As far as earth ponies went, Copperquick wasn’t a strong one, like some, or a smart one, like others. No, Copperquick wasn’t blessed with big, bunchy muscles or a surplus of brains, both suited for different sorts of workloads. No, Copperquick was fast and he could do it for hours, which was why he did delivery work. He was fast enough on the Canterlot streets that ponies just assumed that he was just another pegasus courier and were shocked, shocked to discover that he didn’t have wings.
So, carrying one hundred and twenty pounds of load upon his back was a problem. Carrying one hundred and twenty pounds of load, while exhausted and with a sore back from sleeping on the couch while sitting up, made everything worse. Overhead, pegasi flew in the skies, moving clouds in and doing something with the weather.
“I’ve been thinking about the state of my conservatism,” Miss Oddbody said as she went along, skinny legs wobbling beneath the load. “I suppose as a distraction while I carry this heavy load. Been giving it a lot of thought this morning.”
“Oh?” Copperquick’s ears somehow managed to lift themselves, even with his exhausted state.
“I’m still a monarchist.” Miss Oddbody’s voice held a distinct pride that made itself known through her strain and fatigue. “I still believe in the rule of the Sisters. I was born a monarchist, I live as a monarchist, and I will die as a monarchist. I am a dyed in the wool monarchist and nothing can change that. Well, I suppose it isn’t a monarchy now that Princess Luna is back, but you get the general idea. And since I am a monarchist, and my parents are monarchists, maybe, just maybe, I can focus on what we still have in common, rather than our differences. I am really, really tired and my brain is all weird right now.”
Almost crushed under the burden lashed to his back, Copperquick thought about these words.
“I still have most of my core values,” Miss Oddbody continued, almost panting as she trotted alongside Copperquick. “I believe in strong, traditional family values. I believe in modest behaviour and decency. I still believe in most of the things my parents taught me. But what makes me a radical… what makes me a leftist, what pits me against my parents and so many others… I have lost faith in the bureaucracy. For this, I fear I might never be forgiven. Oh, and voting. My father and mother were quite irate when they found out I voted. I was lectured. That left a few cracks in my relationship with my Daddums and my Moomy.”
“The bureaucracy needs to go,” Copperquick muttered, all too aware that it was bureaucracy that had given him the food upon his back. One good deed did not excuse them for an uncountable number of offenses.
“See, that right there, that will get you tarred and feathered as a radical leftist.” Miss Oddbody shook her head and clucked her tongue. “Keep that up, and ponies will talk, Mister Copperquick, and they will have nothing pleasant to say about you.”
“As for voting, I don’t know how I feel about it.” Copperquick wondered if he was treading upon dangerous ground with Miss Oddbody and he looked down at her, trying to read her feelings. He felt some butterflies in his stomach, but he kept going anyways. “Voting and the right to vote certainly hasn’t done anything to stop the bureaucracy. I don’t see much changed by the right to vote. It’s an empty act that makes the common pony feel as though they have some say in governance, but in reality, visiting any ministry office will show the common pony just how much power they really have. The ministries now have ministries to regulate them, with more ministries to regulate the regulatory ministries.”
“Just because voting doesn’t work yet doesn’t mean that it can’t work later,” Miss Oddbody argued in a polite, respectful voice. “Reform has to be made first. Changes have to be made. Over time, as these reforms, these changes, these little shifts in power, with more power allocated to the citizenry, votes will gain more and more meaning. But yes, I agree with you, they aren’t very effective, for now.”
It was at that moment that Copperquick realised, he and Miss Oddbody could discuss politics in a civil, even polite manner and not come to blows, or even shouting. It was something that his fellow students failed at doing quite often—he hated his classes in college that trapped him in a room with blowhards and narrow minded idiots.
“For now, voting remains an act of conscience done to satisfy the soul. I see it as organised Crown-sponsored civil protest. If those votes are read, then somepony, some Crown agency, they know how the common populace feels on an issue, and if that is the case, then they see the writing on the wall.”
“That is a very enlightened way of looking at it, Miss Oddbody.”
“Why, thank you, my delightful gentlepony friend.”
