It was a shame Goumada was a cold, cruel criminal responsible for illegally sending artifacts of black magic and worse across Equestria to the highest bidder, Lyra reflected, because the Canyon Rim Casino was actually a really nice hotel.
She’d decided to check out her room before heading back to the villa, and holy schlamoly was it pretty. Everything in it was new. Everything. The bed, the carpet, the table, the bathroom, the drawers, the counters, everything. Put together, the room had that “new hotel room” smell that Lyra hadn’t known existed. And it wasn’t just new, it was tasteful and functional. The drawers were roomier than they looked, the floorplan was very carefully laid out for ease of use, and the bed was comfy (even if it had nothing on the couch at the villa), all decorated in soft, calming colors. She even had a good view of the town from her window; being near the top of the tallest building in the city definitely had its perks. Lyra wouldn’t have minded staying here for the rest of the heist.
Except for the teeny-tiny fact that she had to go up eighteen stories to get there. Elevator or no, she just couldn’t spend that much time going up and down and up and down and…
So once Lyra had determined that her room was a nice room, she resolved to never visit the place again. She locked the door behind her, scooted around a maid doing her rounds, and was heading for the elevator when she passed by another pony. Lyra just gave her a nod and would’ve been on her way, but the pony, a unicorn mare with slightly unruly hair, stopped her. “Hang on,” said the mare. Her eyes went to Lyra’s saddlebag and the lyre case poking out of it. “You play the lyre?”
“Uh, yeah,” said Lyra. “I, um, just got hired to play at the anniversary.” And she immediately wondered if it was a good idea to be that open. Oh, well, too late now.
The mare’s eyes narrowed slightly and when she spoke, her voice was tight. “…What chair?”
Lyra’s hooves twitched. “Third.”
The mare smiled and sighed with relief. “Oh, thank goodness. I’m second lyre.” She ran a hoof through her mane. “I need some experience and I worked my tail off just to get in and I didn’t want to get bumped down at the last minute.” Her voice had lost all of its tension.
“I’m not good enough to learn that much music that quickly,” said Lyra. “And do you really think they’d do that?”
“Treble Clef wouldn’t, but Goumada… Yeegh, some of the things I’ve heard about her…”
Lyra stepped to one side as the maid dragged a bag of dirty sheets down. “Well, don’t worry. Your spot’s not what I’m here to take.” Double entendres were fun.
“Uh-huh.” Second Lyre nodded. “Sorry for being aggressive toward you. Good luck!” She bowed a little to Lyra and half-trotted to her own room.
Lyra waved after her, then looked down the hall and sighed. Who would’ve guessed an elevator ride could be dreaded? But it was just so long. Lyra moved around the maid, who was stuffing the sheets down the laundry chute. She jabbed the Down arrow at the elevator and began waiting.
It looked like a paper bomb had exploded in the living room that Sunburst and the Doctor had turned into an impromptu study space. After pillaging the house for almost every scrap of paper they could get their hooves on (Sunburst had actually started collecting toilet paper rolls before he realized what he was doing), they had sat down and started puzzling out the basics of the arcanoscope from Sunburst’s memory. Fortunately, once his memory had been jogged, it took off running and, between the two of them, they had the design for a basic arcanoscope laid out.
Then came the tricky part.
“So,” asked the Doctor, “how do you want this data to be displayed?” He was sketching out a safe for some strange reason.
“I’m not sure,” said Sunburst. He rubbed his beard as he stared at the last few lines of equations. “We could just have the arcanoscope, have it send the light from its lens to another, identical lens, but that’d just, it’d really limit the field of view. Graphs? But those’re hard to read…”
“Data tables, perhaps? A column for each type of mana, and-”
“Oh, Celestia, no!” yelped Sunburst. “That’d be, do you have any idea how obtuse that’d be? It’d barely be any better than just dragging a unicorn in!”
“I could read them perfectly well, thank you.”
