Pinkie and Fluttershy sit in the wagon for what feels like hours. The light outside constantly changes between bright and dark, but it’s more likely they’re traveling through things like tunnels and whatnot.
Pinkie frowns. Not only did they get whisked away to a new Pocket, but now they’re traveling super far away. Finding their way back is gonna be a pain, even IF they’re in a Pocket she can recognize.
At this point, nearly all of the prisoners are asleep, having nothing else to do.
Fluttershy herself begins to doze off slightly, blinking one squinted eye at a time.
Pinke nudges Fluttershy a few times to keep her awake.
“...h-huh?” She says, barely able to look back at Pinkie.
“Important tip. Never fall asleep inside of wagons! The shaking and rocking motions make the Night Terrors much worse.”
“the wha?”
Before Pinkie can elaborate, the wagon comes to a sudden stop. Pinkie gets worried they might be getting transported to another Pocket, but her fears are quelled after they don’t hear the familiar noises of a gateway happening.
Instead, there’s a few clunks on the back door. It’s swung open, causing light to flood the interior of the wagon.
“EVERYPONY OUT!” One armored pony hollers, banging on the side of the wagon wall.
Fluttershy jolts up out of surprise and fear, hooves rapidly skittering around to try and get her footing.
Prisoners begin to get up and shuffle out. Pinkie helps the groggy Fluttershy do so as well. Once they're all out, there's about a fourty or fifty of them in total.
The two look around. They look like they’re in some kind of large stone fort, with the wagon having passed through a large wooden gate. There’s multiple wagons behind them too, forming a sort of convoy.
Pinkie looks up at the cavern ceiling, trying to gauge its features. Doing so is one of the most reliable ways of figuring out what Pocket you’re in. It’s a smooth and light-grey colored wave-like pattern, as opposed to their previous Pocket’s ceiling of jagged stalactites and jagged rocks, and a dark brown.
There also appears to be some kind of ‘cage’ covering the top of the fort, like a big net. Maybe they're for pegasi would-be escapees?
Her ceiling gazing session is interrupted by one prisoner attempting to make a run for it. He’s immediately set upon by multiple armored guards, being beaten into the ground.
Fluttershy covers one of her hooves with a look of worry.
One of the armored ponies approaches the crowd, flanked by two subordinates. Their entire body including their face is concealed. They speak out with a modulated voice.
“YOU ARE NOW PRISONERS AT JUSTICE-2. YOU WILL REMAIN HERE UNTIL YOUR SENTENCES ARE DONE. YOU WILL NOW BE SORTED BASED ON YOUR KINDS. RESISTANCE WILL PUNISHED AND INCUR ADDITIONS TO YOUR SENTENCES.”
Pinkie and Fluttershy’s eyes widen as they look at each other.
They’re about to get separated.
There’s a small amount of chaos as formations of guards encroach on the crowd, forcefully pulling and shoving ponies into creating three smaller groups. A few prisoners try to fight back for whatever reason, getting promptly pummeled.
Fluttershy holds onto Pinkie, scared. She barely knows the pony, but she’s all she has right now.
“What's going on! Why are they separating us?!” She whimpers.
Pinkie tries to calm her down.
“Don't worry! Just… stay strong! I’ll get us out of this one way or another. Just do everything the metal guys tell you to do!”
Fluttershy nods a little, still afraid.
The two get pulled apart by guards and accosted towards their respective groups. Their light shackles are removed, and replaced with kind-specific ones.
Unicorns get some sort of metallic cone placed atop their horns, along with neck restraints that limit how far they can move their heads in any direction. Pegasi get some straps that tie their wings to their sides along with their legs to prevent full movement, and earthen simply get oversized chains connecting all their legs.
Pinkie feels like she got the better end of the stick than the torture-trap unicorns or the pegasi’ have going on.
As the groups are taken in different directions, Fluttershy and Pinkie look back at each other from a distance, before going out of sight.
