Black Jack’s hotel room was neater than Rarity had expected. The white paint was hardly chipped, and the furniture must have been kept up with daily by the maids. Both beds were as clean as they could be, at least after a filly jumped around on them first. To top it off, the whole room smelt wonderfully of vanilla and cinnamon.

The pale unicorn fidgeted on the cushioned chair, legs crossed and hooves tensed across the armrest. It wasn’t ladylike at all, but who would be when their friend’s life was on the line. Black Jack was on his way to the inn, as far as she knew. Why she was the first one he wanted to talk to, she had no idea.

Rarity heard a click, and she turned to find the stallion at the entrance. The cape was still wrapped around his body, despite the sunny day outside. His stoic features remained emotionless as he walked in. The room’s silence was filled with hard hoofsteps.

“How did you manage to get such a nice room?” Rarity asked with an anxious smile. The stitches running across his face were unnerving, and the patch on the right of his face was what seemed to be blue plastic.

He sat in the chair across from her, and as the cape exposed his body, she could see the smaller scars fleck around his stomach. She tried to ignore it.

“When you have enough money,” he said with a dark chuckle, “you can get many things.”

Rarity didn’t reply, and Black Jack continued, “I have a few questions to ask you, if you will let me.”

“Certainly.”

“What does Ms. Fluttershy work as?”

The mare smiled again. “She’s an animal caretaker. Be it pets, bears, or other rather dangerous beings, she can communicate with them and help them in any way possible. She’s even cared for foals a few times. It’s her special talent, I might add.”

“I was wondering what those butterflies meant,” he said almost inaudibly to Rarity as he scribbled something down on his clipboard. “And was anything strange about her the last time you saw her before she was extremely infected?”

Rarity brought a hoof to her chin before saying, “She had been rather dull and sluggish. She barely left her house, and when she did, she was buying food or feeding one of her animals. I have no idea what had happened before.”

“No idea at all?” His thick brow raised.

Rarity shook her head.

Black Jack let out a deep sigh, and the mare suddenly felt like she hadn’t given enough information. “That’s all of my questions, I suppose. Anything else you would like to add or ask me?”

A long pause. “Not that I know of, no.”

“Thank you, Ms. Rarity,” he said, and she took that as a signal that she could leave. She rose to all fours, then noticed how rough he looked and grabbed one of his hooves gently. Confused, he turned to her.

“I wanted to thank you for all that you’ve done so far.”

“I haven’t done a thing yet, my dear.”

“Coming here and diagnosing her was the best thing you’ve accomplished,” she mused. Her words hung in the air as she waited for him to reply. Her heart thudded against her chest. Emotions covered his face, but he didn’t say a word. She gave him a warm smile, then turned and left the room.

“These beds are super duper bouncy and squishy!” the pink mare exclaimed, hopping vigorously on Pinoko’s empty mattress. She did flips and turns at every jump, and the blankets and pillows moved with her until they were a swirling mess. “How could he have resisted the urge not to bounce up and down? Boingy boingy boingy boingy boing-”

Pinkie stopped in mid-air once her eyes fell on Dr. Black Jack, who had just entered. When he saw her, his eyes dilated and he dropped his clipboard. Apparently he hadn’t seen her antics before, and her defying gravity wasn’t a good way to introduce them to him.

Slowly, she fell back to the bed in a sitting position with a soft pomf and stared happily at him. “Good morning!” she sang. “Did you know that your room smells like snickerdoodles?”

Black Jack in the chair, covering up his body with his cape this time. “Do... Do I want to know what you just did, Ms. Pie?”

“Unless you want me to go into a whole conversation about time and space and walls, I don’t think so!” Her smile was everlasting, much different from the tone she had the night before. “What did you want to talk about?”

“Did you notice anything different about Fluttershy in the past few weeks?” he asked, watching her carefully.

