Earning Freedom

by Daxisle

Lance

Lance

A week had passed since Sin's ordered stay in Ponyville, and though it caused no small amount of lecturing from Twilight, he found a new way to earn money every day that he was stuck in the town.

His little partnership with the Pegasi didn't last long. The day after he'd helped them, he noticed a few suspicious ponies eyeing the pair and their freight. Eyes that were devoid of emotion and looked on with a blankness and emptiness that rivaled his own.

Royal Guards.

He knew a bust when he saw one and tried to warn the mares about the possibility of them being watched. They dismissed his claims as paranoia and asked him if he was willing to help them again. Though he declined, good thing too as the two were later seen arrested and taken to jail.

Sin had a bit of compulsion to fall back into his ways of freeing those he believe wrongly imprisoned, but he was trapped in Ponyville now. If he did help them escape, it wouldn't be long until word reached Twilight, Uppity and eventually Celestia. In terms of interest, his peace of mind superseded their freedom.

Besides, he warned them, not his fault they were too stupid to heed his words.

He did find work in the legal market at a saw mill, but that may have been short lived.

His current job was... complicated to determine

---

It all started he was walking through Ponyville on his lunch break. Nice spring day, sun was shining and he ate one of his favorite foods in the world. Potatoes.

His interest was caught by the town's Mayor Mare, (He still couldn't believe someone named their child that) she was in a confrontation with a group of burocrats about the budget outside the Town Hall. Apparently she walked out to get away from them, but they persisted, demanding raises in their pay for the long hours of paper work they were forced to indulge.

She tried reasoning with them, claiming that the majority of the paper work was a direct result of their growing regulations.

That's when Sin decided to listen a bit closer to the conversation, growing regulations were almost never good. And as he listened, he felt a growing swish of anger and confusion. The entire ordeal, the angry bickering and harassment was all over regulations of tulip sales on Tuesdays.

No shit, there were regulations about a flower being sold on a certain day of the week... He knew Ponyville didn't have many problems, but seriously? Was there really nothing better to do?

The meeting had concluded with the three mares demanding a higher pay rate or they'd quit their jobs and leave the mayor to run Ponyville by herself.

Once departed, Sin approached the downtrodden mare and greeted her with a sympathetic smile. One week had worked wonders on his social skills, he still wasn't the greatest conversationalist, but he'd improved enough to not put everyone he met on edge.

The brown and grey earth pony returned the introduction with a sad smile, mentioning how she remembered him from the first time they'd met.

The two chatted for a bit, the topic starting on the rudeness of her subordinates to inquiring about the reason for their disrespect and threats. Sin was both genuinely curious to see the budget and regulations, as well as the pay those three were getting for the work they did.

"I used to be a Senator back in my country, so I know a thing or two about-"

"You were a politician? Well why didn't you say so? Please come with me." She declared giddily, grabbing him by the foreleg and dragging him along. Within seconds, Sin found himself sitting in front of the desk of one of the strongest mares he'd ever met. Another second passed and he was offered a nicely sized manila booklet titled "Ponyville Budget & Regulations of 1233."

"I've been getting so many complaints from ponies about what those three are doing to the system. Especially Colgate and her attempts to make candy buying age restricted. I've tried to go through this a hundred times, but I can't make heads or tails of it all."

Sin eyed the mayor for a moment than turned his attention to the booklet. He carefully opened it and found the tired legal jargin he expected. It wasn't that the the elder mare was stupid, this kind of legalese was practically a second language to anyone who wasn't well versed in it. Especially the bits that set the reader into a loop of reading specific subsections on other pages only to be directed to even more subsections on matters completely unrelated to the topic.

Luckily for her, he was trained in such an art and slowly began the rusty practice of what he called "tracking translations". For the next few hours, he read through the book and wrote down what best he could in laypony terms what the laws were, though some words just couldn't be dumbed down. As he got back into the swing of it, he figured out what was being said without having to go through every provision and subsection. He'd figured out the trend and was beside himself at inefficiency of it all.

He'd spelled out twenty budget synopsis clauses and began reading them allowed. Though, with his old habit of reading law kicking back into effect, so too did his old habit of criticizing it and crossing off provisions he deemed unnecessary.

"The grass of The Ponyville Town Park will be trimmed three times a week? Yea, no. Drop that down to one, no reason to trim the grass three times a freaking week." He mumbled, crossing it off and wrote in his preference. "Double and a half pay for all imperial workers with over 30 hours of weekly service. Okay, who's stupid idea was that? That's gone." Another cross.