A long line of prisoners wait within a hall, appearing to be some kind of queue. Eventually, Pinkie is the next one up. A few guards lead the pony through a few doors, before entering a large chamber.
There’s a table with some chairs, two of which have unicorns sitting in them. At one wall there is a black-robed pegasus mare on an elevated podium, presumably a judge, and a few guards scattered around as well.
Pinkie looks confused. She thought they were going to go straight to the cells.
A chair on her side is magically pulled out for her. She takes a seat, a bit awkwardly due to her chains.
“Erm… is this a... trial?” She asks, unsure.
The judge simply stares at her. “Do not attempt to touch the fixture or the unicorns, or move during the process.”
Pinkie barely has time to register what the ‘process’ is before some device lowers from the ceiling, attached to some cables. The unicorn's eyes close and their horns glow as the device is levitated towards her and placed atop her head.
She begins to feel weird as the device begins to whir to life, glowing slightly. It doesn’t appear to hurt, but it makes her head feel ‘tingly’.
After a minute or two, the device is lifted off and the unicorns stop their concentration. One approaches the judge who leans towards them, and gets something whispered into her ear.
She sits back upright.
“Pinkie Pie. You are being charged with petty theft, assault, property damage, burglary, kidnapping, and associating with criminals. How do you plead?”
Pinkie Pie looks flabbergasted. “What?! How could you even know any of that! I also only did like half of those things to my knowledge, by the way.”
“This device scans recent memories and events. It is approximately 105% accurate.”
“I’m not sure that's how percentages work.”
“It does not matter. How do you plead?”
“Guilty, I guess? What am I supposed to say? You guys can apparently read my mi— wait aren’t I supposed to have a lawyer or something???”
The judge sighs and gesture towards one of the armored ponies. They leave the room and come back with a pony in a suit and a briefcase.
“I am Pinkie Pie’s lawyer. My client pleads guilty.” He says, beginning to walk away.
Pinkie Pie groans.
The judge watches the lawyer leave, and then continues . “You will be out on bond for 50000 Bits.”
Pinkie nearly jumps out of her chair. “What?! I don’t have that money on me!” She exclaims.
“Then find somepony who does. Until then, you’ll be doing labor until you can pay that amount off.”
The judge hits a gavel. “Session adjourned. Next!”
She is quickly accosted out of the room by some of the armored ponies. On the way out, Pinkie sees another prisoner being put in the same chair.
Pinkie smiles widely for her mugshot like it’s a yearbook photo, even fixing her mane to look good.
Afterwards, her clothes and belongings are confiscated and she’s given a prison jumpsuit to wear.
She sits down next to a telegraph machine for her one granted contact.
“Okay… let’s see if I still remember how to use one of these.”
Pinke begins to tap, hold, and release on the machine, her chains rattling the whole time. After the sequence is done, the operator looks at the output with some confusion.
“You’re looking to buy a tupae?” He asks, raising an eyebrow.
Pixie face-hooves.
“Can I just tell you what I wanna say like a normal-pony and you do your little tapping stuff?”
The operator shrugs. Pinkie tells him her message and to whom it’s being sent to.
Pinkie gets led to her cell by two armored ponies and pushed inside.
“You know you guys don’t gotta shove everypony everywhere! Words exist!” She yells. They simply close the door behind her.
Pinkie looks around the cell. There's two bunk beds, one on each side of the cell.
There’s three ponies already in the cell. Sure enough, they’re all earthen.
“Hi?” Pinkie asks, raising a hoof.
“Ey.” One of them says, a small mare. The other two don’t seem very interested.
“I assume you’ll be bunkin’ with me?” she continues, hoofing to the empty bed below her.
Pinkie trots over and takes an awkward seat.
The ‘bed’ feels more like a solid mass of hay and wood rather than anything you could actually sleep on. It itches the crap out of her almost immediately.
The mare above her chuckles a little.
“Pretty bad beds, yeah? You’ll get used to them, eventually.”
