The sun was beginning to set over the city of Canterlot. On a street that ran through one of the poorer districts, a girl with two-tone blue hair tied in a ponytail skipped along, singing a PostCrush song as she went. For Sonata Dusk, this was the nice thing about going out by herself to collect the mail – she could sing as much as she wanted without incurring the wrath of her two grumpy sisters.
Sonata soon waltzed into the post office lobby. Because the mailboxes at their apartment building were stupidly narrow and didn’t close properly, the three sisters had decided to rent a PO box instead. It cost more money, but at least it actually functioned. Besides, the nearest branch of the Canterlot post office was just up the street from where they lived, so the extra walk was no big deal for them.
Still smiling and singing, Sonata pulled a small key out of her pocket and unlocked PO Box 92714. “Let’s see what everyone decided to send me this time!” she giggled. When she saw what was inside, however, her mood immediately changed. “Ugh!” she growled.
Inside the box was a great big wad of catalogs and fliers. No paychecks, no letters, nothing even remotely interesting. Just good old-fashioned junk mail. Sonata yanked it out and began thumbing through it. “Oh, that’s just the worst!” she groaned. She angrily slammed the PO box shut and stormed out of the post office, junk mail in hand.
Adagio Dazzle and Aria Blaze were sitting on the couch when Sonata returned to the apartment. “I’ve had it with these high-heeled snobs!” she declared as she slammed the mail down on the coffee table.
Adagio looked at Sonata with a confused expression, while Aria rolled her eyes.
“Look at this!” said Sonata. She ripped off the rubber band and spread the mail across the table. “Three Carousel Boutique catalogs in one day. That makes ten for this month!”
“Just throw them out like a normal person,” grunted Aria.
Sonata shook her head. “Oh no, I’ve been saving them all up for something really special!”
Adagio facepalmed. “Do I even want to know?”
“Yes, you do!” Sonata replied. She ran over to the kitchen and opened one of the cabinets, revealing a stack of twenty-five Carousel Boutique catalogs inside. “I’ve got three months’ worth of catalogs in here, and now it’s payback time!” She rubbed her hands together. “Carousel Boutique is in for a world of hurt tomorrow!”
“And… what exactly are you gonna do to them?” asked Aria nonchalantly.
“Oh, you’ll see!” Sonata cackled.
The next day, Sonata took out her giant stack of catalogs and got on a bus. Conveniently for her, the bus route that stopped near her apartment also stopped near the boutique. When she got there, Sonata strode up to the frilly lavender facade and chucked the catalogs into the store. “So, you like sending these out, huh!? Well, how do you like getting ‘em back!?”
Rarity, who was busy restocking the clothing racks, glanced at Sonata with a blank expression, then returned to doing her work.
“Yeah, you heard me!” Sonata called. “I’ve had it with you! You people are the worst!” Getting no further response out of Rarity or anyone else, Sonata got on another bus and went back home.
Although Adagio, Aria and Sonata all worked at the same grocery store in the city, they had different schedules, so their days off didn’t always overlap. On this day, both Adagio and Aria were working, so Sonata had the apartment all to herself. Feeling pleased with what she’d done, she turned the radio to her favorite pop station and began heating up a frozen taco in the microwave. “I sure showed them who’s boss!” she snickered.
Later that afternoon, Adagio and Aria returned. “Well, the apartment’s still intact,” muttered Aria. “That’s a relief.”
“Thanks to me, Carousel Boutique won’t be bothering us anymore!” Sonata announced.
“Are you still hung up on the catalogs?” Adagio sighed.
Sonata laughed. “The catalogs? Oh, they’re gone now. I took ‘em out and chucked ‘em right back to the boutique! I think I’ve made my point.”
Aria rolled her eyes. “Yeah. I’m sure you have.” She then tossed another pack of catalogs and fliers onto the coffee table. “By the way, here’s today’s mail. Enjoy.”
