Not Quite Legal, Not Quite Tender
The Bank of Saddlecon Valley
The plan had been easy enough, so far. Easy casing, unnoticed entry, everything right where it should be. Her “employer” would be pleased.
The only problem was the shifting of the clocks. Luna stifled a yawn, as she bent down to pick up two pieces of paper that had fallen out of the ledger, what less-perceptive eyes would have just assumed were bookmarks.
“Daylight Savings,” my black flank, she thought, copying the writing on those small slips too. This nonsense saves nothing and just makes me tired.
A few nights ago on one of her midnight constitutionals around Silver Shoals, she’d been approached by a mysterious mare in a long trench coat, with a proper Canterlot accent. In a few words, her interruptor said that she needed help that only Luna, a former Princess, could provide, and that, in lieu of payment, the job would be doing a good deed.
“What does this good deed involve?” She asked.
“Helping a mare in need, but more importantly, putting an end to a very long-con and bringing justice to those who have been cheated and decieved.”
The mare, upon Luna’s subtle sideways questioning, had once been a banker. And she had detailed knowledge that a rather famous bank, the Bank of Saddlecon Valley, headquartered in the San Franciscolt Suburb of Santa Cantera, was insolvent, its main vault near empty. If it failed, thousands of innocent ponies would be hurt. And its owners were none other than the infamous Flim and Flam Skim.
“The Flim-Flam Brothers? Who gave those ne’er do wells a banking license?” Luna asked.
“Regulatory capture,” her employer said. “Customers were not the only ones who were tricked.” Then, she spoke in a hushed, hurried voice. “You will have to do this during the hour-long daylight savings time change. It’s the only way to avoid their guards and the security system. They kept all the details of the fraud in their private office, on the fourth floor near the back, overlooking the mountains. Look for a silver-colored ledger on the bottom right of their big bookshelf. Send it to someone, anyone. Please.”
“But the time change is in two days!” Luna protested.
The mare looked over her shoulder, worried. “ I have to go. We never spoke”
The mare strode off, in a hurry. And as Luna saw her turn down an alley, she thought she heard someone call out, “Mommy?”
Luna had never done anything like this before. But she was never one to turn down an interesting challenge, even if it would fall on that most annoying of nights.
Luna only took one book from her personal library. As she was leaving, she called out to Celestia, “Heading out for the weekend, check the book on the table, if I don’t come back avenge my death!”
“All right, have fun!” came her sister’s reply.
Plotting her past-midnight entry into the Bank of Saddlecon Valley’s Head Office had been foal’s play for an observant alicorn. The actual entry down an unsecured ventilation shaft on the roof, even easier. The ledger was right where her source said it would be, too.
Except… the details of it were not quite as she had been told. Luna was no expert with numbers, but the mere titles of the ledger sheets inside and the hastily scrawled notes were so juicy by themselves, it was almost sordid. Who knew there could be so much intrigue in accounting? Luna thought.
As Luna copied the last pages of the ledger into the book she brought, and dashed off a quick post-script, the lights of the office abruptly turned on. It was Flim and Flam, the bank’s owners. Flam, the mustachioed one, pulled the alarm with his magic. Silent red lights began to flash overhead.
“Well, well, well,” said Flim. “A former princess turned thief prying into private financial records, sans warrant or authorization! How will that look for the morning papers?”
Luna flashed a grin, and attempted to teleport away.
Then her teleport spell failed, as did her smile.
Flim guffawed. “Oh-hohohoho! You didn’t think we’d have a bank without top-class anti-magic security, did you? Our guards will be here momentarily, so don’t–”
With a beat of her powerful wings, Luna was airborne and through the door, bowling the brothers over.
“Intruder!” she heard Flam cry out. “Thief! Brigand! Burglar!”
Flying at breakneck speed down narrow corridors, Luna bowled over uniformed bank guards, who, like her, had not lost their extra hour of sleep. But she knew from her hasty planning that the windows were cannon-ball proof and too thick to crash through. Her only hope was back out the ventilation shaft the way she came.
And two more guards–both beefy, bearded, Pegasi–were standing underneath it.
Plan B, Luna thought.
She dove down passageways at random, and after two more turns ended up flying down a staircase that had previously been hidden by a fake wall. At the bottom of the staircase was the upper level of the main two-story bank vault.
Which was not, it turned out, empty at all as her employer had predicted. As the ledger had said, it was filled with Flim and Flam’s own money, in place of all the bank’s deposits. Stored here, temporarily. To conceal the fact that the brothers had already “invested” the deposits of a few thousand hard-working ponies.
