I got fifteen days. I guess I should have been thankful for what I got, but I resented the shortness of the span to Tartarus and back. It was odd that thanks to a certain fiery-maned pony, I actually had a sense of how close Tartarus really was.
Fifteen days to do a half-dozen tests. Time to learn enough to think a cutie mark had no physical connection whatsoever to its host. Was it a strong electro-magneto-magical force that kept it in place and conforming to the skin?
Fifteen days to attend senior classes—and inadvertently make my new classmates feel like dunces—and one at the university: library science. Mid-session transfers were difficult, but I got Miss Verdigris as a professor and quickly earned supervised direct access to the rare books collection, and unearned unsanctioned unsupervised access to a card catalog that included the Star Swirl the Bearded Time Wing with tantalizing short descriptions of scrolls and objects. Fifteen days and I knew where every book, scroll, and grimoire I wanted to read resided anywhere in Canterlot, or where and with whom it had landed on branch loan.
Not enough time to research a whole new obscure force of nature, however.
Could it be an attractive force consistent with an attractive spell opposite in polarity to that of the anti-gravitational force generated by Levitate? What if it were a spell in stasis? Could I cancel it like an intrinsic self-reciprocating spell like one cast into an object? I had my eye on Charms and Artifacts 101 for next semester.
Of course, I had to learn how to cancel spells by translating yellow-horse-speak into standard mathematical nomenclature—another thing for which fifteen days proved insufficient.
It was also fifteen days believing that I might yet live a full life doing something that mattered, and that I could finally get about the business of enjoying what I did and maybe help ponykind.
What chance had I had of being left alone? Little more than the chance of an ice cube in warrior-Sunburst's presumed desert home. Analyzed objectively, Cutie marks were the ultimate source of the all evil in my life.
I did my best to stay on the castle grounds, the school grounds, or the university campus. I stayed out of Canterlot as much as possible unless accompanied—actually cajoled—by Sunset Shimmer for meals or supplies. I didn't want to admit what I knew viscerally.
I did have to walk to school.
The dread disruption came on wings of blue. On the sidewalk of Castle Walk Boulevard, within sight of the school, I walked with my magical mechanics textbook levitated hoof lengths from my nose. I saw a blue fast moving form and heard the sound of wings braking and flapping, then the clatter of four hooves. I reflexively swatted with the open book, but Streak danced and fluttered back. She had kitted up in full punk mode, including gold chains, lip piercing, and a mane of sharp looking spikes glued into a crest. No pandering to Starlight Glimmer's precious aristo sensibilities this time.
"Whoa, Nelly. No shooting the messenger, Grimsy." She kept backpedaling because I didn't stop, even as I magicked the book into a saddlebag. As it became apparent I would continue onto the front quad lawn, she frantically took off and fluttered like an angry crow protecting a meal. "Stop. Please!"
By now, every pair of eyes, except for a couple of young fillies kicking a ball around, had turned to face us. Who was this pegasus attacking Sunset Shimmer's protégé?
"Get out of my way!" I yelled. I didn't care.
"I'll follow ya inside. See if I don't."
"Not in this lifetime you won't."
"What ya going to do, shoot me?" she asked loudly, playing to the audience, trying massive downstrokes of her wings, causing me to walk into a wind—as if that could dissuade me.
My aura lit on my horn as I prepared Stun. Truthfully, I didn't want to use it because I didn't want to hurt her. If I did, she'd crash and possibly break a wing. I'd be arrested for assault. She had put me in check, unable to fight.
She saw Grimoire, a crazy pony whom she thought she'd seen murder another by causing him to explode. Her voice squeaked with her effort to control its volume. "He's forcing me, honest. Please!"
"Fine."
I stopped. I saw movement: A silver-maned deep blue stallion with a blue Prench cap and a copper badge on his uniform trotted with a frown darkening his face.
"Quickly," I hissed.
As she reached into her black messenger bag, she said, "Boss said give you this." She had a blue paper, folded like origami into a book. A Grimoire.
As I tried to pluck it with my magic, it stuck in the frog of her hoof, pinched tightly.
I heard a police whistle.
"Look right," Streak said.
Reflexively, I complied, gazing toward downtown Canterlot and the mass of morning hoof-traffic passing the bank and cafe. When the note released into my magic, she said, "Boss don't trust me neither."
What had happened? A photograph? I remembered she owned a compact camera.
I stuffed the note in my saddlebags as the constable came galloping up, yelling, "Halt!" Streak ignored him and shot away. His Levitation proved too weak to stop her.
The middle-aged constable, huffing and puffing, asked, "What did she give you?"
I was way ahead of him, a veteran of the gangs of the eastern cities. I had already grabbed a random sheet and before he finished his sentence; I hit it with a force spell, burning it to a cinder. A puff of white smoke wafted away as I said, "Don't know; don't care," and walked away.
"Wait! Miss..?"
He wanted my name; no free pass. Best change tactics. "Starlight Glimmer," I said. I turned and looked into his amber eyes.
He stepped back. "Why did you destroy—?"
I let myself visibly deflate and my brow furrow, shaking my pigtails. "Because she was an obvious ruffian, trying to sell something," I said, my voice turning into a wail. But I dropped it to a whisper to say, "Probably weed." Then again loud, distraught, I wailed, "In front of all my friends!"
"I'm very sorry about that—"
"As you should be."
"Yes, um—"
"What? I'm late for class!"
He took out a pocket notebook. As I stood, tapping a hoof, he touched a levitated yellow pencil to his tongue, thenbegan scrawling. "Miss Starlight Glimmer, you see, there's a bulletin out about a pegasus that fits that description. She's wanted for questioning. Did you see anything on that paper she gave you?"
The blue origami grimoire? "Other than it was purple, no. Not really."
"I see. Well, if she accosts you again—"
"I'll be sure to tell her to visit the constabulary office and ask for—?"
He sighed deeply, closing the notebook with a soft clap and returning it and the pencil to a pocket. "Officer Lapis Lazuli. Thank you for your time, Starlight Glimmer."
He made sure I knew he knew my name, and wasn't happy. Had to hope I'd only left a sour taste in his mouth. "Don't mention it," I said, then as he strode away, I said under my breath, "Really, don't mention it."
I didn't want to be a sensation, but there I was, a sensation. Ponies I didn't know asking questions and gossiping. Turns out I'd burnt up my homework and had to deal with a pouty senior-year analytical thaumaturgy teacher who thought she had been getting a new teacher's pet.
I didn't get to look at the note until I used the lavatory between classes. In a dark pink-painted stall, finally no longer under scrutiny, I unwrapped it half expecting to find weed or another restricted substance. I found two words cut and pasted from magazines.
SuNSet SHiMMeR