Away and Afar

by PropsValroa

Chapter 72

"I see they have sealant, nails, rope, and some other materials we are going to need. The one inside is moving around the place and appears to not really be focused. Perhaps we could take an advantage of that somehow?" Collapse suggested. "I cannot do long distance unsummoning, I have to be right near the objects to perform the spell, by the way." Collapse spoke.

"Take advantage of it how?" Magloria questioned, raising an eyebrow as she spoke. "Are you going to trip them up or something? Put sleeping pills in their coffee, perhaps?"

"Magloria, I don't think she means to do *that*..." Jump Start mumbled.

"If I was able to do something like that I obviously would, but I am not sure what we could do. I don't wanna do anything to hurt them though, after all, what if they are a really nice panthin shop owner, who enjoys helping others out?" Collapse whispered, seemingly unsure what to do.

Magloria sighed, looking around quickly to make sure there was no one around who might notice a light show later.

"I suppose I could hit them with a knockout ball. It shouldn't hurt them much, and they'll be fine afterwards. I will need a proper source of water though. It requires too much ice to use the water from the air." she suggested.

"Well, perhaps they have well somewhere that we can get some water out of, for that?" Collapse asked Magloria curiously, looking around to see if there was any wells or anything like that in the area.

She couldn't spot anything that looked like a well, neither down the street they were near nor past any of the alleyways or side passages in the place they were at.

She found something else instead. Tablecloths and tiny clothes could be seen hanging out on a nearby washing line to dry, and below it was a tub of water used prior to hanging.

It still had water in it, Magloria probably wouldn't care where said water came from.

"Well, there you go." Collapse said to Magloria. "Let's knock them out *safely* and we'll get what we need and be done with it." Collapse stated to Magloria, seemingly fine with that plan, as it seemed to be what they were going with.

Magloria nodded and, after checking around once again, started drawing the water to her with her magic, the liquid flowing over and condensing into the center of an icy blue magic glow.

There was no way that much water created such a small amount of ice, but whatever spell she had to cast to get this effect did exactly that. It definitely showed the magic off, if the constant dimmer glow of the orb was any indication.

"Now all I need is for them to stop moving for a second so I can take a shot." Magloria said as she moved back over to a window, patiently waiting for a good moment with the ball out of sight.

The panthin was busy assembling a chair (one that was already half built, but they had stopped before) when she threw it, the ball soaring in an arc before striking them in the head with a dull *clink*. They went down like a sack of potatoes, the hammer and nail they were holding landing on the floor with a clatter.

Collapse was confused why the ball of ice was so small. Perhaps it was made that way due to making the ice denser than it would have been otherwise. Something to ask about later on, for sure. Not something to dwell on right now.

When Magloria knocked out the Panthin, Collapse would quickly move her way into the building through the window and begin unsummoning the materials they needed to. She made sure to be as quick as possible in doing so. If anything else looked important for what they needed she would take it as well before heading back out the window, and retreating back to where they were.

If nothing went wrong, Collapse would look to them with a look of success. Now to find the other items they needed.

Collapse managed to collect the entire barrel of sealant, several coils of rope and half a dozen buckets of nails. All of that would probably cost a fortune to get normally, so it was good they managed to get so much from a single place.

"Just adhesive left to get. Now where would we find some of that?" Jump Start asked, looking to the others.

Collapse would look to Jump Start. "Let's see about another shop then, if they have other shops with similar items. I didn't see any of that in here." she spoke, glad that she managed to take all that stuff without issue.

"A place that repairs things would be likely to have adhesives, but I suppose we can just search for a general store instead. They might have something like that." Magloria said. Since they were done inside this place, Magloria would lead them back out and in search of what they needed.

They came across what they assumed to be a general store, closed up for the night and locked up tight. They could see a random assortment of things, ranging from food to quills to toys and books through the store's windows.

However, the windows here had proper glass instead of wood or nothing, and each one was locked, as shown when they tried to open them. Whoever owned this place had a fair bit more money to spend than other businesses, it seemed.

Collapse looked in the windows, seeing how it was all locked up. "Looks like if we wanna try this one we'll have to be more risky. Hmm. I wonder what kind of books they have, to be honest. If they have anything historical or relating to their technology, would be something I would take." Collapse stated. "Perhaps there is an entrance around the back, I don't wanna go through the front, if we can help it." Collapse added, surveying the front part, disappointed that when they tried to open it they couldn't get in due to the locks.

As they moved to the back of the building they could swear they heard a scampering noise across the street, but when they turned to check, they didn't see anything there.

There was a back entrance and windows to the building, but they were just as secure as the front. What? Did you think that everyone would be stupid enough to accidentally leave a convenient way into the building, outside of chimneys that they can't just close?

"It's a pity that none of us know how to pick locks." Jump Start grumbled.

"In my defense, I rarely had to deal with locks in the first place." Magloria replied.

"Yeah, I don't know how to do that. Maybe we can try some other place, I don't wanna risk taking the time when there are easier options." Collapse spoke to them curiously, looking around for other buildings they could look into alternatively.

Well there were plenty of other buildings around, but they might have to travel to a completely different section of the city before they find another general store or place that might look like it has what they need.

It'll probably take another hour of searching, if they had to guess from how long it took to find this one. "The dark would make it tricky to come back here, and we have no guarantee that they're not all locked up the same either." Magloria stated.

"Well I'll let you choose then. We either find a way or *make* our way in, or we try our luck in finding some other place. A...command decision. I don't mind either way." Collapse said to Magloria, letting her choose what to do.

