Polished Shoes was glad he had bought a new suit for the interview. Among the skyscrapers of Whinny City, the undecorated Daughter bank didn’t stand out. But inside, the work of the bank was organized with stunning efficiency, turning along like clockwork.

An alarm clock beeped as the big clock on the wall turned 11. Polished Shoes watched as a flurry of activity erupted in the main office. Ponies switched tasks like mechanical puppets. Some moved one set of papers aside and started on another; others got up and deposited their worksheets in a folder on the wall. Three ponies started eating from lunches they pulled automatically from inside their desks. There was a water cooler; no two ponies went to get water at the same time.

There were rumors that Vela Flicker, chief executive economist of the bank, was a tyrant. But she couldn’t have been as much of a tyrant as the rumors said; she paid above market rate.

If Polished Shoes had been a brighter pony, he would have given that last thought special consideration, and perhaps withdrawn his application while he still had the chance.

Six ponies didn’t react to the bell. They were Unicorns sitting in a tight row, their horns glowing identically over floating arrays of raw numbers. He watched them with interest. They must have been casting Argh, a newfangled magical sorting and calculation program. He didn’t understand how it worked, but apparently it let Unicorns find patterns in more data than anypony could sort through without magic. It had been invented only days before the Daughter banks had been announced. Suddenly economists, mathemagicians, and any Unicorn with a working horn and the ability to tolerate long periods of boredom were in high demand. Daughter banks and anything to do with economics and data were booming.

He wasn’t a Unicorn, just an Earth Pony, and one who wasn’t very strong or good with plants or animals. But Polished Shoes was good with ponies, and he had a degree, and he looked good in a suit, if Mom was any judge. Businesses that hired lots of Unicorns to do their magical statistics had quickly found out that they also wanted to hire ponies like him, in case one of the Unicorns went crazy and tried to bite their manager.

A brown filly came down the hall. “Where—” she began. She looked at the desk behind the chair he was sitting in, which was unoccupied, and made a dark face.

“Come along,” she said tightly to him. “Your interview was scheduled to begin a minute ago.”

Polished Shoes got up and followed her to Vela Flicker’s office. Vela Flicker’s secretary looked like she was still in high school. She was also remarkably foul-faced; she looked like she woke up stuck in traffic and had a root canal with breakfast.

To his surprise, she went around the desk and sat behind it.

“I apologize for my lateness,” she said with a clenched jaw. “We try to be punctual around here. Unfortunately, that’s only so possible with the quality of help we sometimes find.”

“I’m sorry, you’re Vela Flicker?”

She looked around the office as if trying to find another candidate for the name. “Who were you expecting?”

“Sorry, you’re just a lot younger than I imagined.’

“I’m sure. Let’s begin.”

Vela Flicker had been dreading this. Interviews were so stupid, she just wanted to try him out for a week at zero cost. There were so many applicants for any opening at the Daughter bank that she could probably get away with it. But Pony Resources said she would have to pay him severance even if he had only worked here for one day. It was so stupid.

And she was having to do a lot of interviews. Employee turnover was too high. At least her current secretary had been with them for two month now. And the janitors were still the same quiet, tubby mules they had always been. Although who knows if that was really true; all janitors had the same face to her. The perfect crime probably involved a mop, a sign that said “Caution - Wet Floor” and an industrial laser cutter.

“We’re looking for an employee retention specialist because we’ve been having problems with employee turnover,” she said curtly. At least she could skip all the stuff about his hobbies and where he saw himself in five years. “What can you contribute in that position?”

His eyes widened. “Um, well, I think that, as someone who is very passionate about helping others, and contributing to a synergistic, enhanced workforce that combines the best qualities of Equestria’s industrial titans of old with modern ideas that push the envelope of what can be considered the new normal—really, I think the question we’re asking here is what are the best practices of employee retention, and what sort of capabilities can we build to empower the worker while increasing profits?”

Vela leaned back and stared at the ceiling for a moment. Digesting word salad on an empty stomach was never easy. Deciding she was dealing with an idiot, she slowed her speech and raised its volume to compensate. “Hiring is an investment under uncertainty. That means I don’t know what you’re worth, and if I hire you to find out, I can’t put you on an unpaid trial period for a month and fire you without severance the moment you slack off. Unfortunately. So the more you can signal your productivity now, the more I can pay you. This isn’t about whether you get the job—there’s a price at which I’ll hire you, under reasonable assumptions. It’s about whether you get the job at a price that keeps the heater on in the winter.”

