Partial

by Halira

Chapter 37: Assessment

Jessica sat with her legs folded beneath her at the now much lower dining table, a glass of sweet tea in front of her…ginseng sweet tea, an odd flavor that seemed exclusive to Wabash Manor. Jordan and Amicus sat at the table with her, but they had mugs instead of glasses. Amicus had the same tea as her, but Jordan had milk. It was soy milk, which was a considerable risk. You never knew when Rebecca might pop up, and while it wasn’t skim, it was unknown how the pudgy pegasus might feel about soy.

Amicus took a sip of her tea and set the mug down. “It is nice having a table where I don't have to strain to look over. Now, I’d be more than happy to help you with your foster case. It will be a nice change of pace from the normal civil rights cases–not that I mind them, they’re very fulfilling but exhausting.”

“Does that mean this should be easy?” Jessica asked, hopeful.

“Oh, I don’t want to give the wrong impression. It is still a lot of work, but there’s a different dynamic,” Amicus answered. “These offices, they want the kids to end up being adopted. They aren’t out to try to stop you. They want to ensure the best situation for the kid, and that means certain standards have to be met. They aren’t going to compromise on his safety and well-being, so they need you to be able to meet those standards. The burden is on us to demonstrate that you can be a good parent who can provide a happy and safe home, free from want, with a parent capable of caring for his basic and emotional needs.”

“I can provide all that,” Jessica replied confidently.

“And now you just need to prove it,” Amicus said. “I’ll visit your apartment this week to see how it stacks up to what they require.”

Jessica frowned. “What kind of requirements for the apartment?”

Amicus finished another sip of her tea. “Well, it needs to be fully furnished, have a room set up for the kid, the proper number of ways of exiting if there is a fire, windows have to be a certain size and can be opened fully, clean, well-stocked with food, welcoming environment, a few other small details.”

“Sure…I have those things,” Jessica replied. “How much furniture?”

Amicus raised an eyebrow at her. “How about I come over Wednesday after you’ve gotten it set up better to look at what you’ve got? Then I can give you some guidance. I’ll be leaving town for a few days after that to visit my grandfoal, and you can take that time to make my suggested adjustments. Our goal is for me to get you in proper order so that when they come around and look, they see everything is great.”

“Thank you, Amicus. I appreciate it,” Jessica said, genuinely feeling grateful.

Amicus nodded. “I’ll help with the paperwork and drill you with what kinds of questions they will ask you. However, I have to tell you, this is not purely charity on my behalf. I do charge by the hour. We can count this as a free consultation today, but as we advance, I will need to be paid.”

“I suppose that’s fair,” Jessica agreed. “How much will you be charging?”

“I can give you a discounted rate. Let’s say…four-hundred thirty-five an hour,” Amicus replied.

Jessica started gagging on her tea. “That’s the discounted rate?!”

Amicus nodded. “The average going rate is over six hundred an hour. Don’t worry. I only charge for the hours I’m actually working. This should be a three-to-five-hour job if there are no complications. Even if it gets complicated, the most I could see it going to is ten. That’s my side of things; for you, this will take weeks, possibly months. You must be ready to set aside a lot of time for this.”

She supposed that the bill wasn’t too bad, especially if it was spread out over time. She’d been expecting Amicus to personally be putting a lot more hours into this when she heard that dollars-per-hour figure and that was what had scared her. The idea of paying out twenty or so hours of that a week for who knew how many weeks would have been impossible, not unless Wild Growth bailed her out, but one or two hours here and there at that rate she could easily manage.

She sighed. “Thank you. I can manage that. I also wanted to ask your advice on some beauty tips. I’m possibly pursuing my first-ever relationship, and I know nothing about all of that stuff. I tried asking Arachne, but she claims she doesn’t have a clue what to do with a human. Jordan isn’t exactly confident either, and most of my human friends are hard to get in touch with. Arachne suggested you.”

Amicus smiled. “My bratty grandniece actually paid attention to my stories. I don’t know if I should be overjoyed or worried that she bothered to learn about me. I can help you some. I was no salon stylist, but I had a decent amount of experience with makeup and hair when I was young, and I also remember the struggles I went through figuring out how to convert those things to being a pony. You have some pony features, so some of that figuring out could come in handy. Human hair doesn’t sit quite the same with ears like that.”

“Um, you aren’t going to charge her for the help, are you?” Jordan asked.

“No. This would be just something to do for a friend,” Amicus replied. She raised an eyebrow at Jordan. “We need to break you of that habit.”

Jordan blinked. “What habit?”

