8 - Think Tanks for the Intellectual Criminal
Somepony had to draw the short straws to examine the Canyon Rim Casino’s blueprints more thoroughly, and those someponies had been Sunburst and the Doctor, plus Gilda as a somegriffon. The trio sat around the dining room table, staring at the plans. Somewhere in there, something didn’t add up, something that was hiding a vault full of money and the Alicorn Amulet. For all they knew, the entire operation hinged on their ability to ferret out where the vault might be. They couldn’t let the team down.
“So, um, do either of you know anything about, about architecture?” Sunburst asked.
Gilda snorted. “Do I look like a builder?”
“I know a touch,” said the Doctor. “I’ve studied some architectural magic. Spatial expansion, mostly. You know, bigger-on-the-inside stuff and all that jazz.”
“Anything that might help us here?”
“Only that it’s too expensive to do on these scales. I highly doubt you could hide a vault in here.”
“Hnng.” Sunburst flipped through a few of the middle pages. It being the main part of the hotel, each floor looked almost identical. “Either of you know what, know what a vault could look like? Because I got nothing.”
“If it were me, I’d make it big and thick,” said Gilda. She leaned back and looked up at the ceiling, as if reminiscing about protecting money was the most relaxing thing in the world. “A foot of solid steel on each side, with the most ridiculous lock you can think of, you know.” She made gestures with her paws to demonstrate. “Then I’d stick it in some out-of-the-way place that’s hard to get to. Just to tick any thieves off. Then-”
“Ah, beg pardon,” the Doctor said, raising his hoof, “but does it have to be big and thick? The room in Canterlot Castle that once held the Elements was nigh impenetrable and it didn’t have anything like you’re saying. From the outside, it looked perfectly normal. From the inside, too, for that matter.”
“That room was layered with enough magical power to, to move the sun and woven together with, with more than a millennium of experience,” said Sunburst. “That’s kind of hard to come by outside alicorns.”
“Ah. Right. Never mind, then.”
“But we probably can expect, expect teleport interdiction,” said Sunburst. “That spell’s not too hard, at least, at least not when you have enough money to, to afford someplace like this.” He had actually known a tenured professor at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns who’d had her pencil box teleport-proofed after she’d gotten paranoid about students using teleportation to steal her pencils. Even weirder, she’d been right; the wood they were made of was magically valuable. “And then there’s, you know, there’s magical defenses that wouldn’t show up on blueprints like this.”
“I hate magic,” mumbled Gilda.
“I have something of a love-hate relationship with it, myself,” the Doctor said. “On the one hoof, it can do so much… but on the other, it can do so much.”
Time passed like molasses as they skimmed the plans. Unsure of what they were looking for, most of their discussions were vague and inconclusive. Sunburst found himself going over the same few rooms repeatedly, like a gofer running a conversation between offices for executives who refused to get out of their seats. Eventually, he pushed his glasses up and drummed his hoof on the table. “Do you want to just, just go through this floor by floor, looking for things that don’t fit? I mean, if, if we’re doing this, we might as well run it through some method.”
“No,” said Gilda. “Let’s do it. Wanna split it up and each do seven or eight floors? Good.” She grabbed several pages from the middle of the stack and wandered to another room.
“Don’t skip anything!” Sunburst yelled as he took some pages of his own. “And, and I mean anything!”
“I know!”
Not for the first time, Sunburst bemoaned how terrible he was at reading people. They were so… chaotic and… alive. (Which said super things about his personality.) Magic was magic, and it was always magic. It didn’t change. It didn’t behave differently when you’d been stuck in a room with it for an hour. It was predictable. But Gilda? Sunburst couldn’t tell what was up with her. “Irritable” seemed to be her default setting, but at least she was working. Hopefully it was good work.
Unlike Sunburst, the Doctor could read people, and noticed Sunburst’s reaction. “Don’t worry about her,” the Doctor said. “She stopped by Ponyville last year, and believe it or not, she was even worse then. But she came out here on her own, didn’t she?” He glanced at the door Gilda had disappeared through. “Personally, I think she’s cooled off a bit and just doesn’t like sitting around. Shame she has to do so much of it right now.”
“Here’s hoping,” mumbled Sunburst. Or at least, hopefully he wouldn’t need to sit in a room with her for hours on end again.
