Stealing
"Nice try, Ahuizotl! Maybe next time you'll be fast enough to catch me!" Daring Do yelled as she clutched the diamond statue in her hooves. She laughed to herself as she disappeared into the greenery of the jungle.
Not again! He thought to himself. Yet another of his artifacts was gone like the rest.
How does she even manage to sneak past my guards every time? He asked himself. But she's done more than just steal his artifacts. Just a few months ago, he found her and some rainbow-maned Pegasus entering his fortress, their reason for arriving obvious. So, he decided to scare them both. After his attempts to kill Daring Do had essentially failed, he decided to give her and her rainbow friend a good scare.
He had always liked the look of those golden rings, the way they shone like the stars above. So when he was going to place the last one on the stack he had collected to finish the decoration, he decided to have some fun. He told her the biggest lie he'd ever told, one that only a fool would believe. That lie was when he placed the final ring, he promised eight hundred years of unrelenting heat. This is going to scare her so badly! he thought. But apparently, she truly believed him.
She brought six other of her ponies with her, causing a massive distraction. She was able to take every ring off. But during the process, as the second to last ring flew off, it hit an already loosened brick in the old temple, and caused it to fall. When one of the bricks fell, the others followed. And soon enough, when she removed the last ring, the temple crumbled. He tried to grab Daring Do, but he couldn't reach her in time. It leads him to wonder, did she knock down his temple intentionally?
Of course, then he had no home, and neither did the guards that lived there previously. Some of his loyal guards had lost their lives when the temple collapsed. That day he swore his revenge on Daring Do, and what he said was no lie.
Once everypony that had managed to survive had made it outside the rubble, they took what little they had managed to grab before the collapsing temple had grabbed them, and ventured off into the dark jungle. After about three weeks, the injured travelers had, thankfully, managed to find an abandoned and run down pyramid-like fortress. It didn't look like it had much room on the outside, but on the inside, the basement was almost five stories deep. The fortress would work as a base, for the time being. How Daring Do still found them is unknown.
As he contemplated what she might have done, and remembered what she had, he failed to notice a guard walking up to him. The guard, Star Runner, reached a hoof out and tapped Ahuizotl on his shoulder. "Um, Ahuizotl? She, uh, she knocked Fast Flight off the cliff," he said shakily.
Ahuizotl looked past him at a unicorn guard walking out of the old fortress with a rope. Ever since Fast Flight broke his wing trying to catch Daring Do, he never flew the same. She'd been flying at top speed towards a tree, and she knew he was chasing her. She'd then made a sharp turn that only a professional wonderbolt could make, and he'd only half turned when he smashed into the tree. It had crushed his wing.
After that, whenever he'd try to fly faster than a slow glide from a high up ledge, he'd always end up hitting a tree, or crashing head first into a wall. Or even worse, when he was chasing her a second time, his wing just froze and left him to plummet downward like a rock. It was no surprise that they'd have to fetch a rope to bring him back up. "Well let's not just stand here doing nothing, let's go help him."
"Thanks guys! Sorry I caused so much trouble, I guess I wasn't really ready for her to kick me like that," Fast Flight apologized as he was hauled from the tree he landed in.
A frown formed on Ahuizotl's face and he looked at Fast Flight, "It's not your fault, it's hers. She could have killed you." They all glanced down towards the cliff where he had fallen and, if not for the tree, met his doom. "We can't keep letting this happen." Ahuizotl said sternly to nopony in particular.
"What do you mean? It's hard to dodge her kicks, and when I fell I couldn't just fly back-" Ahuizotl shot a look at Fast Flight and interrupted his reply.
"No! I meant, we can't keep letting her steal what's ours. We own it, we keep it. She should not be doing this, and we can't keep letting her. We need to stop her."
By that time, most everypony was thinking the same idea. They couldn't keep letting her sneak in or barge past and take their stuff. Those ancient artifacts could simply crumble if she handled them too hard anyway, so many of them didn't make it back to her house in one piece. Some of the times she raided a tomb, she just come back with a bag full of ashes where she touched something and it disintegrated in her hooves. Why won't she just stop? Taking our belongings isn't doing her any good!
"She's not going to stop if we don't make her," Star Runner said, and he spoke the truth. She wasn't going to stop. Unless . . . .
"I think I know how we can make her." All heads turned towards the voice of Fast Flight. "She steals our stuff, right?" Everypony nodded in agreement. "Then let's reverse it. Why don't we steal it back from her!" Confused faces mumbled to each other.
"How do you propose we do that? We can't just walk into . . . wherever she lives. In fact, we don't even know where she lives!" Ahuizotl stated. Ponies nodded. They don't even know where she is.
"Well, she'll be back for more stuff, right? Why don't we just follow her as she leaves?" Star Runner suggested. The murmuring of the ponies became cheers of agreement.
"Sounds like a plan." Ahuizotl confirmed.
"Now hold on just one moment," a guard stepped out of the crowd. "We don't know when she'll be back. And if she comes, she might just fly out of here. Now, don't get me wrong, it's a great plan. But shouldn't we think this over? What would happen if she saw us? This might be our only chance!" The murmurs turned to silence.
All eyes slowly turned and fixated on Ahuizotl. What would happen if she sees us? How much time do we have?
"We have to try. Next time she comes, I'll go and take two pegasi with me. And if she sees us, I don't know. It's a risk we'll have to take. I don't think we'll have too much time to think it over." He glanced up at the sun, which was now vanishing beneath the treetops. "What choice do we have?" The only reply was silence. "Then it's settled. Next time she comes, we'll be ready." Ahuizotl stated flatly and he began walking back towards the fortress. He glanced up at the cliff now bathed in shadows where she'd vanished earlier that day. His old words echoed in his mind. I will have my revenge.
