//------------------------------// // 27 - Stealing Honey From Killer Bees // Story: The Amulet Job // by Rambling Writer //------------------------------// Starlight, Bon Bon, and Gilda inched across the vault’s bridge, slowly heading towards the safe, keeping low to stay stable. Starlight had made her shield semi-permeable to take some of the stress off it; now, rather than blocking all the wind, she was only blocking something like eighty percent of it. The wind that made it through wasn’t enough to risk knocking anybody off the bridge, but they stayed down anyway. Even with the reduced load on her shield, Starlight found it hard to keep it up, and not just because of the storm. How was Thorax doing? Was he going to be okay? She knew there wasn’t anything good. And getting dogpiled into Tartarus in the process. That was the problem with being a magical powerhouse focused on flashy spells: when something more subtle was needed, you couldn’t do much of anything. “He’ll be fine,” said Gilda, surprisingly solidly. “The changeling, whatisface, Thorax.” “You really think so?” grunted Starlight. It was all she could manage. “Sure.” Gilda said it in a casual voice Starlight had learned to associate with being so assured about something that it shouldn’t even warrant a mention. “He can shapeshift and it sounds like he’s good at panic-planning. He’ll get out. It might not be pretty, but he’ll get out.” Starlight and Bon Bon exchanged a glance. “He might,” Bon Bon said tentatively. Inch by inch, they crawled down the bridge. After what felt like an eternity of getting battered by winds, they reached the safe. Everyone plastered themselves flat against the door. “Any chance you can scan this?” Bon Bon asked, slapping her hoof against the safe. “Not without dropping the shield,” said Starlight. She blinked to focus her eyes. Even without the split attention needed to cast two spells like this at once, the effort needed to keep the shield up had just given birth to a tiny little headache, the kind that grew quickly. “Poop.” “Wanna just try to open it?” said Gilda. “I don’t see any locks on here.” “She’s a unicorn. That doesn’t mean much.” “And that’s a reason to not try it?” “…Not really, no.” Bon Bon and Gilda grabbed the door handles and tugged. Starlight held her breath; surely the safe was locked, right? But, no, with a bit of effort, the handles turned. They kept pushing; the handles turned faster and faster as Starlight’s heartbeat got faster and faster. Finally, the door swung open, revealing the contents of the safe. And what contents they were. Money boxes lined the inside of the safe across all three walls, ceiling to floor. Sometimes they were two or even three deep. Closer to the inside were display cases, of all things, showing off Goumada’s… artifact acquisitions for potential buyers. Starlight didn’t recognize any of them, but chances were that a tiara that looked like it’d been molded from bloodstained barbed wire wasn’t anything nice even though it was one of the nicer-looking ones. She could almost feel black magic congealing in the air like slime. (Why did something so ugly tempt ponies, again?) And right in the middle of it all was the Alicorn Amulet, still looking like some broody teen’s fashion statement. Perfection. She stepped into the safe — the walls were three inches thick, she noticed — and set up her shield across the opening. It was a little easier to maintain that way. “So where do we start?” she asked, mostly to herself. “I’ve been thinking: let’s wipe her out,” said Gilda eagerly. “Take all her bits and doodads — I mean all of them — pay off who we need to, donate the money to charity or something, and give your princesses the evil magical crap.” “Sure, what the heck,” said Starlight vaguely. She didn’t care what they did as long as they were out quickly. The headache her constant shielding had birthed had already grown into a little girl of a headache that would eventually grow into the mother of all headaches. “She… is a vital part of the smuggling business around here,” Bon Bon said slowly. “Hitting her this hard would do a lot to cut down on it… She’d lose so much money it’d be hard for her to come back… Even if she did come back, none of her clients would trust her… We’d get a