The Syndicateby BokChaptersThe MuscleThe RunnerThe FenceThe BookieThe SpookThe CleanerThe BrainsThe MuscleTHE SYNDICATE STRIKES AGAIN! The headline took up almost a quarter of the front page and Fluttershy gasped when she read the bold lettering. She hadn't expected her trip to the mailbox to be so frightening! Oblivious to the world around her, she became absorbed in the paper laid out on her couch as she read the article aloud. "In a stunning display of banditry and lawlessness, the organized crime ring known only as The Syndicate intercepted and looted an armored wagon carrying priceless artifacts that were to be delivered to the Museum of Pony History in Manehattan. Chief of Police Double Donut has fully admitted his men are baffled as to how The Syndicate knew of the wagon's location and cargo. Luckily, no ponies were harmed in the raid, but it's believed that—" Fluttershy's reading was cut short when a loud cough sounded right below her. She looked away from the newspaper to see Angel tapping his foot with a steady, familiar tempo. "Oh, hello Angel." Angel frowned and pointed at the clock. It was feeding time and he wasn't one to wait for food. "Sorry. I'll have something ready soon!" Fluttershy said as she went into the kitchen to prepare a salad. She opened the pantry to find nothing but a few cobwebs. She heard taps again and turned around to see her pet behind her with a scowl. "It looks like we're out of food. I'll have to make a trip to the grocery store." Angel cupped his face and sighed, but did little else as Fluttershy grabbed her saddle-purse. "Now you behave yourself while I'm gone." The rabbit did nothing but cross his arms and roll his eyes at the indignation. His only solace was that he would be mostly alone when Fluttershy left since Discord was off causing some harmless mischief somewhere. Angel sighed with relief when Fluttershy left the cottage and closed the door behind her. He hopped up to the door and pressed his ear against it. Slowly, the sound of his owner’s trot slowly faded away from the door. When he was satisfied, the rabbit turned around and hopped up onto the couch Fluttershy had been on moments before. The dour rodent snatched up the paper and read the article with intensity. "—which led investigators to believe that this crime was indeed perpetrated by The Syndicate and not one of the various other mobs within Equestria. In fact, The Syndicate and all others of their ilk must be opposed at every turn if we are to secure a future for ourselves and—" Angel looked away from the article with a sneer and began to search for the author's name. The pony was apparently brave (or stupid) enough to use their real name and a picture. Soothe Sayer, a bespectacled unicorn pony, stared back at Angel through his slightly snobbish black-and-white photo that adorned the top of his article. The rabbit cracked his paws, then put them in his mouth. A loud whistle filled the room and small birds of every color emerged from their birdhouses. The rabbit ripped out the portrait of Soothe Sayer and jabbed at it a few times with his paw for emphasis. He then produced a large pencil out of nowhere and scribbled something on the back. When he held it up, one of the hummingbirds snatched it out of his hands and led the other birds into a military formation. He gave them orders via series of rodent squeaks and foot taps. The birds nodded to each other and flew out the window towards Canterlot. Satisfied, he scooped up the rest of the newspaper and threw it in the fireplace. The paper burned quickly as he snuggled in front of the warmth and dozed off. Soothe Sayer whistled to himself as he walked home from his job at United Equestrian Press. Sometimes, he couldn’t believe his luck with the gig he had landed. All he had to do was show up to work, write a few angry articles derived from second-hoof sources and cash the easiest paycheck ever, then go home to take a well-deserved bath. Sayer mulled over fanciful thoughts of a new hot tub in his home when a gentle trill flowed out of the dark alleyway he had just stepped in front of. This wasn’t the bad part of town, he thought to himself. What was that racket? "Hello?" he asked to the darkness. The noise seemed to respond; it became even louder and sounds of rustling seemed to join it. Soothe Sayer's curiosity got the better of him and he walked down the alley. "Is anyone there?" His question was met with sudden, feathery violence. Out of nowhere, dozens of wings and beaks set upon the poor writer. Cloud dusts and pain stars erupted out of the alley as Soothe Sayer tried several times to pull his way out of the melee only to be dragged back in. Just when he thought that he was a goner, the scratching and flapping stopped. He opened his eyes to expect some giant muscle-bound pegasus ready to deliver the final blow, but instead there laid only a small scrap of paper. Upon closer inspection, it was a photo of himself; the same one he used in the newspaper. He picked it up, turned it over, and went pale in the face. The Syndicate is a legitimate business. If you don't want a repeat of what just happened, I suggest your articles start reflecting that fact. — A "Angel! I'm home!" Angel's ear twitched as he stirred from his nap. The only thing about Fluttershy that commanded his attention was the large bag of groceries in her possession. He was content to wait until his meal was ready and curled back up. Right before he nodded off, he saw the birds he had sent on the mission perched in some trees outside, looking at him through the window. The biggest of them nodded with the weight of their deed. Angel replied with a thumbs-up before he returned to his nap. He was awoken a few minutes later by the sound of something being pushed in front of him. He opened his eyes to see a wonderful carrot salad in front of him with all his favorite toppings. A single, perfectly round cherry sat atop the meal. "I know it's a little much," said Fluttershy, "but you've been such a good little bunny lately that I think you deserved a treat." Angel immediately dove into the salad and devoured it with a savageness that would rival any parasprite; bits of vegetables and fruit flew out from both sides of the bowl like the mulch from a demented lawnmower. Fluttershy giggled. "Aw, you're so cute when you're hungry. You really are a little angel." The RunnerRainbow Dash wasn't a bad pet owner; she just forgot that Tank existed half the time. It's not that she didn't love him, but Tank only had to be fed once a week and couldn't outrun corn syrup. It was very easy to lose track of him. The pegasus was enthralled in the latest Daring Do novel while Tank moved about her bedroom. Had she payed any attention whatsoever, she would have heard the jangle of objects as her pet dragged what appeared to be valuable necklaces and artifacts with his mouth under her bed. She would have also noticed that Tank waddled about as if his center of gravity had been compromised. "Oh no!" Tank jumped and retreated inside his shell at Rainbow Dash's exclamation. "How the hay is Do going to get out of this one? Laser pit trap and robot sharks? You might as well throw in a swarm of bees!" The turtle heard his owner turn the page and sigh loudly. "Oh COME ON!" Tank slowly realized that his owner hadn't yelled at him. He slowly withdrew from his shell and continued to move treasures about Dash's room. Thankfully, Rainbow Dash wasn't a speed reader and he knew it it would take her most of the day to finish the book. Hours went by with Tank going about his business, every so often forced to retreat back inside his shell on reflex when Rainbow Dash made some loud commentary on the story. The tortoise had just finished preparations when he heard a loud clap as his owner finished her book. "That was the best Daring Do ever!" Rainbow Dash squealed. She looked out the window to see that the sun was already setting. "Woah, nighttime already?" It was at this point that she noticed Tank in the middle of her room. Her beloved slow guy stared at her blankly. "Oh, hey Tank. You need something or...?" Tank slowly blinked and turned his head toward the door. "Um, you need to go for a fly?" If Tank had nodded any slower, moss would have formed on his head. "Well, it's kinda late, but okay." Rainbow Dash hopped off her bed and began rooting through her closet to find Tank's flight gear, fighting a mountain of junk to get to it. "Gala dress? No. Daring Do Fanclub card? No! A Scholar's Guide to Aerodynamics? How did this even—" Tank hid in his shell to protect himself against the volley of trash Rainbow Dash tossed behind her. When she finally located the contraption that enabled him to fly, the floor had disappeared under a sea of discarded items. "Found it!" she exclaimed. Rainbow Dash looked over the junk strewn about her room to see Tank’s shell just barely visible between some old comic books. She dug him out of the quasi-landfill and slowly flapped her way to the entrance of her home. For no particular reason, Rainbow Dash bucked the door open. She kept an awkward grasp on her pet as she slowly hovered outside her door and began to crank the mechanism on Tank’s flying device. The magic within the doodad sprang to life and the little propeller on the machine began to spin. She let go and fluttered off in one direction. When she turned around to check on him, she saw the tortoise slowly floating off in another path. "Oh, doing your own thing? That's cool. Just knock on the door when you want back in," the pegasus said, returning back to her cloud home. Tank used his independence to none-too-gracefully glide across the evening sky, the rattling in his shell even more apparent without a floor to absorb the sound of the ill-gotten loot. He eventually found himself above Ponyville and began to survey the small town. He scanned the ground for some time until he found the building in question and swooped down with surprising grace. He landed in the backyard of the establishment with a solid thump and looked around to make sure that he hadn't been followed. When all was clear, he tapped once on the back door. Tank responded with two knocks and the door slowly opened. A paw slithered out and placed a note on the porch before retreating back inside. When it was gone, the door closed with a crash. "Sweetie Belle!" a voice shouted, "Don't slam the door!" "It wasn't me!" Tank’s slow eyes traced each letter of the note in front of him. Leave the cargo in the tree behind you. Will get to it later. - O Tank grunted; he lifted off and slowly hovered to a small oak tree with a very deep knot in the middle. The reptile checked to confirm his solitude, unhinged his shell, and poured from it more treasure than would seem physically possible. It took a few minutes to completely unload his haul and he had to shake himself a few times to empty out one last little turquoise earring. Tank flew back and inspected his work. Sure enough, the knot was deep enough that the deposit could not be seen by any pony passing by. His mission completed, Tank slowly flew back towards his home. When Tank arrived back at Rainbow Dash’s cloud house, he could clearly hear his owner’s snores through the walls and over the buzz of his machine. He tilted forward and knocked the front door with his head. The snores ceased and gave away to hoofsteps before Rainbow Dash opened the door and smiled at Tank as he flew in. "Hey, Tank. What took ya?" Tank said nothing and only stared at her with soulful eyes. "I