//------------------------------// // 29 - Falling Apart and Coming Together // Story: The Amulet Job // by Rambling Writer //------------------------------// For one second, Starlight’s voice flickered through Sunburst’s anklet. “I- I mean, if we don’t have the cutie marks you’re looking for-” He frowned. “Huh.” “‘Huh’? What sort ‘huh’ is that?” asked the Doctor. “Is it a good ‘huh’?” “I’m not sure. Starlight said something about not having the right cutie marks, but, but I couldn’t make out anything else. Do you have, do you know where they are?” “Not yet, I’m afraid. It doesn’t look like the basement has many cameras.” “Great.” So maybe Starlight and Bon Bon had been captured. Maybe Starlight had tried to stall their captors by switching her and Bon Bon’s cutie marks. Maybe not. Best to assume the worst. He’d heard Thorax talking to Gus, so maybe- “A-ha! There they are!” The Doctor pointed at a screen. “Coming out of the basement now. Are you hearing this, Thorax? Right side of the room as you come in, about halfway down. You see them? … Great! Oh, and, ah, they’re, um, under guard. Good luck!” Sunburst nudged the Doctor aside to get a better look at that particular screen. Starlight and Bon Bon were being escorted by four guards out from some kind of maintenance hall and onto the casino floor. He squinted at the image, but couldn’t make out their cutie marks. Still, it was worth a shot. “Um, hey, Thorax? One more thing.” The one good thing about the crowd, Starlight figured, was the way it swamped their progress. Getting to Goumada seemed to be taking forever. Of course, when she couldn’t do anything, that made it all the worse, a perfect double-edged sword. They inched forward. She looked to Bon Bon and got a shrug in response. No way out. Falling back on old habits, her mind began composing grand schemes involving elaborate plots that always fell apart because she didn’t have any magic. Why did law enforcement types have to deprive criminals of their magic? She spotted a vaguely-familiar griffon and an unfamiliar pony, both guards, heading towards them, practically shoving their way through the crowd. Great. Just what she needed. She might as well just shut her brain off; it wasn’t like it’d helped them yet. The griffon and pony stopped some distance away, exchanged words, pointed. They nodded at each other and the griffon swaggered up. “Hey, guys,” he said with all the nonchalance of buying groceries. “Caught the thieves, have you?” Once she heard his voice, Starlight could place the griffon: Gus. But what was he doing? He’d lose out on his money this way. Unless he thought he could get a reward for turning them in. Or maybe… “Must’ve been quite a fight,” Gus said. He not-entirely-casually looked at Starlight and Bon Bon. “I was sent to give you help.” “We don’t need help,” growled the first pegasus guard. “You sure? Tartarus, I heard the building shake out- Hang on.” He leaned in close and squinted as Starlight’s rump, rubbing what technically qualified as his chin exaggeratedly. He stood back up again and said, “Doesn’t she have the wrong butt tattoo?” The pegasus facepalmed (“Oh, for the love of…”) as the first unicorn said, “Thank you!” Starlight glanced at Bon Bon, who pursed her lips, shook her head a tiny, tiny bit, and tapped her hoof on the floor. Starlight took that to mean, Don’t do anything yet. A wise decision. “I mean, they don’t even have bags!” Gus did a double-take at them and blinked twice. “Where could they hide the Amulet? Or any other loot?” His eyes narrowed a little as he glared at Starlight, but none of the other guards caught it. “Unless you’re saying they stuffed it all up their-” “Maybe they hid it somewhere!” said the pegasus. “I’d rather capture them and be wrong than let them go and be wrong! Look, we don’t have time for-” Her ears folded back and she clamped her wings tightly to her sides. “Who sent you?” she demanded. “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Gus. But his eyes were a little bit wider. “You said you were sent here,” said the pegasus. “Who told you we needed help?” “I don’t see why that matters,” replied Gus, “you guys’re so stupid you caught the wrong ponies!” “Listen,” snapped the pegasus, jabbing Gus in the chest, “if you don’t tell us who sent you, I