There's Bureaucracy Even In The Field of Mad Science
All was not well in Ponyville.
At first, it had started off as a whisper of discontent between a stallion and his wife. This whisper turned into an angry discussion between a group of ponies in one of the local taverns. That discussion did not end in that tavern, but spread throughout town, growing and becoming angrier and more hostile with each pony drawn into it.
Ponyville’s citizens were furious. Many of them were hardworking and honest folk. Most had never raised a hoof in anger, and not a one had ever wished harm upon another, other than an occasional desire to slap their fellow pony on the back of their head. But today that all would change.
No matter how calm or pleasant the creature, there was only so much that one could take before they snapped. For the townsfolk, this line had been crossed quite purposefully, and crossed many times. The first few times they had bared it, as kind, understanding creatures were known to do, but they had had enough.
As the ponies of Ponyville grew angrier and angrier, weapons were gathered. Pitchforks, axes, mops and brooms with their ends carved into points. If one looked very carefully, they might have also seen pots, pans, cooking utensils, and even the odd spear or two.
Torches were found and lit. While such light would have looked wonderfully menacing dancing off the buildings with the ponies’ shadows, the citizens of Ponyville weren’t well versed in these sort of things and the theatricality of it all, so this affair was done right around lunch time. A group of nearly two hundred mares and stallions marched down the main street of Ponyville. On each of their faces was a mask of grim determination.
For too long they had suffered atrocities, indignities, and shenanigans of one mare. Now was the time to show that they weren’t going to take it anymore!
They were going to drive her out, send her elsewhere so that she could torment somepony else, or perhaps destroy her if they could!
All too soon the citizens of Ponyville came upon the towering crystal castle in the exact center of town. Before the castle had sprouted out of the ground, the center of town had been the mayor’s office—or the fountain in front of the mayor’s office if you wished to be a stickler for geographic location— but, because of their tormentors insistent jabbering at the town council meetings every month for the past seven months, as well as a rather unfortunate amount of damage at last year’s Big Bunny Bonanza, the castle had taken the title. It was another crime that the ponies of this community were going to make her pay for dearly.
Like a wave the citizens of Ponyville descended upon the castle, their pitchforks, brooms, and pans at the ready. When they neared the castle’s doors there had been some debate whether to knock them down—since one stallion at least knew to do that much—but when the front door was found to be unlocked, the door was simply opened. Clamoring and shouting angrily, the mob entered the castle’s lobby.
“Let’s get her!”
“Find her!”
“We’ll burn this place to the ground!”
“Down with the tyrant! Down with her experiments!”
“Yeah! And her mane’s dumb too! So are her wings!”
The crowd might have swarmed throughout the castle, destroying everything they could as they went, if not for someone clearing their throat. While such a noise should have been drowned out by all of the talking, shouting, and vows of vengeance that were echoing off the castle’s crystal interior, this clearing of the throat was so professional, serious, and business-like that it rose above it all so that it reached the mob’s many ears.
Ponies stopped shaking their pitchforks and torches to look at the far end of the lobby. There, sitting at a secretary’s desk with his feet propped up and an open magazine in his hands, was Neroymous.
The human was looking at the mob over the top of his magazine with bored, half-lidded eyes, noisily chewing on an overly large wad of bubblegum. He blew a giant bubble, popping it with his tongue before expertly navigating the gum back into his mouth.
“Can I help you all?” he asked.
A collective sigh escaped the crowd. Many looked at each other, their righteous fury cooling into uncertainty. They had been expecting the castle’s occupants to be hidden in some dark room, conducting some horrible experiment or casting some vile, evil spell. What they did not expect was to see someone so suddenly that looked so… normal.
Some shuffled in place as they looked at him, some hid their weapons behind their backs when they saw the lone stallion. A few murmured apologies and excuses. One mare, however, pushed through the crowds, still angry as ever.
“What the hay are you all doing?” she cried. “It’s that weird ape-stallion that the princess keeps!”
Nero frowned. “Hey, excuse you, she doesn’t keep me,” he said, licking his thumb and turning a page in his magazine. “I can leave whenever I want. I’m not some kind of dog. Or Starlight.”
“We need to get him too, stallion or not!” the mare continued, ignoring him.
Confusion once again turned to anger as the crowd puffed up and readied their weapons.
“Yeah! He’s always the one to help the princess with her experiments anyways!”
“He stole one of my ribs while I was sleeping!”
“He helped bring back my long-lost grandparents from a peaceful afterlife and put them in a lava lamp!”
“I’m pretty sure that I saw him peeing in the town’s fountain after the Summer Celebration last year!”
Confusion and uncertainty left the mob, and a wild, animalistic rage once again took over. Mare and stallion alike lowered their weapons and made their way toward Nero with an intent to harm.
If Nero would have gotten up from his chair it would have been his ruin. If he would have shown any fear, or doubt, or any weakness at all the mob would have surged forward and no doubt have torn him limb from limb. But, for all of the mob’s aggression, the only thing they got was another giant bubble.
“Do any of you have an appointment?” the human asked, sitting up and scooching forward.
The ponies’ advance was halted, their confusion returning.
“…Excuse me?”
Reaching into one of the drawers, Nero pulled out a small notebook. Dropping it into the table, he grabbed a small pair of glasses and placed them on the bridge of his nose. He then slapped his magazine into the drawer and closed it, looking at them expectantly.
“Do any of you have a eleven o’clock appointment with Ms. Sparkle?” he asked, opening up the notebook and leafing through it. “She’s running a bit late because her ten-thirty is taking her a little longer, but you’d wait around a little longer I’m sure she’d be able to get to you very soon.”
