Lance absolutely despised missing lunch. It wasn’t as if his meal rations were enough to satisfy him in the first place, so missing lunch on top of that was just a road to misery. The large, dirty-white colored earth pony could easily put down rations for three and still have room for more, but the guard was budgeted—heavily. So, every day, he loaded his tray down with the same amount of food that the skimpy stallion who always sat across from him received, and he seethed about it. The meals were simple: the soup of the day, whatever the special was, and his choice of drink that came in a paper cup which could fit in his mouth in its entirety. In the past, partly from desperation, and partly from a desire to satisfy some deeper carnal pleasures, the earth pony had taken to... other means of acquiring his food. Of course, opportunities to indulge himself didn’t come up often, but it was times like these that Lance longed for them.
Baltimare was an absolute shithole, and hardly a day ever went by that Lance didn’t long for the easy ride enjoyed by those stationed in Canterlot. Being a member of the Solar Guard in Canterlot would more or less land you a permanent job standing outside a door somewhere in well-polished armor that had never even seen combat. It was easy, well-paying work. Being a Solar Guard in Baltimare, however, was akin to being thrown into a blender with all the shit that pony degeneracy had to offer. Drugs, crime, murder—if there’s a law about it, it’s likely being broken in Baltimare. That friendship shit they preached up at Canterlot and Ponyville, sadly, didn’t extend much further than there. If his work had anything to say about it, this was the third shakedown Lance had seen this week. At this very moment, he should have been eating lunch, sitting at a too-small table in the mess hall and eating a too-small meal. Instead, he was sitting behind a stupid brick wall in a stupid slum somewhere in downtown Baltimare, waiting for permission to enter a stupid house and take his frustration out on whoever was unlucky and stupid enough to be inside.
Now, Lance, the largest, strongest stallion in the squad was furiously hungry and irritable off his ass. He grumbled something to himself, sparing a moment to brush his ratty, ice-blue mane out of his eyes with a large forehoof before returning it to the ground with a light stomp. Three other ponies sat around him, their heads only coming up to his shoulder, all clad in the golden armor of the solar guard. Lance’s stomach rumbled—it was a loud, somewhat unwelcoming sound that perked the ears of the other three, even though the plates of the golden armor he wore. The light blue mare beside him blinked, then glanced over and up with a sly smile. “What’s the matter big guy, hungry?”
Lance snapped his head around to glare down at her with steely blue eyes, gaze initially harsh and frustrated, though upon making eye contact it softened into a little bit more of a playful sneer. “What do you think, Dawn?” he said with a huff. “I was just lining up for the casserole when Jade tapped me on the shoulder and said to get my armor on.” He threw a somewhat sharp look up at the dark purple mare sitting across from him.
Jade feigned disinterest, glanced at a hoof, then shrugged. “Orders are orders, siege a suspected contraband distribution center, immediately, on an anonymous tip off.”
“But before lunch!?” Lance snorted, then motioned with his head towards the slummy, two story house they they hadn’t yet received permission to enter, and were instead, sitting just behind a brick wall across the way. “Distribution center,” he oiled out. “Is that what they’re calling crackhouses these days?” His stomach growled again—a needy, low rumble of frustration from his body.
Dawn looked to the side of gut, only slightly visible between his chest and bakcplate. It was the gut of a stallion who kept in shape but also didn’t miss his meal; Lance’s body was full of frame and heavy in muscle, though he was also padded quite well around his barrel and rump. He wasn’t fat, but he certainly wasn’t skinny. Eventually, she rolled her eyes. “Geez Lance, if that thing growls any louder, you’re gonna give away our position.” She motioned her hoof towards a gaunt, mustard-yellow stallion to Lance’s right. “Eat Hacksaw, he’s the most annoying.”
The mustard stallion, Hacksaw, blinked as his name brought him back to reality, confusion registering on his face as he tried to figure out what the conversation had been, though while he did that, Lance eyed him up. The large earth pony let his eyes drift lazily up and down the slim pegasus’ form, though rather quickly, he tore them away and thought happy thoughts. Dawn likely hadn’t realized that eating Hacksaw was a viable option for Lance. Of course, Dawn didn’t know about his... hobby. Some could call it comfort eating, and some could call it gorging. Either way, money didn’t go far in the guard, and when a stallion as big as him needed to eat... No one really asked too many questions when criminals went missing. Squadmates however... were usually off the menu.
