The door to Ponyville’s Town Hall swung open to reveal a white mare with an even whiter smile. “Hello, my little ponies! I’m so glad you made it!” she said, beaming down.
Sweetie Belle smiled right back, the infectious kindness of the mare practically compelling her to. She managed to keep the gesture as charming as her name suggested without sacrificing the loving imitation of some of Rarity’s poise. It was a quality worth being inspired by; even if Sweetie hadn’t been shipped off to an expensive charm school like her big sister had when she was around Sweetie’s age, Sweetie still liked to think she had learned enough by living with Rarity.
“Hiya, Miss Sweet Stuff!” Scootaloo asked. Her wings buzzed with excitement and her eyes were gazing happily up at their welcomer. “Miss Cheerliee told you we were coming by, right?”
“Yeah,” Sweetie chimed in. Her tail swished in the warm air and her fickle young magic hugged her notebook to her chest. “We really hope she mentioned our interview was soon and that we weren’t interrupting anything.”
“Oh, no worries, girls!” Miss Sweet Stuff laughed easily, tossing her mane of blue, pink, and white mane with too much cheer to be posh. “She wrote to me yesterday to let me know you two would need a tour for your assignment. Everypony else has gone home, so we have plenty of time — you don’t have to save your questions until the end.”
Sweetie saw how the bright yellow scarf embroidered with suns rolled with her slight shrug. It was definitely something crafted by Rarity’s hoof. She hummed and nodded. “Thank you so much, Miss Sweet Stuff!”
“We’re gonna have the best Community Helping Hoof project of anypony in class — even AB and Twist!” Scootaloo snickered good-naturedly.
Privately, Sweetie Belle was wondering if they should really be trying to compete. Apple Bloom had been not happy that Miss Cheerilee limited them to two-pony groups for their project.
“I’m sure you will do great! Now, come along girls!” She waved her foreleg, beckoning the two fillies inside.
…
Town Hall was an incredibly spacious and cozy building. Despite its familiarity, it still dwarfed Sweetie Belle whether she was outside or within the high-ceilinged interior of the halls. The main interior hosted a huge foyer (Rarity had taught her that word) that hosted royal visitors, local farmers’ gathers, mayoral debates, and weddings. Rarity had told Sweetie a variety of exciting tidbits about Town Hall — that their own parents had been married there — and dull ones, like the colors of the drapes in every room on the third floor. Apparently, Ponyville was too small for its own separate records archive; whole rooms crammed with nothing but enough papers to build a full-scale fortress were tightly locked up within rooms of Town Hall instead.
Why anypony wanted to do that was beyond Sweetie Belle’s knowing, and when she looked over at Scoots, the look they shared told her that Scoots thought the same. Why lock up something as boring as papers about everypony?
Miss Sweet Stuff hadn’t let her smile slip from her muzzle. Her cheeks were rosy with a casual kind of delight as she led the two fillies to a large, oaken staircase up to one of the higher levels of Town Hall. Sweetie couldn’t help but notice just how much the gentle blue color of their guide’s coat looked out of place. Even the orange and white of Scoots and herself fit the earthier, plain colors of the creaky worn bowels of Town Hall. There was not a single shadow cast upon Miss Sweet Stuff. If Sweetie Belle hadn’t known better, she could have sworn on every god that the mare was absorbing each shaft of Princess Celestia’s sunlight to slip past the curtains.
“Now, the Ponyville Gazette is much smaller than the newspaper in most other places in Equestria,” Miss Sweet Stuff explained kindly, her bright blue eyes staring right at Sweetie and Scoots, “but there’s something so humble about having one little paper all to ourselves. Wouldn’t you girls agree?”
“Sure thing!” Scootaloo piped, hopping up before Sweetie Belle could get a word in.
Sweetie had to bite her lip and tug at the spiral of her notebook in frustration. “Is it hard for all the reporters and printers to have such limited space?” she asked.
“Hmm!” Even the way Sweet Stuff paused sounded so delightful and giddy. “I don’t think so. Everypony loves working here. The only time things can get a itty-little-bitty on the less-than-fun side is when the pegasus ponies try and swarm the desk or swoop over the darkroom door. Everything else is just sooooooo perfect!”
With every little burst of optimism, Miss Sweet Stuff's gumdrop cutie mark gained an oddly perky quality. Sweetie noted that the fact that each candy was depicted as being wrapped up in some kind of gold foil only gave the mare's mark the same odd, hypnotic feeling that the mark's owner had under all her enthusiasm. Around ponies like Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, Princess Celestia, and Miss Sweet Stuff, all sense of worries and homework deadlines melt away. It was the kind of feeling that a pony got when they had cough syrup for a cold — smooth, undeniably sweet, and making the mind slip into a fuzzy, sleepy calm. Seeing the familiar shade of gold of Princess Celestia's cutie mark sun sigils on another pony made Sweetie Belle feel indescribably safe.
