The drama was over, at least for now. Regional Director Grimwold, who had been called in by Celestia, had taken over the scene with a ruthless efficiency. He was aided by a group of serious-faced, black-suited gnomes in very discreet caps. Chief Tallywaddle—currently ex-Chief—had been escorted out of the room, along with a stunned-looking Tiddwiddle and a vociferously protesting Figgwaggle.

The Director’s stone-faced clerks had then stormed into Tallywaddle’s office, clearing it out of all paperwork in a tide of boxes and loaded carts. It took several minutes before the stream of gnomes going into and out of the office stopped.

Grimwold had then taken over the office itself in order to get statements from everygnome involved, starting with the stunned-looking Ninabella. Glummwriggle had felt a brief moment of sympathy for the gnomette. She obviously hadn’t had any idea what the Chief had been up to, and now she was smack-dab in the middle of an investigation that could end her career.

When her interview was over, Ninabella had walked quickly over to her desk while obviously struggling not to cry. She’d recovered her purse from a drawer and started walking out without looking at or speaking to anygnome in the room. Claribelle had darted up, caught her elbow, and had a brief, whispered conversation with the receptionist. Glumm wasn’t sure, but he thought he’d heard the words “bar” and “drinks” and “lots”. Ninabella had looked at Clari with blank confusion before breaking into a wan smile and nodding.

Then Claribelle was brought into the former-Chief’s office to give her statement, leaving a fidgeting Tinseltoes and an worn out Glummwriggle waiting behind. A few minutes later, Claribelle emerged from her interview looking both a little lost and somewhat thoughtful. She’d left the reception area without a word to anyone.

Tinseltoes, on seeing Clari exit the office, had stood and seemed ready to go after her. Grimwold’s voice from the other side of the office door had stopped him. With a sigh, he went in, closing the door behind him, leaving Glumm sitting awkwardly on a chair in the reception area, waiting for his own interview.

While he waited, he couldn’t help but look at Princess Celestia out of the corner of his eye. The Princess had lain down on her belly, folding her legs underneath her. Her face held an expression of serene calm, her eyes closed. Glumm couldn’t decide if she was asleep or just meditating.

Whatever magic the pony princess had used to shrink herself down to gnome size was certainly impressive, and far beyond even the best the gnome engineers could replicate. That said, he couldn’t help but wonder what it meant that she could shrink herself to gnome-size, and yet she was still taller than the next-tallest person in the room, even lying down.

The clock ticked off another minute. Glumm shifted in his seat, washing his hands together as he waited for whatever would happen next.

“I should thank you,” Princess Celestia said so unexpectedly that Glumm jumped a little. “All three of you, actually. You’ve done a great service to me and my little ponies.”

Glumm grunted, turning away so that the Princess wouldn’t see his blush. “I just wish we’d have stopped it sooner, Princess.”

“True. However, now that we know about the situation, we can take steps to address it.”

Glumm flinched and ran a nervous hand along his upper thigh. “Begging your pardon, Princess, but how are we supposed to fix this? The Cutie Mark Intervention Department only gets two or three misallocated cutie marks to fix a year, tops. This is dozens!”

“The department may have to be expanded,” Celestia said, her voice still calm. “I’ll leave that up to Director Grimwold. He seems to have a good head on his shoulders.”

Glummwriggle shrugged, not having ever met the Regional Director before today. He was contemplating what else he could say to the immortal ruler of Equestria when the door to the former Chief’s office opened, revealing a stunned-looking Tinseltoes.

The lad may have been foisted off on him against his wishes, but he was still family. Glumm stood up quickly and went over to the boy, putting a firm hand on his upper arm to steady him.

“Everything alright?” he asked.

Tinseltoes shook himself. “Yeah. Uh. My probation is over, apparently. I’ve been promoted to full Field Agent, effective immediately.”

“Oh, that’s…” Glumm trailed off. His own probationary period had taken months to get through. Months, and Pinkie Pie. “That’s great,” he said, trying to summon up a little enthusiasm for the young gnome’s sake.