"I'm going to stick to the building we already have instead of searching for another one we may or may not find." Magloria stated, looking at one of the locked windows and giving it a tap. "There's got to be some way we can get inside without making noise. Hmm... we can cut our way through if we had a fine enough blade."

"But we don't have something sharp enough, do we?" Jump Start asked, earning a headshake in response. Magloria's short sword would make a lot of noise if she tried. The orange mare pouted.

"It's a pity we didn't see any glassblowing factories then. They would have something that could cut through." she sighed.

Collapse pulled out her ice spear. "Would this be sharp enough? Or we can sharpen it, or something else if that won't work." she spoke as she showed them the crystal spear. It was one of the ones that Magloria had crafted for them earlier on. If it wouldn't work they may just have to find something else then. Collapse really hoped that it would work.

[04-Jun-22 11:54 PM]
Magloria looked at the weapon presented and shook her head. "Definitely not. My ice is far too brittle to be able to cut through glass, and worse still my spears are designed for thrusting and throwing, not cutting."

"You might get a small incision in the glass, but the speartip will immediately start to dull then shatter." she said, turning away from Collapse and back to the glass window that stood in their way.

"We might not be able to cut through it, but what about melting it?" Jump Start suggested. "As long as we don't set the rest of the building on fire of course."

"I can try my fire spell, but it would be bright. Might be enough to attract attention, but I have never really done anything like that with my spell before." she spoke and smirked a bit. "Even if we get 'caught', we would be able to get out because as far as I can tell, we outclass the Panthins in ability. Would prefer not to fight, though. Perhaps I could charge up my spell for a good amount of time so that way it's white hot and very focused." she spoke in agreement.

Magloria gave a look to Collapse. It was the look that meant that she hasn't thought through what she said well enough.

"Charging your spell would cause even more light at once. It would be needed for a shorter time, but it would attract even more attention. Not to mention you increase the risk of burning through too much and setting something on fire."

"There's also thermal shock, I think it was called?" Jump Start added. "I remember it was something to do breaking stuff with big temperature changes."

Magloria nodded. "It's the same thing we used on those centipedes. Making it too hot, too fast will crack the glass, and then we'd be in trouble."

"Well, it's either that or we find some other way to get in. I had thought of something earlier with my summoning spell. Maybe it is possible to summon objects *inside* of other objects? I have never done that so I have no way to know what would happen, we probably would go for something less risky, but again - we don't have anything to pick the locks and neither of us know how to. So what should it be then? I try to be careful and torch the way through the glass, cut out a good portion of the glass so we can slide right in?" she suggested.

"Torch it, but not white hot. You need to keep it low and steady so it doesn't shatter the glass. I thought that the implication of it being fine was obvious, with that exception." Magloria rolled her eyes and sighed.

"And don't even think about trying to summon something into the glass. That could also cause it to break, among other problems." she added.

Collapse nodded and moved aside, she knelt down on the ground as she began charging up her spell. She did so slowly, to be careful. Once she had completed this process which took about a minute, she would then go up to the glass exactly like Magloria suggested with an extra dash of caution as she began to draw a large enough shape for them to get inside with, being extremely delicate.

For the first half of the minute, Magloria had simply watched and made sure that no one else saw what was going on. But in the second half she was wondering why it was taking so long to charge up a fire spell that *wasn't* supposed to be hot enough to melt steel in under a second.

Maybe she was just taking her time gathering the magic to her horn or something. Either way, the glass didn't melt immediately as the flames licked it, as intended. She had to slowly warm it up until it reached the point where the glass started to drip, and drip it did along the line that Collapse had drawn.

Eventually the entire thing began to fall away without enough support. Magloria had expected this to happen, and wrapped her telekinesis around the very hot glass shape, making sure to move it off to the side hidden in an alleyway, so it didn't burn them or anything important.

What was left of the window was a hollow shape of glass, the edges glowing red and misshapen. Eventually it cooled down to a point where they could cross without burning themselves.

Suddenly they heard a voice some distance away. "I saw the strange thing somewhere around here. Sorry I couldn't tell you much more about it." followed by a "Thank you, we'll take it from here." in another voice.

Collapse was more than pleased they had successfully managed to get them glass cut open like that. Success, and she was just about to crawl through to get inside of the building before hearing the voices within earshot. Obviously, they had been spotted to some degree. She looked to Magloria and Jump Start with a serious look. "Even if we get in and get out quickly, I wouldn't be surprised if they were right on our asses. We could get inside and get what we need, and if we encounter them, we'll just run off." she spoke.

"Or...we can be honest with them and tell them what we are really here for. Not petty thieves, but getting needed supplies to get back to where we need to be. A part of me thinks that would be the right thing to do. Either way, if anything goes wrong, it is within our ability to deal with them as we see fit. We have magic and abilities they obviously do not understand." Collapse added.

Magloria scoffed, "There's no way we're convincing them we're not thieves after this." She said, pointing at the melted window before she climbed through it herself. "The faster we do this, the better. Now get inside and help me search instead of standing around in the open."

Jump Start nervously looked at the approaching orange glow of a light source before climbing in through the window as well.

Collapse could just begin to hear the sounds of paws on the footpaths, and it sounded like a lot of steps. She couldn't make out the exact number, but it sounded like more than the 3 they had previously been chased by.

Collapse quickly got inside the building and once they were inside she quickly looked around for anything worth taking. If it was worth taking, she would unsummon it, and ducked around the walls and such so she wouldn't be seen by looking straight inside the window from the outside. She made sure to be as fast, quiet, and careful as possible as she heard the footsteps approaching the area. It would likely be inevitable that they would notice the hole in the window.