//------------------------------// // Foul! Dis-neighbourly conduct! // Story: The Adventures of Schadenfreude // by Daemon McRae //------------------------------// Chapter 5: Foul! Dis-neighbourly conduct! It didn't surprise me that the majority of ponies I'd met, or trotted within earshot of, suddenly had a great deal of things to do elsewhere. In fact, I found it mildly amusing, and started making notes as to who came out of what door at what time. Which would be put to fantastic use later. Celestia help us all if I ever found a work schedule. I did, of course, encounter some ponies that had no apparent adverse reactions to me, including one startlingly chipper young stallion named Half-Pint. Who, mind you, was an average-sized stallion. “Well, hello there!” he called out cheerfully, as I almost ran into him turning a corner. He was just coming out of a room marked “Kitchen”, so I could only imagine what he did for a living. “Name's Half-Pint, I handle all of the drinks and refreshments for the wait staff! Who're you?” Well, I wasn't about to be snarky. He was a well-mannered, cheerful stallion giving me a proper greeting and introduction. I am a stallion of class, after all. “My name is Schadenfreude, Prince Blueblood's new personal attendant. Pleasure to meet you.” He smiled, and bowed his head a bit. “Well, good luck with that. Ol' Bluey's a bit of a hooffull. Hope you're up for it. Oop, I better get back to it! Egg Beater might blow a gasket if I'm late!” I raised an eyebrow, but he was already off down the hall. So instead, I simply waved and said, “Bye!” “Bye!” I waited til he turned a corner, and then took a quick peek into the kitchen. The... surprisingly unoccupied kitchen. That was amazingly well organized. Alphabetically. It was like Heart's Warming Eve come early. For bad people. --------------- A little while later, I was making my way past the Royal's quarters, at which point I could feel every Royal Guard in the hall staring at me. Or, at least extremely aware of my existence. So I did what any respectable (don't even start I can hear you coughing from here), castle attendant would do. I found a small alcove in the hall, and stood there. Not perfectly still, like the guards, because that's boring. Nope, I just kind of hung out. Sat and stared at the wall for a while. Every once in a while, just to keep them alert, I'd scratch my nose or check my hooves for no reason. Now, while you may be wondering why I was in such blatant violation of Rule #3. But in fact, if I'm not committing any actions or actively engaging a guard, it doesn't count. I was literally sitting there minding my own business. For two. Hours. -------------------- Two and a half hours later, and the addition of Rule #142: “Schadenfreude is not to spend more than ten minutes in the presence of a Royal guard unless under the provision of an earlier rule,” I was being frogmarched by Princess Cadence back to the kitchen. “Oh come on, it wasn't that big a deal,” I grumbled, as she all but drug me down the hall. “He cried, Schaden, cried. He's been here five years. But enough about Captain Lucerne,” she stated bluntly, throwing open the kitchen door. “WHAT DID YOU DO.” I looked in at the kitchen staff scrambling around, inspecting every corner of the kitchen, and smiled to myself. “Absolutely nothing.” She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. Tell us what you did so we can write a Rule about it and move on.” My smile grew. “I'm serious. I walked in, looked around, and walked out.” She gave me a glare that, were I someone as close to her as Shining Armor or Twilight, might have made me worried. But I didn't know here that well at the time, so I ignored it. “You mean to tell me you just happened to walk into the kitchen, do absolutely nothing, and walk out just as the entire lunch staff walked back in after... serving... oh you are an asshole.” “You can't spell paranoia without anoi,” I chirped. Her eyebrow twitched. “There's a rule in this somewhere, I just have to find it,” she grumbled, and marched off. “There's a loophole in this somewhere, I just have to find it,” I said to myself, loud enough for Cadence to hear. Then I went about my day. ------------- If there are two words in the Equestrian language that I cannot resist, and are, in fact, the perfect bait for anypony just mad enough to trap me (which is pretty much everypony), it's these: “Keep Out”. There wasn't any lock. No big, ornate decoration. Just a small cardboard sign on a string hung on a nail on a small door in the middle of a side hallway. That said “Keep Out” in somewhat feminine block letters. So I didn't. The room itself was a small storage room, filled with boxes of supplies for the different jobs, and a few odds and ends I wasn't especially concerned with. What did concern me was the two mares snogging in this storage closet. Which explained the rather feminine hoofwriting on the sign. I stared for a few moments, because buck yeah. Then they realized I was there. One of them, a rather curvy unicorn, barked, “Hey! Shove off!” and closed the door with her magic. Now, while I'm not about to blackmail a couple of ponies for finding love (or something like it) in this world, I am a raving douchebag. Thus, I turned to my own, special list. I like to call it “The Counterlist”. Rule #1: Always carry a sharpie. I quietly took the sign down, took out my sharpie, and wrote on the back of the sign, “Free Cake.” Then I hung it back up. And thus, my first day at the castle was a rousing success.