Six Rough Days

by FeverishPegasus

One of those days

Rainbow Dash, sitting up in her fluffy cloud, was tired. It had been a hard day clearing clouds, and she’d had more than her fair share of thunderstorms to deal with. The responsibilities of head weather chief weren’t always difficult to manage, but sometimes they just got out of hoof, especially during the fall season. It certainly hadn’t been her worst day, but it was enough to keep on the ground afterwards.

So, enjoying the rest of her time off, she closed her eyes, and occasionally rolled around not to get more comfortable, but to feel more of the fluffiness of the cloud on her skin. It occurred to her that if some pony were to interrupt her, she might just kill them.

But for now, her sleep remained uninterrupted, and everypony could live for another day.

---

Twilight Sparkle sat in the basement of her library, reading some of her magic fiction. Some of the material could be nonsensical, and it wasn’t nonfiction, but she’d had a long day, and there’d be no way for her to handle some of the more rigorous academia of her current studies. It was hard being a princess, but today had been harder than the rest.

Prince Blueblood could be his own can of beans, but when you add the Yaks in there, things get hectic quickly. She’d had to use her paralyze spells consistently throughout the diplomacy meeting, breaking more than a few castle regulations about the use of magic around royalty, just to keep the adult toddlers from hurting each other. Why Celestia had made Blueblood a diplomat in the first place was beyond her, even if he did have more political power in the kingdom than all the other nobles combined. If anything good could’ve come from that meeting, it would’ve been to teach Blueblood that there were creatures out there that could hurt him and get away with it. Creatures outside of his political jurisdiction that wouldn’t even feel the waste of breath he’d try to use to get some sort of petty revenge.

And although it made Twilight happy that she’d been given the chance to witness Blueblood’s realization, it hadn’t been fun at the time, and the numerous lawsuits aimed in her direction from both the Yaks and Blueblood certainly didn’t make things any better. Heaven forbid she keep the two from killing each other, whilst breaking the rule that magic must never be used on the nobles.

So to cool off, she kept herself away from all forms of stress, hid herself in the basement so that she wouldn’t even be able to hear somepony knocking on the door. The last thing she needed was some rabid fan profusely shaking her hoof while squealing with delight because oh mah gawd she’s just met the princess!

With any hope, she’d finish reading her book about a pony using magic to transmorgiphy her pet bird into an orange so that she could sneak it through the land of the living unicorn horns. Because apparently Starswirl the Bearded had figured out how to conjure up an autonomous horn that could cast its own spells. So of course those autonomous horns had created more versions of themselves whilst using levitation on themselves to commit crimes of catastrophic proportions. Twilight hadn’t been convinced at first, but the story had opened her mind as to the ways disembodied horns could launder money.

One thing she knew for sure though, was that if anypony bothered her, they wouldn’t be able to realize their mistake until after they’d been trapped in a perpetual teleport machine, falling eternally downward.

(Fair warning, you might want to skip the next section)

