Chapters Trying the New, and Trying Again
“I’ve said it more times now than the number years I’ve lived: it was an accident! And nothing even came of it!” The Doctor protested against Derpy’s constant reminding him of the incident he nearly caused at their lunch earlier in the day.
“It doesn’t matter,” she kept chastising him, “you still need to start being more careful! If Skasis hadn’t used his magic to catch your plate in midair before it flipped over that Colonel’s head would've gotten drenched in syrup and covered in butter! You probably would’ve ended up ruining the future by starting some kind of pony war or something!”
“I can assure you completely that no such would have happened. I easily would have been able to explain the whole situation perfectly," he said back with confidence.
“What? You mean, with one of your ridiculous ramblings you do just because you know ponies that actually listen to them will get so lost that stop even questioning anything?” she responded.
“Precisely!” he confirmed with guiltless smile.
“Ugh, I can’t take any more of this; I’m going to bed,” she declared the end of it between the two of them and stepped back to wait for him to open the TARDIS doors.
The Doctor rubbed one of his own eyes before reaching for his TARDIS key. “Capitol idea, it is rather late isn’t it,” he conferred through a yawn.
The Doctor unlocked the door and took a step to go in, only to have Derpy shove past him to enter in first. He went to enter himself after, but then to go ahead and allow Skasis to come past him as well. When he turned around though, Skasis wasn’t right behind him anymore. Instead, The Doctor saw him off a little ways sitting at the cloud edge and looking up to the night sky.
“You coming in Skasis?” he asked.
“Yeah, eventually, just leave the door unlocked,” the unicorn answered looking part-way back at him, but then just lifted his head up to the starry night again.
“Right-ee then,” The Doctor broke into a yawn in between sentence fragments, “see you on the morrow.” After finishing saying what his own yawning had interrupted, he finally stepped inside, and made sure to leave the TARDIS door just ajar enough as to not close on itself.
Skasis continued to look up at the stars above . . . wishing he would see Himmel’s silhouette flying against the starlight at any moment, but the hundred billion nuclear furnaces of the galaxy were alone, just as he was.
“Wo bist du . . . Glau Himmel?” he whispered in Germane to his absent familiar and pet . . . his brother, in his own eyes.
Flying through nigh on the same location in place and altitude, two thousand years in the future, the very being Skasis was thinking of, the Red-Tailed Hawk from Germaneigh that had all but always been with him, found himself asking the same question about Skasis Paradigm.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you all . . . like this. Since before Canterlot, ” Skasis thought to the stars he sat gazing up at.
Skasis kept his eyes aimed up at the uncountable twinkles, and after a few moments his horn hued blue and blurred at the edges with silent vibration, ceasing after a mere two seconds.
The spell he had cast allowed him to hear, to hear the sounds of all the ageless nuclear occupants of the night, calling out across all the universe in the same frequencies they’d held unfaltering for time-spans beyond the scope of pony minds.
“Emissary Paradigm?” the Lieutenant asked to gain Skasis’s attention.
Skasis snapped out of it, and flashed his horn for a brief instant, dispelling his ears of their ability to hear the universe.
“Um-would it be acceptable for me ask something of you?” the Lieutenant begged his own question cautiously, showing a look of urgency and concern, more than enough for Skasis to notice.
“Uh, it’s fine. What is it?” Skasis asked, turning the rest of the way around.
“It’s my son, sir,” the Lieutenant told him with worry, “he’s become very ill. I think he’s nauseous. He’s been telling his mother that his stomach feels horrible, but it doesn’t hurt. When I arrived home after my duty and I asked him what it felt like he didn’t know any words to use for it. Please, sir, he can’t even get to sleep even though he’s tired. We don’t what else to do to help him and any Pegasus medic would just tell us to make lie down deal with it until it’s through. Please, sir, can you make something for like you did for me?”
“Ahh-I know of a few things for nausea. Most of them are really strong, though. If it’s THAT bad I guess I’ll come with you,” Skasis was hesitant, but not really about wandering away from the TARDIS at this point, at that particular moment it was about somepony entrusting him with the healthcare of their foal.
The Lieutenant’s faces abruptly changes to a stretching smile of relief and gratitude. “Thank you so much sir!” the Lieutenant let out with grateful relief, “I must admit I have no way I can immediately repay you for this, nor would I know necessarily how you would wish me to,” the Lieutenant quickly indicated their direction and began trotting off in the direction of his cloud home with Skasis coming up beside him.
“There ISN’T anything you should do to repay me for this,” Skasis countered the Lieutenant’s intent right then in there. “Besides, I probably won’t even be here long enough for you actually see me again after this anyways,” he added a few seconds after, as he slowed done his trotting pace having caught up to the Lieutenant.
“Your emissarial business requires you to return to the ground soon?” the Lieutenant asked. The question caused Skasis’s eyes to expand rapidly as he realized that he just almost slipped on concealing who he, Derpy and The Doctor really were and were really doing there . . . neither truth of which he really had any clue about himself. Still, a good shoot of epinephrine ran through his bloodstream for the immediate moment following, as he tried to explain the lie the Lieutenant already believed. “Uh-y-yes, we’re unfortunately only likely to be here for a few days," he told him.
Skasis looks all around at the crafted cloudscape, and then up briefly to the night sky overhead. “And I like this place too," he said after a sigh.
“Really?” the Lieutenant looked over at him, lost a little bit between surprise and actual disbelief. “But . . . you’re a Unicorn, a ground-dweller. We were always made to believe you are all even afraid of heights for the most part. Do you really enjoy being up here among the clouds?” he couldn’t avoid asking about something that was unheard of to him, no matter what Skasis had already said about himself.
Skasis only confirmed what he’d already said. “Yeah, I love being up in the sky," he looked up at the stars again as they continued to walk. “And I love being able to see the night sky so clear,” he spoke up about one of the things he’d always enjoyed, since he was a colt, even. The Lieutenant lifted his own head up as well, really never having done so in such a way before, and having an understanding come almost at once of what Skasis meant.
“Put me and my friends aside,” Skasis said suddenly, bringing his head back down, “Your son, is he allergic to anything?” “That’s when you eat or drink things and they make you swiftly ill, you said?” the Lieutenant asked just to confirm, having remembered what Skasis had already explained earlier. “Or touch or smell them, yes,” Skasis filled in what the Lieutenant didn’t know, and repeated his question, “Do you know of any your son has?” A detectable amount of regret crept into both the Lieutenant’s face and his voice when he answered. “You would do better to ask his mother such questions," he said, “I . . . I’m not home very often, so I don’t really know anywhere near as much as she would about what he does and doesn’t eat or goes around.”
The two kept walking across the southern portion of what had been built of the city, with silence dominating the rest of the way.
***
Skasis and the Lieutenant both passed through the shut cloud into the Lieutenant’s home, only ending up with a few tiny droplets of water gathered at some of the ends of their fur. The Lieutenant’s wife, a bright yellow pegasus with an alternating pink and red mane was standing at a cloud counter, appearing to be adding something to a cup of water. The Lieutenant, having been in armor with no helm this time as opposed to the first, removes his armor and places it on a fitted stand on which his helmet is also mounted, and then turned around and closed up the awkward opening in the cloud behind them he and Skasis had just made.
“Stratus? Tell me you were able to find that medic?” the Lieutenant’s wife asked upon catching their movement at the edge of her vision. “Don’t worry Sunrise; he was still out and awake, and he’s come back with me," he told her with a calming voice.
