After a good night's sleep, Twilight and her friends headed to City Hall to deal with their captured criminals. "Now remember, everypony," Twilight said, "the goal here is to get these three to confess to their misdeeds by presenting them with all our evidence."
"And figure out how they're gonna repay their debt to society!" Applejack added. "I've got an apple cellar that needs scrubbin', and a little sister that needs apologizin' to!"
"Yeah, and I've got some ideas about how I'm gonna repay them," Rainbow grumbled, throwing a few air punches as she spoke.
"Now Rainbow," Fluttershy said, "the most important thing is to show these poor creatures that what they're doing is not okay, and convince them to find something else to do that won't hurt anypony."
"Agreed," Twilight said. "Reform is just as important as restitution."
"Okay, fine," Rainbow Dash muttered as the ponies entered City Hall. "I won't rearrange their faces. Not this time, anyway."
Helga leaped from her bed upon seeing the ponies coming down the basement stairs. She started pointing frantically at Silver Fox. "It was all his idea!" she insisted. "I needed money, and he said we could make a fortune in Ponyville! He conned a poor, innocent griffon into a life of crime!"
"What?!" Silver Fox gave Helga a look of indignation from his cell. "That's a bunch of baloney! This whole thing was her idea, not mine! She manipulated me into going along with her evil plan!"
Silver Fox and Helga stared daggers at each other for a second, then pointed in unison at Lucky. "It's all his fault!"
"I wanna go home!" Lucky wailed from his cell.
"That's enough." Twilight held up her hoof to call for silence. "Now then, Mr..."
"Nunya!" Silver Fox replied. "Nunya Business!"
"Uh-huh." Twilight rolled her eyes. "Mr. Business, would you care to explain what you and your friends were doing in a house that was relinquished under false pretenses, while having several thousand bits in your possession?"
"Why, of course!" Silver Fox said. "We're with the Equestrian Housing Authority, and we were inspecting the tree to make sure it was structurally sound! The money was from, er, the fines we'd collected from previous inspections! That's it!"
"I see." Twilight said. "Then you wouldn't mind us contacting the EHA to confirm this information, would you?"
"Um, well..." Silver Fox started sweating as he searched for the right words. "You see, we're, uh, pretty new to the organization. Just started yesterday, actually!" He gave Twilight the most sincere-looking smile he could muster. "So we might not be fully, completely, one-hundred-percent entered into their system yet, heh heh."
"Right. Moving on..." Twilight swept a hoof back towards her friends. "Would you care to explain why thirteen different ponies here in town, including two that are standing here with us, have identified you three as the ones who took their money?"
"Gosh, that is a strange coincidence, isn't it?" Silver Fox offered. "There must be a lot of handsome criminals out there these days, huh?" He chuckled and forced another smile.
Twilight did not return Silver's Fox grin. She used her magic to draw a few scrolls out of her bag. "Would you care to explain these?" she asked, unrolling the scrolls to reveal five separate wanted posters. "Apparently these handsome criminals are also wanted in Canterlot, Manehattan, Vanhoover, Trottingham, and Appaloosa."
Silver Fox sighed and hung his head. "I suppose there's no getting around it anymore. Do you really want to know the truth?"
"It would be a nice change of pace," Twilight said.
Silver Fox motioned for Twilight to come closer. "It's a changeling conspiracy!" he whispered into her ear. "Those love munchers have been trying to ruin me for years!"
Twilight glared incredulously at Silver Fox. "Really?"
Silver Fox placed a hoof over his heart. "If I'm lying, my lightning strike m—" He paused, looked up towards the ceiling for a moment, and then pointed at Lucky "Er, strike him."
"Oh, give it up already!" Helga threw up her talons in frustration. "They've got us dead to rights!" She dropped to her knees and grabbed the bars with her talons. "Here's the deal," she told Twilight. "I will tell you anything you want to know, anything at all, as long as you promise me one thing."
"And that would be?" Twilight asked.
Helga clasped her talons together. "Please don't send me back to Canterlot Prison!" she pleaded. "The cells are cold, the food is terrible, and it's full of ugly jerks who don't like griffons! I don't ever want to go back!"
"Me neither!" Lucky added with a sniffle. "They never let me outside without a leash!"
"Shut up, both of you!" Silver Fox demanded. "I've almost convinced Miss Sparkle that the charges are bunk! We'll be scot free by the end of the day!"
"And if you believe that, he's got a bridge to sell you," Twilight deadpanned. "Very well, Miss Griffon and Mr. Dog. I accept your terms of surrender, but you'd better tell the truth, or else. Are you the ones responsible for all of this trouble in Ponyville?"
