• Published 12th Jan 2012
  • 4,924 Views, 93 Comments

Tales from the Staff Canteen - Midnightshadow



Behind the scenes at Equestria Daily, where all is professional and above board...

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Tempest's First Day

At least the building looks nice, the gray-maned pegasus with the electric-blue coat and the storm cloud cutie mark thought to himself as he approached the front entrance of the Equestria Daily offices. He’d taken this job mostly on a whim; his parents were a bit disappointed that he wouldn’t be staying with them in the weather-making business, but he’d wasted enough years of his life kicking away thunderheads and whipping up gales already. It was time to indulge in his secret passion and try his hand at reporting. It was time to follow his dreams.
Granted, his dreams were currently taking the form of an entry-level job at Equestria’s most popular newspaper, an organization that he’d heard more than a few…stories about, to say the least. But hey, they wouldn’t be so popular if they were all completely psychotic or something, he’d been telling himself for hours. It’s gonna be fine. I’ll work my way up, get a few assignments…and worst case scenario, at least I tried something new.

“Yeah…” the pegasus muttered to himself as he pushed his way through the front door. “No sweat.”

The foyer looked normal enough, if that counted for anything. Everything was made of solid marble, and the spotless floor echoed under his hooves as he stepped inside, the ceiling above him twenty feet high and lit plainly with circular light fixtures set into the stone. An assortment of modern but comfortable-looking chairs and couches sat off to the left next to a rotating white rack crammed full of magazines, and directly in front of him was a bank of three stainless steel elevators, and a massive oak desk with a sign hanging on the front that read:

EQUESTRIA DAILY, INC.
OPEN 24/7
IN ALL MATTERS OF OPINION, OUR ADVERSARIES ARE INSANE
NO REFUNDS

It took him a moment to notice the pegasus sitting behind the desk, and once he did he couldn’t imagine how he hadn’t seen him before. The pony behind the desk was huge, with a deep blue coat and a short, closely cropped red mane. He was leaned back lazily into a plush rolling chair, his hind hooves crossed on the desk in front of him and his wings spread to maintain his balance. His eyes were closed, and if it weren’t for the tiny white earbuds poking out of his ears and the slight head bob that accompanied whatever was blasting out of them, the newcomer would’ve sworn he was asleep.

“Uh…hello?” the smaller pegasus said tentatively, before realizing he should probably be a bit more polite. “Sir?”
No response. The new arrival waited a moment, then rapped his hoof on the desk and cleared his throat loudly. The pony behind the desk cracked one deep brown eye open and turned it towards the noise intruding on his music. Once he saw the pegasus standing there eyeing him with a mixture of impatience and curiosity, he opened both eyes and flicked the earbud out of his right ear.
“Welcome to Equestria Daily, where talk is cheap and the moon is cheaper…” The red-maned pegasus’s surprisingly thick eyebrows narrowed, then shot up again, “Oh, hey, you’re the new guy! Forgot you were comin’ today…” Out came the second earbud. “I’m Aqua,” the pony behind the desk said, extending a hoof out towards the new arrival. “You?”
“Tempest,” answered the newcomer warily, his eyes creased in confusion as he gazed somewhat cross-eyed at the well-worn horseshoe hanging six inches in front of his eyes. “Uh…what am I supposed to-”

“Pound it.”

“Like…” Tempest reached out with his own forehoof and tapped it lightly against Aqua’s.

“Like a boss,” Aqua finished, sitting up and flaring his wings in a single motion, “You ready to go up?”
“I…guess,” Tempest replied. He was beginning to see where this newspaper’s reputation had come from. “Are you the security guard?”

Aqua snorted. “Nope,” he said. “We don’t have one.”

“Why not?”
Another snort, and this one was accompanied by a short flight up and over the desk and down to Tempest’s side. Now Tempest could see the feather quill cutie mark stamped onto Aqua’s flank. “’Cause we don’t need one,” the red-maned pony explained, “There’s nothin’ here anypony with a brain would wanna steal, and if somepony did break in, we’d probably get at least eight inches out of it. Oh, yeah, don’t bring anything valuable to work, by the way. Tends to walk off, if you catch my drift.”
“Consider it caught,” Tempest muttered as Aqua called the elevator nearest to the desk. As the doors slid open and both ponies entered the carpeted, cedar-paneled box, Aqua turned to Tempest again.