“I understand,” he lied. “Let me tell you more about myself. Ever since I was young I cared about employee retention.”

“What?”

“I always knew I was meant to assist for-profit, non-profit or governmental organizations in employee retention.” Polished Shoes felt his confidence returning; he had rehearsed this a dozen times with the career help staff at his college. “Before I went to college I did charity work in a poor community in Appaneighchia for a summer. It was a transformative experience that showed me the importance of employee retention.”

Vela had no words. She had passed all of Princess Celestia’s comprehensive exams in her elite economics graduate program. She was the youngest graduate...ever, actually, in its thousand-plus year existence. Even if it made her the baby of the group, the Little Sister, though she wasn’t that much younger than Twilight. No pony had intuition for economics like she did. It was what had allowed her to test out of classes she hardly studied for and join the cohort she had graduated with. Her nose for economics was like a wolf’s following a trail of blood, and she honed in on the answer with laser precision. And she was, right now, very confused.

Polished Shoes had no idea what Vela was going through. He was on a roll and couldn’t stop. “In college I took many classes relevant to employee retention such as Music Appreciation I, Film History, and Introduction to Business (twice), which gave me a wide-ranging understanding of the diversity of pony culture and how to retain all kinds of ponies in a private or public work office. It is believed by me that I can add value quickly to your business slash non-profit slash government agency by employing my skills and unique perspectives to contribute to the mission goal and thus adding value.”

“Are you engaged in a brilliant game of signaling your intellectual dexterity and mastery of workplace norms?” Vela asked, clutching to her last shred of hope, and sanity. “If you are, and you continue to play it, I will kill you.”

This wasn’t a question Polished Shoes had rehearsed for. He decided to hedge. “I think it’s mission critical that all employees engage in, um, games of signaling and so forth,” he said. “So as to, perhaps, synergize, such as.”

“You’re actually the smartest or stupidest colt I’ve ever met.”

Polished Shoes bristled at that. He was clearly older than her by several years, maybe more. “I graduated college, so I must be fairly bright.”

“Wow, I graduated as the youngest pony ever from the most recent cohort of Princess Celestia’s elite economics graduate students,” Vela said. “The homework was pretty intense.”

Polished Shoes tried to think of something that had been hard about college. “It’s graded for accuracy, not completion?” he said weakly.

“Harder than that.”

Polished Shoes tried to imagine. “Gosh.”

Her alarm clock beeped, the same noise as in the main office, just quieter. “Hold on,” Vela said, looking past him at the door. “My secretary brought me lunch.”

Polished Shoes blinked. It seemed rude to have ordered lunch in the middle of a scheduled interview. It was also early for lunch.

The door failed to open. Vela Flicker stared at it a few more seconds, then glowered as she reset the clock.

When she turned her face to him again, there was anger, frustration, and, he thought, a touch of humiliation on her face. But it was the anger that scared him. It was tight and focused, like a laser. He feared it would slice right through him.

Vela stopped slouching like a teenager. She sat straight, with her jaw clenched. “Everything works on a timer in my bank,” she said. “It keeps my workers wound up and the whole bank ticking.” Like the grandfather clock in the quiet room, she didn’t add.

“Maybe—I might have a suggestion—”

“What?”

“The assembly line clock schedule thing might be the reason for your high turnover.”

“That’s not the reason,” Vela Flicker said, as cold and focused as a beam of frozen atoms.

“I agree,” said Polished Shoes instantly. The contradiction didn’t register—he was trained not to disagree with his interviewer.

Vela Flicker rolled her eyes and slouched again, and let out a petulant sigh, like she was bored in school and the clock said there was still a whole hour before the final bell rang.

She glanced at her list of questions. “How would you increase employee retention?”

“Right.” He turned the page of his notepad. “My plan involves utilizing an incentive scheme to identify the core competencies of our workforce while simultaneously increasing morale. By offering a sustainable prize for good behavior and meritable activities, we can—”

“You want to pay them to work.”

“No,” he said, because it wasn’t just his best idea, it was his only idea.

“It sounds like you want to pay them to work. Which we already do, by the way.”

“That’s a valid perspective,” he admitted cautiously, not seeing a way out.

“Is it right, though?”

“I think there are a lot of ways of looking at what I said.”

