Hurricane Paradigm

“UP and AT attention, Prissy Hooves!” the Commander’s voice blasted Skasis out of his sleep. His eyes shot open instantly, though his conscious thought lagged somewhat behind.

“Maybe you didn’t hear me, Prissy Hooves, but last night I made it clear to you that you were going to rise at O SIX HUNDRED! Now UP! And AT attention!” she screamed to point of Skasis believing he felt his fur recoiling back from it.

Skasis came completely into consciousness, defaulting into the normal, hyper-speed rush he resorted to whenever he’d woken up late for his first class.

He misconstruded the height of the bed, however, his legs automatically assuming it was the same as his dorm room bed and thus leaving his landing awkward.

“I see one but not the other,” the Commander said.

Skasis felt a hot flash run up through him and immediately swirled around to face the Commander, who stood glaring in at him from the entry to his tiny quarters. Skasis found her glare unwavering, despite his finally standing. Quickly, he realized that it was his form of standing. He drew in four hooves, each pair right next to each other so that both sets were neatly paralleled and his legs were straightened out.

“That’s more like it, but nowhere near good enough! You’d better find the motivation to wake up without me having to do it for you if you’re to become useful at all, Prissy Hooves!” she scolded and mocked.

Skasis took that particular word jab with a slide, never having viewed his desire for sleep as a problem, especially not given how many sleep problems he had, and still not viewing as so.

“You have a full day’s schedule ahead of you Prissy Hooves. Lieutenant Stratomane will be arriving by 0700 to take you to your mess hall, and then to each of the three emergency medical clouds, where I expect you to provide full application of whatever kind of treatments you can give to my soldiers. Am I understood?” she went on relentlessly, demanding an obedient response from him now.

“Yes Sir,” he answered, his epinephrine rush having woken him, but not granted him the focus yet to use his full voice.

“I don’t think I quite heard that, Prissy Hooves,” she suggested back.

Frustration, nervousness, and lack of sleep all compounded to fate Skasis into developing a headache. In spite of it, or maybe because of it, he found it within himself to raise his voice.

“Yes Sir!” he forced himself to respond in full.

“Better,” she said, and then turned to leave him. “Be ready when the Lieutenant arrives,” she added just before she walked away.

“It’s not like I have a choice,” he thought to himself.

***

Skasis and Lieutenant Stratomane entered the single-room cloud structure serving as the receiving medic station for soldiers injured in the Recon Corps. The single room is unexpectedly small, running only six by two and a half pony-lengths. Twenty narrow beds lined both long walls, and eighteen were occupied, some with clearly injured ponies: splints, casts, and everything.

“Sir, might I assist you Sir?” A young, pink-furred Pegasus mare with a golden mane asked, saluting the Lieutenant.

“At ease,” the Lieutenant replied and saluted the medic back. “I’ve come with Skasis Paradigm, the Commander’s new medic. We-He’s here to offer any potential treatment he can to your patients,” he told her.

“Most these soldiers under my care have already been mostly cared for: bones set, brakes splinted and set in slings where necessary, wounds sealed and given bandage wrapping . . .” she began trying to assure him.

“That’s not the type of treatment Skasis offers,” he cut her off.

“What treatment is there other than mending their wounds?” she asked, appearing openly curious.

“I-I can create medicinal chemical compounds and provide treatment in the form of orally administered tablets, or capsules,” Skasis said.

The medic tilted her head to the side, giving Skasis a clueless look at which he sighed.

“What are some the most prevalent physiological symptoms among these patients?” Skasis asked.

“Well, I don’t really receive many complaints about anything in particular other than the wounds that they arrive with. It’s fair to assume most of them are in some kind of pain,” she said, and then added a snide, prideful comment after, “They’re Pegasi soldiers though, they’ll tough it out.”

Skasis ignored the comment and looked out across all the room, at every face. The amount of pain he saw all of them displaying almost started to make him feel squeamish. Being surrounded by it, being surrounded by suffering . . . it actually lit something, a driving desire to help.

“Well . . . I guess I better just start going down the row,” he said.

Skasis walked over to the bedside of the first injured soldier along the left-side row. The bedded soldier was a grey-blue Pegasus with one wing wrapped to his side and a thick bandage wrap rapped exceptionally tight around one hoof.

“Ah-this is Corporal Rain Haze,” the medic mare told him. “He returned from a far reconnaissance mission with a dislocated wing that I set back in place, and forehoof split half down the middle,” she explained his individual condition, and then added regretfully, “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about that except cast it tightly and hope it heals.”

“Yeah, me neither . . .” Skasis replied.

The Corporal started to rouse and turned over from his resting position to end up facing Skasis. He expressed a degree of shock upon seeing him, along with a number of the other patients who are completely conscious and had taken awareness of the presence of a Unicorn in the clouds.

“This is Skasis Paradigm,” the Lieutenant explained to them all, “he is an extraordinary medic capable of providing specialized treatments with remarkable results. He’s here to provide you with whatever form of treatment he can, under Commander Hurricane’s order. The same as all of you then are under her orders to accept it.”

