//------------------------------//
// VI. Personal Assistant 
// Story: Avocation 
// by Kwakerjak 
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HRH Princess Luna of Equestria
The Royal Palace
Canterlot
 
Your Majesty:
 
In regards to your query, the situation you describe sounds like a straightforward case of fraud. Even if the defendants’ product was indistinguishable from the established brand in a blind taste test, they are still trying to use another product’s reputation for quality to sell their own. I would recommend several years of hard labor, but then again, you know better than most ponies about my admittedly authoritarian tendencies.
 
This, conveniently enough, provides a thematically appropriate introduction to my latest foray into the workforce. Lately, the Mayor of Ponyville has been quite burdened with paperwork, largely as a result of the occasional goings-on in the area (and by “goings-on,” I mean “wanton destruction of local landmarks”). She has, therefore, been looking for a personal assistant to handle some of the more mundane tasks of her office, and Twilight Sparkle was kind enough to vouch for my organizational abilities—which, in hindsight, seems rather odd, since the abilities she refers to were primarily employed to obscure my objective of eliminating your sister from her. But I digress.

The duties of the mayor’s personal assistant consist primarily of organizing and filing the aforementioned paperwork, running various errands, and coordinating her personal schedule. It is in the execution of the last of these that I ran into some complications. I had been working as the mayor’s personal assistant for nearly a week, and even in that short amount of time, I had grown to respect her leadership abilities greatly. Twilight Sparkle had often spoken of her ability to remain relatively calm in the face of turmoil, but I was struck by the way she seemed able to balance the needs and desires of the many ponies who lobbied her for various policy changes. The deftness and aplomb with which these political acrobatics were performed were rendered all the more laudable by her ability to avoid the duplicitousness that so many in public office are wont to entertain.

In short, the citizens of Ponyville have a rare gift in Mayor Mare, and it did not take me long to realize just how much she was taken for granted. Despite her popularity with voters, all of her hard work is generally overshadowed by the town’s more colorful citizens. Of course, this is often quite understandable, most notably in the case of the Element-Bearers, but it is the height of impropriety for such an important pony to languish in obscurity.

Naturally, this particular train of thought will sound familiar to you, as it is more or less the same one I used to corrupt you one thousand years ago. You shall be pleased to learn that I resisted the temptation to convince the mayor of her fellow ponies’ ingratitude; however, I suspect you shall also be disappointed to learn that this was because I chose to take matters into my own hooves. Essentially, I used my power to coordinate the mayor’s schedule to ensure that ponies who showed her a proper amount of respect received more time with which to make their arguments. This went unnoticed for some time, leading me to believe that my actions would prove a rousing success in the long run.
 
Nonetheless, it seems that old habits are very hard to break, and I ended up overreacting to a particularly intransigent stallion who made an unscheduled visit to the mayor’s office on the day she was putting the finishing touches on an important tax proposal. I learned two things that day: firstly, that the phrase “ungrateful buffalo” is considered to be racially insensitive in modern times, and second, that it is not advisable to direct this slur at the mayor’s brother when he is trying to inform his sibling that her niece has gone into labor.

As you can no doubt guess, I was soon dismissed from the position. However, my current mood is quite optimistic, as I recently learned of an opening for a barrister elsewhere in Ponyville. Given that one of the Princesses of Equestria occasionally requests my opinion on legal matters, I am quite confident that I will be able to prove myself qualified for this position, pending my passage of the bar exam. Although I am not inclined to making predictions, I think I can say that I have a very good feeling about this particular job. I shall, of course, keep you updated on the situation.

Yours sincerely,
Penumbra Noctis