lot of dangerous artifacts out of circulation-” “Also it’s fun,” prompted Gilda. “Mostly it’s fun,” said Bon Bon semi-guiltily. Then she grinned. “Yeah. Let’s do it.” “Sweetness,” said Gilda. “That amulet in the center’s what you ponies came for, right? Let’s start with that.” She promptly pulled the glass cover off of the Amulet’s pedestal. Immediately, the wind died. Magic buzzed through the room, and before Starlight could trace it, sound emanated from the vault’s walls. “To you miserable little thieves who have broken into my vault,” said Goumada’s voice. “If you are hearing this recording, you are so far up a creek without a paddle that you have passed the spring and are high and dry. The elevator is gone. The doors have been sealed shut. Guards are en route. You have nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. You can deal with me, or you can make it easy on yourselves and jump off the bridge. It’s plenty far enough to end your pathetic lives. Don’t worry, the floor of the vault is easy to clean.” After the constant gale, the silence was deafening. Starlight’s heart made an Equestrian Games sport out of dropping deeper and deeper into her ribcage. She and Bon Bon both slowly turned to look at Gilda. Still holding the cover, Gilda blinked. “Um. Oops?” Thorax-Earth-Red was brusquely led to an austere conference room where Goumada-Unicorn-Marble was waiting. Her emotions were seething but her face was blank. Watchful-Pegasus-Khaki unceremoniously dumped him in a chair before Goumada-Unicorn-Marble pulled her aside. Goumada-Unicorn-Marble’s horn glowed and the two started talking in silence. Stupid magic. Thorax-Earth-Red fidgeted with his anklet. At least Sunburst-Unicorn-Orange or Doctor-Earth-Brown or anyone else could listen in to what he was saying. With any luck, they’d fit the pieces together already. Not that that mattered at all right now. As Watchful-Pegasus-Khaki talked, Goumada-Unicorn-Marble’s anger shifted. It wasn’t directed at her anymore. No, it was directed at Thorax-Earth-Red. Even if you couldn’t sense emotions, that much was obvious from the way she looked at him. They exchanged a few last words and Watchful-Pegasus-Khaki passed Thorax-Earth-Red’s clipboard over to Goumada-Unicorn-Marble. She looked over it a second, nodded, and said something; Watchful-Pegasus-Khaki immediately backed into a corner of the room. Goumada-Unicorn-Marble turned her full attention to Thorax-Earth-Red and he was struck with a sudden, intense desire to melt into the floor. He forced it down and kept his head high. She walked up next to him and roughly turned his chair to face her. “So,” she said, “you say you’re here for a checkup, Ms. …?” She looked at the clipboard. “Wrench, ma’am,” Thorax-Earth-Red said. “Socket Wrench.” “Mmhmm,” Goudama-Unicorn-Marble said vaguely. “And what company do you work for, again?” If he hadn’t been so stressed, Thorax-Earth-Red would’ve been quite insulted that she was asking these questions while staring at the clipboard that held the answers. Obviously he would’ve made sure he knew all the answers to all the typical questions. “Thauma Locks,” he said. “We’re a security firm specializing in arcane security systems like your fiber arcanic network.” “There’s no Thauma Locks in Trotter Gorge.” “We’re out-of-town. Didn’t you see the address?” Goumada-Unicorn-Marble’s eyes flicked up. “Hmm.” And if she checked the businesses of the relevant town, she’d actually find them; Thauma Locks was a real company, and they did specialize in arcane security systems, although more in the vein of enchanting locks to be pick-resistant rather than, well, fiber arcanic networks. “And do you have an invoice for this visit?” “Ma’am, I don’t carry invoices with me,” Thorax-Earth-Red said innocently, wondering just what the heck an “invoice” was. “I’m just a maintenance worker.” “Are you?” “Yes.” “For whom?” “Thauma Locks.” “And what are you doing here?” “Working on the security system.” “Really?” One of Goumada-Unicorn-Marble’s eyebrows went up. “Because we have an in-house technician for that.” Thorax-Earth-Red really really really really really really really really really really really really really wished he could teleport. “Grab everything,” Starlight heard herself say. “It’s not