Jade stuck up her hoof rather suddenly, then made a sharp sweeping gesture. That one motion was all it took to bring the other three to attention with a bustling shuffle and the light clatter of armor. As one, the four ponies stood, then flowed like water to either side of the brick wall, pausing at each end. Jade gave another signal, and in two pairs they rushed the street, their actions sleek and rehearsed. As was standard for a stallion of his size and a situation such as this, Lance filtered in at the front, Jade slightly behind and beside him. As he mounted the porch, she gave his rump a firm slap, the motion surprisingly lacking in flirtatiousness or any sexual meaning—if anything it was a stallion’s locker room slap, a sort of ‘go kick their asses, champ,’ that you’d expect from a football coach who had never quite understood boundaries. The beast of a stallion lurched forward with a grunt, his pride somewhat scuffed.
At one point in time, they had agreed that his signal to ‘go throw himself against that thing straight ahead and break it with sheer body mass and kinetic energy’ would be a tap on the rump, however, Jade was never particularly good at finesse. Lance hit the wooden door like a tank, and despite the fact that it was deadbolted and chained, the frame burst inward on the side of the latch, then the door itself snapped completely in two when the chain went taut. Lancer burst right through it in a mess of splinters, emerging into a grungy sitting room while the other three ponies filtered in around him.
“Manehatten Royal Guard!” Jade shouted in a booming voice, one that was surprisingly full for a mare of her stature. “Surrender now or get beaten to a fucking pulp!”
Jade had never been particularly good at finesse.
A sickly-looking earth pony went dashing past, into the kitchen, which was only separated from the living room by a bar counter, and from it came a sudden crash and the clatter of silverware hitting the linoleum tile.
“Hacksaw!” Jade spat, stepping forward even as she reached down with a hoof to draw a baton from her leg holster. She gave it a snap, and it extended to it’s full length with an intimidating series of clicks. “Watch the foyer, no one leaves. Dawn, tag the one in the kitchen, then meet me upstairs. Lance on basement. Big guy like you can handle himself.”
The four ponies dispersed, Hacksaw remaining in the foyer while the other three split. Lance plodded heavily down the hallway straight ahead and past the stairs, not quite walking, but not quite galloping—stealth was irrelevant for someone of his size, especially since he’d already kiboshed the door. He wasn’t entirely sure how Jade had known that the house had a basement, but sure enough, on the left side of the hall, below the stairs that climbed to the second story, there was a slanted door which he had to duck to enter.
The sound of the others storming the wooden structure vibrated through the floorboards as Lance stomped his way down the stairs, making no efforts to hide his approach. The staircase was lit dimly by the light cast through the open doorway from the hall, however that light didn’t extend to the room beyond, and once the stallion reached the bottom, he spent a moment or two blindly groping in the air for some sort of a drawstring—there wasn’t a wall anywhere close enough for there to be a switch, so there was bound to be a hanging lamp. He found it, then gave it a yank. The single light bulb on the ceiling flashed to life at the very same time that the sting gave way with a pitiful ‘plink.’
The basement was small and cramped, no more than ten feet square. Trash littered the floor and it smelled of mildew and caustic chemicals. A table in the back corner looked like some budgeted high school teacher’s chemistry set, cobbled together from half of a kitchen dining set and whatever classroom supplies were just lying about. As Lance slowly lowered his hoof, the frayed string dangling from it like that of a popped balloon, he couldn’t help the fleeting suspicion that the air down here might just be flammable.
Lance recoiled backwards in legitimate surprise as a tan earth pony stallion exploded up from below a heap of trash with a hypodermic needle clutched in his right hoof. His short, brown mane looked patchy and his eye sockets were sunken. His ribs showed through his pelt, and all in all, he looked thin and shaky enough to blow over in a light breeze. Lance quickly recovered from the unappreciated jumpscare, and with a small growl, lashed out with his left forehoof in a similar way that one would attempt to swat a frustrating fly out of the air. His large, heavy hoof caught the stallion in the chest, and lifted him almost comically right off his hooves, sending the scrawny guy soaring across the room to crash into the chemistry table, sending dozens of shot glasses and kitchenware full of unknown substances scattering to the floor. Regardless of the fact that the stallion was all skin and bone, the table broke down the middle with the agonized crackle and snap of plywood and the pony was left lying in the crease between the two broken ends, dazed.
