I lay awake trying to figure out where Twilight had heard me say “oh shit” before. I mean, yeah, I was pretty sure she probably had, but I didn’t remember the specific instance. Maybe it was during the time skip, after she’d blasted me out of the library and I’d woken up at the school prom. I was still trying to figure out what had happened during those missing hours.
What actually troubled me more was that it wasn’t the only time I realized I had missing time. Usually, I hadn’t even been that drunk. Surely my tolerance hadn’t dropped that much.
Maybe. Whatever. I rolled over and tried to go to sleep.
That was going to be difficult because it was morning and the sun was shining directly into my window.
“I hate this job!” I shouted.
The sun got even closer, actually starting to physically press through the window.
“Do it!” I shouted. “You burn me alive, you put my out of my misery, Celestia!”
The door opened. “Sir-”
I threw my pillow towards the door, and the maid-uniformed mare who had opened it. “Get out!”
She came in, hoof raised against the glare of flaming corona. The sun seemed to retreat now that she was here.
Her name was Feather Duster and she was usually the maid tasked to deal with my shit. I use that phrase intentionally. I’m that self-aware and yet somehow still an asshole.
I didn’t usually consider my own virtues, or lack thereof in so certain of terms. Holy shit, this is why I was almost always at least buzzed, but working at the castle had really messed up my usual BAC.
“Sir, regarding your behavior, Princess Celestia has threatened to ban agave if-”
“I don’t give a shit! She couldn’t anyway, I’m the castle Chief of Staff! Nothing gets done without me, just like she made it!”
“This is...not really within my purvey of cleaning your room, but I do need you up and out so I can get to it,” she said.
“It does need cleaning,” I said. “I don’t know how it got to be this much of a pigsty.”
I really didn’t - sober, remember? - and I wasn’t speaking figuratively, either.
“Well, if your room wasn’t an actual pigsty…” she said.
Maybe this was why the last Chief of Staff had left.
In that case, I guess my gripe was with Celestia, not Feather Duster. It was never a good idea to piss off your maid, anyway, even if this one was a pegasus and not a latina.
As I got up and walked past her, stepping over a pig, she said, “And please stop calling me Lemon Pledge.”
“Never.”
I grabbed some breakfast from the kitchen and headed to my office. It was fairly large, garishly decorated, and while it wasn’t particularly high up or close to the princesses, I did at least have a window.
I’d inherited it from some guy named Kibitz. I wasn’t exactly sure where he was now, only that I’d replaced him as the Chief of Staff.
The job of Chief of Staff meant that I kept things running around the castle. While I wasn’t third in command of Equestria, I was third in command at the castle itself, behind the princesses. That meant they delegated almost everything to me. I pretty much made the day-to-day decisions, but had to stay within their approval and the budget they had given me. I could control what made it to the princesses for review, but couldn’t get new laws passed by myself. It was frustratingly checked and balanced.
There was a pile of paperwork in my inbox. I put it in my outbox.
Some might say that meant I wasn’t actually doing anything. On the contrary, the Eisenhower Method was at work.
Imagine a matrix with two columns and two rows, equaling four boxes. You have urgent and not urgent tasks, you have important and not important tasks. If something was not important and not urgent, there was no need to think about it. If something was urgent but not important, get someone else to do it for you. If something was important but not urgent, it could be scheduled for later. Finally, if something was both urgent and important, you had better do it.
Since nothing was literally on fire, I didn’t think I was facing anything that fit in the final category.
The door opened and Raven Inkwell came in. She was an earth pony with glasses and dressed professionally. I guess she was a secretary, but I’d never figured out whose, exactly. Mine? I didn’t think so.
She glanced at my full outbox and appeared to withhold a sigh. She picked up everything, put a cupcake in my inbox, and turned for the door.
“Raven?”
“Yes Mr. Valiant?”
“What’s this?”
“It’s an invitation to the grand opening of the Cheese Sandwich Amusement Factory.”
“It’s not a cupcake?”
“Not a real one.”
“Why was I invited?”
“The Crown was.”
I was Chief of Staff, so I decided who would respond to official invitations. Wait a second, go back. Cheese Sandwich?
“What do you know about this guy?” I asked.
“He’s a party pony partner of Pinkie Pie,” Raven replied. “I thought you had read the friendship journal.”
