-Jade, Museum-
“Okay, before we go any further.” Looks like Shining had something to ask. “Just how do you think you’re going to get out of this one Jade? I caught you robbing the museum red pawed and you even have one of the displays on you.”
Ah, the easiest question to answer.
“I’m currently acting as a security consultant for the museum. Though I certainly take a more proactive approach to testing security measures, I can legally get out of this. Arresting me would cause problems for you Shining, though it seems like the museum needed someone like me a bit sooner given someone, aside from me I mean, just robbed them of an artifact from a room that I didn’t know existed before this moment.” I held out the gunbai and started to fan myself with it. “This replica isn’t really worth much to the museum, which is why I stole it. I can even pay for another replica to be made, as it is really that inexpensive.”
“How do you know that’s a replica?” Old Time seemed curious.
“I’m the one that personally held the original in my hands, in fact I stole it off a bunch of angry evil cultist thestral ponies that likely didn’t even know what they had. Took a crossbow bolt or two for that, which is very painful and I wouldn’t recommend anyone do that form of acupuncture therapy. I even gave it to the mare that brought it here to have this replica of it made.” I saw a look of trust enter Old Time’s eyes. “She probably still has the original knowing her. In essence, I stole this knowing that it was a worthless replica compared to the one that actually has a lot of pegasus magic to it.”
“Yep, she’s our security consultant. Never told her about the vault or its contents, at least until now that is. She really couldn’t have done it.” Then Old Time said something that made Shining balk at the idea of actually doing, but it made me smile and wag my tail. “You can let her go.”
Shining turned his glare upon me and I gave him a bright cat smile, he eventually sighed and flicked his horn.
The barrier holding me aloft promptly disappeared, dropping me onto the floor painfully. I could see Shining smirk slightly, he obviously did that on purpose.
“Rude.” I stated calmly as I stood up and dusted myself off. “Still, the Alicorn Amulet, what was it doing here?! Why haven’t you had it destroyed or sealed away, like the Sieve Precarious!”
“Wait, you know where the Sieve Precarious is?” Old Time seemed to brighten despite the situation. Does he not know the damage the ‘Alicorn Amulet’ can cause!?
“Hopefully at the bottom of the ocean where we left it, in a completely magic proof container.” Shining grumbled out as he sent me a look.
“What he said.” I stated blithely. “It’s definitely right where it belongs, trust us on this one.”
“Sad that, I would have liked to study it.” Deciding to set Old Time straight I leaned forward with a glare.
“The thing is either an impending death trap or a nuisance, forget about it. It would have eventually activated and got you stuck in the chaos dimension, where a chaos god would have toyed with you for a while.” My blunt now aggravated tone made Shining look at me curiously. I answered his look. “Yes, a chaos god was involved in that incident. It’s not important to our current conversation and already dealt with, so we should move on unless you want to talk about something like why you’re currently here in Manehattan. Tell me, did you come here with Cadence for the cultural festival, or are you both here for the comic convention while pretending to be here for the cultural festival?”
“You know, I normally wouldn’t say this to any pony, but I think I loathe your very existence Jade. Please, for my sanity, stay away from Cadence!” Shining Armor received another of my brightest toothy grins, he turned away from me and to Old Time. “What exactly is an Alicorn Amulet and what has this reprobate so worried about it? If she’s really this worried, then it must be really bad.”
“I don’t suppose Celestia would have told you about it.” Old Time rubbed at his chin. “In fact she’s been trying to keep the knowledge of the amulets existence quiet.”
“Yeah, mostly because of how horribly dangerous it is.” The look I was receiving from Old Time was one of boundless curiosity. “Oh I absolutely know what it does, don’t know if it can actually be used by anyone who isn’t a pony though. If a pony does have it, then we should all be on high alert for something dangerous happening at any given time in the near future.”
“What does it do and why do you look more worried than Curator Old Time?” Shining was being pretty serious right now, compared to how loose he can be when around Cadence, family and friends.
