The Runaway Bodyguard

by scifipony

Chapter 67 — Pony Princess Presiding

The doctors gave me the good happy juice. I remembered being hooked up to a unit of blood in the conference room, reminding everypony to visit me in the hospital as they loaded me on a pegasus-borne stretcher, and then nothing. Probably for the best.

The wooziness faded as I realized I was splayed out on my back. A light rain pattered against a window. I blinked and saw a team of winged dots scudding storm clouds around. I blinked. More and more I realized I was breathing and that, like my magic, that was a miracle.

I lay in a bed, the blue light of the rainy day reflecting off illuminated monitors. I felt the ache of the saline drip jabbed into my right foreleg, saw what was arguably cheery yellow sheets, and noted that my right rear leg stretched upward connected to a series of pulleys and cables. I heard bleep-bleep-bleep. Bandages wrapped the appendage and various esoterically-shaped, spiraling clear splints, each with holes like in bubble cheese. It was as if a surrealist had been let loose to design medical equipment. I did not miss the brown blood stains on the bandages.

I didn't tell you everything about the fight in the conference room. I had known almost immediately that I wasn't fighting for my life. I was fighting so that giving up my life would not be entirely in vain. Had I not stopped the griffon, she would have torn through Carne Asada's lieutenants. My cannon bone was broken and displaced. Arteries were severed. Blood pumped...

I didn't have to be a statistician to understand I would die first before help came.

I looked at my leg. It felt numb. Tartarus, I felt numb! I looked away and out the window. Funny how I had courage for so many things, but sometimes I really was a foal. I could pretend. I could pretend there were no consequences. I could pretend I was invincible.

If I ignored reality.

This was the pony that would some day figure out cutie marks? She would find ways to keep their curse from oppressing ponies lives? She would help ponies find the equality they sorely deserved? Someday she would save all of Equestria?

Yeah, I was such a naïve foal.

I watched the pegasus weather team outside the window as the fog slowly cleared. The fog in my brain, not so much. Laying on your back after a while does become uncomfortable.

When I looked at my leg, I looked at my hoof. It was swollen from interstitial blood and bruises, and looked deeper purple than the normal lavender color. Tilt forward, I thought.

You thought it would be easy? I fought against fear that I had let command me, and it provided me images of me wheelchair-bound to make the point.

"Stupid hoof," I said, spinning up Levitate despite the medicine that made my numbers lethargic. Slowly, slowly, I got the transforms going. This might take minutes, but I'd do this if it were the last—

I gasped.

By reflex, I’d tilted my hoof forward. Without magic. It really hurt.

I did it again, and again. Then a unicorn nurse pushed open the door with a loaded syringe in her light blue magic, the needle stuck in the little vial.

"Miss Glitter, you're awake!" she said with a sparkling smile.

I said, "No more painkillers or sedatives."

"The doctor says—"

"No more painkillers or sedatives," I repeated.

"I don't think your mother will be happy about that."

"You know who I am?" I asked. "Do you know who my mother is?"

The nurse put down the vial on the table. The syringe bobbed back and forth as she glanced at the monitors and straightened a sheet, manifestly not wanting to answer.

Eventually, she lifted the medicine again and turned to the door. "I'll mark it rejected and send a note to your doctor."

"Do that."

"There's metal pins and plates in there, now, Miss Glitter. Medical magic can perform miracles reconstructing your leg, but as it heals it will hurt. How about something like willow bark extract?"

"Over-the-counter is fine, but I want to open the bottle myself."

She nodded and left.

Many adult ponies chewed valerian root. Most considered it a disgusting habit the first time they either chewed it themselves or kissed a pony that had, but you can buy it anywhere, if you are old enough. Because of my oh-so-tender age, I could not. The product was taxed and regulated.

Nopony told me this directly, but: I figured out that the syndicates and gangs distributed valerian root at a reasonable price and at super high quality, unencumbered by regulation or taxes. Handling such nuisances were the buyer's responsibility. Extralegal organizations handled transportation and distribution. As far as the C.A. Syndicate went, I didn't know if, I didn't know who, I didn't know where, and I didn't know how. I just knew.