swear I’ll-” Something shook outside the front doors, drawing everyone’s attention. Starlight couldn’t see much, but with another boom, the crowd began shying away. Two guards raced in, screaming something, urging people away. Slowly, everyone drew back. And that was when the entrance exploded. Glass and wood flew as one of the road locomotives barrelled through the front entrance, narrowly missing hitting anybody. It plowed through a row of slot machines, two rows, three; each one was batted aside like it was part of a house of cards. The crowd scattered as it continued on its way and mangled remains of games, twisted decorations, and piles of casino chips were strewn in its wake. One of the guards regained his senses. “What in the-” Gus pounced, hitting him in the side and smashing him into the floor. When another guard turned on him, the guard who’d come with Gus clouted her on the back of the head. Thorax? The locomotive’s path of destruction finally took it into a supporting pillar. It shuddered to a halt as its front half crumpled around the pillar, but its wheels were still turning and mulching up the carpet. Steam hissed from a rupture in the boiler and began filling the room. The crowd twisted around itself, some people fleeing in fear, others overcome with curiosity and trying to get a closer look. A guard readied a spell for either Gus or Probably-Thorax, but the second he took his eyes off Bon Bon, she wrapped her legs around his trunk and suplexed him with a vengeance. And then Gilda blurred out of the crowd and bodyslammed the last guard. “Come on,” said Gus. He kicked at one of the guards on the ground. “Let’s get you and my money out of here.” The group fell in with the retreating mob and ran. Starlight’s head was swimming as she tried to take in what had happened. Explosions? Locomotive through the front door. Guard beatdown. And now they were getting out. Was that right? It seemed right. They rushed out of the casino amid the crowd and took a sharp turn down the street. Across from the casino were several road locomotives, two or three of them reduced to mangled husks after boiler explosions. The crowd slowly petered out and sort of congealed a distance from the casino. Starlight’s group ran a bit farther before coming to a stop. Suddenly, a familiar pegasus swooped down. “Hey!” said Derpy. “You’re okay! I was in the crowd when you came out of the basement and you looked like you were in trouble there for a moment.” Starlight looked at Derpy. She looked at the hole in the casino. She looked at Derpy again, pointed, and said, “That was you, right?” Derpy shrugged. “You needed a distraction and that was distracting. Remember how that one guard took me home on one of these that one time? I just remembered what he did to drive it and hoped for the best. And it worked!” Derpy, Starlight decided, was probably one of the most unorthodoxically intelligent mares she’d ever met. She couldn’t find north with a compass and sometimes seemed incapable of finding solid ground to sit on, yet she’d known the basic gist of the heist ever since Ponyville, she’d never needed anything explained to her, and this whole time, she’d kept coming up with bonkers plans in seconds that invariably worked. And now, when they’d needed a distraction? Oh, nothing too complicated, she’d just driven a train through a building. “Thanks,” said Starlight. “I’m not sure-” BOOM. The boiler on one of the remaining locomotives blew, blasting steam into the air and twisting the vehicle’s entire frame into the pavement with its force. Starlight could feel the shockwave as she staggered back a few steps. Agape, she stared at Derpy. “Oh, yeah, I also closed some of the wrong steam valves on those. Just in case.” BOOM. Derpy smiled as another locomotive exploded behind her. “Very distracting.” Starlight made a Face at Bon Bon. “Hang on,” said Gus, “lemme get…” He grabbed Starlight’s mane and semi-roughly pulled her head down. Before she could protest, he’d waved his keygem next to the suppression ring and it’d popped off. Feeling rushed back into Starlight’s horn. Not necessarily good feeling (it still ached after the vault, if a lot less potently), but Starlight was going to take what she could get. “Thanks,” Starlight said. “Sure thing. So