He sighed, daring to look at the next of his entries. "All bushels that lay within Proudhon street shall be trimmed- are you freaking kidding me?" He barked. "What is so special about Proudhon Street?"

The mayor grabbed at her collar and smiled nervously. "Umm, the street where the more well off ponies live?"

Sin glared at Mayor Mare, there was stupid, and there there was special, and boy was he having a hell of a time not saying it to her face. "Oh hell the fuck no." He crossed it off, his quill stroke much more brutal than the ones before. He didn't like when the rich tried to use public funds for their own benefit. Matter of fact, some would call it his greatest pet peeve. "They can pay for that shit out of their own pockets."

As he continued to read through the budget and regulations, Sin's quill moved with a growing ferocity. A few of his strokes cutting through the paper, though one of those was intentional, and one causing him to break the quill and be in need of a second. Spending 600 bits yearly to pay an inspector to ensure flower shops weren't selling tulips on Tuesdays, was that a joke or was the author just trying to piss him off?

Finally, he'd finished his last slash through the paper, double checked the numbers from the book and calculated what he'd deducted from the budget, totaling over seven thousand bits.

Sin slowly closed the book and handed his mangled parchment to her for inspection before leaning against the foreleg rest of the chair and placing his head into his hooves. It was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever read or criticized. These a-holes were literally just looking for something to spend money on.

Steadying himself, the Federalist pony removed his goggles and looked directly into the mayor's eyes. "Madam, I'm going to be frank with you. This is the biggest joke of a budget I have ever seen in my life." He picked up the booklet and threw it into the trash, much to the politician's chagrin. "I don't know how you managed to let these things slide under your watch, but it's no wonder why you get so many complaints. You're allowance of such inefficient and ridiculous usage of public funds is utterly appalling and I'm surprised nobody's come into beat the crap out of you for it."

Mayor Mare didn't take kindly to his words. "How dare you?" She cried in indignation, retrieving the book and replacing it on the desk.

"How dare I? Have you seen this excuse of an economic train wreck?" He pushed open the book again and read the finalization index aloud in a voice that commanded attention and respect. "Three thousand bits for a weekly polish of the Canterlot memorial statue. Twelve thousand bits for annual maternity leave, ten thousand bits for City Hall maintenance. What does this place need ten thousand bits of yearly maintenance for? And to top it all off," he slammed his hoof onto the the very end of the book, a larger printed number who's very existence sent the stallion seething, "you're in debt!"

And that was what landed him in his current predicimate. Mayor Mare didn't take too kindly to his attitude and anger over the use of the taxes. Stating she'd made it clear that she wasn't the one who'd created the laws, but Sin knew that the laws required her executive affirmation in order to pass.

That lead to a shouting match between the two and then there were guards, restraining orders threatened, requests to end resistance, and finally the stallion was now in the Golden Oaks Library, waiting for Uppity to come and "council" him on what the mayor called his "anger issues."

It was a pretty good day, all things considered.

He didn't have anger issues, anger issues implied that one became enraged or overreacted to trivial matters that didn't warrant it. And with that obscene waste of money that the mare called a budget that had the displeasure of tainting his mind, how anyone could call his response an "overreaction" was beyond him.

After a few hours of silent waiting, Uppity finally made it to the library. She was greeted by Twilight and offered a cup tea, which the eccentric mare gratefully accepted.

"Thank you, the train ride out her is always hard on my neck." She commented before looking to find her charge sitting on the couch. "You couldn't make it a week, could you?"

"Hey, you weren't there. You didn't see the abomination that I did." Sin said defensively, still worked up over the numbers more so than the shouting match.

Twilight and Uppity slowly made their way to the coffee table, offering Sin his own cup which he refused with a grunt. Once settled in and all pleasantries out of the way, Uppity spoke. "Sin, it doesn't matter how bad the budget was, you're not supposed to yell at ponies."

'FUCK YOU! What the fuck do you know? Huh? Did you see it? Do you have any idea the waste? The stupidity? The idiocy? If you saw it, you'd be right there with us you bitch!'

Calmly, the stallion argued his case, stating that the mayor couldn't even understand the legislation that she was signing into law. Such gross negligence and political irresponsibility deserved far more than the tongue lashing he'd given her.

"Be that as it may." She lifted her hooves in an attempt to calm him, apparently he wasn't speaking as calmly as he intended. "It's not an excuse to start shouting matches and make threats."

