The Royal Thief

by LTBroski

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Flow, Lightning Shift, and Wise Guy stood outside the long house as the sun continued to rise above the treetop parapet, bathing the courtyard of the base in its early morning light. Wise Guy yawned noisily while Flow let out an exasperated sigh. He checked the position of the sun, judging the time to be roughly seven. Looking back towards the doors of the building, Flow could see Longshot returning with a confused and slightly worried expression on her face.

“Nothing then?” he asked, breaking the silence.

“Not even a note” Longshot answered. “This isn’t like him,” she said nervously, scanning the sky, “I would have thought he’d be the first one out here.”

“Maybe he got caught up in Canterlot?” Lightning Shift suggested, looking up from where he was preening his wings. “He was delivering that armor to the Princess, right? It’s likely he stayed at his place for the night.” He looked closely at his right wing and continued his grooming regimen.

“Still, he would have been here on time. He was there when we agreed on six thirty, right?” Longshot said, her tone growing exasperated. “I mean, what if the Lunar Guard gave him trouble? He can handle himself in a fight, but he isn’t a soldier by any stretch of the imagination.”

“Longshot, relax” Flow said before she could continue her rant. “I’m sure Az’ll be along shortly. And if he isn’t, we have something to do today other than build stuff…” he glanced over at the stacks of lumber that were delivered earlier that morning. Wise Guy yawned again, but the sound was cut short by blaring sirens going off, indicating an approaching pegasus. Flow jerked his head over to see his team jumping at the noise. “Lightning!” he barked.

“On it!” Lightning Shift shot up into the air, trailing a stream of static electricity as he flew off. The sirens cut off as Captain Shade came running outside, along with Proxis and Iron Feather, both of whom looked like they had very little time to put on their armor before running outside. Shade gave a hurried look over the group before turning to address Flow.

“How long has he been in the air?”

“About fifteen seconds, he should have intercepted at this point.” Flow let out a short chuckle. “Tell me again how you managed to pull the Wonderbolts’ top recruit out from underneath them?” Shade returned the chuckle.

“Promises of adventure and excitement the Wonderbolts couldn’t match.” He squinted to where Lightning Shift had flown off to, and could just make out two shapes flying towards the base. “Made for an interesting meeting when that dragon popped up in Ponyville. All those promises and he got to read about something more exciting that what he was doing in the news. He was not a happy camper by any stretch of the imagination.” He shook his head, remembering the experience. “In any case, it looks like he found whoever was flying in. Probably Az?”

“It’s likely, how’d you figure it out though?” Flow looked at Shade with a confused expression.

“Pretty easy actually. The kid’s not here, and there are only two ponies flying back. Simple process of elimination” he explained nonchalantly, turning to Proxis and Iron Feather. “You two can go about your business, everything here is taken care of.” The two nodded and walked back towards the long house. Once they were out of earshot, Shade turned to Longshot, who was watching the two shapes closing in on the base. “I take it this is abnormal behavior?” She turned away from watching the sky long enough to glance at Shade.

“Yeah, lateness usually isn’t his thing. Unless he’s on a job and made plans to meet with somepony for dinner… But I digress, late isn’t his thing.” She looked back down to see three curious faces looking at her. “What?”

“Dinner? So you two were an item!” Wise Guy exclaimed triumphantly. His jubilation was quickly silenced with a punch to the shoulder by an irritated Longshot.

“No, we were not” she said, annoyed, to the group. “It was to discuss plans for our next job. It’s much safer to meet in public over a meal than trying a whole bunch of cloak and dagger. Ponies tend to notice suspicious activity like that, especially guards.” As she finished talking, Az and Lightning Shift cleared the parapet and quickly descended to join the group. As the two touched down, Flow cut the conversation short.

“Nice of you to join us. Get caught in traffic?” he said, walking up to Az.

“Heh, no, sorry about that” Az responded sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head. “I got caught up talking with Luna. Oh, speaking of which, the reason I’m late is because she was writing this up for you” he reached back into his saddlebags and retrieved a slim book. He gave it to Flow who flipped through a few pages before letting out a low whistle and showing it to Shade.

“Manual for the auto-landing mechanism. This looks like it took weeks to prepare though” he flipped through a few more pages. “The drawings are beyond precise, it almost looks like they could jump off the page at me.” He looked up to see Az chuckling. “Something funny?”

“She predicted you would say exactly that, intonation and everything. As for the jumping off the page thing, check this out.” He reached out to the page of the manual Flow had open and tapped on a small mark in the upper right-hand corner of the page. As he did so, the picture on the page, an exploded diagram of the control board, projected itself into the air, causing Flow to drop the book in surprise. The book remained open as it hit the ground, and the diagram grew, expanding as it moved further away from Flow’s face. It glowed a faint blue, weak in the morning sunlight, and Flow leaned in for a closer look, having gotten over his initial shock.

