//------------------------------// // 7 - Can't Read My, Can't Read My... // Story: The Amulet Job // by Rambling Writer //------------------------------// Starlight sipped her coffee. It was far more bitter than she usually had it, but that just meant it banished the last remnants of sleep more thoroughly — through shock, if the caffeine didn’t work. Besides, it’d just been sitting in the pot when she’d woken up, and she wasn’t one to criticize free coffee, particularly when that coffee was still warm. She took another sip. Milk or sugar? Nah, not today. She’d slept well but woken up early, and, unsure of what to do, had wandered over to the dining room. She wanted to get a look at the blueprints, feel like she was contributing something besides “magic”. She was more than magic. To her not-very-great surprise, Bon Bon was already there, unrolling the blueprints and chewing on a bagel until it resembled vaguely wheat-based pulp and the bread started to turn sweet. “Morning,” Starlight said, her voice slightly slurred. Bon Bon looked up. She still had severe bedhead, but her eyes were bright and alert. She swallowed her bit of bagel. “Morning,” she replied. Starlight held up the mug. “Your coffee?” she asked. “No. The Doctor’s. He got up… I think an hour ago? And was just leaving when I got up. Left the pot on and told me to help myself.” “Did he say what he was doing?” “Erm…” Bon Bon scratched her head. “The hardware store, I think? He said he wanted to build up a list of stuff to buy on the off chance Thorax made a lot of money at poker.” Starlight shrugged. No skin off her back. “What’re you doing up?” “I just wanted to take a look at this.” Bon Bon tapped the blueprints. “Kind of a, um…” She twitched and blinked. “…I just want to get a feel for what we’re up against.” “Yeah. Same here.” Starlight pulled out a chair and sat down opposite Bon Bon. “You know, I never really imagined I’d ever do anything like this,” she said as she examined the plans of the casino floor. “And now I’m just doing it like, ‘yeah, whatever’, even though I’m making it up as I go along.” She took a sip of coffee. A single strand of her mane curled into a corkscrew. Bon Bon coughed. “Heh. Yeah. Life is weird.” “Sometimes I think the only difference between ten-year-old me and current me is that everypony demands current me behaves like an adult, even though I barely know how to do that.” “I know, right?” Bon Bon said. “It’s like we adults have this unspoken agreement with each other: we’re not allowed to admit just how much of life we make up as we go.” She ripped off a piece of bagel. “So let’s make more stuff up and take a look at this.” “Whatcha taking a look at?” asked Rainbow. Starlight nearly fell out of her seat at the sudden sound of Rainbow’s voice in her ear. “Did you have to do that?” she snapped. “Not really,” Rainbow said with a grin, “but did you see the look on your face?” “We’re looking for the vault,” Bon Bon said. “It’s kind of hard to rob someplace when you don’t know where the place is.” “Gotcha. Gonna go get some exercise in, be back in… I dunno, half an hour.” With Rainbow gone, Starlight asked, “Any idea what it’ll look like?” Now that they had her attention, the blueprints were a mess of crisscrossing, intersecting, vanishing and reappearing white lines that didn’t look like anything unless you focused. Although she vaguely recognized the shape of the casino, it took effort to say that this was the lobby, those were probably offices, those were stairs, those were the elevators… Stupid monochromatic design. “Not really,” Bon Bon admitted. “Could be square, could be round, could be tall, could be short… It’ll probably- I think it’ll be separate from the casino in some way. Maybe not an entire building away, but not in the middle of everything.” For several minutes, Starlight and Bon Bon stared at the blueprints for the main floor, occasionally making half-hearted suggestions to each other; it was still a bit too early for anything else. But simply looking at the plans made them gradually coalesce into a solid idea of a building, so it wasn’t a total waste. At some point, Derpy showed up, slurping orange juice and gnawing on a blueberry muffin. Bon Bon shushed her; the slurps became nearly-silent sips and the gnaws became quiet nibbles. “Vault?” Derpy whispered to Starlight. “Vault,” Starlight confirmed. Another minute or so with no luck, and Starlight cleared her throat. “Wanna start at the bottom and work our way up?” “Sure. I don’t have any better ideas.” Bon Bon leafed through the pages and pulled out the last one, which showed the basement. But even at a glance, Starlight could tell the vault wasn’t down there. It was all narrow hallways honeycombing the foundation, probably for things like storage and hotel laundry, with nothing that stood out as particularly vault-like. Bon Bon seemed to agree, because she flipped the page aside in seconds. “Definitely not in there,” she said. “I wouldn’t think it’d be underground,” said Derpy. She leaned forward to get a