Politics is a lovely business.
Clari’s heels clicked rapidly against the floor as she walked down the tiled hallway. In her arms were two folders, one rumpled and one pristine, both clutched tightly to her chest. She rounded a corner at speed, nearly taking out a poor pimply-faced and scraggle-bearded gnome who was pushing a mail cart.
“Sorry!” Clari called over her shoulder without slowing down. She heard muttering from the gnome behind her, but she didn't stop for that, either.
Ahead were Tallywaddle’s offices, featuring the only glass door in the entire facility. This door led to a small reception area, where the Chief’s administrative assistant Ninabella would stop anygnome who tried to violate the sanctity of the boss gnome’s private sanctum.
The middle-aged gnomette fixed her with a gimlet glare and her cold voice said, “What possible reason could you- Hey!” she shouted, as Clari simply ignored her and walked past her desk. She didn’t have time to deal with Nina, either.
“You can’t just—”
“Bup!” Clari said, raising a hand palm-out and placing it in front of the shocked assistant’s face. “No time!”
Ninabella, who was suddenly very conscious of exactly how much of her authority rested on every other gnome actually acknowledging that her authority actually existed, was only able to manage a weak-sounding “Hey, what?” as Clari marched past at full speed.
She threw the door open with gusto, causing the heavyset gnome inside to flinch. Tallywaddle, finding his sanctum suddenly violated, looked up with a mixture of startled fear and annoyance on his puffy features. After gaping incredulously for a moment, he managed to surge to his feet and bellow, “What is the meaning of this?!”
Clari was still riding the high from her success in dealing with the ever-unpleasant Ninabella and shoved her hand in her boss' shocked face.
“Bup!” Clari said. A moment later she had a sudden moment of clarity. The warm feeling of success faded away to the chill of impending doom as she slowly lowered her hand to reveal the volcanic features of the Chief’s face.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said quickly, before he could blow. “but this is an absolute emergency! I’ve discovered a violation of the CMAA’s primary charter! Someone’s been changing cutie marks!”
“Of all the nerve!” Tallywaddle shouted, now good and enraged. “For a low-ranking gnomette to just barge in here and start yelling at me about rules violations! You’re facing the sack, young lady, I can tell you that! Some nonsense about...”
The Chief blinked as what Clari had told him slowly sunk in. “Wait, what was that about violating our charter?”
~~*~~
“Hey, so, what happened?” Tinseltoes asked.
A low grunt was his only answer.
“You’re not in trouble, are you?”
This time, the answer he received came in the form of the other gnome gulping back half a glass of ginger ale in one go. The younger gnome watched his uncle drink, eyes wide.
“Golly,” he said, awestruck. A long moment passed as Glumm hacked and coughed, followed by the glass being put roughly back on the counter and the bartender being signalled for a refill. “Uh, don’t you think you’ve had enough, uncle?”
“Enough?” Glumm said, sounding confused. He repeated the word, this time sounding offended. “Enough?! Why, yes, my boy! I do think I’ve had enough! Not you,” he added to the bartender, who’d begun to turn away. “I haven’t had nearly enough of that.”
The bartender sighed and took the glass, refilling it and returning it to the slightly-wobbly gnome at the bar.
“Ten years I’ve sunk into this place, kid,” Glumm said. “Ten years, and I know the business as well as anygnome. You know what I did before this job?”
“No,” Tinseltoes said, though that was a complete lie. Some instinct told him that it was important to keep his uncle talking.
“I was a miner. For almost twenty years, I went down into the dark with a pickaxe and shovel, no light except what we brought with us. It was grueling, back-breaking work. And you know what I’ve learned, kid?”
Tinseltoes once again feigned ignorance.
“Mining is a much more difficult job than working for a gnome like Tallywaddle.” He slammed back another glass of ginger ale. “But not by nearly as much as it should be.”
The grizzled gnome stood woozily to his feet, only giving a peremptory curse and jerking his arm away when Tinseltoes grabbed hold of his elbow to help steady him.
“You going to be okay, Uncle?” Tinsel asked.
“Meh.” Glumm shook his head like a bear. “Bah!” he said. “Gotta use the gents.”
