Daring looked at the surprising set of stacks of four-and-a-half-page questionnaires, from the look of things there were far more applicants than pre-approved spaces. First thing was; first, she and Spike took the time to read over the forms from the Crystal Empire first. After they were done, and their suspicions were confirmed they marked seventy percent of the applications from the Crystal Empire with a significant “RETURN TO SENDER” and shipped them off. After that, they got to the real task of going through the applications.

They decided to handle the meetings at the Ponyville townhouse, most of the details regarding the project were still being kept under wraps. Daring was on the fence about that but Spike and Cadance were both adamant about keeping the majority of info regarding the community out of public knowledge until a few genuine residents had actually begun settling in and getting acclimated to the new town.

Amusingly, all the ponies in Daring’s team, and a few in Luna’s, had asked for community application forms. All the structures were finished, aesthetic detailing and all, and if everyone had returned to their home point. Daring was looking like she might be just a small handful of time from giving birth. Spike jokingly said her rotund belly was just too much fun to play with on more than one occasion.

Daring didn’t mind his antics too much, they were mates and she knew he meant well for her and their baby. She had been warned by Twilight about his occasional bouts of playfulness, and occasional cases of getting ahead of himself.

*************************************************

“I see you’re interested in this venture I started with the princesses, ms Dinky,” said Daring to the young unicorn mare with a pale purple coat and blond mane before her. Said unicorn was dressed in a blue business casual dress, “care to give some insight as to why you decided to fill out an application.”

The mare in question sat neatly, and politely, in her chair in Ponyville townhouse Twilight had given Daring and Spike. She kept her composure, although it was evident she was a bit surprised about a few things. Taking a moment to collect her thoughts Dinky said in a surprisingly elegant voice, “I would first like to thank you for the time you’re taking to meet with me.”

“Not a problem,” said Spike, “we want this project to go as smoothly as possible.”

“And I appreciate it,” said Dinky, “mom expressed an interest in the project, but she’s far too attached to Ponyville to even try leaving at this point, even if somepony went through the trouble of filling out an application in her stead. And I want to try moving toward new opportunities.”

“An excellent starting statement,” said Spike, “have you given any thought as to what sort of role you could be playing in the community?”

“I was thinking working in the postal service, like mom did before she started up her own operation here,” said Dinky.

“We will need postal workers,” said Daring, “and did take the time to have a post office established in the area. That said, if that option was no longer available to you, what other occupations would you consider taking part in?”

“I noticed in your public release,” said Dinky, “you have public bathing facilities, and are in the process of finding managers and staff for the facilities.”

“Right, the bathhouses,” said Spike, “the site has three, for the moment. We might look into adding more as the community expands beyond what we’ve prepped for.”

“But for now,” said Daring, “it’s a bit of a social experiment, so we’re keeping our initial population within a certain range.”

“If I couldn’t be part of the mail service, I think I might want to try working as part of the staff for the bathhouses,” said Dinky.

“Very good,” said Daring, “according to the records we were given access to, your talent lies in record keeping. I think that making you the record keeper for your place of employment, initially, during your stay at the community might be the best course of action.”

“Any reason you didn’t apply when Twilight sent out the alert she was looking for new aids,” Inquired Spike, “given the details we have on record regarding your special talent.”

“I was a little nervous about applying for employment for a princess, even one I’ve known pretty closely most of my life. Mom actually gave me a nudge towards this project when the opportunity presented itself.”

“She wants you to try something without her within arm’s reach,” said Daring, “my parents were the same way. Even though I talked with my sister about going out and having adventures, she really didn’t want to leave the town we grew up in, even if I was with her. Mom and dad had to give her a bit of a forceful nudge to move beyond the place we grew up. I was far more adventurous; I wanted to go out and see the world from a very early age. But recent events have led me here, trying to do something I have very little genuine experience with.”

Dinky gave Daring a perplexed look. “Before the event that kicked all this off,” said Spike, “she wasn’t a very social pony. In fact, she went out of her way to limit her social interactions.”

Dinky gave a curt nod before saying, “Thanks for the consideration. If I do make the cut, mom might drop by for a visit every now and then.”

“We have no problems with that,” said Daring in Spike in unison, after a brief pause all three gave a hearty laugh that lasted for a few minutes. There was something about Dinky that just made all that seem perfectly natural.

After they were done with the bit of laughing, Daring a Spike asked a few more questions before thanking for her time and telling her they would get back to her in few days to let her know the results.

They continued along with a few dozen more applicants, some had even come from some of the major cities, but most seemed to come from smaller communities. Thankfully, they kept the interviews to a maximum of fifteen minutes or so, any longer and they would likely go through a fraction of what they had and be losing sleep while doing a portion of the interviews. Spike wanted to make sure Daring was getting enough sleep, especially with how close she was in her pregnancy.

After the last interview of the day had left Spike inquired, “How many have we prepped for living in the town again?”

“We wanted to keep things to a somewhat manageable level,” said Daring, “so we started with around sixty houses in the residential area, each house should be capable of accommodating up to a family of six or so. Although, sometimes residents choose to dwell in a discreet section of their shop. The shopping facilities we have erected, including the blank dining centers, all have an area that can serve as either places to live in or extra storage.”

