I don’t want to belong to any group that would elect someone like me to lead them
“Well I never expected to win now, y’hear?”
Gladmane—Governor Gladmane, it was now—dabbed at his brow with a monogrammed handkerchief. It came away soaked, both in sweat and slightly more mane dye than he was comfortable with. Outside, he could hear the cheering of his supporters—those loyal idiots—and all the barely-paid staff that had worked so hard to get him into this predicament.
The count wasn’t official yet: there were a couple of districts of Las Pegasus and a few outlying suburbs that hadn’t finished tallying the votes, but it was nearly a bygone conclusion by this point. Even if he lost every one of those sectors (not likely, given the numbers his pollsters had foisted upon him but which he’d only now elected to read) it was going to be a landslide victory.
He, Victory Gladmane, was, for all intents and purposes, the winner of the Las Pegasus gubernatorial election.
And he couldn’t be less happy about it.
He slammed his hoof into his desk, upsetting pens and papers and putting a hefty dent in the wood (particle board, really. It was the cheapest thing he could buy that still looked suitably ostentatious for the head office of a campaign headquarters). “How did this happen?! You were supposed t’take care of everything!”
Across the room, quivering like the pile of jelly in his back had finally given up pretending to be a spine, his assistant and co-conspirator swallowed nervously. The distracting habit made his Adam's apple bounce like a yo-yo. “I dunno, sir. I tried- did everything you asked.”
“Then why in the Sam Hill are my poll numbers soaring higher than Cloudsdale!? Why is there a crowd of ponies popping champagne under a giant banner of my smiling visage? Why am I not, at this very moment, sitting on a beach somewhere, my name covered in mud and my bank account filled with campaign contributions?”
He slammed his hoof again, knocking whole sheaves of paper to the ground. “What happened t’all the rumors you were supposed to spread, huh? What am I paying you for if not t’be my sa-ba-toor!?”
“I-I did!” Astro whined. “I spread dirty rumors about your past. I used campaign funds to sponsor attack ads on the radio. I even leaked information to your opponents. Everything you told me to do and more!”
“Then what happened!?”
Astro threw up his hooves, frustration overcoming his natural timidity. “Hay if I know! None of it worked! For some reason, ponies seemed to like you more when they heard sordid news. It made you seem down-to-earth and approachable. Even when I ran out of real scandals and had to start making them up. There’s an article floating around in at least one gossip rag that says you prefer sugar-free cookies!”
Gladmane shuddered at the thought. That was not one of the rumors he’d approved of, but it was even more ridiculous that a story like that hadn’t killed his campaign right then and there. Probably it’d been too outrageous for anyone to believe. But to think that ponies liked him more for all the dirty laundry? It didn’t make a lick of sense. That wasn’t how it was supposed to work. They were supposed to be scandalized and shocked and, most importantly, stop supporting his campaign!
Astro continued. “And the attack ads just made ponies like your opponents less for using such underhoofed tactics. Even though their candidates were so squeaky clean that they refused to use the blackmail and insider information I offered them.” He slumped into his “Be Glad! Vote for Gladmane!” stylized metal folding chair. “Despite all my best efforts… you won fair and square, sir. I’m sorry.”
Gladmane collapsed back into his seat (also decorated with campaign slogans, but made of much better quality material. A cheap desk was one thing but the chair he had to actually use). Was nobody sane in this city anymore? His question was answered almost immediately by the sound of music from outside his office. Somepony had apparently rolled in the jukebox from the lobby and had loaded it up with a dance remix of his campaign speeches. Clearly, there were no sane ponies left in Las Pegasus. It was the only way to explain his victory.
His eyes drifted to one of the many campaign posters that lined the walls. His own perfect smile looked like it was mocking him now. Sneering as if to ask, ‘Well? What now, einstallion?’.
He looked away, but it was almost impossible to escape his printed gaze and shining veneers plastered over every surface. He ran his hoof through his mane, taking comfort in the familiar action. The walls were closing in, just like that time in Baltimare. He’d won the race, and now everypony was going to expect him—him! A business stallion and former entertainment manager— to actually govern the third largest region in Equestria. Worse: they’d expect him to file all the proper documentation on his campaign finances. No one would look too hard at a failed campaign, but a successful one? He might as well keep his wallet under a microscope!
But this wasn’t the time to give up. He hadn’t given up when his first business failed. Nor his second. Nor his third. Nor when his resort nearly collapsed from all his entertainers unionizing and demanding better working conditions. Not even when he’d been brought up on criminal charges for unfair business practices and had to liquidate more assets than he was comfortable with to get the judge to reduce the sentences to fines, which was what had set him on this path to begin with! No, he always found a way to turn failure into success. To weasel his way out of responsibility and make off with the money while someone else was left holding the bag. He’d done it before and he could do it again.
But boy were the stakes higher than they’d ever been.
He stood again and began to pace, renewed energy surging through him. “The ship ain’t sailed yet. Not until they officially declare me the winner. So we’ve got,” He checked the clock. “Maybe half an hour. One, at best, to somehow ruin this campaign.”
“I can’t think of anything,” Astro offered unhelpfully. Gladmane ignored him. He hadn’t brought the stallion into his scheme for his creativity.
“I can’t change their votes now, but maybe I can get myself disqualified. What kind of things would get me kicked out of the running that we haven’t done yet?”
Astro scratched his chin as his eyes went distant. There was a reason Gladmane had hired someone else to learn the ins and outs of campaign rules. “There’s a number of things that can disqualify a pony from holding office. Such as not being a resident of their district.”
