//------------------------------// // 13 - Flying Beneath the Radar // Story: The Amulet Job // by Rambling Writer //------------------------------// Thorax-Earth-Beige attempted to memorize the whorls in the conference table, but his mind refused to rest long enough to do so. He needed to speak to Goumada-Unicorn-Marble for… what, exactly? The possibility of cheating? He was going to be found out. He knew he was. He was going to cave and he was going to spill everything and he was going to- Deep breaths. No, you’re not. Thorax-Earth-Beige put a hoof on his chest and took those deep breaths. It only helped a little. He kept wanting to turn into something like a roc and smash his way out of the casino. But that’d only make things about a bazillion times worse, and he didn’t have enough skill to turn into something so radically different from his normal size anyway. It almost made him wish for Pharynx-Changeling. Almost. He glanced up. No strong emotions were coming from the dealer-unicorn-violet and she looked almost bored, one hoof propping up her head as she looked vaguely in the direction of the door. At least she’d be fine. The mare-earth-orange still tasted like she wanted to murder Thorax-Earth-Beige, but that was normal at this point. The guard-earth-green and the guard-pegasus-pink didn’t have any emotions, one way or the other; after all, this was just a job to them. Thorax-Earth-Beige tasted a hint of annoyance from the other side of the door, then Goumada-Unicorn-Marble walked inside. Thorax-Earth-Beige managed to keep himself from bolting; this was the pony they were stealing from, after all. She had to know who he was. She had the right piercing eyes and there was just something about her that smelled like “slimy, sleazy leader”. Maybe it was the way she moved. Maybe it was the way she seemed to look at ponies like they were things to be used. It reminded him far too much of Chrysalis-Changeling. Thorax-Earth-Beige closed his mouth as tightly as he could and looked down. “I heard there was an accusation concerning cheating,” Goumada-Unicorn-Marble said. “He was cheating!” yelled the mare-earth-orange, pointing at Thorax-Earth-Beige. “He was doing too well, and-” Her head snapped to one side as Goumada-Unicorn-Marble backhoofed her hard across the face. “I wasn’t talking to you,” she said. She was actually contemptuous beneath her calm voice. “Do not speak unless you are spoken to.” WIthout waiting for a response (and the mare-earth-orange was too busy nursing her muzzle to respond, anyway), she looked at the guard-earth-green. “Just standard procedure, ma’am,” said the guard-earth-green. “The orange mare accused the tan stallion of cheating, then the dealer of colluding with him, then she made a move and had to be restrained.” She shrugged. “I don’t think she had any evidence at all besides her own messed-up mind-” (The mare-earth-orange made an angry sound of protest, but shut up when Goumada-Unicorn-Marble glared at her) “-but you want us to bring all accused cheaters to you, so…” “Mmhmm.” Goumada-Unicorn-Marble wasn’t feeling anything besides annoyed. This was just a chore for her. “Let’s hear each pony’s version of the incident. You first.” She pointed at the mare-earth-orange. “And give me your name.” The mare-earth-orange flinched, then held her head high. It was hard to tell how much of her anger was directed towards Thorax-Earth-Beige and how much was directed towards Goumada-Unicorn-Marble. “Autumn Glade. I played a few rounds of poker, nothing special. Then he comes in-” She point-stabbed at Thorax-Earth-Beige. “-and suddenly he starts cleaning up. And I know you can’t be that good of a player-” “Correction,” said Goumada-Unicorn-Marble. “You can’t be that good of a player.” Glade-Earth-Orange opened her mouth, closed it again, then yelled, “There’s too much randomness in poker! But it was like he knew every hoof the others had! And I was getting bad hoof after bad hoof, and- He was too lucky!” “Mmhmm,” said Goumada-Unicorn-Marble. She pointed at the dealer-unicorn-violet. “You are… Riffle Wash, correct?” “Yes’m,” said Riffle-Unicorn-Violet automatically. “And how did you see events play out?” “We were in the Artifact Room, playing hold ’em at one of the five-hundred-bit buy-in tables,” Riffle-Unicorn-Violet said. “It was uneventful until he-” She pointed at Thorax-Earth-Beige. “-arrived and started winning most of the hooves. And I’d like to add that most of the rounds never went to the showdown, so I don’t know what cards they had. Most of the players accepted it gracefully, but Glade accused him of cheating. Then she