Slot Dependents

by Estee

Rating: teen
Tags: Flim and Flam, Pinkie Pie, Twilight Sparkle, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Original Character
Length: 12617

What's so special about the traveling casino which just set up its tent in the Everfree? You can't lose. As long as you keep playing, you're guaranteed to at least break even. As Twilight and Pinkie discover, the problems only start when you stop...

Why do they keep coming back? Maybe it's wounded pride: they were humiliated once, and so they have to get one con over on Ponyville to heal their egos. Or a lot more than one, given all of the successive embarrassments. But either way, the brothers have returned to the scene of their crime(s) so often as to give Pinkie a tail twitch configuration just for their presence. Something which leads her and Twilight to a huge tent in the Everfree, one which has free drinks, slot machines, and happy ponies who haven't lost so much as a tenth-bit.

They can't lose.

As far as the latest con goes, that's just part of the setup.

(Now with author Patreon, SubscribeStar, and Ko-Fi pages.)

Cover art taken from an image created by DrXFizzle.

Published 2020-07-19 02:10:02 UTC
Last updated 2020-07-19 02:10:02 UTC

The Imperfect Crime

If she had to give the brothers reluctant credit for anything, it would have been this: they really made you think.

Admittedly, they hardly made everypony think about the same things. For example, when it came to Applejack, the ruminations generally started with a review of Equestria's laws: this started with the conditions under which ponies could attack without committing assault, but then quickly intensified until the farmer inevitably wound up at "Ah don't understand why that would even be treated like murder at'tall." That generally led into a quick, frustrated digression as to just what words would wind up on any never-visited memorial stone. They'd been trying to track the ink rope woven from written falsehoods all the way back to some form of paperwork hitching post, because the brothers had to possess real names and from what Twilight had been able to learn, 'Flim and Flam Fields' weren't it.

But for the most part, ponies who recognized that the brothers were back in town (which frequently required seeing through several layers of disguise) would be thinking about fraud. For some, those thoughts would tend more towards recollection, and that tended to be the group who spent most of their time asking Applejack about just when they were legally allowed to launch the first kicks. Others would be looking for the newest flaw, that aspect which would invalidate every no-longer-sung promise and turn the most recent product against the user. With those who didn't know, hadn't figured it out, or just hadn't been in Ponyville long enough to have gone through it... there wouldn't be much thinking going on at all. The brothers had a way of speaking which did the thinking for them and turned the inevitable head tilt towards bit-laden saddlebags into nothing more than a fiscal echo. The sales pitch covered every side of the argument against purchasing while never managing to bring up the idea of top, bottom, front, or back.

The back was their territory. They snuck up behind your rationality and clonked it with Dreams. They made you believe that with a simple investment of funds, life would be Better, Easier, and Filled With More Capitals Than Was Strictly Necessary. And in a sense, everything they said could be treated as absolute fact. Once you turned over your bits, life would be Better and Easier -- for them. They would be Richer, their victims would be at best Richer In Experience (But Poorer In Bits) and if any more capitals were needed, there was generally plenty of room on the latest warrant.

When it came to the brothers... they had always made Twilight think. She kept a Shelf Of Curiosities in the library's basement. The closet-like space was stored behind two layers of protective rock because she'd made sure all magical energies (where applicable) had been fully discharged from everything there, but this was the brothers and you never knew. And there were times when she would venture into that shielded area and look at what was kept there for as long as she could stand to do so. For as long as she could take the thoughts -- other than the one which kept telling her she was putting a double-definition on 'curiosities' and stretching the second one to the limit would eventually see it break.

The contents of the shelf could be regarded as something of a local history for the brothers' activities, as well as a potential series of Nation's Evidence: Exhibits A On Much Too Far Up. In another sense, they served as a sort of museum: the permanent record of those for whom no birth documents could be found. And they always made Twilight think.

There was a little piece of stress-broken ridged metal, which she'd found on the road shortly after the cider press had been chased away. Her assumption was that it had dropped out of the bottom, because it still smelled faintly of apples. Also of wood, bark, moss, those insects you got which lived under bark and in moss, and she generally had to turn away before any memory of the taste finished coming back.

The counterfeit bit never really caught her attention: she had to force it onto the false coin and turn the image against her consciousness as if she was holding it next to a lathe. There was a deliberate lack of art to the image, because a true Equestrian bit had all sorts of little details which were incredibly hard to replicate outside of the Mint and therefore, the brothers had tried to reproduce pretty much none of them. It was almost the right color, had roughly the proper number of ridges in that it had some, and then there was the mane. If you looked at where the Princess appeared on a bit, you would see three subtle lines, indicating the twisting demarcations between pastel colors. And somehow, the brothers had worked out that when ponies made a split-second check of a bit on sight alone, that was where they checked. Get those lines right and the fact that the mane was attached to something more like a donkey just completely slipped past the conscious mind -- as long as the detection was limited to sight. The brothers had gone to some trouble in matching the weight, and so any unicorn lifting the falsehood in their corona would be carrying a proper amount of mass -- but as was the case for so many with horns, they'd forgotten about how the other two-thirds of adults lived. Any pegasus or earth pony who bit down on the counterfeit immediately knew something was wrong, and then spent the next two days trying to get the taste of foil off their tongue.

She always paused at the remnants of the vacuum jar, and usually did so with regret. The brothers had figured out... well, nothing, really. In a sense, they'd stumbled onto a true scientific principle by sheer accident, and Twilight was still trying to reverse-engineer the true cause of what they'd observed: the fact that the majority of things which decayed did so when in contact with air. And thus the jars: a complicated little household kitchen system with tight-sealing lids, a valve, and a rotary air siphon designed to pull the atmosphere out. It took some time, left a pony's neck sore -- and whatever foodstuffs had been placed in the jar wouldn't appear to decay at all. You could keep fresh-cut apples from browning for days. It was possible that the actual time limit was longer, but... they had been dealing with the brothers. A vacuum jar had several requirements: an airtight seal, a clear view of the contents, and walls solid enough to stand against the constant inwards pull generated by the absence of everything. The last would have required time, investment, and testing, and so that was where the siblings had failed. But in the name of variety, it was one of the few examples where, strictly speaking, their creations hadn't exploded.

It had taken them all some time to determine the true source of the dehydrated eggs, as that had been the point where the brothers had started trying scams through mail order. This had initially put the angry buyers of Magical Pets (From A Box!) a train ride away from trying to get their refund, and the 4:00 p.m. to Canterlot had completely filled ten minutes after a joint effort from Fluttershy and Snails had finally convinced the population that no matter what you tried, brine shrimp would never truly love you.

There were eclipse glasses which recorded a stuttering replay of the annual cosmological event, something which required the full efforts of both ruling Princesses to manage: the illusion was substandard, the visual protection evaporated on contact with sunlight. (Getting caught on that one had created the only time when anypony had seen the brothers show anything faintly approaching remorse, and Princess Celestia had gently told Twilight that it was because ponies who had seen others physically hurt were more likely to seek an equally-physical revenge.) An altered Minder, which was supposed to record notes in its owner's voice and had been rigged to create a duplicate storage spool, which would drop out and move to a place where it could be recovered and examined for blackmail material. Two halves of a sundered metal rod: it had originally been meant to let magic-propelled shopping carts home in on a central location. Before everything had gone wrong, the buyer at Barnyard Bargains had hoped it would bring strays in from all over Ponyville: the brothers had tried to add spells which made them self-loading, waited a few days, and then attempted to shoplift most of the store...