“So where you from?” he asked.

“Cloudsdale,” Tempest replied. “This is the first time I’ve ever left it, actually.”
“Well, congratulations. I’ve been around that area a few times before. Excellent mares up there. Oh, Celestia, I remember this one filly with these amazing blue eyes…great body too. And a fantastic plot…”

“Wait, what?” Tempest interrupted. “What ‘plot’? How can a mare have a ‘plot’?”
“Oh, right, you don’t…” Aqua murmured half to himself before speaking up once more. “Yeah, you’ll figure that out eventually. It’s an office joke. Gets old after a while, but it’s hilarious the first week and it doesn’t really leave your head after that.”
Tempest looked perplexedly at Aqua, who raised his eyebrows and grinned back.
“Anyway, we’re just about there,” the red-maned pegasus continued, as the number on the digital readout above the door crept closely to the number of the button Aqua had pushed. “You seen the company rules yet?”

“Well, I got my introductory packet in the mail this morning, but I didn’t get a chance to really-”
“Wait, you got a whole introductory packet? Wow. Seth got organized,” Aqua mused, “all I got was a stack of news briefs and a half-eaten Nickers bar. Actually…well, I guess that doesn’t count since the candy was inside one of the news briefs…”

“You…said something about rules?” Tempest asked over Aqua’s ramblings. Celestia above, I hope they aren’t all like this…
“Yeah, all right, rules. Okay, so there are the official rules, and then the important rules. The official ones are probably in the packet thingamajig you got, so I’m gonna skip ahead to the important ones.”

“Which are…”

“Um…” Aqua puffed out his cheeks and let them deflate slowly and loudly, “Okay, first off, what happens in the news room stays in the news room unless Seth gets lazy and steals your lines for his editor’s notes. Actually, while we’re on that, was there a little box on your job offer with an employee number in it?”

“There might have…”

“Yeah, that means nothing. Seth just makes those up as he goes along.”
By then, the only thing Tempest could manage to respond with was a baffled stare.
“Back on topic,” Aqua continued, seemingly oblivious of his elevator-mate’s confusion, “you don’t have to read everything that comes in your inbox, so you wanna bail on work for a day and hit the races or something, go crazy. Oh, and don’t tell Trixie that Seth’s cheating on her with Fluttershy. She gets possessive. Not a pretty sight when she feels ignored.”

“Is that all?” Tempest remarked in a deadpan, secretly hoping that it actually was.

“Don’t feed the parasprites, the muffins are always free, warp drives aren’t just for spaceships…oh, and if anypony brings cupcakes to work, don’t eat them.” Aqua was silent for a moment, then shrugged. “Yeah, that’s pretty much it.”

The elevator shuddered and came to a stop, and a bell dinged somewhere over Tempest’s head. And Aqua smiled.

“Welcome to the greatest pony show on Earth,” he said. And without further ado, the doors of the elevator slid open.

For a moment, Tempest thought an explosion had gone off the instant the floor they had stopped at became visible. The sudden blast of noise and the absolute pandemonium that seemed to reign over everything in sight had an almost physical intensity to it, as if the room itself was at once both creating the chaos inside it and desperately trying to shove it away. Aqua seemed unperturbed by all the shouting and buzzing and flying bits of paper, though, so Tempest decided for the time being to pretend like he was too. After stepping out of the elevator and ducking under what couldn’t possibly have been a live squirrel flying towards him, he trotted forward to join his new acquaintance, who was already halfway down the debris-strewn corridor that separated the two wings of half-size cubicle walls.
“Morning, Phoe,” Aqua said to a white-furred pegasus sitting behind a disorganized but still functional metal desk and calmly flipping through a three-inch thick binder filled with what looked like hoof-drawn artwork. She had a long, flowing pink mane and tail and a tied-up scroll as a cutie mark, and Tempest couldn’t help thinking she looked kind of cute in a nerdy way. “New guy’s here,” Aqua continued, gesturing with his head back at Tempest before flipping a blueberry muffin off a nearby platter with his wing and deftly catching the entire thing in his mouth a moment later.
Phoe glanced up long enough to catch a glimpse of the new arrival, then blinked and turned her whole head up to face Tempest, her lips lifting into a welcoming smile, “Oh, hello!” she said. “My name’s Phoe. I’m one of the supervisors here at the Daily. Kind of the team mom, I suppose.”
Off to the left, a coffee machine fizzled out in a shower of sparks before bursting into flame, the earth pony nearest to it charred black all over to the great amusement of the unicorn standing next to her. Biting back the urge to ask Phoe where exactly she had gotten her parenting license, Tempest just smiled back and nodded.

