Whistlebutt pointed to where he wanted me to stand in front of the speed bag. "Concentrate, okay?"
He demonstrated how to determine the right distance and height of the bag, and had me practice moving my hooves in a circular motion without touching. I saw he assumed I had no idea what I was doing, which was correct. Moreover, he didn't want me clowning around either. It didn't take long for the audience to grow bored and leave. Finally, I started hitting the thing.
Yep, he was more physically fit than I. I could hit it back, get it to reciprocate one or three times, before bruising my knuckle. "Maybe I don't have rhythm. This makes waltzing look easy."
"You can waltz?"
"Had to learn." I suddenly had a bad taste in my mouth and said it that way.
"If you can dance, you can do this."
Wait, did I just admit to a patrician past time? Frowning, I pushed myself for awhile, marshaling on even after he switched to having me use a spell to bat at the speed bag.
That proved hard, too! Causing Push to focus a quick hard punch, then being ready to hit a randomly responding target with a slightly differently angled force vector with an appropriate amount of fast Push at the right instant was incredibly challenging.
I sweat. I felt inadequate. And dizzy. The flow of ever-changing magical numbers, usually as easy to ignore as floaters in my eyes, became a violent red and orange torrent. At times, the pulsating flow made it hard to focus on the moving sack of sand.
Hypnotic, actually.
A hoof shook me on my withers. "Enough... Enough, already!"
I blinked, looked at Whistlebutt, then took in him motioning down with a hoof. I realized I was swaying dangerously on two legs and did as told, putting down one hoof then the other, unwilling to ceed to gravity even though my hip ached and my legs shook.
Between breaths, I whispered, "That's really hard."
"Oh, the fabulous energy of a teenager." He showed me his pocket watch. It had two sub-dials, each with a red hand, one of which pointed at 10. "Ten minutes, Gelding."
"Didn't feel like that."
"This was an example of the magic techniques I can teach you."
I sobered instantly and felt my ears swivel forward. "Which are?"
"Quick repetition of spells, or long duration variation—?"
"Variation."
"We'll work on the other, too. You're not going to seriously hurt an opponent peppering him with magical punches, but you might disorient him..."
I probed my mane with my magic, found the pencil, and took notes.
After a rest, more laps, getting knocked over by the punching bag, and literally throwing around some weights, a pony hailed us from the entrance.
"Who's she?" I asked, dropping aside a dumbbell with a thud and rolling back onto my hooves.
"Part of the reason you're here today," he said, then as I made to follow, he pointed behind me. "Rack 'em."
"Huh? Oh. The weights." Six of various small sizes littered the mat.
Gym courtesy.
By the time I trotted up, my coach was in a conversation with a unicorn mare wearing a white lab coat with a stethoscope draped over her withers. Affectation? Uniform?
No name tag.
Likely not a uniform but a costume. She had matching white patent lacquer saddlebags. Her fur was a shade pinker than mine and she had a minty green mane hair-sprayed into a backwards spiraling flip. I frowned at her yellow rubber ducky cutie mark.
"Dr. Feel, meet Gelding. Gelding, Dr. Feel."
I lifted a hoof and said, "Charmed, I'm sure."
She looked at me like a bug, her sky blue eyes going up and down as she took in my perspiration-matted fur and my very pink giddy-up. She rudely looked into my eyes as if she saw into my head through glass marbles. Her nostrils pulsed and I saw she was sniffing me, too.
To Whistlebutt, she said, "I'm not a pediatrician."
I stomped my right hoof, inadvertently helping prove her assumption.
She looked down, then up again. "She's paying you well, I assume?"
I tensed and leaned forward.
Whistlebutt stepped between us. "Standard arrangement if she proves able, which is why you're here, Doctor."
She stepped around him. "Gelding, is it?"
"It is, ma'am."
"A well mannered filly with a name like that?"
"It's a verb, ma'am."
Her neutral expression didn't change. Not even a presentiment of a smile. "Coach," she said, keeping her evaluating eyes on me. "Did you explain to her my role in the fights?"
"I figured you could do that well enough."
She nodded and gestured for him to step away. When she noticed a gathered crowd, she frowned and made shooing motions until the area cleared. She wore stainless steel horseshoes. I realized we stood in a small arena. The section of the former catacombs had brick arches on all four sides. Somepony had laid out a hefty straw rope in a circle that stuck out into the other adjoining areas. I'd stepped over not noticing it. No machines, balls, or weights currently lay inside.
"I do two things. First, I examine fighters and certify they are fit to fight. Second, I patch them up after they beat each other silly. I am not a necromancer. It is important not to get yourself killed. Sometimes happens. Coach told you that, I hope."
"Not in those words."
"Well, they do. I suggest you consider another career."
"Uh... no."
"I see." She blinked, then looked away, seemingly momentarily flummoxed. Perhaps she expected logic to work on me? She inserted the ear tips of her stethoscope into her ears and said, "In that case, I need to examine you."