It all made Twilight think, for as long as she could stand to do so. Because those thoughts always went the same way.

What could they accomplish, if they ever let themselves express the whole idea?
If they didn't cut corners, use shoddy materials, turn every effort towards increasing profits instead of quality?
If they weren't addicted to the thrill of the con.
If they could see others as being real, instead of a mobile source of bits which was just waiting for somepony worthy to come along and take them.
If they were just capable of caring about anypony other than themselves...

It was always the same thoughts, and so she couldn't have them for long. It hurt too much.

Under one of the other hooves, Pinkie usually wound up initially thinking about how the brothers were the only stallions in the world whose mere proximity had eventually produced its very own distinctive twitch sequence.

The anger associated with having to deal with those whose passions revolved around making ponies stop smiling didn't fully rise until her tail hit her in the face for the third time.

This particular path into the Everfree was the safest. Zecora had initially done the majority of the work to ensure that she could leave her home without incurring anything other than incidental risk, the town had eventually pitched in, and now the majority of Ponyville residents treated the trip to the hut as a particularly active trot. (Admittedly, it was one where you arrived at your destination with a sore neck because constantly checking to the sides, rear, and directly above started to hurt after a while, but at least you got there.) It meant Pinkie could give Twilight the briefing on the run, because she was doing so while following a well-established trail.

In fact, there was one way in which it was now better-established than ever.

"...and of course I went to the police station, but Miranda told me that the Everfree is sort of -- technically outside her jurisdiction? She can follow somepony if it's a chase and they're trying to get away from her, but she can't just casually go in unless it's something big. Eternal darkness big. Or if Zecora asks, and Zecora isn't even home right now! She's staying in Canterlot, taking extra makeup classes for her citizenship test --"

"-- and it's just us?" Twilight managed to interrupt, doing so between checks of both flanks, a careful examination of the path ahead to make sure no suspicious plants had started growing there (unlikely so deep into autumn, but it was the Everfree and you never knew), plus one reading of the rather helpful sign. The sign was new.

"Just about everypony else is too busy today!" Pinkie half-panted. There was a reason the baker preferred to commentate on the Running from overhead, and it was starting to soak into her coat. "We can't just take them away from their jobs until we know what's wrong. The only other pony I thought I could maybe bring along was Applejack, and we probably really don't want to do that until we're really really sure about just what's going on. Get the brothers involved, and we really-really don't want to try and hold her back today." Thoughtfully, "It's not like Rainbow. Rainbow doesn't know how to wriggle her tail and work out of a jaw grip. Applejack does."

"All right," Twilight reluctantly agreed. "Just the two of us to start?"

"That's what Miranda asked! For us to investigate --"

Twilight's jaw smoothly nipped to the right and took custody of the hat.

"-- because the brothers know us just as much as they know every police officer in Ponyville, but this time, we might be able to do more. But she did say that if it's really bad, or they start running and get a lead, you should send up a flare, and they'll come to help us. But for their coming out to search... she said she believes me, but legally, she can't really get a warrant which says Probable Cause: Pinkie Sense. So it has to start with us."

They passed another sign.

"Almost to the hut," Pinkie breathlessly noted.

"We can't be going to the hut!" Which was almost immediately followed by reconsidering. "...all right, Zecora's probably got a lot of valuables in the hut, but they're zebra valuables! Potion ingredients! The brothers are still unicorns: they can't work with that kind of magic! Unless they were planning on selling to another zebra --"

Both mares blinked.

"We'll check the hut," the baker firmly said -- and then blue eyes widened as decibels spiked. "Twilight, look out!"

The smaller mare just barely managed to alter her gallop's trajectory in time -- but wings which often seemed to do whatever they liked during a full-speed run didn't quite curl back in, and so feathers grazed the startled stallion as the two mares veered around him, with Pinkie's tail involuntarily giving his snout a goodbye flick.

"Sorry!" Pinkie called back. "I'm kind of having some Pinkie Sense issues right now! It'll stop when we reach --"

"PINKIE! AHEAD OF YOU!"

This time, the baker had to jump, and Twilight got her wings into something which approximated a glide position: they landed on the other side of what had been a trio of casually walking, happily chatting, and now rather surprised mares.

"There's never this much traffic!" the librarian declared. "Not when Zecora's home, not ever...!"

"They read the notice boards!" Pinkie replied. "And then they looked for the signs because that was on the notice board after the papers went up this morning, that you just had to follow the signs, and some of them might have started early, and --" The run-on sentence was interrupted by the desperate dual teleport, and resumed on the other side of the traveling herd. "-- I only got the signal a little while ago, I don't know why, maybe they just stepped across the edge of my range or I moved to the edge of the bakery and got into theirs, oh Twilight, I might have a range, we should have done more testing --"

"-- just keep going," Twilight grimly cut in, forcing her wings out of the challenge position. "What was on the notice boards?"

"I'll tell you in a minute! We need to make sure the hut is safe first! Zecora's place is just up --"

And then there was another sign.

They slowed. Stopped. Stared.

"That's her tree," Pinkie stated. "I can just see it from here. It doesn't look like anypony's tried to get in."

"And the new trail," Twilight breathed, "goes right. It looks like it was professionally cleared... Just the right size for ponies." She looked a little more closely. "But too narrow for a cart. Okay: so whatever they're doing, they didn't want to risk being on her territory. Do you know if there's anything special off to the right?"

"Just one of those natural clearings you get sometimes," Pinkie reported. "One of the biggest. It's usually a safe spot, except when it makes it easy for something big to see you from above. Or Rainbow's around with a cloud, which is worse."

"So that's where they set up." Twilight adjusted the hat. "Whatever it is. Let's make sure they didn't touch Zecora's home, and you tell me what the notice said."

The hut was intact, and the contents of the advertising flier didn't take long to relate. The resulting disbelief, however, stayed with them all the way to the tent.

The first thing you could say about the tent was that it was big, and the second was that it could have been bigger. It had either been modeled after a circus tent or, given the brothers, had possibly been stolen away from one. It was the kind of tent which was designed to be assembled in a hurry, with supports that slid into each other and canvas which existed as a series of tightly-pressed pleats. If you had extra room, then you expanded the supports a little, unfurled some fabric, and then you had more tent. This one had been put together in a way which allowed it to take up just about all of the clearing. There was enough room to walk around the structure and examine it from all sides: something which allowed the mares to avoid dealing with security for a few extra seconds, and so they did exactly that. All they discovered was a fairly large half-dome bulge at the back, about the size of an office: one which came with a tightly-sealed flap. It was just possible to get the impression of happy indistinct voices within, and that was all they could hear because pressing their ears against canvas was a risk. Something which created outlines on the other side.

They hadn't been able to hold the position for long anyway, because the third aspect of the tent made it into something nopony wanted to touch. To merely describe it as brightly painted was to miss the perfect opportunity for giving Rarity a nervous breakdown. The myriad of colors had been applied in stripes, swirls, and with occasional touches of plaid. They spent most of their time battling each other and when that paused, took a few seconds for whipping the atmosphere. Twilight suspected the display had just about monster-proofed the tent, because the majority would have no idea how to interpret that kind of visual display and the smarter ones couldn't stay near it without going blind. But if you could force yourself to look at those colors closely... that was when you could spot the heavy weave of the canvas. A heavy, dingy weave which had generations of dirt raising their families among the fibers. Cleaning would have taken effort: extra paint was cheap, and so the grime was protected under multiple defensive layers, which allowed it to establish The University Of Advanced Stench Research. To press an ear against that for too long was to start feeling as if the tent was trying to crawl inside, and the sound of that many layers of paint trying to shift in the autumn wind could be very much like that of an iceberg splitting.

