“And you received the delivery without any complications?”

“Yes, ma’am. We thank you for your haste. It couldn’t have been easy, gathering it all so quickly.”

“Oh, it was nothing. Anything for you, my good friend.”

“If that’s the case… I could use some floor plans for Castle Equestria. And guard protocol, if at all possible.”

The library was, for the first time since I turned it into my HQ, quiet. Dash and the girl had gone home, leaving me alone with Lyra. After the fire at Moondancer’s apartment, she had been significantly quieter. She showed no signs of abandoning our heist, though, so I wasn’t very concerned.

“Oh, Castle Equestria? What sort of business could you have in a place like that?” asked Celestia. I could hear her grin through the phone.

“I’d be happy to speak to you about it, though I’d prefer if we did it in person,” I said. “Very sensitive stuff.”

“Ah, of course. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll be able to meet for a while. I’ve been quite busy in Canterlot as of late. If you are as speedy with this job as the last, you’ll be done long before I can take another leave.”

“If that’s the case, I won’t have to tell you anything,” I said with a smirk. “It’ll be all over the news.”

“I look forward to reading about it, then. I’ll fax over the documents you asked for within the hour,” said Celestia. “Good luck on your job, whatever it may be.”

“Until we meet again,” I said. I flipped my phone shut. I slipped it into my pocket, then turned to face my partner. “So, Lyra, have you been thinking about the job?”

“No,” she said quietly.

“Well, you should have been. This was your idea, remember?”

“I need a drink.” Lyra moved like a mare dead on her feet, which I honestly couldn't blame her for. “I-I I can't… I need a drink, now.”

“I'm out of whiskey.”

“I'll go on a booze run,” said Lyra, holding out her hand and beckoning with her fingers.

“What?” I asked after a few moments of stale silence.

“It's keys, genius. The universal symbol for keys.”

“You think I trust you to go anyplace I can't see you?” I asked. Lyra buried her face in her palms, apparently too tired to deal with this at the moment.

“Look, I don’t know how else to explain this,” she groaned. “I’m not going anywhere! I know that I’d never get out of town before you tracked me down. And, after what you did to Moonie… You think I’m in any hurry to get on your bad side?”

I smirked, pulling out Moondancer’s broken glasses and turning them over in my hand. I tapped them gently against the table, biting my tongue in thought. Lyra had a good point. I found her once before, and that was when she had support. Now, entirely on her own, she didn’t stand a chance of outrunning me. And she clearly understood that, if she ever crossed me again, she’d go the same route as our late friend.

“Fine. Go on,” I said, tossing her my keys. “Pick me up some smokes while you’re out. My pack is almost done.”

“Alright. I need to get some air…”

I nodded, watching as Lyra slowly left the room. Even from inside, I could hear my van’s engine purr to life and pull off. My stomach turned slightly, and I started to regret my decision to let her go. Even though all logic said that she would do the smart thing and come right back, something in my gut told me that this wouldn’t go well for me.

I decided to use this time productively, rather than waste it worrying. I settled down with a stack of books and documents that should be quite helpful in the coming heist. At some point during my research, that fax from Celestia came in, which I knew would be instrumental to our success. Floor plans and guard schedules, and she was even thoughtful enough to outline entrances that would be easier to infiltrate.

I poured over the documents, committing everything I had received to memory. The South Tower was still an attractive option, but now I had new information. According to Celestia’s documentation, the North Tower had a vulnerability to the east: There was a gap for about ten minutes were there would be no guards due to a shift change. I was starting to lean towards that, but… Celestia had left me with one more option, one that I think would probably be the easiest to pull off.

Eventually, while I was midway through scribbling on maps and jotting down notes, I heard the van pull back up. I checked my watch; Lyra had been gone for nearly an hour. Too long for a booze and cigarette run, but she obviously didn’t run off. Good thing, too. I’d hate to have to track her down.

“I’m back,” she called from the entrance, dragging her feet through the hall.

“It’s about time. I was starting to worry,” I said, not at all sincerely.

