Minimum Wage = Maximum Damage
First-time parents in Equestria tended to have a number of things in common, and those shared aspects served as identifying indicators for the rest of the population. In the case of the young unicorn couple, currently waiting (nervously, anxiously, and 'desperately' could be kicked in for full accuracy) in their new house on the absolute edge of town, a place they'd only been living in for a few moons, with moving, new professional jobs, and pregnancy conspiring to keep them from making anything in the way of friends... well, it was possible to start with the residence itself. The original decoration style had clearly been conducted in Trottingham Modern, but those touches had mostly been displaced by Diapers Everywhere. Admittedly, just about all of those were clean: the couple had simply realized that at any given moment, they would need to have a diaper within easy corona reach. The obvious solution was to place boxes all over the house. Under the furniture. On top of the furniture. Given that the couch had been completely buried, it was possible to use part of the bulk shipment as furniture, but only after making sure the improvised construct didn't contain a diaper pail. There were only twelve of those, and a few weren't easy to spot.
The air had developed a certain... odor. The majority of that came from both the diaper pails and the couple's discovery that no cleaning product or spell known to exist was quite good enough. However, there was also a lingering underlayer, mostly composed of sweat. The local humidity had been frequently spiking, and so both parents had been sweating rather more than usual. At least, that was one of the reasons.
There were two pairs of traveling saddlebags, meant to carry foaltending supplies for family jaunts into town and since these were first-time parents, the combined weight of what they saw as the essentials was about eighty percent of the mare's own mass. Those few trips which weren't cut short by -- the usual problem -- tended to end when somepony's spine audibly creaked. Between burden and -- that problem -- the new family hadn't even made it into town yet.
And then there were the parents themselves. All four eyes were somewhat bloodshot. No two strands of fur shared lie or grain. Their tails had been between their legs for some time, and were understandably reluctant to come out again.
They were standing just outside the nursery, as they waited for the most temporary of salvation. Every so often, they would glance through the open doorway, checking on the state of both crib and occupant. They visibly regarded the sleeping filly with love and since that filly was asleep, most of the typically-accompanying concern had been replaced by paranoia about just when she might wake up again.
The couple looked into the nursery. Checked the front door. The nearest wall clock. Repeated the pattern, over and over.
Their eyelids tended to twitch. A lot.
And then the knock came.
It was a very soft knock, for that had been in the rather minimal briefing. (Normally, a letter would have been slipped under the door, but recent circumstances had seen the house rendered just about completely airtight. It was supposed to help. It didn't.) The new arrival was supposed to keep things quiet and if only for that, temporarily succeeded. The knock was just barely audible to straining pony ears, and it still sent the mare into a near-panic as she frantically checked to make sure the greatest blessing of her life was still asleep.
The filly merely shifted a foreleg, and went back to her dream.
Slowly, the stallion ventured to his own front door, trying to keep the noise of his own hoofsteps down. Fortunately, there were a lot of diapers available for stepping on. (They were mostly clean, except for the hoof tracks. They just tended to be somewhat... mobile.) Eventually, he risked the lever, and so got to behold that salvation.
When it came to fur and feathers, salvation was mostly dun-hued. The mane and tail were a little darker, the eyes decidedly brighter. Under normal circumstances, it would have been possible to see that just about every aspect of the new arrival's form had myriads of tiny dark spots flowing across her body, as if she'd been briefly dipped in a vat of black sand. However, the current ones had just about all of her form covered by the Official Uniform, and the OU looked like somepony had recently used it to clean up after the Rainbow Factory had exploded: too many chaos-patterned colors, all of them overly bright. (It was actually worst on the hat, which had obviously been the piece used to mop up the intensifier polish.) To look at the uniformed mare was to mostly see the uniform: it could take several minutes of blinking before somepony stopped seeing it.
It still didn't quite conceal the fact that their visitor was, at best, three years away from secondary school graduation. Her body hadn't completely finished filling out (although the large wings were well ahead there), her face was completely lacking in age and stress lines, and only one of those conditions was a short time away from correcting itself.
The pegasus teen brought up a forehoof. Saluted, just as she'd been trained. (The salute was the training. Everything else was the manual. She was still considering whether it was necessary to read the whole thing.)
