Klondike
By
PegasusKlondike
Dedicated to that one lady at the DMV, the TSA, and AT&T customer service. You know the one I’m talking about.
This was it! The maroon-red pegasus stallion bounced in his seat like a colt before the morning of Hearth’s Warming. He was a rather plain looking fellow, with a simple red coat, a mid length brown mane, and a feather quill adorning his flank. The mare in the seat next to him was much calmer than her partner, but she would admit to a little bit of nervous excitement.
“Can you believe it, honey! We’re finally here, we’re finally gonna make it to Equestria!” he whispered excitedly, bothering the alabaster-white unicorn mare next to him as she tried to read a magazine and pass the time.
Aurora set her magazine down, looking her husband in the eye. “Yes Klondike, I know. You’ve been saying that since we came in an hour ago. Now remember what we went over last night, just submit your applications, and-” she placed a hoof on her chest, taking a deep breath, letting it out slowly, “Relax,” she finished.
Klondike placed a hoof on his red-furred chest, taking a deep breath, and letting it out. He spread his wide wings for a bit more of the tension release that he needed.
Aurora nodded, her golden blonde mane falling loosely over her shoulders. Magically scooping up her magazine, she boredly read while the clock ticked. Two o’clock appointment, and it was now one-fifty. Klondike bit his lip, trembling from a mixture of anxiety and pure excitement. He’d seen all those other potential immigrants get rejected because of extraneous wings, horns, garish color clashes, or just being a threat to the solidarity of Equestria. But he had an ace in the hole over those guys, his wife!
Yes, it was easy to reject a single pony, but nopony would reject a family! He wanted to cackle in glee for how easy this would be!
“Mr.... Klondike?” a smartly dressed, peach furred earth pony mare at the receptionist desk called out, reading the name from her clipboard.
“That’s me!” the pegasus called out.
Before he could be swept away back to the offices, Aurora grabbed his tail with her magic. “Good luck!” she whispered excitedly. Klondike smiled eagerly, crossing the primary feathers on his wing to hopefully garner a little more favor from more coincidence based forces of the universe.
“Okay, Mr Klondike,” the receptionist continued, “Princess Twilight is out for her lunch break. Or out saving the world from some unholy terror, she never really leaves a note when she goes out. But you’ll get your interview. Third door down, on the right.” She pointed a hoof down the drab and depressing hallway, slick with the tears of hideous alicorns, and smelling curiously like moonshine.
“By the way Mr Klondike, I love your ice cream bars,” the receptionist commented.
A creepy comment to say the least, but the pegasus shrugged it off. So what if he wasn’t going to get the interview with her royal majesty Princess Twilight Sparkle, this other pony couldn’t be any worse, right?
Klondike entered the office, nervously poking his head in first. And what he saw raised an eyebrow. A rather corpulent zebra mare sat behind a desk, slowly filing away at one of her overly polished and garishly painted hooves. Excessive amounts of bracelets adorned her forelegs, and huge hoop earring swayed on each striped ear. Her office phone rested on her shoulder, and the zebra appeared to be taking a call. Whether it was important or not had yet to be seen, but Klondike felt like this was a less than professional use of her time, and his.
“Mhm.... mhm..... mhm....” she hummed noncommittally. “Girl, I told you! And what happened, that’s what happened! Mhm! You should never have got yo’self into that!”
“Um, ma’am?” Klondike said quietly.
The zebra silenced him with a pink-painted hoof. “Mhm... Zeneesha, girl, I gotta go, ‘nother one of those “original character” ponies came in, and now I gotta deal with him.” She lazily hung up her phone, being careful not to chip her fresh hooficure. “Sit down, sir.”
“Uh, okay,” Klondike replied nervously, quickly taking the only available spot. “So, how long is this process? I kind of wanted to take my wife to see Cloudsdale before dinner, and-”
Again, a pink-painted hoof silenced him. The corpulent mare whipped out her hoof file, working her left hoof. Leaning back in her chair and not even looking at the pegasus, she pulled out his forms. “So what’s your story?”
“Beg pardon?” Klondike asked.
“Why you wanna come to Equestria?” she asked, as if it had been a completely straight-forward question.
“Oh! Well, it’s kind of been a pipe dream for my wife and I. Uh, you probably know that we’re not really from ‘round these parts.” He grinned sheepishly, but the large mare glared at him and his folksy quip. “Okay, guess that, um, was pretty obvious. But this is really more for my family than just for me. My wife has always dreamed about going to Equestria, walking down the avenues of Canterlot, seeing the hustle and bustle of Manehattan, maybe even doing a little tour of Ponyville. We lived in kind of a harsh place up north, in a mining town. It’s a very dangerous place, and we just wanted to get away from that. And it’s always been my dream to raise a family in a good, healthy environment with my wife.”
The large mare didn’t seem to pay attention, or even care. Whipping out a pencil, she marked a check across a box on the forms. Klondike had no idea whether this was a good sign or whether the zebra was simply cordoning off the spot where she wanted to stamp down that huge and imposing DENIED.
“And wha’dya plan on doin’ in Equestria?” she asked flatly.
Klondike ran a nervous hoof through his mane. “Well, once my wife and I move in, I was going to get a job, maybe just appear in the background a few times, and just... really just go about my life.”
