Silk purse, something something, sow’s ear
Sunset Shimmer stood in the seemingly endless line, clutching a manila envelope in both hands. The warehouselike ambience of the DMV office echoed with the rooba-rooba of voices. Employees and supplicants alike wore the blank expressions of the undead, doomed to walk the world without surcease. Every so often the line shuffled forward a step or two as an inappropriately cheerful synthetic voice announced another ticket number and the lucky holder inevitably had to walk halfway across the giant chamber to reach the correct window.
While it wasn’t her first experience with the bureaucracy, she hadn’t dealt with it often, and certainly not for the current unique situation. The battered old cruiser motorcycle she recently acquired sat under an awning at home, awaiting the TLC it needed to salvage its vintage charm. She wasn’t planning a concourse-style restoration—she needed a rider, not a showpiece—but still she wanted it to shine and, maybe, turn heads when it went by. All that effort would come to naught if she didn’t have every jot and tittle taken care of before the bike was road-ready, so she’d decided to deal with the red tape first.
Twilight offered to come with her, of course, but Sunset had declined with a smile. “There’s no point in both of us being bored out of our skulls, Sunshine,” she said affectionately.
“But if we’re together, at least we could keep each other company with conversation.”
Sunset kissed a lavender cheek. “Look, go have fun with the girls. I’ll be fine.” When Twilight looked a little forlorn, she sighed and gently touched her forehead to the other woman’s, sending waves of love and comfort through their mutual mental bond. You are my Sunshine, cheesy as that sounds, and nothing has changed that—or will. Left unsaid was how fragile Twi was feeling after being forced through months of emotional torture in a single night, no less hurtful for its illusory nature, thanks to the villainous Acerak. Twi smiled weakly, but when the rest of their friends appeared to sweep her away with laughter and enthusiasm for a day of activities, the smile had become more genuine.
Sunset smiled as well in recollection, then blinked, reverie broken, when the chirpy female computer voice spoke up again. She looked down at her ticket. Finally!
“Yes, I got a motorcycle yesterday. I need to take care of all the paperwork for it,” Sunset said to the prematurely wizened minion behind the counter. She placed the envelope on the counter and opened it to pull out the papers that had been delivered with the bike.
Clawlike hands shuffled through the proffered records. “These aren’t—” the individual of indeterminate gender started in a monotone.
“I had the bike shipped from there,” Sunset helpfully informed him, her, or them.
One hand raised a flimsy sheet for closer examination. “The registration seems to be out of date by several years. That must be addressed before we can process anything.”
“But . . . but that’s in another—”
“Yes, which means you’ll need to send that jurisdiction one of these forms, and they’ll need to process it and collect the back registration fees, along with the penalties for noncompliance.”
“What?” Sunset managed to strangle the near-shriek down to a volume only slightly too loud. “I’m not the one who racked up those fees!”
“Nevertheless, it’s a legal requirement. Otherwise we can’t issue a new certificate of title or registration.” The golem paused. “Can you talk to the person who shipped you the motorcycle?”
Sunset already had her phone in her hand, dialing the number. Her face fell when a distinctive three-note tone sounded and a stilted, tinny voice began, “The number you have reached—” She looked up again with a tight expression and simply said, “No.”
“Ah. I see.” The talons descended to rattle on an ancient mechanical keyboard. “Hmm. There are alerts posted for this license tag number. Oh. Parking tickets. Moving violations. . . .”
“You’re kidding!” By now Sunset was leaning forward, palms planted on the countertop.
“Those will need to be straightened out as well. For the moving violations, local law enforcement will want the operator, not the vehicle, but the parking is another matter. Either way, you’ll need to—”
“Yeah, I get it, talk to them.” Sunset’s voice was resigned. In a somewhat acid tone she added, “Is there anything you can do?”
Sunset left the building with more forms, and less accomplished, than when she entered. About the only help she’d received was an assurance the new paperwork was everything she would need, but she had dark misgivings about its accuracy. She drove home in a daze and, once there, dropped the whole stack on the coffee table and flopped onto the couch. She stared at the ceiling disconsolately until the whole thundering herd rumbled back into the apartment from their peregrinations across the city.
“Are you okay?” were the first words out of her fiancée’s mouth on catching sight of her.
She blinked and focused on the concerned faces of her friends. “I’m . . . not sure,” she admitted.
“Well, what happened, darling?” Rarity demanded. “You look like Spike after he lost his favorite chew toy.”
A brief smile greeted this sally. “I got back from the DMV . . . oh stars, an hour ago.” To the growing consternation of her audience, she delivered a blow-by-blow account of her odyssey in durance vile, complete with color commentary. By the time she finished, half of them looked upset and the other half outraged.
“Wow,” Pinkie Pie said into the silence. “That doesn’t sound fun at all.”
“You think?” Sunset closed her eyes and sighed. “Sorry, Pinkie.”
