Chapters A Surgeon With The Hooves Of Gods
Twilight Sparkle stood in the silence of the night, the wind drifting through her mane and feathers. It had been over an hour since she had been standing there, and she was starting to get impatient. This was a life and death situation, and he was taking his sweet time to arrive in Canterlot? It was urgent; she had expected him out of all ponies to realize that.
She had contacted the doctor via mail, telling him to come the night after. When she had mentioned it was a job she believed only he could succeed in completing, and that she would pay however many bits it took, she thought he’d be a little bit quicker than that. This pony would do anything for a few bits.
She only remembered him from Celestia's School For Gifted Unicorns. He was terribly skilled in medical science, even as a foal. It must have been from an amazing surgeon saving his life after an explosion. His body was torn to pieces, but the doctor never gave up on him and rebuilt the colt. He went through so much - brutal rehabilation, his mother dying, his father leaving with another mare - he deserved to be a doctor.
The princess looked up at the clock tower a few blocks away. 10:12. He was an hour and twelve minutes late. He was tardy. Her heart sank. She was sure she was urgent enough in her letter.
“Where is he?” she muttered. “Should I just give up or what? But I don’t want to give up on-”
“I come all this way and you’re already thinking of giving up?” a voice deep and chilled said from behind her. “I expected more from you, Ms. Sparkle.”
Twilight turned around, trying not to trip over the butter yellow dress at her waist. A white Unicorn stallion stood behind her, though the details beyond his scarred, patchwork face and shocked black hair were hidden by the shadows. He had a smirk that made Twilight both a bit more frustrated yet extremely relieved to see him.
“You finally made it,” said Twilight, moving closer to the strange pony. “I thought you decided not to come, Black Jack.”
His smile disintegrated. “I apologize. It was hard convincing Pinoko to stay at the inn while I do this. She thinks I’ll have an affair or the likes.”
Twilight nodded. “Come with me to the castle.”
Black Jack came out of the shadows with a black coat slung over his shoulders, covering most of his body but revealing his hooves in the slightest. A thin red ribbon was knotted loosely around his neck like a shoelace. “Is the patient in the castle?” he asked, his rusty eyes unemotional as always.
“Yes. I’ve been keeping her in bed for the last few days and making sure she doesn’t get out. I’ll explain the symptoms when we get there.”
“Then let’s-” The sound of an unsatisfied child came from nowhere, and Black Jack flipped around to find a young white filly with a yellow shirt and red jumper running to his side.
Black Jack looked confused and angry, while Twilight was just... confused. “Pinoko, what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at the inn!”
Before Twilight could question if this Pinoko was the same one concerned about affairs, the filly said, “I wanted to find out what you were doing with Pwinchesh Twilight!”
Black Jack sighed, then shot Twilight a face full of embarrassment. Little Pinoko was looking determined to find out why her doctor had been called by the princess, though, and Twilight almost felt a smile reach across her face for a change. But that quickly faded when she remembered the reason they were there in the first place.
“Both of you can come with me, I guess,” Twilight said. Pinoko grinned, and the Alicorn continued hurriedly, “but don’t get so loud or nosy. All right?”
Pinoko’s short red hair bounced with her head.
The three ponies were on their way to the castle, and arrived in no time at all. Twilight glanced at the clock again before trotting inside.
10:30. An hour and thirty minutes off schedule. She was missing her beauty sleep.
It’s not like I’m going to be sleeping much anymore, so it doesn’t matter, she concluded in her mind. After what was happening with her friend, sleep was the last thing on her mind.
Everypony sat quietly at the side of the room, watching Black Jack inspect their friend. The pony on the sunken bed was a sickly pale yellow, with long pink hair that swirled around the pillows. There was so much of it that the doctor finally had to pin it behind her ears to check her temples.
Black Jack was shining a small flashlight into her turquoise eyes. “Her pupils are reacting slower than normal,” he said to himself, but the whole room could hear him anyways. “And she has a severe fever. Has she been having seizures?”
Twilight nodded, fear rising in her eyes as if she was having flashbacks of the past. “They’ve become more and more frequent, and make her ache.”
“How long ago did all of this start?” He brought out his stethoscope and whispered inaudibly to the patient. Twilight wanted so badly to help her, but just responded to him instead. The doctor knew what he was doing.
“Her eyes turned yellow a week ago, then she started feeling tired and had a high fever not soon after. We didn’t know what to do, so we told Princess Celestia and she made us take her to the castle.” She looked over to her mentor, who gave a solemn nod. “We don’t want something bad to happen to Fluttershy, so please help her.”