“What other ways are there?”

He shrugged helplessly.

Vela was gazing at him like he was a new species of bug under her microscope, and she was trying to figure out why he had seven legs. “Do ponies prefer this? Do they prefer you? The way you talk, I mean, instead of more…direct instruction and clear requirements. Why would anypony want to make an uncertain….” She trailed off, lost in thought.

“Conflict!” she said a moment later, making him jump in his seat. “There are no battlegrounds when no pony knows what’s going on.” She had a satisfied expression for a moment, then frowned. “But...it would still be harder to do the work, if they just cared about the work….”

Wherever her thoughts were going next, Polished Shoes couldn’t say, because the door opened. At that point the interview, which he honestly felt could have been going better, got completely out of hoof.

“You’re late,” Vela said.

Polished Shoes shivered. Whatever coldness Vela had directed at him was like a warm sauna compared to this. Ice would have melted in embarrassment at what real cold felt like. Liquid nitrogen would have shattered in her gaze.

“I’m sorry,” said an flustered, overweight mare by the door. Her mane was a mess and she looked exhausted and panicked. “I told you, I’ve been helping my sister with her foals while she recovers from her surgery—”

“Where’s my lunch?”

The mare, whose name was Patty Cake, gasped. It was a true gasp of shock and horror. Polished Shoes would have found it a very interesting noise if he hadn’t been leaning away from Vela and wishing he had a warm jacket.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Flicker, I must have forgotten,” said Patty Cake. She was clearly at least twice Vela Flicker’s age. “My nephews will not sleep, and—”

“I’m getting sick of your lazy attitude, Patty.”

There was a sharp intake of breath, and a long pause, as though somepony was counting to ten before answering. “Sorry, Ms. Flicker,” Patty Cake said. “I’ll bring you your messages for today, and then I’ll go get your lunch.”

“I won’t hold my breath.”

Patty Cake started to close the door, then stopped. She was staring into space with an intense look of concentration.

She stepped into the office and closed the door. Then:

“No,” she said, and opened it.

“Patty,” Vela said in a warning tone. “There are a lot of ponies who would take your job the instant it was offered to them.”

Patty Cake gave Polished Shoes a frozen smile. “You must be the candidate for the employee retention position. Good. You’ll need to hear this so you can do your job.”

The tired, overworked secretary faced Vela Flicker, blazing with the calm knowledge that she was going to be fired, and that it was worth it.

She advanced into Vela Flicker’s office, which she was only allowed to do when it was most inconvenient—to pick up something from Vela Flicker’s desk, or to deposit a lunch on it. Otherwise she was to wait at the door like a servant.

“You are the rudest, meanest, most ungrateful pony I’ve ever met.” Her voice rose while Vela Flicker stared up at her. “You never say please, you never relent—I told you I had to help my sister, I left your damn messages on my desk, you just had to look—but you don’t notice anypony but yourself, do you? We’re all gears in a clock to you. Not everypony can tick along like you do!”

An alarm clock beeped on Vela Flicker’s desk—the end of the interview, Polished Shoes guessed—but the stunned Unicorn didn’t move.

“Candyfloss cried yesterday after you yelled at her. I had to spend an hour consoling her before I could even get her back to her desk. All she did was format her report differently from how you wanted. She told me it was how they did it at the firm she worked at before this one, she just forgot, but you treated it like a personal attack. Did you even think about how it affects other ponies? If you want productivity, stop screaming at ponies over nothing, stop getting offended by everything everypony says, I don’t even know what gets you angry anymore! Your temper is like a, a, a fire that just comes out of nowhere and tears everything apart. No wonder you were sent here, you’re perfect for this city.”

Polished Shoes had no idea what the secretary was talking about. Vela was colder than cold, not hot.

Patty Cake stopped in front of Vela Flicker’s desk, and glared down at the plain-looking, brown Unicorn, who was half her age and thought herself ten times more important. She was quite young, Patty Cake noticed; she realized she had never looked at Vela Flicker so closely. The girl was barely a mare, practically a filly still. No wonder her body was so awkward, her face so dark and angry—the bank was being run by somepony still in the grip of puberty.

Vela Flicker slammed her forehoofs down. Patty Cake flinched as Vela Flicker leaned forward over her desk, tears in her eyes.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! All I did was ask you to bring a lunch! You’re always so, so,” Vela gave off a high-pitched growl, a teenaged whine of frustration. “I’m trying to be reasonable!”