The pages Sunburst had grabbed were of the upper floors of the tower. Mostly hotel rooms with an airship landing dock that, as its title pointed out, had been added in later. He went over each square inch separately, examined how it related to each adjacent square inch. Unfortunately, it was a big paper and had a lot of square inches. The labels also left a lot to be desired, especially in the slew of infrastructure on the roof. The lines were so close together that Sunburst actually felt his eyes getting fatigued. He pushed up his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Stupid blueprint monochromaticity.
He flipped down a few pages, into the main part of the hotel. Unlike the platform, it was simple: there were rooms on the outside, ringing a hallway, which in turn ringed more rooms on the inside, plus an elevator bank and some staircases. How creative. Sunburst glanced at the next page: almost exactly the same. Super. Well, at least if there was a difference between floor designs, he’d see it quickly. He began measuring the sizes of the rooms.
He was shocked from his analytical stupor when Gilda suddenly cawed from a few rooms over. Before either he or the Doctor could react, she’d raced back into the dining room, panting and grinning. (How could you grin with a beak?) She flexed her wings and said, “It’s not much, but I think I got something from this stupid paper. Make room.”
Sunburst and the Doctor quickly cleared a section of the table and Gilda plopped down her sheet. “Okay, look,” she said. She traced the outlines of the tower. “The building’s kinda squarish, right?”
“Yeah…” said Sunburst.
“And there are rooms on the outside. They’ve got windows and crap. But check out these rooms.” Gilda pointed at the rooms on the inside of the tower. “Is it just me, or are those shaped weird? I mean, look at how long and thin they are.”
“Hold up…” muttered the Doctor. He raced back to his own set of plans and began flipping through it.
“Huh.” Sunburst pushed his glasses up as he squinted at the rooms. “Those are awfully space-filling. I can’t really picture a bed fitting in them easily.”
“And they won’t have windows, either,” said Gilda. She flipped to the next floor up. Same thing. Even the interior wall was the same size. “So whatever poor schmuck gets that room is gonna be cramped in a place without any sunlight, a crappy stay if there ever was one. There’s no way you can convince me that somepony smart enough to build and run a hotel would make a mistake like that.” Next floor. Same results. She tapped the central square again. “I bet our vault’s in there, probably with some extra security measures.”
“Ah ha! Take a gander at these!” The Doctor laid his plans over top of Gilda’s. “These floors?” he said, grinning. “Supposedly offices and other workspaces. I actually think these are true, given the different requirements for bedrooms and work floors, but if only the spaces with bedrooms are lying-”
Sunburst was already leafing through his pages. “Hey! Look at, look here.” He flattened his wrinkled pages out. “Now, this, these two floors were added later-”
“I can read the bit that says ‘Addition — Airship Landing Pad’, thanks,” said Gilda.
“-added later,” Sunburst said, “but look: a few penthouses on the outside and storage space for any airships in the middle. No space-filling bedrooms.”
“Bingo,” said the Doctor. “Mates, I think we’ve found our vault. Awfully big blighter, though.” He fanned through the pages. “It’s, what? Ten stories tall? Fifteen? And that’s a few dozen yards to a side, that is.” He whistled. “Awful lot of space in there.”
“Bet it’s extra defenses,” Gilda said. “I know I’d stuff that space full of all sorts of nasty magic.”
“And, blimey, with all that space, that’d be an awful lot of nasty magic,” said the Doctor. “Where’s the scale? I want to know how much space exactly… Does magic have a maximum density before it becomes unstable? I never looked too deeply into that…”
“Whatever. Gotcha.” Gilda grinned at the paper like it was a rabbit she was preparing to eat. But then her face (beak?) fell. “So… now what? We found the vault. Kinda. Sorta. Maybe. Vaguely. Ish. Do we just… sit around, or-?”
“I say we brainstorm,” said the Doctor. “What kind of defenses we think there are, maybe ways to get around them? I know they probably won’t be the slightest bit accurate, but it’ll get us into that thieving mindset we so desperately need to be in.”
Gilda immediately stood up. “Then I can’t stay here. Sorry, but I think better when I’m moving and I’m a few pages away from going stir-crazy.”
“Well, um, alright. Are, are you gonna leave the villa?” Sunburst asked.