guess you probably want that stuff off," she said. Her tired brain struggled to remember exactly what strap had to be pulled and in what order to get him out. Finally, she simply gave up and broke the harness with her teeth. When he was free, she held him up up in front of her. "So, did you have any adventures out there?" Tank opened his dry mouth and made a noise between a rasp and a sigh. Dash rolled her eyes. "Eh, who am I kidding?" Tank was set down and left to his own devices as Rainbow Dash returned to her bedroom. His task had been completed and he rewarded himself with the greatest prize he knew. He withdrew his limbs into his protective shell and fell asleep; snores just as loud as his owner’s soon echoed out from the hole where his head had been. The FenceRarity was in a state of near-panic as she rushed about he workroom, attempting to fill a large order she had completely forgotten about until two days before the deadline. Opalescence was curled up upon the head of one of the mannequins, lazily watching Rarity go about her business. "Oh, where did I put those ribbons?" "Ack! Where's my needle!?" "This is imperial purple! I need heliotrope!” After watching the unicorn freak out for a little longer (and enjoying it more than she would admit), the cat hopped off the mannequin. She dodged her frantic owner and began to scratch on the door. Rarity continued to work and Opal responded with scratches that peeled the paint off and a hiss that would wake the dead. "Just a minute Opal! Momma's very busy!" Opalescence rolled her eyes. She'd have to get out soon or she'd miss a deadline of her own. Missed deadlines was never good for business. The next time Rarity got up from her sewing machine, she quickly ran over to the door and cracked it open to give the fat feline just enough room to squeeze out. The cat walked downstairs and into the shop area of the boutique, where Sweetie Belle was busy coloring. ♩ "I am a Cutie Mark Colorer...er! Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmmmm. ♩" Opal held her head high and tried her best to ignore the horrid lyrics as she walked past the tiny pony. Sweetie noticed the cat and waved. "Hi Opal!" Normally, when Sweetie Belle talked to her, Opalescence would either hiss or swipe at at the shrill creature. However, this was one of the very few instances where the annoying music box could come in handy. Opal put on her best fake smile as she walked up to Sweetie Belle and began to rub up against her, purring. "Aw, good kitty," Sweetie cooed, petting her. Now that Opal had her attention, she left Sweetie Belle's maddeningly uneven strokes by stretching and waddling into the kitchen with pompous purpose. Sweetie Belle liked the pet’s sudden friendliness and followed the cat in hopes that she would let her stroke her fur even more. Just as planned. When she made it to the back door of the kitchen, Opal made sure the filly was behind her and began to scratch at the door. "Oh, you want out?" Opal sighed and nodded. Sweetie Belle looked up at the doorknob. "Uh, I don't think I can reach that." Opal blew a raspberry at Sweetie Belle. "Okay, okay. Just hold on." The filly looked around the kitchen for something to jump on. She settled on pulling out a few utensil drawers to make a staircase to the top of the counter. From there, she jumped and grabbed the doorknob. She turned it and the door slowly glided open. Opal walked out in a huff, leaving Sweetie to dangle. The cat immediately made her way to the tree she had told Tank about and climbed inside the knothole. Beneath her paws were millions of bits worth of artifacts and jewels. She already had quite a few less than upstanding citizens willing to pay a hefty sum for even one of them. A transaction was scheduled for that afternoon and she had to hurry if she was to make it there before the buyer. She carefully sorted through the stolen items before locating the one she needed: an ivory necklace dating back before the Pre-Banishment Era. She picked it up with her mouth and leaped out of the tree, speeding toward the direction of the Everfree Forest. Filthy Rich felt, well, filthy. Sure he was a ruthless businesspony, but he was a law-abiding businesspony. Usually. Still, he couldn't ignore his daughter's demands when she brought home a history book and pointed toward an ancient necklace as the gift she wanted for her birthday. Her words still pierced his skull. "I WANT IT!" As much as Filthy Rich hated being called by his first name, even he had to admit there was probably a reason why ponies did it. He hadn’t bought his way to the top without ripping up a few dresses or making friends with some shady characters. Once again, the thugs and sharks he depended upon so much had come through and let him know that a very certain item he was looking for had just appeared on the market. Only problem was, the sellers were The Syndicate. They only communicated by courier bird and no pony he knew had even seen an actual member of the criminal empire. Filthy shuffled around his coat pocket to check the piece of paper he had received with the instructions. He didn’t much care looking at it, since it showed up in his house, on his bed, when he got home from work. How did they even get in? Edge of the Everfree Forest on the west road. Between the two oaks. Come alone. He didn't know what to expect. Was he going to be mugged? Was the necklace even there? Would he be kidnapped and held for ransom? “No, no,” he said to reassure himself. He knew The Syndicate's reputation; they always came through on a deal. Likewise, cheating them on a deal was completely out of the question. The last pony that angered them was found in an alleyway, half-insane, covered in saliva and scorch marks. As the wild flora of the Everfree rolled into view, Filthy Rich began to have second thoughts. Said second thoughts were instantly buried when he realized that this trade was much, much more preferable than going home and facing his daughter’s temper-tantrum. Walking between the two oaks, he found an obviously-placed small mound of dirt. He scratched at it and soon unearthed the necklace, covered in dirt but otherwise in perfect condition. He made sure he wasn't followed. With no policeponies or private investigators in sight, he dropped a very heavy sack of bits where the necklace had been and ran off with his new possession. Opal idly watched him retreat back into town. She regretted not bringing a camera to blackmail him for the transaction, but what was done was done. A few more minutes of waiting prompted her to lazily slither down the tree and claw where Filthy Rich had dropped his payment. She prodded the sack a few times. The payment secured, Opal withdrew several coins with her mouth. She moved to the back of the oak tree opposite of her and tossed the take onto a pile hidden in a small opening beneath the roots. The cat returned to the dead drop and noted the sun. It was still much too soon for The Bookie to show up. Opal did not want to suffer another minute with that bothersome creature Rarity called her sister to kill time and instead opted to nap in the tree until he arrived. "Who?" Opal's large eyes creaked open. Owlowiscious was perched on the same branch as her. He had probably been watching her for the past few minutes, the weirdo. "Who!" She sighed and pointed toward the mound where she had re-buried the gold. The owl flew down and kicked off the dirt with his talons to reveal the sack and snapped it in his beak. He lifted off with surprising strength and was soon just a floating shadow against the night sky. Opal stretched and climbed down the tree, eager to get back to Rarity's home. With just a few more coins, she could afford that crystal-laced ball of yarn she had seen in Canterlot. The BookieNumbers. Owlowiscious' life was numbers. The owl awkwardly flapped through the night, the sack of gold weighing him down. By cross-tabulation of his average flight-speed and the consideration of local wind conditions, he calculated that his cargo was precisely 6.8 kilograms. This meant that the sack did contain (excepting the .00002% chance that one of the coins was a famous "triple-horsehoe" misprint, which was 2.4% heavier) 1,679 standard Equestrian coins, minted and weighed by Her Majesty's Treasury. The wind shifted 26 degrees north, which prompted Owlowiscious to tilt his wings five degrees pitch axis to compensate. This change in wind was fortunate, as Owlowiscious now knew that he would arrive at Twilight Sparkle's library exactly forty-six seconds ahead of schedule. The positioning of the moon suggested that the time was very early in the morning. The chances of Twilight Sparkle in an all-night study session were quite high when Pinkie Pie's party schedule and local economic factors were considered. The characteristic outline of the tree the library resided in rose over the town's landscape and Owlowiscious circled towards the first floor window. He flapped in front of it for three seconds before he saw that the window had been left often, probably by Spike. Owlowiscious cautiously flew in and tensed when he witnessed Twilight Sparkle in the main foyer. Twilight's eyes were closed and her head slumped over a thick book. Drool poured out of her mouth as she snored lightly. Spike was just a short distance away from her, his head resting on a thick dictionary. The idiot had likely fallen asleep while trying to bring it to her. Flying over to one of the bookshelves, he carefully pulled out a copy of Levitation Theory and Application, which was three inches thick from binder to binder. A small click only audible to him sounded upstairs; a small depression in the wood next to Twilight’s bed had appeared, so minute that even Twilight had never noticed it. He acted quickly, only having nine seconds to push it. With half a second to spare, Owlowiscious pushed the small depression of wood in further with his rightmost talon, which sounded a second click. The countdown until the gears reset on the second timer was much more generous and his flight back downstairs was confident and controlled. When he returned to the bookcase he had meddled with, a small panel had slid away, revealing a red button. He pressed it with his beak and the entire staircase revolved halfway open. Owlowiscious flew inside the gap. Once he was inside, the door slowly closed itself with little more than a muffle. Twilight stirred in her sleep. "AJ, if you say one more thing about apples I'll..." Sack of coins still clutched in his left claw, Owlowiscious traveled to the large table in the middle of the hidden room. A single light bulb hung above it and an abacus was bolted into its top right corner. The bird dumped the contents of his bag over the table, the jingling muffled by the thick wooden walls. He flew under for a second and came back up wearing a green bookie visor with quill in one claw and a few pieces of parchment in the other. With everything in place, he sat them down and began to take inventory. This had been a good week. Between Winona's cattle rustling and Angel's expansion of their protection racket, The Syndicate was now looking at an income that would crack the cane of any socialite in Canterlot. In a few years, they could probably just buy Equestria from Princess Celestia. After he was finished counting every coin, he re-checked the numbers dozens of times. There were 1,678 coins, which was one below what it should have been. The table became scarred in scratch marks and feathers as