like we can make things worse for ourselves.” She scooped a couple of Sunburst’s bags of holding from her own bag and tossed them at Bon Bon and Gilda. “I’m going to see what I can do about the door.” Bon Bon opened her mouth, closed it, and began stuffing artifacts into a bag. Gilda ripped entire drawers from the walls and dumped them into her own bag. Bits bounced and rolled across the floor, scattered in her haste. The bridge seemed to grow as Starlight sprinted across it. When she probed the doors, it was just as bad as she’d feared: huge amounts of mana were being dumped into the pistons, holding them shut with a might she couldn’t hope to match. Not that she didn’t try. Oh, she tried. She pushed and shoved and did this and that and the doors didn’t budge one millimeter. Crap on a crap sandwich. Sunburst’s voice came through her anklet. “Um. Starlight. What did you do?” “Gilda got excited and triggered an alarm,” said Starlight. She took a deep breath. “How bad is it?” “Um. Like. Real bad,” said Sunburst. “There are, there’re guards gathering at the vault elevator. Lots of them, too. It’s, we’re keeping the car from, um, from moving, but, but I don’t know how long that’ll last. If they, like, reboot the system-” “We’re working on getting out,” said Starlight, trying and failing to reassure herself. “Calm down.” “…Um. How?” “If we knew, we wouldn’t be working on it.” “But-” Starlight pulled her anklet off and stuffed it into her bag. She needed a clear head and Sunburst wouldn’t help with that. When she returned to the safe, Gilda was stomping one last drawer into her bag and Bon Bon was pulling her drawstrings shut. The two of them had worked quickly and the vault was clean as could be. Which would only make things work for them if they got caught. “Any ideas yet?” Starlight asked. “Teleport,” Gilda said immediately. “Can’t while in the casino,” said Starlight. “Make the walls vanish.” “Magic-resistant.” “Burn through them. With our thermite tape, not magic.” “Too thick. Take too long.” “Fight the guards.” “Too many and I’ve got too much of a headache to keep it up for long.” “Phase through the walls?” “Don’t know that spell yet.” “…Seal the door so the guards can’t get in?” “Still magic-resistant.” “What’s the freaking point of being an archmage if not everything can be solved with magic?!” Gilda screeched. “Long story.” Starlight started pacing as best she could. The only good thing about this was that there was only one way the guards could come in. And even that was sullied by the fact that it was the only way she, Bon Bon, and Gilda could get out. The walls of the vault were huge, flat, and plain, offering absolutely no options for… anything. The only remotely offensive thing in their gear was the thermite tape, and no way was she using that against anything living. Think, Starlight. Think, think, think… “We’re screwed, aren’t we?” asked Gilda. “Ah, well,” she sighed, “it was fun while it lasted. Too bad it chose now to come crashing down.” “There’s another floor between the bottom of the vault and the casino, right?” Bon Bon asked suddenly. Her ears were standing straight up and quivering. “I- I think so,” said Starlight, taken aback. Was that right? Yeah, she remembered it from the plans. A plain floor with some low-level offices, probably empty right now. “Yes, there is. Why? What’re you thinking?” Bon Bon didn’t respond. She just looked at the safe as an evil, evil grin spread across her face. Thorax-Earth-Red had heard horror stories around the fire about what angry unicorns could do. Turning you into a frog, permanently blinding you, messing with your head, making your legs shrink, all sorts of fun stuff. And those spells had the happiest of names, too, like Tenebra’s Hoofrot Hex or Mental Polymorphism or the Osteonecrosis Curses. The possibilities were as varied as they were horrible. Goumada-Unicorn-Marble opted for the Chair Over the Head Jinx. Simple, but effective. He wasn’t bleeding, but it was a close thing. Iron bees were attempting to break out of his head and the world refused to stay upright. He attempted to gather his hooves under him, but Goumada-Unicorn-Marble pinned his foot to the ground. “Now, pay very close attention,” she whispered emotionlessly in his ear. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” She wrenched his head around so they were looking each other in the eye. “Who do you work for?” “I told you!” wheezed Thorax-Earth-Red. “Thauma-” No magic. Goumada-Unicorn-Marble just punched him in the jaw. Thorax-Earth-Red’s head smashed against the ground and he bit his tongue. Something warm dribbled into his mouth. He quickly locked his lips shut; he didn’t know if changeling blood looked like pony blood or not when he was a pony and now wasn’t the right time to find out. “Please do not insult me.” Goumada-Unicorn-Marble’s voice was still flat and expressionless. “I know you do not work for them, assuming they even exist.” She put a hoof on Thorax-Earth-Red’s neck and pressed just hard enough that breathing was an effort. “And you know I know that. You are wasting both our times, trying to keep yourself in the clear.” She pushed her face into his, her breath hot and moist. “And I do not like my time being wasted.” “Do you need any help, ma’am?” asked Watchful-Pegasus-Khaki. Her voice was light and Thorax-Earth-Red tasted a disturbing amount of glee coming from her. “Not yet,” said Goumada-Unicorn-Marble. “But perhaps soon.” Her eyes narrowed. “Well, Ms. ‘Wrench’? Is it soon?” “Hllhhkhlklalk,” Thorax-Earth-Red gurgled in response. He pointed at Goumada-Unicorn-Marble’s hoof. “You can nod or shake your head,” said Goumada-Unicorn-Marble. Her hoof didn’t move. If anything, she pressed harder. “So: is it soon?” Thorax-Earth-Red’s mind tried to race, but it was uncoordinated and kept flopping about. Should he change into something else? Would that make things worse? It would probably make things worse. Knowing Goumada-Unicorn-Marble, it’d be an excuse to hit him with a huge, probably illegal spell. Knowing her, she might not need that excuse to begin with. Goumada-Unicorn-Marble pressed harder. “I am not going to ask aga-” The entire building shook. It wasn’t a meager, light twitch; it was like the place had gotten shelled by some landbound battleship. Entire panels fell from the ceiling, lights flickered, pictures dropped from the walls, Goumada-Unicorn-Marble and Watchful-Pegasus-Khaki reflexively spread out their hooves for balance, chairs rolled several inches. And the noise. The unspeakable noise. There was this single colossal, unearthly CLANG like a train smashing through a metal wall at top speed that made everyone nearly bite their tongue off in surprise. Thorax-Earth-Red thought his teeth were going to shatter from the reverberations. Then there was the building’s response, a horrific, Tartarus-birthed groaning from stress like the entire place was going to bend in on itself and collapse on them. Dust and silence fell. Fear rolled in from all sides, not just the conference room; everyone in the building had heard it and their terror had spiked like never before. But within seconds, Goumada-Unicorn-Marble was up again. “What in the PUS-STAINED MANE OF CELESTIA was that?” she shrieked. “I don’t- I don’t know,” gasped Watchful-Pegasus-Khaki. “Is…” She inched towards the table. “Is the hotel going to come down?” “If it does, heads will roll,” growled Goumada-Unicorn-Marble. “The price tag on it was significant.” She brushed herself off. “I shall take some guards and investigate. This must have been deliberate, the responsible party is most likely still there, and I am in need of stress relief.” “Should I come with you?” “No. You stay here. Keep her-” Goumada-Unicorn-Marble jabbed a hoof at Thorax-Earth-Red. “-from leaving. However you want. Just ensure she can still speak when I return. I would not be surprised if she is associated with them.” Her horn sparked and glowing manacles fashioned themselves around Thorax-Earth-Red’s fetlocks. When he tugged at them, a jolt of electricity zapped through his body. By the time stars stopped going supernova in his eyes, Goumada-Unicorn-Marble was gone. Watchful-Pegasus-Khaki watched after Goumada-Unicorn-Marble’s departure. She raised one of her hooves, like she was going to follow her, but put it back down. She sighed and shook her head. “This is all your fault, you know,” she said to Thorax-Earth-Red. “I bet there’s something really impressive — really, really impressive — going on up there.” She nodded at the ceiling. “And