“‘I’ve finished, Twilight!”
Starlight Glimmer galloped into the command room, a mile-wide smile on her face. “I’ve finished your bills! All one hundred and forty-eight of them.” Starlight took a deep breath before continuing. “You went through a lot of bits.”
Twilight glanced up at Starlight, clearly unimpressed at her students apparent accomplishment of finishing bill payment. “I didn’t order you to do my bills, it was merely a suggestion so you’d stop hovering around me while I reviewed the request I received from the sea ponies for assistance on—” Twilight raised a paper with her magic and furrowed her brow— “swimming up waterfalls so they don’t have to utilize land based means of traversing the rough terrain when their wings are sore.” Lowering the paper, the princess of waterfall climbing brought a hoof up to her chin and tapped it. “But now that I think about it, we don’t pay bills.”
Starlight’s eyes erupted out of her head. Luckily, Twilight was there to supply her with a new pair of sight orbs. “W-wait!” Darting out of the room, Mount Saint Starlight arrived back with the bills. “But I just paid the—” Starlight looked at the top piece of paper— “heating bill.”
Twilight looked at the wall. “We don’t have any heaters in here, Starlight…”
Starlight cast aside the piece of paper and looked at the next one. “The… electrical bill?”
Twilight responded by looking up at the ceiling. “We have artificial light.”
Starlight raised an eyebrow. “Then who sent these!?”
Levitating over the stack of papers, including the one that was becoming good friends with the floor, Twilight looked over the documents that Starlight had come to call ‘bills’. She scanned each of them with her all-seeing eyeballs of princessness before flipping one over. “Starlight?”
“Yes, Twilight?”
“These are from Berry Punch…”
Starlight’s eyes were held in place by Twilight’s magic. “B-but they—”
Twilight shoved a magical cork into her now visibly flustered pupils speaking hole. A sigh escaped her mouth. “Did you actually send her the bits?”
Starlight nodded.
One of Twilight’s ears fell off. Slowly, she walked out of the room, throwing the papers behind her. Each of them landed on a very sad light in the shape of a star that called herself Starlight Glimmer. She shook off the fraudulent documents of robbery (now with +3 Sneak) and trotted out of the room. “W-wait!”
Twilight stopped and craned her neck.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
Twilight thought for a brief moment that, to the average mortal, would’ve felt like an eternity and a half. “I’m afraid not, Starlight. This is going to be a very delicate process that may or may not involve me beating the living heck out of Berry Punch for my rightfully earned taxpayer bits.”
Starlight sighed. “Is there anything I can do?”
The Don of Friendship stopped. “Sure. Go grocery shopping for me.” With that, the marefather left the castle to make Berry Punch an offer she wouldn’t be capable of refusing lest she be given a healthy dose of friendship.
And so it was that Starlight Glimmer, and all of her glim glamness, went to the market to go grocery shopping. It was a beautiful spring day in Ponyville. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and Rainbow Dash was assaulting the clouds in the first degree.
“Bread… bread…” Starlight stared at the shelves that were filled to the brim with bread. Bread of all kinds! Whole wheat, white, Italian, and that really disgusting kind that makes her run to the bathroom five minutes after eating it. “Ew.” She picked it up. “Pineapple.” She threw it into her cart because Spike loves it for some inexplicable reason. Not even Twilight knew why. She just assumed it’s some deep seeded thing that has to do with his dead parents. “That dragon has some serious issues.” With a roll of her eyes that, when done, landed as a thirteen, Starlight continued onward to the next aisle. “Okay, now for tomatoes.”
Indeed, this one was filled with vegetables. Unlike the other aisles that were filled to the brim with ponies, this one was as barren as Starlight’s sex life.
“Unhealthy plebeians.” Starlight trotted down and threw some fresh tomatoes straight out of a processing plant into her cart. “Chemically altered food is so much better than that all natural garbage!” As quick as a greased up Rainbow Dash, Glim Glam left veggie town and grabbed ice cream from the diabetic aisle.
“Ugh, these ponies need to get out more often.” Starlight scoffed and maneuvered around the living barricades of fat and sugar. “I hope this isn’t me in ten years.” Mentally acknowledging that she was well on her way to becoming a boulder with a horn, Starlight went to the checkout and paid for the things she bought. She handed her hard earned allowance and left.
“I’m so going to get back at Twilight for making me go to Mare-Mart…”
The walk home proved to be too much for Starlight as her heart was racing when she ran through the front door.
Spike rolled his eyes. “Starlight, you know that you can just use your magic to open that, right?”
“That’s too much work,” Starlight replied from up the hallway. A trail of door lead up to her, something that she knew Spike would spend the next several hours cleaning up. It filled her with a sense of pride to know that she wouldn’t have to deal with her mentor’s eternal slave. Walking into the command room of friendship, Starlight, starbright waved to Twilight, who was deeply involved in cleaning off her hooves of some cherry substance.
“Make popsicles again, Twi?”
Twilight perked her head up and nodded slowly. “Yeeeeah…”
“Oh boy!” Starlight bounced in place before putting down the grocery bags. “I hope you left some for—”
“Spike ate them all,” Twilight said. “Again.”
Starlight’s left eye twitched. “Why that… ungrateful… AGH!” Ragelight Grimmer’s ears expelled enough steam to fill Canterlot Castle. “I TOLD HIM TO LEAVE ME SOME LAST TIME YOU MADE THEM!”
The command room door exploded thanks to Ragelight’s ragey magic. High pitched screaming filled the air as Twilight let out a sigh and began to write a letter to Celestia.
Several sedatives later, Starlight returned to the command room.
“All better?” Twilight asked.
Starlight nodded. “Well, I did as you asked and went to the market for groceries!”
Twilight waved a hoof dismissively. “That’s nice Starlight,” she said, gawking at her ribbon she’d received for teaching sea ponies to unrealistically climb waterfalls with such ease that at least thirty-six thousand of them had their minds literally blown at the mere sight of such a feat. Suffice to say, the janitors were paid extra overtime several hundred times over. Twilight left before the sea pony lands stock market would crash harder than an asteroid would crash into the planet. “Though there was one who seemed to have… difficulty understand what I meant.”
Starlight took her head out of one of the grocery bags, a piece of lettuce hanging from her horn,
and looked at Twilight. “Oh?”
“Her name was… Skystar.” Twilight groaned. “Every time I told her to grab onto the rocks to climb up, she’d just pop her wings and—” Twilight threw her legs up into the air— “fly up to the top!” The pretty purple princess of pet peeves fell backwards. “But!” She sat up. “Each time she did, I kicked her back down into the water!” A look of pride etched itself onto Twilight’s face. “Because that’s what a good teacher does.”
Starlight blinked and shifted through the bags. “Let’s see… tomatoes… bread… ice cream…” Starlight’s eyes widened. Slowly, she raised her head and stared blankly at Twilight, who hadn’t ceased her aimless connecting of words to create sentences that amounted to little more than a migraine and monstrous hangover.
“After all, It’s what Celestia did whenever I’d fail a math test.” Twilight brought over a grocery bag and looked through it. “She’d kick me down a flight of stairs relative to the number of questions I got wrong.”
“Oh, well, that—”
Starlight exploded.
The princess of grocery lists’ horn stopped glowing. “You forgot the pasta.”
Author's Note
And so it was that Spike had three messes to clean up that day.
