Chapter 1
The Casino
By Paradigm Lost
Las Pegasus was in the full swing of things tonight. Just like every other night there were too many ponies with too much money that were too wide eyed with wonder to pay attention to where their bits were going. The culmination of all this were the hulking monoliths of vice: The Casinos. Several of them lined the strip all themed after some place or another that I had never been to. Tonight though, my eyes were on the Bellagio. For the past few months I have been begging and starving and working to the one thing I needed to get into this place of dream and wonder: my fake ID.
“Vinyl, are you really going to do this? I mean this is a huge risk, like lock up time and shit risks” My fellow box mate Salty Steve exclaimed.
We share a pathetically small half rotted shanty of cardboard together and we have been for a few days now while I got my plan squared away. Steve is really a great pony, and I know he knows what he is talking about, but this is a city of chance and I have got to take my own.
“I know Steve” I tell him with the confidence I am barely rallying together. “But tonight I am going to take that chance. Catch you on the flip side.”
Without looking back less I lose my nerve I stand up and walk away from my temporary bed. One of the few ‘perks’ of being broke and homeless is at least I didn’t have much of anything to pack.
“Hey Scratch!” I hear from behind me.
“Yeah Steve?” I say looking back only briefly before I notice Steve chuck something my way before I catch it out of reflex with my magic. Then I noticed it was a small part of a bar of soap.
“Chu-Fongs Seafood is receiving a new shipment today. They usually leave the back door open for a few under the table people and an open employee shower to those that help. If you hurry you should be able to sneak in and at least hide the smell.”
I knew exactly what he meant. Homeless ponies are easily identifiable by smell, and that red flag would easily help even the densest employee to blow my ‘cover’. “Thanks Steve. Hey, if I win something I’ll send a few bits your way okay old man?”
Steve smiled the sad smile of those who have watched a hundred ponies say the same thing before disappearing from his life before snapping off a brief salute and saying “knock ‘em dead kid.”
Without turning back around I broke into a gallop, careful to conceal the soap in my knotted mane along with my ID and a few bits in a tie bag so I didn’t have to waste magic holding them. There was no sense in losing them in my run to my first shower in weeks and believe me when I say with the amount of grease in my mane they were going nowhere. Finding the restaurant was easy enough. Being homeless you get a feel for the places where the owners don’t mind helping a few homeless ponies for some free labor and a sea food place was one of the biggest purveyors of such a habit. Sneaking in was no problem, the rear door was open so the employees could quickly get in and out of the store while unloading the freight. The showers were the part where I was concerned. Believe it or not there even with a predominantly mare society there are still very real threats to ‘easy prey’.
Thankfully I lucked out and the shower room was empty so I grabbed a stall cranked on the water and started to wash. The water itself was absolutely frigid, likely being taken from the excess clouds that held the upper parts of Las Pegasus up, but sweet merciful Celestia did I miss the feeling of a shower. I spent the next few minutes using every last bit of the shard of soap to scrub the scent of refuse from my body and hair. It would not be a perfect solution, but it would have to do. Now it was time to put my ID to the test.
The Bellagio was a simply massive building no matter what aspect you tried to put it in. The Casino itself was a 17 story building with two massive wings shaped into a semicircle. The Building was built to showcase the Bellagio’s most prominent visual displays: the lights and the giant fountain in the front. Every hour the Fountain and would launch into an elaborate display of showmareship. It was really quite amazing if you were into that kind of thing. Still I mixed and mingled with the crowd and pulled out one of my two ID’s. I had specifically made sure to get one Equestrian Identification Card that had my actual age on it. It would feature in my backup plan if I needed it. Before I could approach the front doors though, I needed to grab a few things from one of the many viewing areas surrounding the massive fountain. Namely I needed a coat to conceal my blank flank, a hat to hide my horn, and some glasses to hide my eyes. Technically I didn’t really need the Glasses or hat, but both were pretty commonplace in casinos and would help hide my age. I could easily pass off as growth stunted as long as they couldn’t see how young I looked.
Lucky me, the first viewing spot I stopped by had some dude chatting on his phone with his hat and jacket thrown to the side. Quickly equipping these I was then able to locate a pair of glasses and a small neck pouch not far from the front doors beside a lady asleep on one of the chairs. They were a huge gaudy affair that people use to hide their hangovers, but as I know from experience beggars are NOT choosers. Now geared and ready to go I walked up to the Casino front door. This was the moment of truth and I could feel my heart pounding out a staccato rhythm as my nerves frazzled themselves. Inside the doors were a few dozen employees greeting the guests as they walked inside, one such employee walked up to greet me.
“Good day Sir and welcome to the Bellagio, the finest Casino on the Strip! Do you mind if I see your E-ID?”
Sir huh? I guess the guy who did the ID had messed up the gender on the card. Oh what the hay, my voice was always kind of raspy anyway. “Thank you sir, and here you go.” I presented him my ID.
With a quick glance at the ID the employee smiled and said “Thank you Mr. Scratch and again welcome to the Bellagio. Do you have any questions or need any help finding anything?”
“No Sir, but I appreciate the offer.”
“Alright then please enjoy your stay and don’t hesitate to find one of us if we can help you in any way!”
“Thanks” I said before moving out into the main floor.
