"The Great and Powerful Trixie rejects your atrocious and usurious offer."
"This is not un-serious," the human, Tanner, said sharply. "This is very serious."
Trixie facehoofed and swished her tail, rustling her cape. "Not unserious," Trixie grated, "usurious."
"Don't use fancy Pony words."
"It's a human word."
"Eh?" Tanner grunted.
"From your Bible."
"I've read the whole—"
"Usury is a sin," Trixie said, glaring up at him. It was hard to glare at somecreature when your head was about even with their belt, but Trixie liked a challenge.
"Five times," said the human.
"Five times you apologize to Trixie? Trixie accepts."
"I have read the whole Bible five times, and I haven't seen 'unserious' being a sin."
Trixie knew the human's name was Tanner, but was too angry at him to bother calling him that. She pawed at the ground with a forehoof. "Trixie wants to know why you think you can raise the rent on her storage unit from fifty to eighty-five dollars a month."
"Look," he said. "This is Chattanooga—"
"That argument carries less weight than you might imagine."
"And Chattanooga has less self storage units than demand."
"A lie, a base falsehood." Trixie levitated her phone and stylus out and began scrolling Cadance'sList. "There are plenty of storage units for rent. Look, one owned and operated by ponies. Aloe and Lotus, I've had sex with them! 'Rent a storage unit, get a free hooficure'."
"Taking more of our jobs!?" the human growled. Then, "Look, the cost of elec—"
"Electricity is cheaper than ever, ever since the Nuclear Regulatory Commission realized that unicorn poo is a superior substitute for low-enriched urania in light water reactors."
"Wait, that's true? I thought that was 'The Onion'."
"No, onions upset our digestion." Trixie rolled her eyes. Selling nuclear fuel was why she now had a Land Rover instead of her decrepit wagon.
"The cost of labor," Tanner said. "My custodian—"
Trixie's horn sparked and a small dust devil swept the concrete floor clear for a fifty step radius and deposited the litter and filth into a trash bin. "You were saying?"
"Don't take his job!" Tanner said, wagging a finger. "He's my cousin and too dumb to survive in the outside job market. Look! Look, Miss Trixie, ma'am—"
"My pronouns are 'great' and 'powerful,' not 'ma'am'."
"Those are adjectives. The rent is eighty-five, starting the first of the month."
"You haven't given Trixie a reason!"
"Because I said so." Tanner turned around and started to walk away.
"You—you—you just think Trixie is too lazy to move her stuff to a different unit and therefore you can jack up the price randomly to cash in on Trixie's laziness!"
The human gave a little shrug.
"What if Trixie refuses to pay more than fifty dollars a month for her storage unit?"
He turned around. "Then I lock the unit and sell all your stuff to the highest bidder."
Trixie smiled.
"Unf," Starlight said, teleporting back in. "There. All of your crap is in your new storage unit."
"Thank you, Starlight. Did you see Aloe and Lotus?"
Starlight rubbed her horn. "What was that last one? It was heavy."
"That last pallet was Trixie's bowling ball collection."
"Why do you have a bowling ball collection?"
Trixie stared at Starlight, dumbfounded. "Y-you don't?"
They stood in the storage unit; having teleported clandestinely in, it was still locked from the outside, and a pair of electric lanterns on the floor provided dim light and deep shadows. Tanner would never know she'd retrieved her belongings.
Starlight levitated up a broom and began sweeping.
"Don't clean up," Trixie said, taking the broom away. "We're leaving in disgust and losing the security deposit will be worth making his cousin clean it." Trixie levitated up one of the two new boxes she had brought with her and opened it, releasing about fifty rats, six snakes, and an angry hydra larva.
"Are those snakes venomous?" Starlight asked.
"They're native species, not invasive."
"That's not the question I asked."
"Oh, my, look at the time," Trixie said without checking her phone or pocketwatch.
The rats and snakes disappeared into the wells of shadow that the lanterns didn't penetrate.
"And now," Trixie said, "for the real reason I needed your help."
"You needed me to teleport your bowling balls, apparently."
"I could have done that."
Starlight blinked. "Teleport, yes. On target, no."
Trixie levitated up the last box and placed it in the center of the now-empty storage unit.
"What's that?" Starlight asked nervously.
"A filly in a box, to be found by a human."
"That's sounds... familiar?" Starlight tapped her chin. "Feels like something Dash was telling me about."
Starlight started to open the box. Trixie bopped her on the nose. "No, I just need a spell on the door before we teleport out."
"What spell?"
Trixie removed the spell book from under her cape and showed it to Starlight.
"I see you woke up and chose violence today."
Puzzled, Trixie said, "I woke up and chose waffles."
"Ah, this is it," Trixie said, a few months later.
Starlight plopped down next to her on their couch. "What?"
Trixie mashed the remote with a hoof, turning up the volume on the TV. "The episode."
"What episode?"
"The episode, the episode!"
"What are you rambling about? Did you spike your blood sugar again with some fad diet to produce extra reactor fuel?"
"The episode," Trixie said.
"On this week's Storage War$," said the stern-voiced announcer, and the show began to roll. THE MOGUL it labeled a character. Another THE GAMBLER. Annoying harmonica music rolled as shots of indoor storage units played on the TV.
"Trixie," Starlight said, voice soft, "what am I about to be an accomplice to?"
"This was filmed weeks ago, you're practically an accomplice after-the-fact by now."
"Give me the popcorn."
"We're sharing."
"No, I might need it all." They struggled for a few seconds over the bowl of popcorn before Starlight ended up with it, leaving Trixie glaring and fuming.
"That's my storage unit!" Trixie crowed as the characters on the show bid against each other for it. There was still quite a bit of mystery about ponies in humans' minds, so given the fact that it was a pony's abandoned possessions, the bidding spiraled upward quickly.
One of them won the quick bidding war and stepped into the storage unit.
The single cardboard box began to shake and rattle.
Starlight clicked off the TV.
"Trixie. Why did you have me put a de-petrification spell on the door? And what was in that box?" Starlight paused. "And why do I think that's related to the disappearance of the Cozy Glow statue?"
"Alleged disappearance."
"No, it disappeared. The alleged part is that it was allegedly stolen."
"Allegedly." Trixie turned the TV back on. "I want to see the autopsies."
Author's Note
I saw someone on Twitter complaining about how self-storage is a scam on par with payday loans.
Trixie is the bane of scammers.