"Threats?" He asked sarcastically. "What? About the ponies coming in and beating the crap out of her? That wasn't a threat, that was me being legitimately amazed that she was able to survive without a feeding tube jammed down her throat."

Uppity pressed her lips and placed her hooves together in front of her muzzle in contemplation. Sin knew what she wanted to hear and that was that what he did was unacceptable. He finally started to calm himself down, finding it in his better interests to just say what DA wanted to hear and move on with his life.

"Alright, fine. I was in the wrong for yelling at her, and it wont happen again." He deadpanned, hoping that would appease her.

"I think you're just saying that because it's what I want to hear." She chirped before closing her eyes in thought.

"Yep."

"Hmmm Twilight? Could you give us some privacy for a moment, please?" The unicorn nodded and wondered upstairs to check on Spike. "Sin, I've never seen you this animated before. Typically you're set at a low simmer of anger, but now, it's like someone turned the heat on the stove up to ten. Why is that?"

"Why? Because I despise wasteful spending on the tax payer's dime. That's why." The orange mare pressed her lips, silently thankful that he hadn't seen the national budget. "Six-hundred bits, Uppity. Six hundred bits a year to make sure certain flowers weren't being sold on Tuesdays! Six-hundred bits! Have you ever heard of anything so reduculous!?"

To that the mare tilted her head, she wasn't sure what to make of the claim but did comment on how silly the idea sounded. Still though, it wasn't really her place to say anything one way or the other.

"Figures you'd say that." The oaken stallion moaned, rubbing a hoof into his head.

"You really care about that, don't you?"

"Well, yea. When I was in the Senate, I was the reason we almost did away with the country's deficit spending. The tax payer doesn't have a say on if they do or don't want to pay the money, it's all up to the politicians and the force that obeys them and enforces their rule. The least that we can do is use the money efficiently."

"We?"

Tensing at the word, the stallion retraced his previous comment. He just counted himself as part of a government. Well, he was part of it a while ago, and with everything he was doing, it should be no surprise he'd get back into the mindset.

Uppity on the otherhand was silently cheering inside. She knew the stallion had potential but never quite knew how to channel it in a positive way. Now the answer was dropped into her lap, wrapped up like a present. "Since you seem so adamant about this matter, I'll investigate it for myself. Under one condition, you must promise that you will never yell at anypony ever again over questionable uses of tax payer bits. I want your word on that."

"You have my word that I will... try." He paused thinking of what else to say. No, no that was about as good as he could put it.

Sighing and figuring that was the best she'd get, the orange mare decided a change of subject was in order and inquired about his acclimation to Ponyville society, since her order of bed rest was obviously ignored.

"Yea, it's been fine I suppose."

"Make any friends, yet? Twilight's sent some reports that you've had a hard time finding a job."

That wasn't true, he didn't have a hard time finding a job, just the first two days was all. His employment as a mill worker showed promise, it was where all the introverts went to work. Well, it would have showed promise, but not returning from a lunch break might have just destroyed that opportunity.

He also denied any acquisition of friends. Uppity didn't need to read Twilight's daily reports to figure that out. According to her reports, all he did was work, come back to the library, eat, read and sleep. Never starting a conversation unless there was a question to be asked, and typically spent his off time in the back of the library, leaving if one of her friends came over for a visit.

"You need to go out and do something fun." She stated encouragingly. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull colt."

Though Sin's definition of "fun" probably didn't line up with hers. Ripping up the budget? That was the most fun he had in months, even if it was a headache. Finding fault with the government of any kind was about as fun as he got, and he was proud of that.

"I'm talking about hanging out with friends and doing stuff together." Oh, right then. "Have you talked to Big Mac lately? Or your friend Shade?"

No, no he hadn't, maybe he should pay Mac a visit. One week was more than enough time to cool down, and he wanted to see how Applejack was doing. Shade on the other hand, he wanted no part of. The stallion had become a dirty hippy, and he hated dirty hippies.

"I have a suggestion, how about you and I go get some coffee?" Uppity asked, fidgeting with her hooves.

Well that came right out of no where, but he agreed. Sin was getting pretty tired of staying in the Library so long and could use some time away from his thoughts.

Author's Note:

Heavy exposition!

Comments are always appreciated.

Comments

[Godiswithus3]

Welllll......This was a fun and informative chapter. The things written in the budget are pretty close to reality unfortunately, which was why I was cheering for Sin in the shouting match. Typical politicians, never learning to take criticisms. Sin and I have the same weakness. We are both too blunt.