Instantly my senses were assaulted by the sheer amounts of color and sound. There were what seemed to be endless lines of slot machines and other basic little gimmick games intersected by what looked like a hundred tables and a thousand ponies. There was just so much to take in. Shaking my head to clear my awestruck mind I decided to keep moving. Maybe if I didn’t stay still long, I could get in and out with more than a hoof full of bits and perhaps get an ID that DIDN’T say I was a male on it…and some food. Lots and lots of food…and maybe a shower while I was at it. Moving through the crowds I catalogued each of the games in my mind. There were Craps, Roulette, Appleloosa Five Card, Poker, and finally my target for the day. Blackjack.
This particular game was one of high risk and high reward. A card game where the goal is to get as close to or dead on 21 as possible without going over or being beat by another player. A lot of the basic strategy was out bluffing the competition and beating the dealer. The rest was a combination of luck, skill, and my favorite, fast math and probability. Taking a seat at a busy table, I put a few Bits on the table and got a small stack of chips in return. Now it was time to bring home the haybacon.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The door to the Observation room opened with I small beep as a tall earth pony strode in. The room itself was a large circular room filled with screens and computers that observed every aspect of the hotels day to day operations and kept a close eye on their gamblers and patrons. If one of the many ponies spotted something on the floor, from the mundane like a patron that was to drunk, or a lost filly to the big stuff like cheating. Typically they would just send the information to the various pit bosses whose job it was to make sure ponies didn’t win too much or cause too much trouble for patrons in their areas. However in certain instances they were required to alert someone higher up to bring special cases to their attention. This is why the mid shift Chief of Security had currently been contacted.
“Chief Sharpe, thank you for coming on such short notice.” The head of Sections 8-15 stated. “One of my interns spotted something you need to see.”
Chief Sharpe Smiled and walked over, already reminded of why he loved it when the intern season came around. Nothing bolstered security quite like a bunch of entry level college kids looking to make an impression and a possible career with the Casinos. They were typically pretty bright and had keen eyes for anomalies to better make nice with their potential employers.
“What do you have for me kid?” Sharp asked the intern, a scrawny bespectacled Pegasus.
“W-well sir I was doing my round of table checks when I noticed something potentially odd” The Pegasus a combination of his wings and hoofs to pull up the footage in question. “You see the patron in the coat and glasses at table 14?”
“Which one exactly?”
“The one with the brown hat sir. Well, at first I noticed they had a pretty decent sum of bits on them indicating a hot streak so I did the rest of my rounds and came back to see if I needed to send in a pit boss or something and look.”
On the screen the gambler was no longer there.
“So then I checked the rest of my section to see if they had potentially walked out when I spotted them at table 25.”
Sure enough the same gambler was on screen at a different table winning even more chips.
“Alright, there is nothing really unusual about our gamblers switching tables. They all have their weird little ‘superstitions’. So please cut to the chase, I need to see what you called me up here for.”
The Pegasus gave a panicked nod before frantically fast forwarding the security footage a couple of hours before stopping the footage on the same patron at a different table. “I called for two reasons sir. One was because this patron has won over ten THOUSAND bits in just under three hours and the second is this.”
The Pegasus played the footage of the table in full swing when about twenty seconds in another patron stumbled and knocked into their gambler knocking them off of their chair. A brief moment later the suspect gambler was back in the seat playing again. The Pegasus then stopped the video, a confident smile on his face.
Sharp kept a neutral face as he stated “I don’t see what you are seeing. Maybe you should take a quick break and rest your eyes for a minute.” Behind him Sharp could feel the Section head nod his agreement behind him.
The Pegasus gave a jolt like he had been tazed before saying “Nonono my eyes are fine! You both must have missed it.” Typing again the Pegasus rewound the film to when the Patron bumped into the gambler and the paused right as the Gambler started to fall. “Now unless I am mistaken” A few more keystrokes that made the camera zoom directly onto the Gamblers momentarily exposed hip. “There is only one kind of pony that should have a bare hip.”
Sharp stood in dawning shock at exactly what was on the screen before him, as well as the stark surprise that this intern had managed to catch something that not only lasted for less than half a second, but something HE had missed. Then with a shake of his head his training kicked in.
“Burnie” He spoke to the section lead “Send this file to Mr. Bells Secretary and my Office with a high priority attachment, then send this kid to my Office too.” Sharpe then looked at the slightly shaking Pegasus. “Kid take a break and head to my office, you aren’t in trouble I just want to speak with you more on this matter. When you get there tell my Secretary I sent you, she will take care of you until I get there.”
The Pegasus started to get up before Sharpe thought of something and asked. “Hey, is that gambler still at that table?”
“Y-Yes sir”
“Thank Celestia for small favors then.” And without further ado Sharpe was moving out the door and hailing the sections pit boss.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking around the table at the other slightly sweating ponies I had to fight hard not to smirk. Everything had been coming up Vinyl almost all night. I just really wished they someponies would stop calling me a whale. I mean, sure this coat made me look slightly bigger but Lunas cheeks I have been starving nearly to death for a few months now, I definitely was NOT a whale. Still I knew that I really needed to make my exit in the next few hands, I felt like I had overstayed my welcome and pushed my luck pretty thoroughly. The bad thing about casinos though is they have no clocks inside, so I had no idea how long I had been at it, but it will definitely have been longer than I had planned.
Still I was sitting on an ace and a four with 6,000 chips in the pool who was I to deny one last hoof. That was until I felt a heavy hoof on my shoulder. Looking over said shoulder I felt my stomach drop as I saw the very definite bouncer behind me. “Sir, I am going to need to you to come with me. Now.”
Well Buck.