Chef Jack Pot had now proven to Gordon that he was fully capable of making good food without Tulip and Red Skillet's interference. A confident chef had arisen where an angry bitter stallion once was. Even Twilight was once again impressed with the stallion's cooking. A little bit too impressed as Gordon had to keep the deranged Princess from kidnapping the chef to make him her personal cook. It was a little amusing for the human, seeing a pastel-colored pony obsess over a burger the same way a dog would over bacon. Unfortunately, Tulip was not feeling the same way.
After being made to look like a jerk, she stormed right out of the restaurant and into the back alley. Jack Pot just celebrated his success with his team, all the while secretly poking fun at their manipulative co-owner. Gordon had suspicions about what really was going on with the elderly mare, but he kept it to himself for now. It took a bit of coaxing to pry the alicorn away from her food but Gordon brought Twilight to talk to Tulip who was sulking behind a bush that was growing back there alongside all the trashcans and dumpsters from the surrounding buildings.
"Tulip has never liked me, so I've never liked her." Jack Pot explained. "She wanted me to be the reason that her pitiful restaurant has been failing. So she just got up and left, right in the middle of the tasting of my burger."
"Why are you out here?" Twilight asked impatiently. "What is wrong? Hiding here is not going to solve anything."
Gordon tried being patient with the mare, despite his preconceptions about her as he waited to speak while Tulip spoke to Twilight.
"I'm an old mare, Princess, I've been through many circumstances. My situation here is to help my husband get this restaurant back to the way it once was. It's not about some bully or some fool."
"Fool? Bully?" Twilight questioned.
"Is that why you randomly walked out of there?" Gordon interjected. "Because Jack Pot was telling me the truth?"
"Because my heart hurt" Tulip replied. "Is that a wrong thing? That I have to sit there and smile and say that everything is fine? I can't do that!"
Twilight groaned inwardly at her first statement.
"Just tell us what is going on," Gordon replied. "Don't walk out because your husband's food doesn't match up to your chef's food."
"I've been facing a bully, who's been abusive to me," she started.
'Jack Pot hasn't laid a hoof on you lady,' Twilight thought with disdain.
"Then you need to address it because for you to just get up and walk out, it looks pretty vindictive. Red needs you back in there. He needs your support in getting through this. Regardless of who is to blame."
She reluctantly agreed as they followed her back into the restaurant. Red was sitting there patiently at the table, waiting for them to sit back down.
"What happened?" Red asked.
"Tulip got a little upset," Gordon explained.
"I get it, the chef has a high quality that he can bring to the restaurant and he should be doing that now."
Gordon beckoned the pony chef to come over to the table and he sat down beside the rest of them with a smug smile on his face.
"So why did you go outside, Tulip hmmm?" Jack Pot asked.
"That was a different issue, Jack Pot, no need to bring it up again," Red replied.
"Because you're a bully and you say so many vile things to me all the time!" she replied.
"Eight to twelve chefs have walked out of here since I first joined on to this restaurant and that is partial' cause of your fake little emotional outbursts to manipulate everyone here!" Jack Pot exclaimed. "When things don't go your way, you try to pin things on me and my kitchen staff. You have wanted me to fail since day one so that can happen."
"I think Tulip is a shark pretending she's a helpless little foal." Jack Pot explained to the interviewer. "You try going into the water with her and you get your nuts sliced off."
"You want Chef Ramsay to have me fired, that is exactly why you walked out the back door there."
'I'm starting to think that's probably, only part of what's going on with this place' Twilight thought.
Tulip and Red Skillet started screaming and shouting, forcing Twilight and Gordon to separate all of them before a fight broke out.
"Stop! I want to see all of you doing your jobs before I decide on what needs to happen," Twilight declared.
"We will watch each of you during dinner service to see how you handle everything in a big rush," Gordon said. "Finish service, and then we will talk more in-depth afterward, alright?"
They continued glaring at each other but they agreed as they got up from the table and went back to what they were doing.
Twilight decided at that moment that she should take the time to find Red and Tulip's house to snoop around before dinner service came around. Their house was just up the road right by the Ponyville Supermarket. It didn't take long to get there while Gordon was keeping an eye on things at the restaurant. She made up an excuse that she needed to attend to her princess duties elsewhere, which seemed to be a good enough lie for her.
Along the way, she bumped into the Flower Sisters who talked her ear off with random girl things for fifteen minutes. It annoyed her, but she tried being polite to the hyperactive mares every time she interacted with them. Even if it was only by accident.
