Fall of the Rightful King-Clean

Chapter Four

"Nick..." Erin said.

"I heard," I answered. Brittney trotted in, a warm smile on her face, and sat in front of us.

"Oats are soooo good," she said.

"Shh," Erin hushed.

"That's correct, Monica," Manuel said. He was an older Latino man with piercing eyes and a rumbling voice. He was in a suit and sitting comfortably. "The Order of Saint Augustine was founded to deal with magic and prevent its use. We are, as you can imagine, concerned with how last night played out."

"So are you claiming responsibility for the storm?"

"No, we believe that to be the responsibility of a rogue person, named Alexander. He is acting on his own, which is very dangerous for those of us who like how we are shaped and do not want it to change."

"And do you use magic?" the reporter asked.

Manuel frowned. "We do, but it is only because it is our weapon against those who do evil. We hope for a world where there is no more magic."

"Right. You must understand, Mr. Garcia, that I'm a little bit skeptical about magic being real."

"Not for long," Manuel said.

"I'm sorry?" The reporter said.

"Nothing, my dear, please continue."

"Well, I've never seen magic and always thought it was a fairy tale. Can you show me some?"

Manuel frowned. "My dear, magic is like a savage animal. It is alive and does not obey willingly. You saw some of the storm last night, and you ask me to show you more? I cannot do this. But I will say," he added, interrupting the reporter. "That we are gathering in the Langan center at 8:00 tonight. We want to tell people what is going on. The magic that created the storm that was unleashed last night is not finished. It is changing and seeks to establish itself as a permanent part of our world. It is dangerous."

The camera focused on the reporter again. She started talking, but couldn't get a word out before Manuel spoke again.

"My dear, your hand..."

The reporter turned to the side and dropped the microphone with a gasp.

"Turn it off! Turn it off!" she yelled at the cameraman, and the screen switched back to the news station.

"Wait!" Brittney yelled. She ran up to the TV. "Go back! You can wewind, light?"

I fumbled for the remote and rewinded. I still didn't see what she was so excited about.

"Now go fowahd! Just a little bit."

We went forward frame by frame. The reporter looked at Manuel, dropped the microphone, and...

"Theh!" Brittney stamped a hoof and pointed at the screen. In the frame, the reporter was grabbing her wrist. Instead of a hand, she had a yellow, roundish shape. It was hard to see because it was blurry, but if I had to guess... it was a hoof.

I sat back. Well. This was... not all the way bad. I mean, Manuel didn't seem like he was telling the whole truth. But if he was, this was the best opportunity we'd had to figure out what the heck had happened.

"Well," I said, looking at Erin, "I know where I'm going tonight. I'll be able to just make it after getting off work."

"Yeah..." Erin said. "I really think you should go. I wish I could but..." she gestured at Brittney, who was trotting upstairs. "She almost died. I can't... I don’t want to just leave her alone. Especially if she's like this! She can't call someone or text or anything."

"Yeah. Makes sense," I said. "I'll tell you everything they tell me."

"But you can't go alone!" she said.

I raised my eyebrows at her.

“Oh, shut up, I’m feeling confused and still trying to deal with hooves. I just want you to be safe.”

“I will,” I said. “It’ll probably no scarier than work. Um… speaking of which…”

“You have to go,” she said. She sighed, hugged me again, then stood up.

“Be safe,” she said.

There weren't a lot of people at work; not a lot of employees, I mean. Even before I checked in, I was getting swamped with requests and assignments. First we had to go attend to a reported heart attack half a mile away, then we were called back to move some 600-pound guy out of his bed after he died due to surgical complications.

The whole time, there were little hints that things weren't totally normal. People weren't answering their phones. The cops were receiving so many missing person reports that they'd asked us to send an hourly report with the names of every new patient. The worst was a lady who came running in, holding a kid and screaming. Another team got the kid, who went straight into surgery. I don't know exactly what happened, but the team walked back out with heavy heads.

I tried to talk with people about what was going on. More than anyone, we were seeing just how much damage the storm had done. There were a lot of people coming in who were clearly concealing part of themselves. Most of them got turned away when we found nothing life-threatening going on. They weren't all ok with this, but what could we do?

