Colts will be Thieves

Olympus looked out the window from inside the house as a car screeched to a stop in the front yard. From inside the car, exited a unicorn in the usual taxi driver uniform, but in a darker color scheme. He continued to watch the taxi driver as he gradually approached the front door.

“Uh, is that supposed to be our ride?” Olympus called out. His friend walked into the room in a business jacket, similar to the suit he was wearing.

“Oh, yeah it is.” he exclaimed with a grin on his face. “Just in time, go ahead and open the door while I finish suitting up.”

As he swung the door open, he was already face to face with the unicorn.

“Are you Zenith Zonal?” asked the unicorn.

“That’s me!” Zenith called from across the house. He trotted back, now in his suit. “Let us not waste anymore time!”

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“Wow, I don’t remember the last time I was in a car.” Olympus said while he admired the interior of the car as it traversed through the luminous streets.

“Why, were there absolutely no cars in Ponyville?”

“Yeah, you’d hardly see any there. Although I do remember seeing something that looked like a car, except it was way bigger and made apple cider. Other than that, life there was generally simple.”

“I guess there weren’t any hang-out places like the club we’re going to?”

“Well, there was this bakery place called the Sugarcube Corner, but not even close. That was all, I think. The ponies there can find literally every place to have a party, though. Like when I heard of one going on in a library, I wouldn’t expect anything like that.”

“Aren’t parties there all balloons and cake and crap?”

“Yeah, it wouldn’t be surprising if the only pony who ever arranged them was some miserable filly who grew up with rocks.# Damn, and now that I look at it, I’ve been there my whole life so far, and it’s weird seeing how insanely different this city is compared to then.”

“If I had a short way to describe Los Pegasus, I’d just say it’s like Manehattan, except everypony there is a traditionalistic cunt. And enough reminiscing, I need to talk about who we’re meeting here.”

“Go ahead, I could feel a wave of depression drowning me.” Olympus said jokingly.

“First off, there’s the boss and founder himself, Volonté Laserteeth.”

“Founder? And he’s still alive?”

“Believe it or not, yeah. He’s at least forever, I’m guessing. He is so old that the only way he ever moves is in a wheelchair being pushed by either me or his other right-hoof pony. I wouldn’t recommend being a smart-ass towards him, he’ll act like that typical old and angry stallion. But if anypony would go further on that, he or even she, would get fucked by a barrage of bullets, mostly on the spot. Not that I will to you, of course, but that depends on other ponies in the room. In other words, you know who you’re fucking with, so just don’t.”

“And you’ve mentioned this ‘other right-hoof’ pony?”

“Right, she’s a unicorn, I think a few years older than me, named Miasma Crescent. I’ve seen her to be on his side for a while before I got where I am.”

“How was she connected to him?”

“I actually have no idea about that, but I don’t want to ask the both of them, either. Though, I did always think she might have been a grand-niece. If there was a family connection like that, it would have been a good reason as to why she has never had to do whatever I had to do. I’ve never seen her in any sort of fight, or even doing an errand, much less.”

“And what did you do?”

“Oh, it really wasn’t shit like whacking other ponies. I would just be there, like backup, when the other ponies do protection racketeering. But that was a long time ago, and how I got ‘there’, was because those other ponies progressively thought that there was nothing to stop them in whatever crime they did, and, of course, had themselves killed or thrown in some dungeon. I was the only alive one in that specific ‘generation’ of members of the family, and the boss himself chose me eventually... And before you ask, you were in Ponyville this whole time, so I never did tell you about that, and it doesn’t seem like a pleasant thing to share in the first place.”

“Mr. Zonal, we will arrive in about 10 minutes, just as a reminder.” The driver called from the front.”
“Thanks, and look for a good station on the radio for the rest of the ride, would you mind? I heard about this group called E.Y.E.S. and I want to give them a listen.”

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When the car pulled up in front of the lively and jazz-emanating Celestia’s Needle, a huge grin grew over Zenith’s face.

“There it is. That new neon sign really matches with the brick exterior, doesn’t it?” He pointed at a neon sign shaped as a horn rising through a swirl of colors matching Princess Celestia’s floating mane. “Miasma designed the logo herself. Driver, go around. We’ll be entering through the back.”

The two were taken around the corner of the block to a dimly-lit narrow street leading back to the club. On the street, were either young couples or small groups of Laserteeth gangsters conversing.

“Huh, good there doesn’t seem to be the occasional rape going on tonight.” Zenith said with a small feeling of surprise.

“Really, second time that had to be brought up the past few weeks.”

“The first time?”

“When I was in the hospital, two detectives came to my room and asked me questions about what happened. One of them asks me if I was raped, then they start arguing like foals.”

“What would be the point of them asking you shit, anyways? Their attention span to any crime in this city is as short as a blink.”