A sudden shriek from behind him was the only warning Lance had before a pair of light blue hooves wrapped around his neck from behind, then squeezed down with surprising force. He let out somewhat of a retch, then jerked forward, spinning left, then right, trying to grab at the mare who held his neck in a poorly-executed chokehold as her comrade groaned amidst the splinters of the chemistry table. Gasping for breath, highly frustrated, but not in any relative danger, Lance threw himself forward, then dug his hooves hard into the concrete floor and jerked to a stop. Physics ensured that the mare continued to travel, sliding right over the top of his head and thudding down on her back before him. Without missing a beat, Lance pinned her with a single, saucer-sized hoof and glared down at her.
Like the stallion, she was gaunt, but nowhere near as bad. Her wings, spread out and flapping desperately, looked somewhat thin of feathers, and likely hadn’t been preened in ages. He swallowed a knot in his throat, his neck still stinging from the mare’s grasp, even going a little red. She was clean, or at least cleaner than the other pony, and her dark blue mane was in decent enough shape.
“Fuck you!” she hissed upwards, her inverted features contorted in rage. She flailed below him, wiggling with all her might, then attempted to spit up at him, though considering she was on her back, the ball of saliva did little more than arc graciously above her head and plop down beside her on the floor a second or two later. “Celestia’s little bitch!” She grabbed at his own forehoof with her two ratty ones and squeezed, letting out an effort-stricken ‘hnnnnghhh’ as she attempted to pull it off her chest. She twitched and jerked and practically seemed to vibrate below his hoof. She was certainly fucked up on something, maybe on whatever had been in that stallion’s improvised weapon. “Don’t you guys have something better to be doing?”
Lance felt his teeth grind against each other as he glared down at her, and his stomach gave another, loud, insistent growl. The sounds of a scuffle from upstairs echoed down through the floor. He would likely have several minutes down here to himself... and he had missed lunch, though this was a dangerous and inconvenient time to snack. He also knew that he was big enough, and she was small enough that he’d be able to hide her below his armor.
“What the fuck are you looking at me like that for!?” the mare spat up at him. “Never seen a real mare bef—” Her jibe turned into a surprised cry as he moved his hoof from her chest to her shoulder, then spun her like a top, one hundred and eighty degrees so that she was facing the same way as him. His other forehoof shoot in, grasping one side of her barrel just below the foreleg, his other moving to match it, and then he hefted her right off the ground like some sort of a toy. She wasn’t even half his size when held up before him, likely a smaller than average mare, though to him, she might as well have been the size of a child. She was left dangling before him, kicking her hind legs, grabbing onto his forelegs with her own and squeezing.
Occasionally, Lance enjoyed playing with his food, however, this wasn’t such an occasion. Without so much as a single taunt, or even a smug look, he opened his maw wide, and stuffed the mare’s entire head right into his waiting mouth, his tongue molesting the underside of her chin. She hadn’t bathed in quite some time, and the natural salts of her body immediately hit his tastebuds and got him salivating. She screamed from inside his maw, though it was a muffled, pathetic sound that barely reverberated down his throat, and with a firm squeeze and a lifting motion, he stuffed the mare’s head right through his mouth and into his awaiting throat, feeling it stretch some with the shape of her muzzle as her shoulders slid past his teeth and her head was forced to point straight up. Once her shoulders were in, the sides of his mouth quickly forced her forehooves down and pinned them to her sides. However, her wings remained flared, flapping and beating at the air, molting feathers and scattering them through the air.
