Secret Treatments

A blowgun is nearly as elegantly simple a weapon as one can get, a single step removed from taking a rock off the ground and bashing someone's head in with it. Any fool off the street can take a hardwood rod and shave it with a knife, and anyone with a glove can dip a projectile into the appropriate concoction and load it into place. The construction of a poison-tipped dart, much like the construction of a campfire, is exceptionally easy to do if you know what you're doing and exceptionally easy to kill yourself doing if you don't.

(Of course, you could simply forgo the concoction, but at that point you may as well stick to the aforementioned rock option.)

There are ultimately three facts that prevent the initial discoverers and current users of this brilliant device from conquering the world with it.

First was the biological component; namely, to do damage, one needed very strong lungs and the common sense to not accidentally inhale the bullet. Every few generations, an aspiring scientist in Equestria bolts awake at night, struck with the brilliant idea of outsourcing the job of blowing to some sort of miniaturized explosion (Incited by a kind of powder, perhaps?) cased in metal, only to ultimately decide that this is a very stupid idea and go back to bed.

Deep in the murky depths of Hepzibah, a swamp country far from mainland equine Equestria, a masked and cloaked individual spotted his target; a great, lumbering beast, merely feet away and holding the capacity to make a bloodstain of the individual in moments.

In a single swipe, making no motion save the subtle gust of wind, he cast off his mask and lifted his blowgun.

With an embouchure honed over the course of decades, he readied his lungs, and fired.

His aim is true. His blow is perfect. The tiny dart rolled in tranquilizing fluids strikes for the heart.

It bounced uselessly off the Cragadile's armoured hide. The cragadile snorted in her sleep, and continued dozing without a care in the world.

Mildly annoyed, the individual readorned his mask and slipped away, realizing suddenly the second reason why nobody equipped with a blowgun has ever taken over the world.

Set idly upon this train of thought, the third and final reason struck him like a train, and he wondered why he didn't think of such an obvious solution earlier.

Magic.

Magic is a tool of the unicorns, or so Water Sound had been told. Few kirin made any further attempts to learn it than was needed for a levitation spell.

Water Sound didn't understand it. It was true, of course, that magic was more difficult for a kirin's horn to perform than a unicorn's, less intrinsically attached to the hippocampus (Brain, not sea creature) as it was. But difficult was not impossible. All good and meaningful things should be a little bit difficult; but even a hound bred for companionship still bears the instincts of past lives, and given time and training, that dog will hunt.

Reaching with her horn into the fabric of space and time, the control of celestial bodies; all of it was a proven possibility, and Water Sound wanted to learn all of it.

With a thought, bottles, plates, rags and meals all darted back and forth in front of Water Sound's eyes, a perfect chorus where not a single member of the choir stuttered or slipped up. Within moments, dirty dishes were clean, food had been removed from the ovens and burners, and alcohol was refilled. Enough food to fill thirty yaks now floated in front of her.

It probably still wasn't enough, she reflected as she burst out through the kitchen door, entering the chaos that was the Hasty Human's front of house.

In Hepzibah's own Hasty Human, it was very difficult to enforce no-pet rules, because that creature at the barstool was just as likely to be someone's dragged in animal as it was a paying customer. Species of all kinds mingled without regards for decency or manners, yelling and hollering, spilling food and starting fights, and always demanding more, more.

Water Sound expertly dodged tossed plates, launched stingers, skunk spray, glass shards, gusts of flame, thrown knives, and at least one unhappy looking Pukwudgie. At each table, she rattled off orders entirely from memory and set down the appropriate dish, which was usually finished before she was two steps away from the table.

In the midst of this chaos, seated directly in the center of the building, a stranger watched her coyly, raising a glass to her as she approached. He wore a black cloak and long clawed boots, shrouding every inch of his skin alongside a beaked leather mask. The expression the mask bore resembled one of shock, with both of the opaque eyeholes wide as saucers and betraying no hint of the emotion behind them. He wore a hat with a wide, circular brim atop it, tipped upward to resemble a black disk behind his head. At his waist, a belt hung strange metal tools, none of which could be easily identified as conventional weaponry.

"Miss Water Sound. You are a hard Kirin to find, my-"

"Here's your drink." Water Sound cut him off, pouring into his outstretched glass and making off. "Sorry, sorry, flag me if you need anything."

The masked individual faltered, looking into his cup and blinking behind the mask.

"Ah. Well. As-"

She had already left. He caught her across the room and awkwardly followed, doing a comparably worse job of dodging projectiles. "Ahem. I've heard a lot about you, Miss-"

"Would you hold this for a second?" Water Sound passed a plate of fajitas into his claws, which he had to sit down to hold.

