Songs of Innocence

Chapter 48: No More Heroes Any More

While Sun was at school having fun, Obassi was at work, trying to write a new article. The outgoing journalist sat at his desk with an unmistakable aura of closeted anxiousness. Something was eating away at him, preventing him from writing even a single letter, and that something was Cozy Glow, obviously. Although Canterlot kept very tight-lipped on the recent disappearance of Cozy's stone statue as to avoid widespread panic, word still managed to get out thanks to one particularly ignorant member of the royal guard. 

Obassi wouldn't dream of making that information public - after all, he's malicious, not moronic - but it took up so much of his mind's energy that he couldn't come up with anything else to make an article on. Sure, he had plenty of potential stories, like whatever boring new trade dispute was going on at the time, but nothing took up his thoughts quite like Cozy. Everyone knew Sun as being a wildcard, and that meant to Obassi that from the moment he walked away from her house, anything could have happened. For all he knew, Sun could have thrown Cozy into the actual sun, and that was causing him immense worry to think about.

The blank notebook on his desk stared back at him as he stared into it, and the only thing that broke him out of his trance was the familiarly nagging, yet compassionate voice of his boss, Loveblue. "Obassi..." she whined. "You do have something new, right?" A barely-acknowledging shake of Obassi's head confirmed her fears that he was slacking on his work yet again. "Is it that unicorn again?"

Loveblue was probably the best boss a person could ask for. She was kind and considerate, and although she was a bit of an older mare, her decades of working at this same job didn't wear on her patience. However, all of that made it hard for Obassi to be honest with her when he messed up. He messed up often. It was always because of the same reason, being that he was always out chasing new stories. In this world of princesses and magic where adventure is always just around the corner, Obassi was a boring, magicless zebra with a soul-crushingly boring, mundane job. 

It was especially depressing, because as far back as he could remember, he wanted to be a journalist. He thought he'd be chasing bad guys and solving mysteries like something out of an A.K. Yearling book. But in reality, he only got to write about other people doing that, and it was always the same. "Threat appears, will it destroy Equestria?", followed by "Equestria saved by Mane Six/ponies no one has heard of" the next day. And he had to write about it each and every time. Different words, but the same story.

He had been doing this for six years now. He had been sitting at his desk every single day for six whole years. Of course he would take each and every chance to go out and get up close to a story. Those few times he did were his lifeline, giving him hope that maybe he could end up somehow becoming the hero he thought he would be when he was a foal. But that obviously never happened. 

In fact, he isn't a hero, is he? If anything, he's a villain in Sun's story, and not even a major one. He's just a side-villain, working for an unhinged sociopath who paid him to ruin the life of someone he had never even heard of. He may not be as bad as Death Drive, but he wasn't thinking about how morally awful he was being, only choosing to follow her, and isn't that worse, in a way? He was acting out of pure self-interest, guided by a mindless evil that wasn't even his idea. He just hoped and hoped that chasing after Sun would make his life interesting, but his illusions of grandeur all began to collapse with the realization that the true enemy was himself for not realizing this was completely wrong in the first place. 

"Obassi?" Suddenly, he was snapped out of all of those thoughts, and brought back to his drab, sterile office where Loveblue waited for him to reply. "You look..."

"Like I need to go home." Obassi finished, standing up from his seat, and walking away. "I'll be back tomorrow."

Loveblue was utterly shocked to see him leave, and so abruptly at that. She couldn't help but stammer as she tried to process what was going on. "Wh-wh-where are you going?! Your deadline is tomorrow, and you haven't done a thing! You're almost a middle-aged stallion, Obassi! Can you please stop chasing fairy tales for once and just get something done?!"