“Now look here.” Applejack put her fists on her hips. “Ya bought a pig in a poke. Let it be a lesson to ya. But now we’re gonna do our best to fix it. Ain’t we, girls?”
There was a general mumble, to which she reiterated a bit through her teeth, “Ain’t we?”
Twilight jumped onto the Web. Backward and antiquated the various Departments of Motor Vehicles across the land might be, they still had managed to bring their digital services at least within shouting distance of modernity. She began to rummage through the sites serving both origin and destination for the bike. The others pawed through the various forms and documents Sunset had brought back.
Rarity peered at Sunset over the red eyeglasses perched on her nose and shook a finger at the snowdrifts of paper. “Darling, what about your insurance papers? Surely the insurance company will want all this resolved posthaste. For that matter, they might be able to help you.”
Sunset clutched her hair. “Agh! I haven’t even gotten to that part yet.”
“And you can’t until you clear up all this stuff, right?” Rainbow Dash held a paper in each hand, looking a little lost.
“Yes, thank you for reminding me.”
Applejack sat back, thumb tipping up her hat, as she looked at one particular sheet. “Well now. Can’t say I know the feller’s name, but lookin’ at the address, it ain’t too far from cousin Braeburn, if’n I recall correctly.” She pulled out her phone. “I’ll just give him a call.”
Fluttershy, for her part, wasn’t submerged in carbonless paper; instead she sat next to Sunset and squeezed a leather-jacketed shoulder. “We’ll get this sorted out,” she promised. Soft as her voice was, she could project an astounding amount of certainty and resolve when she truly believed it. Sunset took a deep breath and nodded.
Before long, most of the others were peering intently into screens and poking away. Applejack had wandered into the kitchen to avoid being a distraction; snatches of her voice floated out to the group, quietly enough to achieve her aim.
Twilight was the first to report back. “I’m sorry, Sunset—I couldn’t clear the charges or penalties completely. All I was able to do was to apply retroactively for PNO. Apparently they’re convinced you’re the de facto owner if not the de jure one.”
“PNO?” Sunset parroted.
“Planned non-operation. Since the bike sat all that time in a garage, they can’t very well claim it was being operated on public roads, can they?”
“How much difference does it make?”
Twilight tapped the tips of her forefingers together and mumbled the total amount.
Sunset sat up straight. “That’s great, Sunshine! It’s got to be a quarter of what I was looking at paying. I didn’t know about that PNO thing.”
“It’s right there on the registration form,” Twilight said with some confusion.
“Not everyone actually reads all of a form, Twi,” Dash noted with a sidelong look from her own phone.
“Oh.” The bookworm’s expression broadcast your lips are moving, but I can’t understand what you’re saying.
“Go let AJ know.” Sunset waved a hand toward the kitchen. “It might make a difference in what she’s telling that cousin of hers.”
After a while longer, both girls returned from the kitchen. Applejack smirked; Twi looked unsurprisingly uncertain. The farm girl reported, “Okay now, Braeburn’s gonna talk to the local cops about the outstanding violations. He ain’t sure how much he can do, but at least he should be able to get better information, and mebbe he can find out if you can swear out a complaint.”
Over the next hour or so the group contrived other similarly partial solutions, and finally Rarity concluded, “Well now. It seems we can stitch together enough to fulfill Fluttershy’s promise, darling.”
Sunset looked notably relieved, and hugged Twilight and Fluttershy, who sat on either side of her, in lieu of embracing all her friends. “I can’t thank you guys enough. This was starting to look like a disaster.”
Twilight hugged her back, then asked, “How did—I’m sorry, Sunset, but I don’t know a better way of putting it—how did you end up with this problem?”
Sunset made a face. “When I called the guy who advertised it on the Web, he said he stopped riding it a while back and stuck it in his garage. He wanted to get rid of it because it was taking up space, so he just asked for shipping charges. Sounded like a bargain.”
“So he offered you a free bike?” Rainbow Dash clarified.
“Yeah, the ad said ‘Free bike’, come to think of it.”
Applejack shook her head. “Ain’t no such thing as a free bike—or a free car. Sure as shootin’, if the ad says it’s free, you can bet the blamed thing’ll cost as much in the end as if ya just paid cash on the barrelhead for a halfway decent one.”
Sunset stared at the paper-covered coffee table. Shipping charges. Back registration and penalties. Parking tickets. Legal fees to fend off other challenges. Parts and labor, even if the latter was hers. She added it all up mentally and grimaced. “Yeah, Applejack, I think you’re right.”
Author's Note
Sunset’s predicament is loosely based on an actual incident witnessed by Baron Engel, who suggested the story idea in the first place. If the legal process doesn’t match the one you’re familiar with, don’t worry about it. I’m borrowing at will from various jurisdictions I’ve caught wind of, not just the California DMV with which Baron and I normally deal—whatever best serves the story. Also, to be clear, the bike crossed state or provincial lines during shipping, which always complicates transfers even more.
