Magnet Boutique was a clothing store that sold everything from expensive, tailor-made suits and dresses. It also specialized in prosthetics, wigs, hair coloring, and skin dye. Spike was still shaken from the events in Impossibly Rich’s interrogation room, but he and his crew were going to have to change their appearances if they were to going to get back into the Resort (now Rich Towers). The proprietor of the establishment was a tall, thin man that had brilliant orange hair with yellow highlights and a big moustache. He wore purple slacks with a matching vest, and a measure tape was draped around his neck like a scarf. The moment Spike entered the shop the owner and his three employees swiftly jumped over the counter to greet him... and the many potential customers.

“Hi, nice to see you, I am Steven Magnet. This is Lily Lace, Starstreak, and Inky Rose. Can we help you fine ladies and gentlemen?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m going to need black, 42 long, and nothing touches this skin but pure silk,” Spike stated. “And get my girlfriends something that will best show off all of their assets.”

“Okay, and would your lady friends like to be wrapped in silk as well?” Steven inquired. “Some people think it’s super tacky, but personally I love it when a harem dresses alike.”

“Okay, look, we’re deputized officers working a very dangerous case, and we need some clothes,” Applejack explained.

“There are a lot of women chasing us,” Spike added.

“As well they should be,” Lily Lace replied, “because you are a very good-looking man. If I didn’t have a boyfriend, I would take a run at you in a heartbeat. I would let you take me upstairs, put me in a bubble bath, and smack my bottom. I would let you punish me! I need, I need you!”

“Lily, honey, what did we talk about?” Steven said to her. “Listen, you kids have nothing to worry about, because we are going to turn you into the beaus and belles of the ball.”

“Thank you,” Spike said.

“Absolutely,” Steven replied. “Let’s start with you, shall we? You’ve got the chiseled chin, wonderful skin and big, broad shoulders.”

“Extraordinary shoulders,” Inky Rose put in. “I’d like to gnaw on them.”

“Let’s put a dead animal on you. Croc skin! Buttercream, buttercream, croc skin, buttercream...” Steven said. “What size is the waist? Let’s go in...”

“Hey, watch it!” Spike exclaimed. “Fresh!”

“He’s got some fire to him. I like that,” Steven commented. “All right, follow me, please.”

He led the group to the back of the store, through a heavy black curtain. On the other side was a large room sub-divided into smaller rooms. There were racks of ballroom gowns as well as feathered boas and lingerie lining both sides of the hallway. There was a beautifying area for hair and make-up with marquee lighting on large mirrors at each station and every kind of make-up one could ever need.

“Cancel the rest of our appointments!” Steven shouted. “We are giving these people whole new looks!”

Lily Lace nodded as the gang immediately started trying on clothes with Starstreak and Inky Rose’s help, all while Steven examined them with expert eyes.

“I want it extra-short,” Fluttershy said as Starstreak helped her get fitted with a cute green dress.

“Pert! Sassy! Do I like it? I do!” Steven commentated.

“And show her something with a heel,” Spike told them.

Rarity cutely pouted as Inky Rose wrapped a scarf around her (Rarity’s) neck while Starlight tried on a sleeveless ‘60’s-style dress.

“We are definitely going to have to improve, if not completely change, your current style,” Inky Rose said.

“Style?” Rarity scoffed. “Firstly, if you knew the first thing about style, darling, you would know that animal prints are passé. And secondly--’”

“Rarity!” Spike snapped as he ducked into one of the changing rooms.

Rarity stopped arguing when she saw Lily Lace enter Spike’s dressing room. Lily stopped in surprise at the sight of Spike standing naked to the waist.

“Oh, my!” she said.

Spike shushed her. Then promised her, in a very husky voice, that he would have her. Not now, not then, but soon. Very soon. Rarity’s cheeks burned at that, but her temper was extinguished when Starlight asked Rarity to unzip her dress.

“I feel bad,” Feather Bangs said as he picked out a suit. “It’s like torture.”

“This is war, kid,” Dash told him. “There’s gonna be collateral damage.”

She walked into Soarin’s dressing room and put her arm across his slender shoulders as he looked himself in the mirror.

