Celestia stared out impassively at the crowd of ponies gathered in her courtroom. They were still trickling in, filling every available seat and making more when they ran out. It wasn’t every day that Princess Celestia held an open court, especially for such high-profile individuals. To her left, Prince Blueblood conversed with his small army of lawyers. To her right, Twilight Sparkle sat alone.
Turning to her aide, Celestia whispered, “Tell Luna that Twilight has chosen to represent herself.”
Raven Inkwell adjusted her glasses, an invisible smirk playing at the corners of her mouth. She opened a drawer in her desk, revealing a small pouch within.
“Already done, Your Highness,” she said. “She remains confident about the rest of the trial, however.”
Celestia’s expression did not change, but inside, she was giggling like a schoolfilly.
Oh, Lulu. A normal, boring trial? With these two? Not in a million years.
“Thank you, Raven,” she nodded. “Well done.”
She gave her ponies a few more minutes to squeeze in and get settled. Poor Spike nearly got stepped on multiple times while trying to make room for the rest of Twilight’s friends. When it seemed as if capacity had been reached three times over, Celestia finally banged the gavel.
The courtroom fell silent. Considering the fact that most of them were already standing, she decided to forego ceremony this time and skip straight to the point.
“Twilight Sparkle,” she began. “You stand accused of the following crimes: trespassing, breaking and entering, destruction of government documents, assault, littering, resisting arrest, and impersonating a public official. How-”
“She pleads guilty!” Blueblood shouted as he jumped from his seat, jabbing an accusing hoof at Twilight.
“Sit, Blueblood,” Celestia commanded. He obeyed.
Off to the side, Raven scribbled something and sent it off with a muted flash. A second flash came moments later, this time from the drawer. Celestia’s professional mask was suddenly placed under a dangerous amount of stress. It was holding for now, but she didn’t know how long it would last.
“How do you plead, Twilight?” she intoned with as little emotion as she could.
“Not guilty, of course! He’s-” Twilight cut herself off. She took a calming breath and continued in a more even voice. “I plead not guilty to all charges, Princess.”
“Very well. We will address the charges in order.” Celestia gestured to the prosecution, who had already begun whispering to each other. Blueblood was not moving, his expression caught somewhere between a sneer and a smirk. “First on the list, trespassing.”
One of the prosecutors—Celestia recognized him as a stallion named Serif—stepped forward and cleared his throat. “Your Highness, our-”
“I told her to leave and she didn’t!” Blueblood shouted. Right on cue, there was a scribble, a flash, and then the ever-so-quiet sound of a bag of bits landing in a drawer.
I even told you they were fool’s bets, Luna. You silly, silly filly.
“Elaborate on that, if you wouldn’t mind, Prince Blueblood,” Celestia said. “From where did you tell Twilight to leave, and under what circumstances?”
Serif sighed and returned to his seat. The other lawyers watched nervously as Blueblood strutted the two steps it took to replace him. On the other side, Twilight was clearly waiting to cut in with her side of the story.
“Well, Auntie,” Blueblood sniffed. “I was window shopping-”
“In a museum!” Twilight snapped.
“Hey, it’s my turn!”
“You can’t just buy history!”
“Auntieee! She’s taking my turn!”
Celestia banged the gavel twice, silently wishing upon a thousand stars for the willpower to get through this trial without laughing or throwing something. As the room fell silent once more, she turned to her student.
“Twilight,” she said in a softer voice. “I know this is hard, but I must ask you to be patient and allow Blueblood to tell his side first.”
“B-but he’s…” Twilight seemed to deflate. “Yes, Princess,” she sighed.
“Thank you.” Celestia motioned to the smirking stallion. “Blueblood, if you will.”
“As I was saying,” he huffed. “I was window shopping, minding my own business, when this crazy mare,” he swung a hoof in Twilight’s direction, “started screeching like a harpy-”
“Blueblood,” Celestia warned.
“-about how I couldn’t touch the paintings. And you know my hearing is very sensitive, so I politely asked her to calm down, but then she started yelling even louder!”
Twilight was gripping her chair with enough force that Celestia could hear the wood creaking. It was almost enough to cover the sound of another quiet thud from the drawer of Raven’s desk. For her part, Raven was still typing at an impressive pace, giving no indication that she was doing anything else.
“So I said, ‘Excuse me, miss, but I need to ask you to leave.’ And she said no, but she said it in a really rude way, so then I said, ‘If you don’t leave this instant, you will be considered trespassing.’ And she refused to leave, so that means she was trespassing!” His chin remained high the entire time he spoke, assured in the ever-present belief that he was always right.
Twilight did not immediately speak up, so Celestia pretended to think about what Blueblood had just said, hoping it would give her some time to calm down. It seemed to work, as Twilight was no longer breathing heavily when she stood up, though she was still visibly shaking.
I know, Twilight. Hang in there.
“Princess Celestia,” she began, her voice mirroring her body. “Is the Canterlot Museum a public facility?”
“It is.”
“Does Prince Blueblood have the authority to declare part of a public facility off limits during its normal operating hours?”
“He does, but only in the event of an emergency.”
Twilight seemed to become slightly more relaxed the more she spoke. “Would the events as Blueblood described constitute an emergency?”
Celestia looked at Blueblood. “Was anything on fire?”
“...No, Auntie.”