accused me of working with him, made a move towards me, and then-” She didn’t place any special emphasis on that word, but Thorax-Earth-Beige tasted a brief spike of anger when she said it. “-the guards moved in to capture her.” Maybe she was angry that the guards hadn’t moved in before. “One of the guards went to fetch you. We waited and- were brought here.” Goumada-Unicorn-Marble’s gaze flitted to the guard-earth-green behind them. Whether she nodded or not, Thorax-Earth-Beige couldn’t say, but Goumada-Unicorn-Marble seemed satisfied. “And you’ve been working here… two years, yes?” “This is my third, actually.” “Hmm.” Goumada-Unicorn-Marble pointed at Thorax-Earth-Beige. “And you?” Managing to not squirm in his chair, Thorax-Earth-Beige said, “I picked up some tokens-” “Your name?” snapped Goumada-Unicorn-Marble. Thorax-Earth-Beige almost bolted right there. “Hmm? Oh, um, Lucent Sunrise. Anyway, I, I got some tokens from the register. I, uh, went to the table and played a few rounds. Then Glade decided to take out her bad luck on me and the dealer, and, uh, things got nasty.” He did his best to look innocent. “Then the guards intervened, and, yeah.” “I see.” Goumada-Unicorn-Marble’s emotions were still. She didn’t really care about this. By now, she didn’t even care enough to be annoyed. She paced around the room a few times, staring at the floor, then said to Glade-Earth-Orange, “And what was your proof of him cheating, again? He was doing better than you?” “He was too good,” snapped Glade-Earth-Orange. “It was like he knew everything, and-” “So… he was doing better than you.” Thorax-Earth-Beige almost reeled from the indignation coming from Glade-Earth-Orange. “…I… guess, if you simplify it down to meaninglessness, yeah. But-” “Silence.” Glade-Earth-Orange shut up and Goumada-Unicorn-Marble did another few moments of pacing. “As I have no reason to believe otherwise, I will assume the aggressive player was simply deluding herself of her skill and luck, or lack thereof.” “What?!” Glade-Earth-Orange jumped to her feet. “I am not deluding myself! He-” Goumada-Unicorn-Marble clicked her tongue; the guard-earth-green lunged forward, tackled Glade-Earth-Orange to the ground, and clocked her on the head. As the guard-earth-green kept Glade-Earth-Orange pinned, Goumada-Unicorn-Marble leaned down and looked Glade-Earth-Orange in the eye. “I take the hiring of my dealers very seriously,” she said. “You should, too. If Riffle was going to work with somepony, she wouldn’t make it so obvious. And suppose she was working with Lucent over there. You still attempted to handle it yourself rather than having it brought to my or the guards’ attention. I do not tolerate actions against my staff. Consider your winnings forfeit and yourself banned for the remainder of today and tomorrow.” She clicked her tongue again. “Steadfast Watch, kindly escort this miscreant from the premises.” Glade-Earth-Orange attempted to protest, but Steadfast-Earth-Green forced her head against the floor. Normally, Thorax-Earth-Beige liked the taste of happiness, but in this context, it was sickening. “And if she resists?” “Feel free to use any force necessary.” Goumada-Unicorn-Marble’s sheer lack of emotional response was almost impressive. “You hear that?” Steadfast-Earth-Green asked Glade-Earth-Orange. “Play nice.” He let her up, then roughly shoved her out the door. Goumada-Unicorn-Marble didn’t even glance after them. “Skysight, please escort these ponies back to the casino floor. You-” She pointed at Thorax-Earth-Beige. “-are free to go with your winnings, while you-” At Riffle-Unicorn-Violet. “-will go back to dealing. You may take whatever remains of Glade’s winnings as a bonus. Good day. ” Anger spiked from Riffle-Unicorn-Violet, but she kept her face blank and her voice level. “And to you.” But as they were shuttled out of the offices by Skysight-Pegasus-Pink, Thorax-Earth-Beige heard her mutter, “Not even a ten-minute break. Nooooo, she’s gotta-” Unsure of what to say, Thorax-Earth-Beige remained silent as they returned to the table. It looked untouched, and with a guard-unicorn-yellow standing watch over it, it probably was. Still muttering angrily, Riffle-Unicorn-Violet shuffled Glade-Earth-Orange’s chips into one of her pockets, then took a long, steadying breath and said to Thorax-Earth-Beige, “You should probably find another table. It might be a while before anypony else comes back here.” “Okay. Um… Be seeing you.” Thorax-Earth-Beige gave a little wave. “Or not. Probably not.” Riffle-Unicorn-Violet furrowed her brow, then smiled slightly. A little bit of happiness