“You okay?” she asked him.

Soarin tried to find the words. He was thinking about all that stuff the Wonderbolts used to hand out almost a century ago about women not being as good as men troops, and he thought it was a bunch of crap, at least in Spitfire, Fleetfoot and Rainbow Dash’s cases. They had proved, many times, that women could fight as well as any man. And there wasn’t anybody, man or woman, that Soarin would rather have beside him in a fight.

“I always leveled with you, didn’t I, Crash?” Soarin asked when he finally found his voice.

“Mm-hmm,” she answered.

“Well, I’m stringing along with this operation, but I’m scared. I mean, it’s no panic, there’s just a little something that gets me right up in here,” he said as he pointed to his heart.

“That’s the only way to be, Clipper,” Dash replied. “It makes you careful. Look Soarin, the brave ones don’t come home. You stay scared.”

“Yeah, you were always one of those who didn’t want any brave ones up in the air, running exercises with you,”

“That’s simple enough,” she said. “In my book, bravery rhymed with stupid, and it still does.”

“Yeah, you were really something. Imagine someone as reckless as you winning ‘Best Young Flyer in Equestria’,”

“Now, don’t think I wasn’t scared the day I won that. And do me a favor: don’t mention it now because my knees are starting to shake all over again,”

“Then how come this operation of Spike’s doesn’t make you shake?”

“It does,”

“No less than a billion bucks apiece,” Soarin thought out loud. “I guess you figured the odds are right, huh?”

Rainbow Dash punched Soarin’s shoulder lightly and she laughed; her tone free, light, and happy.

“Soarin, the way I see it is like this: the nineteen of us against this one little city. We’re in overlay,”

“Well, we might as well get ready for the briefing,”

They exited the change room to check on the others. When they did, they all started sharing what they were going to do with their share of the money when this would all be over.

“I’m gonna get me a couple of Ferraris, one for uphill and one for downhill,” said Rainbow Dash. “Maybe even one for the straightaways, too. I’ll cop every Grand Prix they run. What are you gonna do with yours?” she asked Soarin.

“I’m going to get a fifty-foot yacht and I’m not even gonna put it in the water,” he replied. “I’ll leave it in my driveway just to let the neighbors know I don’t care. Then maybe I’ll give it to somebody—like the mailman.”

“You wanna know what I’m gonna do with mine?” Chrysalis asked. “I’m going to buy an island and I’m going to live on it.”

“I’ve always wanted to swim in a pile of money,” Pinkie said.

Fluttershy laughed. “What about you, Discord?”

“I’m gonna dig an Equestria Games-sized swimming pool, and fill it with Piña coladas and a Canterlot sorority,” he said.

Inky Rose entered Spike’s dressing room, a coat in her arms, with Steven Magnet by her side. Spike took the coat from her and tried it on. It fit pretty well. Spike was impressed; they were clearly good judges of size. It was warm and pliant to his touch, and yet not too heavy. He nodded, pleased.

“The Son of the Serpent deserves only the best,” she said. “A cloth of gold would be more suited to such a knight as yourself. Accept my abject apology that I could not create such a cloth.”

“Apology accepted, Miss Rose,” Spike said. “This will do nicely. Thank you. Now, how much is all this going to cost?” he asked Steven.

“Price!” the man was horrified. “It is a gift!” Steven exited the change room, closing the door behind him. “We’ve done all we can,” he told his employees. “It’s up to them now.”

Spike stood alone once more, thinking about the eighteen friends that were waiting for him outside that door. Right at that moment any of them could have bailed out. It would have been easy. But they didn’t. They stayed. Then he thought about why he had stayed.

Fear of failure was part of the reason. If he walked away now, he would never come back. He knew that, and he had invested almost 20 years of his life. All that time was finally beginning to pay off. He had been beaten many times, but he had never just quit. Not once. Not ever. If he quit now, it would eat him up the rest of his days. Spike Drake, the quitter, who walked away when the going got tough.

Hope was part of the reason, too. His desire and faith that he could still stop Impossibly Rich. That he still had some kind of a chance.

But the top of the list was a woman.

Not Celestia, nor any of the women in his harem. A woman from long ago.