Rain started to fall just as I got in my car. I checked, it was just a normal storm. No gold light, no crazy winds. Just rain. There was something comforting about something so mundane and normal.

My mind was whirling the whole way home. Ok, first of all, we could fully establish that this wasn't just confined to Erin and Britt. I'd kind of hoped that, gold storm and all, it'd been just them. Guess that wasn't a possibility. There were a lot of people changing. Yeah, sure, it might just be this city, but that's still a heck of a lot of people. There were, what, 300,000 people here? What if everyone changed? Britt changed pretty dang fast, and Erin was changing now. What if the rest of us were going to follow?

I could swear that my hands were getting stiff and my ears were moving. They weren't. (I checked.) I was just psyching myself out. I was definitely going to tonight's meeting. Just had to check on the girls first.

I could see something on my porch. A pony, by the look of it. I pulled up and walked towards my door, on my guard. I heard a scraping noise as she pushed her face against the doorknob, before falling back onto her butt. She was a grey unicorn, horn poking out through soaked and matted hair. A dirty, scraped up, and soaked backpack lay next to her, one strap around her neck. I couldn’t see her eyes through her hair. She was trembling very weakly, and I saw a key in her mouth.

"Are you ok?" I asked, bending down by her. She didn't seem like she was in the state to cause me any problems.

“He… help… ple…help…” she said through chattering teeth. Her voice was so faint as to be barely audible. I unlocked the door, bent down to pick her up, and stepped inside.

"Nick?" Erin called from upstairs.

"Yeah, it's me," I said, as Erin came down the stairs.

“Oh my gosh!” she said, quickly feeling the pony’s forehead. “She’s freezing! She needs to get in the bath,” she said, heading upstairs.

“There’s, uh, no bathtub,” I said. “Just showers. We’ve got to be careful with her," I added. "We need to get her chest warm before her legs or she could have a heart attack.” The unicorn simply lay limply in my arms as I carried her up the stairs.

I felt the unicorn’s chest as I reached the top of the stairs. Her chest felt cold, and her heartbeat was hard to find.

“We’ve got you,” I said to her. “We’re going to get you warm and safe, ok?” She didn’t respond. Erin already had warm water running, and took the pony from my arms. She set her in the bottom of the shower, pulled the shower nozzle down, and carefully started running warm water over the grey unicorn. Her curly brown hair reached down to the floor. The mystery unicorn offered no complaint, although she did sit up after we'd warmed her up a bit. We tried asking her questions, her name, when she'd changed etc. but the only reaction we got was some soft crying. When she was warm again, we turned off the shower and began drying off brown hair and grey fur.

“You know,” I said, “I didn’t think I’d ever meet a ‘my little’ pony a few days ago, and this is the second one I’ve dried off from the rain in two days.”

“Yeah,” Erin said. “I didn’t think I’d ever have a tail, either. Can you hear me, hon?” she said to the unicorn. "I need you to stay awake, ok? We’ll get you something warm to drink. Do you like coffee?”

No immediate response, but after a repeat of the question, I saw the horn bob left to right.

“Ok, then, maybe warm milk or hot chocolate?” Erin asked. In response, the unicorn took a deep breath.

“I’m fine,” she said in a voice that said she was anything but. “I just really want to wake up.”

“What do you mean, sweetie?” Erin asked as she moved hair out of the unicorn’s eyes. I had no idea when Brittney had gotten there, but I heard her hooves against the tile behind me.

“A unicoln!” Brittney said in glee, coming close. “Is she ok? Can she do magic? Oh Celestia, I’m so excited! Can…” her voice tapered off as she got a closer look at the poor, grey-furred girl. I could see her eyes now. They were green and pointing in different directions. One locked on to me, but the other looked slightly to the side. This was true even as she looked at Erin, then back to me.

“Nick, it’s me,” she said. Everyone looked expectantly at me. Seeing that I didn’t recognize her, she muttered something vulgar before continuing. “Dang it, Nick, I’m Alan.