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Chapter 1: All of Them2,975 words
Chapter 2: “Get in the handbasket loser, guess where we’re going?”2,099 words
Chapter 3: When All Else Fails, Open Fire1,368 words
Chapter 4: Lemon Zest’s Day In… Hell.1,065 words
Chapter 5: Sugarcoat's Day In... the Office1,302 words
Chapter 6: Indigo Zap's Day In... the Field927 words
Chapter 7: Sour Sweet's Day In... Therapy867 words
Chapter 8: Sunny Flare’s Day In… Class805 words
Chapter 9: In Summary, You're All Insane1,345 words
Chapter 10: Sugarcoat, Stop Talking1,194 words
Chapter 11: Sunny Flare, Please Don’t Kill Anyone1,664 words
Chapter 12: Sour Sweet, Please Don’t Traumatize the Clients1,250 words
Chapter 13: Lemon Zest… run. Just run.1,354 words
Chapter 14: Put it AWAY, Indigo Zap1,261 words
Chapter 15: All of Them, All of Them, Jiggity-Jig1,790 words

Chapter 1: All of Them

Chapter 1: All of them

If anyone ever tells you being a secretary is an easy job, do me a favor: punch them right in their cocksockets, the lying little beelzebubs. Being a secretary is hell on earth, with antidepressant sprinkles. Of course, you could argue that it all depends on where you work. Unfortunately, I work here.

The Canterlot Reformation, Reintegration, and Parole Office. Affectionately referred to as the CRRaP office. Thank Celestia I don’t actually have to sit down in private with any of these chucklefucks. Like this guy in front of me. Some religious zealot looking assplow griffin with blue and white feathers and a cape to match. “Right, and what’s your name?” I ask as nicely as I can.

“I am Grand High Priest Tyrantotaur of the-”

I cut him off as politely as I can, cause I just know he’s gonna keep going if I don’t. “Right, Tyrantotaur. Have you filled out your intake forms?”

“-wha, how DARE you interrupt the Great Grand High-”

“I’m sorry, but we don’t allow for self-designated titles here. Only first and last names, and any titles given to you by the government.” I slide the necessary paperwork towards him, trying to keep my hoof steady, and not fly off in a series of surprisingly punch-like nervous twitches.

He gives the paperwork a disdainful grimace, then takes a quick glance at my nametag. “Listen here, little miss Sunny Flare, you will address me by whatever title I deem necessary, and furthermore-”

This time it’s not my speaking that interrupts him. Instead, I deign to grab him by his collar, and bounce his head off the countertop. Then I drag his face as close to mine as I can get without actually touching the fluffy bastard. “No, YOU listen, you little smegstain. I know exactly why you’re here, and so does everyone else. You’re just another in a very long line of pains in my flank that the Elements of Harmony laid the smackdown on, and now you’re here to become a decent fucking member of society. Your asskicking was televised. Now, if you would kindly take it upon yourself to remember that this is, technically, a division of the royal guard, and we are permitted by law to wail on your pansy ass should the need arise, I would think you’d want to do yourself a favor and GIVE ME YOUR FREAKIN NAME.”

I’m pretty sure my purple coat is now a deep shade of crimson, which is apparently one of the few colors High Priest Tumbledick responds to. “I-it’s Tyrantotaur...”

I give his collar a squeeze. “And?”

“T-tyrantotaur Cuddlestuffs. They wouldn’t let me change my last name,” he whimpers, trying to bury himself in his cape.

I slap the form onto a clipboard, and shove it into his chest. I almost broadside him with the damn thing. He rushes back to one of the many uncomfortable plastic chairs surrounding the horrendously colorful waiting room, and fills out his paperwork in quiet. A familiar draconequus a few chairs down just points and laughs at the guy, while I call up the next douchebag in line. “Wh-how do you pronounce that? Lulu… lulla… HEY TRIXIE!”

A powder blue unicorn pops her head up. She’s dressed in a magicians cape and hat with stars everywhere. “The Great and Powerful Trrrrrixie is here!”