She moved on soon after and came to Red Skillet's house which was a two-story red apartment building squashed in between two others. It was a very ornate building with statues sitting up on the roof and marble steps that led right up to the front door. Twilight suspected that Red most likely used a portion of the money on his house, which made her like the colt even less. Trying for the more discreet side of things, she slipped into an alleyway and pulled out the old black leotard she had tried to use to sneak into Canterlot Castle.
Looking around, she started going through the back door which was unlocked. Only to be assaulted by a gang of cats hiding out in the alleyway. They clung to her and scratched at her violently as she comedically panicked and bumped into everything in the house. Making as much noise as she possibly could have. She couldn't tell what each of the cats looked like as she pried each of them off quickly with her magic, but they were all ragged and were a variety of colors. Black, orange, grey, white, brown. She had to launch them over a nearby fence to save herself from them and then shut herself inside.
"Ugh, must be their security," Twilight halfheartedly quipped.
She carefully went through the house, making sure not to trip any security magic they may or may not have installed. She made sure to tip hoof around any rug or anything that looked like it could hide any pressure plates or special trap runes. Not that she actually knew that there even were any in the house.
The first room she came into was a small storage room filled with cardboard boxes and dusty wooden crates. It was quite dirty and filled with cobwebs which gave her the urge to clean everything in sight. Unfortunately, since she was on a tight schedule, she would have to put all of that on the backburner.
Into the living room, it was set up neatly, if a bit rustic with all manner of black and white framed photos along each wall, and old pieces of glazed driftwood hanging from the wall facing the front door like trophies. A simple fireplace and some simple furniture were lined up against the right side of the room. The hearth was covered in many little porcelain figurines which were shaped like foals. She was rather creeped out by the way the lifeless little things seemed to be following her with their eyes. At least in her mind, they were.
Just around the corner from the living room, she found the staircase which creaked loudly with every step, forcing her to use a muffling spell on her hooves. It worked fairly well as she cautiously rushed up the stairs and looked through each of the bedrooms and closets on the second floor until she found her quarry. An office that presumably belonged to Red Skillet.
The desk pushed up against the back wall of the office was a rather nice cherrywood desk. It stood tall with many small drawers and compartments for all manner of letters, documents, and office supplies. There were slots for letters to go into before they were taken to the post office. Two inkwells were mounted into the wood just by a row of tiny drawers where the table of the desk unfolded by its hinges. It looked like the kind of desk Twilight's grandmother had back home in Canterlot. She approached the desk cautiously, waiting for any sign of something bad to happen.
"Let's see if we can't find anything you're hiding Skillet," Twilight stated to herself.
An hour later back at the restaurant, Gordon was talking with his production crew on proper lighting for specific shots in the restaurant. A small corner table by the front door of the restaurant was where he waited for Twilight patiently as dinner service slowly started to creep around the corner. Rarity had insisted upon getting the word out of his and Twilight's appearance at the restaurant to draw in a crowd. He was starting to get concerned about where Twilight was and was about to head out to look for her.
'I hope she didn't get into any serious trouble,' Gordon thought concerned.
Suddenly, the front doors of the restaurant slammed open and a pony covered in smoke and soot hit the floor. She smelled like burnt fur and had eyes that were bloodshot and clearly irritated. Her mane was all ragged The mare hobbled into the restaurant, struggling to keep her balance as she held what looked to be a journal in her magical grasp. Gordon was about to ask who this strange pony was until he saw the wings and the horn sticking out of the burnt mane that was sticking up every which way.
"Holy shit! Twilight is that you?" Gordon exclaimed. "What the fuck happened?"
"Booby-trapped desk." was all the alicorn would say.
"What?"
"I don't want to talk about it," she groaned uncomfortably.
She handed the journal off to Gordon who delicately grabbed onto its leather-bound cover before watching the mare teleport off somewhere. Gordon waited for a moment, hoping that Twilight didn't just disappear on him again. Not a few minutes after, she teleported back into the room looking more fresh and clean, but somewhat damp. Like she had just gotten out of the shower but tried quickly drying herself off.
"Better?" Gordon chuckled.
"A little. I'm still sore from getting trapped in a Firestorm Cone and getting pelted with meteorites. I didn't even know mages still made those things."
"A what?"
"Extradimensional hammer-space trap that bombards its victims with fire magic and molten rock. Red had one stashed in his desk."
"I'm assuming they are gonna discover that tonight when they go home," Gordon said with a raised eyebrow. "How are you gonna handle that?"
