Ms. Glimmer and the Do-Nothing Prince

by scifipony

51 — Doing What a Mare Must III: Rude Awakening

I inhaled.

That actually hurt. Across my ribs, down my back.

I lay on my right side, muscles tight, feeling beat-up or gouged across most of my body. Even my stomach felt like I'd been punched not so long ago. Only my nose didn't ache, it seemed. Okay, not my mane, either.

Unbidden, I whinnied my distress and moaned. A chair scraped across the tiles. Hooves clattered. A heart monitor bleeped.

I'd announced I was awake.

I stretched, despite the twinges and pain, then opened my eyes. A pumpkin-orange muzzle lay resting chin-down on my bed. A golden sunrise glow over my back lit her curly brown mane as her ears swiveled my way. Her pink eyes twinkled. Broomhill Dare was a big pony, with a horn of five turns: she could comfortably rest this way.

My voice went on strike, my jaw clacking wordlessly like a marionette, but when I'd coughed the phlegm from my throat, I managed, "Why are you here?"

"Being friendly. I didn't want you to wake alone."

"That's kind of you. Not sure I believe—"

"They've taken you off all your pain meds."

"Ah." I'd ordered that, I recalled. Faintly.

"You've done a lot of things to hurt yourself, recently. I explained to everypony I've had experience watching over you."

She had. In Hooflyn, she'd slept with me for weeks, and palled around with me everywhere after I'd gone out of my mind for awhile. I'd tried to stab myself at the base of my horn. The why, and what I'd done to the pegasus assassin that had tried to kill Carne Asada was a bad subject. Unicorn magic wouldn't allow self-harm, but Broomhill Dare had walked in as I'd tried... and the hunting knife clattered into the hotel sink.

She'd threatened to kill me if I tried that again!

I laughed out loud.

She blinked at me. "What? Understatement?"

"Us both. That's something friends do, watch over each other? You were the first pony I cried together with."

She repositioned her head, shaking the bed, eyes moving as she thought, her ears sinking to the sides. "That time in my coach house? Right. I'd let Carne Asada humiliate me in front of you, outing me as one of her enforcers."

"Not the most conventional way of earning tuition to Prancetown, but a mare has to do what a mare has to do. I understood you needed a hug, even as broken as I was."

"You, too. Those tears! I remember a cloudburst."

"Really?" I closed my eyes, seeing us huddled on the cold stone floor with confused Citron outside, guarding. "Right. I'd really needed Celestia to hug me and tell me it would be alright at my parent's funeral; instead she'd made me an earl. Can't remember why my brain vomited that one up."

"I'd let slip that you were an earl, not realizing Citron was outside and might hear. I'd promised to keep your secret of being Earl Aurora Midnight forever. Seems I kept it long enough."

"Yeah, these princess horse apples."

"Didn't 100% believe the earl ones. Carne Asada had implied you were very special when she'd not so subtly shoved me your direction, but they were real." Broomhill Dare placed a hoof on my shoulder. Though gentle, the area felt sore.

I told her, "I'm saving ponies."

"You shouldn't kill yourself doing it."

"Well..." I coughed, then cleared my throat to explain the days since the coronation, then instead said, "Before that. Why are you here?"

She looked perplexed, like didn't we discuss this perplexed, then chuckled. "The Applied Physics and Thaumaturgy Dean River Song reads The Manehatten Times. Read that part about one Broomhill Dare receiving a royal pardon for any imaginable crime, then did some research. That was the Sunday Morning Edition. By Monday morning, he called me into his office to inform me that gangsters weren't welcome amongst the Prancetown student body."

I growled. "I don't suppose he returned the Syndicate's dirty bits that prepaid your tuition and lodging, did he?"

Broomhill Dare snorted despite her pained expression.

"You at least bucked his door to flinders on the way out, right?"

"I thought about it..." she said, looking down.

I thought how attractive having royal power was growing to be. I wasn't going to resist much sending a note to Dean River Song from Her Royal Highness the Crown Princess of Equestria. I'd met Broomhill Dare's quantum mechanics professor, Post Doc, and wondered if Canterlot University might find a position for him. I'd audited the end of his class once and knew I needed a teacher like him. I knew what Carne Asada would do and grinned.

I wondered if Celestia was that much different.

Instead, I said, "About those horse apples, the princess kind."

"Wow. You are a princess. You seem more beaten-up than usual, but beyond that—"

"Just a pony." I corrected.

"Your usual humorless crass self."

