Heartbreak Hotel

by Impossible Numbers

Rating: everyone
Tags: Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Tragedy, Gladmane
Length: 8936

Gladmane is no ordinary con artist, or at least he doesn't see himself as one. Why, he's the very king of the con! The King! But sometimes, a con is too good. So good, in fact, that even the con artist is fooled.

From everyone's friend to everyone's enemy, Gladmane has always been larger than life.

He started off as a used cart salespony in a backwater desert village, but there was no way he was staying there. For he has dreamed the Equestrian Dream, and why be a small-time businesspony when you can be a king?

In a humble hotel, in Las Pegasus the city of dreams, where even the clouds are within an earth pony's grasp, Gladmane plans to show what a heart of gold he truly has. And to hide his mind of steel.

After all, he's good at making friends. He makes everyone happy. And he knows how mean and ruthless the world can be; it's what he's had to fight against just to get here.

So why does his conscience start to prick him, the closer and closer he gets to his greatest performance ever?

Published 2020-11-07 18:00:01 UTC
Last updated 2020-11-07 18:00:01 UTC

This Ain't Pegasus and You Ain't Gladmane

If you couldn’t make it in Canterlot, you could make it in Las Pegasus. If you couldn’t make it in Las Pegasus, you could make it in Manehattan. And if you couldn’t make it in Manehattan, then baby, you just couldn’t make it.

So that was how Gladmane planned his course.

Sitting on a train. Heading for Manehattan. Trying to put together his broken heart.

No. He would be no peasant. He admired Princess Celestia well enough: now there was the ultimate gal for him! And she was right to be a good princess and look after all her adoring subjects. That was what he admired about her. Ever since he had seen her in Canterlot. He never forgot his first love.

But he himself would be a king.

The greatest king in Equestria. And he would earn it properly. He would heal his leaden heart and turn it into gold. He would live the Equestrian Dream. The only dream he had ever believed in.

The dream had come to him, a long time ago. The dream had enriched his whole life…

He’d started off as a dirty little hillbilly colt, born and stuck in Two-Palomino, the twin villages lost in the vast expanse of the cactus-infested San Palomino desert.

Not that he’d stayed there: Two-Palomino was one of those places that can only be a starting point, not a destination.

Even back then, Gladmane had been the sort to spot an opportunity – or, more likely, make one. He’d watched his dad sell good honest used carts of good honest high quality to his neighbours, and had learned the value of helping out a neighbour in need… because it made them feel good. He himself had loved the sight.

Yet it kept them poor.

At first, this was just normal. In his ignorant oasis amid desert, he found bliss. Yet he heard more about the outside world from travellers looking for cart repairs from his dad. They never wanted to stop. They were always passing through. To them, happiness was elsewhere.

The older Gladmane got, and the more his dreams grew to encompass all of Equestria, the less he liked this tiny little twin village. The more he hated it. The more he wanted to escape. The more he felt he could do better. Bigger. Bolder.

So one weekend, instead of following his own dad like a dumb puppy after an old dog too far gone to learn new tricks, he took a bunch of carts without permission, hired some help, dragged the lot to the nearby city of M’Emphasis, and sold the same carts for higher prices under the promise of “good old-fashioned buffalo craft, finest in the west”.

Although he spent a bit of cash on travel supplies, overnight accommodation plus breakfast in bed, and whatever fun times he happened to take a fancy to, he came home with his saddlebags rattling. He had never seen so much money all at once. M’Emphasis City was the first true awakening.

Somehow, the sight of massive bags of money failed to impress his dad, who went on and on about such tedious minor details as why stealing, lying, and wasting money selfishly were “wrong”.

Some ponies, Gladmane realized, simply weren’t reasonable.

Hence, as soon as he was old enough and the incident was seemingly forgotten, he decided to take his philosophy and up and move to M’Emphasis City. He barely said goodbye to his kin. They had lost too much of his respect over the years. They were too small-minded to truly understand.

Still, it hurt his heart a little bit to move away. Even in his later years, he carried a little bit of Two-Palomino with him. Its heart and songs.

Always, in the grand old city of M’Emphasis, which looked a bit like the glory days of Somnambula – How much history he was learning already! How much bigger and more exciting was his world now! – he took an interest in carts. Their sleekness, their colours, their tendency to get more and more pointlessly ornate in the richer, manlier parts of the city. Always, of course, he found one to sell for an even better one later.

Initially, it was straightforward sales, but then he found the benefits of an auction. Ponies, he noticed, would pay more for the same cart if it meant fighting over it first.

And since M’Emphasis was a place where stallions didn’t always keep their opinions to their mouths, punches and kicks sometimes followed, something which Gladmane initially tried to ban before he noticed more ponies turned up willing to pay more money whenever the fights broke out. So he let it go on – though the sight of brawling took a very long time to get used to, and he had to suppress his natural urge to break it up unless too many ponies were watching him. Secretly, he tended to view the fighters as stupid and contemptible. Fighting was what inferior minds did, not true friends.

In his own way, Gladmane was getting a worldly experience.

Had he gotten his experience outside the tough, intense heat of the desert cultures, he might have been influenced by the higher tastes of Canterlot, or by the liberating joy of Las Pegasus, or even have been tempered by the complex competitions of Manehattan, which was like a desert culture but with more rain, less clean water, and far worse sewage-like smells. In all these cases, he might have been emboldened sooner to stop the fighting.