“So I guess you’re wondering where to go, huh?” Phoe continued. “Aqua, do you know where your org chart is?”

Aqua’s mouth was still packed full of muffin, but that didn’t stop him from giving Phoe a very clear “do I look like I know where my org chart is?” look even without the added clarification of words. Phoe sighed and shook her head, her smile still lingering at the corners of her lips. “Hang on a second,” she muttered. “I think I have the new chart around here somewhere…stars above, I swear I’d lose my own tail if it wasn’t attached to my-”

“Fire in the hole!” somepony yelled loud enough to be heard throughout the entire office. Before he could even begin to imagine what was going on, Tempest felt somepony nudge him in the forehoof.
“Cover your ears,” Aqua said, already crouched on the ground with his hooves clasped on either side of his head. A few feet away, Phoe was leaned against her desk in the same position.
“What are you talking about?” Tempest began to ask, but before he could get even half the sentence out, his words—along with every other thought inside his head—were blown away by a thunderous, ear-splitting boom that rattled the entire building and seemed to come from everywhere at once. As Tempest’s head filled with static and his ears began to throb in agony, Aqua stood back up and eyed Tempest with a mixture of pity and a very poorly stifled laugh.
“I warned you,” the red-maned pegasus said, though his words sounded distant and distorted, like they were being shouted at Tempest from someplace underwater. When the dazed pegasus didn’t reply right away, Aqua stepped a bit closer and gave him a slightly uneasy grin. “Hey, Tempest!” he called. Can he even hear me? He wondered aloud, turning back to Phoe as his concern regressed into curiosity. “Dude, I think we fried his brain…do we have insurance for that?”
Instead of answering, Phoe just narrowed her eyes and propped her forehooves up on her desk, pushing her slightly diminutive frame up high enough for her head to clear the tops of the cubicles. “Cereal!” she screamed, taking advantage of the momentary lapse in the ungodly din that had defined the room up until then. About ten seconds after Phoe’s shout, a flurry of papers floated down a stairway built into the far wall, and a beige unicorn with a chalky white mane clunked down the stairs and poked his head out into the office.
“What?” he yelled back. A pair of bright orange earphones hung loosely around his neck, contrasting heavily with the messy curls hanging over his forehead and down the back of his neck.

“We have a schedule for that thing!” Phoe growled. “How many times did I say that at the staff meeting last week?”
Cereal’s clueless look was almost as potent as Tempest’s. “Was that the staff meeting I slept through?” he asked without the slightest trace of meekness.

“You told me you thought it was a great idea! You told me you had it covered!”
“I did. I mean, I do,” Cereal replied defensively. “See, I checked it on the board over there. Ten A.M., time to send stuff to the-”
“P.M.,” Phoe interrupted through clenched teeth. “Ten. P.M. So we could actually see what we’re firing at.” She let out another deep sigh and shut her eyes tight. “This kind of thing would never happen if Midnight could keep from being banished for two freaking seconds…” she muttered to nopony in particular.

“Ooh…” Cereal murmured, sucking in a heavy breath with his lips pulled back against his gums. “Yeah, that was the staff meeting I slept through.”

“Well, maybe if you didn’t stay up till four in the morning reading those depraved clopfic collections that you insist on referring to as literature…”

“I never said Metalhooves.com counted as literature! And F.Y.I., I only stayed up till three last night. I’m perfectly capable of functioning on four hours of sleep and six quarts of coffee. And hey, it’s not like your sleep habits are any better, Miss Fancy Flanks.”

“Oh, is that what you call everypony who knows how a comb works, you heathen?”

“It’s windswept. It’s a style. Rarity said it made me look rugged.”

“You’re about as rugged as a hardwood floor, Cereal.”

“That was terrible.”

“You’re terrible.”

“Your…face is terrible.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Your face doesn’t make sense.”

“You’re not even trying now.”

“Have I ever?”

If Tempest’s head hadn’t been spinning already, he was sure that would’ve done the trick just now. Thankfully, Aqua was either sympathetic enough to usher him away or just didn’t want any part of the argument himself.

