//------------------------------//
// Chapter 37 
// Story: Pandemic: Picking up the Pieces 
// by Halira 
//------------------------------//

Despite the fact she was supposed to be doing things with Number right now Wild had decided she needed to to just walk around and process what she had just learned.

Number had mudered Swift Strike.

Her sister had insisted that Number was dangerous, and Phobia had cautioned her about Number as well. Until today she had a hard time believing Number was capable of doing anything so horrible. There were extenuating circumstances in this case, but it was still a murder in the end. Ponies weren't supposed to do things like that, it went against their nature. Just hearing about it made her sick to her stomach.

Worse, there was part of her that was glad it had happened. That fact made her even more sick to her stomach and made her question whether she was a good pony. On the one end Swift Strike had domestically abused her sister for a long time and had raped Phobia, he'd even done these things after becoming a pony. Becoming a pony should have made him less inclined to violence. 

Of course, there were plenty of examples that wasn't completely true; Sunset Blessing had gotten violent with both Number Crunch and Swift Strike, Crystal Dreams had attempted to hurt Phobia, and the night ponies were more violent than they had been as humans--her sister included. All of these could be tied to protecting though in some way, Swift Strike had just been senselessly violent.

On a whim, and not really having any destination in mind, Wild walked into the restaurant that she had a few weeks before given the tip of a lifetime to. It was pretty busy, and a brief glance around showed there was nowhere to really sit and have a meal. With a sigh she turned back towards the door.

"Catherine Martinez...Wild Growth? I'm so happy to see you again!" Came a familiar voice.

Wild turned around and saw the owner, Wendy, hurrying over to her. She gave the human a smile even though she wasn't really in the mood to smile. "Hi, Wendy. It looks like everything is going well for you here."

Wendy came over to her and smiled down at her. "Thanks to you, twice over actually. Not only did you provide for the bills for this place, all the food that I'm serving today you grew yourself. Granted, I'm still new to cooking straight vegetarian meals, but the clientele don't seem to mind if everything isn't perfect yet. For the first time in years I'm excited about the future of this place. I can't thank you enough for all you've done for us."

Wild gave a slightly more genuine smile hearing that, but her ears were still limp. "I'm glad to hear that. You were very nice to us when we first came to town. You deserve to succeed. I see you've got a full house though. I'll just be going. I'm just out trying to clear my head."

Wendy's smile slipped as she looked down at Wild with a concerned expression. "What's wrong? Is there anything I can do to help?"

Wild didn't want to be dismissive, but there really wasn't any help for this particular problem. "A pony I considered a friend admitted to doing something terrible, and I don't know what to do or how to feel."

Wendy put her fingers to her lips briefly then turned around to a unicorn, a yellow mare with a short pink mane, behind the main counter. "Caitlyn, can you take care of everything out here for a few minutes? I want to step into the back with my friend to have a private talk."

The mare waved with a hoof. "Go right ahead Wend. I have no problem being hostess for a few minutes."

Wendy smiled at the mare. "Thank you." She turned back to Wild. "You have no idea how great it is to actually have some hired help around here, another thing that's thanks to you. Anyway, come with me to the kitchen and we can have a coffee and talk about whatever it is that's bothering you."

Wild didn't know what to do. There was no way on Earth she was going to say what Number had done, but it would be rude to refuse Wendy's offer. The absurdity that those two felt like equally pressing concerns crossed her mind briefly and almost made her want to laugh.

Wild made a quick decision. "Alright, I can't talk about what's bothering me, but I wouldn't mind sitting and talking for a few minutes."

"Come on," Wendy said as she gestured for her to follow. "There's a small table in the back of the kitchen we can sit down at."

Wild followed Wendy into the back. There was a big kitchen back here, as big as the actual dining area. There were two grills, two ovens, a regular stove, and a large prep area. There was also a coppery colored unicorn stallion with blue mane working on several different things at once. The unicorn glanced quickly at them as they came back and turned his attention back to the food.

"Is everything going alright with the food Savory?" Wendy asked.

The unicorn didn't even turn to answer he kept focused on the food as he talked. "It's a lot, but I've got it. Are you hiring on more help? I wouldn't mind another set of hooves in the kitchen, or hands for that matter. A constant full house doesn't leave me much room for breaks."

