Shadow: God, I feel like a jerkbag for not keeping up with updating this story. But at last - at LONG LAST - the new chapter is up. Sorry about the long wait, everyone. Enjoy, fillies and gentlecolts.

My Little Sly Cooper: Thievery is Magic

IX - "I Can Explain... Nevermind, I Really Can't Explain...."

“Oh no no no no no no!” Sly facehoofed at the unfortunate discovery. He recognized the three other equines almost immediately, and it did him no good in aiding his qualms. He glanced left and right, making sure nopony else was in the streets of the town.

But alas, why should they? ‘Twas around the time when every single pony in the gorgeous and humble town must return to their homes and feast upon their delicious suppers before retiring for the night.

Sly sighed in frustration. “You must be pulling my leg....” muttered the coon-turned-pony. With his cane, he hooked the collars of the three ponies into the crook and dragged them along towards the Books and Branches library. After a few minutes, however, the energy reserves of the coon-pony were running low, mainly due to the weight of all three unconscious ponies that he was dragging. “Man, you all really need to cut back on the junk food...” he hissed.

After several minutes of heaving, pulling, and dragging, Sly finally made it to the front steps of the library, where Twilight Sparkle and Spike dwelled. Sly temporarily set down the three surprisingly still-unconscious ponies and knocked rapidly on the door. “Twilight, open up, it’s me!” He called through the door.

The door then swung open to reveal a slightly worried Twilight Sparkle. “Sly, where were you? We were about to set up a search party for you because you’ve been gone so long!”

“Yeah, I know,” grumbled Sly, “but we have a rather serious issue.” He stepped aside, bringing the three ponies into view. Twilight Sparkle’s eyes shot wide open at the sight of the three. She glanced back and forth to check if anypony (if any) stood in the streets.

‘Don’t have to tell me twice,’ Sly thought as he picked up the trio and hauled them into the library. He placed them in the center of the main room, next to the table with the wooden pony bust on it.

“Who’re these guys?” Spike asked the raccoon-turned-pony as the little dragon cleaned the room and replaced the many tomes and scrolls back into their proper shelves and alphabetical order.

“Yes, do tell, Sly,” Twilight Sparkle pressed on. “It isn’t everyday that you pick off somepony off the road.” To make matters worse for Sly, her eyes slightly narrowed, giving her the sense that she was rather... suspicious.

At both her words and her impaling gaze, Sly started to feel... nervous? ‘How can this actually happen?’ he internally asked himself. Never before had he ever experienced such a thing: his thieving genes practically made him impervious to it, and for all of his life, no less.

That might be a possibility; after all, Sly had seen her magic firsthand, er, firsthoof, and despite her translation spell, which should have been harmless, he had every right to be. Twilight Sparkle was, after all, a skilled and mighty magician, and he a mere thief that relied on stealth, agility, and swiftness.

He shook his head and cleared his throat. “I can explain.” He grew slightly more nervous as Twilight Sparkle narrowed her eyes further and let out a low grumble. Spike glanced back and forth between the two of them, trying to see why the coon-pony was being anxious and what the scholarly unicorn was getting agitated about. “Nevermind, I really can’t explain.”

“Well, who are these ponies?” Spike asked. “I’ve never seen these guys before.”

“...I know these guys...” Sly finally confessed. Twilight Sparkle and Spike looked at him in both shock, curious as to how Sly knew the three other ponies on the wooden floor. “Twilight, Spike, do you guys remember what I told you when I first got here?”

“Well, these guys were the guys I told you about....” A rather pregnant silence fell over the whole of the library. Even the quietest of inhalations, or the smallest shuffling of hooves over wood, could be heard as clearly as if the sound had been amplified by a hundred times its volume.

“Trust me, Twilight,” reassured Sly. “It's true. Otherwise, I wouldn't have recognized them.”

“But that’s still impossible!” retorted the unicorn. “How in the world did these three get here from your planet?!”

“Well, we need to do something about this: I’ve already got one stallion living in here.” She motioned her hoof at the pony in question; “but I don’t have enough room or money for feed and shelter three more ponies.”

“But we can’t just throw them on the streets!” countered Sly. “Besides, these are my friends! What kind of guy would I be if I just stood by while these three get the boot?”

Twilight Sparkle wasn’t prepared for that walloping of logic. She stopped in mid-breath, for she had once been prepared to respond to something other than that. She took a deep breath and mulled it over inside of her incredibly sharp equine mind: If she refused to offer help to the three still-unconscious ponies, then Sly would be rather upset and disappointed, something that she couldn’t afford; if she did offer assistance to them, not only would Sly be grateful about the situation, but she could talk to the other element bearers to see if they had enough space in their homes to shelter them.

