The Hearth's Warming Heist
Starlight and Trixie both flinched as the heavy iron door slammed shut. They said nothing as the echoing steps of the royal guard slowly faded, leaving them alone in their cell. They stayed like that for a while, neither really wanting to acknowledge their current predicament.
Unable to bear the weight of the crushing silence, Trixie turned to Starlight. “Way to go Starlight. It’s been my lifelong dream to be thrown in prison. Thanks to you, now I get to have that as a hearth’s warming present,” she said sarcastically.
“Hey, I had the best of intentions! And besides, I can usually tell if somepony’s transgendered from a mile away, my friendship lessons with Twilight have given me excellent interpersonal skills! If anything, it’s the colt’s fault for looking so effeminate and throwing me off.” Starlight shot back.
“Are you seriously blaming the colt for your own idiocy? This is such a textbook example of psychological projection that I’d be surprised if this didn’t end up in a psychology textbook someday!”
“What do you know about psychology? All you know how to do is fool people with a bunch of smoke and mirrors!”
“I’m a stage magician! Knowing a bit about psychology is basically required to make a successful career out of that!”
“Oh yeah? Well if you’re sooo smart, why don’t you tell me what else I did wrong in that situation oh great and wise sage?” The sarcasm in Starlight’s words was so thick, Trixie could practically see it dripping from her mouth like syrup.
“You don’t just cast gender-swapping spells on unsuspecting foals!”
“I already said that I thought he was trans! I just went over how to react when a friend comes out with Twilight, and it seemed like an excellent opportunity to apply what I learned!”
“Oh great, you’ve graduated from projection to the Dunning-Hoofer effect. If you keep it up, I could write my own psychology textbook and have you as every example.”
Starlight’s eyes narrowed, clearly not liking where this conversation was going. “Oh, you must think you’re just soooo smart don’t you? Well if you’re so smart, why can’t you cast any real magic then?”
Trixie recoiled as if she’d been slapped. Starlight knew that she was more than a little insecure about her magical abilities. “You take that back, Glimmer.”
“Make me.”
The guard rushed back into the dungeons upon hearing the sounds of a fight. He saw the two unicorns he had just locked up engaged in an all out brawl. Sighing, he separated the two using his magic, before placing the magenta one in a different cell.
Once the guard left again, Starlight strode towards her door and called out into the hallway. “Way to go Trixie, now we’re separated. Too bad you won’t be able to write that textbook of yours now.”
“Shut it Starlight. When we get out of here, I’m going to make you regret getting us thrown in here in the first place!” Trixie retaliated.
“You can try,” Starlight taunted.
Trixie paused, she just realized that she had no idea how long they were going to be in jail for. “Hey Starlight, how long do you think they’re going to keep us here?”
Without missing a beat, Starlight answered, “well, considering that I broke several laws, and with a few of them carrying minimum prison sentences of a few weeks, I’d say a couple months.”
“A couple MONTHS?” Trixie shouted. “How are you so calm about this? We’re going to miss Hearth's Warming, New Years, and even Hearts and Hooves day!”
Starlight rolled her eyes. “Quit panicking, I’ll get us out of here. Just wait a couple moments.”
Trixie calmed down a little, hearing the confidence in her friend’s voice. She sat back down as she began to wonder how Sarlight was going to get them out of this. Was there a secret loophole in the law that was going to nullify their sentences? Was she going to be released on account of being the personal student of one of the Princesses?
Her question was answered when she heard a loud explosion on the other side of her door. A couple seconds later an identical sound heralded in the destruction of her own cell door.
“Come on Trixie, we’re busting out of here!” Starlight shouted as the dust cleared.
Trixie’s eyes widened. “Are you crazy? We can’t just bust out of jail! Everypony already knows that we’re in jail, we’ll have to live the rest of our lives as fugitives, on the run from the law!”
“Relax, Twilight can fix all of this. All we need to do is give her puppy dog eyes and ask her to forgive us. It works every time!”
