“This is a bad idea,” moaned Sunburst.
“It’s also the only idea,” whispered Bon Bon. She pushed past another knot of gamblers and inched closer to the Employees Only door.
“Why me? Why me?”
“Because we needed a unicorn to fake being an arcane repairmare, Lyra’s at the rehearsal, there’s no way Starlight’s going anywhere near the casino, and Thorax doesn’t know enough about magic.”
“That, that was rhetorical.”
“I don’t care.”
Less than an hour ago, Bon Bon had dragged Sunburst to a clothing store and used some of Thorax’s hard-earned bits to go shopping: a cheap suit and gold shirt for her, a blue work shirt for Sunburst. After stuffing some random junk into a bag and giving Sunburst a clipboard, the two of them looked like a guard escorting some kind of technician as long as you didn’t look too closely. But that shouldn’t be a problem; once ponies thought they saw something, it was hard to convince them otherwise. And thank Celestia the casino was so busy the guards couldn’t stay in one place for too long, doing things such as looking at a random guard and her escort. They still didn’t have a keygem, but Bon Bon had a way around that. Hopefully.
“This is, it is not going to work,” Sunburst said yet again. “We look like idiots. I miss my robe.”
“It won’t if you keep talking about it,” snapped Bon Bon. “I don’t care how loud it is in here, somepony’s going to overhear you if you don’t shut up.”
“Shuttingupnow.”
The casino was busy and nopony gave them more than a passing glance. Bon Bon tried to keep her gait strong and purposeful, but every few seconds, she’d have to push somepony aside and start from scratch. She didn’t try coaching Sunburst; he wasn’t the kind to watch how he walked for more than a few seconds. And honestly, Bon Bon would’ve preferred almost anyone else. He was ill-suited to be a field agent and really should’ve been the guy who bragged about all the gadgets he made and reprimanded agents for losing them. At least he didn’t need to try to act like a guard.
Finally, they emerged from the crowd at the relevant door. Sunburst glanced at the locking panel and shot a Look at Bon Bon; he still wasn’t convinced with her explanation of how to get in. Luckily, he wasn’t the one she needed to convince.
Taking a deep breath, Bon Bon waved her fetlock at the panel. When nothing happened, she frowned, pulled her sleeve back to expose her bare ankle, and cursed. A perfect act, perfectly timed; the guard stopped as she passed them by and glanced at them. Bon Bon seized the moment to flag her down. “Hey, um, a little help?” she said nervously. “I, um, it’s my first week here and I forgot my- key.” Was the right term? Well, too late now. Bon Bon showed her lack of a gem to the guard and grimaced. “And I’ve got to watch this guy do some maintenance work on the security system, and fuuuuuuuudge.” She glanced at Sunburst; he was doing a very good job of looking self-conscious. Of course, it probably wasn’t an act.
The guard rolled her eyes as she walked over. “Sheesh. Make sure you don’t forget it again, okay? You know how the boss can get.”
“No, I don’t,” said Bon Bon. “First week, remember?”
“You’ve managed to go a whole week without having her chew you out? Lucky.” The guard placed her fetlock near the door, beep, and it opened right up. “Get in before somepony else spots us.” She hustled Bon Bon and Sunburst through the door and quickly shut it behind them.
They were in. Easy.
Sunburst stared at Bon Bon. “How-?”
“Nopony wants to be the jerk who didn’t let the rookie in,” said Bon Bon. She ran over the directions to the security hub. Pass one hallway, take a right, go around the corner at the end- “Ponies aren’t as alert as you probably think they are,” she said as she set off. “Be a little bit of gum in their mane, and they’ll do anything to get you out.”
“Wow. Um. Okay.” Sunburst scurried after her, pushing his glasses back into place. “How, how did you know that?”
“I read about it in a lot of books.” SMILE had plenty of field training and social engineering manuals, after all, and Sweetie Drops had devoured them like candy.