The Lieutenant’s wife instantly lifted her head up at those words, drops open her mouth in the start of a soft sigh relief. As Skasis emerged from behind Stratus, head fell in slow motion to one side and her eyes grew as wide as hooves. It was near the exact same look both Skasis and The Doctor had gotten from hundreds of ponies already when they saw them able to stand on clouds. Skasis was still a bit lost on their complete shock. Starswirl The Bearded had already invented the cloud-walking spell earlier in history, along with his credited hundreds of others. So . . . had he just kept it to himself all this time, only writing his discoveries down in notes and journals or something?
“Stratus, he’s-“ Sunrise was about to let her disbelief drive her to point out the obvious, but her husband cut her off for the sake of getting straight to their son. “I know, but you’ll just have to wait for an explanation until afterwards," he told her. She still couldn't help gazing at Skasis for a little while longer, raising her hoof to the midpoint between her chin and her mouth without it making contact, as if internally in some debate. But she quickly let it back down and nodded with resolve.
“Where’s Soot Blizzard?” the Lieutenant asked her. “In our room,” she answered right away, “I was just adding some ginger and salt into some water to have him drink it. Many of the Earth Ponies I spoke with on the migration said it was what they drink when they have queasy stomachs," she added as well, and then looked at Skasis to address him with her question. “Would that help little Soot at all?” she asked.
Skasis nodded back. “It usually does. Even if the stomach is being bothered severely it can still help lessen the nausea a little," he explained.
The Lieutenant lead Skasis, followed by Sunrise, into their room. Inside, their son Soot Blizzard was lying on his side on their bed with an utterly exhausted, but also very squeamish look on his face.
Skasis began to feel quickly uncomfortable, not having any particular admiration for foals, or more so just not for dealing with them. He forced himself to take a single, soundless deep breath, stiffening his resolve to help the Lieutenant, and to relieve anypony of nausea, the one sickness above all else that he could not stand when he dealt with it himself. Being sick never bothered him that much, and pain, despite how he sometimes whined about it, he didn’t care all too much about either. But nausea . . . nausea was something else to him.
“Soot, it’s me,” the Lieutenant said quietly, stepping over to the bed. The little grey colt picked his head up. “Daddy?” he asked, sounding surprised to see his father. “Daddy’s here Soot,” the Lieutenant reassured him, “and daddy has somepony you have to talk to.”
The Lieutenant indicated Skasis over to the bedside with a head motion, and Skasis came over as he was signaled. “This is Emissary Paradigm,” the Lieutenant explained to the little colt, “he’s a medic who’s gonna make your belly feel ok again.”
The little colt’s face let its sickened look almost slide right off as he was lead to gaze up at Skasis with some bit of marveled admiration. “Really? Can you make me feel better mister unicorn?” he asked, sounding practically awestruck. “Yes, so long as you do what I say,” Skasis said, knowing he probably sounded incredibly blunt, if not just awkward, although the little Pegasus colt didn’t seem to care.
“Just do whatever the nice Unicorn medic asks, Soot,” Sunrise affirmed more gently what Skasis had said to her son.
Both parents were smiling warmly at the young colt. Skasis looked from one to the other, and felt rather horrible for being so awkward to the point that they were having to gently reinforce what he said.
“Can you stand up?” Skasis made himself just move on and ask.
Soot Blizzard responded by slowly, and a bit wobblily getting up on his hooves, standing up on top of the bed sheets. Skasis’s eyes narrow slightly as he entered thought for a brief moment. “Does it feel better you stand up after you’ve been lying down?” he asked next. The little colt nodded his head. “How about lying down after standing up for a long time?” Skasis asked then. “For a whittle bit,” Soot Blizzard answered.
Skasis nodded and was about to speak again, but he halted, instead obeying an odd compulsion to look back towards the colt’s parents for a split-second. He felt his temperature rise as he made up his mind to try something he never had before.
Skasis looked back at Soot and spoke with as much gentleness as he thought he could make himself without sounding unnatural. “You can go ahead and lie back down now,” he said. His voice didn’t come across as profoundly comforting, but to the little colt it was a deal more caring than Skasis thought. Soot Blizzard laid back down on his other side as Skasis turned about to speak to both of his parents.
“Has he eaten anything he normally doesn't in the last few days?” Skasis asked them. The Lieutenant looked to Sunrise and Skasis then did the same. She shook her head. “No, rationing has everything mostly the same from one day to the next until the Earth Ponies till more farmland," she explained.
Skasis nodded a couple times before concluding his own thoughts and giving a brief exposition to them both. “Well, he can still stand without real trouble, and he isn’t vomiting at all. Plus, the fact that he get temporary relief from shifting positions would mean that his organs in that region shifting and then settling is creating enough new sensory signals that they’re counter-balancing some of the nausea’s neuro-signals for a few minutes each time. So I'm pretty sure it's not medically severe, since I’m guessing from that that whatever the actual condition is it’s probably localized in just one portion of his G.I. tract. It’s probably being caused by a bad stomach virus, but I can’t be sure. But, a Serotonin Receptor Antagonist should definitely at least quell out the nausea long enough for him to get to sleep," he explained, the molecular-biological portion of which they obviously didn't comprehend.
“So you Can give him something?” the Lieutenant asked with hope quite audibly hanging in his voice.
“Yes; Ondensetron,” Skasis told them.
“I’ve never heard of anything that sort,” Sunrise said at the mention of it.
“I wouldn’t expect anypony to have,” Skasis responded.
Sunrise gave a confused look to her husband, but he just nodded her over in the direction of their son. Willingly, she walked around Skasis and started gently running her hoof through Soot Blizzard’s mane.
“Has he ever eaten Peppermint?” Skasis asked her, to which she nodded back and said, “The few times I’ve been able get some. it’s one his favorite treats.” “Then he should be able to handle a small bit of Ondensetron,” Skasis concluded aloud.
Skasis immediately removed a tuft of cloud from the floor with his hoof and held it up in front of his face. As with the Tramadol earlier, he exhaled slowly and directly onto the cloud tuft. His horn illuminated and tiny blue crackles lightning sparked about the little space in the air above his upheld hoof.
Over the course of ten or so seconds, a very small white tablet, barely larger than a grain of sand transforms out of a third of the cloud tuft. Skasis was about to stop, having produced the four milligrams he was aiming for, but his eyes darted down as he thought for a second.
Instead of halting, Skasis decided to carry on, using up the remainder of the little piece of cloud and transmuting two additional tablets of Ondensetron.
Skasis looked back up, facing Soot Blizzard again. He went ahead and levitated the first tablet he’d made over to the colt. “He’ll need to let this sit on his tongue until it dissolves,” Skasis said to Soot’s parents. Sunrise nodded. “Open wide now like the chimney you came from,” Soot’s mother told her son. Referencing a chimney was something playful they usually did with him, given his name.
Soot looked to his mother and then back at the floating little white crumb, as it looked like to him. He opened his mouth gaping wide, almost to the point of straining his jaw. It actually, to Skasis’s somewhat shock, made Skasis laugh. He floated the Odensetron in and let it all settle down on the grey colt’s tongue.
“Now shut that mouth before you swallow the moon,” the little colt’s mother instructed him again, “and don’t you gulp that magic medicine down until you can’t feel it on your tongue anymore. Okay?” Soot nodded, and sat back down on the bed, unswallowing.
