Being dead was terrible on Starlight’s attempts to sleep. She’d spent the last two nights tossing and turning and generally failing to get anything resembling rest. In fact, as is its wont in these sorts of situations, the attempts at sleep only made things worse because all Starlight could do then was lie down and brood about the Alicorn Amulet and lie down and brood about the Alicorn Amulet and lie down and brood about…

In an effort to get her mind off being dead, Starlight had worked like lightning on her friendship reports all day yesterday. She blazed through them like a caffeinated wildfire through an oil-soaked lumber mill, but it didn’t help. Some part of her brain stayed detached from the rest, poking at her and going, Hey. What about the Alicorn Amulet? Hey. HEY. She couldn’t keep that activity up, and besides, she’d run out of friendship reports soon.

She wished she knew how to send messages to Spike; Twilight would know what to do. But what would she say? What could she say?

Dear Twilight,

A sleazy unicorn stole the Alicorn Amulet from me and is going to sell it on the black market. Help.

Your faithful student who needs help,
Starlight Glimmer

P.S.: Help.

Yeah, no.

A rooster crowed somewhere around Sweet Apple Acres for the fifth time that morning. Starlight moaned and tried to press the pillow further down her ear canal. She was just so tired, between two sleepless nights and all the work she’d done yesterday. All she wanted to do was get some rest, but her brain kept poking her.

“Hey. Starlight.” Poke.

Wait. That wasn’t her brain…

“Are you awake?” Poke. “C’mon.”

With a yawn, Starlight pushed herself up and blinked the world into semi-focus. Rainbow Dash was standing next to her bed, holding a coffee cup in her hoof and a newspaper under a wing and looking some mixture of nervous and quite pleased with herself. “You are awake!” Rainbow said cheerfully, the nervousness dropping away. She held out the cup. “You look tired. Coffee?”

“Wha’ kin’s i’?” Starlight sleep-slurred.

“Double-triple espresso. Strongest kind Ground Bean has. I still think it’s kinda weak, though.”

Starlight stared at the cup for a bleary second and took a sip. In hindsight, she supposed the only way she could’ve gotten awake faster would be to have pure caffeine injected directly into her arteries. She banged her head a few times to get it sorted out from the drastic gear change and attempted to will her fur to uncurl. “Ooookay, wow,” she said. “That’s… pretty strong.”

Rainbow Dash shrugged. “ ’S alright.” Sip.

“So, what are you doing in my room at…” Starlight glanced at the clock. “Almost nine in the morning?”

“Just making sure you’re ready.” Rainbow’s pleased-with-herself grin grew an inch wider.

“Ready for what?”

“Ready for the ponies… who’ll answer this!” In what probably should’ve set some record for dexterity, Rainbow Dash flicked open her wing in such a way that the newspaper flew away from her, opened up, and settled on the ground in front of Starlight on a very specific page:

It took a few long moments for Starlight to process what she saw, during which she invented several new nonverbal varieties of “NOPE!”, composed an aria entirely out of incoherent screams, imagined a scenario where Twilight returned from her diplomatic mission to find her friendship protege a wanted criminal, and wondered just what the heck was up with the Ponyville Gazette. Finally, she blinked. “You- just- put this out as a classified ad? And you think ponies will show up?!”

“This is Ponyville. ’Course they will.”

“Point taken.” Starlight stared at the paper again. “But… but a heist? Tell me, Rainbow, what the heck are you thinking?”

“That somepony with those kinds of connections is going to want to keep her main source of money under close protection so getting the Amulet back going to take a lot of planning and all the help we can get?” Sip.

“…Rrrright.” Starlight wondered if being dead had shut down the thinking part of her brain. Or maybe it’d been shut off when she gave the Amulet to Goumada. Actually, given the mind-control spell, that was surprisingly likely. “So what’s your plan?”

“Uh, duh?” Rainbow Dash tapped the newspaper. “Get some ponies together and do a heist? And if you’re asking about specifics,” she added as Starlight opened her mouth, “we’ll find those out when we get there.”

“I…” Starlight looked at the newspaper again. “I don’t think-”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

“…Not really.” And Starlight was still beating herself up for that. She needed to learn this sort of thing; living with Twilight, having to save the day at some point would be inevitable. She had to be ready.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Starlight. Look. I know you’re worried, but c’mon! I do this all the time! Twilight and me and the rest, we stopped Nightmare Moon, stopped Discord, stopped Chrysalis-”

“Wasn’t that Cadance and Shining?”

“-stopped Sombra-”

“Also Cadance, plus Spike.”

“-reformed Discord-”

“Just Fluttershy.”

