The two of them arrived at a metal door with a handle. A brass plate beside the door announced that it was 'Records and Administration'.

Long reached out with her magic, though she couldn't reach as far as she usually could. The handle jiggled a bit, but did not open, locked.

"Who's there?" called a female voice from inside.

Bell called out over Long, "Just two connies looking to see what their rap sheet looks like."

A loud buzzer rang out from above the door. Bell slapped the door's handle with a sudden wing. "They don't hold that down long."

Long got the idea and grabbed the depressed handle, pulling it open so they could step inside what looked like a reception office. A secretary mare typed busily on a typewriter that only had two keys. That mare looked between the two of them, her own wings fidgeting. "Miss Tailslide, Miss... Story was it?"

Long nodded softly. "Long Story, yes. Nice to meet you...?"

"Records are over there." The secretary pointed one of her wings towards a door tucked in a corner. "Please don't harass the record keepers."

"I'll try not to." Long advanced on the door, Bell just behind. "See you later?" A peek revealed the secretary was already not paying any attention. She willed the second door open without a problem, revealing a room that was filled with enough books to keep Twilight happy for a while, though Bell imagined they had more statistics and such and less scholarly details.

"Heya!" chimed a little stallion. He was a small one, adult, but small. "Looking for something?" he asked with a smile on his round face.

"Hey," greeted Bell as she stepped inside. "No Fuss is still living up to her name. How's it hanging, Clean Book?" She gestured with a wingflick towards Long who was looking around and being overwhelmed by the number of books. "This is Long Story. How long is she in for?"

Clean hopped up onto a table, knocking a few piece of paper free in the process. "No complaints. What'd you do this time? I don't even get it with you. You're always so nice in here, but you go back out there, and then you end up back in here." He shook his head at Bell. His little nub of a horn glowed as he grabbed two books from a shelf above him and floated them down.

Long's attention snapped to the moving books, then the pony that was moving them. "Oh! Sorry, nice to meet you." She waggled a hoof at Clean. "Need any help?"

"Nah, I got this." He slapped down the first book and had it open, flipping through it with his magic. "Long, Long, here we go." He brought down a hoof, holding the book open to the right page. "Huh, says you're in for trespassing."

Long blinked. Not for...? "Does it say anything else?"

"They caught you where you shouldn't be, but you hadn't done anything or hurt anypony." He trailed his hoof along the words. "Worst they could string you up for was trespassing. You have nothing else on your record, so they charged it as a mere infraction." He looked up at Long. "You just have to pay your fine, with work or bits, and you're out."

Long's bottom crashed as she flopped to her haunches. "You're kidding..."

Bell dared to have hope, a cautious smile spreading on her face. "So, hey, what am I in for?"

Clean tilted his head. "Two of you and you don't even know why you're here?" He set down the second book. "I figured you'd just be asking how long you were in for." He flipped open with ease, as if he had looked up Bell's page before. "Says here you're in for speeding. In for a week, then remedial flight instruction." He tilted his head the other way. "They threw the book at you for a traffic violation. Must have been your record."

Bell laughed nervously, not bringing up why she had been speeding at that moment. "Y-yeah... I should be more careful... A week, huh? Well... that's almost over, right?"

End floated the books back up where they had come from. "Just about. Can I help you ladies with anything else?"

Long raised a trembling hoof. "Where are my things? What I had in my pocket, I mean."

"Oh, they put those in storage. Why?" turned away from the safely tucked books to face them properly.

Bell caught where Long was going. "She probably has the bits to pay her fine just waiting for her to do that with."

"Oh! Well, that's convenient. I'll put in the request for you. For now, you two should get out of here before No Fuss raises one." He waved at them as they departed, going back to whatever record ponies did when nopony else was around.

The two mares emerged from the office, both stunned in subtly different ways. Long let out a little laugh, flopping against Bell. "Well... That was... good news, right?"

Bell slapped a wing down on Long's back. "Thanks for dragging me down here. There I was, thinking I'd be spending months, maybe... years..." She turned her ears back on her head, shrinking a little. "This life is the pits."

Long smiled a little, a thin expression. "Well, when I get out of here, I want to tell stories."

"Stories?" Bell began to lead the way towards the mess hall. "What kind of stories?"

"Mostly made up ones." Long smiled as she went, walking in Bell's shadow. "With adventure and excitement and happy endings... Struggle and trials, you know, that sort of thing... I like telling stories a lot more than... this..." She waved weakly at the jail as a whole. "Or ever seeing Keyworks again."

"Are you any good at it?" Her eyes remained forward, not looking at Long as she walked.