“Nah. Ten bits says there’s a bow and arrows somewhere in here. If I can find them, I’ll just shoot the crap out of a tree in the yard or something.” Gilda made for one of the back rooms. “At least I’ll be moving!”
“Sounds good!” Sunburst yelled after her. He turned to the Doctor. “So. Any ideas?”
“Strengthening, probably,” the Doctor said immediately. “Fortify it like a modern-day castle. The right enchantments can get things really sturdy nowadays. The room in Canterlot Castle where the Elements of Harmony were kept… I know it was Celestia doing the enchantments, but…” He whistled. “You could shell that place with a warship and a bowl full of water wouldn’t so much as ripple. But if we don’t go-”
Sunburst cleared his throat. “Hey, uh, Doc? What were you doing in Canterlot Castle to know what the Elements room and its enchantments were like? Wasn’t that off-limits to the public?”
The Doctor’s coat lost several shades of brown. “Well, ah…”
That had been good.
Over about fifteen rounds, Thorax-Unicorn-Green and Corky-Earth-Yellow had cleaned out the other two players, who stuck around to watch. Corky-Earth-Yellow clung on valiantly, playing more cautiously, but Thorax-Unicorn-Green slowly whittled him down. Poker was easy when you could literally taste your opponent’s fear or happiness.
One hundred forty bits in the pot at the turn. The four cards out were the queen of diamonds, the ace of spades, the eight of hearts, and the four of hearts. Thorax-Unicorn-Green had the eight of clubs and the queen of spades. Not a bad hoof, but not the greatest.
Corky-Earth-Yellow’s eyes flitted between his cards and Thorax-Unicorn-Green. A little bit of suspicion swam through a sea of anxiety beneath his expressionless exterior. While changeling emotion-tasting couldn’t read minds and get specific thoughts, Thorax-Unicorn-Green had found that he wasn’t half bad at guessing the thoughts that led to those emotions. Take this particular blend: the last time it had happened, Corky-Earth-Yellow had promptly started raising the bet until they hit the cap for the round and the next card was dealt. Thorax-Unicorn-Green had guessed Corky-Earth-Yellow was testing the waters, trying to see how willing he was to go all the way. Thorax-Unicorn-Green’d had a strong hoof then, so he kept going. Sure enough, come the showdown, Corky-Earth-Yellow had had a weak hoof and Thorax-Unicorn-Green had raked in a lot of money. And if he was going that route this time…
“Raise,” Corky-Earth-Yellow said. His voice was level, but his emotions were nervous. He pushed his chips forward-
“Raise,” Thorax-Unicorn-Green promptly said. No pushing for him; he flicked his chips in with a little flippy move, like a boss. He’d gotten quite good at it over the past few games and was irrationally proud of it. It was his move, not something Chrysalis or even any ponies had taught him.
Corky-Earth-Yellow’s emotions nearly ran away screaming, but he didn’t display anything. After a second, he sighed. “Fold,” he said, letting his cards flutter to the tabletop. But although his voice was weary, he was smiling. “I must say, what are you doing here? You could be clearing out the high-stakes tables with your skill!”
“Ehm. Beginner’s luck? I’m… new at this.” Thorax-Unicorn-Green’s went back as he pulled the pile of chips toward himself and his already quite large pile of previously-won chips. Oh, juxtaposition.
“In bluffing, maybe, but in reading ponies? You’re a natural! In all my years of poker, I’ve never seen somepony quite as good as you.”
“And how many years has that been?”
“Almost fifteen. I stopped playing, oh, ten years ago, decided to come back, started at the low-stakes table to see if I still had it. And I thought I had, then you came along.” Corky-Earth-Yellow grinned. “Nothing to take the wind out of your sails like running into a beginner who cleans you out, yeah?” He laughed and got out of his chair. “And speaking of getting cleaned out, I’ll just cut my losses. Sorry, but I’m done.”
“Aw.” But when Thorax-Unicorn-Green counted up his tokens, he had nearly three hundred and fifty. Not bad when each player only started out with a hundred. Going to a higher-stakes table wasn’t a bad idea. It’d probably be best to cash out some of the chips he’d won and ensure he still had some actual, unloseable money, though. Just in case. The next table up had been, what, two hundred?
