Precinct Five of the Manehatten Police Department…
A desk flan blew through the fairly old-fashioned office of Her Majesty’s Police, causing a few documents to flutter in place under the paperweights holding them down. Blinds were opened, opening slits of view out into the modern skyline of Manehatten City, the Statue of Friendship visible in all its glory out in the harbour.
The sounds of nightshift traffic wafted in, along with the refreshing stench of a bustling metropolis. The mostly stale air of the office smelled mostly of month old doughnuts and of printer ink.
Most of the lights around the fifth floor office complex were off, save for a few hallway lights and one of the office’s lamps. A single cream-coloured earth pony was illuminated by a flickering TV set as she lay back at a desk, the speakers crackling out a news show.
“It is the fifteenth anniversary of the opening of the Celestia Street Royal Bank tonight and business is going well in the bank today as our cameraponies get an up-close tour of the cutting edge security of one of the world’s most secure places to lock up your cash…”
Agent BonBon chewed her gum slowly as she watched the news broadcast, leaning as far back as she dared on her office chair as she watched the screen flicker. Nearby, Junior Agent Lyra Heartstrings hunched over a tablet as she played some mundane game about crushing candy.
BonBon frowned as she watched the live tour of the Celestia Street Bank, popping another stick of gum into her mouth. Her eyes wandered away from the TV set towards a worn and well-used map of the city, with red marker tracing the streets all the way from the Statue of Friendship to the Strange Southern Highway. Multiple photos and reports were pinned to the map, connected by more marker to circles denoting crime scenes and sightings.
Most prevalent in the pictures were to mares, a grey earth pony with a purple treble clef cutie mark going under the name of Octavia Melody, and a white unicorn with an electric blue mane sporting a black note-that-BonBon-couldn’t-remember-the-name-of by the name of Vinyl Scratch. They and their associates were the Music Crew, a gang of lawless criminals responsible for a number of bank robberies, armoured car theft, and heists around the Vanhoover, Canterlot, Trotford, and now the Manehatten area.
BonBon had been chasing them since their first bank stickup in the quiet little town of Appleoosa. Every. Single. Time. She had lost those slippery snakes. Slicker than an eel in an oil slick, that’s what they were. Hay, BonBon could recite their top ten favourite strategies for breaking and entering.
That’s why the RBI had kept her on the case, because she could recite the entirety of their MO from memory. Yet even with that, they still eluded her. They teased her as well, keeping her enraged just long enough to give her the slip. Yet, even with twenty defeats and counting, BonBon wouldn’t give up.
She had managed to track them down to the downtown Manehatten area. She could at least thank her new unicorn partner, Junior Agent Lyra. The mint green unicorn could be pretty obnoxious, but when it came to magical forensics, she couldn’t be any better.
The Music Crew had hunkered down in some dark corner, preparing for something. What it was, BonBon had no clue whatsoever. It was big, she knew that much. The fact that they had met with some sort of contact at a bakery was evidence to that fact. It was why she was in the police station rather than in back at the hotel room, getting some well-deserved rest (a mare could only operate so long on coffee). Police Chief Derpy Hooves had been quite cooperative, even if the pegasus was a bit air-headed, and her officers were ready to respond on their command.
Now it was a waiting game. Just waiting for the other side to make a move.
“…As you can see here, we have the main vault. The main door is made out of pure titanium, four feet thick and enchanted with three layers of protection. The door is only operable using a full biometric identification cypher up in the bank’s control room. The interior secure areas use magic sensors to sense whenever anypony goes in or out, especially when using teleportation or self-telekinesis. Surveillance cameras monitor the entire building with a live feed back to our trained security personnel up in the control room. We currently have most of our guards off for our anniversary party, but we still have enough to handle safety around here nicely…”
BonBon almost choked on her gum as she came to a realization. She knew where they were headed.
“LYRA!” BonBon shouted, turning to her partner.
The mint green unicorn jumped, turning to her superior, “Uh, yeah BonBon?”
BonBon got up from her seat, keeping the TV set on, picking up a pile of documents from her desk.
“Did we get any info on that contact they met up with?” BonBon asked, her voice serious.
Lyra, seeing the apprehension in her new partner’s face, responded quickly, “Uh, yeah! What’d you wanna know?”