Pinoko gave a big smile, which seemed to brighten the room. “Doc is the best shurgeon in the world! He’ll shave her no pwoblem,” she reassured Twilight, then glanced worriedly to Black Jack. “You can shave her, wight?”
Black Jack ignored her question and said, “She has yellow fever. It’s usually very easy to tell on a pony’s skin, but since her coat is already yellow, I had to push back some of her fur in order to tell. Her skin is pale yellow, just like the whites of her eyes.” He began writing something on her clinical chart.
A frustrated groan came from the end of the room, and Dash looked like she would start kicking herself. “No wonder we couldn’t tell! Horsefeathers!” she cried, then looked at Black Jack with concern. “Can you save her?”
The doctor shrugged like it was a casual decision. “It depends.” He gazed down at Fluttershy, who was wheezing helplessly with every struggled breath. “Do you want to be saved?”
Her head moved up and down ever so slightly. Determination shone in her bloodshot eyes. Black Jack smiled genuinely for the first time that night, and brought his rusty gaze across each of the ponies in the room, reading them.
A princess with the bravest face he had seen from her ever since Celestia’s school. A white unicorn blinking away her own tears and shuddering. A blonde mare with eyes filled with all sorts of emotion. A gloomy mare with dark magenta hair streaming over her face. A dragon huddled against Twilight’s legs, his claws wrapping around her like a stuffed toy. And a pegasus with rainbow hair that opposed against her monotone personality, though her eyes raged with passion. They lined up against the pale walls, unsure of what to do anymore.
“I’ll perform the surgery three days from now. I have every confidence that your friend will be back to proper health,” he finally said. Everypony’s face in that room seemed to shine a little bit brighter.
Twilight walked up to him with shaking hooves. “We’ll pay whatever’s needed. Price is no object when you live in a castle, doctor.” The humor was strained in her voice.
“2,000,000 bits, then,” he said, then began gathering his supplies without even looking at it. “In the meantime, I’m going to have to talk to each of you individually.”
Twilight bit her lip. Why would he need to talk to them? Was there something wrong, and he suspected they did something? He wasn't a detective. It was a bit suspicious. “Alright...”
He gave her a stern nod and pulled the black coat on over his back. “Let’s go, Pinoko.”
“Don’t worry, Pwinchesh!” the small redhead sang as she hurried out the door. At least she was in high spirits.
Author's Note
I'm not sure many people have heard of Black Jack. It was a manga of the 70s and 80s, and an anime multiple times until current time. Not as popular as other animes in America at least, but he's still big in Japan. Hehe.
I don't own Black Jack or Pinoko, Tezuka Osamu does. All I did was make them ponies. :)
A Surgeon With The Hooves Of Gods
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. :)
A Surgeon With The Hooves Of Gods
Turns out the meeting wasn’t alone with him like Twilight expected. She learned that day how hard it was to focus when Pinoko was running her mouth. Or to do anything, really. The only reason that Black Jack ever let her come along in the first place was because she wouldn’t stop yelling that she didn’t trust him with another mare. Twilight could tell she had major trust issues or something.
“So...” Twilight began when Pinoko stopped to take a breath. “Why did you need me to take you here?”
Black Jack didn’t look at her. “I heard there was a mosquito swarm in your town, and I wanted to investigate,” he said quite bluntly.
Twilight stopped in her tracks and turned on her hooves to look at him. The Unicorn froze as well, narrowing his eyes at her sudden stop. “What do the mosquitoes have to do with it?” she demanded. “We have an extra day for study and you want to waste it on investigating a bunch of bugs?”
With a sigh, Black Jack shouldered past her and said, “Idiot, I am doing something productive. Do you have any idea on how yellow fever is caught?”
Pinoko picked up her pace to match the doctor’s. “I do, I do!”
“I wasn’t asking you, sweetie.”
“Oh.”
Twilight followed behind them, letting out a heavy breath. “Well, not exactly. I tried to find something about it with the books in the library, but I couldn’t.”
“When a place is populated with mosquitoes, too many to be healthy at all, ponies who are around them the most will catch disease from them, which gives them yellow fever. I’m going to find out if this is the cause of Fluttershy’s fever. And if it is, we’ll have to get rid of them before anypony can go near her house.”
The thought of Fluttershy taking care of what she loves most being the cause of her disease sent shivers down Twilight’s spine. Then she frowned. “How are we supposed to get close to the house without getting sick as well?”