Thorax-Unicorn-Green hopped out of his chair with… what did ponies call it? A spring in his step? He’d always thought that was just one of those weird pony expressions, but no. Happiness was bubbling out of him, making him involuntarily bounce as he walked, as if his bones had been actually replaced with springs. Not that he minded; the feeling was just strange, in the same way Spike-Dragon-Purple’s friendliness had been strange. It was nice, being able to do things for others, and quite useful things, at that.
He happened to be exiting the poker room just after Corky-Earth-Yellow, who slowed down to let him catch up. “I didn’t catch your name,” he said casually. Not a hint of animosity was swimming in his head. Heck, he was so amiable that animosity would probably have trouble swimming and drown in seconds.
“Sundown Gleam,” Thorax-Unicorn-Green said. After some discussion last night, Bon Bon, Gilda, and Sunburst had deemed it a sufficiently generic pony name that wouldn’t attract much attention.
“Technically, I’m Corquodale, but call me Corky.” Mortification blazed through Corky-Earth-Yellow like a kerosene-fed wildfire and he grimaced. “Please call me Corky. Will you be staying here long?”
“I’m not sure. Probably two weeks.” That had been when the celebration (and their heist) was planned, right?
“Because, assuming I’m not that out of practice and you really are just that good-” (Thorax-Unicorn-Green only barely managed to keep himself from puffing his chest out.) “-I was thinking of going to the high-stakes tables in a few days, and if you’re available, I’d love to play you. Once I get my poker face back up to snuff, of course.” He grinned. The closest thing to a negative emotion in him was his own anxiety at his lack of skill.
“Your poker face wasn’t that bad.” It really wasn’t. It was just that Corky-Earth-Yellow, like most ponies, was terrible at poker emotions (and that wasn’t Thorax-Unicorn-Green’s fault).
“Maybe not, but it needs to be better. Don’t feel pressured, just keep an eye out if you’re interested, alright?”
They parted ways after that, Corky-Earth-Yellow cashing in his chips and walking away listening. Thorax-Unicorn-Green found himself with the same cashier-pegasus-lavender as before. “Hey there!” she said happily. “Short time! No see!”
Stupid ponies and their stupid expressions. It made Thorax-Unicorn-Green’s head spin. “Um. Sure.” He laid some chips on the counter, keeping enough for the high table’s buy-in. “I’d like to cash these, please.”
“Sure thing! Gimme juuuuuust a second…”
The cashier-pegasus-lavender’s movements were quick and precise, bordering on mesmerising. It was just counting tokens and bits out, but she was so good at it that it was hard to not appreciate it. Then something moved behind her, and Thorax-Unicorn-Green’s gaze was pulled over just enough to see an employee-unicorn-beige pushing a cart out of sight. Probably full of money, heading to Goumada-Unicorn-Marble’s vault.
It was like a light gem ignited in his head. “So, the, uh, the money goes into the vault every night, right?” he asked.
“Twelve hours or so,” the cashier-pegasus-lavender said. “Restocking cash registers…” She tapped her own. “Keeping track of how much money we make, stuff like that. Couldn’t tell you more than that — I just give the guards the money and they take it away.”
“I see,” said Thorax-Unicorn-Green. Gears were already spinning in his head as he took the bag of bits. “Well, have a nice day.”
“Sure thing!” chirped the cashier-pegasus-lavender. “You, too!”
Thorax-Unicorn-Green was having a nice day indeed as he strode back to the poker room. The more his idea took shape, the more he was sure it would work. He just needed some help from his teammates to get the magic sorted out, and it seemed like it was going to be simple magic.
His confidence boosted and his mind on fire, Thorax-Unicorn-Green took a seat at one of the higher-stakes tables like he was playing with pocket change, causing the other players to look up. Simply from the way they moved, their tighter motions and more restrained expressions, Thorax-Unicorn-Green could tell that they were more serious than the previous table. And they kept just as loose a set of reins on their emotions as everypony else.
Don’t get too excited, Thorax-Unicorn-Green reminded himself. You could still lose your head and then your chips. And maybe your disguise. Don’t lose your disguise.
But that reminder merely tempered his confidence rather than destroying it. Thorax-Unicorn-Green laid his chips on the table. “Hit me.”