Nopony looked twice at them as they walked through halls. Rainbow was right; the blueprints were accurate. When Bon Bon looked up, the ceiling was a dropped ceiling, infrastructure covered by the usual fiberglass tiles. Good. Very few signs of cameras. Also good. Right… then left… and there was the sign, just like Rainbow and the blueprints had said: Security Hub. A guard was approaching from the other side. Yes.
“Hey!” Bon Bon waved down the guard. “Do you think you could help me for a second? I left my keygem at home and I need to get this guy-” She nudged Sunburst; he smiled nervously. “-into the security hub. We’re doing maintenance.”
“Maintenance?” asked the guard. She looked at Sunburst who, to his credit, didn’t flinch. “Uh-huh. What sort of maintenance?”
“I’m- not sure,” said Bon Bon, cringing inside. She’d wanted to come up with an explanation last night, but they couldn’t do that without knowing how the security system actually worked. “He’s the tech. I’m just supposed to watch him while he works.”
Sunburst pushed his glasses up his muzzle. “You, you wouldn’t understand. Very technical. Very complicated. It wouldn’t mean anything to you.” Was his voice a bit deeper?
“Uh-huh,” the guard said again. She looked back and forth between Sunburst and Bon Bon, her ears flicking. Finally, she said, “I’ll let you in, but I’ll need to watch you both. For security’s sake. Just in case.”
Bon Bon wasn’t sure if she should be panicked. The guard was a pegasus, so she wouldn’t know what kind of magic Sunburst was casting to scan the system, but that kind of depended on the system being largely magic in nature. (Which, okay, was pretty darn likely, but still.) “That won’t be a problem, will it?” she asked while thinking about what she really meant very hard in Sunburst’s direction and praying she was telepathic.
Maybe she was. She could see the exact instant realization hit; Sunburst’s eyes widened for a second before he recomposed himself. “Of course not,” he said. “I’m just… seeing what’s up with the system. Somepony watching won’t bother me.”
“Uh-huh,” said the guard yet again. Another look at Sunburst, then she unlocked the door and not-quite-shoved them in.
Bon Bon didn’t know what she expected, but it wasn’t quite like this. Row after row of (lockers? Cabinets? Racks?) racks stood in long, claustrophobic aisles in an unadorned room. The floor was cold metal, the walls were bare, the lights weren’t as bright as outside, and the wiring conduits were undisguised, all very utilitarian. Speaking of wiring conduits, there were far more than Bon Bon would have expected, almost a dozen. They came down from the ceiling and spilled strange glass wires over the tops of the racks. The racks themselves were labelled things like Floors 1 - 5 or Roulette Wheels or Artifact Vault. To distract herself from the fact that she had no idea what she was looking at, Bon Bon glanced up. The security room still had a dropped ceiling. That was something.
Sunburst twitched, then kept walking. Impressively, he managed to look like he knew what he was doing. Bon Bon followed him to one of the racks (she didn’t know how he chose that one). Inside was a tangle of more of those glass wires running through a hole in the top of the rack and plugged into some sort of crystalline lattice. Sunburst twitched again, but he was smiling. Igniting his horn, he pushed some of the wires away and plunged his head into the racks to examine one of the lattices more closely. Well, that was what Bon Bon hoped was happening.
“So,” said the guard, leaning against one of the racks, “what’re you working on?”
“Oh, you know,” Bon Bon said as casually as she could. “Security stuff. It’ll be boring, you don’t need to stay here.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” snapped the guard.
“She, she’s right,” Sunburst said before Bon Bon could respond. “Most of the work will just, it’ll just look like my horn glowing as I poke glass wires. Really boring.”
Apparently, the guard had a catchphrase. “Uh-huh.” She nodded. “So what’re you working on?”
“Increasing the silica’s overlapping thaum throughput and decreasing its attenuation while simultaneously ensuring frequency stabilization and coherence to prevent informational corruption,” Sunburst said casually. He glanced up at the two of them and, seeing the looks on their faces, added, “The system can, it can handle more stuff at once and still work fine.”