“Well that’s something” he breathed. “I’m going to need to take a closer look at this later, actually learn how to use the system I guess.” He shook his head, grinning, as he closed the book and turned to Az. “You really have it in good with royalty, don’t you?” Az chuckled softly and shrugged.

“What can I say? I guess I’m just that charming.” The rest of Nightstalker chuckled along with him and Shade simply shook his head, a ghost of a grin playing along his lips.

“Alright, alright. Everypony’s here, now get to work, you have a lot of construction to take care of today.” He turned to leave before Az cleared his throat, catching his attention. “Something else, then? You never can leave it as it is, can you, kid?” Az chuckled again, and, reaching into his saddlebags, retrieved a small bag that emitted a faint clinking noise as it moved about in his grip.

“I guess you should have figured that out at this point. In any case, Luna and I came up with these last night.” Shade levitated the bag towards himself and retrieved a piece of its contents, a small metal block, sized as if to fit alongside a pony’s head underneath a helmet, with two wires protruding from it. The thicker of the two wires remained straight after leaving the body of the block and ended with a small slotted section after three inches. The second wire was curved, and although thinner than the first, was covered with a rubber tube. After inspecting it, Shade passed it to Flow, who looked it over with a larger degree of curiosity.

“This is the point where you tell us what it is, if I’m not mistaken?” Flow asked, looking up from the small device.

“Oh! Right, yeah, sorry about that” Az said, suddenly realizing the design was not as obvious as he and Luna thought it would be. He walked over to Flow and took the small block from him. He fitted the rubber encased wire over his ear so that the thicker, slotted wire sat close to the corner of his mouth. “They’re communicating devices, enchanted so that you can talk to each other without needing to be near each other.” He took five more out of the bag and passed them to his teammates and Shade, indicating for them to put them on. “Wait right here” he said before winging to the other side of the courtyard and stopping to hover. He began speaking, and much to everypony’s surprise, they could hear him clearly enough to understand. “So yeah, they pretty much work just like this. Pretty neat, right?” He flew back to where the other ponies were standing, each sporting a different variation of a surprised expression.

“So Luna and I thought these could come in handy so we put together enough for every member of the Guard” Az said, landing next to Longshot. “We just can’t have more than one pony talking at once. It was… painful.” He winced and rubbed his ear, as if remembering having his eardrum blown out.

Shade, as usual, was the first to recover from his surprise. “Well between you and the Princess, it looks like we have a decently functioning brain” he said, drawing chuckles from the now recovering members of Nightstalker. “I’ll ensure these get used from now on, they definitely seem like they could help out in a pinch.” He took the piece out of his ear and placed it back in the bag. “I’ll take these back to my office, you guys hold onto those, since you’ll be building all day. Now get to it, you ship out in a week.” He collected the bag of communicators in his magical aura and walked towards the long house.

Once he was out of earshot, Longshot turned to Az with a bemused look on her face. “What is it with you and Princesses nowadays?” A devilish grin spread across her face. “Does Princess Twilight know you’re cheating on her?” she said, causing Flow, Wise Guy, and Lightning Shift to almost fall over laughing with the sudden accusation. Az, in turn, scowled at her.

“As I have told you before, Twilight and I are friends, nothing more. The same now goes for Luna.” He coughed before quickly adding “that typically happens when you talk shop over seven or eight drinks.” The laughing died instantly, and eight eyes focused on Az as he proceeded to rub the back of his head, looking more sheepish as time passed.

“Wait, seriously?” Lightning Shift asked, shaking his head as if to clear it. “I had heard she’s kinda, you know, weird. I mean, after a thousand years on the moon and all…” He looked around at the others for support.

“So let me get this straight,” Flow said, “I sent you up there to drop off her armor and she gives you drinks and chats with you all night?” Az nodded. “What the buck?! I should have dropped it off myself!” He sat down on the ground and pouted. Az rolled his eyes and began walking towards the pile of lumber in the corner of the yard.

“Can we walk and talk? I kinda didn’t get any sleep last night and the sooner we get this done, the better I think.” The others quickly caught up and it wasn’t long before the questions continued to flow, causing him to breathe an exasperated sigh and trudge forward, his head closer to the ground and ears flattened.

“But really, is she weird like everypony says?” Lightning Shift asked, pressing forward with his previous line of questioning.

“No more than you or I,” Az replied, “but she does slip into old-timey Equestrian now and then, especially when telling stories about her past. Other than that, she was pretty cool to talk to once she opened up.”

“And how did you get her to do that?” Longshot interjected, a devious grin spreading across her face.