Glad to be home, Copperquick pushed open the door and muscled his way inside. Esmeralda was starting to get a little fussy, but she wasn’t crying yet, just kicking and blowing spit bubbles of protest. Copperquick wondered if perhaps his daughter didn’t like the discussion of politics. It was going to feel real good to get the load off of his back. He went to work trying to pull the slip knots with his teeth and then shook the bags down to the floor.
It was then he noticed the yellow slip of paper that had been slipped beneath the door while he was away. It had been blown aside during entry and seeing it caused the hairs along his belly to feel prickly. A hint of urine reminded him that Esmeralda needed to be changed. Frozen, he stood there, with heavy bags flopped around him, staring at the little yellow sheet of paper, and feeling a growing state of anxiety.
“What’s that?” Miss Oddbody whispered as she shimmied off her heavy bag of rice.
“The end of me,” Copperquick replied, his words breathed through a strained throat, but not spoken.
With Copperquick frozen in place, Miss Oddbody went to retrieve the sheet of paper from the floor. Using her wings, she picked up the canary yellow slip of paper and then unfolded it. Angling her head to see through her lineless bifocals, she began to read. As she read, she began snorting, tiny snorts at first, then big angry, but defeated sounding snorts that were unique to pegasi, a part of their unspoken language.
“Is that what I think it is?” Copperquick asked, not wanting to know the answer.
Looking pained, Miss Oddbody nodded. “It is a writ of eviction stating that you must vacate in thirty days. Also, there is a five hundred bit fine for violation of your lease, which also must be paid in thirty days, or it will be reported to the authorities.”
Slumping, Copperquick sat down on a bag of beans, and he began to sniffle a bit. He lifted a foreleg, wrapped it around Esmeralda, who hung from his neck, and he gave her a squeeze. The first of his sobs hit his body like a train, undoing him and his defenses. He then lost it and the floodgates opened. Making an odd braying sound, Copperquick bawled his eyes out. The yellow paper slipped from Miss Oddbody’s wings and fell to the floor like a leaf in autumn.
Hearing her father crying, Esmeralda, already fussy, let out a shrieking wail and then began blubbering in earnest, kicking her legs and thrashing in her carrier. Miss Oddbody, who had more than few tears flowing herself, plucked the howling infant from her carrier and then went to work changing her, getting her freshened up. If Esmeralda was going to cry, she was going to cry in a clean diaper.
“Oh, this is a load of soggy bollocks.” Miss Oddbody showed no signs of regret for swearing around a foal. The prim little pegasus went through the motions of getting Esmeralda all cleaned up, all while scowling and muttering the most profane vulgarities to herself. When Esmeralda was changed, Miss Oddbody pulled a bottle out of a bag, slipped it into a bottle warmer that Sapphire Shores had donated, and then, the normally polite little pegasus sat waiting for the bottle to heat, all while a stream of profane words spilled like a flood from her lips.
Her mother was a farmer, and it showed.
When the bottle warmer dinged, Miss Oddbody yanked the bottle out, snatched up Esmeralda, and then stuffed her into her father’s embrace. Copperquick, still sitting on his bag of beans, somehow managed to take his daughter and hold her. The bottle was stuffed into Esmeralda’s lips like a cork, and the startled foal let out a displeased gurgle that she had been silenced. She kicked and fussed a bit more, but hunger won out and Esmeralda began to feed.
“Fronking bellends… stupid, manky little minge sniffing pish lickers… pox ridden tossers… buggering gits… fronking cack hoofed bastards... somepony is going to pay for this cockup, I swear…” Sitting down, Miss Oddbody cracked her front fetlocks and they made a most alarming sound as the slender, prim little pegasus prepared for some unspeakable act of violence. “Right then, I need a cuppa and I think I’ll fix you one as well.”
The citizens of Canterlot were no strangers to odd sights and strange events. Occasionally, bureaucrats would duel in the streets, sometimes, wizards and their spells would go horribly wrong in the worst possible way, Canterlot was a city where weird things happened. As such, nopony batted an eyelid at yet another strange sight on the streets of Canterlot.
A small, slight, skinny young pegasus mare dragged a much larger earth pony stallion along behind her, a strap gripped between her teeth and secured around his neck. The earth pony bawled, great racking sobs, but his tears were invisible, washed away by the pouring rain. Also around his neck was a foal carrier, and in the carrier, a foal squalled, her cries shrill and echoing through the urban canyons of Canterlot.