Skasis turned around to completely face the Lieutenant and Sunrise again. “Even if were to stay awake, that dose should take his nausea away for at least eight hours," he told them, and then craned his head to the side levitate and deposit the other two Ondensetron tablets on the top of the hard-cloud bedside stand on the nearer side of the bed. “If he still doesn’t feel well tomorrow you can make him take another one of those,” Skasis went on. “I can’t say anything about how long this might last since I can’t actually see inside of him,” he somewhat confessed his medicinal-magic limits as he knew them.
“How would anypony see inside of anypony?” Sunrise asked, utterly confounded at the idea.
“With magic,” Skasis responded, “which I obviously have.” He even lit his horn for a few seconds in a demonstration of what his pony-type made already obvious about him. “But I don’t have anywhere near the skill to pull that off. There’s SO MUCH chemically going inside a pony’s body that it . . . only somepony trained can filter it out. I could try, but it would probably just give me a headache,” Skasis finalized his explanation.
“Can you please try, emissary Paradigm? That is, if I’m not overstepping my boundaries by asking it of you?” the Lieutenant pleaded with him. “Please, neither I nor almost all of the other pegasi you met today ever believed it was possible for even unicorns to walk on clouds, but you’re standing right here. I don’t know anything at all about magic, but if what we all thought impossible isn’t, then what you’re speaking of can’t be either," he tried his best to encourage Skasis.
“Ugh . . .” was all Skasis thought to himself; he knew exactly how an attempt at such again would end. He was reconsidering drilling in his point when he looked back over his shoulder at the little foal, who was looking up at him with wide childhood eyes again.
“Oo con o it mit-er un-icorn!” the little colt suddenly encouraged him, in broken, half-pronounced words coming from his mouth still being occupied with the dissolving tablet. But he encouraged Skasis with such foalhood, idolizing enthusiasm. Both parents smiled at the colt’s half-pronounced encouragement, and it ended up even being too much for Skasis to say no to.
Skasis sighed, and gave in. “Alright, I’ll see, but nothing is probably going to come of this," he forewarned them of disappointment.
The little grey colt smiled cheerfully, which lightened both of his parents’ hearts, having seen nothing but his expressed discomfort all day.
Skasis stepped up to the very edge of the bed, and leaned his head close in to the colt, staring intently at the bottom of his chest where the start of his stomach would be. Skasis’s horn began to encompass itself with his blue aura, and his eyes begin to luminesce their green as he attempts to cast a functional medical-magic Sight to peer inside the Pegasus’s body.
At first it seemed like he could see, catching glimpses and glimpses of all he knows how to target: chemical reaction, energy exchanges and concentration gradients. He struggles to look further, pouring in more raw power, but what he predicted came about, and a sensation of oncoming pain began to work about his head.
Skasis relented from his effort after about a minute, once his head really began to hurt. He was left taking deep, but panting breaths, as well as a sequentially pounding pain throughout most of his head. The others all looked at him hopefully, but he just shook his head gently, trying to avoid intensifying the pain. “No, I’m sorry,” he said, feeling humiliated for making a failed attempt, “I’m just not capable of it.”
“No, sir, everything else you’ve done for both my son and I is already well amazing enough. We should just be thanking you now,” the Lieutenant tried to reassure him, though Skasis’s self-doubt didn't budge.
Sunrise smiled gratefully. “Oh thank you, um . . . Skasis?” she asked, not entirely sure of his name, not having been particularly focused on it when the Lieutenant had mentioned it to Soot Blizzard.
“Skasis, Paradigm,” Skasis gave out his name again.
“Is there anything we can do for you while you’re still here with us Skasis?” she asked whole-heartedly once he’d given his name. “Emissary Paradigm, dear,” her husband calmly corrected her, which nodded to acknowledge.
“No, Skasis,” the unicorn repeated, correcting the Lieutenant.
The Lieutenant looked almost taken aback. “But . . . sir, with your position you cannot have ponies addressing you by your first name, and with no recognition of your title being given," he insisted.
“Fine, just your family then,” Skasis allowed. “Now I have to get back to the TARDIS, I want to go to sleep," she told them, holding a hoof up to the side of his head as the pain intensified.
“You need to get back to the what?” was the Lieutenant’s confused response. “Ahh-just lead me back to where you found me, both times," Skasis corrects himself, in a sense. The Lieutenant nods once in response. “Certainly. Let us leave right away," he said, and lead Skasis out of their home, and back off in the TARDIS’s general direction.
***
“Well, this is where I recall first meeting you," the Lieutenant said as the two of them halted near the cloud edge where the TARDIS still sat. “Agh, thanks,” Skasis said back, squinting his eyes just a bit, and rubbing one side of his head with his hoof. The headache was still present. “Of course,” the Lieutenant nodded and stepped away, as Skasis went to go inside.
“Sir,” the Lieutenant suddenly asked after him, “are you sure there is nothing else at all that I might be able to do for you and your fellow emissaries?” Skasis sighed and gave him the same answer as before, “No, don’t worry, we’re fine.”
Skasis opened the TARDIS door and made to step inside. The Lieutenant saluted him one last time, and turned to leave himself. At the last moment Skasis suddenly recalled one particular desire Derpy had expressed since their arrival that morning.
“Actually . . . I doubt it’s something that anypony could do for us on such a short notice,” Skasis initially went to say, until he reached the conclusion of the request being absurd, and inconvenient. “Please sir, anything,” the Lieutenant only encouraged him again. “Could we, er-emissary Doo, meet the Commander?” Skasis tentatively asked.
Author's Note
2nd installment.
Don't forget to read the first chapter before this one, don't ever want to have anypony getting lost.
For reference also, Himmel, or Glau Himmel, is Skasis's familiar/pet hawk back in present-day Equestria, whom he's had since a young age and views as his brother.
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.
“Pansy? Pansy the Commander is here," the brown Earth Pony called inside very gently.
The fragile blue Pegasus turned her head toward the door after he did, her ears springing up straight. When she sees that it is in fact Commander Hurricane, her formerly timid face very visibly brightens up. However, when she sees Skasis soon after, timid shyness rapidly takes her back over, sending her whole body through a single convulsive shiver and leaving her right front hoof considerably trmebling.
“Oh, hi Commander. What are you doing down here?” Pansy greeted Commander Hurricane, with a voice Skasis found more hushed than any Hearth’s Warming Eve play had ever portrayed.
“It’s good to see you again . . . sister. I miss having you as my Officer’s Attendant,” Hurricane greeted Pansy as well, and with a tone more gentle than Skasis would have otherwise thought she was capable of using.
Skasis was left with bulging eyes for a minute after the Commander’s two sentences. The two of them being related had never been anywhere in the historical record.
Pansy’s face lit up again for a few seconds upon hearing from her sister that she did miss her. “O-oh, likewise, I wish you could visit more often; I do miss you. Although I can’t say the same about my time serving," she fell into a more stressful tone at the end, the kind anypony would find themselves using when they recalled bad memories.
“I know," the Commander said back, allowing her head to hang in regret and her voice to express the same sentiment.
Commander Hurricane approached the bed, stopping just past the bottom left corner. She passed by another pony, a mare Skasis had not initially seen at first, but one that was unmistakably Smart Cookie.
Smart Cookie kept looking from the Commander to Skasis for a moment before she spoke for the first time since they’d come in. “I due beg of you to pardon me, Commander, Sir, but might we know who our other guest is?” she asked.
“This Skasis Paradigm,” the Commander began to introduce in her own manner, “a Unicorn who reportedly gave remarkable medical treatment to one of my Lieutenants and his son. He created medicines that they swallowed: one treating nausea and the other relieving pain. And . . .” she paused only to turn her head to him, “he claims to be able to treat and relieve anxiety as well.”
