I only popped round for a cup of sugar
Author's Note
A very stupid idea based on a picture you may or may not have seen and which I may look up and link at some point later maybe I don't know.
I'm very tired.
I only popped round for a cup of sugar
A benefit of having the door under the stairs inexplicably, inextricably linked with some sort of magical pony palace was that it was incredibly easy to pop across if you needed to, say, hypothetically, borrow a cup of sugar.
Which is what Walter was doing, because for him the need for sugar was not hypothetical.
Of course, were you of a mind to start asking awkward questions like ‘How is there a link between my door under the stairs and this palace?’ or ‘Why is there a link between my door under the stairs and this palace?’ or ‘What do you mean talking magical horses?’ or ‘Where do you think you’re going get back here and answer my questions you madman’ you might find yourself increasingly frustrated by just how very confusing and obtuse it all was, as answers were unlikely to ever be forthcoming.
Luckily for Walter he was not of such a mind. His mind was quiet and still, serene and content. The unruffled water of an undisturbed and tranquil pond. He just wanted to borrow a cup of sugar.
And so it was that he came to be once more wandering the halls of the palace, nodding greetings to the guards and staff, clutching the cup which would serve to transfer the sugar. The staff and guards nodded back pleasantly enough, used to the occasional intrusion from Walter who, being deemed ‘mostly harmless’ and known to be on friendly terms with the princesses, was given perhaps unhealthy latitude in wandering the halls.
But such was life.
Today he wandered rather more than usual because he was having some difficulty in actually finding the princesses, to his surprise. Normally they seemed to home in on him the moment he crossed the threshold, either purposefully or else seemingly by pure chance. Most times he’d popped over he’d either bumped into them or they’d bumped into him within minutes. Today? Not so much. No sign of them.
“Hello? Girls?” He asked, peering around a corner, empty sugar cup in hand.
Perhaps a little informal for royalty but their previous interactions had helped to establish this sort of easy, breezy relationship. They were tight like that, he and them. Helped that he was an interdimensional interloper. It was a bit silly to stand on ceremony with someone who arrived at your place by going through a tiny door under his stairs.
His wanderings eventually brought him - quite without his conscious intention - to a room he hadn’t ever been in before. It didn’t look like a room many had been in, in fact. A backroom of sorts. Not decorated to any particular extent, not big or fancy. Just a room, only remarkable really for how unremarkable it was.
That, and for the picture on the wall. It was the picture that had really grabbed Walter’s attention.
“What on earth…”
It looked to be a picture of butts. Several butts in a row. Butts arranged on some sort of graph, the numbers of which presumably denoted something. Royal butts, Walter could discern, what with the coloration and markings and such. But discerning this answered nothing. If anything it made it worse.
“Bottoms?” Walter asked himself, peering at the picture in confusion.
It was only after a few solid seconds of this confused peering that he realised that he was, in fact, just staring at their bottoms. Pictures or not this was clearly not the done thing and, blushing, he averted his gaze. He’d seen everything by this point, but still. It felt unseemly.
“Ah! Walter! You’re here!”
Jumping almost a foot in the air out of sheer shock Walter whirled around to find all four of the princesses. Just standing in a row. Smiling. Staring him down.
“G-girls! Hello! Oh, gave me the fright of my life you did,” he said, hand pressed to his chest, heart hammering fit to punch straight through his ribs. They just kept smiling. Had he been in a less-surprised frame of mind he might have found something unsettling about those smiles. They were the smiles of someone who wanted you to agree with them.
“We wanted to ask you about this,” Celestia said, gesturing to the picture with one gold-shod hoof.
“I didn’t make this,” he said very, very quickly. This seemed to perplex her briefly.
“What? No no, we made this. We just wanted to get your input on it,” she said. The others nodded. Walter blinked at them, looked back to the picture - briefly, he didn’t feel a longer look would improve the situation.
“My input?” He asked.
“Yes. We’ve been having something of a disagreement, you see, and an impartial arbitrator is exactly what we need to have it settled,” Luna said.
“Disagreement?” Walter asked.
“About bottoms. To put it bluntly,” Luna said.
“B-bottoms?”
“Are you feeling alright, Walter? You’re stuttering and repeating things. But yes, bottoms. We were, in jest and over a cup of tea, attempting to rank the regal rears when the conversation somehow took a turn for the serious,” said Celestia.
“‘Somehow’? You were the one who-!” Cadence hissed, only to be cut off by Celestia:
“The point is, it has become something of a sticking point. We just can’t settle it. Despite how obvious the rankings might be to anyone with sense.”
“It’s not ‘obvious’, relative to size, mine-” Twilight muttered, but she too was cut off by an increasingly humourless Celestia:
“No-one cares about things relative to other things! It’s just about the size! The raw, plump size!”