Not too hard to abstract from one product to many. Nopony anywhere in Equestria prevented you from purchasing happy juice. It was however taxed and regulated, and in some cases required you to also have proof you had a doctor and a shrink you visited regularly. The C.A. syndicate likely provided a more private solution for ponies willing to pay.

I presumed.

I did not want one of Carne Asada's hooks in my veins, so I refused the painkillers and sedatives.

#

In my fantasy that I might live, I had promised myself I would uncover the tattler. I sent Citron back to Hooflyn with a message that my supplicants should now visit me in the hospital. He promised to return the next day.

Carne Asada had moved me to a hospital she had invested in up in Baa Harbor Mane. Yes, that Baa Harbor, absolutely the number one best pegasus seafood town in all of Equestria. It consisted of a cloud village floating over a cannery town on a coast dominated by a fishery industry that served pegasi all over the world. Earth ponies and pegasi worked side by side, managing the boats, the sea, and the weather that tended to stormy all by itself despite the vigilance of top flight weather teams.

When I told the hospital nutritionist I was a pescatarian, the pegasus was tickled pinker than her already rose pink. Meal times became the sunshine in my day because, I think, the kitchen staff felt challenged to see if there was a denizen of the sea I wouldn't eat.

It made the doctor happy. This pony needed her protein!

With no need for happy juice, I got cleared for rehab. Had I not trained as a prizefighter, I might have given up. Facial injuries and hoof injuries are worse than limb injuries as far as the pain goes, but it hurt and I could deal. After a week not moving, moving exhausted me. I'd lost an incredible amount of muscle mass. My body had turned to eating itself to heal itself. I had deflated like a balloon. I could not feel from the rear pastern to the frog of my right hoof and would require a plate in the horseshoe to protect me from stones. I could cut myself and not realize I was bleeding to death. The numbness might get better, but would take a very long time to heal. I quickly learned that I would walk and trot again, but I would never win another Celestial Race. I toughed out each session, even if it left me grunting and neighing in distress.

It wasn't so much that I wanted to continue to be a bodyguard. It was that I knew there were monsters out there and I wanted to be able to fight them. Besides which, I had ended up with an injury very much like Blue Lightning's, if not anatomically identical. Both could leave us disastrously disabled. Both could have led us to bleed to death. Both required massive reconstruction. If he followed what I had directed him to do and used my blood money, the both of us would be undergoing rehab at the same time.

No way was I going to allow that punk to have a better result than me!

#

The therapist had me hobbling in tears of pain for hours each day. The doctor then had me back in bed, strung up, encouraging the bone to grow straight and strong over the new infrastructure of gold and thaumatergic gem lattices.

I was laying like that, splayed out on my back, covered only by a thin sheet, when I began receiving visitors from Hooflyn.

Most brought flowers, some choosing tasty varieties and others feasts for the eyes. A few brought chocolates. One pegasus mare, her feathers still damp from the rain, brought a lobster bake steaming from the docks. I wasn't going to let on that the hospital food was actually good, and we shared buttery boiled potatoes, corn, clams, mussels, a giant crustacean, and plenty of good laughs.

All bowed when they entered. It wasn't as if I were royalty simply because Carne Asada called me her daughter, but my visitors seemed to think so. She was the "Queenpin", which was actually a newspaper term not one the syndicate used. That "queen" part, nevertheless, made the hated title of "princess" actually reasonable. I'd plated on another courtesy title. I was Princess Glitter, adopted daughter of Carne Asada, the Countess Aurora Midnight, the Earl of Grin Having, Lady Presiding of Sire's Hollow, daughter of Countess Midnight and Earl Firelight.

I was willing to be a princess... only to the extent that it served my purposes.

