Or Maybe "Heist" Would be a Better Word
"Please, Counselor Lulamoon!" The whole world blurry with her tears, Ocellus threw herself to her knees in front of the desk and raised her front legs with the fetlocks pressed together. "For the good of all Ponykind, I need to be bound in magical chains and thrown into Tartarus! I'm a monster! A monster!"
When nothing cold and clanking immediately wrapped itself around any part of her, Ocellus blinked her vision clear to see Counselor Lulamoon looking back at her with half-closed eyes from over the edge of the desk. "First, Counselor Trixie has asked you and your fellow students to call her Counselor Trixie, has she not?"
Ocellus swallowed. Yet another misdeed to lay at her hooves. "Yes, Counselor Trixie."
"And second..." Counselor Lulamoon's mouth tightened and pursed. "This interview will be much less stressful on Counselor Trixie's back with you on the sofa and me in my chair so I don't have to hang off this desk like an acrobat in order to see you."
Sure that she didn't deserve such luxury, Ocellus opened her mouth to object.
But Counselor Lulamoon—Counselor Trixie, Ocellus meant, of course: she certainly didn't need to compound her crimes any further—Counselor Trixie pointed with a frown to a spot above and behind Ocellus. "Sit, Ocellus."
Torn between transforming into a worm so she could squirm onto the sofa in an appropriate fashion and transforming into a dog so she could whine and slink her way there, Ocellus finally just let her shoulders slump and stayed herself, climbing off the floor and settling among the cushions with her head downcast.
"Much better." Springs squeaked, and Ocellus glanced up to see Counselor Trixie leaning back in her chair. "Now, perhaps you can detail for me the exact nature of your offenses?"
"Theft!" Words came bursting out, the river of despair that had been rising within Ocellus all morning finally flooding its banks. "Sedition! Treason!" She had to cover her face as the final, horrible truth forced its way through her lips. "Being a changeling!"
"What?" More frantic chair squeaking, quick hooves crossing the carpet, a gentle touch at Ocellus's shoulder. "Ocellus, was somecreature teasing you because you're a changeling?"
"No..." Ocellus wiped her nose and did some more blinking to bring Counselor Trixie's face into focus again, her aura suddenly sparking with genuine care and concern. "I mean, not really. They were just—"
"You're such a goody-goody!" Smolder puffed smoke from her nostrils. "Oh, look!" she went on, waving the cobalt crystal sandwich she'd brought into the library even though the school rules stated quite clearly that no food was allowed there. "I'm gonna get sand all over the books!"
"Well?" Ocellus let her nostrils pinch shut before she could suck in any of the blue powder drifting everywhere. "You kind of are."
Smolder puffed more smoke and took a big, crackling bite of her sandwich.
"On a related note..." Across the table, Gallus tapped a claw against his social studies book. "If you really think about it, the three of us sitting here right now represent the species who have given ponies the most trouble throughout the ages." He waved at Ocellus. "You changelings actually defeated the princesses. Twice!"
Everything inside Ocellus tightened up, and she snuck a glance around at the other students—five or six ponies, as it turned out—working here and there in the library's main room. Fortunately, none of them seemed to be paying attention.
"And yet?" Gallus reached into his backpack without looking away from her and took out a package of potato crisps. "Some of us seem to have forgotten our people's ancient heritage of rising up to defy Equestrian hegemony." Deftly, he tore the package open with his beak and plucked a snack out.
Each crunch-crunch-crunch made Ocellus wince. "Some things deserve to be forgotten," she muttered.
Gallus shrugged and kept crunching.
But Smolder's eyes glinted in a wicked fashion that Ocellus was all too familiar with. "That attitude's not healthy, Ocellus," Smolder said. "I mean, if I didn't keep a little hoard under my bed or didn't eat the right amount of gemstones, I'd get sick. And Gallus here, why, if he stopped his sarcastic comments and didn't make himself a general pain in the tail all the time, his whole griffonic nature would shrivel up and turn him into a pigeon!"
Swallowing some potato crisps, Gallus choked and coughed. "Excuse me?" he asked roughly.
"That's biology!" Smolder smacked the book open in front of her.
With a glare, Gallus pointed to the book. "No, that's history."
"That, too!" Flipping the book shut—and not seeming to notice the puff of blue powder it gave off—Smolder sprang to her feet, the claws of her hands gripping the edge of the table. "By being such a goody-goody all the time, Ocellus, you're opposing history, biology, sociology, chemistry, and physics!"
Ocellus could feel her ears quivering. "Physics?"