Being a secretary is the worst job on the planet.

---------------------------------

Being a counselor is the worst possible thing you could do to yourself, short of actually dying. I mean, we all have enough problems of our own, don’t we? Who the hell wants to get paid to listen to someone elses? I mean, we’re not even paid well. ‘Oh, be a counselor’, my parents said. ‘You’re so good at putting on a cheery face! Everyone will open up to you!’ Yeah, and now I wanna close them back up again with some knitting needles and razor wire.

Never listen to your parents, kids. It’s a terrible idea.

“Sour Sweet? Your 3 o’clock is here. She looks like she’s about to cry. Again. You might want to bring a new box of tissues.”

I groan and massage my temples with my wingtips, then bang my head against my desk a few times. “Thank you, Sugarcoat.”

“Also, I wouldn’t hit my head like that, our health insurance doesn’t cover self-inflicted head trauma.”

“Thank you, Sugarcoat.”

“And your 5 o’clock isn’t returning their calls, so you’ll probably need to do a housecall if he doesn’t show up.”

I grit my teeth, trying my best not to start screaming. “Thank. You. Sugar. Coat.”

“You’re welcome,” she adds, walking away calmly. Why do all the unicorns I know make me so damn angry. I peek around my office door to make sure she’s gone, then start gathering my files for my next patient. And a box of tissues.

“I wouldn’t use those tissues, she’s allergic to aloe.” I jump as Sugarcoat’s voice takes me by surprise. I still don’t know how she moves so damn fast.

“Thankyousugarcoat,” I grumble, trying my damnedest to look appreciative.

“Also that vest is a horrible color on you, you should really consider getting something less appalling to wear to the office.”

“THANK. YOU. SUGARCOAT,” I roar, slamming the door to my office. In the process, of course I spill tissues and files everywhere, which just makes me even angrier. I swear to something I’m gonna start breaking ponies.

“You shouldn’t slam the doors, they take damages out of your paycheck, and you’re already behind on rent.”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGHHHHHH!”

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Being Doctor Sweet’s personal assistant isn’t a bad job. She screams a lot when she’s not around patients. And cries. And is generally unhappy. But she doesn’t really take it out on anyone. She needs the job too much. And she’s really bad at pretty much everything except pretending to care about people. And archery. I don’t know why she’s good with a bow. I think it’s an overcompensation thing.

I watch her storm out of her office towards the therapy rooms, then return to my desk. Her schedule is a mess, but it’s not unmanageable. For some reason she’s rather popular amongst our patients and parolees, so she’s constantly overbooked.

I’d tell them all what she was like outside the office, but she’d get fired. Then I’d get fired. And I like money. And having a place to live. So I don’t.

Well, that, and I’m prohibited from speaking with clients. Something about telling a unicorn parolee where the Alicorn Amulet was.

A loud rolling noise and muffled rock music tell me Lemon Zest just arrived with our mail. I can hear those roller skates from across the building, if I try hard enough. They sound surprisingly like yelling, most of the time. I lift my head up just in time to see the bright green mane of the office mailmare zip down the hall, and push my seat back just in time to keep her from crashing in to me. She brakes right at the edge of my desk. “Hey Sugah!” she yells. I pull her headphones off her head with my magic, and drop them in her saddlebag.

“Your music is too loud. You’re going to blow out an eardrum again. Mine.”

She laughs like I’m joking. “Oh, sorry. Here, I got a buncha stuff for Sour Sweet. Thank you letters, some chocolate… I think… Oh! And you got something!”

My ears perk up unwittingly, as receiving mail at the office is rather rare for me. Most ponies I know don’t even know where I work. “What is it?”

“Some cereal, supposed to be good for ya,” she quips, snickering at her own joke. Which I’ve heard probably a hundred times before. I lost count. Picking it out of the pile, she passes me a flimsy envelope. It has the buildings address on both the sender and recipient spaces, so it’s inter-office post. “I got no idea, some guy in corporate said you needed this today.”