“What was that?” Tempest said once they had walked a few cubicles away and the general mayhem of the office at large had returned somewhat.
“Depending on who you ask, either the collective worst nightmare of all our readers or the best crack pairing in the history of Equestria,” Aqua replied.
Tempest shook his head and waited a few seconds before realizing that the twinge in his temple wasn’t going away. “The explosion,” he elaborated.
“Oh,” Aqua said. “That was the cannon on the roof.”
“The…do I even want to know?”
“We use it to launch stuff to the moon.”
If the inside of Tempest’s mouth had been just a few shades darker, he would’ve made a passable imitation of a miniature train tunnel. “It’s kind of a big cannon,” Aqua added nonchalantly.
“…to the moon,” Tempest eventually mumbled, the words simply falling out of his mouth more than being projected. “You have a giant cannon, and you launch things…”
“To the moon, yeah. Mostly stuff like rejected stories, creepy fan letters, empty doughnut boxes. Kinda whatever we have lying around.”

“Why do you send your trash to the moon?”
By now, Tempest was almost certain that the only qualification required to work at this place was to have a really good blank look. “Y’know, I don’t really know,” Aqua said after a pregnant pause. “’Cause it’s there. I guess when all you have is a giant cannon, all your problems start to look like cannonballs, right?”

Just change the subject, Tempest told himself. Just accept it and move on. “So those ponies back there were…”
“Phoe and Cereal. They’re second-in-command to Seth, if you wanna get all technical about it. Mostly, they’re just like us, except they get to actually put stuff in the paper sometimes.”

“They...run this place?” Tempest asked, doing what he hoped was a good job at concealing the fear in his voice.
“Well, they try to,” Aqua replied. “But Seth won’t ever let ‘em. They have to beg him to let them do anything big with the paper.”

“I can see why.”

“Nah, it’s not that he doesn’t trust them. He just always likes to do everything himself.”

Tempest cocked an eyebrow. “He likes to run a whole newspaper by himself? That’s insane!”
“Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve noticed yet, but that’s pretty much a job requirement around here,” Aqua wryly remarked. “Makes things pretty interesting after midnight comes around…in any case, don’t worry about those two. They’re like brother and sister; they fight all the time and then get all cozy again before the day’s out. Office pool’s at four hundred bits about when we’re gonna find them locked in a broom closet together with their tongues tied together and their hooves around each other’s-“

“Yeah, I get the picture,” Tempest said quickly. “So, where am I supposed to go?”
“Oh, yeah, we never figured that out, did we? Hang on, we’ll swing by my cube and look it up there. Or worst case, you can just pick an empty one wherever and act like you don’t speak English. I’ve always wondered whether that would actually work.”
Aqua took a left turn and strode down yet another corridor within the cubefield, with Tempest following behind with a weary look of desperation in his eyes. He’d been pretty worried before about one or two of the rumors he’d heard about this place having a shred of validity to them, but he’d never expected to find out they were all true. Every single pony in this place was crazy. He had never wished so badly to just be sitting down at a desk sifting through press releases and news updates, bored out of his mind and burning weeks off his life for ten bits an hour. At least with that, things might actually be predictable.
Now that he was a little closer to a few of the other ponies working in the office, Tempest could begin to pick up snatches of what they were saying. Naturally, what he heard didn’t make any sense, but he was considering that par for the course by this point:

“Is this a bump or a resubmission?”

“Who took a bite out of my parsley sandwich?”

“Does it count as grimdark if it was all a dream?”

“That was your sandwich?”

“Why did this pony spell Celestia’s name with an ‘S’? And why does Fluttershy have a Stinger missile?”

“Why am I always the one who gets the Bloomberg ships..?”

“What even is a Stinger missile?”
“First stop. Everypony out.” No, wait, that one was Aqua, turning off into a cramped and cluttered cubicle crammed from top to bottom with folders and envelopes, most of the latter unopened. Tempest wedged himself in amongst the clutter as best he could, absentmindedly watching Aqua poke through stacks of papers while also testing himself to see how long he could follow one of the conversations being shouted around him before it inevitably ceased to be contained by the boundaries of what he liked to call ‘logic’.
“If you were an org chart, where would you be?” Aqua asked, in a manner that made it difficult to tell whether the question was rhetorical. Before Tempest could spit out a noncommittal answer anyway, a frazzled-looking earth pony with a lavender coat, a chocolate brown mane and tail and slightly-askew black-rimmed glasses ran past Aqua’s cubicle in a full gallop.