“Chief!” BonBon called up the stairs, before turning back to her partner.
A series of clangs could be heard coming from the Chief of Police’s office up the stairs, before a voice came from the stairwell, “Coming!”
Lyra dug through her desk, coming up with a fresh folder filled with papers. She opened it to the first page, placing it on the desk next to BonBon. The mare stuck another stick of gum into her gob, adding it to the growing ball of sugary chewiness in her mouth.
A grey pegasus mare in a police uniform walked into the room, the unfortunate police chief’s eyes being extremely askew of their targets.
Police Chief Derpy Hooves yawned her eyes betraying the fact that she had been woken up from deep sleep, “I’m here! Please tell me we’ve made progress on the case.”
“I think the Music Crew are planning on hitting the Celestia Street bank.” BonBon cut straight to the point, not wanting to waste time.
“How do you figure?” Lyra asked, raising an eyebrow.
BonBon gestured at a line on the contact’s file.
“It says here that this stallion worked at the Celestia Street Bank, why else would they be talking to him?” BonBon stated.
Lyra’s eyes widened.
“But… how? I mean, I can understand armed interception of the armoured cars, but how are they planning on getting past Celestia Street Bank’s security? It’s, like, impossible!” Lyra argued.
“…I agree. Agent Bon, that place is where the Clyde couple failed. That place hasn’t had a successful heist since its opening!” Derpy agreed.
BonBon took a breath, speaking as she put her hoofgun in her holster and picking up her badge, “That’s exactly why those scumbags are gonna target that place. And when it comes to the Music Crew, well there’s a first time for everything. That Includes the breakage of the Celestia Street Bank’s perfect track record.”
BonBon paused, thinking.
“Does the Celestia Street bank store any single item of high value?” BonBon asked, turning to the Manehatten Police Chief.
Derpy’s eyes stopped thinking, her muzzle scrunching as the little gears turned in her head, “Nope… Oh! Wait! Yes! The centrepiece of Princess Luna’s armour! That’s in there, right?”
BonBon stared back at Derpy, deadpanning.
“Oh, right. Yep! That big diamond is in there! Why?” Derpy confirmed, nodding so quickly that her wayward eyes rattled around in their sockets.
“Even better, it’s a diamond. They love diamonds.” BonBon muttered to herself, heading for the door.
“Wait! Where are you going?” Lyra called after her.
“They’re planning on striking tonight, while most of the guards are off work. We’re heading over there to warn the bank,” BonBon grinned, “Or maybe to catch the Crew in the act.”
“We’ll be right behind you!” Derpy said, her voice filled with determination as she turned to head back upstairs to radio her officers.
“Come on Lyra, we’ve got criminals to bust.” BonBon’s lips drew tight as her partner trailed close behind.
Lyra rolled her eyes, “I still don’t see how they’re gonna break into a bank that secure, it just seems impossible to me…”
The Celestia Street Bank…
Octavia Melody smiled sweetly at the bank employee as she swiped his keycard. The pony blushed, his freckled cheeks going red as he watched the beautiful earth pony walk away, blissfully unaware that he had just been duped.
Using sleight-of-hoof, Octavia Melody threw the keycard through the air, the card passing right in front of a security guard’s sharp eyes. Obviously not sharp enough to notice the access key to the maintenance area behind him flying right by him.
A white unicorn by the name of Vinyl Scratch grinned as she caught the card, stowing it in her suit jacket pocket as she slinked right by two conversing security guards into a hallway. She whistled as she walked up to a heavy, reinforced door labelled Electrical.
The door itself would have, on any other night, been under the watch of an armed, elite guard. Not tonight, management thought that guarding some back-building electrical signal room wasn’t significant enough.
Hey, Vinyl wasn’t complaining.
She drew a taser in her mouth, flashing the keycard across the scanner by the door as she did so. The inhibitor ring had suppressed all her magic, seeing as it was too risky to have her magic resonance flagged by the bank’s “fool proof” magic sensors. The door flew open as the scanner confirmed Vinyl’s stolen access.
She could hear the subtle whirrs and clicks of the surveillance camera in the… upper left corner of the room. Wrapping her tongue around the taser’s trigger, she squinted her eyes and turned quickly into the room. Pulling back on the trigger, she shot out two streams of energy towards the surveillance camera. She only barely hit the camera’s base, her lack of experience in earth-pony style aim to blame. The camera shorted out, stopping its circling view of the maintenance room.
