This Is The Union! Give Us Thy Bits!
Magically being transported to a world of fantasy and mystical creatures from a storybook wasn't part of your agenda. Even on the first day of becoming a history teacher at a local high school; You worked your butt off trying to get that teaching degree for 4 years. You didn't even know how you got there in the first place, remembering back when you fell asleep at a subway train, and then bam! Talking ponies everywhere. They were nice to you to your surprise as they treated you like one of them and helped get you situated in the world. One of the ponies even offered you a job to teach about human history at a school specializing in friendship. Well, your degree on American History wasn't going to help with friendship, but you didn't mind teaching modern advancements in technology, medicine, and other cultural differences.
Despite living there for nearly 3 months, something bothered you that made you do something drastic. Your paycheck wasn't really as desired as you've thought. Thinking to yourself that the conversion rate of bits to dollars might be different. But seeing as one bit is equivalent to a dollar in your world, you had every right to be angry. As you marched back and forth inside the main hallway of the school with 5 other mares following behind. Holding up a large white sign with the text No Fair! slathered on with bright red paint.
You commanded the mares proceeding to follow you every step of the way, "Alright ladies! Let's take it from the top:"
"School of Friendship is unfair!"
"Princess Twilight is in their!"
"Standing is a consession!"
"Plotting her oppression!"
Chanting repeatedly in unison and facing all stern, you successfully caused enough attention to make a large crowd of students circle in the odd behavior that all the teachers are sporting. Maybe this would be enough to get a particular mare of authority to come and finally see the ruckus.
The doors leading to one hallway opened, seeing Headmare Twilight in disarray when all of you looked up at her high-and-mighty status. "G-Girls! What the hay is going on here?! Anon, what exactly is this?!"
"THIS IS THE UNION!" you shouted with excessive lung capacity, "We've unionized in hopes to dispel your cruel practices every authority figure is known to do; The low wages, the unpaid vacations, and discrimination against humankind!"
"Discrimination against humankind? I never said anything prejudice against humans!" she caught your last little remark as you shook your head.
"Okay, I might have exaggerated that last bit, but the first two are very much true!" you raised the sign to her bulging eyes, "How could you be this cruel giving me a payment of only 20 bits for EVERY MONTH?! And I have your friends too who are fed up by your actions!"
The first one to declare their anger was Rarity, holding up a red sign saying More Pay!, "This is such a travesty Twilight! We expect to be paid more because we're friends. However, we were shocked to reveal that Anon of all creatures is the one getting paid more than us!"
"We can't live on 15 bits a month! We were shocked that Anon was the one who organized this." shrieked Rainbow Dash, raising a sign saying Friend Cruelty!
"B-But... I... I..." mixed feelings bubbled inside Twilight as her friends were involved in this outcry you put up, "I thought you didn't care about the money and wanted to shape minds in friendship. Applejack, you produce Ponyville's source of Apples; you make more bits than everyone here! Why are you a part of this!?"
The farm pony heard Twilight's insight of her, clenching her teeth to contain her frustration, "...You think ma family is swimmin' in the gold like some thick-accent ducky?"
"Huh?"
"Haven't ya heard of taxes, Twi?!" Applejack stared deeply at her seemingly hiding her expression, "Most of those bits go into farm equipment, even more, goes to the townhall, leavin' us with the 20% from all sales! Even so, that still doesn't change the fact that your school pays less than what a farmer makes!"
"Twilight needs to burn in Tartarus!" roared Fluttershy, as her sign read Go To Tarturus waving it around at the students.
"F-Fluttershy!? What did I ever do to you!? Do you own an animal sanctuary for Tia's sake? You don't care about the bits!" she soon revealed that Fluttershy was the one acting all bent in this huge protest.
"All you care about is the bits, don't you? And never about the well-being of the poor animals and me!" Fluttershy hissed, "Some of us need time to spend time with the poor animals who are always waiting for me alone in the sanctuary!"
Next in line was Starlight Glimmer, levitating a sign saying Worse Than Me and saying, "Even When I enslaved a whole village to do my bidding, I would never rob them of their precious bits."
"I don't understand this!? Why are you all so fed up with your paychecks now when you weren't just a few weeks ago?" demanding answers from the group as Twilight stared down at you.
You didn't want to speak to her anymore, but you answered. "Because they never really thought it was a big deal when I finally mentioned it. They were fed up about it for months."