better look at the plans. “It’s too scary that close to the gorge. You could run into all kinds of unstable ground. Trust me, I know.” Starlight and Bon Bon exchanged Glances. She did. “So it’s somewhere in the building itself,” said Bon Bon. She went back to poring over the main casino floor. “And that’ll increase the defenses on it. It’ll have to be big, thick, probably armored in some way. Look for a room with walls that are too thick.” Given a specific thing to look for and a few more drinks of coffee, Starlight could focus on the blueprints a bit more. It helped that what she was looking for would be easy to spot. But as they ran through the blueprints and the room with too-thick walls consistently failed to appear, Starlight couldn’t help but worry. And suddenly they were on the top floor with no sign of the vault. After a little less than a minute of looking, Bon Bon frowned. “It’s…” She flipped back a few pages. “I don’t think the vault’s in here.” “Hoo boy,” said Starlight. She plucked away some of the papers and quickly leafed through them to double-check. She skimmed them faster than she probably should have, she admitted, but she definitely couldn’t see any vault-like room. “Great,” muttered Bon Bon. “Just great. Of course the criminal lies on their blueprints.” “Is that easy?” Starlight asked. “I can’t think of why it wouldn’t be. ‘Hey, bossmare. I know you built this vault for me, but could you leave it off the plans? Here’s a hundred thousand bits.’” “Maybe it’s not close to the rest of the building?” asked Derpy. “So it’s-” “No, they need to move money into and out of it daily,” said Bon Bon. She was staring at one of the upper-floor pages, as if that would make the vault appear on it. “If it was too far away, transportation would take too long.” “So what if it’s on the plans and just covered up? Like they put different rooms in place of it?” Bon Bon paused, then stared at the plans with a renewed intensity. “That could work,” she said softly. “It’d definitely be easier than drafting a whole new set of plans just to hide the vault… Although if she left it out instead…” She shook her head. “We need to get somepony else to look over this. I’m beat. And, Starlight, do you think you can duplicate this? We don’t want Steadfast and Holding’s to know it’s missing. I’ll return it tonight.” “Sure. If you’ll give me a second…” Starlight’s horn shimmered and a glow enveloped the plans. She pulled in two directions; the plans went both ways, and Starlight was left holding two copies. “This,” she said, waving one set, “is the original. This-” She waved the other. “-is the copy. They’re physically the same, but the copy has a slight trace of magic that’ll mark it as a duplicate if anypony looks too hard at it. Let’s not get them confused.” “Then…” Bon Bon grabbed the duplicate plans and scribbled COPY on the top of the first page. She flipped through the others, doing the same for each. “That ought to be good.” “You’ve got a plan, don’t you, Bon Bon?” Derpy asked. She licked brown sugar off a hoof. “You look determined. Like, real determined, grr, not just, ‘sure, I can do it’.” “Thorax and Lyra each have their own things, with the poker and trying to get into the band,” Bon Bon said, examining the duplicate plans. “And I also think we should split into two groups: one to examine these, another to do some proper recon. Take a good look at where the guards are, how they move, when their shift changes, that sort of thing. A few vague ideas of what they’re like won’t cut it. I think it’s just getting back into the thick of things feels good.” She tilted her head back and forth. “You know, these are pretty good. I’d never know they’re not the real thing.” “That’s just the spell,” Starlight said, shrugging. “Twilight can make it last for longer.” “Uh-huh,” Bon Bon said. One last look, then she said, “We’d better get the others up.” Thorax-Changeling wasn’t a very good changeling, in more ways than one. He wasn’t especially skilled at acting like somepony; his own personality tended to slip through. He was nervous. He couldn’t put together speeches on the spot. None of them made him a smart choice for an infiltrator. That said, living in the Crystal Empire, surrounded by people who cared about Thorax-Changeling, rather than Disposable Drone 326, had done wonders for his self-confidence, and he felt secure enough to talk to strangers in his changeling form. He was sure he could at least walk into the casino and play a few rounds of low-stakes poker. He’d reviewed the terms with Doctor-Earth-Brown and Gilda-Griffon and thought he knew them pretty well. And if some of them slipped his mind, Doctor-Earth-Brown pointed out that that was to be expected for new players, such as the one he was pretending to be. Thorax-Changeling surprised himself with his own confidence and even said he didn’t want any company in the casino, just in case he was being watched. When Thorax-Unicorn-Green walked through the entrance to the casino, the collective emotions hit him like a wall of