Miss Sweet Stuff had stopped in front of a grand wooden door bearing a large metal horseshoe in the center. Aside from the luck that they were supposed to bring, Sweetie had learned in school that horseshoes were a sign of earth pony identity. She had been told all her life that Ponyville was special in how mixed it was compared to other places in Equestria, but everywhere she looked she still saw more horseshoes and earth ponies in Ponyville than anything remotely like what Twilight tried to describe as ‘unicorn heritage’ in other cities. Maybe it was because Twilight had grown up with too much of those things and Sweetie didn’t know how to miss them, but Sweetie hadn’t even known that unicorns had their own heritage until she had gone to see her sister during the Hearth’s Warming Eve pageant. Not only had she seen that Twilight Sparkle wasn’t exaggerating — there really could be a city of mostly unicorns — but that there were things that Miss Cheerilee hadn’t talked about in history classes.
Lucky horseshoes were one of Sweetie Belle’s favorite things in the whole wide world, and there were so many amazing crafts that could be made from them too, which just made them better! Yet, standing next to Scootaloo she couldn’t help but wonder how selfish other ponies would tell her she was for wishing she had whatever unicorns had for a horseshoe nailed above her bedroom doorframe instead. The sudden wave of guilt was enough to make her want to keep her mouth shut; Diamond Tiara wasn’t the only pony who had taunted her by saying horrible things about her being a unicorn. She watched quietly as Sweet Stuff nudged open the swinging door by its smudged, brass area to press one’s hoof. Next to her, Scootaloo was bouncing with excitement.
“Be careful once we step inside,” Sweet Stuff instructed. Her voice was glazed with the kind of baby-talk undertones used for hushing puppies for mild naughtiness. “Just because nopony else is in here doesn’t mean we shouldn’t put safety first! Please, don’t touch anything and keep your hooves to yourselves!”
Somehow, Miss Sweet Stuff managed to turn all her words into something that was nearly Pinkie Pie levels of cheery. At least Pinkie could be explained — she was Pinkie Pie; nothing more had to be said — but what was it that made Miss Sweet Stuff stick an exclamation mark at the end of nearly everything?
“Yes, ma’am!” Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo said. Out of the corner of her eyes, Sweetie watched and held back laughter as Scootaloo threw a salute in too.
…
Scattered in the center of the Ponyville Gazette’s main room was the grown-up version of everything the Foal Free Press had and more. Printing presses helped the floors creak as the three ponies trotted past. Letter trays spilled their ink-smudged contents on the surfaces of bulky wooden desks. A row of empty firefly lanterns hung upon hooks along the wall, each of them waiting to be filled. Most of the windows were shut tight, with the curtains pulled halfway across as lazily as possible.
The only sound other than creaky floorboards and hoofsteps were from the faint clinking of pencils and pens in their cups. Everything was in its right place, and Sweetie felt at ease weaving among the desks curiously. Nothing in here looked too strange or interesting enough to take note of. Surely her notebook would be filled with something by the visit’s end? Right now, if all the printing equipment was replaced with hoofball and fishing knickknacks, nothing would be different than her own father’s office.
Miss Cheerilee would definetely be taking away points for making her nearly of dying of boredom if Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo couldn’t write anything interesting. The Community Helping Hoof project was something every foal in Equestria was assigned, which was dizzying to think about. It was so hard to imagine such a simple project extending beyond the quaint little village of Ponyville. The goal was to learn about ponies who gave themselves to the community and lived their lives for others, just like Princess Celestia. Except, it couldn’t be somepony super obvious — everypony knew about the EUP and their local Mayor-Mare (or more rarely, their local Mayor-Stallion). Ponyfeathers, if Princess Celestia was actually somepony that could be contacted for something like ordinary school assignments then she would technically be off-limits too — but Princess Celestia only wrote to Twilight Sparkle and politicians and all the other Very Important Ponies under her sun.
Sweetie Belle was neither of those things. She did not want to interview a mailmare because there were so many of them. Apple Bloom and Twist had already selected somepony in Ponyville’s hospital as the subject for their project. She was too scared to go near the Ponyville dam. Scootaloo had thought that picking a teacher would be too mushy. Both of them had been able to agree that laborers were too overrated because over half the class had chosen to interview somepony that Miss Cheerilee said could be called that. It wasn’t like that could be avoided either; the idea of a ‘laborer’ was one of the most popular things a pony could be and one of the most valued cornerstones of Equestrian society. Unfortunately, it was also one of the favorite selections for the Community Helping Hoof project, according to the surveys that Miss Cheerilee had shown the class.