“-helped Daring Do stop Ahuizotl, stopped Tirek, stopped y- the Tantabus…” She chuckled. “This is gonna be easy.”

And if it had been anypony but Rainbow Dash saying that, Starlight might’ve believed her.

Over the next hour, Starlight paced back and forth so much that she wore down the carpet to fibers, magically repaired it, and then repeated. Rainbow’s casual attitude, with her all stretched out on the bed, wasn’t helping things in the slightest; Starlight’s mind seemed to be making her even more nervous to ensure the average atmosphere in the room was still “nervous”.

“They’ll be in the throne room?” Starlight asked for the umpteenth time.

“Yep,” Rainbow answered for the umpteenth time.

Starlight glared at the clock. Still a little early. Time was in that bizarre state where it went by both far too quickly and far too slowly. She could barely remember anything of the past forty-five minutes except that they were the longest forty-five minutes she’d known.

“You wanna just go down there?” Rainbow asked. “I mean, just for starters, it’s harder to wear down crystal than carpet.”

Gulp. “Y-yeah,” said Starlight. “Sure.” It was like ripping off a band-aid: just get it over with, or else it’ll be a lot worse when you actually do it, and it wasn’t like waiting would make the problem any better.

As she walked step by leaden step to the throne room, Starlight dismally reflected that, even assuming Ponyville had the ponies who could actually pull something like this off, the odds of them wanting to do a heist and showing up were pretty slim. She might as well hope that a year go by without some ancient evil from a millennium ago rearing its ugly, probably shadowy, definitely boastful head. The door to the throne room was already open; Starlight could hear some ponies talking inside. She stepped inside with bated breath, praying that whoever was there was competent.

“Muffin?”

Starlight flinched and backed away from the muffin held in her face. Beyond it, Derpy smiled at her, wall-eyed and innocent. “Don’t worry; I’ve got plenty! I thought anypony who came would want a morning snack.” Indeed, a large plate of muffins was sitting on the Cutie Map, several muffins clearly missing.

“Eh… no, thanks,” Starlight said, delicately pushing Derpy’s hoof away. So one of the ponies responding to Rainbow’s call was Derpy. Derpy was good ponies, but Starlight would put more faith in an actual rock being heist material.

“Suit yourself,” Derpy said with a shrug. She took a well-calculated bite and walked back to the Map, where she sat next to Dr. Hooves.

Starlight examined the other ponies in the room besides Derpy: the Doctor (obviously), Lyra, Bon Bon, and… that was it. Four ponies. Well, six, also counting herself and Rainbow Dash. These things were always done in sixes, weren’t they? If Starlight put faith in omens, she would’ve declared the current number to be a good sign.

With Rainbow behind her, Starlight stepped up to the map and cleared her throat. All the ponies turned to her; Lyra was giddy, the Doctor was interested, Derpy was interested in her muffin, and Bon Bon was sullen. “So, um, hi,” she said. “You all read the, the ad, right?”

“What ad?” asked Bon Bon unconvincingly. “I just happen to be at a very specific place at a very specific time without questioning what a bunch of other ponies are doing here.”

“Come on, Bon Bon,” said Lyra. She swatted at Bon Bon. “Lighten up. You didn’t have to come.”

“So!” Starlight said loudly. “A businessmare stole the Alicorn Amulet, and, um…” A sudden bout of schadenfreude seized her. “Rainbow, why don’t you explain it?”

Starlight’s desire to see Rainbow choke withered and died when Rainbow jumped up on the Map and began strutting like she was on a runway. “Listen up, ponies!” she yelled in a halfway-decent drill sergeant voice. “The Alicorn Amulet’s gone, and with Twilight on a diplomatic mission to the zebras, it’s up to us to get it back! The pony who took it has taken it to… to…” She paused and glanced at Bon Bon. “Where’d she take it?”

“Trotter Gorge,” Bon Bon said sullenly. (Lyra swatted her again.)

“To Trotter Gorge!” said Rainbow. “Where she’s got it in… Actually, I don’t know how she’s protecting it. It’s in a… casino, I think?” (It really impressed Starlight how Rainbow could continue to sound confident and boisterous while obviously making it up as she went. Bon Bon, meanwhile, started grinding her teeth.) “And we’ve gotta break in there before she can sell it to whatever dastardly bad guy wants to use it! Oh, it’ll be hard! But I know - I know! -” She stomped a hoof on the Map. “-that we can do it! ’Cause we’re from Ponyville, the hardiest town in Equestria! The Elements of Harmony are from here, and we laugh at the likes of the Everfree Forest! We are not gonna let breaking into a casino stop us!”