"Err. Of course. Ah, my organization has been watching you-"

"Table 27." She pointed him in the right direction and abandoned him again.

"Oh. Right. Excuse me." Sound's voice held such a commanding aura to it, seemingly without trying, that the Stranger felt compelled to deliver the plate to the offending table without a word of protest.

Once his task finished, he tracked down Water Sound again and cleared his throat. "As I was saying, we've taken an interest in you."

"I've already got a job, I'm afraid." Water said distractedly, levitating down a live and nervous looking cow at a dragon's table.

The Stranger tried to continue as he pursued her between chairs. "Oh, this wouldn't be long term. We would be paying very well. Our organization is well funded, and the work you would be aiding with-"

Water Sound laughed uproariously and sarcastically, waving a hoof in The Stranger's face. "Oh ho ho, believe me, when I say I've got enough work on my plate. Is there something wrong with your order, sir?"

The Stranger stammered, struggling to keep up. "Hmm? No, no, it was-"

Water Sound looked up from the minotaur and chimera couple she was speaking to to scowl at The Stranger. "Sir, I'm trying to speak to customers. Please give me a minute here."

He fell obediently silent for the rest of her order-taking, trailing her like a lost puppy as she zipped to the next.

"I can see I'm being a bother. I suppose I should see myself out. That being said, I do wish to speak with you after your shift. Your magical abilities have come highly commended."

The mention of her magic skills brought Water Sound to a pause in the middle of the bar, drowning out the din as she turned to look into The Stranger's eyeholes. "My magic? I don't- I mean, I don't-"

The Stranger sighed in relief, having finally caught her attention. "Yes, you've never monetized your skills, but don't be so modest. Magic is much harder for Kirins to master than it is for those of equine persuasion. And given we're a long way from any ponies, I think you've got a talent that is going dreadfully underused. I asked my superiors who the best magic user was in this country, and they all pointed to one individual."

"I've... I haven't been... May I ask what your organization is?"

"That discussion is perhaps better suited for a place other than here, in this moment. But please, if you have any interest at all-"

The Stranger procured a business card and two small firestarters with runes inscribed on them. He held out his claws to allow Sound to take them in her magic. Inscribed on the card, professionally printed, was a strange black symbol depicting an open set of incisors.

"Dragonfire. Strike the flame, send that card, and I'll come to you." The Stranger bowed his head. "You're a very talented woman, Miss Sound. I want that to finally be appreciated, and put to a good cause."

As he left her behind, Water Sound stood amidst the chaos and movement, on a completely different plane from the barflies around her. She stared numbly at the card floating in front of her, the strange insignia of the open jaws.

Danger. Intrigue.

Plots of adventure novels darted through Water's head. Mysterious organizations recruiting down on their luck women, bringing them into secret conspiracies. Sword fights on top of trains, climbing the sides of skyscrapers- adventures and thrills far from her little swamp town, out where things were happening. Where her magic would see good use.

Yes, she decided. This was it. This was the beginning of the rest of her life. Those adventure novels hadn't lied to her- Good things do happen to minimum wage middle-aged women.

"I'm going on an adventure." She murmured. Then, louder, giddier, "I'm going on an adventure!"

"You're going to table 92! Get on with it, damn it!" A voice from the back barked.

Startled, she dropped the firestarter and scrambled to not lose thaumic grip on the glasses.

She dashed outside to the tables waiting by the door, oblivious to the green sparks on the floorboards behind her, greedily devouring the surrounding oxygen.

Twenty seconds later, as she scribbled down the order of the breezie clan outside, a great green light flashed behind Water Sound and bathed her body in heat.

When she turned, the Hasty Human had completely vanished. A massive rectangular indent in the dirt was the only sign anything had ever been there.

As was a pair of firestarters and a business card lying in the center of the indent, completely untouched.

One of the Breezies snorted.

"This better not make the wait for our drinks any longer."

Water Sound returned to her dingey home, built upon tree trunk stilts to keep the native wildlife out, to find The Stranger already waiting for her.

"Miss Sound. I got your message." He nodded courteously from the shadows.

Water Sound's eyes widened nervously. "Yes. Err. Sorry about that."

"Fret not. The customers didn't seem to notice. I did get out of there before they realized their waitress was missing, though." The Stranger approached her from the shadows, looking approvingly at the scorched furniture sparsely decorating her home.

Water Sound circled back to the Stranger, sitting down in front of him with sparkling, attention-rapt eyes. Visions of conspiracies danced in her mind's eye. "Tell me about your organization."

The Stranger took his seat, resting on his haunches with one hindleg crossed over the other, flexing his paws in his boots. He cleared his throat, taking on a calm tone, yet suggesting years of history behind each word. "Our numbers have been founded from the shadows. I, and many others of my ilk, were scouted out from childhoods, taken from our homes and raised in the ways of the Order of the Maw."