“And you, you’d probably be the only pony who could. We need something simple, like showing the magic on a map of some kind.”
In a moment of pure synchronicity, Sunburst and the Doctor got the exact same idea at the exact same time. Their ears went up and they stared at each other. “Or a blueprint?” the Doctor asked as he slowly began grinning.
“Or a blueprint,” Sunburst confirmed. He grabbed a spare sheet of paper and began scribbling things down. “If we bind the arcanoscope to some kind of illusion transmitter, it shouldn’t be that hard,” he muttered. “I should be able to, to cast some spells to test the theory myself. Just have it mimic something somewhere else. We’re not going photo-real or anything, here. Keeping the two bound at a distance would be trickier, but-”
“Hey,” Gilda said, knocking on the doorframe. “I don’t suppose you’ve got anything I could help with? Shooting arrows gets lame after a while. Plus, the stupid string broke.”
“Sorry, no,” said Sunburst. He barely looked up, he was so entrenched in his math. “We’re, um, we’re still working on the design.”
“Although if you're good with maths,” piped up the Doctor, “you might — might — be able to help with the design.”
“Eh.” Gilda shrugged. “I’m alright. Lemme see.” She grabbed one of the pieces of paper and glanced at it. Then she did a double-take and stared at the equations on it like she was opening up the centerfold in Elder Thing Fancy. “I… think that’s a number…” She pointed at something.
Sunburst took a closer look. “Oh, no, that’s, uh, that’s a marker for a unit of transmorphogenic mana sensitivity.”
Gilda blinked. She wordlessly dropped the paper, letting it flutter to the table, and walked out.
“Wait, hold on!” yelled the Doctor. He ran out after Gilda. Sunburst turned his ears toward the door as he kept up his calculations.
“Yeah?” asked Gilda. She sounded a little perturbed; Sunburst could picture her claws digging grooves in the floor.
“We’ve got an idea we’d like to test on you.”
“…Like, I get what you’re trying to say, but I don’t think there’s any way you could’ve phrased that worse.”
“Eh. Probably not. But you don’t need to be incredibly intelligent or good with magic to-”
“I mean, wow, your phrasing’s crap. But what the heck. Sure.” Gilda walked back into the room and took a seat opposite Sunburst, leaning back to prop her rear legs on the table. “You’re not gonna curse me, are you?”
“Uh, no, no,” Sunburst said as he scribbled away. “We are not casting any magic on you at all.” He glanced up at the Doctor. “Right? I don’t know what you wanted her for.”
“She’s just another test subject,” the Doctor said.
Gilda rolled her eyes. “Seriously, dweeb,” she snorted, “I’m gonna have to keep a list of all the times you need ‘Phrasing!’ screamed at you.”
“For the arcanoscope! The distance arcanoscope thingamawhoosie. We need a name for it. You’ll just be one of the things we test it on to see if the scanner’s working right.”
“Feh. Make sure it doesn’t give me a third eye and I’ll be good.” Gilda’s eyes flicked to Sunburst’s horn for a second and she pushed her chair a little further away.
Sunburst kept writing. Gems. They needed gems. Simple, flawed ones would do for now. Since they were only testing the theory, the spell didn’t need to last or be especially accurate. Weren’t griffons supposed to be greedy? And this villa had belonged to a griffon. Maybe, if they were lucky-
In the entrance hall, the door slammed open. “Guess who won over a thousand bits today, female dogs!” Thorax crowed as he sauntered into the room.
After a few confused seconds, Sunburst facehooved. “Thorax, I, you know I like you, but don’t, please don’t try to be edgy. You’re softer than a cotton ball.”
“Sorry,” Thorax whispered, cringing downward.
“Wait, hang on,” said Gilda. She pulled her legs from the table. Her eyes glittered with only-barely-tempered avarice and her wings were restless. “A thousand? Really?”