wormed its way to the forefront of her mind. “Probably not. Be seeing you.” But Thorax-Earth-Beige wasn’t interested in sticking around with gambling. He’d won another thousand easily and wanted some time to cool off. He pulled a certain gem from his pocket. A plethora of bright lights shone around the edge; they were pointed at the bits Starlight had put the tracking spell on, the bits he’d used to pay for his token, the bits that would be moved to the vault and maybe already had been. Time to do some tracking. Starlight would be the first to admit that her common sense was a bit low. That she could be impulsive. That she could be self-indulgent. That she had an alarming tendency to use magic like a hammer while looking at the world like it was made of nails. And even she thought thermite tape was dangerous. It was only the Doctor’s incessant talking that made her think of doing it in the first place. He just would not shut up about it. “Just think of the potential!” “It’d be really handy to have if we ever need to cut through something quick-like.” “It’s a way to flex your arcane muscles.” “I would really like to see it and I’m going to keep bugging you about it until you make it.” “Bugging you bugging you bugging you…” Technically, thermite tape was just a name Sunburst had slapped on because it sounded cool; no real thermite was used and enchantments just made the tape extremely hot when triggered. But based on the arcane equations, the “extremely hot” of the tape was still close enough to the reaction temperature of thermite to make Starlight nervous. She had a ceramic flower pot to help hold the tape before it heated up, but thermite could still melt ceramics like butter. There was more to be done, but no way in Tartarus was Starlight going to be doing all of it alone. “It’s just, I really don’t see what the big deal is,” Sunburst said as followed Starlight out, levitating a planter behind him. “I ran the numbers repeatedly, and as long as you did it right, it’s, it’s quite safe.” “Uh-huh,” said Starlight. Sunburst had always had a… problem with priorities. Tell him that his house had exploded because of a badly-brewed potion, and he’d be more concerned about which potion had gone bad than, you know. “And what happens if I didn’t do it right?” The gravity of the situation still failed to grab him. “Well, ah, that, um, depends on what you didn’t do right. Probably just fizzle out. I put in a bunch of failsafes, just in case.” Which explained some of the weird not-quite redundancies Starlight had seen. Luckily, she’d figured they were there for a reason and hadn’t removed them. Sunburst plonked the planter in the most open part of the yard. “Wait here, and I’ll, I’ll check if Lyra and the Doctor have found any, any shovels yet,” he said. He trotted back into the house. Starlight took a seat next to the planter and stared at her flower pot. More specifically, the line of tape stuck to the bottom of the inside of the pot. If it worked, the tape would melt right through the pot in seconds. There was a lot of heat in there, and Starlight didn’t want to touch it for risk of setting it off. One way to dissuade certain spell-happy ponies from using magic was to have them risk physical disfigurement — or worse — if that happened. She heard some scuffle above and looked up. Bon Bon was lowering herself down from the roof with a rope attached to… something, while Gilda and Derpy dangled off her like some kind of strange (and angry and foul-mouthed, in Gilda’s case) fruit. Whatever Bon Bon was using, it seemed to be working; since her going was slow but steady. Noticing the pony below, Derpy managed to wave. “Hi, Starlight!” “Hey,” said Starlight. “What’s up?” “Pun predictability,” said Derpy. “Also weight testing. This reel thingy can hold a lot of weight without slowing down.” She nodded as sagely as she could in that position. Right, the ascender. “Yeah, I’m not surprised. Sunburst said he put a lot of work into that and he does not do things by halves.” “You know what, you two can just let go now,” said Bon Bon. “I-” The first sentence had only barely gotten out before Gilda had dropped to the ground, flexing her claws. “That’s gonna be sore tomorrow,” she muttered. She glanced at the empty planter and raised an eyebrow. “What’s going on?” “You that thermite tape stuff Sunburst kept going on about this morning?” Starlight asked. “We’re testing it.” “Then hang on a sec.” Gilda vanished inside the house. Soon after, she reappeared with a bow and a pile of blue-tipped arrows. “Okay, I’m ready.” “Where in the sunblasted Tartarus-born blazes did