One week before Hearts and Hooves Day, the city of Vanhoover was decorated in hearts and pink flowers to remind it's inhabitants of the upcoming celebration of love and family. Flower stands stocked up on vivid red roses and shop windows proudly displayed signs that announced holiday sales of chocolates, jewels and fine clothing.

Amongst the larger big-chain stores, it might be easy to overlook a single shop sitting off on it's own between a large confectionery and a bookstore. But Giuoco Piano's Music Shop was getting a surprising amount of attention today: most would not have noticed amidst the crowd of shoppers, but it seemed rather odd that so many different ponies were entering the shop and none were coming out.

A pair of stallions in well-pressed suits and ties—a stout, waddling unicorn with a cutie mark of a cookie and a tall, skinny pegasus with a cutie mark of a carriage wheel—walked across the street and entered the shop, glancing over their shoulders as they crossed the threshold. The shop interior was filled with all manner of musical instruments, all of them proudly displayed on walls and on raised daises. Ignoring the products, the two stallions walked up the counter, where a young pegasus mare with a flowing reddish-brown mane greeted them with a smile. "Can I help you two gentleponies?" she asked.

"Giuoco asked us to come," the unicorn said, pulling an envelope out from his breast pocket and extracting a letter from within it. Keeping the letter, he gave the envelope to the mare. She examined it carefully, then looked up, her expression suddenly grave.

"Passphrase?" she asked.

The stallions looked at one another. The pegasus plucked a roll of paper with several sections cut out of it and laid it over the letter, revealing the hidden message: "I have no brothers or sisters, but this stallion's father is my father's son. Who is this stallion?"

"That stallion is my son," the pegasus answered the riddle, rolling his eyes. "How come Z insists on using these stupid riddles and puzzles?"

"As long as he pays me, I don't really care how he does his thing," the mare shrugged, flicking a switch beneath the counter. With a click, a door marked "Employees Only" unlocked and the clerk gestured them through it. The visitors walked through the door and trotted down a set of stairs, entering a basement showroom. The wide room was filled with several round tables, at which sat a number of ponies, griffons, donkeys and zebras, all of them murmuring quietly and glancing at one another. Several hanging lamps cast the room and its occupants in low shadow.

"Good afternoon, gentleponies," a unicorn coatpony greeted the visitors at the door. "Hold still for a moment, please." He passed a glowing metal wand that buzzed and clicked over the two. The pegasus completed the inspection, but when the wand was brought over the unicorn, it turned red and beeped loudly. Scowling, the stout unicorn reached into his suit and extracted a shoulder holster loaded with a pearl-handled snub-nosed revolver.

"You know the rules," the coatpony scolded him, taking the weapon and placing it into a steel lockbox. "No weapons. Now, please take your seat. We're about to start." The two newcomers took their seats at an empty table, accepting two glasses of iced champagne from a uniformed waiter. They sipped at their drinks apprehensively, alternatively glancing at their competitors and up at the large stage up at the front of the room, covered with a red curtain.

Behind the bright red curtain, a stallion took a long draught on a goldleaf cigarette, inhaling the heady aroma of expensive Saddle Arabian tobacco. Tilting his head back, he slowly exhaled smoke into the air, watching meditatively as the wisps swirled into and out of existence in a few short seconds.

"Sir, the representatives from the Applewood Runners are here," an assistant reported. "I think that's all of the ones that are going to show up. We're ready."

"Excellent," Zugzwang smiled, flicking the cigarette away and taking his place at a podium. With a nod, he signaled the assistant to raise the curtain. The red velvet parted, revealing the anticipating crowd before him.

"Welcome, my friends," Zugzwang greeted them all with a smile. "It's good to see that so many of you got my invitation, for it's time for us all to see if we can fill our coffers." He straightened his tie. "Without further ado, let us begin the auction with the first item on the block." He gestured to his offstage assistants, who carried a large trunk onto the stage. Prying the trunk open, the tilted the box up to reveal its contents: a neatly-stacked array of rifles.

"A shipment of brand-new .30 caliber Greenfield carbines," Zugzwang announced. "Accurate for up 600 yards and as reliable as the sunrise, come rain, snow or mud. We'll start the bidding at one thousand bits. Do I hear one thousand?"

And so it went. The Greenfields were purchased by the local Canter Nostra family for eighteen hundred bits. Incriminating photographs of a high-ranking noble went to a Sinalope cartel for eight hundred and fifty bits, while a shipping crate filled with young slave fillies was bought by the Japonese Yakuza for six thousand bits. Exhibit after exhibit was offered up in succession and quickly deposited into greedy hooves.

Finally, Zugzwang cleared his throat and made an announcement. "There is only one item left for bidding today, my friends. But I assure you, I have saved the best for last." With a dramatic flair, he reached into his suit and extracted a large manila envelope. "This envelope, my friends," he said, lifting the parcel of papers up into the air for inspection, "contains a plan five months in the making. The documents herein detail a foolproof plan to steal the Muletese Falcon!"