And Thorax was standing up straight again. “Poker is a lot easier than I thought,” he said. He grinned and dropped his disguise. “Really, over a thousand.” He waggled a bag of bits at them and dropped it on the table. “Count ’em.”
Gilda and the Doctor muttered to themselves as they shuffled the bits into easily-countable piles. “One thousand… four hundred… ish,” the Doctor said. He blinked and began recounting. “You… started with a hundred, right?” he whispered. Gilda was containing herself but seemed a few bearer bonds away from dissolving into greed-powered cackles as she held a pair of coins to where her ears probably were and rubbed them together.
“Pretty much! I played a few players on a low-stakes table, cleared them out, tried going higher, and…” Thorax giggled. “Even the best players can’t control their emotions.”
“You, you should probably go for a different shape the next time, next time you play, though,” said Sunburst. “If, if you hang around the casino like that and, and keep winning too easily, ponies might accuse you of cheating, and after that…” He shrugged and made “eh” sounds. “Just in case, you, you know?”
Thorax twitched one of his ear fins, then nodded. “Yeah. Low profile. They talked about that in the Hive a lot. So what’re you doing?” He leaned over to stare at Sunburst’s equations and pretended to know what he was looking at.
“We’re developing something to analyze magic,” said the Doctor. “It’ll help scan the casino’s defences. Maybe. Possibly. I think.”
“Uh-huh. I see,” said Thorax, convincing nobody. “I… don’t suppose there’s anything I can do to help?”
“Yes, actually.” Sunburst put his pen down and stood up. “We, we’ll need a gem or two for, for testing this. Any kind will do. And I don’t want to dip into, into all those bits if we don’t have to. Maybe, if there’s one or two in here, we, we won’t need to go shopping. Let’s split up and search the place.”
“Do you honestly think there are going to be any gems in here?” asked the Doctor, spreading his legs wide. “Any at all?”
“I don’t know,” Sunburst said, shrugging. “But, but we can check. Doc, you and I, let’s look downstairs. Thorax, you and Gilda, can you look upstairs?”
Thorax glanced at Gilda, who was still listening to the sound of two coins getting rubbed together. “Um. Maybe?”
“Don’t worry,” Gilda said. Her voice was light, airy, dreamy. “I’ll be done soon.”
Bon Bon had known several kinds of temperaments as Sweetie Drops and couldn’t help filing them into little, simplistic boxes. People being the complex individuals they were, it was distressingly common for Bon Bon to plop somepony in one box, learn more about them, drop them into another box (without reworking her own system, naturally), rinse and repeat. The latest “victim” of such categorization issues was Rainbow Dash.
Rainbow Dash’s problem (or at least, her main problem) wasn’t that she was stupid or inattentive. Rainbow Dash’s problem was that she didn’t have anything resembling an off switch or even a low setting. She just couldn’t sit still for very long. Tell her she’d win a million bits if she did nothing but sit on that chair for five minutes, and she’d be gone before fifteen seconds were up, and that was on a good day. Bon Bon had worked with several ponies like that, and the solution was simple: every now and then, send them out to do recon. Walking (or flying) the same route five dozen times in a row would still be preferable to laying low for them. And Rainbow’s flight memory was shockingly good.
Bon Bon looked up as Rainbow lazily flew around the casino again. This was Rainbow’s… something like her fifth patrol in the past few hours and she wasn’t getting antsy. She’d identified a number of potential entrances and exits, narrowed down guard patrols, and even pointed out several nearby buildings they could zipline over to a hotel room from. (Bon Bon wanted to say that was an overly-romantic view of heists, but they genuinely were good zipline points. Once you broke the windows to zipline into, anyway.) Bon Bon herself was taking a ground-level approach, confirming Rainbow’s observations while making her own. At the moment, she was hanging out on one of the casino’s patios.
