-Jade, a week later-
Okay, a few things went down when I was slapped awake. Apparently Dr. Zen Bones… almost sounds like saying ‘them bones’… anyway Dr. Zen Bones is a professional and accredited equestrian doctor.
She became an accredited doctor thanks to hearing about a certain chimera that became a lawyer and managed to win a trial in Canterlot a while ago.
Gee, I wonder who helped give her the opportunity to be accredited as an equestrian doctor by hearing that being an equestrian citizen was easy, especially if you were born within equestrian territory and have been there for years while undisputed? Maries’ case for the chimera pretty much gave Dr. Bones the opening to get her license.
Before being accredited, Bones had all the capabilities and training of an accredited doctor that wasn’t a unicorn. She was one of the few, if only, diamond dogs to ever attend a pony college in Manehattan.
Only she wouldn’t be paid for any of her work, because she couldn’t get accredited or a medical license due to some jerk blocking her progress. Zen Bones had basically been an unpaid intern at that point in time, one who could hardly practice medicine even if she should be fully licensed.
Thanks to one certain loophole in the court case made by Maries, she was able to become a fully licensed and accredited doctor. When the pony that blocked her previously tried to do so again, she was arrested for unlawful conduct, among a few other things.
All that thought, Bones was friendly and good looking for a diamond dog even if her accent and verbal skills were a bit annoying. Those were rare thoughts I’d never thought I’d think about a diamond dog, she wasn’t anywhere close to being a mangy mutt even if she was a bit on the short side.
Zen had gotten into an argument with Quick Patch about how I was woken up, an argument of which she won because slapping me had rebooted my brain from being comatose somehow.
From the way Bones explains it, Fizzy kissing me with tongue stimulated my brain somewhat and then the sharp slap afterwards was to kick my brain into high gear. Dr. Bones mentioned this wouldn’t work with a deep coma patient. It did, however, work on me.
My reaction upon waking up was to be expected, I was pretty confused yet oddly happy about it as Fizzle snuggled against me. I was finally off an intravenous drip and ready to get back into the swing of things. After I was given the okay by both Dr. Patch and Bones.
To that end, I planned out our next adventure, it was to be the most horrifying thing we’ve ever done.
It was scarier than cultists with crossbows, more dangerous than Jacky actually having five straight days of good luck in a row, tougher than Velvet climbing Seared Seer Mountain at Snickers behest and it was legally slavery for as long as you were willing to stomach it…
It was a basic eight to six job at the local Hayburger in Ponyville, you needed to arrive thirty minutes early to prepare the restaurant.
Yes, I can already hear everyone’s high pitched squeal of terror.
We were actually going to do something safe for once! I was missing the danger already…
I almost gagged on that thought alone that we weren’t going to spook wyverns, make Fortitude befriend a bufogren so that he can understand what the smell coming from him is like, or at the very least steal something incredible from a museum in a classic impossible thief style that ends up with a different culprit getting captured.
I also wouldn’t mind another trip to Turtle Toga, much less anything to not have to deal with a normal day job.
Nope, nothing for it, we were just going to work at a Hayburger.
Now one would ask why we’re doing this or acting responsibly… well my mother’s birthday was coming up soon and she’d notice any treasury expenditure to buy her a gift. Given that Sekhet was her secretary and owned said treasury.
Oh sure, her birthday was a few weeks away, but we’d only be able to work on what basically amounts to Saturdays and Sundays.
Not mention having to go to school, defend the town from random pukwudge invasions, defend the town from random ‘highland’ pukwudgie invasions, surviving the random monster of the week, training to be able to defend our town with Sekhet and dealing with that one super thief elephant that is stealthier than should be possible for an animal that weighs over a ton and should be visible from up to a mile away.
I would have gone with plan A, but mom already hid the nunchucks that I stole fair and square from the 'Order of Dark Dreams' cultists. I didn’t even get to test them for magical alchemy yet! At least I had my caltrops, a game of jacks was much more fun and challenging when it was played with caltrops.