Sensing an impending meal, Lance felt his stomach tighten and rumble, and, eager to not keep it waiting, the stallion bit down hard on the mare, enough to keep her in place as he threw his head back, a single hoof sliding up to grab her squarely between the hind legs while his other went to the floor for balance. He briefly released her with his teeth, then gave a hard swallow as the mare screamed again, shutting his eyes in a sort of carnal bliss as she slid downwards. His upper row of teeth made contact with the tops of her beating wings, which only went stiff in a natural attempt to keep from being swallowed. Lance grunted, then gave a heavy roll of his shoulders and a hard gulp, accompanied with an even harder pull between her legs. Her left wing folded in, and the right one flat out broke with a brittle snap as the both of them were swept down to her sides, still extended like those of a pigeon squeezed around the middle, the twitching tips hanging out past her rump. Gravity truly did work against the mare, and the next two swallows sent her all but plunging down his throat while his tongue hungrily slithered it’s way down her chest towards her belly. Another gulp was enough sink the mare right to her naval, her twitching wings tickling the insides of his mouth and throat while her form showed as a bulge below his jaw, the entire shape of it extending right down into his chest as it wiggled back and forth. Saliva was filling his mouth just as quickly as it could be absorbed and swept away by her coat, lubricating her for the cruel journey downward. He would have sighed in content if his airway wasn’t temporarily constricted by her barrel and extended wings, so instead, he removed his hoof, cocked his head back all the way, then opened his jaws as wide as he could and gave a couple of rough pigeon-swallows, the first one ensuring that the mare slid right down to her rump, and the next sucking that in as well, leaving nothing but her two kicking hind hooves and twitching wingtips out in the open as they tickled his lips.
Lance let a pleased groan escape him as her rump slid into his throat like a knot on rope, then gave one last swallow, this one light, the carnal bliss of a good meal registering on his face as he closed his teeth around her retreating hind hooves, momentarily pinning her dark blue tail between his pearly whites and letting musty scent of it linger in his nostrils. He could feel her weight settling into his belly, and a third scream from the mare went almost completely unheard through the layer of armor and fat around his middle. Expression somewhat akin to that of someone finishing the last bite of a well-prepared meal, Lance let her tail slide between his lips and gave one last, hearty gulp that sent the mare plunging to her doom. He felt her disappear down his slick throat, felt the pressure of her shoulders against the bottom of his gut as she was forced through the tight ring of his stomach, then the light bounce in his belly as she dropped in fully and was forced into somewhat of a tight ball by the empty digestive sack, which was kept from stretching too far by the armored chestplate he wore. Already, he could feel a little more pressure on the buckles keeping it affixed to his frame.
Lance shut his eyes and took a moment to compose himself, sighing happily as his stomach finally shut up, feeling the thrashings of the mare within him and making his best effort to keep himself unaroused. A shrink likely would have had a field day with him if he ever revealed that eating ponies actually turned him on.
The size of the mare, coupled with the fact that his belly was already somewhat large, on top of the fact that he was wearing full combat armor, ensured that there was no change in his appearance with the mare in his gut. Slowly, he stood, feeling a little heavier than normal, though otherwise, just the same as he was. “Fuck,” Lance muttered to himself. “I so needed that.” Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he had just killed her; well, not yet at least, though she was most certainly on a quick path to death. There was a reason Lance managed to keep a beer belly with such small rations and so little beer; this mare wasn’t the first, and she most certainly wouldn’t be the last for him. If Lance had ever even had a moral compass, there was so much dust on the looking glass at this point that the little needle within pointing towards the moral high ground was completely obscured. The wiggling of the terrified mare in his belly struggled to stir some arousal in his lower body, and Lance had to focus specifically on not letting that get to him in the moment.
“Dude what the fuck!?”
Embarrassingly enough, he had completely forgotten about the the stallion he’d bitchslapped into the kindergarten chemistry set, and a quick look his way revealed that the stallion was back on his hooves, bleeding from several small scratches on his limbs and one across his forehead as he stood there on shaky legs, face alight with disgust, confusion, and terror.
“Y-y-you’re a guard!” he stammered, his squeaky voice somehow managing to be ten-packs-a-day raspy at the same time. “You can’t do that!?”
Lance cocked an eyebrow. “Do what?”
The pony before him spluttered, backing up until his rump hit the wall. “Do that!” He jabbed his hoof accusingly at Lance’s middle, which responded with a muffled and terrified scream “L-let her out!”
A couple shouts from up above drew a small flick of his ears, But Lance didn’t take his eyes off the stallion. “I just did,” he droned, taking a step towards the stallion, who seemed to be trying to phase through the wall behind him. “Tell you what,” he said with a grin, making a hacking sound in the back of his throat. “I’ll spit her up, and then eat you instead.” He reared his head back with a too-wide grin on his face, then clenched his core muscles and forced himself to gag, an effort that took quite a fair deal of practice. The mare inside screamed again as she was contorted, then rather slowly, a bulge started to show in lance’s lower neck.
The malnourished stallion before Lance let out a sound that was somewhere between a cry of terror and a gag of disgust, then wildly waved his hooves before his face. “Nononono don’t do that! Fuck that. Fuck. That! I can find a new dealer!”