Pinkie nodded. “Actually, it wasn’t what I noticed, it was what I didn’t notice! She never came to Sugarcube Corner every Sunday with everypony else like she always did, and when I came over to her house to try and make her smile again, she didn’t answer. She always answers! Well, not anymore, but still!” Then she inhaled.

It was a few seconds before he finished writing down every word she said. He could feel it was going to be a long day. “Okay, and what were you doing the day you brought her into Canterlot?”

“Well...” she started a bit too cheerily, and Black Jack brought up his quill quickly. “It was last Tuesday I think and I was working at Sugarcube like always, and Rainbow Dash and Applejack came inside saying that there was something wrong with her so I told Mr. and Mrs. Cake that I was leaving real quick and so I left and we ran out and I found Twilight and Rarity already up there checking her and stuff and I gasped really loud like this GAAAAAAAAAAASP and we ran and told Princess Celestia and we put her in a bed in the palace and Twilight called you and here we are!”

As Black Jack finished the last few words, he could hear her asked innocently, “Is that enough information?”

He bit back his smart comment and replied, “Yes, I think that’s good. You can leave now.”

She sprang off the bed, with a happy farewell of course, and skipped out the door, leaving Black Jack utterly confused in his chair.

Black Jack had seen Applejack, and from the start thought that she would be sensible and honest about this. She was the only one not beginning to cry. He likes ponies with a will like that. When he came in, she sat in the chair in a very different manner than Rarity did, with her back against the corner of the cushion and her legs crossed on the arm. She was staring at the ground until he said something.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Applejack.” The mare gazed over to him, moving the hat rim from her eyes. “How are you doing?”

“Good enough fer somepony who’s been witnessin’ her friend get weaker n’ weaker,” she answered, her sense of humor much more relaxed. “Ah reckon y’all wanna talk to me about Fluttershy.”

He bobbed his head and sat in the chair, bringing out her clinical chart. So far, it was covered in notes, symptoms, and stories, mainly from Pinkie Pie’s non stop talking earlier. He regretted writing every single thing down she breathed. “Do you happen to know if Fluttershy takes care of insects?”

Applejack grinned. “Of course she does. They’re animals, ain’t they? Ladybugs, crickets, butterflies, centipedes, millipedes, spiders...” She stopped the list before she went on into an endless naming of bugs.

Black Jack stared intensely at her for a few moments. “And what about mosquitoes?”

Her face twisted into one of slight distaste. “Them vermin? She’s been takin’ in so many that her backyard’s full of ‘em. There’s been around fifty strange lookin’ mosquitoes comin’ to Ponyville recently, from outta nowhere it seems. Must be the hot weather the past few days. She thought that if she kept ‘em with her, they’d stop bitin’ ponies up in town.”

“That explains most of the problem,” he murmured. Then he said loud enough for her to hear, “Those infected mosquitoes are the cause of yellow fever, and so I figured that she must have been around so many that she got sick from all the bites.” He paused. “Did you notice any bites along her body at all before this?”

The mare frowned. “Well, no,” she said, “but we’ve seen her leave someplace ‘cause she says she’s itchin’ real bad, and we don’t see her til a few days later. If she had bites, she kept them hidden well.”

Black Jack smirked and said, “You know, you’ve been one of the more helpful ones today.”

“Was Pinkie here before me?”

“Yes.”

She snickered at his misfortune. “Ah think she’s crazy. But she’s a great pony once you get to knowin’ her.” She got out of her chair and looked over her shoulder to see what he was doing as she left.

“Wait,” he suddenly said, and she turned. “You can’t tell anypony about what you just learned about the mosquitoes. Can I trust you with this?”

“Ain’t that lyin’?” she inquired, furrowing her brows.

“Not when it saves lives, no.”

Applejack frowned.

They lost eye focus, and he returned back to the clipboard. The quill in his light blue aura was running away at the paper, like he discovered a breakthrough in Fluttershy’s condition, but his face showed frustration. Why did he have to be so good at hiding emotion? She flipped around and left the hotel in a hurry.