I think I was a little too used to the cold, hard ass, elite royal guard. I’m going to try and ease up on the guy and maybe apologize about some of the things I’ve done, keyword being ‘try’ here.
“Do you two know each other that well?” Old Time looked between us. “You both seem quite familiar with one another.”
“You could say that, she used Chancellor Pudding Head’s law about rubber against me.” Shining was still sore about that? He should really lighten up like I knew he could.
“Well Pudding Head was the lead proponent to the safe sex practices that we still use to this very day.” Old Time received a sour look from Shining.
“Which is why that particular law can’t, and mostly likely won’t, ever be repealed. Ponies have been trying for thousands of years and now it’s pretty much set in stone.” I just made Shining turn back to me and he became quite terse.
“Information, Alicorn Amulet, now!” Yeah, I really should stop riling him up if I ever wanted us to be friends.
“Right, how much do you know about the Alicorn Amulet Old Time? I’ll fill in the blanks of what you don’t know.” Yes, I was in fact using this as an opportunity to learn some facts that I might have not known otherwise. Though I did know quite a bit about it given I try to keep track of the more dangerous stuff like the Misfortune Malachite or whatever Daring Do is looking into now. “Oh and before I forget, here’s some things I want you to look over when it comes to the museums security… also how many guards do you have on staff here?”
“Six.” Old Time stated as he took my notes on the security of the museum, he looked them over as he spoke. “Huh, you do good work. Anyway, an Alicorn Amulet is a powerful magical item that can give any pony power to rival that of an alicorn. That’s about as much as I know.”
“Then, you really don’t know as much as I do.” That made the two ponies turn to me with surprise. “Don’t know who made it, but this is what I know…”
So I told them this in verbatim, without interruption.
The Alicorn Amulet, is a dark magic artifact. One that doesn’t give the pony the exact power to rival an alicorn, but it was close enough that you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference otherwise with the amulet being powerful enough to wipe out a whole town… or the entire city of Manehattan.
They looked on wide eyed at that information, but then I continued into the finer points of the amulet itself.
Once it was put on there were only two main ways to get the amulet off of a pony thanks to the magical lock on the amulet, you either destroyed the amulet or tricked the pony into taking it off. Any other method for amulet removal was usually the end result of a rather… violent… confrontation.
There were uneasy glances at what I was implying the third option to be.
The amulet ‘might’, as far as I know, only work for ponies or pony like beings. Pony like beings included Zebra, Hippogriffs, Thestrals and Sea Ponies.
The amulet could ‘possibly’ make an earth pony fly and use unicorn magic. It could make a pegasus have earth pony strength and again unicorn magic. Whenever a unicorn got a hold of the amulet, well, they just tended to use the amulet as an overly simplified amplifier for their magic wholesale and never actually get around to using its full power.
This is where I was interrupted.
“Why not, wouldn’t a unicorn want to use those other abilities?” Good question Shining. I feel like was being interrogated here, but this was really important.
“On one side a Unicorn sometimes lacks the imagination to use the amulets full power and on the other the amulet causes this problem thanks to the side effects of using it.” Which I would be getting into right about now.
There were several side effects to using the amulet. The main one being the most common among all dark magic artifact side effects, usually appearing on about ninety percent of them really, which was the addictive quality of using the dark magic artifacts in the first place.
You could wear the amulet, but as long as you don’t actively use it then this wouldn’t come into effect. The second the amulet is used, this immediately becomes a problem and you will want to use it more and more. The more it’s used, the more corrupted you get and the more you wanted to use its power.
I called it the downward spiral effect, since dark magic artifacts tended to have nasty detrimental and devastating side effects to those who use them.
Both Shining and Old nodded, you’d have to be very stupid to actually use a cursed or dark magic based artifact. Which led into the second side effect.
The second side effect is that the amulet actively drains your intelligence as long as you wear and use it. The more you use it, the dumber you got and the likelier you were to hurt somebody thinking you were doing something even remotely approaching clever.