Off to one side of the tower, stopping not that far from the edge of the gorge, was a large patio-amphitheatre-showfloor-boardwalk-thing. A broad, flat area, useful for whatever milling about Goumada needed. A stage was being set up for (Bon Bon guessed) an orchestra. The place was filled with ponies and more than a few griffons, chatting or eating lunch or chatting while eating lunch. The crowds were dense enough to make running difficult, but still sparse enough that walking was a breeze. The roar from the river in the canyon was inaudible thanks to some spell or another. A long row of doors led into the casino, surprisingly lightly guarded.
The breeze carried a plume of mist up from the river and across the deck. Some of the snootier guests tutted and brushed at their clothes, but Bon Bon didn’t care. The light sprinkling of water across her face felt good, if a bit cold. Overcome by curiosity, she sidled over to the canyon. It was blocked off by a tall fence and a sign warning guests about the obvious, but it was still an impressive sight. It was thinner than it looked, less than a hundred and fifty feet across, but it was deep. The only way Bon Bon could see down to the bottom was if she went straight up to the edge and looked down, which, yeah, no. Tallish buildings lined the other side. Bon Bon wondered if being that close to a potential collapsing hazard drove the land costs down at all. Maybe there were spells in the land that prevented erosion.
Rainbow Dash swooped down behind her and landed on the patio. “Saw that last pair of guards,” she said. “Changed off right at 2:00, just like you said. A little earlier, actually, like…” She glanced at her watch. “1:58-ish? But maybe this watch is slow.”
“Good,” said Bon Bon. “Did they take any time, or-”
“Nah, they were real quick about it. New gals tapped in, old gals tapped out, boom, done.”
“Hmm.” Bon Bon flicked her tail as she gazed at the other side of the gorge. It was what she’d expected.
“Is that a problem?” Rainbow asked, hanging her hooves over the patio’s railing. Her wings were twitching; miraculously, she was thinking.
“I don’t know. Once we’re done, it might be hard getting ou-”
“Rainbow Dash?”
Bon Bon gasped sharply when she heard the voice. Oh, Celestia, no. She whirled around as if she’d been stabbed, hoping- No luck. Goumada was only a few yards from them, staring at Rainbow Dash with her mouth open.
Bon Bon’s training as Sweetie Drops kicked in almost immediately. “I’m not here, trust me,” she hissed to Rainbow, borderline reflexively. “Lie to her.” Before she got a response or even clarified who she was talking about, Bon Bon had slipped into the crowd, keeping a few ponies between her and Goumada.
As one of the Elements of Harmony and the fastest pony ever, Rainbow Dash was recognizable. Most ponies knew the Elements lived in Ponyville. Goumada was smart enough to guess that Rainbow Dash being up here less than a week after nabbing the Alicorn Amulet wasn’t a coincidence. Maybe she wouldn’t immediately jump straight to “heist”, but she would know that Something was Up. All Bon Bon could do was pray that she’d escaped notice as Rainbow’s friend and wouldn’t be recognized.
“I’ll be! Rainbow Dash! It is you!” said Goumada. She quickly pushed her way through the crowd, grabbed Rainbow’s hoof without it being offered, and shook it. “I’m sorry,” she said in a reverential tone that was a little too slick to be genuine, “but it is an honor to see you here.” She smiled and showed a touch too much teeth. “I am Goumada, the owner of this casino.”
Bon Bon wound her way through the crowd until she was standing behind Goumada, still with a few ponies between the two of them. It was risky, but she wanted to listen in on her conversation with Rainbow. Just in case. She crouched a little and moved to ensure her cutie mark would be blocked if Goumada happened to turn around.
“Huh?” Rainbow managed to get herself together enough to pull her hoof from Goumada’s grasp. She glanced around for a second. “Oh, uh-” She stopped and grinned. “Uh, yeah, that’s me! The one and only.”
“What are you doing here? Don’t you live in Ponyville?”
Bon Bon took a deep breath-
“Yeah, I’m just- visiting a friend who lives up here. A- cousin, actually. She helps manage the weather. Taught me everything I know about the weather. Betcha didn’t know I was a weatherpony before becoming a Wonderbolt!”