---

Pinkie Pie had a rough day, and here’s why. Although Ms. Cake had so kindly given her the standard-regulation, daily hugs that cheer her up so well in the morning, the day started out as a sham because Ms. Cake’s hug had been more brusque than usual, and this had not only sent her into a spiraling series of thoughts that led from Ms. Cake not loving her anymore to the possibility that not just the world would end, but the entire universe and everything we’d ever experienced in our existence in this dimension of time would end as well. Which admittedly happened quite a lot, but because Ms. Cake’s hug had been off, her whole day had been off from what it should have been, because of the butterfly effect, and now her friends wouldn’t get to experience the joys of the true Pinkie, but a Pinkie that is instead the product of a hug that just wasn’t enough and wouldn’t ever be enough because it had already passed and there was nothing that could be done to change that. Yet. But that was all okay, because Pinkie Pie is very good at picking herself up, especially with the use of a mirror pool, and recovering from subtle inconsistencies because after all she is a pony and ponies can adapt and that is what she did. However, that was only the start of it because immediately afterwards when she went to her surprise un-birthday party for Twilight no one showed up and that was when she realized she had forgotten to send all the invitations to her friends, because what pony in their right mind would expect a party for a pony’s un-birthday party? They were a very nuanced version of a party that could only be held certain times of the year as much as the name un-birthday indicates that this type of party could be held on three fifty-five days of the year, because if parties were actually held every day minus one for every year, ponies would come to expect a party and how could you throw a surprise party like that? Hence, the reason why her friends hadn’t shown up to a party they weren’t supposed realize was happening in the first place, but whatever, ponies could adapt and Pinkie Pie could adapt and that is what happened. Even then though, the day continued to get crummier because the surprise hot air balloon attack she’d prepared for Rainbow Dash had to get cancelled because Rainbow Dash wasn’t in her usual spot because she was busy taking down thunderclouds with the Wonderbolts, who don’t usually do weather patrol because after all they are showponies, but the weather had been so bad this time that the government gave them an offer they couldn’t refuse to help out with the weather just this once, so that the ponies living below those thunderclouds wouldn’t have to suffer the negative consequences of flooding that farmers knew so well because a lot of the time it means they have to farm rocks instead, like her family had to. But this was also okay because Pinkie Pie had one more plan that would make up for all the other plans that had failed so far today. Her plan was to make a cake large enough to sleep in, and that was what she was doing right now and it did a lot to ease the frustration she’d been experiencing earlier while running all over Ponyville looking for the ponies that were supposed to attend Twilight’s surprise un-birthday party that she hadn’t sent them invitations for. Overall, it was kind of a downer day, but if she could finish making this cake with ultimate precision and focus without somepony interrupting her and causing a distraction, she might be able to salvage the vestiges of cheerfulness that she had to hold on to so tightly now because the world just didn’t want to go her way sometimes and that was okay. Provided that a pony did interrupt her, she wouldn’t kill them persay, but may subject them to a tirade of constant non-stop cheerful speech to wind herself down from the fact that when it came down to it, she couldn’t even get the privacy it seemed her friends wanted to give her on this very fine day that was all going to waste because of her own personal idiocy, and the fact that the weather too, was conspiring against her to make sure that she had the most crummy, most downtrodden, most dispiriting, most saddening, most all around depressing day.

---

Applejack’s day hadn’t necessarily been bad, but there had been a lot of work to do. She’d been thinking about relaxing while bucking the apple trees, dragging hay everywhere, and feeding the farm animals, but now that it was happening, to say that she was happy would be an understatement.

Because Big Macintosh had gotten himself the stomach flu, it had been up to her to do all the heavy lifting, and on occasion, she had to get help from her little sister. For an earth pony mare, she was exceptionally strong, but tilling the field could get rough, and it was usually up to Big Macintosh to take care of half the field for her. Still, thanks to dual harnesses, Applebloom and her had gotten it done, and it’d felt great afterwards.

After that, it was only a simple matter of corralling all the equipment into the barn, seeing that the family had kept the sheep in the pens for the day. No use letting them roam with only two workers to keep them from wandering off. If Big Macintosh didn’t get better anytime soon, they’d have to hire a temporary farm hand.

Regardless of what the future had in store for her, Applejack laid back against a tree and sighed, tilting her hat forward to keep the sunset out of her eyes.

If somepony came along and interrupted her, they’d get a walloping. That was for sure.

---

Now Rarity on the other hand, had quite an unrewarding busy day of work. She’d spent all day making an unusually large order that she wouldn’t have accepted under normal circumstances. However, in this case, she’d made an exception because her client was, how to put it, very high up there in the social arena.

Twenty dresses of sapphire and violets, certainly no tall order, since she always had to dig into those dresses to get those flowers properly interwoven. Still, she’d done it. She’d actually done it.

Twenty hours of work from the crack of dawn to way past sunset she’d worked. Cutting holes into sapphires with her imported crystal drill, working her hooves to the bone cutting fabric, managing lace, and stringing together sapphire into fabulous daisy chains.

She’d managed to keep her cool while managing the strict pace of one dress per hour, never taking a moment to eat, drink, or rest. She’d simply been a machine performing tasks over and over and over.

And what for?! What for you’d say. Just so that her client could cancel at the last minute, explaining that they’d chosen a different distributer, because, rumor has it, they had an imported crystal drill.

Oh, that and the fact that they weren’t going to pay for their order.