The guard blinked once, twice, thrice. “Oh… kay…” she said. She shuffled for the door. “I’ll, um, leave you… to it… then.” And she was gone.
“That was incredible!” Bon Bon whispered to Sunburst. “It almost sounded like it meant something.”
“That’s because it did, if, if you know the jargon,” said Sunburst. “I recognize the system. These are fiber arcanics.”
“Fiber whatsits?” asked Bon Bon. The term was vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place it.
“It’s, it’s a way of transporting magic. You know how crystals like quartz can, they can hold magical energy? If you melt them and, and you extend them into a wire like this, it’s, the structure allows for near-lossless transmission of magical energy over long distances. Or short ones, I guess.” Sunburst shoved his head into one of the racks on the other side of the aisle and began picking through the wires. He poked one of them with his horn and twitched. “And, wow, they’ve got a lot of magic running through, running through here. This one’s wind magic for A/C, but I bet there’s also visual spells for cameras, audio spells for loudspeakers and radios, base magic to just keep things working… Every single thaum of magic used the building, probably.” He glanced at Bon Bon and grinned. “Yes, including whatever security systems are on the, the vault.” He turned back to the rack and kept muttering. “If they’ve got something generating hydrothaumatic energy in the gorge, then… Yes, that’d work nicely.”
All the magic in the building. All of it. Getting pumped through here. If it’d been on her side, Bon Bon would’ve been ranting about the single-point-of-failure design. But it wasn’t, so she wasn’t. In fact, she was ecstatic about the chance to fiddle with… everything, really. Although- “You know fiber… arcanics?”
“Know them? I wrote a paper on them! Huge paper! Thirty pages long! Thesis-level! Perfect grade.” Sunburst smirked and pushed his glasses into position with a bit more firmness than usual. “Best grade I ever got. Heck, based on some citations I’ve gotten, it’s one of the more important papers in the field. Yeah, I, I’d say I know a bit about them.” He rummaged through the bags, pulled out the arcanoscope, and ran it over the wires, constantly making “ah” and “hm” noises. But he was smiling, so Bon Bon figured it was good.
Eventually, Sunburst stuffed the arcanoscope away. “So do you want the, the good news or the bad news?”
Ah, yes. Good news/bad news. How despicable, yet expected. “Good news.”
“The good news is that there’s no… obfuscation of the magic coming in. It, it’s as easy to read as, as any spell a unicorn can cast.”
But Bon Bon knew a double-edged blessing when she saw one. This was too easy, even if they’d had to con their way past two locked doors to get here. “So they just have it lying bare for any unicorn to read?” she asked. “Why is it okay that their security barely has any security?”
“Because this is cutting-edge stuff,” Sunburst said, patting the rack. “Most ponies who would know what the wires are, are even for would be hardcore futurists or neck-deep in research. I, I’m honestly surprised they could make the system this big to begin with, let alone having it actually work. Plus, I laid some of the groundwork in the first place, so, so I already know what to look for. Its security is pure esotericism.”
Reasonable enough. Bon Bon gave Sunburst the benefit of the doubt. “And the bad news?”
“I don’t have any real bad news, so this bit doesn’t work. Instead, I have better news: I think I know how to reroute a copy of the signals to us.”
Someone somewhere in the universe was having a very bad day. That was the only explanation for the streak of luck they were having.
“It’s almost the same thing as, as the arcanoscope,” continued Sunburst. “It’s just the, you know, the source of the signals that’s different. It’s, I mean, I can’t do it now, but if we come back here later-”
“Won’t the range matter? Like we discussed last night?”