"And how about Pinkie Pie!? Isn't she mad too!?"
"No, she's fine with the pay..." you replied to her nonchalantly, "As long as she gets to bake pastries every day, she's a-okay! But we're not! You better change the ways of your greedy dictatorship you call a school by giving us a bi-annual paycheck of 14 bits an hour!"
"14 bits an hour every two weeks!?" she gasped doing minor calculations in her noggin, "14 times 8 over 10 school days is 1,120 bits every two weeks! That's impossible..."
"No...it's necessary," you huffed with your mind still on edge of the protest, "And you must provide us with worker benefits to go with it; store discounts paid vacation time, paid sick days, a free spa day once a week, and free pastries at the cafeteria..."
"H-huh!? That's way too much for a school that teaches friendship!" shaking her head, Twilight averted her face towards her angry friends. "J-just stop this whole thing, Anon! We can agree to terms that best suits-"
"ENOUGH OF THIS OUTRAGE!" two regal-sounding voices echoed from the distance, making you and everypony else stare down to the front entrance to trace the voices. They were Princess Celestia and Princess Luna in the flesh, and they were displeased as their faces speak for themselves.
"Oh thank goodness, Celestia! Luna! I need your help with this union Anon put together!" breathing the sigh of relief when some ponies of higher authority then her arrived at the disturbance.
"Yes, but there's something bigger than we needed to address dear Twilight," Celestia panned herself towards Twilight, who was shaking from all of this. "Perhaps our little whistleblower can do just that?"
Twilight raised a brow at her statement, "Whistleblower?"
You walked up over to Twilight from the front doors to further elaborate the situation, "I had a little inside man who was always there with you when you did your business at your office, and they have hard evidence that is the reason for our lack of pay...SPIKE! Come out now!"
To Twilight's surprise, she was gasping internally as something deep inside her was trying to stop him from flying up from the crowd of students and presenting a folder that was filled to the max with stacks of paper.
Her teeth clenched hard that it made her form sweat beads across her face. "S-Spike... what exactly are you doing with...THAT!?"
The dragon looked saddened by his face and eyes looking at his best friend, raising the folder to the Princesses'. Luna was the one that picked up the folder and began to skim through the documents. The astonished-looking face and wide eyes can only be caused by the contents of the folder.
"It's all true sister," she deeply stared down at Twilight with a big scowl, "But I want to hear it from herself..."
"Hear what... Lulu?..." cringing at her best not to spill her deep dark secret, Twilight stepped back a few inches to avoid confrontation. Only to be halted by Celestia's aura to keep her in one place.
"Twilight... just tell us what you've done and I'll consider reducing your sentence..." sighed the white alicorn, feeling a bit sympathetic over her elusive crime.
"I-I didn't do a-anything bad! I s-swear!" she stammered her voice, aiming her vision towards you and muttering, "You're the one who did this after all I've done for you?"
"Come on Twilight, what exactly did you do for the reason behind our low paycheck?" you smirked your hardest, keeping her on edge as you leaned over to her ears. "If you stay quiet, you might be in the friendship beams crosshairs..."
"Please tell them..." Spike pleaded to her as he's well aware of her secret, "It's for the best..."
The build-up of guilt was boiling inside her to the point where she couldn't contain the heat anymore. Kneeling on her back legs as she let out the dirty secret she was hiding for the rest of her life.
"I HAVEN'T BEEN PAYING MY TAXES, OKAY!?"
Everyone in the vicinity of the school's main hallway gasped in pure disbelief; the mare that was all about friendship, even the princess of it, committing such a felony like tax evasion? Rarity fainted on sight, which made the girls come to hold her as they couldn't believe what Twilight did was to her own volition.
"T-Twilight... how could you? Committing a crime against the government? Against me!?" Princess Celestia was flustered by her successor's reason.
"I'm so sorry Princess Celestia, it's just that..." she build up her frustration as Twilight took a deep breath, "THE GOVERNMENT IS CHEATING ON US CITIZENS OF OUR HARD EARNED BITS! Why should we of all ponies have to give them a portion of our bits just to support common resources? Don't give me an excuse for the royal guards; all they do is stand all day in the background while my friends and I do all the hard work! Why pay the hospitals when we can just heal patients with magic in seconds!? This whole infrastructure of a government is broken I tell you, BROKEN!"
