//------------------------------//
// Chapter 5: Night Heist 
// Story: Digitizing Reality 
// by TheDimensionRift 
//------------------------------//

Sunset Shimmered opened the door slightly, only enough to poke her head inside and get a look at the room. Every monitor in the computer lab had a bright green indecipherable text sliding over their screens.
She stepped into the dark room which didn't seem to have any functioning lighting except for the bright hue of the green text on the screens which lined the walls of the room. As she made her way through the darkness, Sunset noticed a door at the end of the lab which seemed to cast a brighter light underneath the door.

As she opened the door, Sunset noticed unlike the room before it, the room she was in now only had a single monitor which had a much larger screen then the others. The screen appeared to look almost like the size of a rather large flat screen TV and had several different task windows open. Seeing that the room was devoid of life aside from her, Sunset Shimmer walked further into the room to inquire more about what was on the screen.
As she neared them, Sunset noticed that several of the windows displayed images of Equestria, one referring in vivid detail the layout of the castle in the Crystal Empire and another showing what looked like a guard patrol schedule.

"Hello Sunset"

Sunset Shimmer jumped, startled at the emotionless voice which snuck up behind her, causing her to turn around and be faced with a white haired boy. He wore black thick framed glasses and a dark grey hooded sweatshirt, Sunset also noticed the boy was holding something in his hands. In one hand he carried a Styrofoam cup which gave off a steaming aroma of sweetness, in the other, he carried a small plate which had a slice of cake with a plastic fork sticking out of it.

"Where did you get that?" the flammed haired girl asked with a confused stare.

"Hm? Oh this?" the boy asked as he made a gesture to his cake.
"That Pinkie Pie girl threw a party and I got an invitation. You know if you weren't such a brute, I'm sure you'd be invited to social gatherings as well. And as for this," the boy said now taking a sip of his hot drink.
“This is French Vanilla coffee from the teacher’s lounge, Principal Celestia didn’t mind me getting a cup,”

“No! Not that, this,” Sunset Shimmer said as she pointed toward the large monitor.
“Patrol schedules?; personal information on guards?; a detailed written layout of the Crystal Empire castle?; how did you get all of this?”

“Well when you told me how you wanted to steal princess Twilight’s crown I figured a bit of reconnaissance was required in order for us to be successful, so, I went to Equeastria and did just that. You’d be amazed what ponies are willing to tell you just by asking a few simple questions,” the boy took another sip of his coffee as he walked past Sunset and sat in a chair which was placed in front of the monitor.

“Why are you so willing to help me Vector? I know you, you may be kind, but there is no way your doing ALL of this just for me,” Sunset said as she watched the white haired boy take a bite of cake and type away at his keyboard.

“Well, truth be told, I only want one little thing in return for helping you,”

“I knew it,” Sunset said as she sighed and rolled her eyes.
“What is it that you want?”

Vector swiveled his chair around to face Sunset before he continued.

“The crown your getting contains magic of large proportions. If I could conduct a study of it, the magic inside the crown might help me with some inventions that I plan on building,” Vector said as he took another bite of cake.

“No! Absolutely not! I want that crown for my own agenda and I can’t risk you damaging it,” as she said this, Sunset turned and made her way to the door.
“If that’s what you want then I’ll just go at this alone,”

“Do you really think that’s a smart move? By my calculations if you go at this alone your chances of success without me decrease by 94.6%.”

Sunset Shimmer stopped at the door with her hand on the knob as she heard this.

“United we stand, divided we fall as they say,” laughed Vector.
“Look, you want the crown, and I want a better understanding of Equeastrian magic. Don’t you see? Neither one of us can do this without the other. If we both want to win this, then we’ll need each others help,” the boy washed down another bite of cake with some of his coffee.
“But of course, if you want to leave, you need only to twist the knob,”

Sunset Shimmer held on to the knob of the door as she stood, silently contemplating her choices. After a few moments of silence, Sunset gave out a sigh and walked toward the boy.

“Fine, once we get the crown I’ll loan it to you for a couple hours but no more, deal?”

The boy gave her a nod to inform Sunset they were in agreement.

“Alright then, let’s get down to business,” Vector said as he got up from his chair and moved over to a cabinet in the corner of the room.
“I have here your shroud of darkness that you’ll need, a bag to carry the crown in, and one crown replica that you’ll be swapping for the original,” the boy pulled out a brown hooded cloak and bag as well as a crown as he said this. He handed the items to Sunset as he finished closing up the cabinet and returning to his computer.
“All courtesy of the drama kids in the theater department. Now before you cross over there is one more thing you’ll need,”

Vector opened a drew at his computer’s desk and pulled out what looked to Sunset like an ear bud for listening to music.

“This, is something I made special for the occasion,” he began as he placed the device gently in Sunset’s ear.
“I’ll be able to monitor your position from inside the castle and direct you where to go thanks to this. It’s a earpiece which allows me to locate you and objects around you using echolocation. I’ll spare you the boring details and just say it’ll help me keep in touch with you. I’ve designed it to fit comfortably in your ear and  remain out of sight in both your human and your pony form so there should be no problems there,” the boy finished setting up the earpiece and sat back down in his chair as he grabbed his plate.
“Now your all set, if you just follow my instructions we should be able to pull this off. Now then, wait by the portal until it’s time, and of course good luck.”