"Okay," Twilight half-whispered, because it wasn't. "We're not going to verify anything else from out here. Let's try to go inside."

Pinkie's rather complicated expression suggested a mare who had just remembered that the only times the Bearers tended to be recognized was when it was to their disadvantage, the brothers had every reason to brief security on exactly what they all looked like and in the event that somepony had just been through a serious memory lapse, Pinkie was traveling with an alicorn.

"If we can go inside," Twilight reluctantly conceded. "But those two big earth ponies at the front flap mostly seemed to be turning away kids."

"...I know," Pinkie eventually agreed. "But I think we'll be allowed in, at least to start."

Twilight blinked.

"Why?"

"Because they want to finally get one over on us," the Bearer with the highest emotional intelligence said. "Show how much smarter they are, how little we can do to stop them. And they can't do that unless we're actually there."

The librarian slowly nodded.

"I think they've been hoping we'll come," Pinkie added. "But right now, we know one thing, and they don't know we know it. We know it's them. Nothing on the notice boards had their names, or any of the other names they've used. They didn't suggest the brothers at all. It's just my Pinkie Sense which told me."

Immediately, "And I trust you."

Pinkie smiled. "The words made it sound like a business. We just know who's running it."

"And they've hired ponies," Twilight noted. "For the first time..." Ponies who would be well-advised to take a very close look at their pay vouchers to make sure the ink wasn't dripping into their fur, but it still meant the brothers were temporarily working with others. That was... strange. "So if something goes wrong, there could be a lot of extra ponies to deal with. And I can't teleport us out if it means leaving everypony else in the tent at risk."

"So we're being careful," Pinkie agreed. "Let's go in."

The two security ponies looked them over. A twinned placid gaze briefly rested on Twilight's wings, then performed the eyebrow equivalent of a shrug.

"Two adults," the one on the left pleasantly said.

"The rules are basic," the stallion on the right told them. "No bringing in food or drink from the outside. No interrupting anypony who's having fun. Don't cheat, don't steal, and --" the smile didn't come across as being practiced so much as it appeared to have been painted "-- do have a good time. Mimares?"

He opened the flap for them with his teeth, politely gestured a foreleg.

There was a tunnel of fabric before they entered the main tent: about the height and width of a palace hallway. A garment check alcove was on the right, mostly unoccupied: a bored-looking mare kept an eye on the few things which had been dropped off by those who felt the most vulnerable to autumn chill. And just ahead of that, in front of the second flap, was a smiling green unicorn standing next to a very large box.

"Here's your saddlebags!" the attractive young mare chirped.

"We don't want --" was Twilight's first, perfectly-logical response when dealing with anything which had been potentially created by the brothers: the pause was used to chide herself for losing a chance to collect evidence.

Pinkie just asked "How much?"

"Free!" the unicorn gushed. (Both Bearers blinked.) "What would we be if we charged for saddlebags, I ask you? This is supposed to be fun! So let me put these on for you..."

Her horn ignited, and the Bearers watched as free saddlebags floated towards them. It was very important to remember that they were free, because that was the best way to tell themselves that the saddlebags technically couldn't be overpriced. They had both spent hours listening to Rarity in the Boutique: some of the resulting information was learned naturally, other portions arrived by osmosis, and quite a bit was self-defense because if they said the right words back, there was a chance to change the topic. It meant they each recognized their free saddlebags as being flimsy, poorly-balanced, and made from inferior fabrics which were likely to wear out from the pressure of their own breaths. The color scheme had decided to shortcut past all that through matching the tent.

"Thank you," Twilight managed once they were on, and only after she stopped listening for the echoes of distant, agonized designer wails. "Can we go in?"

The unicorn brightly smiled. "Why would you want to go anywhere else?" Her horn ignited again, and the final flap parted.

Somewhere, music was playing, and Twilight couldn't seem to pin down the source. Some of the sound felt like it was coming from the air itself: just enough decibels to recognize that music existed while being insufficient to identify the actual song. Any lyrics which might have been present were lost in the rhythmic sound of hooves stomping on metal pedals. Over and over again, something that formed a permanent backbeat. You could get lost in that beat. It was the sound of mindless repetition, and it whispered about how easy it would be to become part of the orchestra, to participate with the herd, to stop thinking...

Hooves stomped, and that stomping brought forth more music. Ponies (so many ponies, at least four dozen and that was what she could see from the entrance, the light was so dim) were sitting in front of...

...how to describe them? She could have spent hours examining the interiors, because that was the first thing you saw: brass gears and iron pins, clockwork rotating smoothly around the edges of a great inner well. Every one of the machines was walled in glass, allowing anypony to see exactly how they worked.

The closest one was being operated by Mr. Waddle, and the next shock was that his attention was completely focused on the machine. (Twilight had spent years in watching him almost instantly turn around whenever she entered a room, with 'almost' suffering through major adjustments for joint creaking. He was strangely fascinated by her magic, and she had never understood when her friends tried to point out that he directed an equal amount of attention towards her hips and tail.) He pressed a trembling forehoof against a pedal which had been tilted slightly up from the dirty fabric floor. His effort sent it briefly level, the kinetic energy from that was transferred to the gears, and a display which sat at the average pony's eye level spun a trio of circular reels.

Each of the reels served as a giant gear of its own, spinning in such a way as to send vibrations through everything they were touching. That energy eventually dislodged a lock, and a thick needle of iron speared a slot at the gear's back, freezing it in place. The process repeated twice more, and weights shifted within the machine.

Coins tumbled out of the well, landed in a tray which sat in front of Mr. Waddle's sternum. The weight of fresh metal pressed against hinges, and the tray split in half. The coins smoothly slid down new inclines, directly into the saddlebags which had been carefully set into underlying locking brackets, and the old earth pony laughed.

"Slot machines," Twilight softly breathed as Mr. Waddle's stomp turned a few more gears, played a short happy tune from the music box inside. Music which sounded in the exact key as that which came from the air. "I've read about them, but this is the first time I've seen one from this close. They advertised a traveling casino, and so they brought in slot machines. Something they can rig. And that's the con, Pinkie. They're outside any town and city, so they probably don't have to worry about regulations and if they travel, they can stay ahead of inspectors. Unless somepony can prove there's been tampering and sets off a herd reaction, they can rig the odds to anything they like. They're just making sure ponies lose all their money..."

The baker was frowning. "Mr. Waddle just won."

"Well, you can't lose all the time," Twilight pointed out. "That's too suspicious."

Blue eyes squinted.

"I see a lot of ponies winning," Pinkie declared. "A lot a lot. And I hear bits falling everywhere --" her ears twisted "-- no, that's not bits. It's the wrong sound for bits. But it's not any kind of token, either. We should get closer."

The librarian nodded. "Let's walk around. Slot machines, table games, fivehoof, Reign Of The Princesses... they're going to have it all, Pinkie. And it's all going to be --"

They didn't.

