Trial for a Rest

by Marwile

First published

Twilight Sparkle refuses to take a rest.

After (in her eyes at least) failing horribly in an exam, Twilight decides that she has to spend more time learning again. She achieves this by locking herself up and refusing any kind of rest or even sleep. Can her friends help her?

Written for Super Trampoline's Feghoot Festival. This is your last warning.

6/21/19: This made it into popular stories, somehow...

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The school-famous Rainbooms were standing before an old door in the basement of Canterlot High. This room had been left unused for a long time until Twilight Sparkle changed to this school and asked for a replacement of her old lab in Crystal Prep, which the principal gladly provided. Though right now the lab’s new owner was the only member of the group that was seemingly missing.

The official unofficial leader of the Rainbooms, Sunset Shimmer, stepped forward, turned the door’s handle a few times unsuccessfully and then proceeded to knock on the wood. “Twilight?! We know you’re in there. Please open the door.”

“Can’t. Need to study,” came the short response from inside the room.

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting a little bit, dear?” Rarity now spoke up. “You must’ve been in that room for at least the last 48 hours and I’m starting to doubt more and more you spent any time sleeping. Are you okay in there?”

“I’m fine. The room has a water tap and I have enough rations of cup noodles to last a few weeks. Now if you’d please allow me to get back to my studying.”

“Is it still because of the last exam?” Sunset asked. “It was only a small typo. You even still got the full score. Nobody cares that you wrote ‘they’re’ instead of ‘their’.”

“Well, I do care. Typos like that are just the first step to the total collapse of society as we know it. Today it’s just confusing ‘they’re’ and ‘their’. Tomorrow people will stop caring about the difference between ‘a’ and ‘an’ or ‘much’ and ‘many’. The day after tomorrow people will start speaking in 1337 5P34K only. And the day after that they won’t understand each other anymore. It’ll be the Tower of Babel all over again!”

“Come on, Twi, aren't you overreacting a bit again? I’m making typos like that all the time and look how I turned out. I saved a literal ship load of people during spring break,” Rainbow tried to convince her.

“You were also the cause of at least 73.946% of the problems there and technically still didn’t apologize.”

Rainbow turned to Sunset. “Isn’t there anything you can do?”

“I mean, she kinda has a point with that last one.” She gave an apologetic shrug.

“Are you still there?” Twilight spoke up on her own to everyone’s surprise. “Your attempts at conversation are starting to get really distracting, like my cat here that’s constantly telling me to go to bed.”

“First, you have a pet dog, not a cat. Second, he’s at home with your parents, which is really concerning me,” Sunset said.

“Listen, I do appreciate your concerns, but my recent failure” –”It was just a typo!” Rainbow shouted.– “has shown me that I started to neglect my studies because of our friendship and that there’s lots of material I have to catch up on. And explaining all of this to you cost me many– I mean –much more learning time than scheduled. 5– See, it’s already negatively affecting me.”

“Oh goodness, if we don't get her out soon she might revert back to her Crystal Prep self, or even worse...” Fluttershy worried.

When the girls were starting to draw blanks on what to do, Pinkie, who had been strangely silent so far, gave a big, dramatic sigh. “Seems like we don’t have a choice. Applejack, Plan AA0114.”

The confused girls turned to Applejack. “Are ya sure? Seems a bit extreme ta me.”

“Extreme situations need extreme solutions.” Pinkie snapped her fingers. “Now come on, we need to prepare everything.”

The two walked away and disappeared in the next class room. A few moments later they came out again with Pinkie now wearing a long black judge robe, a matching white wig and a gavel on a telescope stick. Applejack’s outfit could be described as a police uniform… if a dangerously short skirt, a deep cleavage and being form-fitting in just the right places can be considered a uniform.

“It was the last one they had… accordin’ to the clerk,” was Applejack’s only response to everyone’s stares.

She approached the door and knocked again. “Twilight Sparkle, here’s (not) the police! If you don’t open your door and take a break we’ll have to enter by force!”

This time there wasn’t even a response.

“Ah warned ya,” Applejack sighed. She slowly lifted her right leg and with one swift kick broke the door out of its hinges.

“Why didn’t you tell us you had your geode, AJ? We could have saved much time.”

“Ah don’t,” she answered before entering.

To her credit, despite operating only on caffeine and noodles for the last two days Twilight did try her best to resist the (not) policewoman… for about 3.141 seconds, it was Twilight against Applejack after all. She was put in (fuzzy) handcuffs and carried out like a sack of apples. The others got their first good look at Twilight in days and noticed the disheveled appearance and the dark bags under her eyes before she was brought to the other classroom, where Pinkie had been waiting the whole time.

