All in the Name of... Tickets!

Part Two

All in the Name of... Tickets!

***

Day One

“Tit-a-ring, tit-a-ring, tit-a-ring, tit-a-ring!”

The sound of Rainbow Dash’s little key wound clock wakes her up at the joyful time of 3:00 a.m. While her shift as a “Mail Carrier / Weather Pony” starts in an hour, Dash is already groggy from hearing her alarm clock’s ringing. Slapping it, she soon attempts to fight her way out of bed. However the fighting results in Rainbow Dash falling off and hitting her head on the floor, with the covers draping her in defeat.

“Unnnnhhhhhh,” Rainbow Dash groans as she removes the covers from her face.

Fixing herself upright and grabbing the clock, Rainbow Dash reads “3:03 a.m.” and realizes that she now has less than an hour to be prepared for work. Placing the clock back on her cabinet, Rainbow Dash lightly stomps into the bathroom and reflects upon herself in the mirror. Reflecting back was a blue mare with sagged eyes and a sloppy mane.

“I hate mornings, why are they so evil?” Rainbow Dash remarks upon herself.

Rubbing off the dry rheum in her eyes, Rainbow Dash brushes her mane, fur, and tail. Then after scrubbing her teeth and applying some deodorant underneath her flanks, Rainbow Dash tried to smile at the mirror, but her depression still hung over her as she slumps her shoulders and frowns.

Re-entering the bedroom with her head held low, Rainbow Dash flops on her bed and looks up at the roof. She quietly doses into a snooze. Upon waking up, Rainbow Dash panics at the thought of not knowing what the time is. Staring straight at the clock, she reads “3:45 a.m.”

“I’m going to be late!” Rainbow Dash shouts as she unfolds her wings.

Soaring out her bedroom window, Rainbow Dash increases her altitude to a level above the skyline of Ponyville. From her perspective, she could see the entire town as she franticly searches for the Post Office. Spotting it, Rainbow Dash free falls into a searing nose dive while driving her body towards the front of the half-timbered building. She forms a Mach cone in the process.

As Rainbow Dash approaches ground level, she pulls herself out of free fall and spreads her wings wide, causing herself to rapidly decelerate. She lands safely and rushes to the front doors. Yanking them with force, Rainbow discovers that they’re locked. As she goes to bang her hoofs on the doors in frustration, they open up and Rainbow Dash’s momentum causes her to plunge forward and face plant the floor.

Standing over her, Crafty Crate hesitantly asks, “Umm… Are you ok?”

Muffled by the floor, Dash responds with haste, “I’m fine, but what time is it?”

“The time is 3:50,” Crafty answers, “You’re early Rainbow Dash.”

She sighed, “Yay,” putting her hoof up in triumph.

“Yeah, well bub,” shacking her hoof, “You know what the ponies say! The early bird catches the worm.”

“Yeah,” Dash responds with an unenthusiastic tone.

Crafty laughs, “Ha, ha, ha… Yeah, indeed. Whelp, since I guess you’re here. Let’s go ahead and get you started. So pick yourself up when you’re ready and follow me.”

“Ok,” Rainbow Dash sobs as she gets up.

Heading behind the front counter and into a gargantuan warehouse, Rainbow Dash and Crafty Crate bypass rows of alphabetically and numerically sorted mail. Walking into an employee crew room, Rainbow Dash is greeted by her new co-workers in their uniforms. Meanwhile, Crafty positions himself in the front of the room to announce his morning monologue.

“Attention every pony!” shouted Crafty as the crew turned their heads towards him, “As your manager, I want to start off by introducing Rainbow Dash to our team…”

The whole group barrages Rainbow Dash with “welcomes” and handshakes.

“…and to tell you guys that she will be paired up with Derpy Hooves…”

“Woo-Hoo! Alright!” exclaimed Derpy while Rainbow Dash’s face turned pale.

She thought to herself, “You have got to be kidding me,” as she looked over to see Derpy waving at her. Dash waves back with an agitated smile.

