Skasis stepped out of the TARDIS out onto the clouds of Pegasopolis. The sky all around was perfectly clear and blue, with the sun nearly risen to its height. He took the few short steps over to the edge of the clouds and peered down over the vast landscape just as the day before.

“Emissary Paradigm!” the Lieutenant’s voice suddenly reached Skasis’s ears, and he turned about at it. “Seriously: Skasis,” he tried to correct the soldier, but his words apparently never made any contact.

“Sir,” the Lieutenant just went on as he landed right beside Skasis, “I was able to make one my comrades in the Commander’s day guard aware of your request, and he took responsibility to relay it to her.”

“O—kay?” Skasis pressed him to go on, which he immediately did, "sir, I just encountered him again, and he said that she had ordered him to find you. I told him where you were most likely to be, which I figured would be this same spot and he went back to inform her so that she might make her way. I’d suspect she should be arriving shortly.”

Skasis’s eyes expanded quite a bit, not having actually had to interact with anypony of significant historical importance despite all of the time travelling he had been a part of for the past four weeks.

Suddenly, Skasis heard the door to the TARDIS close, leading him to look back over to it. Expecting to see The Doctor and Derpy, he was a little bit surprised when all he found was just the TARDIS still standing there by itself, no pony having emerged from it at all.

“There, they’re approaching from the north now,” the Lieutenant’s voice drew Skasis’s head back to him, and then off in the direction he had indicated.

Suddenly, Skasis heard something that had by that point become distinctly familiar sound, the sound of the TARDIS departing. For the first second he had no actual reaction, his mind simply shut up in a paralysis, wanting for the sake of his calm to reject the reality of what was occurring. But, after the first instant passed, panic came rushing through him, and he rushed toward the vanishing blue police box with all the unathletic speed he could gather up. But it was to no avail.

The TARDIS dematerialized, and Skasis was left behind: stranded in the past.

“Sir?” the Lieutenant called him as he trotted over to where Skasis was now left standing. “Sir, the Commander is here,” he said. Skasis managed to turn about and face the Lieutenant with a stricken face, having forgotten for a moment that nopony who wasn’t looking for or already knew of the TARDIS could really see or hear it.

What he turned to see however, was the motion of the Lieutenant saluting somepony other than, drawing Skasis’s own attention in the direction the salute was aimed.

There in front of him, a deep-red mare in a light cuirass and fore-jutting helm lighted down upon the cloud. Her mane and tail were black as night, her eyes a browned yellow and her wings an odd anatomy to them that Skasis hadn’t seen in any pegasi from his own time period. Her left ear had an upper piece missing from it, and a short scar ran under her eye on her left cheek. But her nose . . . her nose was pushed up awkwardly, farther up and back than it should be, with three scrumped lines forming where the upper bits of it were being pushed together. Her figure was something near perfect, or what would be thought of in Skasis’s time, although it was easily visible that it was entirely consistent of nothing but toned muscle.

“Emissary Paradigm, I presume?” she did indeed presume, and in a tone of voice indicative of her being either suspicious of him, or highly unimpressed. “I’m Commander Hurricane,” she introduced herself, telling him all anypony would have ever needed to know.

The Commander stared straight at Skasis, and he didn’t really have the willpower to stare anywhere else but right back. Both looking right into each other’s eyes, one subconsciously reading the other and one very intentionally reading the other. Her voice didn’t sound at all like what Skasis might have expected; it had more femininity to it than what she had been interpreted historically as having, though it still had a definitive harshness within it.

Skasis tried, after her eyes began to narrow at him, to choke out a response of any kind, still lost in the fact that he had just been stranded in time. “Ah-ah y-yes ma’am. Skasis Paradigm," he barely managed to coherently get out. He even awkwardly attempted to salute as well, knowing of no other physical gestures of signals that would be considered normal for the time period, or the militaristic pegasi tribe specifically.

“DON’T salute me, you are NOT in my military!” she shot down his attempt before he’d even completed it.

Skasis’s entire body went cold in an instant, even though on the surface he started sweating under his fur, as the Commander narrowed her eyes at him further.

“Lieutenant Stratomane informed me last night that there were three of you; where are you two comrades?” she questioned him in an outright interrogative manner.