“I’d like some respect!” Patty Cake cried, stepping back in alarm.

Vela made another frustrated noise. “You’re so irrational!”

“Why do you always have to get so mad?”

“I don’t —STOP MAKING THINGS UP!” Vela’s voice was already hoarse; there was a raw, ragged edge to it as she shouted. Her laserlike precision was completely gone.

All work in the main office had stopped. Ponies gathered by the stairs and looked up at Vela Flicker’s office, murmuring to each other—another secretary gone by the sound of it, who knows how Vela kept finding replacements?

Vela noticed her tears and averted her wet eyes in shame. Patty was so unprofessional to do this to her in front of a potential hire, in the middle of the workday, opening the door on purpose just to embarrass her in front of everypony. She was so stupid and selfish, she never thought about what Vela needed. And she wanted to yell or throw something, but she couldn’t in front of Polished Shoes. Thanks, Patty, you’ve been a big help.

Vela tried to calm down. At least she could control her emotions, unlike Patty. “I asked you,” she hissed, her eyes looking at the table through a watery film, “to bring me lunch.”

Patty Cake didn’t react.

“I don’t want to fire you,” Vela Flicker said. She sniffled automatically, piggish with mucus, and instantly hated herself. Patty was being so unfair to do this to her like this. She wanted to throw something at her, and to crawl under the desk and die. “Please, Patty—look, I’m sorry, okay? Now will you just get my stupid messages? Forget about lunch.”

“I want you,” Patty Cake said, “to treat me with respect from now on.”

“I DO RESPECT YOU!”

The scream was raw and angry and confused.

“I do!” Vela said, her voice ragged from shouting and crying. “So will you stop being so STUPID and get me my damn messages, oh Celestia.” She choked off at the end and turned away from them, butting her head against the wall.

Patty Cake was utterly frozen. Polished Shoes had a thought—what if this was all a test? He had been warned the Daughter banks had unusual interview methods, maybe this was meant to see if he could retain the employee.

“Excuse me,” he began.

“Shut up,” Vela said with so much disdain that Polished Shoe felt a very strong need to write to his mother and ask for some compliments, the unconditional kind. “You’re fired,” she said to Patty Cake.

Patty Cake drew herself up. “Obviously I’m quitting,” she said in a voice that carried out into the main office, “or I wouldn’t be calling you a stupid, arrogant bitch to your face!”

Vela collapsed behind the desk, sobbing. Patty Cake whirled and walked out. The moment she had left Vela grabbed the door in her magic and slammed it so hard that it bounced off the frame and fell off its hinges, banging onto the floor.

In the silence, apart from the sobs of a single filly, Polished Shoe began to worry that he hadn’t nailed the interview.

“Get out,” Vela said after a moment. Her voice was just a hoarse whisper.

“I’ll write to you about the job in a week if I haven’t heard back,” he said desperately.

“GET OUT!”

Vela stayed behind her desk after he left, crying and sniffling to herself. Why had Patty done that to her? She knew she was in an interview then, she had opened the door on purpose, she had called her a, a that to her face, why? She didn’t want a new secretary! She had liked Patty, she knew good restaurants and had become a familiar face among the constant turnover, she had even been the one who suggested hiring an employee retention specialist— sarcastically, but she had.

There wasn’t any noise coming from the main office. They were probably all talking about her. They probably all thought the same as Patty did about her.

Vela was hungry. She didn’t want to be here. She refused to sneak out of her own bank, but she didn’t want to face the stares and murmurs from the main office.

So she went out the window.

---

Vela got a chickpea bun at a stand. This was the one thing Whinny City did well. They took a yellowish, steamed cylinder of garbanzo bean, placed it in a long poppy bun and piled it high with pickles, relish, tomato, onion, and finally a squirt of mustard under a heap of peppers. Celestia above, it was good.

Her hunger sated, Vela felt a lot better. She was still angry at Patty, but she could think now.

She checked her face in the reflective surface of the metal stand. Her eyes were red. Nothing she could do about that, but she fixed her mane as best she could. What a terrible day.

“None of my business, but shouldn’t you be in school?” the stallion cooking chickpeas said. “I don’t want to get in trouble with your parents.”

She didn’t answer. Instead she turned so her flank, and her cutie mark, were showing. When he realized he was looking at nine stars constellated in the shape of the sails of a ship—heading over the edge of the world, she liked to imagine—he busied himself with his chickpeas and didn’t say anything more.

