Schadenfreude on loan · 2:43am Jun 16th, 2018

Just letting you know that I got permission from Daemon McRae to use Schadenfreude in my 1940 Equestria story. His exact quote is "And feel free to use/abuse the bastard! Just drop me a link when you do!" Here's the original:

TSchadenfreude

Schadenfreude is a butler to Blueblood and he's no stranger to being tossed in the dungeon for ticking him off. He decides to tell the story of how he got there this time.

Daemon McRae · 1.6k words · 951 12 · 12k views

And below the fold is the first section of the Equestria - 1940 story that uses him:

(Background: Nightshade is Jon Walthers' guard while in Canterlot. And she flirts with him. Nothing serious. Really.)

Equestria : 1940
Monday 17 June - Canterlot, Equestria

“And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.”
— 2 Kings 6:17

* * ✹ * *

Jon was starting to get used to his four-legged alarm clocks who went off far earlier than the wind-up one he had brought with him. This morning as the sleep faded slowly from his eyes, there was a mottled black and white Appaloosa unicorn standing by the bed. He did not appear to be attempting to wake Jon, but was doing something with his mouth that made an annoying click-click-click noise while looking off in a different direction, much as if the human was just ignorable furniture. It gave Jon a moment to get a better look at the servant, who was wearing one of the half-a-shirt dickeys that gave him enough space to put on a bow tie and a pocket, but little else. The whole synergistic feel of the outfit and the color pattern of the stallion, which gave him dark patches around his eyes like a racoon, made Jon wake up faster than he had expected, just to make sense of the odd pony.

As if to upset all of his first impressions, the pony turned out to be more of a pale washed-out blue than actually white, with the blotches on his coat only being around his eyes, one off-center stripe around his barrel, and one around most of an ankle, quite un-like any Appaloosa Jon had ever seen before. A second, longer look could not spot a horn under the unkempt brownish tangled mane that covered from the top of his head down to his curled-up tail, but it did give Jon a persistent itch for a currycomb and a manebrush to tame that mess. Even his cutie mark of a painting needed fixed, since it was not even centered right on his rump, and tilted to one side as if it had been applied by a poor tattoo artist.

“Excuse me,” said Jon. “Are you—”

“Schadenfreude,” said the young stallion, stopping his annoying mouth-clicking long enough to turn around and stick a hoof out to be shaken. “Butler, pony about town, and personal servant to His Highness, Prince Blueblood. He has extended an invitation to you this morning to dine with His Highness and assist on a project to bring the human and pony worlds closer together. Shall we be off?”

“Uhm…” Jon checked again under the bedsheets to make sure his boxer shorts were still on, then looked at the closet where his clothes had been stored, even the rumbled tweeds that he had dropped over a chair last night and were most probably already laundered and waiting.

“Oh, where are my manners, sir. Here, let me help you with getting dressed.”

Jon had always wanted a butler. He soon changed his mind.

If the truth were told, Schadenfreude was more of an anti-butler. He insisted that His Highness, the Pony Prince of whatever would need him to dress in the most formal of attire, with every formal accoutrement. That meant his finest cream shirt with mother-of-pearl studs, a woven silk tie that Schadenfreude produced from his saddlebags, and a set of braces for his dress slacks that Jon could swear had gotten tied into a knot behind his back somehow. The cummerbund fit only loosely, while the cuffs of his shirt somehow had shrunk while Schadenfreude ‘helped’ until the golden cufflinks could barely connect.

Then it was time for his shoes, which Jon was starting to regret and consider some way to just go barefoot like the rest of the natives.

Various ‘assisting’ in the process included Jon getting poked with the tie pin just hard enough not to draw blood, the servant helping him with the shoes and socks by somehow getting one sock crammed down around his toes while the other sock felt suspiciously holey around one heel. To top it off, the process left a tiny fleck of plastic poking him in the back of the neck from the tight collar, which nearly cut off his circulation until Jon managed to break the thread on his collar button and breathe, using his borrowed (and itchy) tie to cover the loose (and comfortable) result.