Tinseltoes offered up a trembling smile. “Yeah. I think… I think I want to go find Claribelle and tell her the good news.” He started walking towards the door when he stopped. “Oh, yeah. The director said for you to go in.”

“Right,” Glummwriggle replied. His nephew waved, and he waved back. Glumm watched the boy leave, then hurriedly tucked in his shirt and smoothed his beard a little. Then he took a deep breath. “Right,” he said again, and let himself into the office.

Director Grimwold was frowning down at a few papers on his desk when Glumm entered. Except for those papers, the desk was remarkably clean. Tallywaddle’s mountains of paperwork were gone, along with the half-empty disposable coffee cups that usually littered the desktop. The dust and grime had been wiped away, and the desk gleamed. Well, at least it gleamed everywhere the name “Tallywaddle” wasn’t carved into it.

Without looking up, Grimwold said “Have a seat.”

Glummwriggle sat quickly. He couldn’t help but remember the last time he’d sat in this chair. The fear of losing his job, and the frustration of having to answer to a prat like Tallywaddle for his actions. This was an entirely different situation, of course, and he wasn’t angry or upset, but he was much more nervous. He waited, trying not to fidget while the Director shuffled through the papers, making little “Hmm… Hmm…” noises as he did so.

Finally, Director Grimwold looked up, his expression stoic and unreadable.

“So. You revealed yourself to the ponies,” he stated flatly.

Glumm grimaced. “Sir, I did.”

“‘They must never know.’ It’s our primary law, Glummwriggle,” Grimwold stated flatly. “Explain why you felt you had to break it.”

“Well, sir, I didn’t know how far Tallywaddle’s influence ran. And, according to what I heard from Claribelle and Tinseltoes, time was of the essence.” Glumm sweated into his jacket for a few seconds before adding, “Besides, Pinkie Pie… well, she already knew about us. Specifically, me.”

“So I see,” Grimwold said, indicating the paperwork on his desk. With mute horror, Glumm realized that it was his personnel file. “And Princess Celestia vouches for her. Especially since she made…” Grimwold shuffled through the paperwork again and squinted at a specific line. “...a Pinkie Promise not to tell anypony.”

“Sir,” Glumm said. It seemed to be the safest thing to say.

Grimwold looked up at him for a few more seconds. “It also says here that you were responsible for your own misallocation shortly after you started. Managed to convince a filly that her special talent was making mud pies.”

Glumm couldn’t stop a wince at the memory. “Yes, sir. Fortunately, the Cutie Mark Intervention Department was able to get her back on track into a study of general mineralogy.”

“So I see. You also disobeyed a direct order to fire from Control yesterday.”

“Sir, I did,” Glumm said. In spite of his absolute terror of the gnome in front of him, he began feeling slightly irritated. “It turns out, it was a good thing I did.”

“Field agents follow orders,” Grimwold said bluntly. “Explain your actions.”

A scowl drifted across Glumm’s features before he managed to squash it. “That filly you mentioned, the one who was making mud pies? Well, I never forgave myself for that. It was on my mind every time I went out into the field. I’m dead set against making a mistake like that again in the future. When I heard the order to fire, the filly in question was talking about dentistry. I had studied her case file. Dentistry went against everything I knew about her. Sir.”

“Hmm. I see.” Director Grimwold picked up a pen and began writing on the bottom of one of the papers in front of him. The papers from Glumm’s personnel records.

The minutes stretched on until finally Glumm couldn’t take it anymore. “Did you need anything else, sir?”

Grimwold stopped writing, put down his pen and sighed. “Yes. I need a full audit of everything this office has done for the last ten years. I need to figure out how I’m going to get a couple dozen young ponies back on the track their lives were intended to take... though fortunately, it looks like many of them are very close to their original destinies and just need a little nudge.”

Director Grimwold ran a finger along one of the carved names in the top of the desk. “I need to replace this desk, which that idiot Tallywaddle seems to have taken a liking to. I think I’ll take the cost of a new one out of his final paycheck.” He looked up and stared Glummwriggle right in the eye. “And, speaking of Tallywaddle, I need a new Chief to run this place.”

