The Enforcer and Her Blackmailers

by scifipony

Chapter 2: Much in Common

Sunset fast marched me up the staircases out of the caves, ten flights of them, into the school cafeteria pantry and directly off campus. That meant we trotted through the quad as the late classes let out.

I sputtered, "The nurse's office—"

"Not stupid," she said as we walked into warm heavy air. Everypony stared at us, both of us obviously singed. Judging by the looks, and what I could see of my nose, my face was blackened. We splashed through puddles left by an afternoon rain. I could smell the lingering humidity. As we transitioned from lawn to cobblestone streets, she added, "Still trying to figure out if you are."

Without a by-your-leave, she turned sharply into the university bailey gate of Canterlot castle. I looked at the stiff royal guard in brass armor and helmet. Violet eyes followed me, but if he thought the savaged street tough before him was a danger, Sunset Shimmer's presence vouched for me. Letting Boss Running Mead's enforcer into Canterlot Castle was utter idiocy, but it would have been complete lunacy for me to explain it to my present company.

Hopefully, the boss wouldn't find out.

We trotted through various inner gates, past an endless white plastered stone wall with curlicue purple and gold trim, to enter the administration wing. We went up two flights with gilt banisters, through a wood door with a frosted window and hearts trim, and to an inner door.

The white unicorn at the reception desk, a nurse by the red plus on her hat, stood. "Mistress Shimmer, he's with a patient."

"Tough!" Sunset said.

I gave the nurse a shrug and a tentative smile. She had a potion bottle cutie mark. Her magenta eyes widened and she dove for the supply cabinet.

That bad?

Sunset burst into an examination room containing a brown upholstered examination table, a sideboard with all manner of shiny doctor tools, and a cupboard of bandages, unguents, and antiseptics. The window opened to the palace courtyard and the westering sun. On the table sat a purple unicorn foal with bandaged front knees and a taped ankle. A very gray old tan stallion with a head-mirror, a lab coat, and a sandy mane turned and stared through black-rimmed bottle-bottom glasses. Though his dark green eyes looked huge, they also narrowed as they regarded Sunset.

"I—" she began.

Dismissively, he looked from her to me. He nodded. With his nose, he indicated I should wait near the pale blue cupboard, underneath a state portrait of Equestria's princess in a gilt frame.

To his patient, he said, "Hoofball may not be your sport."

"No sport is," she said quietly as he levitated her to the white linoleum floor. I realized she was a runt and only looked especially young thanks to the razor cut of her dark-purple striped mane. Her cutie mark displayed seven stars, if you counted the one that was doubled as two, which hinted at great magic. Perhaps she wasn't that young.

"Run along, without tripping this time. And give my regards to the princess."

"I will!" the little unicorn said with a giggle and left.

Sunset said, "I—"

He stopped her with another look, then indicated me with his nose. "Did you do this?"

"No, I—"

"That's something."

The elderly doctor approached me, examining my horn in particular, before levitating me to the examination table. "Lay," he said, using his reflector to shine skylight from the window into my eyes as I folded down on my knees. His big eyes blinked through the glasses. "Sunset Shimmer didn't do this to you, right?" he asked as if she weren't there.

"She didn't."

"You were fighting?"

Sunset said, "It was a practicum. Her spell backfired."

The nurse came in, settling a number of vials of colored gels on the counter. The doctor now examined my face, and the scorch that ran across my right side.

"No, her spell didn't just backfire," the doctor said. "It's an intentional backfire. A force spell from the look of it. Since when has Celestia allowed you to teach force spells, Sunset Shimmer?"

"I—" Sunset stopped herself and peered at me, eyes narrowed, ears forward. In a whisper she grumbled, "I can't do force spells…"

"You can leave," he told her and flicked his tail dismissively. With a huff, she backed out the doorway. The door snicked closed behind her.

He levitated some cotton, wet with a reddish liquid, that he dabbed on the bridge of my muzzle and my horn. It stung. "I'm Flowing Waters, the princess' physician. Did Sunset Shimmer threaten you?"

"Nooo…"

"But you felt threatened?"

I took a deep breath and looked down. My dead parents had been the princess' secret operatives—"Heroes of Equestria," I'd been told—but I'd run away from a trust-fund life and had made myself worse than low class. The doctor dabbed and I gasped; I didn't know my horn could actually sting. "It was reflex, doctor. Not everypony grows up in a safe— uh, happy situation."

"I see." He used more cotton and scrubbed the wounds, some of which left me shaking despite my determination to endure. They hadn't hurt that much before, but maybe that was the adrenaline. "Well, causing a spell to backfire, particularly a force spell, is a good way to burn the root of your horn. If you're lucky, you'll only destroy any possibility of ever doing magic. Tell Sunset to teach you the proper way to cancel a spell. I'm told she's way too good at that."

"I will."

"Good. As it is, I'm going to have to do some work before you'll be able to use your magic."

It was almost as if he had pointed down and made me notice my right leg ended in a stump. I tried to think of the equation to lift the red antiseptic bottle, but I couldn't remember the magical algebra; the closest I came to making fiery numbers appear in my imagination was an aurora-like mist. I realized with a fright that I couldn't even see his magical aura as he cleaned me up. Even earth ponies could see auras. My heart raced.