Humming to himself, he looked down at the notebook. The mob watched as he leaned forward, a frown working its way onto his face.
“Huh… It doesn’t look like any of you have an appointment today,” he said, turning a page. “Or the day after, or the day after.”
A stallion frowned. “We don’t need no appointment!” he shouted, waving his torch around. “We’re here to drive all of you outta town!”
“Yeah!” the crowd yelled.
Nero looked up from the notebook. “We don’t need any appointment, Ernest Hemingway,” he said. “And yes you do.”
“Oh yeah, says who?” the stallion demanded.
Nero opened his mouth to reply, but suddenly closed it. Sighing, he looked around the room before motioning the mob to move closer. They did so, but cautiously, with their weapons pointed at the human.
“Look, if I had my way I’d let all of you go right in and burn this castle to the ground and murder us and whatever else you want to do, but there’s procedure,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Twilight’s a very busy mare after all. You think she can just up and deal with a mob whenever she feels like it?”
He looked out into the crowd.
“Roseluck, how would you feel if I went into your shop and said that I needed a big bouquet for tomorrow?” he said, making a hand gesture toward the earth pony.
Roseluck’s nose scrunched up. “We can’t do it like that,” she said. “All our bouquets need to be ordered in advance.”
“Exactly,” Nero said, slapping a hand onto his desk. “You need at least three days’ notice to get everything ready, right?”
“Right.”
His gaze snapped toward a stallion. “And what about you, Dr. Hooves? Do your patients usually need to make an appointment before seeing you?”
“Of course,” the doctor said with a flick of his mane.
“That’s exactly the same thing here,” Nero said, leaning back into his chair. “If you want to do something serious like this you need to make an appointment and we’ll pencil you in for a time that’s best for you.”
The crowd looked at each other. Lowering their weapons, they began to quietly converse. As upset as they were, they were still polite folk to a T, and no matter how much they wanted to rampage through the castle, destroying whatever hellish creations they found, doing so would have been terribly rude.
“Well… when’s the latest you can pencil us in then?” one mare asked.
“Let me see,” Nero murmured, looking back down at his notebook and leafing through it. “I know that Ms. Sparkle’s jam packed for this month, and she has that thing next month that’s gonna keep her busy for weeks…”
He clicked his tongue, flipping through page after page before suddenly stopping and looking up.
“I think I can squeeze you in three months from today, say nine or ten?”
“No, I can’t do that,” one stallion said. “I have a wedding that I need to help set up all that month.”
Nodding, Nero leafed through a few more pages. “What about a couple days near Nightmare Night?”
“That’d be aw—! No, wait, I have a thing that I need to do…”
The mob talked amongst themselves for a minute or two, trying to decide what was the best day to come back to burn the residents of this castle alive. Unfortunately for many, their schedules just didn’t match up. Some ponies suggested that the whole town didn’t need to be here to destroy the princess and her lackeys, but others insisted that this was a team effort. The talks began to get heated, and it might have ended in a shouting match if Nero hadn’t stepped in.
“If you guys can’t figure out the best time right now, why don’t you all talk about it for a bit and come back later to see if we can work something out?” he suggested. “I have Ms. Sparkle’s schedule worked out for the next six months, and if you need longer than that I’d be happy to put you at the top of the list for the next one.”
The crowd exchanged glances before nodding.
“Yeah, that sounds good…”
“I should go home to check my schedule anyway…”
“We all can meet up at Sugarcube Corner and work this out…”
Chatting amongst themselves, the mob turned away and made their way toward the front door, with a few mares and stallions apologizing to Nero for wasting his time, and promising that they’d be back as soon as they could. Nero just smiled and wished them all a happy day before dropping his notebook back into the drawer, grabbing his magazine, and kicking his feet back up onto the table.
It wasn’t until all of the ponies had left and closed the door behind them that a purple head poked up from underneath the desk.
“Are they gone?” Twilight asked.
“Yep, they’re gone,” Nero replied, blowing a bubble and popping it.
Twilight smiled, peeking her head over the desk to see if, in fact, her would-be murderers had left the premises. Seeing that they were gone, she turned her attention back toward her assistant.
“Do you really have my schedule worked out for the next six months?” she asked.
Nero snorted. “No. I don’t have a single day of your schedule scheduled. That was a coloring book I was looking through,” he said, turning the page in his magazine. “The fucking idiots.”
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This sounds like something I would pull in a d&d campaign.
*speech level 100*
That was glorious.
I honestly love the dynamic between Nero and Twilight. It just meshes so perfectly!
Bwahahaha
Damn. This is great. Please keep making these :)
Mob rule: Politeness increases by 2000% to ensure all are accommodated.
8304082
Hm.
True.
He'd die a slow painful death, just because that will be his fate.
Alondro munches on a rib... then quickly stops... "Uhm, yeah! It was totally Nero who did it! Get him!"
This fits here.
I wouldn't say they're idiots. More like they're excessively polite when calm and considerate of others, as well as easily distracted. It IS a small-town community, after all. Everybody knows everybody and so also understand what everybody else goes through. If he'd tried talking them out of it from any perspective other than that things could have and probably would have gone very poorly for those two. But keeping a schedule for a busy life and not having time for much else? That's something that most people with Things To Do understand. I imagine it'd be similar to what you'd get if you tried to deal with a riot in Canada, but with more 'Sore-ees' being given as the mob dispersed.
8301820
And the Diplomat of the group gets a natural 20 while the mob rolls a 5 collectively.