As it was, Gladmane himself was like the desert: tough, used to fighting, ruthless, and capable of hiding many secrets where most would see nothing but boring reliability. After all, the desert was reliably barren. Not many remembered it hid more monsters and hostile tribes than most forests could. You had to be mean sometimes to survive.

Then he’d decided, as many did, to make it big. Not just big, in fact, but Big. Namely in the financial department.

M’Emphasis was just a bigger Two-Palomino. He needed something different. Something like the travellers talked about in hushed voices.

The Equestrian Dream lay elsewhere.

First of all, he went to Canterlot.

Where better? Princess Celestia herself lived there – good local pedigree to exploit with a simple “Royal Merchandise here, get your Royal Merchandise here!” – everyone who was anyone ended up there sooner or later, and he was sure he could win a lot of friends with all the locals and tourists alike. He’d mastered his friendship connoisseur skills in the big city of M’Emphasis, and not just because it was a big open city that drew a lot of customers. It had genuinely felt good to make friends left and right.

Whereas Canterlot was a little different to what he’d been expecting.

The place had a reserved, icy cold class that ultimately meant they’d pay ten times more than usual for the same hunk of junk, and all you had to do was pretend Lord Rich Uncle Moneybags or whatever had once owned it as part of a set. So that was what Gladmane did, though not with much enthusiasm. For the first time, he felt ashamed to admit that his uncle had just painted wagons for a living. Even M’Emphasis had welcomed the interesting fact with a friendly nod. Lots of the citizens there understood the desire to go up in the world, so it was only to be expected.

Trouble was, he lacked a certain ability to recall all his great-great-great-great-grandfathers and which noble and glorious war they’d heroically stupidly killed themselves in. This was, in Canterlot society, a moral failing.

As far as Gladmane was aware, ancestors were just a sort of prelude before the big performance. He’d never thought of his dad, for instance, as somehow being an earlier rare edition of himself with collector value.

But that was how Canterlot worked. Bloodlines, thoroughbreds, connections going back centuries, and inheritance. It was no place for an upstart desert mustang with bright ideas.

There was a more modern side to Canterlot, which he’d tried his luck in as soon as he realized the toffs and hoity-toities of the world weren’t going to give his stock a second glance, or a first glance for that matter. Doughnut Joe’s, for instance, had hung on to the business quarter in Canterlot despite having an owner who couldn’t tell a quotation of the Great Bard from – gasp! – any old music hall dirty limerick.

But alas, he’d been foiled again.

Most of the more exciting parts of modern Canterlot were in catering. Gladmane liked food fine, but it didn’t appeal to his dash and verve the same way carts did.

And the rest of the Canterlot business scene tried way too hard to look like it had always been run by a Lord or a Lady.

In short, it was elitist.

Gladmane didn’t like elitism. He’d prefer to convince ponies they were his friends (whilst secretly being superior to them, of course: no point getting too attached to a money source). If he was going to be a king, that kind of dead-end aristocracy would be the first thing to go. Everyone would be welcome, in Gladmane’s world.

But he remembered what one of the travellers had told him. Years before:

If you couldn’t make it in Canterlot, you could make it in Las Pegasus.

So he left, moving on, with nothing but a distant sighting of Princess Celestia to keep him going. The only good thing to come out of Canterlot, as far as he was concerned. Other than himself, obviously.

Finally, he went to Las Pegasus.

Now that was more his speed.

Las Pegasus was definitely not elitist. Most of it was pegasus-owned, so made of the usual clouds, rainbows, and other handy weather-based construction work, but unlike most such places, these had been built on the ground and compacted to enable non-pegasus access.

Good sign, good sign. Gladmane recognized everyone’s right to be treated as equally inferior to himself.

Better yet, the place loved carts. They loved carts so much that they bought new ones – and this was the part that intrigued him – long before the old ones started to break down. They had fads. Every month. It was as if someone had told him you could turn one coin into twelve without getting a heart-stopping visit from the Royal Mint.

He’d sold carts. Boy howdy, he’d sold carts. Sometimes multiple to the same client, who collected them. Even in the cart-loving city of M’Emphasis, he’d never heard of anyone owning more than three.

Somewhere along the way, he got the bright idea of loaning them for a night with chauffeurs, because ponies leaving the exciting attractions of Las Pegasus tended to be unsteady and easier to get money out of. Ponies bought the service as if panicking it would stop tomorrow.

He’d read the room. A trick he had learned back in Two-Palomino.

He’d read it all right. Las Pegasus was a big room with lettering like customized fireworks in the sky. He could hardly fail to read it loud and clear.

He thought: Someone must see what I’m doing. Someone’s going to stop this.

If anything, the chauffeur business boomed overnight. No one thought of it as extortionate. More as an opportunity to make their lives easier. He could hardly believe what was happening. Ponies here fell over themselves to give him money.

And he became friends with everyone!

That was what really got him to stay. The ponies here just seemed so excited to do anything, and Gladmane was – thanks to his tight-knit village upbringing – as neighbourly as any cowpony, as flash as the hotrod carts he sold to his most “discerning” clients (usually the ones with hazy grins, tacky clothes, and a tendency to try to one-up him in proving how discerning they were), and as fatherly as anyone could be whose future sales rested on convincing the customer they wanted to keep coming back.

It was a revelation!

Friendship! Real friendship!

