//------------------------------//
// Chapter 31 — Trigger 
// Story: The Runaway Bodyguard 
// by scifipony 
//------------------------------//

In retrospect, everything went wrong that day. I was a fighter, as was she. We were each champions, but only one pony could be the champion. 

I was a unicorn.

She was a pegasus.

That should have been to her advantage. The sports books acknowledged that with an actual line 17 to 4 payout should I win. Considering the vigorish, I was the 3 to 1 underdog.

But I was a unicorn.

Ponies don't think being a unicorn through to its ultimate implication, and most unicorns didn't give ponies anything to think through. Everypony knows that most unicorns know just Illuminate, Levitate, and usually one further idiosyncratic spell like being able to clean clothing, to instantly make bread dough rise, to find gems, and what not.  

Unicorns work miracles. Think about that. 

Most are not magicians; they are thaumaturges. If you don't know the word, look it up now. Most unicorns never realize this about themselves. Most are...

Satisfied.

A unicorn prizefighter had to be satisfied with her magic and her performance in the arena. The rules of the fight provided balance and implicitly accepted the typical unicorn tendency to be satisfied with their performance.

Nothing could satisfy me, however. Nothing ever would. Not after Sunburst had demonstrated that the right understanding could unlock better, challenging, or fun spells that also made me more. 

I could be in control. I could be powerful. I performed miracles, and a unicorn did not have to be an alicorn to do so.

I had just shot lightning—or had it been fire? (I'd scrunched my eyes closed!) 

With a bang and a clang, wood, metal, and glass whirled and spun apart, pinging and popping as it showered down. Sparks flew amid a downward spray of twinkling thaumaluminescence, green with sparkles of blue and red. I'd hit the middle arc light, but the arena's lighting had been interconnected via a contagious-magic spell. All the lights went dark. The angled late afternoon sun streaming in through the clearstory replaced it with gloom. Shadows flooded every level of the grandstands and the rafters, incidentally projecting an eldritch spotlight on a startled white pegasus who hit her flank on a rafter and tumbled out of control, wings out, flapping haphazardly against sudden pain, spasms, and the terror of an uncontrolled crash to the ground.

I'd done it! I'd cast my special spell, but that wasn't important now. 

The arena clock read 4:47. Thirteen seconds before the judges would ring the bell. Shadow Strike had buzzed me, forced me to run, squirreled herself free of every magic grab and thrust I'd tried, and bloodied my nose.  

I'd done nothing to impress, until now, but it was naught but property damage. 

Shadow Strike was ahead in the judge's points.

I'd performed a miracle. I had my chance.

Shadow Strike righted herself and avoided the ground as she swooped up from a high speed crash in the dirt, teetered on the edge of control, and flapped to decelerate and pull up. As an expert in calculating vectors and velocity, I knew her trajectory in the very core of my horn, and reflected that in the targeting of my second queued spell. Levitate tuned for Push mirrored her predicted movement. An easy transform. The physics of flight limited her motion and what adjustments she could make on a critical path to safety.

I knew she was left-hoofed. I wagered the championship on her reflex action. 

I pushed right and she yawed left.

Like Mustang had done almost a year before—not galloping into a wall but flying into a pole—Shadow Strike knocked herself unconscious with a bang heard throughout the arena.

I cringed with the spectators as an empathic puckered "Ooooo!" echoed throughout the space.

I caught the glacial-maned white pegasus, her feathers akimbo, in a blue-green nebula of magic. I lowered her unconscious body gently to the ground.

It surprised me that I was still that kind of mare. 

It was my sixth KO overall, not counting my unofficial first one, nor when I accidentally knocked-out Woodcutter who was too dumb to let go of a lead. As per the rules, I sat down on her as the ref counted her out. No way she was bucking me off if she suddenly awoke.  

She groaned and said, "Who hit my— me—wha?"

The crowd roared. 

The ref lifted me with a hoof in the pit of my tank-top jersey, gesturing me to rear. Legs in the air, he grabbed a hoof and pulled it out. He bellowed, "Princess Grim, by a knock-out, your new welterweight cham-peeeeeen!"

