Thorax-Changeling never would’ve guessed that coins could be musical, but the two hundred-bit coins he was rubbing together were exactly that. The tiny, clinking tones they made as rubbed them together weren’t that different from a triangle’s ring. They were quite nice, actually, and it was easy to see why Gilda-Griffon-Lion-Bald Eagle had loved them so.
“And if you do them in a circle,” said Gilda-Griffon-Lion-Bald Eagle, “you almost get a melody.”
Thorax-Changeling promptly changed his approach. Now, the sounds were like jazz played on an electric guitar: ringing, unpredictable, and never the same way twice. “Wow,” he said. He reversed the rotation and got a tune that was the same, but different. And it’d probably be different still if he flipped one or both of the coins around. “Why’s it like that?” he asked as he passed the coins back to Gilda-Griffon-Lion-Bald Eagle.
“Not a clue,” she said, “but I bet it’s the design. Check it out.” She held up one of the coins close to Thorax-Changeling’s face. “See all those tiny little ridges and crap? I bet they’re there to stop counterfeiting or something.”
Indeed, for how small it was, the imprint on the coin was beyond intricate. It showed a picture of Celestia-Alicorn-White in profile, with so much detail Thorax-Changeling wasn’t sure he couldn’t see her individual strands of fur. Every curve stood out in a smooth relief and some motto was printed around the picture. Still being a bit new to reading, Thorax-Changeling read the words slowly, but the coin was snatched away by Gilda-Griffon-Lion-Bald Eagle before he could get halfway.
“One-bit coins are a lot more boring. Barely any style at all. And if you rub them together, you get nothing.” Gilda-Griffon-Lion-Bald Eagle flipped the coin with a claw, let it spin for a second, then snatched it out of the air. “So I’m thinking that the different bumps on this make that sweet sound as they bounce off each other. One-bit coins don’t have those, so they don’t sound nearly as cool.” She flipped the coin again. “Or maybe it’s some kinda magic to identify real coins. Y’know, fake ones don’t ring like that.” She stared at the coin as she flipped it across her claws, then held it out to Thorax-Changeling. “Can you sense anything?”
“Um. What?”
Gilda-Griffon-Lion-Bald Eagle stared at him. “Sense anything. Sense magic, you dweeb. C’mon, you can shapeshift!”
“Well, um, yes-” Poof. Gilda-Griffon-Lion-Bald Eagle raised her hackles and twitched away from Thorax-Griffon-Lion-Bald Eagle. Poof. “-but that’s, um, all I know.” Thorax-Changeling looked away. “Even when I’m a unicorn, I can’t really do much besides levitation. And every unicorn can do that. Changeling magic doesn’t work like unicorn magic.”
“Oh, for the love of…” Gilda-Griffon-Lion-Bald Eagle massaged her head. “It’s funny. Every single time I think magic is cool, it throws some stupid curveball at me to make everything more complicated. Changeling magic is different from unicorn magic is different from earth pony magic is different from pegasus magic…”
“Is different from griffon magic?” Thorax-Changeling suggested.
“In the sense that griffons don’t even have magic, sure.”
“But I thought you could sit on clouds, and- Never mind. Let’s go to the next room.”
Thorax-Changeling and Gilda-Griffon-Lion-Bald Eagle’s epic quest for treasure in an abandoned area was proving to be less Daring Do and more picking through an empty house before finally moving away: uninteresting and kind of sad. Most of the second story was still quite dusty, since few of the ponies could access it. There weren’t even any sheets to protect the furniture from the dust. It wasn’t that different from the first story, but with less kitchens and more bedrooms.
The pair was in their second bedroom, having already found lots of abandoned stuff, but no gems. They’d split their search areas: Gilda-Griffon-Lion-Bald Eagle was looking through the dressers while Thorax-Changeling rummaged around in bedside tables or the old steamer trunk at the foot of the bed. A bit of pushing got the lid open, and Thorax-Changeling was confronted with a pile of arrows with strange, crystalline blue arrowheads. He picked one out and turned it over. The arrowhead didn’t look like any gem he’d ever seen, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t one. “Hey, Gilda? What do you think about this?”
