Dusty Joy grumbled quietly to herself as she worked to scrub the wall of the East Wing hallway, a pile of used and dirty rags and scrubbers overflowing from the small waste bin she had brought with her. Several types of cleaning supplies sat around her as she worked hard to try and remove the black stains from the wall, scraping and removing any paint that managed to cling to the surface, only to find that the stains were rather persistent and it didn't help that the few sconces on the walls barely helped to keep the hallway lit as the sun dipped beneath the horizon through the windows, making it harder to tell the stain from the shadows around them.

After having left the hall earlier in the day when the stains first appeared, her boss Peach Seed, a slightly round and peach-colored earth pony stallion, found her out in the gardens sleeping underneath one of the many fruit trees. She had quite the rude awakening when he splashed her with water from the nearby pond. She later found herself in the offices getting, even more, reprimands for sleeping on the job and abandoning her post.

"I HAD to leave the post! There was nothing I could do!" She argued, her boss raising a critical eye.

"Nothing you could do young lady? It's a HALLWAY, there is plenty for you to do. Dust, vacuum the rugs, sweep and mop the marble flooring, polish the doorknobs. Do I need to put your instructions in even more detail?" He took a moment and ran his hoof through his bright green mane, before reaching below his desk and opened a drawer, pulling out a small stack of papers and placing them on his desk. Leaning over, he took a pen in his teeth and began to write, Dusty looking to him in worry.

"What are you writing?" He sighed as he placed the pen back down and pushed the stack of packers forward, showing his signature at the bottom.

"It's your resignation. Please don't make this any harder than it has to be." She looked to him in shock, her head slowly shaking.

"No... no no no NO! You can't do this, I need this job!" Peach took a deep breath and pushed the pen towards her even as she drew back.

"Look, I'm giving you a choice here, either you sign this and we agree on a mutual separation where it won't reflect badly on your resume, or I just fire you and your resume will show that to every job you ever apply to hereafter." Tears welled up in Dusty eyes and she violently shook her head, slamming her hooves on the table with her wings spread wide.

"NO! This isn't fair! You don't even know what happened in that hallway!" Peach leaned back and gave her a look of admonishment.

"Please Miss Joy, we both know about that stallion and that the situation was already resolved. But that is not an excuse to-" She slammed her hooves on the table again, making him jump as she glared hard at him.

"THAT'S NOT WHY I DID IT!!" Taking a moment to collect himself, he gave a huff of air as he sat straight again and gave her a stern look, his irritation finally showing through.

"Then what, Miss Joy. What could have been so bad that you needed to abandon your duties and go take a nap out in the gardens?" Dusty glared back just as harshly as she dropped off his desk and walked to the door, giving a sharp glare back to him as she opened it.

"I'll show you." Peach raised an eyebrow, then proceed to stand and follow her out of the office.

The two of them trotted in silence through the castle, occasionally however they would have to stop as a contingent of guards would rush past them and towards the other end of the castle. Peach Seed continued watching the latest group of guards with a hint of concern for a few moments, before turning and following Dusty.

"... I wonder what all the fuss is about." He stated simply, the first break in the silence between them. Dusty snorted as she continued forward, her sharp glare still present.

"If I had to take a guess? Probably whatever caused what I'm about to show you." Peach perked up at this, was it really so severe?

The two of them finally reached the back end of the East Wing hallway of the castle, a pair of double doors blocked their path. Dusty came to a stop and turned to face him, her glare not stopping him as he simply nodded to her. Stepping up beside her and to the doors, he pushed them open and gasped in shock.

Starting from almost the center of the hall, the left wall was in a severe state of disrepair. A great black stain raised up its surface starting from the floor, then ran parallel with the ground as it continued its destructive path down the hall and to the other end where it vanished around the corner. If the stain was the worst of it, then it wouldn't have been as much of a problem, but sadly it was not to be. The paint on the wall had chipped and fell away, leaving only the blackened concrete visible. The remains of the banners that had been hung on the wall, lay in dark tatters across the hall floor along with the remains of a bust that had been cracked in half, the head of which he could only guess was likely the shattered parts scattered about. Along with the stain, the wall held even darker spider web-like veins that looked to rise off the wall a bit.
Dusty stood behind him, a smug look on her face as she watched his expression go from shock to horrified. His left eye began to twitch uncontrollably and she snickered lightly.

