“Say, what’d you do before all of this?” Bailey asked. Between the beeps and boops of the medical machinery, it was a welcome break to hear a voice.

“What, before the Stable?” Shooting replied.

“Yeah. You said ya’ll were from Hollow Shades, didn’t you? Both of ya. What’d you do there?”

Shooting exchanged a glance with Blueberry before she shrugged. “I was--well. I wasn’t a guard, but I defended the town, in a way. It’s a forest out there, and we were arguably in the Everfree… our weather wasn’t controlled by Cloudsdale. It worked on itself.”

Bailey’s eyes visibly widened at the revelation, but Shooting could only chuckle. “Relax. There wasn’t a lot of scary things out there, but there sometimes were wild animals who were… upset. My job was to… take care of threats like that. Stay in the sky, high up. Watch for intruders.

“When they started building the Stable - I guess we were considered a big enough town, but that never made sense to me - they handed out jobs. You know, just in case.” The irony of her words wasn’t lost on her. As the white and red bat pony came back and checked her vital signs, she continued talking. “Since I was the only pony in the city who was proficient with a gun, they told me hey, you’re security mare. Which was smart - you can’t just pick up a gun and hit anything. You’d just as easily shoot a friend, or waste all your ammo, if you could even figure it out to begin with. Especially in here, metal walls? You miss a shot down here, someone is going to take a bullet. Almost certain.”

“It’s an acquired skill,” Blueberry said, nodding. “It’s a lot like lockpicking. You really can’t just guess and get it right. Or, on the locks you can guess on… those would get picked really early on, honestly.” She chuckled. “I’m sure whatever was left in a building up there, Megaspells or not… it’s all been picked already.”

Shooting nodded, half listening as Blueberry continued to speak. The trio was interrupted by the squeak of a mechanical door opening, a mare in a labcoat entering the room with a clipboard floating in her magical grasp.

“Well, Star,” the doctor mare said. Just like everyone else, the doctor hadn’t escaped the sticky, sweet grasp of the stable’s food supply, her body quite a bit thicker than when she entered. She fared better than most ponies—something Star attributed to her medical profeciency—but it was unavoidable. “I don’t see any drugs currently running through your bloodstream. That’s both good and bad.”

Shooting nodded, giving a hard swallow. “Alright.”

“The good news is, that means you aren’t under the influence of anything. Whatever caused you to have your… spontaneous feasting, that’s gone. The bad side of this is that… I don’t really have a way to reverse … mmh.” The mare bit her tongue slightly, thinking of a way to soften the blow.

Thankfully, Shooting’s body did plenty of softening for it. In the four days she’d been “missing”, her appetite hadn’t gone anywhere. Lost in the trance of the ice cream troughs, Shooting didn’t remember a single minute, but she didn’t need to; what happened was obvious. Shooting Star’s body plumped up significantly more than it had before she was lured in. There wasn’t a single hope in the Stable that she was going to be fitting into her armor any time soon, that barrel of hers having thickened up more than anything else. Her belly grew, hanging several inches lower than it did before, and now beginning to bulge against the inside of her thighs. Her rear took a good ballooning, too, that rump having lost any of the firmness it still had, squishing slightly outward as she seated herself down.

“This is,” Shooting said, reaching down and pressing a hoof into her gut. She frowned a little as it sank in, a new sensation for her, bottoming out against her abs. “All me.”

“…Right,” the doctor said, squinting a little. “The only way that’s going away is old fashioned diet and exercise and, let’s be realistic, none of us are going to get that down here.” She gave a forced chuckle, before clearing her throat when nobody else laughed. “Ah—anyway. You are otherwise cleared to go, Star.”

Shooting gave a little nod as the mare trotted off. Turning to give a smile to her allies, she nodded to Bailey. “So,” she said. “Want to show me your new office, Miss Overmare?”

) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

As the trio walked, Shooting’s mind wandered to the other two mares with her. While Blueberry had been overweight before the stable, and Bailey was just, well, big, the thirty-five pounds she’d somehow managed to gain in three days was rocketing her weight past them. She took slight comfort in the idea that she’d be lighter than Bailey—especially as she looked over the Overmare’s body.

Still, walking was, at best, rather annoying. Each step forward prompted her thigh to grind in against the soft curve of her gut, slowing her down. She cringed at the thought that a few more days of this and she’d be waddling, but she pushed the thought out of her head before it got too deep.

“…and it just kinda started openin’ up fer me,” Bailey said, Shooting only having paid attention for the last bit. “Guess the computer automatically went and fiddled with my ID card. Could just open the door, like, what. Was weird.”

“That is strange,” Shooting commented, pretending like she’d heard all of it.

The trio stood in the entryway, the cold metal of the stable’s interior turning into more of a round shape as the entered the coridor that the Overmare’s office was in. A large, silver door blocked further entryway.

“And she was never there, you said?”

“Nah. Wasn’t shit. There wasn’t no Overmare before, that’s why you weren’t gettin’ no response.” Bailey hoofed her ID card into the slot. It blipped green and the door began to slide open, gears squealing as the door opened. Shooting folded her ears back.

Once the door opened, Shooting couldn’t help but let her jaw go slack.

Beyond anything else, the first thing she noticed was the sheer size. The Overmare’s office was nearly the size of the atrium. It was far less empty, however.

Despite the lone desk in the middle of the room, with a single terminal sat on it, the rest of the walls were covered. TV screens, bookshelves—you name it, the room had it. Most ominously was a large, tall screen covered in green text. Shooting went to check that out first, stepping over to it.

Listed individually, in three columns, was every citizen in the stable. A number hung in place next to their name, each citizen ranked in decending order by it.

“Ah, yup,” Bailey said. “Thought you might get a kick out of that. That there’s every pony—“

“Listed by weight,” Shooting chimed in.

“You’re smart, girl.” Bailey chuckled. “Now, here’s what’s really interestin’. See the last ones on the right, there?”

Shooting turned her attention that way, eyeing the end of the list. Rather than their weights being listed in neon green, they were emblazoned with bright red. All of their names were dead last on the list, and their weights were rather average for a pony.

“Those ones, they ain’t gained a pound. They’re eatin’, ‘cause they ain’t lost any weight, but they’re not blowin’ up like the rest of us.”

Author's Note

The unfinished chapter 3 of Broken Scale.

This chapter was leading towards the ponies who weren't gaining weight being an Equestrian Games troupe passing through the town when the spells dropped, and were actively watching their weight. This was going to lead to the vault's robotic doctors taking this into their own hands, declaring them "severely malnourished", and copious amounts of force feeding.

Broken Scale was essentially going to end with Glaze Filling eventually winning the election after a few cycles, making the decision to open the door because she doesn't believe the mega spells dropped, only for them to find a massive number of raiders outside trying to break in, which would have led to, obviously most of the characters dying because they were far too overweight to possibly fight back.

Bailey was intended to be the great, great grand mother of Raspberry Tart from the original FO:E, and Stonershy's story, Anywhere but Here, having survived the raider attack. This never hashed out because shortly after, Stoner seems to have disappeared from writing AbH and cut all contact with me for... some reason. Never did know why.

And yes, the first few paragraphs are openly making fun of Little Pip and the original FO:E. I still believe that the original FO:E was one of the worst things to happen to the fandom as a whole.