There was something odd about touring the tent. It partially came from the dimming of light, along with the droning beats of stomps and music which only knew one key. Some arrived in the form of ponies who inhaled on each stomp and only exhaled when the reels stopped. There were no window panels in the fabric. Endless clockwork, but not a single clock. As far as the occupants were concerned, it might have been day outside, or it could have been night: it made no difference. Time within the tent moved at the pace of gears, as spinning brass reflected highlights into their wide eyes.

The air was too still. There were no breezes of any kind. Scents of fur and metal went into their snouts and refused to come out.

It was hard to keep track of their exact location, with so few landmarks available. Aisles were evenly spaced, with only so many slot machines making up each row. At first, it struck Twilight as being pleasantly orderly, and then the sameness of it began to drone against her mind. It made her look at the machines a little more closely, because that could serve as some sort of identifier... but all that did was allow her to notice the little illusions which played at the front of the reels whenever a winning combination came up. Some of them were clever and charming: miniature films which you had to win the chance to see. She became curious about the story, and almost stopped in front of a vacant pedal before realizing any such plot would have been against her.

But even with different illusions playing (and it felt like they played so often), all of the machines began to feel identical after a while. It became equally difficult to distinguish the ponies playing them. External gears, which existed to press pedals and gaze and laugh and, once in a while, order a drink. Pretty mares and handsome stallions in bright uniforms toured the tent, all taking orders for drinks. Some of those were for water. The majority requested alcohol, and did so because --

"-- free?" Twilight whispered. "All the drinks are free?" It didn't make sense. Everything the brothers did was about parting ponies from their bits. The happy players (they all seemed so happy) were passing over tips, and perhaps some of that was being skimmed -- but to have no cost for the drinks themselves...

"They get drunk," Pinkie softly replied. "Fast, because cost is a pacing thing too. They stop thinking. They keep playing."

It made a little more sense that way. But still... it was the brothers, and two things had been free. It felt wrong. Unnatural.

Landmarks... it only took a few minutes before the dim light and maze of aisles made it feel as if they would have trouble finding the exit flap: Twilight was counting on Pinkie's memory to guide them out. But there were a few things of note. They found where the drinks were being dispensed from, and the restroom area was nearby. Another pair of security ponies, even larger than those outside, stood silently in front of a glowing flap: the entrance to the partial dome. And at the center of the tent, there was an enclosure built of glass and sternum-high gears, with uniformed ponies standing within and Ponyville citizens around it. Twilight could just barely make out the glint of metal passing through internal channels.

But that was all there was. Employees: about eighteen in total, enough to create problems during a fight. Three distinct stations. And the slot machines, endless slot machines with near-identical payout tables, without a single other source of losses to be found.

Twilight didn't understand. She knew very little about gambling: slot machines had only drawn a tiny portion of her attention because they could be given minor enchantments. Most games which existed for risking money were about stopping magic. Simple dice had to be secured in a way which deflected coronas, ignored wind gusts, and responded to oddly-timed minor tremors through bouncing normally. Other games were worse -- but they were also easier to set up, and nowhere near as vulnerable to damage as the sophisticated clockwork of a slot machine.

She didn't gamble on formal casino games because she understood how odds worked. There was a once-per-generation mark for luck and if you had it, nopony was going to let you in. Everypony else got to learn the same lesson: anypony could be lucky for a moment, and so some won -- but nopony could be lucky for a lifetime. Play long enough and every bit dropped down the little entrance well, forever beyond recovery.

You could drop your life into such wells. Some had and when the financial river ran dry, they would fling themselves into a real one.

Twilight understood gambling as something which could be done with friends: the Bearers often went through wagers minor and major, had a seasonal card game where the money just shuffled around the table (mostly to Fluttershy) and everypony was on a strict chip budget. But as for sending her funds on a one-way trip into a stranger's saddlebags... only the clockwork and illusions made her curious, with most of that directed at the latter because machines and enchanted devices weren't her specialty.

But she still knew that there should have been more than just the slot machines, because if you could secure dice against magical manipulation, then you could create a loophole which read except for mine. The con was right in front of her, and the setup didn't make sense.

And music was playing. The single-key music of winning, and it didn't seem to have an end.

She peered closely at the nearest machine and found it occupied by Junebug, who had just finished locking her free saddlebags into place. The five-bit piece between her teeth was carefully lowered towards the entrance well, dropped --

-- the coin's weight briefly opened the little trapdoor. Miniature inner scales weighed it, and the counter display next to the big blue Cash Out button clicked to 500.

The librarian blinked.

"That's wrong," she whispered to Pinkie.

"No, it isn't," the baker softly countered. "It's counting in hundredth-bits."

In open disbelief, "Hundredths? It's counting smidgens?" With just a little more volume, "Smidgens are things you get and stick in a jar until you realize you've got too many of them, and then everypony else takes them to the bank --" and mounting frustration "-- but I have to send Spike for me and..." She paused just long enough to rally. "Smidgens are what you pay ponies with when you're mad about the late fee! Smidgens are what mares use at the cashier when they know you're five places back in the line and running late! There's ponies who've introduced bills into the Day Court to get rid of smidgens! Why would a slot machine total a deposit that way?"

"Because," Pinkie's currently-superior logic steadily replied, "it makes it feel like you have more than you did. Because it's a bigger number. A lot of ponies just see it that way: a big number. They don't think about how much it really is until they get it back. Or it's all taken away. See what Junebug just did? She snout-pressed the button for betting a hundred smidgens at a time. If she thought of it as a bit, she might have hesitated. But now it's just smidgens..."

"It's a bit --"

Reels spun. Music played. Coins dropped, triggered the hinges, and Junebug laughed.

"I think," Pinkie reported, "it's about a bit and a half now."

Twilight's stare focused on the machine and completely failed to Fluttershy through the glass.

"Do you know how much it's taking?" Pinkie asked. "How much she'd lose over time?"

"All of it," Twilight replied from the heart of dejected confidence. "That's how it always works. But with these..." Her feathers rustled across the length of the soft sigh. "This isn't my specialty, Pinkie. All I can feel for magic is the illusions, and that's harder through the glass. There might be more, closer to the core -- but the gears are in the way, and it still wouldn't be a normal spell: it's a device. Enchanted. And when it comes to the clockwork..."

She blinked, shook her head quickly enough to restyle her bangs.

"I'm teleporting to town. I'm hoping to be back in a few minutes. Wait for me?"

"Sure!" Rounded features briefly wrinkled. "Why?"

Twilight grinned. "I know a specialist."

The steel-grey pegasus trotted around the aisles like a pony who had once seen the word 'stealth' in a dictionary and decided to stop there. She was careful in her movements, because being a repairpony for devices was professionally separated from disarming explosives by the size of the fragments produced by a mistake. She was also visibly careful to a degree where those cautious shifts of legs and wings would have been noticed instantly by anypony who could look away from the reels.

Under better lighting, she would have been rather pretty, especially since part of the delay had been produced by Twilight sending her into a shower. Machine oils had gone down the drain, the short-cut lank copper mane was back to something approaching luster, and the classic Roamer snout with its little inwards curve on each side tended to get nearly as much attention as the raw complexity of her mark. Mechanics were rarely clean to begin with, this one was naturally shy, and she tended to treat grease as something approaching armor. Without that coating, freshly groomed and under better lighting, the pegasus would have drawn immediate attention.