Skasis looked back over at the spot where the TARDIS had once been, his expression even carrying his last fading hope that he had hallucinated its departure. All he found when he looked back was exactly what knew, but still dreaded he would: there was nothing, no Doctor, no Derpy, no TARDIS, just an expanse of cloud.

“I don’t know," he told the truth, in a sense. The Commander could sense almost immediately that he was concealing something, however, and decided to not immediately respond, but wait to see if Skasis would tell anything more.

“They were just me with a little while ago, but they’ve disappeared and I don’t where they are now," he added a further explanation after a few seconds of silence from her.

“Fine, I can have them found," she declared in quite a threatening promise.

She turned to her accompanying guards. “Search all around the city and surrounding sky, and extend it to the ground below if you have to. I want them found!" she ordered them with so much more authority than Skasis had ever heard from anypony before, and at once every other pony except for she and Skasis was gone. Skasis’s heart sunk hard and fast as he interprets they, and thus him as well being spoken of as criminals, however he wasn't left with any time to dwell on the feeling whatsoever.

“You, Emissary Paradigm,” Commander Hurricane snapped her head back in Skasis’s direction before turning herself completely. “I’m to understand you’re also a medic of some sort? And that you gave some kind of remedies to both my Lieutenant and his son that cured their conditions," she went on questioning him, taking a few steps closer.

For perhaps the first time in his life, Skasis withheld all mental urgings to correct statements, from his quickly coming to grips with the gravity of his situation. He took in quiet, deep breath through his nose, and then answered her, “yes ma’am.”

“What conditions can you treat?” she wasted no time in asking.

Skasis tried to give her his best explanation right away. “Most, apart from actual, physical injuries. I can’t set bones or do anything surgical. All I can do is give medications to relieve or cure conditions: pain, restlessness, infections, nausea, anxiety . . ." he listed to a point.

The Commander’s eyes shot back open in full at Skasis’s mention of anxiety as something he could deal with. “Excellent, while your comrades are being searched for, I have a matter of concern that I’m going to involve you in," she dictated, lifting off the cloud and flying over him, picking him up before he even knew what was happening.

***

“Listen carefully, Skasis Paradigm,” Commander Hurricane began telling Skasis in a cold, serious tone as she flew them over the landscape in a gradual descent from the cloud level, “whatever medical skills you have that let you aide my Lieutenant and his son so easily are my primary concern with you right now. Whoever you really are and whatever it is that you’re concealing will be dealt with later. Is that understood?”

“Yes ma’am,” Skasis responded with an enough of an upbeat voice, at least compared what he had sounded like only moments before, for the Commander look down at him in some suspicion. She found Skasis smiling with his eyes open wide in a manner far closer to excitement than fear.

“What are you smiling about, Unicorn?” she demanded to know, genuinely not understanding any reason for him to be. What she got as a response was him up at her with a practically thrilled expression, then closing his eyes and lifting his head back to show the wind blazing through his brown mane.

“Enjoying this, are you?” she asked, and nearly in the form of an accusation. Skasis opened his upward gazing eyes to find the Commander looking right down back at him with almost a sinister smirk.

Abruptly, she cut their descending flight, pulling up for a moment in a half barrel roll, and then took them plummeting toward the ground in an absolute vertical drop.

“EEYAAHHH-HA-HA-HA!” Skasis screamed; he screamed and shouted joyously, at really the only thing in the world that thrilled him so far beyond his personality’s constraints to the point of doing so.

The Commander truly lost focus for a second, though only a second, absolutely dumbfounded at Skasis, at the impossibility of a ground-dweller enjoying flight. There was no way!

She snapped herself back pulled them out of their dive, both to level them out and to invoke G-Forces on Skasis and see if he would still be left smiling afterwards.

And almost to the point of her refusal to believe . . . he still was when they’d finally resumed a calm landing approach. What she was carrying through the sky was impossible: a flight-loving ground-dweller! Few things were so unheard of . . .

***

The Commander hovered about a pony’s height off the ground and dropped Skasis without warning rather than setting him down. She landed herself a few paces away and almost immediately approached him with the same interrogative look she first had when Lieutenant Stratomane’s comrade brought her to them.

