The sound of breaking glass woke me up from my sleep. I jerked upright and looked towards my open bedroom door.
Red Hoofed was standing in the doorway. Her attire was very eye catching. She was wearing a black leather outfit in the form of a tight corset around her barrel. She also had fishnet stockings on her fore and hind legs. Her mane had been tied back in a braid. The most alarming detail was the fact that she was carrying a cat-o-nine-tails whip floating beside her in her magic aura.
“Red?” I muttered before sitting up in my bed, “What are you doing here? For that matter, how are you here?”
I wasn’t seeing her through the screen of my smartphone. She was actually standing in front of my bed in my L.A. apartment.
She remained silent, ignoring my question as she took several menacing steps forward. The aura around her horn pulsed, causing the whip to lash out and scour deep grooves into the nearest wall.
“Is this about rejecting your offer for me to emigrate? I don’t understand how you can be here, but I think that you may be taking this a little too far,” I babbled nervously. My gut instincts were correct, she had the mindset of a crazy ex-girlfriend! I hadn’t even broken up with her, but after our argument, she was acting like it.
She took several threatening steps forward and I scrambled back to keep my distance. Not watching where I was going, I fell off the opposite side of my bed and landed on the floor with a heavy thud.
Red swiftly trotted around the bed and planted a hoof on my chest, pinning me to the ground. She glared down at me like I was a piece of filth. The silence seemed to drag on forever. Only after a full minute passed, did she finally speak, “You’ve been a naughty colt. And now, you must be punished.”
Another pulse from her magic caused the whip to raise up into the air and…
*Beep! Beep! Beep!*
I jerked awake and slammed a fist down on my alarm clock. Laying in bed, I stared at the ceiling to collect my thoughts.
The dream left me filled with a sense of aggravation. I hated dream sequences on general principle. In stories, authors always used them as a way of shoehorning in a ton of metaphors and foreshadowing into a single scene. It always struck me as a lazy way of telling a story. Good storytelling had subtle foreshadowing that was only noticed in hindsight. A dream sequence on the other hand, had no subtlety at all.
It was a good thing that dreams out here in the real world didn’t have foreshadowing. Otherwise, the dream I just had, would imply some disturbing things. Namely, that I was screwed.
The most annoying part about the entire experience was that my alarm clock woke me up just when the dream was getting fun… er… I mean, thank goodness that my alarm clock woke me up from that horrible nightmare!
After throwing off my blanket, I got out of bed and stretched out my back. I went through my morning routine, got dressed, brushed my teeth, and ate some breakfast. It was the weekend, so I didn’t need to go to work.
I cast a wary glance at my PonyPad. My last conversation with Red left a bad taste in my mouth. But I really wanted to play more. There were still three more members of the Mane 6 that I wanted to rob and I didn’t like leaving things unfinished. I was a gamer. I had a code of conduct similar to the post office motto. Neither carpel tunnel nor low batteries nor friends nor gloom of night could keep me away from my weekend gaming marathon.
After sitting down, I reached out a hand and turned on the PonyPad. Once I passed through the main menu and the character select, my pony reappeared in Red Hoofed’s hotel room.
Red looked up from a magazine that was spread out on the bed in front of her, “You’re back.”
“Hey Red,” I said awkwardly, “can we just forget about that conversation we had before I logged out last night? I want to keep playing with you, but not if you’re going to make things uncomfortable.”
The mare’s ears laid down flat against her head before they perked up again. She bit her lip, then nodded and said, “Okay. I guess I was a little too pushy about it.”
“Excellent!” I trotted over to her a gave her a quick nuzzle. She hesitated for a moment, but then nuzzled me back. I approached the hotel room door, “It’s still early in the morning. If we move fast, we can rob our last three targets before they learn about what happened last night.”
The Ponyville market was a busy place this morning. There were ponies going about their business, exchanging bits for food. Most of them were earth ponies.
The market here was significantly smaller than the one in Canterlot, but that was a given considering the town’s small size. The merchandise on offer was much more agrarian than Canterlot though. There was a greater emphasis on fruit, vegetables, and various produce instead of manufactured goods like back in the city.
Our next target was Applejack. It didn’t take me long to spot her manning an applecart near the eastern end of the plaza. The farmer mare was busy having a conversation with Twilight Sparkle. Red stepped away to keep a lookout while I idled next to a cabbage stand so I could eavesdrop on the conversation.