Owlowiscious went into panic mode over the missing coin. He hurriedly sorted the coins one more time and caught one as he was partway through the pile. Sure enough, it was a triple-horseshoe misprint. He scowled at the offending piece of currency. "Who." All the money accounted for, he put all of the money back into the sack and went even farther back into the room. A pony may have just seen total darkness, but his eyes were able to see a large lever in the shadowed back end of the hideaway. He grabbed onto the top and stopped flapping, allowing his chubby body to force the crank down. It took a full two seconds for the entire ensemble to hit the ground, and when it did, a small trap door opened just one meter away. He flew up and turned the bag upside down to empty its contents. The trap door fed to a metal tube and Owlowiscious heard them roll for at least half a minute before the sound became inaudible. He didn't know where the tube went and he didn't really care. He was in it for the math. The only thing to do now was write his transaction down. He went back to the table and pulled a thick book from underneath it. It was a thick brown thing and had "LEDGER" written in very messy wording on the front. Using his talons, he cracked it open, coughing four times from the dust before flipping the pages to write down his most recent deposit. Right below the blackmail money they received from Fancy Pants and the Griffon Prince scheme they had been stringing several Fillydelphians along on, he wrote down the money they received from Filthy Rich. The owl then closed the book and went to the back of the bookcase. He pressed the large blue button on the back of it, which made it revolve once more. The noise of the entrance's movement awoke Spike for just a moment and he set his eyes on an owl emerging from a secret compartment in the library. The assistant locked his eyes with the owl’s for a moment before rolling over. "That's it, no more ice cream before bed." Owlowiscious huffed and and wiped the nervous sweat off his brow. His work finally completed, he took to his perch and drifted into a well-earned rest. The SpookWinona kicked up dirt and grass as she dug into the yard behind the barn. Several other holes littered the yard, all spread out in a seemingly random pattern. The dog had done her best to make the place look like an absolute warzone. At that moment, Applejack was pulling in a cart of freshly-bucked apples towards the barn. She heard the sounds of Winona's vandalism and went around back to check. "Winona? You better not be diggin' in the—" Applejack rounded the corner to see the yard practically turned upside down, with dirt still being kicked out of one of the holes. "Winona!" Applejack's dog peeked her head out of the hole and barked before she jumped out and took off towards Ponyville. That little distraction probably cost her a few nights of sleeping on the porch, but it was worth the fun. It also served the secondary purpose of keeping Applejack away from the market, since she would be the only one to pay attention to Winona running through the stalls. It didn't take long for the border collie to meet the outer reaches of the marketplace. She slowed down and perked her ears up as she passed the pear stand. She was always amazed by what secrets ponies could let loose in the open just because it was noisy. It was there she had learned that Pinkie was the one who had eaten the wedding cake whole, that Derpy was the one who caved in that condemned house by accident, and that Spike was the one who used a book from the rare book section as an emergency hankie. Gossip was always a good gauge to determine whether or not it was worth spending the effort to expand her listening area. The juicy bits she had heard thus far were a good sign and she left the market for one of the fields outside of Ponyville. She came to a stop next to a plain old stump, long since dead and otherwise completely unremarkable. "Bark!" The stump said nothing in reply. "Bark! Bark! Grrrr!" Nothing but the background noises of a summer day filled the air. She barked once more and the stump suddenly flew open on a hinge, revealing the metal frame and handle on the underside. She jumped in, making sure she closed the trapdoor above her. She slid down the earthy tunnel she had dug herself until she was thrown into a rather cramped oval room at least a hundred feet below the ground. The entire area was dominated by a machine that Winona had reverse-engineered from a certain contraption of Twilight’s used to detect brain waves. It wasn’t easy sneaking into the library to steal the blueprints, but the end result was worth the effort. It looked almost exactly like the original, save for a menacing black coat of paint and a few extra blinking lights. What really made the improved machine shine was the addition of a small funnel-like object that stuck out of it. It was Winona's bread and butter. It was difficult without any thumbs or magic, but she managed to fit the funnel into one of her ears and began to play with a small dial on the machine, slowly going over the frequencies. When it came to actual worthwhile information, Ponyville was pretty useless. She turned the dial farther right and soon Manehattan started to come in. "—'em all! We've gotta get this cargo moving by tomorrow!" Winona recognized that voice. It was Black Olive, one of the big bosses of the Ponbino crime family. They were mostly small-time, but their operations did have a nasty habit of cutting into Syndicate profit. She fine-tuned the dial. "That Joke ain't gonna move itself, you babbeo! If this stuff isn't on its way to Las Pegasus in the next hour I'm gonna make you sleep with the seaponies! Winona's ears twitched. Poison Joke? The Syndicate controlled approximately two-thirds of the Poison Joke fields in the country! Where did the Ponbinos get a shipment? She growled at the possibility they had discovered one of their fields and stolen their cargo. No matter. She took off the listening device and began to toy with a number pad on the machine. When the sequence was completed, she hovered a paw over a large, green button that read "Translate" and pressed it. The dial tone began to sound, and she waited. Black Olive was in the middle of rehearsing a speech to his father about how he outsmarted The Syndicate when the phone at the warehouse started to ring. That was not supposed to happen, since Black Olive had used his connections to make sure that the number was taken off the phone book. It was probably one of his idiot cousins, asking for money. He stomped over to the phone and yanked it to his ear. "Yeah?" "Mr. Olive?" Black Olive cocked an eyebrow. He didn't recognize the lady's voice. "Yeah?" "We at The Syndicate are committed to supplying Equestria with the finest exotic goods and unconventional services. I think we both know that your competition is nothing more than an annoyance. If you stop your little shipment now, The Syndicate is willing to pretend this whole thing never happened." "How did you get this number!?" The voice chuckled. "The Syndicate knows many things, Black Christopher Olive." Black Olive gritted his teeth. "How in Tartarus do you know my—" "The choice is yours, Mr. Olive. If you refuse, well, I'm sure The Cleaner would be delighted to pay you a visit." "No! No, that's fine. I'll call it off." Black Olive stayed on the line, expecting some kind of reply. All he heard in response was a strange breathing noise. "Are you panting?" "Uh, no. Good day, Mr. Olive." The mysterious caller hung up. Black Olive slowly turned away from the phone with a defeated slouch and walked over to his subordinates to break the bad news to them. As he opened his mouth, his resolve faltered. Who was he, taking orders from a phone? He was part of the Ponbino family! Even The Syndicate couldn't take that away from him! "Alright boys!" he shouted, "We're movin' out!" Even from hundreds of miles away and under a hundred feet of soil, Winona heard the pony’s defiant order. So he wanted to play hardball? Fine. The Cleaner was about overdue for an assignment anyway. The CleanerPrincess Celestia responded to the many letters sent to her as Philomena was perched contently in her cage. The pet read each parchment down to the word, her mistress oblivious to the spy just behind her back. It had been a slow day; most of the correspondences were with boring figures The Syndicate had likely already bribed or blackmailed. The phoenix tilted her head when she noticed that Princess Celestia had pulled out a letter from Twilight Sparkle. The words written in a painfully calculated style and spoke of some dull research that only Celestia could read without falling asleep. Sometimes she did anyway. Philomena wished she could burst into flame to avoid the boredom when a low, dull birdsong trilled behind her. She paused. A few more notes drifted from the one of the roosting areas in the castle crevices below. The signal! Winona or Angel had an assignment for Philomena. She was glad to take it; the more jobs she did, the sooner she would stop being known as the newbie of The Syndicate. She began to fidget and caw. The princess laid down the paper and turned to her. "What's wrong, Philomena?" The phoenix looked out the window in response. "Oh. Why didn't you say so?" the princess said and unhooked the cage door, freeing Philomena and giving her access to the skies. She roared out of the room and away from Canterlot. Celestia watched for a while before returning to her reading. "I swear, she's been acting so strange lately..." Philomena's destination was a hot spring several miles away from Canterlot, hidden neatly away in a forest. It was the remnants of an active volcano and it suited the bird's hot nature well enough. Within just a few minutes she was already circling the steaming pool of water that was her second home and spared no time to swoop down and perch on a branch above the hot bubbling pools. She looked around for her contact, but found she was alone. She began to preen herself to kill time until she heard a bark below. She jumped off the perch, catching her breath she she saw Winona at the base of the tree. She relaxed and landed in front of the dog, who still wore the glazed dumb animal eyes she used around ponies. At her feet was a scroll, covered in saliva. Philomena looked at it and squawked, chastising Winona for getting her assignment all wet. Winona barked in response, telling her that she didn't really have a choice in the matter and ran off. The phoenix snapped the string that bound the scroll together and it gracefully unfurled, giving her the details that she needed. Name: Black Olive Age: 27 Mane Color: Black Cutie Mark: Martini glass with 2 ice cubes The target owns assets belonging to the Syndicate. Burn everything. Enclosed is a photo and map of his most likely route. Don’t screw this up. - The Brains Her jaw dropped when she saw the signature. All of her previous assignment letters were made by Winona or Angel, sometimes Tank. She had only heard about their leader through passing mention, a vague and extremely intelligent figure that even the rabbit seemed to fear. They wouldn't tell her who he actually was or even what species he belonged to, only that he was intense. She went over the letter one more time, memorizing the details before burning the letter to ashes and launching herself into the sky towards her target. Philomena chose a spot in the road a few miles from Las Pegasus and waited