Sunburst rolled his eyes. “I needed to fit a power source that could cross miles in a gem this big. Here, we’ve got the power source handed to us on a crystalline platter.” He gestured at the rack. “Unfortunately, we can’t do anything like that here, now, so…” He looked down the aisle. “Let’s see what other kinds of magic are in here.” He went to the next rack and poked around. “Visual magic from cameras. Mmhmm. And-”
“Think you can cover for us if another guard shows up?” asked Bon Bon. She didn’t like asking so many questions; being left in the dust was a tad disconcerting.
“Bon Bon, please,” Sunburst tutted. “I’m a scientist. I can pull more technical arcanobabble from my butt than any science-fiction writer you can name. So: yes.” He went to another rack, performed his poking routine, and whispered, “Probably the intercom system… completely bare like this? That is asking for so much trouble. Bon Bon, could, could you get the notepad from my bag?”
“So you’ve got a train,” said Gilda. “You take it off its tracks so it can go anywhere. But you take away the cars it pulls so it’s a lot smaller. And then you run it in the same loop anyway.” She kneaded her temples. “Tell me why that makes any sort of sense.”
Starlight watched the latest steam vehicle — she’d decided to call it a locomotive — turn a corner some distance away. “Because you don’t need train cars to carry just one pony, patrols usually follow the same routes anyway, and you can change courses quickly if you want to.” She rubbed at the telepathy anklet around her fetlock.
Starlight and Gilda were standing some distance down the road from the casino, watching the locomotives pass every now and then, trying to get some information from them. It wasn’t going too well; the locomotives never stopped long enough for them to get more than a vague image of them. Derpy had flown off to follow one along its route some time ago, and she hadn’t returned, although she was giving occasional updates on where the locomotive was moving.
Privately, Starlight wondered how much this truly mattered. Even assuming the inside of the casino had been teleport-proofed, that didn’t apply outside. The locomotives could all be in Goumada’s employ and Starlight could still blip the group to the train station — maybe even further — with no problem. (Okay, maybe a small problem, that was a long distance. But only a small problem!) They wouldn’t do anything in the heist itself. So why bother?
Gilda clacked her beak. “Hmph. Still seems stupid.”
“Not all ponies can fly.”
“I guess.” Gilda sat and waited for the next locomotive, but her tail kept twitching like she was ready to pounce something, anything. Starlight sympathized.
The minutes ticked by. Ponies came and went. The locomotive didn’t arrive. Gilda groaned. “Mind if I get something to eat? I swear, I’ve been sitting here for so long, I’ll even settle for your rabbit food.”
“Go ahead, but be quick about it,” said Starlight. “You need-” But Gilda was already bolting for a food cart over a block away. Starlight rolled her eyes and huffed.
Derpy fluttered down next to her. “Sorry,” she said, “but I didn’t see anything. The train just went in a loop and now it’s coming around again.” She pointed down the street; sure enough, the hulking shape of a locomotive was fast approaching.
Starlight groaned. “I was afraid of that. Unless we actually talk to the driver or wait until they return to wherever for the night, we’re probably not learning anything.”
Derpy looked down the road at the approaching locomotive. She rustled her wings. She furrowed her brow in thought. “…Starlight?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t follow me.” Derpy stepped out into the street.
Where she was immediately creamed by the locomotive.
Starlight and just about everyone else froze as Derpy yelped; she rolled down the street a good ten feet away. The locomotive screeched to a halt and the pony driving it was off in a second. “Oh no, oh no, I didn’t mean to…” she whispered. A crowd quickly gathered around Derpy; Starlight would’ve joined them if she hadn’t been told not to. Derpy had a plan. Right?
Starlight couldn’t see Derpy through the ponies surrounding her, but she could hear her. “I’m okay!” Derpy chirped. “Mostly okay! Pretty okay!” A pause, a grunt of effort. “Yep! Pretty okay! Could be worse, am I right?”
“Oh, Celestia, I am so sorry,” somepony — the driver? — said. “I should’ve-”
Derpy sounded way too happy for someone who’d been hit that hard and nearly run over. “Nope! It’s my fault. I didn’t watch where I was going. And I’m okay! Really!”