"Math, too, probably!" Smolder waved at the still-glaring Gallus. "Like pigeon-boy says, you're denying your heritage and not being true to yourself!" She leaned forward, her voice dropping, Ocellus unable to look away. "And what do you suppose Professor Applejack would say about that?"
Ocellus broke off her account when she noticed that Counselor Trixie's mouth had become a straight, sharp line. "It's okay, though!" Ocellus said quickly. "I didn't pay any attention to them! I just rolled my eyes and got back to homework! Really!" She took a shaky breath. "Everything that happened is my fault and my fault alone..."
Counselor Trixie's horn glowed, a piece of paper and a pencil rising from the desk behind her. "Still, the Great and Advice-Laden Trixie will be summoning those two to her office for a little chat." The smile she gave then was so phony, Ocellus could almost hear it creak. "But please," she said, moving to sit on the sofa beside Ocellus, "do go on."
With a swallow, Ocellus nodded.
That night, sleep wouldn't come. Ocellus finally gave up a couple hours after midnight, transformed herself into a firefly, buzzed quietly out the window of her dorm room, and flitted over the roofs of the school's various buildings. What Gallus and Smolder had said didn't bother her that much—
But she had to admit that it was at least partially accurate. It wasn't that she was denying her heritage as a changeling. She was just ashamed of it.
Or not ashamed. She loved her family and her neighbors and her friends back in the hive and felt proud every day that she'd been chosen to attend Princess Twilight's school and be an ambassador from the reformed changeling people to ponykind and the rest of the world. But...
Her parents had been among those who attacked Canterlot during Princess Cadance and Prince Shining Armor's wedding. They never talked about it, of course, but given their ages and how the changeling hive had been organized under Queen Chrysalis, Ocellus knew they had to have been there. They did sometimes talk about being in the hive's throne room when King Thorax had undergone his ascension. They'd been among the first to share their meager pools of stored love with each other, too, so they'd been right on the cutting edge of the wave that had transformed the entire changeling race.
That was one of the reasons she was here, after all: her parents had been early supporters of the new regime and remained leading figures in the ongoing reformation.
So she wasn't denying her heritage! Her heritage—her real and actual heritage—was all about reconciliation and making amends! Not about skullduggery and...and nastiness!
Settling onto the tip of a gabled window on the school's top floor, Ocellus looked at the moon. Princess Luna hadn't been denying her heritage when she stopped being Nightmare Moon, had she? Or Discord when he'd decided to stop being mean and start being...well, maybe 'friendly' was the wrong word, but less of a menace, at any rate.
The point was: the greatest villains in Equestrian history including Headmare Starlight and Counselor Trixie—
"Me?" The look on Counselor Trixie's face confused Ocellus, the way it kept shifting between proud and upset. Did the counselor maybe have some changeling blood in her?
Ocellus couldn't ask, though, not with Counselor Trixie going on: "For while the Great and Repentant Trixie certainly qualifies in some ways to be counted among the greatest villains in Equestrian history, let's not forget the 'repentant' part, shall we?" She brushed a hoof at the hair hanging over her shoulder. "Or was that what you were about to say?"
"Yes'm." Ocellus sat forward. "It's just that you and Headmare Starlight took good, long looks at yourselves, realized that you were being bad, and changed your minds because you didn't like being bad anymore! Having the hideous and vile nature of your actions thrown back at you—"
"Hideous and vile?" Counselor Trixie's voice rose, her right eye twitching, but then she took a breath and blew it out. "Perhaps we can simply get to the gist of your confession, Ocellus?"
"That is the gist, ma'am! You and Headmare Starlight were bad but became good!" The words tried to stick in Ocellus's throat. "But me?"
The sudden thought almost made Ocellus pop back to her original shape, it was so strange and yet sounded so correct. All Equestria's reformed villains including her parents and their friends had chosen to be good instead of bad. But since Ocellus had never been bad, she'd never truly made a choice!
She needed to commit a crime right now!
Leaping from the roof of the school, she spun herself into the body of an eagle and took off for the distant lights of Canterlot.
Her eyes closed, Counselor Trixie was pressing a hoof to her forehead. "Canterlot?"
Ocellus's throat wanted to get even stickier, but she'd come too far to turn back now. "So my rampage wouldn't risk injuring any of my friends here in Ponyville."
When Counselor Trixie's hoof came back down, her eyes had only opened part way. "One seldom sees such consideration from a rampager before the event."
Shifting on the cushions, Ocellus shrugged. "Well, I didn't want to be rude about it."
"Of course." Counselor Trixie took what seemed to Ocellus to be a very long and deep breath. "Please continue."
Hours later, the barest suggestion of gray in the blackness to the east, Ocellus angled her wings and dropped from the thermal she'd been riding toward the spires of Canterlot. She hadn't done any distance gliding like this in a long time, but she'd always enjoyed it more than regular flying. So very peaceful...