water, even at 10:30 in the morning. He was smothered beneath the mingled elation and despair, contentment and anger for several moments. He breathed in deeply and exhaled deeply, purging the excess emotion from his system. He couldn’t be distracted. Not now. The money-changing booths were easy to find. Thorax-Unicorn-Green marched up to the first empty one he saw and cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he said to the cashier-pegasus-lavender, “but I was wondering if there were any low-stakes hold ’em poker tables in here I could try? I’m trying to get into playing.” Tentative, but not nervous. Good. “We’ve got plenty of hold ’em poker tables!” said the cashier-pegasus-lavender cheerfully. And she wasn’t faking, either; Thorax-Unicorn-Green felt a touch more confident simply from all the emotional sunshine she was exuding. “Over thirty, to be precise! They’re in the back, over there, through that door. Our lowest only needs a twenty bit buy-in, and it’s two-four limit. You know what those mean, right?” Thorax-Unicorn-Green nodded, and she continued, “But if you want to add a little bit of risk, we’ve also got buy-ins for a hundred bits, two hundred-” “One hundred sounds good,” said Thorax-Unicorn-Green. He only had a hundred, anyway. Better to start small. “Then that’s ten-twenty limit,” said the cashier-pegasus-lavender. “Good?” “Good.” “Good! You’ll have to talk with the staff there about open tables, but I’m sure you won’t have any problems. Would you like to exchange your bits for chips now or once you get to the poker room?” The cashier-pegasus-lavender’s chatter didn’t stop as she dropped Thorax-Unicorn-Green’s hundred bits in the register and counted out chips in denominations of 5. “All of our tables are no-flop, no-drop-” (Thorax-Unicorn-Green didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded good.) “-and slowrolling can lead to you forfeiting your hoof if the casino decides so.” She must’ve seen Thorax-Unicorn-Green’s confusion, because she added, “Some jerks with winning hooves decide to take their sweet time revealing their cards, so the other gal lays out their cards to keep things going — cards they think win the round, mind you — only to get cold cocked by the later hoof. It’s a bit of a, pardon my Prench, dick move. So, to keep things light, we’ve decided that poor etiquette can get you removed from the game.” “Huh,” said Thorax-Unicorn-Green vaguely as he took his chips. Kind of strange, with somepony who was okay with mind control setting down etiquette rules. “Enjoy your game!” said the cashier-pegasus-lavender, waving him away. The door to the poker room was labelled The Artifact Vault. Thorax-Unicorn-Green wondered if that was Goumada-Unicorn-Marble’s idea of a joke. He swallowed and entered. A large room was beyond, stuffed with poker tables, most of them with at least three players. A guard-earth-steel was standing just inside the entrance, blocking him from going further in. “I’d like to play some hold ’em poker,” Thorax-Unicorn-Green said. “I heard there was a table with a hundred-bit buy-in, ten-twenty limit?” “There’s a game going right now that you can join.” The guard-earth-steel pointed. “Table 11. Do you need chips?” “Already got them!” Thorax-Unicorn-Green showed the guard-earth-steel his bag. The guard-earth-steel nodded, stepped aside, and waved him on. Not counting the dealer-unicorn-lilac, there were three other players at the table. They all looked up when Thorax-Unicorn-Green sat down and laid out his chips in front of him. A player-pegasus-pinto chuckled. “Watch out, Corky,” she said. “You might actually have some competition, now.” “At these tables?” said Corky-Earth-Yellow. “Nooooot likely.” He tipped an imaginary hat to Thorax-Unicorn-Green. “But here’s hoping.” He had no contempt or derision within him, just a casual, easygoing nature. “Don’t worry,” Thorax-Unicorn-Green replied, dropping his bits in the pot for the first round’s big blind. “I won’t let you down.” The cards were dealt. Thorax-Unicorn-Green took a glance at his: ten of hearts, nine of clubs. Eh, he’d see. All the other players had the same reaction, both inward and outward. With the exception of Corky-Earth-Yellow. When he looked at his cards, he was grinning, just barely. Any amateur could spot it. What any amateur couldn’t spot was the turmoil cascading from him, the nervousness. Everypony called. The flop was dealt and Thorax-Unicorn-Green didn’t even get a good look at it before crushing despair swamped him. Apparently, not a single pony had a good hoof. You wouldn’t have guessed it from Corky-Earth-Yellow’s face, though; he kept grinning as if this were a walk in the park. The other ponies folded quickly. “You know,” Corky-Earth-Yellow said, slouching against the back of his chair, “you two really need to-” “Raise,” said Thorax-Unicorn-Green, and dropped his chips in. “…Yes, do that. Folding all the time’s boring.” Corky-Earth-Yellow turned and looked Thorax-Unicorn-Green in the eye. Thorax-Unicorn-Green looked back with