Chapter 3

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The benches and seats creaked as a couple dozen ponies, guards and other guests took their seats again. Celestia remounted the bench, absent though was her much more attractive sister, Luna. Oddly enough some other pony took a seat at the table across the aisle from me, like they were the prosecution or something...

Celestia gaveled in. “My sister has excused herself from this tribunal to deal with matters of state, the court is now back in session. I would like to introduce Pertinent Law, who has been the primary agent in charge of the investigation into many of the allegations prior to now.” she pointed to the other pony with her gavel then looked straight back at me. “He shall also be arguing against you as well, to ensure the truth and only the truth is brought forth. Pertinent, you may present a statement to the court.”

The cream colored unicorn across the aisle got up and approached the bench. “Thank you your majesty.” he turned and started pacing around the floor as if we even had a jury. “What is a pony? What we shall hear from the defense is that all these misdeeds and actions were simply done in service to some dark power, that he should be given clemency for his own actions, that he is in fact NOT a bad pony. And yet, how does a pony find themselves in service of a dark malevolent force, how does operating businesses under fraudulent credentials, or repeated tampering with local weather forecasts for profit connect to a dark power? I Pertinent Law will argue that the defendant is in fact a bad pony, not deserving of your clemency your highness.”

Celestia sat still listening to his monologue. Well I never said this was going to be easy, but what she and her stupid lawpony doesn’t know is how some of her subjects act when she’s not around.

“The defense may now state his opening statement.” she said with her legal voice.

“I’m not sure how to respond to being called a bad guy or a villain. My friend, Pertinent Law there will contend that I am motivated by greed or a hatred of my fellow ponies. Frankly, nopony really truly knows me, or what motivates me. I admit that i may have been deceitful in some ways, but not without good cause. What I intend to prove here for you is that I am not a bad-pony, and the only way to do that is to simply tell my story and hope you get to know me through it.” I finished.

the only noise in the courtroom was of the occasional shifting bottom in their seat. Celestia produced a tea cup from behind her bench and took a slow long sip before setting it down and taking a look back across the courtroom.

“Um so anyways, Where do I start.” I thought for a moment. Where should I start? I don’t exactly want to play the human card yet, since they’re like the boogeymen in this world’s fairytales. “um so-”

“Actually your honor, I would like to clarify the identity of this pony.” Pertinent said, interrupting me. “You see, in the course of our investigation, we have discovered that this pony’s identity is a facade. All the documents we have uncovered thus far have been either clever forgeries or generated quite recently. Until this pegasus walked into a Manehattan bank, there was no pony named Bojack H. Eque-”

“Oh there, let's start there!” I shouted. “I mean, that's where I first struck rich.” I dragged my chains behind me. “See, I like Manehattan, it's full of hucksters, tricksters, con-ponies and more. So obviously it's the perfect place for a guy to make a quick bit.”
==/==

I remember it being a special day. I had in an afternoon made quite a haul selling my new drink.

I had been living in the city for several months cycling between jobs, you guys put so much emphasis on these magical tramp stamps, but what's a pegasus who can barely fly supposed to do? I tried the weather department but everything I touch turns to snow, I tried the docks but they booted me for dropping a piano on someone. I’d probably be out on the streets if it weren’t for the fact that I had a roommate guest lecturing for the Manehatten University.

You’d have thought working for dark gods would pay pretty well right? Well after trying all the legitimate routes, I ended up getting involved with some 'friends’ who had connections on the docks. I don’t really remember the specifics but basically I got a crate or two of stuff every few days and had to turn it into a sack of bits, which after taking a few out, I would leave in a garbage can in the park.

==/==
“Excuse me, are you saying your businesses are connected to the Manehatten Crime Syndicate?”

“Hey don’t interrupt, and there’s no such thing as organized crime. Like I said, I just got free merchandise from my friends and sold it and always misplaced most of the bits, nothing more.”

“Your honor, He clearly is connected to mafia elements in Manehattan.”