All three of the others grew the reactionary hopeful expressions that one would expect.
“Is this true?” Smart Cookie asked with a voice brimming with hope as well.
“Oh please say it is so!” the Earth Pony stallion asked in the same.
“Y-yeah, I can give relief for it,” Skasis answered them. “A-and if I know the cause I could also treat it so that it will be suppressed completely," he added.
After he had confirmed what the Commander had said, Private Pansy’s eyes even began to glow a little, and she raised her head up above the cautious lowered position she’d kept it in.
“I brought him here with me to help you,” Hurricane told her sister.
“Well, I wouldn’t think any of us know anything about doctoring with magic, but if anything can help Pansy I’m all for it,” Smart Cookie announced her own support, followed swiftly by her brother, the Earth Pony stallion, Grain. “Anything, yes. Please, sir Skasis, my . . . our dear Pansy has been suffering too much from this. Take this away from her, please . . .” he all but begged.
Skasis looked from one pony to another, all looking at him, and leaving him feeling quite pressured and uncomfortable.
“I’ll do as best as I can,” he said, hoping it would be enough for them to hear, despite how unconvincing he knew he must sound. He walked slowly over to the bedside, next to the Commander. She held an intense stare on him; he could feel it even without ever turning to his side to look.
“Private Pansy?” he tried to greet in as hushed of a normal room-voice as he could.
“Y-yes?” her reply came jarred with a nervous stutter.
“S-so what exactly is the problem?” he asked, "what symptoms is the anxiety manifesting itself in?”
Pansy looked timidly at both her mate, Grain, and her sister. They both nod once at her, her mate with an encouraging smile and her older sister with a slow blink.
She went ahead and tried to explain what she could, but her voice was exceptionally unsteady, “I . . . um, I-I just feel afraid . . . all the time. Anything sudden scares me so bad it’s . . . it’s just terrifying. I feel sick to my stomach all the time, and i-it gets worse the more frightened I am. And my hooves, and sometimes my wings . . . they’re always shaking now. I-I-I can’t sleep, and its—it’s . . . I can’t think of anything else right now. I’m sorry.” She tucked her head closer in when she apologized, as if she were actually cowering.
“It’s all well, sweet flower,” Grain said to her with such tangible compassion.
Skasis was completely unresponsive for a few seconds, leading the Commander to question him.
“So?” she asked him.
“This is bad," he began to say, at a quiet level loud enough for only her to hear. “It’s . . . a lot more severe than I was expecting. There’s an underlying cause here somewhere, it’s most likely,” he paused for a second to sigh and spend a moment biting his lower lip, “a really sever Norepinephrine imbalance in the synapses of her neurons . . . but I can’t say that with any certainty.”
The Commander spoke back to him in an equally quiet, though extremely stern manner, “I don’t have time for your doubt right now. You said you could treat anxiety, and you are GOING to give her whatever treatment you can for it. Is that understood?”
“Yes Sir," he agreed to attempt to give her the reality she was demanding from him.
“Now, is there anything you still think you can do?” she asked for specifics.
“Uh-I never said there wasn’t," he answered with a minor air of condescention he was unable to keep out of his responding voice. “I was just noting how severe her anxiety is. I can still give her some kind of Benzodiazepine and that should suppress it pretty heavily, but if I could actually determine the underlying cause I could give her something intended for long-term treatment as well," he went on in explanation.
“But you can still treat her?” she questioned again, for her own reassurance. Skasis saw what he thought was an actual pleading look in her eyes, behind their unyielding militaristic coldness.
“Yes Sir," he said, but then felt just the slightest urge to say something a level more, “I promise you.”
“Sir, please pardon my intrusion on you and the Commander, but . . . what can you do for Pansy?” Grain asked him.
“Uh-yes, I’m going to give her a Benzodiazepine, I just have decided whether Lorazepam or Alprazolam,” Skasis replied simply, too busy thinking on which would be better at that moment to spend further time explaining.
“Ah . . . and what might that be?” Smart Cookie asked.
“Is it that some kind of Unicorn-enchanted herbal remedy?” Grain asked as well.
“N—nno, this is something different," he answered them briefly.
Skasis turned to Private Pansy and made his best effort continue to speak as calmly as possible, and even to add the same kind of warmth to his voice he had with the Lieutenant’s son, despite it still feeling horribly awkward to him.
“Private Pansy, I’m gonna perform some alchemy . . . magic. It’s going to make some loud noise and a small amount of something that looks a lot like lightning. It’ll probably be scary, so I just wanted to let you know beforehoof in case you want to cover your ears or shut your eyes," he told her, feeling a flush of heat under his fur at trying to force himself to sound as he wanted.
“O-oh, thank y-you Doctor Skasis,” Pansy replied with a grateful, but still ever-timid smile.
“I’m not a doctor, " he muttered to himself.
Pansy flopped her ears down against the sides of her head and pressed down on them with her hooves. She still left her eyes a little way open though, somewhat curious as the others were.
Skasis turned his head to the side, not wanting to perform anti-thermodynamic energy-driven alchemical synthesis right in front of her. His horn lit and his Lagoon-Blue aura spun around it rapidly. In mid-air in front of his face a sequence of literal light waves ripple down a massless shape, each passing making the air more opaque until they cease at the formation of a stereotypical orange plastic medication bottle.
As he continued to leviate the open bottle, Skasis scooped a tiny amount of lose dirt with his hoof and held it in front of himself. As he did, his horn’s aura flared briefly as alchemical lighting flashes and flickers out from the dirt. The four other ponies watched on, all amazed though with one not expressively showing it, all having already observed a strange transparent orange bottle appear from nothing and now observing dirt being electrocuted into miniscule white bars lowering into the bottle.
“There. You see these?” he said, floating one just in front of her for her to see.
Skasis turned his head back to Pansy, who actually was sharing in the others shock as opposed to terror. She nodded her head weakly after a few seconds.
“You can take one of these whenever the anxiety really feels the worst, but just never any more than four in one day. Whenever you take one it’s probably going to make you feel tired and if you’re moving around at all you’ll feel a little slow, but that’s it, alright?” he asked after instructing her.
Pansy repeated her weak nod.
“Oh yes th-thank you so much. I wouldn’t mind the rest one bit actually. Um . . . can I have one now? W-w-would that be ok?” she asked very shyly. Skasis nodded back with one a genuine smile.
“I would assume you want water,” Skasis began saying, casting an indicative look to Pansy’s mate mid-speech, “to swallow it with?
“Oh, of course. Here, don’t worry,” Grain acknowledged immediately and grabbed a cup off the table.
He welled up enough water to fill a small wooden cup and carries it over to his wife.
“Here," he said gently, handing it to her.
Pansy took the cup. Her hooves tremored as she holds it, making visible ripples across the water’s surface. She took in a sip and Skasis levitates on of the tiny pills over to her. She reached out a wing and held the tiny white bar on one of her sturdiest feathers and then brought it up to her muzzle. Swallowing it took a few seconds for her, needing to sum up the will to allow everything down though she instinctually feared choking on the little object.
“How long until your treatment has any effect?” the Commander demanded from him shortly after.
Skasis exhaled through pursed lips for a second before answering. “Not long,” he said, “really, most tranquilizing agents act pretty fast.”
“Tranquilizing?” the Commander then asked, raising an eyebrow.
“A powerful drug meant to calm,” Skasis took the time to explain for her, “even if she were terrified and screaming right now just one or two of those would calm her down almost completely. Though taking two would put her or anypony else to sleep for hours, but taking one before she goes to bed should make her tired enough . . . tired and calm enough to finally get some sleep.”