Starlight had initially assumed that Rainbow Dash had been exaggerating when she ranted about how much stakeouts sucked. Now that it was past noon and she’d been on a stakeout for hours, she was considering giving Rainbow a medal for keeping her rant below fifteen minutes.
She and Derpy were sitting on a bench watching the front of the building while Bon Bon and Rainbow watched the back. Starlight had a notepad and was scribbling her observations down, pitiful as they were. Absolutely nothing was helped by the steam-powered machines that sputtered by on the road every now and then; Starlight had taken to casting a shield as they approached to keep the soot away.
It was hard to tell what Derpy was thinking. She seemed equally invested in her current muffin and the casino. She wasn’t writing anything down and, if she had any questions, definitely wasn’t asking Starlight. But she wasn’t squirming and her ears were pointed in the right direction. Well, she’d worked with Bon Bon that first day and Starlight figured that Bon Bon, pessimist she was, would’ve mentioned anything bad about their time together, but she’d said nothing. Maybe Derpy’s memory was just really good.
After jotting down that a certain guard had just done a fourth circuit of the casino, Starlight felt her eyelids droop and quickly blinked herself awake. Then she yawned widely. In the wrong circumstances, doing nothing was surprisingly draining.
“You look hungry.” Derpy held a cinnamon-encrusted banana nut muffin in front of Starlight. “Come to the derp side. We have muffins.”
Starlight gently, reluctantly nudged the muffin aside. “Thanks, but I’m busy. It’ll take a really good reason for me to have a snack.”
“Muffins are high in carbs, which is the primary source of energy for the brain, while the sugars give your metabolism enough of a kick to keep you going through the day, even if you haven’t eaten much else. And nuts and bananas are both good sources of fiber and protein.”
Okay, wow. That was a really good reason. Reasons, even. “And the cinnamon?”
“I like cinnamon. It’s a morale booster, if you want to get all phosisticated.”
What the heck. “What kinds of muffins do you have?”
“This one, blueberry, red velvet, and carrot cake.”
As Starlight chowed down on the red velvet muffin, she asked, “So, what have you seen?”
“Those steam machine things? They come around every…” Derpy stuck her tongue out a little as she thought. “…at something o’clock, something-fifteen, and something-forty. I think they might belong to the patrol cops. Or maybe the casino. Those four pairs of guards — there, there, there, and there — all have staggered shifts so that one pair changes every two hours. I think those two there will be the next ones to be replaced, since that griffon looks pretty tired; see his wings? Oh, and-”
“You spotted all of that?” Starlight had noticed several of those, but not the times.
“I’m good with details.” Munch. “I need to be, to deliver the mail quickly.” Derpy looked at the beaten-down griffon she’d pointed out. “I wonder if he’s the one we’re going to seduce.”
Starlight shocked several pedestrians by spitting her muffin clear across the street.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that!” Derpy protested preemptively. “Heists always have somepony on the inside! Didn’t you read Eleven Oceans? Tiller was friends with a guard, so when he got locked up-”
By now, Starlight had managed to regain a tiny portion of her breath. “I- I’m sorry,” she wheezed, “what?” Cough cough. “We’re- just gonna- walk up, bat our eyelashes at him, and he’ll do whatever we say?”
It was hard to tell whether Derpy’s grin was clueless or earnest. Maybe both. “Oh, sure! A poor, overworked tiercel like him, he probably just wants some company when his shift’s done, but nogriffon’s available because who goes to the bar at 2 in the afternoon? And suddenly: Gilda.” Her grin faltered. “I… don’t know what happens after that…”
Starlight turned back to the casino and couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “Uh-huh. I’m sure Gilda will be thrilled to learn she’s our femme fatale.”
“I could try. He’s kinda cute.”
Fortunately for the other side of the street, Starlight didn’t have any more muffin to spit.
TWANG. Thud
Everypony assumed that brainstorms worked, but sometimes they just made a mess. Sunburst and the Doctor’s brainstorm, rather than irrigating the seeds of ideas to eventually produce fruits of their labor, just left Sunburst feeling tired and washed-out. He borrowed a page from Gilda’s book and got up to walk. Maybe she was doing better.
TWANG. Thud.
