A Wrench in the Machine
----
The gray pegasus pony grumbled sleepily as he slowly emerged from his relatively small house in the bustling burg of Cloudsdale that Saturday morning. His dark coat, contrasting so greatly with the blue and white of the cloudy city he called home, truly matched his mood that morning, in the most stereotypical way imaginable. He yawned and blew his unruly spiked hair out of his face and began to trot down the street.
"Hey, Silver!" a voice called out from somewhere above his head.
Silverbolt tilted his head up and sighed, "Hello, Squall," he managed, forcing a sort of half smile onto his face as he did so.
The pony called "Squall" touched down next to him and began to trot alongside him in near perfect rhythm. He smiled widely at Silverbolt for a moment, before noticing the strained look on his face. "Rough night?" he asked, already knowing the answer.
"Is it that obvious?" Silverbolt asked, blowing his stupid mane out of his face again. "Truth be told, I didn't get to sleep until like... somewhere around eh, four in the morning or so?"
"Dang, dude. No wonder you've got bags under your eyes bigger than my sister's purse. You're obviously going to work today, so why'd you stay up so late?"
"I dunno, Squall, maybe I just felt like challenging myself today. I got home and went, 'Y'know what would be fun, Silverbolt? If we just stayed up until four o'clock in the morning to see how much work we can get done on three hours of sleep! Doesn't that sound like one heck of a heap of a grand ol' time!?'" Silver shot back, going on one of his usual sarcastic tangents.
"Pfft, ahaha, oh man, you're in one of your moods again, huh?" Squall half-asked, half stated as he laughed a little at his friend's pain. "Wow, you're gonna be just the brightest little ray of sunshine over at the office, aren't you?"
"I'm sure I will be," Silver said, sighing dramatically.
The two pegasi fell into a comfortable silence afterwards, simply trotting along at a reasonable pace towards their destination. The building came up on them before long, however, and they parted ways with a pair of simplistic farewells. Silverbolt sighed once again and walked in through the twin front doors of his workplace: The Cloudsdale Central Post Office.
Or he would have, had one of them not opened at an alarming speed and smacked him square in the face just as he was about to grab one of the handles.
He fell to the ground, clutching at his throbbing muzzle with his hooves, writhing sporadically on the cloudy surface of the floor below. "Ow, ow, owww!" he shouted, not really able to do anything else at the time.
"Ooohhh, sorry about that, buddy!" a feminine voice called out to him. "I didn't see you there."
"Oh yeah, because a gray and bright yellow pony is sooooo hard to spot in the middle of an oh-so-crowded Cloudsdale street, right?" Silverbolt mumbled sarcastically, pushing himself up on all fours before continuing to rub his pained muzzle. "Ow, shoot. Am I bleeding?" he asked, looking up at the other pony.
The cyan-blue pegasus female gently placed a hoof on his muzzle and examined it for a few moments. "Nah," she said, releasing Silver's face just as he started feeling a little bit awkward. "You're fine. I mean, it's a little red, maybe kinda swollen, but there's no cut or anything. Just try not to walk into any more doors, alright?"
"Oh yeah, because I was actively trying to do that," Silver stated in his most deadpanned of tones. "Smacking my face into doors is one of my favorite hobbies. Thanks for the checkup, though, I'm glad it's not too bad. Sorry about bothering you," he said as he stepped aside to let the lady through.
She chuckled and flipped her technicolor mane. "Nah, I'm sorry for hitting you with a pane of glass. But uh, word of advice there, Second Place:" she said, winking at him. "Try to be less sarcastic when you try to talk to girls from now on, alright?"
"I highly doubt that's going to happen anytime soon. And what's that supposed to mean, 'Second Place?'"
"Silver Medals are for second place. You're gray and stuff, and I don't know your name. Eh, it seemed a bit more clever at the time, not gonna lie," she said, finishing a little lamely. "What is your name, anyway? I don't think I've seen you around here before."
"I could say the same to you. My name's Silverbolt. What's yours?"
"I guess you could, huh? My name's Rainbow Dash. But you can just call me 'The Best Flier in all of Equestria!'"
"I'll stick with 'Dash' or something, thanks," Silverbolt replied, rolling his eyes. "Nice to meet you, I guess."
"You guess? Oh come on, you're meeting a celebrity here, you could at least act like you're a little more excited!" Rainbow Dash said, almost pouting.
Silver raised an eyebrow at her in disbelief. "A celebrity, huh? You? Forgive me, Dash, but what exactly is it that you're famous for?"
"Oh, nothing really, I just performed the Sonic Rainbom, won The Clousdale Best Young Fliers' Competition, was a part of The Royal Wedding of Shining Armor and Princess Cadence, and I'm also a personal friend of our newly christened Princess, Twilight Sparkle! So yeah, pretty much nothing at all."
"... Oh," Silver said, his mouth beginning to hang open a little. Suddenly the name and mane and everything started to ring a variety of different bells in his mind. "Oh! I actually remember you now! Hahah, oh man, I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you at all at first."
"Haha, I get that a lot, actually," she said, shrugging. "I actually get stuff along the lines of 'I've never heard of you!' a lot more often, though. It's kind of lame."
"I bet it is. Anyway, I should get going. I work here, after all."
"Oh, alright. I should split too, my friend's waiting for me back at the Cloudiseum. She's probably already getting nervous, being over there all by herself. Maybe I'll see you some other time, Silverbolt," she said, hopping off the ground and beginning to flap her wings.
"Same to you, Rainbow Dash," Silver replied, smiling a little (twitching slightly at the pain in his muzzle). "Later!" he called as he turned and walked into the office. He trotted over to the front desk, his bad mood from earlier in the morning slowly fading away into relative nothingness. He smiled as he waved to the receptionist behind the counter.
