The Enforcer and Her Blackmailers

by scifipony

Chapter 22: House Rules

Sunset Shimmer found me in the administration office, getting a photo identification card for advanced placement at the university. I turned when I heard someone humming a tune and saw her walk by the office door. She saw me, too, for she popped her head in. Her unaccountably cheerful person soon trotted inside. I looked away, but knew the yellow pony with fiery hair stood behind me. The councilor noticed Princess Celestia's protégé and stood straighter and carefully explained which professor I needed to find tomorrow in which building on the campus, as if she were being tested.

As I walked out, putting my card in my saddlebags, Sunset Shimmer said, "You're supposed to smile when they take a photo."

"I've had little to smile about recently."

"Acing the exam Celestia gives her prospective protégés?"

Exaggerate much, do we? "I pretty much failed the history part."

"Piffle. A good tutor will fix that."

Not her, of course.

"I heard what you did. Not anywhere of the caliber of magical conjuring I did—"

"—or the runt—"

"—but your performance was commanding," she emphasized. As we clopped down the stairs to the main exit, she added, "And the runt's performance was purely pathetic. I watched from an observation balcony. She had no control! It was lucky she didn't explode! Almost killed me. She's lucky Celestia prevented anyone from prosecuting her for the damage she caused. The exchequer covered all of the repair costs both public and private."

"Don't sound so happy that she might have exploded!" I chuckled.

"Yeah, I wouldn't want that even for the runt. But— But my performance is now improving with the tutoring you gave me. Soon Celestia will notice."

I stopped just as we reached the door exiting into the quad. Other students grumbled, having to walk around us to go through the doorway. Nopony, except perhaps me, was stupid enough to say anything to Sunset Shimmer. "You don't seem like the type who would wait to be noticed."

"Celestia has been working with the runt a lot recently."

"Well, go to the princess. Show her your tricks. Ask for help."

"I dunno. There's assignments and…"

I rolled my eyes and trotted out. It took until I stopped at the boulevard that a contrite Sunset Shimmer caught up. I liked my little flat with its simple bed and two windows, but, manifestly, I could not go home.

Sunset Shimmer asked, "Okay; what's wrong?" She looked at the restaurant that I did, with its gaudy red and yellow plastic decor.

Across the street down the block was the Hey Burger!; my stomach growled. I would be earning no more money, and I had no place to live. In a short time, perhaps longer if I were frugal, I would be grazing in the parks. I might get away with sleeping in the university library stacks, but eventually it would be in an alley, under an overhang, trying not to be soaked by an evening rain. I said, "Remember that roommate situation you were telling me about for one gold and ten silver? I need it."

The mare walked around me, stepping in the gutter so her green eyes could look inquiringly into mine. She stepped aside, checking my flank to assure herself it was still blank, then probably would have checked my temperature had she a thermometer available. "Nonsense," she said. "And the Hey Burger! it is, my treat."

"You don't have to do that."

"I do."

She said nothing, even as we sat at a plastic yellow table with red plastic bench seats. The waitress wore a green outfit with a funny field-hat that looked like two pieces of green cloth standing up with green lace connecting the two sides. It covered her mane. After she took our order and trotted away, I said, "It's not nonsense. I— I lost my apartment."

"And your job. It's written all over your face. You don't want to return to the Lower, either. Can you afford a place in Canterlot? No."

I felt my appetite waning. Which was ridiculous. I needed to eat up so I wouldn't go hungry later. "You're not helping."

"What?" she said in mock outrage. The miracles of fast food and unicorns able to heat meals with force spells meant that the waitress trotted back with two steaming sesame seed bun sandwiches, a hay stack of fried alfalfa, and an orange soda for me and a small cider glass for her with brown-amber liquid and a foamy head that creeped over and slid down the side. She saw my eyes and said, "Non-alcoholic."

I blinked. I was going to ask what was wrong with her when she said, "I am helping. I said 'nonsense' because that's what you finding a place to live is. Don't be a silly filly. You can stay with me."

Reflexively, I said, "No."

"Really? How much money do you have left? Do you really want to work at Hey Burger! grilling or serving burgers while trying to keep up AP and university coursework, especially with the princess likely to look in on you at any point? The gigs or whatever you did before certainly pay better than what you're going to get cooking, cleaning, or selling dresses. And don't give me horse apples about living on the street again. We are both way beyond those horse apples. Eat."

I did. The sandwich dripped with cheese and ketchup. The alfalfa and oatmeal had been mixed into a perfectly spiced ground patty and smothered with warmed-up mustard, pickle-relish, basil, and grilled onions. It was grass-eater heaven. For a few minutes I didn't think about her offer until she said, "And I won't charge rent. But there is only one bed, you know."

"Ugh!" I put the sandwich down and shook my head.

However, Sunset Shimmer was if nothing else persistent in getting what she wanted. Eventually, I agreed—certain it would not end well.