It was either work at a menial job to get mom a present or I could wear a dress and get a picture taken. I still refuse all dresses and I wasn’t about to let my mom have a picture of me she could lord over me for the rest of my life!
As for the planned assistants for this job, I needed at least Fizzle, Blade and Flamberge onboard with helping me with the boredom of the fast food industry.
Flamberge for flame broiling prowess to cook burgers quickly. Knife master Blade can chop up and make fine hayburger patties, all while working with toppings and ingredients. Fizzy would be there to prevent me from going insane as I fried up potatoes and would possibly work the cash register. This left open one slot for a volunteer, who would most certainly not be Jacky.
I don’t know about anyone else, but if we took Jacky along, then I’d expect someone to eventually get a face full of boiling oil at some point. She could drop us off with the Ardent Survivor, but she was not working alongside us while we do these part time jobs and she was no good in a kitchen. We also didn’t want to pay for the numerous damages to the Hayburger we would be working at.
I could work at ‘The Witch’s Fare’, but mom would be more suspicious about me needing money after I dumped all of my bits into Ratatoskr. I got what I paid for at the very least, Ratatoskr is a very competent messenger god and he saved my family’s bacon more than once… now there's something that I haven’t had in a while.
Still, who to choose for our fifth member in horrible menial labor though? Generic maybe? Seems like his kind of speed. Maybe Arizona, but doing anything related to customer service would make her so very angry, even if she would be good at milkshakes. If I could get Velvet onboard, then we’d have free snow cones or at the very least quick ice cream.
No, we needed someone who is horrible to deal with that can be worse than any customer we’ll get and will inevitably out annoy them by a wide margin… we’re taking Wary Berry!
No wait, she was fruit inspector and quality control. No matter how much I disliked her, her job was actually important here. So who? Hmm… oh… that could work!
We were going in to do the jobs of the poor overworked ponies of Hayburger and we would try to at least have fun with it.
-Day zero at the Ponyville Hayburger, minutes before it opens-
“Are you ready for this guys?” We were giving some poor beleaguered ponies freedom from this job on the weekends. I bet they certainly felt sorry for us poor slobs.
“Why are we doing this again?” Sorry I got you a cash register job Fizzle. Hope that all the gods and goddesses be kind to you if you get a brain dead customer today, especially one that takes minutes to make an order. “This doesn’t seem like our speed Jade, though I’m not entirely knocking the fact that we aren’t doing high octane adventure like flying off a snowy mountain with an uninflated balloon in an airship. This seems all too… safe… somehow.”
“Well I want to earn money to buy my mother a birthday present and this is the least dangerous thing I could think of that we’d be doing to earn bits.” She nodded and understood my answer, but she quirked a brow at me. “Trust me though, this will be far from safe. Have you ever dealt with annoying customers before? Customer service is a complete nightmare and I’m sorry about what you’ll have to go through today. Just make sure to write down everything someone says when they make an order. That way, they can’t say you made a mistake with their order. Also smile and ask for a name.”
“What kind of present could you possibly be getting for mom that would require five of us to be doing this?” A true present that mother could appreciate Fizzle, a true present from the heart and is bought from hard labor that isn’t me putting on a dress and taking a picture of said dress wearing.
“Something pretty good I assure you, that and I’d be helping out the local economy when we’re done.” There was something about the way that Fizzle wore the hat over her horn that was cute, but the Hayburger uniform really didn’t suit her.
I’d prefer Fizzle in her Commander Tempest armor personally and she doesn’t look happy about this, but she was doing this for me and I was willing to do something for her afterwards. In any case, I should really wish Fizzle luck… she’d need it.
Flamberge didn’t seem to understand how boring and methodical this job would be, he was actually enthusiastic about this. I told him if anything tries to get into the food, he should fry it and eat it personally or throw it in the garbage.
Blade was looking calm and ready with two sharp edged spatulas to start chopping up hayburgers, vegetables and other things for hungry mouths.
