//------------------------------// // Chapter 13: Unintended Consequences // Story: The Enforcer and Her Blackmailers (Enhanced & Augmented) // by scifipony //------------------------------// Careful not to push my newly healed leg, I walked slowly to the end of the alley. I smiled at the undercover copper. He smiled at me, so I turned away from him and on to Elm. He said, "You, filly. Wait." I stopped and looked back. The ponies around him looked at me. Having seen where I'd come from, they'd (of course!) formed a low opinion of me, despite the glaringly fine quality of the flower-embroidered denim saddlebags I wore when attending Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. The stallion asked, "Did you see anypony suspicious around here?" "I was sleeping with my uncle. I'm going to hustle something to eat, or go and graze, if that's okay with you." Grazing was eating some pony's lawn for free. His cheek twitched. His nose, too, because I was downwind and smelled of recent sweat. Maybe I had met him, or one of his friends had rousted me once last spring. He said, "You be careful." Translated: Don't steal anything because I'm watching. "I will, sir," I said, turning away. "Thank you, sir." It was a very long walk to my flat, but I spent it with a silly grin on my face. It might not be my special talent, but self-healing magic was very cool. To put a cherry on top of the ice cream dessert, when I entered my apartment I found a silk purse filled with silver bits tied with a blue thank you note thrown through my open window. In a whisper I said, "Thank you, Running Mead. I guess my sleepwalking didn't botch the job after all." I pulled a bucket of water from the tap, put it by my hay stack, then collapsed in my bed and didn't wake until the next morning. Walking to school, aching from every bruise and the greenstick fracture to my leg, I found myself walking up Elm. A glance showed nopony watching me and I kept my ears purposely perked so as not to look worried. I did know why my subconscious sent me here. A mare might have to do what a mare had to do, but I knew how I would have felt if somepony had done to me what I had done to the homeless stallion. Angry. Humiliated. I would probably have blasted my oppressor, true, and I grinned at that, but the having happened would still have felt horrible. I still had nightmares of not being in control during the Hooflyn gang war and of the first time a crime boss' lieutenant implied he needed to ride me before he promoted me. Sure, living on the street or living on the edge opened oneself to being victimized, but it didn't make it right, nor make it right that I felt I had to victimize a nameless faceless pony, give him nightmares, and destroy whatever small illusion of safety and control he clung to. What had happened to my dream of helping ponies? My dream of finding a way to make ponies safe from the oppression of their cutie marks? So much for my principle of consent, for that matter. Despite the heavy tomes I carried in my saddlebags, only the silver bits I carried along with them weighed me down. Running Mead's unexpected generosity constituted my rent, grocery money, and a book I had my eye on. To Tartarus with it! I could graze, had grazed numerous times, and I had slept huddled up against a wall in an icy rain. Likely, Running Mead would have another job before the week was through; under the circumstances, it felt necessary that I should eat my pride—with which my larder was full—and ask for work. The purse contained twenty bits of silver. That I'd spent one on butter pastry, princess oats, and Trottingham sipping chocolate this dawn—reminiscing absurdly of home—soured my stomach. What would the stallion do with such a windfall? My first thought was he'd surely spend it on hard cider or buying product. For a moment I loathed myself. Yet, I'd eaten my supper beside a trash can fire or spent the night in a charity shelter beside plenty who self-knowinglyprofessed they'd do just that. There were those who had spent their last bit and lost their job, and sometimes their family, and had had no choice but the hard-scrabble street. Few cared so little for their high station in life that they left to choose the street, as I had, looking for meager opportunity because of overwhelming pride. Few had my salable skills and the fungible ethics necessary to make a life like mine work. It didn't matter his situation, or if he would drink himself into a coma and die. I knew absolutely I would not feel better giving him the bits—but I'd feel worse if I didn't. Before I reached the entrance to the alley, I slowed to listen to the clatter of my hooves on the sidewalk. Salary ponies and workers rushed by, on hoof, by taxi, and via a noisy bus. When a lull in the traffic presented itself, I slipped into the alley. Empty. As I approached the link fence at the dead-end, I smelled pine solution. Brushes had scoured away the grime of a long habitation leaving the bricks a brighter red than the rest of the alley. Bits of faded green shredded canvasfrom his broken-apart lean-to floated in puddles of water tainted with excrement. Well, of course the agent had made the constabulary roust him. I had copped an attitude, implying I'd let him ride me by saying had I'd "slept" with him and by calling him "Uncle." Smelling of sweat, they might have thought we'd just finished. That his "niece" looked underage—by the design of my disguise, and that he refused to say anything about me because of my hard not-to-take-seriously threats—likely got him arrested. I chose an appropriate curse of something I was ill-equipped as a mare to do to myself, and would be nasty if I could. The oath echoed in the isolated alley like an epithet. I turned away. I walked with my ears down to school. I didn't cry; hadn't—not that I'll admit anyway—since losing Sunburst. I had no idea why my eyes burned. From comments my classmates whispered behind hooves, and a note I intercepted, I must have looked even more horrible than I felt all through the school day. I asked no questions and offered up the wrong spell when a teacher asked. Unfortunately, somepony noticed. Perhaps it was the way I dragged my hoof as I walked?