The Commander relaxed her look to her normal one placid sternness and nodded her head once.
“Do you feel any better, sweet flower?” Grain asked Pansy.
“Ahh-I don’t think he meant that stuff would work THAT fast, Grain,” Smart Cookie said.
The Commander simply held a flat, irritated expression.
“O-oh . . . of course,” Grain corrected himself, slightly embarrassed, “I’m sorry Sir Skasis. Um, if you two are going to be here for long we should at least offer you some lunch, or at least perhaps tea.”
Skasis is reminded of the fact that he hasn’t actually enjoyed tea in months, not since he first got dragged off into adventuring with his friends Shooting Star, Cobalt and Sundial.
“Oo, tea would be awesome," he answers back.
“You’d like some? Of course, I’ll set a pot of water over the fire. Smarts? Pansy? Would either of you like some?” he asked the two of them. “No thanks Grain, I think I’ll just make myself a sandwich,” Smart Cookie answered, heading over to the table herself.
“Oh yes please,” Pansy requested with a kind smile.
“Um . . . and you, Commander?” Grain asked the armored Pegasus with an obvious, fearful hesitation.
The Commander responded with a horse-snort. “Tea is for ponies who need their nerves settled,” She said, and then narrowed her eyes. “There is nothing that unsettles mine,” she declared.
“Of . . . course, I apologize. I never meant for that to mean anything of the sort," he said, backing away and walking off to make Skasis and Pansy their cups.
Skasis was left to find Commander Hurricane glaring at him with a patheticizing expression. He looked away and let his head half hang after a few seconds, taking his fifth hurtful insult from her that day. It was clear in her eyes right then, at his acceptance of tea she’d viewed him as weak . . . or rather, more so than she likely already had. It truly felt as if she had torn him half apart in just the few hours since he had met her.
On the bed, Private Pansy slowly began to sit up, drawing Smart Cookie’s and the Commander’s attention.
“Pansy? Are you feeling better? You haven’t been able to get up all day,” Smart Cookie asked, brimming with anticipation.
Grain turned around from boiling water over the fire in the fireplace, wearing an equally hopeful look.
“I feel much better actually,” Pansy confirmed, and went on. “M-my stomach isn’t anywhere near as queasy as it was earlier. And,” her words were broken by a gasp as she held out a hoof in mid-air, “my hooves . . . t-they’re barely shaking anymore.”
Everypony’s eyes widened, with the exception of Skasis. The Commanders even swelled open, albeit not as much as the other two, but they still did hint at astonishment all the same.
“Do you really feel better?” Grain asked, stepping closer and seeming ready to burst with joy.
“I still feel anxious, I-I can tell,” Pansy admitted, “but . . . I just feel so much more relaxed right now, and it’s like it’s getting better every minute.”
Grain let his mouth open in a gigantic smile. He came back over to the bed and wrapped Pansy in a slow and gentle hug.
Skasis even smiled, lightly. He took a few steps forward and assumed Grain’s place in front of the fire, using his magic to enhance it and make the flames all lap towards the bottom of the pot. The water came to a boil swiftly afterward, right as Skasis turned his head to see the Commander approaching him.
“This is almost miraculous,” she confessed, to Skasis’s surprise. “She’s been suffering for so long, and it’s only ever gotten worse . . . and for some part because of me. But you’ve done this? And, in just minutes?” the Commander kept going on, still in temporary disbelief.
“Benzodiazepines are extremely reliable. But, like I said, it’s only giving her relief. With this she’ll just have to take one whatever times of the day she’s feeling the worst. If I were capable of confirming what I’m pretty sure is the underlying cause, I could give her something she would only have to take once a day and she would never have to feel unnaturally anxious or terrified ever again," he said the same as he had earlier.
“Try," she ordered him.
“What?” he responded.
“You said with certain magic you can see inside a pony and find what’s really wrong with them. So do it," she ordered again.
“Uh-I told you, I can’t. I’m not CAPABLE of it," he tried to affirm himself.
She just responded with her nearing-signature unimpressed glare. “Words of a quitter, and whiners and lazy recruits who don’t want to put in the effort of holding more responsibility than they already have," she stated bluntly.
Skasis ended up displaying more frustration and distress on face than he even remembered feeling anytime at all in the immediate past.
“So which one is it? I already know you’re a whiner, and judging by the fact that you said you stopped attempting this when you failed to experience success I’d say you’re quitter too. So then, is it JUST those two? Or is it all three?" she asked, unimpressed and impatient.
“I . . .” Skasis couldn’t even respond to her anymore.
Skasis clenched his teeth at his wordloss. After a few seconds of staring straight into the Commander’s ever-challenging eyes, he found himself walking over to the bedside again.
He sighed once before speaking to Pansy,"here, I’m going to try something, magic again, if that’s alright?”
She looked around at the others cautiously first before she said responded on her own, “I-if you think you need to Doctor Paradigm. Just tell me if it’s going to be loud again.”
Skasis shook his head. “No, not this time, I’m just going to try to see. Just . . . don’t move, not much at least," he told her. Pansy sat as still as she could, while Skasis closed his eyes for a moment to think. He debated over and over with himself how to approach this. How was he supposed to see the inner functionings of a complex biological organism? He knew what a large number of the chemical processes that were occurring are, almost all of them really, so should he just think of them all at once and try a vast overlap?
Skasis opened his eyes again, having made up his mind. He lifted his head until his gaze was level with Pansy’s and began to light his horn. His aura swirled around it, this time welling juts up from its base and off the point of it, like flames coming up from a log.
He kept as many neurochemical reactions in his mental focus as he could, and he found himself able to see them within her one by one, more and more at a time. But, he hit a breaking point and came to the same magical impasse as before. He struggled on with it, even to the point of sweating, but made no progress.
After several minutes, exhaustion forced him to give up.
“I tried, I couldn’t maintain the intravision," he said, panting.
“O-oh that’s ok,” Pansy assured him with genuine kindness, “I’m sure you tried your best. I still feel much better anyways. Thank you for making me that . . . whatever it was.”
“Alprazolam. I’m sorry I couldn’t do it," he apologized again.
“That’s quite alright,” Smart Cookie joined in assuring him, “we’re all just grateful that you could help Pansy at all, let alone by as much as you did, and as fast as you did.”
“Yes, do believe us Sir Skasis, this is already wonderful,” Grain even added gratefully as well.
But then the Commander’s voice broke the attitude of the moment, “Is that IT? Is that all the effort you can give?”
Everypony in the open-room cabin turned to her with confounded faces.
“What?” was the only reaction Skasis could verbalize.
“Is that all you do, attempt anything for a few minutes of failure and then completely resign?” she furiously questioned him.
Skasis was at an utter loss for words . . . again.
She then exploded into a brief, scolding rant, “you don’t turn around and fly back to base when there’s a storm in your way; you go over it, you go around, or you go through it if you have the skill, courage and discipline for it. Pathetic!” She gave off another horse-snort as she finished.
What little self-worth Skasis had even still had was caving as Commander Hurricane just walked away toward the fireplace with a vivid expression of disgust. Skasis stared at the floor for a solid few minutes, lost in his internal fragmentation and strengthening sense of worthlessness.
Eventually he looked back at Pansy, who still sat up at the bed’s edge, now looking over her sister with rather saddened eyes.
Skasis looked right at her one more time, beginning to light his horn, some sudden desperate need to prove himself to the Commander driving him.
