The Runaway Bodyguard

by scifipony


PART THREE: New Career; Chapter 32 — The Hard to Refuse Offer

The shadowy mare sighed. "I really want you."

My heart raced in response.

"If you really want to be a bodyguard, I will es settle for that. I've been es seeing you've gotten every opportunity. I am not going to waste effort by insisting on making you do es something you will not do."

"That... That's generous of you. Am... Am I getting the job?

"Por supuesto! ...So, what do I call you?"

"Grimoire is fine, when I'm working."

"When not? Gelding?" She snorted. "I haven't the huevos for that verb to have meaning you intended. Let us es see? There es Starlight es Starbright from your Celestial Race application. That is a foal's name, yes?"

"Hey!"

"Es verdad. Ah, look how her eyes would es sparkle in the moonlight. How about es Starlight Glimmer?"

"Let's stick with Grimoire," I shot back.

"One day you will be comfortable with me and my teasing, but, yes. Another concession, Grimoire, hija."

She reached into her pocket and I flinched.

She didn't face me, but continued speaking around something she held in her lips. "A concession for a concession. Answer me this: What kind of pony, neigh, what kind of unicorn who can learn to teleport joins an es syndicate when she owns an infinite, how you say, honeypot like this?"

A bronze and copper rectangle glittered at the right edge of her mouth. The rune noticed my gaze and a green spark ran the length of the crossed H shape.

My command card. Entrance to Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, admissions exams waved. Exclusive—that went without saying, as White Towel would say. Having learned teleport, I might even get tutored by Princess Evil herself! A "honeypot," if you liked that type of sickly sweet.

My cheeks became warm. I had been pickpocketed by the colt with the dipper cutie mark that had stumbled into me.

Dipper cutie mark.

Naturally.

I did not need the card. I did not need her line of questioning, either. Frankly, it spooked me back to my senses. I began casting Teleport.

A pony tackled me from the left. Feathers slapped me in the face, poking me in the eyes as forelegs wound around my withers, hooking my right foreleg.

Tears blurring my vision, I took advantage of the momentum of the shove. I rolled right, intentionally kneeling, using his attempt at compensation to throw the pegasus before landing on his rib cage. (Grape had eventually forgiven me and given me some very personal tutoring.) The pegasus coughed the air out of his lungs as we slid toward the edge of the stage. I cast Push to keep from being raked by his rear hooves. He ought to have been more protective of his wings—

Another pony piled on before I could poke the first's wing joint with my horn. This stallion had barreled in from a hiding place in the curtains from my left. I managed to punch a hoof into his stallion parts, then kick him off when he curled up with a strangled whinny.

The pony conducting this violent orchestra jumped back. "Don't leave, yet, hija."

I flopped like a fish that had inadvertently jumped onto a boat, banging the persistent pegasus against the floor again and again, getting him to release me as I tried to stand, but a third pony galloped from behind my prospective employer. This mare had had time to evaluate my actions. Though I Pushed at her, she flattened herself and slid as I got my hooves under me. With the pegasus stallion swatting my flank with a wing, the mare dove underneath me, sweeping my legs, upending me and throwing me forward.

I was no gymnast. I transformed Push to a blue-green Shield across the floor just in time as I fell. My knees and my jaw bounded off the magic cushion.

I sprang back up, straining my shoulder muscles as a fourth pony landed on my back. I tried to buck, but the pegasus tackled me again and the mare had turned around and grabbed my flank.

Two earth ponies weigh a lot. Still whimpering, the unlucky stallion joined the pony calzone with me as the lavender aubergine filling and immobilized me, standing. I squirmed to no avail.

In desperation, I switched to Teleport.

"Really, I thought better of you," the mare in charge said, approaching me despite my glowing horn. "I am planning to let you choose whether to work for me or not, so there's no need for you to leave before I make my proposal."

I grunted trying to push a pony, any pony, off. I kept casting, but the numbers failed to keep spinning, the wish predicate kept addressing a non-temporal reality, and the equations kept sliding out of balance.

"I know enough about Teleport to know you cannot cast if you have to teleport everypony hugging you." She touched my horn with the pink frog of her hoof. The shock of the soft pad caused me to lose all my prep. "I gave the es spell to White Towel to give to you, after all. I had to learn Old Ponish. And I can do analytic calculus."

Sometimes you get what you ask for. You probably want to know how I went from fainting after casting Teleport for the second time to being invited to interview to become Carne Asada's bodyguard. It is a study in making all the right decisions and not understanding the implications...