Rolling his eyes, Lance lowered his head, then gave a lazy swallow, forcing the mare right back down to where she’d been previously. “That’s what I thought.” He would have to do something about this stallion. He couldn’t just let him tell his squad what he’d seen. Of course, it would sound absurd to them, but there were blue feathers all over the floor, and the terrified screaming from his gut still had a few minutes to die down; it was a risk he could take, but didn’t want to take. Of course, this left him with another dilemma as well. Eat the stallion, or kill him? Eating him would provide next to no benefit other than hiding the evidence, considering the stallion barely seemed to have any meat on his frame. Killing him, of course, would lead to a long line of reports that he’d have to fill out and likely put him in some hot water.
He wasn’t expecting the cracked-out stallion to bolt for the stairs, and it came as a surprise when the skinny, yet surprisingly agile pony went zipping by on his right side. Lance gave a heavy lurch to the side and snapped down hard on the scrawny stallion’s tail right as he was about to pass out of reach. Instead, the little guy came to a sudden stop with a sharp cry of pain, his forehooves dragging across the concrete as Lance dragged him back and away from the stairs.
The oversized earth pony didn’t even waste any time in turning the comparatively small stallion around, and instead, chewed his way down that tail while his right forehoof slammed down between the stallion’s shoulder blades in order to pin his chest to the floor, knocking the air out of him in a sharp wheeze in the process. Unlike the mare, which he had rather enjoyed eating, even if it had been fast, this stallion tasted vile, like filth and dirt and musk. It was almost enough to make him retch, and as his lips reached the stallion’s rump, stretching to engulf it, he made the conscious decision to spit the stallion out at the very same moment that the creak of the door opening somewhere at the top of the stairs reached his ears.
“Yo, Lance?” Jade’s voice called down the stairs.
Panic flashed in the big earth pony’s eyes, and in order to keep the druggie—who’s rump was currently in his mouth—quiet, he moved his hoof from the middle of his back, and instead, wrapped it around his throat and squeezed. He was committed now. Jade would likely wonder why the stallion’s tail was soaked in saliva were he to spit him out now.
As the stairs creaked with every step that Jade took towards the basement, Lance felt his panic rise. He yanked down with his hoof and more or less forced the writhing stallion rump-first into his throat, gagging from a combination of that and the rancid taste. The poor guy’s hind legs contorted at angles that they weren’t meant to contort at as Lancer forced them past his teeth, and in a similar fashion to what he’d done with the mare, threw his head back to let gravity do his dirty work.
He had never eaten a pony so fast in his life. It took the earth pony a little less than four seconds to force the scrawny stallion down his throat, and Jade appeared no more than a second after the cold snap of his teeth closing around the stallion’s snout cut the air. “What the fuck are you doing down here, Lance?” Jade snapped towards him, her tone somehow managing to sound casual. “We’ve got this place tied down and you’re down here fucking around.”
Lance shrugged and rather hurriedly turned away from his superior, feeling that panic rise again, considering his throat was still very much stuffed with writhing stallion. Trying to distract, he pointed his hoof in the direction of the smashed chemistry station, then brought that hoof right back in to push firmly against his throat as he forced a painful swallow. A wet gluck filled the air as he forced the stallion down, the outline of his chin traveling down Lance’s throat as he was forced into the earth pony’s gut alongside the still-thrashing mare. Right when Lance was ready to feel the bounce of the stallion dropping into his gut, the gross-tasting pony lodged right at the bottom of his throat, the bulge of the stallion’s head showing from the front of Lance’s chest. What came next for the stallion was an uncomfortable pressure as he more or less ran out of room between his spine and his chestplate. Still facing away, Lance grasped desperately for the strap to loosen his chestplate while Jade paced her way across the room to glare at the shattered beakers and glasses. Considering his throat was now blocked, his body started throwing up defense mechanisms, and the large stallion gagged, eyes watering as he fought to keep the pony down.
“What the fuck did you do?” she asked, turning to face him. “What the fuck are you heaving at over there?”
Lance’s hoof found the strap, and gave it a small yank as he struggled not to vomit, the taste of the stallion still fresh on his tongue. The second he freed up the strap, he felt the vile creature finish his plunge, forced into his gut with the thrashing blue mare, accompanied with a hard drop and bounce from his belly, and the pained creak of the leather straps on his armor. Lance heard, and felt a scream from the crackhead, and he winced some as Jade’s ears perked.