Gladmane shook his head. He owned three homes in Las Pegasus and had liens on a couple more. That wasn’t something he was willing to give up. “Next.”
“Not being an Equestrian citizen.”
“Skip the ones I obviously can’t do nothing about you—wait a minute. How hard would it be to fake a birth certificate?”
“If we had a few days, easy. This is Las Pegasus. In an hour…” Astro shrugged. “I might be able to get a doctor to swear he witnessed your birth in Kugeltown, but it’ll be his word alone.”
“Not good enough. We need something that’ll get me out the second folks catch wind of it.”
“Have you ever committed treason or sold national secrets to a foreign power?”
“No. Do you know any who are buying?”
“No. All my contacts are local.”
“Then skip it. What else?”
“It may not be an immediate disqualification, but you could reveal the honestly absurd amount of embezzlement of campaign contributions you’ve been doing.”
Astro ducked as a Gladmane bobblehead nearly missed clipping his horn. “We, you halfwit! The campaign embezzlement we’ve been doing! You’re on my payroll!” And he refused to go down for that one alone. “And obviously we’re not doing that! Then we wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in Tartarus of keeping any of it!” He slammed his hoof into the desk again. This time it went straight through, leaving a hoof-sized hole in the fake wood and revealing the truth behind its mahogany veneer for all to see.
“Well then I don’t know!” Astro rose angrily, knocking his collapsible chair to the side. He snorted and walked over to the window, leaning slightly on the sill as he fished around in his pocket for a cigarette.
Gladmane worked his hoof out of the desk and brushed the splinters off his jacket. “Fat lot of good you are,” he grumbled, stepping around his desk to right the toppled chair.
“You’ve got to face the facts,” Astro said, accompanied by the repeated clicking of his lighter. “You’re going to be the governor and there’s nothing either you or I can do about it.” Finally, the light caught and he held it to his cigarette. “Not unless you’re willing to pull off a capital crime, like a murder or something.”
Gladmane… paused. “Murder?”
“Oh yeah, that’d do it.” Astro looked out into the city, completely distracted and defenseless. “No coming back from that. I wouldn’t be surprised if they ran you out of town on a rail. Maybe even out of Equestria as a whole. No sane pony would ever support a monster like that.”
Gladmane considered the collapsible chair in his hooves. It was a good weight. Very solid. Easy to swing. Even had a couple of sharp edges, should the need arise.
He hesitated. Was he really willing to go so far? To cross such a threshold, to potentially abandon his homeland, to give up the new house he’d just finished signing the papers for?
A cheer came from outside. “Three cheers for Gladmane! The best Governor we’ve yet to have! He promised to get rid of all our taxes and line the clouds with gold! Hip hip—”
Yes, that was right. He had made a lot of campaign promises that he had absolutely no idea how to implement.
Suddenly, the chair didn’t seem quite so heavy.
Gladmane dabbed at his brow with a monogrammed handkerchief. It came away soaked, both in sweat and slightly more of a drying crimson fluid than he was comfortable with.
He was going to have to start rationing out those now instead of just throwing them away.
The job was done, messy though it was. He never would have expected the wiry stallion to put up such a fight, but in the end only one of them was armed and he’d landed a good blow to the head as his opening move.
With the most difficult part over, now he needed to find the best way to spin it. To present the exact narrative he wanted to get him technically disqualified, but hopefully not exiled. Self defense could do it, if he set the stage a little…
A knock came at the door, swiftly followed by it being opened without response. In the brief moment available to him, Gladmane cursed his open door policy.
“Mr. Gladmane?” Ms. Rouser called, “Is everything alright? Everyone’s celebrating yet you haven’t—oh.”
Her words died as she opened the door fully. Gladmane imagined it was quite the scene. Office destroyed. His tux disheveled. Astro… on the floor there. And there. And a little over there.
Rouser took it all in with the calm-headedness that he’d hired her for. No last chance to prepare or justify. The orchestra was tuned and the conductor arrived. However this last song played out, it was time to face the music.
“Is that Mr. Turf?”
“Yes,” Gladmane admitted quickly. “It was. I killed him. With this chair. Just now.” For unambiguous emphasis, he hastily added, “Being of sound mind and body.”
He readied himself for the coming condemnation. The window was unlocked and there were bushes below. He could make the jump if he needed to and book it to the train station before a mob could get organized. It’d take some work to access his funds once he got situated somewhere without extradition clauses, but he had enough stashed in a suitcase by the wall to make it to the border.
Much to his surprise, the mare breathed a sigh of relief. “Well thank Faust for that!” She tittered lightly. “Honestly, if you hadn’t done it I swear about half of us were ready to do it at a moment’s notice. I’ve never met a more insufferable idiot. There wasn’t a single day that his screw-ups didn’t make our jobs harder. Sometimes it seemed like he was actively trying to get you to lose!” She laughed again, completely ignorant to Gladmare’s poleaxed expression, then shook her head and sighed. “Don’t worry Governor, we’ll get this all cleaned up. Shield will make sure there’s never even a search for him, let alone a body to find, and Clean Sweeps will get your office looking brand new. Now come on, the radio crews have arrived and everyone’s waiting for you to give your acceptance speech.” She paused, and gave him a quick look up and down. “Maybe after a quick stop at makeup.”
Governor Gladmane nodded numbly as he allowed himself to be led away from his office, from his crime, from his way out and into the backrooms of his headquarters. Those first bloodied hoofsteps being his first steps into the world of local government.
As he was guided to his ultimate fate, one thought managed to echo though his shell-shocked brain.
Really, there truly was nobody sane in Las Pegasus anymore. Especially those involved in politics.