“You say um way too often. It makes you sound less confident,” Amicus answered. “You’re the lady of the house, the Mistress of Wabash Manor, and you’re both intelligent and talented–if you weren’t, my little sister wouldn’t have left Wabash to you. It would be best if you sounded confident in your role, or people will try to walk all over you and not take you seriously. How you speak reflects on how people perceive you.”

Jordan lowered her ears. “Oh, well, alright then. I’ll try to do better.”

“No pouting,” Amicus chided. She then finished her tea and looked back at Jessica. “Now, beauty techniques between humans and ponies are more similar than you may think. The primary thing is we need different types of products to accomplish the same goals, with only a few that don’t have a corresponding product–for instance, ponies don’t use blush, and humans don’t use fur glamor. A few things are applied differently as well.”

“What’s fur glamor?” Jessica asked, feeling ignorant.

“It makes your fur color look more vibrant and shiny,” Jordan answered.

“We might try a little of it with you on your legs, but humans don’t normally need it,” Amicus said. “Do you own any makeup?”

“My mother bought some for me for my birthday last year. I don’t have a clue where it’s at. I tossed it in a drawer after getting it, and I have no clue where that drawer’s contents are in all the boxes,” Jessica answered.

“We’ll pretend that doesn’t exist then. I can go out with you tomorrow and see if we can find some makeup, styling products, and nice clothes,” Amicus replied.

“Um-” Jordan began, then immediately realized she’d just committed the verbal sin again. She nodded before continuing, “I wanted to see if you were willing to take me to your university tomorrow and show me around.”

Jessica frowned. She wanted to visit Mark tomorrow. She also needed to focus on unpacking because if Amicus saw her apartment as it was now, she’d declare Jessica had no hope of adopting. She did want to hang out with Jordan, and she did need some help from Amicus, and the old earth pony would be out of town by the end of the week. She also wanted to fit some time in with her little brother. It was a lot to fit in.

“I’m going to visit Mark tomorrow, but I’ll pick you two up after I’m done,” she said, deciding on a course of action. “That is if you don’t mind spending a little time at the university, Amicus.”

“Oh, I don’t mind. It gives me more time to stretch my legs. I spend way too much time cooped up in this house. Old people need exercise, or their legs stop working right,” Amicus said fondly. “Maybe I can convince Andrea to come along with us. She could stand to get out more often. She hasn’t gone anywhere in weeks. Security is tight enough here for her to go out for a few hours without it being an issue.”

Jessica took note of Jordan’s frown and wondered how bad things were going between her and Andrea. The old crystal pony was a pain to deal with, primarily because she always judged the security and how people were disrupting it by living their lives. Maybe Andrea would be more civil once away from the mansion.

“That would be alright if she wants to come,” Jessica replied. “Where is she now? I haven’t seen her since I called Wild Growth.”

Amicus waved a hoof. “Well, she was going to go lie down because your stone and Luna make her feel ill, but Luna apparently took the suggestion of any bed in the house literally and decided to lay down in Andrea’s bed. So, Andrea has a sleeping alicorn occupying her bedroom right now. She decided to go out back and feed her critters instead.”

“She keeps bats,” Jordan explained.

“Well, she encourages bats to come, anyway,” Amicus corrected. “It isn’t just bats. She feeds squirrels and a host of birds as well. She’s no wildlife expert, so It took her a while to figure out how to set up the bat feeders and bird feeders so they weren’t poaching the other’s food. They’ve grown quite used to seeing her and now know seeing her usually means food, so they will come right up beside her without fear.” Amicus shook her head. “I think she enjoys having creatures eager to see her. She might be as prickly as a cactus, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t sensitive as well. Everyone wants to feel loved and wanted. Asking her along on this excursion will be a good thing. I’d see if Brief wanted to come, too, but I doubt he’ll be interested in shopping for makeup and clothes. He’d probably insist we go look at power tools for an hour if he came, not because he likes power tools, but because he’d feel the need to do something stereotypical manly after being around so much girliness.”

“I like power tools,” Jessica mumbled. The other two looked at her. “Well, I do! I like working with my hands and making things. I'm a licensed mechanic. That doesn’t make me a tomboy or anything like that.”

“Didn’t say you were,” Amicus replied with amusement. “Don’t worry about such labels. They were outdated even when I was young. I was the prissiest of my siblings, and even I got that label thrown at me because I dared to be good with electronics and like video games, as if a girl couldn’t like those things, too. I’m surprised you young people even still use terms like that.”

“You liked electronics, really?” Jordan asked. “How’d you end up in law then?”

Amicus narrowed her eyes at Jordan. “Because we can’t all be defined by one thing. That would be pretty boring. I see so many ponies that think the mark on their flank defines everything about them. We’re more than our cutie marks. I chose this path that got me my mark, but it isn’t all of who I am.”