Of all the essential careers on the suggestion list that Cheerilee has passed out to the class, a Celestial Moral Manager was not one that either Sweetie or Scoots had considered before. They had heard of the profession before, but only vaguely. It was hard to call oneself an Equestrian and not know at least a little about them. Nothing could be considered a real and good news outlet without a Celestial Moral Manager on their staff, just like you couldn’t have a paper without a printer or reporter.
After the Gabby Gums incident, Sweetie had heard whispers between her mother and Miss Cheerilee when the former came to pick her up on occasion. Everfreeshire’s mayors were receiving suggestions from Princess Celestia about why it might be important to have Celestial Moral Managers specific to student papers at all local schoolhouses. The fact that Miss Cheerilee had gone through the effort to whisper this even when she thought Sweetie Belle hadn’t been around told the little filly far too much. The Gabby Gums incident had stirred a little more discontent than she had imagined.
And now, the two fillies would find out exactly what ponies like Sweet Stuff did — for right in front of them both was the door to her office. The frosted glass was neatly painted with black cursive letters spelling out Sweet Stuff’s job title as noticeable as the smile of the mare ready to nudge open the door.
…
“This is where all the latest articles are submitted,” rambled Sweet Stuff. Her tight corkscrew curls fell in an easy wave that brushed past either of her withers. “I have to read everything you and your parents see in the newspaper three issues ahead of time, at least for general content.”
Sweetie Belle looked up from her scribbling. Mouthwriting was tiresome to her jaws, but mouthwriting’s shorthoof was the only thing she had currently mastered. Ponyville’s schoolhouse didn’t teach hornwriting, and never had, no matter how many unicorns moved to town or were born there.
“Even the funnies?” Scootaloo asked, peering up at Sweet Stuff with wide eyes.
“Oh, absolutely!” giggled Miss Sweet Stuff. Her smile only grew wider and the sunlight pouring in to her office was brighter than new bits against her glossy mane. “Ponies wouldn’t believe the effort that has to go into making sure that the ‘fun’ stays in ‘funnies’ by ensuring that they’re positively good for as many ponies as possible.”
Scootaloo nodded with visible rigor.
Meanwhile, Sweetie Belle tried not to look too much at the tall stacks of fresh-smelling papers on the mare’s desk. It was like all the homework of a full season at the schoolhouse had been set before her. Something that required that much reading had to be the worst job ever!
Other than that monster tower of papers, Sweet Stuff’s office was relatively dull. She had a big wooden desk just like all the other heavy, big wooden desks. A portrait of Princess Celestia hung in her office and inside the main Gazette room; it looked just like the one hanging in Miss Cheerilee’s room too. A miniature Equestrian flag stuck out of a cup of pens with squishy, colorful mouth-grips that were filled with glitter. The normal golden sun sigils decorated every other surface that they could reasonably cover.
“Why do you have to read everything so early?” Scoots asked, now casting her own wary look at the paper’s size. “I thought that was the editor’s job, to, y’know, make sure everything looks perfect.”
“That’s right!” Sweet Stuff cheered. From where she stood Sweetie Belle watched as the mare’s eyes sparkled with the kind of joy that made her look straight through Scoots instead of at her. “Except, I get an even bigger say than any of the editors and other staff here. Can you guess why that is, my little pony?”
Sweetie Belle’s jaw was starting to ache; she wished Scootaloo had been the one who offered to take notes. Instead, it was Scootaloo who was currently letting her jaw gape like a fish because she was searching for an answer to an obviously rhetorical question.
“I’m like life’s editor!” squealed Sweet Stuff, another trail of giggles leaving her in a quick breath. “When ponies try and write things that may be hurtful, I am the one there to remind them of the most important things. Each of us must only ever use our sweetest words and speak in our kindest voice. As ponies, we should always strive to put the kindness that is the greater good above everything else. It’s just like the old saying of Clover the Clever, that lovely old mare!”
’Speak only in your kindest voice or not at all’, Sweetie Belle thought, is how I think that went. It’s been a while since Equestrian Morals classes had a lesson on the Founders…
“I’m the one who makes sure that all articles in this town stay that way, and that nopony publishes anything that could be considered illegal or ill-timed. Just think about how sad things would be if a report about a run-in with a highwaymare on the outskirts of town would be if it were on the same day as something very, very important just like the Summer Sun Celebration, Hearth’s Warming Day, or another splendid occasion!”
