[ID: A reply from @/getallemeralds reading "yes?" in all caps. End ID.]
one answer is enough for me! hokay, SO,
context: coast of maine. very fractalous coast. several small towns on it. mine is one of them. neighboring town has a fort in it. fort has cannons. during the war of 1812 the guy in charge of the fort fired the cannons at the british once, spiked the cannons (making them unusable) and left. the fort was taken by the british and they tried to make maine into Ireland Two: It Went So Well Last Time. good jorb. btw this was the second time that that town was taken over by the british and no one has ever let them forget it. (MY town, when threatened by the british, said they would sign the oath of loyalty to the king and then All Got In Boats And Left. based)
FLASH FORWARD. 1857. cannons still at fort. some young rapscallions over in my town get the idea that they should sail over to the neighbors, steal a cannon, and carry it back to be fired off the night before the fourth of july. sounds super easy right. WRONG
they get over there fine but immediately realize that they have made a critical error. they forgot cannons are heavy. they succeed in dragging one cannon halfway to the beach before giving up and deciding they're gonna need a bigger boat.
ROUND 2. on the night of july 3rd, they set out with TWO boats: the original boat, with 7 men, and a bigger boat, with wheels and equipments and nineteen men. unfortunately the night is foggy (and some of them, if we're being honest, are probably drunk), and the ships get lost.
somehow no one at the neighboring town has noticed that one of their cannons has been dragged down a hill yet.
the bigger ship gets swept up the bay by the tide and misled by a lighthouse, but they manage to row themselves back down to their destination and after several hours get the cannon on the ship! YAY! unfortunately they still haven't found the other guys so they rope in ANOTHER boat (that i guess was just out there??) and THAT guy towed them back to their harbor! cannon heist: successful. BUT WAIT
remember how i said at the beginning about the guy spiking the cannons? WELL. turns out. they had never been unspiked. that cannon was still unusable. SO they dragged the cannon up a hill, improvised a drill, and drilled a new hole.
and thus, the cannon heist was TRULY complete, and the cannon was fired off many times that fourth of july, resounding triumphantly across the bay!
.....of course, this meant the neighbors (and everyone else) immediately knew exactly who had stolen their cannon. but they never stole it back, and to this very day, that cannon remains with the town that stole it. >:3