Chapter one: Robbery on the train
The sun was hanging low on the skies of Equestria, as Luna steadily went to work on raising her own marvellous work. Night was slowly falling, and so the train cars in the Ponyville express were dimming the lights, allowing some to sleep, while letting others stay up for a while longer.
As was the case with six ponies, and one dragon, in the far end of section B.
"What exactly is the point of going to Applelosa this late at night AJ?" Rainbow asked, throwing down her pitifully awful hand. The game of poker the six of them had decided to spend the time playing hadn't been treating her well, so far the best she'd managed was a pair of aces, easily triumphed by Rarity's straight flush.
"It's mah cousin Braeburn, he's saying sumthin's been stalking round town, and no one has been able to find this weird animal, or whatever it is." Applejack leaned in a little closer, actually revealing her cards, but no one really noticed. "And he says he's heard some kinda maniac laughin from the deserts." She made a little shiver, and was accompanied by Fluttershy, who was shaking more than the train itself.
"You guys, stop scaring her!" Pinkie almost screamed. But as she had so far been told to quiet down by three, give or take a few, train conductors, she at least kept herself slightly in control, and it was more so a very high pitched whisper than a scream.
"Alright Pinks, sheesh," Rainbow huffed. Blowing a strand of her own hair away from her face.
"Mind if I settle in for the night girls?" Rarity asked, trying her best to hold in her yawns. "I'm terribly tired, and I need my ten hours of sleep if I'm gonna be searching through a desert the entire day."
"Sure Rarity, the sleeping cabins are that way." Twilight opened the door and pointed down a rather long corridor. A sign with the words "sleeping cabins," was actually placed right in front of the door, so her friendly pointer was rather unnecessary.
"Thank you Twilight." She picked up her luggage from underneath the chair, a surprisingly small amount considering that she almost never left Ponyville without half her closet. "Good night girls, I'll see you all tomorrow."
She closed the door behind her as she heard the various "good nights," of her friends. As fun as it was to be with them, she didn't want anything other than to just lie down and get a good nights sleep. But it seemed even that would be impossible.
The door labelled "Sleeping Cabins," was blocked, by something rather large and puffy. Rarity could only guess it was a pony as it was wearing a rather large trench coat. But she could swear that there was a smell of seawater in the area.
Apparently she wasn't the only one annoyed, because she heard quite the distressed voice from the other side of this blocked doorway. She put down her luggage, and with a runtime of 3 seconds where she put about 30 metres behind, she rammed straight into it, only to bounce back and land on her haunches.
Apparently whoever was on the other side noticed this, as suddenly she heard a voice calling from the other side.
"Try again, he's almost gettin lose see!" The voice yelled in something very akin to a Buckston accent.
She tried again, this time though she saw the gelatinous mess before her move itself a few inches more into the door way. She repeated this process about five times until finally, with a satisfying 'plop' the doorway was now open.
Rarity got back up after landing head first into whatever had been blocking the door. To her surprise it was soft and blubbery, kind of like ballon, only this didn't pop. She noticed a small figure leaning in over the fat thing, blowing fresh air towards it with a newspaper.
"C'mon ol'boy, you ain't gonna go down like this are yah?" The little thing piped up, it was the exact same Buckstonese voice Rarity had heard from the windows, but this thing was clearly not a pony, it was far far too small, and walking on two legs no less.
"Remember all the good times we had bud, c'mon, you've gotta wake up, we still have so many heists to complete, so many banks to rob!" The little thing almost wailed. Rarity actually noticed that whatever it was it was crying like a newborn. Which suddenly made the large round figure gasp and flail about.
"Oh right buddy, I forgot." The small one said again, he pulled out a small bottle from within his tiny black trench coat. He poured it all over his friend. Which made it jump up and float around in the air.
"There you go see, you're up and going right?"
The big thing just made a sort of slurp sound, which apparently was enough. "That's right, Nyah!"