"See, I told you it wasn't my fault." Her words seemed to spark some life back into the stallion as he blinked rapidly, shaking his head for a moment almost as if to make sure he wasn't dreaming himself. After a few moments of silence, he took in a deep, shuddering breath and let it out in a long sigh.

"... Okay, you can keep your job... this uh... this definitely counts as something out of your control." Dusty grinned in triumph and threw her hoof into the air.

"Yes!" Peach looked back to her with a raised eyebrow, only to roll his eyes as she shrugged her shoulders. Looking back to the disaster before him, he groaned.

"The amount of paperwork this is going to take... I guess neither of us gets the night off..." The smirk on Dusty's face vanished immediately as she looked to him with dread.

"Um... what?" Peach turned to face her and gave as best an apologetic look as he could, she didn't like that look.

"I'm sorry about this, but I still need you to try and clean up what you can, especially those stains. We have to get this mess taken care of so that the stonemasons can come in and repair any structural damage." Dusty stared at her, her left eye having developed a twitch. She could not formulate a response as her mind raced at the idea of having to clean up this mess on her own. Peach turned to the doors and walked past her, pausing for a moment to place a hoof on her shoulder.

"I know it's a lot to ask of you, especially with us being short staffed right now, but I promise that I'll compensate you for your time and the effort that you put in." Dusty opened her mouth as if to say something, but all that came out were a few incoherent sounds as she stared down the hall at the immense task before her. Peach removed his hoof and continued towards the door, calling back to her.

"I'll come by every few hours to check on your progress. If something like this happens, you need to come and get me instead of just going off and taking a nap, I'll overlook it this time." The door shut behind him, leaving her in the hall as she continued to stare at the hall, her eyes pinpricks and her left eyelid twitching unhealthily.

Several hours later, she found herself with sore hooves and even darker bags under her eyes as she continued to scrub the same spot on the wall. The stain, no matter how hard she tried or what type of scrubber she used, simply would not go away! She had begun with the floor itself, picking up the tattered remains of the many banners, that had been a nightmare as almost every time she would touch them, they fell into even more pieces! The chipped pieces of paint along the floor had been a bit easier and the bust was a simple matter of sweeping. The wall itself was the primary challenge, she had put it off for as long as she could. She hadn't made any progress since she first started trying to remove the stain either. She had used every cleaning chemical short of pouring sulfuric acid on the surface and nothing worked! The rags and scrubbers then began to turn black themselves the more she used them, forcing her to collect new ones, which led to the growing pile next to her.

Just as she was about to throw the current rag into the pile, her other hoof reaching for a stack of fresh ones at the same time, the door at the back of the hall opened and she looked to see Peach Seed stepping through, a grim look on his face. Standing to her hooves, she looked around the hall with worry, making sure that the floor was as clean as possible, before standing as straight as she could and facing him with a smile, her heart in her hooves.

'Maybe if I'm really, REALLY nice and polite, he won't be mad about the wall and I won't get fired...' Her small bit of hope slowly dwindled as she watched him glance to the wall and grimace, his irritation clear. As he approached her, he looked to the massive pile of scrubbers and other supplies, then again at the wall.

"No luck then I take it." He spoke softly as he studied the wall. Dusty gave a shaky chuckle and continued to smile, her ears folded back.

"I-it'll come off... I'm sure of it! ... please don't fire me..." His ears perked up and his eyes widened as he looked to her, a sympathetic look taking the place of his grimace.

"Oh! No no, I'm not here because of that, I'm sorry. I know you are trying your hardest, it isn't your fault that this isn't coming off. It's definitely a conundrum..." He glanced at the wall after seeing Dusty visibly relax and release a breath she had been holding.

"Oh thank Celestia..." She whispered under her breath, Peach giving a slight smirk, only to frown once more.

