For what seemed like the hundredth time that day, and was probably well into double digits without exaggeration, Luke had a door slammed in his face.

“A simple ‘no’ would have been fine!” he yelled through the polished wood, but the haughty head chef of Ristorante Canterlot wouldn’t hear another word. Like so many other business owners, she no doubt assumed the ‘alien’ from another world would scare off all of her customers. To employ the services of such a beast would be business suicide, no matter how harmless the Princesses claimed he was.

With a glare that could cut steel, Luke spun on his heels, stomping away from the restaurant along Canterlot’s Mane Street. The spacious lime-tinted cobble pathway was positively packed with the proudest of posh ponies going about their daily business, many of which made no small show of giving him the widest of berths. Honestly, you’d think he had leprosy from the way they turned their muzzles up at him.

The nobles were the worst. They often regarded him as if he were a cancerous tumour that had sprouted legs and started walking about, lording it over the poor ponies with his humongous lanky frame and flappy minotaur limbs. Of course, Luke did nothing of the sort, but prejudice was rife within the well-to-do districts of Canterlot.

The miffed human pushed the uppity aristocracy from his thoughts, stopping to hold the now slightly crumpled copy of his resume in front of his nose. There had to be something he was missing. Something he hadn’t thought of…

Luke Nona

A punctual, reliable individual, with an excellent work ethic, scrupulous attention to detail, and a passionate sense of pride over a job well done.Doesn’t eat ponies! Princess Celestia can confirm this.Will only distract you from your working day with the freshest, most dankest of memes.

Nah. As resumes go, this was Grade-A material. Who needs actual experience when you have the power of long and interesting adjectives on your side, right?

So, why the hell was he still claiming welfare?

He’d been religiously attending these blasted ‘appointments’ every two weeks for almost a whole year now, and he was still just as unemployed as the day he’d descended from the Crystal Mountains.

Yes, Luke was an anomaly to ponykind. It turned out that an ill-conceived solo hiking trip to the Austrian Alps in the dead of winter hadn’t been the brightest of ideas, especially considering his abysmal navigation skills. He’d gotten so lost, he’d wandered into a city made of crystal, and inhabited by sapient ponies, of all things.

With a dejected sigh, he resigned himself to plodding along the beaten track to the Canterlot Employment Reassignment Centre. It was a route that had long since been burned into muscle memory over the past few months. His legs could no doubt take him there without the aid of his eyes, at this point.

The government-ran building was situated on the outskirts of the west end of Canterlot. It was a wonder the nobles hadn’t started a petition to have the establishment moved, considering the “riff-raff” that flocked to the building on their assigned weekdays to collect welfare payments and prove their efforts to find a job.

Sure enough, Luke was only a couple of gleaming white marble, gold accented streets away when he spotted a few ponies that stood out like mules amongst racehorses. A young pegasus mare, her mane tatty and barely kept, a couple of laughing foals trailing behind her. A frail, old stallion with a limp, his impressive white beard becoming trapped under his forehooves every couple of paces.

“Sundance, Moonbeam, come on! We’re going to be late,” cried the mare. She sounded about as tired as she looked, whipping her head back to the frolicing foals. They fluttered up to her back, still giggling away.

Luke smiled, following the mare around the corner into a street that was home to a few smaller, but still pretty extravagant establishments. You had Van Cloven Hoof, a designer jewellry store, its inch-thick glass window panes showcasing the finest diamonds and gems in Canterlot. Bon Voyage, a travel agent, boasting airship cruises to various sun-drenched destinations all over Equador. Canterlot Carousel, a high end clothing outlet ran by one of the Elements of Harmony, no less. What really stood out though, was the huge cylindrical white tower looming over all of the other buildings— the Canterlot Employment Reassignment Centre.

Or, the pony dole-house, as Luke liked to call it.

Following the mare and her foals inside, Luke paused for a moment, holding the glass door open and waiting for the elderly stallion to make his way up the small flight of marble steps to the entrance. Dude looked about ready to keel over by the time he reached the top, poor thing.

“Thank you, big feller,” the stallion croaked, hobbling his way inside.

“Don’t mention it, Sir,” Luke chirped, surprised. He honestly hadn’t expected gratitude, and even more honestly, he knew that he really shouldn’t be making such assumptions. Maybe the nobles were just painting ponies in a bad light.

Meandering past several rows of wooden chairs that were hopelessly too low for him, Luke claimed his favourite position—a casual lean against one of five marble pillars that rose all the way up to the white domed ceiling of the lobby—to wait for his name to be called. And so, the biweekly ritual began. Sometimes, he’d pick a different pillar each visit, just to liven things up a bit. It never really worked. The interior of the lobby was just as white and uninteresting as the outside, no matter where one decided to stand.

Ponies came and went as their names were called, the majority of them of the earth and pegasi variant. The locals claimed equality, but it was easy to see that Canterlot was a unicorn’s city. Luke had only ever seen around one or two unicorns coming in to sign their names.