for her mark. The calm left her plenty of time to contemplate how she would go about destroying the Joke. The Syndicate usually gave her very few conditions to finishing her assignments, giving her full leeway on how she did them. This suited her freewheeling nature just fine; she'd fly out of Canterlot for her afternoon exercise and burn down a house or two for insurance fraud. Princess Celestia was never the wiser. Still, just hurling fireballs at them would raise questions. No, Philomena had to make this look like any old pony with a torch could have done it. She noted several old trees close to the road and quickly formulated a plan. Like all of her plans, it involved burning things. She liked to burn things. It took longer than expected for the smugglers to show up. Several larger earth ponies pulled rather conspicuous draped carriages behind them. She watched them pass by until they were in the position. When they were, she sprung her trap. She stretched her wings and one particularly old tree burst into flames. It crashed down on the road and blocked the paths of Black Olive and his crew. They shouted in surprise as a second flaming tree smashed down behind them. Several more were sent flying out of the middle the forest, fully wrapped in a cloak of fire. The massive, flaming lumbers smashed the carriages and sent Poison Joke everywhere. "To Tartarus with this!" Black Olive yelled before he ran into a wheat field next to the road. All of his cohorts followed. Their screams carried off into the night and soon the only sounds that could be heard were the snaps and crackles coming from Philomena’s fires. She made sure that she was alone before she examined the smashed carriages. The Joke within them had been crushed and spilled everywhere, but still viable. She flew above the carnage and used every bit of her power to heat the ground below. The sensitive petals of the exotic plant were soon blackened and useless. It pained her to waste this much good contraband, but orders were orders. It was late in the evening when she returned to the balcony of her home and landed on the railing. At that moment, Celestia walked by the open entrance and saw her loyal firebird. She walked over and extended a leg for Philomena to perch on and the phoenix gladly accepted the offer. "There you are, Philomena." she said and eyeballed at her playfully. "You haven't been up to any trouble, have you?" They both had a good chuckle. Philomena’s laugh was normal at first, but slowly developed into something much more sinister. The BrainsPinkie Pie darted about her room in hasty preparation for the party that she had decided to throw exactly one minute ago. Several times she almost tripped over Gummy, who had situated himself in the middle of the room. Eventually, he decided to take to the top of Pinkie’s bed in an effort to avoid being trampled. As soon as he finished his climb, Pinkie rushed up to him, holding a plain cake. "Gummy! Should I use chocolate or caramel?" He slowly blinked one eye and then the other. "Use both? Darn, why didn't I think of that?" she said and returned to her frantic work. Little did she know the stare that followed her about the room was one of intense hatred; Celestia herself would not be able to fathom the darkness that lurked behind those wide irises. He didn't want this. He would have been completely happy to have been born a normal alligator with the large size and sharp teeth that so defined his species. Nothing but days full of ambush hunting and thrashing at the river's bottom, his brain filled to the brim with killer instinct and nothing else. Yet, from the second he was born, he was burdened with the curse of thought. Even worse, he could not express it; he was a genius trapped in a moron's body. Then, the Pink One found him. In the first few days of his existence he had strayed from the riverbed, hoping to learn more about the strange world outside his egg. That was when the Pink One came upon him, finding him adorable and cute and all those other words that made him sick. He must have bitten her a hundred times that day, but all his assaults were simply taken as signs of affection. How he hated the Pink One! Every time she came near him he would leap upon her skull to crush it between his mighty jaws, but his attacks did nothing but incite laughter from the hyperactive blight. Not only that, but the Pink One's steady diet of sugary sustenance supplied to him had stunted his growth, forever dooming him to a hatchling's form. His thoughts nearly drove him to get off the bed and attack his owner, but he restrained himself. No, he had plans. The Syndicate was meeting to induct its newest member and Gummy did not make a habit of being late. If he tried to chase his "master" down, Pinkie would mistake it for a game of Hide n' Seek and his tardiness would almost certainly be assured. So, he waited. Every so often Pinkie would come up to him and ask some inane question about decorating or invitations and take his silence as sage advice. Sadly, she was always too far away for him to strike. Finally Pinkie Pie walked right up to the bed with a horn in her mouth. "Mmmphy? Shmm phy mvvmm a mmvva, fmor a marmmffia?" Gummy struck, his four tiny legs sending him straight at Pinkie's noggin and in one swift move he latched himself onto her head. He adjusted his mouth just so, waiting for the effect to take hold. Pinkie giggled and the horn dropped to the floor. "Aw, I think somepony's hungry! How does a big fat mint sundae sou—" Her sentence was cut short as her hair became frizzled and pupils dilated. The sunny smile of the pink pony instantly evaporated and her colorful coat became muted with just the slightest shade of green. Success! He was worried for a second that his attempt had failed; that would only have meant more sweets to rot his soul with. Once, he had missed the correct part of her head by just an inch and was forced to bear the humiliation in front of his henchmen as Pinkie carted him about the park with him still attached. The members of The Syndicate knew better than to mock him, but a certain passing cardinal did not and decided to spread the news to his friends. The local arts and crafts store never figured out where the shipment of red feathers had come from. Pinkie-Gummy walked over to a section of the wall and pressed several sections of it, which lit up to the touch and beeped. After the sequence had been entered, the wall slid away to a spiral staircase that descended into the bowels of the planet. Those stairs were mostly for show; he preferred a faster way down. He commanded his vessel to leap down the shaft in the middle of the spiral and Pinkie obeyed unquestionably. Pinkie soon slammed into the bottom of the shaft, but the strange physical properties of the pony meant that she flattened out like a rubber ball, then immediately regained her composure with no damage dealt. In front of Pinkie-Gummy was a large and serious-looking black double-door, with a soft blue light shining through the cracks at the bottom. The Pinkie vessel pushed it open and walked inside. It was Gummy's masterpiece; it had taken months of straight work through the night with the use of Pinkie's body to get the base operational, but it was well worth the effort. The room was essentially a large cave, with a massive map highlighted by bluish lights which took up the entire southern wall. The center was dominated by a round table with five seats and two perches, one of which was newly-installed. In the middle of the table was the symbol of The Syndicate: an "S", with the jaws of a predator in the foreground. Everyone was already present except Philomena, was was to be in at any moment. Pinkie-Gummy took his large leather seat at the head of the table and placed Pinkie's hooves on top of it in his best effort to be commanding. He never started any meeting until everyone was present and the rest of The Syndicate sat in nervous silence as they waited for the phoenix to arrive. A few minutes passed until an orange glow appeared at the tube that the winged members of the organization used to gain access to the HQ. Philomena burst out in all her radiance. She looked down in confusion to see Gummy latched onto a very somber Pinkie Pie, who motioned for her to take her place on the remaining empty perch. She complied and Pinkie-Gummy looked over the assembly one last time before speaking. "We must first sort out the highest priority. Bookie, how are The Syndicate's finances?" Pinkie's body asked. She spoke in a completely different voice, one possessing a much heavier tone and an evil accent of indiscernible origin. "Who!" the owl replied. "Good, good. And Fence, have you offloaded all of our acquisitions?" Opal meowed. "Excellent," Pinkie-Gummy said. The fused being turned attention to Philomena. "I am pleased to see that you managed to find our....abode." Philomena squawked and flapped her wings. "Now, now. The traps were there as a final test, of sorts. You won't have to worry about them on...return visits. Now that the formalities are out of the way, I would like to welcome Philomena, or should I say 'The Cleaner', as a part of The Syndicate!" The other animals present congratulated Philomena in their own noises. The phoenix tried to hide her blushing face behind the brilliant plumage of one of her wings. "And now that we're all here..." Pinkie-Gummy stated as he jumped back off the table and walked over to the huge map behind them, "I believe that I should reveal to you all that The Syndicate is going to be moving out of our traditional role." Opal arched an eyebrow and meowed. "No, Fence, The Syndicate's plan isn't just 'make a whole lot of money.' I founded this organization with a much grander purpose." Pinkie-Gummy reached below the desk and flipped a tiny switch. At once the chair Pinkie-Gummy sat in was sent upwards by a giant spring and the mastermind twirled through the air a few times before sticking the landing right in front of the map. The whole cave then seemed to shake as the entire map revolved around, slowly replacing the picture of Equestria with one that showed the entire country carved up into smaller blocs. In the middle of every colored division, one of the members of The Syndicate had their portrait framed. "Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: Operation Faustkrieg!" Pinkie-Gummy announced in a booming voice. The controlled pony walked onto a small platform and pulled a lever on the side. It sent the puppeted pony dozens of meters into the air and the center of the map fell into their shadow. "No longer will we be known as simple pets! We will pull the land and clouds right out from under those four-legged talking abominations that dare call themselves ponies! This is our land and we are going to take it back!" The other members of The Syndicate could only look on in awe. Pinkie-Gummy leaned forward and the controlled pony's twisted, diabolical face became partly illuminated by the soft map lights. "Fellow animals, the war begins now. And here's how we're going to do it." Several hours later, the secret entrance in Pinkie's room opened and Pinkie-Gummy stepped out in a triumphant fashion. When the coast was clear, the small alligator unhooked himself from his owner's head. Pinkie blinked a few times as her pupils shrunk back to normal size and her coat returned to its original state. When she was fully herself again, she saw Gummy looking up at her and grinned. "Gummy! Let's get you that mint sundae!"