There was only so much assistance that Tinseltoes was willing to give to his inebriated uncle. He pointed him in the direction of the bathroom and gave him a gentle nudge.
“He’s your uncle, kid?” the bartender asked as Glumm tottered away. He was using a grubby cloth to spread the dirt around on an empty glass.
“Yeah,” Tinseltoes said. “Does he do this often?”
“Come in and drink? Sure.” The bar gnome shrugged. “This much drinking in a night? No.”
Tinseltoes absorbed that information. He chewed his lower lip, concerned. Things were rapidly getting out of hand, as far as he could see. The disaster out on the field, the presumed chewing-out that he’d gotten from the Chief... those were both things that could be survived. But if he let Glumm drink himself to death, the next family reunion would be all kinds of awkward.
Grandma would probably get involved, he realized with a shudder.
A minute later, Glumm staggered back out of the little gnome’s room, looking slightly better.
“So,” Tinsel ventured as delicately as possible, “do you think you’re going to lose your job?”
“It’s up to Gnome Resources, now,” he replied, swaying slightly as he resumed his seat. “For the moment, it’s the next best thing: Suspended without pay.”
The bartender, who’d done a very poor job of pretending not to eavesdrop, cleared his throat roughly. “Sooo,” he drawled. “You’ll be settling up your tab tonight, then?”
~~*~~
Chief Tallywaddle now knew exactly what it would feel like if his guts had suddenly all vanished only to be replaced by a large ball of sloshing ice water. That was precisely what looking at the two folders lying on his desk felt like.
“And you’re certain?” he asked.
“As I can be, sir,” Claribelle replied. “This rumpled one was wedged back behind the boxes. I think it got missed. But I believe there’s a whole box full of them. Why else would Tiddwiddle take off with the whole box?”
“And you have proof that it was him?”
“No, sir,” Clari said with a sigh. “But it’s pretty likely, all things considered. The evidence sure supports that conclusion. Tiddwiddle is the counselor assigned to Diamond Tiara’s case, and he was the one going through the stacks looking for a particular box. A box which, I would like to add, is now missing and most likely hidden in his office.”
“I see.”
Tallywaddle stood up and paced over to the CMAA flag hanging on his wall. Emotions boiled within him as he considered his next steps.
Regardless of how this played out, his life was about to get a lot more complicated. Tallywaddle didn’t like complicated. He was keenly aware of the gnomette behind him, though she was staying as still and quiet as she could.
Something would have to be done. Something bold. Something decisive. Something that would prevent Central Command from ever wondering if he actually knew what he was doing out here.
With a startling sense of clarity, the course of action he’d have to take laid itself out before him. He turned and offered a smile to the gnomette seated at his desk.
“Young... Claribelle, was it?” he asked. She nodded. “My dear, I have to thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for bringing this to me. You’re quite right, of course. This is a problem of simply enormous magnitude. I can only assure you that I will treat this with all due urgency.”
“Thank you, sir,” Claribelle said, standing as he approached. He escorted her out to the outer office and spoke with just the proper urgency to his Assistant, Ninabella.
“Nina, dear, could you please get a message to Tiddwiddle that I will see him in my office, immediately? He’s to drop whatever it is he’s working on and get here as fast as possible.”
Nina blinked in surprise and then nodded. She pressed a button on her desk, causing the PA system to click on.
“Counselor Tiddwiddle to the Chief’s office. Tiddwiddle to the Chief’s office for an urgent matter. Meaning now.”
“There,” he said to Claribelle. “I’ll take it from here. You said you work in the archives, correct?”
“Yes, sir,” Clari said, smiling.
“Well, I have to say, you’re doing a bang-up job, if you’re finding discrepancies like this! But I won’t keep you. I’m sure you have a lot more work to complete.”
Clari’s smile faded slightly. “Um. Yes sir, but... I was hoping I could...”
“Now, Claribelle,” Tallywaddle said, putting a paternal hand on her shoulder. “You’ve done well in bringing this to me, and I truly appreciate it. However, what will happen next is between the Counselor and myself. Disciplinary action like this is supposed to be kept private.”
“Oh... Yes. Of course.”
“You’ll be down in the Archives if I need you, yes?” Tallywaddle smiled at her again, putting just a small amount of pain into it to show that he was contemplating something unpleasant. “I’d like to know where to find you, just in case I need you to repeat any of your testimony here.”
