My Little Underlevels

by zero_hour

Twilight Sparkle Part 1

Twilight woke up to the ringing of her alarm clock. She used her magic to silence the device, and rolled herself out of her simple bed that was little more than a cot. As she made her way across her tiny apartment into the kitchen, the unicorn nudged Spike out of his basket, eliciting a groan from the baby dragon.

“Five more minutes…”

“It’s already six, Spike. You sleep in too often as it is”

“Lighten up, Twilight. Besides, when was the last time I slept in?”

Twilight levitated two packages of preserved hay towards herself from their place in a cupboard.

“Well I don’t keep track of that, but I’m sure that the office records all of your late arrivals in a nice big file.”

Spike rose from his bed, muttering darkly to himself as he did so. Twilight allowed herself a small smile of triumph before turning back to the breakfast she was preparing, grimacing at the unappetizing blobs of gray paste that had allegedly once been hay. Still, she supposed, it was fortunate that she had anything to eat at all. As far as the underlevels went, she and Spike were quite well off. After hurrying through their meal, the pony and her dragon friend walked out into the hall outside their apartment. They made their way down several flights of stairs and out the main door of the building, and had just started off down the street when they were approached by a white unicorn who, despite her somewhat dirty appearance, had an aura of respectability around her.

“Why hello, Twilight,” she crooned. “How are you today?”

Twilight smiled falsely, experience telling her what was coming next.

“I’m fine, Rarity. And how have you been?”

“Fabulous, darling, just fabulous. Say, you wouldn’t happen to be able to loan me a few credbits, would you?”

Twilight sighed. “Between jobs again?”

Rarity sniffed, raising her head a little. “Not everypony is fortunate enough to have as steady job as you, Twilight.”

Twilight sighed again. That was true, but as much as she hated to leave a friend in need, she couldn’t spare anything without missing that month’s rent. Suddenly the lavender unicorn brightened up as she formulated an idea.

“Well I’m sorry Rarity, but I need to save my credbits for the rent.”

Rarity started to turn away, looking a little disappointed and reassuring Twilight that there were no hard feelings, when her friend interrupted her.

“However,” she continued, levitating her spare key towards the white unicorn, “Feel free to get some breakfast out of our apartment, so long as you don’t eat everything.”

Rarity gave Twilight a hurt look. “Twilight, I don’t know where you got the idea that I’m the type of mare who would take advantage of her friends, but-”

Twilight laughed. “I was just kidding, Rarity. Take the key.”

The flustered mare did so, watching as Twilight and Spike continued down the street.

“Really,” she muttered to herself, entering the gray metal building that stood before her, “The things that some ponies consider funny.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

As Twilight walked down the dirty, metal-plated street, she looked at her surroundings . She had been born, and had grown up in, the underlevels of Coruscant. Coruscant was a city planet. This meant that not only was the entire planet covered in one massive city, but that there were new buildings constantly being constructed on top of those that already existed. This created levels of city, those that were further down being called underlevels. The level that Twilight lived on was old, hundreds of levels down from the surface. It was lit exclusively by artificial light, as it was much too far down for any sunlight to reach. To make matters worse, Empress Celestia ignored the masses of ponies living in poverty, apart from a light police presence to enforce the local District Leaders’ authority. Partly because of this lack of control that the government showed, and partly because of the atrociously high unemployment and poverty rates, crime in the underlevels was a huge problem. Twilight was one of the few government workers in the underlevels. She had a steady job, which was rare, but the work took more intelligence than most ponies there had, on top of being long and tedious. Evidence of the tediousness of Twilight’s job was presented as she rounded a corner and was greeted by the sight of some two hundred ponies trailing from her office down the sidewalk. She groaned. Today was going to be a long day.

The line of ponies had been in front of the Imperial Department of Paperwork for hours. The earliest had arrived at three in the morning, and they came to do everything from pay taxes to turn in draft notices to renew identification cards. As they moved aside to allow Twilight to unlock the door of the building, they felt relief that the wait was nearly over as well as apprehension for the harrowing process that was to come. Twilight also dreaded the approaching maelstrom of paperwork, although she was more used to it than anypony in line. She and Spike walked through the main door, locking it after them. The exasperated colts an mares outside would have to wait for a few more minutes. Twilight said goodbye to Spike as he turned down a side hall towards the office where he worked as the District Leader’s personal assistant. She then approached her desk, cleared it off, and opened the front door with a small control panel on her desk. In seconds the room, the hall beyond, and a good portion of the street outside were filled with ponies. Ponies bearing papers. Twilight sighed before moving to help the first mare in line. This was going to be a long day.