Ah, Las Pegasus! Home of the circus, the baseball game, the theme park, the talent shows, the gambling districts, the expensive cocktail bars, and all the other things that meant a pony long on cash and short on taste had effectively died and gone to heaven without any funereal inconvenience.

At this point, something in Gladmane went cha-ching. More than cha-ching, in fact. His very soul seemed to wake up in hungry joy. He wanted more!

So one night, he scoped out one hotel and its nearest attractions to get some prices and other little fiscal details down in a notebook, hurried to his office over his cart garage, and sat up until daybreak working out the likely range of incomings and outgoings.

He stared at the result for a long time.

It was worth a king’s ransom.

The next morning, he sold his cart-selling business to a passing junior executive who couldn’t believe his luck, packed his saddlebags, and hurried to the first hotel he could find.

Which turned out to be a mistake. They had no job openings.

Gladmane tried the second. No job openings.

Third. No openings. Fourth, fifth, sixth.

What on earth was he thinking? It was the atmosphere of the place. His dad had warned him long ago in an effort to curb his youthful enthusiasm: Las Pegasus could make a sane pony roll over and play dead. It’d play fetch with a wayward mind if the mind wasn’t careful. And tough luck for you if you didn’t get any treats at the end of it.

Extravagant gestures, tossing money around, playing for the big leagues: Gladmane’s mind, all right, but blown out of shape by a distorted mirror. His own dream turned against him.

Well, not for long…

Gladmane had learned another lesson: the power of dreams. Grab a pony by the dreams, and their hearts and minds would follow…

He still had some cash to spare. Just get a disguise, slip into the first hotel, pretend to be a cleaner – he’d long since learned ponies having or arranging a good time didn’t notice menial staff – keep an eye out and his mouth ready…

A little while later, a fight broke out between two concierges in the main lobby. The manager himself came down to break it up, after hearing about it whilst talking to some prospective clients.

Why, the manager was appalled! Appalled! He didn’t care that each insisted the other had mocked their dreams of making it big, frustrated by a lowly and low-paying job while the boss obviously liked the other one! An outrage! In front of guests! They had been warned enough times over that fraudulent tipping business! Out! Out! Out!

The manager apologized to his prospective clients, and to show how good he was, he did take the time to thank a nearby cleaner, who’d not only alerted him to the fight but had helped him restrain one of the concierges. Yes, sometimes the chaps were worth paying attention to, weren’t they? Now, about that merger deal…

The next day, just as the happy manager was about to send out a notice for two new concierges, a rather dapper gentlecolt came in and asked if they had any positions open. Well, of course he gave the chap a trial week, just to be fair.

The new concierge soon proved very popular with the rest of the staff, never complained or grumbled like they did, and – despite this initially raising the manager’s hackles – the tips he claimed to have received from grateful guests turned out to be genuine.

What a stroke of luck indeed. Why, the merger even went off without a hitch, and though the manager didn’t remember sending out any gifts or flowers as a token of his appreciation – which had swayed the prospective clients in the end – it was always possible he’d done so and simply gotten lost amid the other hotel duties on his mind. Anyway, the merger went ahead without issue, meaning he now owned several profitable attractions in addition to his hotel. Soon he would have a complete resort.

Things were looking up! More money began to pour in, despite the increased workload. Which just meant he could afford a new stress ball now.

Better yet, now the manager only had to advertise for one concierge. Would miracles never cease?

Gladmane’s mind licked its lips. Hungered. Watching the world, reading other ponies’ thoughts. Especially the manager’s. Tightly wound, obsessed with money, never suspecting a thing.

Slowly but surely, Gladmane began the greatest show on earth.

What a helpful concierge this dapper gentlecolt proved to be, too! The manager was most impressed.

When two musicians broke out into a fight and refused to perform for the evening entertainment, the new concierge graciously offered to fill in, explaining rather meekly but cheerfully that he’d played guitar in a few bars back home and could pass a tune right enough. The manager – rather shaken by the fighting and pressed for time in any case – threw him to the lions and hoped for the best.

Whereupon, the new concierge tamed them.

Such a voice! Such a tune! Like country music, but nowhere near as depressing. Which was all very nice, of course, but nowhere near as relevant as the fact that quite a few mares paid him handsome money for an encore, and asked rather breathily when he would be coming back.

In fact, this new concierge seemed to be doing awfully well for himself as time went on. But it was only right: he was a miracle.

As the tensions of fast-paced, impatient Las Pegasus caused more and more staff to start breaking out into fights all around, the manager was happy to see that the new concierge was more than willing to lend a hoof, and more than capable, and never got into a fight himself.

True, the poor helpful chap wasn’t good at everything – filling in as the host, the poor hick frankly mucked up Trivia Quiz Night by mixing up the questions and the answers – but then he saved so much with his own self-deprecating jokes, and got along so well with the audience – even breezily walking among them and greeting a few by name – that hardly anyone complained. If anything, the hotel drew in a few more than last year’s projections would have predicted.

Yet all the while, the manager grew more and more suspicious. It was just a little too convenient.

It was when a couple of cooks mutinied and the new concierge conveniently offered to help out that the manager finally asked, “Is there anything you won’t volunteer for? You’re not going to tell me you can cook gourmet-style too?”

Whereupon the new concierge said, quite simply, “Why no sir, Ah’m fine.”