By the time he was ready to leave his room, Jon was restraining himself from snapping at the ‘helpful’ servant by only a thin thread, and by the faint popping noise he could hear from his jacket, even that thread was fraying.

Then the front door to his suite swung open and a familiar armored batpony stumbled inside, blinking in the light. She swung her head from side to side with her eyes closed, then began to stumble forward with hesitant steps until she fairly placed a damp noseprint onto Jon’s clean cummerbund.

“Gotta geup,” mumbled Nightshade. “Something, somthin Royal Prince, I think.”

There was a distinct odor of fresh outside air around the sweaty pegasus, who had obviously been flying in the pre-dawn gloom because there were moths stuck to the front of her armor and a few bits of leaf matter in her mane. Little rivlets of foamy perspiration were dripping off her armored flanks, making puddles on the marble floor and onto Jon’s glossy black shoes. He was probably going to be late for his pre-dawn meeting with Equestrian royalty, but Jon hesitated at just leaving the tired guard behind.

“Are you off work?” he asked.

Nightshade nodded in the middle of a toothy yawn, perhaps in the affirmative or maybe just from fatigue. “Had to run extra patrols,” she muttered. “I’m fine. Headed home.”

“First things first.” Taking her lack of resistance as a positive, he steered her into the bathroom with Schadenfreude right behind and nudged her in the direction of the bathtub. It took far less time for Jon to kick out of his shoes and throw his suit jacket into the other room than it did for him to have gotten dressed in the first place, but it was the only way to keep his suit reasonably clean while he did what he really had not expected to do.

Jon had never bathed the family dog, mostly because the family had never owned a dog, but while wearing only his pants and wielding the pony scrub brush in both hands, it was much as he had once imagined bathing a Great Dane. Well, other than peeling off Nightshade’s bug-splattered armor and giving the pieces a quick scrub with a damp washcloth. The exhausted batpony slept through most of it, except the cold-water rinse, and yawned during the whole vigorous toweling afterwards.

“Y’don’t have to do this,” she muttered. “It was a long, hard night—” She snickered, rubbing her damp mane up against Jon’s bare side.

“I don’t need the tub this morning,” insisted Jon while giving a few damp spots an extra wipe. “And you told me that your home is all the way across Canterlot, so you probably would have wound up passed out on a roof somewhere between here and there. Hop up into bed while I’m gone and try not to scare the maids.”

After a short stagger across the bedroom floor, Jon managed to boost the heavy batpony up into his recently occupied bed and pull the covers down so she would not get tangled up in them. The snores started before he even got turned around to find his discarded suit and start getting dressed again, but there was something else that drew his attention first.

“Just getting your camera ready, sir.” Schadenfreude worked the film advance lever and squinted at Jon through the viewfinder. “Say cheesecake.”

Jon grabbed for the tangled sheet to throw over the naked batpony guard before the camera went ‘Click!’

“How are you managing to do that with hooves instead of—” Click.

“At least let me get my shirt on—” Click.

“Laying on the floor will not get you a better angle while I”m getting dress—” Click.

“Somepony get the door before—” Click.

Jon stalked over to the suite door with his shirt half-buttoned and peered out, only to see a very curious Twilight Sparkle peering back at thim. “Oh, good,” she said with a relieved expression. “You need to get dressed the rest of the way. Prince Blueblood wanted to see us this morning and— Oh. Schadenfreude.”

The camera clicked again before the pony holding it worked the film advance. “Just go ahead and act like I’m not even here,” said Schadenfreude, aiming the viewfinder again. “Oh, yeah. Work it, baby.”

The damp lump on Jon’s bed stirred, and Twilight’s alert eyes naturally moved to examine the sleeping batpony, then those violet eyes moved back to him, standing there in nothing but his damp slacks and a half-fastened shirt. “Oh,” she said.

“It’s not what you think,” said Jon with a quick look at where Spike was yawning on Twilight’s back. “She’s nocturnal, so she’s going to sleep here during the day. After I gave her a bath. While I’m at Prince Blueblood’s. Once I get my clothes back on. So we can leave. With Schadenfreude. Let me…”

Schadenfreude held up his black suit jacket again. “Let’s get you to your meeting with the prince, sir.”

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