But illusions played, and ponies laughed. None of them looked, and so the pegasus completed her circuit.

A wing lightly curled towards Twilight, doing so at the same moment when the sleek head nodded to the left, indicating a trio of machines without players. The Bearers moved towards them, which took a few seconds: they had to pause so an old mare whose movements jingled could slowly pass by.

The pegasus sat down, and careful teeth placed the free saddlebags into the locks.

"Sit," she whispered. They sat. "Play."

"We'll lose --" felt like a good protest.

"Play," Ratchette quietly said. "We'll look too weird if we're just sitting here doing nothing. If you don't have any money on you, I'll lend you some of mine. Just... play."

The bit tasted odd against Twilight's tongue, as if it was something which had just been fouled. It was almost a relief to release it into the well.

They played. The illusions were actually rather well-rendered, and Twilight found herself with an immediate chance to appreciate that.

It won't last. They only show the little scenes on winning combinations. I have to remember it won't last.

"First," the mechanic softly told them, "you should know there's almost no magic. It's the illusions and a few basic securing effects to keep somepony's corona from trying to probe through any momentary entrances. Otherwise, most of the protection comes from being enclosed: differentiation is their primary barrier."

Twilight nodded. No living free unicorn could move any object which was fully inside another, which came as a great relief once you pictured somepony who could look at your rib cage and try to relocate your heart. "So it's just about pure clockwork." With a smile, "Which is still more your mark than mine. Did you see anything unusual?"

With open fascination, "Other than the double-hinged tray?"

"Ratchette..."

"It's a really elegant design. Produce vendors could use that. Anypony who loads up saddlebags."

"Ratchette."

The pegasus blushed, then silently nodded. Pinkie lightly stomped a hoof, and smidgens tumbled.

The librarian's heartbeat was quickening.

"Are they rigged?" she asked. "They have to be --" Another nod, one where the minimal movement had almost been frozen by confusion, and that last aspect was something Twilight didn't see in time. "-- then we can go get more ponies! Tell everypony here about what's going on --"

"-- if you tell them," the pegasus quietly cut in, "they'll never leave."

Both Bearers stared at her, and the "...what?" emerged as a perfect chorus.

"Play all the money you want to, Twilight," Ratchette whispered. "You can't lose. Nopony here can. They're rigged to win."

The reels spun. Most of Twilight's brain seemed to go with them. "They..." It doesn't make sense, it can't make sense... "...they can't be..."

"They are," the mechanic stated, and the curves of the snout twisted with distress. "Not on every stomp, because then anypony would realize something's wrong -- and just stay where they were, because why wouldn't they try to take advantage of a broken machine? But a whole tent which never stopped paying out... that would get noticed. But the way they worked this -- if a pony was really unlucky, if they played a lot of machines only a few times each at just the wrong moments -- that's the only way to really lose. It's a slow climb, Twilight: you'll get a nice hit after you've dropped some money, and then over time, you'll get a few more. I think..." The steel-grey forehead creased. "I'd have to watch for longer to get the exact rate, but -- I think on average, you'd gain about one percent over your original stake per hour. Some will do a little better or worse. But as long as you keep playing, you'll always leave with more than you started. That's the rig."

They played for a while, because it was something to do while they watched the numbers mount. And then they staggered out of the tent as weight shifted within fragile saddlebags, because they needed a place to think and it had to be one which was still touched by Sun.

Several polite attendants offered to escort them to the center of the tent. They only got away from the last by promising to come back soon, and almost completely missed the first attractive frown of the day as she watched them go.

"Counterfeits," was Twilight's first proposition, made as soon as they were within the relative safety of the trees. (Mentally turning 'being off the path in the Everfree' into 'relative safety' said a lot about how she saw the tent.) "We know they've tried that before. They take in real bits, they give back fake smidgens --"

"-- it's too much work!" Pinkie protested. "All this metal, all the shaping! The brothers hate making a full effort! Even if they did it in bulk somehow, like they had their own little mint, it might take more than a smidgen's worth of effort to make a single smidgen! And ponies are going to look at their winnings! Somepony would have complained by now --"

"-- we just took a bunch of smidgens out," Twilight grimly cut in. "Let's inspect them. Just to be sure."

There were three surprisingly large piles of smidgens, because they'd played for some time and smidgens had a way of accumulating. Inspection took a while, with everypony's mouth longing for a free drink of water. Smidgens were known for becoming dirty easily, and these had been rubbing against each other.

"They're all Equestrian mintings," Ratchette concluded.

"And they're not enchanted," Twilight reluctantly admitted: she could feel that now, with the coins in the open. "How do they take our money by giving back more money? It just doesn't make any sense..."

"Maybe they reformed."

The other two mares immediately looked at Pinkie.

"They're sorry for everything they did," the baker continued, curly tail slowly swaying. "But they can't say so, because they can't even show their faces in town to say the words with. So they set all this up to slowly, slowly pay ponies back..."

She stopped, and abashed blue eyes looked back into twinned stares.

"I don't believe anything I just said," Pinkie confessed. "I mostly said it to see if I could believe that. It didn't work."

The trio sat in silence for a while, listening to ponies trot by along the nearby path. It was quiet enough to count every hoof, along with recognizing that the number of passages was increasing. There was also a few heading the other way, and their steps sounded oddly light.

"We're missing something," Twilight decided. "We have to be. Maybe they could have changed. But I'm not going to believe that without a lot more proof. They're hiding in that little back-dome of an office because they have something to hide from: us. Because there's a reason, a new one. They have to get one over on Ponyville, because that's the only way they might stop coming here --"

There was a moment, with her body low and her wingtips rustling against browning autumn grass, when she thought about it. It was something which shamed her so deeply as to lock the words behind a barrier of denial. The conflict visibly twisted her features with pain, and her friend saw it. Did what Pinkie always did, when somepony's heart was hurting.

"It's not worth letting them win," the baker said. "It never will be. We stop them until they stop or they're stopped. But it's okay to think about it, Twilight. Especially when you're tired. We all have thoughts like that, because we all get tired. You just don't let them be anything more than thoughts. Okay?"

Took it onto herself and in doing so, took it away.

"Okay," Twilight weakly smiled. "So we keep looking. Let's go back inside."

Ponies stayed at the machines, because you didn't leave something which was paying off. The available spaces had been produced by a relative lack of ponies, and more were arriving with every hour. Saddlebags filled, and a few did so to such a degree as to non-magically summon an attendant, who was just so happy to provide an extra set.

The three mares had trouble finding a place where they could all sit together. It helped encourage them to cycle in and out of the tent, because the air was different inside and they couldn't stand to breathe too much of it. Ratchette was outside at the moment a very confused Time Turner was rejected by security: they then spent several minutes trying to figure out if his talent was the key to unlocking everything before a disgruntled Pinkie proposed that he'd been sent away because of his mark. There were no clocks, no natural light inside, and so the brothers wished to keep out any reminder that time was passing.

They were trying to think on their hooves, and so had to remain aware that time was passing because there wasn't enough of it. This was a traveling casino, and the duration of its stay had been posted to the public notice boards. If they didn't come up with the right answer, then the brothers would very literally pull up stakes and head for the next town, triumphant at last. Twilight just didn't know what the triumph was --

-- might be. It's 'might be'.
They're still here. We can still stop them.