“But I should’ve-”
Gilda chose that moment to return, a bag of fried carrots in her beak and the claws of one forefoot holding a cup of soda. “I got you something,” she said, tossing the carrots at Starlight. They bounced off her head. “What’s going on?”
“Derpy got hit by a train!” Starlight whisper-screamed.
“Oh.” Gilda took a sip of soda and promptly spat it back out. “What?!”
“That road vehicle thing, that locomotive-” Starlight said breathlessly, “she just- told me not to follow her, and then she-” She flung her hoof out. “-went into the street, and wham!”
“And- you’re not helping her or checking to see if she’s okay?” Gilda hissed, crushing the cup in her claws..
Derpy’s voice filtered through the crowd. “How many times do I have to say I’m okay?” She was annoyed for the first time Starlight had met her. “Well, don’t do that, that hurts even when you’re at your best!”
“She’s got a plan,” said Starlight, not remotely confidently. “Probably. Maybe. Hopefully.”
“Look, is there anything I can do for you?” asked the driver. “Anything at all?”
“Well… if you could take me home, I guess that’d be nice.” Derpy sounded reluctant. “But I don’t need it.”
“Wait, is she showing that mook to our house?” The muscles on Gilda’s talons were standing out so much it was a wonder she wasn’t digging into the concrete. “If she screws this all up, I swear I’ll-”
“I can do that!” the driver said, sounding very eager-to-please, almost desperately so.
“It’s on the edge of town, on the other side of the gorge,” said Derpy. “It’s a long trip.”
Gilda blinked and loosened up. “Okay. That’s not our house.” She glanced back and forth between Starlight and the crowd surrounding Derpy. “What is she up to?”
“If I knew, I’d tell you. Let’s move back.”
“Don’t worry!” said the driver. “This engine’s got plenty of energy left and room for you! Come on!” An unassuming unicorn in what was probably a policemare’s uniform pushed out of the crowd, leading Derpy by the hoof, and pulled her toward the locomotive.
“This is too weird,” whispered Gilda. “Even for you ponies. Should we help her?”
Derpy put a hoof on a set of steps leading to some seats on the locomotive. She glanced out over the crowd; her eyes met Starlight’s. Starlight made her best questioning expression and pointed at her horn. Almost unnoticeably, Derpy shook her head. The driver helped her onto the locomotive; a few blasts from a horn to make the crowd disperse, a few lever pulls in the right pattern, and the machine was off, Derpy with it.
“No,” said Starlight. “We shouldn’t.” Why, she couldn’t say. But Derpy had been trustworthy so far, and there was no reason to stop now.
Derpy’s voice came through the anklet. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Is it expensive?”
“What’s she doing?” asked Gilda. “Those’re the bad guys!”
“The casino pays for it? Do you work for them?”
“I don’t know!” said Starlight. “But she seemed-”
“Do the police need to do anything in return?”
“-pretty sure of…” Ding. Starlight smiled at the departing locomotive. “Oh. Oh, that’s good.”
“What’s good?” demanded Gilda. “Glim-Glam, what is go-”
Snap-crack, and they were back in the villa’s living room. Derpy’s voice was still coming through loud and clear. Starlight’s horn was still smoking and her head was still spinning, but she barely noticed as she grabbed a quill and one of Sunburst’s pieces of scratch paper.
“-ing on?” finished Gilda. She blinked, then curled into a ball, clutching her head. “OW! A little warning would be nice, sparklebutt!”
“No time. We need to write this down.” Starlight had already scribbled enough to fill half a sheet of paper.
“Oh. But shouldn’t the cops… Never mind. How does this run?”
“Derpy’s getting the driver to tell her everything.”
11.
12.
13.
14. The elevator doors opened. A few mares got out. Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe hammered the “Close Door” button with his hoof. The elevator doors closed.
15.