The doctor said, "Don't worry; whatever you feel, remain calm." My twin ponytails tied themselves together as if alive, with no visible aura. "I can fix this."

Over the next hour, he did just that. At first the magical pulse, that ethereal wind that distorted an alicorn's mane and powered unicorns, might have been a myth for what I could sense of it. As he worked, I soon saw flashes of light until my vision distorted into psychedelic swirls; slowly, the pain on my face eased to be replaced with a tingling drawing sensation, as if my flesh and bones were being attracted like filings to a magnet. I began to sense numbers, flashes of dots at first, then foggy neon digits. Soon I saw how he manipulated the magic pulse and knew my magic had returned. My eyes burned, causing me to blink rapidly. I refused to cry.

Eventually, his numeric patterns and matrix solutions flashed across my mind like a spring torrent going over a cliff to form a cataract. I sensed the magical-mathematical equivalent of mists and rainbows. Entranced, I relaxed into the fascination of a fractal world where everything, down to the smallest detail, was composed of glowing layers of flowing numbers. I quickly realized these described the nerve connections between my brain and my horn.

As I began to decipher the numbers themselves, I felt him reaching through muscle and tissue. With nary a sense of yuck, I detected how he eased me apart, separating injured tissue and encouraging the blood flow to carry away bits of damaged detritus. I was a broken toy in a carpenter's shop being disassembled, having splintered bits glued together, then enduring a sanding and a new coat of varnish, finally to be fit back together in its original shape. I did not doubt for a moment that he could remove anything from an arrowhead to a tumor without spilling a drop of blood.

Over and over, he cast the spell, solving the same equations with different targets as he moved from my head to the burns on my face and neck. His numbers were overwhelmingly beautiful. Shiny. And incredibly cool.

I memorized the equations I could assemble from the repeating numbers, even getting a faint sense of the spell itself. I felt sad when he finished. The nurse mopped his face of sweat. I had been so engrossed, I hadn't realized she assisted.

Was it possible? Might I get a cutie mark as a doctor? Even I might not mind that.

"Thank you," I whispered.

He smiled, shining an emeraline light into my eyes using a spell.

I glanced to see the stars and a faint orange glow had replaced the sun. He flashed my eyes a few more times, then, satisfied with what he found, he said, "Barthemule."

"A mule? What? Who?" I sputtered.

"Barthemule, a student of Star Swirl the Bearded—"

"Star, who?"

"You need to concentrate on your history books, young filly. Barthemule codified the calculus needed to solve for the equations in the spell I used. You read what I was doing; thankfully you were interested. Some ponies faint—some fight, yelling and screaming. I hate to restrain a pony. Your interest prevented you from feeling attacked."

It hadn't seemed like an attack. "You're a doctor, and I understand you have your bag of tricks." I shrugged. He shrugged. As he lifted me in his magic off the examination table, I asked the other thing I wondered about, "Speaking of tricks, how did you get Sunset Shimmer to be quiet? That's one I could totally use."

He compressed his lips, thinking, then pointed with his nose to ask the nurse to leave. He took a deep breath. For the first time, he looked down as he said, "You two share a lot in common, and I am hoping you'll teach her to become, well, less prickly. I— She was a foal I found living on the streets—"

I stiffened. I had a tiny third-floor walkup and technically no longer lived on the streets. But, if he figured out I was a runaway…

"—in the Cliff Strand district, living under tarps and in cardboard boxes. She refused to leave. It took Princess Celestia to tame her. If you could help my daughter—"

Another shock. My question proved I had hoof-in-mouth disease, but I had asked. Now I'd obligated myself.

"—well, I'm not going to charge you for the visit today in any case. What happened between you two is your business, but if she doesn't stop pushing everypony from students to the princess, it's not going to end well."

He looked up. We locked eyes, his magnified dark green eyes serious yet pleading. He took off his specks and wiped them with a cloth.

He knew I was a runaway.

"Why would the princess need to tame her?"

"She's incredibly talented, like that purple filly you saw before, and like you, I think."

I blushed and immediately trotted to the door, saying, "Yeah. Yeah, yeah, sure." It opened in my magic. It was as if I hadn't let my magic explode in my head at all.

"Stubborn, the lot of you."

I glanced in a mirror and found that, other than a faint dusting of black straight lines of naked pink skin where the fur had burnt away and a whitish discoloration over my eyes, I showed no evidence of having been in a fight or having backfired a spell. I was no worse for wear, as they said, but glancing ahead, I suspected Sunset Shimmer might be. Standing in the dim hall, I saw her in the waiting room staring at the floor fixedly, her fire gone, obvious worry playing unconsciously across her face like on a foal.

I had a premonition that my health might be the least of my problems.

Author's Note:

Next:
Chapter 3: Work Issues
Starlight's criminal employer, Running Mead, has a job for her and Starlight doesn't like it.

Comments

[Gabriella_Valente]

This is really good !!!!

[redmar]

This is already interesting while it has hardly begun yet.