"What am I missing?” he thought to himself, “why do fail this every time!?”
Skasis ran over everything he knew about Biochemistry in his mind, until something finally struck him. The thought raced through his waking mind of the joining of the three tribes happening in the time period around him, and of the massive Legion-scale cooperation of trillions of cells in every body of every living organism. Only then was his mind able to lift itself from its single-lensed view of the individual biochemical processes at their pure, macromolecular level. Instead, now it lifts to the point he can see the perfectly ordained order that it all, every process, and cell, every chemical reaction, fit and amounted to.
As his mind perceived Biology and life for what it is, his horn glows and his aura shifts to something more like a lunar halo. Slowly, he looks into Private Pansy’s head, and he finally sees.
“I know what’s wrong; I was right!” he said.
Skasis could see the entirety of her neurons. The Norepinephrine imbalance looked so blatantly obvious now, the absence of the calm-inducing neurotransmitter even shining a bright alarm red as if to alert anypony who could see to the fact that something was wrong.
“Pardon?” Smart Cookie asked, reestablishing her attention.
“I can see it, the Norepinephrine deficiency . . . it’s so obvious,” Skasis responded, still observing.
“Wait, what do you mean you know what’s wrong?” she asked, “I thought those little . . . things you gave to her were already making her better?”
Skasis corrected her, of course, “I said they were reliving her symptoms, not getting rid of the problem itself. But, now I should be able to give her something that can.”
Without warning, Skasis turned his head to the side and began to conjure another plastic bottle, this time and opaque white one. The pills that he transmuted from the dirt that time were larger red capsules, all falling into the levitating bottle. Throughout it all Pansy only reacted with a mild start, the Alprazolam producing its significant calming effect in her already.
“And what is this you’re making now?” the Commander suddenly asked, having returned from the fireside.
“Venlafaxine,” Skasis said, without losing focus.
Skasis examined the capsules carefully and then telekinetically screwed on the bottle cap.
“I hope you don’t me asking for all of our pardons here, but ah . . . I don’t think any of us are gonna know what any of these are, despite you saying what they’re called and all,” Smart Cookie admitted on the group’s part.
Skasis didn’t hesitate whatsoever in laying out an extensive explanation for them, albeit an intentionally simplified one. "It’s a Seretonin and Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitor. We call them anti-depressants. They correct the neurotransmitter levels in the brains of ponies who take them, which seriously reduces the levels of depression and anxiety that they can experience beyond what’s caused by just personality, or what should be generally normal, though normal can vary," he told them.
Private Pansy looked out at the new bottle floating in the air, and glanced down at her cup of water.
“Um . . . should I swallow one of these now, Doctor Paradigm?” she asked Skasis.
“I’m not a doctor,” he corrected, “and no. You NEED to take this with food, although it’s fine if you drink water as well, obviously," he instructed her just enough.
Pansy looked over to request something of her husband, but he already knew.
“Don’t worry, I’ll make you a Dandelion and Sunflower sandwhich right now then,” Grain promised and went over to their table to begin doing so.
Pansy smiled so sincerely after Grain had walked off. “Oh thank you Grain,” she said very quietly, not intending to be but still being heard by Skasis and Commander Hurricane, “you’ve been so caring and patient with me.”
“So, ah-Sir Skasis, how often does our Pansy have to swallow one of these ven—lala-flex . . . things,” Smart Cookie asked.
“Venlafaxine. Just once a day. It will probably take a couple weeks for it to work since it has to slowly build a consistent presence in her system. But once it does, she should feel just fine, whatever’s normal for her or was normal before all of this started,” Skasis explained further.
Pansy looked surprised. “Just one?” she asked.
“Yup,” was the whole of his response.
The Private’s face lit up so much, and she took the bottle in her hooves almost marvelled at it.
The Commander took keen notice of Pansy’s gladdening disposition . . . and she finally felt something inside she’d wished to for the longest time: she felt relief.
“Oh, Doctor Paradigm? W-what if they run out?” Pansy suddenly asked.
Before he gave an answer, Skasis thought about the fact that he has been left behind by the TARDIS’s two occupants, and that he had no idea of when . . . or any guarantee that they would ever be coming back for him.
“I’ll make more," he told her, decided to do such for her sake, on the chance that he might not be around to be of help again.
“I’ll go ahead and give you as many as I can make before my energy burns out," he said as he kept on.
Mentioning his magical energy supply stabbed Skasis with a with blind-siding sorrow, forcing it upon him to remember what he had managed to forget amidst the chaos and emotional turmoil of the past few hours: his familiar, his pet hawk, and by all means to him, his brother, Himmel . . . was still two thousand years ahead in time from him, back in present-day Equestria.
It took him a moment to be able to speak again, but he did. “. . . it’ll be enough. I can probably make at least a few hundred; that’s several months’ worth of pills."
Skasis kept on manufacturing Private Pansy’s medication until he his current magical energy was completely spent, having made over three-hundred capsules and enlarged the bottle to the size of a gallon jug.
Grain finished making both Pansy’s sandwich and hers and Skasis’s tea soon after.
They remained for a while longer. The Commander talked personally with Private Pansy, both of them reminiscing on past events that the Private admitted she had been terrified during. The Commander removed her helmet and saluted the Private first, as opposed to the other way around, her own manner of showing, Skasis guessed, when she truly valued somepony.
All the meanwhile, all Skasis sat next to the fireplace, enjoying the smell of wood smoke and sipping hot tea.
***
The Commander led the way down the walking path away from Pansy and Grain’s home. Once they had gone about a two-minute walk away, she came to an abrupt stop and turned about to face Skasis.
Skasis halted, remaining about two meters from her. He assumed she was going to speak, since when she grabbed hold of him to fly him down to the Private’s home she did it without warning.
“Skasis," she addressed him in such a calm manner, though her voice was still naturally hard. But right then . . . her manner speaking sounded almost personal.
Skasis’s eyes widen a little at this instance of her calling him by his first, actual name. She looked right back at him and in an instant, she relinquished all the intensity that he had thought her face naturally bore.
The Commander shut her eyes and dipped her head as she removed her helmet. She kept one forehoof on the ground while the other held her helmet down at knee level. As soon as her helmet was off and out of the way, she raised her head back up and opened her eyes once more.
Skasis found himself gradually, and unexpectedly taken aback by how striking he found her appearance to be. Never had he even cared to look at mares before in any manner of seeing attractiveness; there has never been anything stand-out-ish about any he met in his mind. But the Commander . . . he was finding her, somehow, in that moment . . . attractive. But, somehow it felt like it was because . . . unlike EVERY mare from his time, and many still in this period . . . she was not a Pretty Pony.
Her face was scarred across her left cheek, her left ear had a completely ripped-out tuft, the scrumple of her nose was some permanent infracture, her eyes were a dim and bland shade of browned yellow practically the same color as urine. And her mane, her mane was in no way styled, in no way kept, and on top of both her hair was short.
The emerging feeling was so unknown to Skasis that he did even initially turn red or feel a cold sweat like what suspected should have been normal.
The Commander then spoke. “You’ve done me a great favor and service. It’s been so long since I’ve even seen my sister as happy as she got today. On top of that, the knowledge you possess, and the way you were so able to cure her of something I thought was an incurable ailment was—remarkable, to say the least. Thank you for everything you’ve done for her,” she said.
Skasis’s only reaction was his mouth beginning to drift open in subtle shock.
