Several stories up in the fruit-loading depot, a small group of ponies scurried along a hallway, the lights of their headlamps casting shifting shadows that had even the most hardened spending more time checking their shoulders than ahead.
"Hold, good ponies..." their feather-hatted leader, Non Sequitur, said, stopping and extending a hoof by a door. "And silence! We are in position. All that remains is to successfully carry out this ambush!"
He swung the door open, stepping out onto the loading room's observation balcony... and stopped, blinking. "The thief isn't here?"
A pony in his entourage shrugged. "I don't see 'em, myself."
"Of all the holes in an otherwise-perfect plan..." Non Sequitur hissed, peering over the railing at the empty floor below. "The mare we left to stand guard is missing. Of course..." He touched the brim of his hat. "It's only logical. The thief must have anticipated my plan and determined they would have greater luck outrunning a lone pegasus than attempting to elude this squad! Fortunately, my intellect managed to deduce this before too much time could elapse! Now, as for our next course of action..."
Someone tugged on his buttoned-up coat. "Hey, maybe check this out first?"
He frowned. "What's this? Have you found a critical clue?"
The pony pointed to a nearby wall.
Non Sequitur moved to investigate... and nearly toppled when his hoof contacted something squishy, causing it to slide across the floor effortlessly and without an inch of grace. "Gahh!" He caught his balance - barely - and looked down at the item that had almost tripped him.
It was a banana peel.
Slowly, his eyes wandered upwards, to where the metal that made up that segment of the wall had been stained with something yellow and mushy, smelling like smashed bananas, traced in the shape of letters. He squinted.
HA HA HA
I stole your thief
Find me if you can
Valey
"I still don't get why we didn't stay put," Maple said as she walked with Starlight, Valey and Grainwave down a darkened corridor. Grainwave had a headlamp, saving Starlight the effort of keeping her own horn going for illumination. "If we want them to find us, all of a sudden."
"Meh," Valey meh'd, towing Tarfeather along behind. "Don't wanna make it too easy for him. Not too hard, either, but if he's not a little ticked by the time he finds us he won't just march us into town then and there. He'll stay here and wait for more 'criminals,' you know?"
Maple frowned. "I feel like you've just made up an entire plan right here and now and I have no idea what it is, and I don't like that."
"H-Hey, I'm just here," Grainwave laughed nervously. "Please, if there's anything important you need to talk about, don't let me get in the way! I've heard the stories about what you do to paperwork, and I really... really don't want to be an obstacle..."
"Mmm." Valey licked her lips. "Yeah, paperwork. Screwing that up is the best. Don't worry, I've got better things to do today." With a wink at Maple, she added, "And hey, you trust me, right? I thought you didn't need to know what I'm doing!"
Maple sighed, ears flat. "Stop making me regret this..."
"Whateverrrrr." Valey rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I'm making this up as I go. It's what I do best. Don't worry about the mango muncher, he'll get off with nothing more than egg on his face. Mmmph." She stuffed a banana from Tarfeather's pack into her mouth, leaving the peel on the floor and chewing noisily.
"So basically," she said between bites, "The dude you're working for?" She poked Grainwave, who jumped at the contact. "He's like... I dunno if he still is or just used to be a clerk up in Dangerous Karma's base. Super easily ticked off by numbers that don't add up and stuff. Doesn't like it when stuff goes missing, absolutely blows a fuse when it's stolen from under his nose. Now, this stuff?" She hefted a banana bunch. "It's not actually worth all that much. Only profitable because this place makes so much of it... so if I help myself to a free lunch every now and then, that's not even gonna be a single hair off of his mane. He probably loses a million times as much just from stuff that goes bad and falls off the trees without being picked. Maybe more."
Grainwave narrowed her eyes, opened her mouth... and backed down, thinking better of speaking.
"Yeah?" Valey looked up, offering her a stolen banana.
She declined it with a shake of her head. "So you are a thief we're supposed to be catching?"
Valey chuckled. "Yeah, that depends on your definition of 'supposed to.' DK budgets for dudes to check and make sure the roof hasn't caved in, nobody steals the production equipment, and the Spirit aren't using this place as a night base, but... eh..." She stretched. "The clown you've been following isn't official at all. He just goes on thief hunts because he feels like it, and DK lets him because hey, free security is free. Maybe he'll catch something that actually matters?"
Grainwave stared at her, clearly skeptical.
