Pandemic: Starting Over

by Halira

Chapter 6: A Sleepy Return to Denver

I couldn't really say much about the flight from San Francisco to Denver, as I spent almost all of it asleep. I was told after I was roused that four of the five foals slept through most of that flight as well, with the notable exception of Méng.

Méng was wide awake through the entire final stretch but happily occupied by the antics of Tom and Jerry. I wasn't sure how I felt about that. I was glad he was kept Out of trouble, but I'd always found Tom and Jerry cartoons to be particularly mean-spirited and violent. People liked to point to Tom as the villain of the series, but if you paid attention to Jerry, he was an instigator and terror in his own right. In fact, I was more sympathetic to Tom than I was Jerry, but then again, I'm a cat person. I supposed no harm was done, letting him watch the show. It wasn't like I hadn't watched it myself at his age, and it wasn't like I had gone and done anything abominable.

Oh, wait… I seemed to recall a city blowing up along with a long list of other crimes. Tom and Jerry weren't going to stay on his playlist. They were going to be nice foals, who would only be exposed to violence in the case of heroes defeating villains. He could watch the turtles cartoon with his brothers. At least that wasn't mindless violence and back and forth vindictiveness.

I probably needed some extra advice on him, and Yinyu didn't seem forthcoming with it. To be fair to her, she was awake at the same times he was, so she likely would have had an easier time dealing with him. I had to be awake in the daytime, though. There was an obvious answer for who to ask advice from, my daughter, who had three night pony foals of her own, all older than Méng. She had plenty of experience dealing with toddler night ponies. I'd need to give her a call. Sadly, I likely needed more advice on the others just as much. Where was the book explaining how to deal with a teen mother and colt that might have the most politically powerful pony period as a father (he presided over a population more massive than the entire planet Celestia ruled)? Líng might be the easiest of the siblings to deal with; he just liked to get wet and muddy, and I could happily live with that… provided he didn't go and almost drown or something because I wasn't paying enough attention to him.

Crap. I need to stop thinking about these things.

When we finally arrived in Denver they triple checked me to see if I could walk on my own. I could, as long as I didn't try to move too fast. It was fairly late when we arrived, and they had to rouse the foals from their sleep. We headed to get our shuttle back to the condo. There wasn't much talking, as everyone except Méng was exhausted. The little colt followed close by his sister's legs, and she regularly had to prod him to keep moving because he would stop to look at his surroundings.

When we got into the airport lobby I'd been dreading reporters waiting to jump on me for interviews. Luckily, we arrived so late that many of them must have gone home. There were only two or three of them left, and they looked almost as tired as we did.

"Miss Blessing. Do you have any comment on the death of Yinyu Wu Yan?"

I couldn't help myself. I let myself sneer at the reporter, and be damned with how that would be played on the news. "Are you seriously asking that right in front of all her foals? What the fucking hell is wrong with you!"

"Miss Blessing, how are the foals doing after the dea-"

I stomped a hoof, and almost fell over doing it. "Fuck off!"

"Miss Blessing, do you have any comments about the group in Florida that are now calling themselves the Blessingists? Will you be giving an endorsement?"

That brought me up short, and I just looked at the reporter like he was crazy. "What the hell is a Blessingist? No comment. I don't even know what happened."

As we were hurried out towards the shuttle I overheard at least one reporter giving the report that I had been hostile and refused to answer questions. That would not go over well, but I was too tired and too angry to care.

Once on the shuttle I turned to one of the agents. "What's a Blessingist?"

The human spread his hands. "It's a group of Shimmerists in Florida that denounced the speciest views of Shimmerism and stated that their new mission was to bring magic to all and expand our magical knowledge, which doesn't necessarily require transformation of humans to ponies. That last part is where the break comes from. They were inspired by your final manifesto before your arrest."

I tried to process this new information. "When the hell did they do that? I didn't hear anything about it?"

"They officially broke with Shimmerism earlier today, but there had been arguments going on for weeks. You really didn't hear about the schism you put into Shimmerism? No one reached out to you asking for endorsement?"

I'd actually been avoiding the news altogether and just trying to lock myself away from everything. Only certain people could even contact me by phone, and none of them mentioned anything. Most of my groceries were delivered to me. so I didn't even leave the condo much. I had done my best to live under a rock, and only got taken out from under it because Tonya had shown up in my dreams and told me Yinyu had appointed me guardian of her foals, and the next morning I had government agents at my door. It's kind of hard to ignore a Dreamwarden announcing something in my dreams and then having the government show up at my door, no matter how much I might want to.

"No, it must have slipped my attention," I said with a deadpan.

I looked at the foals. Lántiān was the only one aside from Méng who was awake. The night pony colt she was trying to keep moderately restrained from running all over the car by keeping a leg around him as he looked out the window. Shǔguāng and Hé Líng were cuddled up against one another with Qīng Yǔ making a bed atop the two of them. They made a cute little pile. I wondered what it was like having such a tribally diverse family, but I supposed that I would find out soon enough. Hopefully no one would be dropping any crystal pony foal off at my doorstep to complete the full set.