Gilda-Griffon-Lion-Bald Eagle looked up. “What do I think about sweet Gideon’s scrambled yolk!” she yowled. She shuffled back, her tail twitching restlessly. “Okay, be really really careful with that thing,” she said in a low voice.
“Why?” Thorax-Changeling looked at the arrow again. It didn’t look that dangerous. But then, magic.
“Those’re arctic arrows,” Gilda-Griffon-Lion-Bald Eagle said. “If you break the arrowhead, it’ll freeze you solid. If it breaks inside your body, it’ll freeze your blood solid.”
“Good thing I don’t have blood, then!” joked Thorax-Changeling. “And are these all that fragile?” He lightly swung the arrow towards the trunk.
“No!” Gilda-Griffon-Lion-Bald Eagle lunged for Thorax-Changeling.
Clink.
Nothing happened. The arrowhead bounced off the trunk. Gilda-Griffon-Lion-Bald Eagle froze in her lunge, claws still outstretched. She blinked at Thorax-Changeling.
“Well, I was- thinking,” said Thorax-Changeling, confident and self-conscious at the same time, “if these broke that easily, would they be kept out in the open?”
Gilda-Griffon-Lion-Bald Eagle lowered her claws slowly. “I guess not,” she admitted. “But seriously, you idiot, be careful. Those things are dangerous. I’m not even completely sure they’re legal for civvies to own.” She squinted into the trunk for a second, then opened up a wardrobe.
Thorax-Changeling shuffled the arrows aside, but it looked like they were all that was in the trunk. He dropped the arrow back in and shut it. Were they making any progress at all? He didn’t know a thing about money. He didn’t know a thing about how gems related to money. He didn’t know a thing about keeping either. So he-
“Wait, wait.” Gilda-Griffon-Lion-Bald Eagle slammed the wardrobe shut. “We’re doing this wrong like idiots. Griffons don’t keep their money in the open like this.” She settled onto her rump, closed her eyes, and scratched her forehead. “If I was a cluster of gems,” she muttered, “where would I hide?”
“Um. I’d hide in a jewelry box,” said Thorax-Changeling. “Or a safe. Or a… piggy bank. Or-”
“The mattress!”
“Or that.” Pause. “Wait, what?”
Gilda-Griffon-Lion-Bald Eagle ripped the sheets from the bed. “Griffons hate banks,” she said as she examined the edges of the mattress closely. “And a jewelry box or safe, well, they’re obvious. But if you stick it in a mattress, nobody can take it from you while you’re sleeping, so- Ha.” She pointed at a prominent seam in the mattress and quickly ripped it apart. She plunged her hand into the mattress and her eyes lit up. “Yes…” she hissed as she drew out a bag. Thorax-Changeling ran over and she upended it.
A small array of gems — rubies, sapphires, emeralds — tumbled onto the floor, along with a small pile of bits.
“Yes! Boom!” Gilda-Griffon-Lion-Bald Eagle pumped a fist in the air and gathered up the mess of shiny things. “I thought they might’ve forgotten about it. I mean, they forgot those arrows. C’mon. Let’s get back to the eggheads.”
Thorax-Changeling looked at the mattress again, stuffing pouring out of the seam Gilda-Griffon-Lion-Bald Eagle had torn open. “Is it just me, or is keeping things in your bed a bad investment?”
“It’s not just you. Trust me, griffons don’t really do investments. That means giving our money to somebody else.”
“…Griffons aren’t very fiscally responsible, are they?”
Gilda-Griffon-Lion-Bald Eagle whistled, an impressive feat with a beak. “You have no idea.”
Much to Rainbow Dash’s disappointment, the adulation the crowds on the casino patio were showering her with was dying a slow, painful death. Time to get back to the old grind. Well, new grind, since she’d never heisted anything before.
Speaking of the new grind, what had Bon Bon been on about? Suddenly she was all “pretend I’m not here” and then she was just gone. Rainbow had gone out on a limb and trusted her — her Element wasn’t Loyalty for nothing — but she had a few questions. Once she managed to find her. How could Bon Bon vanish so quickly?