“Then I don't believe there was an emergency. The charge of trespassing will be dropped.” Twilight breathed a sigh of relief. “However, we still have the remaining charges to address. Next is-”
“Your Highness,” a nervous voice called. Serif stepped forward again, speaking quickly so as to stop his client from potentially causing further harm to their case. “We will also be dropping the charge of breaking and entering.”
“Very well,” Celestia nodded, marking something on her paper as yet another soft thud came from Raven’s desk. She could feel a crack beginning to develop in her mask. “May I ask why?”
“It was dependent upon the trespassing charge, Your Highness.”
“I see. In what way?”
Twilight piped in. “I left to go get the curator, but I couldn’t find him, and when I-“
“Your Highness,” Serif cut in, “forgive me, but this is no longer relevant to the-“
The gavel came down a single time. Everyone in the room flinched.
“Continue, Twilight.”
“When I got back to that section of the museum, he had locked the door, so I teleported in. That’s it.”
“Ah.” That made slightly more sense. “In any case, let’s move on to the next charge. Destruction of government documents.”
Serif squared his shoulders and straightened his tie. “Your Highness, when Miss Sparkle refused to leave the room after our client warned her she would be trespassing, and then entered that same room again after the door had been locked, it stands to reason that our client would believe a crime had occurred and would thus report it to the police. In reporting the incident, our client was given two documents to fill out regarding what had transpired. These documents, regardless of what is written on them, are property of the police department, thus making them government documents.”
“Interesting,” Celestia hummed, debating whether it was mean to lead them on. She decided it was fair play for trumping up charges and wasting Twilight’s time. “That is technically correct.”
Twilight froze, her mouth half open in shock. The gathered crowd started whispering amongst themselves. The crack widened.
Serif continued, now sporting a confident grin, “Our client was in the middle of filing the report when Miss Sparkle snatched the documents from him, tore them to pieces, and crumpled them into a ball.”
He gestured to the table where the evidence was on display. The evidence in question was eight scraps of paper that were heavily wrinkled. It was clearly a police report, and Blueblood’s illegible cursive was plain to see.
“Twilight, did you do this?” Celestia asked, feeling like a pet owner chastising their puppy for making a mess.
“I… I did, b-but if we’re going by technicalities, then the documents aren’t really destroyed! They’re still usable with some tape!”
“In addition,” Serif charged on, “Miss Sparkle then threw the ball of paper at our client, a clear instance of assault. She then left the paper on the ground, littering. Our client, who has the power as a prince to make an arrest, attempted to do just that. Miss Sparkle refused to comply, thus resisting arrest.”
“Very interesting indeed. Is this true, Twilight?”
“Yes, but…” Her voice trailed off.
“Twilight, it seems you’ve broken the law. Consider yourself pardoned.”
“What?!” came the unanimous cry from the prosecution. The crowd’s whispers turned into sounds of confusion.
Twilight was staring at her with a slowly dawning realization. Celestia’s mask finally broke entirely as a wide smile warmed her cheeks.
“Let’s see, that’s one pardon for destruction of government documents, one for assault, one for littering, and one for resisting arrest. Four pardons in total. Is that correct?”
“Auntie, she still impersonated a public official!” Blueblood shouted over the crowd, who fell silent one more.
“Oh, that’s right. My apologies, please present.”
Blueblood looked around for Serif, but the defeated lawyer was already trudging to the door, his head hung low.
“Ugh, fine! I’ll do it myself. Auntie, Twilight pretended to be me!”
It was all Celestia could do not to burst into laughter at that moment. Gathering herself, she glanced sidelong at Twilight and winked.
“Prince Blueblood, did this impersonation involve Twilight mimicking your voice and making silly faces?”
“Yes! And she kept saying ‘I’m Blueblood’ and babbling like a nitwit when I sound nothing like that!”
“Is this true, Twilight?”
Twilight, now flushed with embarrassment, but nearly on the verge of laughter herself, could only nod.
“I see. That’s another broken law, Twilight. Consider this your fifth pardon. You’re free to go.”
Twilight’s friends rushed forward, cheerfully embracing her in a group hug. Blueblood turned several shades of red and stormed off, not bothering to help clean up. The prosecution, sans Serif, dejectedly gathered their papers and grumbled about preferential treatment, but Celestia paid them no mind. Everyone else could see that the spirit of the law mattered far more than the letter of it.
The crowd by this point was openly joking with each other at the ridiculousness of it all, and as they began to disperse, Celestia reviewed her list.
- ~~Twilight represents herself~~ - 50 bits
- Spike calls out support for Twilight - 20 bits
- ~~Blueblood interrupts me~~ - 250 bits
- ~~Blueblood interrupts his lawyer(s)~~ - 50 bits
- ~~Blueblood insults Twilight~~ - 10 bits
- a fight breaks out - 200 bits
- ~~the prosecution withdraws at least one charge~~ - 30 bits
- Twilight provides a solid defense against each charge - 20 bits
All in all, it was a net win for her. She could already imagine the look on Luna’s face. The lack of a fight was a tad disappointing, but Blueblood more than made up for it by having the gall to interrupt her before she could even get her second sentence out. It was wonderful.
With a lightness in her step and a heaviness in her cake fund, Celestia all but skipped down from the bench. Twilight was in an equally joyous mood as she gathered her belongings and followed her friends to the door. They were both so caught up in their own merriment that they nearly bumped into each other.
“Oops! Pardon me, Princess.”
“Of course, Twilight.”
Author's Note
god i hate myself
