The life I'd carefully constructed looked ready to unravel.
"Whoa there, Gelding," Whistlebutt said, touching a hoof to my withers. He added lowly, "I understand you want to protect your Power Puff Pony super-secret identity. I'll help with the green hairs, but you've got to slow down."
I swallowed hard, realizing I'd found a burst of adrenalized energy and slowed from a trot to a mere plod. I saw the grandstands he led me to, with reporters and photographers and, in between, Bite of Kale.
My boss was actually bouncing in his excitement. Didn't he know how old he was?
Whistlebutt squirted water in my mane. "Easier to keep them tucked in."
When he squirted my bunned tail, I tensed up and walked like an automaton. It felt weird, him steadying himself with a hoof on my dock while tucking hairs with his magic. I realized suddenly I could do this myself, and realized further that my wits had been scattered and I needed to gather them back up.
He said, "Towels."
"What!?"
He pointed toward the sponsor tables where folded towels were stacked. Though many pony lengths away, I grabbed two and I saw his differently green magic grab another water bottle from a steel vat of ice water.
"Wait," he said as I unfolded my load.
He squirted the cutie mark that bled yellow onto my green trunks. The stain dripped away.
He inhaled sharply. "Uh, oh! I hope you're still overheated..."
He had snatched the towels from me and dunked them in a vat of ice water. I barely had time to gasp at his idea before he slapped the towels over my saddle area, hiding my midriff. Cold. I gasped loud enough to get looks, then shuddered as he proceed to wrap the second towel around my neck. I gasped again.
The cold and wet did feel good, though.
He was camouflaging the color of my coat, disrupting the obvious cues to my appearance, and making the wet towels more memorable than things like some dye bleed on my flank. He tied the frigid fabric tightly around my neck so it wouldn't slip, tight enough that I felt blood pulsing from my still rapid heart.
I had a thought about hiding in plain sight. "Reading glasses?"
He shook his head at the non-sequitur. "Huh?"
"Reading glasses?" I hissed.
He grunted and a red square-frame pair levitated up to my eyes. They were half-height. I could look over them.
As I passed the Bite O'Kale sponsor table, the bouncing old stallion and about two dozen grocery store fans began stomping their hooves. "Yay Starlight!" "Well done!" "So proud!"
On the table, beside samples of apples and, of course, ornamental edible kales, I saw billed-hats and tee-shirts. "May I?" I said, grabbing the unicorn version of the hat and placing it on my head, stuffing my still damp bun into it so it pulled up on the back of my neck and back from my horn, disguising one additional feature of the still missing runaway Countess Aurora Midnight.
Bite of Kale was already bouncing in for a big sweaty hug, but the race official motioned frantically for me to hurry after him. I shrugged as I picked up my trot to get beside the white pegasus wearing a Baltimare Celestial Race-branded white jacket. "We've now got the three winners, so we're going to do a swift awards ceremony. There will be a big dinner ceremony tonight, so don't be late!" He looked at a clipboard hoofed to him. "Starlight Starbright... that's how you want to be addressed?"
He saw me gaze suspiciously to the crowd of ponies dressed in button-down casual non-athletic dress, some with pads of paper in-hoof or floating together with pencils, and a gaggle of photogs still screwing in flash bulbs. He said, "Awards and pictures first. Then you visit your sponsor, then we call you for a press interview."
"I signed up for this?"
"Actually you did, if you read the entry form. Quick, what do you want to be called?"
I mumbled, "Mmm... Starbright."
"Mrs. Starbright?"
She shoots, she scores—a buckball reference for the rest of you! I nodded.
He stopped and adjusted the towel around my neck to push it away from my number placard so it didn't read just 66. That also made the Bite O'Kale gold embroidery logo completely visible, too. "On the podium. Fastest time to the left."
A brown, stilt-legged, thin but muscular earth pony with a short tan mane and tail stood to the left. Next to her was a pink pegasus with a golden mane that curled outrageously, looking like cumulus clouds above her with smoke trailing behind. Dents in her hair showed she'd tied it back previously—and maybe should have left it that way. Perspiration dripped from her hairline.
I, of course, dripped on the podium in large splats. At least I wasn't overheated anymore.
I bumped hooves, click, clack. I got a "Congrats!" and a "That was a great time for a unicorn! Nice."
"Thank you," I said, stepping up beside them.
"Mares and Gentlecolts, may I present this year's tribal winners of the 207th annual Baltimare Celestial Race! Bolt, from Saddle Arabia." He pointed at the earth pony. "Arrow Trace from Vanhoover. And Mrs. Starbright, a Mobtown resident."
As the press and the gathering crowd of hundreds stomped their applause thunderously, I marveled that any city would want mob in any moniker for their town. The word had many connotations, all of them bad as I recalled.
