• Published 19th Aug 2014
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All in a Day's Work - psychicscubadiver



Wilfred Xavier Manning is an exemplary clerk. However, he is somewhat less qualified to deliver invitations. Especially when the recipients are six of the strangest girls he has ever met.

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A Loyal Employee and an Honest Word

All in a Day’s Work

Author: psychicscubadiver
Editor: Silentcarto
Proofreader: Coandco

Disclaimer: My Little Pony and all related characters are owned by Hasbro. I am not Hasbro.

Chapter 2: A Loyal Employee and an Honest Word

The profusion of apple trees was solid evidence that Wilfred Xavier Manning was no longer in London. Somehow, he and his almost silent guide had managed to leave the city of his birth completely behind. Wilfred did some small mental arithmetic, and found that they had indeed walked the requisite number of miles to reach the countryside. It was odd that such a path existed from one of the parks at the heart of the old city, but London’s roads and byways were often a mystery even to its natives.

Wilfred had never heard of an apple orchard so close to the city, but that did not surprise him. He could not reliably name most businesses within a block of his home or office save for the few at which he was a regular patron. The air was fresh and sweet, and ripe apples hung heavy on every branch.

He breathed in deeply. The scent of healthy trees and fertile earth underlay the headier aroma of succulent fruit. Wilfred could barely remember the last time he had eaten an apple in the peak of season, and never had he tasted one fresh off the tree. The temptation to reach out and pluck one of the juicy fruits was strong, but he held himself back from such an action. Wilfred Xavier Manning was no petty thief.

“Oh, it sounds like she’s working,” Shy said, cupping a hand to her ear. A gentle smile bloomed on her face and some small amount of tension eased out of her shoulders. Wilfred paused and listened as well. The only thing he could hear, other than the sigh of a gentle breeze and sporadic birdsong, was a series of thumps. There was a pattern to them, but they were hardly rhythmic. Perhaps Shy’s friend was using a hammer? Curious, Wilfred followed Shy as she left the path behind.

They followed the noise to its source in the middle of a large field of apple trees. The concealing nature of the artificial forest kept Wilfred from seeing Shy’s friend until they were a mere fifteen feet away. He had only just rounded the last tree before being struck with another bizarre sight. A tall woman dressed in men’s work clothes – dungaree trousers, an old shirt, and an oddly shaped hat – was working in the field. She strained, grunted, and occasionally wiped sweat from her brow in a manner that was decidedly unladylike. Indeed, if not for the way her shirt … er ... fitted her, Wilfred would have thought her a strangely effeminate farmhand. Yet her mannish manner was not the greatest source of his amazement. That was reserved for the work she was doing. The woman was collecting apples… by striking the tree with her fists.

Were he not witness to the sight, Wilfred would not have believed it. Yet, every time the buxom blonde hit the tree, it trembled and apples fell into the waiting baskets scattered beneath its boughs.

Half-remembered stories sparked to life in the dim recesses of Wilfred’s mind, and he actually recalled hearing of a similar feat. Supposedly, there were Orientals who could shake every leaf from a tree with a single blow, yet deal no damage to the trunk. Like any sensible man, Wilfred had dismissed those stories as flights of fancy, but here stood proof that he was wrong. It was readily obvious that some English farmer had heard the same stories and believed them. Either that selfsame farmer had studied under some Orientals capable of the feat or simply divined the secret for himself. Then, like any good Englishman, he had turned that ability into something practical. Not only practical, but simple enough to teach his daughter, as well. Wilfred seldom felt respect for those who spent their life tilling the earth, but a man of that measure deserved nothing less than admiration.

“−jack.” Shy called. From her troubled expression, this was not the first attempt to draw her friend’s attention. The Amazon, probably Jacqueline or something similar, was evidently too absorbed in her labor to hear Shy’s soft words.

“Miss Jack!” Wilfred called out in a strong, clear voice. Shy flinched away from his sudden outburst, but the blond farmgirl merely glanced at the odd pair of the orderly clerk and the waifish girl, relaxed her martial stance, and gave them a bright, guileless smile.

“Howdy, y’all. Sorry if I was ignorin’ ya. My mind tends to wander once I get into the rhythm of workin’.” She had a curious accent, not one that Wilfred could recall ever hearing, but then, every borough and shire of Britain supposedly had their own version of the Queen’s English.

“No apology necessary,” Wilfred assured her, reaching into his coat for another letter. The first he pulled out was enclosed with an orange ribbon laced through with gold. “I’ve been tasked with delivering these invitations, and I believe one is meant for you.” She certainly qualified as ‘unique’, and Shy had identified her as a friend. The name on the side of the rolled letter remained illegible to him, but Jack’s eyes widened in recognition.