“One of them did say they’d eventually track down Speck and-”

“Call bullcrap on that.”
“Yup, they would have forgotten by now, of course. You’d think they could just look up a record of him in the station and go to his house. But no, fuck prostitutes and eat donuts, I guess.”

“Even if we didn’t have any records of the dude, it wouldn’t be much of challenge to find him through word of mouth, although it would take months. But that’s something we can discuss with the boss and Miasma, come on.”

After giving the driver a generous tip of 50 bits, Zenith led Olympus into the back door, entering through a long hallway, with a set of two solid-looking pegasi standing every few feet. As they continued walking, the soothing sound of jazz from the widespread dining hall at the front of the building grew louder. And the end of the hallway, was another couple of pegasi, but now standing side by side of a door. Unlike all the doors they have walked past along the way, this door had small marking and and a obscurely different design.

“In case you’re wondering why this door’s different, was so it wouldn’t exactly scream something, like ‘the fucking boss of a crime syndicate hangs out here’, but on a good level of subtlety that shows some significance.” He opened the door. “After you.”

As soon as Olympus entered the room, he instantly felt a strong glare from two heads facing his direction. He looked up to meet eyes with a very elderly, stern looking Earth pony in a wheelchair. It was hard to determine what color he was because of the physical toll time has taken on him. Sitting on his right, was a blue, mare unicorn. Her green and light-blue mane was set loose on her back, danced around her neck as she fixed her gaze onto Olympus. Compared to the old pony’s deadpan stare, she gave a feeling of contentment. He was so drawn away by the two, that the walls around him seemed to collapse, with the only sound in the room being the small sound of wheezing.

“Boss... Miasma.” Zenith introduced himself as he took a seat aside Volonté Laserteeth. “This here is my foalhood friend, and he’s... interested in what we do, if that’s how I can put it.”

An awkward breeze drifted through the room as the three young ponies waited for the boss to speak, as he was still wheezing.

“So... “ Right after uttering the one word, Mr. Laserteeth went into a brief coughing fit. “Hurgh! Hurgh!... shit, ahh.... So. Did this young little prick... ?” He slowly lifted his frail hoof to Miasma for a second, then confusedly shifted to Zenith. “Did he... give a good job telling who we are?”
Zenith rolled his eyes and answered for him, “Yes, I did.”

The boss glared back and grumbled to himself. “But... “ He then locked on to Olympus. “Do you know what you’re in for?”

“Yes, I-...”

“So you don’t?” Miasma spoke up. She practically sang with the smooth, but irritated tone she had. “Say you have no idea and leave it at that.”

“Miasma, you have done literally 0% of what this whole organization did in the history of ever, so don’t even attempt to be a smart-ass defending something like that. You wouldn’t even be able to handle a single parasprite.” Zenith snapped back.

Miasma sighed then made a defensive gesture with her front legs, “Fine, you have a point.”

“I hope you... realized that not many ponies... griffons... or whatever race, get to see me.” Mr. Laserteeth growled. “They only see someone below Zenith or Miasma here... then they do a small-time job... like protection racketeering or performing a hit. You... on the other hand... you’re a good friend of Zenith, and he’s willing to not let you go through a world of shit, so be grateful.”
To back it up, Zenith gave a smile and nodded to Olympus.

“That doesn't mean you’ll immediately be in this position, or that you won’t do shit... the only good thing between you and me so far is that you’re trusted.”

“What he means is,” Miasma explained, “is that there’s no huge risk of getting yourself killed, or arrested in whatever you’ll do, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

At that moment, a disgruntled Earth pony burst through the door with an envelope in his mouth. All heads in the room turned towards him.

“Is this some fucking joke or what?!” He threw the envelope as he got himself a seat next to Olympus, making it slam into the round table which they were sitting.

“Mr. Haze, that was all we needed to pay for the month.” Miasma assured.

“Not even close. No. All your other ponies or griffons get drunk and vandalize the bar. Have you even heard the bartender’s complaints about those shit-heads?! There’s a lot more you need to pay if this club can still be considered as the ‘Laserteeth hang-out’ spot or whatever.”

“... What those other ponies do is through no fault of our own... and the bartender is just too incompetent for his job if he wants to complain... you better watch your mouth... colt.”

“Yes.” Miasma defended. “The required payment was 700 bits. We paid 500 bits, because we are only paying as the family as a whole. What those other ponies did, isn’t any of our concern because they are not directly affiliated with us. You want the other 200 bits? Ask them.”

“If you ponies are actually as hard-ass as you claim yourself would be, you would confront them your own damn se-!”

Mr. Haze abruptly stopped talking after he felt a kick of pain in his stomach. He gasped when he looked down to see a knife lodged in his belly. He continued to pant as the room stayed silent. He started to fumble his hooves into his clothes for a few seconds, causing more attention to the other pegasi in the room.

Then, in one fast movement, he brought up a revolver from his coat to point at Mr. Laserteeth. Just as Zenith quickly retaliated by pulling out his pistol as well, Miasma used her horn to grab it from his grasp and fired.

