Blank Slate is the greatest thief of his generation. He has robbed countless nigh-impossible marks, and his talents as a master of disguise are beyond par - truly, nopony knows who he is.
And now he's preparing the greatest heist in mortal memory: the treasure vaults of the Princesses themselves.
But you have to get up pretty early in the morning to get one past the pony who defines when ‘early in the morning’ is…
Spoilers in the comments! Beware! Beware...
Audio Reading available - thank you ABagOVicodin
Czech Translation available - Thank you Keranis
Chapters (2)
Other then some spelling errors I liked it!
I liked this
..........Ha ha ha ha ha
4989388 O.o Spelling errors? I have an editor full of doom to such things! Plus that's usually the one thing I don't mess up.
Could you PM me an example or two?
Remember I'm Australian, so errant 'u's and '-ise' instead of '-ize' are part of your complete breakfast :)
But glad you otherwise liked it!
4989415 Glad you enjoyed! Thanks for commenting :)
That twist---brilliant. You flipped the "Celestia is scary when saying nice things" trope on its head, superbly.
Well done. :)
This is so good. It made my fave list.
Unfortunately, I'm angry at you for making this before I did. I had a similar idea, but never got around to it. Now I won't even start because it could never top this.
Overall: 2563/2563
4989876 Well, let's face it, she is.
Whether she intends to be or not.
Glad you enjoyed it!
4989919 Hah! Heaven knows I've had more than a couple ideas fall into THAT little bottomless pit before XD Still, write it! Just find a nice twist to work into it!
Glad you enjoyed. :)
Ah, this was nice. The narrative was a little wordy, but that lent itself very well to the smug nature of ... I don't know what to call him for fear of spoilers. Is he the protagonist or the antagonist here?
Great, now I'm just confused!
My reaction after reading Chapter 1: "I liked this. Great idea!"
My reaction after reading this chapter: i.imgur.com/bhKp2.gif
...Now I get that Blank Slate is named that in a reference to his special talent, but did you name Cuckoo Cloud after a cloudcuckoolander? Because he doesn't seem to be one. I don't even know how that name matches up with his talent OR his cutie mark...
4990266 Just consider him to be the main character, and you're set.
4990266 Protagonist, of course! He's the good guy here! Now, anyway. Totally reformed. :)
4990842 That's the effect I was going for!
Glad you enjoyed.
4990969 The name was basically a reference to his nature - Cuckoos are known to lay their eggs in other birds' nests to make the other birds raise their eggs as their own, so it's simply a much more subtle reference to his talent for disguising himself. Originally it was "Cuckoo Song", I honestly don't remember why I changed it - but I'm trying to move more towards names that don't actually necessarily flow as one whole concept. (Most names you see in the fandom are 'adjective' 'noun' or similar, or at least make sense outside naming conventions; a lot of the ones you see in the actual show are much less so - "Fluttershy" "Thunderlane" etc - so yeah.)
But no, I hadn't even considered that link.
Pffft...I did NOT consider that ending.
That was funny as hell
Celestia didnt even KNOW "Blank Slate" was a thief, he turned himself in for no reason
4991062
4991068
Of course, then you have to imagine the guards coming up to Celestia after the fact to let her know that the jewel thief has turned himself in, just as she planned all along.
What is she going to do, tell them it was all a huge mistake?
(Luna is not going to let her hear the end of this for decades.)
And you know what the funniest part of this would be. When Celestia hears about this case (which she will cause they'll want to confirm his story) She'll just smile and say that convincing him to turn himself in was her plan all along. And everypony will believe her too. Ha!
Hmm Celestia could possibly use Blank Slate as an Infiltrator and or spy in her service
Uhm... he'd leave powder on everything he touched. He'd also probably leave puffs of dust behind with every step he took.
Powder doesn't just stay put. Seriously, try putting any finely powdered substance in your hair sometime. He has fine powder over his entire body. He'd be a mess, and it'd rub out easily too.
A better bet would be magically-enchanced, fast acting fur dyes, though they might be susceptible to disillusionment charms, which I suspect would be a standard security measure.
Hmm, so Canterlot castle doesn't even have a proper identification system.
But the oversight of focusing ONLY on magical disguises and totally forgetting about physical ones is not at all realistic. Any remotely competent security would be looking for both, especially if they're still on the alert after the changelings.
They'd almost certainly have a very strict ID system in place as well if, as the story states, they're still on the lookout for changelings.
Later he realized that all the bits in Equestria were made of gold and jewels were so cheap and plentiful that Twilight Sparkle's dragon assistant was given many as treats and payment for small chores, and if he wanted to steal enough to actually get 'rich' he'd need to carry a hoard the size of a dragon's out of Canterlot Castle.