I was at the frying station, my job was onions, potatoes and anything that needs a quick deep frying. Like any fast food restaurant, this was most certainly not a healthy place to eat even if all the food tasted delicious.
I couldn’t actually digest hay, so I wouldn’t know why a hayburger would taste good to a pony. We were still going to take advantage of the employee discounts while they lasted though, everything else on the menu other than the eponymous hayburger was edible to me at the very least.
As for the last person in our five person crew, it was Maries. Her job was to manage our collective neuroses into a functional unit, managerial work would help her in the future and who would say no to the firm paw of a chimera?
Also if some jerk asked for our manager and tried to pull on over on us, they’d be in for a big surprise if they tried to argue with Maries. There’s no beating a really good chimera lawyer.
“Are we about ready to open guys?” I called out, they all seemed to nod or think they were. They didn’t know the regular workers here needed a fairly large break from the insanity that was the fast food industry.
Even ponies with a cutie mark entirely geared to working in this industry needed a vacation from it every once in a while. When said pony's name is ‘Fry Hard’ and he needed a break, you knew you were in for a rollercoaster of tedium and horrors unseen.
“About as we’ll ever be Jade, though I’m wondering how you are so good at getting menial jobs like this. I mean interning with ‘Glasses and Staches’ for a day was one thing, but getting impossible job positions for more than one being and it becomes questionable. How would anyone let us even do this when we’ve never worked at a fast food restaurant in our lives?” After pausing a moment to consider her words carefully, Fizzle realized the kind of situation we came into. “Speaking of which, how did you get us these jobs without any prior training on our parts?”
“A pony owed me a favor or two.” I wasn’t lying, but I wasn’t about to tell anyone which ponies owed me the favors and why, but I’m sure I’d see Bon-Bon with Lyra over these coming days. Rogue’s always had connections in weird places for a reason and I was no different. “Also be of note, no work place fraternization. Hugs are allowed, but no kissing or nuzzling unless on break or we’re done for the day. We cannot mess this up people! Do you understand your job Maries?”
“Yes, we understand what we are supposed to do. We’ll be intimidating, but fair!” Maries was always good for following rules and knew when to break them, she was the only one here who couldn’t do anything illegal or she’d lose the ability to be a lawyer. That was okay, I could get away with enough for all of us.
“Okay I’m going to open the doors, whoever our first customers are, they better be gentle with us.” Way to jinx it Fizzle, did we even need Jacky here for things to go wrong? I watched as she opened the doors to the restaurant and went behind the counter, we were already setting up for a busy day of horrors upon horrors.
“Hi guys, oh this is so cool, you’re working at The Hayburger!” Oh for the love of, please tell me that our first customer wasn’t Pinkie Pie!
“Hello everyone, nice to see you today.” With a very shy Fluttershy in tow, I noticed from the back that Pinkie was holding the nervous mare's hoof.
Were they on a date? Well that would be interesting if they were, Pinkie liked to cuddle her friends and was very physically affectionate. That would be something Fluttershy would appreciate at the very least.
“Welcome to Hayburger, home of the hayburger, may a take your order?” Fizzle said blandly with a flat look on her face. No, I don’t think she would smile at any time in any of the escapades involving this restaurant that we might get into.
“Wow Fizzle, that was great! You could try to smile a little more though.” Pinkie Pie, she’s working as a fast food service drone. Fizzle gave Pinkie a disgruntled look. “Oh right, sorry! I’ll have two hash browns with ketchup, three fluffy biscuits with grape jelly, a breakfast hayburger with a broken yolk fried egg and some pomegranate juice!”
“Okay, that’ll be tomato smashing chariot wheels, three cats heads with purple diggers and a burnt protein hammer on a leaky raft with underworld juice for Pinkie.” The fact that Fizzle said that all with a straight face made Pinkie burst into a fit of giggles. “What will you be having Fluttershy? Don’t mind my dry humor, this is going to be a long day for us all and I need to get a jump on it right now.”
Yes, this was the most horrific start to a most horrific day and I didn’t see it going any other way.