//------------------------------// // Chapter 3 // Story: Student Debt // by AsiagoUnicorn //------------------------------// A thought occurred to Starlight Glimmer while she carefully manipulated the atomic makeup of a bushel of apples in order to turn them blue at Rainbow Dash's behest. The trio had sequestered themselves within the Apple family barn with a stolen basket of apples, an unopened can of blue paint, and several dozen garden rakes. Starlight decided to voice this thought, “So Twilight needs money. Correct?” Spike muttered something vaguely equivalent to a yes from deep within the loose pile of hay he had fallen half asleep in. He had tuckered himself out hours prior trying to talk, scold, and threaten his equine compatriots out of their schemes, not to mention his lack of a full night's rest. “Okay, so what if we try to make some bits to help her out by pranking ponies for money?” “Why would ponies pay to be pranked?” Dash questioned from her perch in the rafters. Starlight pondered the best way to phrase her thoughts for a moment. “See that's the thing. They won't know they've been pranked.” “Wait,” Dash leapt down to the hard packed dirt floor so she could see what she could only assume was a crazy mare face to face. “If they don't know they've been pranked what's the point?” Starlight slowly set the apples down, having finished her task. “I'll know they've been pranked, and you'll know they've been pranked, and Twilight will get a tidy sum of money to put towards her student loans.” “Okay, I think I can kind of see what you're getting at. Let's give it a shot.” Starlight shooed Dash's hoof away as the mare reached for an apple. “Don't eat those. They're full of sulfur and other things that are very bad for a grown mare.” ✱ ✱ ✱ Twilight Sparkle expected a lot of things out of the seedy underbelly of Canterlot. She expected interactions to primarily take place in shady back alleys and under the cover of darkness. She expected some modicum of professionalism, at least when they were trying to sell her something. She expected lengthy coats concealing their cutie marks, and obscuring their identity. What she did not expect was for the street gangs of Canterlot to be primarily run by foals. “Show me the bits, and I'll show you the goods,” the little filly spoke, her voice filled with all the gruffness of a baby bunny. Her coat was a dull gray where it peeked out from under the brown trench coat that was several sizes too big. Twilight procured a small bag of bits from seemingly nowhere. They were cheaper than expected too. The filly examined the bits with intense scrutiny. Finding them to her satisfaction, she slipped an Equestrian ID out of a hidden inner pocket within her trench coat. Goods were exchanged, and the filly spoke as she walked away, “If anypony asks, I was never here.” Twilight turned the ID over in her magic. It was surprisingly well done. While she could spot a number of mistakes and deviations, she was certain it would hold up for the purposes of contesting a student loan. “I'm going to by so much candy with this!” the filly shouted, thinking herself out of earshot. Twilight smiled. Maybe crime wasn't so bad after all. ✱ ✱ ✱ Spike yawned drowsily, trying to shut the light and the sounds of the market out by burying his face in the purple mane before him that really could only belong to Twilight. It hit him moments later that it was not in fact Twilight's mane, and he was not in fact riding on Twilight's back. He shouted, leaping off Starlight's back and falling painfully to the ground. Struggling for coherent words, he stammered out question after question, “Where am I? What have you done with me? Who am I?” Dash laughed with pure unadulterated schadenfreude. Spike stuck his tongue out at her, and tried to regain his bearings. They were in the market, and, judging by the sun's position, it was a few hours past noon. The stalls around him were still bustling with ponies and business. Ponies were rushing to get their grocery shopping in with the day's stocks dwindling. Just a few paces away, Starlight sat at a small unfolding table with three transparent cups and a marble. Every now and then, she'd hark the services she provided, a gambling game, at the top of her lungs. Next to her, hidden from the ponies that passed by the table, was a large bucket overflowing with glimmering bits. “Oh, you're finally awake,” Starlight noted gleefully. She