They wandered the casino's dirty floor. Their planned excuse, should they have been stopped, was that they couldn't find a trio of vacant machines in a row and as more of Ponyville gathered under the tent, this became increasingly true. But nopony questioned them: something which felt like an act of deliberate viciousness. They were simply permitted to wander, and... even that felt as if it tired them more than the mere distance would have allowed.

There was nothing strange about the water: no effects which would make the consumers vulnerable. Alcohol was just that, and so they didn't have any. They just kept moving, forcing themselves through each hoofstep, knowing only that something was wrong and they had to figure out what it was.

And then Mr. Waddle, the oldest pony there, somepony Twilight sometimes swore had to be the third oldest pony anywhere... became tired.

They didn't know how long he'd been at his chosen machine. It was possible that he didn't know either. He was just tired, and so he reluctantly staggered to his hooves: something which, for Mr. Waddle, involved a few false starts and at least three joints trying to move the wrong way. The free saddlebags were unlocked, and Mr. Waddle carefully lowered himself until his head was under hinged tray and saddlebag straps, ready to slide the whole thing along his neck onto his back.

He lifted his head. His neck, which was dealing with the weight of saddlebags bulging at the visible seams with accumulated smidgens, mostly stayed where it was.

Vertebrae made several interesting sounds, and that made a few ponies look around because it was the first thing to happen in a while which had been off-key.

He grunted. Struggled, and did so with increasing desperation. Twilight, who was all too aware of how the ancient stallion reacted when she lifted anything, decided it wasn't a good time for extra attention and managed to keep her horn dark. Several attendants quickly closed in.

"Carry those for you, sir?" the strongest offered.

"Oh, thank you," Mr. Waddle wheezed. "Terribly gracious! If you would just follow me home --"

"-- can't do that sir. Can't leave the tent. That's leaving work, sir. But we can carry them to the exchange station for you."

"...exchange... station?"

"Yes, sir. Gets your bits out, sir, instead of carrying smidgens. Nowhere near as heavy! Or..." Somehow, the words came out as compassionate. "...we could help load you up, and get you to the exit. Happy to do what we can in the tent, sir. We just can't do anything about the rest of the way."

The ancient pony very slowly blinked.

"Exchange..." he just barely breathed. "Yes, that makes sense. Carry them there, please? So gracious..."

The attendants loaded up, and the flimsy saddlebags teetered on broad backs. Expertly-trained Bearer eyes estimated three minutes to seam failure.

The procession moved towards the central enclosure of glass and gears. The mares followed.

"Exchange for you," the attendants offered the operators, and the saddlebags were lowered to the ground.

"Happy to help!" the nearest operator beamed. "Just one thing to tell you first, Mr. -- oh, this is our first meeting, isn't it? Can I know the name of a winner?"

"Waddle," the old stallion wheezed. "Emeritus Waddle."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Emer!" A forehoof awkwardly presented itself over the glass ridge: some effort was required on both sides before pressing occurred. "So this how it works. This lovely little machine I'm standing in the middle of? Once I place everything properly, it'll count your smidgens and figure their total value in bits. Then it dispenses, and you get your winnings in an easier-to-carry form! Would you like that?"

"Yes," Mr. Waddle smiled. "Funny, isn't it? How one smidgen never feels like much, but when you get that many of them --"

"-- the sign of a winner, Emer! So we'll have you cashed out in a minute! It's just a matter of asking you to agree to the processing fee."

The fourth horseshoe dropped.

It only did so for three mares, all of whom were now staring at the playlet as it moved towards what was now an inevitable conclusion. The central actor simply said "The what, now?"

"Well," the operator merrily explained, "this thing I'm standing inside? Very complex. Lots of gears, a little magic. Very hard to maintain, sir, very costly. The drinks, we keep those free, at our loss. Saddlebags? We give them away! Keeping up the slot machines? Well, we just hope they pay for themselves, don't we? And with you, that hope has certainly been dashed! But this... this, I'm sorry to say, we have to pay for. So do you mind if, for the honor of cashing out a winner, we ask for just a small processing fee? Only on the level of, shall we call it, a mere eleven percent? To spare you from having to carry so many smidgens home?"

Mr. Waddle's bleary eyes slowly blinked behind the smudged lenses. He looked at the complex machine. Then he looked down at a weight of smidgens which stood a good chance of outmassing him and, after several hours of play with only alcohol for company, could probably outwit him too.

"That sounds fair," decided a gambler's high with the assistance of too many drinks. "Proceed."

You would leave with more than you started, every time, as long as you played long enough. But you would leave with smidgens. An enterprising filly could proudly fill a huge jar over the course of several years -- only to find that not only did she have around a mere fifty bits, but no merchant in town wanted to count that many smidgens.

Ponies loved big numbers. But big numbers came with an equal amount of weight. And you could stagger under saddlebags which would be doing well to reach the main path intact, spend hours trying to gather lost coins, try to move with a weight which gave some earth ponies trouble, grounded pegasi and overwhelmed most unicorn coronas as you slowly realized that nopony in town would really want to take your money in trade...

...or you could convert the smidgens back into bits, on the spot. For a processing fee (and Twilight was convinced it was a sliding one) which wiped out everything you'd won, just before it guaranteed you lost.

It was, as cons went, a slow drain. But it was a sure one. Ponies who lost everything in a normal casino might quit. A few would eventually recognize what the fee had done. But this setup, when dealing with the rest of the population... you took a little wool, and then you left for a while so the victims could grow more. The same shearing station might even come around again. Some new illusions to watch play on the reels, more free drinks, and those whose brain cells had drowned would never bother to work the math. Ponies would approach of their own free will...

As cons went, the current scheme was a lot of things, none of which were illegal. In the sheer dark elegance of it, there was an argument to be made that it was beautiful. Twilight's inner self shamefully admitted that had she encountered it in a novel, she might have internally applauded.

But the main character would have had the solution waiting in the next chapter. This was the real world, and so it was a horror.

They were outside again, near the restroom side of the tent. There was something of a smell, and most of that rose from their own desperation.

"The victims agree to be fleeced," Twilight morosely noted as her chin sank deeper into browning grass. "And some of them will never realize they were taken. It's insidious. No one bad night which might shock them into seeking help. Just winning. Winning constantly, until you've won less than you started with."

Pinkie shivered, and every curl trembled. "And there's going to be ponies who love the feeling of winning so much that they go somewhere else," she added. "Trying to get it back from games which work normally. Games where your luck always runs out. They'll chase that feeling, they'll die trying to get it back..." Her head came up. "We have to stop this now. Everypony start thinking. We can beat it!" But the blue eyes had been clouded. "We have to."

Ratchette shuddered. "I... I'm not a Bearer," the pegasus slowly said. "I'm not meant for this. I'm not a hero. I don't know how to save anypony..."

"Just be Ratchette," Twilight gently told her. "We need that more." The striped tail slowly swayed. "Let's think..."

Every muscle tightened.

"I can set something up at the entrance to the main path," Twilight said. "Print up a one-sheet which explains how everything works. But..." With open disgust, "Most ponies won't read it. Some are going to decide it doesn't apply to them. And even if everypony who hasn't come yet listened, we can't pass the one-sheet out inside the tent. We'd get kicked out. It doesn't do anything for the ponies who are already there."