you find arctic arrows?” yelped Bon Bon. “I don’t think they’re legal!” “North bedroom, second floor,” said Gilda casually. “Buggy and I found ’em while we were looking for gems. Last griff who was here must’ve left them. And if you care that much about legality, sweetie, what’re you doing here?” “Well-” spluttered Bon Bon. “That’s- I guess-” She kept looking at the tape, then at Gilda, and repeating. “I suppose- Maybe- Just be careful, alright?” “Don’t look at me. They’re the ones working with thermite.” “I told Sunburst it was a stupid idea,” Starlight said defensively, “but nooooo, he was all-” “If it’s stupid but it works, it isn’t stupid!” Sunburst said, showing impeccable timing as he returned from inside the house, a shovel over his withers. “It’s just, it’s just risky!” The Doctor followed Sunburst out with a shovel of his own. “And risk brings reward, as they say.” He and Sunburst began digging up random clumps of dirt and dumping them into the planter. “Fortune favors the bold. No pain, no gain. Et cetera, et cetera.” “Witty saying!” Lyra added as she trotted out. “Starlight, is it normal to taste blue after casting a lot of magic?” She ran her tongue over her lips. “Because sweet mother duck, am I tasting blue.” “That just means you’re pushing yourself harder than usual,” said Starlight. “You’ll be fine as long as you’re not tasting high-pitched fuschia.” “Gotcha.” Lyra smacked her lips. It was simple: Starlight would hang the flower pot, and the tape inside, from a rope. They’d trigger the tape, with the elevated position of the pot allowing for better observation of how well it was working. The molten ceramic would be caught it the planter below to keep it from lighting the grass on fire and doing Bad Things to the house. Once Sunburst and the Doctor had a good amount of dirt in the planter and shaped it into a vague bowl, Starlight grabbed the end of the rope tied to the pot and dangled it above the planter. She didn’t know how her magic would deal with that temperature from holding the pot directly, and she didn’t want to. Everybody was ready as Sunburst made the final adjustments, watching as if it were a play (or in Starlight’s case, a trainwreck about to happen). Finally, Sunburst took twenty steps back from the planter and his horn started glowing. “Are you sure that’s far enough? Thermite burns at over four thousand degrees Mahrenheit, you know!” yelled Starlight. “I know!” Sunburst yelled back. “But part of the spell is keeping the heat from, from spreading too far!” He turned back to the pot. He paused. He took twenty more steps back from the planter. His horn sparked; for a second, nothing happened. Starlight held her breath, waiting for- Something glowed dimly in the pot. Then it glowed brightly. Then the entire bottom began melting away. Starlight instinctively cringed away; even from such a small source, the heat hit her like a furnace. Luckily, she kept the rope steady. Sunburst, the Doctor, and Bon Bon leaned forward, watching intently and Oooooooing. Gilda had an arrow notched, but she hadn’t drawn the bow back yet. And Lyra and Derpy were splitting a muffin, chowing down on it like it was popcorn. Even extreme as it was, the heat didn’t do anything to Starlight’s magic, and she held the rope steady. Soon, the reaction had burnt itself out. All that was left of the flower pot was the upper rim, dripping molten ceramic. The planter had caught all of the runoff and Starlight guessed it was making some pretty nice glass in there. Or maybe pretty bad glass, what with all the impurities. Sunburst raced up to the planter as cautiously as he could, blocking his face with a leg. Leaning over, he looked into the planter and giggled. “I think it works,” he said. “Heads up!” yelled Gilda. TWANG. Thud. An arrow zipped across the yard and buried itself in the dirt right near the top of the planter. Immediately, a wave of ice washed out, smothering the bucket in a frigid blanket; Sunburst jumped back with a yelp. Sheer heat meant the ice barely lasted a few seconds, but that was enough for she to notch and release another arrow. “I… I really don’t think that was necessary,” Sunburst said quietly, pushing his glasses up his muzzle. “Don’t care.” TWANG. Thud. “I am not taking any chances.” (Starlight’s opinion of Gilda promptly went up.) “You can make this easily, right?” asked Bon Bon. She was tilting her head this way and that as she stared into the planter, trying to see the melted ceramic and molten glass beneath the ice. And were her eyes glittering? “Well, um, I can’t, but, Starlight can. If you can browbeat her into