The MuscleTHE SYNDICATE STRIKES AGAIN! The headline took up almost a quarter of the front page and Fluttershy gasped when she read the bold lettering. She hadn't expected her trip to the mailbox to be so frightening! Oblivious to the world around her, she became absorbed in the paper laid out on her couch as she read the article aloud. "In a stunning display of banditry and lawlessness, the organized crime ring known only as The Syndicate intercepted and looted an armored wagon carrying priceless artifacts that were to be delivered to the Museum of Pony History in Manehattan. Chief of Police Double Donut has fully admitted his men are baffled as to how The Syndicate knew of the wagon's location and cargo. Luckily, no ponies were harmed in the raid, but it's believed that—" Fluttershy's reading was cut short when a loud cough sounded right below her. She looked away from the newspaper to see Angel tapping his foot with a steady, familiar tempo. "Oh, hello Angel." Angel frowned and pointed at the clock. It was feeding time and he wasn't one to wait for food. "Sorry. I'll have something ready soon!" Fluttershy said as she went into the kitchen to prepare a salad. She opened the pantry to find nothing but a few cobwebs. She heard taps again and turned around to see her pet behind her with a scowl. "It looks like we're out of food. I'll have to make a trip to the grocery store." Angel cupped his face and sighed, but did little else as Fluttershy grabbed her saddle-purse. "Now you behave yourself while I'm gone." The rabbit did nothing but cross his arms and roll his eyes at the indignation. His only solace was that he would be mostly alone when Fluttershy left since Discord was off causing some harmless mischief somewhere. Angel sighed with relief when Fluttershy left the cottage and closed the door behind her. He hopped up to the door and pressed his ear against it. Slowly, the sound of his owner’s trot slowly faded away from the door. When he was satisfied, the rabbit turned around and hopped up onto the couch Fluttershy had been on moments before. The dour rodent snatched up the paper and read the article with intensity. "—which led investigators to believe that this crime was indeed perpetrated by The Syndicate and not one of the various other mobs within Equestria. In fact, The Syndicate and all others of their ilk must be opposed at every turn if we are to secure a future for ourselves and—" Angel looked away from the article with a sneer and began to search for the author's name. The pony was apparently brave (or stupid) enough to use their real name and a picture. Soothe Sayer, a bespectacled unicorn pony, stared back at Angel through his slightly snobbish black-and-white photo that adorned the top of his article. The rabbit cracked his paws, then put them in his mouth. A loud whistle filled the room and small birds of every color emerged from their birdhouses. The rabbit ripped out the portrait of Soothe Sayer and jabbed at it a few times with his paw for emphasis. He then produced a large pencil out of nowhere and scribbled something on the back. When he held it up, one of the hummingbirds snatched it out of his hands and led the other birds into a military formation. He gave them orders via series of rodent squeaks and foot taps. The birds nodded to each other and flew out the window towards Canterlot. Satisfied, he scooped up the rest of the newspaper and threw it in the fireplace. The paper burned quickly as he snuggled in front of the warmth and dozed off. Soothe Sayer whistled to himself as he walked home from his job at United Equestrian Press. Sometimes, he couldn’t believe his luck with the gig he had landed. All he had to do was show up to work, write a few angry articles derived from second-hoof sources and cash the easiest paycheck ever, then go home to take a well-deserved bath. Sayer mulled over fanciful thoughts of a new hot tub in his home when a gentle trill flowed out of the dark alleyway he had just stepped in front of. This wasn’t the bad part of town, he thought to himself. What was that racket? "Hello?" he asked to the darkness. The noise seemed to respond; it became even louder and sounds of rustling seemed to join it. Soothe Sayer's curiosity got the better of him and he walked down the alley. "Is anyone there?" His question was met with sudden, feathery violence. Out of nowhere, dozens of wings and beaks set upon the poor writer. Cloud dusts and pain stars erupted out of the alley as Soothe Sayer tried several times to pull his way out of the melee only to be dragged back in. Just when he thought that he was a goner, the scratching and flapping stopped. He opened his eyes to expect some giant muscle-bound pegasus ready to deliver the final blow, but instead there laid only a small scrap of paper. Upon closer inspection, it was a photo of himself; the same one he used in the newspaper. He picked it up, turned it over, and went pale in the face. The Syndicate is a legitimate business. If you don't want a repeat of what just happened, I suggest your articles start reflecting that fact. — A "Angel! I'm home!" Angel's ear twitched as he stirred from his nap. The only thing about Fluttershy that commanded his attention was the large bag of groceries in her possession. He was content to wait until his meal was ready and curled back up. Right before he nodded off, he saw the birds he had sent on the mission perched in some trees outside, looking at him through the window. The biggest of them nodded with the weight of their deed. Angel replied with a thumbs-up before he returned to his nap. He was awoken a few minutes later by the sound of something being pushed in front of him. He opened his eyes to see a wonderful carrot salad in front of him with all his favorite toppings. A single, perfectly round cherry sat atop the meal. "I know it's a little much," said Fluttershy, "but you've been such a good little bunny lately that I think you deserved a treat." Angel immediately dove into the salad and devoured it with a savageness that would rival any parasprite; bits of vegetables and fruit flew out from both sides of the bowl like the mulch from a demented lawnmower. Fluttershy giggled. "Aw, you're so cute when you're hungry. You really are a little angel."
The RunnerRainbow Dash wasn't a bad pet owner; she just forgot that Tank existed half the time. It's not that she didn't love him, but Tank only had to be fed once a week and couldn't outrun corn syrup. It was very easy to lose track of him. The pegasus was enthralled in the latest Daring Do novel while Tank moved about her bedroom. Had she payed any attention whatsoever, she would have heard the jangle of objects as her pet dragged what appeared to be valuable necklaces and artifacts with his mouth under her bed. She would have also noticed that Tank waddled about as if his center of gravity had been compromised. "Oh no!" Tank jumped and retreated inside his shell at Rainbow Dash's exclamation. "How the hay is Do going to get out of this one? Laser pit trap and robot sharks? You might as well throw in a swarm of bees!" The turtle heard his owner turn the page and sigh loudly. "Oh COME ON!" Tank slowly realized that his owner hadn't yelled at him. He slowly withdrew from his shell and continued to move treasures about Dash's room. Thankfully, Rainbow Dash wasn't a speed reader and he knew it it would take her most of the day to finish the book. Hours went by with Tank going about his business, every so often forced to retreat back inside his shell on reflex when Rainbow Dash made some loud commentary on the story. The tortoise had just finished preparations when he heard a loud clap as his owner finished her book. "That was the best Daring Do ever!" Rainbow Dash squealed. She looked out the window to see that the sun was already setting. "Woah, nighttime already?" It was at this point that she noticed Tank in the middle of her room. Her beloved slow guy stared at her blankly. "Oh, hey Tank. You need something or...?" Tank slowly blinked and turned his head toward the door. "Um, you need to go for a fly?" If Tank had nodded any slower, moss would have formed on his head. "Well, it's kinda late, but okay." Rainbow Dash hopped off her bed and began rooting through her closet to find Tank's flight gear, fighting a mountain of junk to get to it. "Gala dress? No. Daring Do Fanclub card? No! A Scholar's Guide to Aerodynamics? How did this even—" Tank hid in his shell to protect himself against the volley of trash Rainbow Dash tossed behind her. When she finally located the contraption that enabled him to fly, the floor had disappeared under a sea of discarded items. "Found it!" she exclaimed. Rainbow Dash looked over the junk strewn about her room to see Tank’s shell just barely visible between some old comic books. She dug him out of the quasi-landfill and slowly flapped her way to the entrance of her home. For no particular reason, Rainbow Dash bucked the door open. She kept an awkward grasp on her pet as she slowly hovered outside her door and began to crank the mechanism on Tank’s flying device. The magic within the doodad sprang to life and the little propeller on the machine began to spin. She let go and fluttered off in one direction. When she turned around to check on him, she saw the tortoise slowly floating off in another path. "Oh, doing your own thing? That's cool. Just knock on the door when you want back in," the pegasus said, returning back to her cloud home. Tank used his independence to none-too-gracefully glide across the evening sky, the rattling in his shell even more apparent without a floor to absorb the sound of the ill-gotten loot. He eventually found himself above Ponyville and began to survey the small town. He scanned the ground for some time until he found the building in question and swooped down with surprising grace. He landed in the backyard of the establishment with a solid thump and looked around to make sure that he hadn't been followed. When all was clear, he tapped once on the back door. Tank responded with two knocks and the door slowly opened. A paw slithered out and placed a note on the porch before retreating back inside. When it was gone, the door closed with a crash. "Sweetie Belle!" a voice shouted, "Don't slam the door!" "It wasn't me!" Tank’s slow eyes traced each letter of the note in front of him. Leave the cargo in the tree behind you. Will get to it later. - O Tank grunted; he lifted off and slowly hovered to a small oak tree with a very deep knot in the middle. The reptile checked to confirm his solitude, unhinged his shell, and poured from it more treasure than would seem physically possible. It took a few minutes to completely unload his haul and he had to shake himself a few times to empty out one last little turquoise earring. Tank flew back and inspected his work. Sure enough, the knot was deep enough that the deposit could not be seen by any pony passing by. His mission completed, Tank slowly flew back towards his home. When Tank arrived back at Rainbow Dash’s cloud house, he could clearly hear his owner’s snores through the walls and over the buzz of his machine. He tilted forward and knocked the front door with his head. The snores ceased and gave away to hoofsteps before Rainbow Dash opened the door and smiled at Tank as he flew in. "Hey, Tank. What took ya?" Tank said nothing and only stared at her with soulful eyes. "I guess you probably want that stuff off," she said. Her tired brain struggled to remember exactly what strap had to be pulled and in what order to get him out. Finally, she simply gave up and broke the harness with her teeth. When he was free, she held him up up in front of her. "So, did you have any adventures out there?" Tank opened his dry mouth and made a noise between a rasp and a sigh. Dash rolled her eyes. "Eh, who am I kidding?" Tank was set down and left to his own devices as Rainbow Dash returned to her bedroom. His task had been completed and he rewarded himself with the greatest prize he knew. He withdrew his limbs into his protective shell and fell asleep; snores just as loud as his owner’s soon echoed out from the hole where his head had been.
