Prologue
Not everything that shines is gold, but better check in any case because gold is crazy valuable:
It happened shortly after earning her cutie mark, the young Rarity was walking around Poniville thinking about fabulous things and such, then she saw it, just as she was imagining a beautiful diamond on her mind the ground beneath her hoofs began to glow, curious she dug a little (with telekinesis mind you such perfect hooves are not easy to keep) and she found it, it was not a diamond but one does not look a gifted horse in the mouth, it was an emerald a bunch of them actually and a golden watch and as any filly her age she took it all and went home to brag about it.
Soon after she came to know that the emeralds and the watch belonged to Meadow Old, Meadow Song´s grandfather who was already old during that time (Rarity´s dad used to say he was already old when he was a colt and if anything he expected the old bat to outlive him), the important thing being they were reported stolen a week ago. Being the nice young lady she was she turn it all over to the police and explained what happened, the hunt for the thief lasted two weeks before Meadow Old in a fit of clarity remembered he was the one who buried it in the first place, for reasons he could not remember… but it may have been important so he buried it again in the same place.
With a new power come new responsibility so Rarity took upon herself to plunder the soil till nothing of value was left, during this phase of her childhood she collected many knick knacks which along a nice sales pitch really helped her start her own boutique, but that was years after. She became a real master of her “gem locating” spell, which did not really locate gems but anything of valor, alas ”anything of valor locating” spell did not sound nearly a fabulous so a little liberty was taken when naming it. She came to love this spell, it was unique (not exactly unique, but pretty rare and actually difficult but her cutie mark being gems she had a little advantage there) and made her horn glow in such a faint beautiful way, she learned how to control it and focus it, she could make it recognize certain items only, set a minim or maximum value for the objects to be recognized by it (being a little filly strange shaped rocks ended up more valuable than actual bits but she was happy with it), she became a really industrious filly and practiced every day, she was such a pro that her parents tough of sending her to Celestias´s academy for gifted unicorn but alas she could not lift a phone directory with her telekinesis (but had no problem juggling around fabrics, needles and gemstones with a combined weight well over her own) so she stayed on Poniville.
Since very little Rarity showed a great disposition towards generosity, and loved dotting her baby sister with gifts and accessories (most made by herself mind you, some of her macaroni hair pins are still circulating in the market and surprisingly fetch a very high price, when asked why she never started a macaroni fashion line all she said was that glue gets everywhere and being covered in fur makes that hazardous). One day, shortly after Sweetie bell´s third birthday a virus came to Ponyville, mostly harmless but Sweetie took the worst of it, she fell sick very sick and Poniville did not have the facilities to properly take care of her, she needed to be moved to Canterlort´s hospital (which was the nearest one with the proper equipment). Health care is provided by the crown in equestrian, but a little filly needed her parents or at least one of them to be with her least the experience turn completely traumatic, sadly the family was going through a little economic problem and none of Rarity´s parents could take time off work least they get fired. This was a turning point of Rarity´s life, she learned two valuable lessons one: the value of money, if only her family had money they could all go with Swetie and help her in her recovery, but they did not and she could do nothing about it or so she thought until she remembered a certain buried watch.
It was really easy, all she had to do was focus on the watch and follow the glow which being at faint as it was it was no problem for Rarity to follow it, she was used to it. She came back home with the watch hidden on her saddlebag, she knew her parents would not accept it but she had a plan, her parents would not be home until later so she could pull it. She turned on the stove and levitated the watch inside little did she know that levitating something into a fire actually hurt, not as much as touching the fire but bad enough to make a pony cringe. But she had a mission and a little pain was nothing, she kept doing this for the best part of an hour levitating the incandescent object carefully so it would not touch the walls of the stove, she kept this until the watch was nothing but a lump of very hot gold.
Later that day Rarity told her parents a very suspicious history about lost leprechaun gold and a cockatrice which they believed (if Rarity ever found a fault on her parents was how naïve they were, that and their fashion sense. GOD THAT HAT). Right after that her parents went to their respective bosses and presented their reseing, her mom with a polite talk and a minimum of bitter remarks and her dad with a tackle (he had a hoofball cutie mark after all) , they went to Canterlot and came back when Sweetie bell got better and live off the gold for a few months and by the time her parents got a job (after that her dad carrier as a hoofball coach became legendary and would often make demonstration on the players on how to properly tackle) they still had a little left (to put things in perspective, gold contrary to gemstones is really rare in Equestria and sought after by many a mage and rich lady with a thing for shiny) which went towards the emergency found.
And that was Rarity´s second lesson, on one hoof we had Meadow´s watch, sitting in the dirt and not being used for anything and on the other her family who actually needed the money, so why was it wrong to take that which was not being used to help those she loved?, sometimes generosity means doing what is right no matter if it is wrong.