Helga swallowed hard. "Yeah, that's us."
"And in Canterlot, and Manehattan, and all those other places?"
"That was us too."
"And by 'us,' she means her and the dog!" Silver Fox said. "I had nothing to do with it! In fact, I was acting as an undercover agent for the police, infiltrating this notorious crime family to expose them to bring them to justice!"
Helga scrunched up her face at Silver Fox's claim. "Liar. You're the brains of this outfit."
Lucky nodded in agreement. "Foxy's really smart!"
"Foxy?!" Silver Fox threw himself against the bars closest to Lucky's cell. "When I get my hooves on you, I'll—"
Twilight used her magic to pull a seething Silver Fox back to the middle of his cell. "I'd advise you to restrain yourself, Mr. Business," she said. "But just for the record, you say that you're completely innocent and had nothing to do with any of this?"
"Exactly!" Silver Fox replied.
"Then I'm afraid you leave me no choice." Twilight nodded to Rarity, who used her magic to grab a set of leg chains off of the wall and clamp them on Silver Fox. "A pair of Royal Guards are on their way to take you back to Canterlot to stand trial," Twilight informed her prisoner. "Rainbow, please escort our friend here to the train station."
"With pleasure!" Rainbow grinned and pounded her front hooves together in anticipation.
"Fluttershy," Twilight added, "please escort Rainbow to the train station, to make sure Mr. Business gets there in one piece."
"Awww..." Rainbow scowled and kicked the ground with her hoof.
"Hah!" Silver Fox laughed at his partners as the two pegasi led him away. "See you around, suckers! Give my regards to Al Capony when you see him! I'm on my way to Canterlot to fight for my rights and show the world that I am innocent, while you two brainless idiots get to rot away in this backwoods hoosegow!"
Twilight shook her head as Silver Fox disappeared up the stairs. "He never stops, does he?" She turned back to the remaining prisoners. "Now we need to figure out what to do with these two."
Helga gulped. "Well," she offered, "we barely got to spend any of the money we took. You can take it all back! That'll cover most of it, right?
"Not quite," Twilight said. "According to my calculations, the bits you gave us only cover 78.41% of the damages. You'll still need to cover the 21.59% you 'barely' spent."
"You can start by helping me clean up my apple cellar!" Applejack offered. "I've got a bunch of broken barrels and an inch-deep layer of cider to get out of there!"
"Ooh! I can do that!" Lucky said. "I'm good at cleaning! Foxy always said it was the only reason he kept me around!"
Helga, however, shuddered at the offer. "An inch of cider?" she asked. "Isn't there something less, er, sticky that we could do?"
Applejack shook her head. "All I've got for you are messy jobs," she said. "If you don't like it, that's too bad! Bein' a little messy never hurt anypony."
"Well, perhaps I have a better use for her talents," Rarity proposed. She walked up to the cell and stared down the griffon inside. "Since you've promised to be honest with us," she said, "tell me: Where did those gems on your sash come from?"
"My sash? Um, well, they don't really come from anywhere, actually," Helga admitted. "They're just normal gems I carved out and had Silver Fox stick together with his magic."
"You put different gems together?" Rarity scratched her hoof with her chin as she processed the idea. "What an interesting concept!" she finally said. "Do you think you could come back to my shop for a demonstration? These gems would be absolutely perfect for my summer line!"
"Wait—you mean, like, put my gems on a real outfit, and design a real fashion line for a real shop that will be seen all over Equestria?" Helga's eyes lit up. "Yes, please!"
"Wonderful!" Rarity turned and winked at Twilight. "It seems I'll get to be the exclusive supplier of these gems after all!"
"Great!" Twilight said. "I guess that settles the restitution piece for now, but there's one last thing we need to do. Pinkie?"
"Yes, ma'am!" Pinkie saluted Twilight, then turned to address the prisoners. "You two made a lot of ponies sad, and that was totally not cool! You need to apologize to them, and promise that you'll never, ever, ever do anything like that again!"
Lucky hung his head and nodded. "We know. We're sorry."
"Yeah, we've learned our lesson," Helga said. "No more shady moneymaking schemes."
Pinkie pressed her face against the bars. "Do you Pinkie promise that?"
Helga and Lucky exchanged confused look. "Uh, sure, yeah," Helga agreed. "We, um, we Pinkie promise, whatever that means."
"Excellent. Thank you, Pinkie," Twilight said. She used her magic to pull a set of keys off the wall and open the cell doors. "With that, I hereby declare the Case of the Conniving Con Artists to be closed!"
With that, the ponies made their way back up the basement stairs with their mostly-reformed prisoners in tow, confident that justice had finally been served.