My Little Black Ops

by Kaelzoroden

Prelude 3/4

“Wow Scootaloo, where didja get all this stuff?” asked Apple Bloom, her head and forelimbs inside the chest that Scootaloo had pulled from under a pile of junk in what passed for the closet.

“Oh, I was trying to set up a Rainbow watching club.”

“Well what's so hard about that? Just check when the next one's scheduled.”

“No, not that kind of rainbow.”
Apple Bloom leaned back out, a set of night-vision goggles strapped to her head.

“Oh.”
Sweetie Belle was busily pulling a tangled mess of straps and buckles out from the chest.

“Hey, what's this thing?”

“Oh, that's my climbing harness. Carabiners on the front and back for good weight distribution. It's great for when you're hanging from a rope off stuff. Actually, let me look, I think I have something in here for you.” Scootaloo buzzed over and began rooting through the chest. “Found it!”
She leaned back with what looked like a black scrunchie in her hooves. She turned to Sweetie Belle and plunked it down over her horn.

“What is it?” Scootaloo grinned at her.

“Horn silencer. It'll hide the light from your horn!” Her expression became slightly more serious for a moment. “Doesn't do anything to the light around whatever you're messing with, though.” Sweetie Belle crossed her eyes trying to look at it before turning to the chest and scrunching up her face in concentration. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Slowly, a worn binder rose from the chest surrounded in a glow that was, for the first time, not mirrored by a similar glow from Sweetie Belle's horn. As Apple Bloom broke into a grin at this, Scootaloo's eyes went wide. Just as the binder began to rotate, Scootaloo dove on to it, snatching it out of the air. Sweetie Belle, her concentration broken, looked to Scoot in surprise. Scootaloo, clutching the binder to her chest, grinned and blushed a little.

“Sorry, this is, uh... top secret spy stuff.”
Apple Bloom was quite certain that she could see the corner of a photo with a lock of rainbow hair sticking out of the edge of the binder. Scootaloo got up and quickly stashed the binder back in the closet.

“Alright Crusaders, grab what you can use!”

------------------------------

“Darn, no Cutie Mark for montage scenes.” The Crusaders were doing their best to stay dry on the road to Sugarcube Corner. Apple Bloom was rigged out with the night-vision goggles she had found, along with one of a set of walky talkies that Scootaloo had managed to acquire (Sweetie Belle insisted that they were called Speaking Stones) and a set of horseshoes that were, at least in theory, supposed to make her hoofsteps quieter. Right now, all they were doing was squishing when she stepped in mud. Sweetie Belle hadn't found much else to her tastes, wearing only the scrunchie and a matte-black saddle. It was supposed to be a stealth outfit but, with her white hide, it made her look like a ponified cow.

Scootaloo was the only one who looked properly prepared. She had a black turtleneck on under her climbing harness, with a length of rope coiled around her midsection. She seemed all-together too used to moving in the gear, making the other Crusaders wonder exactly what it was she got up to when they weren't around. Scoots also was wearing some sort of utility belt, though she hadn't explained it before heading out.

“So let's go over the plan one more time.” Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle groaned; Scootaloo had gone over it several times already since they left the hideout. “Hey, I don't know how you guys are at being sneaky, and if Pinkie catches us there's no way we'll get our cutie marks.”

“But if sneaking is our special talent, shouldn't it be easy for us even without a plan?” Scootaloo glared at Sweetie Belle.

“Hush. Okay, so we know that the front door is gonna be packed, and Pinkie will be running into the back room way too much to try and sneak in the back door without getting noticed. That's why we're gonna climb up and go in the window! Pinkie never bothers to lock the window to her room, so we should be able to get in no trouble.” Apple Bloom leaned over to whisper to Sweetie Bell.

“How d'you reckon she knows that?” Sweetie just gave her an I-don't-want-to-know-and-neither-do-you look.

“Once we're in, we've got to be on the lookout for Gummy. He looks slow, but if we aren't careful he'll have Pinkie breathing down our necks before we know it.” She shuddered a little before continuing.
“That's where you come in Sweetie Belle. You can shuffle stuff around on the other side of the room and get him to look away so we can sneak in.”

“I don't know if me using magic is really such a good-”

“Don't worry, I know you'll do fine! Anyway, we should take a quick look around her room, on the off-chance that she's got her recipes written down somewhere. If we don't find them, we've-”

“SWEET CELESTIA, WE GET IT!” Scootaloo started at the combined voices of her friends.