The FenceRarity was in a state of near-panic as she rushed about he workroom, attempting to fill a large order she had completely forgotten about until two days before the deadline. Opalescence was curled up upon the head of one of the mannequins, lazily watching Rarity go about her business. "Oh, where did I put those ribbons?" "Ack! Where's my needle!?" "This is imperial purple! I need heliotrope!” After watching the unicorn freak out for a little longer (and enjoying it more than she would admit), the cat hopped off the mannequin. She dodged her frantic owner and began to scratch on the door. Rarity continued to work and Opal responded with scratches that peeled the paint off and a hiss that would wake the dead. "Just a minute Opal! Momma's very busy!" Opalescence rolled her eyes. She'd have to get out soon or she'd miss a deadline of her own. Missed deadlines was never good for business. The next time Rarity got up from her sewing machine, she quickly ran over to the door and cracked it open to give the fat feline just enough room to squeeze out. The cat walked downstairs and into the shop area of the boutique, where Sweetie Belle was busy coloring. ♩ "I am a Cutie Mark Colorer...er! Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmmmm. ♩" Opal held her head high and tried her best to ignore the horrid lyrics as she walked past the tiny pony. Sweetie noticed the cat and waved. "Hi Opal!" Normally, when Sweetie Belle talked to her, Opalescence would either hiss or swipe at at the shrill creature. However, this was one of the very few instances where the annoying music box could come in handy. Opal put on her best fake smile as she walked up to Sweetie Belle and began to rub up against her, purring. "Aw, good kitty," Sweetie cooed, petting her. Now that Opal had her attention, she left Sweetie Belle's maddeningly uneven strokes by stretching and waddling into the kitchen with pompous purpose. Sweetie Belle liked the pet’s sudden friendliness and followed the cat in hopes that she would let her stroke her fur even more. Just as planned. When she made it to the back door of the kitchen, Opal made sure the filly was behind her and began to scratch at the door. "Oh, you want out?" Opal sighed and nodded. Sweetie Belle looked up at the doorknob. "Uh, I don't think I can reach that." Opal blew a raspberry at Sweetie Belle. "Okay, okay. Just hold on." The filly looked around the kitchen for something to jump on. She settled on pulling out a few utensil drawers to make a staircase to the top of the counter. From there, she jumped and grabbed the doorknob. She turned it and the door slowly glided open. Opal walked out in a huff, leaving Sweetie to dangle. The cat immediately made her way to the tree she had told Tank about and climbed inside the knothole. Beneath her paws were millions of bits worth of artifacts and jewels. She already had quite a few less than upstanding citizens willing to pay a hefty sum for even one of them. A transaction was scheduled for that afternoon and she had to hurry if she was to make it there before the buyer. She carefully sorted through the stolen items before locating the one she needed: an ivory necklace dating back before the Pre-Banishment Era. She picked it up with her mouth and leaped out of the tree, speeding toward the direction of the Everfree Forest. Filthy Rich felt, well, filthy. Sure he was a ruthless businesspony, but he was a law-abiding businesspony. Usually. Still, he couldn't ignore his daughter's demands when she brought home a history book and pointed toward an ancient necklace as the gift she wanted for her birthday. Her words still pierced his skull. "I WANT IT!" As much as Filthy Rich hated being called by his first name, even he had to admit there was probably a reason why ponies did it. He hadn’t bought his way to the top without ripping up a few dresses or making friends with some shady characters. Once again, the thugs and sharks he depended upon so much had come through and let him know that a very certain item he was looking for had just appeared on the market. Only problem was, the sellers were The Syndicate. They only communicated by courier bird and no pony he knew had even seen an actual member of the criminal empire. Filthy shuffled around his coat pocket to check the piece of paper he had received with the instructions. He didn’t much care looking at it, since it showed up in his house, on his bed, when he got home from work. How did they even get in? Edge of the Everfree Forest on the west road. Between the two oaks. Come alone. He didn't know what to expect. Was he going to be mugged? Was the necklace even there? Would he be kidnapped and held for ransom? “No, no,” he said to reassure himself. He knew The Syndicate's reputation; they always came through on a deal. Likewise, cheating them on a deal was completely out of the question. The last pony that angered them was found in an alleyway, half-insane, covered in saliva and scorch marks. As the wild flora of the Everfree rolled into view, Filthy Rich began to have second thoughts. Said second thoughts were instantly buried when he realized that this trade was much, much more preferable than going home and facing his daughter’s temper-tantrum. Walking between the two oaks, he found an obviously-placed small mound of dirt. He scratched at it and soon unearthed the necklace, covered in dirt but otherwise in perfect condition. He made sure he wasn't followed. With no policeponies or private investigators in sight, he dropped a very heavy sack of bits where the necklace had been and ran off with his new possession. Opal idly watched him retreat back into town. She regretted not bringing a camera to blackmail him for the transaction, but what was done was done. A few more minutes of waiting prompted her to lazily slither down the tree and claw where Filthy Rich had dropped his payment. She prodded the sack a few times. The payment secured, Opal withdrew several coins with her mouth. She moved to the back of the oak tree opposite of her and tossed the take onto a pile hidden in a small opening beneath the roots. The cat returned to the dead drop and noted the sun. It was still much too soon for The Bookie to show up. Opal did not want to suffer another minute with that bothersome creature Rarity called her sister to kill time and instead opted to nap in the tree until he arrived. "Who?" Opal's large eyes creaked open. Owlowiscious was perched on the same branch as her. He had probably been watching her for the past few minutes, the weirdo. "Who!" She sighed and pointed toward the mound where she had re-buried the gold. The owl flew down and kicked off the dirt with his talons to reveal the sack and snapped it in his beak. He lifted off with surprising strength and was soon just a floating shadow against the night sky. Opal stretched and climbed down the tree, eager to get back to Rarity's home. With just a few more coins, she could afford that crystal-laced ball of yarn she had seen in Canterlot.
The BookieNumbers. Owlowiscious' life was numbers. The owl awkwardly flapped through the night, the sack of gold weighing him down. By cross-tabulation of his average flight-speed and the consideration of local wind conditions, he calculated that his cargo was precisely 6.8 kilograms. This meant that the sack did contain (excepting the .00002% chance that one of the coins was a famous "triple-horsehoe" misprint, which was 2.4% heavier) 1,679 standard Equestrian coins, minted and weighed by Her Majesty's Treasury. The wind shifted 26 degrees north, which prompted Owlowiscious to tilt his wings five degrees pitch axis to compensate. This change in wind was fortunate, as Owlowiscious now knew that he would arrive at Twilight Sparkle's library exactly forty-six seconds ahead of schedule. The positioning of the moon suggested that the time was very early in the morning. The chances of Twilight Sparkle in an all-night study session were quite high when Pinkie Pie's party schedule and local economic factors were considered. The characteristic outline of the tree the library resided in rose over the town's landscape and Owlowiscious circled towards the first floor window. He flapped in front of it for three seconds before he saw that the window had been left often, probably by Spike. Owlowiscious cautiously flew in and tensed when he witnessed Twilight Sparkle in the main foyer. Twilight's eyes were closed and her head slumped over a thick book. Drool poured out of her mouth as she snored lightly. Spike was just a short distance away from her, his head resting on a thick dictionary. The idiot had likely fallen asleep while trying to bring it to her. Flying over to one of the bookshelves, he carefully pulled out a copy of Levitation Theory and Application, which was three inches thick from binder to binder. A small click only audible to him sounded upstairs; a small depression in the wood next to Twilight’s bed had appeared, so minute that even Twilight had never noticed it. He acted quickly, only having nine seconds to push it. With half a second to spare, Owlowiscious pushed the small depression of wood in further with his rightmost talon, which sounded a second click. The countdown until the gears reset on the second timer was much more generous and his flight back downstairs was confident and controlled. When he returned to the bookcase he had meddled with, a small panel had slid away, revealing a red button. He pressed it with his beak and the entire staircase revolved halfway open. Owlowiscious flew inside the gap. Once he was inside, the door slowly closed itself with little more than a muffle. Twilight stirred in her sleep. "AJ, if you say one more thing about apples I'll..." Sack of coins still clutched in his left claw, Owlowiscious traveled to the large table in the middle of the hidden room. A single light bulb hung above it and an abacus was bolted into its top right corner. The bird dumped the contents of his bag over the table, the jingling muffled by the thick wooden walls. He flew under for a second and came back up wearing a green bookie visor with quill in one claw and a few pieces of parchment in the other. With everything in place, he sat them down and began to take inventory. This had been a good week. Between Winona's cattle rustling and Angel's expansion of their protection racket, The Syndicate was now looking at an income that would crack the cane of any socialite in Canterlot. In a few years, they could probably just buy Equestria from Princess Celestia. After he was finished counting every coin, he re-checked the numbers dozens of times. There were 1,678 coins, which was one below what it should have been. The table became scarred in scratch marks and feathers as Owlowiscious went into panic mode over the missing coin. He hurriedly sorted the coins one more time and caught one as he was partway through the pile. Sure enough, it was a triple-horseshoe misprint. He scowled at the offending piece of currency. "Who." All the money accounted for, he put all of the money back into the sack and went even farther back into the room. A pony may have just seen total darkness, but his eyes were able to see a large lever in the shadowed back end of the hideaway. He grabbed onto the top and stopped flapping, allowing his chubby body to force the crank down. It took a full two seconds for the entire ensemble to hit the ground, and when it did, a small trap door opened just one meter away. He flew up and turned the bag upside down to empty its contents. The trap door fed to a metal tube and Owlowiscious heard them roll for at least half a minute before the sound became inaudible. He didn't know where the tube went and he didn't really care. He was in it for the math. The only thing to do now was write his transaction down. He went back to the table and pulled a thick book from underneath it. It was a thick brown thing and had "LEDGER" written in very messy wording on the front. Using his talons, he cracked it open, coughing four times from the dust before flipping the pages to write down his most recent deposit. Right below the blackmail money they received from Fancy Pants and the Griffon Prince scheme they had been stringing several Fillydelphians along on, he wrote down the money they received from Filthy Rich. The owl then closed the book and went to the back of the bookcase. He pressed the large blue button on the back of it, which made it revolve once more. The noise of the entrance's movement awoke Spike for just a moment and he set his eyes on an owl emerging from a secret compartment in the library. The assistant locked his eyes with the owl’s for a moment before rolling over. "That's it, no more ice cream before bed." Owlowiscious huffed and and wiped the nervous sweat off his brow. His work finally completed, he took to his perch and drifted into a well-earned rest.