where’s my stuff?” Starlight took a deep breath. “Waiting for retrieval. We hid the… loot in-” “Hid?! You dropped it up a laundry chute!” hissed Bon Bon. “We hid it in a safe space so it wouldn’t be found if we were captured,” said Starlight, a touch more loudly. “Somepony’ll retrieve it soon.” Gus’s eye twitched. He raised a claw declaratively, only to say nothing. He glanced at the casino and the crowd milling around it. “You better pull through,” he snarled, poking Starlight in the chest. Wings crossed, Starlight didn’t say. Partly because she needed wings for that. Maybe some quick alicornication was in order. “We’ll pull through,” she said. “Don’t worry.” “We will, I promise,” said the guard who, by now, could only be Thorax. Gilda made a face and wiggled her hand with an “Ehh…” sort of sound. Starlight glared at her. “So what happened with you after we split up?” “Dunno.” Gilda shrugged. “Guards must’ve stopped chasing me to go for you. Got into the hotel, ran up a story, pulled the elevator doors open and jumped down. Once I was back in the casino, I was about to skedaddle when I saw that you needed help, and, yeah.” “Can we get back to the villa?” Bon Bon glanced at the casino and shifted her weight from hoof to hoof to hoof. “I don’t want to stay here any longer than we have to. Any chance of teleporting?” “Not yet.” Starlight rubbed at the base of her horn. Her headache was still throbbing. “We’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way. Are you coming with us?” she asked Gus. “What the heck, sure,” said Gus. “At least I’m leaving with a-” He paused and stared at one of the intact locomotives. A few seconds passed and he didn’t continue. “I didn’t have time to get all of them,” said Derpy apologetically. Gus rolled his eyes and said, “-with a bang.” The motley crew began running back to the villa. “Hey, Sunburst?” Starlight asked. “Oh, thank Celestia. Is, is everyone alright?” “Yes, but-” “And you’ve got the Amulet?” “No, but-” “SON OF A-” “But Goumada doesn’t have it either! It’s safe, we just had to hide it.” “On the casino grounds?!” “Well. Yes. Listen, can you get Lyra and Rainbow?” When the entire heist suddenly depended on her, Lyra felt less cocky about their chances. Not a lot, though. It was simple: get to the chute, grab the bag inside, get out. The simplicity of it was the reason she only felt a little less cocky. It was also the reason she felt less cocky at all. Things were only that simple when something would absolutely go wrong. But she was walking towards the laundry chute on the top floor and it was all up to her. Starlight’s bags were in there and she just needed to get them. It was easy. She guessed the meteor was about a minute away. She’d heard the terrible CLANG that was probably the safe hitting the floor just after the band had finished up and she was milling with the crowd. The guards managed to calm everyone down and, soon after, reassure them that their rooms were still safe, but that sort of sound kind of killed the mood with a sledgehammer. Sunburst had contacted her not long after that, explaining the situation, and when the guards let her return to her room without incident, well, here she was. Lyra stared at the door to the laundry chute. Weird how something so banal was suddenly so important. She took a deep breath and reached for the handle. Luckily, it was unlocked. She looked up, and there it was: Starlight’s bag, resting on the ceiling. She pulled it down, dispelled the spell, and felt around inside. All of her gear was still there, several loose piles of bits, and… oho… The feeling of dark magic on it made her cringe, but Lyra pulled out the Amulet, just to check. Yep, it was the Amulet she remembered. Dark voices whispered to her without bothering with her ears, giving her promises of power beyond her wildest dreams. But the hyperbolic language with which they wove their overinflated visions of perfection reminded her too much of junk mail and ads, so she just stuffed the Amulet back into the bag. “Got it,” she whispered into her anklet. Perfect. Now- “What’re you doing?” Lyra spun around. Second Lyre was looking at her with the vague interest of somepony who has nothing better to do. Unfortunately, that attention combined with the stress of everything being