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// The Start 
// Story: The Equestrian Thieves Guild 
// by Wrat 
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Check Mate was only seven years old when they took away his family.
Seven years felt old to him. He felt mature. He felt grown up. He felt ready to face the truths of the world. But his feelings were wrong. 
In truth, seven years old was far too young. Too young to understand that his father was a powerful figure in the princess's court. Too young to understand that that kind of power bred enemies. Too young to realize just how easy it was for those enemies to accuse his father of treason and have him executed. He was too young to understand any of this. All he understood was that when he was seven, the guards came and took away his father. His father, who was the only family he had left.
The same enemies who had taken his father away took him in. Raising him as a ward, they sought to poison his thoughts of his father. They told him horrible things, and tried to win him to their side, that they might use him later. But Check Mate remembered the walks his father had taken him on. Check Mate remembered the times his father had smiled at him. And Check Mate realized that these ponies were not his friends, but his enemies. And so he waited. And watched. And learned. For years, he lived among his enemies, carefully watching them for weaknesses, for failures, for opportunities that he could exploit. 
He learned much in his time as a ward. He learned how to lie. He learned how to smile at your enemy while hating them with every fiber of your being. And as he learned, he waited for an opportunity to arise. And that opportunity came as a young pegasus off the streets. 
Stratus had never known a family. 
His father had died in the royal guard before he was ever born. His mother had died of grief while giving birth to him, and the doctors had pulled him out of her corpse. From before he could think, he had been juggled around from orphanage to foster home to orphanage, never lasting more than a few months. 
It wasn't his fault that he was so naturally curious. For any other foal, such curiosity would have been encouraged and nurtured. His ability to pick locks and sneak through the shadows enabled him to find out as much as he wanted, and he never used his talents maliciously, only for curiosity. But many of those in the homes Stratus was sent to had secrets they preferred to remain hidden, and they made that fact painfully clear to him. However, Stratus was a warrior at heart, and no matter how much his body may have been broken, his spirit never showed a crack. 
Of course, he never took a beating if he could avoid it. Rather than slow down, his kleptic habits increased in pace. Mastering the arts of stealth and investigation, there was soon no door that was not his servant, no shadow that was not his cloak, and no pony that was his equal. 
Stratus might have lived for many more years in such a state, if not for one dreary day. On that cold day in December, he knew he had gone too far. He had been snooping around the orphanage, when he saw the headmaster doing something that he shouldn't have. Normally, Stratus would have been too sneaky to be caught, but he had never seen something like this before. The distraction was just enough to cause him to slip up, and the headmaster saw him.
Just minutes later, Stratus found himself stumbling through the new fallen snow to escape the bigger foals the headmaster had set on him. The three foals were the largest in the orphanage, and they enforced the headmaster's rule in exchange for special privileges. 
Most days, Stratus could have escaped. He had escaped from the three many times before, flying out of reach, or hiding in a dark crevice. But one of his wings hurt where a heavy rock had struck it, and the snow revealed his trail to his pursuers. And so he ran, with the three large foals right on his heels. 
It was only a matter of time before they caught him. For them, it was more than just an order from the headmaster. Stratus was the one pony who could truly defy them, and his free spirited nature had made him their constant enemy. As they drove him to the ground, they began to punish him for all their failures over the years. 
Stratus was forced into a ball, his body and voice screaming in agony. In that moment he realized that if he did not act, the three foals were going to kill him. 
He didn't know how the brick got into his hooves. One second, the largest foal was rearing back for a vicious kick, and the next, he was stumbling backwards, clutching his broken jaw. The three thugs were forced to flee as Stratus wildly flailed about with the brick, striking out in a blind frenzy. Stratus continued swinging the brick long after they had left, the pain clouding his mind. When his head finally cleared, the hopelessness of his situation became clear. He had no home to return to, no friends to take him in, and the cold was already seeping into his bones. To make matters worse, he could feel bones in his body shift around as he moved, and his blood dripped freely, polluting the pure white snow beneath.