“Size indeed! There are other factors! Many other factors!” Luna interjected. Celestia did not look convinced.
“Such as?” She asked.
“Firmness, for one!” Luna said, stomping.
Celestia rolled her eyes.
“Pffbt!” She raspberried. Which was a verb now.
“Look, all I really wanted was-” Watler tried to say, but speaking up had been a mistake. It reminded them he was there.
All of them went from having their attention focused on bickering to having their attention focused right back on him. Walter wilted beneath the burning, ferocious eyes of four petulantly pretty (and pretty petulant) pony princesses, and took an unsteady step backward, clutching his sugar cup for emotional support.
“Walter,” Celestia said sweetly, smiling sweeter still as all the princesses took a step forward. Walter took another step backward. “You see our issue, can’t you? We need a deciding vote. A voice of...reason…”
“S-surely there’s someone-” He started to ask, but Celestia - canny, canny Celestia - knew where he was going before he’d even got halfway there:
“In the palace? Ah, alas, their judgement cannot be held to be impartial. Unlike yours, Walter. Sweet, objective, Walter.”
Walter was backed up against the picture of the bottoms now, and had nowhere else to go. He held his cup before him like a shield, but it was woefully inadequate.
“We know you’ll make the right choice, Walter,” Luna said.
“You’ve got a good head on your shoulders,” said Twilight.
“A man of taste,” Cadence said.
And the four of them, almost as one, turned about, to present him with their arguments.
So to speak.
This was the final straw for Walter, who took the opportunity to escape. With them facing away he lunged to the side and slithered through a gap, falling to his hands and knees and scrabbling along before launching off at a full sprint, heading back the way he’d come but far less casually this time.
“You’re all mad!” He yelled, running as fast as his legs could carry him, only just keeping ahead of them thanks to their lunatic insistence on running backwards, rumps raised. That they didn’t fall over after three paces twisted the mind in knots.
“Walter! Come back!” Celestia cried, looking over her shoulder as she galloped asswards after him, the others doing likewise.
“We need a neutral observer!” Luna shouted.
“I’m not neutral, I’m biased! Horribly, horribly biased!”
This brought them up short, surprisingly, and there was a pleasing screeching sound as all four of them came to a skidding halt, complete with sparks and a little cloud of smoke - theatrical stuff.
Hoping perhaps that sense had prevailed - and taking the opportunity to catch his breath - Walter leapt behind a decorative statue and cowered for a moment, gulping down air. He looked down to check he still had his cup. He did. This at least was constant and coherent.
He risked a peek around the statue and found the princesses stacked up and waiting on him, thankfully at least now facing the proper way.
“Who are you biased in favour of?” Twilight asked from the top of the stack, looming over him.
It was then that Walter realised he’d made a grave error. He’d spoken in haste, and he’d made things worse. He’d dug himself a grave, painted himself into a corner, sawed through the very branch on which he’d been sat. There were no right answer to the question he’d set himself up for.
“Um…”
He hesitated, as might as well be expected, cowering before the stack of princesses that tottered and wobbled over him, huge eyes watching his every move, soft and strokable ears pricked and ready for an answer.
“Um…” he said again, swallowing, licking dry lips.
This was apparently all they needed.
“Don’t say anything! Your eyes said more than your words ever could!” Celestia (bottom of the stack) said, affronted. Walter blinked.
“They do?” he asked.
“Yes!” Luna, also affronted, snapped.
“...and what do they say?” Walter asked, honestly curious.
“You know what they say, Walter!” Cadence said. She too was affronted.
Looking up at Twilight - the stack-topper - he found her looking just as (if not more) affronted than all the others put together. None of them looked happy. His eyes had somehow made a confusing situation objectively bad. Walter made the only choice available to him:
“Right, more running.”
And off he went. The princesses gave hot and angry pursuit but, having been stacked, they had to first unstack and so trailed Walter, his two legs clearly giving him a natural advantage over their magical four (and their wings).
“I can’t believe you preferred hers!” All of the princesses yelled at one point or another during the pursuit, clattering after him as Walter ran hell-for-leather towards the tiny, nondescript door in a normal, nondescript wall that was his exit. Reaching it, he fumbled for his knob in panic, gripped it firmly and, with a strong twist, granted himself release.
Release from pursuit, that is.
Hurling himself forward through the door he quickly scrambled back to slam it shut and then threw his weight against it as four loud thumps followed. The knob rattled as hooves made a meal of manipulating it and muffled voices continued to blame him for his poor taste, but this all soon died down, and before too long all was silence, barring Walter’s gasping breaths.
These too eventually settled, and then all was properly silent.
“Tea with no sugar today,” Walter then said, “I can live with that.”
A few calm moments passed, and then Walter stroked his chin and gazed into middle-distance, face a mask of solemn and serious thought.
“How would I rank them…?”