"I'll tell them afterward I had to relieve them of the journal. Its evidence in a royal investigation."
"Isn't that breaking?"
"Under article 2, section 5-B it states a Princess is allowed to enter another pony's property without permission under the premise of an officially recognized investigation as long as another Princess knows what is happening."
She seemed to realize she brought up a problem upon herself as she quickly took out some parchment paper, made a quick report to Princess Celestia, and sent it off via dragon flame.
"I'm not even going to try to ask you about the fucking weird laws here," Gordon chuckled painfully into his hands.
Twilight went on and explained what she found in the journal. Gordon promised her that he would look it over after service when they got back to the castle. She collapsed to the ground in exhaustion, lying on her back and snoring away.
From the moment the both of them arrived earlier that morning, Twilight and Gordon had been hit with a variety of issues. It was finally time for dinner service and Ayers had arrived at the restaurant with his girlfriend. For the first time in a very long time, Ayers was going to be working alongside his father and mother. At Gordon's request.
Twilight watched from the front of the counter how Ayers greeted customers and took their orders. She was fairly impressed with his polite behavior and cordial performance. One pony in question that came to the counter was Thunderlane. One of Rainbow Dash's friends that she had always liked. He had heard about Twilight and Gordon's appearance at the restaurant and decided to try it out.
"What can I get for you, sir?" Ayers asked him as he held out a notepad.
"I think I'll try the Dodge Junction Chili Burger," Thunderlane replied cheerfully. "That one sounds tubular."
"How would you like that?"
"Uhhh, cooked?" Thunderlane replied.
Ayers hoof faced himself and tried remaining patient.
"How cooked? Rare, Medium, or Well Done?"
"Oh! Medium!"
Twilight giggled good-naturedly at the stallion from afar as she watched.
Ayers brought the order to the back and after a small case of miscommunication from the overworked Jack Pot, they started on the order. Gordon followed Ayers back to the front to get a clear understanding of his duties in the restaurant.
"Okay, so what are you doing tonight?" Gordon asked.
"I've been hosting, expediting, serving. A lot to say the least."
Gordon looked out to the packed dining room and saw Red Skillet walking around from table to table, talking to ponies with no rhyme or reason.
"Is your father taking orders?"
"No, he's just hosting tonight."
"I've been wanting for him to just stay by the register and just run bills," Ayers added through his gritted teeth.
"He doesn't seem to be listening," Gordon replied.
"No one is listening to me!"
They watched and cringed as Red Skillet tried to awkwardly talk to one of the customers about the beer that they were drinking. Ayers reared back in embarrassment as he watched the customers lean back in their chairs from his father.
"I want my father to get back to just being at the register, but he just likes chatting up with the guests where he is not needed. Not to mention, he's had a bad breath problem for a long time. I know for a fact that when he trots up to ponies, they lean back or get out of their chairs for a moment." Ayers said with disgust.
Ayers discreetly walked out and tried to tell his father not to linger by the tables as he pulled the reluctant Red Skillet back behind the counter. Red Skillet unfortunately wasn't listening to his son's protests as he went into the back office to speak with him. Twilight stayed close behind, already able to tell that it wasn't going to end very well for either of them.
"I don't want to talk to you right now! I have work to do!" Ayers insisted loudly.
"Just give me a few bloody damn seconds to talk to you!" Red retorted.
"What is it?!"
"You are mistaken about me. I was just greeting, that's all I was doing and I'm always happy to do it!"
"You're lingering by their tables and bothering them! They don't need you hovering over them all the time!"
"I'm not lingering! You are mistaken!"
Meanwhile, Gordon remained up front behind the counter, speaking with Ayers mare friend, hoping to get more information.
"So Clementine, Ayers, and Red don't really work together at all do they? Not even normally?"
"Nope." the mare replied. "All they really do every time they are together is go to the backroom and yell."
"Their relationship is that fragmented?"
The mare simply shrugged.
"It's just how things have been for a long time!"
"Ayers' father will not listen for any reason," Clementine explained. "He doesn't understand the meaning of the word "NO." No matter what Ayers says, he is just like a brick wall most of the time. And just as stubborn as one."
When Ayers got back into the kitchen, he found mistakes were already starting and confusion was beginning to boil over. Countless orders were being stacked up on the line, and Jack Pot was having a difficult time catching up. The pressure was already starting to get at the bulky stallion as he snapped a couple of times at his staff and Ayers. Burgers and other meals were being sent out quickly, but unfortunately, the meals had many things wrong with them.