it.” “I’ll help!” the Doctor said brightly. “This worked out just as well as we could have hoped! It heated up quickly, burnt itself out in the right time, didn’t spread… You see, Starlight? Not everything that can be incredibly dangerous actually is!” (Maybe that’s just me, thought Starlight.) Gilda glanced at Starlight, a skeptical expression on her face, and made a “cuckoo” motion while pointing at the Doctor. A prismatic streak plummeted from the sky and landed right next to Starlight. “Whatcha doin’?” asked Rainbow. “Almost burning the house down with thermite,” answered Starlight. “Cool. But then shouldn’t we be doing this at the casino?” Heh. “Anyway,” continued Rainbow, “Goumada’s more than a bit of a jerk, but I think I got some good info. I had to go into the back to get to her office, and- Y’know, where’re those blueprints? I wanna check them.” Tracking the bits down wasn’t a pain, but it was definitely harder than the phrase “tracking spell” made it sound. First, Thorax-Earth-Beige had to deduce which lights pointed to bits that had actually made it into the vault and which were in the possession of other ponies after being used for change (he’d almost chased a light clear out of the casino before he realized his mistake). Then, since the spell didn’t take distance into account, he had to figure out where they were so he didn’t walk himself into walls. And then he had to figure out which floor they were on. And so, Thorax-Earth-Beige found himself rolling back and forth on his hooves as he stood in front of the elevator bank, waiting for a car to arrive. He looked at the gem again. Still pointing inwards and up. Pretty steeply, too, although not so steep that the vault would be near the top. Hopefully. Inside the elevator, Thorax-Earth-Beige realized he didn’t have any idea about which floor the vault might be on. So he went for the best option: hit all the buttons for all the floors, lighting the control panel up like a Hearth’s Warming tree. The doors closed- “Wait!” A stallion-unicorn-white sprinted over and waved his hoof between the doors; they stopped and reopened to let him in. “Sorry,” the stallion-unicorn-white (Thorax-Earth-Beige couldn’t taste any sorrow there), “but I’m quite busy and can’t afford to wait for the next elevator.” The doors closed and the elevator started moving up. Thorax-Earth-Beige only picked up a few words; he was too busy staring at the tracking gem. “Mmhmm.” “Now,” the stallion-unicorn-white said to himself as he turned to the panel, “where’s th-” He looked at the light show of elevator buttons. He lowered his hoof. He blinked. He looked at Thorax-Earth-Beige. He wordlessly started punching the “Door Open” button. When he got off on the second, his relief was such that you’d have thought his lifelong cancer had been cured. Of course, Thorax-Earth-Beige realized with a cringe, maybe he himself should’ve done this on the stairs. At the sixth floor, the light was mostly horizontal. At the seventh, it still wasn’t quite horizontal, but now, “not quite” was pointing down rather than up. Thorax-Earth-Beige quickly got off, praying that no poor soul would need to use that elevator before it reached the top floor. The light was pointing towards the insides of the hotel, exactly where the others had said it would be. Thorax-Earth-Beige set off down one hallway; the light began moving, but only a little, and still pointed in. He turned a corner and kept walking. Still the light pointed inward. Once he was halfway between each end of the hallway, the light was aimed straight in. Just to be sure, Thorax-Earth-Beige completed his circuit of the building. The vault was definitely surrounded by the interior walls, just like they’d guessed. Perfect. Except that they didn’t know how to get into the vault. Thorax-Earth-Beige pocketed the gem and glared at one of the inside hotel rooms. These were supposed to be fake, weren’t they? Maybe they were actually the entrance. Almost definitely not, but whatever. Thorax-Earth-Beige tested the doorknob of one. It jiggled like that of any locked door. Right? He tested one of the real rooms. Right. But maybe that was just for authenticity. He looked left and right. Nopony was coming. He shifted one of his front hooves to the long, thin tentacle of an octopus and squeezed it under the edge of one of the fake doors. Far too soon (about an inch, to be exact), he bumped into a wall. Right? He prayed his selected room was empty and slid the tentacle under one of the real doors. Right; he soon felt the open air of the room on the other side of the door and pulled his leg back out after