Brand X
"I'm sorry, I just don't think you have a case," Inkwell said. "I can't recommend taking this in front of a judge."
"Taco Princess is deliberately violating the Beanis trademark!" Twilight yelled, Inkwell wishing she hadn't used the word 'violating' considering the circumstances. Twilight slapped the full-page ad she'd found stuffed deep in her mailbox onto the desk. "Look at this!"
"One free Tastesplosion(tm) Bean Banger(tm) with purchase of value meal," Raven Inkwell read. She sighed. "I understand your concern, but there's a lot of precedent on this. Well, not specifically on this. There isn't a huge amount of previous art regarding bean-based marital aids."
"Taco Princess' Bean Banger is a clear derivative of my work!" Twilight huffed. "And it's a cheap knockoff! They're only rated for one use and the only flavor they have is sour cream! No one wants hot sour cream!"
"Miss Sparkle, if I might suggest?" Raven Inkwell sighed. "This is likely a matter that the free market will decide on. If they're as poorly made as you suggest then customers will simply refuse to buy."
"It's damaging to my brand," Twilight grumbled.
"Until you can show actual damages, I'm afraid there isn't much I can do. If you want help drafting a letter to Taco Princess to ask them to consider licensing your Beanis brand or petitioning them to stop producing Bean Bangers, I would be happy to assist you." She paused. "But I would prefer if you asked later, and not during my lunch break."
"Fine, I'll... think about it," Twilight said, standing. "Thank you for your time."
"Of course," Raven said, not standing to meet her, shaking her hand and waiting for the girl to leave and close the door securely.
She sighed and shifted in her seat, finally able to relax and finish enjoying her lunch.
"I thought she'd never leave," Raven groaned, standing up and looking down at her chair. She pressed the intercom button on her desk. "Bring me some paper towels, there's sour cream on my chair again."
“Explain this to me again, because I really hope I didn’t hear you right the first time,” Sunset said, feeling a headache coming on.
“I’m sure you’re familiar with the famous Hetap challenge, where random people were given two unmarked cups of soda and asked which they preferred?” Twilight asked. “It’s one of the most famous marketing strategies of all time. You see, Hetap is sweeter and less carbonated than the market leader, so a small sample tends to be more palatable than-”
“That’s great, Twilight, but I have some concerns about your methodology,” Sunset said.
“Just let me handle it,” Twilight said. “It’ll work fine.”
“...Tell you what, I’ll sit back here, and you go ahead and show me, and I’ll watch.” Sunset leaned back as much as the folding chair would allow, folding her arms over her chest and kicking her feet up on the table Twilight had set up along the busy street.
“You’ll see,” Twilight said. “Random focus groups are the only way to really get market research done.” She looked around, then ran into the path of a woman walking down the street. “Excuse me, miss? We’re doing a study and just want to ask you which of these two products you prefer.”
“Ah, I’m just-” the woman blinked in surprise.
“Can you tell me which of these two looks more enticing?” Twilight asked, opening the box she was holding.
“Well how was I supposed to know it counted as sexual harassment?” Twilight demanded. “I was just asking her if-”
“If she wanted to touch them, or taste the filling?” Sunset asked, signing her name on the paperwork. The police officer checked it over, then unlocked Twilight’s handcuffs.
“It was a perfectly normal question,” Twilight said.
“You gave her a dick in a box, Twilight. Technically two dicks in a box. How did you expect her to react?”
“Well if somebody gave me a dick in a box, I would listen to what they were saying and offer constructive feedback on what they were doing, because I respect the march of progress!”
Sunset considered Twilight for a long moment. “Uh-huh. And you wouldn’t react badly if the person with the box demanded you look closer and feel the texture and rub the beanis?”
“The texture of the Bean Banger is significantly worse,” Twilight mumbled. “It’s an important marketing point. A Beanis is made from very fine material carefully sourced from organic bean paste and Bean Bangers are just refried beans and disappointment.”