Water breathlessly repeated the name.

"Secrecy is our foremost concern. If any knew of the work we did, it could threaten the peace of the entire world." He tilted his beak down, boring into her skull with those empty eyeholes.

"Do you work for the Equestrian Crown?" Water spitballed, already fancying what her black mask would look like. "NLR? Abyssinian Royal Families?"

The Stranger shook his head slowly. "None of the above. We are funded entirely by ourselves, and a few select beneficiaries. No royal family in existence knows of us. The Order has never had more than one hundred members, but we work worldwide, and have for centuries."

Water's eyes were sparkling by now. She leaned in close, whispering breathily as if afraid of bugs even now. "...What do you do?"

"Dentistry."

Water blinked, smile frozen. "Pardon?"

"Dentistry." The Stranger repeated. "More specifically, Monster Dentistry."

Water's neurons still yet refused to fire.

"...Pardon?"

He seemed to take that as her being impressed. "Tell me, Water, while under attack by the monsters that plague Equestria, have you ever noticed what shiny white teeth they have? How pleasant their smiles are as they bear down on you?"

"Not really, no." She admitted.

The Stranger nodded sagely. "All our doing. Without the Order's tireless work over the years, the Equestrian ecosystem would have undergone an epidemic of plaque and cavities. Only we hold the line between those forces of destruction and the beauty of our natural predator's."

She stuttered, struggling to regain her lost awe. "This is... What you do? All the secrecy, all the... Recruiting children from childhood?"

"Our greatest achievement; Career day. We monitor the results of school career day exams across the world very carefully. When a young creature indicates that they wish to be a dentist when they grow up, as I did, it tells us they are ready."

"But... No kid wants to be a dentist."

He snapped his talons. "Exactly. We live in a world of magic and monsters. When a child looks at the possibilities for their adulthood and decides that what they want, more than anything in the world, is to clean teeth? That shows dedication. A love for the art."

"The art of dentistry." Water said miserably.

"Indeed. Now you understand." She got the feeling The Stranger was winking at her.

"So... So, my magic. You wanted me to... To what, make a tooth cleaning spell...?"

"Ha!" He chortled. "Believe me, my friend, a member of the Order needs no assistance in that department. Nay, I require your magic for a different purpose.

The Stranger drew himself up, and a gust of wind through the open window ruffled his clothing. Moonlight reflected off his eyeholes and beak, shrouding half his face in chiarascuro.

"Water Sound! Will you aid the Order of the Maw in our righteous cause? Will you lend your skills to the betterment of the world, although the world will never know the good you have done, although you will receive neither pay nor thanks?"

Water Sound stayed slumped back in her chair, looking past The Stranger and out the window. She was beginning to feel very much like someone somewhere was playing a nasty trick on her.

"Sure." She murmured. "Yeah. Alright."

It was a few hours after The Stranger left that she realized he had said she would receive no pay, despite having earlier said she would be paid very well.

Water Sound was, unfortunately, a mare of her word.

Which she began to regret the next day, throwing all she had into supporting a crumbling shield from the jaws of a Cragadile.

Very awake and rather furious, the animal thrashed its head back and forth, trying to shatter the annoying jawbreaker in its teeth. This all seemed to Water the surest proof that alligators were not ornery due to a lack of toothbrushes, but for some other strange reason science was yet unable to reveal.

As well as the fact that they really, really do not enjoy drills.

Water Sound groaned in agony, sparks flying off her horn as she struggled to stay upright. The thaumic shield surrounding her was rapidly cracking and rehealing, spurred on by all of her will to stay up against the formidable jaw strength of Hepzibah's greatest superpredator.

The only one who seemed entirely calm was The Stranger- Rather, downright ecstatic, hollering things Sound could barely pay attention to, her head being gripped in an invisible hydraulic press as it was.

"Batten down the hatches, Miss Sound!" The Stranger called, voice raw with more emotion than Sound had ever heard from him. He lay on his back between two of the Cragadile's teeth, working on a third with his strange metal tools above him. "We're gonna install some crowns in this lass!"

The Cragadile, as a testament to her intelligence, would not be sated by simply biting down on the annoying jawbreaker on her tongue; She thrashed and rolled, tossing Sound back and forth in her self-sustained bubble, and roared to such a strength Sound thanked her stars the shield blocked out smell as well.

It still wasn't enough. Sound was giving ground, shrinking the bubble by half inches at a time to try and desperately allow her mind and horn to keep up. Her knees gave out, and she sank into a sit, pressing her cheek into the tongue under her as if it held any chance at quelling her headache.