She kept going, “and, regarding you specifically, the resolve and ability you showed to persevere against the odds of failure and overcome your own perceived lack of capability is to be commended. I honestly wouldn’t have expected such qualities in a Unicorn not too long ago . . . but you’ve proved me wrong. This may not have been combat, but what you showed was the drive of a real soldier. So from now on, under most circumstances, I’ll treat you like one. You’re welcome to salute me if you wish.”
Skasis’s eyes at that point were practically shimmering with all the Commander had just said. He didn’t immediately understand right then and there. In all the hours since she had met him, she had all but destroyed and torn him apart and coldly pointed out more than half of his flaws with deadly precision. But here she is thanking him, calling his medical skills remarkable, and commending him on the change within himself that he had just made? Who was she, this armored, red Pegasus mare?
He hesitantly saluted her, and she placed her helmet on the ground to free her right hoof to return the favor. He relaxed his foreleg after she did hers, and she donned her helmet once more. When she opened her eyes again with her helm on, all the intensity of her face from hours before returned.
“Now listen to me very carefully Prissy Hooves,” she said to him, seriousness rising swiftly in her voice, “I’m taking back to my cloud fort for the purpose of interrogation.”
Skasis’s heart dropped.
“I’m well aware neither you nor your two comrades are emissaries. The three tribes haven’t even used emissaries between each other since our unity upon the founding of our new land. Your disguise was poor, whatever kind of spies you might be,” she said, eyes continuing to narrow until the moment after she’d finished speaking, when she looked away briefly and looked like she was thinking in reflection.
“After what you’ve done for me, I’ll be so kind as to interrogate you myself, and assure you that it will be entirely verbal, and that I won’t torture you,” she told him, pausing once to lean in exceptionally close, and with more narrowed eyes than Skasis had yet seen from her, “unless I decide you mean harm to the three tribes.”
Skasis, a minute ago awestruck, a moment ago stunned, was then emotionally vaulted over into the status of terrified, but still remained composed as the Commander grabbed hold of him from above and flew them both away into the sky.
Author's Note
Well, this is the longest installment yet, double the last one's length. Hope it's not too long for anypony.
Hopefully you're reading these down here because you've already read the actual chapter above, otherwise spoilers;
So yes, once again I'll reiterate myself that Commander Hurricane is a mare, and I actually do believe I'm the only one who's developed a view of Private Pansy having been her sister. Ironically, you may find, I didn't actually write the story with that being the case, it was actually more recently when I was reviewing it that I began to develop that idea in particular and felt a strong drive towards implementing it as fanfictional reality.
Hope all can enjoy
The Commander paced methodically back and forth in front of Skasis for a brief time before suddenly halting right in front of him and turning herself to face him directly.
“Listen carefully to me, Prissy Hooves,” she began to explain to him, very intensely, “I’m going to give you a chance to speak now. If you do, you’d better tell me everything: everything about you and your missing comrades, who you are, where you’re from, and WHAT you’re doing here. Everything!”
The Commander swiftly brought her face within a nose of Skasis’s, with a display of intensity Skasis had never before seen. After a few seconds, she slowly raised an eyebrow, already impatient waiting for a response. “Well?” she prodded him verbally.
Skasis’s face turned quickly red and he started feeling internally hot and externally cold, in some mixture of fear and subliminal panic.
He clenched his teeth on his own, while his throat tightened itself subconsciously. “I-eh um,” he began, getting caught in a brief few seconds of hesitation before going on, “I’m not good at explaining myself in situations like this. I lose the ability to speak clearly. I-I would rather just have you question me.”
“Unable to handle pressure, hah?” she responded, “I’d expect as much from one of you.“
The Commander relaxed her eyes for a moment as she pulled her face back from his, relieving some bit of the discomfort her intensity had been bringing Skasis.
“But, your honesty might you lead you well with me,” she then said, saying so with nearly the same, almost friendly voice she had thanked him in outside of Private Pansy’s home.
“Thankyou, Sir,” Skasis responded quietly, and with some relief.
“Thank me if you’re allowed to leave,” she snapped back, and then sprang right into questioning him without any further warning, “now, we begin, Prissy Hooves. Who are you?”
“Skasis Greeneyes Paradigm,” Skasis gave the only answer.
“Where are you from?” she asked next.
“Ah-I’ve lived in a lot of places. I’m not really from one place” he said.
The Commander leaned her head in closer to him with a suspicious look for a few seconds, but then relented the expression and retracted back from him again.
“I see,” she says, nodding once. “I would expect you would have to, having parents of,” she went, break for an instant to shudder, “an outlandish mate pairing. Were you outcasted because of them?”
“Well, I was usually an outcast everywhere we lived, but not for that reason,” Skasis replied.
His reply incited her to raise an eyebrow at him again. “Then for what do you believe you were? Do you yourself not find your parents . . . unnatural?” she asked, not shuddering, but still stiffening at her own last word.
“No,” he answered, his voice becoming more glum as he continued, “and I just . . . I’m really not good at interacting with other ponies, socially. I only really have one friend, besides my brother,” he ended sadly, and without mentioning that by his brother he meant his familiar/pet hawk.
The Commander looked away from Skasis, not allowing him to witness her eyes softening for the few seconds that they did.
“No—not really . . . I mean sometimes-“ he said until she zeroed in on his wavering answer and interrupted.
“So nopony on the ground will accept you because you can’t socialize, and Pegasi won't accept you because you can’t fly. That must be quite a bit of resentment you have built up?” she said almost provocatively, keeping her eyes narrowed.
“I don’t really care that much,” Skasis said with some rising negativity.
“Really?” she kept going without any relent, “Are you sure it doesn’t get tiring after a while? Time after time, no matter how hard you try you know it will still never be good enough for anypony?”
The Commander restrained herself at the last second; emotion had been growing in display on Skasis’s face, and it was enough for a reaction.
“Yeah, yeah it does. And I’m SO sick of it! But it’s not like I’m gonna do anything like. Hmpf. It’s always my fault anyways. No matter what excuses I make up for myself right after something happens, I always have to realize that it was me in the end . . . for everypony else’s sake . . .” he ended his short outburst unable to continue holding her gaze, and just looking away with a face full of bitterness.
The Commander had listened, and observed him carefully, and even stood silent looking as if she were in hard thought for a long moment afterwards.
“Accepting responsibility; for your own failure and failure that may be the fault of others? Another soldier’s quality, partly misplaced, and another I wouldn’t have expected a Unicorn to have,” the Commander finally spoke again, and relaxed her face just slightly as she did so. All the while, utter surprise spread across Skasis’s face once again at her speaking something of such positive regard to him.
“Let us move on,” she suddenly resumed again, “past that and on to more of the pressing matters at hoof. Who are your two comrades, and where are they?”
“One of them’s a female Pegasus,” he began, “her name’s Ditzy Doo, and the other pony is just called The Doctor, and he’s an Earth Pony. Uh . . . they-WE are not really emissaries, we’re ah—travelers . . . and I have no idea where they are, or when they are. I-I don’t even know if they’re ever coming back . . . I’m lost,” he admitted in as much of a self-realization as it was answer to her questioning.
“Why did you impersonate emissaries?” she asked.
“It was just the first disguise The Doctor could think of,” he answered.
“Are you a spy, Skasis Paradigm?” she asked in a very open challenge.
The question hit him so side-ways that Skasis was left struggling to produce even the simple and only response. “Wha-dt-h NO!” he barely managed to say.
The Commander glared at Skasis for a good moment, reading him, and leaving him increasingly afraid of her with each passing second. After that moment had passed though, she suddenly relaxed her expression, all the way back to an almost completely neutral one. She sighed, for the first time Skasis had heard.