Before Trixie could even respond, the same royal guard burst back into the dungeon, his horn at the ready in case he needed to cast any magic. “Freeze!” He shouted, “Don’t move or I’ll be forced to subdue you with force!”
Starlight yawned as she quickly cast a spell which made the guard disappear.
“OH MY CELESTIA!” Trixie screamed, “YOU JUST KILLED HIM!”
Starlight looked offended that Trixie would even suggest that she would stoop so low as to actually kill someone. “Seriously Trixie, you need to lighten up. All I did was teleport him away.”
“Where?”
“Jeez, somepony’s really wound up! You’re acting as if this is your first time escaping prison like this.”
“This ismy first time escaping prison! It’s the first time I’ve ever been to prison before!” Trixie paused, “Wait, why did you say that as if you’ve escaped prison multiple times before?”
Starlight waved her hoof dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s focus on getting out of here first.” Starlight then turned towards the door leading out of the dungeons and blasted it to smithereens before casually walking through all of the debris, as if nothing were wrong.
Trixie swore before following Starlight through the ruined door, figuring that since there wasn’t a way out of this that didn’t involve a longer sentence, she might as well go with the option that had the chance of letting her off scott free.
After several more doors destroyed and guards dealt with, the Canterlot Castle’s alarm system finally went off, alerting every guard that something big was going down.
“Starlight, they know we’ve escaped now! Every guard in the castle is going to be after us now! The princesses might even come to try to stop us! We should just stop now and turn ourselves in!” Trixie pleaded as Starlight kept walking.
Starlight kept blasting through doors as they talked. “Come on now, I’ve fought Twilight to a standstill before, and she’s both an alicorn, and the element of magic. I doubt there’s anything they could throw at me that I couldn’t handle!”
Trixie snorted. “You only fought Twilight to a standstill because she didn’t want to hurt you. If she didn’t care about that, they’d probably have to scrape you off of the pavement with a spatula.”
“You’re just saying that because you’re jealous of my unrivaled abilities in magic.”
“Now I can add the self-serving bias to the list of examples I can use you for in a psychology textbook.” Trixie shot back.
As Starlight and Trixie moved through the remains of the next door, they stopped. In the room ahead of them was a group of around 30 guards, all ready to fight the escaping criminals.
“How do you plan to get us out of this one?” Trixie asked nervously.
“Simple,” Starlight answered, “We do something unexpected.”
Before Trixie could ask what Starlight meant, the floor underneath them disintegrated, and the two ponies fell to the floor below them. Trixie looked up to see that the floor was back where it was before.
“Let’s keep moving,” Starlight said as she blasted through the next door, finally revealing sunlight.
As Trixie stepped out of the castle, she began to worry. There were pegasus guards everywhere in the sky. There was no way they were going to get out of this unscathed. “Starlight, this is impossible! We should just turn ourselves in, and maybe they’ll be lenient with us.”
Starlight shook her head. “This is going to be easy, you’ll see.” Lighting her horn, a turquoise blast emanated from the pair. Once the blast made contact with a royal guard, they immediately dropped from the sky.
“Oh my Celestia Starlight, you just killed them!” Trixie shrieked.
“I didn’t kill them, I just made them all fall asleep. They’ll wake up in an hour or two and feel fine,” Starlight said dismissively.
“They fell from the sky! At the very least they’re going to be bruised! At worst, some could’ve landed on their heads and broke their necks! Did you think about that before you got us in trouble for murder? Huh?” Trixie asked hysterically.
Starlight paused. “I didn’t consider that,” She admitted after a couple seconds of silent contemplation.
“Do you ever think before you act?”
“Nope,” Starlight said proudly as she began to trot towards the balcony to get a clear line of sight to Ponyville. “My intuition is usually good enough that there are no negative repercussions to my actions.”
“Seriously?” Trixie deadpanned, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ego as big as yours is today.”
“Ever looked in a mirror?” Starlight quipped back.
“You’re impossible,” Trixie groaned.