Sunset adjusted the hood on herself and put away the fake crown in her bag. She stood silently looking at Vector with a guilty smile.

“Hey, V, before I go can I ask you something?” asked Sunset as she rubbed her hands nervously.

“Sure, anything,”

“Can….can I,” Sunset began.
“Can I have a bite of that cake that Pinkie Pie gave you?”





The Orange unicorn exited the mirror into a room with no inhabitants and a large double door at the end.

“Alright Sunset, moment of truth, if you just listen to me you should be able to slip away with the crown before anypony even notices your there. We have a small window of opportunity and we can’t risk you getting caught, so I'm going to need you not to talk and just listen,”

Sunset frowned at how demanding her friend was being, she never did like taking orders from someone.

“I designed your earpiece with maximum noise reduction so that no noise I make will be able to escape it. I could yell right and no pony but you would be able to hear me. Anyways, continue forward and exit this room, you should see a guard, avoid him and keep right,”

The unicorn did as she was instructed and opened the doors carefully, sure enough, she was faced with the back of a guard making his nightly rounds. She listened to what her friend said and went right down a long hallway.

"Another guard coming up, stick to the shadows,”

When faced with another guard, Sunset moved quickly out of the way and hid to avoid detection. When the guard faced his back toward Sunset, she maneuvered behind him silently and continued on her way to the crown.

“Impressive, say, have you done this before?” Vector teased over the microphone.
“Alright, your nearing the princess’ room, proceed with extreme caution,”

‘What do you think I’ve been doing?’ Sunset thought to herself as she moved closer to another pair of double doors.
Sunset slowly opened the door and saw the young princess sleeping in a large bed, next to her bed was a smaller dog sized bed which her dragon slept on.

“A dragon? Oh how I’d like to study the little thing. But now is not the time, you know what to do, carefully swap out the crowns and then get out of there,”

The unicorn used her magic to retrieve the crown, but in the process, she knocked over a lamp which had been resting on the nightstand. She caught it at the last second and returned it to its original position.

“That was a close one, try to be a bit more careful Sunset, we’ve come too far to fail now,”

With the lamp back on the nightstand, Sunset retrieved the fake crown that her friend had given her and carefully swapped it with the original and placed it in her bag.

“Well done my partner in crime, mission accomplished. I’ll be waiting for you in front of the school statue, now, all you have to do is-”

Vector was interrupted by a loud thud as Sunset tripped over Spike’s tail. The noise caused both the dragon and the young princess to awake from their slumber.

“Sunset you’ve been compromised, you already have the crown just get up and make a run for the mirror! I’ll be waiting for you on the other side,” said Vector in a concerned tone of voice.

As Sunset recovered from her fall, she was startled by the high pitch voice of the princess she had robbed.

"My crown, she's stolen my crown!" yelled Twilight as Sunset Shimmer dashed out of the room.

"Oh boy, that doesn't sound good, alright Sunset there are no guards ahead it's just a straight shot to the portal now,"

As she continued forward to the mirror, Sunset could hear the cries of Twilight Sparkle rapidly approaching behind her.

"Stop, thief!"

Twilight used her magic to teleport in front of the unicorn in an attempt to stop her, however, Sunset was one step ahead of her and teleported past her, losing the cloak in the process.

"Heads up Sunset, you've got company,"

The unicorn looked back to see five other ponies running behind Twilight who had joined in the chase. As Twilight got closer, she attempted to bite at Sunset's bag to take back her crown.

"Your almost there, keep it up,"

As she neared the room where the mirror was, Sunset was tackled by Twilight Sparkle and both ponies were sent rolling into the room.
During their struggle, the crown Sunset had stolen slipped out of the bag and bounced off of several surfaces before being sent through the portal.

"Sunset I got the crown, what happened?"

As the crown flew through the air in into the portal, everypony except Sunset let out a gasp.

"What did you do with my crown?" asked Twilight with an angered face.

"Sorry it had to be this way," Sunset Shimmer teleported herself in front of the mirror before continuing.
"Princess" she finished in a sarcastic tone and gave Twilight a salute goodbye before entering the portal.





When she exited the other end of the portal, Sunset Shimmer was greeted by her white haired friend who was holding the crown in his hands. 

"V, we did it," she said as she stood on her feet.

Sunset Shimmer noticed that her friend was smiling, not one of his usual fake smiles either, it was one of the few real smiles that he displays after a great feeling of accomplishment; a smile Sunset had only seen one other time since she's known him.

"Indeed we did my friend," Vector lost his smile as he carefully looked Sunset over.
"Say, where's the cloak?"

"I may have lost it in the chase," Sunset said with a nervous smile.

"I'll have to find a way to explain that to the theater department," Vector teased.

Both the teens began to laugh, knowing that their operation was a success.