pushed the bucket of bits to Spike. “We've been really successful.” Spike eyed the bits cautiously. A day filled with practical jokes and tom foolery had taught him not to trust anything either of the mare's he was with stated as true. Carefully, he picked up one of the bits and scrutinized it up close, nearly touching it to his eye to take in all the little details and anti-counterfeiting measures. Slowly, he placed it in his mouth and crunched. “Mmmmm.” He let out a pleasurable moan at the explosion of flavor in his mouth. “That's a bit alright. Soft gold outside with a crunchy zinc core.” Dash cocked her head. “You can eat money?” “Mmhm.” Spike nodded enthusiastically. “I'm a dragon. I can eat gems, precious metals, pancakes. Pretty much everything historically used to represent wealth.” “What about rare collectibles?” Dash asked in part out of curiosity, and in part wondering what she needed to hide from the precocious young dragon. Spike tapped his chin in thought. “Maybe, but I haven't tried. Collectibles are pretty valuable. I'd hate to-” Starlight waved a hoof in Spike's direction and shushed him. “Be quiet for a second. New customer.” She smiled at the stallion approaching the table, and gave him the prices, “Five bits to play, ten if you win.” He was a tall stallion, with a candy orange coat and a short brown mane. Caramel, if Starlight recalled correctly. Caramel covered his mouth with a hoof to hide his quiet snickering. He was familiar with the game the mare offered—three cups with a single marble hidden inside. First the cup with the marble was shown to him, and then they were shuffled. If he picked the cup with the marble, he won the game and a nice quantity of bits with it. Usually, there was some level of trickery involved in the form of the marble being shifted between cups via slight of hoof. The mare, however, was playing the game wrong, and he was going to make bank off of it. It wasn't hard to see which cup the marble was in when they were all clear. He offered set five bits down on the table, and true to formula, the mare lifted the cup with the marble up, showing him that which he already knew. Then, the cups were set into motion, being shifted at impossible speeds by her magic. Caramel snickered again. If they had been opaque like they should have been, he would have been screwed. The cups stopped, and Caramel selected the one that clearly displayed the marble. The mare shook her head sadly, and lifted the cup he had selected up. As it rose, the marble vanished from sight, somehow only visible through the glass. Caramel cocked his head and furrowed his brow, out of equal parts confusion and anger. “Double or nothing?” the mare offered. ✱ ✱ ✱ Twilight sat herself smugly back down on the chair across from Red Ink in his decrepit office. “Before you ask, yes, I do have my ID.” She presented it to him with a flourish of magic. Red Ink smiled the twisted fake smile of a pony who has just realized they may be required to actually preform their job. “We may proceed then.” “Excellent,” Twilight Sparkle launched headlong into her request, “I recently received a letter stating that I posses a monumental amount of student debt. That is the correct term, by the way. Were a pony to donate this sum to the Equestrian government, it would be such an impressive show of generosity that there would almost definitely be several monuments erected in their image.” Red Ink gestured with his hooves the universal sign to continue, or more accurately, to hurry it up and dispense with the unimportant drivel. “In any case, I am nearly one hundred percent sure that this claim is in error. It is impossible that I owe that much, and in fact, incredibly unlikely that I owe anything at all, due to the nature of my tutelage.” “It is normal for a pony to rack up student debt at a rate they are not quite cognizant of, and perfectly normal for a pony to find themselves with much more than they anticipated as a bright-eyed young filly.” Twilight gave him a deadpan look. “I was Princess Celestia's personal student. I'm fairly certain I didn't have to pay a dime on account of my talents.” Red Ink shrugged a sluggish, uninterested shrug. “Even famous ponies accrue debt.” Twilight had never been one to growl in frustration. There was, however, a first time for anything. “You're missing the point. I'm almost one hundred percent certain that Princess Celestia herself covered the costs of my