A sharp whisper of "Simoon Duster, reporting for duty!" emerged with an accent, something which suggested some portion of the bearer's early years had been spent in Saddle Arabia. And then she waited.
The parents weren't moving. They were just -- staring at her. At her youth. She was starting to wonder if they had some way of perceiving her experience, which wouldn't exactly take long to finish.
The stallion practically fell into her right shoulder.
He openly (and softly, for there were ways in which he was a fast learner) sobbed into the fabric, and also into red, blue, and yellow. The yellow was ill-advised.
"You came," he whispered. "You're here..."
Simoon awkwardly smiled. "For the next five hours," she replied. Quickly glanced behind her, saw late-autumn Sun beginning to dip. "It... starts when I come through the door."
The mare, whose form and streaming eyes had been closing in on Simoon's left shoulder, instantly diverted for the little vertical rack next to the doorway, and a wavering green corona fetched a scarf.
"It's a movie," that parent whispered. "And dinner. Plus we thought we might... try to meet a new friend or two. Go to them, because we haven't been able to... we haven't..." Her voice nearly broke, and the next words emerged as half a sob. "Five hours... five whole hours out..."
The smile's awkwardness seemed to be increasing by the second.
"You'll stay?" the stallion asked. "You promise you'll stay?"
"That's the job," declared the teenager on the verge of her first (and last) night of employment. "Just go out. Do whatever you like." (It was fun, getting to instruct adults.) "For five hours."
They both frantically nodded, collected their things as quickly as coronas, desperation, and the pressure of a ticking clock would allow. Simoon stepped aside just in time to avoid an unintentional double spearing, and the couple broke for the doorway.
But the stallion, in the last possible second before a degree of release could be obtained, hesitated. Looked back at the teenager in her uniform, and so would behold most of the Coming Soon trailers through afterimage.
"You'll be okay?" he desperately inquired, seeking that one final level of reassurance. "She's... she's not easy to manage..."
In response, Simoon saluted again.
"Sir!" she proudly whispered. "I am a Surge Protector!"
From the Official Surge Protector! Training Manual.
(Text indicated in red does not appear in the original printing and was added due to the Truth In Text settlement clause for the post-lawsuit edition.)
What is a Surge?
Surges are a perfectly natural part of a pony's life. Without Surges, virtually nopony would be who they are today. Surges are something which simply have to be dealt with in whatever way brings us the maximum possible profit . One could even say they're beautiful from a great distance and after an equally great deal of therapy, none of which we should ideally be obligated to pay for.
Shortly after a foal is born, their magic begins to find its way out into the world. However, these displays of prowess take place while the infant has no direct comprehension of what they are actually doing. While a particular Surge might appear when a foal is upset, it does not necessarily demonstrate malicious intent: the foal is simply too young to know what malice is or at least that was the original theory. Others might occur when a foal is particularly happy. Some just show up. Surges are unpredictable for appearance, frequency, magical effects, duration, and overall demonstrated field strength. In particular, a number of foals will display magic during their Surges which they never manifest again.
Surges tend to start a few weeks after birth and last for a few moons. While some foals display them for longer periods, virtually everypony will stop having them shortly before full speech appears.
How are Surges dealt with?
Now that's the question and the profit, isn't it?
In those cases where a foal's race matches that for at least one parent and the foal's overall field strength is fairly close to that of said parent, it's pretty simple. The parent simply stands guard, watches for the signs of a Surge, and then (counters/unweaves/whatever it is earth ponies do, but it's probably just keeping nearby flowers from blooming early). This can be rather exhausting, as the parent needs to exactly match their foal's waking hours -- but let's face it: they weren't sleeping much anyway.
However, should the foal and parents be different races, the latter will have no means of shutting down the former. This means that foal's magic is free to express itself with no natural controls. Usually, this is a minor problem in that it's a problem which we felt could best be dealt with by underpaid, untrained minors. But there are times when life becomes interesting, and aren't the interesting parts what life is really about?