Wendy looked around at all the dishes Savory was cooking and then back to the unicorn. "It does look like we need more help. I'll see about hiring in a few more people. I definitely underestimated how much help we need. It had been years since I had done any hiring when I brought you and Caitlyn on."

"I'd recommend a staff of at least twenty, and I'd consider opening new locations. I've been in the restaurant industry for a long time and I couldn't imagine a restaurant this busy running on such a skeleton staff," Savory said as he set a pair of dishes aside on the table. The yelled to the door. "Caitlyn, orders for the Pumpkin and Thompson up!"

Caitlyn hurried into the room next to the table and grabbed both dishes up in her magic and levitated them close by her. "Wish I had more range on grabbing things so I could just grab them from the door, it would save time."

"We'll figure it out sooner or later," Savory said dismissively, while still attending to several different things he was cooking. "You've seen the Equestrians do it on the news, we've seen they've got longer range. If they can do it there has to be a way we can do it too."

Caitlyn sighed and looked at Savory's flank, which had a salt shaker mark on it. "Hopefully when I get my cutie mark it'll give me some extra magical omph, and then I can be a mage like Twilight Sparkle or Starlight Glimmer."

"Stop daydreaming about being a mage and move those orders," Savory said as he started sauteing another pan of vegetables.

Wild listened to the exchange between the two unicorns and thought about purpose. How much of a pony's life was dictated by the mark on their flank? She was doing other things than just growing things now, she was getting involved with bigger events and plans. Still, she was only able to do that because of her magic giving her a gateway into that. Her purpose was tied to her cutie mark, directly or indirectly.

Wendy gestured to an old fold out card table and a few chairs at the backend of the kitchen. "Sit down here and I'll fetch us some coffee."

Wild hopped into a chair as instructed. She chose one that gave her a good view of the door to the dining area and the unicorn preparing food. Wendy stepped back out into the dining room in the meantime.

From here she could also see a large walk in cooler off to the side, probably packed to the brim with produce. This round of produce had been free, but going forward Wendy would have to pay for it. This seemed a little unfair to Wild at first when she first heard about it, but it was explained to her that the earth ponies needed to make a living, and they couldn't be expected to just give what they produced away for free. There were practical reasons for this for the town too. The town needed sales tax to function, and that required things to be sold instead of given away. She'd just started her civics class in final semester of school before this all started so she wasn't fully familiar with how this all worked yet.

Wendy returned with two steaming ceramic mugs and set one down in front of Wild and another down on in front if a chair the human quickly occupied.

"So," Wendy said as she picked up her mug and blew on it, not taking a sip yet. "How have things been going for you since moving into town? I wasn't there for the crop growing, but I saw that tree sprout up from the the front door of the restaurant."

They were still trying to figure out what to do about that tree. It could be seen from anywhere in town. Most wanted to keep it standing, but there were practical concerns with that. That tree would eat a lot of nutrients from the ground by itself, making it near impossible for crops to grow where it's root system reached. That was if it could even get enough nutrients to begin with due to it's huge size. The other concern was what happened if something like a tornado or major storm knocked it down. The pegasi insisted that they could prevent that from happening, but a lot of ponies were still concerned. Debate would probably rage for weeks about the Sky Tree, as it had started being called since it seemed to extend endlessly into the sky to anypony standing below it.

"Things have been a whirlwind," Wild said after blowing on her own coffee. "My future sister-in-law got hurt almost as soon as we moved in. She seems like she's getting better though."

"I'm sorry to hear she got hurt," Wendy said and then took a small sip of her coffee before setting it back down. "Can I asked what happened to her?"

Wild shook her head. "I'd rather not talk about it, but as I said, she seems like she's getting better. She came out of her house today and helped with some negotiations with the Augusta ponies."

Wendy blinked. "What kind of negotiations?"

Wild carefully lifted her coffee mug up with two hooves and took a small sip. She let off a small shudder at the taste, there was no sugar or anything, just straight black coffee. It tasted worse than the beer. She barely ever touched coffee, but when she did she typically heaped a ton of sugar and creamer into it. She'd still drink this though, just to be polite.

Wild set the mug back down. "The ponies and a lot of humans from Augusta are moving here. There are a lot of them. There will be over a hundred thousand ponies and over six thousand humans here when all is said and done. I think that part of the sign that said pony capital of the south might need to go back up, and you might really want to think about hiring on a lot more help and opening other locations."

