Late Fees

by MrNumbers

Rating: everyone
Tags: Comedy, Twilight Sparkle, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 1743

Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Equestria, is still, above all else, a dedicated librarian and bibliophile. Books must be cared for. Books must be returned on time. Books must be respected.

Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Equestria, is still, above all else, a dedicated librarian and bibliophile. Books must be cared for. Books must be returned on time.

Books must be respected.

Now with dramatic reading!

Published 2013-07-25 14:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2013-07-25 14:20:01 UTC

Broken spines

Twilight Sparkle had led a short life, but it had been incredibly busy.

She couldn't even stop to take a cup of tea, most days, without some tentacled monster swarming from the teapot and snatching the clotted cream from the scones tray.

She had been shocked, at first, as she gently set the teapot down back down on the table before her, being careful not to disturb the doily she set it upon more than necessary, and swore to never, ever, under any circumstances, cast that Tempest in a Teapot spell again. Except maybe for future inter-dimensional research, so long as she made the proper preparations and precautions and, if Pinkie Pie asked very nicely, party tricks, because the look on Rarity's face would just be far too good to pass up.

Well, that was a relevant point, anyway. In Twilight's short, though industrious, life she had grown so desensitized to eldritch horrors beyond mortal ken that, currently, she kept an extra butter knife near the tea set should the tentacled monstrosity, recently dubbed 'Wiggles', feel the need to have a scone with his cream as well.

Being a gracious host is imperative to being a good friend.

Even with that skewed sense of perception, however, and a perpetual sense of childlike wonder at the world, and ponies, around her that allowed her to make friends even with abominations in her kitchenware, Twilight Sparkle found herself staring in naked, undisguised horror and revulsion at the pony before her.

Disgust. Hatred. Loathing. Sorrow. All of these words were entirely insufficient in conveying Princess Twilight Sparkle's emotions at that present moment as she looked upon the victim of the horrific, inequine crime before her.

"Sorry it's a bit late," the stallion awkwardly chuckled, rubbing the back of his scruffy mane with a hoof, "and, uh, messy. I totally forgot I even-"

"A bit messy." Twilight spoke evenly, building a mental dam to keep her raging torrent of emotions in check, "You call this a 'bit messy'?"

The stallion, for his part, looked at the floor, whether out of shame or fear it was impossible to determine.

"Princesses above, which I suppose I am now included, if you call this a bit messy what in Tartarus would qualify for-" Twilight snarled, forcing the stallion a step back.

He heard a plink in his head, a phenomenon Twilight would have been fascinated to observe firsthoof. It has been said that, when enough mental effort in particularly powerful unicorns is expended, the force of it can cause nearby observers to 'resonate' in sympathy.

Twilight, however, was preoccupied with being the source of that plink, a chip giving way under the burdens of an ocean of roiling emotion.

"Sir," she spat the honorific coated with dripping venom, "The pages are torn, what pages still remain-"

"At least half of them are still in there!" he protested, "Last time I checked, anyway!"

"That may, then," Twilight's voice was calm once more which, Caramel decided, was somehow infinitely worse, "explain the quite literal paper trail you've left behind you."

He glanced behind him and gulped. He hadn't noticed that, apparently.

"Well, err, at least it's all in a nice, organized line, I can go pick them up and-"

"Assuming, one, that the breeze hasn't picked up, which I sincerely doubt because you delivered this back to me during a scheduled electrical storm, and two, aforementioned storm," Plink, "hasn't reduced the pages into an amorphous grey mush."

"Not a fan of papier mache, then, I take it?" Caramel grinned weakly, his chuckling dying in his throat as he gulped it back down, caught as it was as a large and obstinate lump there.

*Crunch*
"This is not a thing that is okay to joke about my little pony." Twilight boomed in her new-found royal voice, indeed whipping the few dry pages behind Caramel inside the library into a frenetic frenzy in the blast. It also had the pleasant side-effect of giving him a rather fetching new mane style.

'At least,' he thought, 'I'll leave a wicked corpse.'

"This is a reference book. It's been overdue for months." Twilight drew a hoof to her chest and pushed out, as her foalsitter and fellow Princess had taught her many, many years ago. "I hope you realize how much this will cost to replace, let alone the late fee."

Caramel gulped.

"It says here," Twilight glanced at the library card, "that this was a book on... Organizational abilities?" She glanced up, expression deadpan. "Really?"

"Err... I guess the lessons didn't quite sink in, huh?" Caramel started backing slowly away to the door, to freedom, to continued living if Twilight could remain distracted for just long enough for him to-

His butt pressed against something large and furry. He hadn't even heard her teleport. He whipped around and came face to face with two candles at face height and-

'Those aren't candles, those are her eyes!'

*PwooooooCRACK*

"Tell me, Caramel," the formerly-purple-now-flaming-alicorn gazed into his very soul, burning his retinas in the process, "How do you plan on paying for this?"