At least Goumada was happy. She waved off the last few well-wishers and shook Rainbow’s hoof again. “Well, it has been most enlightening speaking with you, Ms. Dash- You don’t mind if I call you Ms. Dash, you do?”
Rainbow’s ears went back, just a little. “It makes me sound like I’m somepony’s stuffy aunt.”
Goumada laughed. “Then you’ll have to live with it, because I’m calling you Ms. Dash anyway! If you’ll stop by my office sometime tomorrow, I can show you the schedule of the anniversary festivities and we can talk about when you’ll perform. Is that acceptable?”
Oh, Celestia. The worst part of any stunt flying: schedules. She couldn’t just be awesome, she had to be awesome at this time at this place for this long. At least flying in formation with the Wonderbolts synergized to create extra awesome via Spitfire’s Theorem of Logarithmic Growth of Awesome. But awesomeness was awesomeness, so Rainbow said, “Sure, sure.”
“Splendid! I’ll have ponies waiting for you. Trust me, you will be well-compensated. Now, I’m afraid I must be off.” Goumada tipped an invisible hat at Rainbow and quickly vanished into the crowd.
Rainbow blinked, then puffed her chest out, grinning. She’d never actually been paid to do the sonic rainboom before. Even at Cadance’s wedding, it’d been a favor to Twilight. And Rainbow didn’t care one whit about getting or not getting paid. She liked doing it, and that was all that mattered.
Except that now she was getting paid, and… Wow. That was awesome. Even if the payer was a totally evil villainess scheming to sell the Alicorn Amulet to the highest bidder, it was pretty cool. It was even during the anniversary celebration, when everypony would be watching and everypony could see how incredible it-
During the anniversary celebration.
When the team planned on doing the actual heist-y part of the heist.
Rainbow wilted a little. Well, paddle her teeth and call her gobsmacked. That wasn’t good.
Still, they had plenty of other ponies and not-ponies to choose from. It wasn’t like one or two ponies missing would destroy the plan. In fact, it couldn’t, because they didn’t even have a plan yet. And everypony else said winging it was a bad idea. But they needed to know, so after another skim of the crowd failed to yield Bon Bon, Rainbow decided it was best to head back to the villa and wait for her to appear.
Even with her oops regarding timing, Rainbow couldn’t stay down for long. Soon, her casual mosey had turned into a confident, self-assured swagger. She was the only one who could perform at the anniversary in the way she was going to. How could she not be proud? She was literally one of a kind.
But as she strutted down the street, her struts weakened and her gait risked caving in. A chill was crawling its way up and down her spine, and it didn’t even have the decency to do it quickly. Ever hair on her body was standing on end and her feathers were quivering. She knew this feeling. This dreadful, unshakeable feeling. She’d felt it plenty of times before.
She was being followed. Followed by somepony implacable, unstoppable. Somepony with a single-minded determination. Somepony who couldn’t be shaken off, for they would just home in on her again. She was being followed by a curious sort of juggernaut, stealthy yet steam-rollery. There was only one reason for her to be followed. Somepony wanted her autograph.
Rainbow Dash kept walking and held her head high, but her autograph-hunter-hunter senses silently engaged. They’d been honed from lots of Wonderbolt stunt flights and subsequent winding-downs to the point that they were closer to reflexes and instincts rather than skills. Autograph hounds were easily among the most dangerous things she’d ever encountered. They didn’t have the decency of most fans, content to watch in crowds or from a distance or in crowds from a distance. No, they felt entitled to a little one-on-one action in dark places. They could be lurking anywhere, waiting, just waiting for the right moment to strike, to jump out while stabbing something small and pointy at her face (to hold in her mouth and use to write, but still). And she even risked going to jail if she socked them in the face! Honestly, Discord may have gotten into her mind and mucked with her very sense of being, but at least she could punch or laserblast him.