Once again, this universe had thrown me a curve ball. On the other hand, maybe, just maybe, this was the salvation I had been looking for.
I considered it for a long moment and then said, “Get me Prince Blueblood and a VIP train.”
“We’re going to a joke shop?”
That was one thing that hadn’t changed about this universe - Blueblood was an asshole.
“We’re going to a joke factory,” I said. “It’s official Crown business, so we’ll need to make a short speech on the importance of laughter and how honored we are to be a part of Equestria’s newest industry, which will surely drive our great country forward to ever higher standing.”
“Do not think to lecture me on speeches,” he said, looking down his nose at me, which required him to tilt his head back because be were sitting beside each other. “I am actually royalty, not a peasant with elocution lessons.”
“I’m sure you’re happy for yourself.”
He continued looking down his nose at me, once again because we were sitting together in the same seat on the train. “I see you also have no concept of personal space.”
“You said you wanted a window seat. I wanted an aisle seat, so I don’t see how I could sit anywhere else.”
He gestured around the royal railcar, which was incredibly plush and furnished compared to other train cars. “You could sit anywhere else.”
“Shh, shh,” I patted his forehead. “You’re actually royalty, not someone who knows how to think. That’s why I’m Chief of Staff.”
Blueblood was still in a mood when we arrived at the joke factory. To my non-surprise, Pinkie Pie was also there. It was a grand opening for a joke factory, after all.
“Hey Valiant, how’s the new job?” she said as we walked into the factory. I saw Blueblood eyeing her with disgust. I wasn’t sure if that meant he knew her or not.
“I hate my life,” I replied. “But I can’t leave, because I’m addicted to the power.”
“Wow, with insight like that, you sound sober.”
“I am.” I sighed.
A bald stallion named Sans Smirk met us. I’m not sure why he was wearing a Cheese Sandwich mask. I guess this was Cheese’s business manager or something.
“Wow! A whole factory dedicated to gags!” said Pinkie as we walked in. “I bet this is the funnest place ever!”
It was not. You would think that an Equestrian factory run by a joke pony would have Willy Wonka shit for days, but no. OSHA would shit a brick if there was fun going on.
Oh yeah, as castle Chief of Staff, I’d had the Occupational Safety and Health Administration established. There were far too many workplace accidents in Equestria.
“Maybe the fun is behind all this boring-looking factory stuff,” said Pinkie.
“The fun is the factory stuff,” Sans replied. “We take a fairly serious approach to comedy here. Observe.” He squirted himself in the face with a gag flower.
“The squirting flower’s a classic,” said Pinkie, “but what if the flower was part of a shirt, but the flower didn’t squirt – the shirt did?!”
“That is literally the funniest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Sans. There was enough inflection in his voice and expression that I thought he meant it, but I could also definitely see why he was named Sans Smirk.
“Valiant’s got joke for days, too,” Pinkie offered.
Surprised to be put on the spot, I said, “Uh...what are the symptoms of a disease that causes loss of iron in your hemoglobin and loss of personality in your brain?”
“What?” asked Sans.
“Blue blood.”
Pinkie cracked up as if she hadn’t heard me tell that joke before. Blueblood glared at me as if he’d heard it several times, which he had.
Having now heard from everyone but Blueblood, Sans showed us up to Cheese’s office. It was...dark.
Cheese turned his chair around, face barely visible in the gloom. “Pinkie, I’m glad you came. I knew I could count on you to help me. I...I completely lost my laugh.”
“Well that’s good,” I said.
Everyone looked at me. I waved a hoof. “No, I mean, not like good for you. I just think it’s good that you’re the real Cheese Sandwich and not some Weird Al doppleganger that I’m going to have to send back to Hell. Again.” I paused and put a hoof to my chin. “On the other hand, if you were that kind of guy, maybe I could get Weird Al here to help me put you away, and then I could hitch a ride with him back to the real world.”
I started looking for chalk to do summoning runes. I didn’t see any, and I wondered if I could use Blueblood’s white horn instead.
Meanwhile, Pinkie kept trying to get Cheese to laugh. She mostly used Sans as the butt of her various jokes, and kept escalating things.
I watched with some interest. Seeing Pinkie unto others was a lot better than having it done to you. Blueblood, meanwhile, sulked. “These problems of lost laughter do not concern me in the slightest.”