But the manager’s suspicions didn’t last long. No one fought the new concierge. No one else suspected him. If anything, he was one of the few members of staff everyone liked. He was a drinking chum, he told jokes and lifted spirits, he praised them at just the times when they were feeling down, and he swapped gossip and tall tales that always kept them smiling – or bursting out into laughter – when they served the customers.

Better yet, he was a fountain of good cheer, and therefore of good business. Even the customers drank from it, especially the female ones. Life in the hotel had turned from a dull, garish grind into a party that no one wanted to leave.

It was a miracle.

Eventually, the manager even relented and offered him a promotion, the first one he’d given in a decade. Usually, he distrusted social climbers, but the new concierge – whatever his name was – seemed all-around trustworthy. There was no evidence of any wrongdoing, at least.

And all the while, Gladmane grinned in two faces – a grin for the public, and a grin just for himself.

Meanwhile, Gladmane learned a lot more about life in one month at Las Pegasus than he’d learned throughout the rest of his life.

He learned the tables and when to spot a cardsharp a mile away. He learned all the little money tricks and backdoor bribes that smoothed the gears of the hedonism machine. He figured out how each roulette wheel and even the whack-a-diamond-dog game were rigged – magically or otherwise – to suck dry the rich clients and occasionally reward the poorer suckers, who were the loudest about their fabulous wins and a beacon for other suckers.

He could spot a dud cart from the genuine article anyway, but he soon turned his keen authenticity-meter towards the other grand prizes and rich idiot sales: luxury beds, home arcade systems, spa kits, “genuine” first edition memoirs, and rare celebrity costumes that he knew for a fact had been stitched up in someone’s bedroom the previous morning.

There was not a con he couldn’t tell from the real deal, no hustle he couldn’t bustle, no swindle he couldn’t swing.

The whole thing was rigged. To make sure everyone had a good time and to make more and more money. And the whole thing was wonderful. Undeniably and yet incredibly wonderful. He had never felt so vindicated.

He felt he could do no wrong.

Had the manager noticed all this keen observation by Gladmane here and there, he might have been more worried about Gladmane’s rising popularity. As it was, he was too busy planning further expansions for his resort.

It also meant Gladmane could swipe whatever job he wanted whenever he fancied – croupier, announcer, psychic act (which even the manager saw for what it was, but that was OK because customers rarely did), and dealer. He was useful to a harried manager.

Meanwhile, Gladmane rose up in the ranks. From concierge and senior concierge, he reached junior head of staff, then head of staff, then assistant manager.

It took months, years of planning, and more than once suspicion went his way – especially when he got too ambitious for his own good, and the fighting ponies he’d stoked up seemed barely invested enough in their tussle to need replacing – but Gladmane enjoyed every second of it, even the moments when he seemed on the verge of getting caught. Life was a game, and it was the best kind of game because he kept winning at it and kept enjoying every round. He’d rigged it in his favour long before anyone else had even bothered looking up the rules.

Best of all, he’d rigged it so that everyone won. Everyone was happy. Everyone had a good time.

Everyone who played the way he wanted them to, of course. He felt a pang of regret if an employee got fired for one fight too many. Sometimes he even looked up job openings for them elsewhere so they could hopefully get back on their feet later.

But it was near the end of his grandest scheme yet that he stopped worrying about it so much. That was how the game went. No one said the game wasn’t mean. The desert didn’t take pity on non-survivors.

Then one month, his behaviour changed, apparently at random.

Of course, he couldn’t help himself and kept swiping little trinkets here and there. It was insane, it was reckless, it would undo all his hard work in an instant if anyone ever found out about it. And it just made him grin all the harder.

He couldn’t help himself, but it wasn’t kleptomania.

If anything, the plan hinged on him bringing up all these mysterious thefts with his manager, and then with the rest of the staff, which one boiling midsummer’s night, he dutifully did.

The manager’s temper, frayed by years of intense management over hotel and attractions, snapped.

Oh, Gladmane was helpfulness itself. He dealt with the paperwork needed to authorize the hotel-wide search, supervised the locker search himself, reassured everyone like a good cop to his frustrated manager’s increasingly unlikeable bad cop.

Meanwhile, the manager screamed and insulted anyone who showed the least amount of uncooperation, up to and including those who were mere confused by the barked new orders.

Still, even factoring in the manager’s shaky sanity, no one could blame him. Thefts in the hotel were serious business. Customers wouldn’t trust any place where their valuables were at risk. The security lockers for valuables charged a small fee for the service. Grand-scale theft from them would be the death of the business.

So that’s what Gladmane arranged.

One night. A quick visit to the lockers, when everyone else was preparing for the usual evening services.

The next morning, he heard the manager scream the place down.

When a theft of that magnitude was discovered by an unfortunate receptionist helping a customer – and the manager took out his anger on anyone who even suggested they go to the Royal Guard about this – Gladmane was the one who waited until the manager had gone to have a lie-down, cleared his throat, and then suggested the staff were right: they should get the Royal Guard in on this, but quietly. This was serious. If it got out without a culprit caught immediately, no one would come here ever again.

That got them worried, all right. Jobs were on the line now. The manager was itching to let ponies go anyway, just to save a few bits. He was rapidly losing friends up at the top.

Phase One was down. Now for Phase Two.

And then even Gladmane began to worry. The script was going in a direction he hadn’t planned for.