Except— She shook herself. Peace should be the last thing on her mind right now! She had a crime spree to commit! And she needed to get it over and done with before Professor Fluttershy's animal care class this afternoon, too.
Soaring across the city, though, she immediately realized her problem. This early, there weren't a lot of ponies around, and the ones who were out and about on the streets looked kind of tired and grumpy. Did she really want to make their day even worse by robbing them or menacing them or whatever it was she was planning to do?
Regret tickled the back of her head. She probably should've thought this through a bit more...
On the verge of turning and winging her way back to Ponyville with a vow that she would pick up a new notebook at the student store and start making plans for her rampage before lunchtime today, she instead found her attention drawn to an oasis of warmth and love and light up ahead among the darkened buildings, the aromas of chocolate and coffee and fried dough making her tummy rumble.
Donut Joe's, the sign said.
"Donut Joe's." Counselor Trixie's expression had gotten all straight and sharp again. "Princess Twilight's favorite eating establishment in the entirety of Equestria."
Nodding, Ocellus had to turn away. "I didn't know it was at the time, but that...that's another crime to add to my ledger."
A bit of silence, then Counselor Trixie asked, "And will we be getting to the actual crime here soon?"
Ocellus gave another nod and forced herself to go on.
Concentrating her form down to that of a sparrow, Ocellus took a perch on the building across the street from Donut Joe's. Through the windows, she could see a large unicorn stallion in a white apron and little square hat—Donut Joe, she assumed—bustling about behind the counter, his magic lifting racks of donuts from the fryer, slathering some with frosting, some with glaze, and leaving some of them plain.
She let her tongue dart out to lick the edge of her beak. It was nearly breakfast time: she could swoop in, grab a donut, and swoop back out, her crime committed before this Joe fellow even knew he'd been robbed.
Spreading her wings, she made ready to leap down upon her unsuspecting prey—
Except, well, what would be the point of that? Yes, of course, in an ethical sense, even if nocreature but her knew that she'd committed a crime, it would still be a crime, but would that be enough in a practical sense? Princess Luna had tried to take over the world, after all, while Headmare Starlight had bamboozled an entire village, and Counselor Trixie—
"Yes, yes, yes." Counselor Trixie snapped the words as sharply as a pair of scissors. "Counselor Trixie knows very well what she did." She leaned forward ever so slightly. "What we're trying to ascertain right now, however, is what exactly you did."
Nodding, Ocellus sniffed. "I'm sorry, Counselor Trixie. It's just I...I've always found your tragic but uplifting story to be so very inspiring."
Again, Counselor Trixie's expressions flitted too quickly for Ocellus to make them out individually, and the tangled scents of her emotions tickled Ocellus's ionotropic receptors almost as much as the dust from Smolder's gem sandwiches. "Yes," Counselor Trixie said more slowly this time. "Well, one does one's best, does one not?"
"One does." Ocellus blanched. "I mean, I do. I mean, I want to. Or I try to. Or I—"
"You're continuing your story, Ocellus." The swirl across Counselor Trixie's face had settled into a very-close-to-natural smile. "If you'd be so kind."
Watching the baker prepare his wares, Ocellus resolved that she would need to commit a crime worthy of redemption if she wanted this whole escapade to have any real value.
Still, anything along the lines of confronting Donut Joe, threatening him, and grabbing a tray of donuts seemed more than a little extreme. For Smolder or Gallus, that would be the natural way to go about it: they were action-oriented, take-charge sorts of creatures. But Ocellus saw herself employing more finesse, more stealth, more—
The phrase "cat burglar" popped into her mind, a term she'd first run across in one of the Daring Do novels Professor Dash had recommended to her; without another thought, she swapped her feathers for fur, massed herself up to proper feline size, and padded along the roof of the building. At the edge, she slid down a rain spout to the sidewalk, scampered across the street, and slunk through the alley beside Donut Joe's hoping to find a back window with a screen that didn't quite fit.
Instead, though, the alley widened into a little courtyard, some trash bins lined up against the shop's wall and a back door propped open from which came the clatter and scent of donuts being prepared. Sneaking forward to peer in and get "the lay of the land," as the book had put it, Ocellus peeked around the door frame only to find Donut Joe himself clomping toward her, several empty flour sacks held aloft in his hornglow.
"Well, hey there, kitty!" the stallion boomed, the warmth of both the kitchen and his friendly manner flooding over Ocellus like a sudden puff of dragon breath. "You looking for some breakfast?"