I nodded.
She tapped the plenum on the instrument's diaphragm, flinched, then pressed it to my chest. It was cold, despite my fur. She touched it to at least two dozen spots on my chest, barrel, back, and even my stomach. On cue, it gurgled for her.
She looked into my ears with another scope with an illuminated cone, then into both nostrils pulling them open with the device. Last, she had me open my mouth wide. "Ahhh—"
"Not necessary."
I closed my mouth and she jerked the instrument back. "Keep it open."
She spent quite a bit of time looking, I realized, at my teeth.
"Well?"
"I am not done, yet." She put her instruments in her saddle bags and touched a hoof to my lower neck. At least her horseshoe wasn't as cold as her stethoscope.
A blue nebulosity pulsed around her horn; a glance confirmed the air around her hoof glowed. I concentrated and sensed spell numbers in Brownian motion, but couldn't see the patterns. The spell had at its root mathematics I'd yet to learn. My heart began to beat faster as the prospect sunk in. I opened my mouth, then felt strange. A bit of an ache in my stomach. A momentary shortness of breath. A tug in my groin. A cramp in my abdomen. They came and went immediately.
Her left eyebrow raised as a half smile slithered onto her face. Lowering her voice, she stated, "You're between 13- and 16-years old. Fourteen or—"
I stiffened. I whispered, "How could you possibly guess that?"
"Your teeth. Shape, wear, color, gum line." Whether it was suggestion or whatnot, the roots of my front teeth itched.
"Not your spell?"
"That, too. Roots spread in the jaw. Un-erupted teeth. Yeah." It sounded like a nifty spell, but I didn't like being laid open.
"And my age... It matters, how?"
"Has White Towel laid a hoof on you?"
I narrowed my eyes and looked into her blue ones. It didn't phase her. I was a slab of meat. I said, "Other than whipping my sorry flank and pinning me to the cement, no."
She sighed. "I meant, has he pressured you to—"
"A perfect gentlecolt, sadly. I did try—"
"Mental immaturity—"
"Watch it!" I growled.
"Exactly," she said, taking my retort as a confirmation. "Has anypony explained the minimum age requirements of the sport?"
"It's a sport?"
"Seventeen."
"And the problem is?"
"You are not seventeen."
"Neither are you."
"She's not as well-mannered as I thought."
I moved closer, causing her to press harder on my throat. I ignored the pounding of my pulse. "I'm not speaking in the third person about you."
"You know what I mean."
"It is your word against mine."
"Tell me, Gelding. How old are you?"
"Are you even a doctor? Are you even licensed?"
Her eyes narrowed and her jaw clenched.
I added, "Do you have admitting privileges at any hospital?"
She snorted. "I don't carry my credentials with me, but I can bring them. Do you have your emancipation papers?"
I knew better than to admit anything. I jerked my head as a thought struck me like a horseshoe making a ringer. "I wonder if the medical board knows you officiate at the fights? They're not exactly legal—"
I gasped and looked down. I felt a sudden hard pounding in my chest. Then a second time as my heart skipped a beat. I could only imagine what happened when the blood rushed into my heart, and, instead of being shunted to the next chamber, splashed like a miniature tsunami into the wall as the organ failed to beat.
I looked up and met the doctor's hard eyes. I said, "Associated with gangs—"
Stupid me.
My heart skipped one beat, beat once, then skipped it again. Spash! I began to feel ill. And angry. And... I paused to actually think. About things like anomalous cutie marks and the lack of a name tag.
My stupidity made me feel even angrier.
I shoved her away with Levitate. Her steel horseshoes squealed on the hard floor. That broke her contact with my chest.
She immediately reached out, but I caught her hoof and held it as I backed off out of reach. She kept pushing, but that meant she twisted her leg joints in my grip. She couldn't make contact.
The weird sensations in my body ceased. As did the sense of somepony squeezing on my heart.
I said in a deadly deep monotone, "We have an understanding, then?" I torqued her leg just a smidge to make my point.
She opened her mouth and I prepared to twist hard if stupid happened. Maybe she saw my aura intensify because she quickly said, "Yes," then loud enough for everypony in the gym to hear, "She's good to fight. No issues."
Whistlebutt stepped up, looking at me. I'd let go of the doctor who—and I give her credit for her nerve—just put her leg down as if we'd only been hoof-bumping. "No issues? Are you sure?"
"I'll certify that."
"Good. Good. Very good." He smiled, clearly relieved. I saw some sweat had beaded at the line of his mane. He caught himself going to swat me on the flank as maybe he might have a lady-friend from decades ago; he thought better of it and patted me collegially on the withers.
Moving my lips only, I said, "No hard feelings?" As Dr. Feel curtly shook her head, I continued aloud, "She must be excellent at first aid and trauma if she works for the fights?"