Glumm’s brain went into neutral as he realized what it was that the Director seemed to be implying. After a few seconds, he blurted out, “Me?! You want me to—”

Grimwold’s barking laugh cut him off. “No. No, of course not you. I already have somegnome in mind.” His eyes twinkled as, for the first time since he arrived, the Director smiled. The smile was a cold, pitiless thing, and Glumm felt a rush of cold down his back. “No, I have other plans for you.”

As he swallowed against the lump in his throat, Glumm wondered helplessly about what that meant. Barely any thought at all was left over to wonder who Grimwold had in mind to take over the Ponyville branch of the CMAA.

The two gnomettes sat at a table, and already several empty glasses sat between them. The bar they were in wasn’t the Whole in the Wall. What with everything that had happened, Claribelle had decided that the day’s events warranted stopping somewhere a little nicer.

The gnomette across from her was wearing a look of mingled hope and confusion. “Say that again?” she asked.

“Work for me,” Claribelle repeated. “Same hours, same pay, same everything.”

“But I thought you hated me,” Ninabella said.

“Pff!” Clari waved a hand dismissively, though Nina wasn’t far off from the truth. “No, of course not!”

The truth was, everygnome in the CMAA tended to dislike the Chief’s personal assistant. It was her job to be a gatekeeper, after all, and to be the voice of the boss whenever he couldn’t be bothered to do something himself. But, after everything that had happened, Claribelle wasn’t about to hold onto a grudge.

“And I thought I was going to get fired,” Ninabella said.

“Nope. I asked old Grim-face about it, and he said that he didn’t think you had any prior knowledge of Tallywaddle’s actions.”

“Of course I didn’t!” Nina’s face flushed from more than just the alcohol they’d had. “I never would have gone along with it.” She sniffled. “Those poor foals…”

Clari offered a sympathetic smile and a hand-pat as Nina sniffled. The truth was, she had been likely to be fired. Grimwold had told her so when he had offered her Tallywaddle’s job. Clari had told him that if she decided to take the job, she wanted Nina to keep her position. It was non-negotiable, as far as she was concerned.

“So, you’re really going to be the new Chief?” Ninabella asked.

Claribelle took a few seconds to think about it. “You know what? I think I will.”

“Sorry, what?” came an awkward, surprised voice from behind her.

Clari turned to see a wide-eyed Tinseltoes standing behind her. The skinny young gnome had a look of disbelief on his face. She sighed and turned in her seat to address him.

“Yes, that’s right. It turns out that Grimwold wanted someone who was good at organization, and he was really impressed when I told him about the filing system I made for the records.” Clari offered him a winning smile.

“Well.” Tinseltoes blinked a few times. “Well.” Then he smiled. “I suppose ‘congratulations’ are in order. Chief!”

Tinseltoes saluted, and Clari giggled. After a few seconds, Ninabella joined in. The young gnome grinned and relaxed, and Clari’s heart skipped a beat. He really isn’t bad-looking, in an odd sort of way, she decided. And he did pop Tallywaddle in the nose!

She made up her mind.

“Say, um. Tinseltoes.” Clari cleared her throat, heavily conscious of Nina listening in behind her. She put the other gnomette out of her mind before she lost her nerve and chickened out on this completely. “You did a great job today.”

“Thanks!”

“And I was wondering…” Clari hesitated, blushed, and then blurted out, “Well, would you like to go out and get drinks sometime?”

Tinseltoes gaped at her like a fish. Ninabella uttered a quiet gasp behind her. The world constricted down to a narrow point as she waited for Tinseltoes to answer.

“Rule 337-A,” Tinseltoes said eventually, a mournful note in his voice. “It’s on page forty-four of the CMAA handbook.”

Clari blinked. “Which one is that again?”

It was Nina who answered, annoyingly enough. “Er… it’s the one that prevents a manager from dating anyone who reports to him.” She cleared her throat. “Or, in this case, her.” Ninabella grimaced and added, "After my third day of working for Tallywaddle, I printed that page out and had it pinned up on my wall."