he’d gone a foot. At least one door was a fake. But testing all of the others? Yeah, right. Thorax-Earth-Beige didn’t have the time, patience, or security to try them all safely. They’d have to do that some other way. But! At least he’d confirmed the location of the vault. Now they had to figure out how to get into it. And find its entrance. After some time away from the Artifact Vault, Thorax-Earth-Beige felt ready to go back to poker and try a few more games. As somepony else, this time, and more subtly. Apparently, amateurs could put repeated losses down to their own lack of skill, but pros, not so much. One last look to be sure that the hallway was still clear, a flash, and Thorax-Pegasus-Blue poked at the Down arrow for the elevator. An all-too-familiar stallion-unicorn-white staggered out when the doors opened, his mind overflowing with exhaustion and done-ness. “Watch out,” he said. “There’s a khaki earth pony who’s going around punching all the buttons. Apparently he thinks it’s funny. I had to wait five minutes for another elevator.” The words were out before Thorax-Pegasus-Blue could stop them. “Couldn’t you have taken the stairs?” “Stairs? Stairs?” The stallion-unicorn-white rolled his eyes. “Who has time for those?” He snorted. “But he’ll stand out in a crowd, and I swear, when I find him…” Thorax-Pegasus-Blue stepped into the elevator and set it on a downward course. “Well, good luck,” he said as the doors closed. “I hope you don’t miss him.” And he was away. Lyra had volunteered to help the Doctor find any kinks in the thermite tape, so Starlight was helping Sunburst with the arcanoscope. They were working on the first steps towards shrinking its output so the entire casino’s readout could fit inside a room. Had she really been so nervous only a few days ago? So despondent? So sure that this would never work? And yet here she was, casually working with Sunburst on a long-range magic sensor with a very clear idea of scanning the casino’s magic. It was amazing how much taking that first step could bolster your confidence. “And, um, make sure the ruby and the emerald, that they’re not touching,” said Sunburst. “It’ll cause magic to bleed from one to the other. Maybe we should just stick some tape between them.” Good thing tape was magically neutral. Except for duct tape. Duct tape was the most magical thing in the universe, with WD-40 close behind. As Starlight wiggled the piece of tape between the two gems, she said, “Speaking of tape, sorry I was so loud about the thermite tape before. I’ve just seen magic get out of control too many times to try making something so dangerous without much testing.” Sunburst waved her off. “Eh, you’re fine. I know I’m, that I’m not exactly what you’d call, uh…” One of his ears went down. “What would you call it? Focused? Alert?” “…Prudent?” “Close enough. But you know what, what I’m talking about, right?” Sunburst reached into the frame of the arcanoscope and jiggled something; Starlight’s coat stood on end for a second as magic hummed. “I just get so involved in something, it’s, it’s like I have blinders on and I ignore the obvious and-” Something went zap and Sunburst pulled his hoof out with a yelp. “I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine,” he said quickly. “Just- surprised.” He stuck his hoof in his mouth and sucked. Starlight couldn’t help smirking. When Sunburst stopped sucking, he said, “Anyway, maybe, maybe I should have somepony call me out a bit more just to make sure that I’ve, I’ve covered all my bases.” “Just remember to listen,” teased Starlight. “What was that? I wasn’t listening.” Starlight chuckled. It was so easy, with even just one companion at her side. No wonder Twilight and the others talked about saving Equestria so casually; Starlight knew that what they were attempting was difficult, but she felt like she could take on the world. To get by, all she needed was a little help from her friends. And she almost hadn’t done it. It’d taken Rainbow Dash and (what seemed to be) a phenomenally bone-headed move to even take the first step. Meanwhile, the results were speaking for themselves, even if they weren’t done quite yet. How had she ever done anything when she’d spent all her time looking out for number one? Maybe she really hadn’t. The first time her town had faced opposition, it’d fallen ri- “-arlight?” said Sunburst. “Do you think you can entangle these?” He waved two gems at her. Starlight twitched as her train of thought derailed. “Hmm? Oh, yeah. Give them here.” “You alright? You kinda zoned out there for a sec.” “…You know what, yeah. I’m alright.”