“Last one!” Rainbow Dash called. She and a group of pegasi were attaching an anchor to the ground. Much like eleven other anchors, a rope was attached to this one. On the other side of the ropes was a large cloud. Standing on the cloud was a stone tower that stood as tall as one of Canterlot Castle’s spires. How a stone tower stood on the cloud was beyond Rainbow Dash, but not beyond her intellectual friend. As soon as it appeared in the skies of Ponyville, she wanted it anchored to the ground. She wanted to know how the cloud was supporting the tower as well as what was inside. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, Rainbow was curious as well. The inside of the tower could hold an innumerable number of treasures. Exploring it would be an adventure, and it was something she did not want to miss. Rainbow pushed on the rope testing its strength, when she saw that it was up to par she smiled.
“Alright, that’s the last one,” she said. “You can all take a break for the day. I don’t think we need to worry about weather duty with this thing in the sky.” The pegasi all cheered and went their separate ways. When they were out of sight, Rainbow flew to the library. She was promised that by the time she and the weather team were done anchoring the tower; her friend would be ready to head out. She flew through an open window in the library and landed on a balcony looking over the foyer. Below her was a purple unicorn with a checklist in front of her.
“Hey,” she said. “Ready to head out?” The purple unicorn looked up.
“Not yet, Rainbow,” she said. “I have a few more things to pack before we start the expedition.”
“What’s left?” Rainbow jumped down to the foyer. “I can get it for you. The faster you pack, the faster we can go explore the tower.”
“This isn’t something you can rush,” Twilight returned to her checklist. “This is a major archeological find. There could be thousands of artifacts that could be waiting to be found. The right tools are needed to extract them.”
“So we’re grave robbing?” Twilight looked up at her friend with disgust. “What? What you just described sounds exactly like grave robbing.”
“We’re not grave robbing,” she said. “We’re going on an archeological expedition to the tower.”
“Which most likely is from a long gone civilization.”
“Exactly.”
“And inside is most likely the remains of said civilization.”
“That’s right.”
“In other words, one massive grave.”
“Correct.”
“So we’re going to go inside this massive grave to take objects of meaning and importance from this civilization without permission.”
“Yep.”
“Then we’re grave robbing.”
“Yes we are… hey wait a minute!” Rainbow was laughing at her. “Rainbow, we're not grave robbing!”
“Come on, Twilight,” Rainbow laughed. “Lighten up. There’s no reason to be ashamed of grave robbing. Archeologists get paid to grave rob.”
“We're not grave robbing!” Twilight shouted.
“Wait, you’re not?” a young voice asked. Both ponies turned to the source of the voice. They found a purple baby dragon holding a box. He put the box down in front of him. “Then why did you ask me to get our grave robbing stuff?” Twilight chuckled nervously.
“Ha ha, very funny, Spike,” her eyes were rapidly moving back and forth. “I don’t have any grave robbing tools.”
“What are you talking about?” Spike pulled a crowbar from the box. “We used this when we broke into the Canterlot Catacombs. It was also used to extract Osiris’ Crown from that body we found.” He reached into the box and pulled out a small sledge hammer. “And we used this to break that mausoleum in the Royal Cemete….” He was stopped as his mouth was magically turned into a zipper. Sweat began rolling from Twilight’s head.
“Rainbow, could you see if any of our friends want to join us?” said pony shrugged.
“Whatever. I’ll be back here in half an hour,” Rainbow took off and left through the window. A sigh left Twilight’s mouth.
“That was close,” she turned to Spike. “Your timing was terrible.” Spike unzipped his mouth.
“Hey, it’s your fault for telling me to get this stuff last,” he defended. “You could have told me that Rainbow would be here.”
“I didn’t think she’d be done so early,” Twilight said. “Still, have to keep that a secret.” Spike mimed zipping his mouth. Twilight smiled at him.
“So,” he said. “Are we actually going to go grave robbing?” Twilight laughed. She telekinetically reached into the box and pulled out a black sack with a gold rope tied to it. Spike grinned.
“Do you really need an answer to that?”