That took a few seconds to sink in, after which Clari said, “Oh…” in a very small voice. Very nearly everygnome she knew worked at the CMAA. If she wasn’t allowed to date anyone who reported up to her, her dating prospects were starting to look a little slim.

“Well, I suppose I could always fire you, first!” she said. “I’m kidding!” she quickly added, when Tinsel’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.

“Oh… Well… Good?” Tinseltoes said weakly.

Clari sighed. She hadn’t even started the job, yet, and already she was bungling it up. “It’s okay. We can just be friends.” She smiled up at him as he stood there uncertainly. “Come on. Join us for drinks?” When he hesitated, she hastily added, “It’s not a date. It’s a work outing.”

Tinseltoes managed another smile. “Alright,” he said as he joined them.

Several weeks later...

“Agent 13, do you copy?”

Glummwriggle, hiding behind a barrel at the train station, pressed a button on his communicator. “Copy, Dispatch. Target Alpha is in sight. Target Beta is with her. I think I can get them both at once.”

There was a long pause before Dispatch replied. "Confirmed. Target Alpha is still primary, but if you can get Beta in the mix, then go for it.”

Glumm grinned. “Confirmed, Dispatch. Ready to deploy.”

He strode out confidently from behind his barrel, trusting in his fancy new “Don’t Notice Me” field generator to keep the ponies from noticing him. It made what he’d used as a CMAA Field Agent seem like a bad joke.

The Cutie Mark Intervention Department got all the coolest toys.

Behind another set of boxes, he could make out his nephew. Tinseltoes had a Cutie Cannon out, pointed at the Cutie Mark Crusaders as he spoke into his own communicator. Even though Glumm seriously doubted that any of the fillies on the train station’s platform would get a cutie mark that day, he still wished his nephew luck. He offered him a nod, one professional to another, and got a nod in return.

Glumm didn’t envy Tinseltoes. The CMC were a handful when there were only three of them. Now with four, things would be even harder. Fortunately for the sake of everygnome’s sanity, it seemed like one of them would be leaving on the next train.

“So, you’re leaving, huh?” Target Alpha said as she and Beta came around the corner of the platform. “Great! Now we’re stuck here with these lame blank-flanks!”

That seemed to annoy the newest member of the Crusaders, who replied angrily, “Hey! That’s not how you talk to my friends!”

Dispatch once again started talking through Glumm’s headset once again, distracting him from the arguing fillies for a few moments. “Correction Opportunity approaching within 19 seconds, counting down.”

“Confirmed, Dispatch. I’ll be ready.”

Glumm quickly broke out his Fate Rifle, a device built by the greatest Gnome engineers, assisted by the mighty magic and arcane knowledge both Princess Luna and Celestia. He wasn’t sure exactly how it did what it did. Something about a dose of concentrated, controlled chaos being released during specific times of temporal flux in order to incrementally re-align the subject with the harmonic grid, or some such thing. Most of the seminar where it was explained had gone over his head. Not that he minded, as he had mostly been there for the donuts.

“What are you gonna do about it?” Target Alpha asked in her snotty voice.

There was a pause, during which Dispatch kept counting down the time.

The newest member of the Cutie Mark Crusaders smiled. “Tell your mothers about your bad attitudes!”

That prospect seemed to terrify both Alpha and Beta.

”Two… One... Fire!”

Glumm snapped off a shot, hitting Diamond Tiara straight in the chest. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, he quickly reloaded the Fate Ordinance and snapped off another shot, this one hitting her crony, Silver Spoon. Both fillies tumbled backwards off of the train station’s platform, falling gracelessly into a large patch of mud. And, whether it was the effect of the rifle, or just plain irony, Diamond Tiara’s namesake tiara wound up on the head of a pig, who turned and seemed to grin at a horrified Silver Spoon.

“Dispatch, I got both targets,” Glum said into his headset. “Repeat: I got both Alpha and Beta.”