Jordan lowered her head. “Sorry, that was inconsiderate of me to say. Speaking about marks defining ponies…have you and Andrea thought of any solutions for my mom being here? I was reading on the internet, and it does seem like the early stages of cutie-mark madness.”

Jessica’s ears flicked. “Wait, what’s going on with your mom?”

Jordan shrugged and looked away. “When she gets stressed, she starts acting all crazy and starts digging for treasure. She’s been hoarding as well. Her mark is about finding things. Dad’s lungs are getting worse, too. I was going to move them here, but we can’t have my mom trying to dig here. Bad things could happen.”

Amicus sighed. “Looking things up on the internet is not the way to make a diagnosis. You need to get an expert to work with her. As for if she starts digging here, we do have a solution. There’s a side house on the grounds. The old groundskeeper used to live there before he retired. It’s a small house, cozy and in good shape. It’s not big enough to deal with a growing family, but it is suitable for two ponies who aren’t going to be having any more foals, and Sunset made sure there’s nothing directly below it if you try to dig underneath it because she was paranoid about someone hiding out there and doing just that–we’ve had some creative intruders over the years. We can have your parents live there. They can still take meals and everything with us, but if your mom is not at her best at any point, we can confine her to the house until the episode passes. We can set up camera feeds inside that house to be safe.”

“I’ll want to go look at it. I don’t want my parents living in a shack,” Jordan said.

“It’s your house; you’re free to check it out,” Amicus replied.

Jessica stood up. “Thanks for the tea and hospitality, but I need to get home. I haven’t had a shower in days, and my panties are in desperate need of changing–I don't want to end up with a yeast infection; one time was enough with that.”

“Too much information,” Amicus said, scrunching up her nose.

“What does not washing your clothes have to do with yeast?” Jordan asked in confusion.

“Look it up,” Amicus replied, sounding exasperated. She then smiled at Jessica. “Thank you for spending time with me and inviting me to hang out with you tomorrow. It feels good to be included. I’ll do everything I can to assist you in this adoption process. It has a few challenges, but they aren’t insurmountable, and we’ll work through them.”

Jessica held out a fist to Amicus, and the earth pony raised a hoof and bumped the fist.

---

While driving out, she noticed a small crowd had formed across the street from Wabash Manor. There were a lot of drones in the air of varying sizes, many more than usual, although none of those drones dared cross the boundary of the fence. People must be well aware of what became of their drones when they trespassed. It was easy to guess why. Luna must have been spotted by one of the various drones that typically circled the property, and now interested people had swarmed in for a chance to see the alicorn princess–even if it was just from a drone feed.

She paused by the gate to put the hood of her car up. She had a long-standing uneasiness about crowds gathered outside houses that went back to her days in Riverview. She could remember the mob gathered outside her Auntie’s mansion during that final Thanksgiving before the Cataclysm. The angry mobs had played their role in what had eventually happened, evolving into riots over that fateful week that had drawn guards out of the Bastion and into the street, making it much easier for Poly Glot to break free from his cell. She still recalled their screamed obscenities at those gathered for a family meal. These people weren’t an angry mob, just curious onlookers, but they still the fur on her legs bristling. The retractable hood wasn’t much of a barrier between her and them, but it was something.

While still parked, she set her phone in its holder and set it to voice command and speaker. “Phone, call Adam,” she instructed.

“Calling Adam,” the phone responded.

It took him a moment to pick up. “Doctor Middleton! You’re back!”

She smiled. “You can call me Jess.”

“Is that what your friends call you?” Adam asked, sounding a bit hopeful.

“Some of them,” she confirmed. “Some call me Jess, some get to call me Jessie.”

“Is Jessie better than Jess?” Adam asked.

Her smile faded slightly. “Sorry, you aren’t to that level yet. I’m very stingy about who I allow to call me that. Maybe you’ll get there. Speaking of which, I will be busy today and tomorrow, but I was wondering if you wanted to go for some more coffee together on Tuesday afternoon? We can discuss my findings from the trip. I promised to share everything with you.”

“Yes, of course!” Adam said excitedly. “We might want to go somewhere more private than the faulty bar if you’re going to be sharing that information with me. I know a jazz lounge that has private booths if you're interested. They’ve got nice music if you like jazz.”

“Jazz?” she replied, uncertain. Did she have any particular feelings about jazz? Did she have any particular feelings about any type of music? Now that she thought about it, had she ever just put music on to listen to? She typically just listened to whatever her family or friends were listening to…or tuned it out because she wanted to focus on something else. At any given time, she could hear someone’s music playing somewhere. At that moment, there were at least six different types of music playing within her hearing range. It was noise to be tuned out, not listened to.