The large mare flipped through his forms, barely glancing at them. “Sorry honey, we don’t need that many writers as background ponies, so that’s gonna count against your immigration.”
“Wait, I never said I was a writer! And even if I was another writer, I wouldn’t be dumb enough to put it on my forms!” Klondike replied frantically.
The zebra’s eyes opened angrily, and she dropped her file, leaning over the desk and pointing a painted hoof at his flank. “And just what is that on your skinny buttcheek there? Your file says it’s a quill, and ponies with quills for cutie marks are writers! There ain’t no more room for writers in the background!”
“But I-” he protested.
“Sir!” she barked. “I’m gonna have to ask you to calm yo’self!”
Klondike trembled in his seat. The stallion took a deep breath, letting it out slowly to ease his stresses. “Okay. Sorry about that. Can we move on to the next question please?”
The corpulent mare eased back onto her pillow, flipping to the next page in his forms. “Alright sir, there’s an inconsistency I see here in your forms. You say you’re a miner, your cutie mark says you’re a writer, but it says here that you’re a monster slayer.”
“I never said I was a miner,” Klondike replied as calmly as he could. “I said I was from a mining town.”
“Either way, we don’t need any miners. And as for monster slayers, they’re about as common as demigods around here. And I’ve been through four alicorns this mornin’ alone. And don’t get me started on those dime a dozen writers.” An X went onto his forms, and Klondike’s heart sank a little.
“Look, the monster slayer thing was a one-time deal! I mean, there was no place to put personal accomplishments, so I wrote it in as one of my professions! It wasn’t even a big monster. And for the record, I’m not a miner! Do you see a shovel in my hooves! I worked as an accountant for a mining company, that’s why I have a quill as my cutie mark!” he growled from between clenched teeth.
“Sir!” she barked again. “You gonna have to calm yo’self, or I’m gonna have to call security, then you’re never gettin’ into Equestria!”
Klondike laid back his ears, folding his forearms and sulking on his pillow. “And I thought zebras were supposed to talk in nice little rhymes,” he murmured.
A look of pure scorn erupted from the fat mare’s face, and she stood from her pillow, a tower of overly painted and overly perfumed sassiness. “Oh, you did not just spout that ignorance at me!”
Klondike sat up, trying to stand his ground. But sadly, he knew he was far outmatched here. “And what if I did!”
The mare leaned in, the tip of her nose nearly crushing his muzzle. “You don’t who I am, where I come from, or what I did to get here! You’re a skinny little pony boy who pranced on in here expectin’ me to be all on my knees to make sure your little girlfriend gets to go shoppin’ in Canterlot! My cousin Zecora talks in rhymes ‘cause she chooses to, and here yo’ story writing flank comes in here, sayin’ that all zebras look the same and sound the same! Well, that’s yo’ third strike! You were doin’ pretty darn good til you copped an attitude!” She marked a huge X across most of his form, smugly sneering at the pegasus.
Klondike erupted from his seat, standing on his hindlegs with his wings outspread. “That’s it! You can call me whatever you want, but nopony, NOPONY insults my wife!”
“Well that’s yo’ problem! And you know what my problem is? Slippery hooves!” She grasped up Klondike’s file, holding it over a paper shredder. “Yo’ move!”
Klondike’s wings snapped to his side, and he sat down quickly. “C’mon, i-it was just a joke. It takes two opposing forces to create friction, so that was technically both our faults. So let’s not do anything we’ll regret!”
The large mare lowered the file another inch towards the waiting teeth of doom.
Klondike bit his lip, seeing his future in Equestria inching closer to the shredder. “Can I at least talk to your manager?”
“You’re lookin’ at her!” the zebra replied.
The stallion held up his hooves in surrender, sighing loudly. “Okay, you win. I’m sorry about the whole “rhymes” comment. I know you have a very stressful job, and you deal with a lot of degenerates and undesirables, and I can understand that. So yeah, I’m sorry.”
The mare stared at him with one raised eyebrow, just wondering to herself if he was truly being earnest in his apology. The stallion showed no further aggression, and she lifted his file away from the hungry jaws of the paper shredder. “That’s more like it,” she said. “Now, since you apologized like a decent stallion, I’m gonna overlook your profoundly ignorant comment.”
The red stallion swallowed the knot of frustration in his throat, forcing up a grin. “Thank you.”
For the first time in the interview, the zebra looked with some semblance of intent through his paperwork. The minutes ticked by quietly, and nearing the end of the allotted time for his interview, she finally set down his file.
“You have good credentials, and your past record is clear of too many instances of misbehavior. I have to admit that you have skills that would fill some rather unique positions in Equestria.”
The stallion’s heart rose in glee, he knew that despite the setbacks with the bureaucrats, he was on the home stretch! He could imagine it now; a nice little cottage somewhere in the country, working only when he needed to, and appearing in the background, perhaps on a regular basis!
“But,” she continued, “all of those positions are currently filled. Like I said before you copped an attitude, we have too many ponies who come in here with exactly the same credentials as you.” The large mare lifted her big, red stamp, and brought it crashing down on his file. “Reapply in four to eight months, and we’ll see if there’s an opening.”
Klondike’s eye twitched, he stood from his seat, and he walked silently down the hall, slipping in a puddle of fresh OC tears and majorly screwing up his back. “Aw, screw Equestria! I had better job offers from Middle Earth anyways!” he shouted.