The first heist episode 1:
Shady business
Shady shades was not a nice pony, in fact he was as his name says a shady pony, he swindled money out of the innocent and made a living out of it and being Ponyville a very innocent town he made a very good living. Shady was very careful, he never stepped out of the line the law marked, he came close to it but never passed it and whenever someone wanted to take the matters on they hoofs he was very quick to run for Ponyville peace keepers (I am talking about the police and not the mane six who while may they have saved the town a couple of times they bring more chaos than peace to it) who reluctantly must enforce the law. For the most part Ponyville ignored this despicable character and just chose to avoid him, he in return did the same for he alredy had a small fortune to live of so he did not really need to antagonize the town any further.
In life all things come to an end, and Shady´s fortune was nearing its own, so Shady was forced to “work” one of his favorite methods was to contact some pony from out of town, a stranger and “hire” them to do his dirty job, the stranger this time was Pomp, an earth pony stallion from Manehattan on his way back from losing big on Las Pegasus, so he contacted him and told him his little plan.
The next day a very polite earth pony stallion from Canterlot visited Rarity´s parents, his name was Exquisite taste and he was an employee at the “royal gem” a famous jewelry shop at Canterlot, he came here because he heard about a very valuable piece of jewelry being here and he wanted to asses it and buy it. Rarity´s parents were not sure about which piece of jewelry he was talking about so they showed hi everything, finally he came across an exquisite platinum filigree which belonged to Rarity´s mom (she got it as an inheritance from her aunt and it was worth quite a lot) and said that he would like to take it to his hotel room were he had his equipment to properly asses it, he left two hundred bits as assurance of his intentions and left with it. No need to say no one ever saw Exquisite taste again.
Similar things happened across Ponyville that day, a new stallion named X from X works for X, and wants to check/sell something and by the end of the day Colgate had ten new ultra modern and expensive toothbrushes, granny smith lost her silver locket and Fluttershy had ten litters of doctor Miracle´s famous elixir which would cure angel bunny of his “furry bones degenerative disease” which in fact did not exsist.
This was in fact “the worst possible thing” as Rarity let her friends know during the next day tea party and she was mostly right because what could be worse than a red eyed Fluttershy who spent all night crying when she finally realized she was taken advantage of?, but who could have been so evil? Stealing from poor Fluttershy and nothing could be done about it, that pony was probably kilometers (I.S. ftw) away from Ponyville so the only thing they could do was comfort Fluttershy and spend the day away gossiping.
After many cups of tea and a fair share of biscuits (who could resist that mellow white goodness) Rarity arrived home, that is to say her boutique since she have been living on her own since she was sixteen (most people were amazed by how independent she was when she told them, she just forgot to tell them that her mom would come to her house every day to check on her), thinking about the thief she was muttering about this when there was a knock on the door, when she opened it she came face to face with her mother who told her over tea about this marvelous stallion who was going to buy her aunt´s filigree and how she would finally be able to buy that new fishing rod for her husband. It was not pleasant to break it for her that the the filigree was stolen suffice to say blood curling battle cries were heard that day.
Next day Zecora came to her boutique asking about some cloths she needed for a ceremonial garb, being the only zebra around it fell to her to bless the land (crazy zebra voodoo magic ), as Rarity searched her boutique for the very specific fabric (damn picky zebra) she told her friend about the thefts, Zecora was surprisingly mad, furious in fact which was rather surprising since her expressions went from neutral to mild neutral in an exiting day and only scaring people made her actually smile (and then she called us racists for fearing her), apparently thievery was a pretty big deal back on Zebrica and normally ended with the culprit being exiled (and for the record Zecora was exiled for an altogether different reason) but alas nothing could be done about it, the culprit was already out of reach or so she tough, while looking for the fabric Rarity found herself thinking about her grand aunt (you know like the sister of your grandma) filigree, it was to say the least exquisite, almost fabulous it was during this thinking that she caught something in the corner of her eye, a faint elegant glow, she knew what it was and she focused.
She and Zecora arrived outside a very big house, not Filthy rich level but very nice and she, being the gossip she was, knew exactly who the owner of this house a very shady stallion named… screw this you already know his name. So Rarity took it on her hoof to confront the evil doer so she, angrily, knocked on his door while Zecora stood there like she was going to burn his house down any moment, the stallion came out and received the brunt end of a verbal bashing and to his credit did not falter at all, he politely told her he had no idea what she was talking about and that he have never met anyone named Exquisite taste and that if she did not stop verbally assaulting him he would call the police, and call them he did, in fact he called them even before he opened the door and when they arrived all they saw was a stallion being verbally assaulted by a mad mare and a zebra trying to kill him with her stare (and for all they knew she was probably capable of doing it).
And so Rarity and Zecora spent their first night on a cell, which was not actually a cell but the waiting room of the commissary where they were treated very nicely and fed donuts, but her pride suffered none the less. The next day when they got off they walked together in silence for a couple of minutes until Zecora broke the silence.
“khuadibu, it means punishment and a certain stallion is getting his”
This was for the record, the first time Rarity heard Zecora talk in prose, that was how angry the zebra was.