because of you, I can’t see it.” She put a hoof on his head and pressed, just hard enough to make a point. “So you’d best behave,” she hissed. Like Thorax-Earth-Red had any other possibilities. She was a trained security guard and he was tied up on the floor. Pissing her off was the smart thing to do. He did his best to look contrite as she stomped to a corner, took a seat, and scowled at him. Experience with Chrysalis-Changeling-Queen made it easy. “Thorax?” It was Doctor-Earth-Brown. Kind of a shock, to hear his own name after all this time. Even though it’d only been, what, fifteen minutes since he first went into the security room? Twenty? “Ah, are things, um, going well for you?” Watchful-Pegasus-Khaki’s ears were angled back in that way ponies showed anger. Praying she’d have a hard time hearing him, Thorax-Earth-Red whispered, as loudly as he dared, “No. Short answers.” “Ah. Ah. Aaaaaaaaaaah. Hmm. Well, um, Starlight and her group are… We’re not quite sure what, Starlight took off her communicator, and a bunch of cameras just went offline.” Thorax-Earth-Red grunted. It was all he wanted to risk. “Sunburst is trying to keep it together, but he’s not really that, ah, sort of person. So, um, bear with us, we’re working on getting you out of there. Maybe.” Uh-huh. Great. Like they could do anything. Thorax-Earth-Red guessed that, with their limited access to the casino, all they could do was bear with him and ho- Bear with him. Bear. Everyone was pretty certain he was a changeling already, so it wasn’t like he had much left to lose… “Think that’s enough tape?” Bon Bon asked. “We’ve gone around that beam fifteen freaking times!” yelled Gilda. “…You’re right, let’s do two more.” She glanced meaningfully at Starlight, who sighed and unrolled another strip of thermite tape. “Ponies are crazy,” muttered Gilda. “Ponies. Are. Cuh-razy.” Starlight didn’t deny it. She was probably the craziest one. Or least, she thought that until Bon Bon had suggested her plan: burn through the supporting rod with thermite tape and drop the safe through the vault floor. “Look at the size of that thing!” she’d said. “Look at how far it’ll fall! It’ll punch straight through!” “And the next floor,” Starlight had said, “to go right into the very crowded casino beneath us.” “Nah,” Bon Bon had said, “the vault will absorb most of the impact, the next floor the rest, there’s just offices and maintenance all the way down, and ten bits says they’ll be empty anyway. Besides, you got any better ideas?” Starlight didn’t, so Bon Bon half-browbeat her into wrapping the support with tape. And wrapping it and wrapping it and wrapping it and wrapping it… “You know,” Starlight said, still wrapping, “if we do too much of this, we might get roasted alive. You do know how hot thermite gets, right?” “That’s what your shield is for,” responded Bon Bon. “At least it’s good for something,” mumbled Gilda. Starlight groaned and kept wrapping. After Bon Bon permitted Starlight to stop, the three of them backed up to the vault doors, still sealed. The beam looked uneven from the mess of tape stuck to it. “What do you think?” Starlight said. “Good?” She didn’t add Please? Bon Bon nodded. “Good,” she said. “Hit it.” And, after taking a deep breath, hit it Starlight did. Heat blasted out from the coils like a wall; Starlight put up a shield and still felt like she might start sweating. The light wasn’t blinding, but still bright enough that she had to look away. Gilda gave a weird chirp-like yelp and covered her head with her wings. But Bon Bon squinted at it, her grin slowly getting wider and wider. After an eternal fifteen seconds, the worst of the light died down. Starlight blinked. The rod was glowing white, already looking thinner. In fact, the floor of the safe didn’t match up with the bridge anymore. Then, without any warning, the safe fell. It was a titanic, gargantuan thing, as hard and solid as a boulder. Trailing a few drops of molten steel, it plummeted like nothing else; Starlight swore she could feel the air pressure changing as it was displaced. It slammed into the floor of the vault like a freight train and the entire building quaked. Starlight stumbled several feet forward, her fall from the bridge only barely avoided. Gilda did fall