“Is this what you’ve got to deal with every time you pick up a gun, Tavi?” Vinyl said out loud, striding into the room and shutting the door behind her.
“Stay focused, Vinyl.” A smooth, aristocratic voice responded through her earpiece, eliciting a smile from Vinyl Scratch.
Holstering the taser, Vinyl picked up a USB stick from her pocket along with a pair of pliers. She scanned the walls, looking for a certain junction box.
“It’s the one with the big sign saying “Surveillance Systems”, Vinyl.” A male voice spoke through the comms.
“I see it, Doc.” Vinyl rolled her eyes as she walked towards a fusebox with the aforementioned sign.
She broke the lock off with her pliers easily, opening the box with a brush of her hoof.
“Alright, I see the panel. Which hole does this peg go into?” Vinyl asked, tossing the USB stick in the air idly.
“The one labelled 1142-PB.” the Doc responded.
Her eyes settling on the correct input, Vinyl Scratch shoved the stick into the plug.
“Done. Alright, how does this help us?” Vinyl asked casually, stowing her pliers and heading for the door.
“I’m gonna give a link to the security up in the control room under the guise of an advertisement and I’m gonna clickjack their computer when they check it.” The Doc explained in his usual jittery manner.
Vinyl nodded, heading out into the hallway once more.
Up in the control room, a nightshift surveillance operator raised an eyebrow as an offer for a three-for-one coupon for free tacos at Taco Teddy’s came onscreen on the one monitor he had saved for personal use. Shrugging, he clicked on the link, not expecting his browser to tell him that he had no internet connection. His wireless was fine! Yet, no matter how many times he refreshed the page, his coupon did not present itself.
His monitors flickered briefly, jumping to nothing but static and then back again. He considered reporting the anomaly, but decided against as he checked the views and found nothing out of the ordinary. Even the camera in the electrical room had come back online! It showed nothing but an empty room and a closed door.
“So, what does that do for us? Does it jam their cameras?” Octavia asked, walking out of the front lobby and into the mare’s bathrooms.
“No, that would be too obvious. It puts a recorded copy of empty rooms on the guard’s monitors. We’ve been through this!” Vinyl complained.
“You know how old mares like me can be sooo forgetful!” Octavia swooned.
A mare in a business suit stared at Octavia from the sinks as she seemingly walked in, talking to nopony.
Octavia took the suspicion smoothly.
“Those new Bluetooth headphones. Almost invisible, huh?” Octavia said, revealing the tiny “Bluetooth” device in her ear.
The suited mare smiled back, switching off the water as she picked up her bag and headed back to the lobby.
Octavia checked the stalls, finding only one other occupant in the toilets with her. She bode her time, pretending to adjust her makeup in the mirror. Not before long, a flush was heard as the singular mare in the bathroom walked out, washing and drying her hooves before leaving.
Nopony else arrived. Thanking Celestia that it was downtime for the Celestia Street Bank, Octavia turned from the mirror and placed a nearby “Out of Order” sign at the bathroom’s entrance, splashing a bucketful of water right by it to make the argument convincing. Can’t have her extended toilet break interrupted, huh?
She walked into one of the stalls, shutting and locking the flimsy door behind her. She took off her suit, slipping into a sleek, black bodysuit. She pulled her hair in, tying it into a bow, doing the same for her tail. Couldn’t have a stray strand of hair setting of a laser detector, right?
Octavia stood on top of the toilet, looking up at the vent cover leading into the ceiling above the, admittedly, pristine public bathroom. She took out a screwdriver, using her earth-pony mouth dexterity to work open the screws. The cover clanged to the floor.
Octavia spared another glance around the room. She was in the clear.
Silent as the night, Octavia Melody lifted herself up into the ventilation systems. She took a pair of thermal goggles from her saddlebags, placing them over her eyes. All around her, security lasers bounced around the ducts.
“Hope our contact was good.” Octavia muttered as she began to crawl through the ducts, her light steps preventing the metal from clanging too much.
To her delight, she passed right through the lasers without the alarms going off immediately. She continued her jaunt through the ducts, counting the vent covers as she went over them.