“Hopefully I don’t stay here long enough to.” Pinkie responds, dryly.
The mare laughs again. “You’re funny. What’s your name? Mines Marcy.”
“Pinkie Pie.”
Marcy snorts. “Bit on the nose, huh?”
One of the ponies on the other side, an orange stallion rolls over towards the wall.
“Can yall shut it? I’m tryin to sleep.” he groans. The stallion below him just stares up at the bottom of the bed above.
Marcy tosses some of her bed mulch at the top stallion's face, causing him to growl.
“You shit!” He says.
Marcy laughs. “What’s the problem, Slick? I’m just giving you more bed to sleep on!” She says with a smirk.
The two begin to bicker, but the stallion below Slick huffs loudly, making them stop. One of his eyes drifts towards Marcy and stares at her directly, before looking back above.
Pinkie just sits there awkwardly, trying to figure out the dynamic here. The four just lie in their beds silently for a little while.
She can already feel the boredom setting in.
“So… what are you guys in for? Is that like what people say in prison?”
Marcy chuckles. “Yea. I suppose.”
She leans over the edge of the bed, looking at Pinkie while upside down, her mane flipping down as well.
“Arson.” She says with a flipped smirk.
“Oh” Pinkie says, a bit troubled.
“Ah, don't worry about it. Some twat was hurting one of my friends, so I took a torch to his place. Unfortunately he seemed to have connections with the Order, so… they pulled their strings against me.”
“Ah! Okay.”
She glances towards the other side of the cell.
“What about you… slick, was it?” She asks.
Slick barely turns over. “Murder.”
“Oh.”
“The guy deserved it, though. He was my brother-in-law. Found him beatin’ my sister. She convinced me to turn myself in after the deed was done, but honestly I’m starting to regret that decision...”
“Erm… alright.”
She looks directly across to the big stallion. At a closer inspection he nearly takes up the entire bed. Pinkie is a bit worried about what he did in particular. He has a uneasy aura to him.
She’s about to ask something, when Marcy cuts her off.
“That’s Terry. He’s dont talk much.”
“Uh. Okay. Do you know what he’s in for?” Pinkie asks, cringing a little.
“Jaywalking.”
Pinkie sits back forward. “Really? I thought he would've—”
“He illegally crossed a street to set some guy on fire and then kill him. They put ‘Jaywalking’ as his main offense, as a joke.”
Pinkie pauses.
“Well surely he must've had a reason?”
“Nope. He just felt like doing that.”
Pinkie blinks a few times.
“I see.”
Fluttershy nervously looks around as she’s brought into some large room. There’s some weird wooden platform and a few of those 'chairs’ around it, along with a few unicorns. Some scary looking ponies wearing metal clothing stand around the place as well.
Near the end of the room, some pony wearing long black robes stands on some big wooden thing.
One of the chairs is levitated outwards for her. She awkwardly takes a seat, still a bit unfamiliar with them.
The black robed pony and her stare at each other.
“U-Uhm. Hello?” Fluttershy says.
“Do not attempt to touch the fixture or the unicorns, or move during the process.”
“Huh?”
Her eyes widen as some weird shiny disc-like thing begins floating towards her.
Fluttershy immediately begins to freak out, getting to her feet. The two unicorns stop their channeling and step back, as guards quickly descend on her, some drawing weapons.
“WAIT WHAT IS THAT THING DON’T HURT ME!” She cries.
The guards appear to stop from this act of fear.
The black robed pony sighs.
“This device will simply scan your mind for recent events and thoughts, as to let us see what crimes you have committed.”
“But I haven’t committed any crimes!” She exclaims.
“We’ll be the judge of that. Now sit down. Another outburst like that and you’re going straight to solitary.” the judge says.
Fluttershy sits back in the chair, still uneasy. The unicorns begin the process again. Fluttershy whimpers a little but manages to keep herself somewhat calm as the device is placed above her.
It feels like her head is being poked with tiny little pricks.