One breakfast hay burger sent to the local carrot farmer Carrot Top was soaked in grease and came to her table looking like an oozing wet pile of mush. Just one look at the burger made her sick as she pushed it away and tried closing her eyes to settle her stomach. Another hay burger given to a locally known vegetarian griffin who was visiting town received his burger medium-rare and almost pink in the middle. It reminded him too much of meat which made him flag down one of the waitress mares.
"Excuse me miss, I ordered my hay burger medium-well. Can you get that fixed?" he asked nicely.
"Sure, I'll take that off your claws," she sighed as she picked up the plate and trotted back into the kitchen.
A pattern of unhappy customers continued well into the evening as food kept getting sent back into the kitchen. Gordon just told Twilight to wait and watch with him until things really started going downhill. He had some semblance of hope that Ayers might have had a chance to pull things together and get the night back on track. However, that didn't seem to be helping at all either as the tickets continued piling up. So many had piled up that they had to lay them next to each other, covering all of the counters. Twilight was completely aghast and felt lightheaded from how disorganized everything was.
"This is completely unacceptable! Everything is so chaotic!" Twilight shrieked in distress. "It's like a game of Solitaire!"
In the kitchen, the tension between Ayers and Jack Pot was at its breaking point as miscommunication started turning into attacks. One of the orders was written improperly on one of the tickets, confusing.
"Does table #2 have their hay fries?" a sous chef asked.
"Table #2? There is no Table #2." Ayers replied.
"Table bucking #2!" the chef snapped back.
"Jeez guys, why is this so hard to understand?" Jack Pot groaned angrily at everyone.
The chef pulled the ticket down from the line with his magic and handed it off to Ayers assistant.
"It says #42." she corrected.
"It's 42, you morons!" Ayers shouted. "There are two guests at the table! There isn't going to be 42 bucking guests at some fictional table!"
The disagreement continued to mount up as they continued shouting at each other. Tulip tried calming down Ayers who was starting to scream at them.
"I'm gonna jump over this counter and knock your ass out if you don't calm the buck down!" Jack Pot threatened.
"OH, YOU ARE? YOU ARE? COME HERE RIGHT NOW!" Ayers roared. "YOU WANT TO THREATEN ME? THEN GET THE BUCK OUT OF HERE!"
Jack Pot came over and got into a shouting match with Ayers that lasted for three straight minutes. The sound of the fighting could be heard all the way from the dining room which was disturbing the diners.
"I don't give a damn--" Jack Pot started.
"YOU ARE DONE! GOODBYE!"
Jack Pot angrily left out the back door kicking a coat rack over.
Twilight and Gordon waited for the commotion to stop before running into the kitchen and following Jack Pot out.
"Should I have done that?" Jack Pot asked the interviewer outside. "Probably not. But I'm not just gonna stand there and let some crackhead and his mother yell at me like I'm the one doing everything wrong! We should not be treated that way."
The assistant chefs were getting angry at how unfairly their former head was treated as one of them tried defusing the situation.
"Come on Ayers, there's no need for any of this--" one of them stated.
"What the fuck did you say?" Ayers growled.
"Dude! It was a miscommunication on the line!" he insisted.
"I DON'T CARE!"
Tulip got in between the two and got the angry unicorn to be quiet for a moment.
"Let Ayers handle it. Everything is fine!"
"I've taken shit from so many ponies tonight, that I just cracked," he said with his voice breaking.
Right outside, Gordon and Twilight went to talk to Jack Pot, hoping to figure out what started the fight.
"What happened, Jack?" Twilight asked.
"Ayers is in there, screaming his head off like a maniac." he chuckled grimly as he shook his head. "I told him that if he didn't stop screaming and treating us like crap that I was gonna go over there and kick his ass."
"Probably not the smartest thing to say to your boss," Twilight remarked. "You're lucky being fired is all that happened."
"I do get it though," Gordon said with sympathy.
"Your Majesty, I don't need him doing that to me and my staff in there. There's too much confusion going on. You got Ayers, you got his mare friend, you got his evil mother, you got that dumbass of a father of his...none of them go to the top floor. They all have serious mental problems."
"Did he ask you to leave or something?" Gordon asked in disbelief.
"Yeah, I got canned alright. Now I need to find a new spot in Ponyville," Jack groaned.
Twilight rubbed the bridge of her snout with her forehoof, mimicking Gordon involuntarily as she materialized a piece of parchment and a quill as she wrote down a letter of recommendation for Jack Pot. Hoping that would get him a new job at one of the other restaurants in Ponyville. He took the letter thankfully as he somberly walked off into the streets.