She did know that the lasers above the vault itself weren’t offline, as they were on a completely different system that their “friend” didn’t know how to disable. Or just would disable. Honestly, Octavia thought Bulk had gone too far in… interrogating the poor stallion.
She took a right at a branching path, slipping through another stationary fan, away from the vault complex. She then took the next left, ending up at a dead end above the entrance to a hallway.
Gently removing the vent cover, Octavia dropped down into the hallway. With the use of her thermal goggles, Octavia was able to make out the spiderweb of lasers blocking her way to a sliding metal door guarded with a four-digit passcode.
Smiling at the challenge, Octavia ran through the positions of the, dangerously active, lasers, before lunging. She skipped, flipped, danced, and ducked under the maze of lasers, the detectors still blissfully unaware of her presence as she arrived at the other side.
She brushed herself off, smiling smugly as she walked up to the large touchscreen passcode lock. Taking out a case of forensic hoof-printing dust, Octavia Melody blew the powder onto the screen. Just as she expected, the hoof-prints of the past ponies to use the door appeared on the screen, highlighting the buttons they had pressed to gain their legitimate access.
She put in the code 9102, hitting enter. Just as she expected, the doors slid open as the lock beeped happily.
Octavia looked back at two surveillance cameras on either side of the room, their views having passed over her many times. Due to the absence of blaring alarms, Octavia could guess the Doctor’s scheme worked out, with the security guards still unaware that they were being robbed.
Walking through the door, Octavia was met with an array of lockboxes. She was in one of the subvaults of the Celestia Street Bank’s vault complex, each one being separate from each other. Below the vault complex was the Maximum Security Vaults, each one being protected by the heavy titanium doors the TV had bragged about. Octavia herself was above the maximum security vault that contained their prize, a centrepiece amulet from Princess Luna’s ancient battle armour.
It was worth millions, and was currently being greedily kept by a griffon noble. On Equestrian territory! He was just asking to get stolen from. It wasn’t like the Music Crew ever performed a heist, especially one so complicated, without good reason.
The fact that the cops had been so close on their tails was… worrying to Octavia, but Vinyl was unfazed by the authorities. That’s why she had stuck with her since they held up a bank in Appleoosa all those years ago.
They were cousins, having met up at music school. Sure, Vinyl’s music was a bit too… rambunctious for Octavia’s taste, but they were bonded in crime regardless of musical taste.
Octavia took out one of the Doctor’s gadgets, placing it on the floor in the centre of the room. While the lockboxes were tempting, she had much bigger fish to fry. The silent saws activated, cutting a circle in the concrete.
Lifting the block of cut concrete, careful not to pull so hard as to activate her Earth Pony magic (the presence of the magic detectors were still a threat), Octavia revealed a panel of metal. As expected, the saws had cut just deep enough to reveal the panel, not to damage it. Damaging it using any type of force would trigger the alarms and bring armed and dangerous guards down on them very, very quickly.
Octavia pulled out wire cutters, working on methodically deactivating the panel’s tamper alarms. As soon as all the blinking lights on the panel were off, she lifted the panel out of the hole she cut, making a square of open space large enough for her to slip through.
Using her thermal goggles again, Octavia noted the presence of yet another complex of security lasers beneath her. She looked around, seeing no guards. Everything was going according to plan.
She attached a thin, strong cord to a ceiling beam, testing the connection well. With the trained perfection of a lifetime acrobat, she began her decent past the laser detectors.
Sirens whooped as Agent BonBon drove uptown to the Celestia Street Bank, a fleet of police cruisers following close behind. All of her instincts screamed at her that her targets were inside that bank as she cycled through traffic towards the impressive, modern styled building around the corner.
Finally, the black RBI issue vehicle along with the Manehatten Metropolitan Police pulled in front of the Celestia Street Royal Bank.
"I sure hope you're instinct's right, Bon." Lyra mumbled, following BonBon as she ran up the steps to the entrance of the building.
"Unless I'm wrong, which I'm not, they're in there right as we speak." BonBon stated, tossing yet another stick of gum into her mouth.
They approached a helpdesk, Police Chief Derpy and two other officers right behind them.
"Can I help you, officers?" the mare spoke in a slightly Prench accent, looking rather nervously at the intimidating law enforcement in front of her.
BonBon took out her RBI badge, placing it on the desk.