Even so, sometimes parents will want to go be bored for a while, just like they were before their foal arrived. And so for those times when dam and sire need to seek a life outside the nursery, or even when they just want to try sleeping for more than forty minutes at a stretch, we created the Surge Protectors! For you are a pony of decently high field strength or so we assumed. It's not as if we tested or anything. Tests cost money. You paid us for your uniform, so why can't you pay for your own testing? Really, it's your fault if something goes wrong! You are a pony of skill or so you claimed on your application. Seriously, if you expect us to actually follow up with your references, you pay for the stamps! You are a pony who matches the foal's race which, other than the fact that you were actually willing to work for us at this pay rate, was the central job qualification! You can (counter/unweave/let's call it 'anti-earth (tm)') the foal's spontaneous creations!
You are the best of the best! (It's an advertising sort of phrase. We're flattering you. Is this stupid court-assigned overseer unicorn really going to watch me block out type for everything? -- and she's making me leave this in.)
You are a Surge Protector!
We give you a week.
There were things which a Surge Protector! was supposed to do within seconds of having been left alone in a client's residence, and Simoon made sure to take care of the most important immediately. After all, it was understood that she was meant to take care of the foal, watch the residence, and pass fifty percent of her salary (plus all tips) back to her employer until the uniform was fully paid for. It was a surprisingly expensive uniform, and that meant she had a near-sacred duty to inventory the contents of the vegetable crisper. After all, it wasn't as if attending to what her interviewer had described as one of the single most vital duties in the nation was going to provide her with enough bits to bring in her own dinner.
Once the celery had been rejected and the arugula gathered its typical soft gasp of surprise, she turned her attention to the nursery.
The foal (a pegasus filly named Gale: that had been on the pre-assignment briefing sheet, and had also comprised just about the whole of it) was still sleeping. The tiny form had that appeal which was natural to all infants: the extra-soft velvet-red fur, the unique scent which was almost capable of being distinguished within the lingering miasma of diapers. Simoon, who'd been a lone foal, silently regarded the little body and found herself regretfully thinking about opportunities missed.
Then she looked again.
There were ways in which the nursery wasn't all that bad. There were toys and mobiles, all rendered in bright colors (although nothing so bright as her own uniform). The crib's mattress appeared to be decently thick. The walls and ceiling -- well, those strongly suggested that the house had been restored after a particularly rough previous ownership, and the local part of the process wasn't quite finished. It wasn't as if the multiple rough paint patches indicated recent hasty repairs, and certainly not a dozen or more of them.
But it was also a nursery which showed that the unicorn couple clearly hadn't been expecting a pegasus foal. It wasn't just that too many toys presented a strong profile to any potential wind: the crib didn't have a roof. The sleeping occupant had a clear path to freedom: up and out. And when you combined that with the total lack of wing sleeves...
Somewhere in the deepest parts of Simoon's earliest memories were dim recollections of wing sleeves. Every pegasus loathed them. There was a time in the earliest portion of life when flight had been easy. Instinctive. The most natural thing imaginable. And wing sleeves were what stopped that. Nopony could fly in wing sleeves: you didn't get the airflow through the feathers. You could buy them in designer labels and with things like Mommy's Grounded Me written along the length, but ultimately, they were nothing more than an extra layer of diapers. Nothing done to dress up wing sleeves could ever completely overcome that automatic feeling of revulsion.
But they were also necessary. And not only was there no roof of thin bars on the crib, but this sleeping filly's wings were free.
Of course, the parents were both unicorns. So as Simoon understood it (and not very well, after a childhood spent in a place which was just about completely free of them), unless they had exceptionally weak fields, both should be capable of enveloping their daughter within a bubble of projected corona, holding her in place. Perhaps they'd decided that was better than using the loathed wing sleeves and for that, she could certainly give them credit.
Still... when combined with the lack of roof...
She looked closely at the filly. Tiny. Beautiful. In so many ways, a living incarnation of the future, a promise that there would be one.
Simoon smiled. (She couldn't help it, really.) And for the very first time in her life, truly pictured the day when she would become a mother.
The filly's eyes opened.
DSQ (Desperately Screamed Questions)
Why does my uniform look like this?
Studies have proven that very young foals are naturally attracted to bright colors. And while much of our population naturally qualifies, we believe that it just isn't possible for a color to be too bright. Numerous toy manufacturers none of whom we actually contacted and who will apparently sue us if we try to list them as actual references again certainly agree with us! So we made your uniform as bright as possible. We feel that makes you seem more appealing to the foal. As a stranger, it might even make you seem less threatening: you're not an intruding stranger, you're just another toy! It means that even with their parents gone for a while, the only constant in their young lives absent, there's nothing to be afraid of! So in our opinion, a bright multicolored uniform calms a foal. The science proves it or at least, we assume it would have if we'd actually funded any studies rather than using that part of the budget for getting drunk at the bar and scribbling down some of our guesswork on the driest napkins.