After an appropriate amount of time to process these events the remaining four girls decided to follow them. Inside they noticed that the room had been redecorated to mimic a courtroom with Pinkie in the judge's chair. Twilight was nervously fidgeting in the defendant’s seat and Applejack stood at her side. They sat down in the (surprisingly enough not empty) audience and watched the remainder of the trial, which already seemed to be wrapping up.

“The judge is now ready to announce the verdict,” Applejack announced.

Judge Pinkie rose from her chair. “Twilight Sparkle, your punishment will be a camping weekend with your best friends, where they will make sure you’ll have a healthy night’s sleep of at least eight hours every day. There won’t be any books or electronic devices you could use for learning purposes in a two mile radius, guaranteed. Additionally, you’ll take a supervised nap right now in another room, where we already prepared a comfy bed for you. Any last words, defendant?”

Twilight was clutching her head. “You can’t do this to me! 1–I need to study! 0–Only my brain can save the world! I (4/\/7– I can’t take 4– @– a 2357!1! N0! /\/O!1 /\/0000000000000000000000!!!!!!!1111111111” The lights started flashing while she was screaming and some people swore they could see black feathers flying around her. Even some foam gathered at her mouth before she fell to the ground unconscious.

Judge Pinkie ignored Twilight’s breakdown and banged her fully extended gavel on the table. “The defendant is hereby declared guilty for resisting a rest!”

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While (not) policewoman Jackie carried Twilight into her prepared bed, the court continued to the girls’ surprise.

“Let’s move on to the next case. Bailiff, bring in the defendant!” Judge Pinkie announced.

Snips, in a proper policeman costume, brought in Sandalwood and led him to the defendant’s chair.

“Sandalwood, you’re accused of attacking a fellow student. What do you plead?” Judge Pinkie asked.

“Not guilty, of course. I don’t even know what’s going on,” he answered.

“In that case, bring in the victim! Miss Lulamoon!”

A completely distraught-looking Trixie entered the room. Flash was supporting the girl to her chair and even there it looked like she could break down any second.

“Miss Lulamoon, please tell the people here what happened, if it’s not too much of a problem.”

“N–No, it’s alright. I have to do this,” Trixie said weakly. “It was at lunchtime. We sat at different ends of the same table. When I noticed that my fries weren’t as salty as I prefer them, I started to look for the small salt sachets. Why couldn’t I be content with my fries as they were? Nothing would have happened...” She took a deep breath. “Anyway, I saw them lying right before Sandalwood, so I innocently asked him if he would kindly pass them over to me–”

“And that’s exactly what I did. That’s all!”

“So you admit to the crime!” Flash, who suddenly appeared in the prosecutor’s chair, shouted. “You took the salt sachet and then, without any regards for her safety, you threw it at her!”

The whole audience gasped and wild murmuring soon followed.

“Order! Order in the court!” Judge Pinkie banged her telescope-gavel on the table several times. “I’m truly sorry, Miss Lulamoon, that they had to find it out this way.”

“I–It’s fine,” Trixie sniffed. “They would have found out sooner or later anyway. Yes, yes it’s true. I, Trixie Lulamoon, have been… as-salted!”

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After two more class trials Judge Pinkie’s Court finished for the day. Of course her friends stayed behind to help clean up the classroom and push everything back into its rightful position.

“Phew, what a day,” Sunset said while pulling a table. “Who could’ve thought that mock class trials can be so exhausting.”

“I mean, it was a surprise to see you jump in to become Wallflower’s defense attorney,” Fluttershy said.

“Oh yeah, that was so awesome,” Rainbow added. “Everybody was totally convinced it was her and just as Pinkie was about to give her verdict, BAM, you jump in to defend her.”

“That was so cool, Sunny, I nearly broke character,” Pinkie admitted.

“Every time it looked like Flash had you cornered, you pulled out a new twist to turn the whole case on its head. You were a true Turnabout Terror, darling.”

“It was not a big deal girls, I just did what I thought was right. And Flash also did a great job as prosecutor, he even supported me when he realized who the true culprit was. Though he could have toned down the air guitaring a bit.”

“Still, can’t believe it was actually Bon Bon,” Rainbow said. “I was so sure it was Wallflower, she just has these evil eyes.”

“I’m still here and not deaf.”

“Sorry!”

“And we are done, girls,” Pinkie announced as Applejack pushed the teacher’s desk into place. “Thanks for the help, everyone. It’s good to see we finally have order in the court again.”