“Thank you, Twilight,” Sly told her. He then glanced over at the three, and pondered on what to do with them next: “But if you said that there’s not enough room, then where should they go?”

“Well, I could ask one of my friends if they could take them in...” suggested Twilight Sparkle. “However,” she continued, “I’m not sure how they would react.”

“Why not just tell them?” asked Sly. “It’d be much easier that way, it’d clear up any confusion, and plus, I think that your friends would get along rather well with mine.”

Twilight Sparkle thought about this as well, her brilliant pony brain churning once more. “Alright... should I call them now?”

“Uh... sure.” Sly sat down and pawed the hardwood floor, his hoof slightly scratching it. He stopped after he noticed it: it’d do no good to scuff up his friend’s floor.

“Spike?” Twilight Sparkle turned her head to face the purple draconic toddler. Spike looked at her, awaiting the order his surrogate sister would give him: “I’m going to write a letter to each of the other five: do you think you can send it to them?”

Spike scratched the back of his head, slightly abashed on how to answer the question. “Well, I’ve never tried sending letters to anypony other than the Princess, but... I’ll give it a try.”

“Thank you,” said Twilight Sparkle, smiling warmly. Her horn glowed, and five scrolls and a letter encased in a lilac-hued glow floated over to the table in the middle of the room. Furiously and quickly, Twilight Sparkle started writing.

“With Dragonfire,” answered Spike in a matter-of-factly tone. “With it, I can send letters to the Princess, or apparently anypony I want to send it to, at the blink of an eye.”

“Well, the exercise would do you good,” remarked Sly shrewdly, a mischievous grin on his face. Spike took a swipe at him with his sharp claws, but Sly quickly recoiled, dodging the attack. “Ah-ah-ah~” tutted the coon-pony.

“Alright, the letters are finished,” declared Twilight Sparkle, holding five rolled-up and sealed scrolls, each one having the name of the receiver written on it. Spike took the scrolls, held out one, and took a deep breath. He exhaled, and emerald-colored flames erupted from his open maw, engulfing the selected scroll. The inferno-enveloped scroll started swirling and getting smaller and smaller, until it finally vanished with a pop. Sly jumped back in shock at the scene, but shook his head: indeed, he had seen worse.

Spike repeated this process for the other four scrolls, until all five of them had been delivered to their respectful recipients. “Thank you very much for that, Spike.” Twilight Sparkle walked over and nuzzled the dragon in appreciation, earning a small little blush from the reptilian assistant.

Sly, Spike, and Twilight Sparkle turned their heads at the noise, locating the source of the sound. Their eyes rested upon the three ponies on the floor, who were stirring and slowly rising, their bodies probably drained and beaten from being brought across the vast cosmic ocean to their current position.

“Well, glad to see you three are waking up.” A warm smile was spread upon Twilight Sparkle’s muzzle.

“INCOMIIIIING!” A new voice hollered from outside. Before anyone could do anything-

At once, the sound of breaking glass rang throughout the library, startling the five ponies and one dragon. They craned their heads again to see the upper half of Rainbow Dash dangling out of one of the now-broken windows of the library, the multichromatic-haired mare’s rosy eyes rolling in her head out of dizziness from the brunt force of the collision.

“Oh man... I think the crash made her stupid or something,” muttered Sly. Twilight Sparkle, Spike, and the three other ponies snickered slightly. In response to that, Rainbow Dash shook her head fervently and squeezed inside the library via broken window, landing on the ground in front of Sly.

“I heard that,” grumbled Rainbow Dash, a look of agitation on her face; Sly simply rolled his eyes. Twilight Sparkle, with a sigh, levitated the many broken shards of glass into the air and dropped them into the nearest trash bin. A knock at the door then ensued.

“Come in!” She called.” At the approval of entry, the door swung open, revealing Applejack, Fluttershy, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie, all but the latter rather tired-looking; how Pinkie Pie was still unaffected by the somnolence that was cast over everypony else was a complete mystery to everypony in the room.

“Hi, Twilight!” greeted Pinkie Pie, a large, permanent smile on her face as she bounced around the room. “We got your letters and you wanted us to come over! We thought that you were inviting us to this super-duper-looper-extraordinary-hooper party! But then I thought, ‘Wait a hoof-tickling minute! Parties are my thing!’ I mean after all, they ARE on my Cutie Mar-”

“Eeeeyyyyes?” The pink mare stopped in mid-bounce, standing in the air like it was a tangible surface. Sly’s eye twitched at the complete desecration of the laws of physics; despite not being the brightest of creatures, even he knew that what Pinkie Pie was doing was an impossible feat. But to his relief - or so he would like to believe - Pinkie Pie landed on her four hooves on the solid hardwood floor.