off, but caught herself within a few feet. She yelled something, but Starlight couldn’t hear her. Whatever sound the safe had made when it hit, it must’ve been so loud she’d been deafened before she could hear it. Gilda flapped back up to the bridge, her beak still working soundlessly, and excitedly pointed down. The safe hadn’t plowed clean through the vault walls — they were too thick for that — but it was still resting askew in a very definitive hole, the military-armor-thick metal around it curved like putty. Metal from the pole, still red-hot, was splattered around the floor. Even as Starlight watched, the safe slipped down a foot and the entire building rattled. There ought to be enough space for them to crawl out. Gilda didn’t seem to notice Starlight’s lack of audible response. If she’d been deafened, too, she didn’t hear her own lack of voice. She pointed again, threw back her head in what was probably a laugh, and jumped down to the safe. Starlight glanced at Bon Bon, who was rubbing her head and muttering. A quick burst of magic and sound returned to the world. Bon Bon’s ears twitched and she looked at Starlight, opening her mouth. “Just used a spell to fix our deafness,” preempted Starlight. “…How remarkably specific.” “I live with Twilight.” “Point.” After Bon Bon spared a second to gawk at the damage she’d wrought, Starlight levitated the two of them down to the floor. After using the hearing spell on Gilda (not that she noticed) and scooping most of the molten metal away with magic, she said, “Look for a hole we can slip through.” Her heart was pounding. The worst possible screw-up imaginable, and they might just wriggle out of it. No, they weren’t out of the woods yet, but they could see the light of the town. “Um… Here, maybe?” asked Gilda. She waved them over to a gap between safe and floor that looked promising, if tight. Starlight couldn’t see anything beyond the rift. Gilda dropped onto her stomach and wriggled forward. Her head vanished, then her wings. Her rear claws scrabbled at the smooth floor before they, too, were gone. “I’m fine!” called Gilda. “You should be good!” With a little help from Bon Bon, Starlight forced herself through, slid down a steep, foot-long slope, fell two more feet, and landed on a thick layer of dust that had once been fiberglass panels. To her semi-disbelief, the safe wasn’t even touching the floor of the next story down. The vault was just that strong. Still, the entire ceiling had buckled like a giant had sat on it and dropped at least three feet, even in the distance. Around the safe, there was barely any clearance at all. Wherever they were, it was unrecognizable in the debris strewn about. The ceiling had lost its tiles (which had lost their shape), lights hung loose, and retaining walls had been reduced to rubble. A few ponies were coughing, but there were (astonishingly) no screams of pain. Starlight vaguely walked over to one of the nearest intact doors and brushed the dust off its plaque. It was a sufficiently corporate title that she knew they were in offices. Which offices, she didn’t know, and at the moment, it didn’t really matter. Gilda and Bon Bon stood up, brushing themselves off. They stared at the safe, at each other, and collapsed into the humorless laughter of relief. “I told you so!” said Bon Bon. “I told you so!” “Crazy’s been right so much that maybe I’m the one who’s crazy!” said Gilda. Starlight found herself grinning. “Well, come on. We’ve gotta-” “Um. Can I get some security in the second-floor offices?” It was like a needle to Starlight’s rump. She whirled around to see a dazed guard in the halls, slowly walking towards them; he must’ve just come around a corner. He had a hoof to his earpiece. “Like, all of them,” he said, his voice just as hazy as his expression. “Literally all.” Pause. “Yes. Really. … It’s… complicated.” Finally, something she could blast. Starlight launched a spell at him — nothing major, not with her headache, just enough to put him down for a few minutes. It caught the guard in the chest mid-sentence and he cartwheeled away down the hall. Only to expose another guard behind him, her eyes wide. “Holy-!” “RUN!” yelled Starlight. She bolted around the safe and down the hallway, Bon Bon and Gilda close behind.