education.” “Princess Celestia is not in possession of infinite bits just because she's-” “Stop it. Right there,” Twilight interrupted, “Just tell me now: Are you going to let me contest this loan?” Red Ink was not a malignant pony. He wasn't even a moderately disruptive pony. He wasn't the pony you heard was going to be at the party, and then suddenly needed to seriously consider how much the vague chance of talking to your high school crush was worth. But there was protocol, so he spoke, “No. You'll have to go to court to apply for bankruptcy and default on your loan. I can not help you at this time, as this office is for applying for loans.” If Twilight hadn't just spent the last hour teleporting across Canterlot in search of a fake ID, she would have lit the office on fire. ✱ ✱ ✱ “Okay, okay,” Twilight muttered to herself, drumming her hoof on the counter of Donut Joe's. “Just need to find a cheap lawyer, file for bankruptcy, and then surrender all my material possessions. No big deal.” She dropped her face onto the sticky counter and groaned. She couldn’t file for bankruptcy. Just the idea of parting with all her books—the image of all those bankers and government officials touching them with their filthy hooves—twisted a knife deep within her gut. And the castle. The castle was important. She couldn’t lose the castle. The fate of Equestria relied on her possession of the castle. She screamed half heartedly and pounded a hoof on the counter. All around her were the scattered remains of paper to-go cups and boxes of donuts. She was easily on her third dozen and showed no signs of stopping. Donut Joe had seen this before. “Finals?” he asked. “Worse,” Twilight mumbled, refusing to lift her head up to face him, and instead speaking into the surface of the counter. “Student debt. I have to file for bankruptcy. I can’t file for bankruptcy.” If she had been looking up, she would have seen Donut Joe visibly cringe at the words. “I feel you. Student loans are tough. I had to open this place to pay mine back.” “Culinary school?” Twilight probed. Donut Joe nodded, realized she couldn't see him, and then responded, “Yep. No other place for me, really.” A nostalgic memory welled up within Twilight’s mind. “When I was really little, I toyed with the idea of going to culinary school.” She lifted her head and looked Donut Joe in the eye. Her coat was stained with tears and the filth of the counter top. “My mom made these amazing quiches, but every time I tried to follow her recipe something would go horribly wrong. I'd forget to put in the eggs, or I'd burn the crust. One time I accidentally used white glue instead of cream.” She shivered. “That was disgusting.” “So I thought, that maybe if I went to culinary school I'd be able to make my mother's quiches.” “Did you ever go?” Donut Joe questioned, enamored in her story. Twilight giggled, experiencing a momentary respite from her woes. “Well clearly I didn't go. Spike does all the cooking.” “You could still go, you know. It's never too late to attend college. They accept ponies of all ages.” Twilight sighed, the crushing weight of her problems falling back upon her shoulders. “Not with all the debt I've accrued I can't. They'd never let me take the loans I'd need to pay for it.” Donut Joe looked her deep in the eyes. “Then pay it off. For your mother's quiche!” “Yeah, I’m just going to pay back 1.2 million bits worth of loans just like that. I’d have to rob a bank or something.” Although, after all she had been though that day, maybe robbing a bank wasn’t the worst way to solve to things. She searched for her moral compass, only to find it had gone to take a nap hours ago, tuckered out by the sheer stupidity of her day. “Actually yeah, I’m going to go rob a bank.” “Wait, don’t-” Twilight cut off Donut Joe in the flash of purple light of her teleport spell. She was a purple pony princess, and only hell and high water was going to stand in the way of her goals. ✱ ✱ ✱ “Hey Starlight,” Dash announced as she placed a blanket over Spike, who had just fallen asleep again. “I'm starting to think this isn't fast enough.” Starlight looked over the four overflowing buckets of bits that she was struggling to hide. “What do you mean?” “Okay, so don't get me wrong. This is a lot of bits... But 1.2 million bits is a lot of a lot of bits.” Dash gestured the grossly underrepresented size of that many bits. Starlight smirked. “Let's step up our game then.”