‘Take deep breaths, Sly... Just take. Deep. BREATHS,’ he instructed himself.

‘Relax, silly filly!’ said the all-too-familiar voice of Pinkie Pie in his brain as she looked at him and smiled widely. ‘It’s just your good ol’ Aunt Pinkie Pie!’

Sly’s brain, which was still addled by that knockout gas from Clockwerk’s gas chamber when Carmelita had been capture, was already commencing to shut down. His chest was rising and falling rapidly. If he had been afraid of Twilight Sparkle before, he had no idea what he would be in for if he ever insulted or angered Pinkie Pie.

“Sly?” Twilight’s voice brought him away from the edge of madness and into the realm of reality. “Don’t you wanna introduce your friends to mine?”

“Sly?!” wailed the three ponies. The green unicorn and fuschia Earth Pony jumped towards Sly and tackled him in the largest hug they could ever give anyone... er, anypony.

“Hallelujah!” hollered the green unicorn, his voice very familiar to Sly. “I knew it’d work!”

“Bentley!” wheezed Sly, his oxygen being drained from him ever so slowly by the anaconda-like squeeze from both ponies. “Murray! You two... are crushing me!”

“Sorry!” apologized the both of them before getting off of their best friend. Sly stood back on his hooves. He looked down at the two ponies before him; they still had not gotten used to being a pony, for they were wobbling precariously on their hooves.

“What became of us?” inquired Bentley. “It appears we’ve taken the shape of equines... strange... I can even walk!" He tried lifting up a hind leg, and, sure enough, the leg he wished to move was lifted up a few inches in the air. "It must be some sort of weird miracle!”

“Even weirder,” began Murray, “are these tattoos on our butts! What gives, Sly?”

“Oh, right,” said Sly. “Well, Twilight, care to tell these guys what Cutie Marks are?”

“Cutie Marks?” said the orange pegasus pony Carmelita in a surprised tone. “Blegh... sounds girly.”

“Girls, this isn’t getting us anywhere,” Twilight Sparkle announced. “And as for what a Cutie Mark is...” She then launched into a session about what Cuties Marks are, what they mean, how no two ponies can have the same exact Cutie Marks, and how each Mark gained symbolizes the pony’s maturity and special talent.

It would’ve gone on longer... had the whole audience had tried to pay attention.

“Ahem!” Twilight Sparkle cleared her throat noisily to lull the ponies out of their sleepy and exhausted state.

“Twi, Ah dunno why ya gotta bring us ‘round here at this time a’ night,” said Applejack, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

"I concur, darling," agreed Rarity, stifling a rather unladylike yawn with a hoof. "This could not have waited until morning?"

“Well, we could always sleep here for tonight,” countered Twilight Sparkle. She then gasped, a smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye. “It could be like a big sleepover!”

“Oh my... I’m simply dying with joy,” deadpanned Sly, while the other boys groaned in disgust at the idea.

“Relax, guys, it’ll probably just be separated by gender, if it makes you feel better,” said Twilight Sparkle. Her eyes then went wide in realization. “Oh! I’m afraid I never got to introduce myself! I’m Twilight Sparkle.” She put a hoof on her own chest. “This is Spike, that’s Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and- Say, where’s Pinkie Pie?” She had been pointing her hoof at each individual respectfully until she reached the mare in question, who seemed to have all but vanished from sight.

A rustling came from inside Sly’s saddlebags, and after a violent shake, out popped Pinkie Pie, dressed up in an outfit that was completely similar to Sly's, with a mask, beret, and little cane to boot. “I’m right here!” called the mare through the muffled voice that the cane in her mouth had impaired her with.

Sly, Bentley, Carmelita, and Murray were so shell shocked by that defiance of physics that they were left silent. Sly opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it and closed it. ‘Nevermind... Pinkie’s just being Pinkie.’

“Very well. My name is Bentley,” announced the green unicorn after he got over that little episode.

“And my name is Carmelita Fox,” the orange fox-tailed pegasus concluded. All the ponies smiled and gave their greetings and salutations to the three, and they them.

Twilight Sparkle, at the mention of the name, felt something bubbling inside her. Something she had not felt in awhile.

‘I remember that name,’ she mentally seethed. She looked at Carmelita, her look of anger not wavering or faltering in the slightest. 'All too well....'

Ever since that night last night... Twilight would never forget the one who had brought Sly here... through the most dastardly and treacherous ways of all.

Sly gulped audibly at the sparks of lightning that arced between the two as they glared at one another in loathing.

You're all probably wondering why Bentley, Murray, and Carmelita didn't need the translation spell and Sly did.

My Little Sly Cooper: Thievery is Magic

by Deyeaz

IX - "I Can Explain... Nevermind, I Really Can't Explain...."