“Do I look like your damn maid? Screw off!”

Lex ignored Sirrush’s brusque reply, as well as she rude gesture she made a moment later, knowing that she was trying to provoke him. “Just go in there and say what I told you to say, then go outside and patrol the sky for airborne enemies.”

But the drey simply put her hands on her hips, lips curling in a sneer as she glared at him. “You think I’m your puppet or something? That you can sit me on your lap, fist me up to your elbow, and make me say whatever you want?”

Stepping forward, she put her face within inches of his own. “Kiss. My. Ass.”

Meeting her gaze, Lex sighed inwardly.

Then he backhanded Sirrush hard enough to knock her off her feet.

She caught herself with one hand before hitting the ground, turning her fall into a backflip, righting herself a dozen feet away from him. Rubbing where he’d struck her, she grimaced as she touched her bruised cheek, before turning her head and spitting out blood.

Clenching her fists, her eyes dilated as she stared him down, breathing heavily. “When I’m done with you,” she growled, her arms and legs turning draconic as her wings and tail appeared, “I’m gonna use your shriveled sack as a punching bag. Five hundred reps of jabs, hooks, and uppercuts. And if it hasn’t burst by then, we’ll move on to kicks.”

“The bones in your hands would shatter before I ever got so much as a bruise,” snorted Lex, not bothering to take a ready stance.

She gave a wordless screech and flung herself at him, lashing out with her claws, wings, and tail.

The fight lasted all of thirty seconds, and then only because Lex took his time subduing her. When it was over, Sirrush was flat on her back with Lex was straddling her. Her wings and tail were pinned underneath her, her legs were tightly bound up in his own tail, and her arms were held above her head by one of his claws. But she hadn’t stopped struggling, thrashing and snarling as she fought to free herself.

“Bastard!” she panted as she kept writhing, succeeding only in exhausting herself. “This is the only way you could ever get a girl like me under you!”

“Not the only way,” replied Lex coolly, his free claw tracing a talon over her lips, deftly avoiding her attempt to bite him before his wandering digit moved lower. “Just the most enjoyable.”

The touching brought a renewed round of struggling from Sirrush. “GET OFF!!!”

Smirking, Lex leaned down over her. “You first.”

Sirrush cursed. Then she grunted. Then she moaned.

None of which surprised Lex in the slightest, since he’d known from the beginning that this was what she wanted.

This entire exchange, from the insults to the violence, was Sirrush’s version flirting. Whereas Spice preferred to be slapped around and publicly denigrated, and Agrat enjoyed a round of drinking and persiflage, Sirrush was turned on by violence. Or rather, she was aroused by the physical rush that went with being violent, getting an equally visceral thrill out of carnage and carnality alike.

For his part, Lex found her fetish distasteful. While the beast within him could appreciate fighting to win breeding rights, that was only because doing so was an expression of dominance; meek submission was just as stimulating to it as forceful surrender. Those among its conquests that had agreed to stay with it – temporarily, until their offspring had been raised to the point of independence, after which they and their mother were summarily cast out – had never been treated harshly, even during subsequent breeding attempts.

In its own way, the savage creature that made up Lex’s instincts was in perfect agreement with his pony aspect: violence was a tool, rather than a source of pleasure unto itself.

It was just that the two halves of him disagreed on when that tool should be used.

But this, Lex reflected with another inward sigh as he continued to fondle Sirrush, is one of those times.

A few minutes later she threw her head back and bellow a scream that could easily have been a war cry before finally going limp, sweat-soaked and panting.

“Now,” demanded Lex as he stood up, grabbing her by the hair and dragging her to her feet, an application of his will being sufficient to clean her up and heal the cuts and bruises she’d sustained, “do as I told you.”

“F-fine,” she panted, needing a moment to make her legs stop shaking. “But next time you’re gonna have to do more than just rough me up and feel me up.”

“Don’t worry, I will.”

A shudder ran its way down her spine then, even as she retracted her draconic features, leaving only the scales around her chest and groin in place. For a moment she hesitated, and Lex knew that she was considering trying to start another fight. But all it took was a frown – his disapproval radiating out with a literal force all its own – and she thought better of it, padding down the hallway of the extradimensional mansion.

Staying behind, Lex let his awareness follow her.

Not needing sensory organs to perceive his environment, he was capable of detecting virtually anything in his local vicinity. Doing so meant that he was being bombarded with a rush of information that would have driven a mortal – even his old self – to madness from cognitive overload. All the more so since he was continuously examining myriad possible futures. But as a titan, he was easily able to handle the incredible amounts of data he was picking up at any given moment, to the point where he could flawlessly sift through it without needing to consciously concentrate.

That was why it was easy for him to register what Sirrush was doing as she turned a corner, strode to the appropriate door, and kicked it in without knocking.

“Listen up, fox bitches!” she bellowed, causing the Pimao Jingzhi in the banquet hall to freeze, eyes wide as they stared at dark-skinned woman who’d suddenly barged in. “‘Cause I’m only gonna say this once!”