“So that’s why you made it, so those structures had two stories. And the hotel structures you had me oversee can easily have any of their rooms act as a residence for their staff, but just to be safe I made sure to have portion of the main floors hold a few rooms for staff only that could act as a place for few minutes of rest or temporary residence should any of the faculty require it. But why are their two three-story hotels in the commercial district to begin with? You’re not honestly expecting that many guests at any given time, are you?”

“One of those structures is actually supposed to be a department store, of sorts. I thought might be a good idea to have a facility for small and startup businesses to operate in a more regulated environment, that or have a place for more vendors to sell their wares.”

“I get it, they rent or buy a space and everyone knows where to find them. And since businesses of that nature are usually a bit low on funds, do you have a special policy for them?”

“We’ll work on logistics when the time comes for that, and the facility can act impromptu storage for the community until the rooms have a designated owner or renter.”

“Sounds good,” said Spike, “but for now, you need to get to sleep, we don’t exactly want you losing focus tomorrow.”

*********************

The next day, about five hours after sunrise and 2 hours after the two had eaten their morning meal, they back to several hours worth of interviews. At around noon they took a break to eat, Daring ended up downing four times as much as Spike this time around. Daring’s consumption was a bit of surprise since she hadn’t showed signs of such a massive appetite that morning.

All the completed interviews were divided into “pass” or “fail” piles; the third pile was for interviews that were yet to happen and marked “pending” but all of it was still more time consuming than Spike and Daring would have liked. Twilight had offered to assist in this matter but Daring and Spike insisted that they should be the ones to take care of it all since they were the ones that were trying to build the community and would the most significant deal of involvement with its developments. Daring also made the argument that if she and Spike had a better understanding of the potential residents, it would be easier to decide on who gets to be a resident during this early time.

After lunch it was more of the same, the interviews almost all seemed to blend together. There were a few cases of having an interesting interaction, like was the case when they found themselves having exchanges with former members of the teams they had building the town. Veggie Malt, Spike, and Daring couldn’t help feeling sorry for his name, had been one of the more excitable individuals they interviewed. All the former build members were surprisingly able to make the cut, but Daring wanted to keep the number of actual practitioners of any given profession to something akin to sample size so that they could have something resembling a diverse community.

The real problem was finding acolytes; Daring would prefer they be young mares and fillies interested in the faith. Princess Cadance was handling the creation and delivery of the new acolyte furniture, Daring and Spike would be showing her where it all went when they had the time and received word regarding the delivery of the items in question.

The town’s policies would be provided in a simple, so simple a foal learning to read, pamphlet for all the new residents to read. Since she was confirmed as an observer for the town, and they wanted her to feel like she had some involvement in project before it all got underway, Daring had entrusted Flurry Heart with the production the pamphlets, she wrote out the ten key policies for the community on a piece of loose paper, with a little bit of background info regarding the town, and handed it off to Flurry with the expression “Have at it” and watched the excited young half skip/half hover away. It would take some time for Flurry’s project, especially with making copies.

Day two of the interviews, with what looked like another day and half’s worth of work, was finished. They were just getting ready for dinner, Spike insisted on actually making something when there was knock at the door. Since Spike was preoccupied, Daring went and got the door.

What she saw confused her, Twilight and Flurry with a few dozen boxes floating in their magic, six for each mare. Daring stepped out of the way as she said, “We’re just getting ready for dinner, Spike’s in the kitchen prepping it now.”

“We’ll be quick,” said Twilight as she and Flurry entered the structure and set the boxes in the corner next to the door, “Flurry just wanted to get these to you as soon as possible, we might have gone a bit overboard.”

“We?” Daring said with confusion and a raised eyebrow.

“Aunt Twilight knows a spell for duplicating objects, after I got about a dozen or so prototypes of the pamphlet made I brought them over for her to look over and decide which one was best, after all, she knows the aesthetic you’re going for and details of the project almost as well as you.”

“True,” said Daring, she had a bad feeling about where this was going.

“After looking through the dozen Flurry drew up I compared them to the mission statement you have for the community and chose the one that best matched,” she then slightly opened one of the boxes and reached in before pulling out a four-page pamphlet modeled after a pair of intertwined dragon tails. The pamphlet itself had a variety of dragon images adorning it, in caring and nearly intimate positions to each other, along with a quick introduction to the town on the first page, the following pages were adorned with bullet points regarding expectations of the residents.

After reading it over Daring placed on the table for Spike to look over before saying, “I can see you put a lot of work into this, and I do think the design and motif go well with what we’re trying to do. However, you wrote all the community expectations from the angle of this just being any other in Equestria, of the dozen or so points you have in the pamphlet about a quarter are not what we’re going for. I recommend you take a look at the charter I wrote up, Princess Celestia has a copy and would likely be more than happy to help you out with writing up the initial community expectations.”