“We know what we're doing! Besides, we're here!” Apple Bloom gestured ahead, to where a row of rather damp ponies were lined up outside Sugarcube Corner.

“Wow, it really is busy today!”

“Good, more customers means a busier Pinkie Pie! The busier she is, the less likely she is to notice us!” Scootaloo happily trotted around the building, the crusaders following her. She calmly shrugged her way out of the rope before pulling a few metal bars out of her belt.

"What about the Cakes? Won't they be back there too?" Scootaloo turned to Sweetie Belle, grinning happily.

“Nope, I heard Pinkie talking to Rainbow Dash about how she has Sugarcube Corner all to herself while the Cakes are in Canterlot! Probably catering or something." As she was talking, she was screwing one bar into the middle of another. "Now, the trick with getting up onto the roof here is that they've got more than one gutter. The frosting is actually just a decorative cover, and if you can hook the second gutter then climbing up onto the first part of the roof is easy.” She paused as she finished assembling the grappling hook, before tying it off to the rope. “I'll go up first and help you two up. Either of you ever climb a rope before?” The other two shook their heads, wondering when exactly Scoot had become intimately familiar with the architectural peculiarities of Sugarcube Corner. “All right. Just hang on to the rope and try to push up against the wall, I'll help pull you up.” Grabbing the rope in her teeth, she gave the hook a spin before launching it skywards with a practiced motion. One clunk and an experimental tug on the rope later, Scootaloo was on her way up. Assisted by her wings, she was up the wall in surprisingly quick time. “Okay Apple Bloom, grab on!” Apple Bloom eyed the rope warily before biting it and putting her front hooves against the wall.

“Rherhy!” The rope went taut, and Scootaloo could be heard grunting above.

“Try to climb Apple Bloom; you're heavy!” Apple Bloom glared at where she figured Scoot was standing before diverting her gaze and trying to find a hoofhold. A few minutes and an only slightly damaged window frame later, Apple Bloom was pulled onto the roof by a panting Scootaloo. “You gotta cut back on the apple pie! You weigh a ton!”

“Yeah? Well ya'll pull like a...” Apple Bloom was about to say filly, before realizing that that would lack impact. “...like Sweetie Belle!”

“Hey!” Sweetie Belle yelled from down below.

“Whatever, you're up now. Let's just get her up here. Sweetie Belle! Grab the rope!” A moment later the rope was pulled tight from below. Scootaloo reached for the rope but was blocked by Apple Bloom.

“Lemme show ya how you REALLY pull a rope!” Grabbing the rope in her teeth, she hauled back abruptly. Sweetie Belle squeaked from below as she was suddenly and unceremoniously hauled several feet into the air. On the roof, Apple Bloom realized that she had backed herself into the wall and was now sidestepping to try and find some room to pull.
Sweetie Belle's eyes went wide as she realized that she could see into the bakery from where she was hanging. The rope had shifted when Apple Bloom had given it the first hard yank, and she was now hanging directly in front of a window through which she could see the busy entryway to Sugarcube Corner. She tried to find something to grab to pull herself out of sight, but short of pawing on the glass there wasn't much she could do.

Actually, she realized, that wasn't entirely true. She had one option, but it wasn't a very good one. She was debating with herself, before she saw Pinkie Pie, dutifully manning the till, begin to turn around. Sweetie's pupils shrank to pinpricks before she was bathed in a light-pink glow and spun violently several feet to the right, out of sight of the window. She struggled to hang on, the burst of force she had put out making her spin fast enough that she thought she was going to be sick. For the next few moments, she just closed her eyes and tried to focus on just hanging on, until she finally felt her friends grab her shoulders and haul her up. She flopped on to the roof, waiting a moment for her stomach to settle.

“See? I'm not heavy, ya'll just don't know how to pull!”

“Yeah yeah, at least I didn't back into the wall. Whatever, let's get this show on the road.” Scootaloo walked over to the window and gave it a tug. Oddly, it didn't open. She shook it a bit, producing a rattling noise. “Oh come on! Why would she pick TODAY to lock it!” The others were already coming over, hopping up and leaning on the windowsill for a better view. Sure enough, a small hook bolted into the sill was sitting smugly through the eye of a matching bracket on the window. Scootaloo glared at it for a moment.
“...I don't suppose we could get cutie marks for breaking and entering?” The stare she got from Apple Bloom fairly kaiboshed the idea.