Dr Feel interjected, "Just so you understand, my specialty is setting fractures and pinning bad breaks without need of surgery. I can also stop external bleeding, and most internal bleeding, which I'm very good at discovering. That means you'll heal quicker and bruises won't darken—much. I can also sew up ear tears and the like." She evidenced the barest of smiles.
Whistlebutt nodded, saying, "She's the best, and the promoters pay her well." He looked beyond the doctor toward the entrance and added, "Which brings us to the other reason she's here."
A bluish-purple earth pony walked our way. His short mane and tail were a burgundy color. His eyes were magenta. As he approached, I realized that even though he was a stallion, he was the same height as me. Eighteen or nineteen. I had the immediate impression that he was no wimp. He was so sinewy, his muscles stood out through his fur. He looked like a model in an anatomy book. He was in no way a "cartoon character" as Whistlebutt had used the term. He looked perfectly muscled, like any more would have looked bulky or less not sufficiently trim. If I understood correctly, that meant he kept his strength and mobility balanced at their peak level.
He was a fighter.
In my imagination, I'd held up what I thought Sunburst would look like now as an ideal of masculinity. This stallion, though...
Sexy.
"Grape—" Whistlebutt began.
I had reached out a hoof. "I'm Gelding. Nice to meet you. The name's a verb, by the way."
Somepony watching in the gathered audience snorted.
"Hey!" I turned and pointed at the herd, ranging my hoof around until a certain golden Clydesdale work pony gulped and ducked his red-maned head.
"Sorry," I said, turning back and extending my hoof to the purple dreamboat. "Fanboys can be so rude, sometimes."
Grape smiled, bowed, and took my hoof with the frog of his. "Enchanté," he said in a deep voice. He touched his lips where my hoof met my skin and I felt an electric tingle run up my leg. It wasn't magic. He was an earth pony. But it felt like that.
Nothing I could do to stop it—my face heated up. And I found myself sketching a curtsey in return. Reflex. Thank you, Proper Step!
"Princess Grim! Princess Grim!" the pony gallery began chanting, first with a couple of voices, then everypony.
My face colored as I noticed a playful sparkle in Grape's magenta gaze. I rolled my eyes.
I said, "I may never live this day down."
Everypony went silent when I turned my head toward the main group.
Grape said, "That may be true."
"I am not matchmaking, you two," Whistlebutt said, stepping between us. "Grape is here to spar with you, Gelding. I am not a professional fighter, and I need to see how you'll react to a real fight."
Grape walked around him to stand by me, "And that's why you asked me here?"
My hide ticked and itched with him so close. I had to force myself to concentrate on what was being said. I side-stepped, needing to find just a little distance and some of my wits. I had to work to grab back my suspicious nature. What had Whistlebutt said?
Oh, right. I asked, "A real fight? Is this hazing, or some sort of initiation?"
"Think of it as getting to hitch up the wagon and drive it around before you buy. A test."
"Well, I like to fight."
"But will you like it when you get hurt? I'm not going to put in the effort and spend the bits training you to have you quit and run crying when somepony gives you a black eye or breaks your nose."
"You think I'll quit?" I asked in an unintentionally ominous voice.
"Not really, but given your, um, apparent maturity, I can't say for certain."
Dreamboat said, "Mizzenmast clobbered me in the first fight Coach arranged for me. Broke a rib, too. But I still wanted to be trained."
I looked at Grape. He nodded.
I asked, "Who am I fighting?"
Whistlebutt replied, "Grape."
My hooves banged together and clattered as I whirled ungracefully around to face the stallion. My dreamboat transformed in my mind to an ironclad warship with four big cannons. I was more likely to crack a hoof than to bruise him if I landed a blow on that tight body. My eyes ranged up and down his physique, and I found myself mentally naming muscles I knew you couldn't see on most ponies even if they flexed and posed.
Yes. I had. I had been tutored in anatomy.
Grape noticed my eyes and smiled as they flicked up to his. At least I hadn't tried to glance at his stallion parts (he wasn't wearing anything besides a messenger bag), and that showed that my mind was at least on the right track! His tail swished in amusement.
He said, "It's part of my job to train and practice."
I gushed, "And you do it so well!"
"Thank you, I think."
Whistlebutt cleared his throat and I looked at him. "Here's the deal. We're going to have a fight with regulation rules. You will get hurt."
I looked into his green eyes. I could tell he was earnest. He meant it.
"That's the point?"
"It is."
I looked at Grape, I looked at Whistlebutt, and I looked at Grape again. If ever I were to find the whatever-it-took to find the special fighting spirit I'd found as I fought the monster, this might do it. What was a little pain to achieve that goal? Of course, Grape was going to have to catch me if he had any hope of "clobbering me."
I huffed.
"You are outmatched. You will be hurt. Do you want to go on?"
"I'm not a foal. I'll fight."