She was the reason he didn’t walk out of that city.

To walk away would be to admit defeat. To admit failure, give up, forget it.

Spike could never forget it. From the day his mother died, he made a silent vow, to himself and to his parents, that he would never rest until the people responsible paid for their sins... with their lives if necessary.

Soon, his mission would be complete.

The door to his changing room opened again and Trixie entered, wearing a rather conservative baby blue dress. Spike looked at her for a moment, thinking about whether or not to share what he was thinking and feeling. A part of him didn’t want to; she’d never understand his goals. He had tried to convince himself that he was looking for justice, but now it was looking more and more like revenge. They were so alike, he thought, yet so different.

But Trixie did understand.

She shook her head as Spike pulled on his white opera gloves. His good luck charms. As long as he wore them, nothing bad could happen to him.

It had always been that way. Spike put on the gloves and he couldn’t lose. Growing up, nearly every break Spike had ever had had come when he was wearing those gloves. It was funny: it was almost enough to scare a guy sometimes. Spike would be in a penny crap game in some back alley, down to his last three cents, the whole wad shot, when he would pull out the gloves and he would start taking on all the other kids, and he never missed.

It was the same thing on a bigger scale when he got older. Cards, dice, the horse track—they all behaved as if he owned them and the dough just fluttered in. And then, after a while, Spike’s own luck had started to come in, not as solid as the luck the white gloves brought him, but still better than most people’s.

“You don’t need those,” Trixie said. “The magic didn’t come from them. It came from here.” She placed her hand over his heart. “It was all you! You are the Magic Man... You’re the son of the legendary Double R, Barbara Drake... But now, the tables have turned.”

“What?” Spike asked.

“You’ve always warmed my cold and lonely heart. Ever since we were kids,” she told him. “It’s my turn to protect you for a change.”

Trixie removed her hand from Spike’s chest, made a little gesture with it and three playing cards with the golden Sun on one side and sapphire numbers on the opposite side, appeared between her fingers. The first was a two, the second was an eight, and the third was ten.

The eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth (and final) Gates!

“Those... Trixie, you...” Spike began.

“These are rightfully yours,” she said. “I have watched you forge your own destiny, Spike. You are more than worthy!”

Spike took them from her and thought about their friendship. And then he thought maybe, if things had been different, he and Trixie could have had everything. They’d have made a perfectly good marriage. He couldn’t stop the tears which welled within his eyes.

“It’s ironic,” he said. “The title of Most Valuable Casino Dealer is what tore us apart, and I’ve been trying to gather these wretched things ever since. I thought they were the only things connecting me to my mother. I fought so desperately to find my way back to her. That’s why she hid a part of herself in that video game before she died, to protect me from danger. She didn’t want me to walk the same path she did. She was trying to protect me from the Casino Guild, ever since they tried to kidnap her when she collected all thirteen and became the MVCD. The truth is... I hated myself. I was disappointed in my own immaturity. I couldn’t accept it, and acted out of spite. I won’t make that mistake again. I have given everyone else in my life a second chance... so I will try to help Twilight, if I can.”

Spike looked at the woman who had been his best friend for so many years. Trixie was such a dear, sweet woman. He had known her for so long, trusted her, depended on her, and loved her.

“Thank you, Trixie, for helping me grow into the man I am today,”

“I’ll always be here for you,” she said at last. “Now, let’s go out there and make some magic.”

They exited the changing room with Spike dressed to kill in a perfectly tailored purple crocodile skin suit, a matching belt, neck tie, and boots.

Did he really have them sewed up for this? Were they so tied by this funny loyalty that they’d go along with something that went against everything they believed in? Until now, Spike had been dead sure they were all in, regardless of how much they might hate the whole caper. Now, Spike wondered.

He would not see this plan fail, or, if it did, the one responsible for that failure would be made to pay. And that would be him, Spike Drake, whom Twilight Sparkle hated.

The changing room doors opened and the gang stepped out one by one.

Applejack had changed into an elaborate red silk cheongsam dress reminiscent of the Far East with a slit up her right leg all the way to the top of her thigh. She had borrowed Sunset’s ‘Shimmering Sunset’ lipstick as well as her red eye shadow. Even if they had been without makeup, the honey-haired farm girl’s lips were still full and soft, and Spike loved them that way.