“Well, now. Ain’t this a surprise?” She took the letter from him and pored over it with a casual air. That Jacqueline, both a woman and a farmer, was literate came only as a small surprise; in these enlightened times, it was only fitting. The true surprise that Wilfred felt was in her reaction. To receive a letter from someone as important as his employer and act in so cavalier a fashion? It was curious indeed.

“I’d be right glad to help ya out, Will,” Jack said, tucking the letter away into the voluminous pockets of her trousers. “Shoot, I bet you’re already rarin’ to get back to your job.”

“Not at all,” Wilfred lied politely. In truth, he couldn’t wait to be back to his ledgers. True, the countryside was beautiful and the company pleasant, but every minute spent here was another minute away from his real work. If he was lucky, they would be back in time to get in another hour of paperwork. If he was unlucky, it would be quitting time and he would be unable to tie up those niggling loose ends until tomorrow morning. In light of that, the overly familiar diminutive Jack had used was only a minor annoyance.

“Oh, really?” Jack asked, arching an eyebrow skeptically. “You ain’t in any kind of hurry, Will?”

A brief twitch marked Wilfred’s irritation, but he strove not to show it. His perpetual glower might have grown a shade darker than usual, however. “I would never seek to hurry a lady,” he replied crisply.

Jack snorted in disappointment, her eyes flat and hard. “Horseapples. It’s plain as the nose on your face that you can’t wait to get going.” She let out a heavy sigh and fixed her hat in place. “Well, let’s get goin’, then,” she said, and set off at the brisk pace, Shy and Wilfred hurrying to follow her.

Jack’s stride was equal to his own, and she marched with no sign of slowing down. It took several minutes and no small amount of effort to catch up with her, but Wilfred managed as they reached a hard-packed dirt road running between two fields of apple trees.

“I believe,” he said between breaths, “that Miss Shy is having some difficulty keeping up.”

Jack stopped so suddenly that he almost ran into her. She turned around, her face red, and peered into the field where Shy was struggling to hold the pace. Her rabbit bounded along at her feet as she hurried. As she drew close, Jack grimaced. “Sorry there, sugarcube. You know how I can get.”

“That’s okay,” Shy replied, as she sought to catch her breath. “I understand.” The waifish girl took a moment to gather herself, and Wilfred stood uneasily, not certain how to proceed.

Jack sighed and turned to him as they began their journey again at a far more sedate pace. “Look, I didn’t mean to stomp off like that, but I hate gettin’ lied to. It’s bad when the fib’s obvious and even worse when it’s over something silly.”

“I was only being polite,” Wilfred said, a trace defensively.

“That ain’t no excuse. You don’t have to lie to be polite; you just gotta use a little tact. I can’t say I’m particularly strong on that quality myself, but that don’t mean it isn’t an option. In fact, I’ve got a pretty good example for you, Will,” she drawled, putting a subtle stress on that unpleasant diminutive of his proper name. Despite his attempts to keep a stiff upper lip, Wilfred felt his scowl deepen at being addressed in such a manner.

Jack just grinned. “Y’see? I can tell you don’t like it when I call you that. If you asked me nicely to stop, I’d do it. That’s tact.”

“Very well,” Wilfred replied. “Would you please refer to me either as Wilfred or Mr. Manning?”

“Sure,” Jack said easily, a small smile a triumph in her expression. “No sense in pretending to like something you don’t, and if somebody takes exception anyhow, they probably ain’t worth being friends with.”

She had a point, but Wilfred was not ready to admit defeat quite so easily. “However, at times it is necessary to lie. Should a highwayman demand to know many people are in the coach, should you tell him the truth? Even in circumstances less dire, near everyone has superiors and quite often there are things they simply do not want or need to hear regardless of the truth. Should you throw your career away and go hungry on the streets rather than tell a single lie?”

Shy gave a small shiver at the mention of highwaymen, and Jack listened intently. The latter gave a begrudging nod in agreement. “I’ll admit some lies are necessary, that robber one for instance, but which lies are necessary and which aren’t? A lie might be easier, but most of the things a lie solves could be done better with the truth or just keepin’ your mouth shut.”

Internally grinning, though his outward expression remained the same, Wilfred pressed the attack. “Ah, but if a lie is harmless, why should it matter? Would you tell a child proud of a drawing how badly they have done, or tell a sick woman that her illness has made her ugly?”

Jack snorted and shook her head. “I’d tell the child they’d done well for their age, and I’d tell the woman that beauty’s only skin deep. Just ‘cause I said some lies were necessary, doesn’t mean that lying is harmless. The more you make a habit outta lying, the easier it gets, and the more problems you try to solve with it.”