“You quack!” Rainbow Dash’s voice rang through the room like a brass bell. “Why won’t you help her?”

Black Jack had to use every ounce of his strength to hold her wings away with his magic. She looked like she was about to rip him to pieces. He didn’t want that again. “I am going to help her, you just don’t have enough patience to wait! Stop yelling or we’ll both be in trouble.”

“And what if she dies tomorrow? Or tonight?” Rainbow bared her teeth as she kept trying to break free, ignoring his demand.

He yanked her closer to him. “Then she dies. There’s nothing else to it.” The fire died out of her magenta eyes, but threatened to relight at any second. “But I’m committed to her life, Ms. Dash.”

Her voice lowered when she asked, “Then why can’t you perform the surgery tomorrow instead?”

Black Jack sighed deeply and set her on the floor. “I have my reasons, and I prefer that you don’t ask questions about them. Now, you can cooperate-” He shut the door behind them and locked it. “-or I can quit now and you can forget about your friend staying alive.”

Static hung in the air between them. Amber eyes met rose, both ignited for two different reasons. Finally, one spoke. “I’ll... I’ll cooperate,” she breathed.

The unicorn didn’t smile. “I thought so. Now, these questions don’t just involve Ms. Fluttershy, but the rest of you as well.”

Rainbow nodded hesitantly. Neither bothered to sit down.

“Did you make much contact with her or her house while she was acting strangely?”

“Yeah, a lot,” she replied. “We tried to talk to her, but she insisted we left and tried to make sure we were as far from her house as possible.”

He held a skeptical look. “And did you listen to her plea at all?”

With a scoff she said, “No, it just made us want to help even more.” This mare’s humor was sickening in ways Black Jack couldn’t explain. “I think some of us got bit by the mosquitoes too, but none of us said anything.”

Another silence, but this time Black Jack was sure you could hear his heart speed up. “Is that all you needed to know?” Rainbow sighed, tapping her hoof impatiently.

It took a moment for him to realize she was talking to him. “Oh, uh, yes. That’s all. Thank you.”

Twilight slowly entered the room, the quietness of the hotel eerie. It was late at night, and she was apparently the last one he wanted to talk to. The whole situation made her nervous. “Hello?” she called, but there was no answer.

As she walked in, she noticed many other things as well. The air smelt of cookies, and the blankets from the bed on the right were spread all out of place, unlike the one at its side. There were two chairs across from each other, and a small table next to one of them.

Then she saw Fluttershy’s clinical chart. She didn’t want to snoop; she knew it was wrong. But it was just information about her friend, right? He wouldn’t mind.

She wrapped it in a pink aura, and was about to bring it to her view until somepony’s heavy hooves thudded into the carpeted room. Quickly she placed it back on the table and gave him a guilty grin. “S-sorry...”

“Don’t touch things that aren’t yours, got it?” Black Jack’s iced voice wasn’t as scolding as she expected. It was more menacing than anything. She chewed her lip again and looked up at his patchwork face. “And don’t bother sitting down, this will be fast.”

Twilight cocked her head.

“I want you to take me to Ponyville and Ms. Fluttershy’s house tomorrow. It’s very important that you come with me, because if you get infected, you will be the easiest to heal.” Without letting her see the front, he brought the clipboard over to him. “I’ll see you at 10:00 in the morning.”

She had so many questions she wanted to ask but didn’t know how to. All she could think of to say as she left was, “And you’ll be punctual this time?” And it wasn’t a humorous question.

He nodded.

She gave him one last look, then left his room.

Why did she have to see him in alone? And why Ponyville? It must have something to do with it. she realized. Whatever it was, it surely has something to do with Fluttershy’s well being. She shouldn’t ask questions. Not now.

Author's Note

I don't own Black Jack or Pinoko, Tezuka Osamu does. All I did was make them ponies. :)