“Look who I bumped into.” I looked up, both confused and a little miffed at what I saw. Lyra held a large green bag, which was no doubt holding our booze. To her left, clutching a duffel bag, was a very tired, very high-looking Rainbow Dash.

“Sup,” she said. “Heard we were drinking.”

“I guess we are,” I sighed. “Come on, take a seat.” I stacked my papers up a bit more neatly to allow room for my guests. “My cigs, please.”

Lyra reached into her pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, which she then tossed to me. The pack was open, which further added to my mild annoyance.

“I swiped one,” said Lyra, pulling the aforementioned swiped cigarette and sticking it in her mouth. “You got a light?” I rolled my eyes, but pulled my lighter from my pocket and lit her cigarette for her. After a moment of thought, I sparked one up for myself.

“Want one?” I offered Dash. She shook her head, then plopped her bag onto the table.

“I got something a bit more to my taste in here,” said Dash. She started rummaging through the bag, eventually returning with a baggy of coke and a slightly bent credit card. Whoever the former owner was, I hoped for his sake that he had the good sense to cancel the card before Dash had a chance to play with it.

“You plan on sharing?” asked Lyra. Dash shrugged.

“Help yourself.”

“I thought you got clean,” I said. “Mostly clean, anyway. You kicked this stuff a long time ago.”

“In prison, there’s not a whole lot to be happy about. Coke… Well, you grab your pleasures where you can get em, you know?” said Lyra. “And I was resourceful enough to get it.”

“You sound proud of that.”

“Nah. I just don’t give enough of a fuck to be ashamed right now.” She glanced at Dash, who was currently making lines of coke on the table. “You gonna tell her?”

“Does she want to know?” I asked. Dash shrugged, tapping away with that credit card.

“None of my business. But… I can make some guesses.” She slipped her card back into her pocket, admiring the three strips of cocaine she had lined on the table. “You met up with your friend, and only you walked away. Not exactly rocket science to guess that you fucked her up bad before popping her.”

I didn't say anything at first, instead grabbing the green bag from Lyra. I pulled out the pack of plastic cups and the bottle of bourbon, then poured and passed the drinks. I grabbed the bottle, staring at the label for a moment. Dizzy Dragon, Spike’s favorite brand. I sighed, then downed my drink.

“Let's party,” said Lyra, though her voice lacked any and all enthusiasm. She raised her cup in a half-hearted toast before sipping her bourbon. Meanwhile, Dash was ignoring her cup entirely. She seemed focused on the cocaine before her. She brought her nose down to the table and snorted the first line.

“Ooh, fuck,” Dash grunted, wiping away the blood that was making its way down her face. “Fucking tight.”

“Dash, not to be rude,” I said, grabbing my documents and looking then over. “But I'm trying to work. Why exactly are you here?”

“Ran into Lyra while grabbing my blow,” said Dash. “She got me thinking.”

“That's new,” snorted Lyra. Dash snickered, elbowing Lyra in the side.

“Shut up. Anyway, she had me thinking, and I realized that I never paid you back. For Thunderlane,” she said. “You helped me clean that whole thing up. Helped me move Soarin. Saved Scootaloo.”

“What's your point?” I asked. Rainbow sighed, grabbing her cup and draining it.

“My point is that I owe you, and I always pay what I owe. So… if you still want me… I'll help you do your crazy-ass heist.”

I raised an eyebrow curiously. That was a surprise, to put it mildly. Dash had stood her ground before, about being out of the game, and it made very little sense for her to change her mind now. She had nothing to gain, and a whole lot to lose. But, for whatever reason, she was on board. The question now became if I wanted her here.

I hadn't forgotten my promise to Celestia, to cut Dash loose. She was becoming a liability, and it would be beneficial to my future endeavors if I were to ditch her now. But, at the same time… I didn't want to do that. Despite our arguments and butting heads, Dash was my friend. She was a valued member of the Crew, and I don't leave my own. So I was in a bit of a rock-and-hard-place situation.

