//------------------------------//
// Chapter 72: Crying in a Restroom 
// Story: Pandemic: Starting Over 
// by Halira 
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We arrived at the observatory with little time to waste. I had paid through the nose for a private group presentation—or at least I used Wild's money to do so, and Number had been able to get the Creams included in as well. I quickly got everyone checked in and began ushering them into the planetarium for the presentation. 

"Aren't you coming in with us, Auntie?" Líng asked as he noticed I was not making a move to come in with them. 

"Auntie has to take care of some things. I'll be in the building," I said calmly. 

"Aww, but you keep having to do stuff," Shǔguāng complained. 

My ears sagged. "I'm sorry, but I'm doing it because it is important, not because I want to. If I get done quickly, I'll join you inside. Just behave yourselves and enjoy the show."

"We'd enjoy it more if you were there with us," Shǔguāng muttered, but did as he was told and went inside. 

My mom looked back at me with a sad look. "Family trips are more fun if you spend them with family."

I laid an ear back in annoyance. "I know, Mom. Like I told him, I'm doing what I have to. I'll be in there as soon as I'm done."

"Okay, Baby. Just… try not to take too long," she said with a small smile. Then she went in to find her seat. 

With everyone in the planetarium, I made my way to the restroom closest to it. If the only people in the planetarium were my family and staff, it wouldn't get many visitors. This was confirmed when I entered and found no one inside. I chose a stall and lifted my phone to start searching through numbers. 

One of the benefits of me being someone the government had a vested interest in keeping safe and monitoring at all times was that I could call the FBI and get ahold of someone who was going to take me seriously right away. I wasn't even sure it rang before it was answered.

"What can we do for you today, Miss Blessing?" No greeting. No asking who it was. I bet they even knew I was in the restroom of the observatory and which restroom in particular. My spending was tracked, so they knew I was coming here. The observatory got federal funds, so for all knew they could tap the cameras here. 

"Blessingists in the area have been going missing recently. I just learned about this today. Why did no one alert me?" I demanded.

"We did not feel it was necessary to alert you Miss Blessing. It is our understanding that you hold no connection to the group, aside from them basing their beliefs off your ideas. Has your stance recently changed?"

"No… but I find it interesting that whoever you assigned to take my calls knows all about this completely unrelated to me case," I replied. "I'm trying to protect my family here. I'm told you already know about the barking, and I am hoping it was already passed onto you about that Shimmerist with the dogs who went missing. I'm still working in the dark here. You don't have to tell me everything, just enough so I know what to be on the lookout for."

"There have been numerous acts of aggression against Blessingist groups by Shimmerist groups throughout the country, Miss Blessing. Many of the Blessingists are former Shimmerists, and we consider this the equivalent of a gang war. The only thing that has us directly involved with your local ones are the fact there are so many missing persons in such a short time and the fact you are currently in Denver. At this time, we have found no evidence to directly link them to your situation or the Shimmerist Ronald Shea, AKA Dog Bite, AKA Howler. We are looking into the whereabouts of Dog Bite for questioning. Do you have any other questions, Miss Blessing?"

My ears sagged. "I suppose not."

"Then have a good day, Miss Blessing, and call us if you have any other information." The call ended without any further chance for me to speak.

After the call ended, I sat down in the restroom stall because it was the only way to avoid pacing in the confined space. I bit down on my lip hard because it was the only way I wasn't going to scream. 

This wasn't fair. I didn't want to be anyone important. I tried to fade into obscurity and be the mother I always wished I could have been. Yet, the world wouldn't let me go. I was still hurting people, no matter how much I tried not to. People I had never met were suffering because of me, just to send a message. There were people out there that hated me so much; they would hurt anyone who so much as spoke favorably of me. How long before they came to hurt my family? They could have come to hurt me long before. They had waited, knowing that would have been too easy, knowing there were much crueler ways of hurting me. Why kill me when they could break me?

Fucking Shimmerists! They could all burn in Hell! The police should be out there, rounding every one of those mongrels up and locking them away. Can't just go arresting every Shimmerist they see my ass! I had been content just to avoid them and let them scream their obscenities at me, but it was no longer about just me. It was about my foals, my family— it was about the well-being of idiot fools who thought I had some magic answers to their problems and had put themselves on the Shimmerists' shit list with that idiocy. 

I heard the restroom door open and did my best not to make a sound, just so whoever it was would have no reason to check on me. Hoofsteps approached my stall and came to a halt right outside it. I instinctively sniffed to try to recognize who, but all I smelled was the remains of shit and piss all around me. 

"Sunset… Charlotte, are you okay?" 

I nodded like an idiot, even though she couldn't see me. "I'm fine, Mom. You don't need to worry about me."