She locked stares with him, her emerald green eyes deep and knowing. “But the worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves. You can bury the truth down deep and forget for years, but eventually it always comes to light. And when it does, the lies only make it hurt worse.”

A chill raced from the base of his spine to Wilfred’s neck. He felt a moment of vertigo that passed almost as soon as it had come. Jack was no longer looking at him, but instead had turned to watch the path ahead. Wilfred opened his mouth to say something, but it slowly closed.

For a farmer, Jack was curiously astute. It should have been easy to dismiss her words as the product of an uncultured mind, one unused to necessities of politics and urban life. Yet Wilfred found he could not. He certainly hadn’t been won over to her cause, but there was something it what she had said that was impossible to disregard. There was a … kernel of truth, perhaps, in the midst of her rural philosophy. Another chill began building along his spine, cold knowledge seeping into his−

A crash of thunder equal to any cannon went off, and Wilfred was startled out of his contemplative state. Looking quickly around, he found that they had left the apple orchard behind and were now following a path through a gently rolling meadow. A humble village sat in the distance, but there was no evidence of storms or artillery around it.

“That’ll be Dash,” Jack said with a roll of her eyes.

“Oh, I hope nothing goes wrong. Some of those tricks are just so dangerous,” Shy said, wringing her hands nervously.

“Dash?” Wilfred asked, curious how any ‘trick’ could produce a burst of sound like that. Was the person in question a firework maker?

“Our town’s resident daredevil,” Jack replied, shading her eyes against the sun. She raised a hand to point out a large bundle of clouds floating leisurely past. “Look careful now, and you’ll catch a glimpse.”

Confused, but obedient, Wilfred strained his eye to look in that direction. There appeared to be something swooping and darting among the clouds, disrupting the natural patterns and carving new ones. Some sort of bird? Wilfred was no naturalist, but he had never heard of this behavior from any sort of avian.

“I don’t figure we wanna sit around all day just watching. Shy, Wilfred, cover your ears.”

Wilfred blinked, but Shy already had hands over her ears as Jack drew in a mighty breath. Wilfred’s hands had barely closed over his own before Jack let loose with a shrillest, loudest whistle he had ever heard. Even under the protection of his hands, his ears rung with the noise of it.

At last her lungs gave out, and the sound died away. Wilfred let go of his ears only hesitantly. “Was that necessary?” he asked, crossly.

Jack smirked. “I’d say so.” The she pointed in the direction of the sky over the village. The bird was done swooping around the clouds and was instead rocketing this way. As it came closer and closer Wilfred realized that, despite the large wings, it was not shaped like any bird he had ever seen before.

In fact, those huge, blue wings appeared to be attached to a human figure. “Those limbs are functional?” Wilfred blurted in surprise, turning to stare at Shy. The quiet girl blushed and shrunk away before nodding. Jack grinned and chuckled while Wilfred hastily remastered himself, cheeks aflame.

Shy is rather clearly not the only person with her … condition, Wilfred thought, attempting to make sense of the impossible sight of a person flying. But of course any others who shared it would live together. The village in the distance took on a new light. It was likely that … stricken people and their families lived here, like a leper colony, in a way. An entire town of people hidden away from the world and those who would seek to destroy or exploit them. Likely, this village and others like it had been the work of good Queen Elizabeth. Perhaps the villagers were the descendants of those who survived the Spanish Inquisition and other foolish witch hunts.

However, it was neither the time nor the place for such woolgathering. With daredevil flair, Dash went into a steep dive, aiming right towards their group. It took every measure of Wilfred’s British fortitude not to duck for cover, but his resolve held strong. And if his hands shook it was only because of the sudden breeze. Barely twenty feet away, those two massive wings shot out, catching the air and slowing the laughing figure with each mighty flap.

“Hey, slowpoke,” Dash said to Jack with a brash laugh. “What’s up? And who’s the guy in the undertaker suit?”

Dash was a rather unique youth, and certainly the most androgynous that Wilfred had ever seen. He was so smooth-cheeked and so lithe of figure that he could easily be mistaken for a woman. The thick balloonist’s jacket, wildly dyed hair, and cocksure attitude helped to dispel that illusion, even if his high voice did cast a mild shadow of doubt. Wilfred shook his head, amused with himself; as though the gentler sex could ever behave in such a way. Secure in his conclusion, he braced himself for an interaction that seemed likely to become abrasive. The fact that his employer had told him meet six girls had already been neatly excised from his mind.

“I have an invitation that I believe is yours,” Wilfred said. This time the ribbon was a rainbow of colors, matching the stripes in Dash’s hair perfectly. He snatched the letter with a blur of motion that Wilfred hardly saw, much less had the ability to prepare for. The ribbon was haphazardly thrown to the ground and the paper roughly unrolled. Dash’s eyes roved over the invitation, pursing his lips as he read.