16.
17. Thorax-Unicron-Taupe hammered the wall with his head.
18.
19. The elevator doors opened. Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe and the Doctor-Earth-Brown got out of the elevator. He hadn’t moved at all, and yet Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe felt like he’d run a mile. Who would’ve guessed that standing in one place could be so exhausting? He missed flight.
“You know what skyscrapers need?” he muttered to the Doctor-Earth-Brown as they walked down the hall. “Shafts. Big shafts that go from the tops of the buildings to the bottom so that pegasi can fly up without needing to use elevators that take a whole minute to get to the tops of buildings and are cramped and get stuffed with other ponies and are awkward and-”
“Couldn’t you have simply been a pegasus and flown to the airship landing pad at the top of the building?” asked the Doctor-Earth-Brown. “See, there’s a sign for it. Right over there.” He pointed at the sign: an upward-pointing arrow that said To Airship Landing Pad.
Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe blinked at the sign. Then he tossed his head back and groaned. “Let’s just get to the room,” he mumbled.
The keygem Lyra had given them worked just fine and soon the Doctor-Earth-Brown was making some last-minute adjustments to the arcanoscope. “Bit finicky, these things are,” he muttered. “Have to let Sunburst know… We never did test transporting them, did we? Ah, well.” He finally flipped a switch and a big illusion popped from the gem. Multicolored lines, faint dots, and a dim haze were etched in the air over an area about six feet cubed, give or take. Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe could barely tell what it all meant, although the lines looked like they were tracing out a building, maybe. The lines vaguely pulsed with… something, while most of the dots moved around, seemingly at random (but mostly horizontally).
Whatever it was, it made sense to the Doctor-Earth-Brown. “Everything seems to be in order,” he said, “and that’s us, right there.” He pointed to an unmoving pair of dots, one white and one green. “You’re the green one.”
“I am?” Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe took several steps to one side. The green dot moved a few inches over. Then it clicked: the lines were currents of magic running throughout the building while the dots were ponies (or changelings, or griffons, or…), with the colors indicating what type. Just like that, he could see the hotel in the figure the lines traced out and everything made sense. “Oh, wow.”
“That’s, what, five floors?” asked the Doctor-Earth-Brown. “Six? I think it’s six. Do you think it’s six? Indeed it is six. Do you want to do the scouting, or should I go while you sit in this nice, comfy room?”
“I’ll go out,” said Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe, arching his back.
The Doctor-Earth-Brown shrugged and made for the door. “Ah, well. Better luck ne-” His hoof was on the knob when he stopped himself. “Wait, what?”
“I need to stretch my legs,” said Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe, rolling said legs one by one, “and you can read that scope thing better than me. It makes more sense for you to stay here. Unless you want to go out.” He ducked his head into the straps of the arcanoscope’s bag.
The Doctor-Earth-Brown made a small O with his mouth. “Ah. I see. I… merely assumed-”
“You know what they say about assuming!” Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe said brightly. “Something about donkeys. Keep your anklet on.”
The halls were still empty. Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe almost slipped through several different shapes just to stretch his gestalt, but he didn’t want to risk anything. He spared a moment to glare at the sign pointing up to the airship landing pad, though. The stairwell beyond that sign was cold. Why were staircases like this always cold? He even thought it got to him more than it did to ponies, since bugs always went away during the winter, and he was, well.
The Doctor-Earth-Brown’s voice flitted through his head as he headed down. “So, ah, Thorax. You still doing alright? You hear me just fine?”
“Yep.” Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe’s footsteps echoed down the stairwell like he was in a cave or a mine shaft. “Why? You worried?”
“Not yet. Just checking that these anklets are working properly, since this is their first real field test. But I can hear you like you’re standing right next to me. Arcanoscope’s also swell. I’ll let you know if things look off.”
“Good. See you soon, then.”