"Baby, you may be an excellent liar, but you've never been able to successfully lie to me," Mom replied with a sigh of her own. "You've been shaken up since right before we got on the bus to come here, and I can tell by your voice you're only worse now. I know you haven't done it much these past thirty years, but you can talk to your mother."

Damn her for reading me. "I just got off the phone with the FB,I… those crazies that think I'm all that...the Blessingists, you know them?"

"I'm not sure that was a complete thought you just said, but yes, I know who the Blessingists are," Mom said from the other side of the door. "What's going on with them, and why is the FBI involved?"

I sniffled. "There's been a string of disappearances with them in the last two weeks. Always soon after altercations with Shimmerists. I don't even know these people, Mom! They shouldn't have anything to do with me, but people are disappearing that may never come back to their families, all because they believe I'm some sort of savior. The FBI doesn't know who is doing it, only that it is Shimmerists, and Colorado is a hotbed for Shimmerist activity, so who knows which ones. They say they are currently working with law enforcement to try to find out who."

"And I hope they find whatever ponies are responsible soon," Mom said firmly. "Is that what has you in a tizzy?"

"It's not just that; it's things like the barking and getting attacked in the street in Pony Hope," I cried. "It's me wondering if they took all these ponies without a trace, are they capable of taking the foals too? This is about hurting me, Mom, and they have to know… if they study me at all, they have to know. Are they going to go after the foals, my daughter, or you next? I'm a liability to my family by just existing."

Mom sat quietly as I cried, making no effort to open the bathroom stall. Maybe she was wondering if I was right. Perhaps she was wondering if everyone should distance themselves from me. I knew I was asking myself if I should send them all away.

"You know… this isn't the only time you've been found crying in a restroom," Mom said in a quiet voice. "I remember an incident… something that happened when you were in sixth grade. I think it was one of those times you redefined yourself, maybe the first in the line. You remember, don't you?"

A painful memory resurfaced, long forgotten until that second. "The dance team."

"The dance team," she confirmed. "You had your heart set on being on that team, and those little girls were so cruel to you."

"They made fun of my acne and called me fat… I wasn't even fat, only not super thin like them," I recalled. "I could dance just as well as any of them."

"Maybe, maybe not. I'm sure you were better than at least some of them. I'm also sure you put your heart into it more than any of them, and you were more than deserving of a chance to show your stuff," Mom replied. "I remember the school calling, and not being able to believe what you did. I couldn't deny it after I arrived and I saw those girls with my own eyes. Your father and I had to beg and plead with the principal only to suspend you instead of expelling you. Some of their parents wanted to press charges, and I had to talk them down too. You'd always been so well behaved up to that point."

"First sign I was a regular psychopath," I muttered bitterly. 

"No!" Mom all but shouted. "Those girls cornered you in a restroom, trapped you in a stall, and taunted you mercilessly. We are all animals; when you get down to it, and you were a terrified girl backed into a corner you couldn't get out of. So what did you do?"

"I taught those girls never to back me into a corner again," I said with a half-laugh. I don't know why I felt any humor in it. It wasn't funny at all. Some of them ended up having to go to the hospital afterward. 

"Damn right you did," Mom said, sounding proud. "And those little snots deserved it too."

"Other kids called me a psycho for all of middle school and part of high school," I reminded her.

"But they never dared back you into a corner again, now did they?" Mom asked smugly. 

"That is an irresponsible thing to show pride in me over," I chided her. "You should have gotten on my case about how violence is wrong, and I should have talked it out, or ignored them, or… I don't know. You're a pony now, so violence should upset you even more than it did back then."

"That's true, in many cases, but it can fall apart when you aren't dealing with reasonable people, or you can't afford them doing anything else to you. I might get sick watching something like that, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate that sometimes it's needed," she replied in a grave tone. "You were not as much an athlete as some of those girls back then. On any other day, if you had gotten into a fight with them, at least half of them would have beaten your ass on their own, but they pushed my little girl to her limit, and my little girl, when pushed to her limit, is a force to be reckoned with."

"It doesn't matter," I mumbled. "This time, I don't have a bunch of girls to charge into, punching and kicking. I don't even know the names or faces of who is out there. I'm just an old weak unicorn who is dependent on others to protect her and her loved ones."

Mom sighed. "These ponies… whoever they are, who are threatening you both directly and indirectly, don't understand who they're dealing with, and it's time you remembered that too. No one scares my baby girl into a corner and gets away with it. They want to bully you and other ponies? Then I feel no sympathy for what is going to happen to them when you have had enough."

I opened the stall door to see her wrinkled face looking kindly on me. I still had tears in my eyes, but I smirked at her all the same. "You are way too bloodthirsty to be an earth pony, you know that?"

"I'm not bloodthirsty at all," she said without breaking composure. "I just know what happens when somepony gets my baby filly crying in a restroom."