“Huh,” Scootaloo mumbled, flicking her ears. “So what would happen to that story then? Wouldn’t that be important? It doesn’t just go away?”
Sweet Stuff must have gone to a special school for smiling. Most ponies were always smiling because anything less was just icky and rude, but Sweet Stuff could give Pinkie Pie a run for her bits. The only one that Sweetie knew who could out-smile Pinkie Pie was Princess Celestia herself.
“Now, that’s a silly thought!” Sweet Stuff clapped her forehooves together and let the melodious sound fill the room. “No, my silly little friend! Nothing like that happens. When things that would turn somepony’s smile right around happen in town, we just hold off on publishing that information. Other times, we take a few bits out to turn a wildfire of smoke and gloom into a few annoying embers. While I may be blessed to have such an amazing job serving my princess and my community, there are times when I must decide something cannot be published if it goes against what the princess would want, be it in her law or something else. If the community would hate it, and Equestrian morals would be burdened by the contents of the papers placed before me, then I must toss them to the shadows and let them be no more. To do otherwise is to violate a sacred duty and undo all that Harmony, Princess Celestia, and most importantly, Destiny would will us all to know.”
The next time Sweetie Belle had looked up from her flurry of notes, Scootaloo’s muzzle was scrunched up like a pruny hoof. “That sounds even weirder than Miss Twilight’s new book sorting spells!”
The kindly smile of Sweet Stuff did not falter. “Oh Scootaloo, be careful with your words. Calling somepony ‘weird’ is a very rude thing to do; it implies they don’t belong in the herd! Twilight Sparkle is the Faithful Student of Princess Celestia, and to suggest negative things about her. Do you really think that’s okay?”
“Oh shoot!” Scootaloo squeaked, her wings letting her hover with anxiousness momentarily. “Horseapples! I’m real sorry, Miss Sweet Stuff, I—”
“Shh,” cooed Sweet Stuff, “you don’t have any reason to fret, my little pony. I promise you that the work I do isn’t that strange-sounding. Just think about it like this: if you have a month where there are thirty days, and twenty have rainstorms, what do you think is more important? Should we let ponies know that there are twenty days of no-good, gloomy rain or should we tell our ponies about the ten days of sunshine?”
Scootaloo’s muzzle wrinkled even harder in thought, and Sweetie paused to watch her friend scratch at her short mane in thought. “Uh, jeez. I guess the rain? I kinda like rain, so—”
“Hee-hee!” Sweet Stuff erupted in her high, slightly grating peals of laugher. “Oh, Scootaloo, you are so funny! It’s much more important to tell ponies about the sunshine, of course! To do otherwise would be horribly pessimistic of us, and fostering such bad things within anypony is among the most un-Equestrian things somepony could do! Let no news be bad news, and let bad news be no more than is ever needed to be said! That is a moral fit for anypony — ‘good vibes only’ as the fillies your age say, hee-hee!”
Both Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle watched Sweet Stuff read their curious expressions. “Is there anything else that you girls would like to know for your project?”
At last, Sweetie Belle seized the chance to stick her pen in the spiral of her notebook. With careful nudges of her muzzle, she nudged back through all the pages of notes she took. “I think we’re almost done, Miss Sweet Stuff!” Sweetie Belle squeaked, ignoring how her voice cracked at the end. “But, umm, our classmates might find it hard to understand some of these things. Miss Cheerilee says we’re not allowed to only use our interviewee’s words, otherwise, we’d be ’omitting any of our own work’ is how she put it. Can you give us some examples of things our classmates would relate to? The kind of stuff that is too bad for putting in the paper — if there’s anything you’re allowed to mention?”
All at once, Sweet Stuff’s huge whale of a smile shrank down to a guppy. A mysterious twinkle that Sweetie wasn’t sure was really there danced in Sweet Stuff’s eyes — or Sweetie Belle’s imagination. “Well… I suppose there are a few things that I could tell you…”
“Please, please, please, please!” the two fillies pleaded, jumping together and giving their best pleading puppy-dog eyes.
Sweet Stuff cleared her throat daintily. “To start, just think of what would have happened if that Everfree Forest zebra was allowed to accuse shopkeepers of being unfriendly. She mailed us a letter after every visit she made to town before Twilight and the rest of the Bearers investigated her thoroughly. Had that been allowed to be published, the Gazette would have welcomed slander against innocent Ponyville subjects! And it would be all because of giving an unnecessary spotlight to completely unfounded accusations! What we would have prevented was an irrational, skewed perspective by having somepony like Zecora be able to make Ponyville out to sound like a backward, unwelcoming and un-Celestian place to live.”