Wendy nearly dropped her coffee mug as she was trying to pick it up. "How...where are they all going to go? All the towns around here combined in their best haydays didn't have half that many people."

Wild shrugged. "Going to be a ton of building, annexing land, and purchasing land going on. Expect a lot of multistory apartments and businesses to go up. I'll talk to Sunset about making sure the older parts of town are preserved. I know she already was making plans for tearing down and replacing the most run down abandoned residential houses. Some of them barely qualify as buildings anymore."

Wendy shook her head, still seeming to try to process things. "What about those of us who've lived our whole lives here? I know some people were already starting to mutter about how our opinions on things were going to be drowned out by all the newcomers. Now you're talking about this place becoming a major city instead of a town."

Wild blinked. She hadn't even considered how this was impacting all the long standing residents. They'd wanted to save their town before, but now their town was soon going to be swallowed up into something larger, the neighboring towns too. Something would need to be done to protect their interests. 

"I'll talk to Sunset about your concerns. I have a fair bit of pull with her," Wild said.

Wendy exhaled out a long breath. "Please do. We don't want to just be brushed aside after bringing you all here to live."

Wild reached over and touched her hoof to Wendy's hand. "I'll make sure that doesn't happen. You've all been very generous to us by bringing us here. We need to make sure that generosity is repaid with you being respected and listened to."

Wendy smiled at her. "You're a good pony, Wild Growth. Everyone will feel better knowing you're looking out for them."

Wild smiled in return, but part of her felt uncomfortable. This was yet more responsibility that she was taking on. These people needed her to be their voice and protector. She had so many things she had to worry about already. Despite her smile her ears betrayed her.

Wendy picked up on her mood. "I'm sorry, I brought you back here to see if there was anything I could do for you, and here I am asking you to do more for me. Please, tell me what's weighing on your mind."

Wild looked down at her coffee and took another sip, not even noticing the taste as much this time. "A friend of mine told me they did something bad, something that changes how I look at them. They told me in confidence so I can't say what, but I still don't know how I'm supposed to react."

Wendy laid her elbow on the table and laid her head into her hand. "That's a tough one. Why'd they tell you whatever this is?"

Wild shook her head. "I was keeping something from them, and we traded secrets."

Wendy frowned. "That's not really how secrets are supposed to work you know. So, now you know something about your friend you didn't know before. You said it was bad; is it something they're doing now?"

Wild shook her head again. "No, it only happened once as far as I know, and they seem pretty shaken up about it having happened."

Wendy nodded. "So, they made a mistake then and they know they made a mistake. If it's something really bad they must really trust you if they told you about it. I think that means that they consider you a friend."

"This was a really big mistake," Wild said in a low voice.

Wendy sat and thought for a moment. "When I was about your age I made a big mistake myself. I had an older sister and she was engaged to this really handsome army cadet. Long story short, both me and that cadet got a little too drunk and wasted and ended up sleeping together. My sister walked in on us in us screwing around in bed. To this day she still won't speak to me. I regret that mistake and would do anything to mend that bond with my sister."

Wild looked up at Wendy. "You think I should forgive them then for what they did?"

Wendy sighed. "I can't answer that, that's your best judgement. I know that sometimes stupid things happen in the heat of a moment, and those things change everything for the rest of our lives. We then spend the rest of our lives regretting that moment, wishing for forgiveness or the ability to change what happened."

Wild thought back to her first time speaking with Number. From that first day Number was desperate for forgiveness and approval. There was no question Number was filled with regret and wanted to be a good pony. 

Wild hopped down from her seat, coffee still unfinished and smiled to Wendy. "Thank you, I needed to hear that. I'm supposed to be doing things with my friend right now, and I better go tell her that I trust her still and she's still my friend."

Wendy reached down with her palm facing towards Wild. Wild placed her hoof up against the palm. Wendy then let off a chuckle. "Still getting used to doing that, it seems so weird. Anyway, I'm glad I helped, and I'm glad you aren't letting whatever this is end your friendship."

Wild needed to get back over to Number now. She didn't know how she was going to move forward knowing that Number had done this. She wasn't sure that she was doing the right thing by keeping it secret either. What she did know was Number was her friend and wanted to do right. It was time to go be that friend and figure out together what to do.