The lieutenants talked about current events, Canterlot politics, sports when I found an enthusiast. Punch Drunk looked like the contender for the championship this year. I made sure to steer the conversation back to Hooflyn and to business. I carefully chatted in generalities—sort of like how I understood about valerian root. Anypony that looked determined to give details, I clamped their mouth shut with my magic. I mentally related business to aspects of running the estate or running Grin Having, keeping it "general" as if I were talking about something I'd read in a business textbook.

I understood that Rose Thorn was as likely his or her name as Gelding or Glitter was mine. I did my best to be personable. Chatting and actually using techniques I'd been endlessly tutored and tested in turned out to be surprisingly enjoyable. It helped me ignore the pain. Ponies talked about good profits and bad, transportation bottlenecks, not getting financing, investments paying off, supply chain issues, personnel who they wanted to fire but couldn't, border skirmishes, diplomatic issues with neighboring borough leaders. I began to see why Carne Asada was busy all the time, and spent time with her minions or going over reports and making plans. I pointed out things now and again, but listening seemed to work. Most of my supplicants left much happier than they arrived.

#

A knock came at the door. I was still settling in after being hooked back up to the cabling. At least the gum I chewed was fresh and minty. "Yes?"

"It's Red Spirit, Miss Glitter. Are you decent? May I come in?" His voice was throaty.

"I don't consider myself a particularly decent pony," I replied. True. "You may, however, enter."

The black-maned, sandy brown stallion actually voiced, "Ha ha," as he pushed in. He had bristly hair, the kind that didn't stand down. He had cut his mane into a crest that tilted right and separated into tufts. I noticed his short cropped tail twitched nervously. I noticed that unlike most of the rest of his cohort, he wore nothing more than a black string tie that matched his mane, though there was a yellow rain slicker folded on his back next to a bouquet of sunflowers. The brown-centered, tasty spicy ones.

My eyes went to his muscular flank. I watched a red flame cutie mark, blown rearward by an unseen wind, flex and relax.

He noticed my gaze and smiled.

I raised the ante. I looked slightly forward of his cutie mark, between his legs, and smiled.

That elicited a disturbed whinny, but he swiftly laid the snack flowers between the vases of roses and pink gladiolus. He missed the table with his raincoat and it smacked on the floor. Drizzle wet the window, and had wet him on the way from the railroad station. He smelled pretty good, like he had rubbed some rosemary oil in his fur.

"What borough, may I ask?"

"Sunset Park."

"The docks on the waterfront. Lots of warehouses. So, Sunset. May I call you that?"

"Sure."

"Strong season for commerce, though the other boroughs are complaining about supply chain woes. Business good for you?"

He replied after a noticeable pause. "Great, wonderful. You know, I really don't want to impose." His eyes, which were green, went from my face down my body, then back up to my horn. "You look... uncomfortable. I should be going. I only wanted to pay my respects."

I'm not saying some of the other lieutenants weren't cagey or had been the stallion you'd want to take home to mama, but intuition made me think this guy deserved testing a lot more than Flatbush had, and Flatbush was actually greasy from the olive-smelling stuff he combed into his mane and hadn't been able to sit still. (He'd turned out to be a sweetie pie, though.)

I threw off the sheet with my left leg. Such things never go as dramatically as you would like, and an edge snagged on a cable and pulley. "Shoot," I said. I had Levitate ready to send into my horn, but I didn't want to light it. Not yet. "Could you, Sunset, please?"

He smiled at me, looked at me laying there with the sheet mostly off, then at my face. When he looked ready to bolt, I shook my head once side to side, then pointed my nose. He raised a hoof, considered whether he might have to step on the bed, then stretched out his neck instead.

I adjusted my hips.

His eyes dipped, then he shot his jaw forward to clamp the corner of the sheet that had stuck there, then finished dragging the sheet to pile on the metal hoof board. He completely missed he'd climbed onto the mattress for a moment.

I hadn't used my magic for the simplest thing and had rubbed it in his face.

"Hot," I said.

"In here, uh...?"

Actually, slightly chilly. I asked, "Are you married?"

"No—"

"Special somepony?" I shot back.

"N—N—"

"Good. No hurry, then." I patted the side of the bed. "I seriously crave attention."