And so, Sunburst had abandoned the Doctor and pulled himself to the backyard. Gilda had indeed found a bow and arrows and was repeatedly loosing them at a single tree, as if she hoped the small bits of wood each arrow chipped off would eventually chop it down as surely as any ax.
Gilda glanced over when she heard Sunburst approach. “Yo.” TWANG. Thud. “Any ideas?”
“Pfft. I wish.” Sunburst sat down to watch her shoot. It was fascinating, the things griffons could do with claws. “We don’t know what casino security looks like, so we don’t know what, what to have ideas on. He keeps going on these hypercomplicated ideas where… sheesh, I can’t remember. Do you have any ideas?”
“Not really.” TWANG. Thud. Gilda’s arrows were awfully close together. “I barely know a thing about magic except that it comes from that.” She waved an arrow at Sunburst’s horn. “So I started thinking about security in general. I bet there’s some kind of… I dunno, remote-viewing mumbo-jumbo-” TWANG. Thud. “-do you have that?” Sunburst nodded, and she continued, “We already know there’s those magic key things, so there’s probably some other kind of magical ID. Heck, maybe it senses personal auras or whatever.”
“That’s ridiculous. Auras in that sense don’t, they don’t exist,” said Sunburst. It remained one of the most absurd things Sunburst had heard. You could detect it from interference with a person’s magical signature, obviously, and no such interference had ever been detected.
Gilda glanced sideways at Sunburst, giving him a look like she’d just downed an entire can of rotten peas, then shot off her last arrow. “Whatever.” Once she’d retrieved her arrows, she said, “Sorry, but that’s kinda all I got at the moment. Wish I could sense magic so I could make better plans.” She drew the bow back and aimed. “Well, what I’d really like is to be able to sense magic in the casino-” TWANG. Thud. “-while sitting in a chair here.”
Ding. Sunburst’s ears went up and he grinned. “That, that’s brilliant! Thanks, Gilda!” He raced back inside. For once, being a near-complete failure at the applied parts of magic school wasn’t a bad thing.
“Sure!” TWANG. Thud. “Thanks for what?”
Sunburst ran through the house, going over his idea in his mind again and again. It could work. It’d take a heck of a lot of effort, but it could work. He couldn’t do it on his own, though.
He skidded to a halt in the dining room. The Doctor was still talking to himself. “…would chronolocks be susceptible to time magic? Or are they specifically designed to-”
Sunburst cleared his throat. “Hey, um, Doc? Are you any, any good with math?”
The Doctor stared at Sunburst like the latter had tentacles in place of his eyes. “Any- good?” He snorted. “‘Any good’, he says. My dear stallion, mathematics is the very foundation of… well, everything!” He paced back and forth, making big, grandiose gestures. “Even magic itself runs on it, let alone more mundane things like physics! And as a stallion of science, I could not bear to let mathematics go unexamined in my studies. Why, to ignore mathematics in science would be akin to ignoring narrative in writing, ignoring rhythm in music, ignoring gods in theology!”
“That’s…” Sunburst tilted his head. “That’s not a ‘yes’…”
One of the Doctor’s ears went down. “…Yes. I am quite good at maths.”
“I mean, it’s just,” Sunburst said quickly, “just because you, um, study something doesn’t mean you’re good at it.”
“…So… what do you need?”
“Well, um, Gilda, she suggested we get something to detect magic-”
“And are we supposed to smuggle you, Starlight, and Lyra into the vault to use as thaumaturgical detectors? Waving you around, jabbing your horns at the wall?” But then the Doctor frowned. “I’m not sure Lyra would mind all that much, actually…”
“No,” Sunburst said, shaking his head. “No. Just… no.” He sat down opposite the Doctor. “Have you ever heard of an arcanoscope?”
The Doctor drummed his hoof on the table. “I believe so, yes. Presents a false-color image based on what sorts of magic are being used, right? But aren’t those just teaching tools?”
“Uh… yeah. Y’see…” Sunburst coughed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I, uh, you probably saw this, but I got my cutie mark in magic, so I was enrolled in, in Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, then it turned out I was the wrong kind of gifted. I… I’m… I know the theory of magic, it’s just, I’m bad at the actual doing part, and I was assigned an arcanoscope that was supposed to help with that.” He snorted. “As if studying music theory’s going to make you more dextrous for the piano. Flunked out after a few years.”
