Mail-Do-Well

Mail-Do-Well

Chapter 1

Written by CanterlotGuardian

“Hey, Derpy. Can I get off early today?”

Derpy looked up from her desk at the Ponyville mail office. She surveyed the back room to see who was

talking to her. Not that she needed to, really. She only had one employee in the whole branch.

“Sorry, Sparkler…” she said with a sheepish grin. “I got caught up in reading this new Daring Do book

that Twilight lent me- after Rainbow Dash got it back to her a week late…” She chuckled to herself; that

silly Rainbow Dash was always obsessing over that book series. Not that Derpy could blame her; it was a

well-written and engaging series. “Anyways, what did you say?”

“I just asked if it were possible for me to get off early today,” Sparkler replied, poking her head into

Derpy’s office. “It’s seriously dead in here.”

Derpy got up and walked out of her office. “Well, let’s see what all you’ve done today and how much

is left. Then, I’ll decide.” She and Sparkler went back to the back room where all of the packages and

letters were normally piled up. When they got back there, though, Derpy noticed that the room was

looking rather… bare.

“Oh my,” she said aloud. “There isn’t anything back here.”

“My point exactly…” replied Sparkler. “We only got three packages and one letter in, the whole day, and

I’ve already gotten all of those sent off to their respective locations.”

“But what about last week’s overflow? We had a lot more stuff in here last week that didn’t get sent

out.”

“Yeah, well, about that… I kinda came in over the weekend and got all of those delivered myself.”

Derpy looked at her quite oddly. “So you did my job? You didn’t have to do that-“

“I know I didn’t. You weren’t feeling well, though, and I figured that you wouldn’t mind if I turned

around and helped you out a little bit. I won’t even expect you to pay me for those days. Volunteer

work, let’s call it. Besides, I was really bored and had nothing important to do.”

Derpy looked at her assistant and smiled warmly. “You know, I wish I had a daughter like you.”

Sparkler blushed a deep crimson. “Oh come on, Derpy… You know that when you say stuff like that, it

makes me go all red. Besides, you’ve got an amazing little sister, and you’re always saying she’s like a

daughter to you, aren’t you?”

“Well, yeah… I would actually like to have a kid someday, though-“

Just then, Sparkler noticed something. “Um, Derpy…” she said, cutting the mailmare off. “What on earth

is that?”

Derpy followed her gaze over to the back door of the post office. When she saw what Sparkler had been

looking at, her jaw dropped. Someone had spray-painted some very… interesting things on the inside of

the door.

“Why is it on the inside?” Derpy asked, walking over to it. “Isn’t graffiti usually on the outside of

something?”

“Yeah,” Sparkler replied. “That is rather odd.”

“Odd?” Derpy asked rhetorically. “It’s more than odd. And quite frankly, it’s really getting to me, seeing

all of this happening.”

“All of this? What do you mean by that?”

“You haven’t heard about the other taggings that have been going on lately?”

Sparkler looked at her with a bemused look on her face. “Um, no… It’s not really that big of a deal,

anyways.”

Derpy looked a bit cross as she faced her employee. “I’ll address what you just said in a moment. But

yes, there have been quite a few graffiti taggings around Ponyville as of late. As a matter of fact, before

you got here today, Mrs. Cake was in here to pick a package up, and she was telling me about how

somepony had broken into her shop and spray-painted “PIE IS BETTER THAN CAKE” on all the tables in

the shop.”

Sparkler couldn’t help but laugh. “Pie is better than cake? Really? That sounds like something a grade-

school filly would do. Rather immature, don’t you think?”

“Yes, that is true, but at the same time, it’s not something that should be happening to begin with.

That’s not the only thing I’ve heard of, either. One of my other customers was telling me about one

of her relatives out in Manehattan who had the same thing happen to her house. Some very obscene

things were put on there.”

“But Derpy,” Sparkler pointed out, “Manehattan is a pretty long ways away from Ponyville. Are you sure

that the two instances are even related?”

“Maybe not, but I do know that I for one, am not going to stand for this.” Derpy turned to her employee.