"A pony with a problem. Kind of like after I took over the syndicate for those two weeks, preventing the gang war blowing up that Carne Asada caused."

"Different scale, I gather?" she asked, smirking. She lifted her head aside and pointed with a velvety nose. "Anything to do with him?"

Shining Armor had fallen asleep on one of the cushiony hospital chairs left for patient's visitors to rest in. The sitting blue-maned stallion had slipped to hang over the side and his mouth lay open. Direct dawn light missed hitting him in the eyes. "Cadance will be happy."

"Huh?"

"Princess Mi Amoré Cadenza. That he doesn't snore." Broomhill Dare did, though it was more of a whistle. "She'll make pretty little princely fillies and colts with that gentlecolt one day if she ever gets her priorities straight." He wore khaki shorts and a beige shirt so as not to look so weird wearing clothes in the first place. "Yes, it has to do with him. And why I clobbered Celestia, twice. Yes, the reports are true, and all the horse apples in between, and much that was hushed up, including why I got hurt."

"Sure, I'll help."

"Um. You might want to wait until you hear the entire—"

She stood. "I've got time on my hooves thanks to the dean, suddenly."

I cast the daily spell. Then, between my two visitors, they propped me in a sitting position. I was plenty strong enough to sit up myself, but I acquiesced to their magic. I was presented a white porcelain bowl on a metal tray. It contained gelatinous wheat gruel for my breakfast, with powdered alfalfa and egg mixed in. I would have asked for fried kippers and onions, had I been asked, but no hospital would have made that. At least they brought honeyed tea.

Revived from my magical expenditure, my stomach hurt less not more. Zecora and Flowing Water appeared soon after, to explain my condition. The old tan pony doctor chewed me out first, and I supposed I deserved it. Sunset Shimmer and Citron (who wore a full length cast on his right leg), watched from the doorway, and the mare winced at her father's words.

Under no circumstances was I to use my healing spell unsupervised or without attendants. I wasn't to use it on myself, period. Spoken like somepony who had never suffered being wounded, but no never you mind! He wasn't wrong is general, only in the particulars, and I wasn't as stupid as I had proved to be. I did learn from my mistakes; I worked studiously only to make new ones!

I had healed the griffon scratch without cleaning it. That had created an anaerobic environment that festered badly, thus the fever and swelling. During a fight, I'd broken it open; the mess entered my bloodstream. In imprecise non-medical terms, I had blood poisoning. Sepsis. My organs started failing.

There was only so much Dr. Flowing Water could do to boost my immune system. They'd even opened me up in places to clean the pus out. Were it not for Zecora, with her shamanic methods and herbs, they'd have lost me.

I had understood well when I'd concluded I'd died.

"How many days?"

"Six," Sunset's father answered.

"It's day 593, then. I cast the daily spell?" That was my cutie mark magic asserting itself.

He nodded, "Twice daily. There was also that thing you did to the lieutenant—"

"Because I'm a crazy pony."

Sunset interjected, "Because you're a princess. You'd hid it from me pretty well when we lived together, but I should have seen the signs." She snorted. "You were everything I pretended to be."

"You wanted to be. Don't be so hard on your dreams, pursue them; I don't want the job. Princess?" I scoffed. "Not anywhere as romantic as it's cracked up to be. Do princesses often smell of unwashed horse and blood—? Wait. What did I do to a lieutenant?"

Sunset looked askance. "You left her in tears, so I heard. You passed out while casting a spell on her, I mean, well, in your condition! A brother and sister griffon dragged her away to cider her at the Red Log to keep her from becoming hysterical. It's a famous kitschy pub in the Lower. It has free karaoke after your second glass. I recommend it." Cidering at a restaurant was something my former roommate had taken me to witness many times, self-medicating her anxiety away due to her misunderstandings with Celestia and willingness to let her steamroll her.

I faintly remembered casting a spell and ponies trying to pull me away, and prevailing against them, which didn't make so much sense because that would mean I cast the spell together with Push or Shield. I could juggle spells, but not consistently, and then only in full control of my faculties. In any case, with the clue of the griffon, it had to be the ensign. Who'd been promoted?

The events of the "previous" morning trickled back. I threw off the covers to lay with my front hooves off of the bed. The Stoop. The promotion. Me being called Captain. And...

And...

Sensora tried to assassinate me and caught me vulnerable. Blueblood had come to my aid, fighting to the death for me, twice, but...

Wait.