“hey let me finish my story before you start taking more charges on my.”

==\/==

It wasn’t a bad existence… Oh hell, I was bored, very very bored. I mean what the hay, here I am living in bucking Equestria and I’m no better off than I was before.

Anyways, things started that day like they normally did.

“Get-up you lazy yak!” My roommate shouted at me. He had an angry look on his striped face.

He tugged my blanket off the couch, dropping me on the floor. “Ow, what the heck.” I moaned

“You used all my wana root and wapaka slime! I have to demonstrate a traditional xandi poultice today and you’ve used it all up mucking about in MY kitchen!” Xanny said, continuing to scold me.

Zebras, normally very hard to anger, but when they get going, you don’t want to be the target of their ire.

==/==

“Your honor, are we supposed to believe this pony had a zebra, named Xanny, living with him as a roommate in Manehattan?!” Pertinent Law interrupted, yet again before being pelted by a snowball.

Celestia gave me a stern look.

“Hey, it's my story and let me finish before poking holes in it.”
Celestia’s glare continued unabated.

“Ok to clarify, his name was Xanidus and he wasn’t my roommate by choice, we were tribe brothers so he couldn’t really kick me out since it would bring a curse onto seven or eight generations of his family.”

“Is this Xanidus still within Equestria to verify your story?” Celestia asked.

I shrugged. “Honestly, Last I heard he was working somewhere in Canterlot. We sort of had a falling out which kind of started on the day I was talking about so if you mind, I’d like to continue my story.” I said. “Your honor.”

Celestia sighed, obviously my charm was rubbing off on her.

==\/==

Anyways, back to the good old days. After some fumbling around in the cabinets, I found the missing spices, Xanny was always critical of me being a slob but I always put my working materials back in their proper places… just not the ones he knew of.

“You gotta put more salted leeches in that.” I said, eating my bowl of cereal.

“Quiet boo-yak, I’ve been practicing this art for years.” Xanny said as he stirred the bubbling crock on our stove.

“I’m telling you, more leeches, it’ll go bad if you don’t.”

“Ooya quite you. I brewed this with ma grandmother for countless years before you came along.” The pot emitted a noxious burp before turning black.

“Told you, always add more leeches.”

Xanny broke down into a storm of zebran curses.

====

After cleaning up the mess, and assisting him brewing yet another poultice, this time with an appropriate amount of salted leaches, somepony pounded on our door.

Xanny frowned. “I thought I told you to keep your friends and their packages downstairs.”

“Actually I’m expecting a different sort of package today.” I said, opening the door. I was greeted by a gold toothed earth pony and a ridiculously bulked up pegasus. “Hello gents can I help you?”

The earth pony frowned. “Drop the stupid act. You got the bits?”

I tossed him a small sack. “You’re never any fun.”

“Good, remember that.” He said, hoofing me an envelope. “You’d better not be paying for this with the boss’s money.”

“I got that, don’t worry. I just need it for another day as collateral, you’ll have your bits by tomorrow.”

“You’d better, else we’re gonna have to set up an appointment with the concrete farrier.”

These mafiosa types, always with the concrete cliches.

"Ya ya, don't worry, they'll be better than my lead shoes." I said, closing the door.

With our business concluded I went back to the kitchen with the envelope in my grasp and dug through its contents.

==/==
“Out of curiosity, whatever did you do to endear yourself to these friends of yours?” Celestia asked.

“Oh thats a funny side story. See I’m a terrible flyer and a terrible worker but there was this foreman that nopony liked either. Well one day we were unloading a shipment of pianos and I may have accidentally dropped one, on him. It got me fired but that's how I ended up in a certain circle of people in Manehattan.”

=\/=
Xanny wasn’t happy, he wasn’t usually happy so it didn’t really bother me.

“What are those?”

“These” I said, pulling out one of the documents. “Are me, but on paper.”

I looked over the forged birth certificate.

