//------------------------------//
// Chapter 19: Arrival in Missouri 
// Story: There's a Monster Pony Outside My Window 
// by Halira 
//------------------------------//

Of all the chaotic things that had occurred, this had to top it all off for Wendy. Kristin was lying in her lap, asleep, and Kristin was a tiny miniature horse with yellow fur and a bright neon green mane and tail. 

Wendy kept her usable hand protectively over her sleeping daughter as they sat waiting for her husband to return from the motel's desk. Miss Newman's necklace was still around her daughter's neck. There had been some debate about removing it, but with Miss Newman still out cold, they didn't know if it would somehow do harm. All they could do was wait for the unicorn to finally wake up and tell them how to deal with this. 

Kristin had initially panicked, as had they all after the girl had put the necklace on, but after they managed to get her untangled from her clothes, she had calmed down quickly. That had unnerved Wendy and Charles both— that their daughter didn't seem particularly upset that she was furry and had four legs. It seemed unnatural to be so calm about it, but Kristin seemed perfectly okay, as well as still in command of the power of speech and all her memories. 

The next problem had been Charlotte and Andrea trying to insist that they wanted their turn too. That had, of course, been shot down immediately. That they even had to have that conversation was ridiculous. Thankfully all three girls were exhausted and passed out soon after. Also, thankfully, the additional scare of having their daughter turn into a pony had been enough to give Charles the energy to finish the drive across the border and all the way to Kansas City. 

Charles returned to the car. "We have a room for the rest of the night and tomorrow night...or is it tonight? It's like two in the morning."

"It's three, actually," Wendy replied. "Can we afford to stay here two nights?"

"Three in the morning," Charles muttered, and he started the car to drive to their room. "We need time to recover, and we need that pain in the ass in the back seat to be awake and helping us. Speaking of which, has pain in the ass stirred at all?"

Wendy shook her head. "Still passed out in her puke. I don't think it is because she's sick. Whatever she did to that other pony exhausted her too much."

"Well, hopefully, that means she'll wake up in the morning refreshed and ready to safely fix Kristin," Charles said as he pulled the car into a parking spot near the back of the motel. "Here's our room." 

"You know you're going to have to carry Miss Newman inside. We can't leave her out here. It's too risky," Wendy said, knowing that she couldn't really help. She could carry Kristin, but Kristin was tiny and featherweight at the moment, and she could be carried with one arm. 

Charles looked back at the pony. "Maybe Andrea can help me. We need to wake them up anyway." He reached around and gave Andrea and Charlotte a shake. "Girls, wake up. We have beds to sleep in."

The two of them groggily stirred and wiped the sleep from their eyes. Charlotte looked around, and her eyes fell on the blanket covering Miss Newman. The small child then crawled over and shook it.

"Old lady pony, you need to wake up!" Charlotte called as she jostled the pony. 

"I don't think that's going to work, baby," Wendy said as she carefully unbuckled her seat belt. 

Charlotte was undeterred. The girl lifted the blanket and grabbed the unicorn's horn, and began using it as a handle to shake Miss Newman's head. "Wake up!"

This got a reaction where all other attempts to wake the pony had failed.  The unicorn made a bunch of grunts and then gasped, jerking away from Charlotte. "Horn! Touch! Bad touch!" She jumped to her hooves, standing on two legs briefly, and then went tumbling backward off the seat. "Ow!"

"The old lady pony is awake!" Charlotte announced happily.

"Errrmmmm," Miss Newman hissed. "Where am I? Why does it stink so much?"

Wendy immediately focused on what was important as Kristin woke up and looked around with bleary eyes. "You need to fix my daughter right now!" 

Miss Newman groaned again as she tried to get off her back. "Much as I might want to break Charlotte right now, she's very much intact. Don't go grabbing a unicorn's horn! It's sensitive! It's an organ filled with nerve endings, not all bone! Ow! My head is killing me! Does anyone have some aspirin?"

"I'm talking about Kristin! She turned into a pony!" Wendy growled. 

The old pony went silent and, after a few seconds of shuffling, stuck her head between the two front seats to gape at the much smaller pony on Wendy's lap. "Why is Amicus wearing my necklace?!"

Kristin snorted. "My name's Kristin, not Amicus!"

Miss Newman shook her head and winced. "How long has she been wearing it?"

"About four hours— we're in Kansas City," Wendy explained in a hurry. 

"Still have plenty of time then. Damage that was done isn't going to be able to be undone," Miss Newman grumbled. The pony looked around. "Are we stopping for the night?"

"We all need rest," Charles answered. "I skipped Topeka and all the other stops on the way here. I also found a hotel well away from the freeway. I figured it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack for them to find us in just a day or two."

The unicorn laid her on the seat. "That should be fine. They can't search as well anymore. Let's get inside the room, and we'll deal with Am… sorry… we'll deal with Kristin then. Several more minutes as a pony isn't going to make anything worse. She's going to be naked, so you'll want to take that necklace off in the bathroom anyway."

"What do you mean by damage that was done??" Wendy demanded. "Is Kristin going to get sick or hurt?"

