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Ticket

Rainbow Dash stared uncomprehendingly at the notice in front of her, mindlessly sipping her morning coffee and trying to remember whether she’d put hay waffles in the toaster or not because she didn’t want to expend the energy necessary to get up and check. It was so early in the morning she wasn’t even awake enough to realize her wings were still stiff when she went outside to get the mail.

Her tickets to the latest Wonderbolts show, which had arrived that day and been extracted from their envelope just moments earlier, sat by her foreleg on the kitchen table, and some discarded junk mail had made its way onto the floor near the trash can as a result of her bad aim. But this one letter just wouldn’t process, no matter how many times she read it. The stupid, oblivious grin that had been on her face ever since she saw her Wonderbolts tickets remained, unaffected by what she was seeing.

Finally, after about five minutes of rereading it, Rainbow’s brain finally made sense of the words:

Ms. Rainbow M. Dash,

As a result of your failure to appear before Cloudsdale’s High Court on Thursday, in regards to your arrests for numerous gross speeding violations in multiple districts across Cloudsdale since the inception of our citywide speed limits, you have been tried in absentia and found guilty on all eight hundred and seventy five charges (please see attached documents for a list of specific charges and decisions).

On the same day, your sentence was handed down. You are hereby ordered to pay to the City of Cloudsdale the following amount: one million one hundred and twelve thousand six hundred and thirty nine bits. Because it has been discovered by this court’s investigation that you do not possess the requisite amount, your home and belongings are hereby seized by the City of Cloudsdale. You have three days to gather any items of personal significance and vacate the premises.

Dash’s smile slowly morphed into a contemplative frown.

“...Cloudsdale has a speed limit?”