-and Bon Bon released her breath. Not the smoothest of cover-ups, but at least Rainbow didn’t put on a song and dance routine about the pleasures of robbery. Apparently, Rainbow could think almost as fast as she flew. (It was a shame she didn’t think all that much.)
“Then I- saw the posters for this place’s anniversary and thought I’d check it out. Pretty cool, and trust me: I know cool.”
Goumada’s laugh didn’t quite suit her. “While I am not usually fond of such language, you are indeed cool.” (The word sounded so unnatural coming from her mouth that Bon Bon’s skin crawled.) “The sonic rainboom? A true work of art. Awe-inspiring.”
“I know, right? Nopony else can come close. Not even Princess Celestia!”
“While we are on the subject, if you are already here, I was wondering: would you be willing to perform a rainboom at the anniversary celebration in two weeks? I can think of no better way to cap it off.”
Bon Bon forced herself to remain calm. Goumada knew. She had to. The offer was too quick. It was a great way to reduce their forces: if Rainbow was working alone, well, it was hard to perform a heist when you were rainbooming. If she had friends, those friends were still down a pony they might’ve been counting on. Easy. Slick. Dastardly. (A small part of Bon Bon’s mind relished being able to use “dastardly” again.)
And Rainbow, being Rainbow, didn’t catch it. Sunblasted show-offyness. “Of course I can!” she said. “Who wouldn’t want to see a bit of this awesomeness?” She hovered a few feet above the patio and posed.
Now, Goumada’s smile was just shy of predatory. “Splendid. Splendid.”
Bon Bon waved her hooves and shook her head, trying to get Rainbow’s attention. Maybe, if she backed out now, she could make up a story about-
“Would you mind if I announced your participation?” Goumada asked. She was already walking for the stage. “Right now?”
No no no no-
“Heh. Go right ahead.”
Rickin’-rackin’ frickin’-frackin’-
Atop the stage, Goumada cleared her throat. “Could I have everypony’s attention?” she yelled. “I have an announcement to make!” You couldn’t fault her voice; the entire crowd had simmered down in seconds. Another throat-clearing, and Goumada continued, “I am pleased to announce the Element of Loyalty herself and fastest pony alive, Rainbow Dash, has agreed to perform at the anniversary celebration!” She waved Rainbow up, but Bon Bon watched her eyes. Goumada’s gaze flicked over the crowd, looking for anyone suspicious. Bon Bon crouched down a little more to avoid detection.
Rainbow didn’t notice anything amiss. She landed next to Goumada, giving a smile and a wave. The crowd soon exploded into cheers and a stampede of applause. Rainbow lapped it up like a dog did water. Of course their heist simply had to include a jackdaw in peacock’s feathers.
Goumada kept talking; although she smiled, it seemed to Bon Bon to be rather self-congratulatory. “When the day comes, she will perform her signature sonic rainboom for all of us! Please give her a big round of applause in thanks!” She walked offstage, bowing and directing the crowd’s attention even more towards Rainbow Dash. But Bon Bon kept watching her and didn’t miss her speaking into some sort of wristband.
As she wiggled through the crowd, trying to leave the patio, Bon Bon turned her attention to the guards at the nearest door. For a long moment, nothing. Then one of them perked up and she put a hoof to her ear. Goumada had seen her, Bon Bon suspected, and had just given an order to have the guards find her. Sure enough, the guard exchanged a few words with her partner and they inconspicuously sidled into the crowd.
But Bon Bon knew who to watch and some tricks to avoid detection. Keep your head down, don’t stop moving, don’t spend too much time watching them. The guards were easy enough to keep track of, and Bon Bon wormed her way through the throng and to the street. Eyes forward, gait confident and not at all paranoid, don’t stop walking. Bon Bon glanced up and down the street, but the only alerted guards seemed to be the ones on the patio, thank goodness.
