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// A tailor's son 
// Story: A self-made pony 
// by Paradise Oasis 
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I came from the humblest of beginnings...

"Hey, Pants! Get your hindquarters over here, and get this lovely mare's bags!"

"Right away Mr. Discount!"

The young stallion, barely out of his teens, worked at the Discount's food and grocery.... a store for the upper working class ponies of Manehatten. He was small, and his brown mane was usually unkempt, giving the colt a mangy appearance. His manager, Sales Discount, was always keeping a stern eye on him; true, the boy was honest and worked hard, but he seemed to lack that fire in his belly that signified a colt willing to work his way up the ladder of success. 

"Lead the way, m'am. I'll carry these out to your cart for you."

"Such a polite young stallion!" The old mare complimented him. "If only more young ponies were as polite as you!"

After he had levitated her shopping bags to her cart, she tossed him a five bit tip.

"Thank you for all of your help!" She called to him, as her chauffeur pulled the cart away.

"Thank you very much m'am, and please came again!" He replied happily.

The teenage Colt trotted back into the store, smiling to himself. "Anything else I can do to help you tonight, Mr. Discount?"

"Naw, you're done for the night, Fancy." The big earth pony snorted, chomping on his cigar. "You just sweep up, and head for home."

The young unicorn cheerfully did so, and soon he was clocking out, and on his way home.

The trot back through the Manehatten Ghetto was not a pleasant or a safe route... but it was one fancy pants knew well. On his way he passed boarded up apartment buildings, condemned houses that still had ponies who could affords little else living in them, and shady looking stallions peddling loco weed. This neighborhood was too poor to draw the goat crime family's intrest, so they left it under the control of the local street gangs. Facy Pants sighed, why did any Pony have to live like this? 

As he approached his building, he heard the rage of an argument coming from inside. "I told you thugs I don't have any more bits! Now get your sorry flanks out of here!"

"That's a shame, Mr. Pants!" The oily sounding voice came from inside the tailor shop. Fancy stopped outside the door, and listened in. "It would be a shame if something were to happen to that boy of yous!"

"You leave my son out of this, you son of a Nag!": Fancy heard his farther whinny. "Now you take your thugs, and get out of my shop, before I call the law on you!"

"You think they'll even risk they're hides by coming out here?" The stallion hoodlum chortled. "But yous gots guts, Pants! I'll gives youse dat! C'mon boys, well try here again next week!"

As Fancy waited at the door, he saw three scowling earth ponies walk out past him, scowls on their faces. Fancy knew well enough to keep his mouth shut and let them pass, then he ran quickly into the shop.

"You all right, pop?" Fancy asked the red unicorn tailor, currently picking himself up off the floor. "They didn't hurt you none, did they?"

"Naw, just my pride, son." He dusted himself off with his hooves. "Thank the great horsemaster your mother didn't live to see what this neigggggh-borhood has become."

Fancy winced at the mention of the Horsemaster... the deity that made him and his family stick out like a sore hoof from the majority of Equestria's Celestia-worshipping population. That was one of the reason he and his father was confined to these ghettoes, despite all of his father's hard work- no landlord would rent them a tailor shop in the nicer neighborhoods.

"Mark my words, boy.... I'll see to it you get out of here." Parsifal Pants told him, levitating the needle back up to start sewing up a pair of torn trousers. "I didn't slave my whole life so you would have ta spend the rest of your life in this sinkhole."

"Don't worry dad, I swear I'll keep studying in school." He tossed the tip he had earned into his dad's hooves, and went back towards his room to study. "I'll show them money isn't everything, and that if he earns his reputation by deeds, a pauper pony can be a prince in equestria!"

His father laughed. "That boy... always quoting those fancy novels he reads!" Before she died, his wife had made the right choice sending Fancy to that prep school for gifted Unicorns, even though it cost them every bit they had.

It was late that night when he was asleep, that a triple-crowned cutie mark appeared on the late-blooming boy's flank. 

It was also later that week that he came home from work to find his father's shop ablaze. 

"What's going.... oh no....pop!" He galloped towards the tailor shop in a panic! "NO! POP!"

Before he could run inside, several pairs of hooves stopped him, dragging the screaming teen back from the blaze. Concerned neighbors barely held a screaming, tear-faced Colt back from running in to save a stallion who was already immolated. 

"No! Let me go!" The young colt screamed. "My pop's still in there!"

"You can't do anything, kid!" The gruff old stallion from across the street restrained him with his hooves. "Yer old man is done for! I'm sorry!"

It took the Fireponys three hours to snuff the blaze. The old couple across the street allowed him to stay with them until he could get on his hooves. Nopony was at the funeral except for Fancy... because nopony else really cared. 

The gangs had finally stuck their blow against the old tailor, and burned a lesson into Fancy Pant's mind. That young colt swore to get out of this ghetto, and earn the success and prestige to come back and bury Manehatten's criminal element for what they had done.

He would be the pony...... that every pony should know......