Also, we had some ruined material which couldn't be used for our central enterprise. That's how all this started. We were just trying to get rid of those bolts at a profit. Would somepony make this mare stop staring at me? It's like I'm something she just scraped off the bottom of her hoof.
Be proud of your uniform. It identifies you as a Surge Protector! There's no uniform like it, so what else could you possibly be?
You could be the single most visible thing in the area and thus the most likely target for whatever happens after the foal sees you. In fact, you are most definitely that. By design, just in case somepony decides we're responsible for any damage to the residence. Residences are expensive.
You're a teenager. We thought you would be fungible.
The little filly's eyes were a soft green, and nearly all pupil. She blinked a few times, yawned and stretched out six limbs. Simoon noticed how tiny the wings were: too small to keep anything in the air for long, but... well, Surges. Things happened during Surges and with a pegasus foal, the primary source of flight was magic, not muscle. She didn't doubt that this filly was capable of getting into the air, especially with a crib roof out of play.
But Simoon felt she was ready. She was one of the most talented students in her class. Her parents had moved back to Equestria just to make sure she finished her education in a region where she could receive proper magical instruction. Her teachers... well, one of them had told her that he felt she needed a challenge, and so had been the pony who pointed out the classified ad.
Her raw field strength was on the high side. Her techniques were coming along. Not only that, she had been hired. And why would the agency have hired her if she wasn't suitable for the job?
Why did you hire me?
Because you felt you had what it takes to become a Surge Protector! And we agreed with you!
You were willing to work for minimum wage. You thought paying us for the uniform was normal. You had no prior work experience which would lead you to believe anything might be a little bit off. And in particular, you had no idea just how much can be involved in this job. Do you realize the kind of salary professionals in this occupation can earn? No, of course you don't. If you did, you would have asked for a respectable fraction of it, and then we never would have hired you. Let's just say it's a lot.
Because there are professionals. Admittedly, there aren't all that many of them. Despite the number of cross-species foals born every year, it's a rare occupation, along with being one of the least-seen marks. It's much more common for a friend or relative of the appropriate race to stay in the house for a few moons. We've even heard that earth ponies -- complete strangers! -- will just volunteer. With no prior relationship, for no pay at all. Have you ever heard of something so disgusting?
But there are professionals. Like the Marey Pop-Ins agency. You have no idea how much they make and if we're lucky, you'll never find out. They move into the home. They take care of everything. They are magical. To wit, they make bits appear in their bank accounts. We thought those should be our bits. And there's practically nothing a marked professional can do which a teenager can't, for less money, at a much lower level of skill. So we thought, with so few marked professionals out there and the high prices that come from the lack of supply added to high demand, why wouldn't ponies pay us to fill the gap? Charge just about the same rate, pass along what the law cruelly mandates we must to you, and then take some of that back through our fee structure. Such as with the uniform. You're responsible for the damages, you know. And since we got the base cloth from our main product, it's very easily damaged.
We thought this was a really good idea. And you must have agreed with us, or you wouldn't have applied to perform this job for minimum wage (minus expenses). So can't you see how this is your fault?
So you DELIBERATELY hired me to perform a job which I wasn't mark-qualified for?
Did you see the word 'fungible' before this? Your lack of vocabulary is in no way our responsibility --
-- the unicorn is telling me to put the definition in.
"Able to replace or be replaced by another identical item; mutually interchangeable."
See? Describes teenagers perfectly.
The infant finished her stretch, opened her eyes again. Looked directly at Simoon, who smiled.
"Hello, Gale," the teen whispered. "I'm going to take care of you tonight. Everything's going to be fine."
The filly blinked. Took a breath, one which emerged as a wail. Tears began to coat the pupils as miniature hooves beat against the soft mattress.