“We’re going to get arrested again,” Sunset said. “Why am I even doing this? I should have said no and made you get help from someone else, like Rainbow Dash. Or Rarity. I bet she even has outfits just for breaking and entering!”
“But they don’t know how to pick locks,” Twilight said, with a smug grin.
“I don’t know how to pick locks either,” Sunset pointed out.
They both looked at the back door to the Taco Princess.
“Really?” Twilight's grin faded to a thoughtful frown.
“You thought I could pick locks,” Sunset said. She sighed and shook her head.
“Well you wear a leather jacket, and everyone says you used to be a school bully and sort of a minor villain. I assumed…”
“Woah, woah,” Sunset said, waving her arms. “I was not a minor villain! I was going to conquer an entire world with an army of brainwashed slaves! That’s not minor villain territory. And before that, I was practically running the school and ruined the lives of dozens, if not hundreds, of teenagers!” She paused, coughed, and looked away. “Not that I do that anymore.”
“Right,” Twilight said. “So we’ll have to be creative…”
“We’re stuck,” Twilight groaned.
“I told you we weren’t going to fit in the air ducts!” Sunset growled, struggling. "I really need to start being more assertive with saying no to people."
“Stop moving like that! You’re brushing up against-” Twilight blushed.
“Oh Celestia, is that what that is?! Why do you have that?!”
“It’s a standard reference Beanis! For science!”
“There is absolutely no scientific reason why you need a sex toy.”
“Well I’m sure that’s what they told One Stone when people told him a patent clerk had no business worrying about the fine structure of the universe!”
“Let’s just stop arguing and figure out how to get out of here before anyone catches us,” Sunset said. “We got stuck when you tried turning around to go the other way. Can you get back the way you came?”
There was motion, more struggling, and a sharp gasp.
“N-no. There’s too much friction, and when I started rubbing up against you, the, um, product responded and-”
“Twilight you aren’t allowed to blame this on your dick getting too hard.”
“Look, admittedly it’s a problem.” She struggled a little more, gasping as flesh rubbed against bean. "M-maybe even a design flaw. But I have an idea. You just need to trust me and do exactly what I say."
“Oh god, I need about ten showers,” Sunset groaned, as she tried to get queso blanco out of her hair.
“You have to admit that it worked,” Twilight said. “The additional lubrication was just enough to free us!”
“If we get arrested again, we are not telling them about that,” Sunset said. “In fact, even if we don’t get arrested, we’re never talking about this again!”
“The important thing is, I'm a genius and it worked perfectly.” Twilight looked around. “Now, we just need to find…” She looked around. She’d never been in a fast-food kitchen before. She’d rarely spent much time in a regular kitchen before her recent quest to master the extremely niche market she’d decided to carve out. She’d since moved on to a more accurate laboratory oven, of course, but commercial ovens weren't quite like anything she’d worked with before.
“Come on, they’re probably made somewhere else and shipped here,” Sunset said, stepping past Twilight and opening the door to the walk-in freezer.
Sonata Dusk looked up from the Bean Banger she was sculpting, a tray with two dozen already finished set off to one side. She squeezed too hard in surprise, and hot sour cream sprayed into Sunset’s face.
“So anyway, long story short, we reported they were using illegal immigrants as labor,” Twilight said. “Without the residual magic the Sirens were using, their Bean Bangers are little more than erotically-shaped burritos. They'll never even make it out of the local test market.”
“That’s not at all what I was asking, Twilight,” Dash said. “You just told me a story I really don’t care about and I wasn’t even in it at all.”
“Why would I need to tell you a story with you in it?” Twilight asked, frowning. “If you were in the story you would have been there.”
“Yeah, but I like stories about me,” Dash said. “Tell it again, but with me!”
“I’m not going to-”
“SNOOORE.”
“You aren’t even making a snoring sound you just said the word snore.”
“SNOOOOOOOOORE!”
“Fine! So I was going to talk to a lawyer, and you were there too-”
“Do I bang the lawyer?”
“That isn’t what happened, Dash!”
“If I’m there I want to bang her.”
“DASH!”