The large one floated up towards the ceiling, letting the small one back into sight. It was even smaller than a foal, but only slightly. It had a large red fedora and a black trench coat on. She couldn't see its face behind a red bandana that covered most of its face. The large one was wearing the same outfit, minus the fedora. But the bandana did little to cover up its puffy face.
"Thank you missy, I was worried I was gonna lose my pal here if you hadn't come along, Nyah." The little one said, it apparently had this habit of ending every single sentence with this sort of laugh. "My name is Vinnie, and my pal here is Spike." The little guy tipped his fedora in appreciation. "Thank you for yer help, Nyah."
"It was nothing..." Rarity said, pretty unsure of the situation. She had absolutely no idea what either of these things were. The large one she'd noticed had rather large spikes growing out of his back, and the tiny ones hand was just a stump with absolutely no fingers. They were trying their best to hide their identity, yet they told her their names. They were a strange pair to be certain.
"If you say so missy," Vinnie shrugged before waving his friend forward, "don'tcha wanna say thank you to the nice lady Spike?" The large one flopped forward and made the same slurp noise she'd heard before. "That's right see? Nyahaha." Vinnie laughed, "You must excuse us missy, were a lil bit busy here."
"Of course, of course." She said hastily, stepping away from the door to let them through, Vinnie walked right past and Spike flopped right after her. She turned towards the doorway, but just then she heard that weird laugh again, and she turned to see that both of them were now gone.
"I just need some sleep." She said, she said trying to convince herself that it had all been a dream.
The remaining six ponies in cart section 5B had only just resumed their poker game when they heard someone knock on the door.
"Who could it be at this time of night?" Spike asked, looking up from his comic to check the time, it was eleven pm, so whoever it was were either desperate to find something, or it was Rarity.
Twilight opened the door, only to find there to be no one out there at all.
"Ey there missy, I'm down 'ere!"
Twilight looked down, and saw a small thing wearing a black trench coat, red fedora, and a red bandana. "Hello there little guy, are you looking for your mother?" She asked as carefully as she could, which made the little guy look up at her with a very bemused look.
"Look here lady, I ain't no kid I can tell ya that fer free." He quickly drew something out from his coat, which turned out to be a rather cartoony looking pistol, like something out of Luna Wars. "And this here is a holdup see, Nyah."
Twilight couldn't help but smile, "I don't think this is a good idea little guy, you'd better go back to your parents and get a good nights sleep so you can grow big and strong."
The little thing pointed the pistol straight towards the deck of cards they'd been playing with only a few minutes earlier, he pulled the trigger, and the entire pile promptly disintegrated into a puddle of water, saltwater as far as she could tell.
"I'm not no kid see, now hand over the loot, Nyah." The thing laughed. Spike was the first to hand his stuff over. Pushing his bag of snack gems towards the small guy. The five friends just tossed either their purses or their wallets towards the criminal. Pinkie decided to go melodramatic when she handed over a small rubber ducky with the name "mr squiggly" written on the side, which the tiny guy promptly snatched from her hooves with a, "Thank you, Nyah."
"Thank you all very much ladies, now onto the next one see." He snapped, somehow with only one finger on each limb, and a rather humongous guy quickly dashed out from the left. He opened his mouth, and the tiny one tossed the sack of valuables into his mouth.
"Remember the names Vinnie and Spike, see!" The little one said, jumping onto the larger ones back before throwing a couple sheets of paper towards his victims. The large guy then somehow flew into the air and zoomed off, accompanied by, "Nyahahahaha," from the small guy.
Twilight picked up one of these sheets and looked it over. It was a wanted poster, and so was the second one. The first was what looked to be a large plankton with a red fedora, holding a metal plate with the number 5532. The name of the criminal was Vinnie, wanted dead or alive with a reward of 2.5 million solar, whatever that was. The second was of a huge blowfish, it similarly was holding a metal plate, but this one with the number 5531. This one was named Spike, just like their little dragon compadre. The price on his head was 2.45 million solar, and instead of dead or alive, there was 'preferably dead.' But the weirdest thing was at the top of each poster there was the name "Interpool," which Twilight couldn't recall ever hearing before.