His eyes rose from fixed on my right hoof to look into my eyes. He held it long enough for me to think it was natural for him to dominate his subordinates that way, then he broke off the gaze intentionally. "Uh, Miss Glitter, I-I don't think the boss would like me doing that." He wanted to leave.

"Are we talking about another boss, or Carne Asada here?" The Marvel Gang, perhaps?

He glanced at the door. He hadn't latched it. "C.A.," he whispered.

"The one who's only restriction is 'no foals?'"

"She... actually says that?"

I nodded. "I have a reputation to maintain," I added, patting the mattress beside me while adjusting my hips, doing my best to convince him the rumors with Me and Grape Sucker were indeed true.

He swallowed visibly. He took a step like a marionette with multiple puppeteers that were acting different plays.

"Sunset, wait!"

He gasped. "What?"

I pointed my nose at the door. "Close the door softly, and press the Privacy toggle switch." Not a lock, only a red flag to indicate a procedure was in progress. "Somepony walked in the other day." I sang, "Embarrassing!"

Of course, a unicorn could do all that herself, if she had her magic. I implanted in his mind: Was it gone? Had she burnt herself out when she blasted the griffon? I had made sure he could see I wasn't the strong, muscular pony from that day. I was tied to a bed. I was physically weak.

He shuffled around the bed, the gears in his head obviously overheating. Would he? Would he not? Would I need to have him dragged back to the hospital after he bolted? I didn't want Carne Asada to question what I was doing.

His shoulders straightened. He pulled on the knot of his tie to loosen it a bit, then gently latched the door and pressed the Privacy toggle switch so it clicked.

A suaver, more self-assured stallion trotted back.

I encouraged him, voice throatier. "Oh, that's much better."

As an earth pony, he had strength. In a fight, contact with an earth pony opponent meant serious hurt or a loss. He, of course, was a hoodlum. If he were Blue Lightning's intel source, Blue Lightning presumably knew what he let be known could result in somepony's death. Sunset might know how to fight; I doubted he was born to his rank and must have had to.

Might it be worth it to take down Carne Asada's daughter if the Boss wasn't possible? He had the strength in his hooves. He would have seen no guards on his way to the room, or outside the hospital.

I patted the bed, working up Shove with contact vectors just shy of pushing it into my horn.

He came closer.

I said, "Kiss me."

He blinked, then leaned over and kissed me on my cheek.

I made a raspberry. "Seriously? Are you in pretending to be my father, or are you in the running for fathering my foals?"

I'd gotten that one from Broomhill Dare. Safe had gotten her into role playing. She described it all to me, and the reasoning, recounting some of the better scenarios they'd done. The stories always gave me a fit of the giggles, and then she'd join in, but apparently that line with Safe as a pirate captain had worked magic. In any case, I understood role playing. I did it all the time.

As he stepped closer, I parked the gum by my molars and invited him forward. Spearmint on his breath. Ponies planning playtime don't prepare with a breath mint to visit a young mare alone in a hospital room, do they? Was I decent? he had asked. Telegraph, much?

I had to turn my head and reach up, but he kissed me deeply. High marks for making my lips tingle and playing languorous tongue wars. I pulled back, before he seemed done. I was stretching my neck. Worse, he had all four hooves on the ground. If I were to give him the best opportunity to murder me, that just would not do!

"I give that a solid 80% mark."

"What, am I in high school?"

"Okay, 83%."

"Sweet Celestia."

"Only one princess in this room!" I pouted. "You could do a lot better."

"How?" he asked, defensively.

I patted the bed.

"Not enough room."

I waved my hooves above my chest and down my body. "I could tell you the exact volume of space you could occupy above me, but then you'd call, Nerd!"

This time he did really take a good look at all I offered him, lingering between my rear legs, then frowning at my traction apparatus.

I said, "I think you'll fit. Just be careful not to hurt me." I didn't bat my eyelashes, but I did smile.