"No, no, it's okay!" Simoon protested, her wings instinctively flaring out from sheer concern. "I'll feed you! I'll change your diaper!" (If it came to that. She was hoping it wouldn't.) "I'll read to you! Do you like stories?" There had been plenty of books in the house (many with wind and water damage), but they were all overly thick, ridiculously heavy, and came with the kind of titles which carried multiple subclauses. It meant she had to improvise. "I heard one about the Bearers --"
Miniature, perfect velvet-red wings flapped.
Every tenth-bit of air in the nursery went directly into Simoon.
Employee Behavior: General Guidelines
* Remain calm. Foals are very responsive to a pony's emotional states. If you're upset, they'll become upset. Try to smile!
The wind blast hit her wings, used the extra surface area to push. It was enough to send her airborne, and no part of that was under her control.
It was a short flight, and what turned out to be a very soft landing. The good news was that she came down on some of the piled-up diapers. The bad news was that her tail wound up locating one of the diaper pails.
"You..." The accent was stronger now, flaring as she tried to struggle back to her hooves, which were skidding across clean white cloth (and that was the kinder option). Also, her uniform was beginning to fray along the seams, which at least finally indicated where the seams were. "You little..."
* Do not call a foal insulting names. (It's not as if they're going to understand you anyway.) In particular, never call an innocent little foal a monster. Just about every foal in the world goes through Surges. You were a foal once, so you went through your own Surges! Were you a monster?
If you were, you may be eligible for a raise. (Two years service required. Raise shall not exceed one-twentieth of a bit. Any increase in salary incurs a compensating deduction from your tips -- what do you mean, 'that's illegal'? You may be an officer of the court, but that doesn't give you the right to tell me what the law is! And of course I'm blocking out type for everything I say! I want a record of the pain you're inflicting on me! It's not as if you can stop me right here and haul me off for contempt of
All right: if that was the way the foal wanted to play it. Simoon was strong. She had talent.
Admittedly, she didn't have the current activity as her mark talent. But Simoon's uniform-covered mark displayed a miniature sandstorm, and it made her exceptionally good with wind effects. If Gale was going to play around with atmospherics, Simoon knew she had enough magic to shut the foal down. She'd just been caught off-guard. All she had to do was get upright again, start her own wings moving, and the current Surge would effectively be negated --
-- a drop of water hit her snout.
It made her look up. Part of that was just to make sure it was water: after all, she'd been trying to flick her tail out of a diaper pail and that meant there were worse options. But the verification didn't help anything, not when she saw the moisture coalescing on the ceiling, even as the increasing humidity abruptly shifted to floor level.
Simoon's lungs had spent years becoming acclimated to desert conditions. She wasn't used to high humidity any more. It made her feel like the entire room was underwater or, given the presence of those diapers, under something.
She forced herself to her hooves, ordered her nostrils to keep working against what felt like the atmospheric equivalent to a poorly-skilled changeling, an ocean trying to disguise itself as air and failing miserably.
Humidity. The filly was pulling in humidity. (She had approached the rather isolated house from the front, had no way to know about the custom-dug swimming hole in the backyard.) There was a wing pattern which dispersed humidity and having spent most of her life in a desert, Simoon had possessed very little reason to practice it. She had to -- curl the tips in a little, right? Flap just so...
That was when the filly arrived.
The tiny wings were flapping frantically, keeping the little body moving more through magic than effort. But they didn't need to do as much work as they might have otherwise required: Gale had found support, and so the flaps weren't really meant to keep her aloft. The cloud, created via humidity and Surge, provided a stable surface for her to rest on. The wings were just offering propulsion, and the cloud moved with her.
She was looking directly at Simoon again. The eyes were green, and just about all pupil. It gave them a certain gleam.
The glint of something very much like malice.
* Always remember: the foal is not doing any of this on purpose. Yes, they recognize when a stranger is present, and that they can't smell their parents' presence in the house. It is certainly possible that the situation might upset them. But they are not capable of deliberately summoning their magic, let alone purposefully directing it at an intruder. Anything which may seem to be purposeful intent is mere coincidence. Respond accordingly.
Bitsen Run swore that was going to hold up in court.
The cloud was a small one. It made the deep rumble from the dark mass feel all out of proportion to its actual size.
The filly's forehooves went up.
Then they came down.
Why was I issued a uniform? Why didn't I get ARMOR?