Vela grinned to herself. That was one of life’s little pleasures she had discovered since taking over the Daughter bank here. It had its drawbacks though. Her very first day in Whinny City somepony had tried to steal her purse. It had been the best part of her day; she had gotten to break his leg. Now if somepony attacked her from the side, they were just as likely to jump back and apologize.

Still, being powerful afforded her ten opportunities for fun for every one that it took away. She understood why Princess Celestia hadn’t abdicated the throne after more than a thousand years as princess. The Sun only knew whose legs Princess Celestia got to break when she wandered down whatever passed for grimy alleyways in her life.

Vela knew she should go back. No way did anypony stick to the clock when she wasn’t around. But she was still angry. And she wanted to...break some legs.

What was there to do in this city? She could take pictures in front of the stupid bean sculpture that everypony loved. She could go bother the high-security lakeside research unit and remind them that she was smarter than they were, or she could do her civic duty and take a guided tour along the river to help keep the water relatively alive.

None of that appealed to her. There were sports teams to watch, but she wouldn’t be caught dead at a hoofball game. Somepony would take her picture, and her Sisters would see it, and they would never let her live it down.

There had to be something.

She turned to the stallion tending his chickpeas. “What do ponies do for fun around here?”

---

Whinny City smelled permanently of corn. It was overpowering near the cornpacking plants and stank through the railway lines that traversed the city. The walk from her apartment to her Daughter Bank took her right across it every day. She should have numbed to it eventually, but it only grew more intolerable.

Walking through the city wasn’t so bad if she stayed away from the smellier parts. The skyscrapers gave her an uneasy sense of vertigo when she looked up at them, but she studied them anyway because she could still see the effects of the fire. There was a jagged line of terra cotta houses and buildings through the wooden industrial sector, marking the path the fire had taken.

The whole city had been in the process of rebuilding when a bank had suddenly failed. Vela’s first job she had set for herself, after dealing with the aftermath of Nightmare Moon and helping to pull Whinny City out of the downturn called the Great Succession, had been to sort that whole mess out.

There had been complaints about her mandatory fire insurance; she dealt with that by obtaining permission from Canterlot to give a voluntary defense fund credit to everypony who couldn’t afford it. Buying fire insurance was completely voluntary, and if you didn’t and your house mysteriously burned down in the night, well, you never knew when disaster would strike, that was what insurance was for. A newspaper had pointed out the unlikely correlation between ponies who had refused to buy insurance and ponies whose houses mysteriously incinerated in controlled burns all in the same night. But the newspaper organization had bought fire insurance, so Vela had their printing presses kicked in instead. After that, there was no more trouble.

Vela Flicker knew she wasn’t popular among the citizens of Whinny City. Whatever. Public opinion rolled off her back like criticism in an academic workshop. She knew she was right, and if it took others longer to see that, that wasn’t her problem. You didn’t fight with idiots, she reasoned. You surrounded yourself with brainiacs and waited for the idiots to beg to join the club. Then you had a better bargaining position and could get their labor for cheap.

She hadn’t realized she was so unpopular with Patty.

It was lunchtime, so the streets were crowded and noisy. Ponies were rushing off in groups to get pans of the local soupy casserole called pizza. Others, like her, were headed to the stadium.

She had never been to the racecourse before. It wasn’t exactly her speed. It was a place where dumb stallions with more muscles than brains ran around in a circle for the amusement of thousands. Whoever ran around in a circle the fastest was considered the fastest circle-arounder and got a prize.

A stallion in a uniform tried to stop her at the gate. She walked past him, and he was lucky enough to see her cutie mark before he laid a hoof on her.

The races were just starting. Ponies were balancing trays of greasy vegetables and cups of overpriced beer as they navigated to their seats while the announcer’s voice boomed around the interior of the stadium, talking so excitedly about their sponsor’s new line of shaving cream that it was like he thought it could bring dead water back to life.

Part of her was hoping to see Patty there. There was no reason for her to be there, but it was fun to think about. Patty was probably full of regret and nerves; she’d beg for her job back. Vela would say no, of course, which would only make Patty beg more.

Looking around for her as she walked down the rows, she spied instead a group of well-dressed stallions sitting up close to the track, gulping down beer and snacks and arguing animatedly with each other. Finance types on their lunch break, she guessed.

