Standing by the entryway of the Manehattan Mareiotte hotel, Anon stared blankly into the lobby as a pair of guests walked passed. “May I help you with your luggage?”
His tone, much like his demeanor, was soulless and dead, but that was with good reason. Shortly after Celestia had set off on her harebrained adventure, he’d gotten a scroll from Luna that informed him that he was going to assist her sister with her endeavor - meaning he’d be working alongside her with any position she took. The silver lining was that he was being paid handsomely to look after the former Princess, although the money made little difference to him.
He snapped from his apathetic stupor as a blinding light assailed him. “Took you long…”
The words died in his throat as he gazed up at Celestia. Her uniform was the same as his, consisting of a bellmare’s jacket, slacks, and a neat little cap, but that was the problem - the uniform was exactly the same as his. Practically stuffed into an outfit that was clearly several sizes too small for her, she scrunched her snout while fruitlessly trying to tuck her shirt into her pants.
He would have said it was odd that they’d been hired as soon as Celestia had expressed an interest in the job posting, but it wasn’t all that strange. When a nigh-omnipotent demigoddess who’d protected your family for generations comes in looking for work, you’d be hard pressed to turn her away - imbecilic in fact. While the position required no special training or degree, merely consisting of moving luggage and assisting guests when needed, he kept his fingers crossed that the prodigious alicorn wouldn’t find a way of fucking it up.
“Stupid - Mmmph,” she grunted, struggling with her attire.
Shaking his head, Anon grimaced. “Was that the biggest they had?”
“Yes,” she wheezed, sucking in her gut in a last ditch effort to make herself as presentable as possible.
He wanted to bury his face in his palms, but it was inordinately tough to look away from her. Though he’d seen her in swimsuits and gowns, nighties and casual wear, this - this was something altogether different. Somehow adorable, hilarious, and just a pinch provocative, she was beguilingly bewitching. Seeing a sudden movement from just outside, knowing that walking in and finding an ex-royal fighting with her clothes would only make the bizarre scene even worse, he sidled to Celestia’s side and gently elbowed her hip.
“Eyes up,” he hissed, forcing a smile and preparing to greet what he assumed to be guests walking inside. “May I help you -”
“Welcome to the Manehattan Mareiotte hotel,” Celestia blared. “May I help you with your luggage?!?”
Windows shattered, the room shook, and Anon wouldn’t be surprised if several ponies in the vicinity shit their pants from the full, unrestrained might of Celestia’s Royal Canterlot Voice. The only reason he wasn’t immediately deafened was because, moments after first meeting her, she’d greeted him in a similar, thunderous way. He was actually lucky that his ears had been magically healed and reinforced after that fateful incident - unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for most creatures.
“Sorry!” he yelled, doubting the couple, both of which were clutching the sides of their heads while gnashing their teeth, could hear him if he spoke softly. “She’s new!”
The good news was that the pair, a unicorn stallion and a pegasus mare, weren’t bleeding from their eyes, ears, or noses - the bad news was that they quickly noticed whom had addressed them. Falling to their knees, either ignoring or forgetting about their sudden hearing impairment, they bowed before the giantess. So much for not making a scene…
“N…no need for that!” Celestia sputtered, kneeling and offering a hand. “I’m just -”
“What?!” the pegasus yelled.
Her boyfriend or husband - honestly, he could have been either, looked just as confused as she did. Perfect - now there were two ponies with blown-out eardrums and a poorly-dressed alicorn in the glass-strewn lobby. Anon wandered over and helped the couple up while brushing them off.
Joining him, Celestia sent power surging into her horn. “Should I -”
“No!” Anon firmly interrupted. “You go help them to the front desk while I get their things ~ ok?”
He didn’t like to cut her off, but he’d known what she was going to say before she said it. The last time she’d tried helping somepony with a medical emergency she somehow reversed the flow of time and broke the rules of the natural order, changing a geriatric stallion suffering from hiccups into a toddler, so there was no way in hell he was going to find out what would happen if attempted to treat hearing loss. She really was a sweetheart and wouldn’t hurt a fly - that said, her unfathomable strength and limitless arcane power could be apocalyptic.
“See,” he continued, nodding over as a nurse stumbled from the employees only area. “She’ll get them patched right up.”
Celestia nodded, offered her hand to the stricken pair of guests, and hauled them to their feet. The place was a mess and it would only be a matter of time until the Royal Guard showed up asking questions, but that wasn’t too much of a concern. As soon as everypony realized what had caused the pandemonium, all would be forgiven - at least he hoped it would.
Trotting past him and exhaling a plume of smoke, another bellmare moved past him. “I ain’t cleaning this shit up.”
“It’s…it’s all good,” he muttered. “We’ll take care of it once they’re checked in.”