It took all of the little pegasus’ mare’s strength to tug the much larger earth pony along. He stumbled and dragged his hooves over the ground behind her, rearing his head back, and resisting every step of the way. But the little pegasus mare, with her skinny legs, her mosquito thin body, and her slender wings, she would not be deterred, scowling and squinting as she went.
Nopony stopped them. Nopony said anything. Canterlot ponies, most of them polite to a fault and not wishing to cause a scene, stepped aside and allowed the tiny pegasus to pull the earth pony along by his lead. The rain came down in a deluge, flooding the streets and turning the white sidewalks grey.
“Good heavens.” Twilight Velvet watched as Miss Oddbody dumped a drenched Copperquick onto the couch and she stood there, trying to assess the situation. With an almost mindless flick of her magic, she dried everypony present and cleaned up the puddles of water from the floor. “Gracious, what happened?”
“An eviction notice for lease violation, that’s what happened,” Miss Oddbody replied after she spat out the strap she had held in her teeth. “And a five hundred bit fine.”
“Oh.” Twilight Velvet let out a demure gasp. “Oh dear, well, as bad as this is, it might work out to our advantage.”
“How in the blue Tartarus does this work out to our advantage?” Miss Oddbody demanded to know as she stomped one petite hoof upon the dirty, stained floor. She gave herself a shake and her bun, now dried, collapsed completely, spilling out her long mane into a flood that spilled down her neck and over her face. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Velvet… but I am very upset right now. Please, forgive me.”
“This works out to our advantage. Mister Copperquick now faces a condition called imminent hardship. This is an entirely new set of qualifiers and we can use them to get appeals. With the ante upped, new conditions and opportunities are presented.” Twilight Velvet looked over at Copperquick, who was sobbing in an inconsolable manner on the couch, clutching his daughter.
“Mrs. Velvet, that’s all fine and good, but he is going to be homeless in thirty days.”
“Miss Oddbody… Buttermilk… I can’t save everypony, I am painfully aware of this fact, but I can pick and chose my battles. I have chosen to die upon this very hill, if that is what is necessary, and I assure you, come Tartarus or high tides, I will be looking after Mister Copperquick. We now have thirty days with an advantage… a powerful advantage, leverage, if you will, my lovely Buttermilk, thirty days that we might be able to exploit the system.”
“After thirty days, then what?” Miss Oddbody asked.
“Well, we need to keep Mister Copperquick homeless and without an address—that is just too good of an advantage to give up, but we can’t have him and little Esmeralda suffering. Give me some time to work things out. I assure you, I will find a way to keep our advantage while also ensuring that they are sheltered.”
“Thank you.” Sniffling, a long dangling ribbon of shimmering, shiny snot dangling from his nose, Copperquick looked up from where he sat on the couch. “I kinda lost my hope there… I’m sorry.”
Conjuring some tissues with her magic, Twilight Velvet went to work wiping Copperquick’s nose, and then also tried to clean up Esmeralda’s face. Looking both cross and stern, Twilight Velvet’s brows formed deep furrows as she began to think about the problem at hoof.
“I didn’t think about this working out to our advantage. I wish I had, I might have been able to comfort Copperquick.” Miss Oddbody slumped and her wings drooped. “Now I feel bad. I feel like I’ve failed my client.”
“Buck up, dearie.” Twilight Velvet began to pace the floor, her brows still furrowed. “I need to think about how to defend my hill. Miss Oddbody, go and fix me a cup of tea. Also, I think that both you and Copperquick could use one as well. Now go. Off with you, young miss!”
Wings buzzing, Miss Oddbody zoomed off, her hooves just inches above the floor.
“What a delightful set of circumstances I can play with.” Pacing, Twilight Velvet’s eyes narrowed into slits and her ears angled forwards over her face. “Copperquick, darling, I assure you, I am far too invested in this to allow you to slip through the cracks. We just need to make it look like you are about to slip through the cracks. Dire circumstances and all.”
“Where will I go?” Copperquick asked.
“Oh, I shall think of something. I’d let you come and stay with me and my husband, but that would be a conflict of interests and pose a number of issues about professionalism. But not to worry.” Turning about, Twilight Velvet yelled, “Miss Oddbody, do pull out the biscotti! I believe this warrants a special occasion!”
“Right, Boss!”