With a melodramatic sigh, Dash crumpled the letter into a ball and shoved it into one of his pockets. “Fine. I’ll go.” Those powerful wings stopped their slow beats, and he landed lightly on his feet. “But this is really cutting into my practice time. I hope the boss appreciates the sacrifices I make for these errands.”

Fluttershy put her hand to her mouth, doing a poor job of suppressing a quiet giggle. Jack didn’t even bother; she laughed outright. “I’m sure it’s right accounted for. After all, you’re giving up so much.”

“I know, right?” Dash replied, either missing the sardonic tone or choosing to ignore it.

“Excuse me,” Wilfred said, “but did you say ‘the boss’? I was unaware we shared an employer.” It also made an already confusing situation even more confusing. Why invite your employees rather than command them? For what purpose would one employ a farmer, a daredevil and a quiet nature-lover? Their unique abilities obviously had to be involved, but for what reason?

The trio of oddities shared a glance then all spoke at the same time.

“Sorta.”

“Not really the way you’re meanin’.”

“Kind of, yes.”

They shared another glance after their conflicting answers. Dash shrugged and bulled ahead. “We don’t have ‘jobs’ or anything. Sometimes there’s just stuff we gotta do.”

“What Dash is tryin’ to say is that we aren’t employees like you’re thinkin’.” Jack rubbed her chin, her expression contorted as she seemed to search for the right words. “Y’see, we’ve got a duty because of who and what we are, but there ain’t no money or employment involved.”

“Ah, you are personally loyal to my employer, then?” Wilfred asked, hoping he’d gotten a glimmer of what they had meant.

“Yeah, that’s about right,” Jack said.

“What other kind of loyalty is there?” Dash seemed amused by the prospect, if his cocksure grin was any indication.

Wilfred made a sound that a less judicious person would have described as a ‘fussy harumph’. “There, of course, exists the loyalty of an employee to his or her employer. I’m speaking of a certain respect for superior position regardless of the person who fills it.”

“So you mean, like, obeying somebody because they’re your boss?”

“Precisely,” Wilfred said, feeling slightly more warmth than usual in his cool satisfaction.

Dash snorted and chuckled at that most uncouthly. “That’s not loyalty! That’s obedience! Anyway, I’ll fly ahead and let Pinkie know we’re coming.” Without pausing for a reply, the impetuous flyer shot off leaving nothing more than dust and a few feathers in his wake.

“Those are not the same things at all!” Wilfred shouted at the departing figure. If Dash heard him, there was no sign of it. Without any further recourse in that direction, the clerk turned to the people left to him. “It isn’t. Your friend is quite wrong on that account.”

Shy withdrew behind the curtain of her hair and wings again as Jack chuckled and raised her hands in mock surrender. “You don’t hear any argument outta me, do ya?”

Wilfred took a deep breath and calmed himself. It was so rare that he should lose his temper that most of those people who knew him would have doubted its existence. The young show-off, however, had brought it to the surface in record time. If there was anything Wilfred Xavier Manning prided himself on, it was his loyalty. To even imply – much less outright state – that he possessed no such virtue grated upon him like little else. “Your pardon,” he said, after restoring his neutral expression.

“That’s okay,” Shy said. “Not everybody gets along with Dash.”

“Yeah, no worries,” Jack replied with an easy grin. “Howsabout we get movin’ again? Since Dash already headed off to Pinkie’s, that may as well be our next stop.”

“Certainly,” Wilfred agreed. Despite a carefully projected calmness, his mind was still troubled. Of course he was loyal. What was loyalty, if not attending the person to whom you owed service? That the person to whom you owed loyalty could change meant nothing. When one monarch died, the loyalty of the nobles and the commons passed to their heir, and no one would dare call devotion to the throne mere obedience. Logically, Wilfred was certain he was correct. His approach was only rational.

So then why were his thoughts plagued with doubts? Why was it so difficult to banish Dash’s simple words?

Silence ruled the trio as they walked towards the unimposing village ahead. Normally, Wilfred valued silence above any sound, finding the vast majority of chatter meaningless. Now, he wished for conversation to keep him from his thoughts, but even more than that, he wished he were back at his desk, doing his proper job.

There everything made sense. Sums and figures did not make him question himself. They did not twist his thoughts or knot his stomach. The longing grew so strong within him that he would almost swear he felt a physical pull back the way he had come. He dismissed the notion with cold pragmatism. Whether it was loyalty or obedience, he would fulfill his obligation, and flights of fancy were not conducive to completing his task.

And so, a man at war with himself made his way towards the small town of Ponyville.