Skasis instantly felt uncomfortable and spot-lighted. His eyes widened expectedly, and he reflexively picked one forehoof just slightly off the ground while moving his eyes about from side to side, making sure to keep them from meeting those of any of the dozen or more soldiers now staring at him with mixed looks.

"Answer any question he asks you,” the Lieutenant instructed the injured Corporal. “That goes for the rest of you as well,” he then gave the same order to all of the others.

The Lieutenant’s final command elicited salutes from everypony else who could move their right foreleg without causing further injury to themselves. He returned their salutes quickly and nods once as a whole, resulting in them all dropping theirs.

Skasis stood in the midst of every ponie’s stares for a brief moment longer before he forces himself to turn to face and focus specifically on the Corporal.

“How much pain are you in?” he asked.

“Not as much as some in here,” the Corporal responded after a blink, “my wing’s fine, my hoof’s what’s still stinging.”

Skasis noticed underlying dark circles around the Corporal’s eyes, and he raised his right forehoof up just beneath his chin, debating for a moment.

“Mm-uh, how much have you been sleeping?” he asked.

The Corporal gave him a strange look, and then looked over to the Lieutenant. The Lieutenant responded with a motion of his head in Skasis’s direction, at which the Corporal turned back to the unicorn.

“Ah . . . about, maybe an hour or two every day, at most. Ah-I usually can’t fall asleep until somewhere around sunrise, and then it’s usually only 0800 around when I wake up,” the Corporal admitted to Skasis.

Skasis went half-way through a wince at the Corporal’s answer, knowing full-well from his own University stress experiences what sleep deprivation could do. He bring his upheld hoof the rest of the way up to his chin, and slid it back and forth just as The Doctor had done, deliberating.

“OxyCodone,” he finally decided out loud.

“. . . What?” both the Corporal and the young Pegasus medic asked at the same time.

Skasis’s ears didn’t even register the attempted interaction before he twisted his head to the side and initiated a sequence of complete and utter Baryonic Particle Reconfiguration, referred to in spell terminology as Raw Creation. All the soldiers in the room who could feasibly move their heads snapped in his direction to look on with unfounded faces as his blue alchemical lightning sparked out from the spell aura around his horn.

A large, opaque, rectangular white bottle formed itself out of the countless disassociated particles in the air. Above it, before its cap forms, a series of large bisected dark blue tablets appear, sequentially falling in to the bottle, with the cap and seal materializing at the process’s finale.

Every conscious soldier who had been able to turn and see was left with an open mouth and at least slightly widened eyes, most never having seen any magic beyond unicorns levitating food upon collection from the Earth Ponies. The Lieutenant looked on at Skasis and the demonstrated process with a grin, knowing how much Skasis had helped him and his son, and convinced he could help everypony else.

“Alright,” Skasis began instructing the Corporal, “just take two of these at the same time once every day. It’ll take two to get rid of most of your pain, but four a day would be an overdose. I would probably take it closer to night time—or whatever time you would prefer to go to sleep, since the period with the most alleviated pain comes in a hour or two after you take them,” he finished advising him.

Skasis levitated the bottle over to the Corporal, but ended up just finding him staring back with an expression probably still lost in the alchemical display. The Pegasus medic standing nearby with the Lieutenant bore a similar expression as well.

“What?” Skasis asked the dumbfounded Pegasus, who had no response.

“Corporal! Did you not hear Medic Paradigm’s instructions?” Lieutenant Stratomane demanded a response from him after he failed to answer Skasis.

“Uh-ah-uh—Yes sir! Instructions are clear and understood, . . . sir!” the Corporal finally shouted back.

“Good, then follow them,” the Lieutenant ordered again, at which the bedded soldier nodded back.

The Corporal took the OxyCodone bottle out of Skasis’s aura, and peered at it skeptically for a few seconds before unscrewing it open.

“You said . . . swallow these?” he asked, unsure.

“Yeah; almost everypony uses water, it usually helps,” Skasis answered.

The Corporal gave one more hesitant look at the bottle, and then tilted it to pour two pills out onto his hoof. His free wing reached outward and behind him, dipping its longest feather into the wall of cloud and scooping out just enough to serve as a mouthful of water. He sucked in the condensed water vapor, let the heat of his mouth liquefy it, and then pops the pills into his mouth, swallowing them in a gulp.

“Am I to assume those are anything at all like what you gave me?” the Lieutenant inquired out of curiosity.

“Yes, but far more powerful, WITH side-effects,” Skasis responded.

“Side-effects?” the Lieutenant asked, drawing confused looks from both the Corporal and the Pegasus medic as well.

“Uh—with OxyCodone it’s mainly just a restriction of your reaction speed. You CAN NOT move fast at all when you’re on OxyCodone. But, it’s not like he’s going be,” Skasis explained.

“You’re saying those things he swallowed will make his movements slow?” the medic mare asked.

