The Runaway Bodyguard

by scifipony

Chapter 47 — Round Two

Next morning, I was the first pony down to breakfast. Not a stretch, because I would have done my morning trot first had I not worried about confronting a silly wrong-side-of-the-door issue upon returning. Nopony appeared surprised I was there, and Glory was the last to arrive. Staff ponies laid out scrambled eggs, hay-biscuits, cheese, and fruit. First in, first fed, first satiated. It made up for my kale crisp dinner last night. I stuffed some red apples into my saddlebags.

That got me looks from the mares. Gonna lecture me on manners?

I then took three hay-biscuits—which looked like fluffy adobe bricks, both in color and texture—and stabbed them with a knife. I stuffed the crusty delights with soft cheese. A guard (not Minty) interrupted my surgeries to hoof over a note.

"Is this my assignment?"

"Steeple Chase wants to talk to you."

I realized I'd stuck my tongue out as I worked. I licked a hole in the bread to clean-up the overloaded cheese and packed the rolls inside with the apples.

"Tell Steeple Chase I am no fan of formalities. Next time, instead of a note, tell the lord of the manor to send an assignment and not to waste my time or his."

As I walked away from the aghast guard, with a crowd of mares each mouth agape, I snapped away the card from the guard's hoof with my tail. The pale blue paper fluttered to the terrazzo tiles.

As I trotted toward the entrance, I added, "I have plans today. Tomorrow would be fine."

When I walked down the steps in the Silver Stream Gym, I thought how the upside-down unlucky horseshoe sign looked as unsightly as ever. It smelled like a fight gym: pony perspiration and gym socks mixed with a taint of blood. Somepony had sparred early this morning—and been cut badly.

It felt like home, though I wasn't here to stay.

I wore a purple dress and had let my mane remain natural today—fluffy and girly, with bangs that gathered on one side and which tried really hard to block my left eye. Nopony recognized me as I walked to the bits register. Like all gyms, and by that I meant any celebrity business, they sold high-priced logo gear to their clientele. I didn't recognize the noob who folded down the sport section behind the counter.

I pointed. "I'd like the championship sweats in brown."

"Let's see. Yes. Got brown. Hoodie, too?"

"Yes. And the coffee tumbler. No, the one with Princess Grim on it."

"No problem—" The teenage red and blond colt looked up through the glass, then stood. He rubbed the peach fuzz on his chin. "You're—"

With the swiftness of a punch, I covered his mouth with a hoof. "Say nothing and I'll buy anything in the case and autograph personally it to you with anything you want it to say, no matter how rude. Fanboi on me and I'll autograph your nose with a horseshoe. Don't make a fuss."

He nodded, blue eyes wide.

After a hour on the bus and the train, I found a spot outside the Cocoa Bean, under a shady tree. With the storm gone and the air fresh and warm, I entertained myself by reading a torn 20-year out-of-date mustard-stained Thaumatergical Review Letters I'd found in the dumpster out behind the Celestia Library Complex building. Ripped, but readable. A particularly fascinating study tried to falsify the codicils thought to make time spells possible. I completely lost track of time, pun intended, though the math made my horn overheat. My gut insisted the authors failed to prove time spells impossible.

When I reached for my now cold chili-pepper Equidorian Silver cocoa, I realized Broomhill Dare had taken up station, tutoring a pink unicorn with horn-rimmed glasses. The student had an overbite. His green eyes met mine, then darted back to his book. The orange pony had her back to me.

I rotated my ears forward.

Broomhill Dare reviewed practice midterm questions, the terminology of which I wasn't sure I understood. The answers made it obvious she referred to categories of codicils and predicates, and how they differed thaumaturgically. I preferred Marlin's jargon, but then the library Sunburst and I shared had been populated with classical volumes. When she commented off-hoof that in practice finding the harmony between the parts of the spell was the difference between casting powerfully and casting reliably, I felt absolutely certain that I needed her to tutor me.

The pink colt dashed away without looking at me. When the tutor began packing her supplies, I trotted over.

"These are for you," I said as my aura evaporated from around the folded hoodie, sweat pants, and tee-shirt. I purposely let the tumbler drop a hoof-length so it made a metallic clunk. I kept my orange sparkle marker floating aside me as, when nervous these days, I liked to keep spells queued. "Um..."

She looked at the blue and pink graphic of Princess Grim with her hoof held high in the air, adorned with the championship belt. Drawn, of course, since Trigger had interfered with photographs being recorded that day. Her faint magenta eyes came up and she frowned.

I said, "I'm sorry that I made you uncomfortable, yesterday. I know you're a fight fan. The least I can do is autograph these." I unfolded the shirt, making visible the word Champion and the year. "I didn't write anything yet because I didn't want to write something obsequious... or pathetic."

"I still don't tutor foals."