I put a hoof to my nose and it came back red as I pirouetted slowly around on my rear legs. I snuffed and that made it worse, but despite the pain, I smiled.  

I was happy. 

Six straight wins and nothing Dr. Feel's spellcasting couldn't heal.

Flash bulbs strobed from the audience, but the anemic light didn't help. I wore my Celestia satire costume, the dark blue one graced with a midnight moon cutie mark on both my trunks and in the center of a silver breastplate embroidered on my tank top. Fan pictures would show a blue pony with a black mane, all dyed. Fighters often wore costumes or took on personas. 

Prizefighting was a game of bits. A way to earn plenty of them. A way to create a new life. 

I received the championship cuirass, plated with gold, bedecked with red roses and blue spiral ribbons. Coach, having put on his best green tweed jacket over his Team Grim tee-shirt, trotted up.

"Magnificent. Do you believe me now?"

I nodded as one photographer, a powder-blue brown-maned unicorn, dashed from all the way across the arena—rather than from the judges stage from whence I'd expected the now tardy press gaggle.

"Sorry, late," he gasped. 

I looked where I expected the other reporters. Beyond the gate, I spotted a confusion of ponies in the shadows. The underdog had won. Confusion was to be expected. Such horse apples made bookies and promoters nervous.  

Coach stood next to me, not touching, having learned that when I perspired, the wash-out dye tended to stain everything. The photographer held his camera in his yellow magic. He adjusted the cuirass with a hoof, motioned the referee in place, then nodded.  

"1, 2, 3!" Click.

The flash bulb exploded. The silver reflector crumpled and collapsed.

"Well, phooey!"

An official waved us to the main gates as Dr. Feel attended to Shadow Strike. The pegasus kept on insisting on standing with her wings flailing out as we walked by. Dr. Feel kept pushing her down and mumbling some choice curse words at her.

My nose wasn't getting fixed any time soon.

I trotted out of the shadowy arena on three legs, waving to the cheers of the crowd. After fourteen fights—8 wins, 2 losses, 4 no-decisions—the cheers hadn't grown old. Beating up ponies to make other ponies happy still felt weird, but whatever. Ponies gave me permission. It kept my conscience clear. Getting bits didn't suck, either. More fun than anything I'd done as a countess!

Ponies held open the gates into the recesses of the arena. Others kept the crowd beyond the velvet ropes. My first clue something was amiss was when an earth pony bull galloped from the right and blocked my trainer from following.

"Coach!"

A young voice, not my trainer's, said, "Don't worry yo-self about it."

I turned. I found a stallion's pink kerchief at the end of a hoof. I pressed it to my nose and watched the chivalric pony take the bits from the fight promoter slash bookie, count out at least a quarter, and brush it into a pouch. He scraped out another pile as I came to his side. 

He said, "Your take."

It amounted to substantially more than I knew my prize purse ought to contain, even subtracting Coach's cut. Something told me not to say anything since nopony, even the promoter, said boo. The whole fight system wasn't legal, despite payments to the constabulary retirement fund. The betting less so.  

I carried the pouch in my magic as an excuse to keep a spell spun up. I didn't have pockets in my fight giddy-up anyway. My first direct look in the warehouse gloom at his black-nosed red-roan face validated what my ears had figured out. I remembered the punk, his greasy black bouffant and his gold chains, not to mention his unsteerable filly-friend with an attitude.

"Have I got a deal for you! You'll make gobs more bits than you're making now."

I backed away in disgust. "Trigger."

"There's certain offers you shouldn't refuse."

The gangsters had dressed for going to the fights. Gone were the adolescent tee-shirts. All wore dark blue pin-striped business jackets (bare-chested). Some wore dark wraparound sunglasses, though with the lights out, that seemed like a liability. The stallions wore bouffants. The mares wore blue plaid dresses, though none of the same cut. One wore a mini-skirt, the rest knee-length except for the oddball with a full bustle and crinoline. Gold rings, silver earrings, and bracelets abounded. 

No dolled up Mustang, though. MIA. Pity. No second chance to break her.

The group of young miscreants kept the reporters back with practiced glares. They had a pet unicorn. Her pink aura formed around a camera a pony held over his head. The flash bulb exploded.