I shrugged. “Well, I’m not holding you against your will or anything.” I was hoping he would catch the implication in my voice, that I could if I wanted to.
“As if I would walk by myself to the train station,” he said. I wasn’t sure where the carriage that had carried us from the station was now, but I could call it.
“Well, get a taxi. You have money, right?”
“As if I would travel aboard a common hackney! As if I would carry my own wallet!”
“Hey Pinkie, I have an idea!” I called.
She turned away from her Cheese efforts. “By all means, my ears are open. I just can’t get Cheese to laugh!”
“Alright, I’ll take a crack at it.” I glanced around, sizing up the building. “Give me just a sec.”
I found a staircase that climbed up. Everyone watched as I climbed. I made it up near the ceiling of the main assembly area and then stepped out onto a catwalk that led to the shift-change bell. After sizing it up for a moment, I turned, and bucked it loose.
The bell fell straight down and landed on Blueblood’s head.
“Yeah, bitch, you just got donged!” I shouted down at him.
Since I’d created OSHA, you might think such a thing was unsafe. However, I’d been wearing a hard hat, so it was all good.
It didn’t kill Blueblood, but everyone enjoyed seeing him physically injured. Pinkie, who was the type to laugh at anything, which unfortunately included other people getting hurt, cracked up. “Maybe instead of Blueblood, we should call him Prince Belvedere!”
“It’s...it’s, um, funny you mention that,” said Cheese. His voice gained confidence. “I used to know a Prince Belvedere, and Blueblood is a dead ringer for him.”
Pinkie literally ROFL’d.
Watching her, Cheese cracked a smile, and then laughed.
“I figured it out!” Pinkie exclaimed, jumping up with a gasp. “It’s not about other ponies getting you to laugh, you need to make other ponies laugh! You aren’t getting that stuck here in this factory! That’s what’s been wrong with you.”
“It does make a certain sense, sir,” Sans said to Cheese. “Spreading laughter has always brought you joy.”
“But spreading laughter is what this factory does,” Cheese pointed out.
“Except you don’t see it,” said Pinkie.
“I have a solution for this, too,” I said. “I’ve been developing small cameras with remote broadcast capability. By packaging them with your jokes and sending them all over Equestria, you can spy on everyone. Of course, I would also be a recipient of the video feed.”
But Cheese was already gone. He’d thrown on his old traveling outfit and headed out to wander the land as a drifting jokester.
I turned to Sans, who I guess was now the default factory guy, but just then Blueblood groaned from his position on the floor and pulled the bell off his head.
His mane had been formed into a perfect replica of the inside of the bell.
Sans sniggered, but then caught himself and returned to his professional demeanor. “I can already see a market for bell-hair wigs. It will be excellent for Nightmare Night.”
Donging assholes and making money off it? Very interesting.
I put that idea on the back burner. I grabbed the limp Blueblood by the horn and dragged him back to the train station.
Back at the castle, I sighed and shook my head as I walked in the door. Since I’d gone to the factory, there was probably a ton more paperwork I was going to have to have Raven do. This day wasn’t over yet.
Sure enough, when I walked into my office, my inbox was full again. I wondered what would happen if I just set it on fire.
I hesitated too long, though, and Celestia walked in. “There you are, Valiant. I want to start a scholastic buckball league.”
“A school sports competition?”
“Right.” She clopped her hooves. “Get to it.”
She smiled and walked out. At no point did she ask what I was doing with Blueblood.
I sighed and picked up a pen. I wrote start a scholastic buckball league on a post-it, put it on top the stack of paperwork, and moved the entire stack into my outbox.
That done, I decided I’d worked enough today and left the office.
Down a couple floors, I walked into my room to discover that it was still a pigsty. I mean, it was neat as a pin, but still a literal pigsty.
“Damnit, Lemon Pledge!”
“It’s clean, what else do you want me to do!? Also, not my name!”
I really needed to go find a drink.
I turned to leave again. Lemon Pledge said, “Are you just going to leave the Prince here?”
Here being facedown and surrounded by pigs.
“Yeah, he needs a nap.”
“If he doesn’t show some signs of life, I’m concerned the pigs will try to eat him. I’ve heard that they’re omnivorous, and now that the room is clean, they can’t exactly root for slops or whatever it is that pigs do.”
I shrugged and turned for the door. “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a ham.”