supreme confidence. Corky-Earth-Yellow’s face didn’t twitch (but his anxiety grew) as he said, “Very well, then. Raise.” “Raise,” Thorax-Unicorn-Green repeated. Corky-Earth-Yellow’s chips weren’t even in the pot yet. Low whistles flew around the table. The other two players were looking between Thorax-Unicorn-Green and Corky-Earth-Yellow with a steadily increasing interest. Even the dealer-unicorn-lilac was examining him with above-average attention. Thorax-Unicorn-Green kept his eyes level and his face blank. Corky-Earth-Yellow held his gaze for a second before sighing. “Like origami, I fold,” he said. His grin tasted of envious appreciation. “Perhaps we do finally have a challenger here!” “Perhaps,” Thorax-Unicorn-Green said as he scooped his chips up. One single round in and he’d already made sixty bits. This was going to be good. At the same time Thorax was heading to the poker tables, Lyra was wandering around the casino floor, feeling somewhat lost with her lyre case slung over her withers. Her thoughts had been simple: ask to join the band playing at the anniversary. But ask whom? It wasn’t like there was a sign advertising, “Musicians Sign Up Here!” Maybe there’d been one a few weeks ago, but… After circling the floor for what felt like the fifth time, Lyra decided there was nothing else for it. She got into line for casino tokens and queued. When she finally reached the front of the line, the cashier didn’t look twice at her unusual baggage, but simply asked, “Yeh?” “Um. Hi,” said Lyra. “I saw the poster for the anniversary celebration, saw that they were hiring local musicians, and I was… wondering if… there were still seats open?” She smiled. “Or somepony I could ask about seats being open?” The cashier looked at Lyra, at her lyre case, and shrugged. “I’ll see who I can find, but no promises,” she said. She marched into the back room. What followed was an epic, hour-long adventure in red tape, where Lyra got bounced around from pony to pony (and occasionally griffon), bounced back, at one point wound up back at the first pony, was briefly thought to have a desire to bartend the event, and was finally shooed into a green room behind a stage and told to wait. Lyra examined the room for something to do. Not a bad place, all things considered, but it felt a bit cheap. Everything was nice, but nothing more. She tentatively tried the couch. As she’d expected, “not bad” was the best she could say about it. Definitely a far cry from the heaven that was the couch back at the villa. She tried the door; it was unlocked. She had no intention of leaving, but Lyra leaned out and looked up and down the hall to see if anyone was coming. Some workers, but nopony who looked involved in music. Lyra sighed and stretched out on the not-bad couch. The minutes slowly ticked by. After five hours, Lyra looked at the clock to see that only five minutes had passed. Some part of her registered that this was the first clock she’d ever seen in the casino. She looked out into the hallways again, just in time to hear some voices quarreling. Voices quarreling about music. “You said you wouldn’t change the lineup,” grumbled somepony. “And I’m not!” said somepony else. “I’m simply adding another harmony line!” “That sounds a rather lot like changing the lineup.” “That’s because you don’t know a sunblasted thing about conducting orchestras. Everypony else is exactly where you want them. The new pony isn’t changing that.” The two ponies rounded a corner. One was a severe-looking unicorn in a business suit — Goumada, Lyra guessed. The other one was a pegasus, clearly a conductor. She had the usual prim suit coat, and a baton was in a holster on one of her fetlocks. A folder poked out from under one wing. “If you don’t do this the way I want,” Goumada said quietly, “maybe I don’t need you.” “Fine, then, fire me!” snapped the conductor. “Then you can do it because you’re so good at it! Oh, and since I’m the one responsible for managing the orchestra’s paychecks, if you fire me, I’m taking the entire band with me!” Goumada curled her lip at the conductor as the pair entered the green room. When she saw Lyra, she stopped. “What’re you doing backstage?” she demanded. “Are you so unintelligent to have missed the signs saying ‘Authorized Personnel Only’?” Before Lyra could take offense, the conductor stepped in. “She’s obviously the mare auditioning. Can’t you see she’s waiting for us? Sorry,” she added quietly to Lyra. “Hmm.” Goumada spared a single extra glance at Lyra and said, “She’ll do. Make sure her playing isn’t too substandard.” She flicked her tail and strode away. “I wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole,” Lyra chanced, “and I’m guessing I’m not the only one, although somepony’s already stuck one up her butt.” “Unfortunately, yes,” huffed the conductor. “Don’t mind her, she wouldn’t know class and tact if they showed up at her front door, dancing the can-can with Fancy Pants and Discord, with flashing neon signs hovering above. Why she wanted to look at you, I don’t