A gasp of surprise went up among the crowd, every eye turning onto the manila envelope with lust. "We will start the bidding at two hundred thousand bits. Do I hear two hundred thousand bits?"

"Two fifty!" an enforcer from the Bloody Burros shouted.

"Three fifty!" the representative from the Sinalope cartel bid.

"Five hundred!" the Griffon mafioso called.

The bids came in a flurry of shouting voices, each of the attendees desperate to be the ones to claim this great prize. Zugzwang called out each of the current bids with a wide smile on his face.

"I hear nine eighty!" he declared, gesturing to the current top bidders, the stallions from Applewood. "Nine eighty going once...going twice..."

"Two million!"

Every head turned to face the owner of the voice: a mare sitting on her own in the back of the room. She was a pure white unicorn with a long mane of silvery-blonde hair streaked with scarlet. Her emerald green eyes held an almost hypnotic beauty to them, holding the gaze of every stallion in the room with no effort at all. The mare's cutie mark was a golden envelope addressed in scarlet red ink, accompanied by a scarlet quill and ink pot. In an aura of pale reddish magic, she held an unlit cigarette in a silver holder.

"Two million bits," she repeated softly, although her upper-class accented voice carried across the entire room. "For the Muletese Falcon."

Nopony objected: her competitors seemed to be mesmerized by this mare, by her display of audacious strength and power.

"Going once...going twice...sold!" Zugzwang banged his gavel on the podium with a final clack. "The plans are given to Madame Scarlet Letter!"

Scarlet Letter smiled and lit up her horn. The envelope was surrounded in a field of pale red magic and floated across the room into her eager hooves.

"And that closes the auction today," Zugzwang announced. "Your business is most appreciated, my friends. I bid you all a good day." And with that, the curtain closed and the lights began to dim, cuing the attendees to begin to disperse with their ill-gotten gains.

The stout unicorn retrieved his revolver, scowling heavily at the blonde mare with the envelope cutie mark. "Freaking Scarlet Letter," he grumbled to his companion. "Always hogging all the glory for herself and her gang."

"Keep quiet, Burt," the pegasus hissed. "If she heard you talking like that—"

"You know what being the ones to steal the Muletese Falcon would do for the Applewood Runners, Ernie?" the stout unicorn snapped. "We wouldn't be the laughingstocks of the Equestrian underworld anymore; we'd be the ones on top!" His eyes slowly slid back towards Scarlet Letter, shining with greed and envy.

"True enough," Ernie agreed quietly, following his gaze as they exited. "But who said we had to steal it direct?" With a final glance back, the two of them exited the shop, already scheming hard.

Meanwhile, Scarlet Letter slowly opened the manila envelope and began to examine the documents within it. At the very top of the pile was a photograph of her target: the Muletese Falcon, a magnificent golden statue of a falcon inlaid with jewels of every color. The picture itself seemed to sparkle beneath her gaze, and she could not resist an awed gasp.

"Oh, my dove, you do know how to spoil a mare," she cooed to Zugzwang, who had joined her at the table.

"Only the best for you, Scarlet," he replied. A waiter brought over a bottle of beerenauslese and two glasses. Zugzwang poured a glass for the lady, and then one for himself. "Of course, I must be sure...are your men up to the task?"

"The Scarlets are the finest criminals in Equestria," Scarlet Letter assured him, sipping daintily at her wine as she scrutinized the plans before her. "We have the resources and ability for anything, especially a plan conjured by our dear friend Zugzwang, the Black King of Crime."

"Madame, please, you make me blush," Zugzwang laughed softly.

Scarlet flipped over a sheet of paper, revealing a file beneath. Clipped to this file was a photograph of a pale orange stallion with curly brown hair, dressed in a dark hat and a poncho with a rubber chicken riding on his back. "Who is this stallion?" she asked.

"That is Cheese Sandwich," Zugzwang replied. "He is the key to the plan's success."

"Indeed?" Scarlet raised an eyebrow, examining the picture intently. "Well, then, let us make a toast to Mister Cheese Sandwich, and thank him for his aid."

"Of course," Zugzwang agreed. The two criminals raised their glasses and clinked them together. Their eyes sparkled at one another over their glasses.

"Happy Hearts and Hooves Day, mein Geliebte," Zugzwang whispered.

"Happy Hearts and Hooves Day, my dove," Scarlet Letter answered. She leaned in, silently asking for a kiss. And whatever Scarlet Letter asked for, she got, even if she was making demands of a king.

Author's Notes:

And here goes nothing. This is the first time I've included a prologue to a story, but I felt it was necessary to set up the story.

So what do these two lovers have in mind for Equestria's Super Duper Party Pony? Read on, my friends...