Carne Asada's former security mare trudged into Canterlot penniless and looking for work, apparently having walked, worked, and hitch-hiked across the continent in late winter. From what Streak, my youngest employee, could find shadowing her in the university district, she was looking for a change of career. She had applied for admission to Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. She'd have to wait months until enrollment started.
I saw leverage and a desirable new hire.
Why would I want a security mare who failed her last employer? Well, in CA's case, sometimes you can't save a pony from her own stupidity. I also visualized a different employment for the mare's "special" talents.
I gave orders to ensure the mare's efforts in finding a job to pay room and board would be marginally fruitful. I provided strategic services to many businesses; they usually respected my opinions on such matters. The mare seemed reluctant to venture into downtown or suburban Canterlot. Perhaps it was that she was shy about being noticed as the failed security mare for Carne Asada. Perhaps it was because visibly healing wounds, time pounding the pavement, and days exposed to the sun and the elements made her look like a vagrant. In any case, she restricted her search to the less-structured more-freewheeling Lower Canterlot where I conducted my core business. Her life would be hard.
Surprisingly, this stoic mare didn't break. She saved the minimal bits she made first sweeping floors, then, when pushed out, cleaning ovens at a bakery, then later hauling garbage, and after that painting walls. She literally performed a dozen menial jobs before the proctors at Celestia's School granted her admission when the spring session opened later in the month.
And during those months, she spent nothing. Instead, she lived homeless in encampments in the Cliffside-adjacent warehouse district. She never visited the homeless shelters paid by Celestia's homeless tax levy. She grazed in both Palisades Park and Blueblood Park, even bathed publicly in the freezing cold Blueblood pond as did the other hard-case homeless ponies. She even endured a week of strong spring storms, sheltered beneath the eaves of warehouses or restaurants after they closed, often soaked to the skin.
The latter drove my usually hard-flanked pegasus transport mare to tears one evening. The only thing I could do to stop Streak from taking the unicorn to her "nest" that last dark rainy night was to relent and promise to offer the former security mare a position in my organization the next day. I wasn't pleased to accede to upward pressure from an employee, but the unicorn had experienced enough hard times that I could possibly convince her to do anything.
As dusk settled in and the next work day ended, the weather team settled a dreary bank of gray clouds weeping disconsolate drops and drizzles over Canterlot. Drops from eaves went tick, tick, tick. You could hear occasional ponies galloping, splashing through puddles. A gentle wind swirled a patchy mist that made the warm spring day feel too humid, and intensified a mildew scent too many days of rain often brought. Even wheels made a sishing sound as increasingly fewer late wagons and buses clip-clopped by.
I didn't often walk home, but I sent my coach ahead and strode along levitating a black umbrella, shadowed by a couple of security ponies, through the Lower towards downtown Canterlot. There weren't many routes from the street repair contractor with whom I did business to the homeless encampment the mare frequented. I heard Streak cough loudly, her agreed upon signal from her perch on the limestone cornice of a building on the corner of Commerce and Flower. I sped up and soon heard the hoofbeats of a lone mare. I shook my head pointedly to stop my security from closing in.
The lavender mare walked into view and I slowed so our paths would intersect. She looked tired. Her green-striped purple mane hung limply as she hadn't bothered with an umbrella—cost no doubt—looking as if the weight of the world weighed it down; but really, it was only water. Her head did not hang down as surely mine would have were I so miserably wet, nor did her eyes look glassy. The opposite. She displayed a presence, an affirmation that she was her own mare and that the weather simply was. Any other pony's annoyance at weather, work, or bad circumstance was her acceptance.
Stone cold.
Her purple eyes locked on me almost as I began to slow down, then flicked to Punt, my brown mare in a black rain slicker who was smart enough to not linger but to trot ahead, but it was already too late. The security mare pegged her.
A narrow-eyed glare met mine as we closed. I smiled as I kept contact, predator to predator. She did not speed up nor change direction. Time felt like it slowed, as if the rain drops became lazy, somehow defying gravity to move like glassy streamers to the wet cobbles that consumed them. I could feel the blood pulsing in my head and throat as her stare reflexively intimidated my subconscious. I could smell her unwashed, wet laborer-horse scent. Her scars had healed; only dirt streaks marred her coat. She looked fully grown, now, her youth only visible in the teen beauty of her face and her surprisingly muscular youthful form.
