The first day is always the worst... well, most of the time.
Hey, I'm Alex, but... you can call me... Alex, I suppose. I'm just about as average as a pony can get: Average height, average strength, and an above-average set of senses. No wings, no horn, all stallion. Cute glasses, mane's all unkempt because I never have the opportunity to use a damned COMB, and, well. My energetic-ness is usually off the charts, but, not today. Not for the past week, really, because I realized something that I should have known a long time ago.
I need a job.
I signed up for some sort of labor lottery, and got stuck working at some cupcake shop that I used to go to all the time as a colt. Sugarcube Corner... run by the cake family. I never knew much about them, really. Just that they, like their name may imply, are rather sweet. This is my first day at work, and it went as follows: Woke up, crawled out of bed at two in the morning, took a hour-and-a-half shower, came out, it was two in the morning. My alarm clock appeared to have frozen. After I mashed the button a few times, it snapped to the real time: three-thirty on the dot. Thankfully. I didn't start until, like, six or seven, so I went downstairs to play some form of video game by myself, and was interrupted on my trip across the room from teh stairs by bumping into my sister, Lexia. She always had the cooler name.
She's just about as average as I, average height, strength, etc. Her mane, much like her tail and everything about her, and much like my own, was messed up. She wore almost identical glasses, the only difference was that hers actually had lenses. Mine were basically just frames for cosmetic purposes. She's like the cool sister that everybody wants, and that I got stuck with. This would normally be a blessing, and as of recently, I've learned she knows quite a bit on how to fight, but, this morning... she's all critical with me about "Oh, you need to look your best" and I was like "Yes mom." Which I immediately regretted, because neither of us ever knew our mother. Our father, as the cliche goes, was a drunkard, and I have a few scars left over from when he smacked me in the head with a bottle of Jackie Daniella (The female version of Jack Daniels, and much more fruity to the taste, which I learned when the bottle smashed over my head and splattered my blood and a lot of the contents down my throat.) Long story longer, we're the cliche duo of two parts left alone and two parts gone.
So, as I headed to the kitchen, blah blah, morning routine. Breakfast: Toast. I love toast. After about one hour of sitting around, munching on toast, I decided to leave for the day, and get a bit of fresh air. Lexia agreed, and promptly kicked me out of the house. Fun.
I headed down the road to my new workplace, the crisp, cool air doing absolutely nothing to boost my confidence, and it was still rather dark, so I bumped into a cart, a wall, a streetlight, and a person, who promptly shoved me aside and continued to walk. "S-sorry!" I called out, and I was promptly given the pony equivalent of The Finger. Deciding that do strangle this person would be stupid, I decided to continue walking, and by the time I got Sugarcube Corner, I had bumped my legs and head into just about everything in the town, including the front door, which swung open as I planted my nose firmly into a heavy glass jar of candy. The candy jar didn't budge, and I heard a quiet crack when I made contact, most likely my face. I closed the door behind me and looked around the darkened store, it was oddly spooky. Footsteps could be heard upstairs, which I assumed belonged to the owners of this "Fine establishment" and I breathed a sigh of relief when the semi-familiar face of Mrs. Cake popped out from around a corner. "Oh, hello! You must be the new help!" I responded with a witty "My face hurts." and she let out a high-pitched, femenine-as-hell giggle as she turned and trotted away to do something. I flipped on the lights, and the glare from one of the large glass candy jars almost drilled a hole through my eye. As I turned away from the glare, my cheek made contact with something rather soft, I let out a quiet squeak and hopped in the opposite direction, barely missing a rack of sweets. I turned to focus on the soft object, and it was the muzzle of a bright pink mare, who's face was uncomfortably close to mine. Well... not uncomfortable, because she radiated happiness and no glint of malice or harm. (I mentioned sharp senses, and, well, this was one of them. Auras. Woulda been cool if I died to become a Lucario~!) I smiled a little as she let out a cute, bubbly giggle and hopped around in circles before me, her tail brushing right up into my face, forcing me to sneeze. Thankfully, I sneezed into my foreleg. "So, you're my new buddy, yeah? You look like fun, and I like fun, and everybody likes fun!" The voice was rather high-pitched, and my oversensetive hearing made it like nails through my skull, but I put on a brave face and nodded. She giggled yet again and suddenly hopped out of sight, coming back with a clipboard held firmly in her mouth. "Sign here please!" she said with a muffled tone, and I perused the paper. "Pinkie's list of friends." There were a lot of filled-in spaces, and one had been crudely drawn with a "Reserved" space next to it. I looked from it to her, and she nodded, so I signed right on that line. She tossed the clipboard aside, and one would hear a comical CRASH and the sound of a cat screeching, and she suddenly hopped away from view again. I stood completely still, soaking in the ambiance of what just happened, when I was suddenly being pushed to the front desk, behind the register, and a tophat was placed upon my cranium. "Here's your hat, and here's your station!" I heard Mrs. Cake say, and Pinkie (I assumed that was the pink mare's name) leapt around the store excitedly. "Store'sabouttoopenohmyCelestiathisissogreat!" She said in the fastest way possible, and I strained my ears to make out any words. All I heard were "Store, Celestia, and Great" before suddenly the door opened and someone walked in.