know. Anyway, I’m Treble Clef, and I’m the conductor of the orchestra.” She looked Lyra up and down. “What instrument did you play, again? I’m afraid I never caught it.” “Lyre,” said Lyra. She patted her case and held her breath. Clef stroked her chin and examined the ceiling. “We could use a third lyre,” she mused. “Mind, the pay won’t be the greatest-” “This is more for the experience,” Lyra said quickly. “Pay’s at the bottom of why I’m doing this. And, yes, I can put up with her.” “Ah. Excellent. Come along, then.” Lyra took every opportunity to examine and try to memorize the hallways Clef led her through, even though the trip was short. Every little bit helped, and for all she knew, she could end up getting chased down these by the end of the whole shebang. Clef opened the door to a smaller room stuffed with chairs, generic music implements — stands, mostly — and a few spare instruments. She pushed aside stuff to make space, and pulled out a chair and a music stand. “Since you’d be third chair, this won’t take long,” she said as Lyra took her seat. “Even with the short time to learn the song.” Lyra nodded, as if she was just learning this. She’d been in a few last-minute auditions like this before. “Now, your lyre’s tuned?” Clef pulled out the folder from under her wing and put it on another stand. “Should be. Let’s double-check.” Lyra pulled out her lyre, went up and down the notes. They were all still tuned. “Sounds good to me.” “And to me,” said Clef, skimming through her folder. “Now, first song…” She dropped a music sheet onto the lectern in front of Lyra. Lyra glanced over the notes and immediately knew it was easy. A simple melody, not too fast, no overly-complicated manipulating of the string. She could do this one in her sleep. A C A G, C… F G F E, C… D, E, F, G, F E-F G F… A A-A- Clef nodded. “Very good, very good.” She wasn’t looking at Lyra, but she sounded appreciative. “Next song…” She switched out sheets. Okay, wow. Lyra actually knew this one. It was a bit more complicated than the last, but she’d played it loads of times. C C E C F F A G, G G-G-E G E-D C, C C E C F F A- “Uh-huh, yes, good.” Clef was smiling a little as she rustled through her music. “One last song, and then I’ll see.” The next song wasn’t… easy, but it wasn’t exactly hard, either. A bit fast, and the notes jumped around a bit, but the overall melody wasn’t that bad and the notes had a steady rhythm. Lyra took a deep breath. E-E-G-A, B-C-C-B-A-A… E-E-G-A-A A-A, E- “Impressive,” said Clef, snatching the sheet away. “Darn shame you came along now, because if you were around when auditions were first open, you could make first chair, easy. Welcome to the band.” “Oh, thank you!” said Lyra, grinning from ear to ear. She jumped up and shook hooves with Clef. “You have no idea how much this means to me!” “I have an idea.” Clef was smiling slightly. “Now, your packet…” She handed Lyra a folder, stuffed with papers. “There’s schedules for our rehearsals, plus your own sheet music. You’ll need to learn it quickly, but it’s quite simple, so I don’t think that’ll be much of a problem for you. There are also… brochures for the casino, if you are so inclined.” Clef’s lips curled. “You’re already performing for Goumada at her own casino, I don’t understand why she can stoop so low as to force promotional materials on you in addition to that.” “Because she’s arrogant and shameless?” Clef smirked. “Now, I’ll also need your name…” She pulled out a pen and a piece of scratch paper and looked expectantly at Lyra. Lyra caught herself halfway. “L- Heartstrings.” Best not to use all of her real name, just in case. Clef glanced briefly at her, but muttered, “Heart… strings… Lyre… three…” She underlined the name. “And finally, performing here gets you a complimentary room until two days after anniversary and backstage access. If you’ll follow me, we can get you your key and access gem.” She set off down the hall. As Lyra followed her, she started grinning wider than normal. “Did you say access gem?” she asked, struggling to curb her enthusiasm. “Only to backstage rooms like this, but yes. It’ll let you into authorized areas so you don’t need to keep finding the staff to let you in.” “Oh. That’s good.” And by “good”, Lyra meant “much better than anything I expected today holy Celestia’s sugar-laced tail”. She managed to keep it at that. Clef led Lyra to an area outside the main floor of the casino, got into a shouting match with another staff member over accessibility for band members, and retrieved a key and a gem. “Room 1911,” she said, passing the key to Lyra. “Up near the top. And this-” She passed over the gem. “-will get you through entertainment doors. They’re marked. Just move it near the panel next to the door and it’ll unlock for you.” “Thank you,” said Lyra, not quite bouncing on her hooves. “Now, please: don’t make me regret this. You’re cutting it awfully close, but we could use the extra harmony.” Clef inclined her head. “Practice well and have a good day, ma’am.” “Don’t worry. I will.”