"And writing would take a while," Pinkie added. "I don't think we can go around the tent whispering it either. Too noticeable. And 'no interrupting anypony who's having fun'."

More thought, as Sun shifted across the sky.

"It's partially about carrying capacity," Twilight realized. "What if somepony else did the carrying?" With increasing brightness, "I could --"

"Some ponies won't let you teleport them," Pinkie reminded her. "They don't like the disorientation. There's a lot more who would let you levitate things and walk with them to their homes, but there's only so many ponies leaving the tent at once. It leaves you going back and forth all the time. You'd miss a lot of players, and the trotting would wear you out."

Twilight's chin immediately went down again.

"Same problem with bringing in Snowflake," the librarian morosely muttered. "He's strong enough to carry just about any amount of smidgens somepony could win, and more ponies trust him these days. They'd let him fly their winnings home, staying at their side as a bodyguard. But there's only one of him. And they made the path too narrow for carts..."

"Carrying's out?" Pinkie asked.

"Out."

The Bearers kept thinking it over. Ratchette, who had stretched out her left foreleg, seemed to be scratching furrowed patterns into the dirt.

"Mr. Croesus?" Twilight eventually proposed. "He could --"

Pinkie sharply looked up. "The bank's manager? What about him?"

"Um." A blush was beginning to underlight purple fur. "This would have to be you, Pinkie. Because I'm -- you know..."

"Banned from the bank," the baker finished. "Forever. Because the parasprites ate the ledgers. All of them, all the way back to when Ponyville was born. And that's when he started having his employees chip records into stone, which makes it really really hard to get a deposit receipt home when it's the size of my own body. Why Mr. Croesus, Twilight? Because he already sends ponies out of his business with things which are too heavy --"

"-- he makes exchanges all the time! You can ask him to set up a temporary bank branch at the last sign. Smidgens to bits! It's what he's supposed to do!"

There was silence for a while.

"Twilight?"

"...Pinkie?"

"I've been in town longer than you. Right?"

"...right..."

"So I know a few ponies a little better than you might. Like Mr. Croesus. I know him, and his mark. His mark is just about all there is to know. He's a pure banker. He's so pure, he doesn't let himself be contaminated with anything which isn't bank. So I'd go to him, and explain exactly what was going on. About the slot machines, and the counting one, and the exchange fees. Do you know what a pure banker would do? One who's so pure, there isn't any room left for being a pony?"

She didn't know why she'd just shuddered. "...no."

Steadily, "Study the counting machine. And then he'll try to buy it, or have somepony build one. If he can't, he'll have his tellers start charging a processing fee to count smidgens, tenth-bits, anything at all, because it's been proven that ponies will pay and a fee is like gum, Twilight: once you let it get in your fur, you might never completely get it out. Other banks would see him getting the fee, they'd start their own, they'd start charging for counting money you were taking out and you'd wind up writing the Princess asking for the palace to write a new regulation or start banks of its own just so ponies could get at their own money without losing eleven percent of it. Mr. Croesus doesn't leave the bank much, Twilight. He'd never come here on his own, his employees are too nice to ever tell him about any of this, and he is the last pony who should ever see this, because then we'd have a few moons where the whole world was that counting machine, Spike was out of flame and scrolls, and you'd hate yourself because I hadn't stopped you. And I love you too much to ever see you go through that. So no Mr. Croesus. Okay?"

It took a few seconds before Twilight could move, and then just a little longer to cross the minimal distance and nuzzle against pink fur.

"Okay. And... thank you."

Pinkie smiled. "It's all right. Mr. Rich would do it if we asked, and understand why it couldn't spread. Even if he still tried to make one, just to make closing the store at night a little easier. But that only works here, Twilight, and we don't know where they're going next. Just that they're here for one more day before they go. Spike could help you warn every town on the continent, if we had enough time, and maybe one extra day is it. But that still leaves a whole world..."

Ratchette glanced down at the intricate furrows, just before sharp copper eyes looked up.

"Or the brothers could just quit."

It was a statement which begged a question, and Pinkie was the one who voiced it. "Why would they quit when they're making money?"

"You quit because you're losing," the mechanic volleyed. "I saw how those machines work. It's easy to see: they're glass. Glass because they want to show off. Give me two hours and I can rig tools. One of them goes into the entry well. I can mess with the counter: make it think it's taking a hundred-bit coin for every bit that goes in. There's an option to remove your money at any time. That empties the machine from the top down."

The copper seemed to be tarnishing.

Darkly, "Or I could use the tool which gets stuck in the bottom. That'll make the machine lose track of how much is coming out. Either way, they lose everything minus a processing fee, or you could just teleport us home --"

"-- that's stealing!"

It was the first time either Bearer had heard the new note in the pegasus' voice: the sudden fierceness, and neither knew how to deal with it. Ratchette was infamous for being bad at dealing with ponies, performed the majority of her venting upon malfunctioning devices and could easily tuck into a curl of hoped-for retreat in the face of customers who didn't know how to deal with the existence of a pegasus device mechanic. Nopony had ever seen her angry.

She was angry now.

"They stole first! They're abusing machines to abuse ponies! Why shouldn't they lose everything? Why can't we just turn it right back on them, their own abuses --"

"-- because they can ask the police to arrest us!" Twilight yelped. "Glass machines, Ratchette! Wandering attendants! If they see the tools, that's it! The ponies they're victimizing agree to the processing fee: even if they're in a position where they don't know to say no or don't want to bother, they agree! As far as the law is concerned, we'd just be thieves! Miranda might let us go --"

Breathing too heavily, wings moving into the challenge position. "-- I can send blueprints to repair shops all over Equestria if you just let Spike help me, we can have ponies waiting everywhere --"

Twilight's wings flared.

"-- ponies in towns with police chiefs who haven't spent years dealing with Bearers! It's still glass! It still just takes one bad moment, and it's ponies who are going to wind up in prison!"

Ratchette's eyes slowly closed. Wings eventually refolded, and a lank tail fall dropped into the grass.

They gave the mechanic a little time, moments for just being under Sun with a beating heart. And then she opened her eyes again, so that dampened copper could force out what little strength remained.

"You're right. You're..." She swallowed: a gulp of air and shame. "...I don't know why I just... it felt so personal..."

Pinkie's warm body subtly shifted closer.

"You don't have good experiences with altered things," the baker softly said. "Mostly bad ones. One of them was with something the brothers changed: the Minder, right? And you've never been this close to them, so you didn't have a chance to be mad. It's okay to be angry. Just..." Pink fur pressed against grey. "...figure out how to use it."

The mechanic released a shuddering breath, one which took long enough for Twilight to move up to her other flank.

"Maybe this is why I'm not a hero," she said. "I don't think of the right things."

"They really make you think, don't they?" Pinkie asked. "The brothers, I mean. It's strange, because they don't want ponies to think. They want to think for everypony they hurt, and that just makes us think all the more. So maybe if we think long enough, we'll come up with the right thing..."

They thought.

They went back into the tent, trotted around for as long as they could stand it while trying not to count ponies, or smidgens, or bits. Looked carefully at everything they were seeing, so they could add it all to what they were thinking about.

They tried to come up with an answer. Something which would save Ponyville. The ones they cared about, and ponies all over the continent whom they had yet to meet.

They failed.

The trio was moving around the outer edge of the tent. It was better than being inside, although it was more than marginally worse for the eyes.