She breathed in the air, took in the sounds and the rhythms of the streets. Behind her? No, no, that was too obvious. Name chasers weren’t content to follow that simply. They tried to predict their quarry’s movements. Or maybe, if they were a pegasus- Rainbow Dash looked up. Sure enough, a pony was hovering above her, watching her. The pony’s flight hitched when she saw Rainbow Dash seeing her and she tried to zip away across the rooftops, but she had less chance of that than a grain of sugar escaping Pinkie Pie’s notice. Rainbow was on her in a second, quickly swooping in front of her to force her down to a rooftop.
The guard’s wings twitched as Rainbow glared at her. “I know why you’re following me,” Rainbow said in her best intimidating voice. It was quite good, if she said so herself.
“You…” The guard visibly gulped and shuffled from hoof to hoof. “You do?”
“Yeah. Seriously, dude, if you want my autograph, you can just ask.”
The guard twitched again. “Well, I… Um…”
“I mean, I bet your boss doesn’t want you following me around all day, right?”
“I… Uh…”
“And I don’t want to be followed. So get me some paper, I’ll get you my autograph, and we can both go home happy, alright?”
“…Sure.” The guard smiled, but Rainbow didn’t need to imagine hard to hear the creaks. “Yeah. Absolutely.”
Luckily, the guard had a pen and notepad on her. Rainbow scribbled out her name. “There you go,” she said. “Now stay away from me, and remember: I’m watching.”
The guard gulped as if she’d been struck. “Right. Sure. Sorry.” What was her deal? She’d gotten the autograph she’d wanted, hadn’t she? But she looked at her autograph and looked at Rainbow and didn’t move.
“Scram!”
Finally, the guard was gone, flying back to the casino. Rainbow rolled her eyes and jumped down to the street. To her surprise, she landed right next to Derpy.
“Hi!” said Derpy brightly. “You’re being followed.”
“Yeah, by some pony who wanted an autograph,” snorted Rainbow. “Don’t worry, I sent her packing.”
Derpy blinked. “Okay, then! That’s good. Come on.”
Rainbow kept glancing around as she followed Derpy down the street, but her autograph senses weren’t tingling. Derpy led her up an alley and around a corner, where Starlight and Bon Bon were waiting as if they were some kind of criminals in hiding (which, okay, they were, but not like that). “Um, hey, guys,” said Rainbow. “What’s going-”
Zap.
“-on?” Rainbow blinked. They were back at the villa. And by the time she’d registered that, her eyeballs felt like they’d almost been squeezed out of their sockets. She quickly brought her hooves to her eyes and employed her entire litany of curses, one that’d been considerably expanded after spending time with Spitfire. “Stars above! Sweet Celestia, tabula rasa, stot of a-”
After about a minute, Rainbow’s eyes felt normal enough again for her to open them, she did so. Starlight was lying on the ground, moaning and clutching her horn. Bon Bon was rubbing her head and one of her rear legs kept twitching. And Derpy was sitting by, watching everyone else with concern. Somehow, it didn’t surprise Rainbow that Derpy took being slammed through space in stride. She’d slammed through everything else in Ponyville.
“Sorry,” Starlight eventually mumbled. “My fault.” She groaned and rotated one of her legs like she was afraid it was going to pop out.
“But why’d you do that anyway?” demanded Rainbow. She tried blinking and groaned. “Gaow, my eyes…”
“You might’ve been followed,” said Bon Bon. “And-”
“Yeah, Derpy told me,” replied Rainbow. (Derpy’s smile indicated she was much too proud of herself.) “There was an autograph hunter who-”
“An… An autograph hunter?”
“Well, yeah. Why else would somepony be following me?”
“Because Goumada knows you’re from Ponyville and suspects what you’re up to and was trying to have you followed so she could track you down to your accomplices?”
Rainbow’s mouth narrowed into a tiny little “o”. One of her ears twitched. “Well, uh… When you put it like that…” And then her pride came right back again. “She was a really sucky tail, then. I spotted her less than a minute after we left the casino.”
Bon Bon frowned and licked her lips. “I think we just got lucky. They’re trained to keep buildings secure, not follow ponies and stay out of sight. Look, whenever you leave the casino, try to make sure you’re not being followed, okay? The last thing we need is a bunch of rent-a-cops knocking on our front door.”