“I’ll say,” said Spike as he set down two plates of vegetable curried rice before picking up the sample pamphlet Daring had placed on the table, “you both seem to have a tendency to get ahead of yourselves when you’re excited about a project. Twilight has a pretty solid grasp of the mission statement, so the opening portion of the pamphlets is fine but the points on expectations of the residents should have been written up after taking a look at the charter draft in Celestia’s possession and consulting Daring herself. And to make matters worse, you jumped ahead with producing a dozen boxes worth of copies before doing either. I would expect this sort of thing from Flurry, she’s still young and feels a need to prove herself, but this is something I was hoping Twilight would have grown out of, especially given how much she likes to cite adhering to the rules and protocols.”

Twilight gave a sheepish grin before saying, “You’re absolutely right, Spike, I should have considered the proper avenues for this sort of thing. But a project like this is so new I’m not even sure there is a proper protocol.”

“We’ve been doing this for several months now, you should have picked up on the rules we set for this,” said Daring. “We’re almost ready for everything, just a few days of interviews and we should have our starting population. While I think the pamphlets are a good idea for newcomers, Spike and I will be setting out the ground rules for these first residents that are being brought in.”

“In other words,” said Spike as he got the chair for Daring in front of one of the two plates of still steaming food, “get back to work on the pamphlets after taking a look at the community’s charter and talking to Daring about it all. That second part might be a bit tricky right now since Daring and I will be busy with more interviews tomorrow and the day after, but I’m sure you can schedule a meeting with Celestia about all this on short notice.”

“She has actually sent me a letter recently saying she wanted some personal time,” said Twilight, “I’ll send her a note that I’ll be seeing her tomorrow later tonight.”

“And before you go,” said Spike, “get these boxes out of here, we don’t need our potential residents seeing something like this just yet.”

“Will do,” said Twilight as he effortlessly in her magic, “just out of curiosity, how long do are thinking of running this social experiment.”

“I honestly didn’t put much thought into a time limit,” said Daring, “I’ll send word to Princess Luna and Princess Cadance once we have the specifics there worked out.”

“What about foals? I’m pretty sure you can’t just interview them without their parents,” said Flurry with a vested interest.

“We’re making sure a few of the ponies have families,” said Spike, “and we have applications from three different ponies that are certified as teachers, one of which is on our morning itinerary for tomorrow.”

“Good to hear,” said Twilight, “come on Flurry, let’s leave them to their nightly activities.” With that Twilight and Flurry left, with the boxes of pamphlets with the only remaining pamphlet in the house being the one Daring and Spike had looked over and gave critique on. Daring and Spike began eating their food, Daring almost diving into hers, a few minutes after their unexpected guests had left.

***************************

The following morning saw Daring and Spike sharing the shower, in an only semi-erotic way, before getting dressed and opening their door for more interviews that day. The first one to arrive, ironically enough, was a pegasus mare that just happened to be one of their three prospective teachers for the school. The pegasus mare was lithe, almost as if she were built to be a fashion model, with a dusky violet coat and sky blue mane with a streak of ocean green down the middle. Her choice of attire for the day was a forest green jacket and skirt with a white blouse that displayed her cutie mark, a protractor and open book with a black writing quill.

“Ms. Eventide Note,” said Daring, “welcome, please have a seat,” the mare in question took one of the two seats across from Daring and Spike, “before we begin everything in earnest, my partner and I would like to hear a brief summary of what you have heard about this project and why you have an interest in it.”

“Well you see,” said Eventide, “I heard about this whole thing from a friend of mine who happens to be part of the current castle staff in Canterlot, I’ll provide you the details on all that later, mentioned this special project that all the princesses are being very tight-lipped about. I don’t mind the whole secrecy thing, especially with how high ranking nobility are. I’ve always wanted to be a teacher, but I could never find work as one, by the time all the jobs I heard about were open gave me time to actually meet with them they informed me they had already filled the position, I’m genuinely a bit surprised that hasn’t happened yet.”

“We want to make sure we’ve covered all our bases,” said Spike, “so, you haven’t heard anything about this project other than it’s some secret project all the princesses are working on?”

“Well, I did hear it’s supposed to be a social experiment that uses components of some older living aspects from way back when.”

“That’s more than enough for you to know at this time,” said Daring, “and yes, it is true that this project will be incorporating several aspects of society that are much older than most modern ponies are familiar, we want to get some idea of what they were like while getting the opinion of ponies with a more updated opinion. I’m what you might call the project overseer, and if you make the cut, we’ll inform you and the rest of the confirmed residents about the more in-depth details. However, due to the nature of the project, you will only be allowed to talk about what goes on in the community with your fellow residents and certain confirmed individuals.”

“We want to keep outside influences to a minimum during the initial phases of the project,” said Spike. “We don’t usually inform prospective residents this much, but from what we’ve been able to confirm about so far we think it’s safe to say some more of the generalities. Like we said, you’ll only get the specifics if you’re confirmed.”

“Now then,” said Daring, “Let’s get this interview started off…”

Author's Notes:

I’ll admit this is probably one of my longer chapters, as to how that happened I have real clue. As you can see Daring wants to have some personal touch, and she and Spike have been at this for few days when the chapter picks up, there are a lot of applicants for some reason.

As always, you know my policies