“Just shut up and stand still, I can’t teleport us very far if you keep moving.” Starlight commanded.
With a flash of light the escapees disappeared from Canterlot, appearing several miles away in Ponyville. Trixie shook her head, disoriented after the long range teleport. She saw that she was in the Ponyville supermarket, and Starlight was buying a pair of sunglasses.
“What are those for?” Trixie asked as the two walking out of the store.
“Twilight’s Hearth’s Warming gift,” Starlight answered.
“Wait what? She clears you of all charges, lets you live in her home, teaches you friendship, all for free, and you get her a pair of sunglasses for Hearth’s Warming?” Trixie asked, bewildered at how dense her friend could be sometimes.
“Twilight always said that spending time with friends is more important than giving gifts”
“That’s not an excuse for giving her a crappy gift!”
“These aren’t crappy, they cost me 2 bits! My stipend can barely cover this after you write off all of the expenses I end up having for fines and posting bail!”
“Wait, she pays you to be a glorified squatter?”
“If you call 10,000 bits a week pay, then yeah, I suppose she does.”
“10,000 BITS?” Trixie roared. “I make that much in a year if I’m lucky! And you think that 10,000 bits a week is barely enough to be called pay? How is that even possible?”
“Maybe if you got a real job, you’d see more bits coming your way,” Starlight said with a smirk.
“Okay that’s it!” Trixie shouted as she tackled Starlight and began pummeling her with all her strength. The fight moved down the street, neither mare able being able to obtain the advantage, but both getting quite a few good licks in. The fight wound down outside of the Castle of Friendship, both too exhausted to continue. As the two layed on the ground, catching their breath, Twilight opened the front door.
“Are you two okay? You seem to have gotten into a bit of a tussle. Again.” She asked.
Starlight hoisted herself up onto her hooves to answer her mentor. “Yeah, it was just a small disagreement we had. It seems quite silly in retrospect, right Trixie?”
“I’m going to murder you.”
“Starlight laughed nervously. “You know how she is, always willing to make a joke.”
Twilight’s only response was to raise a single eyebrow.
“Anyways,” Starlight continued with a nervous cough, “I got your Hearth’s Warming gift for you! I know it’s a couple days early, but that’s fine, right?” Starlight floated the pair of sunglasses up to her mentor, cringing slightly to see them shattered into pieces from the brawl.
Twilight blinked. “I love it, you shouldn’t have,” she said in a deadpan voice, evidently not being able to believe how bad of a gift the broken pair of sunglasses was.
“Er, it’s supposed to represent our friendship, how you encountered me broken, but still took me in. And eventually, you were able to fix me, and help me live up to my true potential,” Starlight said, “It’s really a metaphor for all of the things you’ve done for me, if you think about it.”
Twilight’s expression softened, “Aww, that’s actually really sweet. I feel kind of bad for thinking you got me a terrible gift this year. Again. You obviously put a lot of thought into it this time, and I couldn’t ask for a more meaningful gift.”
Starlight grinned. “You know me, always willing to please! Now uh, I think Trixie and I need to rest, it’s been a long day for the both of us.”
Twilight stepped aside to let the two in. “You certainly don’t need to ask me to gain entry into our home, and besides, I’d love to hear about your day at some point.”
Starlight’s eyes widened. “I said long, not interesting. Trust me, you don’t really need to know about how are day was. Anyways, we’re both really tired, and we’ll see you tomorrow, or something. Good night!” Starlight and Trixie both disappeared as Starlight teleported them to her bedroom.
Twilight just chuckled and turned to continue wrapping Spike’s Hearth’s Warming gifts. She only made it about 5 meters before she heard a knock at the door.
She opened the door to see an entire platoon of royal guard at her door, armed and ready to fight.
“We’re very sorry to interrupt you day Princess Twilight,” The officer who was standing on her front steps said, “But we would like to know if Starlight Glimmer and Trixie Lulamoon are here at the moment?”
Twilight sighed. “What did they do this time?”