Oh, come on. You're the one who's clearly being ridiculous here. Think about it for a minute. Your uniform is made from our usual product. This means it can fall apart under undue strain, which we have defined through previous lawsuits as 'Anything a pony might do while wearing it, including existing.' And do you know what a uniform which effectively disintegrates (requiring you to pay us for the damages and replacement) under the slightest provocation does? It provides you with freedom of movement. At any moment, you might be required to move rather quickly and with your uniform gone, you can do exactly that!
Armor is heavy. It takes time to don, and isn't all that fast about coming off either. It slows you down. Additionally, given how much we got out of you for a mere uniform, do you really want to find out what we would have charged for armor?
Actually, we did think about it. But we couldn't get any cheap enough. Plus now that I'm thinking about it again... well, what if a really strong unicorn Surge squeezed the armor? What would that do to the pony wearing it? And with a pegasus foal, isn't most metal electrically conductive? Wouldn't wearing armor actually increase the danger? You're lucky we cared enough about you to send you out there in nothing more than a flimsy uniform!
...actually... given all those problems, why do Guards wear armor? Wouldn't it just make their job that much harder?
Court-appointed unicorn who followed me back after that three-day interruption from my unfair contempt incarceration?
...she just figures there's some enchantments involved. And as we all know, enchantments cost money. An expense which we, as your employers, would clearly be obligated to pass along to somepony. Let's face it: the main reasons anypony hired the Surge Protectors! as a new agency with no previous reputation were the availability and the price break. We seem to have less availability after the publicity surrounding the first lawsuit made so many employees quit and drastically lowered the number of applicants, especially since they apparently all have to read the revised manual now. Under supervision. And if the next ruling goes through, they may have take a test afterwards. So the price break is all we've got left, and we're trying to temporarily stay in business on that and a flow of teenagers with low reading comprehension.
Look, I can put that in if I want to. I'm going for an audience with low reading comprehension. Anypony who shouldn't be working for us would have left already.
Daily life in Equestria carried a certain number of truths, things those in the other nations occasionally perceived as 'odd'. For example, most of the other sapient species felt it was natural that if, say, somepony happened to hear multiple bursts of indoor thunder while seeing just as many lightning flashes working their way past thick curtains, they would send for the police. But those were species who simply weren't used to pony Surges and so didn't understand that the neighbors generally came in first. It also helped to have that home in a place where witnesses existed, and this house was isolated to start with.
So nopony saw much of anything, not directly. By the time the echoes of thunder reached anypony, they had faded to the point where they could be mistaken for something heavy having fallen off a cart. Lightning flashes which were forced to get past curtains and trees eventually resembled overactive fireflies. And the howling of the wind? Well, that was completely indoors, so the walls did a lot to stop that, at least while most of them remained intact because the lightning had to hit something. Also, there were screams and after a while, they gave the wind some serious competition.
It could be said that a thousand years passed in a single night. That a single teenager, battling without friends or Elements, desperately fought until the prophesied time when the stars would come into alignment and grant a single desperate chance to gain freedom.
Or it could be said that Simoon tried to hold out for five hours.
Same thing, really.
How do I collect my pay?
A true Surge Protector! is paid in the gratitude of those they serve, and values that coin more than any other.
I really liked that line.
I want to keep it.
You're evil. You know that. Evil.
A true Surge Protector! is paid in the gratitude of those they serve, and values that coin more than any other. However, The parents pay us. We pay you. Also, despite what we originally tried to tell our first wave of employees, you are making far too little to actually be paying taxes on it. Anypony who worked for us prior to the lawsuit will be getting that back. Tips are of course yours to keep, once you have paid for your uniform, any damages to said uniform, the cost of printing these manuals, and anything else we may require you to cover.
No, you cannot drag me back to court again! There was only the one settled lawsuit! So far! And we'll win all of the outstanding ones! You have no cause to --
The unicorns were on the approach. They had some distance left to cover before they reached their home, along with a few precious minutes before they would be forced to enter it again. In both cases, they were trying to make it last.
"Home again, home again," sighed the stallion, who was looking a little more relaxed.
"I hope she's okay," said the mare, who only had one week of maternity leave left. The motherly part of her didn't want to spend so much time away from her firstborn: the practical realized there was only so far any pegasus technique could reach and was considering volunteering for a lot of overtime.
