//------------------------------// // Chapter 8 - The Crystal Heist // Story: Lukas: A New Generation // by MyAwesomePony //------------------------------// Later that night, Zipp, Sunny, Izzy and I were putting our plan into action, we started off the plan by creating a replica of Queen Haven's crown so we could effortlessly swap it for the real crown, which I might add, Izzy did a really good job in making the crown look as accurate as possible, the second part of the plan however, was a lot more difficult to pull off. Zipp was to distract the huge amount of Pegasi all awaiting her entrance, taking pictures of her and bombarding her with question after question. While Zipp was doing that, Me, Sunny and Izzy were to stealthily make our way into the castle. After navigating through the seemingly endless amount of hallways of the castle, we found ourselves in the throne room, where Pipp will be performing her royal celebration she mentioned earlier. As we snuck in and hid behind Queen Haven's throne, I was beginning to have second thoughts about this. "Uh guys, I'm not sure about this." I whispered nervously, knowing that this plan could easily backfire in a number of ways. "Don't worry, Lukas." Sunny assured me. "Zipp seemed really confident in this plan, so it's gotta work." "Yeah." Izzy added. "Besides, Lukas. This plan will be a slice of cake." "I sure hope you girls are right." I said, still with slight nervousness in my voice. Just then, the lights dimmed as everypony looked up, seeing Queen Haven and Zipp slowly fly down on their respective thrones, now that I knew that they couldn't fly and were in fact using wires, I couldn't understand why no one had noticed their secret yet. Little did I know, I was soon about to jinx myself... "Remember to smile." Queen Haven announced as Zipp rolled her eyes. Once Haven and Zipp landed on their thrones, Sunny gave me and Izzy a stern nod, knowing exactly what we needed to do next. So while Pipp took centre stage with her musical performance, I was given the task to do the honours of swapping the crowns around, but just when I was about to, a spotlight was heading towards my direction. To avoid being seen, I ducked down, but since I was standing on Izzy's back, I almost fell off, but I managed to keep my balance. As I held the fake crown in my hand, I readied my hand to make the swap easily, I literally felt like I was Indiana Jones at that moment. Deciding to just get this over and done with, I quickly grabbed the real crown, before putting the fake crown on Queen Haven's head, and somehow, no one noticed. I looked at Zipp, who seemed to have been watching me make the swap as we both had a smug look on our faces. I quietly jumped down from Izzy as we started to make our way out. "Huh, that was surprisingly easy. I guess you girls were right after all." "Of course we were right." Izzy replied. Sunny, Izzy and I made our way towards a pair of doors, but when Sunny pressed the button to open the doors, we were soon met with a Pegasus guard who was currently on a call with someone over the phone. "No, you hang up." The guard said in a sweet voice. Sunny quickly closed the doors to avoid getting caught. Just then, we all heard the sound of a dog whimpering, we looked behind us to see Queen Haven's royal dog, Cloudpuff, staring at us with a curious expression. "Aww." I cooed. "Who's a good doggie?" Suddenly, Cloudpuff growled at us as his teeth grinded, making us all scream. "Not you!" I screamed as me, Sunny and Izzy made a run for it, with Cloudpuff quickly following behind us. As we were running, I looked behind me and saw that Cloudpuff was right behind us, determined to return the crystal back to its rightful owner. I turned back over to see Sunny opening a door, only to be met with Hitch, who was wearing cardboard wings and a fake moustache. Sunny screamed upon seeing him. "Sunny Starscout, you are under arrest—!" Sunny then promptly shut the door behind her. It was at that moment when Cloudpuff caught up to us, Izzy yelped as the small dog jumped up on her, then onto Sunny, then snatched the crystal right out of the Earth pony's saddlebag, before he ran off with the crystal in his mouth. "No!" Sunny exclaimed. "Get back here, you little mutt!" I called out in anger as Sunny and Izzy gave chase to Cloudpuff, with me not too far behind. While we were running after Cloudpuff, I managed to hear a bit of Pipp's performance, and I had to say, it was surprisingly catchy. Suddenly, we caught sight of two Pegasus guards in front of us as they were in awe of Pipp's performance. To avoid being spotted, Sunny and Izzy hid behind a nearby wall. "Get it, Lukas!" Sunny whispered loudly to me. "Don't worry, Sunny. I got this!" I assured her, before I ran off after Cloudpuff. The dog then ran up to the front of the three thrones, he then started jumping up and down, trying to get the attention of Queen Haven, but I wasn't going to let that happen. So I jumped out and tackled the dog as me and him got into a fight over the crystal. Suddenly... "WHAT IS THAT!" I immediately froze upon hearing that, I looked up and saw that all the Pegasus were all looking at me with curious and scared expressions. Just then, Queen Haven, who seemed to have spotted me as well, got off her throne and approached me with an enraged look on her face, and since I was currently in the middle of a fight with her pet, I couldn't look worse. "What do you think you're doing to my sweet, little Cloudpuff?" Queen Haven exclaimed in anger. "You... you... BEAST!" Unable to come up with an explanation, I was just silent. At that moment, Pipp suddenly started flying around the room like crazy as she screamed, the wires that were holding her up seemed to have malfunctioned. The Pegasus then looked up and gasped, with them distracted, I snuck away and followed Cloudpuff, I had an idea to get the crystal back. "Cloudpuff, what are you doing here?" I asked as I approached the dog, who looked up at me confused. "Don't you have a pedicure right now?" Cloudpuff gave a small yelp in surprise, before he raced off, dropping the crystal in the process. I picked it up and ran off as well. I saw Sunny and Izzy emerging from behind a curtain as I gave the crystal to the Earth pony. "I got it!" I exclaimed. "Yes!" Sunny cheered as she placed it back in her saddlebag. "Let's go!" I said frantically as Sunny, Izzy and I ran off once again, soon followed by Zipp. "FREEZE!" A familiar voice called out. We all looked over to the source of the voice to see Hitch staring at us, thus getting the attention of all the other Pegasi who looked at us too. "It's the prisoners!" A Pegasus from the crowd gasped as we tried to make a run for it. As we were running, I could still hear Pipp screaming before she suddenly stopped. I stopped and looked back and saw that Pipp had stopped flying around and was now hanging upside down from her wires, revealing to everyone that... "She's a fake!" A Pegasus called out in disbelief. Soon, all the Pegasi were murmuring and taking pictures of this shocking discovery. I looked over and saw that Zipp was also looking up at Pipp with an apologetic look on her face. Just then, Sunny bumped into Zipp while she and Izzy were running away. "Zipp, Lukas, hurry!" She exclaimed to us. Zipp and I began running after Sunny, Izzy and Hitch, or in Zipp's case, galloping. As we ran out of the room. I caught up to Sunny and Izzy, who both looked at me. "Lukas, you were amazing!" Sunny said. "Yeah." Izzy agreed. "If it weren't for you, we probably would've been captured." "Oh, it was nothing, really." I replied modestly. "Now let's get out of here!" TO BE CONTINUED...