As the unicorns concentrate with their eyes closed, their faces begin to contort a little. Not out of pain, but more like confusion.
The judge raises an eyebrow.
After an unusual amount of time, one of the unicorns, looking somewhat shocked, goes up to the judge and whispers into their ear.
The judge’s face is suddenly one of bewilderment.
“That… that can’t be possible. What range did you set it to?”
“Last few days. Scanner came back completely blank.”
The judges eyes narrow.
“Do it again. Clearly, there must be something wrong with the device.” she says, while sitting forward.
Fluttershy gulps. All eyes are on her as the device comes back for a second round.
Pinkie and other prisoners are lined up in some sort of court-yard, tied together in a chain gang. All around the yard, tons of rocks lie in various spots.
A single armored pony with a helmet a tad too big for his head, covering the front of his eyes, walks parallel to them back and forth.
“Listen up, Maggots! You are about to indulge in one of the greatest acts that this Underworld can give you… rock smashing!”
Other guards come near the group and drop various tools, such as sledgehammers and pickaxes.
Pinkie raises a hoof as far as the chains can allow.
“Uh. Yes, hi. Why are we smashing rocks when there’s literally rocks everywhere?” She asks.
The helmet pony walks up to her, staring her in the face.
“Ohhhh?? We got a funny pony here, don’t we?”
“Well I don't mean to brag but, but I would say—”
“SHUT UP, MAGGOT!” He shouts in her face.
Pinkie blinks a few times.
“We smash rocks because people want smaller rocks! Tiny rocks are one of the Judicar Order’s greatest exports! Without them, where would people get all those small rocks to put in playgrounds or in their front yards or at beaches?! YOU CAN’T HAVE A BEACH WITHOUT TINY ROCKS EVERYWHERE POKING INTO PONIES HOOVES WHEN THEY TRY TO WALK AROUND!” He bellows.
With a bit of corralling, the chain gang shuffles nearby one of the fields of rocks, and begin getting to work.
Everypony visible struggles. Even Terry has trouble with his rock, which is smaller than him by a comical degree.
Pinkie snickers a bit looking at her rock.
“You serious? This tiny thing?” She asks, in disbelief.
The helmet pony almost takes flight from how fast he runs up in front of her, face red.
“WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM, MAGGOT? YOU BETTER START CUTTING AWAY AT THAT THING OR THE ONLY THING YOU’LL BE CUTTING IS THE POUNDS WHEN YOU’RE STARVED IN SOLITA—”
SMASH!
Pinkie breaks the rock in two with a single strike of her pickaxe. The helmet pony’s eyes bulge.
“W-what..?”
The other prisoners look with similar amounts of surprise.
“Woah! How’d ya do that???” Marcy asks, being positioned right next to her.
“I used to break apart boulders. It’s actually pretty easy! You just gotta go with the grain, find the right spot… and…”
With another strike, one of the rocks halves is split once more.
Marcy looks back at her rock, trying what Pinkie said. After a few seconds of aiming, she gets a similar result.
Her face slowly turns into a smile. “Oh ho ho!”
She begins to go ham and beginning to smash the rock apart into tinier pieces.
The technique slowly gets passed down in both directions of the chain gang, until everypony is destroying rocks like crazy.
The helmet pony backs up, looking at the scene.
“Mother of Sol…”
The judge wipes their brow.
“Are you kidding me? Fourth time and still nothing?”
The unicorns look visibly tired. There’s even an extra unicorn or two brought in to help, who similarly look tired.
“Nothing, your honor. This pegasus hasn’t committed a single crime in the past few weeks, at least. She hasn’t even hurt a fly, nothing.”
Fluttershy sits in her chair, looking confused at the chatter some distance away.
“Okay… we need—”
A guard pokes out from behind the door. “Your honor, we need to keep going with the prisoners, this—”
“Shut it! Send them somewhere else or something! I’m trying to get to the bottom of this!” The judge snaps. The guard gulps and quickly goes away.
