King and Kingpin

by Istaran


Opportunists

[Alright, so what's the plan?] Apple Core asked her partners in crime mentally, while she placed an order for some pasta.

Stone Breaker and Mirror observed their surroundings subtly while waiting their turn to order. Looking in opposite directions due to their seating, the ability to transfer visual information between them gave all three a great view of the entire restaurant at once. [Those two,] Stone Breaker said, indicating a couple of larger stallions in a booth. [They work for Calabrese, hired muscle.]

"Eat quickly," one of the stallions said to the other, quietly enough they mistakenly thought they wouldn't be overheard. "The boss needs us down by the docks in an hour. Ready to 'work'." Given that they were professional thugs, that must have meant violence of some kind. But that also meant opportunity.

Stone Breaker and Mirror slipped off to the stallions' room when the thugs were getting close to finishing their meals, taking up positions in stalls to change their appearance. Stone Breaker had the right build, and merely had to change his fur colors again, including a dyed copy of one of the thugs' cutie marks. He lacked the thug's hat, which could give them away, while Mirror simply did as changelings do and matched the other thug perfectly, cheap suit and all, even down to the smell of excessive cologne.

Apple Core kept an eye on things, enjoying her pasta nice and hot as it arrived, while keeping an eye on the thugs. If they left, the heist would depend on the other ponies' lack of attention to detail. Often reliable, but never a sure thing. As it happened, they headed for the stallions' room themselves.

While they were relieving themselves, Mirror used a subtle bit of changeling magic to suppress their thoughts for a bit, making them a little less aware of their surroundings while Stone Breaker smoothly swiped the hat off one head. They were out the door before the thugs had even finished pissing, never noticing any other ponies had been present.

They trotted into the kitchen area like they owned the place, and were dutifully ignored as they made their way to the back office. Sure enough, there was a safe there, and they went up to it, Mirror glowering at the staff just enough to ensure they didn't get too interested, while Stone Breaker slowly turned the combination lock.

The kingsblood made each click quite audible, despite the low volume, and in a minute he had the safe open, and its contents in hoof as he made his way out the back exit.

"Where are you going with that?" somepony finally dared to ask. He looked to be the manager.

"The boss needs it," Mirror replied, with his victims' own voice. His tone allowed for no argument, and none was made.

Meanwhile, the real thugs made their own exit out the front door, one of them complaining absently about a draft. A waitress, seeing them leave, nearly made it back into the kitchen in time to see their dopplegangers, but Apple Core called her over, stalling her a moment with a request for to-go boxes for the other two meals.


"That was easy," Sky Ranger said as she sat on the bed in their new hotel room.

"Too easy," Mirror added, sitting undisguised on a cushion out of view from the room's window, in case a pegasus flew by.

"It won't be that easy ever again," Stone Breaker pointed out, back to his own coloration. The hat was gone, left in a dumpster in a random alley. "They were sloppy because they were careless, because they didn't know what they were up against. In the future, they'll realize their ponies can be impersonated, even if they don't know how. They'll get more and more careful."

"Then we should strike again, fast, before they even realize we struck the first time," Sky Ranger pointed out.

"Who are you, and what have you done with my innocent little Apple Core?" Stone Breaker questioned with a grin.

"I told you, I'm Sky Ranger now."

"Alright, if we're going to strike again fast, we need to get going soon. Where do we hit?" Mirror asked, looking to Stone Breaker.

"Why am I suddenly in charge?" the stallion said, a bit taken aback.

"You're the one who knows all Vito's business. More so than either of us, at least," Mirror pointed out. "Especially me."

Stone Breaker sighed, looking out the window for a bit while he thought. "Alright... then here's where we go next."


"So what did you gather us all here for," Clockwork Wing began, fidgeting a bit, and causing the wooden frame on her back to strike noisily against the machine that dominated the room. The earth pony had invented a pair of cloth wings that worked great for flying downward. Upward... well, she had other inventions for that.

"Hay, be careful!" Golden Spanner chided. The unicorn stallion checked quickly for damage, before proceeding to show some readouts from his own invention. "Look at this here... here, here and here."

"What am I looking at?" Clockwork said, observing some various spikes in a set of wiggly graphs.

"Those are radio waves. On frequencies nopony is licensed to use," Golden said. "Somepony's started using them, and aggressively."

"And...?" Greased Lightning asked, the oil-stained pegasus mare glaring at the papers. "Are we supposed to be the radio police now?"

"What are they even saying?" Clockwork asked.

"That's just it... they're making all kinds of seemingly random screeching noises. But look at this," Golden replied, bringing out yet another graph. This showed 8 separate lines, with spikes at very regular intervals, but a seemingly random pattern as to which lines had spikes at any given interval. Sometimes many of the lines spiked at the same point, other times only one or two. "They seem to use clusters of different frequencies at once, always in exponents of 2. There's some kind of communication going on there, I'm sure of it, but it's nothing like our simple broadcasts of Equine speech, or even music. And it's fast. This graph has over a thousand distinct pulses of communication, but it's just the printout of a single second. I think there's only one explanation for this."

"This ought to be good," Greased said, though her tone was anything but optimistic.

"Aliens," Golden said, looking at them both with determined confidence.

The mares were silent for nearly a minute before Greased started laughing uncontrollably.

"Okay, so, aside from the fact they could just be some kind of inventors like us, or something, why the sudden meeting? Did you have anything other than just radio waves to report?" Clockwork asked.

"Well, nothing other than radio waves, but you might want to hear this anyways. Up until a few days ago, the signals were always coming from the west. The distant west. I've been trying to work out a way to figure out their exact location by using multiple antennae to see the difference in timing between when the signal arrives at each one. The math is hard, and time consuming, but I've gotten a basic feel for it. But here's the thing. Starting a couple days ago some of the signals have been closer. Much closer. Occasionally north, south, or east in fact," Golden explained.

The mares were silent again, this time more thoughtfully. They all knew what that meant, but Golden spelled it out anyways. "They're here. In our city. Not all of them. At least three, but I'd guess three groups."

"Where," Greased Lightning calmly demanded.

"I don't know yet," Golden said. "I told you the math is slow and hard. I think we need to bring in somepony with a math related cutie mark. Preferrably a mathemagician."

Greased was on her way out the door without a word.

"Good work, Golden. I don't know if they're aliens or what, but we're going to find out," Clockwork said before she started heading out as well. She paused at the door and looked back at the stallion with a furrowed brow for a few seconds. But... why? She shook her head and trotted out. Because none of us can leave a good mystery unsolved. That'll have to be reason enough.