Another race official, a unicorn with silver-grey hair and pale blue fur walked up and magicked on a gold medal suspended by a blue ribbon. The second he stepped aside, the flash bulbs began popping. Despite the bright day, I still blinked and took the opportunity to push the reading glasses up—intentionally ruining scores of photos.
All three of us in the winner circle had sponsors, so off I trotted.
Bite of Kale was still bouncing, or had started again. Keeping strategically to the opposite side of the table from him, I said, "Mrs. Kale is going to get on your case again if you come home aching."
He grinned and kept springing like a pony half his age. "You won! You won! Best investment in years. So happy!" He lowered his voice as he added, "Mrs. Kale can kiss my—"
"—I really tried," I said quickly then added, looking down and affecting the bashfulness that he preferred, "I kinda think it was lucky that I came in first for the unicorns."
"Nonsense. You give everything 120%! However, um... Why didn't you ever tell me you were married, Mrs. Starbright?"
I coughed. "Does it really matter?"
"No." His grin momentarily morphed into a bit of a leer before he added, "Of course not."
I whispered, "Actually, the race official got the name thing all wrong..."
He stopped. I stopped. We both laughed, and weirdly all the Kale fan club laughed with us. I saw that many of them had fibrous green stuck between their teeth. Samples. I sensed an odd symmetry to the scene.
Whistlebutt had stood away from me during the medal ceremony and my schmoozing during my return to the sponsor table, but as I followed the white race official who fetched me a few minutes later, my coach trotted along side. I sensed this was him being experienced in these things and acting professional.
He seemed to be commenting on my thought when he said to me, "The more I watch you, the more I realize you are always acting. I wonder who the real Gelding is."
I felt my left eyebrow raise as a proxy for my still damp hackles. It was possibly one of the worst things he could have said to me, but he hadn't finished.
He added, "Don't worry. I know our deal; I'll stick to it, absolutely."
"Do that."
Reporters starting shouting questions. Shutters clicked.
"How does it feel to have won the race?" was the clearest question.
I snorted. "Exhausting."
Amid the resulting laughter, I added, "Unexpected. I just trained hard because I wanted to please Bite of Kale of Bite o'Kale Grocery who invested so much in me. He really cares about everything!" Including having a pretty stocking clerk around, which I did not add.
I fielded a bunch of other questions about how I worked to cross the finish line as the 100th contestant when three other ponies had turned the last hundred pony lengths into a tough race. I recounted all that, and described my training regime, what I had eaten (and that I now liked fish). I asked to have explained some nerdier sports jargon in the reporter's questions. "I'm new to this athletic stuff. Have mercy on me."
That got a flurry of different questions about my background that I redirected until a rather rotund pegasus, a tan white-spotted one who had used sports jargon on me twice—and explained it—asked, "I see Coach White Towel is with you. Is he your trainer?"
"Yes... Yes, he is."
"Is coaching races a new thing for him?" he followed up, not addressing Whistlebutt who stood behind me. "He usually coaches prizefighters. Are you a fighter?"
...Was I...?
I liked the fighting I had done, and it had brought out the best in me magically, but it wasn't what he meant.
I glanced back, then grinned widely. Whistlebutt nodded, stepping slightly forward.
"You're training for the fights?"
Whistlebutt answered, "We've yet to work out the technicalities—"
Reporters shouted over each other, and the few reporters that had lingered around Bolt and Arrow Trace after their interviews seemed to startle. They looked my way, then trotted quickly to join the gaggle. With Whistlebutt beside me now, more flash bulbs went off, and photographers moved closer in to get us in a tight frame. I shielded my eyes with a hoof.
I was really glad of the towel, the glasses, and the hat.
Whistlebutt raised his voice and continued, "If all goes well, I expect her to enter the arena later this summer."
"Is she—" "—have the stuff—" "Is she good?" "Can anypony beat Cyclone Beaujangles?"
He raised a hoof. "I wouldn't offer to train her if she didn't have championship potential."
"She's a unicorn!" an old pegasus gasped and shouted the obvious.
"Yes. She fights smart and mean."
"I'm known as Gelding," I said, peering at the crowd through narrowed eyes.
When that got a few blinking blank stares, I added, "That's a verb!" I flexed my muscles, showed my teeth, and growled like a rabid dog.
The reporters, despite their otherwise sporting professional demeanor (which granted wasn't really well-mannered), found themselves cheering and raising hooves in the air. That made my face heat up.
"Remember, Cyclone is still middleweight, maybe even edging into heavyweight class. My protégé here is a standard welterweight—"
So he knew my weight, too? "I'll fight him," came out of my mouth.
Silence, for a heartbeat.
A tall red earth pony, whom I'd asked a newbie sports question back when I didn't understand his jargon, now shouted, "Do you even know who Cyclone is!?"
Another cried, "He beat Secretariat!"
"Beat him up, you mean."
I asked Whistlebutt, "Your last champion, Coach?"