Was this real?

He was an impostor. Sensora were a pony kind that could assume the shape of others. His name was Thorax... 7(?), and somehow my love had transformed him from a dark sensora to a light one.

My mind listed Queen Chrysalis, a pink transforming chrysalis, the reality of the green nightmare, and Mudflats/Occeli. It came back in a snap, including the real Blueblood and Moondancer...

Mustang's murderous jackknife, my trophy...

My healing everypony...

Even Fizzlepop Berrytwist who had lost her horn following my commands.

I looked up, a sick sense of premonition filling my gut. "Where's Thorax?"

Broomhill Dare blinked at me. Sunset even tilted her head, saying, studiously."That's the middle part of an insect, isn't it?"

"Not a thorax! No jokes. Where is he? Thorax. Why isn't he visiting me?"

Dr. Flowing Water looked away.

I slid out of bed. My front legs threatened to fold, but I got up straight as Broomhill Dare came up to steady me, acting like a wall to balance against. I stalked up to the doctor, glaring into his green eyes magnified by his bottle bottom glasses. "Where is he?"

"I finished healing him, but when Princess Celestia returned she took all the changelings away."

"Two or three of them?"

"The green bug had explained the one you stabbed was a ringleader, so she'd been—"

"You know they're under my protection?"

"Princess Celestia—"

"Ugh!" I stomped my hoof, not very convincingly as the room threatened to whirl around me. "Guards! Guards!" I shouted.

As expected, two scrambled into the room. Green and pink Pistachio followed with a flutter of auburn feathers–

Firefall!

I all but dashed her way, if you could call a fast hobbling such, but I skidded to a halt as the pegasus with magenta eyes folded her wings. "Ms. Glimmer?"

I sniffed. I'd learned that I could smell the sensora. Bakery-scented.

She smelled faintly of horse, with an undertone of gardenia. I hugged her. "You're okay! You're back. I was so worried." AWOL, then possibly dead, then what really happened...

"I'm okay," she said, disengaging me gently but firmly, as she would have pushed away her filly, until my hooves clattered on the tile. "But if you'll allow me, Ms. Glimmer, I was right. Wasn't I?"

"About Blueblood? That something was wrong? Well— What happened?"

She reported. "I flew visual to clear the townhouse of threats, surveying for threats. I heard Blueblood's other bodyguards rushing behind. Not finding Mudflats anywhere, not even in the closet I threw open, I noted the attic door stood ajar. I flew up with the weirdly upset bodyguards thundering up after me. In the attic, Mudflats awaited me. Popped up, like a jack-in-the-box. With only a lantern lit, I didn't see him until I rammed face first into his hooves. The next thing I knew, the others tackled me. I woke up soaked, laying in a puddle of green honey-scented water, the day before yesterday."

"Are you okay?"

"Fabulous, actually." She fluffed her wings, smiling. "Especially, now that I know you're well, too."

"Do you remember anything?"

"While I was sleeping? No. Other than lots of great dreams that faded when I woke, and the feeling of having slept very well, like never before in my life? No. The provost offered me the week off, but other than the day I decided to spend with my daughter, Cinder, I decided I had a duty to you; I won't fail you again,"

Being encapsulated was as Thorax described. My luck seemed always to be that I suffered the exceptions to the rule, that I should have been dreaming and unaware, but that had proved luck nonetheless. But for misfortunate luck, I might be hidden in somepony's attic, hanging upside down, tubes shoved into every orifice, living out my life as some sensora's love meal, dreaming only good dreams that made me feel loved.

Firefall tapped her chin. "Somepony tipped off the constables, I was told."

I gasped. "Celestia took away Thorax and Occeli. I need to see them!"

"Who?"

"The sensora?"

She blinked at me and tilted her head, "Sorry, Ms. Glimmer. Who?"

"Changelings," Citron clarified.

Her expression went flat. "The special prisoners? I'm sorry, but I can't help you there—"

"They are under my protection!" I screamed.

She clattered back at my vehemence.

"I—"

"That Blueblood was an impostor. His name was Thorax."

The pegasus studied me, doing the math about me, him, and what we did together that night. I stood shakily, with Broomhill Dare beside me, looming menacingly. I breathed hard, and I judged I looked pathetic, certainly worried as a pony might be for a friend, as I had been for her.

Flowing Water said, "Young lady, you really need to get back in bed."

Firefall sighed, decision made. "I can't take you somewhere I don't know the location of, but I know somepony who can."