“…and our Crew Trainer Stamps.”

Rainbow Dash thinks to herself, “Stamps? Who’s Stamps?”

She then gets a nudge on her left shoulder. Looking to see who touched her, she recognizes the tan pegasus standing next to her. Turns out, it was the same one that she crashed into a few days ago.

“Oh, that’s Stamps,” Rainbow concludes.

Meanwhile, Crafty continues talking, “Also, I want to remind you all to make sure that you complete your mail rounds on time! Why?” a moment of silence goes by, “Because the management is starting to crack down on mail ponies not finishing their runs within their respective shift times…”

The entire crew is surprised by this fact as they pan their eyes on other crew members, suspecting one of them to be guilty of doing so.

In the meantime, Crafty adds in motivation to finish his speech, “…While I am not concerned with you guys doing this, since we have been fantastic on our times, it still doesn’t give us a reason to slack off. So do your jobs and I promise you there will be no write ups!”

“Yes sir!” the crew shouts.

“And Rainbow Dash! Follow me.”

“Yes sir!” she yells while following Crafty out of the room.

Passing by a locker room, they entered a small study room with a single wooden table setup on one side of the white walls. Rainbow Dash sits down at the table and Crafty slams a thick book in front of her face entitled How to be a Mail Pony… A Basic Guide for New Equestrian Mail Employees. Rainbow Dash is astonished by the size of the book as she opens it up to the index.

“Now Rainbow Dash,” Crafty explains, “As our new employee, your first day will be devoted to reading this book entirely.”

“Really? That’s it? All fifty-four pages?”

“Well,” Crafty adds, “That and I will be coming in and out with stuff you need to fill out.”

Dash nods, “Oh, well ok,” thinking to herself, “Well, this book could be as exciting as reading a Daring Do novel. Right?”

She was wrong.

It took Rainbow Dash less than two pages for her to realize the book’s incredible lack of devotion towards all things centering on the word “Fun.” Refusing to read it, she wasted eight hours doing nothing except signing legal paperwork when it was presented to her. Eventually, Rainbow Dash survived her hours in Hell, with a book she assumed was written by Herpony Melville, and was thankful she took the day off from being a weather pony to help serve her “Day One” as a mail mare.

Leaving the small room, Rainbow Dash rejoiced, “Well, at least I won’t have to do that again! See you tomorrow Crafty and the crew!”

She heads out the back door of the Post Office and returns home.

***

Day Two

As the crew room’s clock reads "3:50 a.m," Rainbow Dash is found sitting by her locker wearing her new watch she bought yesterday. Today is “Day Two” and she’s ready to help deliver mail with Stamps and Derpy. As the clock turns to "3:55 a.m," she sees Crafty Crate walk in with his clipboard and typical morning grief. He then proceeds with his announcements while wishing Rainbow Dash luck on her first outing.

“Thanks,” she replies, “Although I’m kinda nervous.”

“Well don’t be,” Crafty responds, “You’ll have Stamps and Derpy to help you out.”

“Yeah Rainbow Dash! It will be fun!” cheered Derpy.

Still having doubt about working with her again, Rainbow Dash is hesitant with her speech. “I sure hope so,” she replies.

“Well fantastic!” Crafty yells, “Now let’s get out there ponies! You all have eight hours left and I don’t want to keep you waiting!”

“Yes sir!” everyone shouts.

Grabbing the mail bags out of their lockers, Rainbow Dash immediately feels the weight of hers as she slugs it on her back. Adjusting posture as she walks, Rainbow Dash follows Stamps and Derpy out of the crew room and through the back door. Once outside, they all takeoff in route towards their mail zone while Stamps explains to Rainbow Dash how to correctly deliver ponies’ mail.

Arriving at their first stop on the south side of Ponyville, the mail box reads “1000 N. Main Street” and Rainbow Dash is quick to search her bag. She pulls out a letter that has the same written address on it and places it in the mail box. Celebrating success, Rainbow Dash moves to the next mail box, grabs the mail within, and places her delivery inside. Proud of her achievement, she repeats this motion a few times until she notices a cloud above her.