"It was then I realized how utterly stupid this whole effort was."
... the spell, oddly enough, also seemed to show the date when they were meant to die... hovering over their heads with their names in slanted crimson script.
And if she happened to rewrite that date with their name in a strange little black journal which had dropped out of the sky in front of her hooves one day (it had some weird language on it which they could only make out spelled something like 'Morte Message' according to the translation spells, whatever that meant), why the pony would die at that time, by any method she chose to write in!
It was sooooo much fun playing god!
I was hoping it would have been one of the elements that did it, not Celestia. Of course with the end of season 4, that is now no longer possible.
This was hilarious!
Beautiful, beautiful twist. Well done.
Part of me wants to call bullshit on Celestia, but now I can't help but think that she doesn't even remember the names of Twilight's friends without help. All those years of not committing something to memory probably makes a bad habit.
4991349
What if you make the date a thousand years from now?
Brilliant.
I love how the second chapter thoroughly changes the meaning of the first.
And now I have to wonder how Celestia would react to reading the transcript of the interview...
I really liked this story. It reminded me of an accidental version of The Interrogation by Zamairiac and the unofficial fan sequel The Interrogation: Spared Change by Post Script. (Both very good stories)
Huzzah and well done! This was a really fun story, and I was quite moved by the exchange between Celestia and Cuckoo Cloud. I didn't suspect at all that it was an 'accident', and that made what she said to him very powerful.
That it turned out to have nothing directly to do with him thus became quite funny
and I can totally see an immortal (or nigh-immortal) entity needing something like that spell.
Thanks for posting this quite entertaining caper tale!
Light and laughter,
SongCoyote
4991085 That's the way a real mastermind does it. No matter what happens, or how far shit has come off the rails, EVERYTHING is exactly according to plan.
Well played...
A spell that could reveal any ponies name? I could use something like that. But wanting aside, there's one thing I can't figure out. How exactly did she figure out what he was about to attempt and that it was him stealing everything? Was it just a lucky guess or did she exactly what was going on?
4991816 I think the whole point of this chapter is that it turned out she didn't know what he was up to and it was the Knowing Names spell that inadvertently scuppered the thief's plan.
I need closure.
So Celestia didn't know that he was the thief.
Will she still punish him when she finds out, or will she give him a second chance?
4991816
Lesson time.
Good comedy works with a buildup and a twist. The buildup sets expectations, and the twist subverts them. Classic example "Man walks into a bar, the next one ducks."
'Man walks into a bar' is the set up for a bar joke, expectations are set.
'the next one ducks.' subverts the expectation, changing the entire meaning of the set up.
Setup: Celestia thwarts a thief by appearing at the last possible second and showing him that she knows exactly what he's about to do.
Twist: She had no idea what was really going on.
4991942 I would take you more seriously if you hadn't blotted out all but one of your sentences and sound like a condescending ass.
4992002
Sorry.
4991304 It isn't realistic here. But in a world where pretty much every disguise involves magic, and Changelings can only disguise themselves as ponies by using magic? People didn't check for shoe bombs at airports before someone tried to blow up a plane with a shoe bomb. There just wasn't any need or any rational reason to do so until we found out that someone was actually insane enough to come up with the idea.
Nice to know who the next chief of security in Canterlot is.
4991116 She might not even say that, instead just murmuring something about how every pony deserves a second chance, and letting everyone just assume she was (a) omniscient, (b) benevolent, and (c) didn't want to make a big deal out of tracking down and reforming a notorious thief with only a few casual words.
*Applauds* Well done! Well done. I'm going to take my time to check out the rest of what you've written after this.
"“Unless…”
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Dusty"
"cast.
[centre]~-~-~-~[/centre]
“Oooh"
Something appears to have gone wrong with the tagging.
"With grunt"
"With a grunt"?
…Hahahahaha! Oh my! :)
4991289 It isn't that kind of powder plus he was wet when applying it so to allow it to set this works really well when trying to get a quick sold color and remove it soon after it is used as a stage technique very often to make a character have graying hair and swap between the two
That was brilliant. Fantastic story.
Wubs it.
Oh, this is rich.
God I would love to hear more of this Cuckoo Cloud life.
I implore you to continue writing this story, it would be awesome reading the adventures of Cuckoo Cloud, Celestia's top spy. I vote his code name be OOC
Ignoring the fact that the first thing I thought of when I read his real name was "Cloud Cuckoo Land" from The Lego Movie, that twist was amazing. I finished the first chapter and thought: "yeah, that's just like Celestia to do that kind of thing." and then finished the second and started laughing. Brilliant.