They’d explained that they did what they could to cancel the order, but as much as they’d tried for three hours to call her, she’d never picked up the phone. Surely now, the blame must be placed on her. Store policy dictates that orders may get cancelled fifteen hours before the delivery date. And they’d tried that. They’d tried to call her at the crack of dawn.

Of course, Rarity hadn’t been able to dispute this, because with a sudden gasp of realization, it occurred to her that she’d been in the back room all day. The phone could ring as loudly as it wanted to, and she’d never be able to hear it.

But the intern! She’d thought, but realized with a sinking feeling that he’d been out sick today, caught by the bug that seemed to be infecting all the ponies in Ponyville this week.

She hadn’t been able to muster the decency to say goodbye before hanging up, and proceeded to shove one of her manikins against the wall and perforate it with a sewing needle at perfect one-inch intervals across its body, down its legs, and around its head.

After which she went about gathering food to hopefully settle the terrible knotting of her stomach that had been plaguing her all day because of the stress.

As soon as she’d gathered everything, gotten her plush freak-out sofa, stuffed her face with three cucumber and dandelion sandwiches, and guzzled enough water to irrigate a farm for three days, she’d found it in herself to relax. Exhaustion hit her, and as she tumbled into the soft cushions of her sofa, her thoughts vaguely spiraled around the idea that if anypony were to wake her, they’d get the same treatment as the manikin.

---

Fluttershy’s day had been rough, but she was managing. She’d only had to deal with Angel’s picky appetite, the bear breaking her sofa, again, and the beavers making a dam out of her silverware. Certainly a bit more work than the ordinary, concerning her numerous daily tasks to make sure that the animals didn’t off themselves, but overall, not too bad.

Although there had been that incident with the palace tax collection agency, what with their trying to push off the animals as her assets. And, well, the ducks had pooped on her dinner table too, which had been frustrating. Now that she thought about it, there’d also been the problem with Rainbow Dash’s pet tortoise, poor thing. What was she going to tell her?!

And she realized, that brought up a whole other host of problems she’d had to deal with. One being that the goats were now resentful of her for paying so much attention to the dying tortoise. Apparently, they liked to keep timesheets of her attention given to each animal, and today she'd just thrown everything out of whack.

She remembered a goat in glasses pointing furiously at a whiteboard, saying stuff about the correlation between attention given and the happiness measure. He’d explained that happiness isn’t something easily measured, so to perform more of a mathematical approach on this illusive feeling, they’d used the smiley face chart, and polled each animal at three separate times during the week.

The results were almost unanimously a three (partially smiling), except for one rabbit, who always answered ten (grimace of pain), even though it clearly hadn’t been in pain. Which was fantastic! Really, it was, but there’d been fluctuations in the ratings occurring around the weekends, when Fluttershy had to leave for a few hours to hang out with her friends in the afternoon. They explained that this loss of time disadvantaged not only the goats of this community, but also the beavers.

Which according to their estimates, resulted in a happiness skew of two smiley faces, just today, while attending Rainbow Dash’s weekly Tortoise check-up, for both the goat and beaver community. Her attention had to be split evenly between all animals, no matter the interruptions, lest each species become jealous of each other and tear apart the community as we know it. Also, they added, we’ll go on strike.

She’d asked them how they planned to go on strike, if they hadn’t been performing any work for her in the first place. They said that they’d stop holding the tri-weekly surveys, which thankfully, sorted the problem out for itself.

So now that she’d survived through this particularly difficult day, she broke into her cellar and grabbed some of her finest aged grape juice. After a particularly difficult struggle up the stairs, she crashed into her living room sofa and took a sip straight from the bottle. One good thing about living with animals, is that you didn’t have to worry about class.

As she lay on the sofa, smothering her thoughts into nothingness, it occurred to her that if someone were to bother her in this state, she wouldn’t kill them, or physically hurt them, but it wouldn’t be beyond her to write a harshly worded letter.

Comments

[deadpansnarker]

[phantomlord01]

Why do the goat remind me of these guys?

[FeverishPegasus]

8055365 Not gonna lie, halfway through the first chapter this song got stuck in my head. I was really temped to make the title "You had a bad day," but well, I dunno. Either way, thanks, it's stuck in my head again

[FeverishPegasus]

8055423 I wanted to give the impression that the goat was a new hire for some big company that does something menial, like sock production. I think the video you linked nails this on the head, haha.