“I look ridiculous, don’t I?” AJ asked.

“That is the sexiest thing I have ever seen,” Spike said.

Sunset wore a dark violet dress with a single strap over her right shoulder (also with an exaggerated slit, but up her left leg instead of right); her hair was tied back in a long ponytail, and she wore a ring that would allow her to win at the slots. It contained an electromagnetic RPM controller that created pressure on the case, which caused the rotation of the cylinders to stutter and stabilize in a way that desired symbols would appear and the machine would always bring out a jackpot.

Fluttershy’s hair was tied back tightly against her neck, and there was a fair amount of skin peeking out of her sassy, low-cut green dress that was three inches too short. Gold earrings swung beside her smooth cheeks, and a jade butterfly was in her hair. She was wearing a little light blush and high heels and looked like she was going out dancing. Nobody would ever suspect her. Pinkie Pie chose a dark wig, a skimpy black leather halter top, a studded collar, and matching tight pants. Vinyl Scratch had pocketed her sunglasses and was dressed like an Elvis impersonator in a white sequin jumpsuit, complete with a black wig. Except the top part (which displayed a generous amount of her mighty breasts) didn’t have tassels, the pants were a pair of tight booty shorts, and she wore white gogo boots.

Zephyr Breeze wore a polo shirt and slacks, as if he’d just come from the tennis court. Sunburst had on a Stetson, a gaudy shirt, round rimmed sunglasses and he had combed his thick, pointy goatee while Starlight Glimmer was in a ratty T-shirt and jeans with holes in them, and a purple beanie on her head. Soarin, his hair slicked back, stepped out wearing a blue crushed-velvet shirt and black leather pants, a gold watch on his left wrist, and a heavy golden chain around his neck, beneath his wide-open collar. It would be hard to miss him. Moon Dancer ditched her glasses and chose a tight black latex bustier, with a matching short skirt and fuck-me heels. Rarity wore a backless white top, a short black leather skirt, and rhinestone boots.

“Whoa, look at you!” Spike said to Sunset. “Gorgeous!” he said to Pinkie. “Smokin’ hot!” he told Fluttershy. “Damn!” he said at Moon Dancer. “And Vinyl, aren’t you a little slice of pie!”

“And how do I look?” Rarity asked him.

“Who would have thought you had the legs of a thorough-bred,” he replied.

Rarity scowled at him and marched back into the changing room.

“That was really rude, Spike,” Fluttershy said. “But thank you,” she added with a smile, which earned him a kiss on both cheeks (two from her, two from Sunset, two more from Moon Dancer, and two from Applejack).

“Rarity, that was a compliment,” Spike said. “You don’t need to change.”

She came back out and asked, “You really like it?”

“You know I do,” he stated.

Rarity blushed. Rainbow Dash appeared soon after, wearing a sleeveless ensemble that showed her slender neck and sharp athletic shoulders. Thorax and Pharynx had changed into three-piece suits with silk ties, and Feather Bangs was dressed in a gray suit and leather shoes. An outfit that said he had more money than brains.

Discord had donned a fake thin black mustache and pulled his hair back into a sleek ponytail. He wore a red silk shirt open two buttons at his neck, and his black Armani jacket flowed around him like a cape. He was very pleased to discover that he looked pretty good in Armani.

“Pretty darn good!” Discord said, admiring himself in the mirrors.

He looked virtually unrecognizable. And finally Chrysalis, with her hair tied back in a bun, round glasses balanced on her nose, dark blue lipstick, black leather skirt, fishnet stockings, and a green blouse that was bursting at the buttons, could have passed for a porn-queen college librarian.

“You should dress like that more often,” Spike said.

“Do you really like it?” she asked.

“You’d scare me into submission,” Zephyr told her.

The gang of friends finally clustered together and Discord told them the rest of what he had learned while working for Flim and Flam.

“What?” Rarity asked. “Taking over Flimflam Resort wasn’t her true goal?”

“The ICDG has no interest whatsoever in running a casino,” Discord stated.