”Copy, Agent 13. It doesn’t look like there will be another Correction Opportunity today. Come on back to HQ. I think we put those poor fillies through the wringer enough for one day.”

“Copy that, Dispatch. Agent 13 out.”

Glumm quickly disassembled his Fate Rifle, which was a much more elegant and portable device than the Cutie Cannon. When he was done, he waved to his nephew, who nodded back.

Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, along with many other colts and fillies in Ponyville, were on their way back to their true destinies. Over a dozen were already there, only needing a gentle nudge in the right direction. These two, though, were a special case. Their true destinies were almost completely opposed to what the fillies thought they were supposed to be. And, even though he felt like a bully sometimes, Grimwold had explained it to him.

“First thing, these two need to be reminded that they aren’t better than any other pony,” the Director had said.

So it was that the Fate Rifle deployed negative reinforcement whenever they acted against their true destiny, and positive for when they embraced it. The Fate Rifle Ordinance could reward, just as easily as it could punish. Though, it said something about the fillies in question that the negative reinforcement outnumbered the positive by a five-to-one ratio.

Glummwriggle felt pretty bad for the fillies. It wasn’t entirely their fault they were bullies. It certainly wasn’t fair that they, and other ponies their age, had to suffer for what a few stupid, greedy gnomes had done.

Just for a moment, he allowed himself to wonder exactly what happened to the three gnomes involved.

“Figgwaggle, I’m warning you! Keep your stuff to your side of the cell!”

“This is my side of the cell, Tiddwiddle! It’s not my fault you drew the line all crooked!”

A knock on the door roused Tallywaddle from a deep sleep. With a groan, he levered himself up off of his loudly-protesting bed and shuffled to the door. On the way, he glanced at a clock. It was barely past noon, and already some inconsiderate lout had decided to wake him up!

“Better not be another court officer,” he muttered darkly. His own trial, which he’d demanded be seperate from Tiddwiddle’s and Figgwaggle’s, was coming up next week. He’d started out rather optimistic about his chances, only to see all of his carefully gathered influence in the gnome community dry up and blow away. Now, his greatest fear was ending up in a jail cell with those two louts.

He opened the front door to his house and was surprised to see a delivery gnome standing there. Behind him was a large wooden crate on a four-wheeled dolly.

“Sign here, please, sir,” the gnome said, holding out a clipboard.

“What is this?” Tallywaddle asked him.

“Not sure, sir. Letter came with it.”

Tallywaddle grunted and took the letter. While the young gnome moved the crate into his living room, he opened the envelope. He almost swore out loud when he saw the letterhead.

From the desk of Grimwold, Regional Director of CMAA, Greater Canterlot Region.

Tallywaddle,

I hope this letter finds you in poor health. Here’s that damned desk you marked up. You paid for it, you may as well keep it. The new desk is much nicer, anyway. Young Claribelle is doing a bang-up job as your replacement, keeps the thing nice and cleared off. This branch has never been run so efficiently!

Yours disdainfully,

Grimwold.

Tallywaddle snorted and crumpled up the letter. He tried to go back to bed, but the damned crate kept popping up in his mind, disturbing his sleep. Finally, he grabbed a hammer and crowbar and opened the box, revealing the beat-up desk that he’d used for years.

His eyes bugged out at the sight of it. Just as he remembered, there were multiple places where his name had been carved into the thing. But somegnome had taken the time to carve various insults after each instance of his name.

Tallywaddle is a gasbag
Tallywaddle is an idiot
Tallywaddle is a giant bowl of guts

And so on, and so on.

“Who did this?!” Tallywaddle roared at nobody in particular.

“Your ginger ale, sir,” the waiter said, leaving the glass of sparkling bubbly on the table in front of him.

Glummwriggle, who had been busily cleaning his nails with his ancient pen-knife to the mute horror of the wait staff, nodded his thanks.

His new job sure paid a lot more, that was for sure. He’d never been able to afford to eat at a place like this on his old salary. And, as he sipped his ale, he allowed himself a smile.

Life, he decided, was good.