"I am not asking. I'm apologizing. I should have known better than to imply you could or would tutor somepony not enrolled at Prancetown University."

"There's that part about lying," she added, matching my gaze unflinchingly.

Tough Cookie. One of the founders of Equestria, I thought before frowning about whether I remembered that right. History... not my best subject. I sighed, "About that..."

"Princess Grim isn't your real name, and I get that. It's just not the best policy, and I know that."

"Once a teacher, always a teacher."

Her orange face reddened.

"You're really Princess Grim?"

"Hooves and horn. Which means I know fight ponies. For example, my first bout was against Punch Drunk. Regulation, but unofficial—"

"Really?" she practically cooed. "Such a hunk."

"He took my hoof when he met me and said, Enchanté!"

She sat attentively with her hooves together in the air. "And?"

"I laid hooves on him. Actually, only one, and knocked him out."

She began to clap her hooves together. She paused as her mouth opened, then she clapped more enthusiastically. "Oh, wow. I remember reading the article on the front page of the Baltimare Sun sports section. The unofficial KO. And it proves to really be by an under-aged filly, not even an earth pony at that! Okay. Wow." She sobered, then waggled a hoof proudly, "He's going to win the championship this year, just you wait."

"Because I retired."

"You and him. That'd be the re-match for the record books."

She stood up and said, "Okay, okay, I got it: To Broom Hill Da— by the way, there's a silent R-E, so it's spelled D-A-R-E, and Broom Hill is one word regardless of how it sounds. —'To Broomhill Dare, Punch Drunk was an earth pony hunk, but no match for a unicorn's horn.' Is that cool?"

"Sure. I can autograph each item differently."

"Oh. Nice. Going to have to think about— And I'm going to be late to class! Come with me."

"Can I?"

"Don't worry about it." She grabbed her things.

I trotted behind her, answering her questions, quoting statistics, and describing stallion prizefighters I'd met—all the intimate details. She liked that, a lot.

I didn't understand why.

The Barthemule Physics Annex building, while it had a three story glass front, proved to be an otherwise unremarkable red brick building with white wood trim. The interior golden oak walls and hoof-worn black-veined marble floors reminded me of the decor of my Grin Having mansion, only in cheery light woods instead of aristocratic dark mahogany and walnut. As a TA, I expected her to be teaching a single-digit numbered freshman class in a generic tiered-stadium hall. I'd read that happened, in a novel taking place at a college.

She led us into a room no bigger than a doctor's waiting room that barely fit twelve desks. The three walls other than the one with the windows were clad with black slate floor to ceiling, chalked with equations and matrices. The room smelled of chalk dust and academa—despite one of the five other students, a white unicorn mare who perspired profusely and wore gardenia to mask it. I sat at the back, entranced.

I'd never heard of Quantum Mechanics nor seen the violation math discussed by the mousy pegasus(!) stallion who taught the class. I scribbled furiously in my notebook, though I suspected I understood Old Ponish better than his equations. My statistics training was sorely lacking.

Afterwards, I found myself in a fugue, plugging in numbers to see what I got despite my horn heating uncomfortably. I flipped between my notes on Teleport and what I'd written, suspecting I might have learned something important.

"Is this a friend of yours, Miss Dare, or another perspective student you're trying to scare away from Prancetown?"

The elderly blue pony had square wire-frame glasses and had shaved his mane to a patchy white stubble. I looked up and said, "So magic acts like light: simultaneously a particle and a wave? Why do we see a sparkle when it becomes a particle? It isn't actually a, um..."

The fellow pushed his glasses up his muzzle, the way Sunburst did when startled, only he used a wing. His feathers made an interesting rustling sound. "Photon. No, i-it isn't." He waved at the blackboards. "The math implies an answer, but the theory is all about probabilities."

"But it signals lost magical potential?"

"Scant."

He looked at me, then scanned my somewhat frumpy dress trying to ascertain my actual form and possibly guess at the cutie mark I'd yet to be cursed with.

He turned to Broomhill Dare and said, "Might be a freshman next year, or you coached her. No additional teaching assignments!" he finished walking to the door. Fading away with his hoof-falls in the hallway, he added, "The others are beginning to think you're a teacher's pet. You aren't."

I said, grinning, "You know how to hustle."

She snorted. "You do, too, P.G." It sounded faintly like Pidgy. A nickname was encouraging. "Are you some kind of prodigy?"

I shrugged, then reflexively shut my notebook when the mare glanced down at my Teleport spell. I stood from the desk and packed it. I said, "I like magic. Unfortunately, I'm not always that good at it."

"I'm not sure if you are equivocating or dissembling, but that's still lying—"

My mouth dropped open. It was as if she had purposely run her carriage over my puppy.

Author's Note:

Next: Starlight tries a different tactic: Honesty.