Attractive, I thought as I let her pass before me. Academically— like a timberwolf.
Fascinating. Amazing.
I wanted her— Even as she turned her head to keep her eyes on me as we passed. As she swept behind me, did she look back? I heard her hooves clatter serenely as she splashed in a puddle a pony-length onward. One way to find out.
I stopped.
She stopped.
I looked and found her eyes on me, flicking just once to my other shadow, Fletching, a red stallion in a yellow slicker. Arguably hard to miss. Her tail swished once.
I said, "I was wondering if I could have a word with you—" I used her work name: "—Grimoire?"
She instantly disappeared in the pop of a lime-green magical sphere. Teleport. Before I could fully motion to Streak to dive after her, before the pegasus could even begin to leap from her perch, I heard an exit pop a block down Flower followed by another in-teleport, then another on Corral Street two streets north... and yet another who-knows-where further away.
Only high level unicorns could master Teleport. I could master only Levitate and Illuminate, and neither well. Everypony knew you had to think about a spell to cast it. It was inconceivable that she could have cast one after another so close together. That meant she'd had to have mastered an even higher level multiple teleport spell—news to an unschooled magician such as I.
I grinned from ear to ear. I would employ her. I had no doubt I'd succeed, but I would have to make her an offer that she couldn't refuse. A part time job earning bits enough so she could afford a flat near downtown and blend in like every other student at Celestia's School—likely in exchange for keeping to myself information about her past (and her new job). She would drive a hard deal. Perhaps she was already too skilled for Celestia's School, but I knew she absolutely wanted to attend it at all costs.
I had leverage.
All I had to do was put Grimoire in the same vicinity as Sunset Shimmer and they'd surely bond. A twofer.
My transactions with Grimoire, whose chosen name I had learned was Starlight Glimmer, are an example of my overestimating my influence on ponies with expertise different than my own... and that was undoubtedly due to situational ethics, which was possibly Grimoire's special talent.
I didn't have a clue when I next met the dangerous filly midmorning outside the Hooflyn Delicatessen. The restaurant was situated at the edge of a park called The Edge, which stood between Downtown and Lower Canterlot. She'd thought she'd eluded me last night, but I'd dropped a "boomerang" at her hooves as she exited the homeless encampment the next morning. The day had dawned bright and blustery, with plenty of fluffy little camouflage clouds scudding through a blue sky, which gave Streak plenty of opportunity to mysteriously return the gift she kept trying to discard. She got the message pretty quickly when she arrived at Street Lamp & Friends Construction and found a sign reading "Sudden Emergency - Closed Today" in the window. She found all the shades pulled down, and none of her co-workers in evidence.
In the end, she did not evade Fletching or Tailor when they intercepted her heading out of town on Ponyville Way. She even pocketed the gift, which, as she approached my standing table outside the deli, she levitated out of her woven-straw saddle bag with her green magic. Her eyes flashed angrily in the sunlight, gleaming a unique tourmaline purple-blue. Surprisingly, she put down the pouch of ten gold bits on the table so lightly that it made no sound, making her voice sound loud.
"These, sir, are yours." She turned and began to walk away.
I smiled, pushed aside my plate of kippered onions, potatoes, and eggs, and replaced the pouch with one containing twice as many bits, assuring that it clinked loudly when I did so.
She kept walking even as Fletching started to step into her path. I shook my head and he stopped.
I flung the pouch at her head.
She caught it in her magic without even looking at me. As if her magic were a wall, the pouch dropped to the cobblestones with a loud ching. She didn't teleport.
So... This salespony still had his audience. Interesting. Without turning, she said, barely veiling her anger, "I am a failed bodyguard. You don't want me. Let me leave Canterlot in peace."
"Why would you want to leave Canterlot?"
She stopped. The muscles on her back bunched and twitched.
I reached out for her with my magic. I wasn't ready to coerce, yet. I wanted to make a deal and for that I needed an exhibit.
I opened her saddlebags and pulled out her possessions: a brush, ponytailers, a water-stained notebook, a green library card, a dozen bronze bits, and a letter with her name on it with a royal seal in red wax. All of it dropped inelegantly and noisily to the cobblestones because I wasn't good at holding multiple things—except for the acceptance letter from Celestia's School. She was shaking explosively as I shoved the letter in front of her face.