She sat behind them. She didn’t know why, but she never started knowing why she did anything.

In this case, it didn’t take long for her to figure it out. The races began, and the traders or bankers or whatever they were, started gambling on them. She quickly noticed there were patterns to the bets they placed, stupid patterns. They were betting based on some combination of information in little booklets they had—there were ponies going up and down the steps selling them for two bits—their own impressions of who seemed to be particularly fit or energetic today, and a desire to defy the odds, which were publicly displayed on an electronic screen. They bet on the favorite racer less often than they should have.

I can beat them.

After the end of the next race, Vela nearly got up to challenge them when she felt a thrill of fear run through her. She didn’t know anything about racing. It all came down to chance anyway. She’d be exposing herself to further humiliation if she lost.

But Vela rebelled against that note of caution. It would work, even if she had to make it work. A sense of invincibility flowed through her. Animated with bravado, she stepped out of her seat and down to their row, angling herself at a T to them like a ship maneuvering into firing position. This way they wouldn’t see her cutie mark.

“Who’ve you got?” she asked bluntly.

One of them looked at her. “Sorry?”

“I’ve got Lucky Stripes to win and Speed Racer to come in second for thirty bits.”

“I’ll take that bet,” he said.

One sitting further down the row said, “Dude, she’s just a kid.”

“Ignore them,” he said. He smiled at her. “Trying to stretch your allowance?”

Vela forced a smile. “My mom hardly gives me any.”

“She wouldn’t want you gambling with it.”

“It’s my money,” said Vela. It was easy to sound petulant, it was her money now that she was responsible for the local money supply.

“Well, I’m not a very lucky pony. You can bet with me a little. I don’t mind.”

“You’ll take money from anypony,” the other one said.

Vela forced herself not to roll her eyes.

“Know much about racing?” the investor said.

“They try to be the first to go in a circle, right?”

He laughed. “You’ve got it.. Want to sit down?”

She sat in the empty seat next to him and ignored his spasm when he noticed her cutie mark.

“I’ve never been to the racecourse before,” she said. Their row reeked of beer and fried food. This close to the track, the pounding of hoofs on the dirt was like thunder. “It seems like so much fun.”

“Mngh,” he answered. A few of his friends glanced over, but they couldn’t see her cutie mark.

Lucky Stripes won, but Speed Racer came in third.

“Darn,” Vela said. “You won.”

He managed to unstick his jaw. “No, no, tell you what. This was your first time, so let’s call it even.”

“That wouldn’t be fair. I insist.” She floated thirty bits into his trembling lap and looked at the card for the next race. “Who do you have for race seven?” she said to the investors farther down the line.

“Sherclop Pones to win,” one answered, grinning. Apparently they were willing to bet with her now that their friend had broken the ice. Another had Stupid Jones to show. Vela took those bets, and won the second one.

It wasn’t a bad afternoon, watching muscular stallions sweat and exert themselves in the sun while someone twice her age squirmed and sweated in the seat next to her. Still, she wasn’t really making money. Actually, she had lost money

But she was picking up on things. It wasn’t the stallions on the starting line that mattered; she didn’t know who would win any more than anypony else did. So instead of trying to figure out what caused race outcomes, she was keeping track of what caused bets to be placed. The investors weren’t weren’t doing what had become muscle memory as a graduate student studying under Princess Celestia, where she had learned to chain back feelings within herself to so as to distinguish between the causes of her moods and the causes of her expectations, so they couldn’t stop themselves from betting based on how loud the last race had been or how recently they had used the bathroom. They were drinking more, and thoroughly enjoying the company of a girl with bad luck and apparently endless amounts of money. All she had to do to win was to lean on the moments where the differences between the information causing her predictions about the outcomes and the information causing them to bet were most different—since she deferred to the public odds, and these bozos didn't.

By the end of the next hour, she had made more than twice as much as she had put up, and the investor sitting next to her had pissed himself.

Vela unclenched. It was working.

“Say, what gives?” one of the investors said angrily. Vela had won another bet, paying out seventeen bits to one and taking a total of one hundred and eighty-three bits from the others. She couldn’t ruin them at these stakes.

“What say we stop playing with loose change, boys?” she said.

The stallions for the next race were lining up. Vela watched a large gray one shake his head inside his lane, his whole body twisting with power.

“Two thousand on Greathoof to win,” the investor spat. “I don’t care what the odds are.”