“Oh! Yes, sir!” Clari’s smile recovered and once again beamed out of her eager face. “Here, sir,” she said, holding out a clipboard.
“Er. What’s this?” Tally took the board with with all the enthusiasm he’d have had in picking up a dead minnow.
“A receipt, sir. A new policy I’ve implemented, as head of the Archives. Whenever a file is removed, it has to be signed for by the one taking it.” There was a moment of leaden silence, after which Clari added, “It’s to stop further discrepancies, sir.”
“Ah. I see.” With a quick flick of his wrist, he signed the form on the clipboard. Clari took out the yellow copy from the middle and handed it to him.
“Thank you, sir!” Clari chirped, tucking the clipboard under her arm.
“You’re quite welcome, my dear. And, once again, I thank you for bringing this matter to my attention.”
He watched with a fond smile as the gnomette left his reception room. Then he nodded to Nina, walked back into his office and shut the door. As soon as the door clicked shut, his shoulders slumped and the smile fell from his face.
Rule of Effective Gnome Management #19: The warm, loving grandpa routine. It had served him well once again.
His face now set into grim lines, the Chief walked around his desk and sat down with a sigh. He leaned forward, opening the rumpled folder and flipping through a few pages. He closed it, lifted the folder and, without any ceremony whatsoever, calmly dumped the entire thing into his waste basket.
That done, he set his elbows on the desk, pressed his fingers together between his second and third chins and waited for his misbehaving Counselor to arrive. They had a lot to discuss.
Stats
Page generated in 0.018 seconds
Total duration
652 users online
909,407 hits today, 2,054,621 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
4061849
I would have wated two more days just to be that guy.
Do the gnomes have advanced magical tools like photocopiers or scanners?
Dear god, I thought that, if this wasn't dead, it was certainly on life support. I gotta say, I'm happy it pulled a Lazarus
This fanfic is delightful.
That's great, Clari just made herself a target. It's rather unfortunate she told nobody else, it makes the antagonist 's job that much easier to clean up...
Suspended without pay sucks, and we doubt he has enough applicable transferable talents to change fields now. Not even if he tried to go back to mining... Such a conundrum.
Keep going! ;)
Oh, this cannot be good...
In any case, great to see this update. Eagerly looking forward to more.
Here's hoping that Clari made some duplicates of the proof and stored it carefully.
4070206
Wait, wait. We've come upon a story that Alondro likes?
4073618 I like well-written stories is all.
Unfortunately, 'well-written' in a description that cannot usually be applied to fanfiction in general.
Pony has had a higher percentage than the usual fanfiction, most genres of which I refuse to read at all since 99.999999999999999999999999999% are dreadful.
Pony has a full 0.1% good!
Conceptually interesting, if perhaps a little too heavy on the gnomes and too light on the ponies. As entertaining as bureaucracy can be (said mostly honestly), I usually expect more ponies in a pony fanfics.
4217249
Plenty of opportunity for ponies to shine in this story yet. Just wait until Apple Bloom breaks the 3000 year old record and figures out that gnomes are firing cutie marks at ponies' butts. She puts 2 and 2 together after what happened to <tragic other CMC member who may or may not be a dentist> and is now on the run from the law, dodging spies, royal guards and angry gnomes who need only a good shot at her flank to end it all. Suddenly Daring Do! Explosions! Manitcores! Space marines! AAAAAA
Just a little more paperwork, don't worry. Surely just a couple more forms in triplicate, and then we can get to the action adventure. Yup, aaaany minute now.
Me wonders if Tally is secretly involved in this and just hides it very well...
4217249 What if the whole point of the story IS to focus on the gnomes?
"But if he let Glumm drink himself to death, the next family reunion would be all kinds of awkward.
Grandma would probably get involved, he realized with a shudder."
Gotta love the international Fear of Grandma clause.
Hmm, I'm starting to sense that Tally might not just be a lazy administrator out to avoid trouble, but perhaps is almost a Mr. Watternoose-esque being. We shall see if I am right or assuming too close a comparison to a Pixar movie.
The plot thickens! Just how corrupt is the government?!