"Gale or the Surge Protector?" It was the natural question.
"Both," the mare sighed. "It's been hard enough for us. All those little dust devils in the house sending diapers and books all over the place. The tiny storms out of nowhere. Little lightning strikes grounding themselves in the walls..."
"It wasn't enough for major damage," her spouse pointed out. "Just some singes here and there. Static electricity with a little extra kick. Nothing which would hurt a pony. Gale loves us. She's not trying to hurt us: she never would. It's just Surges."
"But between her waking up for feedings, or just crying, and those miniature thunder booms... not being able to sleep..." the mare continued, and wrapped that part up with another sigh. "It's been hard, especially with not having any friends out here. Tonight helped."
The stallion nodded.
"But Gale knows us," the mare went on. "It's her first night with a stranger. So things might have been a little stronger than usual." Thoughtfully, as they approached the last bend in the road, "We might want to tip her a little more if we see the uniform is singed. Even static electricity can do some damage."
"It's quiet," the stallion noted. "They might both be asleep. Well, it's late enough for that. Gale's too young to be awake for too many hours straight, and I think the Protector might have been about --"
Which was when they mutually made the final turn, and got their first view of the living room.
It was a reasonable expectation, to see one's own living room when looking at the residence from the front. If the curtains had been pulled aside, all that would have been required was a glance through a window. In this case, there were certainly no curtains in the way. Nor was there a window. Having part of the surrounding wall as rubble on what was left of the front lawn also did a lot to open up the view.
Initially, they simply stopped moving. When movement resumed, the first few hoofsteps came in a stagger. After that, they were galloping.
The mare quickly took the leap, vaulted the rubble while using her own corona for an extra push, went through the largest hole...
Simoon Duster, with dun-hued, dark-speckled, slightly-singed, and still-drying fur on full display, was resting atop a mountain of (mostly-clean) diapers. And wrapped up in about ten of them, with all limbs completely immobilized, was a tiny foal who had just enough of her form exposed to display hints of red velvet.
"-- and that is what they supposedly did at the Gala," the teenager finished. "Not that I believe any of it." She wearily shook her head: the last few threads of the uniform fell away from her ears.
The filly cooed.
"I know, right?" Simoon declared. "It almost made sense until they brought in the cake!"
"What..." The mare swallowed, instinctively moved to the left to give her spouse a landing zone. "What happened? Our daughter... our house..."
The teenager sighed, which made the new stress lines in her fur crease. Then she saluted.
"I think," Simoon stated, "she has trouble around strangers. You should wait a few moons before you introduce her around. And her field strength is a little higher than you believed." A thoughtful pause. "Also, I've been looking at my employee manual and... look, I'll try to explain everything. As much as I can, anyway. But -- well..." She winced, and her wings dipped from the weight of sheer awkwardness. "...do you know any lawyers?"
The mare took a slow, deep breath.
"Is Gale safe?"
"Yes."
"She didn't get hurt?"
"No. I caught her when the last cloud got dispersed. She's okay." The dun snout sniffed at the rather open air. "She might need changing again, though. I can't tell any more."
"In that case..."
-- what do you mean, 'that was your filly?'
A Surge Protector! is vital.
You bring parents peace of mind. The freedom to step (or fly) out for a while. And you get to spend precious time both meeting and protecting Equestria's future, while doing so for pay. What could be better than that?
A lot of things. Like getting through our first week without being hit by lawsuits. Like winning the first one. Like not having to rewrite this manual while a clearly-prejudiced agent of a non-neutral judicial body just watches me all the time. Like divesting ourselves from this so-called business entirely. But the court says we can't sell off until every case is closed, so we're stuck until then.
We are losing money.
It's your fault. It's all your fault. Making real money means never having to say you're sorry, much less admit things on a witness stand or in print. Why can't you respect how business is supposed to ideally work? Having Princess Luna audit our old books was bad enough. We had to branch out. And you couldn't even let us have that.
The government is the tool of oppression against profit.
You're Moon-frozen right I'm printing that. Nopony's reading this far anyway. So sue me.
Again.
Welcome to the Surge Protectors!
A wholly (reluctantly and not-for-long) owned subsidiary of Hoovmat Suits Limited.