“Luke Nona,” called a beige bespectacled unicorn mare, the name rolling off her tongue not unlike a refrigerator would down a flight of stairs.

Luke made his way past several cubicles, eventually reaching one near the back row, where the bored looking unicorn sat with her muzzle buried in a piece of parchment. She looked up at him as he nudged the wooden chair aside with his foot, opting instead to kneel down in front of the low desk.

Gilded Scroll had been getting ponies back into full time employment for over twenty five years. Never in all her time as a Vocational Advisor had she come across a case as difficult as the creature that now knelt before her. She’d tried just about everything. He had neither wings, nor magic, so that alone wiped out a large chunk of the opportunities that could have suited him. This, coupled with the fact he wasn’t even remotely equine, made it damn near impossible to put him in a job.

“Gilda! What you got for me this week?” Luke asked hopefully. He had a good feeling about this week. This was the week things would finally start looking up for him. “Did you speak to the manager at the Canterlot Shipping Company?” He could already picture it: soaring through the skies on a large freight airship, getting to visit some of the famous Equestrian cities he’d heard about. And the job itself? Stock picking. How hard could that be?

Gilded sighed. “Yes.”

“Great!” Luke exclaimed, throwing his small stack of crumpled resumes into the air in triumph. “When do I start?”

Another, longer sigh. “You don’t.”

Luke’s face fell, just as one of the crumpled resumes landed pitifully on his shoulder. He felt rather silly. “Oh.”

“I tried my best for you, dear, I really did. But she said the position had already been filled,” Gilded explained, her voice as soft and comforting as she could make it.

Luke gave a sigh of his own as he gathered up his resumes. Every visit to this place yielded nothing but disappointment. He should have known not to get his hopes up. “Is there anything else?” he muttered.

“Well, I’ve been inquiring with a few of our agricultural clients, and some of them have shown an interest. Can you pull a plow?”

Wait. What? Was she talking about those huge wooden things dragged through fields by roided out earth stallions? “Can you pull a plow?”

“Well, no, but I’m not an earth pony,” Gilded retorted.

“Well, neither am I, fuzzy cheeks,” Luke countered. Pulling a plow, indeed. Those things probably weighed as much as a small car.

It seemed Gilded Scroll’s patience had ultimately ran out, judging by the way she huffily slid the signing clipboard over the desk. “Sign here. Your bits will be paid into your account, as usual. Keep handing out those resumes.”

Luke did as he was asked, his mind already wandering to the businesses in Canterlot he hadn’t yet approached. There was that little bakery up on fifth street. It wasn’t too far from his apartment, either. Only, the mare running it was a tiny little pegasus. Luke hadn’t the heart to approach her for fear of scaring the feathers off of her.

He had already tried near enough all of the other small businesses, with pretty much the same result: rejection. Maybe he should try the larger corporations? Admittedly, wandering in off the street to the huge fancy reception of some multi-million bit gleaming corporate tower was not a prospect he found all that appealing.

But then again, living like the lowliest of lowly peasants was even less appealing.

Hastily restacked resumes in hand, Luke strutted from the dole-house with his head held high. He was only a stone’s throw away from Mane Street, where some of the larger businesses had their corporate headquarters.

He’d never get a job at the Crown Bank, perhaps one of the larger buildings on the illustrious street. That place required all sorts of fancy qualifications, some of which could only be awarded by Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. Since Luke was neither gifted, nor a unicorn, that was out.

There was Rosewood Entertainment, the famous theatre company. Luke paused in front of the gargantuan cuboid-shaped building, with its gleaming windows and shiny polished marble walls and pillars glinting in the sunlight. Maybe he could apply for a ticket handler position? Or a stage hand? All he had to do was go in and hand the receptionist a resume. It was simple. Right?

He made to go and do just that, but his feet chose that moment to ignore his commands, and he ended walking right on past the building. What if the pony on the desk just laughed at him? Told him he was mad to think he could ever get a job at Rosewood?

Luke trudged on, aimlessly kicking a pebble along the ground as ponies continued to trot around him. Another building caught his attention, perhaps the biggest and most impressive of the lot. There’s no way in hell I’m walking in there, he thought, gazing up at the skyscraper.

This gleaming marble structure made the dole house look like a small-town church bell tower in comparison. It was shaped almost like a designer vase, gracefully curving outwards around the middle, then narrowing again, before curving outwards to a lesser degree at the top. Floor after floor of polished windows ran all the way up to an airship dock at the very top.

Whoever owned this place was rich. Extremely rich.

A large sparkling logo consisting of magically glowing letters set below a set of purple and gold stylised lilies adorned the glass covering the huge open-plan lobby. In fact, to call it a mere lobby was an understatement. It must have ran all the way up to at least the fiftieth floor, its ring-like balconies tapering off to a point the higher you looked. The solid gold spiral snaking its way up the balconies in a helix kind of made the whole thing look like a huge unicorn horn.

Luke shook his head. This place looked like a noble’s wet dream. He’d never fit in.