The judge takes a deep breath, wiping their brow.
“Okay. Go get every available unicorn. Even the auxiliary staff ones who aren’t that good at magic. This pegasus has to have something about her!”
The helmet pony watches in horror as the prisoners stand in giant containers full of fruits.
While fruit stomping is usually a boring, deponyizing, and mundane task, this pink pony has somehow turned it into some kind of fun event.
All the prisoners jump and bounce in the containers in sync, easily crushing and pulping the fruit into juice below. A few of them are even laughing, including the pink one.
He bites his hooves.
At this rate, they’re going to run out of menial labor for the prisoners to do!
A small crowd of unicorns are assembled inside the chamber, easily at least two dozen. At this point, the doors are shut, the room not being used for the normal operations whatsoever anymore.
“Listen up, ponies. We’re going to be scanning this pegasus’s entire life.” The judge instructs to the crowd.
“But, your honor! The scanners can’t handle that kind of strain!”
“I don’t care! It’ll work! Now, get to it!” the judge orders, hoofing at Fluttershy, still sitting in her chair.
The device is lowered onto Fluttershy’s head once more, as the entire group of unicorns begin to channel their magic into it.
Fluttershy begins to feel a bit of pain, unlike the other times, having to hold onto the chair to keep herself still.
The twenty years of her life are scanned and analyzed within seconds by all the unicorns, seeing literally nothing except her just playing with animals, eating fruits and vegetables, and sleeping.
The unicorns begin to feel pain as well from the flood of information.
The device itself begins to whir loudly, and begin to shake.
“Your honor! The scanner is starting to break apart!” The whirring and shaking gets worse.
“It's going to blow!” Another yells, pointing at the device.
Fluttershy has the intuition to shake the device off her head, and toss it away into one empty corner of the room. Everypony takes cover as the device explodes, sending small metal fragments everywhere.
The judge slowly raises her head back over the podium. All the unicorns look dizzy or sick, as does Fluttershy.
“What… what did you see…” The judge says, towards one of the few lucid unicorns.
The unicorn rubs their temple.
“Nothing… this pony… is a blank slate. A saint.” they say.
Other unicorns corroborate the claim.
The judge screams into her hooves, before taking a deep breath.
“Alright. Fine, fine. This pony either is incredibly lucky, or literally an angel. Take her out of the prison.”
One of the guards looks at her with confusion. “But your honor, they can’t be let—”
“I said let her go. She’s free. No charges.”
The judge throws off their robes.
“I quit, by the way.” she says, leaving the room nonchalantly.
Fluttershy slowly lifts her head up, eyes rattling a little.
“My head hurts…” she says with a groan.
Pinkie and the other prisoners easily run atop a large spinning treadmill, having figured out that if they sync their movements it’s much easier for everypony.
The helmet pony approaches Pinkie with two other guards at their flanks. He looks upset.
Pinkie briefly glances back, still running.
“What? Am I going to solitary for being too good at all this stuff?” She asks, sarcastically.
“I wish, but sadly, no. You’ve made bond.”
Pinkie immediately stops, accidentally tumbling off the treadmill.
Marcy and Slick glance over, hearing what was said. Even Terry looks over a bit.
“Well, that sure was fast. See ya, pink.” Marcy says, still running on the treadmill.
“Woot! Stick it to the Order!” Slick chips in.
The helmet guard rolls his eyes, leading Pinkie away. She smirks and waves as she’s taken further.
“Good… bye.” Terry croaks.
Marcy and Slick look at him with surprise.
Pinkie is led towards some kind of reception area, freed from her chains. The first thing she does is scratch some parts of her legs she couldn't reach before.
Besides that, she wonders who from the Troupe got sent over to pay her bond.
Her question is quickly answered when she looks ahead and sees an utterly gigantic pony sitting in a chair far too small for his frame. She has to look nearly straight up to get a look at his face.
“Trouble Shoes?”