“Go ahead and take the day off, Sparkler. I’m going to stay here for awhile and get all of this graffiti

taken off the door.”

“By yourself? Do you not want me to stay and help?”

Derpy shook her head. “That’s fine. I want to do this myself. This is my building, after all. Besides, it

shouldn’t be too hard to get it off.” She smiled at Sparkler. “You can go. I’ll be fine.”

Sparkler gave Derpy a hug like she always did when she was getting off her shift, then walked out

towards the front of the building to get her bag and take off. Derpy had gotten that bag for her as a

birthday gift the previous year. She’d even taken the time to hand-fasten a muffin onto the snap that

held the bag shut. This had the effect of making Sparkler’s bag look exactly like Derpy’s bag, which is

what she’d wanted.

Sparkler had loved it so much that she could scarcely be seen around without it.

Once Derpy had made sure that Sparkler was gone, she set to the task of getting the graffiti cleaned off

the door. First, she checked to make sure that the door’s lock wasn’t broken in any way. She did this

by locking the door from the inside, then stepping outside before shutting the door and testing to see

whether or not she could get in from outside.

Her experiment was successful- the lock on the back door was indeed still working properly.

Unfortunately for her, this also meant (as she realized a minute too late) she had locked herself out.

Laughing to herself silently, she went around front and came back in through the main entrance,

heading back into the back area.

With that particular fear allayed, she started concentrating on getting the actual spray-painted material

off of her door. She put on some music- heavy metal, as it was her secret musical love- and got started

scrubbing down the door.

Her initial estimate was way off, as to how long it was going to take to get it off. Rather, she had to

spend almost five hours getting it off the door. By the time she was done, she was bone-tired and

wanted nothing better than to head back to her place and collapse into the most comfortable bed ever.

Derpy dragged herself into her office, packing everything up into her own bag. She made sure to mark

her place in the Daring Do book that she was reading, before putting it in the bag.

Just as she was about to lock her office up, she heard the front door open.

“Um, Miss Derpy…?” came a tiny voice from that room. “Are… are you closed? If not, then… well, I’d like

to get a letter mailed off…”

Derpy sighed. Just when she thought she was in the clear, somepony had to come in and want

something done. She knew full well, though, that she just didn’t have the heart to turn them away, so

she set her bag down by the door and walked out into the main lobby.

“Oh hi, Fluttershy! Yeah, sure, let’s get that mailed off for you!”

It was almost nine at night by the time Derpy dragged herself into her home. She let the door shut

behind her as she looked into the dark house. There were times like this where she really hated living

alone. She wanted someone to comfort her, someone to be a listening ear while she unloaded on them

about the problems of the day.

Sadly, because many ponies still saw her as the silly wall-eyed mailmare, they really didn’t include her in

their list of potential partners.

She turned on the kitchen light and went slowly over to the refrigerator. She was sore all over from

the scrubbing, and her dragging movements showed it. Opening the refrigerator, she pulled out some

leftovers and tossed them into the microwave. When they were done, she added two blueberry muffins

to the plate, before heading into the living room to eat.

The muffins were fresh; she’d finished making them that morning, but she hadn’t had time to eat one

before she had to go to work. That was okay in her book, though; it had just given her something to look

forward to for when she got off work and back to her place.

As she sat in the relative darkness- the light from the kitchen was the only light she had at the time- and

slowly ate her dinner, her thoughts were consumed by the predicament she had voiced to Sparkler back

at the office.

She really was concerned about these taggings, even though Sparkler seemed to not think of them as

severely as she did. What could she do about it, though? She was just one pony-

“The town meeting!” she exclaimed out loud. She’d almost forgotten about it. Mayor Mare had come

into the post office the previous day to mail off a package to her cousin, and while she was there

she’d mentioned to Derpy about the town meeting that was going to be taking the place the following

weekend.

Derpy leaned back in her easy-chair and smiled, taking a bite out of the fresh muffins. She’d finally

figured out a way to bring this to everypony’s attention. Now, they had to do something about it.

Now, they would have to take action.