“I didn’t know you had an account with the Royal Canterlot Bank, Pinkie.” Princess Twilight Sparkle tilted her head as her enthusiastic friend, Pinkie Pie, produced a membership card from somewhere deep within her voluminous pink mane.
“Well, duh!” Pinkie replied, barely holding her face still for the bank’s magical identification machine to scan her, “I have bank accounts all over Equestria—”
“In case of bank account emergencies?” Twilight smirked, eliciting a grimacing look from Pinkie.
“No. Because diversifying your wealth across multiple institutions is an intelligent financial decision to protect it from excess loss in case of an economic downturn.”
“Oh.” Twilight blinked. The receptionist pony returned Pinkie’s card to her, and she placed it in her mane where it went… somewhere, much to the receptionist’s surprise.
“So what business do you have here, anyway? I know you wanted to come with me on my trip to get Starswirl’s Eight Lost Tomes out of my safety-deposit box, but magic’s not really your thing,” Twilight asked.
“I’ve got stuff here, too!” Pinkie smiled.
“Oh, really? Like what?” Pinkie’s smile disappeared as quickly as it came on. She gave Twilight a blank stare,
“Don’t worry about it.” Before Twilight could press any further, one of the bank’s guards came forward to let the two mares know they were cleared to enter the safety-deposit box vault. He guided them down a long hallway with several security clearances where he and another pony each had to be scanned and scanned again by magic screening devices, along with Twilight and Pinkie.
“This process always makes me feel so… exposed.” Twilight covered herself as if somepony was seeing some of her that they weren’t supposed to. They reached the end of the hallway with the vault.
“Right in here, ladies,” One of the guards put in a final access code which prompted all twenty-four of the huge metal locks to disengage with a resounding KA-CHUNK. The guards heaved the vault’s massive round door open and unlocked the inner day gate to let Twilight and Pinkie in.
“There you go. Take your time, Princess.” The guards tipped their hats and walked off.
Nodding her thanks to the guards, Twilight magicked her safety-deposit box’s key out of her saddlebag. Pinkie shook her own out of her mane.
“How do you even—”
“Hey!” Pinkie exclaimed before Twilight could address the space-time conundrum, “It looks like our boxes are right next to each other! Who knew?” Indeed, on the far end of the vault were the larger boxes for ponies who either had bigger items to store or deeper pockets to flout. While Pinkie was more of the former (though she did have a pretty penny saved up), Twilight’s royal status came with perks that included any and all bank space she could ever need. Pinkie’s box was number 15, and Twilight’s was number 16.
“Oh, so they are.” Twilight said. Dismissing Pinkie’s shenanigans for the time being, Twilight proceeded to open up her safety-deposit box where she began rummaging for Starswirl’s Eight Lost Tomes.
“This might take a while, Pinkie. Since I don’t come here very often it’s pretty much the only collection of things I have that aren’t meticulously organized.”
“That’s all right! I’ve got plenty of stuff to look through, too!” The second Pinkie Pie’s key clicked her box unlocked, all manner of objects defenestrated out of it, enough to nearly bury her.
“Wow. I’ll… leave you to that.” Twilight returned her head to the cavernous box, igniting her horn for illumination. Meanwhile, Pinkie dove into her pile of things-probably-only-valuable-to-Pinkie, making an inexplicable splashing noise.
Sometime later, Twilight had located six of the Eight Lost Tomes while Pinkie had retrieved a few dozen sealed scrolls, an expensive-looking necklace, and what appeared to be an ornate jewelry box. Twilight looked over at Pinkie’s hoard after coming up for air in her own searching efforts.
“I’m guessing those are some super-secret recipes, right?” the Princess asked, referring to the scrolls. Pinkie nodded vigorously.
“Uh-huh! There are some really important holidays coming up and each one of these super-duper-secret sweets needs to be baked!”
“So that’s why you wouldn’t tell me what was in here earlier. Don’t worry, Pinkie, I won’t peek,” Twilight winked. Pinkie giggled,
“Oh, Twilight. That’s not what I was hiding from you. Nopony gets to see the most secret thing I have here. I wouldn’t show it even if you royally decreed me to! Even if all the princesses royally decreed me!”
“It’s not a threat to national security, is it?” Twilight raised an eyebrow and involuntarily flared her wings. Before Pinkie could answer, the two ponies were interrupted by a loud CLANG. The day gate to the vault had closed.
“That’s not good,” Pinkie said.
“Don’t worry, it just shuts itself automatically at closing time. We have been in here a while. I suppose I can get the other two Lost Tomes tomorrow.” Twilight walked up to the closed gate.
“Hello!” she called, “We’re still in here! Could somepony let us out?” She expected one of the guards to come back right away. After all, the Princess of Friendship was in the bank. That’s not a customer you just ignore. As if the universe was telling Twilight she was not to have her way that day, though, rather than being freed, nopony came, and the main vault door was beginning its automatic closing sequence.
“Wha—Hey! There are ponies still in the vault! Can’t anypony hear me? Hello!” Twilight yelled. Pinkie pulled a megaphone from her pile of stuff.
“HEY BANK PONIES! WE’RE ABOUT TO BE LOCKED INSIDE THE VAULT! SOMEPONY GET US OUT OF HERE!” The sheer force of the sound waves shook the immediate area. The vault door stopped closing—for about a second before beginning to close even faster.
“Oh, come on!” Pinkie complained, “Even I know that’s a load of—” Anyone outside the vault wouldn’t be able to hear Pinkie’s expletives as the vault door had finished closing, trapping any sound inside. The vault’s twenty-four locks re-engaged in sequence. Each KA-CHUNK of the tumblers made Pinkie and Twilight flinch. Inside the vault, four magic lanterns on each corner of the room provided the only illumination.
Twilight stared at the closed gate and door in front of her, desperately trying to process what just happened. Without so much as turning her head, she addressed her friend,
“Pinkie, in my safety-deposit box there’s a copy of The Royal Canterlot Bank: The Workings of Wondrous Wealth. Could you get it for me?” In a split second, Pinkie had it in her hooves,
“Right here, Twilight!”
“Now open up to page 394. Remind me what it says at the end of the section on vault operations.” Cheerfully, Pinkie began reading,
“’At the end of each day, the day gate and safety-deposit vault close automatically with a spell that’s been in place for hundreds of years. No one, not even a Princess, can open it or break through due to special magic nullifying metal several feet thick on all sides. To prevent thieves and rogue bank employees from making any late-night withdrawals, the spell makes sure that the vault’s contents will only be accessible again the next morning when the bank opens.’”
“That’s what I thought it said.” Twilight fainted.
“Wow. I hope they changed that since the book was written. If a pony got stuck in the vault, they’d have to stay there all night!” Pinkie looked up from the book at Twilight, then the closed door.
“Oh. I guess they didn’t.”