Unexpectedly, a tip-off was leaked to the Royal Guard via letter shortly afterwards. An anonymous tip, exposing Gladmane as the real culprit of the crime.

And unfortunately for Gladmane, at a time when he’d – entirely spontaneously, because it was a junior concierge’s birthday and why miss out on fun even at a time like this? – hosted a party at his now-luxurious condo.

So Gladmane was there, surrounded by friends, admirers, and a few mares determined to be more than that, suddenly facing the Royal Guard who had a warrant to search his home, based on a potential lead in the hotel thefts case.

Oh darn.

Hundreds – not just staff, but the general public too – now knew about the case. Panic and worry spread among the partygoers. Gladmane himself was suddenly flustered, apologetic, completely confused. Nevertheless, he nodded his head slowly and left the building.

The wait was unbearable.

What had happened? Everyone kept asking, but though a hundred answers were invented by rumour, no one felt any confidence in any of them.

Already, several ponies had rushed home to tell all and sundry about news of the thefts, and how Gladmane’s condo was being searched even now. Gladmane, they’d say! Gladmane!? No, it couldn’t be him. It just couldn’t. There must have been a mistake. Even the press who turned up to photograph him seemed uncertain, though not so uncertain that they wouldn’t make a juicy story out of it.

Gladmane himself was in shock. He barely answered the questions. Something had gone wrong. It shouldn’t have happened like this, not in front of witnesses. He waited for his future to be decided.

Eventually, the Royal Guard left the building. No evidence.

A huge sigh of relief from the crowd, but a renewed questioning from the press, who now swarmed all over the Royal Guard and Gladmane trying to find out more about the thefts. Gladmane dutifully swore he was not allowed to discuss corporate confidential matters to the press, which just made them all the hungrier. It took hours to get it so that he was alone in his condo again.

Had something gone wrong? He awaited the next morning with bated breath.

It could all unravel any second. He’d never felt so startled by his own daring. This was nothing to what he’d tried before. Two concierges fighting over hearsay didn’t come anywhere close.

Would Phase Two work? He was starting to have doubts, in what was left of his conscience.

Next morning, Gladmane decided he’d go where the script was taking him, come what may.

He turned up for work, as usual. To his own horror, the manager cornered him and shouted at him for several minutes. What had happened last night? What was this about the press? Why had the Royal Guard gotten involved!?

All the staff saw was a tightly wound manager bullying someone who’d already gone through a trying time last night. Gladmane knew better than to be assertive. He looked as shocked and frightened as he dared.

His act held, but only just.

For just before the manager could sack him – and it was clearly on his mind and between the lines – the Royal Guard came to the hotel to speak with the manager. As did the press, the crowd of interested ponies, and whoever happened to be trying to sell them carrot-in-a-bun.

The manager stepped outside uncertainly to dismiss the rumours, which was a waste of time as most of the victims of the theft were in the audience and weren’t shy about it. Uproar shouted throughout the hotel that day.

Whereupon, Gladmane relaxed. The plan was back on track after all.

Later, it turned out the hoofwritten anonymous letter the Royal Guard had received – the one accusing Gladmane of the crime – matched the standard signature of the manager’s contracts. The manager swore blind he’d never seen the note. The Royal Guard – who were getting tired of his tantrums at this point – witheringly suggested oho, so someone must have spent weeks copying his style, then? Interesting statement.

A second anonymous tip came in, this time with newspaper cuttings that couldn’t be identified.

Gladmane grinned when he thought no one was looking.

The manager’s house was later searched. All the stolen goods were accounted for in his basement. Some had notes attached, memos for black market clients, and down payments in suitcases that overflowed onto the floor when the Royal Guard opened them.

One week later, amid the chaos, Gladmane became manager by default.

He put on his best concerned face for the speech to the press, the crowd, his fellow employees. He’d rehearsed this moment to perfection, and still they saw nothing but a stallion shakily improvising a speech.

He swore to clean up the poor hotel’s tarnished reputation, adding to the effect that he had enjoyed working with the old manager and wanted it known that the poor stallion was not a bad pony, but had probably struggled under the strain of all that work and stress, was hopefully finding peace in his new “retirement”.

Then he answered questions, most of which turned out to be much easier than he’d expected. Most were about upcoming shows. Well, waste no publicity…

Despite a few suspicions lingering in the days that followed, they were going up against the kindly, fatherly persona that Gladmane had mastered years ago. Besides, even if he couldn’t play ponies to make them feel guilty, the same way he played a guitar to make listeners feel like serenaded lovers, there was no evidence of Gladmane being guilty, apart from the dubious tip-off clearly hoofwritten by the previous manager.

Also, there were no more thefts while he was in charge. Not after he hired new security ponies and installed magical cameras for added protection. Gladmane knew security measures well. He’d often faced them himself.

After a few weeks passed, Gladmane could finally sigh with relief. Any remaining suspicious questions dried up. The danger was over. The plan had worked. He was safe again.

He was almost a king.

And that was it, more or less.

Gladmane had his little kingdom.

He ruled the hotel benevolently. Thanks to him, it became one of the most popular in all of Las Pegasus – indeed, in all of Equestria. His employees erected a golden statue of him in the lobby, as thanks for saving their jobs.

The tourists flocked to his attractions, he charged top bit for the privilege of serving them and treating them as the best friends he ever had, and for a while he even came to believe he’d earned his way to the top fairly and that he could stay there forever.