“There's no pay,” I said. “No money. Just the satisfaction of the job.”

“I don't have shit to do anyway,” she said with a shrug. “Until the Elements money comes in, I'm kinda stuck here.”

“It’s gonna be risky,” added Lyra. “Dangerous.”

“The way I see it, it’s my best bet. If you go down, I go down. My only chance is to be there with you to make sure nothing goes tits up. If I sit it out… Well, won’t make much difference anyway.”

I sipped my bourbon, curiously thinking over what Dash had said. It wasn’t like her to change her tune so quickly or so drastically. Still, I could use the help, and heisting with two partners always felt the most natural. Took me back to the good old days of heisting.

“Alright, then,” I said. “Welcome back, Ms. Dash. Tomorrow, we’ll head over to the castle to case the place.”

“And tonight?” asked Lyra.

“Tonight, we drink.”

“Really?” scoffed Dash. She raised up the black shirt and white skirt “Maids?”

“Housekeepers,” I corrected her. “Try that on. If it doesn’t fit, I need to take it back.” Dash looked at the outfit as if it were a dead skunk.

After three days of casing, our plan became clear. I had acquired most of the materials and returned them to the library. I figured we could take another day to plan, another to get the last of our gear, and three more to practice and research. Almost a whole week until we'd be ready to go. Until then, we'd be in the library.

“Nah, I’ll risk it. Looks about my size, and the less I have to wear this shit, the better.”

“So… Your plan is to infiltrate the Castle’s housekeeping staff?” asked Lyra.

“Perfect cover,” I explained. “We pick three housekeepers, incapacitate them, and take their place. Should be pretty easy to move around without getting stopped.”

“No one would suspect the maids, I guess,” said Dash. “But do we seriously have to wear this shit? This ain't exactly my style.”

“Don't care. This is standard uniform for Castle housekeeping.” I took the uniform from Dash and set it next to the other two. “It's part of the job for a housekeeper to be invisible. They blend into the background.”

“We’ve gotten pretty damn good at that by now,” said Lyra. “So we slip in and head to the Crown. How do we get past the alarm? You know there's gonna be one.”

“Well, this is where things get… hairy.” I pulled my revolver from my hip and set it on the table. “There's no stopping this alarm. Defenses are too strong and this place has backup generators for its backup generators. So… This is going to be a half-loud heist. As soon as we grab the package, we have to leave.”

“What's your plan for that?” asked Lyra. I sighed, then grabbed a duffel bag from beneath the table. I opened it and pulled out about five pounds of C4 plastic explosives.

“Are you fucking serious?” asked Dash. “Your plan is to somehow sneak bombs into the Castle, steal the Crown, and blow a hole in the wall?:

“I'm with her,” said Lyra. “How the hell are we supposed to even get it in there?”

“Hand me that broom on the other table,” I said. Dash shrugged, but grabbed the broom and tossed it to me. I unscrewed the head and showed the handle. “Hollow. Just like our dusters. We can fill them and retrieve it when we need to make our escape.”

“And if we meet with resistance?” asked Lyra. I picked up my revolver, turning it over in my hand.

“We shoot our way out.”

“If we try to blast our way out, we'll only be leaving the castle in bodybags.”

“Only if we try to leave the way we came,” I said. “But, if we have evac on standby and are quicker than quick, we'll be golden.”

“Fucking nuts,” muttered Dash. “And I assume there's no Plan B?”

“Nope. This is it.” I started packing everything back up. “Frankly, I don't expect to have to shoot much at all. If we catch them unawares, we should be able to get out easy. And we'll definitely catch them unawares.”

Even as I said it, I felt a bit nervous. How could I not? This was huge for me, and Mythos. I doubted I would retire anymore, probably just stick to smaller scores to get my fix. This would be the pinnacle of my career. But, all the same, I had this gut feeling that something would go wrong. My gut feelings had a pretty good track record. Just this once, I decided to ignore it. For the sake of the heist, the Crew, and my partners.

It's something I will never, ever do again.