He nodded.
"Do I have a chance?"
"Maybe. He's an earth pony."
The reporters started shouting questions again.
Whistlebutt said, "He'll have to slim down and come down a weight class, though. She's well muscled, and I'm not letting her gain an ounce of fat—or become a cartoon character like some ponies—" implying Cyclone "—to go up a weight class. Cyclone's fat and musclebound. His decision."
"I'll fight him."
Silence ensued, again.
Whistlebutt locked eyes with me and I looked into his green ones for at least ten seconds, then he grinned. "Coach Reaver, Cyclone's coach, isn't going to be happy when he hears that."
I turned to the crowd and said, "Awww. Too bad!"
Even the other winners and more of a crowd had gathered to see what the hubbub was about, but Whistlebutt said, "Thank you, but that's all for now."
As we walked back toward the sponsor tables, he even raised his voice at the reporters following us. He'd dealt with fight reporters before, I gathered, and he put them in their place by naming their individual names as in, You keep this up and I won't let you interview us.
It didn't take many steps before I encountered Bite of Kale. He'd probably tagged behind me to see if I mentioned the grocery in the press gaggle. Obviously, he'd gotten an earful. Two earfuls. He wasn't bouncing anymore.
He asked, soberly, "Are you really training to be a fighter?"
I couldn't tell from his tone whether he was about to fire me or if he was merely curious. I couldn't read him, and since I'd been hoping for a raise or bonus and didn't want to lose my job right now, I lowered my ears and stuttered when I said, "Y-yes. G-going to be."
His mouth just opened and hung there. Then a "Wow!" came out. He raised a hoof to the side of his mouth, as if he were speaking confidentially, but with reporters trying to hear as we walked away, and the herd of ponies and Kale fandom around us, that was impossible. He said, "Mrs. Kale is an intense fights fan. She goes to every local event. What's the word they use these days...? She'll be stoked! You realize you'll still have to keep your primary hours at the store, right?"
I nodded. "Rrright."
He reached out and got that hug he'd been jonesing for since I'd first seen him. I made an oof sound.
As Whistlebutt and I trotted off, moving rapidly, I asked, "How popular are the fights, really?" Looking back, I saw the reporters who knew better than to follow but were still following. The photographers were still taking shots, and I reflexively dragged the towel back over my flank.
"You have no idea what just happened."
"You're right," I said, shaking my head.
"Your demure deadpan trash talk is perfect. Keep it up."
"O-Okay."
"About Cyclone... That challenge is going to get back to him and Reaver. I want you to know he's dangerous."
"How so?"
"Enough so that I would say, start watching your flank. He was a street fighter I recruited when he was sixteen. I got him cleaned up and got his nose clean. A typical bully, he associated with the Marvel gang and got caught twice for thuggery in some protection scheme. After I'd gotten him to focus and build muscle in the right places, Reaver swooped in and snagged him. He even paid out the contract I'd signed him to. I can't prove it, but I'm sure he's on 'roids."
I had him explain the sports jargon word and felt my eyes widen.
"Street fighter?" I asked.
"That's the important point. With an ego and undeniable testosterone poisoning. If you see a big blue muscular dude with a red Mohawk, best slip away, else engage him in the middle of a street or in a crowd. In an alley, or where nopony is around, he might use weapons, or crowd you and panic you with his sheer bulk. He has no stamina for a long bout, and he knows it. He attacks first and he attacks hard, trying to make you think he's a maniac, to panic you, and he holds grudges."
"Sounds like a certain princess I know," I murmured.
"Certain— What?"
"Ignore me."
He shook his head.
"Do you know where the Silver Stream Gym is, on West Chester?"
"Three blocks from the hostel, with the unlucky horseshoe sign out front?" It pointed down because the very prominent bolts had rusted out.
"The one. Be there tomorrow morning at 8 AM. I'll talk to Bite of Kale and get the day off for you."
"You think?"
"You know it. As to your question. The fights are very popular. Welterweight is the most popular weight class for the sport."
I lifted my gold medal in my green magic. It depicted a prancing unicorn high-tailing it with 207th Annual Baltimare Celestial Race written in script around the edge. It felt light. I could tell without biting it that it was gold plated. "What about the soirée tonight?"
"I know you don't want to go, so I'm not pushing it. Considering that..." he pointed behind us.
A few hopeless hopeful reporters jotting notes followed well behind as we retreated. I was beginning to wonder if there'd be bigger columns written about me as a fighter than about me as the unicorn winner of the race. I was glad I'd gotten the name Starlight not mentioned. There was the barest possibility that Proper Step remembered what Sunburst called me, and it would not take too much for him to possibly see through my flimsy disguise, were he allowed to contemplate a big newspaper photo of me.
"Considering their reaction, you'd actually learn the true meaning of Mobtown were you to go."
I didn't plan to go.