Skasis, having mostly been able to take the fall alright, looked up to see her expression, and quickly changed his own to a much more serious one.

“Explain to me, Emissary Paradigm, just how is it that a UNICORN enjoys flying, free-fall, AND severe G-forces?” she asked still sustaining much of her interrogative tone, though some shock was just barely becoming detectable behind her composure.

Skasis still faintly smiled as he responded. “I-I’ve just always loved flying,” he said, “I mean . . . to me, it’s liberating. It makes me feel so free, even though I know I’m not in control. Plus, I haven’t gotten to fly since the last time my dad fly me around, which was-“

“Your father flew you?” she begged the question, with such an emphasis of stress on the word flew.

“Uh-yeah, he’s a Pegasus," he answered. The question struck Skasis as odd for the few seconds it took him to answer. Only right after did he suddenly remember just how separate the three tribes likely still were in the immediate post-foudning time. He watched the amount of visible disbelief in her face only grow from his answer.

In reality, she almost didn’t believe him. But, she was far from ignorant of how to read ponies, and being in her position had so quickly lead her to develop the ability to pick out lies. And to all that she could tell . . . he wasn’t lying.

“You’re an outlandish pony," she said with a couple shakes of her head.

“A Pegasus and a Prissy-Hooved Unicorn as mates? Uch!” she then said, shivering violently for an instant and not in any way hiding the fact that she found the concept practically sickening. “Nevermind,” she ended the line on that subject, “just follow me.”

The Commander turned about and began a trot toward the only nearby structure: a relatively small little log cabin set against the start of the trees just some twenty pony-lengths beyond it. Skasis immediately followed as she’d ordered.

“You said that you can treat anxiety, correct?” the Commander returned to questioning him about the subject she was concerned with. “Yes ma’am," he answered. “In what manner, and to what extent?” she pressed for specifics, without ceasing her advance toward the small home.

The Commander stepped straight through a collection of mud puddles along the narrow path that lead up to the quaint home, while Skasis trailed behind, placing his hooves carefully as he went, avoiding as much mud as he could. The Commander had all but come within a few steps of the door when she pulled an about-face to investigate Skasis’s lack of a response, and ended up seeing him trying to keep from mudding his hooves.

“Pff! Prissy Hooves," she mocked with nearly tangible disgust.

Skasis lifted his head at the insult, not having expected it. As he stood simply looking into her disapproving gaze, a piece of himself began to crumble away inside. He didn’t know why; maybe it was because of who she was, and that she of ALL ponies had been the one who’d just said it. It was one of those moments . . . those moments where somepony really takes in an insult aimed at them, or something else harsh that somepony said about them, and comes to the realization that whatever was said is true. After a moment in that depressing realization he resumed moving onward. He still stepped around the mud, but he went on doing so with his head hanging a few noses low.

“So, Prissy Hooves, do have an answer for me or not?” she demanded again, after another moment had passed. Skasis winced at her use of that comment again, in combination with her fully renewed harsh tone. “It depends on the severity of the condition, and the cause . . . which I’m not capable of determining," he answered.

“Not capable?” she quickly questioned. “Was I mistaken to have believed my Lieutenant when he told me that you were an exceptional medic then?" she asked.

Even then, Skasis couldn’t avoid letting off a groan of frustration. “I tried to tell him I’m not a medic,” he explained, “or any kind of physician. I’m a Chemist, an Alchemist. I’m capable of transmuting ambient matter into medicinal chemical compounds, and very broadly diagnosing some common conditions I learned about in a couple of undergraduate medical classes.”

The Commander still held her unimpressed face, and let Skasis stand taking it in for a good bit of time, which he slowly did, shutting up and lowering his head slightly in a submissive manner.

“So you’re a whiner too, Prissy Hooves?” she posed her observation as a question to him.

That time her words completely struck him silent. His expression fluctuated between frustration and defeat, until the latter overcame the former, and his eyelids even began to slump half-way shut.

“You really can’t handle harsh words, can you?” she noticed, without any expressed sympathy.

Skasis held his own unchanging look, half-fallen eyelids and all, and responded in a nearly hollow voice. “No . . . because their true," he admitted, for the very first time.