“A jazz lounge sounds great,” she answered. She was honestly more or less neutral about it, but she decided it wouldn’t hurt to show some enthusiasm for it. She was supposed to be getting out and experiencing things. “Is there any sort of dress code?”

“Just dress nicely, and if you have anything with a jazzy feel to it, wear that,” Adam replied.

Jazzy feel? What was a jazzy feel? Amicus better have some clue what that meant when they went shopping tomorrow because she had no idea what a jazzy feel meant.

“Alright, see you Tuesday,” she said, trying to sound cheerful.

“It’s a date. See you then,” he replied, then hung up.

A date? This was a date? She didn’t agree to this being a date. She wasn’t ready for a date. She thought she would be broaching the idea of a date over coffee, and if that went well, there might be something the coming weekend. She wasn’t ready for this! Why’d he hang up before she could object to this being a date?! Could she reject it? Would that ruin everything if she did? She didn’t know what the proper ways of handling these things were.

Slow breaths. Don’t work yourself up and have a panic attack happen, she chided herself in her head.

Turning around to return to Wabash to seek the immediate help of Jordan and Amicus was tempting, or maybe call up Phobia for the Dreamwarden to walk her through her anxieties. Phobia certainly owed it to her to give her a few one-on-one therapy sessions after all the Dreamwarden had put her through. She did need a shower…a bath might be better, something to relax and soothe her. No, she would not go immediately running to anyone for advice so they could laugh at how foolish she must be. Fudge that! Well, maybe she would talk to someone later before she went to bed. She needed someone to calm her before she inevitably had to deal with the horrors of an excited Yinyu Wu Yan. Just thinking of what might be coming in her dreams was enough to make her stomach unsettled…more unsettled since it already was.

There was a crystal pony staring right at her from across the street. She still had that damn stone in her luggage. What was she supposed to do about it before Wild came up with a solution for it? Could she leave it unattended at her apartment? It seemed a very dangerous thing to leave unattended, especially if it would attract the attention of every crystal pony who got within a certain radius of it. That also meant carrying it around with her everywhere also was a bad idea. She should have asked Andrea to help her figure out how far a crystal pony could detect the thing from. Too late for that now…though she could still turn around. No! She’d already decided she was going home and taking a bath.

The pony wouldn’t stop staring, and it was making her nervous. She shifted gears and drove away.

---

The crystal pony stallion watched as the antique car drove away. He normally wouldn't care about the filthy Middleton girl who had willingly abandoned her ponydom, but something had been seriously off about what he had been feeling from her direction. She wasn’t that impressive with her magical strength. They’d scouted her for years and knew it only took one crystal pony to neutralize her if she ever got in the way. There’d been something else in the car with her. It wasn’t the Equestrian princess. He could still feel her if he strained his senses toward the Apostate’s home. Something that significant could be felt at a distance if you were looking for it. No, this was something else, something of similar power, yet the Middleton girl had been alone in that car.

He took a short stroll down the street, away from the gawkers. He’d been the only one on that curb that he knew of who wasn’t just there to try to catch a glimpse of royalty. The Apostate might be gone, but Wabash Manor remained under guard; it continued to get visits from Luna and the Dreamwardens’ minions. That meant that Wabash Manor still held secrets, possibly the secrets of ETS. The new mare in charge seemed weak on the surface, but there were now plenty of videos swimming around the internet of her downing a crystal pony–not just a crystal pony, but the Warden of Fear’s pet crystal pony. Unicorns typically were no match for crystal ponies and beating a crystal pony trained as well as the Dreamwarden’s guard was a ludicrous proposition unless you had obscene levels of magical strength. That filly was not what she seemed; her fighting prowess, skill, and visitors declared that loud and clear. She was the new guardian of the Apostate’s stronghold, possibly there to continue the Apostate’s work, and she was not to be underestimated.

Now, something powerful just exited that stronghold with the Middleton girl. Although Sunset Blessing was hated, any sane pony understood she was still one of the greatest mages. She’d unlocked the secrets of ETS when it had been theorized that it would take centuries. Nopony other than her had even come close to that feat. Her other works, while not nearly as important, were also rarely rivaled by the work of others. She'd also murdered Royal Bearing during a magic duel; Royal Bearing had been a very powerful unicorn. No, the Apostate should never be underestimated. There were sometimes outlandish tales of what the Apostate had created years ago in the depths of the Bastion, and one of those said she had once made a stone to rival the power of alicorns. Something with the strength of an alicorn had just driven by in the Middleton girl’s car.

His superiors were going to be very interested in this news.