"Well, I don't have many bits-"

"Not the bits. How do you plan on atoning for harming a poor, defenseless book like this you monster." Her voice wasn't loud in the conventional sense, in fact it broached upon being a loud whisper, but it was deep and harmonic.

Indeed, somehow Twilight had managed to boom at the precise resonant frequency of Caramel's skull, which I can assure those of you not as versed in physics as she, is far worse than conventional decibels.

"I-I'm sorry?"

"That's a start, of course," Twilight nodded, sending a few errant embers airborne in the process, "but I'm afraid you're going to have to atone better than that, vile fiend."

"Vile fiend?" Caramel shuddered, too terrified to do anything about the parts of his mane that had just caught fire other than hope his panicked shivering somehow caused them to extinguish out of pure pity, "Is that really necessary? I mean, it's just a book!"

The dam broke. Well, that's a rather mild way to put it. Rather the dam ceased to be in the most fantastical possible way. The dam didn't merely crumble as it released its emotional burden, oh no.

It glowed white hot, momentarily, then vaprourized in a puff of plasma, boiling the seething and frothing flood behind it as it poured out and-

Caramel blinked. Twilight Sparkle was gone. Where the pony had stood before her were four black hoofprints and nothing else.

"Just a book?!"

Oh. That's where she was. Twilight Sparkle's rage has obviously made her, for the moment, omnipresent.

Today was not a good day to be Caramel.

"Well, y-yeah!" Caramel stuttered, "I mean, don't you think you're just overreacting? I mean, sure, I might have broken the spine, lost most of the pages, forgotten about it for months and once, when I ran out of toilet paper, it was-"

"Caramel, please, step outside." the voice rang in his ears.

"W-why?"

"Because I wish to do horrible, unspeakable things to you now and I wish to do it somewhere less flammable."

"Oh." Caramel murmured sadly as he shuffled to the door.

"Wait," he said, stopping momentarily, "does that mean that if I don't go outside you won't-"

Pop

"-do horrible... Oh, I forgot you could teleport me." he said as he was suddenly aware of the fact he was now standing somewhere where there were no witnesses that, for some reason, happened to have a bubbling bog.

"Caramel Apple, I would like you to meet a good friend of mine. Wiggles, care to meet our new guest?"

"Celestia," Luna murmured as she stared at the fleurescent mushroom cloud erupting from Ponyville, "Did you, at any point, remember to mention the mood swings attached to the Ascension?"

"It appears it slipped my mind in all the excitement, sister." Celestia gently put her tea back down on the saucer with a gentle 'clink' of fine porcelain on porcelain, "what's got you thinking of that now, of all times?"

Luna sighed a long, weary sigh.

"Send Spike a package of the Darjeeling, sister, and pray that it gets to her in time."

Celestia raised an eyebrow. "My student is most capable, Luna, I'm sure she's-"

Luna turned and shook her head, slightly, wordlessly cutting her off, "It's not her well-being I'm concerned for. Let's just pray that she doesn't do anything she regrets..."

"Now, what have we learned?"

"Treat literature with the amount of respect it deserves, Princess."

"Very good, little pony. I'm also very, very sorry I reacted how I did."

"It's uh, well... Nurse Redheart said I should be out by the end of the month!" He turned slightly green, visible even under all the bandages, "Though I'm never, ever going to eat calamari again..." Caramel chuckled before paling considerably.

"Oh... Oh no..."

"What? It's okay, Caramel, I'm truly sorry, I'm not going to-"

"I forgot, I never returned the cook book I borrowed the year before."

There was an almost imperceptible eye tic on the Princess, gone before you could even see it if you weren't looking for it.

Caramel, however, was looking for it and tried vainly to scoot to the opposite side of the hospital bed.

"I'm sure," Twilight said evenly, "if you-"

"I accidentally deep fried it. Twice."

"Twice?"

"Well, the first time made it catch fire, then I tried to put it out and dumped it-"

"I get the picture." Twilight sighed. Then she chuckled. The chuckled grew to a laugh, then to cackling.

Caramel just stared, chuckling nervously.

"Spike!" Twilight called as she trotted out of the building, "I'm going to have a bubble bath. Bring the tea. All of it."

"Wouldn't that make it taste like soap?"

"Oh, Spike, haven't you ever heard of bubble tea?"

She stormed out of the building leaving Caramel desperately attempting to try to blow out the small fire that had sprung up on his hind leg's bandage.

Author's Note

Man I keep forgetting how insecure of my writing I am until my mouse hovers over that 'submit' button every time.

If it wasn't for your consistent overwhelming support I wouldn't have felt as comfortable taking such big risks as I have recently, so I honestly hope you like this, because it would really be embarrassing if my 'thank-you' present were to be metaphorically regifted.