The humongous brown pony simply looks down at her, dwarfing even Terry with his height. A few guards around look a bit nervous at his presence, even though he’s just a visitor.
“Yep. Ello’ Pinkie.”
Pinkie raises an eyebrow.
“Uh… don’t mean to be rude, but why exactly did they send you? You’re somewhat of a… large presence, if you catch my drift.”
“I was the closest pony in the area that Yacci could get ahold’ of after your telegraph.”
Pinkie shrugs.
“Well, thanks. Can we get out of here now?” She says, heading for the door. Trouble Shoes follows her, bonking his head on the top of the door on the way out.
Trouble Shoes leads her towards his wagon.
“Alright, get in. We should get goin’—”
“Hang on! There’s another pony we need to get. A yellow pegasus with pink hair. But I have no idea where she is, she could be anywh—”
“Like that one?” Trouble Shoes says, pointing in the distance.
Fluttershy sits on a bench, feeding a few birds, like nothing even happened.
Pinkie runs over to her.
“Fluttershy! You’re okay— wait, how are you even out of the prison?” Pinkie asks, confused.
“Oh! Uhm… they put me in some ‘scanner’ thing and said I had apparently not committed any crime… ever? So they just let me go.”
Pinkie doesn’t doubt that idea whatsoever.
“Okay then. But still, we need to get going!” Pinkie says, beginning to walk back to the wagon.
“Get going where? This place is nice!” Fluttershy says, gesturing around. Outside the gigantic prison fort, the town surrounding it isn’t that bad looking. A bit simplistic, but certainly cozy.
Pinkie pauses.
“What if I said I could take you somewhere nicer than here?”
Fluttershy thinks for a moment.
“Promise?” She asks.
“Promise.” Pinkie assures.
Fluttershy relents, and follows Pinkie back towards the wagon. Entering it and glancing at the pony pulling it, she's shocked at his sheer size. He dwarfs her even more than he does to Pinkie, due to her smaller size.
“Hi there, tiny pegasus.” He says, with a surprisingly gentle tone.
“...hi.” Fluttershy says, still a bit surprised.
After a few preparations, the three set out and away.
A few minutes pass of them travelling away from the town. Pinkie suddenly perks up, smacking her temple.
“Shoot! We forgot about Trixie! How are we even supposed to find her?!” She exclaims.
Trouble clears his throat and smacks his lips.
“There’s a latch in the corner. Open it.”
Pinkie, slightly confused, scoots over to one of the corners and sees a small handle. She pulls it out, revealing a hidden compartment underneath.
Trixie lies there, reading a book. She glances up, eyes widening a little at Pinkie's sudden apperance.
“Oh! Hey Pin-”
She’s yanked out of the floor and lightly throttled by the pink earthen.
“Trixxxie!!! Why did you ditch us?!” Pinkie yells. She’s less angry, more confused and hurt at the unicorns action.
Trixie tries to pry off her hooves in surprise.
"Pinkie! What are you doing?!" Fluttershy cries.
“Hey! No fighting back there!” Trouble says, shaking the wagon to break them up. All three of them fall around the wagon's floor.
Trixie gets up, a bit dizzy.
“I’m sorry, Pinkie! I couldn’t let myself get captured back there! The Judicar’s 110% accurate crime scanners would have ruined me…” She pleads.
Pinkie doesn’t look convinced.
“What could you have done so bad that you’d ditch us in order to not get arrested??? Petty theft?? Stealing the gem??”
Trixie looks away, a bit solemnly.
“I don't want to talk about it right now... Can we just relax, now that we’re all together again?” She says.
Fluttershy looks at Pinkie appealingly, clearly wanting to just chill out as well.
Pinkie sighs. “Fine. But you will explain to me how you're able to dry-cast, later.
Trixie grumbles a little.
They settle down in different spots around the wagon.
Trouble Hoof takes a deep breath for the long journey head.
“Next stop… Meridian Quay.” he says, beginning to walk once more.
The four head off, away from the Judicar fortress.