Through sheer force of will, he dragged himself into a nearby building. The building was an old warehouse, long since abandoned and stripped of anything useful. But it was out of the wind, and away from any ponies the headmaster might send to finish the job. Curling up in a corner, Stratus hugged his wings tightly around his body, wondering how he would survive. He fell into a deep, fevered sleep.
When his fever broke days later, Stratus realized that he would need to eat. His ribs were beginning to poke out from his already skinny frame, and he could feel his stomach shrinking. Forcing himself to ignore the pain, he dragged his body to a nearby market place. There, he began begging for food, for scraps, for anything any pony could spare. But no pony even gave him a second glance, brushing past him as though he were already dead. Stratus could feel the pain in his stomach growing with every second, and knew that to return to the warehouse was to seal his fate. In that moment, he made a decision.
Years of sneaking had trained him well to be a thief. The stall vendors never even noticed that some of their wares had gone missing, along with the small foal. As Stratus frantically stuffed food into his mouth, feeling his stomach stretching outwards, he realized that no pony truly cared for him. The only pony who could make things better for him was himself.
And that was how, after several years on the streets as a petty thief, he found himself standing outside an enormous mansion. The mansion was nothing special, just another house to most of the nobility. But to Stratus, it was a challenge. Gone were the days when he had to steal food to survive. Thievery was more than just a means of survival to him now. It was adventure. It was excitement. It was his way of shouting his defiance to the world that had forsaken him.
Getting into the mansion was easy for Stratus. Safe in the embrace of his only friends, the shadows, he slipped over the garden wall and slithered into the back door. But once inside, Stratus realized his mistake. From the outside, the mansion had seemed large enough, but inside, it was impossible to find his way around. A maze of doors, walls, and guards assaulted his skills as he desperately searched for something that would satisfy his thirst. As the night wore on, he grew increasingly desperate, knowing that when the sun rose, his window of opportunity would be at an end. Carelessly, he walked around a corner, at the exact second that a young earth pony was approaching. But this mistake was not detrimental to him: it was the single greatest accident that could have happened.
Check Mate had been returning to his room after a night of study when he ran into the pegasus thief. At first, shock overwhelmed him, and he almost cried out in alarm. But he quickly realized that this could be the chance he had been waiting for for seven years. Striking up a conversation, he began trying to win over the pony before him. Stratus, hesitant at first, soon opened up when he realized that the other meant him no harm.
After a few minutes of talking, the two realized the potential benefits each could receive from the other. Stratus saw a wealth of information and strategic insight that could help him achieve even greater feats than ever before. Check Mate saw a chance to finally deliver justice upon the ponies who had destroyed his family. That night, the two of them forged a partnership which would eventually shake Equestria itself.
When the family awoke in the morning, they found their vault completely emptied. All their letters of credit had been taken as well, and when they rushed to the banks, they found that their accounts had been drained. All that was left was a note, signed by a group calling themselves "The Equestrian Thieves Guild." In just a few short months, they were forced to sell everything to keep out of debt. Their noble title was gambled away in a desperate bid for cash, and after a long, slow decay, they were forced to leave Canterlot, and Equestria, forever.
The night after the heist, Stratus and Check Mate toasted their success. As the night wore on, they both began to think about the future. Creating a fake thieves guild had seemed nothing more than a trick to throw their enemies off of their trail, but the more they considered it, the more they liked the idea. Stratus thought of the greater challenges he could take on and the greater rewards he could reap. Check Mate thought of hunting down the others who had ruined his family, and finally having peace from the ancient crime.
It would be many years before the name of the Equestrian Thieves Guild would become common. Many years before their name would strike fear into the hearts of merchants and nobility across the world. Many years before the princesses themselves would lead the hunt for the notorious organization. For now, they were just two ponies in a room that smelled of cheap cigarettes and cheaper booze.
A more promising start has never been had.