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// 6 The Heists 
// Story: Numbers Are Ponies Too 
// by Telofy 
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I do have a written record! It was early dawn. Amber had only slept for a few hours but she was wide awake. She was proud to have come to this realization while she was still in Canterlot.
There was another thing she would have to do in their final week of vacation there. A calamity that she could prevent almost whenever she wanted. A very convenient calamity. But for that she first needed more information, more than she could remember.
Once she had a more thorough record of the future, she could intervene in catastrophes from the San Palomino Desert to the Neighagra Falls, and it would also help her plug holes of half a year or more that gaped in her scribbled pages from the previous night. A pony with her calling could not possibly be forced to waste half a year just waiting. She burned to get to the castle.
She left a note for her parents and brother not to worry while she engaged in trespassing and theft. She elided the last part.
She emptied her backpacks on the floor, put them on, and galloped off to Juniper’s hotel.
A minute later and halfway there she braked hard, hooves raking through the dust. She stood in front of the hypnotherapist’s practice that she would pass eight years from then on her way to the university. She stepped to the door and knocked.
A middle-aged pony with calm, confident eyes opened for her, and soon they sat on a cushy couch sipping vegan mango lassis. If lassis were a time measure, then Amber did not want to stay for more than one of them, so she got straight to the point.
“I need to remember a lot of things that happened over the past eight years and I need to recall them in detail. Can you hypnotize me and then make me wander back there and recount them on tape?”
The hypnotist shook her head. “You’d be much more likely to make up fake memories that would be indistinguishable from real memories to you. You don’t want that.”
Amber pondered that for a moment. Her glass was not even half empty, so she had time. And then she had a new idea.
“There’s something else you might be able to do for me.”
Half an hour later Amber reached Juniper’s hotel and learned that Juniper’s parents were still blaming her for their daughter’s cold. They told her to scram, and Amber complied rapidly when she saw a potted petunia being levitated out their window. It crashed to the ground inches behind her flying tail.
She only knew September’s hotel, not the room number, but the colt was already up and was dreamily glancing out of his window when Amber approached.
The performances were past and the weather must have been very ordinary as well, because he was excited to learn of Amber’s new plans and eager to escape the boredom of the empty hotel room.
Armed with empty backpacks, both ponies trotted to the castle.
The backdoor to the executive wing that Fleur had taken to get to her office had hardly changed over the eight years no matter the temporal direction. Amber recognized it and with it recognized a crucial flaw in her plan. The door was locked just as it would be in eight years, and of course she had no keys. She pressed the handle and rattled the door, all to no avail. How had she imagined they would be able to rob a governmental building with nothing but backpacks and good intentions?
She stared at the lock as if she could scare the driver pins into the hull. She cursed under her breath. “Darn, we’ll have to find another way in.”
Just as she turned to leave, September tried the door a final time. It opened.
“How’d you do that?” Amber asked.
“Dunno.”
Up the staircase and then left. Or was it straight and the next one left? All the hallways looked the same, gray carpets, white walls, and doors to the many offices every ten or twenty steps. Amber did not want to waste time vacillating. She took a left turn. After a few score steps she realized her mistake and they turned. So straight after all.
The new route looked more promising. A few ponies passed them by, but they seemed to be on important errants and hardly took notice of the two young ponies. Soon they came upon one of the hallways that was patrolled by a guard. Amber thought that maybe the guard would let them pass if only they exuded the right kind of routine confidence. She was not sure if September could pull off an act like that, and due to their age, they would probably seem out of place no matter what they did, so she decided to wait in a smaller, arching corridor until the guard was out of sight. Didn’t Fleur have to unlock another door on our way here? It must’ve stood open or we would’ve noticed it.
The guard would not go out of sight. He walked a few hundred steps to the far side, then returned. When he threatened to pass the door to their corridor, they retreated back a few steps until they were hidden by the curve. His hoofsteps passed the door.
A few seconds later Amber thought she heard voices, many of them. The guard still had his back turned on the the mouth of their corridor, so they peeked out to see where they were coming from. A pony with a loud, clear voice was walking ahead of maybe a dozen others, explaining various aspects of the castle and of Canterlot. The visitors, tourists probably, were either listening or chatting among themselves.
When they passed the door, Amber felt a tug on her backpacks. “Come, this is our chance,” September whispered to her.
A minute later they still walked among the group, pretending to listen attentively. The guide even flashed them a smile when she saw them. This part of the castle must be so boring that she had to fill the time with general factoids about the architecture and later the intellectual heritage of the city. Another minute later, Amber indicated to September that it was time for them to excuse themselves again. They were almost there.
Amber definitely saw one of the previously locked doors standing open now. They were lucky indeed. The office itself was of course as unlocked as she had left it a few days earlier.