See, Equestria isn’t exactly a hard place to live, and it's certainly not a place that seems to ask a lot of questions, but you still need some documents to do things like say open a bank account. Normally this isn’t an issue but when you completely lack any of that, you are a little bit stuck. Fortunately, I knew a guy who knew a guy who had a cousin who knew a friend who knew another guy, and now I had all the paperwork I needed.

Xanny huffed at me. “Never mind that I asked, I do not want to know of any of these dealings.” A bell tower chimed outside. Xanny nearly jumped. “Oohy you have made me late too!” He said, frantically grabbing bits and bobs to stuff in his satchel.

“You wouldn't have been late if you remembered the leaches!” I shouted back as he flew out the door.

----+----

With Xanny gone, and my documents safely tucked away, I got up myself and proceeded to brew my own stuff.

See a few weeks earlier I had finally come up with my first great hit, a blend of cheap spoiled vegetables, fruits, and a few other bits that when properly mixed together was perfectly palatable, and importantly, filled one up on the cheap.

With my daily cargo brewed then, I made my trip downstairs to the back alley where my humble wooden cart lay covered up. The poor thing was in pretty bad shape but it could fit the couple crates and barrels I carried about every day and the harness wasn’t too itchy even for a pegasus.

After hitching up and a quick trot across town, I parked my cart in front of the Manehattan's Grand Central and opened for business. See, the brewing bit was smart cooking with a dash of Zebrican herbalism, figuring out where to sell it was the real stroke of genius. In the morning, when everypony is rushing off the morning trains into the high rises for work, I always parked my stand across the street from the door where plenty of hungry, sleepy ponies traveled by, then in the afternoon, I moved to outside the stalk market, and then by the end of the day, I migrated down towards the theater districts.If everything went right, I could expect to clear a hundred bits or more, pretty good for a crate of spoiled or damaged fruits.

==/==

“Wait!”

“What now?” Celestia asked, mildly annoyed at this point.

“Nothing, it's just this is way more boring for me to tell the next part.”

“But you-”

“So I’m going to let my business partner Double Book finish this chapter.” I said, giving my partner a whack on the back.

Double book let out a squeak, having found himself suddenly in the witness box.

Everyone did a double take.

“How did…” Celestia stuttered.

“Oh that's easy, I bumped into the fourth wall.”

She looked around the courtroom.

“See, its right there!” I said pointing towards the back of the courtroom.

“I see only the far wall of this courtroom.” She said, looking annoyed.

“No, not there, there! in front of the audience but behind the tables. We bumped it just now”

She shook her head. “Does this happen often?” She said,turning to Double Book.

“Please don’t your highness.” Double Book begged.

“Hey, at least my fourth wall is in good shape, not like a certain pink party pony’s”

Everyone turned to look at Pinkie who just shrugged.

“Oh don’t give me that, you’ve broken your fourth wall so much you’re capable of non-euclidian motion!”

“What do eclairs have anything to do about it?” She said casually pulling an eclair from her mane before stuffing it into her mouth. “Sheesh.”

“Anyway, i’m getting boring so I’ll let Double Book tell you what happened next.” I said, taking advantage of the momentary lapse in narrative cohesion to pull a margarita from under the defense table. “Mmm frosty.” My head was still pretty sore from having taken a pounding after all.

Double Book cleared his throat. “Lets see.. well that day…”

==\/==

It was like any normal day. I was working as usual at the prestigious Goldmane and Sacks bank, Manehatten branch, things were perfectly fine. Nothing out of the ordinary.

“Double I need those quarterly projections, and a graph on that Bitsons project. For Celestia’s sake, are you sleeping!” My boss shouted at me.

“No Sir! I mean,Yyyyes sir! right away.” I said, toppling off my chair.

“Good, I wouldn’t want to have to give you a poor quarterly performance rating.” My boss said, plodding past into his office.

“Oh and one more thing, there’s some poor fruit sales pony at the front teller asking about a loan or something, get rid of him, we don’t give out loans to his kind.”