"Hello. Good morning to you, Silverbolt. You're just barely in time for your shift," she said, giving him a small wave in return. "Now I'll just need to see your employee identification card and you'll be all set to go."
Silverbolt nodded and turned to get his card out of his saddlebags, but noticed that there was one little problem. He wasn't wearing his saddlebags. The ones with his I.D. card in them. He had probably left them at home in his groggy haste to get out of the house earlier. He stood in a paralyzed daze for a few seconds before he slowly turned back toward the receptionist, who was giving him a stern yet sympathetic look.
"Forgot it back at home?"
"Yeah."
"Rough night last night?"
"Yeah."
"Half awake when you left to show up on time, not thinking about any potential consequences of doing that, huh?"
"... Yeah."
The receptionist sighed and shook her head. "I'm sorry, Silverbolt, but I can't allow you to start your shift without that card, and you can't exactly make an excuse such as 'I'm sick' or anything, as you look plenty healthy to both me and the security cameras. I'm afraid you'll have to go back home, get the card, and get back here as soon as possible."
Silverbolt sighed and hit his head on the receptionist's desk in despair. "O-okay," he agreed, sounding about as "okay" as a pony hospitalized for getting in a brawl with a bear.
"By the way, Silverbolt... what happened to your muzzle?"
"It's a long story," Silver said, turning to head back out the front door. "I'll be back as soon as I can be."
"Good luck!" the receptionist called out to him as he left the building. "You're probably going to need it!"
----
Silverbolt re-emerged from his humble abode a very exasperated little quadruped. He had just spent about fifteen minutes or so hunting for his saddlebags and his employee I.D. card after enduring the return trip from the Central Post Office to his residential area. The bags under his eyes were only growing in size and darkening in color to match his ever-fouling mood, and his bi-colored wings were so tired that they hung limply at his sides. He sighed and looked up into the sky, hoping that there was no possible way that this day could get any worse.
He was met by a flash of light and a resounding boom, closely followed by the smell of singed hair. Just as soon after that, he was greeted by a fresh downpour of rainwater intense enough to instantly flatten his large and poofy spiked mane, sticking it to his head.
He silently cursed whatever being decided to pick him to test out their almighty powers on and looked up to find the source of the lightning and rain. He was greeted by the blushing and smiling face of another gray pony with golden eyes, though hers were a little more skewed than his own.
"S-Sorry about all of that!" she stammered out, quickly trying to re-style Silverbolt's mane. "I kind of lost that cloud an hour ago, and when I found it, I accidentally sort of, ahaha, kicked it too hard? Ahahahah, yeah, so, um... yeah," she concluded, laughing nervously.
Silverbolt spit a large volume of rainwater out onto the ground below and shrugged. "It's fine. The way this day's been going I was honestly half-expecting something like this to happen to me at some point."
The cloud-wrangler sighed and looked at Silverbolt sadly. "I'm sorry," she said, obviously not really knowing what else to say.
Silverbolt laughed a little, coughing out some smoke in the process. "Really, it's fine. You're uh, Ditzy, right? Something like that? Ditzy Doo, I believe it was?"
She nodded. "Yeah, that's me. How did you know?"
"You work at the C.C.P.O., like I do. You're like, the premier delivery pony over there. Famous for always getting your delivery to its recipient, even though your sense of direction can be a little bit... wonky, from time to time."
"Heheh. Wonky," she said, giggling a little. "Oh! Speaking of deliveries, I should get this cloud over to the Weather Factory before I end up being late! Nice meeting you, uhm..."
"Silverbolt. Get a move on, before the Weather Nuts get you in trouble," Silver said, nodding at Ditzy and smiling. As he watched her fly away, he suddenly realized that he had his own job to get to. Unfortunately, unlike Ditzy Doo, he was most likely not going to be there on time at this point.
----
"I'm... here!" Silverbolt called, bursting in through the front door of the C.C.P.O, panting heavily. "I got here as... fast as I... could! I got my card and I'm... ready to work!"
The receptionist shook her head slowly, but smiled. "Impressive determination, Silverbolt. You obviously didn't get any of that luck you needed, though. How unfortunate. Now, let's see that all-important employee identification card, shall we?"
Silverbolt nodded and reached for his I.D. card, pulled it out, and grinned widely at the receptionist, clamping the card in his mouth.
"Uh, Silverbolt. What am I looking at, exactly?" asked the receptionist, quirking an eyebrow at the silver pegasus.
"My I.D. card," Silverbolt mumbled through his clenched teeth. "It's right here."
"That is a charred piece of paper, Silverbolt."
Silverbolt took the once-important paper out of his mouth and confirmed that it was indeed burnt to an absolute crisp. His heart sank. "But it was... when I got it from... I don't know what..."
"Well, I don't know what happened, but I guess you'll just have to get a new identification card from the desk over there," the receptionist said, genuine sympathy apparent on her face.
"I can just... get a new card?" Silverbolt asked weakly. "Then why did... why did I...?"
"You can only get a new card if your previous card has been damaged beyond repair. And er, well, I don't exactly think you'll be able to repair that card anytime soon."
As if on cue, the charred I.D. card crumbled away into microscopic ashes and was scattered into the wind that may or may not have actually even been there..
"I'm sure they'll provide you with a new card right away," the receptionist said, smiling pitifully at the broken pegasus standing before her, "and maybe you should keep this one away from any sort of, well, open flame."
"It was a lightning bolt, actually," Silverbolt said, his voice hollow and emotionless. "But I'll make sure to keep that in mind. Thank you for your time."
"I... am so sorry, Silverbolt. I truly, really am."
"Me too," Silverbolt said, sighing dramatically for the umpteenth time that day. "Me too."