And that was enough for her.
She floated down to the vault floor. Flim and Flam followed her down a few moments later, flanked by their guards.
“That was some low-down dirty thievery you pulled, Princess,” an out-of-breath Flam said.
“My thievery? You scammed thousands of ponies out of their money and spent it all!”
“Oh, not that,” Flim said. Your, ahem… bookmarks.”
Luna opened her book to the front. The slips she had found in the front of the original ledger she had copied from were a pair of airship tickets for two days hence, which she read for the second time.
“Baahli?” Luna asked, incredulously.
“Indoneesheep,” Flam said. “Surf, sand, and if need be lots of connecting flights to countries without extradition treaties. Those tickets are the only thing of value you really stole tonight, so we will be taking those back.” Luna watched the tickets disappear… but not their imprint in the front of her book.
“You won’t be getting away with this,” Luna said, confidently.
“Oh? How will it look come Monday with you trapped in our bank vault?” Flam asked. “Have a nice long day, Princess! Oh, almost forgot, banks are closed tomorrow!”
Flim and Flam chuckled as they walked away, locking the hidden vault door behind them and turning out the lights. In the dim light, Luna read her book, one last time, and saw the note.
Got them.
Then, feeling tired, she looked for a place to sleep.
Luna had made herself a bed on a pile of empty thousand-bit bags, burlap rough but doable for one day and one-and-a-half nights. She had spent the previous day in darkness in her golden prison making a rough count of all the assets in the vault. Still, she had brought no food and the one bottle of water she’d thought to bring in her saddlebag was long since emptied. But Luna was nothing if not patient, so she had simply curled up and waited for the inevitable.
The overhead lights slammed on, and Luna was woken with a start as the main door to the vault opened.
In stepped a very panicked Flim, and an even more desperate looking Flam. Outside, she could hear angry shouts, by the thousands. Flam heaved the vault door shut and worked the lock, shaking like a leaf in the wind. Flim threw down a newspaper beside Luna’s makeshift bed as she sat upon it, sphinx-like. “WHAT DID YOU DO?” Flim shouted.
The headline of the paper told it all.
SAN FRANCISCOLT EXAMINER
BANK OF SADDLECON VALLEY INSOLVENT
Royal Bank of Equestria To Assume Control, Says All Insured Deposits Will Be Paid Out
Examiner Exclusive: Internal Ledgers Reveal Scope Of Fraud
Bank Owners Flim Skim & Flam Skim Wanted For Questioning
Luna simply smiled at him. “I thought you said the ledgers were meaningless. Apparently you were mistaken about that. And is that a bank run I heard outside, by any chance?” She looked around the packed vault of bits. “Not to worry, I spent yesterday counting, and there are more than enough bits in here to pay out all the deposits on that ledger.”
“But you were in here for a whole day! There was no way you could have gotten–”
Luna literally threw her book at Flim, who took it in the chest with a wheeze. “Last page,” Luna said, eyes narrowed. “You’ll find something very interesting.”
Flim opened the last page of the book, the one with the entire ledger. He read. “Luna - what have you gotten yourself into this time? Nevermind, I’ve let the Royal Bank know…. they need to get out there and secure the bank. I also told the news… papers. You had better have a good explanation for this… I await juicy details. Love… Celly.” He sighed. “How…”
“You are not the only one who has a sibling to help them out. The Linking Book spell was one of the first my sister and I learned millenia ago.” She half-smiled. “You didn’t really think I would be in here without a plan, did you? Knowing what you two ne’er do wells are capable of?
Flim said nothing and sat back, dejected, on his haunches. Luna could tell he knew. Knew that he and his brother con-artist had now been definitively out-conned.
Flam ran up to them, having secured the vault door temporarily. “...Brother? What’s happened?”
“It seems… we’re on the hook,” Flim said, and showed him the magic book.
“But…but…but… this… this is our fortune! We were supposed to move it out today!” Flam said, a look of panic in his eyes.
“Not necessarily,” Luna said, and they both turned to look at her. “If you try to claim all of this as your own, the Bank of Saddlecon Valley is undercapitalized. All your assets will be subject to seizure to make sure your depositors are made whole, and you will both be facing long prison terms for fraud as well. And those airship tickets to Baahli… well, I don’t think you’ll be making that flight tonight. If you try, you’ll be caught. And from then on your suits will still be striped, but black and white, with the word PRISONER stamped all over, for, oh, ten to twenty years, give or take. Depending how good of a mood the judge and the Crown Prosecutors are in.”
Their faces fell.