At the back of the hall, Yuyan slowly stood up. “We-”

“I’m here with a message from your new pimp!” continued Sirrush, raising her voice so as to drown out the six-tailed kumiho. “He says that from now on, anyone who’s in his presence will have their thoughts read, like it or not! Doesn’t matter who you are, doesn’t matter why you’re there; if you’re anywhere near him, he’ll know what you’re thinking. And if you’d rather he didn’t” – she jerked her thumb over her shoulder, pointing behind her – “there’s the door! Got it? Good!”

And with that, she turned around and left, smirking as she brought her draconic features back out and flew toward the mansion’s exit.

Leaving Lex gritting his teeth.

He’d known she’d butcher his message, of course, but there’d been little alternative. He didn’t want to interrupt his wives while they were getting to know each other, and all of the other emissaries – save only for Spice, who was still playing with that summoned monstrosity in her room, knowing she’d have been even more disruptive than Sirrush – were working to safeguard the adlet village. And while he could have used a spell or some other remote method of delivering his words himself, he’d wanted to avoid both the waste of resources (minor though it would have been) and the possibility that Mei Li’s clan would feel intimidated into compliance if he delivered the news personally.

It might have been excessive caution on his part, but the new policy he was implementing warranted such measures.

No longer would anyone be allowed to have private thoughts while in proximity of him.

It wasn’t a decision that Lex had made lightly. Mental privacy was an aspect of personal autonomy, which had always been – and still was – one of the central rights that he wanted his government to protect. While his moral code had numerous provisions where it was acceptable to read someone’s thoughts without their consent, those exceptions were highly limited in how expansive they were allowed to be, and even then could be justified only by issues of immediate necessity.

The problem was that “necessity” didn’t mean the same thing for a titan that it did for a mortal.

Adagio had been the first example of that. While Lex had given himself permission to read her thoughts during their fight – something entirely justified by the atrocities she’d committed and the powerful magic she’d had at her disposal – he’d made sure to limit himself to the battle tactics she was employing. Even when he’d demanded answers about what she’d done to gain the power that she had, he’d refrained from reading her thoughts, instead settling for bluffing about doing so.

The result was that he’d been taken completely by surprise when she’d unleashed a creature that had put all of Everglow, and potentially even the gods themselves, at risk. Not only that, but he’d needed to cut a deal with Kara – agreeing to allow her into Equestria – in order to find out who had granted Adagio her aristeia. And he’d lost the chance to glimpse any answers she might have had about why her soul couldn’t be found now.

All because he hadn’t felt any impetus to dig deeper into her thoughts, certain that there’d been no need.

After all, how could there have been, when his titan powers made it so easy to overwhelm her?

It was one thing to voluntarily accept additional hardships in the name of doing the right thing. It was something else completely when that hardship impaired his ability to protect the people he needed to. And yet, he couldn’t simply give himself blanket permission to read everyone’s mind because of what they might know; that level of justification was no justification at all.

The answer he’d come up with was to make a public announcement, informing everyone around him that being in his presence would necessarily constitute their agreeing to let him read their thoughts.

Anyone who didn’t agree was free to refuse to come near him.

Which was more of a choice than Princess Luna had ever given anyone, with her invasive intrusion into ponies’ dreams. No matter that she held that she did so only to relieve them of nightmares; even if that altogether minor benefit had justified such an incredible violation of ponies’ mental privacy, there was no way for anyone to opt out of those nocturnal visitations. At least when his goddess had invaded his dreams, she’d been acting under the auspices of his having agreed to be her champion. Luna, by contrast, had seen fit to enter the dreams of anyone she wished, regardless of their relationship with her.

Which wasn’t to suggest that his own policy – while still superior to that of the alicorns – was without imperfections. Even with his foresight, he couldn’t tell when circumstance would bring him into someone’s presence unexpectedly, at least until six seconds before it actually happened. But he could at least refrain from reading their minds until he was actually there, and they tried to leave or stay accordingly. And in the event that someone had sufficient discipline to control their thoughts while around him – or used magic to try and shield their mind – that was their prerogative; his moral code still demanded that there be just cause for actively trying to bypass their defenses.

But otherwise, everyone’s thoughts – both present and future – would be another set of data for him to examine.

And now that the Pimao Jingzhi are aware of that, decided Lex, taking note of how none of the foxes had ventured toward the banquet hall’s exit, meaning that they were willing to accept his knowing what they were thinking, it’s time to put this new paradigm into practice.

With that, Lex turned and headed toward Mei Li’s clan.

Author's Note

After a brief interlude with Sirrush, Lex has her inform the Pimao Jingzhi of a decision he’s reached: that from now on, he will read people’s minds as a matter of course!

How will the foxes react to this? What will Lex discover now that he’s given himself permission to listen in on their thoughts?