"We believe your security has been compromised, we need to talk to your manager." BonBon's voice was serious, very serious.
The employee nodded nervously.
"I'll call him right away."
"...I don't know what you could be talking about, honourable Agents! As I'm sure you can see, we are not in the process of being robbed!" the bank manager stated in his pompous accent, pointing his hoof at the array of camera monitors before them.
"Anything strange tonight?" Lyra asked the pony monitoring the cameras, nodding at the screens.
"Uh... nope." the security pony shook his head, before hesitating, "Uh... well. The electrical room camera went dead for a bit, but it's working now!" he gestured at a camera inside a blue-lit room filled with electrical panels and technology.
"Hmm, is that right?" BonBon mumbled, pushing the security officer aside and placing her hooves on the keyboard.
She brought up an interface, checking a few statuses.
"I don't know why you had to bring the entirety of the Manehatten PD all the way here. We've never had a successful heist ever since our opening in 99 BL! We are the most secure bank in the Manehatten area!" the manager started.
"Yeah well, we have reason to believe the Music Crew is robbing you as we speak!" Lyra said enthusiastically, eliciting a frown from the manager.
"Lyra... you really need a speed bump between your brain and your mouth." BonBon spat as she scanned the many codes and information before her.
BonBon frowned as her eyes caught a certain viewing setting that had obviously been tampered with. It was a classic camera-jamming strategy of the Music Crew. They played a pre-recorded view over the monitors, indistinguishable from the actual live feed from the cameras aside from the fact that they never saw the ponies slinking through their building.
BonBon smiled slightly, knowing now that her instincts had lead her well to the Celestia Street Bank, as the Music Crew were obviously still in the building. She clicked the settings back to the live feed and changed the view to the camera in the vault containing Princess Luna's ancient centrepiece.
"...Now, if you officers could please just leave and let us have a... nice... night..." the manager's jaw almost fell off as he saw the live image of the inside the most secure chamber in the building.
An image of Octavia Melody, sticking tongue out at the camera as she pulled herself up from the vault by the rope she had attached from a hole at the top of the vault.
Octavia's eyes shot open as the alarms began to blare around the building, wincing as the red lights began to flash, she secured the gold-set diamond inside her bag.
She frowned as she heard the thunder of guard's hooves coming from the hallway she had entered from. The guards ran into the room, unaware of Octavia's presence above them as she hung from the ceiling beams. As soon as the last rifle-totting guard ran underneath her, Octavia dropped to the floor.
She ran through the hallway of laser detectors, not bothering as she ploughed through the lasers. The alarms had already gone off, what was the point in trying to sneak out now?
As Vinyl would say, "When you've already been detected, throw subtlety out the window, you need to run now."
Bullets whizzed by her as she turned the corner, heading for the rendezvous point Vinyl had mentioned. The guards pealed around the corner, hot on her tail.
Two burly stallions came around another corner, blocking her way forward. Not wasting a beat, Octavia flipped over their line of fire and dropkicked the back of one's head. She wrapped her hoof around the other ones neck, pulling up on his leg like a puppet-master.
She used his hoof to fire his rifle at her pursuing guards, not aiming for them but aiming close enough to drive them behind cover. After pushing the guards back, she whispered a "thanks" into her hostage guard's ear, before punching him through a nearby window.
She followed after the stallion as he rolled off the slanted roof tiles beneath the fifth-story window and caught the back of his fatigues on a jagged tile, hanging off the edge.
Octavia ignored him, dancing across the roof tiles towards her destination. Below her, the streets were filled with police cars, their sirens blaring and their red-and-blue hues making the neighbourhood a practical disco.
"How did the cops get here so quick?" Octavia mumbled to herself, jumping off the slanted roof and onto the flat top of a neighbouring convenience store.
Octavia almost jumped as a nearby roof access door was bashed open and two ponies poured out. They both wore suits and golden badges shone in the flashing reds and blues of the nearby cruisers. She recognized their faces. Well, she recognized one of their faces.
A cream coloured earth-pony with a pink and blue mane and a cutie mark of two candies, BonBon. An RBI agent. Their arch-nemesis ever since Appleoosa. Somepony who also had a basketball-sized ball of gum in her mouth as well, judging by the bulge in her cheek. The other one was a mint green unicorn with a cutie mark of a harp. She didn't recognize the face, and the light didn't allow her to make out the name on her badge. She could tell though that they were both RBI, and they weren't here to chat.