Lyra and the Doctor clapped. Derpy tried and failed to whistle through her mouthful of muffin. Bon Bon sulked. Starlight shuffled from hoof to hoof and tried and failed to not blush.

“So!” Rainbow Dash hopped off the map and began walking around its perimeter. “We know what we need to know. We know who we’re doing it with. A-”

Bon Bon raised a hoof. “Um, uh, quick question.” She cleared her throat. “Does anypony really get what we’re doing?”

“Of course!” said the Doctor brightly. “We’re going to take the Alicorn Amulet back from that businessmare and show her what for!”

Bon Bon sighed. “Yeah, no.”

She started pacing around the Map. “We are going to leave Ponyville and go to some trade city way out in the north, near the border of the Griffon Kingdom. Someplace none of us have gone to before. We are going to try to steal a priceless artifact from a businessmare who has ties to organized crime. We are going to steal it from, in all likelihood, a vault. A vault that is undoubtedly heavily guarded. A vault with the best security systems bits can buy. A vault we have no information on. If any of us get caught, we’re all going to jail for, at the bare minimum, however long it takes Twilight to get back from the zebra lands and get us out, which could be moons. Keep in mind, that’s at best, since those organized crime connections mean said businessmare probably won’t have a qualm about having us just ‘disappear’. And to top it off, not one of us has any experience in this sort of thing whatsoever. In short, our chances of success are practically nil.” She looked around at everypony. “You do all get that, right?”

“I know!” said Rainbow Dash. “Isn’t it awesome?”

“…We’re doomed,” muttered Bon Bon.

“Look,” said Starlight, “if you don’t want to do this, that’s, that’s okay. You don’t have to. No hard feelings. But…” She took a deep breath. “The Alicorn Amulet was stolen on my watch. I need to get it back. And… And I can’t think of any other way to do that.”

Bon Bon looked at the door for several seconds. “I should just go,” she mumbled. “Just go off, save my own skin while I still can. This is stupid.”

“Buuuuut…?” Rainbow Dash asked with a grin.

“But…” Bon Bon breathed loudly for a moment. “Someone’s gotta keep watch over you girls. And guy. Considering I’m probably the sanest pony in the room right now, that might as well be me.”

Starlight nodded reluctantly. She suspected she’d be agreeing with Bon Bon a lot in the coming days. “So, um,” she said to the whole room, “you heard what she said. Anypony gonna back out?”

Lyra’s hoof shot into the air. “I’m not!” she said happily. “The Alicorn Amulet’s too dangerous to leave in the wrong hooves and, well, this might be fun. Ponyville hasn’t had a large-scale monster attack in forever.”

“The bugbear attack was less than a year ago!” whispered Bon Bon.

“Yeah! Forever!”

“I’ve recently been wanting to go on an adventure like Twilight and the rest of the Elements,” added the Doctor. “It’s been much too long since I did something out of the ordinary. I don’t think I’m the type to sit down and relax for the rest of my days.”

“I’m here ’cause he’s here,” chirped Derpy. She nudged the Doctor.

“And I’m here ’cause she’s here,” said Bon Bon sullenly. She nudged Lyra.

“All right,” Rainbow said. “So! We’re all in!” She grinned at the assembled ponies. “And… now what?”

Bon Bon decided to introduce the Map to her muzzle repeatedly and at high speed. “You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?”

“Hey, gimme a break! I-”

“If we’re, uh, breaking into a casino,” cut in Starlight, “don’t you think we should, I don’t know, go to the casino and see what it’s like?”

“Yeah,” said Derpy. “Scope it out, steal some blueprints, find weaknesses, find out our specialties to tailor our plans around, an- What? Why are you all looking at me like that? It’s how heist stories go.” She shrugged and took a bite of a muffin. “Diff if duh fedup.”

A vague murmur of agreement rippled around the Map. Her morale bolstered slightly, Starlight said, “So now, let’s, uh, get to Trotter Gorge and check out the casino. Maybe we can take the train there.” Without waiting for a response, Starlight turned around and walked out of the throne room. From the sounds behind her, everypony was following.

And suddenly, Starlight felt that strange sensation of terrified confidence that so often accompanies big events. No, the Alicorn Amulet hadn’t been recovered. Yes, getting it back was still looking about as likely as Twilight not organizing a library just because she could. But some ponies thought they could get the Amulet back, one of whom had already saved Equestria plenty of times. Having several ponies behind her, even if one was doing it kicking and screaming, was a huge pick-me-up for her.

Maybe, just maybe, they could do this.