“Pfft. Easy-peasy!” Rainbow waved a hoof dismissively. “If all else fails, I’ll just fly away faster than they can follow.” One of the many, many perks of being one of the awesomest ponies in Equestria. “And speaking of which, no, I didn’t tell Gouda Feta-”
“Goumada.”
“-anything about us. I bet she thinks I’m here for the Alicorn Amulet, but she doesn’t know about anypony else. Oh, and, uh, I kinda accidentally got hired to do the sonic rainboom at the anniversary party.” Rainbow grinned. “Heh. Sorry.”
But Bon Bon only responded to wave her off. “It’s not that bad. We don’t even have a plan yet. Thank Celestia we’re winging it, or else we’d be in deep trouble right now.”
And thusly was Rainbow Dash vindicated.
Her head still ringing from her on-the-spot teleportation, Starlight loped into the house. The floor felt like it was tilting beneath her, but it refused to be consistent about which direction it was tilting in. She massaged her head in a vain attempt to mute the ache.
It cleared up her hearing a little, though. She heard voices coming from the living room. “-eel anything?” Probably Sunburst.
“…Nope. Nothing.” Gilda.
“Alright, uh, that’s, that’s good. Now, if we…” Definitely Sunburst.
Even without the caw of surprise, it would’ve been Gilda. “…Okay, whoa. That… That’s cool.”
“Can you, um, wiggle your claws or something?”
Starlight didn’t really “walk” to the living room so much as fall towards it when the floor was tilted in the right direction. Sunburst, the Doctor, Thorax, and Gilda were all sitting around a table, ooooing at something that Starlight couldn’t see. She shuffled around to get a better look.
An emerald, heavily flawed but still suitable for some forms of magic, was sitting on the table. Gilda was holding her paw over it and off to the side. On the other side of the table, as if it’d been rotated around the gem, was a very hazy image of Gilda’s paw, all red and foggy. Gilda twiddled her talons. The image did the same. She pulled her paw away from the gem and the image vanished. “Sweet,” she whispered.
“Now, if our calculations are correct,” said the Doctor, “mine should be white, Sunburst’s purple, and Thorax’s green. So…” He thrust his hoof over the gem. An image of same poofed into existence, completely white, just as vague as Gilda’s. “Ha! Excellent.” He noticed Starlight and waved. “Ah, Starlight! Was your day productive?”
“Technically,” said Starlight. “What’s this?”
“Magic sensor,” said Gilda. “And apparently I’m magic.” She moved her claws in range of the gem again and twiddled her fingers, apparently for the heck of it.
“Well, it’s not like you could sit on clouds otherwise…”
“That’s what I said!” said Thorax, buzzing his wings.
“Let me know when I can chuck lightning and I’ll believe you.” Gilda made a V shape with her claws in the image, then pushed away from the table. “Hungry. Be back in a sec.”
“We’re, uh, we’re trying to see if we can scan magic remotely,” said Sunburst. “You know, see the spells used in, used in the casino’s defenses. It’s, it’s worth a shot, at least.” He remained invested in his paperwork.
“Ah.” If anypony could do something like that, it would be Sunburst.
“Oh!” said Thorax. “And I had an idea earlier today. Starlight, could you put a spell on bits to track them?”
Starlight stopped like she’d run into a clear plastic film stretched over a doorway. “I- Sure, but… But why?”
“It’s simple,” said Thorax. “I, I think. You put a spell on the bits I won today and I go and buy chips for poker. Eventually, the bits get moved into the vault. We track the bits and we find the vault.”
“Actually, um,” said the Doctor, pointing between him and Sunburst, “we already found the vault, me and him. Well, me and him and Gilda. Well, mostly Gilda. Well, all Gilda.” Pause. “Our group found the vault, is what I’m saying! Well, might’ve found the vault.”
Starlight and Thorax stared at the Doctor. “Got anything more to add?” Starlight asked.
“Ah… no.”
Starlight huffed and turned back to Thorax. “Actually, that’s a pretty good idea. Tracking spells aren’t that hard, or at least Twilight ensured they weren’t. That mare does not want to lose her books. And if the casino has something set up to remove enchantments from things going into the vault, well, then we know that it has something to you know the drill. Let’s get it after dinner.”