The Commander tilted her head up and lowered it level again in a very slight minor nod.

“Hmph,” she finally broke the lengthening silence, “I’ve never met any of you who can. Although, I’ve never met one of your kind who ever admit to their own flaws either. For that, you might be only the third Unicorn ever to earn a raindrop of my respect.”

Skasis picked his head back up, and his eyes opened back all the way again. He found that her face right then was actually lacking in the perpetual sternness it had been carrying. That gap only lasted a few seconds, but still . . .

“Now, do you have an answer for me as to WHY you’re not capable of finding the cause of a pony’s anxiety?” she picked up her questioning again.

Skasis exhaled everything from his lungs and began a fresh sequence of breathing before he attempted his explanation. “I can, but it would just be a symptom-based assumption, b-basically a guess. Only heavily trained medical mages can magically determine exact medical conditions, and I’m inept at examining anypony’s biochemistry at the level of interconnected systems-function.

“Inept?” she asked.

Skasis hesitated for a lengthy run of seconds before he forced himself into his admission. “I-I can’t cast medicinal spells of that level. I’ve tried, and failed,” he told her.

“I see; so you’ve allowed lack of success to make you abandon your resolve," her words and tone were so blunt and disapproving that it honestly felt like they physically hit him.

Were it any other pony but her, Skasis would have ended up expressing his frustration somehow, especially feeling nothing but such at a third insult, especially a true one. But hearing it from her . . . hearing from her only made him fall silent . . . again. He shut down, reeling himself in to face the realization that she wasn’t even insulting him for the sake of it, she was pointing out his more severe flaws one by one by one.

“Regardless, solving THAT problem is YOUR concern. I still require the medical skills that you do have. Now listen carefully to me, this is a matter of personal concern to me; just because you’re incapable of using this . . . Special Magic, doesn’t mean that I don’t expect results matching those that made my Lieutenant speak so highly of you. Is that understood?” she dismissed his incapability and went straight to setting her expectations for him.

“Yes ma’am," he responded, just giving in.

“That’s yes SIR. You may not be a part of my military, and I may have forbade you from saluting me, but you will still address me appropriately as a military officer. You Unicorns may be sensitive of a pony’s being a mare or stallion even in high positions of authority, but that is NOT the case among us Pegasi: not in MY Military. Am I clear, Prissy Hooves?” she demanded from him yet again.

“Yes Sir,” Skasis obeyed.

The Commander nodded and turned about to the door. She knocked lightly several times and a few seconds passed before the door was opened from the inside by a brown Earth Pony stallion with a pale blond mane.

“Oh, Commander,” the stallion greeted with a dip of his head, “and . . .” he had to halt, obviously not recognizing Skasis.

“I’m here to see my former Private," she said to the Earth Pony, who nodded back. “Of course. Welcome in, please," he responded, and stood aside to allow them in.

The inside of the log house was a single, completely open room. There wasn’t necessarily all that much inside. A table suitable for four ponies stood in the corner to the right of the door. There was a fireplace set in the wall directly across from the front door and a bed just wide enough for two ponies in the far right corner, its head against the same wall as the fireplace.

In the back corner of the little home, at rest on the bed, was a blue Pegasus mare with a delicate, ghost-white mane. Skasis recognized her from the few supposedly accurate images that existed in historical records: it was Private Pansy.

Author's Note

3rd installment. Shortest yet, but the next will be back up to decent length, as should most of the ones immediately following it

On the note of Commander Hurricane ( yes she is a Mare in my story) being addressed as "Sir", I still use it as coming from (at least what used to be common in the military to my understanding) addressing someone of higher rank in the military, since you're addressing the position of authority, not the individual themselves, (though as mentioned, I've heard from some that things have been changing recently in the U.S. military at least, however both of my parents served for 20 years and throughout all their service female officers above them were always addressed as sir, so I'm sticking with such) granted, I didn't initially take into account, there might also just be differences either between branches of service and or individual units or bases.

Regardless, always know you have my utmost respect if you are a service member or previously were. Both of my parents served 20 years in the US Air Force, and I practically grew up on Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod, though we technically lived off-base, I was still out there A LOT.