"Oh my gosh guys, did you just see that?" Pinkie asked excitedly, "that guy looked all cuddly and friendly, but then he destroyed the cards and everything and oh Wow!"
"Yeah Pinkie, we did see it." Applejack answered dryly, "that was about a months worth of savings gone right down the drain though. How am I ever gonna explain that to granny?"
"Don't go into a tissy quite yet Applejack, they might still be on the train." Twilight said, "and if so then I can find them."
She focused as hard as she could on the faces of both the criminals, and soon after they appeared in her mind. They were heading down towards the sleeping cabins.
"They're heading towards Rarity!" She shut off her horn as she said it, making her friends look to each other frightened. Except Spike, who had pushed himself out of the chair and headed out the door.
"They're not gonna hurt her." He whispered to himself, clenching his fist into a ball and stomping angrily. "Not in a billion years."
He opened the door to the sleeping cabins, and immediately caught sight of the blowfish and his plankton comrade. "Hey you!" He shouted at them, a bit of smoke joining his words. The two fishy bandits turned around immediately, The blowfish Spike just stared at the dragon dumbfounded, while Vinnie scratched his head in bewilderment.
"Look here kiddo, I don't like hurting children, so what'd ya say you just go back to yer cabin." He threw the bag of gems back towards the dragon, "here, you can even keep yer garbage. Now scram."
Spike just kicked over the small bag and stared angrily at the two robbers. "I don't want my gems!" He yelled, "But you can't hurt her."
"I Donna know what'cha talkin bout kid," Vinnie snarled, patting his partner on the head, which made the blowfish snarl and growl. "But the more time I spend here the less money I'm making, and that's upsetting both me and me partner see!"
"You're not gonna hurt Rarity." Spike bellowed, blowing a little waft of green flame out. He bent his knees readying to pounce on the two fishy fellows.
"You'll be fittin in for some new shoes soon kid," Vinnie laughed and dragged the hat down to cover his eyes even more so than before. "Concrete shoes, Nyah."
As if from a catapult the blowfish lunged forward with an angry growl, making Vinnie hold onto his hat for all he could. As soon as Spike got even close to his dragon adversary he pushed as much air into himself as he could, and the spikes which had given him his nickname flew out, narrowly missing the dragon or going straight through the train itself.
"You'll be sleeping with the fishes see!" Vinnie smiled before firing a shot with the blaster pistol. It hit the floor right between Spike's legs and bore it's way through it, leaving a hole with liquid iron along the sides.
Spike breathed in as hard as he possibly could, before letting a gust of flame go right towards the blowfish and his buddy. Soon both robbers got quite worried looks on their faces, but soon after they disappeared in a thick veil of smoke, but not by Spikes doing.
If all had gone well there should've been a fine pile of ash where the two of them had been before, but instead there was just a thick veil of smoke which Spike had trouble seeing through.
But he soon found out where the two of them had disappeared off to, when he felt something prod the side of his head.
"When you play with water kid, you drown." The small plankton devil grinned, prodding the dragon twice to get some sort of reaction out of him. "Let's leave a message for the rest of this planet," he said to his partner, both of them wearing giant smiles. "You don't go messing with Vinnie and Spike."
"See ya in heaven kid, and be sure to tell them Vinnie sent you." Vinnie smiled, preparing to pull the trigger.
When suddenly he felt something tug at him.
"Not right now Spike, I've gotta finish the kid see." He said, waving his blowfish buddy away. Then he was prodded rather hardly on his shoulder. "Spike you've gotta be patient see, Nyah."
Until finally he was quite literally batted on the end of his fedora so it slid of his head.
"Alright Spike, ya don't touch the fedora, you did touch the fedora, so why I ask, did you touch-" he turned around, and didn't finish his sentence, as suddenly he was staring at his unconscious friend, and a rather angry face belonging to someone he'd met earlier.
And then there was something that hit him in the face.
And then darkness ensues.
But he could swear that just before everything went black he heard, "oh my poor Spikey-wikey."