“We’ve got to catch this varmint, Twilight!” Applejack stamped a forehoof on the countertop of her stand. “It took me forever to cheer up the Crusaders yesterday. Pinkie Pie gave them some more cupcakes for free, but they were still heartbroken by the entire ordeal. What kind of monster steals cupcakes from fillies?”
The kind that likes to mess with NPCs just for shits and giggles.
Twilight was examining a small piece of paper held in her magic. “You said they found this calling card with the rock?”
Applejack tilted her hat back and glared at the paper. “That’s what they told me. Not only did he rob three fillies, but he’s bragging about it!”
“My profile of Dark Mask does indicate that he has an ego,” Twilight said.
Applejack pulled a basket of apples out of her cart and put them on top of her stall. “You’ve heard of this jerk before?”
“Yes, I have. Remember when I told you and the girls that somepony broke into my parents’ house and attacked my father? The perpetrator stole a bunch of items and left behind an identical card,” The purple unicorn explained, putting the card away into her saddlebag. “I’ve been tracking his crime spree ever since. I had to pull a few strings using my role as Princess Celestia’s student to get access to the case file.”
“Any luck figuring out who he is?” Applejack asked.
Twilight shook her head, a frown spreading across her face. “I got close once, but no, not yet. However according to what I know, this is the first time he’s operated outside of Canterlot. I’ve also never heard of him stealing cupcakes before. He usually steals bits and toothbrushes.”
Damn it, there’s that weird rumor again! I never did figure out how that started.
“If he’s in Ponyville now, then we need to-”
“Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Whatever else Applejack was going to say was cut off by a faint scream that echoed out across all of Ponyville. The heads and ears of everypony in the market turned in the direction of the sound.
“What in tarnation was that noise?” Applejack asked, also looking in the direction that it had come from.
“I don’t know,” Twilight said, her gaze drawn across the market square, “but it sounded like it came from Fluttershy’s house.”
With both mares looking away from me, I crept up behind Applejack. I activated my advanced pickpocketing skill. While I kept the reticle steady in the minigame, my pony reached out his hoof and sneakily swiped Applejack’s Stetson hat off of the back of her head. With a second button press, I slide another calling card into her mane.
“Let’s go check it out, Applejack,” said Twilight.
With the two ponies preoccupied, Red and I snuck away.
Badge Unlocked: Cattle Rustler
Unlocked By: You stole something from Applejack.
Reward: 100 bits
Up next for victimization was Twilight Sparkle herself. She was probably the easiest target on our list due to her occupation and the nature of the item that we wanted to steal. All I had to do was check a book out of her library with no intention of ever returning it.
Red followed me inside Ponyville’s Golden Oaks Library. The inside looked cozy with bookshelves built directly into the wooden walls. It reminded me vaguely of the interior of a log cabin. Or what the inside of a log cabin would look like if the architect mixed together abstract art, high fantasy, and head trauma from a horse buck to the face.
I saw a familiar face in the form of Spike, the dragon. He was up on a step ladder putting away a book. Spike gasped and pointed a claw at me, almost dropping the book in the process. “Who are you two and why have you broken into my home?”
“What?” I stammered. “We’re just here to check out a book. This is a public library, right?”
Spike blinked at me and then rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, “Ah… right, a customer… there’s a first time for everything, I guess. I was starting to think that Twilight was the only pony that knows how to read in this town. Help yourselves to any book you want. When you’re ready to check out, just put your name, your address, the book’s title, and today’s date into the ledger.”
Spike turned his attention back to reshelving a stack of books.
Red looked at one of the shelves. She picked a book out and showed it to me, “You should get this book.”
I looked at the title, A Confederacy of Dunces, “I’ve never heard of it before. Why do you think I should get this book?”
Red hadn’t been talking to me much all day other than a few comments here or there. She must still feel raw about our argument last night. I’d give her time and hope that her feelings would recover.
“In some ways, the main character reminds me a lot of you,” Red said without elaborating.
I shrugged and put the book into my saddlebag. It really didn’t matter what book I stole. Walking over to the Ledger book, I picked a pencil up with my pony’s mouth and wrote in the details. For my name, I put down Dark Mask. I left the address blank, then wrote the name of the book. To add insult to injury, I put a calling card into the ledger.
