Introduction
There are those of us who are special. Who excel at something. Who make a difference. And then there are those of us who are not. Those of us who go through school with average grades, few friends, and no particularly special talents. There are those of us who go through their entire lives wishing, dreaming, hoping to do something wonderful, but they just can't.
You wanna know something funny? I used to believe that when I got my cutie mark, it would be something wonderful. Something to do with creating. An artist or writer or something special. But it wasn't. It was a recycling symbol. A goddess-damned recycling symbol. I got it when I saw my entire block littered with trash, and I cleaned it. No special story. No sonic rain-boom. I just realized that cleaning was something I was actually pretty good at, and it appeared. At first I was ecstatic. But then I realized something. I had just chosen my destiny, and it was to clean up trash. The entire reason for my existence was to properly dispose of the Sparkle-Cola bottle somepony had been too lazy to recycle or throw away themselves. I didn't go home that day. I cried in my little spot in a forgotten alleyway of Manehattan. I wish I could have said that my parents looked for me, their only son, but they didn't. I don't think they even noticed. I was gone for two whole days and my dad was just sitting there watching television while my mom was at “a friends playing poker” as if we didn't know. I tried to hide it at school, but they saw it eventually. I had had few friends to begin with, and that number slowly dwindled to one as I got into my junior year of high school.
And then he died. Apparently from a manticore attack. His name was Dawn Scar. He really was special. He was a golden color with a long dark red mane. A rather startling contrast. But you got used to it. He was an artist, and his cutie mark was a paintbrush and an easel. They found an unfinished painting next to his mutilated corpse.
And then high school was over, and I got assigned my job. A street cleaner. I reported to the cleaning headquarters of the city (a rather depressing place with a tired looking elderly unicorn in charge) and they gave me section 42 of the city to clean. It was my section, and I was to clean it for the rest of my life.
And this is where I will start my story.