That explained a lot.

Trigger continued. "You remember Cyclone Beaujangles?"

How could I not? His name had come up in the Celestial Race press gaggle. Whistlebutt had held him up as a real life boogiemare. As I trained as a fighter, I concluded his whole story was inflated. As I racked up wins on the circuit, Shadow Strike trounced him. In his subsequent fight, he kicked a unicorn in the horn, effectively sidelining his career for the year. I'd heard the unicorn could still cast spells.

Then, two weeks ago, I'd met the stallion in the muscular flesh. While I had months ago quit working at Bite O'Kale as prize purses provided plenty of income and store hours made it hard to ramp up my grueling training, I hadn't bothered to craft another out-of-the-arena persona or gone to the trouble of moving to better digs other than Mobtown Mattresses. I didn't need the distractions of living the high life; for me, such things were totally last year, my life as a foal. I'd grown up to appreciate the simplicity of frugality.

That said, a lavender mare that walked around town wearing simple dresses with her purple mane and tail tied in a severe bun, resembling her picture as the winning unicorn from the Celestial Race, proved hard to miss.

The bulked-up ripped stallion proved equally hard to miss. He looked as blue as a mountain lake in the morning sun. Nopony could unsee his fire-engine red Mohawk mane. Like a battle flag. 

As winter approached, the sun had risen late and I'd spent time in line at the Buckstars buying my morning tea-cooked oats. With everypony rushing off to work, the sidewalks were crowded. Draymares pulled early morning deliveries, messengers cycled by on bikes, and one bus after another rumbled by, each pulled by teams of six, snarling traffic.

The hopped-up stallion could care less whether the streets were full or empty. My first cue that something was amiss came when I saw a pony suddenly jump sideways and crash into the brick wall between storefronts half a block away. I saw the pink mare's startled green eyes as she hit, then slid down. Amply warned, ponies near the disturbance gave way. A saffron pegasus fluttered up, squealing, a hoof held to her stomach.

I blinked in disbelief. Then I saw a stallion whose bulk was clearly due to 'roids. At twenty pony lengths away, his eyes fixed upon me. They were amber; they could well have been on fire.

I clunked down my carton of maple sugar black tea oats atop of the green newspaper dispenser I stood beside. It sold the Baltimare Sun. I remembered everything Whistlebutt warned about. The stallion was a street fighter deep in his twisted core; he preferred fighting dirty. His suspension from the fights proved it. His demonstration that he didn't care about anypony as he shouldered ponies aside on the street seconded that observation.

I needed to keep him from pinning me against any surface, and to keep him surrounded by crowds where he couldn't indulge his inclination toward murder—assuming he cared. When he head-butted a Clydesdale stevedore that I knew because he lived around the block, causing the fellow to fold to his knees, I wondered if anything could stop him from expressing what he wanted.

This was the type of thing that made you wish the constables actually patrolled your neighborhood!

I backed up, carefully, but quickly. The street was a rather steep downhill of cobblestones. The paved sidewalk was little better, being cracked by years of disrepair and strong summer rains, and wedged up in places by overgrown tree roots.

He bellowed, "You want a piece of this, Gelding?"

"I said I'd fight you. I meant in the arena—"

"Liar! You talk horse apples, you make me look bad—"

"I've said nothing about you since the race—"

He stopped and bellowed, his face turning red. "You seriously want to die, don't you, Gelding!" 

"That's a verb, you know."

"A threat? Another threat? As if I'd let you touch me!" He stalked forward. "Beg your sugar colt nicely, and you might convince me to leave you only paralyzed from the hip up!"

I gave him my best what-the-fudge look, eyeing the traffic and the sidewalk. Ponies jaywalked trying to get away, snarling the wagon traffic even worse. It worked to my advantage. 

All this time, I'd prepared Levitate. Now I was ranging it on him, recalculating the distance as I let him get closer and closer. Behind me, I spotted a delivery cart parked up in the entrance way of Riddles' Hardware Store. It hadn't opened. A red colt wearing a blue delivery cap wedged himself out of the way against the window.