It was in the middle of this, besieged on all sides by certain death, that Water Sound realized she had never given those drinks to table 92.

Water (The liquid, not the kirin) suddenly rushed into the Cragadile's mouth, and Water (The kirin) automatically held her breath before remembering the shield. The animal was now diving into a lake in an effort to make it harder for Sound, which was working pretty well. Shoved to the side of the shield, closer to the dark pit that was the throat, Sound grunted and turned to The Stranger, panting.

"A-Are you finished?"

"Nearly there, Miss Sound! Art cannot be rushed, I'm afraid!"

Shrinking, shrinking, ever shrinking. Water Sound was practically cheek to cheek with The Stranger by now, her hindlegs bunched up into a fetal position until she could nearly kiss her knees. All the while, The Stranger sang and laughed, no worse off for wear as he bonded a crown to the fang.

Cragadiles could hold their breath underwater for up to an hour. Water Sound didn't have that long.

Fortunately, while Kirin may not be magically gifted, that didn't mean they were a completely talentless species.

Water Sound scrunched her eyes shut, flashing her fangs. She mustered her frustration, her anger, her rage. She thought about her shitty job at the Human, and how long her commute to work was going to be now that she had relocated it. She thought about how many years of practice she had put into her magic, and what it was currently being used for. She thought about how she had been roped into this in the first place, first because of her own naivety, and then because she was just too damn nice to say no-

The shield shattered. Resting at the bottom of the lake, the Cragadile finally shut her eyes in satisfaction.

Ten seconds later, the water began to boil, and the still-rippling surface was broken by a fireball, and a leatherball not too far after.

As soon as his rear hit the shore, The Stranger stood up jovially, resecuring his tools to his belt and looking down with an upturned chin at the despondent Sound.

"A job well done indeed! Why, I do say you're a natural at this, Miss Sound!" The Stranger cackled as they stretched their back out, shaking off excess fluid. "We have successfully saved the dental hygiene of one of Faust's beautiful creatures, and it is my belief that nature will be forever in our favor for this."

Water Sound recalled that the Cragadile population of Hepzibah was around 1.5 million. She didn't say a word about it.

"What you have done today will not be soon forgotten. It is a damn shame you can't come work for us professionally, Miss Sound. For this job, I daresay the Order owes you a favor now!"

"Don't mention it. Happy to help." Sound said, genuine about the first part of her sentence.

"I do mean it." The Stranger's voice took on a less bombastic intonation through the mask. "That shield? I've known trained unicorns who couldn't pull that off. Who taught you?"

Water Sound looked up, peering through a dripping mane at The Stranger.

"...Self educated. Do you mean that?"

The Stranger placed a claw to his chest. "Well, I don't know what a professor could teach you about shields you don't already know, but I reckon a proper course might do you well in other fields. Just a suggestion from an old bird. I think you'll do fine in the future, Miss Sound."

He sauntered off, and as his footsteps receded, Water Sound began to think about her life in the kind of way one can only do while soaked from head to toe and waiting out a killer migraine.

A beating of wings stirred her from her stupor, and she looked up to see the silhouette of a Sky Carriage coming down against the sun.

It alighted a good 20 feet away from Sound, allowing her to see the two gryphons who had been carrying it.

They immediately unhooked themselves and approached The Stranger, addressing him with some frustration.

"Eris damn it, Phil. We've been looking for you for days now. Did you go running off again?"

"Who's the kirin? You've gotta stop dragging random people into this shit, Phil."

"And take the mask off, man, you look like an idiot."

The Stranger shook his head vigorously as he approached them, still holding his head high as if he were the tallest creature in Hepzibah. "The Order has many enemies, Sirs. Fiends who would rather the ecosystems of Equestria go rotten in the mouths. It's often dangerous to show our faces in public."

"Shut up and get in the carriage. Your mom's gonna have some words for you."

As The Stranger was pushed into the carriage, still looking proud as ever, one of the gryphons yanked his mask off, finally exposing his face to Water Sound.

Obsidian-colored feathers, with streaks of white plumage over his eyes and down his chin. Small eyes and a long, narrow beak, evolved for plucking bits of food from hard to reach places.

Water Sound shut her eyes gently as the carriage took off, feeling the sudden urge to beat her head on something.

"Alright. Yeah. I should have figured." She mumbled. "A Trochilus."

Water Sound never saw The Stranger again. She never once heard from or about the Order, and she never saw that strange open mouth symbol.

But two years later, when she gathered up enough bits to apply to Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, she decided to offhandedly mention to the alumni she met with that she came recommended by the Order of the Maw.

He told her he had no idea what she was talking about.

She got her acceptance letter the very next day with no further questions.