He was, in short, one of the few ponies to make it to the top and find it not lonely at all.

For a few more years, that was fine. Even the fights stopped once he was in charge. That was how good he was, or so they said. In truth, it was because he had no more use for them. Ponies fell over themselves to be his friends and cohorts. He liked that.

Until one day…

One day, Gladmane looked at his perfect life and his perfect earnings and what he thought of as his perfect friends, and wondered if it was enough.

Some of the acts he’d hired were talking about taking their shows on the road, which meant they’d earn more money out there than they would in here. They’d get out from under his fiefdom. They’d volunteer to leave his little kingdom.

Sure, he offered them money, but for some of them it was a matter of principle too, and they wanted to stand on their own four hooves instead of constantly being referred to as Gladmane’s this-and-that, no offence of course, he’d been good to them after all, the best friend they’d ever had…

He understood, he understood. He was kindness itself to them.

And a little old forgotten part of Gladmane, which had fallen comfortably asleep all this time, woke up. And sat up. And grinned.

Why not, after all? He’d earned the right. A few last fights, just to keep his employees from getting any funny ideas. Teach them they could stand with him or not at all. All without compromising his friendship with them. In fact, play his cards right – which he did every night – and he could even convince them it was their idea to stay after all, to fill his coffers, to complete his set of collectible acts.

He used the same old trick: play the confidant, whisper rumours, turn them against each other, act as a futile peacekeeper out of his depth, watch them convince themselves to stay beside him. Honesty and kindness, his favourite things.

What made his old flair and verve even happier was receiving a challenge, of sorts.

One day, two small-time swindlers – blood brothers even, thick as thieves, and Gladmane had seen early on how thick it was to be a thief – tried to infiltrate his hotel looking for easy money. Amateurs.

So Gladmane played his little game with them too. They thought they were kings. He knew they were just pawns with big ideas.

And within a week, he had them under his hoof so skilfully they were refusing to spend any more time with each other than their contracts allowed. It was too easy. He couldn’t believe he’d been as stupid as them once.

They even thought of him as their friend! Like he cared about them.

In a strange way, he found himself getting angry with them. They reminded him too much of his younger self, seeing nothing but pennies when the streets they walked on were paved with gold. So he’d done a little digging to find out more about each of them.

Yes, they were the usual small-time idiots. They could swindle an inventor out of his Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 and then con a dumb family out of their apple farm, but they had no big plans, no grand vision, no royalty. They were just fools pinching pennies. They even went right back to selling fake cures. Gladmane regarded them as a basilisk might regard a pair of hissy milk snakes. All hiss and no real venom.

What Gladmane hated was what one of them had said to him: the idea that he was like them.

No! He had real friendship! He wasn’t just a glorified salespony with a smile. He had more friends than anyone he knew! He felt different. Happier. Kinder, genuinely kinder. Like he was a good king. Everyone loved him, and he loved them.

He didn’t have to play tricks anymore, not that he ever really had, of course. He could stop. He could stop any time. This was the last swindle. That was it.

He was a good king now, he kept telling himself. The show must go on. All that jazz.

He began to sweat in private.

Anyway, even if he admitted to himself he’d been a con pony, he was nowhere near as bad as those two idiots were. Had been. He’d only punished the obviously guilty anyway. He could read ponies. See their true hearts.

He kept sweating.

Nuts to this! If he was so innocent, why deny all this? It was obviously wrong. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling.

He decided:

First chance he got, he’d get those two con ponies fired for some excuse or other. Get them out of Las Pegasus. They didn’t deserve a place in his little kingdom.

Only he couldn’t, could he? Las Pegasus was a big city. Despite the fame and fortune of his hotel and the attractions, he couldn’t claim to be king of the rest of the city yet.

Time to expand his kingdom.

Play the game for a little longer.

And yes, if it came to that, keep his greatest show on earth going. A few last acts before the happily ever after. He’d be king, remember? A good king.

That night, Gladmane began his new plan.

This time, it didn’t work out that way.

The broken friendships he caused alerted a certain magical map several hundred miles away, which had only recently awoken.

Admittedly, Gladmane had heard of the Friendship Map, but had largely forgotten about it among the myriad duties of his hotel. Anyway, what did he have to fear? Sure, he was mean when he needed to be, but he was a genuinely good friend to millions by now. What did a few acts matter? No, the Map could be ignored. It would clearly be on his side.

In hindsight, he should have paid more attention.

A little while later, two unlikely looking mares came calling. Emissaries of Friendship, even.

Gladmane, as an expert on friendship, knew who they were as soon as he saw them. But he wasn’t worried. If anything, he saw it as a good sign. It meant he could finally lay down all doubts about what he was doing and get his big plan underway.

Sure, they were notables in their native town, but they didn’t seem all that smart. Easy enough to deal with, or so he thought. More actors playing to his script, guest stars in his greatest show on earth.

He prepared his introduction, stepped forwards, and began his new life as a real king…

One week later, Gladmane fled Las Pegasus before a lot of ugly old history came back to haunt him, this time with torches and pitchforks. His kingdom collapsed overnight.

So the world had finished with Gladmane. Had indeed finished Gladmane himself.

He’d been exposed as the trickster fraud that he was, and now there wasn’t a pony in Las Pegasus who hadn’t done a little digging and worked out what he’d been up to all this time. A few of them had been his victims. They in particular were out for his blood.