That night, she gave the functional tour of her ivory tower. Everything from the glassware in the basement laboratory to the reflector telescope in the attic observatory. She spoke in full teaching assistant mode, assigning me desk space, shelf space, closet space, garden space (the pots on the third level), laboratory table and fume hood space, pantry space, and kitchen space—not that it looked like the pristine salt and pepper, brass accented space had ever been used. "The Oat Bran O's are mine!" She showed me how to use the plumbing and the heating, and how to refresh the lantern system that in full use mode could make most every surface of the blue and gold accented marble residence glow softly.

At least she let me choose my side of the enormous bed. That would be the right.

Frankly, for a sixteen year-old who had fought in the Hooflyn gang wars and seen too much of the violent underbelly of Equestria, I was unaccountably petrified of going to sleep that night. I could protect myself, I had no doubt. But this being vulnerable thing, that just didn't work for me.

I had no idea what Sunset Shimmer had in mind, or why she didn't just order in another bed, but it was her house and it was her rules.

I was the beggar.

After a fabulous shower, I took my side and snugged in under satin sheets far finer than any I'd had as a foal. She did the same, but left on a lamp to read. I didn't think I would sleep a minute, unsure what she would do, and my heart racing anytime she moved or readjusted her position. But the sheets were airy and the mattress cushy. The slight breeze from the open balcony blew clean air over my nose, some times tickling, and brought no real sound as it faced the precipice.

Perhaps it was the five league trot up from Zecora's, or the two climbing the switchback Ponyville Way Incline to the city itself, or the day arranging school matters unsure of my situation. I did sleep, and soundly.

And woke with dawn rays filtering through lace draperies with a cool breeze that brought the sounds of twittering birds. My bed mate had not molested me. Perhaps she had heard me when I said I preferred stallions. That, however, did not prevent her from snugging up to me in her sleep.

I grew aware of warmth against my back. I commended myself for not flinging myself from the bed like a crazy pony, but instead I lifted my head and looked back. She lay there, sheets kicked off by one of us, her golden velvet back against my lavender pink making us a pair of Cs. Her usually poofy hair matted against her face and spread out in night-sweat glued-together curly ropes of yellow and red across her pillow. She snored almost imperceptibly and somewhat daintily for such a large mare.

As I shimmied a bit to break contact, she began to shiver. Even after I gently levitated the sheets over us, it continued. She twitched. After a few minutes, I heard the faintest moan.

I lay my head on the pillow and felt bad. I shimmied back, made contact. In a minute she quieted and fell more deeply asleep.

And so it proved: over the next nights, despite being bombastic and imperious during the day, though decorous around me, she made no advances. But every time I awoke, whether I had staked out the middle ground or had drifted so my hooves hung over the edge, there I'd find Sunset Shimmer, her rear and and withers snugged to mine. I wouldn't call it snuggling, and it manifestly was not. But it seemed like—felt like—wanting to be leaned against, to find contact, to not be so terribly alone.

In this, I became aware, we were alike.

The both of us were abandoned. Her by a heartless mother when old enough to be weaned but young enough to have known no adults, an orphanage, nor foster parents. Never cared for. Never held. Me, I didn't remember my parents, though I certainly had to have been held.

I'd been the accidental git of a pair of ponies that by themselves were talented business sorts, but who'd together become cheerful bumbling foals. They'd married after my arrival and during the subsequent journey evolved into a team that would become "Heroes of Equestria" before I was four. That left me old enough to know I had parents, to have photographs of myself with them, to remember grieving them—but way too young to remember their voices or their love. A butler raised me—no father figure, just a proper stallion—along with a governess he hired who provided lessons but shied away from love. He'd told me once that servants must always provide impeccable service, and with a butler named Proper Step you can guess it was perfect to the point of being mechanical and cold, but I understood deeply that a foal needed more. Much more. It drove me deeply into my books. And with my friendship with Sunburst, somepony temporarily filled the void.

But Sunburst had abandoned me, too.

Sunset Shimmer and I had the same issues; we felt isolated. Contact could fix that, and I grew certain that she would ask no more than I could give. But on the fifth day, I rolled over. In the dawn, I extended my left legs gently over her and bent my right ones under me such that they wouldn't get in the way. Oddly enough, it played into my need to protect and the new warmth against my stomach lulled me rapidly to sleep.

Neither of us complained. We each slept well.

I wondered if this was what being a sister meant, caring for one another, being just a little bit more without having to ask. My parents had been killed before they could give me a little sister, which might have prevented me from changing my life as radically as I had.

A sister I could deal with, for now, anyway.

She wasn't a friend, though. I knew the signs well enough that if I went there, disaster would strike. For now, like this, life became pleasant.

She had a cutie mark, though. Disaster was likely, if not inevitable.

Author's Note:

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Next:
Chapter 23: Likely, Meet Inevitable
While the situation with Sunset Shimmer deteriorates, Streak delivers an ultimatum.