on her short-circuited Lyra’s brain and she imagined she was sweating like a faucet. “Um…” she said as she tried to compose a plausible lie. “Uh… Heist!” Smooth. Second Lyre pulled back slightly. “Heist?” She leaned forward in interest, a small smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “What’re you heisting?” “Nothing!” yelped Lyra. Her sweat was coming out like a firehose, it had to be. “Nothing at all! Nope! No heist!” She failed horrendously at hiding the bag behind herself. “Why, why, why would you- think that? I didn’t say anything!” As Celestia-blessed silk. “Oh. Shame, that would’ve been neat and Goumada would’ve absolutely deserved it.” Second Lyre smiled innocently. “But since you’re not, I’ll leave you to your… not-heist business.” She winked, waved, and walked away. …And not sarcastic, apparently. Huh. “Um. Lyra?” asked Sunburst. “What’s-” “Nothing,” said Lyra. “There’s no problem. There was, but it’s gone. I’m fine.” “Okay. Um. If you get down to the entrance, Rainbow will pick you up.” “Got it.” Lyra knew better than to trust that her luck would hold. She did her best to keep her steps loose and natural. She’d been stupid not checking the hallway before; she wouldn’t be that stupid again. Nopony was around now, at least. As she strode toward the steps, she had to fight to not hold her bag tight. She wasn’t a thief, no siree. She was just an instrumentalist in the band, heading out for… some rest. The last few days, preparing for the anniversary celebration, had been stressful (they really had been) and she needed to unwind. But as Lyra stepped into the stairwell, she heard some voices coming up. At the bottom of the first flight were four guards coming up. When they saw her, they quietly exchanged words, and before Lyra could get down, they’d spread out to keep her from slipping by and were marching up the steps like they were part of the Royal Guard. The unicorn who appeared to be leading them stepped onto the landing, forcing Lyra a few steps back to give her space. “There’s been an… incident,” the guard said. “Thieves have broken into the vault and we suspect they may have hidden their loot on hotel grounds. We’re combing the area.” “Oh, come on,” said Lyra. “I’m a lyrist, not a thief. I can get my lyre out right now and show you.” “Mmhmm. That won’t be necessary.” The guard’s eyes flicked downwards. “What’s in the bag?” “What, this?” Lyra wiggled her bag. “Psht. It’s nothing.” But she realized too late that she might as well have just told them she was carrying the Amulet. With these sorts of guys and gals, it was never nothing. The guard glanced at one of the others. They both nodded. “Open your bag,” said the first guard. “Dump everything.” “It’s nothing!” said Lyra. “Just- personal stuff!” Clutching the bag close, she took a step back. “Can’t a mare have her privacy?” At this rate, a neon sign would be less conspicuous. “Open. Your bag,” demanded the guard. Her horn started glowing. “Um…” Idea. Lyra widened her eyes and pointed. “Behind you! The changeling!” And her yell was so urgent that the guards spun around as one. Lyra took off in the opposite direction, running back into the hotel. “Plan B!” she gasped. “Plan B!” “Plan B, got it!” said Rainbow. “On my way!” “Stop right now and put the bag on the ground!” one of the guards yelled. Lyra paid him less attention than she had last year’s bugbear and kept running like her life depended on it. (It probably did.) She crossed the hotel, reached the other stairwell, and legged it up the stairs to the roof. When she slammed open the door to the airship landing platform, the wind hit her in the face like a solid object. She squinted through it, not that there was much to see. A flat platform for passengers to disembark, some huge bollards for securing an airship, railings to keep the stupid away from the edges. Somepony was working at a junction box; they didn’t glance at Lyra. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, although there were a few pegasi. But none of those pegasi were Rainbow. Voices pounded up the stairwell. “She went to the landing pad! Send some pegasi up outside!” Footsteps soon followed. “Rainboooow,” said Lyra, jumping from hoof to hoof, “where aaaare yoooou?” “I’m coming!” said Rainbow. “North side! Gorge on your left!” Where was the gorge? There was the gorge. Lyra bolted for the north side, her hooves pounding against the ground like never before. She heard somepony yell behind her; what they yelled, she neither knew nor cared. She vaulted over the railing and kept running. No Rainbow. “How close?!” “Almost there! Five seconds!” A spell zipped over Lyra’s shoulder, so close it singed her coat. And another. She didn’t have five seconds. So once she reached the edge of the building, she jumped. The ground fell away beneath her. All of Trotter Gorge was laid out in front of her. For a second, with nothing holding her down, Lyra felt oddly peaceful. Was this what it was like to be a pegasus? It was nice. She could almost see it from a distance, the towering spire of the casino and the little speck that was her detaching itself from it. Now, there was nothing else. Just her and the air. …Holy crap, twenty stories was high up. Then gravity kicked in and she started falling. But just as she plummeted past the shocked pegasus guards on the outside, a different pegasus zipped around and snatched her out of the air. “Heh! Sorry!” said Rainbow. Her flight speed hadn’t slowed at all. “Got tired of waiting for me?” She tightened her grip around Lyra’s body. “Yeah, I decided to take the short way down!” said Lyra. “You’ve got the Amulet?” “Yep!” “Perfect! Let’s get gone!” Several pegasi guards had been called up, literally and metaphorically, to corner Lyra at the airship pad. They had been trained to catch runners (or fliers) quickly. They were unloaded. They were strong. They were sleek. They were driven. They were also not Rainbow Dash. They never stood a chance. Never even sat one. Even with her handicaps, she was gone in an instant, the casino a distant memory. Lyra looked down; even at this height, the ground blurred past. Trotter Gorge was quickly a speck in the distance. And all the time, Rainbow’s flapping didn’t waver, didn’t so much as twitch. It didn’t even feel like she was working that hard. If she hadn’t been loosely clinging to a single pony, Lyra figured, it might’ve been a whole lot of fun. Less so when slipping and splattering across the ground at high speeds was a very distinct possibility. But only a little less so. She looked ahead for their target. And there it was, winding its way across the land, its path marked by a clear cloud of smoke: their train. Even Goumada couldn’t stop trains. It’d been a just-in-case measure: buy some tickets for a certain train at a certain time and they could bug out once the heist was over. Rainbow swooped down, matched speeds with the train, and landed on the platforms between two cars. As soon as Lyra had her hooves on something resembling solid ground, she began rummaging in her bags. Her coat stood on end when she touched a certain distinctly-shaped hunk of metal. Yep. The Amulet was safe. They entered one of the cars and Rainbow collapsed against the door, laughing. “Ha! That was great! Those chumps didn’t stand a chance!” Lyra giggled. She hadn’t realized how tightly her nerves were wound until they were unwound. “I knew you were fast, but not that fast.” “Hey, I can sonic rainboom. Do you know how-” “Ahem.” They both looked up. A unicorn conductor, disapprovingly tapping her hoof, was staring at them with a stern expression and a raised eyebrow. “You probably think you’re being clever,” she said in a tight voice, “but trainhopping pegasi have been a thing for as long as trains have, and-” “That’s why we’ve got our tickets!” Rainbow said, whipping said tickets out. “It’s been…” She and Lyra looked at each other. “It’s been a pret-ty crazy day today and we were just late.” The conductor’s ears twitched. She plucked the tickets from Rainbow and examined them. “Huh. That’s a new one.” Punch, punch, and she handed the tickets back. “Do I want to know how crazy?” “Nope!” “Ah. Well, have a good day, ma’ams.” Bad news: with her cutie mark gone, Starlight’s aptitude for magic had dropped significantly. Good news: since cutie marks wanted to go to their original ponies, the cutie-mark-swapping spell that had required a unique mind to cast could be reversed by a sufficiently-competent unicorn. Bad news: the only other unicorn in their group at the moment was Sunburst. Starlight