“Ooh,” the Doctor said. He cringed back a little, like he’d been struck physically rather than emotionally. “So sorry.”
Sunburst mumbled something about not worrying and waved a hoof vaguely, then performed the time-honored art of blazing along and pretending the last embarrassing moment never happened. “But, um, I really liked the idea of the thing, so when I went back home… I… kinda stole it.”
“Why’d you have to steal it?” The Doctor’s went up like springs. “Couldn’t you just buy one?”
“I’d, I’d washed out of one of the most prestigious schools in the, in the country,” Sunburst said flatly. “I didn’t have a job, I didn’t have any, any prospects for one, and I was living with my parents. I couldn’t afford one.”
“Ah. Most unfortunate.”
“But, um,” Sunburst continued in another bout of ignore-embarrassing-moment-jutsu, “while I don’t have it here, I did manage to, to study and reverse-engineer it, so, um, I’m going to write down the equations I remember-”
“-and I check your work? Certainly.”
“Not just that. Turn it into a, a remote scanner that can send its data back to someplace. Then we can, I dunno, stuff it in the air vent or something.” It’d have to be the air vent. Heists and anything that involved sneaking around always utilized air vents in some way. “We can analyze all the magic in the place we want without, without our unicorns being waved around as thaumaturgical detectors.”
The Doctor’s voice immediately turned distant. “…Ah. Huh.” He made little popping noises with his mouth as he thought and stared at the table like it held the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Sunburst fidgeted with his beard while he waited. Beards were good for fidgeting with; it was half the reason he’d grown one.
“So let me see if I have all this correct,” the Doctor said eventually. “You want me, an earth pony with no innate access to thaumic magic, to take equations from some half-remembered dissection of a remedial teaching tool and use them to help design a brand-new invention from scratch with capabilities far beyond said teaching tool, probably using no more materials than what we can procure from hardware and arcanoware stores on a budget, where the ins, outs, ups, downs, and sidewayses of said invention will all rely on actions that are impossible for me to do?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
The Doctor’s face lit up with glee. “Excellent! Positively sensational! And here I thought it was too good to be true! Shall we get started?”
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I like this chapter especially the part where Derpy show she's intelligent and observant. Sunburst reapeats several words at a few ponts is that an error or intentional?
Smart Derpy is precious.
When you're Starlight Glimmer's childhood best friend, it's best to keep an eye on you as well. "Necrocratic nation of the predictable dead" isn't too far off from "Soul-mutilating equality cult," after all.
Good to see Thorax is at least trying not to get carried away.
And they are good muffins. And a wonderfully observant mare.
"Something about reversing the polarity of the neutron flow? I swear he's making up half of it."
"We should only need one."
We have definitive progress! Now to see how much further everyone can go before running facefirst into some unforeseen issue.
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This Sunburst is being written with a stutter.
Nopony expects much from Derpy, but oh my is she full of surprises. Also, her improbable mish-mash of practical knowledge and extrapolating from fiction is wonderful. She and the Doctor go together wonderfully.
Also, that last bit with the Doctor was excellent.
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As someone who thinks quickly in concepts but has a hard time putting words to thoughts, I strongly identify with the way Sunburst speaks here. I don't have a stutter but I do repeat words all the time when my thoughts aren't sufficiently scripted before I open my mouth.
Wow derpy caught all of that that is amazing 👏
So it looks like everybody is still trying to figure out a plan how to Heist the casino the doctor Sunburst and Gilda figure out the map layout but somehow came out empty what it looks like Gilda kind of gave some ideas and even the doctor agrees and it looks like thorax is getting better with his poker the game but he needs to be careful how he plays it because sometimes ponies and other creatures get a little suspicious so he has to play it carefully and it looks like Starlight and Derpy are still try to figure out patterns of the workers how they do whatever thing but surprisingly Derpy figure it out a little bit she's pretty good well hopefully they all have some ideas hopefully it will go down okay
You're really good at making him the Doctor while also not making him a problem-solving plot device. I guess the lack of access to time travel and sonic screwdrivers helps with that. Either way, I love seeing him excited about tech projects <3
Derpy is also wonderful! I'm a sucker for characters who are really smart at specific things and nothing else.