Sonata immediately tore off the rubber band and began flipping through the mail. “Oh, come on!” she groaned. “There’s even more catalogs this time! Everything Under the Sun Emporium!? Chip’s Electronics!? Come on, can’t we just get a flier for Tony’s Tacos? It’s Taco Tuesday for crying out loud!”
“Just go to sleep, Sonata…” said Aria.
Sonata slammed her fist into her palm. “That’s it – this means war! Since I can’t stop all of these thugs, I’m gonna have to attack this problem at the choke point!” She made a throat-slashing gesture for emphasis.
Adagio was unimpressed. “By doing what? Stopping the mail?”
Sonata’s eyes lit up. “Adagio, you’re a genius!” She hugged her older sister, who did not reciprocate.
The following afternoon, Adagio was sitting on the couch when her phone began to ring. She angrily picked it up, but upon seeing that the post office was calling, composed herself. “Yes?” she asked sweetly.
“Is this Adagio Dazzle?” asked the voice on the other end.
“Why, yes, it is!” Adagio replied. “What seems to be the problem?”
“We have some mail for you to pick up. Your PO box is obstructed by bricks that we are unable to remove at this time.”
“What in Equestria!?” Adagio exclaimed. “I’ll be down there shortly. Goodbye.” She hung up, then glared at Sonata, who was grinning nervously. “Sonata… what did you do?”
“Oh, is this about the post office?” Sonata chuckled. “I bricked up our PO box to stop the mail. Clever, huh?”
Adagio sighed heavily. “Well, that clearly didn’t work because instead of putting our mail in the box, they called me instead. You’re coming with me.” She grabbed onto Sonata’s hand and dragged her out of the apartment.
When Adagio and Sonata entered the post office, Derpy was sitting at the counter. “Oh, hello, Adagio! Hello, Sonata!” Derpy said in her usual slow, slurred voice. “How can I help you?”
Before Adagio could speak, Sonata ran up to the counter and grinned at Derpy. “I’d like to cancel my mail, please!”
Derpy was confused. “So you just want us to keep it?”
Sonata shook her head. “Oh, no. I want to be permanently out of the system. For realsies!”
“Well, let’s see…” Derpy started the computer next to her. “Name?”
“Adagio Dazzle,” Adagio cut in. “And no, I do not wish to cancel any mail.”
“I think what she means to say,” Sonata countered, “is that she wants to close her PO box.”
“Oh,” said Derpy. “Okay!” She bent down to pull a big box of paperwork out from under the counter, and began furiously searching through it. “Oh, here we go!” She placed a Change of Address form in front of Adagio. “Just fill this out and you’ll be all set.”
Adagio angrily pushed the form away. “I am not changing my address. I only ask that you –”
“Stop sending us mail!” Sonata interrupted. “Not to our PO box, or anywhere! We’re had it with the postal service! Either send us taco catalogs, or don’t send us anything at all!”
Derpy was again confused. “But then… how will you get your paychecks? And what about your bills?”
“Oh, the bank can pay our bills!” Sonata laughed. “As for our paychecks, hello! Email is a thing now! Have you been living under a rock?”
Derpy leaned in and looked at Sonata with a worried expression. “Well, of course nobody needs mail, Sonata. Even I can figure that out. But you don’t know the half of what goes on here. So just walk away! Please!”
At that moment, a supervisor walked up. “Is everything all right here, Postal Employee Muffins?”
Derpy smiled back. “Yes, sir! Everything is all squared away, just the way you like it! Isn’t it, Sonata?”
“That’s right!” said Sonata. “As long as I stop getting mail!”
“Shut up!” hissed Adagio. She turned to Derpy. “Don’t listen to a word of what she says, dear. She’s an idiot. Anyway, we’d best be on our way now. Ta-ta!” She dragged Sonata away from the counter.
Derpy glanced up at the clock. “Time for my three-hour break!” she announced, and ambled cheerfully away.