“Which means Impossibly Rich was just after Spike’s Gates,” Dash said.

“In my opinion, I believe the Guild is looking for a new MVCD to succeed Spike’s mother, Barbara,” Discord said.

“A new Most Valuable Casino Dealer?” AJ asked. “They’re after Spike?”

“Spike or Twilight, that’s the reason why Cinch let them battle via Russian roulette,” Discord answered. “Those two are the closest dealer to becoming the MVCD. Twilight has ten Gate cards, Spike has three, so he’s down, but not out! Even though that’s quite a gap, he is still a Gate Holder.”

“Wait, Spike has the final three?” Sunburst asked. “Where’d you get them?”

“Trixie,” he said. “All right, now listen up! Most of you already have a general idea of the plan of this operation. But before I give you the full picture, I want to point out that in spite of what happened a few hours ago in Rich’s interrogation room... you have all stood by me. I’d say that’s a Tartarus of a good sign. Now, what I’m about to say is extremely profitable and very dangerous.”

They all nodded to indicate that they understood. Then Spike reached into his crocodile skin suit and pulled out a royal blue handkerchief with a crude map of Las Pegasus sewn into it with the names and shapes of several key landmarks embroidered in white. The ones they were interested in, especially the casinos.

Spike’s finger stabbed the handkerchief map, the eyes of his allies following, before he looked at them.

“This is our objective: the 3000 block of Las Pegasus Boulevard, otherwise known as the Mirage, the Maretro-Goldwhinnyn-Mareyer Grand, the Rich Casino and Resort, the Rich Plaza, and the recently opened Rich Towers,” His eyes made another tour of the circle of faces. “Together, they are the five most profitable casinos in this city. Our mission: to liberate billions of dollars. Now, Rich Towers feeds into the cages of the Mirage, the Grand, the Plaza and the Casino Resort, but every penny ends up in the vault of the Towers, beneath 200 feet of solid rock. Units involved: special teams made up of former employees and customers of the Flimflam Brothers’ Resort. We are going to hit Impossibly Rich hard and the take is thirteen figures each.”

Soarin had a faint, troubled frown.

“Just for curiosity, how did you figure this was a job for former casino employees?” he asked. “Why didn’t you just get some regular heist guys?”

“For the best reasons,” Moon Dancer broke in. “One, a man with a criminal record can’t get near Las Pegasus, much less the casinos.”

“Well, I guess that lets us out,” Thorax said about himself and Pharynx.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Spike told them. “You’re not hoodlums. The Las Pegasus people have a line on the bad boys, sure, but they don’t keep records on every guy that ever took a first-time fall. You have no connections with their underworld, and the Hive Casino and Grill is a legitimate business.”

“Hoods are always mixed up with other hoods,” Applejack added. “And where there are hoods, there are stool pigeons. But with us... no stoolies, no leaks.”

“You know something?” Chrysalis put in. “I think the only reason I agreed to get into this caper was so I could see you again.”

“Sounds like a Tartarus of a price to pay and I agree with you: I’m worth it,” Spike told her. “And secondly, a big time pro like we’d need in an operation like this is always yakking to other pros, I don’t care who he is. You hire a guy to do a job in, say, Fillydelphia, or Manehattan, Neigh York or Chicoltgo, in on it. The word never spreads faster than when a pro does something big. He can’t keep it to himself any more than he can fly.”

Spike’s voice was intense, his eyes were burning. They marveled. Spike, who usually played it so cool, was giving them the hard sell.

“Sure, these guys claim they do their talking only over the grapevine and nobody but the people who’re with it can listen in. Like AJ said, there’s always a leak, and they always wind up in the big house. With us, nobody will ever know.”

“And how did you fit into all this?” Pharynx asked Moon Dancer.

“I was the planner,” she explained. “I’m the one who dreamed this whole scheme up, but not how to do it though. That’s why I asked Spike; he worked out the tactics and the coordination.”

They stood quietly. The plan was so full of holes it made Swiss cheese look solid. No one else said anything, but they all knew that there was still a chance that something could go wrong. And they all agreed on one thing: to try this would be crazy, to do it would be impossible, and there were over a dozen reasons it wouldn’t work... but they were almost two dozen men and women who just didn’t care. Spike waited a moment before he went on.