I sighed. Another pony turned away by this elitist jerk. It always seemed to work that way, we gladly took savings accounts, charged banking fees, even billed postage to our customers, but only the richest of rich would ever be granted any sort of loan from us. Not that we would immediately turn them away, no, it would always be some sort of undotted I or superficial defect in their paperwork that would disqualify them.

Nevertheless I left my desk and proceeded to the lobby.

“...and then the landlady said “Oatmeal!”.”

As I rounded the corner, I saw a teal pegasus leaning against the counter. Other than a pair of patched saddlebags, he had nothing else with him.

The teller, a young mare was trying her best to keep a straight face. As Mr. Peterbit often remarked, “Tellers are paid to serve, not chatter!”

I cleared my throat. “Ahem, I believe you were asking about a loan mr?”

“Bojack” He said. “Bojack H.” He grabbed my hoof and shook it violently. For a pegasus, he had the grip of an earth pony.

“Nice to make your acquaintance Mr. um Bojack.”

“Please, Mr. Bojack was my father. Anyways, I was just telling your clerk there, and your constable here that I have an exciting business proposition that I think your bank would love to invest in and I won’t take no for an answer.”

Why would anypony like him come to a place like this? I thought. He seemed too cheery.

“Well isn’t that interesting…” I said, pulling out my most sincere smile. “Let’s see if we can work something out.”

===

Fruit juice. This pegasus must have hit his head a few too many times. I thought. For the last several minutes I listened to him explain his entire business of pushing a cart from point A to point B selling fruit juices to ponies. I looked at the number he was asking for and grimmaced. Only a madmane would come up with such a number when they’re selling blended fruits.

“So um, sir you have no credit…”
“Absolutely.”

“And no collateral.”

“Oh yes, I’m completely broke.”

“And you lack even a written business plan or proof of income.”

“Quite valid.”

“And so for these reasons we here at Goldmane and Sacks simply cannot loan you the bits you are asking for.” I half expected him to break down and cry. They always cry when they get turned down

“I know.” He said, if I didn’t know any better, it would seem like he was actually happy that I turned him down... I gulped. I leaned over my desk. “Are you some kind of investigator from the crown?”

He leaned in across my desk. “If I said yes, would you process this paperwork like I was approved?”

I felt nauseous. Why would somepony from the crown be interested in us? It's not like we had two books, one filled with massive amounts of red ink showing enormous losses while the other one showed solid black figures, nope not at all.

“Ahhahaha.” the pegasus laughed falling back into his seat. “Just kidding. I wanted to see how you’d react.”

I collapsed on my desk. Clearly there was no reason why I should have been so worried. Unfortunately, all this commotion drew the ire of Mr. Peterbit who leaned angrily out of his office.

“Double Book, may I have a word with you?” He said.

“Yyess mr.-”

“Hey can’t you see the guy’s working here?” Bojack interrupted. The vein under my boss’s horn throbbed. “Now you were telling me about how I can access my funds?”

Mr. Peterbit’s brow twitched, not in a subtle way either. This ridiculous pegasus began blathering on deliberately ignoring him. “So anyways. When I first started out placing the stand in front of the tourist traps seemed like a good idea you know, but then tourists don’t want to eat from food stands they want to go to the crappy restaurants, so I said to myself “hey, who’s got a lot of money and not enough time? BANKERS! The lazy butts, can’t drag themselves over to an actual place for lunch, so they’ll gladly eat whatever you sell them, so long as they can get back to counting bits.”

“Excuse me sir, I think it is time for you to leave.”

“What is your problem? I’m having a nice conversation with um… bookkeeper here.”

“Sir you are causing a scene, and you are insulting my profession here in my own bank so i’m asking you to leave before I call sec-”

“Its because I’m teal isn’t it!” He interrupted. “How many teal ponies do you have here anyways? I haven’t seen any.”

By now, the two security guardsponies at the door had arrived.