"You, stop!" the green one shouted, pulling out a hoofgun in a flash and aiming it straight at her.
"Lyra! Stow the gun! We're in a public area!" BonBon shouted to her partner.
Octavia smiled sweetly, dropping into a slide right beneath the agent's gun. She heard a bang as the unicorn pulled the trigger, and Octavia brought up her back right hoof to slug the agent in the face. The unicorn was launched back by the kick straight into her partner's face, who shrugged her off easily.
Octavia frowned as BonBon cracked her neck.
"You gonna run like a coward or what?" the agent taunted.
Octavia smiled sweetly, dodging into a shadow as the agent quick-drew her gun and fired at the place she was only a second ago, this time there only being concrete behind her.
Octavia catapulted herself from the roof of the convenience store into the second story of a nearby parking complex, galloping swiftly up the stairs. She heard a set of eight hoofbeats right behind her as she jumped over a car, heading towards the railing over the street. She heard the beat of dubstep from the street below, smiling as she approached the railing.
The two agents, the mint green one rubbing her bruised jaw, cornered up to her, guns in hoof and in telekinesis. She smiled sweetly.
"I've got to bounce now, have a good evening, officers!" Octavia back flipped off the railing to the perilous fall below, a shot echoing above her.
BonBon raced to the railing in time to see the grey earth pony falling. Just before she hit the ground, however, a nondescript grey van shot by underneath her, Octavia disappearing into an opened hatch on top of the vehicle.
BonBon cussed under her breath, shooting a glare at Lyra (who had shot at the risk of hitting a pony across the street again) before bringing her walkie talkie to her mouth.
"All units! Pursue that van!"
Sergeant Pinkie Pie of the Manehatten Police giggled in excitement as she floored her cruiser, heading after the grey van matching the description from the agents. Her partner, an junior officer by the name of Cheese Sandwich, grunted as he was pressed back into his seat by the sudden acceleration.
She began to hum a chase tune as five other cruisers pulled up beside her, sirens blaring as they chased down the van. A helicopter flew overhead, a bright spotlight tracking the van as it wove through traffic at high speeds.
Pinkie's heart thumped and her adrenaline ran high. It was like she was in an action movie! All the lights whizzed by at a bajillion miles per hour and her mind was almost driven epileptic by the thrumming lights of her neighbouring policeponies.
She kicked her car into high gear, beginning to overtake the slower van. She wasn't supposed to pull in front of a suspect vehicle in a high speed chase, you were never really supposed to pull in front of another vehicle in any chase really, but Pinkie just could resist the rush she would feel as she stopped the van in its tracks.
As soon as she was in front of the van, she slammed the brakes, blocking the road up ahead with her car. Instead of hearing a screeching slam as her cruiser was used as an expensive roadblock, she heard the sound of screeching brakes as the van slowed to a stop.
Well, that was easy.
"They've pulled over! Get over here agents!" Police Chief Derpy Hooves requested over the radio.
"Wait, how much of a fight did they put up?" BonBon raised an eyebrow, speaking into her radio as she approached her vehicle along with her partner.
"Uh... not much? They kinda just slowed to a stop when we pulled out in front of them."
"It's not them. If it is, then the diamond isn't in there with them." BonBon stated, unlocking her car.
"How do you figure?" Lyra asked, running close behind.
"I've been in many a car chase with them, they don't just pull over unless they're pulling a fast one on you or literally about to burst into flames. They're probably heading in the exact opposite direction by now." BonBon said, opening her door.
"I'm driving!" Lyra declared, pulling a cop-show style slide across the hood of the car.
The junior agent failed miserably as she slid to a squeaky stop on the not completely frictionless hood of the RBI vehicle. She then slid off the hood, faceplanting on the asphalt below.
"I'm okay!" Lyra shouted as she jumped up, running around to get in on the left side.
BonBon got in, smiling as Lyra's telekinesis grabbed at the steering wheel she thought should be on the left side of the front seats.
"European car, wheel's on the right." BonBon grinned, hitting the ignition button as the car roared to life.
Lyra pouted as the car shot out from the parking garage, heading into the streets and turning the opposite direction from where the police had pulled over the dummy van.