Scootaloo nodded so much her mane still shook after her head had stopped bobbing. “Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You have to include the words of different ponies…”
“Exactly! That would not have been done if we gave a platform to anypony who wished to say unkind things about our town. If news became gloomy or made somepony feel sad, the only reasonable thing to do would be to stop consuming it and refocus on normal, bright-and-shiny real life that our sun goddess has blessed us with. Negativity has never done anypony any good!” Sweet Stuff cheered. “Instead, we uplifted the concerns of our citizens about the wicked-looking stranger in our midst when such news was needed because it helped others feel safe and address a very real problem to the Ponyville herd at the time.”
Sweetie Belle found herself nodding along with Scootaloo. If she had been a grown-up, she might have been scared too. A place like the Gazette would have been a perfect place to communicate her worries.
“Plus, treason against Princess Celes— the royal family,” Sweet Stuff corrected herself firmly, shaking her head from side to side like she had a bee in her (non-existent) bonnet, “is never, ever permitted in any paper! Our Celestia-wrought laws have always forbidden such conduct! It is a sad thing when any Celestial Moral Manager finds something that has to be submitted as evidence of heresy. I’ve heard some sad, sad stories from the other poor, overworked CMM fellowmares of mine in other cities.”
Sweetie Belle found a cold shake tear through her stomach at that ugly, unthought-of word — heresy — and the images of monsters the mere mention of the crime produced. Once again, her and Scoots were not so different — their eyes found the portrait of Princess Celestia in Sweet Stuff’s office at the same time. What kind of evil creature could get it in their head to hate their kind and merciful goddess?
“There…” Scootaloo whispered, her legs clearly locked stiff to prevent them from shaking, “There’s… never been anything like heresy in Po-Ponyville ha-has there, Miss Sweet Stuff?”
Niggling somewhere in the back of Sweetie’s mind was one of those dumb bad-gut, uselessly paranoid thoughts. As irrational as it was for her to bother with questioning it, she just didn’t get why Sweet Stuff was smiling the way she was right now, so slow and certain.
“Poor thing,” came the familiar syrupy voice of Sweet Stuff, “I didn’t mean to scare you. C’mon, we’ll have to get you and your friend Sweetie Belle some sweets here soon to calm your mind — I have a bowl somewhere in here. Ponyville has never been suspected or investigated for heretics, my little ponies. The closest we have ever gotten to that was when Twilight Sparkle had a teensy bit of a bad day and let loose a minor magical mishap with a doll of hers. The Ponyville Gazette had gotten quite a few letters that were…” For the first time since they met her, the two Crusaders saw Sweet Stuff blink, pinching her eyes shut.
“...They suggested that dear Twilight Sparkle was less than heroic. Some ponies were even suggesting that she, the Faithful Student of our sun goddess, face punishments and restrictions.”
“But Twilight’s super important!” Scootaloo protested.
“And how can somepony question the Princess like that?” Sweetie gasped. A quiet, topsy-turvy feeling was spreading through her stomach. It was one that made her feel like a big, fuzzy spider was crawling around and giving her an ugly tickling feeling. Everypony knew that what was good was because it was rooted in kindness — which was one of the Elements for Celestia’s sake — and the authority of the mare who could read Destiny, who ruled over them all…
...the idea that somepony could look at Miss Twilight and want her to be gone… or who knows what else…
...it made Sweetie Belle feel a lot like what she imagined Rarity would, if Twilight really had been sent away.
“That’s awful,” Sweetie whispered sadly, watching as Sweet Stuff nodded somberly in approval of her response. Some of that icky feeling crept back into the dark pit of Sweetie’s stomach when she caught sight of that agreement. “And, umm, thank you so much for the tour — we’ll be able to succeed in our assignment now!”
“You two are very welcome! Disobedience most certainly is a terrible thing. That is why there is a Celestial Moral Manager in each town, and one in each form of a news outlet that you can possibly imagine. Any world where our Princess and her treasured Faithful Student are able to be degraded and judged is nothing more than a mill of lies in need of correction. That’s where ponies like me step in. We do our part in throwing all four hooves in towards helping guide the light of Princess Celestia to all those who might be trying to hide. Will you girls do the same in using your lives for others, in whatever way you can?”
“Huh,” Scoots mumbled again. “Y’know, Miss Sweet Stuff, when you put it like that, it kinda sounds like the club Sweetie, our friend Apple Bloom, and I have. We’re the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and we try and do our best at stuff too!”
I like the sound of that, Sweetie Belle thought, flipping the front cover over her notebook. I’m sure that Princess Celestia would be grateful if Scoots, AB, and I all tried to work a little more of her Harmony into our crusades and being more good news than bad news in Ponyville.