Up the street, cross the street, down the street. Starlight and Derpy were still looking at the front doors of the casino, talking about something. “…much better balance in the cinnamon and sugar,” Starlight said as she nibbled on a muffin.
“But the bananas give this one a more interesting taste!” protested Derpy.
“And you’re not wrong. I just think that, overall, the red velvet’s more consistent taste-”
Bon Bon tapped both of them on the shoulder. “Hi,” she said. “We need to go.” She immediately began walking down the street.
After a few seconds’ shock, Starlight and Derpy caught up to her. “What’s going on?” asked Starlight. “And where’s Rainbow Dash? Did something happen?”
“Goumada saw Rainbow Dash and I think she might’ve seen me,” said Bon Bon. She turned into the first alley she saw. Anything to get off the street. “She knows ponies are here from Ponyville. She might have Rainbow Dash followed. And she’s probably looking for you.”
“Oh,” said Starlight. A long pause. “Can I start swearing now?”
“Yes.”
And Starlight did so.
Bon Bon glanced behind herself. Nopony was following them. Good. But she couldn’t find Rainbow Dash and warn her about being followed without risking exposing herself to whatever guards were watching her. Bad. Hnng.
The ground became very interesting in these sorts of situations. Bon Bon stared at it as she paced back and forth. “I’d bet money Rainbow’s tail’ll be a pegasus,” she muttered. “For mobility. Goumada probably saw me, so she’ll probably give the guards my description. She’ll definitely give the guards Starlight’s description. So we need to talk to Rainbow without the guards seeing either of us and also somehow lose a pegasus tracking her, maybe from above.”
Derpy spoke up. “I wave Rainbow Dash around the corner and Starlight teleports us back to the villa before the chaser catches up.”
Bon Bon looked up and stared at Derpy. Then she looked at Derpy. From a distance, she wasn’t all that distinctive, actually; blonde, a very ordinary manestyle, plain gray coat. Her eyes were her most notable feature, and it was easy to miss them if you weren’t close. Even if the guards saw her, she could be mistaken for another plain-colored pegasus. And teleportation was a pretty standard part of the repertoire of a super-unicorn like Starlight (or Twilight, when she’d been a unicorn). After her casual proposals of just about every step so far- “Since when did you become Miss Instant-Plan?”
“Delivering Discord’s mail means you learn to think on your hooves very quickly.” Derpy smiled and shrugged, chewing her muffin with the sort of contentment and self-satisfaction that normally only comes once in a lifetime.
“I, uh, can teleport us all to the villa, if you need me to,” offered Starlight. “So, I guess, once Rainbow gets here-”
“Then I’ll go see if I can get her,” said Derpy. “Be back… I dunno.” She trotted back to the street. Bon Bon lifted a hoof, ready to run and stop her, but quickly lowered it. What would she object to? Derpy might’ve been clumsy, but she was proving herself to be smart and quick-witted. She could figure this out on her own. After all, she’d come up with the plan on her own in a few seconds.
Starlight watched Derpy go around the corner. “Any ideas if the guard spots us? Even if we capture her, what then?”
“I don’t know. Unless you know memory-wiping spells.”
“…Well, uh… funny story about that…”
Bon Bon facehooved. “…Seriously, Starlight, what in Celestia’s name is wrong with you?”
“A lot of things,” admitted Starlight. “Although this one wasn’t completely my fault. I was working on them with Twilight a few months ago and we were our own guinea pigs. She said something about wiping a villain’s motivation to be bad would keep them from doing any villainy, but eventually decided that motives were more complicated than that and that brainwashing, even for the greater good, was a bad idea.”
“Well, did they work?”
“I don’t remember.” Pause. “So I guess they must’ve.”
It was better than nothing, at least. Maybe working with somepony whose magic skillset was only two steps away from megalomania wasn’t totally a bad thing.