“Nothing I did, per say” Az responded, shrugging. “Apparently I reminded her of somepony she knew once, though I was never able to figure out who she was talking about.” They arrived at the stack of lumber to find it divided by beam length. A set of blueprints was stapled to the front of the stack, folded over several times to account for the size of the building to be constructed. “Well here we are, that’s it for story time I think, now we can get started, right Flow?” Hearing no response, Az looked around to see where Flow was. While the group had set off towards the lumber pile, Flow remained seated, still pouting that he missed a chance to drink with royalty. Shaking her head, Longshot whistled loud enough to catch his attention, but also caused those nearby to cringe at its pitch and volume. Flow perked up, looked around to see he was abandoned in the middle of the field, and hurried over to the lumber pile.

“So boss, what’s the plan?” Wise Guy asked, grinning, “that is assuming you’re done moping.” Flow glowered at him, still embarrassed before clearing his throat and walking over to the pile to inspect the blueprints.

“The plan is for you to stop making smart-ass comments, first of all” Flow said, unfolding the plans. Wise Guy winked at him, causing Flow to roll his eyes. “As far as the mission goes, we’re going to make the layout today, which should take four or five hours if we push it. Tomorrow is gear check and planning, and the rest of the week is practice, full gear the whole time.” Longshot, Wise Guy, and Lightning Shift groaned, while Az looked at them confused. “Hey, hey,” Flow interjected, “you know how I work.”

“Better uncomfortable now than dead later” the three deadpanned in chorus.

“Right.” Flow was about to return to looking over the plans when he saw Az staring at the other three confused. “Oh, sorry, I forgot you’re new. Whenever we have to practice for an op this big, I like to run it in full gear to make sure we’re ready to go. I’m sure you did something similar in the past?” Longshot barked out a laugh, causing Flow to look over at her with an arched eyebrow. “Something I miss?”

“Plan anything? Mister Fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants over here? No matter how much prep I usually do for a mission or job, he shows up totally unprepared every time.” She continued chuckling to herself.

“Whoa now, I’m never unprepared” Az retorted. “Just because I never do run-throughs doesn’t mean I don’t prepare.”

“Whoa, whoa, you’ve never done a run-through before a job?” Wise Guy asked incredulously.

“Yep” Longshot answered, still smirking. “It’s caused a few close calls, if I’m not mistaken?” Az snorted, causing her to chuckle again.

“ANYways,” Flow interjected agitatedly, before the conversation could go any further, “we do run-throughs here, and will be doing a lot of them before the week is out. We’ll do the gear check at noon tomorrow, that work with everypony? We’ll be working pretty hard today to get this framework done, and I want us to get enough rest this week.” The rest of the team nodded in agreement. “Right, so let’s get started with this. I’ll lay down the pattern magically, and we just need to fill in the frame for now. We’ll get to securing everything once all the boards are in place.” His horn flared, and the outline as shown on the blueprint page lit up on the field with an ethereal glow. “Alright folks, let’s get this done.”

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After five hours of placing, fitting, and nailing together the frame of the building, Nightstalker made their way back to the long house to eat and get some much needed rest. Az, who had spent the previous night awake, was the first to make his way back towards his room. Sunlight still streamed through his window, although it contained the light gold color of early afternoon. He set about putting away his saddlebags and gathering up his armor before heading to bed for the afternoon and night. Az looked his armor over and searched through each of the pockets, ensuring that everything he left in them was still there. Satisfied that nothing went missing since he left the previous night, Az placed his armor by the door and turned back towards his bed, yawning loudly.

Might as well close the blinds at least he thought drowsily. After doing so, he rolled onto his bed to finally get some shuteye. As he rolled onto his side, he felt a slight crinkling sensation underneath him. Weird bed, it feels like I’m lying on paper. He yawned again before his eyes snapped open with the realization that he was laying on a rolled up piece of parchment. Getting up off the scroll, Az picked it up with a wing to get a closer look at it, but having closed the blinds only moments beforehand, was unable to make out any details about it. He hopped out of bed to try and avoid messing up the covers too much and walked over to the window. As he opened the blinds, sunlight once again streamed into the room, hurting his eyes.

Wincing, Az looked back at the scroll gripped in his wing. Despite being wrinkled from having been laid on, he was able to discern that it was neatly rolled up and sent by Twilight, as the crest affixed to the ribbon indicated. What does she need this time? I thought she went back to Ponyville… He slid the ribbon off of the letter and unrolled it, noting it smelled more like books than usual. I guess she did send this then, lives in a library if I remember right. He was about to begin reading when he noticed the penmanship was different than the previous letters she had sent him. Instead of the typical flowing script she regularly used, the writing style appeared rigid and rudimentary, as if the quill was manipulated by a hoof rather than magic. Confused, Az began reading.