"The Princesses?" It was the last resort, and so Ratchette had been the one to propose it.

"They might have an easier time getting into the back office," Twilight admitted. "There's got to be an active warrant for the brothers somewhere. But they're also really visible. I don't think the brothers would have done this if they didn't have at least six ways of getting out set up in advance, and when somepony sees the Princesses coming... they'll probably just find two ponies pretending to be the owners."

"Employees," Pinkie sighed. "I think that's the hardest part to believe. They're paying ponies. Fairly. They almost have to be, because this might not have been the first town. They've never trusted anypony enough to work with them. Just each other."

The bulge of the office dome was starting to come into sight.

"They may rip them off at the very end," Twilight darkly declared. "They're saving that up for a treat on a special day. Stretching out the pleasure. But they're doing a lot of things they wouldn't normally do, Pinkie. Having employees, giving out money even for a second, and it feels like they actually thought this through." Miserably, "Better than we did."

"Maybe they stole it from somepony else," Ratchette proposed. "The whole concept."

"Maybe they're fighting themselves," Pinkie softly countered. "They know that who they are doesn't work, so they're trying to be somepony else. Just a little. But that's hard, to be anypony else. You're always you underneath, and this is too close to who they really are to be anypony else for long. Maybe they can't keep it up..." Curls sagged. "And they probably stole at least some of it. Because it's them."

Three mares ran out of strength, and a trio of bodies sank into the dirt next to the dome's bulge.

"We're beaten," Twilight stated at normal volume, her ears drooping against her skull. "I never thought I'd say that. We can't do anything."

There was a bulge of a dome at the back of the tent, because that was where the office was. There was also a lot of paint, and so when the additional weight leaned against the interior canvas, it made a sound like a small iceberg splitting.

The mares automatically looked in that direction, and so easily picked out the outlines of two tall, thin stallion bodies pressing against the fabric. It was just possible to make out the ears. They had to imagine the smirks.

"We still have a day," Pinkie reminded her -- but the tail's curls were limp. "A day to think of something."

"Of what?" Twilight tried not to shoot back. "I feel like I'm fighting myself just to think! Just to come up with an answer, to be me! I'm supposed to think of things, and..."

It felt as if her own ears were merging with bone.

"...I can't. How am I supposed to --"

Which still let her hear the faintest echoes of the snickers.

fighting myself to make this work
fighting themselves to make this work
they don't work with others
they don't trust
they don't limit themselves to taking just a little when they can try for everything
they're not acting like themselves, the same way Ratchette wasn't and
that has a price
How long have they been paying it?

You had to give the brothers reluctant credit, if you gave them any at all. They really made you think, and one of the ways they almost taught you to think...

"...do this," she finally finished. "So maybe I can't." And before the others could approach her to reassure, she snorted. "I'm just surprised they're doing so little. I came up with at least three improvements just while we were roaming around in there!"

...was how to think like a con artist.

There were no window flaps, no way of seeing what was going on outside. It left her free to wink at her friends, and she did so at the same moment a pair of stallion-shaped outlines subtly leaned forward.

"Improvements?" Pinkie quickly (but not too quickly) asked. "Like what?"

"Why do they have to pay out all of the money?" Twilight proposed. "We already know they work with counterfeits. They probably have a few around, just to keep their hooves in whenever they feel like shorting somepony. So slip a few into the exchange machine, and that's all the more for them to keep." Another snort. "For that matter, how many ponies are counting their smidgens before they bring them up to the glass? Have the machine say it's giving you a hundred and fifty for the latest win, but it only dumps a hundred and forty-five. It all adds up, right?"

"Plus there's the garment check," Pinkie considered. "Ponies leave stuff in their pockets all the time. You've got hours to go through their things and see if there's anything you want..."

Ratchette's copper gaze was bouncing from one Bearer to the other.

"Oh, the employees are probably doing that already," Twilight dismissively said. "Taking the best stuff for themselves. There's got to be all kinds of opportunities for skimming."

Which was when imagination temporarily ran out, and she met the mechanic's eyes.

"Like... the coin refills," Ratchette slowly offered. "They have to refill the machines, especially with how much they pay out. That means huge bags of smidgens. It would be easy to take a few, and then make the machine's counter say you'd filled it completely. It's open already, so everything you need to adjust is right there. And with all the times they see the interior, it wouldn't be that hard to work out how to do it."

The stallion outlines were now on the verge of falling through the canvas.

"And what about the tips for the drink servers?" Twilight sarcastically pointed out. "If they're bits, then that money isn't being converted into smidgens and if it's smidgens because everypony's got so many, that isn't turning into bits! Money going out of the brothers' saddlebags! Seriously, when you've got this many ponies around, it's a guarantee that some of them are scamming you. And what about the water? Okay, free drinks are part of the appeal, but those ponies stay clear-headed! There's got to be something you can mix into water, something that won't show. You can just say you're... flavoring it. Flavored water, the newest player sensation. Then there's just enchanting a few bits, so they'll serve as beacons. Tells you where ponies keep their money!"

They talked for about ten minutes. Some of it consisted of partial repeats, which Twilight tried to justify as working out the details. But the brothers had a way of making ponies think and so for those ten minutes, the mares volubly thought about so many of the things which those on the other side of the canvas hadn't been able to risk thinking about at all. The trio proposed improvements which were both obvious and profitable, to the point where 'potentially, and cumulatively, noticeable' started to feel like something which could be dealt with.

The victims always felt like they could come out on top. That was how you knew it was a con.

They talked for ten minutes, and then they left. All three were hungry, it was too late to start cooking anything, and so they used part of their meager profits to treat each other to dinner. Twilight, Pinkie, and Ratchette stayed at the restaurant for nearly two hours. Talking, recovering, and wondering whether any of it had worked.

It meant they missed most of the riot.

Pinkie stopped by the tree a few days later, just in time to find Twilight adding the mostly-trampled remnants of a slot machine to the Shelf Of Curiosities: the place where you were mostly curious about why it had happened at all. They then both took a trot to the police station, where they learned that while several former tent employees were willing to testify, none of them had any idea where the brothers might have run to. The largest stallion, however, was able to advise the searchers to look for what should be a fairly distinctive pair of fresh limps.

And after that, they made their way through the narrow tool-crowded aisles of the town's only fix-it shop, where they found its proprietor working on a repair.

"It's for Applejack," Ratchette announced once her mouth was clear and the spring-loaded steel spider of jaw-mounted equipment had been removed from her face. "I salvaged one of the drop-trays. I think that once I fix and modify it a little, it'll be good for dispensing fruit into saddlebags. No cost, since I'm just asking her to try it out."

Both Bearers nodded.

"I could have put a patent on it," the mechanic quietly added. "I checked, and it was never registered. But... it isn't my blueprint. There's a chance they didn't steal it, so it might be theirs. And even if it is... I shouldn't be the one who registers it. I'll use it, at least until it's claimed. But if they ever wanted to change... the patent would give them a start."

Again.

The pegasus looked at the tray for a while. Examining the elegance of the design.

"Do you ever think about it?" she asked. "What they could do, if they were different? If they cared? The kind of ponies they could be?"

A pair of tails twitched.

"Yes," Twilight eventually answered, even as her eyes sought the floor.

"But not too much," Pinkie quietly finished. "It's not good to spend a lot of time thinking about things which you know are only going to hurt. Can we buy you lunch?"