Adagio opened PO Box 92714, revealing five red bricks wedged inside. “Where did you get these bricks?” she demanded.
“Adagio, our whole building is made of bricks!” Sonata laughed. “Duh!”
“Well, your craftsmanship could use some work, that’s for sure.” Adagio shoved the bricks out the other end of the box, and they hit the floor with a loud crash. “Now that that’s taken care of, we’re going home. This box, and our mail, don’t exclusively belong to you. Remember that.”
“Not getting mail would help you too, you know!” groaned Sonata. Although she was down, she was certainly not out, and she was already thinking about her next scheme.
Two days later, it was Saturday, and all three sisters had the day off from work. Aria was watching a horror movie on the couch when Sonata came down the hall with a beat-up red wagon in tow. Inside the wagon was a partially disassembled mannequin wearing a mail carrier’s shirt and a metal bucket over its head, as well as a large stack of papers with anti-mail slogans scrawled on them. On either side of the wagon were signs reading CANTERLOT MAIL RE-EDUCATION CENTER.
“What the hell is this?” asked Aria.
“It’s my mail re-education center!” Sonata replied. “Read the sign! Since blocking our PO box wasn’t enough, I’m taking this to the streets. Time to expose the post office once and for all!”
“If you say so,” muttered Aria. “But how did you get the wagon?”
“Snails gave it to me!” Sonata replied. “I traded him a pair of my panties for it.”
Aria scowled. “That’s just weird. What about the shirt on the dummy?”
“I borrowed it from the post office yesterday!” Sonata said with a grin.
“Of course you did,” grunted Aria. “Also, why does the dummy have a bucket over its head?”
Sonata laughed. “Hello? Isn’t it obvious? It’s because we’re all blind to their tyranny!”
Aria raised an eyebrow. “Then shouldn’t you be wearing the bucket?”
“Don’t question my logic!” Sonata retorted. She dragged her wagon out of the apartment and over to the stairs.
“I share a room with her, yet I still have no clue what she does during the day,” Aria muttered to herself.
Unsurprisingly, Sonata found getting the wagon down the stairs extremely difficult. It tipped over a total of eight times on the way down, each time leaving Sonata to pick up the mannequin and gather all the papers. After a great degree of effort, Sonata finally managed to reach the lobby and bring her wagon out to the street.
Just a couple of blocks north, there was a busy intersection with a lot of pedestrian traffic. Sonata decided that would be a good place to set up camp, so she brought her wagon to the street corner and waited.
Sure enough, Sugarcoat soon walked past. “Hey!” shouted Sonata. “Mail is evil!” She handed Sugarcoat the first flier in the stack. “Spread the word!”
“This seems very strange and unnecessary,” Sugarcoat remarked flatly. “I must ask, why does this mannequin have a bucket on its head?”
“Because it symbolizes our persecution!” replied Sonata.
Sugarcoat was unconvinced. “If that’s the case, you should be the one wearing the bucket.” She turned and continued on her way, tossing the flier into the next recycling bin that she passed.
The next girls to pass by were Lyra and Bon Bon. “Mail is the worst!” called Sonata, giving each of them a flier. “Tell your friends!”
“What did the post office do to her?” chuckled Lyra.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” replied Bon Bon.
“The post office hates you!” Sonata announced as Flam strode up. “Pass it on!”
“Well, they’re certainly not very punctual,” agreed Flam. “I’m sure my brother and I could give them a run for their money!” He grabbed two fliers off the stack and walked briskly away.
Sonata stayed where she was for the next hour, railing against the postal service and handing out her anti-mail fliers to anyone who would listen. Eventually she got bored and started craving tacos, as she often did during the late afternoon. So she took her wagon three blocks west to Tony’s Tacos, leaving it in the window while she ordered her food.
A black-haired man and a silver-haired woman, each wearing a pair of sunglasses and a dark blue suit, spotted the wagon as they passed. They exchanged a sinister smile and continued walking in lockstep toward the post office.