“Hey, calm down, she doesn’t have that much,” one of his soberer friends said.

“Yes I do,” she said mildly. “Is he the big gray one?”

“He’s never lost,” the investor said.

“Gosh golly gee-whiz. You’ll give me 500 to 1 odds.”

“Fine,” he said instantly. His friend sighed and shook his head.

Vela sat back and waited for the race to start. She glanced around. The stadium was completely full now, and everypony’s attention was held rapt by the stallions lined up at the starting line. She wondered if she was the only pony in attendance betting against Greathoof.

The race started. It was one and a half miles. Greathoof started out in the lead, and he ended in a bigger lead.

“I won,” the investor snarled. “Pay up, if you can.”

“Hold on.”

“Don’t think you can back out of this. I don’t care if you have to call Mommy to pay your debt.” He was quite drunk, Vela thought.

Her horn was glowing. A moment later a check poofed into existence in front of her. She scribbled the amount on it and signed her name.

“Here,” she said, floating it over to him. “You can turn that into any bank in Equestria for two thousand bits. It’ll work only for you.”

By now he had read the name signed on the check. His head whipped in her direction.

“I—hold on—”

She got up, showing them the nine-starred sail on her flank in the process.

“Well, it’s been fun, boys,” she said to them. “But I’m quite busy, so I can’t play all day.”

She sauntered up the steps. The investors, frozen, watched her go, then stared in horror at the check.

“Don’t cash it,” one said instantly. The unlucky winner nodded miserably.

“Dude, did you know?” he said to their friend who had first bet with Vela.

“Mm-hmm,” said the investor, whose jaw had been stuck shut from tension for at least an hour. It would take some serious massaging before it loosened up again.

The winner let his head fall into his lap. “Dude, I’m so screwed.”

---

Vela went up the steps, then walked around and down to the entrance to the racers’ stables. The door was locked. Her cutie mark got it unlocked.

She found Greathoof’s stable, or the door to it. A fat stallion was chewing a piece of straw by the door. He rolled his eyes when he saw her.

“Not you,” he said when she got close.

She stopped. “What?”

“He likes prettier girls. No offense. I’m just doing my job.”

A disbelieving grin spread over her face. “What is your job?”

“I’m his manager. Now get out of here.”

“What do you manage, pray tell?” Vela was icy now, feeling the anger focus into a tight, cold beam—so much better than when it exploded in unpredictable fire, like an erupting volcano.

“I manage him. You deaf as well as ugly?”

She turned so he could see her cutie mark. The straw fell out of his mouth.

“Look, I didn’t mean nothing by it. I didn’t think you were anypony important.”

“Don’t worry,” she said sweetly. “I don’t pay your salary.”

“I—”

“I’m the reason your salary is paid in bits and not in bundles of hay. May I go in? Please?”

He nodded quickly and jerked aside. She pushed the door open and closed it behind her.

Greathoof was simply the biggest stallion she had ever seen. He was the biggest pony she had ever seen other than Princess Celestia, and while she was tall, he was thick with muscles. They stuck out of him like geography, with mountains of shoulder and rocky hills for thighs and tectonic plates moving along his chest. She didn’t think she had all the types of muscle he had. He might as well have had a fifth leg for all their anatomy had in common.

He also stank. Sweat rolled off of his shuddering body as he took in huge gulps of water from a container that was, without exaggeration, bigger than she. Then, pausing just to breathe, he started on an incredibly smelly mix of grass hay and oats. There was more than she ate in three days. Maybe more than she ate in a week.

“Excuse me,” she said. He didn’t respond, just kept eating. He must have swallowed five or ten pounds of food by the time he looked up at her. Then he took another long drink of water. His muscles shook as he swallowed.

“I don’t mean to bother you,” she said. She realized she was just buying time. Why had she come here? It wasn’t his fault she had lost money.

He looked past her at the door like he was expecting somepony else to come in. “Pondella sent you?” His voice was intimidatingly deep and booming, like his vocal chords had been replaced with a tuba and a microphone.

Was Pondella the manager? “He let me in.”

“You?” He was looking at her closely, nakedly inspecting her body. He sounded skeptical. “Why you?”

It took her an unusually long moment to think of an answer. “I’m, uh, a stable inspector. To make sure the conditions are fair.”

“Oh.” He turned back to his food and took another enormous bite.