“Did you hear that?” she asked, suddenly going rather still.
Lance felt himself clam up, and he cleared his throat before wiping the cold sweat from his brow with a forehoof. “Hear what?” A powerful kick jostled his belly, and the stallion screamed again, then the mare screamed, albeit nowhere near as loudly. Nonetheless, it was certainly audible.
Jade, by some miracle, was too busy looking everywhere but at him to see his belly move, though she turned sharply to face him immediately thereafter. “That!”
“Sounds like it came from upstairs,” he said tensely, his right hoof sliding back to locate the strap to tighten his chestplate. He found it, then gave it a small tug, though he wasn’t expecting the sudden rush of air from his stomach that was the result of his action. A loud, obnoxious burp burst forth from his mouth, accompanied with two, light blue feathers that were left flitting about in the air.
“Yeah...” Jade mused, glaring up at the floorboards while Lance desperately waved his forehooves about, trying to swat the evidence of his crime out of the air.
“It was like that when I got down here,” he blurted, gesturing as largely as he could for the shattered table. “They must have tried to destroy the evidence. Smell is getting to me. Don’t know what it is.” He swallowed down another gag.
Jade rolled her eyes and cast a harsh look his way. “Are you sure your clumsy ass didn’t knock it over when you went barging down the stairs?”
“It’s against the far wall! How could I do that?” Lance stifled another burp, keeping his mouth closed this time, though the taste of the acidic and musky air from within his gut wafting over his tongue was unmistakeable, and a clump of feathers and fur managed to find its way up his throat and land on his tongue. With a grimace, he swallowed it back down, then hunched over a little as his belly gurgled and squelched.
Her attention was drawn away from the chemistry set as she turned fully to face Lance, eyes looking him over with scrutinizing intent. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
The stallion forced a shrug, making sure to keep somewhat doubled over as to hide the fact that his gut was rather swollen, and squirming. Muffled cries from within reached his ears, and he covered it by groaning as loudly and as long as he could manage with the breath in his lungs. “You know,” he said after a quick inhale. “I just really do not like missing lunch. I think my body is punishing me.”
Jade rolled her eyes. “Fuck dude, there’s a fridge upstairs. Go eat whatever’s left if it’s still any good.” She snickered. “Not that I’d trust any of it. Those fuckers upstairs were disgusting.”
He let out a laugh, a harsh, forced laugh, finding the comment a lot more relatable than Jade would ever know. At the point, he really wanted the ponies in his belly to shut the fuck up and die already, and as Jade turned briefly away to observe the room, Lance wrapped his hoof around the strap for his chestplate and gave it as hard of a tug as he could manage. The sickening urge to throw up was punctuated by a third, violent burp. Luckily for Lance, it obscured the sickening crunch of bone from within his gut and the agonized wail of pain from the stallion which turned into somewhat of a gurgle halfway through as he was likely submerged in stomach bile.
“Dude!” Jade snapped. “Fuck off with that shit. Get your ass upstairs and stop stinking up the air down here.”
He gave a chuckle that trailed off into a flustered groan, then gave his head a firm nod, turning and starting towards the stairs with a somewhat awkward gait to his step. He had been complaining about missing lunch not ten minutes ago. He couldn’t just... be seen walking around with a swollen gut, so his makeshift corset of a chestplate was his only line of defense; coincidentally, however, with two ponies in his stomach and the straps drawn in so tight, he was in a perpetual state of discomfort and constantly fighting the urge to vomit. As he awkwardly ascended the stairs, the somewhat humorous and rather grotesque image of him throwing up the broken remains of two ponies on the kitchen floor flashed through his brain.
Yeah, that would be a hard one to explain.
Lance took deep, sharp breaths through his mouth as he climbed the stairs, building up a little bit of a sweat due to the fact that he was lugging not only his own large frame, but the weight of two others and his armor. With a final grunt, he reached the top step and sat back on his rump for a moment to take a breath. He could still feel the squirming thrashes of the two ponies in his stomach, though with how tightly the two were restricted, they couldn’t do much more than squirm. Lance tensed briefly, then forced up another burp, this one reeking of acid and blood; the release of air made his stomach feel a little better. On a whim, he burped again though the initial rush of air over his tongue was interrupted by a half a mouthful of coppery-acidic tasting liquid as it rushed onto his tongue from the back of his throat. The taste of it was honestly refreshing compared to the vile taste of the stallion that still lingered there, though still not much better Lance groaned, then tilted his head back and swallowed it back down with a grimace.