The press went crazy over it. The guards, sheriffs, and police officers everywhere began to hound him. Sooner or later, he’d be a pariah in every village, town, and city in Equestria.

He was running. Worse, he was running out of places to hide.

A week of this was too much. He endured a month.

Out of breath but too frightened to stop, Gladmane narrowly caught a train before the sheriff of Appleloosa caught up with him.

As he peered nervously out of the window and saw the town and the galloping ponies fall far behind, he slumped down on his seat, waved off a couple of curious glances further up the carriage, tried to get his jumbled thoughts organized.

Then he decided. He’d go back to Two-Palomino. To his hometown.

He had nowhere else to go now. He had no friends anywhere. He was doomed.

Yet how could he?

He hadn’t seen the old place in decades. He didn’t even know if his family would recognize him, flashy suit or not.

Well, he was caught in a trap. He couldn’t walk out. He certainly couldn’t talk his way out anymore. He couldn’t go on among suspicious minds any longer.

So he’d go back home. He’d get berated. He’d have to swallow his pride and start selling worm-nibbled carts all over again, and he didn’t think he’d have the old gusto needed to jazz them up anymore. Assuming he didn’t get reduced to the gutter by no one wanting to buy off him.

And maybe, if he was repentant, he might, with years of toil and suspicion and insults and constantly wrestling his own feelings on the matter, have made it as far as merely been a well-liked used cart salespony.

Perhaps, for once, it was time to try humble pie.

After a lifetime eating gourmet. Serving gourmet. Serving gourmet to legions of fans and admirers, or singing them to cheers (and sometimes to tears) every night whilst he had to fight off mares with the mike stand and sold his outrageous costumes to roomfuls of hopefuls. He’d sold them more than mere stuff. He’d sold them dreams, and he’d sold them so well he could even believe his own made-up stuff himself. That had been one of the shockingly nice things about Las Pegasus: everyone loved him, and to his own surprise, he’d loved them back. Genuinely loved them. He couldn’t wait to wake up and go to work every morning. He’d been the luckiest stallion in Equestria –

Anyway, maybe he should go back to sleepy old Two-Palomino.

He could plead with his dad – genuinely plead, not just fake it for advancement or as part of a larger ploy – and live out his days in disgrace like he should. Or like everyone seemed to think he should. Or like he’d somehow convinced himself he should.

Gutter? He’d fished ponies out of the gutter. True, he’d then had to throw some of them back, because economics was a harsh mistress, but he’d genuinely felt it as a loss at the time, as if he’d had to tell a friend they were going to die.

That was what surprised him. He genuinely missed his life in Las Pegasus. Less the mean schemes and more the fun times he’d had with others.

What could it mean?

Then again, why not?

Because who didn’t want a slice of Las Pegasus? It was a dream on clouds, and better still, a dream on clouds that ponies on the ground could actually reach!

He’d known the regulars by name – could shake hooves and slap backs and swap outrageous nonsense with the best gamblers, magicians, singers, dealers, high society types, and fellow employees who’d shared the same boat as him and had been the closest to kin he’d ever felt outside his village.

The trust they’d put in his hooves! Who’d known it’d be so easy – so enjoyable – to make it big!? He’d put on a mask and been shocked at how well it had fitted, had even wondered if it should stop being a mask and start becoming a face…

Sure, he’d cheated a few out of their futures, but he’d read the room, and they were probably on their way out anyway. Like that manager. What a hothead he’d been! What kind of jerk fired a couple of concierges just for one fight?

Gladmane kept talking to himself.

Really, he hadn’t hurt anyone more than they were already hurting themselves. He’d just shown them the way. Perhaps if the manager had been nicer, Gladmane might have been happier leaving him alone. Better yet, maybe Gladmane could have earned the position legally instead of being denied it by his superior’s constant paranoia over all the fighting and stress over all his own self-imposed managerial problems…

Wait, wasn’t Gladmane supposed to be repentant?

Where was he?

Dreams in ruins. Not a friend left in the world. His secrets out for all to see.

How in Equestria could anyone like him after all that? He’d betrayed so many. Or at least, they’d see it as him betraying them… because if he was honest… hadn’t he planned behind their backs? For their own good, maybe, but how would he feel if someone else tried that excuse on him? Why would he trust someone like that? Why would they?

Now he sat on the train, still chasing his own gloomy thoughts, watching the stop for Two-Palomino coming into view.

Perhaps, he thought, this was the end of the party. Perhaps it was time to clean up.

It was only luck that had saved him from spending the rest of his life singing jailhouse rock. He wondered if the Royal Guard were looking for him, even now. Perhaps they’d catch him if he tried going anywhere else.

Beyond the windows, San Palomino was as bleak and lifeless as he remembered.

What a shock it would be for his kin, to see him again after all this time. He’d have a long story to tell. He’d have to give them what was left of his soul and see what they’d do with it. Then he’d know for certain what was left for the rest of his life.

Yes, he’d come clean. Start over. Earn their trust the right way. They were kin, after all. They were like his first friends. However many mistakes he’d made, if he was honest with himself and with them – with all the manipulating and meanness he’d indulged in – perhaps they’d show him some kindness.

Kindness that deep down, he knew he didn’t deserve. Las Pegasus haunted him. The looks on the other ponies’ faces when they’d seen him for what he was… No way he could show his own face in Las Pegasus ever again…

Repent. Reform. Restart his life from cart salespony up, the right way.