Pinkie Pie drew her gun as she approached the back doors of the van, backed up by two other officers and four SWAT. They slammed open the doors, revealing a furnished interior.
A large, probably very good, computer sat in the corner, offline. A table and a few chairs were piled in one corner, and a couple of empty cardboard boxes could be seen at the far right.
The cops tore the interior apart, looking for the centrepiece to Luna's ancient armour, finding nothing but a few dead rats.
Pinkie winced as she saw Police Chief Derpy walk step into the van with her comrades, her askew eyes looking quite angry.
"Sorry chief, we didn't find anything." Pinkie saluted, trying to ignore the fact that she had employed a very illegal chase manoeuvre a few minutes ago.
Derpy frowned bring her radio to her lips, "Agents! You were right, the van was a dummy!"
Vinyl Scratch whooped as she shoved Luna's centrepiece into back into her bag. They were flying through the streets in the opposite direction of the cops on their motorcycle, Octavia holding on tight around Vinyl's midsection to stop herself from flying off.
They were away, they would be outta the state before the cops could lock down the city and the Griffon's riches would live on to serve them. After all, Vinyl was sure the Princesses would pay dearly for such a historical artefact to be restored to them.
She felt Octavia tap her shoulder urgently. Vinyl turned around to see what the commotion was about. Her eyes widened as she saw an RBI vehicle speeding down the street over a divider next to the eight-lane highway. The face of Agent BonBon was visible through the window.
The vehicle turned suddenly, hitting a car ramp at the back of a car hauler, flying through the air right above them. For a moment, it looked like the lawpony wanted to smash them beneath her vehicle, right before the car landed in a shower of sparks right behind them.
Vinyl grimaced, giving the motorbike more juice as the agents switched on their lights.
Sirens blared and beeped as the real chase began. A few patrol cars pulled out into the lanes to join the chase, the "thwop thwop thwop" of a helicopter audible above the noise.
A spotlight came on, focusing on Vinyl and Octavia, and an amplified voice commanded them to pull over.
They began to weave through traffic, some of the cops falling behind but the RBI agents always somehow keeping up with them. Slowly but surely, the police began to catch up, the thrumming of their lights hot on the back of her neck.
She cut through three lanes and took an off ramp, heading straight for the Manehatten harbour. Most of the police didn't make it to the exit, but Bon and her new partner made the manoeuvre, momentarily going on their two side wheels to slot through traffic.
They came to the harbour, the RBI close behind. They came to a three way junction, the right side being blocked by a guardrail heading off into the ocean.
Two cruisers pulled into a blockade formation straight ahead, and three patrols piled in to block off the street to the left. The screech of tires was heard as BonBon's vehicle drifted to block off the way they came.
Doors slammed as cops pulled out their weapons and began to box them in.
"Gotcha now, cowards!" Vinyl heard BonBon shout, her and her partner both having their guns out.
Vinyl winked as she pushed the throttle, propelling herself right into the water.
"Get some divers down there!"
"Why haven't they come up yet?"
BonBon shook her head as the Manehatten cops piled around the broken guardrail where Vinyl had driven off the road. They had pulled another fast one.
It was another one of their quick escape strategies, jump out and into a boat to make an escape. Sure, their bike might be down there, but they nor the diamond were.
BonBon looked out at the many ships milling around the harbour, shaking her head. The scumbags had gotten away with another one. While she knew that one of those boats held her suspects and the treasure, there was no way to know which one. And it wasn't like the harbour patrol had the ponypower to strip search every single ship in the waters.
"C'mon, Lyra. We have paperwork to do." BonBon commanded, gesturing at her partner.
Across the Manehatten harbour...
Vinyl high-hoofed her partner in crime as she closed the door of her personal vault, the centrepiece secure within. Bulk Biceps, the muscle of their operation and their general backup, piloted the Not For Sail confidently towards the open seas.
Octavia had slipped out of her bodysuit, now relaxing her tired muscles on a bench nearby.
"So... where to next, Vinyl?" She asked as Scratch sat down next to her.
"I'm thinkin'... Canterlot. May as well see the sights while we fence the big ol' diamond back to the Princesses." Vinyl muttered, admiring the towering Statue of Friendship as their boat passed it by.
Octavia smiled sweetly.
Author's Note
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