was sweating as she held her side of the spell, something she’d never done before on something this simple. “And remember,” she said, “hold the stands-” “I know!” gasped Sunburst. “The train keeps twitching and, and throwing off my focus!” Not for the first time, Starlight wondered if she should just wait for Lyra to (hopefully) return. Sunburst took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said a bit more levelly. “I, I think I’ve got it this time.” “Do you?” asked Bon Bon sullenly. “Yes.” Sunburst’s horn started glowing again, and this time, finally, Starlight’s and Bon Bon’s cutie marks peeled themselves from their irrespective ponies. A bit of magical floating around and they found their proper positions again. Starlight shivered as some inexplicable part of her felt right again. “Finally,” said Bon Bon. She grunted and flexed her entire body. “You have a really weird mind, Starlight.” “We already established that ages ago,” Starlight said. Bon Bon rolled her eyes and turned to Sunburst. “Any news on Lyra and Rainbow?” Her voice was a little tighter than usual. “Not, not yet,” said Sunburst. “But, um, that includes them getting captured, so… here’s hoping?” He grinned nervously. “Yeah. Sure.” The others in their group were almost as tense as Bon Bon, sitting around their car silently and trying to not look at each other, as if that would broadcast to the world what they were doing. Gus, also on the train with them, had an easier time than the others, but you could still pluck the atmosphere and call it a guitar. Well, except for Derpy, who was watching the scenery drift by without a care in the world. (Thorax seemed to be taking up her slack.) Starlight nearly melted with relief when Rainbow Dash and Lyra walked into their car a few minutes later. Even better, Rainbow had one of the smuggest looks possible on her face, which, considering this was Rainbow Dash, was probably setting some kind of world record. “Hey, guys!” said Rainbow. Everyone in the team turned at the sound of her voice. “Lyra!” Bon Bon charged forward and grabbed Lyra in a hug. “I was so worried, and- Are you okay?” “I’m fine, Bonnie. Better than fine.” Once she’d pulled herself from Bon Bon’s hug, Lyra smiled and levitated from her bag the Alicorn Amulet. Everyone breathed out a sigh of relief. Even Gus, although Starlight suspected that was just because he was definitely getting his bits now. They’d done it. They’d gotten the Amulet. No one had gotten caught. They were away. They were free. They’d done it. And Starlight was an idiot if she thought Goumada was going to let it rest there, but she wanted to have her moment. “You weren’t followed, were you?” asked Bon Bon, killing the mood harder than an axe murderer. Rainbow rolled her eyes. “No, we weren’t, Mom. You really think they could catch up with me? Look, I’ll even check outside again just to show you!” She zipped out one of the windows. Lyra passed the bag over to Starlight. Starlight examined the Amulet intently, one tiny part of her still utterly paranoid she’d been had somehow. But the Amulet looked good and felt bad, just as it should. “May I see that?” asked the Doctor; he snatched the Amulet from Starlight’s magical grasp. After a few moments of turning it over, he huffed. “I can only hope the design is necessary for it to work in some way, because you couldn’t make this look more evil if you tried.” He passed the Amulet back to Starlight. “Short of some spikes. What is it with evil and spikes?” Rainbow zipped back into the train. “No followers,” she said to Bon Bon smugly. “Told ya.” “Good,” said Bon Bon. But when she went to the window, she looked out intently, as if she was searching the skies. “So how’s everyone else doing?” asked Lyra. “Tense, but fine,” said Starlight. “You getting back was a huge relief.” “Nice. And the villa?” “Clean as a whistle. We didn’t leave anything behind for Goumada to find.” That’d been one of their hastier actions in the whole heist: getting all their stuff back together so they could get to the train on time. If Goumada was going to try to chase them, they definitely weren’t going to make it easy for her. Lyra glanced at Bon Bon, then lowered her voice. “That includes that couch, right?” she whispered. “Absolutely,” whispered Starlight.