It happened to be constricting a sidewalk that was further narrowed by an overgrown birch tree. I jerked dramatically, intentionally, approaching it as if I'd noticed my predicament. I made sure I looked like I was forced to take the curb and the wedged pavement between it and the tree as I continued to retreat.

It made me look pinned between the traffic and tree.

Cyclone dashed forward as I stepped over a root and by the blocks of cement into the clear. It left us separated by a pony length. Like the muscle-herd he was, he led with a right-hoof punch.

He wore blackened steel horseshoes, size extra-large.

He wasn't so stupid as not to notice the pavement and stepped appropriately. That wasn't the trap I'd set, however.

I cast Levitate against the two hooves he had on the ground at that moment, breaking his gait, then on the third that he shot down desperately trying to catch himself from tripping. His legs tangled a half-a-beat later, making him visibly stumble. I let him try to recover as I watched the traffic adjust to the jaywalkers.

Wait for it.

Wait for—

I pushed.

Best part of it all, it was very sunny. No way anypony could see my magic, not that any might fault me for casting something nasty having been stalked by the loudmouthed pony that had injured a half-dozen ponies he'd pushed aside.

He went over, waving his left foreleg trying to find some balance. Skittering hooves landing on uneven cobbles didn't help. He threw himself left toward the curb, trying to avoid the traffic. He slipped and slid hooves-first into the street.

A delivery van loaded with bags of flour and bales of hay couldn't swerve in time.

I don't think I'll ever forget that brittle breaking-stick crunch as long as I live. I landed on my rump and began retching.  

My reaction wasn't feigned. 

Physicians like Dr. Feel might be good at mending pony bones, but I felt certain that Cyclone Beaujangles would never walk again. It was somewhat of a mercy that he had struck his head going down and lay there unconscious, tongue lolling out.

Ponies helped me up and told me how lucky I was. A mare with her mane hidden under a dandelion scarf brushed the dirt off my dress. Her school-age son babbled how brave I was. Others summoned an ambulance. I returned to the newspaper dispenser, grabbed my carton of oats, which hadn't cooled all that much, and inserted a copper. I pulled out the sports page and left the rest on top, then trotted quickly up the street to the gym just in case some pony had called in the constables.

Oh, I remembered.

I looked Trigger in his eyes, which even in the shadowy light looked very blue. "Beaujangles, uh huh."

"He was a test and you passed. It  satisfied the higher ups that there are services you can be well-paid to provide."

I broke my stare with the gangster lieutenant before I decided I might rather like to set him on fire. It would be a hollow victory. I turned around, but saw no safe egress. I was surrounded. I felt envious of Shadow Strike's wings.  

My glance upward touched upon metal beams and wood siding. Glass reflected the glimmering setting sun from the clearstory. The warehouse rented for the arena, I'd been told, had been designed for the construction of tall ships back when Equestria built its air navy. It explained why it didn't have upper floors for increased product warehousing. Catwalks and walkways lay just below the rafters seven stories up. And directly above where I stood, the "upper story" connected to a glassedin two-story office area. It was probably where naval officers managed the ship construction. The lights I'd destroyed had been where a crane had many years ago hung down.

I could not fly. I knew it was unlikely that I could batter my way through the goons that surrounded me. Worse, were I to actually get off another force spell, I was sure I'd be tackled before I made anymore than one pony regret cornering me.  

I wasn't stupid. 

What I could do, and the worst that could happen would be that I failed, was once again try my newest spell. I might even learn something about myself. I'd spun it up successfully on a dozen occasions, but each time I'd sensed something I could only describe as a presentiment of oblivion awaiting were I to kiss the wish predicate to life.

I had my bits. I had what I needed for the next phase of my life.

I stood cornered, ready to lose my freedom if I didn't try something.

A hurricane, not unlike the dark storm a rogue Windigo had hurled at Horseshoe Bay some years ago, whirled with flaming digits in my head. Internal electricity formed and lightning struck as I balanced the equations with that oh so lovely math the evil princess had so helpfully illustrated for me.