Sonata continued her protest the next morning. This time, she parked her wagon directly in front of the post office, just to make her feelings even more clear. When she returned to the apartment for lunch, she sighed as she lugged the wagon through the door. “What a morning!”
“Have you really been working that hard?” asked Aria sarcastically.
“It’s not as easy as it looks!” Sonata shot back. “But this has been a great day so far. I was out in front of the post office, and not a single person went in! No one!”
Aria rolled her eyes. “That’s because it’s Sunday.”
“Well… whatever!” Sonata replied. “The point is, I think my message is really catching on! I’m giving out so many of these, I barely have any left!” She held up the thin stack of fliers that remained in her wagon.
Aria was still not impressed. “I think there’s a solid chance most of your fliers are in the trash now.”
Sonata lost patience. “Ugh… you’re always so negative about everything, Aria!”
“As if you’re not being negative about the mail?” Aria retorted. “It’s the way this world works, no matter how much it sucks.”
“Girls, stop arguing!” Adagio snapped. “Having to deal with you each day makes me exhausted. Sonata, I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish with this anti-mail movement of yours, and quite frankly it’s no longer my concern. It shouldn’t be yours either, Aria.”
“I’m just telling it like it is,” said Aria. “Anyway, can we get lunch now? I need a meal.”
“Certainly,” said Adagio. “How about the gourmet burger place on Ninth Avenue? It’s like fast food, except it isn’t.”
“Works for me,” replied Aria.
“We never get any mail from them, so they’re okay in my book!” said Sonata.
Aria rolled her eyes. “This has gone too far…”
Sonata was at work for the next few days, but on her next day off, she was back on the streets with an even bigger batch of anti-mail fliers. She was towing her wagon to a different intersection when Derpy came running up to her. “Hi, Derpy!” said Sonata.
Derpy looked very concerned. “Sonata, what are you doing?”
Sonata sighed. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll change the bucket to something else!”
“Um… no, it’s not that,” said Derpy. “You’re in trouble, Sonata. Big trouble!”
“Like… what kind of trouble?” Sonata asked, skeptical of Derpy’s words.
“Oh, it’s bad!” Derpy replied. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you, but I’ll tell you anyway. One of these days… maybe a warm summer day, just like today… you could be walking down the street, when a mail carrier you know, or maybe even trust, will point to their mail truck and ask you to get in.”
“Ooh, what happens next?” exclaimed Sonata.
“Nothing!” cried Derpy. “No one will ever see you again!”
Sonata raised an eyebrow. “That’s it?”
“Well, not really, but…” Derpy paused, then quickly corrected herself. “Yes… I think so.”
Derpy then spotted two people in dark blue suits walking briskly down the street. Unbeknownst to Sonata, they were the same pair who had seen her at Tony’s Tacos on Saturday. Derpy immediately gesticulated toward her mail truck. “Quick, Sonata! Get in! Get in!”
Sonata shook her head. “Nope! This is exactly how you said it would go down!”
“But there’s another way it can go down,” countered Derpy, “and it’s going down that way right now!”
“Oh, please!” Sonata scoffed. “You said it’d be a mail carrier I know, and you’re a mail carrier I know!”
“I know you know,” pleaded Derpy, “but you don’t know what I know!”
The man in the suit then spotted Sonata and pointed. The woman nodded, and they jumped into a black SUV and began speeding toward her. “Run, Sonata!” cried Derpy. “Run!”
Sonata finally looked back and saw the imminent danger heading her way. But instead of breaking into a sprint, she jumped into Derpy’s mail truck and hit the gas, leaving the cross-eyed mail carrier in the dust.
“Oh, no!” Derpy wailed. “Now how am I gonna finish my route?”