The mare’s name was Belle Hop, because Equestrian irony was a force to be reckoned with, and he couldn’t blame her for her indifference - shit, he’d be the same way if fate had resigned him to a life of service work. Turning and scampering over to the pair of wheeled suitcases the would-be guests had been toting, he grabbed the luggage and threw it onto a nearby cart. Regardless of whether or not he and Celestia were politely excused from their position, he couldn’t just stand there with his thumb in his ass.
As he steered the pushcart over to the front desk and joined his oversized coworker, the corners of his lips turned up. Though it couldn’t have been more than a minute since the blast, the hotel’s nurse, a lithe unicorn, had already remedied the couples’ hearing. There were a number of fantastic things about Equestria, but damned if magical medicine wasn’t one of the most convenient and awe-inspiring of them.
“I’ll walk them up to their room,” Celestia noted, reaching for the cart.
Pulling the little wagon out of her reach, Anon knit his brow. “No, I’ll take them up to their room. You stay here and -”
“If it’s all the same to you, we’d like her to see us upstairs,” the stallion exclaimed, grinning from ear to ear. “It’s not every day that we get to meet a Princess!”
“Former Princess,” Celestia softly corrected him.
The couple laughed, Celestia giggled, and even the nurse and the desk clerk chuckled a bit while Anon simply shook his head. Seriously, there were many astounding things about ponies, but one of the best was just how friendly and chipper they could be under even the most disastrous circumstances. Seizing the opportunity not to wind up sweeping up glass, he leaned across the counter and tried to grab the pair’s key - tried in that it was snatched away as soon as he touched the damn thing.
“Ah ah,” Celestia tutted, winking down as the key into her grasp.
With his shoulders wilting, Anon threw his hands up in surrender. “Fine, but I’m coming with you.”
He pushed the luggage cart along while Celestia chatted with the pair of paramours, glibly answering their questions and shrugging off their praise with practiced ease. Even if they weren’t going to get fired for the fracas, he felt confident that they were going to get a stern talking to before the day was through. Reaching the lift and swinging the gate open, he smirked.
Ponies might have a hard time deterring Celestia from doing what she wanted, but dealing with cold, unsympathetic steel was another matter entirely. While the main elevator was decently sized, large enough to accommodate at least six comfortably, it wasn’t designed to hold a mare of the alicorn’s immense stature - that and she probably weighed as much as three adults combined. He stepped in after the couple, grabbed the control lever, and turned his attention over to the giantess standing just outside.
“You coming?” he asked, doing his damnedest not to smile.
Though it was a bit mean to tease her in such a way, fully aware that she couldn’t fit in the cramped confines for any number of reasons, he couldn’t help himself. He may have felt bad if she wasn’t able to join him shortly, simply teleporting herself up to the sixth floor where the guests were staying, but that wasn’t the case. Just as he went to rest his hand on the gate, Celestia stooped down and shuffled forward.
“I believe I will be joining you,” she mused, scraping her horn against the elevator’s ceiling. “Move over, Anon, I want to work the controls.”
“I…” he faltered as a cold bead of sweat rolled down his temple.
His instincts told him to leave, to let her make an ass of herself by herself, but it was too late for that. Crammed to one side of the lift by Celestia’s ass, he watched in horror as she closed the gate and placed a hand on the lift’s controls. All things considered, things could be worse. Pinned by a huge, warm tush, he snickered and -
Riiiiip
The blood drained from his face as his eyes shot to Cele’s rump. He’d wondered if her uniform would be able to make it through the day, although he hadn’t anticipated her pants splitting after less than an hour on her shift. It was only by the grace of some higher power that her derriere wasn’t fully exposed - nevertheless, the sight of her vibrant, pink panties contrasted against her snow-white hide, paired with the subtle scent of vanilla and honeysuckle, was nothing short of mesmerizing.
Glancing over to the pegasus mare and seeing her glowering in disapproval at her coltfriend or husband, who was already beginning to openly salivate while ogling the monolithic alicorn ass just beside him, Anon made an executive decision. It wasn’t like he wanted to make his situation worse, but the circumstances dictated dramatic action. Wriggling behind Celestia and using his body to shield her profound posterior, he cleared his throat.
“Whenever you’re ready, Cele,” he croaked, his rib cage compressed by her tremendous caboose.
Shifting slightly and inadvertently crushing Anon further, Celestia threw the lever. “Going up!”
The breaks on the lift released, the enclosure shuddered, and an engine somewhere high above angrily groaned under the weight of two ponies, a lone human, and the behemoth alicorn. Though Equestria’s technology was roughly comparable to that of Earth’s in the 1940s, antiquated by Anon’s standards, the old-timey mechanisms of the world worked well enough. Sure enough, after a tense moment of near-stillness, the elevator began to rise.