"How do you want to play the rest of this Gordon?" Twilight asked. "We need to see what's in that journal before going after them."
"Yeah, we can give it a look tonight and then come up with an endgame for this whole thing tomorrow," Gordon stated. "I'd rather not hit a family with anger management and manipulation issues with criminal accusations until we have something concrete."
"I'll send a message to the Royal Guard Bureau in Canterlot and have them relinquish the evidence from the coup. We need to see how it connects to them and then compare that to what's in the journal."
"You try to get Ayers to calm down and open up a bit, see if we can't resolve any more of these problems, while I talk to the sous chef, see if I can't get some more information."
Unfortunately, the night was already starting to go down in flames as ponies tired of waiting, were starting to get up from their table and leave. The waitresses gave the customers drinks and Root Beer Floats on the house, hoping to appease them.
Some of the kitchen staff were fed up with how the owners were treating them and their former boss as they started to quit and walk right out. But not before they demanded their pay from Red Skillet. Twilight and Gordon tried to let them handle the situation unless it devolved into shouting and fighting. She realized that the restaurant would need to collapse before any meaningful change could begin to happen.
"I don't have your payment right now, but I will tomorrow--" Red tried to offer,
"We demand that you give us our pay right now. Equestrian law states that you give us our pay before we leave." one of them growled. "Plus who knows if you are going to even be here tomorrow?"
"We are going to be here tomorrow, that's obvious," Red replied.
"Well, we don't know that. You've been treating us like shit for months. Tulip will probably just hide the money and pretend she lost it."
Tulip's face started to turn beet red at that remark.
They stormed off into the backroom as Ayers and Clementine followed alongside Gordon and Twilight.
"Write the check for a thousand bits," Ayers instructed.
"Will you put the money in tomorrow?" she asked the colt.
"Why would Ayers be the one putting in the money from his own pocket?" Twilight asked. "You should be paying from the restaurant's accounts, not his!"
"They are what!?" Clementine shouted as she pushed through towards Tulip. "I don't think so! You already stole his money once paying for the restaurant, you are not taking any more money out of his account!"
"Clementine, butt out please, and don't get involved!" Tulip snapped.
The mare started tearing up as she turned to Gordon.
"His parents will never respect him, Chef, they are the most fucked up ponies I've ever seen." she cried.
Red and Tulip just continued as they swiped one of Ayers checks and filled it out, handing it to one of the chefs, despite all of Clementine's protests.
"Can't you do something, Your Highness?" Clementine pleaded with the alicorn. "Ayers doesn't have the money in there to give to any of them! He's given them too much!"
"She's right, Red, if Ayers isn't permitting you, then that's theft. I cannot allow that in my city," Twilight declared.
"IT'S NOT YOUR CHOICE!" Red barked at Clementine and Twilight.
"It's not your choice either! It's Ayers' choice and you aren't letting him have it!"
"We have the deed to this place and access to all our family's accounts, you are not an owner!" Red replied.
The rebelling staff tired of waiting and left the building, threatening to take their complaints up with the Royal Guard to get their payment. Ayers, unable to take the stress anymore, went into a corner of the kitchen and started to bawl his eyes out. His assistant tried cheering him up, to no avail. Twilight stayed behind in the back room, having a harsh conversation with Red and Tulip while Gordon went to Ayers.
"That was pretty horrendous back there," Gordon said.
Ayers couldn't do anything but sniffle as his bloodshot red eyes looked off in a random direction. He slumped against the counter and sniffled, trying to keep his emotions under control.
"You gonna be alright, mate?" Gordon asked concerned.
"I got threatened and shouted at...my parents are treating me and my mare friend like shit...All I want to do is make something good for Ponyville...Go back to the days when Twilight loved coming here." he sobbed. "I'm paying for everything,...I'm always getting all the supplies...directing the kitchen, and nothing works. My ma and pa get in the way of everything! I'm the only one keeping this place from closing down!"
Gordon couldn't help but feel sorry for the colt as he tried patting him on the withers to get him to calm down.
"You're in your mid-twenties and you've got the entire world on your back for God's sake!" Gordon exclaimed. "None of this is right!"
"I just can't do this anymore! We are going under and I can't stop any of it from happening!"
Gordon coaxed him to go outside with him to get some air while the other sous chefs try to restore order.
"It all hit me like a flood gate. Every bad emotion from the past few months just came colliding with me at full speed. I just can't take it anymore!"
Next Time: Burger Princess Shack Finale