It was really kind of impressive how Thorax’s pleased-with-himself smile could be so dorky when he still had fangs. He even wiggled his ear-fins. “Good,” he said, nodding serenely. “Good.” Under his breath, he whispered, “I’m helping.”
“Speak, speaking of good,” said Sunburst, “Starlight, do you think you could double-check my math on this?” He pushed a sheet of paper towards her. “It, it’ll send the signals from the sensor to another gem so we can look at it here. I already had the, the Doctor look at it-”
“Double-checked it, actually,” said the Doctor. “Looked fine to me.”
“But, still, it’s, I don’t want anything to go wrong. Because, with this, if it does…” Sunburst cringed.
“Sure.” Starlight shrugged and began examining Sunburst’s work. It was confusing from the very first equation, but after living in Ponyville for several moons, she was used to confusing. Sunburst’s notes helped. “Don’t want you dosing Gilda with polymorphic levels of thaumic radiation.”
Something crashed in the kitchen. “Wait, what?” squawked Gilda.
Starlight wondered if it was just her, but sitting in one place and staring at a building for most of the day turned out to be surprisingly tiring. Lyra returned ten minutes later with good news about her own assignment, so with everyone shuffled back into the villa, there wasn’t much to do for the rest of the day. After taking a minute to charm Thorax’s impressively large pile of bits and connect them with a locator gem, Starlight started whiling her time away by talking about arcanoscope designs with Sunburst and the Doctor, maybe testing some of the more basic ones and remote viewing. But Starlight had found it hard to focus on that topic, and after dinner, she’d turned in almost immediately and fallen asleep soon after.
She didn’t get any nightmares. (And thank goodness for that; what would Princess Luna say if she found out about this?) But she suddenly woke up in dark — past midnight, according to one of the clocks — feeling incredibly thirsty. She licked her lips and rolled out of bed, careful not to wake anyone.
Thankfully, the villa wasn’t the creaky kind, and Starlight made it to the kitchen without a sound. But once she’d retrieved a cup, one of her ears twitched. She wasn’t making any sound, but she could still hear something scratching nearby. Did the house have mice?
Starlight hunted the sound down a hall to one of the rooms no one had been interested in. Sunburst was sitting at a table, hunched over a sheet of paper with more surrounding him, scratching away with a pencil in flickering lamplight. He glanced over his shoulder and gave a little wave. “Hey, Starlight.” And he went right back to whatever his work was.
“Sunburst?” Starlight asked. “You’re still up?”
“Uh, yeah, yeah,” said Sunburst. He didn’t look away from his paper. “I’m just putting together other spells that might be useful for us. Like this one.” He lifted up a sheet with a particularly dense set of equations. “If, if I can make it right, it’ll, it’ll let us communicate at a distance, even through walls, with the right enchanted objects. We really shouldn’t have to regroup just to get each other up to, up to speed.”
“You can do this tomorrow. It’s-” Starlight paused to yawn. At least it helped her point. “It’s past midnight.”
“I know.” Sunburst waved her away. “But I, I’m on a roll right now, and I don’t want to just, to just leave this alone.”
Starlight rubbed a hoof against her leg. “Are you feeling okay?”
Sunburst looked up and his eyes narrowed. “Starlight, we tal-”
“No, I’m not going to go on a ‘woe is me’ whine-fest again,” Starlight said, rolling her eyes. “It’s just nervousness. And I wanted to be sure that you were all right, too. I mean, you’re up pretty late.”
“No, it’s, I’ll be fine.” Sunburst went back to his paper. “I’m used to this. I like it. If I get tired, I’ll make myself some, some coffee.”
“You’ll have to grind them yourself,” Starlight said. “The beans are in the cabinet to the right of the icebox.”
“Yep. I saw. Get some rest, Starlight, and don’t worry about me. I, I’ll be fine.”
“Right. See you in the morning.” Starlight stifled a yawn and closed the door behind her. Sunburst could take care of himself. Now, about that water…