The SpookWinona kicked up dirt and grass as she dug into the yard behind the barn. Several other holes littered the yard, all spread out in a seemingly random pattern. The dog had done her best to make the place look like an absolute warzone. At that moment, Applejack was pulling in a cart of freshly-bucked apples towards the barn. She heard the sounds of Winona's vandalism and went around back to check. "Winona? You better not be diggin' in the—" Applejack rounded the corner to see the yard practically turned upside down, with dirt still being kicked out of one of the holes. "Winona!" Applejack's dog peeked her head out of the hole and barked before she jumped out and took off towards Ponyville. That little distraction probably cost her a few nights of sleeping on the porch, but it was worth the fun. It also served the secondary purpose of keeping Applejack away from the market, since she would be the only one to pay attention to Winona running through the stalls. It didn't take long for the border collie to meet the outer reaches of the marketplace. She slowed down and perked her ears up as she passed the pear stand. She was always amazed by what secrets ponies could let loose in the open just because it was noisy. It was there she had learned that Pinkie was the one who had eaten the wedding cake whole, that Derpy was the one who caved in that condemned house by accident, and that Spike was the one who used a book from the rare book section as an emergency hankie. Gossip was always a good gauge to determine whether or not it was worth spending the effort to expand her listening area. The juicy bits she had heard thus far were a good sign and she left the market for one of the fields outside of Ponyville. She came to a stop next to a plain old stump, long since dead and otherwise completely unremarkable. "Bark!" The stump said nothing in reply. "Bark! Bark! Grrrr!" Nothing but the background noises of a summer day filled the air. She barked once more and the stump suddenly flew open on a hinge, revealing the metal frame and handle on the underside. She jumped in, making sure she closed the trapdoor above her. She slid down the earthy tunnel she had dug herself until she was thrown into a rather cramped oval room at least a hundred feet below the ground. The entire area was dominated by a machine that Winona had reverse-engineered from a certain contraption of Twilight’s used to detect brain waves. It wasn’t easy sneaking into the library to steal the blueprints, but the end result was worth the effort. It looked almost exactly like the original, save for a menacing black coat of paint and a few extra blinking lights. What really made the improved machine shine was the addition of a small funnel-like object that stuck out of it. It was Winona's bread and butter. It was difficult without any thumbs or magic, but she managed to fit the funnel into one of her ears and began to play with a small dial on the machine, slowly going over the frequencies. When it came to actual worthwhile information, Ponyville was pretty useless. She turned the dial farther right and soon Manehattan started to come in. "—'em all! We've gotta get this cargo moving by tomorrow!" Winona recognized that voice. It was Black Olive, one of the big bosses of the Ponbino crime family. They were mostly small-time, but their operations did have a nasty habit of cutting into Syndicate profit. She fine-tuned the dial. "That Joke ain't gonna move itself, you babbeo! If this stuff isn't on its way to Las Pegasus in the next hour I'm gonna make you sleep with the seaponies! Winona's ears twitched. Poison Joke? The Syndicate controlled approximately two-thirds of the Poison Joke fields in the country! Where did the Ponbinos get a shipment? She growled at the possibility they had discovered one of their fields and stolen their cargo. No matter. She took off the listening device and began to toy with a number pad on the machine. When the sequence was completed, she hovered a paw over a large, green button that read "Translate" and pressed it. The dial tone began to sound, and she waited. Black Olive was in the middle of rehearsing a speech to his father about how he outsmarted The Syndicate when the phone at the warehouse started to ring. That was not supposed to happen, since Black Olive had used his connections to make sure that the number was taken off the phone book. It was probably one of his idiot cousins, asking for money. He stomped over to the phone and yanked it to his ear. "Yeah?" "Mr. Olive?" Black Olive cocked an eyebrow. He didn't recognize the lady's voice. "Yeah?" "We at The Syndicate are committed to supplying Equestria with the finest exotic goods and unconventional services. I think we both know that your competition is nothing more than an annoyance. If you stop your little shipment now, The Syndicate is willing to pretend this whole thing never happened." "How did you get this number!?" The voice chuckled. "The Syndicate knows many things, Black Christopher Olive." Black Olive gritted his teeth. "How in Tartarus do you know my—" "The choice is yours, Mr. Olive. If you refuse, well, I'm sure The Cleaner would be delighted to pay you a visit." "No! No, that's fine. I'll call it off." Black Olive stayed on the line, expecting some kind of reply. All he heard in response was a strange breathing noise. "Are you panting?" "Uh, no. Good day, Mr. Olive." The mysterious caller hung up. Black Olive slowly turned away from the phone with a defeated slouch and walked over to his subordinates to break the bad news to them. As he opened his mouth, his resolve faltered. Who was he, taking orders from a phone? He was part of the Ponbino family! Even The Syndicate couldn't take that away from him! "Alright boys!" he shouted, "We're movin' out!" Even from hundreds of miles away and under a hundred feet of soil, Winona heard the pony’s defiant order. So he wanted to play hardball? Fine. The Cleaner was about overdue for an assignment anyway.
The CleanerPrincess Celestia responded to the many letters sent to her as Philomena was perched contently in her cage. The pet read each parchment down to the word, her mistress oblivious to the spy just behind her back. It had been a slow day; most of the correspondences were with boring figures The Syndicate had likely already bribed or blackmailed. The phoenix tilted her head when she noticed that Princess Celestia had pulled out a letter from Twilight Sparkle. The words written in a painfully calculated style and spoke of some dull research that only Celestia could read without falling asleep. Sometimes she did anyway. Philomena wished she could burst into flame to avoid the boredom when a low, dull birdsong trilled behind her. She paused. A few more notes drifted from the one of the roosting areas in the castle crevices below. The signal! Winona or Angel had an assignment for Philomena. She was glad to take it; the more jobs she did, the sooner she would stop being known as the newbie of The Syndicate. She began to fidget and caw. The princess laid down the paper and turned to her. "What's wrong, Philomena?" The phoenix looked out the window in response. "Oh. Why didn't you say so?" the princess said and unhooked the cage door, freeing Philomena and giving her access to the skies. She roared out of the room and away from Canterlot. Celestia watched for a while before returning to her reading. "I swear, she's been acting so strange lately..." Philomena's destination was a hot spring several miles away from Canterlot, hidden neatly away in a forest. It was the remnants of an active volcano and it suited the bird's hot nature well enough. Within just a few minutes she was already circling the steaming pool of water that was her second home and spared no time to swoop down and perch on a branch above the hot bubbling pools. She looked around for her contact, but found she was alone. She began to preen herself to kill time until she heard a bark below. She jumped off the perch, catching her breath she she saw Winona at the base of the tree. She relaxed and landed in front of the dog, who still wore the glazed dumb animal eyes she used around ponies. At her feet was a scroll, covered in saliva. Philomena looked at it and squawked, chastising Winona for getting her assignment all wet. Winona barked in response, telling her that she didn't really have a choice in the matter and ran off. The phoenix snapped the string that bound the scroll together and it gracefully unfurled, giving her the details that she needed. Name: Black Olive Age: 27 Mane Color: Black Cutie Mark: Martini glass with 2 ice cubes The target owns assets belonging to the Syndicate. Burn everything. Enclosed is a photo and map of his most likely route. Don’t screw this up. - The Brains Her jaw dropped when she saw the signature. All of her previous assignment letters were made by Winona or Angel, sometimes Tank. She had only heard about their leader through passing mention, a vague and extremely intelligent figure that even the rabbit seemed to fear. They wouldn't tell her who he actually was or even what species he belonged to, only that he was intense. She went over the letter one more time, memorizing the details before burning the letter to ashes and launching herself into the sky towards her target. Philomena chose a spot in the road a few miles from Las Pegasus and waited for her mark. The calm left her plenty of time to contemplate how she would go about destroying the Joke. The Syndicate usually gave her very few conditions to finishing her assignments, giving her full leeway on how she did them. This suited her freewheeling nature just fine; she'd fly out of Canterlot for her afternoon exercise and burn down a house or two for insurance fraud. Princess Celestia was never the wiser. Still, just hurling fireballs at them would raise questions. No, Philomena had to make this look like any old pony with a torch could have done it. She noted several old trees close to the road and quickly formulated a plan. Like all of her plans, it involved burning things. She liked to burn things. It took longer than expected for the smugglers to show up. Several larger earth ponies pulled rather conspicuous draped carriages behind them. She watched them pass by until they were in the position. When they were, she sprung her trap. She stretched her wings and one particularly old tree burst into flames. It crashed down on the road and blocked the paths of Black Olive and his crew. They shouted in surprise as a second flaming tree smashed down behind them. Several more were sent flying out of the middle the forest, fully wrapped in a cloak of fire. The massive, flaming lumbers smashed the carriages and sent Poison Joke everywhere. "To Tartarus with this!" Black Olive yelled before he ran into a wheat field next to the road. All of his cohorts followed. Their screams carried off into the night and soon the only sounds that could be heard were the snaps and crackles coming from Philomena’s fires. She made sure that she was alone before she examined the smashed carriages. The Joke within them had been crushed and spilled everywhere, but still viable. She flew above the carnage and used every bit of her power to heat the ground below. The sensitive petals of the exotic plant were soon blackened and useless. It pained her to waste this much good contraband, but orders were orders. It was late in the evening when she returned to the balcony of her home and landed on the railing. At that moment, Celestia walked by the open entrance and saw her loyal firebird. She walked over and extended a leg for Philomena to perch on and the phoenix gladly accepted the offer. "There you are, Philomena." she said and eyeballed at her playfully. "You haven't been up to any trouble, have you?" They both had a good chuckle. Philomena’s laugh was normal at first, but slowly developed into something much more sinister.