* * * * * * * * * * *

“Hello, and welcome to the Imperial Department of Paperwork. How can I help you?”

The words were unnecessary, really, but Twilight felt that they helped create an atmosphere of professionalism, so she repeated them to each and every pony as they approached her desk. It was almost seven in the evening now, and the exhausted unicorn had droned through countless papers since she started an seven that morning. It didn’t help in the least that the vast majority of the ponies in the underlevels couldn’t fill out a form if their life depended on it. In theory, Twilight was only supposed to be filing the papers that the other ponies turned in, but due to the inabilities of others, she spent most of her time filling out paperwork that was brought to her and making futile attempts at teaching hopelessly uneducated ponies how to deal with hopelessly complicated bureaucracy. On the bright side, there were less than ten ponies left in the lines that had started out with well over three hundred. She was just about to start helping Berry Punch, the owner of the local bar, with an Alcohol Distribution Permit Renewal Form, when a commotion near the door caught her attention.

“Hey! I was here first!”

“Do I look like I care? Get out of my way.”

Twilight peered over at the source of the disturbance and saw a pony in white armour and a helmet shoving it’s way past what was left of the line. She let her face fall down into her hooves. It was hard to recognize the voice, thanks to the voice distortion in the helmet, but there was only one local stormpony with that kind of swagger. Sure enough, the mare shouldered past Berry and removed her helmet, revealing a sky-blue face and a rainbow-coloured mane.

“Hey Twilight! How’s it going?”

Twilight gave Rainbow Dash a disapproving frown.

“I’m fine, but you just cut in front of several ponies who have been waiting all day to talk to me.”

The pegasus grinned. “Oh come on, Twilight, I can do that sort of thing. Why do you think I joined the army?”

The purple unicorn gave her friend a skeptical glance.

“I thought you join the army to get offworld?”

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Well yeah, but that didn’t really work out now did it?” she tossed her helmet on the ground carelessly. “They just had to stick me with police duty. And not just police duty, but police duty in the exact same district that I’ve been my entire life!” there was a thud as the mare brought her head down on Twilight’s desk. “I just need to get out of here, get a change of scenery, you know?”

Twilight placed a comforting hoof on Rainbow’s shoulder for a moment before turning back to the Berry Punch and continuing her work.

After the last pony left, she turned back to the armour-clad mare, whose head was still resting on the desk.

“So…” she ventured, “Did you come to visit me or do you have some papers?”

Rainbow Dash straightened up. “Oh right. The papers. Here you go.”

She produced a small packet from her military-issue saddlebag and handed it to Twilight, who quickly scanned the first page. “Another police brutality form?” the unicorn exclaimed.

“Yeah, well, he uh… He was asking for it. Trust me.” Rainbow Dash made her way towards the door. “You should take care of it tomorrow. You look tired.”

She reached the door and turned to face her friend.

“Oh, and Twilight?”

Twilight look up. The pegasus looked embarrassed, avoiding her friend’s eyes.

“Forget about what I said earlier, about being stuck here. I’ve just been real -well- stressed lately. Besides,” she said, breaking into a grin, “if we give up hope, what have we got left?”

With that, the cyan mare donned her helmet, turned around, and walked out of the building.

Comments

[Grey the Mighty]

Ok i'll give you points for originality for a star wars fic. Not many people go with the underlevels of coruscant as a theme.

[Abrams]

I don't really like crossovers, but I am HUGE Star Wars nerd. I mean HUGE (I'm owning 89 SW books, and after ester I'm gonna buy some more, 'cause I missed last three of "Fate Of The Jedi" series). And I hope that ponies are just one of the spiecies, I mean other cannon spiecies will apper in story. And RD in military? Well Empire is human-centered and I don't remember many aliens(except of Mitth'raw'nuruodo(Thrawn) maybe) in Imperial Military. And Twi is definitly force sensitive. Well... Tracked.

[Tundara]

This is certainly an interesting take on crossing Star Wars with MLP. I'll track and see how it pans out. Has potential.

[B0bthebum]

MOOR.

[Thespurgin]

Hmm... this has promise. Will it escalate into a nice pocket adventure or will it be more SoL?