“A restraining order!” she exclaimed, while pressing her hooves down so hard on the royal breakfast table that she could hear it creaking. “How dare that overgrown lizard.”

She picked up her cup and threw it once more across the room. Like the last two times, the cup and all of its black liquid content made a complete stop mid-air, then flew back to their original position next her plate, all the while surrounded by her sisters magic. It was a game they had often played when one of them was upset.

“There is more,“ Haywood said, sitting to her left, while he read the letter from the court in Vanhoover.

“Oh dear,” Celestia said.

“He demands twenty-thousand bits in medical costs, with another five for causing mental distress,” Haywood continued, while ignoring the whirlwind next to him. “That’s roughly the amount you have in your bank account.”

“And the price of that airship that you wanted commissioned,” Celestia mused, not quite able to keep the amusement from her voice. “What were you going to call it again?”

“The Moon's Return,” she growled, knowing that her sister knew full well that the construction would need to be postponed several years.

“Did you really have to smash his face in?” asked Celestia's royal advisor, Kibitz, from across the table. “If this goes to the press it could be quite the scandal.”

“I don't think Gordon Rich will make this public,” Haywood said. “The dragon seems to value his privacy.”

“Still, I doubt you can win this lawsuit, Luna,” Celestia said, in between sips of her morning tea. “We spent a whole day looking for anything illegal surrounding Gordon, and found nothing.”

“True, and he has four witnesses against our zero,” Haywood continued, and scooted the chair slightly away from her.

“Bah, why don't you two just kiss again,” she exclaimed, and threw away her cup a fourth time. This time it didn't stop mid-air, but instead splashed all over the Saddle Arabian carpet that had been a friendship gift during their last diplomatic delegation. She now remembered why they had stopped playing this game a millennium ago.

“That was a six-thousand bit rug,” Kibitz mumbled. Celestia and Haywood were too frozen to react.

“Could this morning get any worse?” she sighed, laying her head on the table. “I’ve thought of a few ways to get back at him, but they all have too many problematic drawbacks.”

Celestia snapped out of the stupor and turned to face her. “Drawbacks?"

“I could enact a law that makes it illegal to have more than twenty percent of your wealth in physical bits,” she said, with her cheek still pressed to the table. “That would force him and others to put a decent chunk back into the system, unless he uses it to buy goods outside of Equestria.”

“That's a pretty big ‘if’,” Kibitz complained, mustache twitching. “Such a law would be very hard to enforce, and cause unnecessary problems for ponies, with the worst case scenario being it not solving anything.”

“Exactly. We could also add a yearly fortune-tax that is based on a percentage of their wealth,” she said, without any real conviction in her voice. “But I assume you all know the problems that would cause.”

“The merchants and nobility are already annoyed at us because of the monetary crisis,” Kibitz sighed, shaking his head. “Adding more taxes at this point would be ‘the hay-straw that broke the pony's back,’ so to speak.”

“I think our best course of action is to work with Gordon, not against him,” Celestia stated, voice full of confidence. “We might find a solution that will benefit us both.”

She took her head off the table and leaned in close to Haywood. “Here it comes,” she whispered, and theatrically rolled her eyes.

“I think Twilight will be perfect for the job,” Celestia said, smiling at the prospect of giving her pupil another conundrum to solve. “I’m also very interested in their contact with the changelings.”

“So we let Twilight Sparkle fix everything for us again,” she deadpanned. “When was the last time you did something yourself?”

“Oh, don't be so sour, Luna,” Celestia beamed, giving her a warm smile. “Twilight is the Princess of Friendship after all, and from what you briefed me about him, Gordon is the kind of stallion that puts a high emphasis on business relations. It's like what he said about the changelings—he needs us more than we need him.”

“So we work with him instead,” she groaned, and waved at the service mare to bring in another cup of the black joy. “Are we really going to take his advice about using paper money?”

“I don’t think so,” Celestia chuckled. “It would risk being like that time we introduced tulips as a form of currency.”

“Ah, yes,” she replied. “It did actually work for a time, until those pegasi messed up the length of a winter, which caused all the ponies to eat the nation's entire supply of ‘money’ months before the next harvest.”

Kibitz and Haywood looked at the laughing sisters with more than a hint of scepticism.

“That sounds insane,” Haywood said, trying to wrap his head around the idea of using food in such a way.

“We ruled far fewer ponies during those days,” Celestia explained. “We could personally help anyone that got hurt by our policies, but we can’t do that anymore. Now that Equestria has become such a far-stretching nation, we play it safer now than in the past.”

“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I’ve learned so much these last two days!” Twilight Sparkle beamed, bouncing around in circles inside the office, all while levitating several charts, diagrams, and what looked like anatomical studies of dragons. “Gordon Rich knows so much about dragon culture, and when I asked him why he never published a book about it, he simply said. ‘It never crossed my mind’. Can you believe that, Luna?”

“I can imagine it being hard for him to write in a normal book,” she replied, not sure what to make of the situation. Twilight was supposed to have had a quick meeting with Gordon, but had ended up staying there for two whole days. Now the energetic mare had suddenly teleported into her office out of nowhere, babbling about pie charts and how well Spike and Gordon got along.

“Oh, he never writes anything himself, he simply lets Air Service transcribe for him.” Twilight answered. At least the mare had given up on bouncing around, but still alternated between standing on her left and right legs. “Did you know that grown dragons don’t need to hibernate if they limit their dietary intake of amethysts? And that they create substantially less smoke if they polish emeralds before eating them? That’s so interesting!”

“Fascinating,” she agreed, and couldn’t help but to tap her hoof impatiently on the bench. “You should publish a book about it, and I will be sure to read it.”

Haywood’s head appeared in the open door, no doubt curious about what the commotion was about. Their eyes met and she nodded at him to enter, though he gave the excited Twilight a wide berth.

“I’ve got enough material to write three books!” Twilight exclaimed. “Though, Gordon wanted two-thirds of any royalties from the sales, and when I told him that I would never bother with royalties, he broke out in a coughing fit.”

“And did you convince him to stop sabotaging the economy?” she asked, being blunt about it to restrain Twilight from going off-topic.

“Yep!” Twilight cheered. “It took some effort trying to convince him that working with the princesses would yield the best long-term dividend.”

“How did you manage that?” Haywood asked, having taken one of the seats along the wall.

“I showed him charts of projected profits that compared him working with us related to against. He first stared at me like I was a crazy mare, but after two days of hard numbers-crunching presentations, he agreed to deposit the majority of his coins back into the banks and business.”

“So, no paper money then?” Haywood asked.

Both alicorns laughed at that.

“Of course not,” They both replied simultaneously after their chuckling had subsided. “That idea was silly and would have never worked.”

Her office was warm, cozy and lacked a certain Twilight Sparkle—who had returned to pester Gordon Rich with questions about dragon wing anatomy or something.

Haywood lay on the couch, slightly yawning as he read through the final reports about the bits that now were back in circulation.

“I think we can now put this case to rest,” she announced, and signed the last paper needed to conclude her report. “It was a fun adventure wasn’t it, Haywood?”

“Most thrilling,” he agreed, in a very neutral response.

“So, what more crises ails the nation?” she asked, with her mane slightly disheveled.

“There has been some legal issues over land between the Hooffields and the Mccolts again—” He stopped himself when he saw her twitching eye, and noted the once-again large stack of empty cups on her desk.

“Where do they live?” she asked.

Haywood looked at the window, then back to her, then to the mound of cups.

“If I tell you, can you promise to not send us flying through the window again?”

“No promises,” she grinned.