"Impossible!?" Luna gasped, reaching in for the documents once more, "These are all the tax documents you've collected date back to... ever since moving to Ponyville?!"
"That's right! I've been doing this ever since Celestia sent me to Ponyville! I've been collecting my hard earn bits ever since while strategically avoiding to surrender it all towards the government!" Twilight snarkily spoken unhinged from her usual self, "I had help from a green dinosaur who did this for all his entire life!"
"B-But Twilight! What exactly happened to the money you've been keeping to yourself!?" asked Rainbow Dash, flying above her as she left pampering Rarity from her faint.
Twilight answered her, "What else? I've been spending it on books! Magic scrolls! and other stuff from off-the-chain businesses and shady retailers. How else did you think I funded the construction of the school from my own pockets?"
"I've heard enough, Twilight. You've been stealing bits from us and providing cruel wages for you and your friends!" the princess, seeing a teardrop from her eye as she turned directly to Twilight, "But I'm charging you with countless crimes against Equestrian kind; Tax evasion, embezzlement, worker cruelty, and being a lousy friend."
"No... please Celestia! Don't do this! I did this because the government is a corrupted scumbag, but I'm not saying you two are!" Twilight continued to plead for her life as she turned directly at you, "I'm sorry for what I did to you and my friends, PLEASE forgive me!"
You gently walked over to her teary face, adjusting the red tie and your black suit to give her an answer as you stared down at her, "You want forgiveness...get religion"
But then, Twilight bounced back as she stood up from her kneeling, "Religion? That's also a farce! God is just merely a projection of an imaginary entity that only exists in the cognitive minds of ones social-"
"That's it! I know exactly where to place you!" said Princess Celestia, lighting her horn up alongside her sister, "I expect Cozy Glow needing somepony to spend time with..."
You and the rest of Twilight's friends stayed silent as the sisters formed a portal that revealed a cage leading to Tartarus. Fluttershy was especially happy as her wishes are coming true to the tea. The sisters could see Twilight back up from the portal as she saw the cage calling out her name.
"Is that Twilight? Why is she crying like a baby?" Cozy Glow across the portal asked curiously seeing the alicorn in tears.
"No! Please, anything but there! I don't want to be stuck in Tartarus! There are no books over there!" she sat down in the fetal position, hiding her face from the portal.
Fed up by Twilight's crazy nature of being a tax-avoiding freak, you grabbed her by your hands and picked her up by the hoof, "I miss the part where that's my problem..."
She cried on the top of her lungs while you hoist her up on your shoulders like a sack of potatoes. Revving yourself up as you spun her around one revolution and instantly chucked her to the other side of the portal that lead to Tartarus. The sisters acted fast and closed the portal where the deed of putting that tax-dodging mare out of sight and out of mind.
"Well Anon, I humbly apologize for your lack of pay workers in this school, same goes for all of you here." apologized Celestia, bowing down to you like a king, "I'll make sure this school gets all of your demands you require."
The rest of Twilight's friends gathered around you, still in disbelief that their friend and Princess of Friendship would also minor in Tax Evasion. They all looked confused at the lack of somepony that would lead this school to victory.
"Thank you, Princess, but who will be headmare of the school now?" you asked her, seeing no one at the top of your head to fill in the role.
"Maybe you can take on the role..." she leaned over at you, making a flustered looking expression
"M-Me!? Are you sure? I don't think I'm ready for a big of a task..."
"Come one Anon! You were pretty much built for the job!" Rainbow Dash playfully hit you on your shoulder, "Plus, you're the one that enlightened us on Twilight's dirty deed!"
You couldn't believe yourself, going from teaching at a school to becoming basically the principal in a matter of three months. You stared down at the students waving and cheering you on as you gave out your answer,
"It's Head Master, by the way..."
Meanwhile in Tartarus...
"And that's why the government is a useless pile of junk that simply wants to take OUR bits for themselves and recycle them in pointless ways!" Twilight finished lecturing the filly from the confine of their cage, making her amazed by her detailed speech.
"Golly! I should've been friends with you from the start!" Cozy Glow clapped upon listening to Twilight's speech, "I hate the government too!"
Twilight pulled up a big smile on her face as she cheered alongside Cozy, "Ohmigosh Cell-Sisters!"