As if on cue, a whole bunch of them spilled out from the building’s multiple magically revolving doors.

Quickly averting his gaze, he shuffled back towards the bank. The question of how attractive ponies appeared to him hadn’t really crossed his mind in the past year, but some of the mares accompanying this party were quite clearly supermodels. He certainly had no intentions of being caught ogling them.

Giving up the pointless endeavour as a lost cause, he headed home. Maybe he’d come back and try again another day. Probably… not.

The buildings quickly went from flashy glass and marble to faded white stone and old wooden doors as Luke made his way back to the dingy little apartment complex he called home. The only good thing about this place was that the ponies were a lot friendlier, but that was about as extensive as the ‘pros’ list got.

He wrestled with the lock for a good thirty seconds before the stupid thing yielded, allowing him access to his apartment.

It was the most humble of humble abodes, what with its cracked and peeling, thoroughly outdated wallpaper. He gave the place a gloomy once over. His couch was a sorry looking thing, sporting several holes, many of which exposed the springs. A dented old ice box sat just behind it, next to a small stove. You knew you were poor when your living room was also your kitchen.

Luke threw the pile of un-handed-out resumes onto a spindly old side table that was missing a leg. The only reason the thing stayed upright was because it was leaning against the wall, its ragged old tablecloth covering an ugly crack in the plaster.

Throwing himself down on the couch, he rested one leg on the coffee table, his eyes glazing over. His gaze eventually ended up settling on a life-sized alicorn lamp, complete with multi-hued flowing mane and tail, and a long spiralling white horn poking out from the top of the shade.

Wait… He didn’t have an alicorn lamp. Anything related to alicorns was often expensive.

Striding over to the corner, he plucked the dusty old lampshade from Celestia’s head. “For God’s sake, what are you doing here?”

The alicorn demi-god pursed her lips, as though she hadn’t just been caught in the act of pretending to be an inanimate object. “Luke, Canterlot is such a great city, yet you choose to live in the part of it that showcases my greatest failure. Why?” she inquired, her tone suggesting she was admonishing a small foal.

Luke rolled his eyes. “Oh, get over yourself. Every city has people living on the breadline. The fact that everypony in Canterlot has a home and no one is starving is an achievement in and of itself,” he muttered, throwing the lampshade aside and plonking himself back down on the couch.

Celestia raised herself to her fullest height, which was just a bit too tall for the small apartment.

SCRAPE.

Her horn left quite a sizeable hole in the ceiling, bits of plaster raining down on her mane. “Please. Reconsider my offer,” she implored regardless, throwing a perfunctory glance up to the mess she’d made. “My offer for the role of Administrative Assistant to the Crown still stands.” Her horn flashed, prompting the ceiling to instantly repair itself.

“I already told you—I don’t want handouts. Besides, that job sounds made up,” Luke challenged.

Celestia had taken it upon herself to make a fuss over Luke from the moment he’d turned up in the Crystal Empire, quickly whisking him off to a rather sheltered life at Canterlot Castle. He’d ended up staying there for a couple of weeks, but being in close proximity to the nobles had swiftly become very tiresome.

“Technically, welfare counts as a handout,” Celestia huffed, if only to prove a point.

“Yes, but it’s the same handout everypony gets. Plus, I’m expected to look for a job, just like everypony else.”

Celestia stomped a forehoof. “I just offered you a job!”

“A fake job.”

Celestia frowned. “Fine. I didn’t want to have to resort to this…” She paused, letting out a tiresome sigh. “An old friend of mine owes me a favour,” she began, her royal ears drooping. It really did look as though it pained her to say it. “I was hoping to hold it over her head for a few more decades, but it upsets me seeing you live like this,” she said, waving a hoof around with an ugly grimace on her muzzle. “It’s the same with all of my subjects. If an easy solution existed, I’d have found it years ago.”

“Hey! It’s not that bad,” Luke lied. His place was a shithole and he lived like a bum. He was well aware of that fact.

“Do you want the job, or not? And yes, a real job. You won’t be working for me, either.”

Luke gave her a deadpan stare. “Look at this place! Of course I do,” he muttered.

Celestia grinned. Her ears perked right up, and the sun streaming through the murky windows seemed to shine just that little bit brighter. “Good. Make sure you’re at the J’adore headquarters on Mane Street tomorrow morning. O’eight hundred hours sharp.”

Luke felt the colour instantly drain from his face. “Wait, that’s…” The huge magically glowing logo flashed through his mind, along with the gorgeous supermodels, and the fifty storey unicorn horn.

Celestia didn’t appear to have heard him. “I don’t know what you’ll be doing yet, but you’ll definitely be on the payroll. Don’t be late.”

With a loud CRACK that nearly caused Luke to fall off his tatty couch, Celestia disappeared in a flash of bright white light.

Let me know if you spot any typos/editing blunders. Also, remember to vote on the story and tell me what you thought of the chapter. It really gives me the motivation to try and improve. All feedback is appreciated. :-P

You can expect an update in the next few days or so.