//------------------------------// // Chapter 3: When All Else Fails, Open Fire // Story: The Incompetence Bureau // by Daemon McRae //------------------------------// Chapter 3: When all else fails, open fire. “This shouldn’t even be a problem!” Lemon whines, glaring at a menu like it’s mortally offended her. “Sunny, you’re the smart one here, can’t you just like, think our way out!” I can’t stop myself rolling my eyes like bowling balls. “Oh, sure. Hmm, let me give it some thoug-WE’RE SCREWED.” “Normally I’d argue with her but I got nothin’,” Indigo drawls, drowning her sorrows in chocolate milk. She even had the gall to order one of those curly-wurly straws. Which looks like fun why the FUCK didn’t I think of that. “And what the hell do you mean she’s the smart one?! I’m plenty smart!” Lemon dismisses her with a hoof. “Nah, you’re the punchy one. Sour Sweet’s the crazy one, I’m the lovable idiot, and Sugarcoat’s the slutty one.” Her assessment is met with a few audible growls and glares. Not wanting to argue with my position as the brains of the operation, I instead turn my attention to something more interesting than Sour Sweet trying to kill the punk rocker with her eyes. “Uh, Sugarcoat? You don’t seem to be doing much counter-arguing here. Anything you wanna say?” Pigtails continues to browse the menu with mild interest. “No, not really. She pretty much hit the nail on the head.” Indigo raises an eyebrow. “Um… not that I don’t like punching a fool, but aren’t you a little… offended by the ‘slutty’ part?” Sugarcoat, the undisputed master of eyebrows, calls and raises her own eyebrow. “Being the only one at the table who’s actually had sex in the last four months, no, no I do not. Although I think Sunny is almost as much the ‘punchy’ one as you are.” “Wha-I am NOT!” Sour Sweet sniffs loudly. “Sunny, my friend, you clean blood off your desk almost daily. The guard actually tried to recruit you. TWICE.” I search my feelings, knowing it to be true. “Yeah, but Indigo punches way more ponies than I do!” Zap’s expression turns wistful. “Yeah, I do.” “And what’s this about me being the ‘crazy one’?!” Sour growls, returning her attention to Lemon Zest. The entire table stares at her. “...yeah, ok.” The conversation dies down a little, so I flag a waiter. He trots over with his best ‘I actually hate everything but I’m getting paid to be here so smiles it is’ smile. “What can I get you ladies?” Lemon, who only seems to remember just now that we were actually here for food, buries her muzzle in the menu again with some urgency. “I’ll take a big-ass tray of hayfries. And I mean greasy,” she ends her sentence with the kind of intensity usually reserved for serial killers and salesponies. Sour looks ready to cry again. “No carbs. Please, for the love of Celestia, anything but carbs!” Sugarcoat just points to a thing on her menu, and the waiter nods. “Oh, and some lemonade.” The waiter turns his attention to me, “And for you-” “PANCAKES!” Zest shouts. The waiter almost jumps out of his leafy green fur. “I need pancakes! And syrup! DROWN THE BASTARDS!” “Uh...ok…,” the poor colt mutters, writing furiously on his notepad. I suspect he’s drafting a restraining order. He then looks to me pleadingly, wanting very much not to be at our table any more. I nod to Sugarcoat. “Whatever she’s having, but make mine an iced tea. Unsweetened.” Sugarcoat raises her other eyebrow at me with the kind of fluidity usually reserved for cell animations, but says nothing. The waiter nods, and trots off, looking grateful to be anywhere Lemon Zest is not. Which is not an uncommon sentiment. ------------------------------ We chat amicably, and unproductively, for a dozen minutes or so, before a different waiter shows up with our food. A mare this time, she gives Lemon a cautious glance as she slides what looks like a prisoner’s last meal of pancakes and maple syrup stacked to her eyelids across the table. She snatches her hoof back almost immediately as Lemon almost lunges at her fork. Without a word the little devil starts eating with all the table manners of a timberwolf. The next plate to hit the table is a light salad accompanied by a glass of water for Sour Sweet, who sniffles a “Thank You” before poking the plate with her own fork, taking a reasonable bite. Then the waiter puts my fries in front of me, and I see the face of GOD in the still-sizzling starchy gold mine. “Oh my yes,” I pray, sticking a forkful into my face. It tastes like heaven and heart problems. I try to say thank you but all that comes out is an unintelligible grunt. Sugarcoat translates: “She says thank you.” The waiter nods with a smile, and puts Sugarcoat’s food down in front of her: a triple-hayburger with cheese, onion rings, and bbq sauce. For a second, a look crosses the unicorn’s face, the kind one normally sees on lonely stallions at burlesque shows. It’s gone in a moment, but I say a small prayer in my head for the poor food in front of her. And then one for Sunny Flare as her eyes widen in abject terror at the mountain of food before her. She looks at Sugarcoat pleadingly, but gets no response as the bluenicorn takes a bite out of her sandwich that would traumatize a small child. Or Sunny Flare. That’s definitely an ‘I need therapy’ look. We all eat (mostly) in peace, the only sounds coming from the occasional crunch of salad, and the ungodly cacophony coming from Lemon’s general direction. I don’t think I’m alone in deciding NOT to look at her. “So,” Sugarcoat says after a few minutes of horrible chewing noises. “Any thoughts as to how we keep our jobs?” Sunny Flare looks up from her half-eaten sandwich (she made it through HALF holy shit girl), with a defeated look on her face. “I got nothing. I think this… thing is making me dumber by the bite.” She wipes a bit of sauce off her mouth with a napkin, then looks around the table. “Anypony else?” Sour Sweet, the poor girl, is wiping the last of her dressing of the plate with a slice of cucumber. “I don’t think so. And I’m so booked with my clients this week I doubt I’d be able to do anything different anyway. Maybe we just hope she doesn’t come anywhere near us?” “Maketh thenthe,” Lemon Zest says between bites. Or during. Fortunately for everypony, she swallows before she talks again. “I mean, when I got audited by the iris-” “I. R. S.,” Sour Sweet growls. “Right, those losers. Anyway, I didn’t even see the guys. They just looked at a bunch of papers and called me like a month later saying they didn’t find anything. Maybe she’s just gonna sit in some dingy office and look at paperwork all day?” I blink. Then again. Nothing changes. “Am… am I still drunk, or did that make sense?” Sugarcoat looks genuinely surprised. Also, her burger is gone (HOW?!). “I… I think she’s right. We might not even see the princess for more than a few minutes.” Sunny looks almost religiously hopeful. “So… we don’t have to actually do anything?” “Maybe not,” Sour ponders. “Maybe not.” -------------------------------- Monday morning arrives, and I’m sitting here with the rest of the crazy train, surrounding a conference table. The only additions are our boss, Ms. Cinch, and Princess freakin’ Twilight Sparkle. “Well, ladies, I’ve assembled you all because you have the most… expressive employee files in the company, and thus the Princess has elected you five for her little audit.” “Yes!” She says excitedly. She looks to each of us in turn. “I’m very excited to see how you perform your daily functions, so for the next week I will be shadowing each of you in turn!” The other four girls glare daggers at me. I try to make myself as small as possible, wishing wholeheartedly that I’d been allowed to take my headphones into this meeting. “And today, Lemon Zest, I will be following you!” The glares turn to malicious smiles, and I want to cry.