“Thanks for the book!” I called out to the dragon as Red and I left.
Spike waved one of his clawed hands over his shoulder at me without turning away from the shelf to look. “Sure thing, see you later.”
Badge Unlocked: Brain Drain
Unlocked By: You stole something from Twilight Sparkle.
Reward: 100 bits
Ugh, the achievement system was getting lazy. That joke was too easy.
Rainbow Dash was my final target.
“How are we going to get up there?” Red asked as we looked up at Rainbow’s floating cloud house. The house was floating a good fifty to sixty feet above us. We stood slightly off to the side so we wouldn’t get splashed by the runoff from the rainbow waterfall. “I can cast a cloud walking spell on you, but you’ll still need to get high enough to reach it. The wings spell is way beyond my abilities.”
We’d seen Rainbow Dash fly off towards Fluttershy’s house only moments ago. She’d probably heard about her friend’s missing mane by now. Her rainbow colored contrail was very distinctive and couldn’t be mistaken for any other pony. That was how I knew that her house was currently empty.
“Don’t worry, I planned ahead,” I stated, pulling a rope and a grappling hook from my bag. “I just need you to cast the spell on me, and then float the hook up to the house.”
“I can do that,” Red said. Her horn lit up with her green aura before my pony was enveloped in a matching glow. The controller in my hands vibrated until the aura faded away. A small icon showing the silhouette of a pony standing on a cloud appeared in the corner of the PonyPad with a two hour timer under it.
Next, Red picked up the end of the grappling hook in her magic and floated it up to the cloud house like I asked. She hooked it around one of the Greek columns.
“I’ll wait down here. Don’t take too long. We don’t know how long Rainbow Dash will be gone.” Red told me after securing the hook.
Like in all videogames, climbing a rope in this game was way easier than it would be for me in real life. I just had to grapple the rope with a button press and then tilt forward on the thumbstick to shimmy up it like a spider-horse.
The inside of Rainbow’s cloud house looked surreal to me. It was like walking around inside of a thick fog bank. The walls, floor, and ceiling were featureless and white. The floors looked squishy to the point where I imagined that it must feel like walking on couch cushions.
I needed to find a piece of Wonderbolt memorabilia to steal. A task that proved to be extremely easy. The third room I entered was a veritable stalker shrine to the Wonderbolts and filled with their merchandise. Rainbow Dash had everything. There were posters of members on the walls, trading cards inside of plastic sleeves, and plush toys piled up to the ceiling.
There were so many options for things to steal that I wasn’t sure which one to choose. I couldn’t take everything with me. I leaned against a wall and scratched my head.
*Click!*
A hidden compartment in the wall I leaned against swung open. The compartment was only about a foot deep, but was taller than my pony and slightly wider.
Hung up inside of the compartment was a pinup poster of Soarin from the Wonderbolts. There was a small note written in the corner of the poster. Thanks again for convincing me to emigrate. We’ll spend more time together as soon as our show tour ends. Love you! -Soarin
Soarin was posing in a very provocative position. On the positive side, I now had the perfect item to steal in order to embarrass Rainbow Dash the most. On the downside, I now knew what a quadruped looks like when wearing a banana hammock. I could have gladly lived my entire life without knowing that.
After carefully rolling up the poster and putting it into my bag, I tapped a calling card to the empty spot on the wall where the poster used to be. I left the secret panel wide open so Rainbow Dash would see it the next time she came home.
Badge Unlocked: The Fast and the Furious
Unlocked By: You stole something from Rainbow Dash.
Reward: 100 bits
With all 6 of my targets successfully robbed, it was time to get out of Ponyville. Red and I were on the first train back to Canterlot before the clock even struck noon.
Badge Unlocked: Thief of Harmony
Unlocked By: You stole something from each member of the Mane 6. I hope you feel proud of yourself.
Reward: 100 bits
“Now that you’ve accomplished your goal, what’s next for the great Dark Mask?” Red asked me when we left the train station and went back out onto the streets of Canterlot.
I could tell that she was asking in a sarcastic manner, but I deigned to answer her anyway, “The achievement system just gave me an idea for that.”
“And what idea would that be?” She probed me for more information while she walked beside me.
“We’re going to pull off a heist.” I grinned at her. “We’re going to steal the Elements of Harmony right out of the royal vault.”