Sonata barreled down the road like a lunatic. She ran three red lights in a row, leaving angry drivers swerving and honking their horns in her wake. But the black SUV was rapidly gaining on her. Trying desperately to shake off her pursuers, Sonata stomped on the gas even harder as she approached an interchange with Interstate 99. She veered onto the southbound ramp, with the SUV following suit a few seconds later.
On the interstate, Sonata darted in and out of lanes, whipping around anyone who was driving even remotely slower than her. The mail truck’s engine began to shudder and groan, as it wasn’t built for highway speeds. The next exit, the one for the Canterlot Mall, soon loomed ahead. Sonata was prepared to accelerate for as long as she needed to, but as she passed under the quarter-mile advance sign for Canterlot Mall Road, the mail truck’s engine exploded with a loud bang, and everything in front of the windshield went up in flames.
“Aaaaaaaaaaah!!!” Sonata screamed. She swerved into the breakdown lane and bailed out of the truck. But she forgot to set the parking brake, and the burning truck kept rolling until it crashed into the exit sign at the ramp, knocking it to the ground.
The black SUV arrived at the scene shortly after. Sonata gulped as its two occupants got out.
The man spoke into his walkie-talkie. “Rest assured, Mr. G – we got her. We’re on I-99 South, just before exit 78. The LLV, however, is toast. Good old Long Life Vehicles, always keeping our workers on their toes.”
The woman walked briskly up to Sonata with a metal bucket and a rope in hand. She placed the bucket over Sonata’s head, tied her arms behind her back, and led her over to the SUV. She shoved Sonata into the trunk, and she and her male colleague began driving back to the post office.
When the bucket was removed and her arms were untied, Sonata was dazed and confused. She was sitting in a dimly lit room, with no idea of where she was.
A old, physically imposing man with blue skin, red eyes, and a thick white beard sat down in front of Sonata. “Oh, dear…” he remarked in a low voice. “What have they done to you?”
“Who… who are you?” Sonata stammered.
“My full name is Grogar the Seventeenth,” the old man replied. “But you can call me Mr. G. I am the Postmaster General.”
“Well, Mr. G… can I go home now?” asked Sonata.
Mr. G shook his head. “Not quite yet. You must understand, I drove all the way up from our nation’s capital just to speak to you.”
“You did?”
Mr. G nodded. “In fact, I was called away from lunch at my favorite Mexican restaurant. Do you like tacos, Miss Dusk?”
Sonata was surprised. “You bet I do! Tacos are the best!”
“I’ve been reading some of your material,” said Mr. G. “And I must admit, you do make a strong case. An army of men and women in ill-fitting khaki pants running through the city, stuffing catalogs of haute couture into each and every box.”
Sonata laughed. “Yep!”
“Well, it’s my job,” replied Mr. G. “And I’m damn serious about it. In addition to being a postmaster, I’m also a general. And as we both know, the job of a general is to, by Faust, get things done. So perhaps you can understand why I get a bit irritated when someone calls me away from a good taco.”
Sonata quivered in her seat. “I’m so sorry, Mr. G.”
“I’m sure you are,” said Mr. G. “Now, as it so happens, I believe we have a stack of mail at the front desk that belongs to you. You want that mail, don’t you, Miss Dusk?”
“Yes, sir!” replied Sonata. She got up from her chair and gave Mr. G a salute.
Mr. G gave a slight smile. “That’s better. You’re free to go now. Enjoy your mail – I mean it.”
As Sonata walked out of the room, she saw a security guard bringing in someone else with a bucket over their head. She instantly recognized the light gray hands and blonde hair. “Derpy?”
“I just don’t know what went wrong…” Derpy whimpered.
Sonata followed the signs on the walls and made her way back to the lobby. Just as Mr. G had promised, there was a stack of mail sitting on the counter, and it had her name on it. She picked it up and began skipping home. It felt good knowing that the city was full of dedicated and hardworking mail carriers, who would go the extra mile to deliver so many catalogs just for her.