“Okay, bad news first,” he continued. “Ever since Impossibly Rich won the Flimflam Brothers Resort and converted it into the Rich Towers, it now houses a security system that makes the Canterlot Treasury look like a candy store. First, we have to get in the Towers’ front door, which anybody will tell you takes more than a smile. Next, through those doors are guards with automatic weapons. This is where it gets tricky. They know our faces; that’s why we came here. Once we get into the casino, it’s a piece of cake. Any questions so far?”

“Any good news?” Vinyl asked.

“Yes, the Rich family has a long list of enemies,” Spike said, “enemies with loose cash and nothing to lose. Now, the top three casinos can clear three million dollars a day just on the floor. Rich, with her high-level players and no limits, is projecting five billion. But in exchange for the loans, she had to give up six of the nine seats on her board, so she doesn’t even control her own casinos, and a couple of them aren’t friendly. So she has to clear no less than half a trillion in the first quarter, or she gets dumped out of her own hotel. Now, the Equestria Gaming Commission stipulates that a casino must hold and reserve enough cash to cover every chip in play on its floor. That means on a weekday, by law, it has to carry anywhere between $70 and $80 billion in cash and coin; on the weekend, between $90 and $100 billion. On a fight night, or a grand opening, like the one we’re about to walk in to, tonight, no less than $150 trillion without breaking a sweat. That’s so much money that we will never have to figure an angle or cut a corner or lie or use a knife on anybody ever again. There are over a dozen of us and even if we don’t get equal shares just try to do the math.”

Listening to Spike talk, they could almost see the trillions in hundred-dollar bills. They could almost feel them in their own hands, smelling that oily perfume that came from money and nothing else. For a second they were held transfixed in that illusion communicated to them by Spike.

And then Rainbow Dash whistled, breaking them free of their fantasies.

“Exactly,” Discord stated.

“Any further questions or comments?” Spike asked. “Anybody worried?”

“I have a question,” Starlight said. “Say we get into the Towers, through the front doors, and past the guards with the big freaking guns, and into the casino, all without being recognized by the Eyes in the Sky, are we really supposed to just walk out the front door again with a hundred and fifty trillion dollars in cash and chips on us without being stopped?”

Spike stifled a sigh as he nodded.

“Yeah,” he replied.

Rarity raised her hand.

“I have a suggestion,” she said. “Forget the whole thing. I like to swing as much as the next lady, but this isn’t a combat team, it’s an alumni meeting. Spike, darling, you’re trying to catch lightning in a bottle. I grant you’re brave. But the question now is: How dumb are you? Have you forgotten that the percentage is always with the house?”

They all looked at Rarity, their eyes blank, hostile, and/or sympathetic. Rarity had never been the most liked woman in the business, now she was laying it all on the line. She might as well have been holding a gun to her own head and getting ready to pull the trigger. The men and women around the room wondered if Rarity could be that simple that she thought she could live long, refusing to throw in when she knew what she knew now.

Applejack was the first to speak. “The percentage is with the people rigging the game. And in this case, it’s us!”

“Why didn’t you tell me this back at the airport?” Spike asked Rarity.

“Darling, could you please take this seriously? This is not a game! It’s a war! Impossibly Rich will stop at nothing to hurt you!”

“I know,” he replied.

“Spike, you saved us, now I’m trying to save you!” Rarity said. “This is exactly why revenge jobs don’t work. You put yourself in a position, you know you should walk away, but you can’t. This is how people die or go to prison.”

“Anybody agree with her?” Spike asked.

The rest of them were silent.

“What about you, Applejack?” Rarity asked. “You have a brain.”

“Yeah, I got a brain, Rarity, but I got to go with Spike,” she said.

“All right,” Rarity told Spike. “If I can’t talk you out of this, I can’t. But I’m certainly not going to let you pull this off without your best girl.”

“What are you talking about?” Applejack asked. “I’m his best gal!”

“I beg to differ,” Pinkie put in. “I think I am the best.”

“No, I am!” Sunset, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash shouted.