"I'll discuss some of that with you after we're in the room. Get a move on," Miss Newman instructed. She then sniffed herself and jerked her head back. "God, I reek. I'm taking a shower before I go back to sleep."

Wendy wanted to argue, but she instead moved to scoop Kristin up, only to have her daughter shove the arm away.

"I can walk," Kristin informed her

"Let her walk," Miss Newman instructed. "You don't want to deal with a squirming earth pony. You could end up with both arms unusable. She might be small, but she's a lot stronger than she looks or comprehends, and her magic could surge if she's emotional, making her temporarily even stronger. My niece accidentally cracked her father's ribs when she was less than a week old during a surge. Unless you're a masochist or have a reinforced steel cage, don't try to restrain an earth pony who doesn't want to be restrained."

"Sounds like having a baby when you're a pony is dangerous," Charles commented. 

Miss Newman shrugged. "If you don't know what to expect. It could have been worse. Dealing with earth pony foals is easy compared to some other tribes. God help me if Andrea had put the necklace on. She might have killed me in my current state or damaged the spell in the necklace. I'm not even sure what damaging the spell while she was wearing it would do to her— nothing good. Anyway, let Kristin walk if no one is around, and let's go in the room."

Wendy opened the door. Kristin hopped out and paced about while waiting for Wendy to come out. The kid seemed as adept at walking on four legs as if she had been doing it her whole life. Wendy frowned, not liking that her daughter moved around with such ease in a body that she had to business being in. 

"Keep close to your mother, Kristin. That way, if someone sees you at a distance, they might think you're a dog or cat," Miss Newman instructed as she fumbled with the door handle with her hooves. "Can someone help me with this?"

"Can't you use your horn?" Wendy asked as she got out of the car. 

Charles opened the door for the pony, and Miss Newman climbed out with much muttering. "It's on the fritz for the time being. A bad side effect of what I did to our pursuer."

"What exactly did you do?" Charles asked.  

"I honestly didn't expect it to hit me so hard, but I've only used it once before to judge the baseline, and that was on a much more powerful foe. It involves sabotaging their magic by inserting runes into the gaps of their sloppily put together active or passive spell matrices in a way that violently brings down the whole matrix by making it both non-viable and highly volatile. It hits with a wave of feedback through the thaumic convergence causing the same thing to happen within my thaumic core when it all collapses. Guess it doesn't matter how powerful or weak the target is; it's still going to leave me flat on my ass, completely magically exhausted— good to know. That makes this a learning experience."

"Huh?" Charles asked dumbly. 

"To explain it in terms you might understand, that pony was a poorly insulated electric outlet, and I jammed a wet metal fork in her and held on. Does that make more sense?" Miss Newman asked in a cross voice.

"That's all kinds of stupid," Charles said dryly. 

"Whatever works," Miss Newman groaned as she stretched outside the car. "Can you grab my saddlebag? I should keep my anchor crystal close. I would also like to do some reading from my Bible tonight."

Charles unlocked the door to the motel room. Despite being instructed to keep close to Wendy, Kristin immediately bolted for the door, right past her father's feet, and into the room.

"Eww! It smells bad in here!" Kristin shouted from within. 

Andrea and Charlotte quickly ran to get in the room as if there was some desperate need to confirm that the motel room smelled terrible. Charles stepped aside to let them through, and when he did, Miss Newman took the opportunity to hurry into the room.

"Sure, leave the crippled woman to bring in the luggage," Wendy complained as she slammed her car door shut. 

Charles walked over to her and rubbed her back. "I'll grab the clothes for Kristin and Miss Newman, along with Miss Newman's bag. You head inside, deal with the girls, and try to figure out if the beds are sanitary enough to sleep on."

"I'm getting that necklace off Kristin first and finding out what else it did to her. You heard Miss Newman, there's going to be side effects or something," Wendy asserted worriedly. She leaned into him. "Why'd she do something so reckless and stupid as put on that necklace? What are we going to do?"

Charles pulled her into a gentle hug. "For the first answer, she's a kid. Kids do stupid things without thinking. As for the second answer, I don't know, but we'll figure it out. Maybe it won't be too bad. Miss Newman didn't seem to be panicking or anything."

"That could just mean she's a psychopath," Wendy muttered. "Why is she even here? I know to try to help us, supposedly, but why her?"

"She said it was her spell that got those other ponies here," Charles reminded.

Wendy threw up her good hand in exasperation. "And who has something like that laying around?! It has to be illegal. And she knows spells meant specifically for crippling other ponies? Why?"

"Time travel isn't technically illegal, but I'm sure they'll make a law about it as soon as they find out I know how. It wouldn't be the first time they made a law in response to my actions."

They turned and saw Miss Newman, still in pony form, standing in the motel room doorway. 

"Something you should know about ponies, we have exceptional hearing," Miss Newman said gravely. "I heard the whole thing, and I'm not even upset about your suspicions. However, I'm not the one you need to be concerned about. There's a little filly crying in the bathroom because she overheard you saying some things about her. I think you need to attend to her. Oh, and once you have her calmed down, you can take the necklace off her. Wait until then. Believe me; you don't want her bucking you."

The unicorn then calmly walked back into the darkness of the room.