“Yes; it’s a side effect: a negative and typically Undesired reaction the body has to taking the medication, though USUALLY most ponies find the benefit of taking it worth it,” he explained further.

The Corporal looked up at Skasis with alarmed eyes at the confirmation that he was going to lose physical movement speed.

“Uh-this is something temporary, right?” he asked very nervously.

“Yeeess, no pony would take it otherwise,” Skasis answered him with a clear overtone of condescension. The Corporal relaxed in apparent relief.

The Lieutenant gave Skasis a disapproving eye at his condescing tone. Though after a moment, he let it go.

“So, who’s next?” the Lieutenant asked Skasis.

“Uh . . . since I’m just going to be dealing with the same thing . . . ech,” Skasis began to say, and then winced at his own following words, “I could try doing a mass-diagnosis.”

“Whatever you judge to be effective,” the Lieutenant confirmed.

Skasis sighed quietly, dropping his head to look straight down at the ground. In a moment, he repressurized his resolve, and forced what little anti-stage fright courage he had up to the forefront and did his best to project himself.

“Alright, listen up, anypony who’s pain has kept from sleeping for more than two hours, raise your hoof,” he spoke out to the entire infirmy.

The Pegasi all looked surprised to hear Skasis speaking so addressingly. They all exchange looks with each other, and a few of them raised their hooves. Two looked as if they were struggling to do so, and both also had half-closed eyes as if near passing out, but the dark all around their eyes told Skasis that they rarely were able to.

“They need Palladone . . .” he thought to himself.

“Enough, I’m sure he’s counted you,” the Lieutenant relieved them.

The ponies all lowered their hooves, and Skasis took the passing moment to memorize which ponies had raised them.

“Alright, everypony else: if your pain is insignificant enough that you feel you would be able to function if your injury was completely mended raise your hoof,” he said to the rest of them. “And don’t lie to me,” he even added with an amount of authority in his voice he’d never heard himself able to convey before.

The Lieutenant gave Skasis a look again for his tone, but this time it was one of admirable surprise.

It takes no longer than an eye blink for the rest of the patients to throw their hooves up into the air. Skasis’s eyelids immediately dropped a third of the way in his automatic response of being unimpressed.

“Really?” he asked in a low tone.

“Pegasi soldiers are tough,” the Pegasus medic mare interjected again, with another stuck-up comment, “if they’re not seriously injured, they’re not going to allow any amount of pain to keep them from doing their duty.”

Skasis kept his eyelids low, fed up. The Pegasus medic’s remark did strike up an idea in him though, and he decided it was the only one he really had to try.

“Everypony keep your hooves up,” he suddenly said to the entire group again, and then turned around to the Lieutenant and the Pegasus mare. “L-Lieutenant, and . . . uh—“ he began to ask, freezing at his lack of knowing the mare’s name.

“Private Briskly Healed,” she said for him.

“Could you please . . . face the other direction?” he then asked the two of them.

The Private’s face clearly displayed how ridiculous she found his request. However, the Lieutenant very quickly showed a visible air of understanding what Skasis might be doing.

“Do as he says, Private,” the Lieutenant order her.

“What?” she immediately objected.

“The order of Commander Hurricane, that’s what!” he shouted sternly at her.

The Lieutenant performed an about-face, turning in the direction opposite of all the patients in the infirmary, and the Private grudgingly followed suit.

As soon as they had completely turned away, Skasis looked back to the ten or so raised hooves out in front of him. Within a few seconds, half of those hooves fell, slowly and nervously. Skasis tried his best to put on what might be an assuring smile, and once he has memorized which of them, he nods them all off.

“Alright, I got it,” he told them.

The Lieutenant and the Private perform another about-face, returning to their original orientation.

“Most of them need the same thing to help them sleep, so I think I’m just going to have you do a mass-distribution in that regard. It’s really just their pain-killers that are gonna be different,” Skasis said to Private Healed.

The Private gave Skasis an incredibly disdainful look at his telling her what to do. It was pretty obvious to Skasis that it was for no other reason than the fact that he was a Unicorn, but he didn’t particularly care.

“Do you think you could a set a time for all of them to at least try to go to sleep? It’ll be kind of like they’re back on their ordinary duty schedule, and it should help them get ready to be. Just make sure that they all take two of what I’m about to fabricate half an hour before they do,” he asked her, and even added some correlation to their regimentation to try and adjust her cooperation. It seemed to work, since she stood thinking for a moment, and looked as if she ended up decided the idea wasn’t half bad.

Skasis went through the alchemy process again, this time with Lorazepam: tiny white tablets. Several hundred formed inside of a large, transparent orange prescription container.

“Here,” he said, levitating the fat bottle over to her.

She took ahold of it with her mouth and walked it over to her supply shelves.

Skasis sighed through his nose and walked over to the two most sleep-deprived, and obviously pain-wrought Pegasi.

“Let’s start with you two,” he said.

Alchemical lightning put on another fantastic display, and Skasis channels its power into the creation of big, red-brown tablets.

“This, is Palladone,” he began to tell them.