At a loss, Ocellus just stood there, but then Joe's warmth wrapped around her, his magic picking her up as it dropped the flour sacks into the trash bin. "'Cause you're in luck!" he went on, carrying her gently but firmly into the bright, busy, sweet-smelling space. "I got just the thing for you right here!"
And before Ocellus knew what was happening, she found herself being settled into a corner of the kitchen with a bowl of milk and a damp little pile of pink, salty-smelling fish. "Nothing like lox in the morning!" Donut Joe was saying, already across the room and pulling another tray of donuts from the oven. "'Cause you know what they say: eat some dead fish first thing after waking up, and nothing worse'll happen to you all day!" He laughed, set the tray on a table, and began slathering out generous amounts of chocolate frosting.
Blinking, staring back and forth between the plates and the baker, Ocellus noticed two things at pretty much the same time: first, that the counter above her held three square pink boxes with yesterday's date scrawled across them in black ink, and second, that a framed photograph was hanging on the wall beside where Donut Joe was working, a framed photograph of Princess Twilight with a big, beaming smile and her full royal regalia standing beside Mr. Joe at what Ocellus guessed was the counter out front.
"And that's when I knew." How Ocellus managed to speak louder than a whisper, she wasn't sure: the guilt and shame of her actions pressed down on her like a layer of mud. "That's when I knew I was about to commit not just theft but treason and sedition."
"Now, Ocellus." Beside her on the sofa, Counselor Trixie shifted slightly. "There's no need to get carried away."
Ocellus levitated a tissue from the box on Counselor Trixie's desk and wiped her nose. "I'm just being honest about the horrible, horrible thing I did."
The entire situation swirling and pressing against her, Ocellus let out a wail and burst into her true form, tears swelling from her eyes. "I'm so, so sorry, Mr. Joe!" she cried out before grabbing one of the pink cardboard boxes from the shelf and sprinting for the door.
"What the—?" she heard Donut Joe mutter behind her, but by then she was already out in the little courtyard, was transforming into as generic a pegasus as she could manage, and was leaping into the morning sky, the box clutched to her chest.
"And I flew all the way back to Ponyville and the school and your office without stopping once!" Daubing her eyes with the tissue, she gestured with her snout toward the pink box she'd dropped just inside Counselor Trixie's door. "There's the evidence, and I...I'll take whatever punishment the law requires..."
For a long, long couple of seconds, silence lay heavily across Ocellus's ears. But then Counselor Trixie sighed. "I don't suppose you're familiar with standard bakery practices around Equestria."
Ocellus blinked out from behind the tissue. "Is...is that another crime I can be charged with?"
Counselor Trixie's mouth went sideways. "No, Ocellus. It's just—" She took a breath. "When one is a traveling performer of uncertain income, one learns a number of important facts. Among them is the way that bakeries will collect the donuts and other assorted pastries that remain unsold at the end of the day, box them up, and donate them to establishments called food banks. Individuals who find themselves temporarily short on bits can then visit these food banks and be assured of meals substantial enough to keep themselves on their hooves for as long as they might need the assistance."
The implications jabbed deep into Ocellus. "You mean I didn't just steal from Donut Joe? I also stole from one of these banks?" She was just about to turn into a beetle and demand that Counselor Trixie stomp on her when Counselor Trixie put a gentle hoof on her shoulder.
"Perhaps," she said, "you and I could take this box of donuts to one of the Ponyville food banks right now. They're always happy to receive donations."
The sudden love and warmth filling the room buoyed Ocellus's spirits however much she was trying to keep them squished to the floor. "Ponyville has food banks?" she asked after wrestling her emotions into a more controlled state.
"Two of them." The smile that curled over Counselor Trixie's muzzle had a slightly devious scent to it. "We'll in fact invite Smolder and Gallus to accompany us, and the three of you might then spend a few days a week volunteering there for the next month or so. Yes, I think that's exactly what we'll do."
Nodding, Ocellus thought she understood. "Then that'll be my punishment?"
All trace of Counselor Trixie's smile vanished. "Not at all." She moved her hoof from Ocellus's shoulder to touch her chest. "The feeling you have here, the one that's stabbing you like your insides have shattered into a thousand jagged shards? That's your punishment." Pulling back her hoof, she swallowed so loudly, Ocellus could hear it. "Going somewhere and helping those who need it, that's what pulls those shards back together and allows one to begin mending."
And then Ocellus thought she really did understand. "Helping those who need it, Counselor Trixie?"
"Indeed." Counselor Trixie's horn glowed, and her hat sailed over from the rack to settle at a jaunty angle on her head. "Now, if you'll be so kind as to gather up the donut box, we'll stop by Professor Fluttershy's class to collect Gallus and Smolder and be on our way."