"But." Dusty immediately tensed up as he said this. Turning to walk past her and further down the hall, he motion for her to follow. With a side glance at the supplies, she shrugged and dropped the scrubbers, trotting into step beside him.

"There is another situation that has come up, and though some of the, ahem, darker details have been withheld from me, I have been told that some professionals were sent in to clean up the portions that you as a maid are not prepared or trained for." Dusty smiled at this, finally a break!

"So I'm done with the wall? You guys have somepony else coming to take care of it?" He glanced to her with an apologetic smile and her good mood instantly soured. She really hated that look.

"I'm sorry, but the wall is still our problem until we pass it on to the masons, even worse is that the stain doesn't end in this hall. Rather, it ends where this hall leads, which is another problem altogether." The two of them came around the corner and Dusty's eyes widened as the hall before her was littered with open boxes of medical kits, torn bits of medical tape and other disposables, and the scuff marks of many, MANY hooves. The mess went all the way to the other side of the hall, all the way to the doors that lead to the Canterlot Ballroom, then seemed to stop.

"What happened here?" She asked quietly as they proceeded, stepping over the mess. She could see many spots on the floor and the walls they were cleaner than the rest, as though somepony else had already been here and scrubbed them. A few of the rugs that were normally centered on the marble flooring were also missing.

"Chaos is the best way to describe it without making you sick to your stomach. I'll leave it at that. This is also more of what you'll need to clean up, but the bigger project is in here." They stopped just before the large double doors of the Canterlot ballroom. He nodded to the doorknob for her and she cautiously reached forward with her hoof, turning and pushing it open.

She stared in complete shock at the utterly destroyed ballroom. The floor was near completely black, as though somepony had emptied a half dozen cans of black paint on the floor and let it dry, with only just the edges of the floor still retaining their pristine white. Many of the wooden pews that had been brought in for the wedding, lay shattered across the ground along with chunks of the floor, deep gouges showing where they had been removed. A few of the pillars lay on their sides, either broken in half or shattered entirely. The black stain from before had also reappeared on the inside of the room near the doors, following the wall to the dais where it finally came to stop at a massive hole, stained black rubble sitting in the opening as the cool night air brought a chill across her fur. The littered and ruined remains of more banisters and curtains lay across the floor of the wall, the wind occasionally catching on one and causing it to fall to pieces even more.

The red carpet that had led up to where the center of an aisle should have been, had been completely removed. It wasn't the only sign that someone else had already been here to clean up something. Many of the remains of the pews had been pushed to the sides of the room, clearing the floor as it looked like someone had done some intense scrubbing of their own. She spied a stain of dark red on one of the mostly still intact pews, she gulped audibly.

"I know." Nearly jumping out of her fur, she snapped her head to her left where she found Peach Seed standing alongside her and looking around at the destruction.

"When I first saw it, I could hardly believe it, much less understand what happened. There were guards everywhere and everything was covered in..." He put his hoof to his lips as he suppressed a strangled sound. The dark red stain she remembered seeing sent a shiver down her spine.

"I know I've already asked a lot of you, and believe me, you'll be compensated for it. But if I could, I'd like to ask a bit more." Once more, the poor mare found herself unable to respond as her mind simply shut down. He glanced to her in worry. After still not getting a response, he waved his hoof in front of her blank eyes, still nothing. He slowly backed out of the room, looking left and right with a sheepish grin.

"So uh, I'll just leave you to it... again... good luck?" He turned and quickly trotted back down the hall.

The quiet in the destroyed ballroom was deafening for a few more moments, only to be interrupted by a shout of pure outrage.

"OH COME ON!!"

Author's Notes:

Shaded: "A bit more of our favorite bat pony maid!"

Twilight: "You know, eventually this poor mare is going to figure out who is putting her in these situations."

Shaded: Begins to sweat Y-y-y-you wouldn't tell her... would you?

Twilight: Casually filing her hoof "I don't know, how soon do you think you'll have the next chapter out?"

Shaded: "Soon! I swear! Ahem, I do not own MLP: FIM Or the Equinox Ponies!"

Twilight: "Good boy."