After the confines of the elevator, even the boring staircase felt great. Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe could actually move his legs. Even the arcanoscope bumping lightly at his side had turned into something new and exciting. He noticed that his each of his hooves made a different sound on the steps, so he started making a simple song by timing his hoof falls correctly. At least until he passed somepony coming up and got a weird look.
The Doctor-Earth-Brown inhaled sharply. “Ah, Thorax… What, what story are you on?”
“Um… Eleventh. Why? Is there a problem?”
“I don’t believe so. But if I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing, then I think I’m seeing the Alicorn Amulet. And a mess of other things as well. Keep going. We need to confirm this.”
Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe opened his mouth, then closed it. Now wasn’t the time to ask questions. Even though he had many of them. He swallowed and convinced himself to keep walking.
He didn’t hear anything bad from the Doctor-Earth-Brown, so he assumed everything was acceptable. Finally, he said, “I’m at the bottom. Coming back up.”
“Stop when you reach the sixth floor,” the Doctor-Earth-Brown said. He sounded out of breath and a little excited. “You’ll want to see this. I’ll meet you there.”
“See what?” asked Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe. But all he could hear was the Doctor-Earth-Brown’s pants of exertion.
Somehow, the Doctor-Earth-Brown managed to reach the landing before Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe. He was bouncing on his hooves and grinning from ear to ear. “This is brilliant,” he said. “Absolutely brilliant.” He flicked on the projector of the arcanoscope, quickly adjusting it so the image could fit in the narrow stairwell. “If I’m seeing things correctly, we’re here-” That was the only set of a green dot and a white dot in view. “-and the vault is right here.”
Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe flinched when he looked at where the Doctor-Earth-Brown was pointing. The magic displayed in the illusion was twisted and sickening, an ugly red color disturbingly similar to blood. Purple and green hues twisted around the red and each other into bizarre intertwined spirals. The whole thing pulsed like a heartbeat and Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe felt like it was barely restrained, like a few small pinpricks would let it burst open and slather everything with capital-E Evil. He felt nauseous just looking at it, and he didn’t even have anything in his stomach to be nauseous with.
“Call me crazy,” said Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe, “but I think that’s the Alicorn Amulet.”
“I concur, Crazy,” said the Doctor-Earth-Brown. “Probably a load more evil artifacts in there as well.”
“Are we stealing those, too?” asked Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe.
The Doctor-Earth-Brown shrugged. “Might as well. Get those problems off the streets, bankrupt a criminal mastermind, and solve our original problem in the process. A smashing way to go out, and highly efficient, too.”
Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe would preferred to not go out at all, thanks, but he kept his mouth shut. the Doctor-Earth-Brown was in a Mood. “So what do all these mean?” He gestured vaguely at the image.
“Well, ah, you see this brownish haze throughout the whole building? That’s-”
“In small words,” Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe added hurriedly.
“It blocks teleporting. These lines here move magical energy throughout the building. This green cloud here around the Amulet is… Well, I’m not exactly sure, but I’m pretty sure it’s some sort of wind magic. And this cluster of red lines? Those are all highly-tuned detection spells.” Then the Doctor-Earth-Brown frowned. “Where are they?” He tapped his chin. “I’ve never seen them in here before.”
Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe tried to place the lines in relation to himself, but he was having a hard time of it. They were too far into the building. Then his eyes fell on some dots nearby. Some dots that were moving vertically. “Is that in the elevator shaft?”
“I- I… believe so.” The Doctor-Earth-Brown rubbed his chin and squinted at the lines, leaning in so close one of them passed through his muzzle. “Yes, it’s on the right level… You’d need to get the money into the vault somehow. Hmm. Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmmmmmmmmmm.” He turned to Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe with a not-completely-reassuring look on his face. “We need to get closer for a more precise reading.”
“How would we do that?” scoffed Thorax-Unicorn-Taupe. “Do you want to break into the elevator shaft?”
“What a splendid idea! I was simply going to suggest we take the arcanoscope into the elevator, but that will provide much less interference!”