This effect, thankfully enough, wasn’t a permanent one. Remove the amulet and you’d be able to think coherently again. This effect was likely to prevent the wearer from thinking of ever taking the amulet off at all based on their own volition, so mind control magic wouldn’t actually be effective in stopping someone from wielding the Alicorn Amulet.
The third effect is tied to the second one. This one was that you became increasingly paranoid, unhinged or deranged about a lot of random objects or things. Generally gaining a deep mistrust of all those around you and having your ego inflate to the point where you’ll become a narcissist even if you previously weren’t even close to being one before.
The narcissist thing was guaranteed to happen after prolonged exposure, even the sweetest and nicest of ponies would fall into this effect eventually.
I gave an example of paranoid about random objects, by pointing out that you could be paranoid about books and could actively think that they were out to get you. To the point that one might even go on a book destroying rampage.
Shining shivered at the thought, most likely because of his little sister Twilight.
That’s the basis of everything this dark magic artifact does. It isolates you, addicts you to its power and warps your mind into being something you’re not while possibly becoming increasingly magically volatile on top that. It eventually makes you a completely malicious destructive force that becomes like a brainless berserker against just about everyone and everything around them.
If you had a goal to achieve while wearing the amulet, you could feasibly achieve it before the amulet takes too strong a hold. At most it would be good for one spell, after that I’d suggest sealing the amulet away from yourself for a month and visit your nearest doctor to see if dark magic is still infecting you or not. Oh and it would be best to destroy the amulet by any means necessary at that point, because you would be tempted to use it again and any obsession you have with power would eventually make this happen.
So I was right to be worried and or quite scared of it being out there somewhere in Manehattan at the moment, possibly being held by a pony of incredibly dubious moral intent. If they had good intentions, then they might not get too bad for a few days.
“One final thing to note, I want Mister Time to go over all my notes and think about how to make better security measures given what’s happened here.” Taking random jobs for weird reasons does not mean I don’t complete said jobs when I acquire them. I actually took my security consultant job seriously, which is why I stopped to jot down notes about the museums security measures. “You had six guards walking around the museum? That’s enough guards, it’s the other stuff you need to work on.”
“Of those six, two were found knocked out by me and the remaining guard on the second team with the vault being opened and the amulet being stolen.” Old Time seemed to look a little older when he learned that Manehattan might soon be destroyed. “I’ll get right on it Miss La Perm.”
“Please, call me Jade, my mother is Miss La Perm.” I turned to Shining. “Am I free to go now?”
“Of course.” As soon as Shining said that I turned around and began to walk casually for the museum entrance. “Hey! I think you are forgetting something Jade, give the replica gunbai back.”
“You can’t blame me for trying right?” I had hoped that he had forgotten about it.
“Ah let her keep it, she managed to acquire it fair and square and even got outside with it! I wouldn’t have known she was innocent of the real crime that took place here if it weren’t for you Captain Shining.” Old Time chuckled somewhat merrily. “Besides, I have three other copies of Zephyr’s Gunbai in case the first was ever stolen.”
“Thanks!” I made my exit while stuffing it into my pack full of stuff, mostly before Shining found some other reason to keep me here.
I’ve been wanting a gunbai that wasn’t loaded with pegasus magic, just to see if it worked differently with magical alchemy.
-Hotel-
I closed the door behind me and turned to a pair of eyes almost glowing in the dark, I dropped my pack off to the side and moved over to the bed.
“It’s about time Jade.” At Fizzle’s words I quickly crawled up onto Maries’ chest and found myself wrapped in paws and a hooves, I felt safe in their grasps. “Tell me how it went in the morning, this shouldn’t have taken you nearly this long to do.”
Maria was still somewhat awake and had brought me tightly into the pile of snuggles when she felt me crawl up on top of their body.
Sleep wouldn’t come to me easily, but I’d eventually nod off after receiving a kiss to the forehead from Fizzle.