“LADIES!!” Spike yelled. “We can discuss this after we rip off Rich.”

They all nodded.

“Okay, from this point on, we don’t know each other. I will say that again: we. Do. Not. Know each other. We don’t use our real names, and we never mention Flim or Flam. If you need a restroom break, make sure you go alone. Once we’re in the suites, we’re okay—they don’t put cameras in the suites, but the hallways and elevators are wired, so we have to make sure we stagger our breaks. And even though it’s night, all of the senior casino employees are going to be working the floor,” Spike told them.

They all nodded again.

“I will be the Big Player in the first group, Discord will BP for the second, and Chrysalis for the third. In case one of us gets caught, Soarin, Feather Bangs, or Zephyr Breeze will take over. Applejack, Sunset, and Fluttershy will spot for me. Pinkie, Dash and Rarity will spot for Discord; Moon Dancer, Trixie and Starlight for Chrysalis. Spotters, make sure that your BP can see you at all times. Try to not look at each other at all, and never work the same tables. If there is an emergency of any kind, spread the signal and we’ll all head to the designated meeting place. You all know the drill if things get ugly?”

They nodded once more.

“It’s different in there this time. The stakes are higher but the return is gonna be the biggest. The rest of the players won’t be in on the scam, so they’ll think it’s their lucky night. But we’ll never get them out the door with all their winnings. Nobody leaves this town alone. Oh, and one more thing...” Spike went back to his changing room, returned with a duffel bag, and unzipped it. It contained no less than half a million dollars in cash. “In case we don’t succeed, if we don’t win... a little parting gift for each of you.”

They each took two handfuls from the stash. Then Discord reached into his pockets, pulled out numerous two-way emergency beepers—complete with digital screens for abbreviated communication—as well as several plastic cards, and handed one to each of them. They were perfect fake IDs with false names.

“Where’d you get the pictures?” Sunset asked.

“Your MyStable and Trotter accounts,” he replied.

He had created nineteen distinct aliases, one for each of them.

“Deck Breach, professional gambler,” Feather Bangs read his.

“I don’t like my name,” Rarity said.

“Why not?” Discord asked.

“‘Sandy Broadchest’?” she read it.

“Just pretend you don’t speak English, otherwise we’ll have to put a green wig over your hair,” Rainbow Dash told her.

“Who’re you supposed to be?” Soarin asked Discord.

“I am Lyman Zebra. I’m a former agent of the Hooviet Union, now a diplomat with the Equestrian consulate. I live in Canterlot, and I enjoy backgammon, chess, and walks on the beach,”

The men slid their cards into their wallets while the ladies slipped theirs into their Victoria’s Secret compartments. Discord also gave Spike, Soarin, Zephyr Breeze, Applejack, Sunset, and Rainbow Dash cigarette lighters (that weren’t really lighters) made of polymer that reacted to ultrasonic pulses. They weren’t metallic, so the compasses on the tables wouldn’t detect them. And they didn’t affect the weight when they miked the dice, which were controlled from the manufacturer all the way to the floor.

Spike put his hand into the center of their circle.

“One last thing, if the worst should happen, I want you all to know that it has been an honor, a pleasure, and a privilege to know each and every one of you... and to call you my friends,”

Then they all laid a hand on top of his. First Applejack, then Sunset, then Fluttershy, then Pinkie, Moon Dancer, Trixie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Starlight, Sunburst, Vinyl Scratch, Discord, Thorax, Pharynx, Chrysalis, Soarin, and finally Feather Bangs. Spike looked upon their faces, and in them he saw everything from strength, courage and honesty, to empathy, kindness, hope, beauty, generosity and loyalty. They were all his friends, and even before assessing their own losses, they were eager to minimize his.

“Let’s go make a killing!” Discord stated.

Something in his tone made Spike certain that to Discord this wasn’t going to be “just business.”

This was going to be fun!

They were going to take back the Resort!!

They were going to win back everything that they had lost!!!

AND THEY WERE GOING ALL IN!!!!

Next time, Spike and company infiltrate Rich Towers and start winning big in the various games in order to be able to buy back the resort... and hit Impossibly Rich where it hurts!