//------------------------------// // Chapter 24: Breakthrough Consequences // Story: The Enforcer and Her Blackmailers // by scifipony //------------------------------// Sunset Shimmer returned home late, both high and drunk. For a while, I thought she was having trouble breathing and that I might need to take her to a hospital. Or to visit her father. I should have taken her to her father, but if I've learned one thing in my life it is that thinking about what you would do if you were in a crisis and acting during a crisis were two completely different things. Later, I'd think about it and realize that I hadn't wanted the doctor to learn I'd introduced his adopted daughter to nettle-ewe—and that I hadn't wanted to piss off Sunset Shimmer into throwing me onto the street. I might act as if I were willing to ditch everything and start anew elsewhere, but, in the crucible, I didn't feel so glib or willing. I endured an hour of her standing in the kitchen, her eating the contents of a box of cereal, then starting another, all the time talking about the intricacies of this or that spell whilst I did everything I could to keep her from casting the spell while drunk, including Levitation by pouring out her cereal for her lest oat bran O's go flying like drunken birds pinging or plunking into every window, cabinet, or plant. Her issue: something the princess had said (surprise!), something about the runt being in need of her attention and Sunset somehow not. Could this be interpreted as a compliment, Sunset? Absolutely not, Starlight! I saw another cutie mark driving its owner insane. Ponies would be better off without them. Getting her to bed proved another ordeal all together. She'd suddenly hop up from the mattress and prance toward the balcony—off which I worried she might try to fly. I locked the glass doors. I tried massaging her, beginning to wonder when I'd become both her nurse maid and enabler. Even that didn't work at first. I kept increasing the pressure I applied until I worried I might actually be hurting her; she seemed totally anesthetized. Eventually, my efforts quieted her to a low mumble, peppered with a few flailing of hooves and sputtering remonstrations. I'd grown quite adept at making her muscles contract and flex, hurrying out waste fluids and toxins causing her fatigue and pain; it appeared to feel good. I no longer feared I might lose myself, at least in this territory. It did take up enough of my attention that I understood I'd get no further studying done until Sunset Shimmer fell asleep. To make that happen, I spread my ministrations from her neck down her back, and finally down her legs and flank. Her flank proved interesting... While healing Rye Bald's brain and skull, I had known I'd dealt with something substantially more complex and active than simple muscle. I still couldn't remember the entire experience, but I remembered enough that I realized that, as I probed Sunset Shimmer's half-red half-yellow sun cutie mark, I examined something more complex than skin and fur coloration. Moreover, I had encountered something odder than anything in a unicorn's body except perhaps her horn. A unicorn horn is a physical manifestation of the body that allows the direct manipulation of magic, like the wings of a pegasus allows specific manipulation of flight magic. These magic organs were flesh, blood, and bone. The cutie mark, on the other hand, appeared totally different, though like my horn, it communicated information back to the brain by radiating magical energy that the nerves picked up as a signal. Though this thing on her flank seemed akin magically to a pegasus' wing, as I probed it I discovered only muscle. I could ask it questions; I got vague impressions of lifting celestial bodies and wings of fire, and great skill at magical symbology. But it had little substance, though her body fed the area with increased blood flow. I sensed a magical aura and began to think that it wasn't tissue at all, but magic somehow localized into an aural projection of an organ. It seemed like a magical symbiont, though to my way of thinking, that meant little more than a parasite since it changed a pony to suit its purpose. I thought about it a while, then got the muscles and skin in the area to shift in coordination but in opposition. In effect, I tugged the cutie mark aside and it shifted about an inch downward. If my magic were water in a pool, I'd say I'd found something gelatinous and had found a way by paddling to move it by water pressure. Sunset Shimmer grew very quiet and froze. After a minute I worried it was because of what I'd done. My heart thumping in my chest, I let go of my magic. The mark snapped back into place. Sunset turned her green eyes toward me. They seemed unfocused, wet as if she'd been in tears. Slurring a bit, she said, "That hurt, but for a moment I stopped thinking about the runt and Celestia snubbing me and nothing mattered any more." She laid her chin on her legs and sighed. "What a relief. Could you do that again?" I whispered, "Not tonight." "Oh, too bad." She closed her eyes, rolled on her side, and fell instantly asleep. I felt like I had gotten caught with my muzzle in the cookie jar. I'd made a epic discovery, but had experimented on another pony. The optics of that act looked bad; totally unethical. Yet... Yet... Yet, I'd had an epiphany. I jumped off the bed and examined Sunset Shimmer as best I could. Her chest raised and fell rhythmically, and when I prodded her around, she shimmied herself under the sheets I held up for her. For the first time since the day Sunburst had gotten his cutie mark, I wished I had one, too. I'd have been able to examine myself. The implications of my discovery—if for no other reason than it snapped Sunset Shimmer's mania and allowed her a moment of solace—caused my brain to overheat. What would Understanding Pony Behavior have called it? Cutie Mark regression therapy? Could this be it, the something that I could actually help ponykind with? I looked at my flank. Still blank. Shoot! On reflection, I felt kind