Long thought back to the competition with Trixie. Though she had failed spectacularly at being Trixie... "I really had fun," she breathed out, smiling with the warm memory. "I wouldn't mind that as a job." The dim memories of her old life poked at her. What had she been? Something boring... It had been not unsimilar to the drudgery of painting all the cakes.

Bell smirked a little, daring with her buoyed spirits. "Do storytellers need any, you know, assistants?" She lifted a hoof. "Someone to carry the stage props and keep rowdy ponies off their tail?"

Long smiled brightly. "I don't have a Great and Mysterious wagon just yet... A helpful hoof, and maybe a wing, would be... nice." Part of her wondered if she was moving quickly. She had only met Bell recently, but she had been nothing but kind, and was trapped just as she was. If she could help pull another pony away from that world, why shouldn't she? "It'll be tough, to start... I didn't bring... all my bits with me, and going back for the rest sounds like a bad idea..."

"So we'll eat instant noodles for a while," scoffed Bell. "We'll work hard, you know, together, and work up from there, right?" She leaned in. "But we won't do it alone."

Not doing it alone was a deep temptation. Long wanted a friend she could keep. Vinyl had a husband and a life. She couldn't just crash in on her and ruin what she'd built like that. Rags lifted in her memories and she began to blush, thinking of the stallion. What about him?

He was in deep... And he wasn't there. She couldn't ask him, and even getting close enough to try would mean going back in the don's territory... Her chest hurt and she raised a hoof to it as she took a purposefully deep breath, trying to dispel the tension that ached in her. No, Rags could not be considered an option... "Let's get out of here."

"We're getting dinner." Bell gestured with a toss of her head at the cafeteria they were reaching.

"No, I mean here here. Let's get out, then we'll figure out our next step, alright?"

"Our next step," Bell echoed, looking pleased with herself. "Yeah. We'll do that. Grab us some food and I'll get us a seat."

Soon they were seated at a simple metal table. Other ponies were seated on the same benches on either side of them, most stuffing their faces with the mashed potatoes and corn being offered. There was a bushel of wheat propped up with it, but it seemed many of the other inmates were skipping it.

Long didn't understand why. She leaned in and sniffed at it. Its aroma seemed pleasing enough to her equine senses. With an extension of a strong tongue, she pulled it into her mouth and chewed on the wheat, grinding it in her chompers slowly and contently.

Bell snorted softly with restrained laughter. "Nopony eats that. What do they think we are, giving us uncooked wheat like that. Do you like it raw?" She lowered her face and started chomping the not-wheat portions of her meal, her snout becoming messy with bits of mashed potato and flecks of corn. "Mmm."

Long couldn't answer at first. Chewing up raw wheat took a moment. While she worked on it, her eyes wandered, taking in the population that surrounded her. The jail was co-ed, with mares and stallions scattered about. Was that how they used to do things? No. Despite the fog of her memories, the linking of jail to horrifying gay rape somehow managed to be intact.

Not that she could... oh, no. She could still be abused that way. Being a mare was not protection against it. She shuddered softly and glanced aside at Bell. At least that mare appeared to have no interest in that. Hay, she wanted to be an assistant storyteller. That was a much nicer thought than worrying about dropping the soap at the wrong time.

With a great swallow, the wheat vanished down her throat. "It doesn't taste bad, just needs a lot of chewing," she finally answered Bell before willing a serving of the softer food to float up to her, chomping into it far more easily. There were little seats in the mashed stuff and they had another flavor when she bit into them, not a bad one. Ponies seemed to like adding seeds to anything in which it was practical to do so.

Bell shrugged softly. "If you're tough enough for it, I won't let myself be shown up." She grabbed the bushel of grains in her wing and stuffed it in her mouth, chewing noisily.

Another pony peered at Bell before looking back at her wheat, though another stallion beside her beat her to chomping his. They had started a trend, wheat bushels vanishing off the plates of most of the prisoners, no one wanting to be the one that was too soft to go ahead and eat theirs.

Long decided to accept that as a good sign. If they could start trends outside of jail as easily, maybe becoming a storyteller would be more than a fancy. "Oh, I do magic."

Bell rolled her eyes mightily. "Tell me something I don't know, magic pony."

Long tensed. Magic pony. That is what she wanted to be, right? "I just mean I'll be using magic, in the shows, to make the stories more interesting. Nothing like a few special effects to really bring a tale to life."

Bell shook her head as she grabbed a napkin with a wing and cleaned herself of her food. "I can't help with that, but I can get all yer stuff in place. No more, uh, teleporting."

Long snorted softly. No more big teleports with lots of stuff... but maybe a little teleport here and there... She was a magical pony, so she had to magic. It was in her blood. With a growing smile, she polished off her dinner. She just had to get her things back and check out of this... unsightly hotel.

Author's Note

Plans for the future begin to come together for Tri--Long Story.

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