“Why are we out of mayonnaise?” the panicked pony shouted as he passed.
“You really want me to answer that, Alex?” Aqua said back just as loudly without turning around. Tempest heard a pained groan from the hallway followed by a very vulgar synonym for horseapples, and then Alex was gone. “You don’t want me to, either,” Aqua added half a second later, just as Tempest was about to ask for what felt like the hundredth time that day what exactly the hay had just happened. Left without anything else to say, Tempest settled for closing his eyes and pressing his forehead against a towering mass of letters and notes piled on top of a tray that said ‘Inbox’ on the front. He was still marveling at how peaceful the world behind his eyelids was when Aqua spoke up again.

“Hey, Pole! Polecat! You got a second? And nice outfit, by the way.”
Tempest opened his eyes and looked up. A deep charcoal grey filly with a tightly braided coral mane was standing just outside Aqua’s cubicle. She was wearing an ornate black-and-white maid outfit and a patently sour expression about it.
“Shut it,” she snapped back sullenly. “What d’you want?”

“Do you know where my org chart is?”
Tempest felt a bead of sweat begin to form at his maneline just from watching Polecat ratchet her glare up a notch.
“Aqua, I have twenty-six story submissions to sort through, an interview with Lyra about her new solo album in seven minutes and Luna in the break room having an existential crisis over the toaster,” she said, “why in Celestia’s name would I know where your org chart is?”
“Just asking,” Aqua replied innocently. “That’s a no, then?” Polecat’s annoyed sigh and quick exit gave him all the confirmation he needed. Back went Tempest’s forehead against the inbox pile.

“Oh, hey, there you are, ya little rascal!”
There was a rustling of paper and a whispering fwhump as one of the stacks on Aqua’s desk lost its long-running battle with gravity and fell to the floor. Aqua took the accident in stride and used the newly opened space to lay out a badly crumpled and colorfully stained map of the office floor. “And your new home away from home is…” Aqua narrated, hovering his forehoof aimlessly over the sheet for a second or two before stabbing it down up in the top right corner. “Right here!” he announced. “Under this brown spot. Which isn’t coffee since I don’t drink it, so I don’t really know what the hay that is. Anyway, there you go. Mystery solved.”
Tempest picked his way over to the desk for an upside-down look at the org chart, “That’s my office?” he asked. He could see his name printed next to the irregular smudge of whatever-it-was Aqua was pointing at, but everything under said smudge was completely illegible.
“Yep,” Aqua replied. “Well…I think. I’m pretty sure. It’s either your cubicle or the boiler room. They’re right next to each other, it looks like.”
Tempest’s left eye twitched, and a muscle in the side of his neck jumped painfully. “You know what? I don’t even care,” he said. “I just want to start working. What department am I in?”
Aqua’s expression was momentarily blank like the flank of a newborn foal, “Depart..? We’ve really only got the one. Everypony kind of does everything around here. You’ll get used to it. Or you’ll have a psychotic episode. Say, today isn’t your birthday, right?”

Why me?

“All right, just…had to check. C’mon, let’s go get you set up. I’ll introduce you to whoever’s around today on the way.”
Almost in a daze, Tempest followed Aqua back out into the hallway and off through yet more cubicles. Most of the ones over in this part of the office was just full of overstuffed files and candy wrappers, but Aqua took care to point out the ones that had ponies in them.
Every. Single. One.

“The unicorn in the corner cube by the window is Garnet. Nice guy, good with PR, family’s in the gemstone business so we’re all hoping for free samples at Christmas. And over there is Cupcakes. I call her Om Nom and she hasn’t hit me for it yet, so I take that as meaning she doesn’t care. Ooh, Postage Stamp’s in this morning. He insists that everyone call him “The Messenger” ‘cause he hates his name and most of his immediate family. Brilliant critic, shameless misanthrope, and cranky as all get out before he gets his coffee. Don’t make eye contact.”

Aqua kept talking after that, but Tempest’s stomach seemed to have filled with butterflies and the inside of his skull with bees, so it became very difficult to keep his attention on his guide’s explanations. He nearly ran smack into Aqua’s rump when they finally stopped.
“And here we go,” Aqua said, stepping aside to allow Tempest his first look at his new office. “Wow, I’d forgotten what these things looked like when they’re clean. You need any help setting up?”