I look at the envelope curiously as it sits in my hoof, and wave Zest off to do the rest of her rounds. Not learning anything more about its contents from the envelope, I tear it open and start reading.

Dear Ms. Sugarcoat,

It has come to our attention that-

Forget what I said earlier. My job is garbage.

-----------------------

Being a mailpony is easy as hell. I skate around and give people stuff. And for the most part, it’s their stuff. Come on, we have like a dozen mares with Sugar or Sweet or Candy-something in their name. I get diabetes just looking at the mailing list.

I hop on the elevator back to the sorting room, when I feel my phone vibrate in my bag.

It’s Sugarcoat, texting the group.

SC: Drinks tonight. Need alcohol. Bent Unicorn at 7.

“Aw yeah, gonna get hammered!” I start typing furiously, and soon the whole group is writing back and forth.

LZ: Hellz yeah. We gun get fckd UP!

SS: I might not make it to 7. Someone just bring me whiskey and hangover gravy now.

SF: Double that order.

LZ: Ruff day?

SS: What are you, a fuckin dog?

LZ: I AM good with my tongue.

SS:...I will kill you unless you buy the first round. With my TEETH.

SC: Zest, aren’t you on the elevator?

LZ: Yeah, why?

SF: Oh my god. Look up, you retard.

I poke my head up from my phone, and see a lot of ponies staring at me, or trying to squeeze past me into the elevator. “Oh… heheh, muh bad,” I apologize, cramming myself into a corner.

I put the phone away till I get off the elevator, then whip it back out again ans I zoom across the lobby on the gound floor. I’m just in time to see Indigo Zap walk in the front door. I call out to her as I roll by, “Drinksat7atBUgethammeredorgetnailedscrub!”

I think she nods, but I’m around the corner before I can be sure. And just in time for my boss’s boss’s boss to step out of a stairwell as I’m going a hundred and one hojillion. I screech to a halt just before I hit her, yet she doesn’t move a muscle. “Ah, Ms. Lemon Zest. I do hope you’ve brought me some good news to offset this blatant disregard for office safety,” she says in that cool, creepy horror villain tone of confidence and spite specially brewed in Tirek’s anus.

“Uh… yes, Ms. Cinch. Lemme...” I dig around my bags for something with her name on it, and hand her the first thing I can find.

She coolly snatches the letter out of my hoof with magic, and tears it open, wasting no time in reading it. As she does, her face darkens like storm clouds. Or my future. “WE’RE BEING AUDITED?!”

I fuckin hate my job.

--------------------------------------

Lemon Zest whizzes by just as I step in the front door, and all I catch is “Drinks at 7 BU.” Which, honestly, is all the information I need. I could use a break after all the running around today. Not that I don’t love my job. Being a parole officer is awesome. I get to tell people what do do all day, and chase down dumbasses who think ‘If I can run faster than this pegasus I don’t have to do this thing I don’t like.’ Protip: you can’t. Hell, I’d try out for the Wonderbolts if I didn’t love my job so much.

I trot up to the front desk, grab a key from Stallion McWhatshisface, and make my way to the Cages. Well, they’re not actually cages. It’s just a bunch of rooms where the PO’s do office work and make calls and stuff. But that sounded really boring, so we all pitched in and got a plaque that said “Cages” and hung it on the door. Said door creaks open as I brush past my coworker, a griffon too busy on the phone to do much more than nod and keep walking.

There’s not a lot of guys in the office right now, since we’re all mostly out in the field at this hour. I drop today’s papers in my box, a small cubby in the wall, dig around in it for my phone, and turn it on to see I missed a bunch of messages. Mostly about us grabbing drinks.

SF: Is Zap not answering her phone? The fuck?

SC: She’s in the field. You know they can only have office phones out their. And you can’t send personal messages on an office phone.

LZ: Iz ok I just saw her and let her know.

SC: Did you actually talk to her? Or just yell stuf really fast as you skated by?

LZ:...yes?

I chuckle to myself and join in the conversation.