"You said this building was full of hostile guards!" Maple protested, sputtering. "Valey! Are you just trying to scare me?"
"First off, I said it was full of guards," Valey teased, waggling a hoof at Maple's frown. "Nothing about them being hostile! Second, they totally hate me, and actually probably are hostile. There's just nothing they can do about it because even if I let them catch me, they've got no sanction. What would they do, take me to DK? He'd laugh in their faces. Tie me up and hide me away? First off, Herman would come kick their rears, and second, if you can bust out of the Defense Force fort, do you really think an irate accountant can hold me?"
"Hold on," Grainwave interrupted, anger starting to clash with her reluctance. "You're pulling my tail, aren't you? That this patrol is a sham?"
Valey whistled innocently.
"It better not be! When he was asking for help this afternoon in the streets, he said this was official, from Dangerous Karma! He said..." Her ears folded. "Look, I really need this to be something the Sky District will think favorably of as service to the city, and you're... you. Can you please have mercy and just tell me now that you're pulling my tail?"
With a perfectly-angled smirk, Valey wiggled her eyebrows and tipped her beret. "Kiddo, I'm pretty sure you've been hustled."
Grainwave shrank. "You want me to feel cornered, don't you? You're about to point out that you're from the upper districts, and can pull strings to get me hired if I do you a favor."
Valey put a hoof to her chin. "Huh. Hey, that's a pretty good idea! Wanna do me a favor?"
"I've heard of your reputation..." Grainwave backed away further, trying her best to appear an evenly-matched party.
"Nahhh." Valey grinned. "How shallow do you think I am? I just want some help pranking that clerk guy. What was his name again? Non Sequitur?"
Maple coughed, pointing down at Tarfeather, who was awake and gagged. "Weren't we doing something else?"
"Eh, like I said: making stuff up as I go along, here." Valey shrugged. "He'll be fine. Seriously, we've gotta wait the rain out either way, so why not have fun while we're here?"
"Mmmrlmphgg," Tarfeather protested, rocking slowly back and forth. Valey silenced him with a grin.
Grainwave looked carefully at Valey. "What exactly do you want me to do? And how do I know this won't just get me in trouble with Dangerous Karma?"
"You can, uhhh..." Valey looked around. "Yeah, you kind of don't know, do you? Huh. That stinks." She grinned apologetically. "All right, let's do it this way. Give me a hoof, here, and maybe I'll scratch your back back! Not literally. Unless you ask. Or we..." She pointed to Starlight, Maple and herself. "Will leave you and the mango muncher and do our own thing, and you can find your boss and get your reward and all that and we'll still be cool... but I still wanna have my fun so we'll probably be haunting him and anyone with him on the way out, and that might include you. Sound fun and fair?"
"If I do help you..." Grainwave narrowed her eyes. "What would you want me to do?"
Valey snickered. "Easy peasy. All you'd need to do is find the dude, look like you've seen a ghost, and tell them something actually important to watch for is here. Say... a big, huge pack of Spirit ponies. Just put them on edge a little, okay? So that they'll be all primed for spooking..."
"Didn't you just tell him you're already here? With a message on that balcony?" Maple squinted. "Why would you do this, now? I thought you already had a plan to do something else!"
"I told you, I'm making it up as I go!" Dropping Tarfeather, Valey hovered and did a midair backflip, just because she could. "Don't worry, I'll think of something good. I was just... thinking about other things on the way here." Her green eyes glowed in the darkness. "The better question is, why not?"
"How often does that actually happen?" Grainwave drew the conversation back to the request, still wary. "Actual organized ponies breaking into this place, instead of petty thieves? Would he believe it?"
"Eh, probably never." Valey rolled her shoulders. "But paranoid ponies will believe anything. This'll be easy!"
Back in the loading room, which had long since been deserted...
The single, white floodlight flickered and sparked, losing power for nearly two seconds and temporarily bathing the room in blackness. During that time, there was a crack... and one of the rolling doors that separated the station from the rainy world outside inched open. Two strong hooves forced it further apart, and a single pony slipped through, water streaming in torrents from his coat.
He wiped his brow as the power buzzed back on, causing the door to re-engage and tighten itself shut. "Whew!" he proclaimed to nobody in particular, taking in his surroundings. "Made it! Now that was some foul weather to travel in. Lucky for me whoever wired this place doesn't know what a pony can do with just an outdoor power meter and a stick. Time to get down to mission alpha..."