of relieved. # The next day, at breakfast, we had the discussion I dreaded all night. Sober (apparently), surprisingly with no hangover, she brought up the sticky subject of me massaging her to get her to sleep. I felt uncomfortable when she shivered with unmasked pleasure as she told that me that she had "adored the sensation" but had decided not to acknowledge it because it would have made us both uncomfortable. "So, I'm acknowledging it. Thank you," she said. She continued as I stirred my bowl of oaty O's, looking down at the granite kitchen island. "But that mental chiropractic manipulation you did last night, that we need to discuss." She listened as I described my discovery and my theory that, "...it isn't so much a part of a pony's body as a magical manifestation generated by the nervous system. All ponies have magic. I've directly sensed it at work in a pegasus—even zebras have it; it's not a stretch that earth ponies have it too—" "Wait, zebras?" "I've met one." "This new magic Father taught you lets you see this?" I wasn't going to correct her about how I learned the magic and powered on. "That and seeing auras and the numbers in them, which, with more practice, you will see, too." "I'm going to have to learn all this. But how does this magic generate a cutie mark?" "Generate? That might be a philosophical question. What I theorize is that pony magic, let's say, crystallizes the moment of realization, for lack of a better term, allowing the apparition to act as a reinforcement for the putative skill or talent, while creating a dominance marker in the social hierarchy. It takes a pony from being a generalist and promotes—no, enforces—the stratification of the herd." "Sounds like you're taking those psych books too seriously." I felt my face flush and let my anger leak out. "If you had been where I've been, seen the ugliness I've seen, spent time observing from on high and from the gutter, been beat up and used by the marked ones, you might have a better appreciation of what I'm implying." She smiled at me and my outburst, crunching thoughtfully on a spoonful of cereal. "I dominated the street; I was the user, trust me on that. But I've experienced oppression, too. I'd dearly like to understand why a simple sun holds power, and why a cutie mark of seven stars seems better destined for greatness than a setting sun." She saw my theory from an opposite perspective. But as I opened my mouth to clarify, she raised a hoof to stop me and said, "I'm supportive of you studying this new magic, but you do know that what you did last night was..." The implication hit me as she looked for a word. My heart raced and my stomach soured. She had been drunk, high, and virtually anesthetized; had I been a stallion and not a mare— I quickly inserted the word, "Wrong," before she inserted the word every mare dreaded. She chuckled, the sound coming out her nose. "Let's say, 'inappropriate.' 'Unethical' is floating in my mind, too..." My whole body cooled. Another blackmailer. "So… In an effort to be supportive of research I too am interested in, let me tell you how it's going to be: No experimenting on other ponies, only on me, getting my permission first and under my supervision. Do this and we'll just forget how we got to this point." I nodded. "You'll start writing down everything you learn, your Barthemule derivative equations, any spell mnemonics you create, your theories, your experiments, your observations, with drawings and all the data you collect. I'll provide any tools you require. I'll find an undergrad faculty advisor who will listen to me and won't interfere with your work when the need arises to legitimize the research. We'll review the research together and you'll help me with the maths and magicks. When we have the science sewn up, we'll submit it to Celestia with my name as lead researcher. Got it?" "I get to do physical research on your cutie mark?" "Within limits." "You get me what I need and help write it all up?" "Sure, but you must make me an expert in the new magic." "I'll teach. The learning's up to you." "Yeah," she said, quieter. Perhaps she thought of her troubles learning to visualize numbers and master quick draw. That turned into a smile and she trotted around the island and held up a hoof. "Deal?" I felt the emotion growing in me like an increasingly strong wind against a stand of strong trees, trying to blow them over. What was this expanding feeling? "Deal," I said, doing the hoof bump, then hugging her with tears in my eyes. She was giving me everything I wanted to fulfill my purpose in life. I could give a copper bit about credit or her motives; I'd have my new magic and a true understanding of the abomination of cutie marks, and maybe a way to help all of ponykind through the darkness the magical aberrations caused. Sunset Shimmer didn't push me away; instead she hugged me back. Nevertheless, she looked at me strangely when we parted. She asked, "Maybe I should hit you about the head and shoulders? Does that type of treatment make you happy, too?" "Nope," I said, and lifted Sunset Shimmer and our bowls of cereal in my magic. Her legs scrambled for purchase reflexively in the air. She had been correct when she had said levitating monsters from Tartarus pretty much made them ineffectual. My cheekiness stunned Sunset Shimmer such that I managed to carry her to the counter built across the dining room's picture window without further protest. It looked out across Canterlot Castle, with its fairy towers and soft curving ramparts illuminated in the dawn-light, blazing orange and throwing dense shadows. I set down our bowls and spoons, levitating napkins and a bud vase with a single daisy to complete the place setting. I knew what she wanted. "Enjoy your breakfast and the view, my future queen." She wanted power. As she laughed, I thought how I'd been Carne Asada's bodyguard in Hooflyn—until she committed the sin of stupidity and made it impossible to protect her life. I was happy being a lieutenant so long as I got what I wanted. If nothing else, it provided cover.