Az,

First of all, I’d like to thank you for making Pinkie’s day yesterday. She was positively ecstatic that somepony actually showed up at her little surprise party. Admittedly, some of my friends still have their doubts about you, but you definitely won her over. That being said, I’ve received permission from Princesses Celestia and Luna to bring them to your base of operations, pending approval from your commander. After you managed to snag a piece of cake from under our noses some of the girls have been itching to see if you’ve “improved” after taking Fluttershy’s Element. Pinkie also said something about getting some pointers, but I don’t think you need to indulge her in that endeavor. I know this is a little short-notice, but we were hoping to come visit as soon as possible, there are a lot of things coming up that we need to get ready for. Could you please talk to your commander about this? If he gives you any trouble about letting random ponies on base, just tell him they’re the Elements of Harmony, that should smooth things over.

Your friend,

Twilight Sparkle
P.S. Oh, and if you were wondering about the penmanship (I would too) it’s because my assistant, Spike, is writing for me as I dictate.

Az sighed as he finished reading the letter. He rolled it back up and tucked it under his wing before rubbing his temples in agitation. “I’m never going to hear the end of this” he muttered, walking towards the door of his room. He opened the door and almost walked into Longshot as she stood with a hoof raised to knock.

“I was just coming to talk to you” she said, slightly surprised that the door was suddenly replaced with Az’s face.

“So I noticed” he replied, looking at her raised hoof. She chuckled nervously before lowering it to scratch at the back of her head. “So what’s up, L?”

“Just letting you know what the deal is for tomorrow,” she spotted the scroll tucked under Az’s wing, “but more importantly, what’s up with the letter?” She plucked the letter out from under Az’s wing with her magic eliciting a surprised noise from him and trotted down the hallway, opening it. “Oooh, it’s from Princess Twilight! Any good lovey-dovey stuff in here?” she teased as Az sprinted down the hallway to catch her. Upon catching up, he lunged for the letter, only to have it tugged out of his reach at the last second by Longshot. He flapped his wings before hitting the ground, and turned quickly to prevent her from getting further down the hallway.

“Oh, c’mon, Az. What’re you going to do to stop me from reading this to the whole main room?” she asked, the devilish grin he was beginning to hate spreading across her face.

Better fight fire with fire here, or explosives at least. The angry expression stretched across his face vanished, replaced with a smug look. “Oh, nothing. Later, though, I wouldn’t be surprised if all of my grenades suddenly rolled under your door while you sleep soundly in your bed.”

Her eyes narrowed “you wouldn’t.”

“I might” he narrowed his eyes to match hers, as a smirk spread across his face. She humphed and held the letter out to him he took it quickly, rolled it up, and replaced it under his wing. “So what’s the deal with tomorrow?” he asked pleasantly, and began walking down the hallway.

“We’re meeting up at noon, like Flow said. Make sure you bring all of your stuff that you plan on bringing on the mission. After that, we’ll be planning entry and egress routes, shouldn’t take more than an hour or two. I just figured I’d remind you since you took off pretty early after lunch.” They reached the main room and Az stopped to go into Shade’s office. “You’re always in there, you know that?” she asked, bemused.

“Much to my chagrin, as well as his, I can assume” Az responded, before knocking on the door. Longshot rolled her eyes and walked back towards the rest of the team. After hearing Shade call for him to enter, Az opened the door to find Shade looking through some new letters. He looked up from the papers and cocked an eyebrow at Az.

“Kid, can I get through a single day without you coming into my office for some reason?”

“Probably not. I do have a question for you, though.” He took the letter out from underneath his wing and held it out to Captain Shade. The letter became enveloped in the captain’s silvery-grey magic, and floated over to him.

“Still getting love letters from the Princess, huh?” Shade unrolled the scroll and began reading. Once his finished, he levitated the letter back to Az, who tucked it back underneath his wing. “So the Elements consider you some kind of pet project. How lucky for you.” Az chuckled dryly. “Well, if they have the three Princess’ permission, I can’t see any reason to deny them access. Do you have any idea how they’ll arrive?” Az shook his head. “Fantastic, well you be sure to ask that when you write back and let me know, will you?” He looked back down at the pile of papers in front of him. “Have them come in later in the week, like Thursday or Friday. You can use them for practice, have them wander the building and sneak around them, that sort of thing.” Az nodded and walked out the door. He walked over to the rest of this team to tell them what was going on.

As he expected, they broke into laughter after he told them. Shaking his head, he made his way back towards his room, yawning the whole way. Once he reached his room, Az dug his quill and ink out from his nightstand and set about writing back to Twilight. His response simply read:

Shade’s ok with it. I just need to know how you girls will be arriving, and whether Thursday or Friday would work better? Sincerely, Az

Az rolled up the letter, replaced the ribbon around it and said “send.” The letter vanished in a puff of green flame and smoke. Az yawned again, put away his writing utensils, closed the blinds and climbed into bed, falling asleep almost instantly.

Author's Note:

Yay another chapter! I'll try to be a little more regular with these.

Thanks for reading!