Good colt! He took directions and his warmth and weight settled on my barrel, but not elsewhere. I guess he was a gentlecolt after all, or he had other intentions after my warm up. He didn't jostle my broken leg at all. I liked this. I squirmed a little bit to maximize the feeling of being protected it invoked in me. His pleasant rosemary scent grew stronger.

He kissed me again. Deeply. Definitely cracking the ninetieth percentile!

I used my ears to range the movement of his forelegs. He had me pinned, but not my pelvis, thought the traction did a good job of immobilizing me. He kept his forelegs to the side of my head, not touching me. Maybe he would touch me later, if I allowed there to be a later. I transformed Shove into Pull as we shared more spit, and prepped it into my horn, lighting it.

His attention was elsewhere.

I sensed my heart beating faster and my interest growing, though I felt none of the hormonal cocktail of crazy that had driven me to Steeple Chase. I put my forelegs around his neck, then relaxed and enjoyed being ridden until he felt he had done his best to impress.

He had, too. Pity.

He smiled at me, looking somewhat relieved.

I smiled back, then said, "That was the kiss of death."

His face drained of blood, visible in his lips and cheeks which went a pale yellow. He used his earth pony strength trying to fling himself free, but I held him pinned with my magic, though my forelegs did help a little.

I said, "Such a compromising position, too."

In my peripheral vision, I saw a shadow grow against the misty sky. Something thumped the window. Both of us looked. Crystal Skies hit the window again, glaring at the two of us as Sunset squirmed. He stopped holding himself up. Now I could feel his stallion parts, but by their size, I could tell they weren't going to be any fun.

The pegasus thumped again, giving his best imitation of a slavering mad dog, then did something even I didn't expect. He ran his feathers in a circular motion on the glass face. It made a screeching-scratching noise, and a white line grew. He was cutting the glass. Made sense, since he had told me he could scratch sapphire with his feathers. How he did the trick while flying I didn't know. Crystal pegasus, right? I had an inkling that he might have been a burglar before he joined the syndicate.

The stallion in my hold started to shake. I hoped I wouldn't scare the piss out of him, considering our relative positions. Nevertheless, I continued. "My colt-friend might find out. He has a fiery temper."

Somepony galloped down the hall. I was going to hear it from the nurses about that! Somepony knocked. "Sweetie?" Citron asked. "Are you okay?"

"Everything's good, at the moment."

"What?" Sunset asked. "What's going on?" He squirmed some more.

I pouted. "You're not talking to me about business and I have questions about somepony! I also have these really freaky alicorn mind-control powers. They mess you up if I use them on you. Like, for example..." I moved my mouth to his ear and whispered, "Hey, stop cutting the glass."

Crystal Skies backed off and hovered, narrowing eyes on us.

"See?"

He nodded, not fighting any longer, instead shivering.

"Take a picture," I whispered again.

Crystal Skies lifted a box camera he had around his neck. I grinned widely, mashing my cheek up against Sunset's so it would be a good portrait of us. The camera flashed.

"You can go."

Crystal Skies hovered closer to the window, looking reluctant. I heard through the gum, "Are you sure?"

"Really. Go now."

Crystal Skies gave me that protective look I got from my herd these days, did a barrel roll, and disappeared.

"Dear Heart," I whispered toward the door.

"Uh-huh."

"I'm okay. You sit by the door and wait, all right?"

"Yes, Sweetie."

I levitated the stallion off of me, flicking the sheet back on, and smoothing out the wrinkles. With everything proper, I set him down on his hooves beside the bed. He sat down hard on the floor. He didn't even look like he would run if I closed my eyes and counted to ten.

"The kiss of death is real?" he asked.

"Do you know a pony named Blue Lightning?" I returned.

Author's Note:

Four chapters left! If you like what you’ve read, why not up-vote now? It helps other readers discover the story. Thanks.

Next: Carne Asada and Starlight Glimmer come to an understanding, but do they understand the same thing?

Comments

[Tillion]

Hahaha, oh loved that
Wonderful scene setting, and the tension from that line, I could feel that!