“That’s easy,” Black Jack said, his horn lighting up a light blue. “My magic can deflect diseases, albeit for a short period of time. I can surround ourselves in it until we leave.”
“... Isn’t that cheating?”
Black Jack rolled his eyes. “No, it’s disinfecting. There’s a major difference.”
“Not really...” Twilight said, turning her nose into the air. She was glad he couldn’t see her smug look from behind him, or he would be ticked.
“If you had actually read a book or two on the medical field, you would have seen the disinfectant spell in at least one of them.” His chest seemed to puff out a bit at that statement.
“Hey! I said I couldn’t find one anywhere! It’s not like I stock my library with books about doctors and stuff, not like you .”
“I don’t even have a library.”
“Last time I saw your house, your office was buried beneath your books. If that’s not a library, I don’t know what is.”
“It’s not any different from yours.”
“What?”
“Hey, look! It’sh a pwetty cottage!” The two grown ponies stopped their bickering and looked down at Pinoko, who was pointing a hoof to the distance. It was a cottage, but it looked swarmed with mosquitoes and other dangerous insects. “Ish that where we’re going?”
Twilight turned in the direction of the filly’s hoof. She nodded and said, “That’s Fluttershy’s house!” before trotting ahead of Black Jack toward the cottage. The doctor snorted through his nose, followed with a puff of smoke, then ran after her. Pinoko skipped happily along, not even trying to catch up with either of them.
When she got closer, Twilight could see that the once small group of bugs from just a few weeks ago was now a huge mass that seemed to continuously grow larger. The animals that once roamed free about her yard had ran off to escape the mosquitoes, and the house itself was wrapped in yellow caution tape. All the windows and doors were barred shut with wooden planks. Twilight had never seen it like this before.
But before she could take another step forward, a blue aura enveloped her and drug her back. “What are you-” Twilight exclaimed as she was plopped next to Pinoko. Black Jack had already started to walk towards the house. The princess could see a faint cerulean color illuminate his body and horn. “Aren’t I coming with you?”
“I wanted you to come along so I could find Miss Fluttershy’s house,” he replied over his shoulder. “Not so you could tag along and get yourself sick too. Stay there with Pinoko until you see me leave the house.”
Twilight was fuming. “I thought you said you wanted my help!”
“I lied, sorry.” The doctor ripped through the caution tape and entered the house, trying to avoid the mosquitoes as best as possible.
“Miss Pwincess, you’re wearing holesh into the gwound...” Pinoko lay on the grass, giving Twilight a concerned look. The Alicorn was pacing back and forth across Fluttershy’s yard, and was indeed making deep holes in the ground. Her steps were hard but quick, and the hole she made already went up to her knees.
Twilight turned to look at the young assistant. “Pinoko, how can you not be worried? He’s in there all alone with no reinforcements! He’s been in there so long... what if he’s hurt?”
Pinoko deadpanned. “If he was hurt, he would have told us by now.” Then she bore a jack-o-lantern grin. “I’m shure he’s fine!”
“Well, I’m not.” Twilight looked at the house and frowned. “I’d better go in there and see if he’s okay-”
Suddenly, the doctor burst out of the door and quickly shut it behind him, then let out a long sigh of relief. “How did she let her house get like that?” Black Jack asked quietly, shaking his head.
Twilight released the breath she didn’t realize she was holding and ran over to him. “How did it go? What did you find?”
“Mosquitoes. Lots of them.”
She rolled her eyes. “Duh. I mean, what else? Like, something significant that might help Fluttershy.”
Black Jack reached into the depths of his cloak and pulled out a container. It was a smashed mosquito, almost the size of his eye, with it’s blood and juices spilling out of it. “I killed one of the larger ones and put it in the jar. If I can analyze the juice, there should be an antidote in it that we can use to cure your friend.”
Twilight quickly grabbed the jar from his hoof and held it with her magic, staring at the massive insect in awe. “And you’re sure this can help us...?”
Black Jack nodded. “The antidote for most diseases are found in the source.” He started walking back to the center of Ponyville. Pinoko quickly got up from the grass and began following him, trying to get by his side.
Twilight run up to his other flank. “Hey, maybe I should try being a doctor, it looks like fun.”
The stallion faced her, softly smiling. “Oh, I’d like to see you try.”
“Maybe I could be better than you.” She nudged him playfully.
He pushed her back gently. “Let’s not ask for miracles here, Princess,” he chuckled.