“Congratulations on your win,” she said. He didn’t answer.

She looked around his room. Other than the incredible amounts of food and water, there wasn’t much else. There wasn’t a bed, just a long, thick mattress on the floor. He probably would have broken the bed anyway.

He noticed her examining the place. “All good?”

“Huh? Oh. Yup. All very...inspected.”

He was looking at the door again. “You can go now. I think somepony else is coming.”

She took a step toward him. “Maybe we could talk first. I bet against you, you know.”

“Why? I always win.”

He seemed so genuinely confused that for a moment Vela forgot herself. “The odds were too good. Five hundred to one.”

“You lost five hundred betting against me? Serves you right.”

“No, no, those were the odds. I lost two thousand bits.”

“You said five hundred to one.”

“Yes, that means I would have won five hundred bits for every bit I bet.”

“I don’t get it,” he said impatiently. “How much did you lose?”

“Two thousand.”

“Serves you right.”

He was dumb, she realized. Or maybe he was really a genius, but his brain was so tied up in coordinating all his muscles that it couldn’t do much else.

“I didn’t think you looked like a winner,” she said.

“I’m the greatest,” he said darkly.

She shrugged. Her head felt a lot clearer now. “I don’t think so. Sorry to waste your time.”

Vela turned to leave. She had barely gotten a step when his shadow fell over her. His forelegs were on either side of her. The heat from his belly, heaving up and down with each huge breath he took, emanated over her back.

“There’s something I always do after a victory,” he said. “Usually my manager sends a pretty filly to my stable. You’ll do.”

His breath was hot against the top of her head. Something hard bumped against her leg that definitely wasn’t his leg.

“I have to go,” she said.

“Like hell,” he said, and grabbed her mane with his teeth.

Her body surged with panic and her horn glowed. She flung him off of her, sending him crashing against the wall, knocking over the water container, which began to spill onto the floor. He might have been more than twice her size, but he was no match for her in magic.

“What was that noise?” the manager demanded outside. He cringed when she glared at him.

There were two pretty mares simpering at the manager. They fixed envious glares on Vela.

“Have fun, girls,” Vela grinned mirthlessly at them. She started to walk away.

“She’s not even pretty,” she heard one of the mares say.

---

There was still an hour until normal working hours at the Daughter bank were ended. Feeling hungry, she bought a grass kebab along the way. See, Patty? How hard was that?

Patty. That’s right. She had forgotten after the...incident at the racetrack. Her gut squirmed. She didn’t want to face her right now.

She couldn’t finish the kebab, so she threw it away and sat on a bench. What was wrong with her? She should be working right now. She had gone away gambling for hours. What a joke.

She didn’t want to face Patty right now.

It’s her fault, she wanted to rage, but that just made her stomach twist. Vela wanted to apologize, that was the hard part. She wanted Patty to be her secretary; she was the only one there whom Vela felt comfortable with.

Just do it[/i/], she scolded herself. Suck it up. Even if you can’t just tick along like Patty thinks, you can tick along better than this.

When she got back to the bank, the first thing she saw was Patty at her desk surrounded by employees, most of whom ducked back to their own desks when they saw Vela come in. Candyfloss and a few others stayed.

Vela saw the cardboard box in Patty’s lap and made a snap decision. “You’re fired.”

Patty’s face turned red. “I was just taking my things home.”

“Good, see if you can scrub the seat and desk off so it doesn’t smell like you either. I’d rather not have to be reminded that somepony as lazy as you exists.”

Vela turned sharply down the corridor and stopped at her office, where the door was still laying on the floor, broken off from the hinge. She went inside, closed the window, and levitated the door up against the doorway, blocking the entrance more than closing it.

Why had she said that? Vela sank into her chair and felt her eyes burn, though she didn’t cry. Patty usually came in smelling like fresh bread. Vela loved that smell. What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t Patty have just asked for her job back?

Vela barely remembered her own mother, aside from the yelling. She didn’t need Patty. She had toughed it out by herself since always.

It just had never hurt this much before.

Struck by inspiration, or at least by the desire to change something, she got out a pen and parchment and began to write.

Dear Princess Celestia,

But just then the alarm clock beeped on her desk. Right. She stuffed the unfinished letter in a drawer. Back to work.

And when Vela found the unfinished letter at the end of the evening spent catching up on the work she had missed, she couldn’t remember what she had wanted to say.

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