//------------------------------// // Chapter 13: Unintended Consequences // Story: The Enforcer and Her Blackmailers // 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, I could tell they had a low opinion, despite the glaringly good quality of the flower-embroidered denim saddle bags 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. Maybe I had met him, or he had rousted me once last spring. "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 much of 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 obviously 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 been horrible. I still had nightmares of the Hooflyn gang war, or the first time a crime boss' lieutenant forced himself on 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? Despite the heavy tomes I carried in my saddle bags, 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 and one bits of silver. That I'd spent one on butter pastry, princess oats, and Trottingham sipping chocolate this dawn, reminiscing absurdly of home, left my stomach souring. What would the stallion do with such a windfall? My first thought was he'd surely spend it on hard cider or buying product. And for a moment I loathed myself. Surely, I'd eaten my supper beside a trash can fire or spent the night in a charity shelter beside plenty who professed they'd do just that. Yet, 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 questionable scruples 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 so I could barely hear 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. It was empty. As I approached the dead-end link fence, I smelled pine solution and could see where 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 plastic from his broken-apart lean-to floated in puddles of water tainted with excrement. Well, of course the undercover copper had rousted him. I had said I had "slept" with him and had called him "Uncle." That his "niece" looked underage (by design and by virtue of being true), and that he refused to say he knew anything about me—because of my threats—likely got him arrested. I chose an appropriate curse of something I was unequipped as a mare to do to myself. The oath echoed in the isolated alley like a epithet. I turned away. I walked with my ears down to school. I didn't cry; hadn't since losing Sunburst. I had no idea why my eyes burned. From comments I heard whispered, I 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.