Soaring up to meet the cloud, she kicks it into non-existence. Then suddenly, Dash notices more around her.

“Alright you stupid clouds,” she chanted, “Prepare to meet my hoofs! Ahhhhhhh!!!”

Flying to each cloud, Rainbow Dash kicked, punched, smashed, and moved them while quickly diving down to deliver more mail on Main Street. Once she was done with both tasks, Rainbow Dash looks down at the street and up into the sky. Out of breath, she shouts to Stamps, “Well, that was easy!”

He replies, “No kidding… Except it took you twenty minutes to go through fifteen mailboxes.”

Rainbow Dash snorts, “Well I told you that I had to mix in my weather duties! Right!?!” She looks into her bag, “Besides I’m done with my bag!”

Derpy smiles, “Well that is great Rainbow Dash!”

Stamps adds, “But you still have more mail to deliver!”

“Are you kidding me?!?” Rainbow Dash smacks her sweaty face.

“Nope,” Derpy and Stamps respond.

Flying back to the Post Office, Rainbow Dash picks up another bag of mail and continues the routine for three hours. Upon completing their morning rounds, Rainbow Dash, Stamps, and Derpy returned to the office and rested in the crew room for their one hour mid-shift break at "8:00 a.m." During the rest, Rainbow Dash wonders what she is doing afterwards.

“We are going to go and help the cargo ponies,” Stamps answers, “But since you are a six-hour part-time employee at the moment, I must tell you that your shift will end at eleven.”

Rainbow Dash asked, “So you mean in three hours right?”

“Correct,” Stamps replies.

“Oh. Ok.” Rainbow Dash was disappointed to hear those words.

As the clock read “9:00 a.m,” they headed to the back to find the Post Office’s clydesdales lifting crates and boxes full of outbound mail. Helping to load the mail into cargo wagons, it didn’t take Rainbow Dash more than twenty minutes for her to feel the exhaustion of her work as she picked up a thirty pound case of feathers. Placing it on the back of a wagon, she repeated the same motion with a box of bricks.

“You know,” Rainbow Dash pants as she talks to Derpy, “Why does this box of bricks,” grunting as she throws it up and onto the transport, “weight as much as the feathers?”

“I don’t know,” Derpy responds.

“Well, you would think that bricks would weigh more than feathers. Right?”

“Right, Rainbow Dash,” said Derpy, “But, thirty pounds is thirty pounds.”

Dash scratches her head, “And it still confuses me.”

“Speak for yourself,” implied Derpy.

“Yeah, true,” replied Rainbow Dash.

Getting back to work, she looked at her watch and read the time to be “9:31 a.m.” Knowing her shift is eventually going to end, Rainbow Dash stepped up her effort and forgot all her intentions on re-checking her watch. With the habit working like magic, she checked her watch at a later time and read “10:52 a.m.” Exhausted, she is happy with the thoughts of her first day and the fact that Pöny Crëw is only about a month away.

After asking permission from Stamps and Crafty Crate, she clocked herself out and tried to fly home.

***

As the number of work shifts began to add up, Rainbow Dash got into a groove of mixing her two jobs together while increasing her performance as a mail mare. However, she began to deteriorate in her level of mental energy. While it didn’t slow her down physically, the two weeks she spent on the jobs began to take their toll. Eventually, Rainbow Dash thought she was going crack until she saw her first paycheck.

“Woo-Hoo!” she shouted in the crew room, “Eight-hundred and sixty-four bits! Ahh yeah!” she fist pumped.

“You really deserve it Rainbow Dash,” Crafty pats her back, “Keep it up! I’m sure those extra two hours will be yours in no time.”

“Thank you!” Dash replies.

Seeing the check restored the mental strength lost in Rainbow Dash as she reminded herself about the payout. Meanwhile, she had the hundred bits saved up for the concert.

“Another two weeks,” spouted Rainbow Dash.