“However…” Luna continued, “if these are, in fact, your customers' deposits, as I said, there’s enough in here to go around. Your banking days are over, but you will be free ponies, and can always start again. And perhaps, this time, on the right side of the law.”
Flam sighed. “She’s right, you know.”
Flim gave the linked ledger back to Luna, with all their secrets, and Flam gave up the vault door key from around his neck as well. “You are free to go,” they said in a sad unison.
Luna bowed, got off her impromptu throne, and made her way to the vault door, opened its bulk with the key, and strode through. Dozens of nervous bank tellers looked slack-jawed at her as she strode onto the bank floor with the vault key and a ledger. It was Monday morning in Santa Cantera. Luna could see a crowd of ponies, at least a thousand, mixed in with stern-looking Royal Guards, and suited bureaucrats with full briefcases and saddlebags, outside the windows, staring at the Princess who had just emerged from the bank vault carrying a massive ledger. Luna paid no mind. She unlocked the front doors and prepared her Royal Canterlot Voice:
“Citizens of Santa Cantera, and Depositors of Saddlecon Valley Bank! After… extensive… consultations this weekend at the request of Flim Skim, Bank President, and Flam Skim, Bank Chairman, I have personally verified that there are enough bits on hoof to repay all depositors. You may all withdraw funds at your leisure.”
She looked up at the clock. Daylight Savings Time was still throwing her off, but it was time for the bank to open anyway, so she propped open the doors, and spoke again. “Inspectors and Examiners from the Royal Bank of Equestria, you will find the current managers in the vault. Royal Guards, please take charge of the crowds. Customers and depositors, please form an orderly line for the tellers. Once again, all deposits are available.”
Though Luna was no longer technically a ruling Princess, everyone obeyed her. The crowds filed in, no longer panicked but insistent on getting their bits out.
Luna was watching the scene from the upstairs balcony above the teller floor, when she heard a familiar voice behind her.
“Thank you, your highness.” It was the proper accent of the earth pony mare who had hired her. And at her side were two young foals, a colt and a filly, each with a curiously red-and-white candy-striped mane and unicorn horn. Luna turned, and bowed her head with a tired smile. “I am no longer a highness, madam,” she said, bowing, “but you are most welcome nonetheless. But… may I ask your name?”
“Harshwinny,” she said.
“I see,” said Luna. “But if you are not a depositor, then why are you…”
Harshwinny looked behind Luna. “I’m here to serve some papers. Guards, please stop those two stallions!”
Luna turned around and saw Flim and Flam, being escorted by a pair of Royal Guards and a group of Royal Bank Inspectors, halting in their steps as Harshwhinny strode over, followed by the two foals.
Harshwhinny cleared her throat. “I’m Miss Harshwinny, formerly with RBE. I was the one who gave these two their banking licenses, but I’m afraid I too was deceived as to their… capitalization. In more ways than one.” Luna could see cold fury in Harswhinny’s eyes. “I believe they called it regulatory capture as they left. You two stole my heart, sirs. And I expect compensation.”
Harswhinny took two sheaves of papers out of her saddlebags, and handed one to each of the clearly internally panicky soon-to-be-former bankers. “I am serving you in a paternity suit, alleging one, or both, of you are the parents of these foals. May I present to you Legal Spirit, and Tender Heart. The colt and filly looked up at the stallions who may–or may not–have been their sires.
Flam spoke first. “But… but we can’t both be their fathers? Yes, twins run in our family, but…”
“Not to worry, I have you each as the father of one,” Harshwhinny said. “The family courts will sort it out from here.”
Not wanting to intervene in poetic justice, Luna discreetly teleported downstairs and made her way out a side exit, drawing a salute from the guard on duty.
Santa Cantera’s morning sun shone in her eyes. “Curses,” she muttered, “I need to find a hotel and get some room service and some sleep.”
“I’ve already arranged that,” came the familiar voice of her sister, who was trying to look inconspicuously touristy and failing, even among the sartorially challenged ponies of San Franciscolt. “And I think you need a better hobby than, you know, crime.”
“Petty larceny, at best,” Luna said, stifling a yawn.” What are they going to do, imprison me? All that money has our faces on it anyway.” Then she looked up to her sister, and gave her a tired nuzzle. “Plus… I know you’ll always be there to bail me out.”
Celestia chuckled as they turned up the main street of Santa Cantera. “Oh, I suppose. But I’m still getting you a hobby. And you owe me that lost hour of sleep.”
“Your time change law,” Luna said.
“Listen, just because I kept Royal Assent…”