I held the purse of bits in the air, the nebulosity of my blue-green aura pulsing and expanding around the starting-to-jangle contents. Everypony stared at me, awaiting my next caustic retort to Trigger's goading. Meanwhile, I worked up the spell equations, then factored-in the breach-chaos codicil, and let the numbers flow as splendor after splendor of magic sluiced into my horn. That meant I let the targeting on Levitate disintegrate and turn into mere guesses. The purse began to vibrate as I lost track of where I applied counter-gravity to keep it afloat.

I needed a target.

The open porch I'd seen; I felt positive I knew where it was. All that time I'd spent on trying to get that stupid Don't Look, Don't See, Don't Hear to work had made me very observant of my surroundings before I needed to be.

I felt the warmth of completion. Digits stormed orange and red like wind blown embers in my sensorium, coming close to blinding me.

"Well," I huffed.

Trigger tilted his head to better hear my words. Unfortunately, at this point in my work with the spell, I had no choice but to say the cheesy mnemonic aloud.

"I wish I may, I wish I might... Teleport."

The world around me jerked 5° rightward, like a gear ticking in a clock. My perception of reality slowed as transform after transform triggered around me. The physical laws broke down along fractal surfaces; my view pixelated. What I'd wished for didn't exist in the normal world, but belonged naturally to the realm of incredible densities and unimaginable gravities, the stuff that laughed at the pressures needed to make a diamond. A shell of light, crackling with blue lightning spread out from inside me, stopping then restarting my heart and making every hair on my spine and neck stand on end. It spread out even as I dropped my pouch of bits. Even so, they fell slowly like I'd been plunked into a vat of glycerin.

The crackling grew until it reached a pony length around me.

The world vanished.

For an eternity and for an instant, I found myself engulfed in utter darkness. Suspended weightless in a lightless void, I realized I was in vacuum. My mouth had been open. My lungs emptied violently, worse than the hardest cough, and I heard my scream—not directly in my ears, but as transmitted through my flesh. A cold magnitudes more frigid than the inside of Bite O'Kale's walk-in refrigerator chewed through my fur to my skin, trying to freeze me solid at the speed of thought.

I had sent myself into oblivion. To death.

This is how I die—

I landed, knees bent, my head falling on a wood plank floor. Surprised, my head continued down and my chin struck the wood, making me see stars.  

I gasped. Air! Air!

I heard a loud bang, and another bang echoed back so the two overlapped. I groaned even as I worked to fill my lungs over and over again.

I blinked and saw frost steaming upward in ribbons off my fur. I coughed, and a bit of mucus flecked with blood spattered my hoof. Despite my dizziness, despite exhaustion, despite the ache in my chest from the worst cough of my life, despite my having struck my chin, I looked around. Frost—my perspiration, my congealed blood on my nose—steamed upward toward rafters that were now less than a story above me.

I jumped up. Though wobbly, I saw the glass front of the management office. To my right, over the guardrail, I saw the grandstands. Letting myself take in everything, I became aware again of the crowds still cheering. They didn't comprehend something had happened that had made their new champion, Princess Grim, work an incomparable miracle that only alicorns accomplished.

"I did it. I did it!"

A heavily accented voice called out. "Che! Boludos! What es happening?"

"Sweet Celestia," I whispered, looking around. I needed out of the building. I'd teleported, but if I'd been surrounded by gangsters before, I'd probably just landed near the bosses. Of course the promoters were affiliated. Where better to watch the fight than from a sky box? I looked out through the clearstory that ran the length of the building, which was now at eye level. I spotted a flat area of corrugated metal on the next roof, where the furnaces and chimneys came out. I need to get there and quick!

I had a handle on the spell setup prep. I just needed to fix the snapped wish predicate and refactor the codicil!

The spinning red and orange digits began whirling. It made me dizzy. And nauseous. I blinked as the exhaustion of the fight, the pain of having been punched in the nose, the adrenaline of having been cornered, and the strain of casting the highest level of spells bucked me to the curb. I didn't even bother to try to Levitate my purse of bits. I bent my head down, bit the fabric with my teeth, and with my target fully envisioned in my mind and not bothering to lift my leaden head back up, I cast my second Teleport.

The blackness I experienced was not the oblivion I'd encountered in between one place and another. It was nevertheless total. 

I passed out.

No, it was not a good day.


- End of Part Two -