She ripped it from my magic and shouted, "How dare you!"
Wait. What? Her accent changed from non-descript to something patrician like out of Horseshoe Bay. Her history implied she was a runaway. Positing her a runaway from old money answered her disdain for it.
Still, she didn't teleport.
"Please, Grimoire." I used her work name as you don't use leverage until you must expend it. "I have no desire to keep you from your dreams. Any choice to leave Canterlot will be yours and yours alone."
"I won't be your bodyguard."
"Even part time?" I teased.
"No."
"Pity. I would have gladly welcomed you, but as I said, I don't want to interfere with any schooling you may want."
"Then what's this?" She tossed the purse of bits. I didn't have to attempt to catch it as it wasn't thrown at my head as I had thrown it at hers—and my levitation spell wasn't that quick in any case. It plopped in the plate of eggs and splatted my white tie and yellow tweed jacket. She emitted a single smug short grunt of satisfaction.
It had landed dead center.
I levitated away the gunk before it could stain, then said, "Canterlot is an expensive place to live and well-paying jobs are hard to come by. Except for her protégés, I've heard Celestia gives no full-boat scholarships. Look at your notebook."
She glanced at the yellowed, dog-eared thing at her hooves. Even the black cover was water-spotted.
"Even if you can afford textbooks, would you expose them to the elements or theft?"
"Nopony steals from me." From her deep tone and her piercing glare, it was a threat leveled at my employees. Her notebook and other items shot into her saddlebags.
"I just want to help you pay rent and buy some clothes, or to replace those saddlebags. You're going to have social issues with your fellow classmates if you go to school looking and smelling like a vagrant."
"I don't need any silly friends. Friends are highly overrated." There was that patrician accent again.
"Well, think of your books then—"
"What do you want?"
A chartreuse mare chose that instant to exit the deli. Tailor reversed his billed cap and deftly intercepted the lady, escorting her away. I chose this location because the collection of restaurants didn't have windows you could see through because of the iffy neighborhood. The cafe tables outside the Hooflyn Delicatessen were private off-hours, surrounded by brick and green painted wood walls in an alcove formed of other buildings, perfectly out of view of the park.
I answered, "To offer you a job."
"From you?" She huffed and smiled with obvious disgust. "Right. I've made many mistakes in my life. I suppose I deserve this. I've undoubtedly earned it, but no thank you."
"So you're going to leave Canterlot?"
In a low voice, she said, "Yes."
"You do know I knew Carne Asada and the Ham-Down—"
"I'll leave Equestria! I have a childhood friend who I've just learned left for Saddle Arabia where he escorts mega-caravans. I'll go there."
Childhood? She was still a child, fifteen-sixteen tops. And with her disdain for friends, possibly spurned by the one who went to Saddle Arabia, who, by her tone, she wasn't convinced was even there or remotely findable—nuh-uh. I'll go there. Not, I'll join him. I would never have given such valuable information away for free. There are times when experience trumps youth. "So professional security is in your blood... and that of your colt-friend's?"
That should have spooked her, but again, no teleport. She clenched her teeth and said nothing.
"Look," I said, "I really want you to go to school, have a good time, and make special friends." One Sunset Shimmer in particular. "Let me help you."
"How?"
Bingo! I had my yes. "It's pretty much an acting job. No fighting."
She lifted an eyebrow.
"I need a pony who knows how to look, let's say, fearsome to convince ponies who have agreed to pay what they owe but refuse to honor their contracts. It'll be strictly on-call, rarely more than once a week, and you hurt nopony."
"In other words, you want me to pretend to be your enforcer?"
"Convince whomever I send you to—"
"Only deadbeats."
I nodded. "Only deadbeats. I don't care how, even if you break stuff, your choice. Not my problem. If you do it without hurting ponies, more the better. Nopony wants trouble. When they pay, I pay. Causing no trouble gets you bonuses. You game?"
She looked down and scraped a hoof on the cobblestones. "Only deadbeats?" she whispered.
"Yes."
"Nopony needs to know my past." Statement, not a question. A requirement.
I smiled on the inside. She was sharp. Sharp like a knife. "Nopony."
Situational ethics, I thought when Starlight Glimmer whisked away the purse with twenty gold pieces and stuffed it into her saddlebags. She cracked an evil grin. "And for whom am I working, sir?"
"I go by the name, Running Mead."