Eating the stallion had been a terrible idea. The mare had been perfect, just the right size to fill him nicely so that he could go on with the rest of his day, but the stallion was just too much. Were he off duty, it would be a different story.
There were three ponies hogtied on the kitchen floor. The guard was generally against hogtying ponies, as it was degrading and generally frowned upon by the public, but it was the easiest way to contain prisoners, and when you did as good of a job as Jade’s unit did, superiors tended to turn a blind eye to some of the smaller details; thing such as hogtying, broken bones, and maybe a little bit of accidental death.
Hacksaw glanced up at Lance’s entry, whistling to himself as he leaned back against the kitchen table in one of the creaky chairs and idly examined the front of his forehoof. “Where’s your catch, Lance?” he asked, a gruff smirk forming on his face.
Lance rolled his eyes as he made a beeline for the fridge. “The basement was empty.” He felt a weak kick against the underside of his stomach and made sure to tense his core as he strode swiftly past the reclined stallion, towards the fridge. “Just a lot of chemicals.” his oversized hoof grasped the fridge door and yanked it open, the light inside blinking on to light up rows and rows food in all different states of freshness. It was what you would expect an impoverished fridge to look like—it was just kind of gross. But there, in the door, was a bottle of milk. Frowning, Lancer sat back on his haunches and removed it from the door. He popped the cork, took a sniff, then shrugged and went bottoms up with it.
“Dude what the fuck,” Hacksaw said with a laugh, snorting as he struggled not to lose his balance. He kicked his hind legs a couple times, letting the chair fall forward and back onto all four legs. “You’re gonna get every disease ever.”
Lance made quick work of the bottle, closing his eyes in relief and bliss as the cool liquid poured down his throat, quelling some of the aggressive churning in his belly and washing some of that horrible taste out of his mouth. He lowered the bottle with an almighty burp—and another subtle crack and a pop from his stomach—then lazily tossed it into the corner, ears flicking briefly as it shattered. “Relax, the milkman brought it by this morning.” He sniffed the air, grimaced, then slammed the fridge door closed again. “I think that was the only thing in there that wasn’t rotten.”
He was just readying to turn around when a sudden, violent thrashing from within his stomach caused him to stiffen up with a groan. One of the two—he wasn’t sure which—was bucking the hell out of his insides. Lance doubled over a little bit and shut his eyes, hoping that Hacksaw couldn’t see his wiggling and shaking gut from the back. The large stallion knew what was happening—death throes. With the way they were both sandwiched in his gut, and with the rising, caustic fluids, the chances that one of them would be completely submerged were... very high.
“Dude, you okay over there?” Hacksaw asked, starting to sit up from his chair.
Waving his right hoof, Lance motioned to the stallion that he was fine, and eventually started to sit up once squirming died down. “Yeah. Milk on an empty stomach.”
After another moment or two, he sat himself back against the fridge door, hind legs splaying out on the linoleum tile as he waited for Jade to return from the basement. Groaning, he reached for one of the straps connected to his chestplate and loosened it enough to take some of the pressure off his gut. He could spare a belt loop or two, hopefully. He felt the pressure within literally push the plate out an inch or two, and almost immediately, that sense of uncomfortable fullness was cut in half. He groaned contentedly to himself, then let his eyes fall on a chartreuse mare who was hogtied not too far from him.
“Wonder where your other friends went,” he jibed, patting his armored belly with the flat of his right forehoof.
If only she knew.
Hacksaw rolled his eyes, sliding out of the chair as Jade’s hoofsteps echoed in the hall. He made himself look busy just in time for her to trudge into the room with Dawn in tow. “Well I guess that’s a wrap. Let’s get on the horn and get the damn hazmat team in here, this place is gonna need to come down board-for-board.” She cast her eyes across Hacksaw, Lance, and the ponies hogtied in the middle of the floor. “Lets get them out of here and get lunch.” She smirked at Lance. “You hungry, big guy?”
Lance forced a grin. “Oh, yeah, totally. I probably could eat a small horse.”