“So - uh -” Anon warily hummed as he looked over to the couple, “are you two here on vacation?”
“We’re visiting his parents,” the mare groused, leering at her smitten husband.
Anon nervously smiled. “W…well I hope that y…you enjoy your stay.”
“Oh!” Celestia chirped, awkwardly glancing back at the pair. “They - I mean, we have a continental breakfast that’s absolutely to die for! Tomorrow morning, if you’re not in a hurry, you should come down to the lobby to indulge yourselves! There will be scones, muffins, oats, and even little tea cakes!”
Gazing at the ex-Princess’ ass, heedless of the peril he was in, the stallion licked his chops. “Cake s…sounds pretty nice…”
The comment was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Grabbing her lover’s collar and pulling him away, the mare snarled. If looks could kill, the poor bastard would have been dead several times over, although he likely had little say in his spellbound plight. Anon couldn’t explain it - hell, he could barely wrap his head around it, but there was something about Celestia that activated almonds wherever she went.
He’d only started paying close attention to the phenomenon shortly after her retirement, presuming most ponies acted the way they did because of her title alone, and he’d come to a startling conclusion. Be it from adoration, attraction, allegiance, Equestrians were affected by Celestia in a very peculiar way - specifically an amorous way. Everypony respected her and gave her space, that was a given, although he’d caught more stallions and mares than he could count undressing her with their eyes.
“Are you two going to…” he trailed off, craning his neck as an angry creaking crept to his ears.
The mare stiffened and looked upward, assuring him that he wasn’t hearing things. “Um - what was that?”
“I’m not - shit,” Anon cursed, noticing the elevator grind to a halt and slowly reverse course.
Fiddling with the lever, Celestia snorted. “Well that’s not good…”
What began as the lift’s creeping descent turned into a downward crawl, then an outright plummet. One of two things was happening: either the Lord of Chaos was having a laugh at their expense or they were suffering from a cataclysmic run of bad luck. As the couple flew into an outright panic, apparently forgetting that they could fly and wield magic respectively, Anon swallowed hard and patted Celestia’s haunch.
“Hmm?” she hummed, tranquilly peering back at him.
Anon glanced back and forth between her face and the position indicator positioned above the gate while his stomach did somersaults. “Maybe you should do something?!”
Trying the lever again, flipping it back and forth, Celestia pursed her lips. “Should I summon maintenance?”
His jaw went slack and he blinked. She was dense, but she wasn’t that dense ~ was she? For fuck’s sake, they were about to wind up as a mangled heap of hamburger and metal in the basement of a premier hotel! With only two floors to pass before they sailed past the lobby, his survival instincts kicked in.
“Stop the lift!” he yelled, his voice cracking and barely audible over the wails of his fellow passengers.
“But I’m not a mechanic,” Celestia pouted.
With mere moments left before impact, Anon clamped his eyes shut and clung to her ass. If nothing else, her plush backside might - might serve as a shock absorber and spare him from an untimely demise. He didn’t have many regrets, actually being thankful that he’d woken up in a world of magical, talking horse folks, but he swore an oath to haunt Luna and Twilight for letting Celestia follow her impulses of being a Jane Everymare.
Angry grinding cut through the terrifying din, the elevator lurched, and what would surely be a fatal plunge came to a dead stop. Anon didn’t move, hugging Celestia’s posterior for dear life and only eventually remembering to breathe. Some sort of a fail-safe had activated and saved them, halting the falling elevator in its tracks just shy of smashing itself to pieces. While he and everypony present had been spared physically, the psychological damage to the guests had been done.
The poor stallion stood mute, shell-shocked with his eyes glazed over, while his wife continued screaming in abject horror. Breathing hard and hoping he wasn’t going to suffer from a massive coronary, Anon withdrew from the alicorn’s backside and took stock of the situation. Nopony was dead, which was definitely a plus, although they appeared to be lodged between the basement and first floor.
“I believe it’s broken,” Celestia huffed, finally taking her hand off the controls. “One moment…”
Pulling the gate open, she extended a hand, grabbed the floor just beyond the threshold and flexed her arm. Knowledge of her arcane might was common - after all, she’d controlled celestial bodies with her magic for eons, yet it was rare for one to witness her staggering physical power. With no apparent effort whatsoever, not even giving the smallest grunt of exertion, she pushed the elevator upward.
“I’m so sorry for the inconvenience,” she sighed, nodding and motioning out to the lobby.
The pair didn’t hesitate, bolting out like their very lives depended on it - not like Anon could blame them. Seeing a number of staff members moving in their direction, drawn from their efforts to clean up the detritus and shards strewn about the place, he pinched the bridge of his nose. They were definitely going to get canned for this shit, although that wasn’t his main worry. If there was one thing he’d learned about Celestia, it was that she wasn’t one to give up her pursuits easily…