Meanwhile, Sweetie Belle was staring intently at the mechanism. It didn't look to be complex in any regard; the hook just looked to be pivoted into place. Casting a glance at her two friends busy discussing the pros and cons of a cutie mark for burglary, she bit her lip and turned back to the lock. Lowering her head, she focused on the hook. Okay dumb hook, you need to turn. And if there's one thing I CAN do with my magic, it's make things turn! An aura of magic sputtered into existence around the hook, patchy in places but holding. The hook shivered for a moment, before springing free of the hook and bouncing as it hit the maximum extent of its rotation in the opposite direction. Sweetie dropped the magical aura and hopped back, slightly giddy at having made her magic actually do what she wanted it to properly for once.

Apple Bloom was interrupted from her groove on the potential economic fallout and repercussions of having theft-based cutie marks (“Applejack would buck me into next week!”) by the window gently swinging open. Sweetie Belle beamed at her friends, as Scootaloo fluttered over to the window.

“I KNEW your magic would come in handy! Come on, let's check out the room while it's still packed downstairs!” Hopping up, she lent a hoof to the other Crusaders, and in short order they were all inside.

Pinkie's room was, as could safely be expected, something of an utter mess. There were old supplies littering the floor from several recent parties, at least two of which the fillies could remember having been present for. Scootaloo took a step forward.

“Apple Bloom, you search the third of the room over by the stairs. Let us know if anyone's coming. Sweetie, you take the third by the bed. I'll check the rest.” They took a moment for a hushed "Cutie Mark Crusaders Ace Investigators!" before splitting into their respective areas. Apple Bloom, after ensuring that the stairwell was clear, got to digging beneath a pile of old banners. After a bit, she had to come to the conclusion that there just wasn't anything there that wasn't part of a party at some point, meaning no recipe. As she was pulling some streamers out of her mane, she heard a loud whisper from the bed.

“I found something!” Sweetie had hopped onto the bed and opened up a seemingly unlabeled book. Her face lit up as she reached the title page. “This looks like the right thing! It's called the Candy Sutra, this'll have the recipe for su-” She stopped abruptly mid-word, after she turned a page. Her face now an expressionless mask, she closed the book. Staring straight ahead, she hopped off the bed, dropped the book to the ground, and pushed it back under the bed where she had found it in the first place. After walking away from the bed, she paused a moment. Looking up, she met the rather quizzical stares of her friends.

“That pony likes candy WAY too much.”

Just as Scootaloo was about to ask for clarification, Apple Bloom plowed the both of them from where they were standing to behind the mound of party supplies. Scootaloo opened her mouth to ask before Apple Bloom pressed a hoof to her lips and pointed toward the stairwell.

A pair of purple eyes crested the top and were quickly followed by a scaly green body. With a slow and steady pace, Gummy made his way into the room. He paused for a moment before turning and blinking slightly out of sync at the pile the Crusaders were hiding behind. As if not sure about it, he took a tentative step forward, followed by a few more. He began to slowly circle the pile, normally blank stare narrowing slightly as he sensed prey nearby. After getting as near as he could without being seen, he braced his small form and charged, as best as he was able. His prey, taken utterly by surprise, could do little as powerful jaws closed upon yielding orange hide.

The Crusaders heard a rubber squeak from the other side of the pile, having taken care to mirror the small alligator in his creeping around the pile. The sound of him chomping on the balloon they had pulled from the pile was the signal they needed. As quietly as possible (which was still rather loud, but with the rain on the roof proved to still be quiet enough) they charged helter-skelter down the stairs.

Comments

[Captain_Savage]

Slalkerloo drop!

Keep up the good work mate

[Kaelzoroden]

Just a note: I don't mind bad ratings, but please tell me what I'm doing that you don't like! If nobody tells me what to look out for in my writing, it's hard for me to fix it!

[Knight Fire]

I HAVE NOT READ BUT IS NOT GOOD!!!!

[Kaelzoroden]

Sorry to the few people watching this about the wait, school is eating most of my time. The next update will roughly double the total wordcount of this fic though, and should be up within the coming week.

[Delicious]

[Captain_Savage]

Waiting........

[QuackmanBrony]

Man I'm glad I started reading this. I needed a laugh and I got one.
And Scootaloo, how did you get so good at sneaking? You're not doing anything bad are you?