Tempest had nothing on him but a stormy gray mane that had been neatly groomed that morning and a raging case of residual insanity. “No, I’m good,” he said weakly.
“All right, then. Just holler if you need anything,” Aqua replied. He began to turn and — finally — leave, but just as quickly stopped and turned back again. “Oh, and before I forget…”
Aqua stretched out his wing, and a crumpled, brown lump of something or other bounced up into the air, the red-maned pegasus rolling it skillfully across the quills of his feathers before plopping it onto Tempest’s desk. It was a muffin, fresh from the bakery and flecked with dozens of softly melted chocolate chips. Tempest stared at the pastry, then back at Aqua, who for the first time smiled with something approaching sincerity.
“Just a little something for the culture shock,” said Aqua, “Welcome to the team.” And with a flick of his tail and a final nod, Aqua left. And Tempest was finally alone.

“Huh,” the electric-blue pegasus said in reply. Tempest looked down at the muffin again. There was still steam rising off the top. His mouth began to water, and a smile touched his lips for the first time that morning. Maybe everypony in this place was just mostly crazy. He could live with that.
The slightly muffled knock on his cubicle wall came just as he was about to take his first bite. A yellow-maned pegasus with a coat the same shade of gray as his own mane was standing in the gap between the grayscale walls that led out into the hallway, her mouth bent into a visible grin despite being full of letters. Her eyes were bright and the same color as hay, and neither pupil was pointed directly at him like the rest of her face was.
“Mer cul!” she said through the letters before spitting them out onto Tempest’s desk. “Hey, I’ve never seen you here before! What’s your favorite candy? Mine’s muffins!”
“I’m…new,” Tempest eventually said, feeling a bit cross-eyed himself trying to maintain eye contact with the bubbly mare. After a bit, he gave up and just focused on her nose. “Are those my assignments for the day?”
“What, those?” the mare said, looking down at—well, in the general direction of—the envelopes on the desk. “Nuh-uh! Those are just the minutes from last night’s staff meeting. Which is weird, ‘cause it was actually in the morning, and they had a clock in the room so I don’t even know why they had to write down the minutes!”

“…run that by me again?”
“Anyway…” The mare stuck her head back out into the hallway and grunted, and moments later dragged a gigantic cardboard box that was almost half as big as she was through the entryway by her teeth, and was stuffed to the brim with envelopes of every shape and size. “These are your assignments!” she panted. “I would’ve got ‘em here earlier, but they’re so heavy. It took me all morning just to get ‘em down this hallway!”

Celestia, Luna, and Nightmare Moon. I’ll never sleep again.

“But don’t worry,” the mare added, dropping her voice into a conspiratorial whisper, “if you wanna skip one or two, I won’t tell anypony.”

“Thanks,” Tempest sighed, “really appreciate it.”
“Don’t mention it!” the mare replied happily and loudly, just before gasping with glee. “For me?” she gushed. “Aw, you shouldn’t have…”

Tempest turned his head. She was looking at his muffin.
“You’re such a sweetie! We’re gonna be great friends, new-pony-I’ve-never-seen-around-here-before!” she said with a wink. And without further ado, she craned her neck, opened her mouth wider than Tempest had previously thought was equinely possible, and snapped up the whole steaming hot muffin in one bite, softly melted chocolate chips and all.
“Fanks urr uh ‘uffin!” she mumbled through crumb-dusted lips. And then she was off down the hallway again, humming a tune to herself and bumping into things at random intervals as she walked. Away from his cubicle. With his muffin.
Crying would’ve probably been a very unprofessional response to the situation, as would have been pouting. So Tempest just went with a heavy sigh and a mournful glance at the overflowing box sitting in front of his desk. With no other better idea about what to do, he leaned forward over the desk and plucked the top envelope out of the box, flicking open the loose seal with a careful forehoof. Maybe he’d at least get to read some interesting stories before the day was out. Maybe the day would end better than it started. Maybe everypony’s first day at a new job was this hard.
He slid the contents of the envelope out onto his desk and read them. The title at the top of the page was ‘How Applebloom became a Princess’. The story below it was exactly seven sentences long, and ended with the world being blown up. And there were hundreds more unopened envelopes sitting in front of him, waiting to be uncovered.

For the last time, Tempest sighed. It was going to be a long day.