“BU...What. I’ll have you know, Goldmane and Sacks has never denied a loan to a pony based on the color of their coat. Now you can either

“Well fine then, I don’t need your bits anyways. I’ll go make my own bits, with hookers and blackjack!” He said pushing between the two guards. “And GOOD HURUMPADA TO YOU SIR!” I heard him shout from the lobby, followed by the door slamming.

“AND YOU, GET BACK TO WORK.” Mr Peterbit shouted at me. “I cannot believe you were about to offer that wretch a loan.”

“But sir, I-”

“No buts, You’re lucky I have a dinner with some actual potential clients. I expect you to review our loan policies while I’m gone and your finished accounts better be on my desk by tomorrow morning or you’re fired!”

“But sir I- yes sir.” I sighed. I needed this job too much anyways. I silently cursed that stupid featherbrain for giving me extra work and set about finishing my reports.

It took me more or less an hour before I was done filling out the paperwork. Standing up, I started walking over Mr. Peterbit’s office to deliver them when I tripped on something heavy, sending my finished reports all over the place.

“Ow, son of Celes-” I froze. Sitting on the floor, where that stupid pegasus had, was a well worn saddlebag. Inside it was the object that I had tripped over.

Sitting there, shining in the late sun, a solid bar of gold. I looked around, fortunately all of my co-workers had all clocked out for the evening. “What the hay?”

I tried to pick it up, the weight alone proved it was solid gold. “What the hay is a fruit stand owning pegasus doing with a solid brick of gold?” I said.

“Everything alright back there?” I jumped. The guard had obviously heard me fall. “Yyya I’m fine, just uh tripped.” I stammered.

Quickly, I threw the brick back into the bag. There was more going on here. Nopony is just walking around with gold bars. This brick alone represents at least 10,000 bits worth of actual gold, if that idiot had just presented this instead of going through the hoops, we would have gladly forked out the loan.

I heard a door get thrown open out front. “Mr. Peterbit, I thought you were going to be gone for the rest of the day”

“Yes yes, Is Double Book still in by chance?”

Crap, what now? I heard quick hoofsteps on the marble floor as he rushed to the office space.

“Ah there you are. Double Book, a model employee!” He sang. I knew something was seriously wrong at this point. Mr. Peterbit was smiling. “Always diligent to a fault!” He pulled me into a hug.

“My boy, you’ve hit the motherload of all customers.”

“I...I did?” I wheezed.

“Why Yes you did! You have to act quickly though.” He said, dropping me on the ground.

“I… do?” I rubbed my head. “What do I have to… do?”

“My boy, that pegasus, the one who was in earlier. He’s loaded. I mentioned him to some colleagues just now and did you know what they had to say about him? That crazy pegasus walked into each and every bank in Manehattan today and deposited thousands of bits worth of gold in each bank, he even paid extra processing fees, he didn’t even negotiate, just accepted everything. Imagine what kind of charges we could have made if he had taken a loan with us, or maybe a line of credit! Maybe we can sell him a mortgage.... ” He said, staring off into the distance.

“But you tossed him out of here.”

He froze up. I swear I heard the sound of shattering glass. “Yes… yes I did.” He turned towards me with a creepy smile on his face. “But you seemed to hit it off with him didn’t you? I want you to find that crazy pegasus, beg him, apologize to him, do whatever it takes to bring him back through these doors tomorrow. I shouldn’t have to tell you how important it is to the continued success of this institution to bring in wealthy clients who pay our outrageous fees!”
“B-but my accounts…” I said, nonchalantly shouldering the bag with the gold.

“Oh those forms can wait for another day to get filled out. Go find that pegasus!” He said, practically pushing me out the office door.

“And whatever you do, remember to get his yearly income and credit score!” He said, as I headed through the door.

Author's Note

This chapter and the next full one hopefully will get the stage set.

I don't know how well it flows or how consistent it is, this is the product of several interruptions and many small additions.

Anyways, I know where this chapter has to go, I just haven't had time to get there quite yet.