Perhaps he would earn their trust again? Perhaps he’d meet ponies he’d hurt before and have a chance to help them get back on their hooves? Perhaps he could be the Gladmane they’d believed in, and not the Gladmane hiding behind schemes and smiles anymore.

The train stopped. Gladmane made a decision.

He stood up.

He walked to the open door. He stared out at the place of his birth, at the tiny village, at the few ponies scraping an honest living out of the bare soil.

He opened his mouth, as he had done just before launching into a song like a rocket in front of hundreds of screaming fans…

He closed his mouth.

He scowled, rubbed his face as if to get the dirt off, and swallowed. Honesty, huh? Well, honesty it would be.

He said, “Ah’m never gonna live a life Ah don’t believe in.”

So when the doors closed and the train hurried on to Manehattan, he sat down and hummed out a tune he could play in a bar when he got there.

A new life beckoned. A better life.

If you couldn’t make it in Canterlot, you could make it in Las Pegasus. If you couldn’t make it in Las Pegasus, you could make it in Manehattan. And if you couldn’t make it in Manehattan, then baby, you just couldn’t make it.

So that was how Gladmane planned his new course.

He changed his name, of course. It was Gladmane who took the train ride to Manehattan, but it was “Tender Love” who stepped onto the platform at Grand Cheval Station. “Tender Love” had been the name of his favourite female fan, who’d actually made him feel loved rather than merely admired. He’d tried plying her on many otherwise lonely nights, but though she’d spend time with him, she’d always leave before the evening was done.

At the time, he’d assumed it was because she was playing hard to get, which had excited him even more. Now he wondered if it was because she kept sensing his true nature under all the jokes and drinks, just long enough to be repulsed by it.

Well, in some small way he’d acknowledge that. He used the name. It was a name longing for the Equestrian Dream.

Anyway, enough sentimental nonsense. He had business in Manehattan. A comeback.

Despite his initial fears, no one recognized Gladmane as he roamed the streets of Manehattan to get a feel for the place. It was on the opposite side of Equestria to Las Pegasus. News probably had not arrived here yet. Besides, no one cared in Manehattan. They had their own problems to deal with.

And what a place it was! Not as jazzy and exciting as Las Pegasus, nor as stuck-up and stale as Canterlot. He noticed a few breath-taking carts stuck in traffic on the roads, but that was just the old salespony eye wiping itself clean. His future lay elsewhere.

There was one career where you could practically do no wrong, after all.

That very night, by luck, he found a modest little bar and persuaded the barstallion to let him sing on the tiny stage. It didn’t earn him much, but he had made a start. He kept coming back until he felt confident enough to try more bars for more gigs and eventually more ponies in the audience. There was this to be said for Manehattan: it had no shortage of bars.

He was on his way.

To his delight, he soon found a manager who understood him perfectly. A former manager of Countess Coloratura’s, in fact, who understood that talent was good but image and style were what sold like hot cakes. Hot beefcakes, perhaps, if Gladmane had any say in it.

A few gigs in Manehattan got him what he wanted: a devoted fanbase and a few bars who were more than willing to let him come in as a well-paid regular (not to be sneezed at, in a city where every street corner was lousy with wannabe musicians, and getting paid at all was a dream to most of them).

If anything, Gladmane got to know the clientele well enough to devote songs to particular mares of interest, and he bought everyone’s rounds and paid off other ponies’ tabs, because a little investment here and there could pay dividends in loyalty later on.

Better still, his manager grew impatient and pushed him to new and more glamorous heights sooner than expected. The old thrill came back.

Gladmane’s name was changed yet again. The King.

Perfect.

His conscience no longer stood a chance.

Gladmane, a.k.a. Tender Love, a.k.a. the King, was made unrecognisable behind suits and haircuts far more outrageous than anything Las Pegasus had managed. He even hired a very confident dressmaker – who he liked for how chummy she was, how much she ended her sentences with a cheery “aheheh OK”, and how much he saw of his own ambition in her seemingly friendly eyes.

Meanwhile, his voice was distorted and his appearances hidden by enough lasers to blind a mole. His manager insisted on pizzazz. Gladmane was allowed to play the haughty superior as much as he liked, though not too much, because being a king meant being a good king.

Bit by bit, under the hot spotlights, any trace of the old Gladmane was ruthlessly burned away. Gladmane could feel it happening. The old fool had been just another con pony, but this time, this time he was the real deal. He knew it.

In turn, he got his manager to respect that maybe playing the “nice guy” card would work in the long run. His manager wasn’t inclined to argue, being more interested in pampering and presentation, which suited Gladmane fine. He didn’t want a manager who was too smart.

Thus the King rose in the charts, giving the likes of Coloratura and Sapphire Shores a run for their money.

As the King smiled and made friends and influenced ponies, he found himself right where he belonged. He didn’t even need to trigger fights anymore. They happened of their own accord now. Manehattan was that kind of place.

And deep down, where his conscience had long ago stopped bothering him thankfully, the big dreams came back to whisper in his heart. To intoxicate him. To make him do what a sober mind would never dare.

Behind the mask, Gladmane faded into the past. Tender Love hid in the present. The King was the mask, but he was the only one with a future. The rightful future.

The King would have his kingdom after all. And then a happily ever after.

He would not make the same mistakes again.