In a split-second, blood sprayed all over the door behind him, as well as Olympus’s face. Olympus turned next to him, to see a huge bleeding hole in the center of Mr. Haze’s forehead, and both ponies, dead and alive, dropped their jaw.

Gradually, Mr. Haze’s corpse leaned back too far to fall from his seat, flopping on the ground with the knife still implanted within him.

It took the room a whole 10 seconds to realize that it was Miasma who responded fast enough to save Mr. Laserteeth. She was still seen holding Zenith’s gun with her magic and staring in one
direction with a thousand-mile stare.

“Zenith... give me back my knife.”

“That was your knife?”

“The one that’s in Mr. Haze’s stomach, yes, that knife. ”

“Whoop-dee fucking doo.” He said in wonder as he looked over the pony’s corpse.

“... It could have been your fault that I would have been killed, if Miasma didn’t react.” Laserteeth snarled.

“Well, I had no clue he was even loaded. This was the first time he tried to confront us about this kind of thing. What happened, happened.” He impatiently looked back at Miasma. “My gun?”

Miasma dubiously tossed the pistol back to Zenith, to put it back in his satchel. He picked up the revolver from the spreading puddle of blood and placed it on Olympus’s hooves as he was still staring at the body.

“You can have this, as a sort of welcome gift or something.” he casually said as he awkwardly thrust out the knife from Haze’s belly.

“Um, don’t you think anybody would have tried to get the cops after hearing that gunshot?” Olympus finally spoke out.

“Here?” Miasma replied. “Nopony would ever dare to do that.”

“You know, we’ll need to hide him.” Zenith claimed. “Ponies tend to notice things like other missing ponies having their head blown off.”

“I know, get Nefario. We can stash the body in the trunk of his car while we look for a place to dump the body.”

“Who’s he?” Olympus asked.

“He’s part of the group that Mr. H was complaining about. Kind of the co-leader of a sort of flying gang that’s connected with us.”

“Why’nt you go and have a drink or something at the bar?” Zenith said as he dragged the body. I’ll meet up with you in a minute.”

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The club was filled with jazz, the place was blooming with peace of mind. All handsome stallions, one drunk with all his buddies, and there was that one mare with the prominent dress attracting attention to all those in the vicinity. The rhythmical drummer of the performing band smiled down upon his audience, the same he would smile up at a beautiful, starry sky, as each hoofstep heard seemed to tap along with the music. At the same time, a soft harmony of trumpet notes drifted across the room, penetrating through the ears of every pony or griffon alike.

“You okay?” Olympus suddenly heard from beside him to see Zenith. He’s been sitting at the bar, blankly staring at the band the whole time. “You still look a little shook up.”

“Well, yeah. Having a head explode next to you would do that.”

“Don’t get too gushy. I can tell you, you won’t have to deal with anything like that.”

“What did Miasma mean, exactly? About how I wouldn’t really get in harm, like, what would I do?”

“You’re a pegasus, well... obviously. So my best guess is that you’ll only be there for transporting ponies and such.”

“Hey, I’m fine with having anything to do. Opposed to nothing back in PV.”

“And I need to ask again. You’ve decided to live here again, and even work with us, while we look for this Speck dude, and you don’t even know what you’ll do when you see him again?”

“Really, I don’t. Maybe he’s scared of me now, like how I was when I got him. Maybe he still has a death wish against me, I don’t know. I will just face him with an attitude of tenacity, and we’ll both see how we’ll react.”

“It’s your battle, wh-” Zenith cut himself short when he saw a unicorn and a griffon clumsily hauling what was clearly seen to be Mr. Haze’s corpse covered in thick sheets.

“Hey!” He snapped angrily, but not loud enough to draw attention. The griffon looked around dumbfounded until he looked back. Zenith made an exasperated gesture for him to approach. The feathered creature dropped the corpse on its head then flew over.

“Axel, I told you to fucking go around the other way.” Zenith stressed with his teeth clamped.

“His car’s at the front!” The griffon contested stubbornly.

“That’s all you have to say, you fuck-noramus? That body is Mr. H, you know, the owner of the Celestia’s Needle, the place we’re standing in right now? Seeing that pony walk through the door and exit out covered in sheets by two guys can probably, yeah, that’s the word, probably cause some suspicion.”

“Oh.. uh, I-”

“Just be quick about it. Jeez.”

Axel then flew back to assist in transporting the late pony’s body, foolishly bumping into other ponies along the way.

“That griffon,” Olympus questioned. “He’s part of that ‘flying gang’ you mentioned, right?”

“Yup, they call themselves “Nicers”, from the ‘Valley’ part of the city. Pretty ironic name for how they actually act, a reason why we made a truce with them a couple years ago. I’m tired of talking so fast now, about time we just end the day listening to tasteful music. I need a damn beer, I don’t care what brand it is.”