IZ: It’s ok, I understood most of it. I’m down to drown in some tekillya.

SS: Oh no. No tequila. The last time you drank Horse-e` Cuervo you almost died.

IZ: Pssh, that wasn’t even the alcohol, that was traffic.

SC: The fact that you even need to make that distinction is a good indicator that you should stick to something safer. Like whiskey, or paint thinner.

IZ: Whatevs, booze iz booze. Anyway, gotta go, just dropping off some paperwork. Meet at the bar?”

SF: Yeah, sure.

LZ: Hellz yeah.

SS: No, I figured we’d rendezvous in a darkened parking structure with trenchcoats.

SC: The last time we did that we all got arrested.

The rest of the girls chatter back and forth in small bursts while I turn my phone back off. Just in time, as my boss pokes his head in immediately after I drop the phone back in my box. “Hey Zap, you got a minute? There’s some paperwork I need you to fill out.”

I fucking hate my job.

---------------------

We all meet up at the bar after what seems like an eternity of filling out forms, and find our usual table rather quickly. Some minion takes our drink orders and scurries off, leaving us to our own devices. Not a great idea.

“Are you actually trying to be bad at this? Cause you’re really bad at this,” Sugarcoat points out.

“Yeah, shut up. You don’t know the kind of day I’ve had,” groans Sunny Flare, who’s trying to balance a pencil on her nose while we wait for our drinks.

“Can’t have been worse than mine,” says Sour Sweet over her glass of water. “God, who knew unicorns were such crybabies.”

Sugarcoat and Sunny Flare both give her death glares, while Lemon Zest tries poorly to hide a laugh behind her hoof. “Please,” she interjects. “I bet I got you both beat.”

I shrug. “Eh, not that bad. I had to do like an hour of paperwork, but nothing out of the ordinay. Why? What made your days to craptastically unique?”

Before anyone can get a word in, Sour Sweet starts spitting fire. “It’s this whiny unicorn magician chick! Holy balls does she have issues. She’s got this-”

Sugarcoat shoves a hoof in her mouth. “Doctor-patient confidentiality. Also, none of us care.” She puts her hoof down just as our drinks arrive, and she takes a long draw of Manehattan Iced Tea. “I got another letter from HR today. Something about making one of the other therapists cry.”

“Again?” Zest asks incredulously. “Which one?”

“I don’t know. Not all of them tell on me.”

The green-haired pegasus rolls her eyes. “I’m surprised you still have a job. Hell, after next week, I’d be surprised if any of us do.”

“At least you didn’t get groped by a mino- wait, what?!” Sunny Flare interjects, chorused by the rest of the group, myself included. “What do you mean we might not have jobs?! I NEED my job!”

I take a shot of whiskey, since they vetoed my tequila, and add, “Yeah. What did you hear? Were you eavesdropping on the upper floors again?”

Lemon shakes her head. “Nah, I almost ran into Ms. Cinch -literally- and gave her a letter to keep her from firing me. Turns out it was from one of the Princesses.”

“Oh, you have GOT to be shitting me. Who?! It can’t be from Luna, she’s a client!” Sour Sweet yells. And she’s off.

“No, better,” Zest continues between sips of beer. “Princess Twilight.”

The whole table groans involuntarily. “What the hell now?” I grumble, really wishing I had some Cuervo right now.

“Apparently she wrote something to Cinch about how not everyone is staying reformed, and they’re having issues after the fact, and blah blah blah ponies keep trying to take over the world. SO she wants to come down here herself and see how we do things. At least, that’s what I got between all the yelling. Cinch did a lot of that,” Zest added.

Before anypony can follow up, our waiter comes back. “Can I get you anything else, ladies?” he says shakily. I recognize him as one of the unfortunate stallions who always seems to be working whenever we go drinking.

Sugarcoat speaks first. “We’re going to need a LOT. of. Tequila.”

Author's Note:

I don't know where this came from. Originally I just wanted to write something with Sugarcoat in it, because she's my new favorite "pony".

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