They swiftly scooped up all the detritus of partially singed newspapers and deposited it in their backpacks. Amber observed with dismay that they bulged conspicuously.
Now they only had to get out. It should be possible to avoid the patrol, Amber thought, since there must be many ways out. She led the way along the hallway. Looking through the windows in the doors she saw that only a hoofful of the offices seemed to be in use, just as she remembered it from eight years from then.
They passed a hallway to the right, and Amber recognized it as the one she had mistaken a few days earlier for the hallway through which they had just come. On that tour she had not met a soul in the whole wing until she came upon the tower where Praetoria found her. It had been earlier in the morning then, but maybe it was always as empty. She yearned for the safety of the public streets outside. If only she had been able to learn teleportation. Buck “if only,” she reminded herself.
In her reverie she walked out into an intersection of two hallways, and as if to punish her doubly for her carelessness, not one but two guards stood only a few doors away. For a moment she forgot to act suave, stopped dead in her tracks, then stumbled forward when September bump into her.
“Hmm. Are you lost, madam?” the guard still wearing her armor asked. “Sir?” she added when she saw September.
“Depends,” Amber replied. “Is this the correct direction to the archivist’s office?” She pointed at random, straight as it happened. There got to be archivists here, right?
“Hmpf. What archivist?” the guard asked. Her intonation was so flat that Amber could not tell whether she wanted to know which of several archivists Amber meant or whether she did not know of any.
“The one of …” Amber searched her memory for anything she knew about the place that did not sound utterly inane. “… of the Hypogeum Absciticious.” Thanks, bubs!
“Hmm. Oh, you mean the curator of the gallery?”
“Or curator, yeah.” She intoned it as if it were an inconsequential distinction.
“Hmm,” the guard started, and Amber thought how expressive that sound could be if only she put any sort of intonation into her voice. “Hmm. I think that’s this way, don’t you think?” she asked her colleague.
“Whew, Hypogeum Ab–, uh… Lower certainly. There’s a staircase this way.” He tried to be helpful. “But weren’t you part of that tourists group a few minutes ago?”
Oops! Why do all those guards have to look so darn similar in those helmets! Amber started to sweat. She hated to lie, but this seemed like a situation that demanded it. She tried to think of a believable cover story.
September was quicker. “Nah, we were just interested in what the guide had to say. We’re on an errant for the c-archivist.”
That was a fib that Amber could build upon. “Yeah, she mentioned that the prevalent architectural style that was used for most of the governmental buildings in the city is a reproduction of the style of a much earlier period, long before the reign of the royal sisters. They discovered the ripped, ogival vaults and arches, the flying buttresses, and the ornate stained-glass windows during archeological explorations of their own, and much later decided to fashion their palace in the same spirit just as they reused many names from earlier periods as well. We found that fascinating and followed her along for a little while.”
After that, the guards were silent long enough for Amber and September to pass them. But they did not get far.
“But your packs were empty earlier. Can we have a look what you’re transporting there for the archivist?”
So he can’t recall a simple word like abscititious but he does remember the state of our backpacks. Darn again. “Only some scraps of old, scorched newspapers, see.” Amber levitated one side open. She hoped they would not look any closer and discover the dates years in the future.
The guard on duty levitated one of the scraps to her eyes. “But this is years in the future. Where did you get this?”
“Uh, they’re just …” Amber looked at September for help, who looked back wide-eyed and helpless. “Run,” she whispered.
Amber grabbed the scrap from the guards magic before she could react and both of them raced along the winding corridor closely followed by both guards.
“Alert the guards at the entrance to the Hypogeum! I’ll follow them!” The armored guard shouted.
So let’s not run that way. Amber took a sharp right turn at random, hoping it would not lead them into any sort of cul-de-sac. Outward, upward, and find a carpet!
Amber had already noticed that doors favored them that day, but what happened then was hard to attribute to mere chance. The moment September’s tail passed one of the door that somehow always stood open for them, it slammed shut in front of the guard. Amber only heard the double umpf. Not a second later a light blue aura played around hinges and frame of another door to their left, then ripped it free and slammed it outward in a dust cloud of mortar. Through the hole, Amber recognized the tiles and ornaments of a tower. “This way!”
The door had come to a crashing halt at the balustrade of a balcony. Amber could not tell if it was the same one where had met Praetoria. Most of them probably looked the same.
“I’ve never tried this before,” Amber called to September over the noise of their hooves on the tiled floor, “but this door already proved it could fly!”
A second later she just threw a short glance behind her to ascertain that September was on board, then accelerated under several times their own weight outward and upward. They were pressed against the unyielding material of the door. Amber understood why Juniper preferred soft carpets. For a moment she thought she saw Celestia’s mane wave from a window in the tower, then the city vanished behind the curve of the mountain.

