Makeshift Sanity was a happy pony. Yes, it was true, he had just completed an eight-hour shift. Yes, it was also true that he was completely exhausted. And finally, it was true that while Canterlot--being an enlighted city--had a rather high minimum wage of twenty-two bits per hour, he was still only making minimum wage. But none of this mattered right now, because Makeshift's shift was finally over, and he was a happy pony. He would clock out, clean up, and exit the Lucky Seven Supermarket where he worked, free at last for the rest of the weekend.
Tragically, Makeshift's quest to spend the rest of the afternoon playing hoofball with his son would be thwarted by a rather large and messy explosion in the produce aisle.
Shoppers, employees, and government officials investigating the grocery store for money laundering all gasped in unison, their faces splattered with lit bits of disintegrated broccoli. Makeshift galloped over to the source of the commotion, and what he saw would go down in the annals of Equestria as something no pony really talked about unless they were really drunk: a very wet Celestia covered from head to hoof in vegetables.
"Hello fair citizens. I need conditioner."
To examine what led to Makeshift Insanity getting two hours of overtime pay cleaning up the mess, we must travel back, way back, almost three thousand years ago, to the days before Nightmare Moon and King Sombra, before Starswirl, before Discord, and even before Scorpan. We must travel back to Equestria's halicon days, to a mere hundred-fifty years after the tribal unification.
"Those? Are they not lovely? I received them as a gift from the Mighty Faust for placating the unruly Ursa Major. Those shining beacons are but stars that now permeate my mane, testaments to the filaments of light that bespeckle my night sky.
Celestia peered closer at them. "No, Luna, I think you have dandruff."
And hey, at least Makeshift got some overtime hours cleaning up the mess.
