Two hours and three more broken pencil leads later, I trotted down the steps into the Silver Stream gym. Yep. Still smelled of pony perspiration, mostly the stallion sort. Whistlebutt immediately popped up with a hard-to-miss whinny from where he had been spotting a pegasus at the bench press. He trotted over, looking more and more angry as he approached.
When he got close enough, he said in a low voice, "Where did you disappear to?"
"About my offer—"
"Are you ready to reconsider?"
"Yeah. You could say that. I gave an interview to Cordial Cowherd over at the Baltimare Sun."
"You-you... What!?"
"The fellow is a fount of information. Oh, and, my story of KO'ing Punch Drunk is coming out in the evening edition, on the front of the sports page, above the fold. Don't know how much you read the papers, but that's pretty prominent. He even sent a stringer to verify my account with Grape and interview him. Grape's feeling much better, by the way."
Whistlebutt clunked his hoof against his forehead. "Sweet Celestia."
"About our deal...?"
"20/80," he repeated.
I took a deep breath and let it out. "That's not what I said."
I wasn't going to mention the name Coach Reaper, not yet, because I was pretty sure the shady character wasn't ethical and would find a way to blackmail me. That and because I thought Whistlebutt was probably better for me, and at least visibly ethical. You never know with ponies, of course.
He said, "Do you have any conception of the costs involved?"
"I do, now. In detail, as compiled thanks to years of reportage. Accounting matters, White Towel."
"You don't get it."
"Probably, I don't. Not totally. Frankly, I could take it or leave it. About my offer?"
"50/50?" He scoffed.
I tilted my head, frowning. "Did I say that? I don't think I said that."
"It's ridiculous and you know it."
"That's right. I said 60/40."
"What?"
I tapped my hoof, giving him about a minute to stop sputtering and to figure out where I was going with this. As his complexion went from beet red to something more like his own green coloring, he found his voice again. "Not happening."
"I clearly said 65/35."
"Are you insane?"
"Didn't you figure that out the day we met? Really, sir. Ugh!" I threw up my forelegs and turned. "I really don't need this. You think about what I've told you and what is important to you and what's important to me. If you can do that and you can come up with an accounting of expenses, debits, and projected offsetting credits, you know where you can find me at Bit O'Kale." I demonstratively stomped up the stairs in a huff I really didn't feel. He'd make it worth my while, or I wouldn't bother. And if he retaliated somehow, I'd just move on.
I might have my blind spots; I would definitely make mistakes, but, you know, I understood that I could take what the world threw at me. Bottom line, I would succeed. Who needed friends and cutie marks when you could apply your mind to problems? If you looked at setbacks as challenges and handled what came at you in the moment, life became interesting and surmountable.
As far as I was concerned, I'd already given the bent hoof to Celestia's plans for my life. I just didn't care beyond that.
Somewhere down the line I might even solve the conundrum of cutie marks, but I was okay with that goal being further off. Prize fighting bits might have advanced my goal forward a few years, but what the hay.
By the end of the week, I signed a contract. Whistlebutt got himself a lawyer and an accountant, and even admitted to his own cash flow. I could see I was actually squeezing him badly at 65/35 as I read the first accounting he brought me as I sat on my lunch break on the loading dock behind Bite O'Kale.
He really wanted me. Gosh!
It reassured me that his hype was genuine, that all the pain I would endure would be worth the trouble.
However, the last thing I wanted was to give him any reason to buck me when I wasn't looking, or to embezzle funds. I praised him for his work and told him he was hard of hearing: I'd only asked for 50/50.
He was okay with that.
Maybe out of gratitude, or maybe to needle me where it really hurt my pride, he did something he had told me he couldn't do. He brought me a new spell to learn!
He told me he'd brought the duplicated pages to all the unicorns he'd ever taught. The pages looked fresh to me. I didn't believe him, but I copied them carefully into my notebook, anyway. I took one look at the arcana and the wish predicate; the equations brought back the taste and thrill of Princess Celestia's spell that day on Castle Way in Canterlot.
The spell checksummed, which meant I might be able cast it. Whether it functioned was another matter. I knew this much: The ponies able to cast it were all documented in history books, but, so far as I knew, none other than the princess herself could cast it today.
I told him it was a spell for the highest level unicorns.
He said, "And you're not?"
He had me there.
That's how I began to study Teleport. It certainly would have solved the problem handily when Punch Drunk charged me, had I already mastered it. Or when The Monster had caught me...
I studied hard.