She had recognized her magic as she knew she would. She was also the one who played Twilight in the theater play. Now she somehow thought it necessary to steal something from an empty office in the castle. I should’ve asked her name.
The door opened. “Your Highness?”
“Yes?”
“It’s probably not important, but a filly and a colt just escaped us on a door, in a way. They seemed to be able to make it levitate underneath them. Anyway, it looks like they stole burned scrapes of newspapers that are dated in the future.”
“Yes, I saw them fly past. Interesting.” She could not suppress the flicker of a mischievous smile at her elisions. She had felt no ill intent from these ponies, but what was their intent? “Please find them. I would like to know what they’re up to.”

It was like a sojourn in the land of Cockaigne for Amber. The scraps they had harvested contained reports on countless little and larger calamities, much more than she could possibly have remembered anymore. All she had to do was to make sense of the sometimes partial and partly burned articles and organize them in an efficient fashion.
Her brother helped her, even though he had been released from the hospital mere hours earlier, and September had chosen to stay at the Roses’ hotel for a while.
After they had rounded the mountain, they landed the door in the outskirts on the opposite side of Canterlot, then furtively made their way back to the hotel. There had been no pegasus guards following them, none of the guards had asked their names, and with their bulging backpacks they might just pass for really studious little ponies who were not at school for some reason. Still they decided to strip the backpacks as soon as possible and then lay low for a while.
Money was not an issue for September. He pondered talking a room in the hotel and paying somepony to move his belonging over, but Amber assured him that it would not be necessary.
They were making good progress too. Damask read all the articles and fragments of articles, marking each that seemed relevant however tangentially. September and Amber then categorized them, building little heaps of all articles that touched on the same event, which Amber sorted by how many ponies and other sentient beings would get hurt if she did not intervene. If none of the articles provided hard numbers, she would make her own estimates.
All the while, they also protocolled these data for each heap on a notecard and agreed on titles for each card. The nature of the incident, as well as the date, location, and their best estimate for the harm it caused were crucial. In some cases it so happened that the scraps were so large or an article so encompassing that it was relevant for more than one event. In those cases it was helpful to quickly assess whether it actually added new information about one of the events. Amber would compare it with the collected data on each of the relevant cards and assign it to the heap where she felt it provided the greatest new insights. That way, she had to add cross-reference on the cards in only a hoofful of cases.
Early in the process already, Amber noted with some surprise and embarrassment that during her own brainstorming she had overlooked one particularly devastating and lasting catastrophe that she should have been perfectly aware of. The sorts of incidents that she had scoured her memory for were sudden, like plagues, fires, and breaking dams. They were also all within Equestria. All the while she had failed to recall the thousands of griffons who had to sell their beautiful eyries to be able to afford some of the last overpriced food for their families. They still had five years to build reserves for the drought period—if Amber could warn them. Again she was glad she was still in Canterlot.
They worked until late into the night while Amber’s parents supplied them with food and drink.
“Well, Amber, it seems your dad has assumed control of the hotel kitchen. Don’t expect to see him again tonight,” her mother said and set down a tray of poêlée with fennel, Brokaw avocado pudding, toasted cashews, pea tendrils, and sweet pepper vinaigrette. Her dad took food seriously.
“He’s so cool. He’s been nerding out with the chef all day!” September said. He had not yet learned that it was inevitable whenever they visited a restaurant or checked into a hotel that offered quality cuisine.
It should turn out that Amber’s mother was right once again. Amber woke up first again and found her dad sleeping on the couch, his bed being occupied by September. She carefully draped her duvet over him since he only seemed to have found a thin quilt for himself. She did not have to wake anypony for what she had planned for this new day.
Thanks to several newspaper clippings, she finally had enough data to tackle the calamity that she had concluded was one of the most convenient for her to avert. It was still almost a year till it would torment—or annoy—her home town, but with a little luck she could forestall it right away.
She went through the newspaper clippings again to ascertain that the notecard was not missing any important bits. “I Thought It Was Just a Unicharm!” titled a national daily paper. It was a direct quote as the subtitle revealed: “An interview with the merchant who sold Ponyville for a satchel of gold.” The text did not contain any pertinent information, but on one of the many embedded photos, Damask had recognized an alley in Canterlot that they had passed on their way to the hotel.
One borough of the city lay in a wide vertical cleft that ran all the way from the top of the mountain to the plateau that formed the foundation of the city. As such, it only saw direct sunlight during a short period of the day—unless clouds occluded the sky. Since it also lay on the windward side of the mountain, moist air from the ocean was constantly pressed upward along its sheer face, soon condensated in the thinner, cooler air, and thus nurtured thick clouds, fogs, and almost daily rainfalls. Amber would wrap herself in her cape and fill all her bits into the pocket. She shuddered at the thought of trotting there alone.