The condo was part of a small private complex owned by SPEC. The condos were used to host and impress visitors that SPEC wanted to make contracts with. There were five fully furnished condos in the complex, each with large living rooms, large kitchens, and game rooms, in addition to three sizable bedrooms. I had one one these condos all to myself, even though there wasn't any financial value in SPEC housing me. I was a charity case. The complex was gated and walled, with security at the gate at all hours of all days. Our shuttle stopped at the gate, confirmed who I was, and informed the shuttle that they could let me and the foals off right there so we could walk in, rather than letting the shuttle drop us off at the door.

"Why are you making us walk? Can't you see everyone is exhausted?" I protested.

The guard on duty at the gate looked apologetic. "It's my job on the line if I let any unauthorized person through the gates after ten at night. After what happened in Riverview, Wild Growth put down additional security rules across the board. She also made it clear that failures to uphold those rules would not be tolerated. She said if things had been done as they should have been back in Riverview that the disaster wouldn't have happened."

The fight went out of me. I knew exactly what was being referenced, and although that part I wasn't personally responsible for, my failure to run a tight enough operation could be held to blame. I had been lenient on those that had security lapses when I should have come down on them harshly. I thought I was being magnanimous, but it had led to a lot of people getting hurt or killed. At least I could take heart that Wild Growth had no intention of making the same mistakes. Lord knew she had plenty of work to do cleaning up my mistakes.

"I understand," I wearily replied. I turned to my oldest charge. "Go ahead and rouse your brothers. Just one short walk and then they can get into a proper bed. We'll go over the house rules in the morning."

Lántiān gave a pointed look at her youngest brother. "What about Hǎo Mèng, ma'am?"

Crap, what was I going to do about him for tonight? He was going to be awake all night, and everyone else was in desperate need of sleep. Normally I'd say I'd just stay up and watch him, tiring as that may be, but Tonya would probably chew me out for that. It still might be the only option. If I'd been thinking I might have had something arranged, but now there was no time to do that.

"We'll figure that out once we're inside," I answered, dreading what I'd almost certainly have to do. "If I have to I'll stay up to watch him, and arrange for a sitter first thing in the morning. I'd try making arrangements tonight, but there's zero chance I could get someone approved to get by security at this hour. I apologize, it's my fault for not thinking ahead."

The pegasus filly gave the pile of foals a hard nuzzle, and gave commands in Mandarin and English. "<Wake up!>! Wake up! <We are here.> We are here."

Shǔguāng yawned and rubbed his face. "<Mama was talking to me.>"

"Use English, like ma'am instructed," Lántiān scolded. I really needed to find some better way for them to refer to me.

The young unicorn huffed. "Mama was talking to me. I don't want to get up."

"You'll be able to go back to sleep soon enough," I assured him. I then looked over at his little brother who was taking his time to stir. "<Hé Líng, wake up.>"

The earth pony rolled over, dislodging Qīng Yǔ from on top of him, and making the infant pegasus irritably squawk like a bird. She gave her uncle a harsh glare, and aggressively butted her head against him in rebuke. Lántiān put an end to that by grabbing her daughter up by the scruff of her neck, and Qīng Yǔ responded by just going limp in her mother's mouth. Líng took a look around him, and having gotten the idea, stood up.

We exited the car and walked from the gate towards the appropriate condo. I spotted lights on in the next door condo, which was a small surprise. The condo I was in had been the only occupied one when I left for Japan; mine and the condo that served as a guard station and property office. It wasn't a concern, as long as whoever was there didn't make lots of noise. I'd left the front porch light on with my own, and hadn't bothered to lock the door. I found little use in locking doors. Any unicorn worth their salt could use magic to unlock any regular lock, and any earth pony could easily break down the door. If someone wanted to get in and had already gotten past the guards one little lock wasn't going to do much.

I turned the handle and pushed the door open, stepping inside first just long enough to flip the light switch. The foals followed in behind me, looking over their surroundings as they did. However, I stopped Hé Líng when he passed the threshold.

"<How did you manage to get muddy on that short a walk!>" I exclaimed, looking at the wet mud all over his hooves. I did a quick glance at my own and all the other foals', but none of us had a spec of mud on us.

He just stared up at me like a deer in the headlights. His two brothers I spotted already exploring the living room, and his niece came bounding over to them having been set free by her mother.

I groaned. "<Wipe off that mud and then you are taking a bath before bed.>" The colt's expression visibly brightened at the word for bath. Yinyu had warned me about him, but I didn't think he was that adept at gathering mud; it couldn't have been more than a twenty-yard walk to the door. I didn't even remember a mud puddle along the way.

He wiped his hooves as instructed, giving them each a very thorough scrubbing against the doormat, and then stepped inside. I shook my head again in flabbergasted disbelief, before shutting the door. I started walking away from the door only to hear a loud knock on it. What now?

"Who is it?" I called out.

The reply came back quickly and loudly. "The greatest and most powerful neighbor any friend could want!" It couldn't be.

I opened the door back up to see a grinning azure blue unicorn with a mane so light blue that it appeared almost white.

"Trixie?"

She reached her hooves around me and gave me a big hug. "Hello, neighbor! The great and powerful Trixie has arrived!"

Comments

[Humanity]

I was about to assume this was a trollfic until I looked a little lower.

[badninja]

Well that is an interesting neighbor. I wonder why she is now living on Earth and what led her here?

[Halira]

10269926
Had debated dropping the Pandemic part of the title, and had done it with a previous fic in the series right after the onset of the actual real life pandemic. People kept telling me to just go with the title since it is part of the ongoing series. Now questioning it again.