Aviator

Briar

Average height, dark brown coat, maroon mane, scary. That was about as far as any description of Briar ever got. The pony had a reputation, to say the least. Some called him a mobster, others a terrorist. Perhaps they were right, but the pony was just too enigmatic, even to his closest allies, to tell.

Briar leaned back in the comfortable, padded captain’s seat of a recently “borrowed” yacht and took out the pictures the sharpshooter he’d met a few weeks ago gave him. The earth pony perused the photos for a few moments. To the untrained eye, they were simply some aerial pictures of the desert. Not much to see there- certainly nothing worthy of classified material. Briar knew otherwise, though, and what he saw was opportunity.

“Briar?”

The pony looked up calmly as a Unicorn walked in from the deck. “Yes?”

The Unicorn cleared his throat. “That, uh, squadron they dispatched to defend the Sol- they added two more Pegasi to their ranks. We just sighted them over the coast.”

Briar raised an eyebrow. “Is that so? Two more… tell me, Spyglass, do you trust me?”

The stallion was slightly taken aback by this. “Yes sir,” he answered, “but what-“

“Do you trust me implicitly?”

Spyglass gulped. “Yes, sir.”

“Then do you not think I might have planned for something like this?!”

The Unicorn backed away slowly, “of course, Briar. I’ll leave you be, sir.”

“That would be best,” Briar growled as the pony left. He kept up the fierce glare as long as possible, but as soon as the cabin door closed, he sighed and rubbed his eyes. He was getting too old for this. Thirty-five years after a life of high-class, organized crime, and here he was. As far as he knew, he was the only pony who’d made it this far. Most never made it past twenty years in the business, and when they came to the end of their careers, “retirement” usually consisted of a knife in the back, or a fast, one-way trip to the bottom of Manehattan Bay. He liked to think he’d played his cards well; that his life was a shining example of how to play the game and survive. After all, there was something to be said for being in the mob business as long as he had without actually killing a single pony. His reputation, it seemed, preceded him.

This, of course, was Briar’s greatest asset. He was still one of the most feared criminals in Manehattan, and was working his way up the wanted lists across the country as well. Briar got up from his seat and trotted over to the yacht’s mini bar, helping himself to a glass of wine.

“Manehattan’s most wanted,” he mumbled to himself, “I couldn’t have asked for anything else.”

His career had started out in what most considered to be a unique manner. While most of Manehattan’s known thieves started out stealing simply to stay alive, Briar had thought of stealing more as a game. He vividly recalled walking past an apple cart on Main Street in his younger years and asking himself how easy it would be to snag just one shiny, red fruit. While this thought alone wasn’t an entirely villainous act, he chose to act upon it, surprising himself with how easy stealing one little apple had been. Thus began his criminal life. From the apple, he worked his way up to books, or fancy silverware, before moving on to bigger and more expensive items. He never resorted to violence in his work; it ruined the fun. For nearly thirty years he’d been at it, and for nearly thirty years his conscience nagged at him each night. Stealing was wrong- Everypony with half a brain knew that- but it was just too much fun to quit. He’d even tried stealing items and returning them later, but it simply wasn’t enough; not to mention that any self-respecting group of assistants would be hesitant to follow a thief who simply gave back the spoils of their endeavors. To this end, Briar had decided that he’d had enough of the criminal life. He’d known for a while now that Manehattan’s justice system would never let him go with a slap on the wrist; in fact, he’d be lucky if he’d only see one life sentence. He’d actually sat down and done the math a few weeks ago. In the time he’d been a thief, he’d stolen exactly 2.6 percent of the city’s revenue. That was an unforgivable number, he’d decided, and it demanded that he instead retire as an anonymous figure, albeit a figure with a nice island somewhere in the Griffon Sea and a good yacht- preferably one that hadn’t been stolen. He liked yachts.

Yet even with retirement on the horizon, he’d been itching for just one more job- one that would combine the greatest heist of the century, or perhaps even the greatest of all time, with a single act- the one good thing he felt he could do for ponykind. Would it redeem him? Briar smirked as he slid back into his chair. Doubtful, but there was always a chance. Even if it didn’t, it’d ease the weight on his conscience. No one in his current crew knew, of course, but that wasn’t an issue. Money fixed problems, plain and simple, and he had a lot of it. The real trick would be avoiding being caught and branded a terrorist. The stakes were nothing if not high.

Briar went back to studying the photos he’d been given. The desert called to him, and its deeply buried secret was practically screaming to be discovered. Somewhere in the sandy, dusty cliffs the photo showed, his redemption lay in wait. He turned his head back towards the Manehattan shoreline, following the faint contrails left by the Aviator squadron that had flown over minutes ago. He was getting ahead of himself. He had to put the heist first.

After all, if life had taught him anything, it was that the heist always came first.