Then she trotted there alone.
As she rounded the mountain, the early dawn was first blocked by the granite of the cliff wall, then shrouded in fog. A few of the stores were already open. The deeper Amber went into the borough, the more frequent became the stores and pubs that had not yet closed. She saw a few ponies reeling and staggering homeward from the bars, or so she guessed, but they were too far gone to reciprocate the seeing. She felt as if her dark, hooded cloak camouflaged her against the tenebrous backdrop. Then the rain started.
Not half an hour later she found the shop. It was dark but the door was unlocked. A bell chimed when she opened it, but no pony appeared to welcome or intercept her.
The rain had soaked through the seams of her cloak and more water had splattered up her legs. She shivered, yet she would have to leave the door open to have any light inside and to keep the bell from chiming again.
The interior was filled with carelessly piled up assortments of lamps, books, and useless séance paraphernalia. Amber tiphoofed the narrow path along the center of the room. Meh. I’m never going to find it here.
The narrow path widened and transitioned into a wider area littered with smaller heaps much like an estuary. Amber reached the bay, a mostly uncluttered semicircle around a long counter. The items behind the counter looked more valuable and were arranged with greater care. High up, the metallic gleam of the Alicorn Amulet caught her eye.
The light came on. Before Amber could bolt for the door, a calm voice spoke from the shadows.
“May I help you, young traveller?” the voice asked the young traveler. A bespectacled pony stepped from the shadows. Amber could not place the accent. Was he from Mane? Or from Rode Island? She had never been there. Or was it a posh Canterlot affectation?
Her heart was still beating double time, but she forced her voice to equal calmness. “I see you have a unicharm in stock.”
“Oh, that is no unicharm, young lady. That is the legend’ry Alicorn Amulet. It is one of the most mysterious and powerful of all the known magical charms.”
“Pff! Pull the other one! I know a unicharm when I see one,” Amber said. As if to accentuate her words, a gust of wind slammed the door shut.
“I see you are versed in the dark arts far beyond your years. Still, few have the skill to forge a unicharm anymore, so each is worth its weight in gold.”
“What spell does it enhance?” Amber was bluffing. She barely knew what a unicharm was.
“That is for the owner to find out.”
“So you’re saying you lost the manual? There are millions of magical spells. No pony can try them all out to find the one spell it would boost. Without the manual the thing is scrap metal.”
“Oh no, the ruby alone is worth more than the rest of the rubble in here!”
Good, at least she had knocked him down to the raw material value. She had one hundred fifty-five bits on her. “20 bits.”
“Hah! One kilobit and not a bit less!”
“I don’t have a thousand bits. I have thirty bits on me. Take it or leave it.”
“Nine-fifty and I’ll gift-wrap it!”
“Forget it,” Amber said. “Next item on the list: books on amniomorphic spells. Do you have any?” That would buy her time until she knew what to do next.
“Sure, the whole shelf over there.” He pointed. “Some are almost undamaged. Thirty bits if you take all of them.”
Amber climbed over a moraine of rubble until she could read some of the titles, grabbed one at random, and levitated it to her. She leafed through it, pretended to read. The shop owner waited and watched. She put it back and selected a second one. He was still watching. She actually read a chapter of this one, the only one that had not molded away. Just when she was about to put it back, he seemed to get bored of staring at nothing. Amber saw from the corners of her eyes how he turned and vanished into another room. Careful not to trigger a loud rubble avalanche, she climbed down.
The Alicorn Amulet was inside a glass cloche. She hovered it toward her, opened it, and deposited the amulet in the inner pocket of her cloak. She hesitated, the cloche still hovering. Finally she put the one hundred bits from Fleur where the amulet had been and lowered the cloche.
Her next destination was the castle. She would prepare an anonymous letter for Celestia and Luna asking them to lock the relic into a safe forever. She would seal it in an envelope to be opened by the princesses alone and deposit it right at their tower so it would not be intercepted. Hopefully, no pony would recognize her. She snuck to the door.
“Young traveller!” The merchant stood behind her halfway between the door and the cloche. He made no attempt to intercept her, which scared Amber more than a running tackle would have. “You are not from around here, are you, silly filly.” It was not a question.
Amber did not ask what he was insinuating. She jumped up the steps to the door. At the same moment she passed through into the open, a shrill whistling set the house and the very earth vibrating. Amber’s legs gave way for a moment and she fell into the mud.
She jumped up and threw a last glance at the merchant. It was a simple whistle that had caused the sound; surely it was magically enhanced. He stowed it back into his work coat. Still he made no attempt to pursue her.
Amber ran.