The BrainsPinkie Pie darted about her room in hasty preparation for the party that she had decided to throw exactly one minute ago. Several times she almost tripped over Gummy, who had situated himself in the middle of the room. Eventually, he decided to take to the top of Pinkie’s bed in an effort to avoid being trampled. As soon as he finished his climb, Pinkie rushed up to him, holding a plain cake. "Gummy! Should I use chocolate or caramel?" He slowly blinked one eye and then the other. "Use both? Darn, why didn't I think of that?" she said and returned to her frantic work. Little did she know the stare that followed her about the room was one of intense hatred; Celestia herself would not be able to fathom the darkness that lurked behind those wide irises. He didn't want this. He would have been completely happy to have been born a normal alligator with the large size and sharp teeth that so defined his species. Nothing but days full of ambush hunting and thrashing at the river's bottom, his brain filled to the brim with killer instinct and nothing else. Yet, from the second he was born, he was burdened with the curse of thought. Even worse, he could not express it; he was a genius trapped in a moron's body. Then, the Pink One found him. In the first few days of his existence he had strayed from the riverbed, hoping to learn more about the strange world outside his egg. That was when the Pink One came upon him, finding him adorable and cute and all those other words that made him sick. He must have bitten her a hundred times that day, but all his assaults were simply taken as signs of affection. How he hated the Pink One! Every time she came near him he would leap upon her skull to crush it between his mighty jaws, but his attacks did nothing but incite laughter from the hyperactive blight. Not only that, but the Pink One's steady diet of sugary sustenance supplied to him had stunted his growth, forever dooming him to a hatchling's form. His thoughts nearly drove him to get off the bed and attack his owner, but he restrained himself. No, he had plans. The Syndicate was meeting to induct its newest member and Gummy did not make a habit of being late. If he tried to chase his "master" down, Pinkie would mistake it for a game of Hide n' Seek and his tardiness would almost certainly be assured. So, he waited. Every so often Pinkie would come up to him and ask some inane question about decorating or invitations and take his silence as sage advice. Sadly, she was always too far away for him to strike. Finally Pinkie Pie walked right up to the bed with a horn in her mouth. "Mmmphy? Shmm phy mvvmm a mmvva, fmor a marmmffia?" Gummy struck, his four tiny legs sending him straight at Pinkie's noggin and in one swift move he latched himself onto her head. He adjusted his mouth just so, waiting for the effect to take hold. Pinkie giggled and the horn dropped to the floor. "Aw, I think somepony's hungry! How does a big fat mint sundae sou—" Her sentence was cut short as her hair became frizzled and pupils dilated. The sunny smile of the pink pony instantly evaporated and her colorful coat became muted with just the slightest shade of green. Success! He was worried for a second that his attempt had failed; that would only have meant more sweets to rot his soul with. Once, he had missed the correct part of her head by just an inch and was forced to bear the humiliation in front of his henchmen as Pinkie carted him about the park with him still attached. The members of The Syndicate knew better than to mock him, but a certain passing cardinal did not and decided to spread the news to his friends. The local arts and crafts store never figured out where the shipment of red feathers had come from. Pinkie-Gummy walked over to a section of the wall and pressed several sections of it, which lit up to the touch and beeped. After the sequence had been entered, the wall slid away to a spiral staircase that descended into the bowels of the planet. Those stairs were mostly for show; he preferred a faster way down. He commanded his vessel to leap down the shaft in the middle of the spiral and Pinkie obeyed unquestionably. Pinkie soon slammed into the bottom of the shaft, but the strange physical properties of the pony meant that she flattened out like a rubber ball, then immediately regained her composure with no damage dealt. In front of Pinkie-Gummy was a large and serious-looking black double-door, with a soft blue light shining through the cracks at the bottom. The Pinkie vessel pushed it open and walked inside. It was Gummy's masterpiece; it had taken months of straight work through the night with the use of Pinkie's body to get the base operational, but it was well worth the effort. The room was essentially a large cave, with a massive map highlighted by bluish lights which took up the entire southern wall. The center was dominated by a round table with five seats and two perches, one of which was newly-installed. In the middle of the table was the symbol of The Syndicate: an "S", with the jaws of a predator in the foreground. Everyone was already present except Philomena, was was to be in at any moment. Pinkie-Gummy took his large leather seat at the head of the table and placed Pinkie's hooves on top of it in his best effort to be commanding. He never started any meeting until everyone was present and the rest of The Syndicate sat in nervous silence as they waited for the phoenix to arrive. A few minutes passed until an orange glow appeared at the tube that the winged members of the organization used to gain access to the HQ. Philomena burst out in all her radiance. She looked down in confusion to see Gummy latched onto a very somber Pinkie Pie, who motioned for her to take her place on the remaining empty perch. She complied and Pinkie-Gummy looked over the assembly one last time before speaking. "We must first sort out the highest priority. Bookie, how are The Syndicate's finances?" Pinkie's body asked. She spoke in a completely different voice, one possessing a much heavier tone and an evil accent of indiscernible origin. "Who!" the owl replied. "Good, good. And Fence, have you offloaded all of our acquisitions?" Opal meowed. "Excellent," Pinkie-Gummy said. The fused being turned attention to Philomena. "I am pleased to see that you managed to find our....abode." Philomena squawked and flapped her wings. "Now, now. The traps were there as a final test, of sorts. You won't have to worry about them on...return visits. Now that the formalities are out of the way, I would like to welcome Philomena, or should I say 'The Cleaner', as a part of The Syndicate!" The other animals present congratulated Philomena in their own noises. The phoenix tried to hide her blushing face behind the brilliant plumage of one of her wings. "And now that we're all here..." Pinkie-Gummy stated as he jumped back off the table and walked over to the huge map behind them, "I believe that I should reveal to you all that The Syndicate is going to be moving out of our traditional role." Opal arched an eyebrow and meowed. "No, Fence, The Syndicate's plan isn't just 'make a whole lot of money.' I founded this organization with a much grander purpose." Pinkie-Gummy reached below the desk and flipped a tiny switch. At once the chair Pinkie-Gummy sat in was sent upwards by a giant spring and the mastermind twirled through the air a few times before sticking the landing right in front of the map. The whole cave then seemed to shake as the entire map revolved around, slowly replacing the picture of Equestria with one that showed the entire country carved up into smaller blocs. In the middle of every colored division, one of the members of The Syndicate had their portrait framed. "Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: Operation Faustkrieg!" Pinkie-Gummy announced in a booming voice. The controlled pony walked onto a small platform and pulled a lever on the side. It sent the puppeted pony dozens of meters into the air and the center of the map fell into their shadow. "No longer will we be known as simple pets! We will pull the land and clouds right out from under those four-legged talking abominations that dare call themselves ponies! This is our land and we are going to take it back!" The other members of The Syndicate could only look on in awe. Pinkie-Gummy leaned forward and the controlled pony's twisted, diabolical face became partly illuminated by the soft map lights. "Fellow animals, the war begins now. And here's how we're going to do it." Several hours later, the secret entrance in Pinkie's room opened and Pinkie-Gummy stepped out in a triumphant fashion. When the coast was clear, the small alligator unhooked himself from his owner's head. Pinkie blinked a few times as her pupils shrunk back to normal size and her coat returned to its original state. When she was fully herself again, she saw Gummy looking up at her and grinned. "Gummy! Let's get you that mint sundae!"