“You have no intentions of harming us. You’re just incompetent, and you’ve been deserted. What you did do, however, was not acceptable: lying to multiple officers of My Military, and intending to lie to me myself,” she said.
Skasis braced himself, and held a resigned look on his face.
“As a punishment, you’re going to be taken advantage of, by me,” she told him, much to his confusion.
“Sir?” he asked.
“You can clearly make yourself capable of walking on clouds, and your medical treatment is unlike anything I’ve ever seen or heard of. I have every intention of having you see every soldier in every infirmary,” she stated, and then added on, “and then I just MIGHT have you placed back on the ground among the rest of you.”
Skasis stared at her for a moment, uneasy about the end suggestion she had made. “Can I stay here, Sir? Until my comrades return, at least. I’d like it better to stay up here in the clouds,” he asked her with a clear share of nervousness.
She gave him, in turn, the closest look to confusion he had seen her produce yet. “Very well. But you WILL be taken to treat ground ponies. Your medical skills must be shared with the other two tribes . . . for the sake of our new unity,” she said. "In the meantime you will be escorted to the medics mess hall and then to a secure set of quarters for your permitted eight hours," she then told him.
Skasis took notice after she’d spoken that the sun was setting outside, and assumed it must have been near what was their standard of dinner time. He also grudgingly assumed “permitted eight hours” meant eight hours of sleep, or at least some form of rest. He was still overwhelmingly relieved, however, that at least she had said he was going to be taken to a set of quarters as opposed to being thrown in some kind of dungeon. Though, the concept of being left alone to be taken around by some random set of Pegasi soldiers felt slightly imposing to him. He would much rather have the Commander do it, and for more than one reason, one of which he does not yet entirely know, and the other being that she was the only pony he is even remotely familiar with and used to other than . . .
“Sir, you summoned for me, Sir?” Lieutenant Stratomane addressed and stopped to salute the Commander as he entered in.
The Commander immediately began instructing him, “Yes, our new medical asset needs an assigned escort to be taken between infirmaries, the medics mess hall and my stronghold. Since you’re the one pony who’s had the most interaction with him, I find appropriate to assign the duty to you. You are to take him to the medics’ mess hall this evening, and then return him here immediately. Are your orders understood?”
“Yes Sir!” the Lieutenant replied obediently with another salute.
She saluted him back again and nodded at the two of them. “Get on with it then. I have matters to oversee,” she said, preparing to leave herself.
“Let’s get a move on,” the Lieutenant said to Skasis and turns about to step back out.
Skasis froze for a few seconds, shifting his head from the Commander, who was walking off to a lift off from a balcony, and back to the Lieutenant who had already taken several steps to leave but was stopped looking back at Skasis, waiting. Skasis trotted hastily to catch the Lieutenant and then dropped to a normal walking speed to match his.
As soon as they rounded the corner of the narrow hallway, the Lieutenant’s demeanor changed and the natural, calm smile he’d had most of the day before when he’d escorted Skasis and the others around came back.
“Well, whoever you may really be,” the Lieutenant suddenly began, “I have to thank you again, E—Skasis Paradigm. Those red . . . tablets, I believe I remember you calling them, you gave me performed just as you said they would. My leg was near completely painless for the remainder of yesterday after I’d swallowed your medicine. Oh, and my son! He’s feeling so much better; he’s not even sick in the slightest! And, he won’t stop talking and asking about you, the unicorn who saved his tummy. I’ve never actually seen him idolize anypony before,” the Lieutenant looked nearly as amazed as he sounded as he finished speaking to the young unicorn walking next to him.
Skasis was unaffected initially by being told the medical chemicals carried out the reactions they should have been expected to, but he begun to feel different the more they kept walking. He felt . . . strangely filled, fueled in a way when the Lieutenant expressed his utter delight, and spoke of his son’s apparent looking up to Skasis.
Skasis was hit in that next moment by running flashbacks of things Sundial had said about him, along with other ponies from all across his past telling him quite bluntly how arrogant he was, or how much so they perceived him to be, and it just launched him into his self-devaluation thought process that had become so habitual to him.
“Yeah, I’m not anypony to idolize,” Skasis said.
“He’s a foal, Skasis. He never knew you before, and you just came into his world and fixed everything for him, in a way that not even his own mother and father could do. He’s going to think you’re a hero . . . and little foals need to have some,” the Lieutenant said back, his tone almost stern until the end.
Skasis went back to looking forward, and his gaze fell to the cloud floor as he absorbed what the Lietuenant just said while the two of them walked away.
***
“Sir, returning medical asset as ordered, Sir,” Lieutenant Stratomane announced his and Skasis’s return as the two of them entered the Commander’s small fort.
“Thank you Lieutenant,” she said, approaching them from the middle of the foyer. “Report back here for escort again at 0630 tomorrow. You’re dismissed,” she then ordered after.
“Yes Sir, understood,” the Lieutenant replied, saluting before he turned and left for his own cloud home.
“As for you, Prissy Hooves,” Commander Hurricane suddenly began to inform Skasis in a clearly non-negotiable manner, “your duties will begin tomorrow. You’ll be taken about our infirmaries by my Lieutenant over the coming days, until you have treated every PONY you can in every WAY that you can. Is that understood?” she asked.
“Yes Sir,” Skasis answered, entirely in submission.
“Excellent. Once your medical capabilities have been made use of to the greatest possible benefit to all of the free tribes, you’ll be released your effectively-indentured service. Until then, you serve the new Union of Equestria, and you answer to ME! Is that clear? Prissy Hooves?” she told him thoroughly, and then questioned his acceptance again.
“Yes Sir,” he responded again, in complete submission still.
She allowed her expression to go neutral for the following moment, which Skasis had begun to recognize at that point as her nonverbal signal of approval, to a certain degree.
She turns away from him and walked towards the longer wall opposite the open balcony, heading near the corner where it met the wall which held the exit. Skasis shifted his position to observe what she was doing, legitimately curious.
When she reached the wall, the Commander effortlessly, without raising herself up on her hind legs at all, performs a set of three hoof-jabs at near-sonic velocity, the end result of which was the clearing away of a roughly pony-sized doorway through the cloud wall to some small room behind it that practically resembled a prison cell in Skasis’s mind.
“Although I’ve already determined you mean the three tribes no harm, I am taking every necessary precaution for the protection of our new land. When you’re not under my Lieutenant’s supervision, you’re to be kept in the most secure location possible,” she said and then paused to convey an intimidating stare, “in case you decide to try something.”
In another situation with a different pony Skasis would have likely complained about not being trusted, but he doesn’t. Instead, he moves over to where the Commander is standing and peers inside the room.
The room was less than half the size of his University dorm room, at two pony-lengths long and one pony-length wide. It contained a cot-sized cloud bed protruding from the wall at knee level, and a small opening in the opposite wall served as a face-sized window looking out at some of the underside of upper Pegasopolis, and the misty mountains far off at the horizon.
“These are your quarters for the duration of your indentured medical service. You have eight hours of permitted off-time starting now, and I highly encourage you to use it for shut-eye. I need you awake and focused when you’re taken out tomorrow. You rise when I rise: 0600. Am I understood?” she said, and demanded yet another response of confirmation.
He really would have groaned at the thought of getting up so early had it been almost any other situation . . . but not then, not in response to her. “Yes Sir,” he just complied.
The Commander hovered off of the cloud floor and flapped a pace back out of the entrance to Skasis’s room. She then closed up the opening in the cloud wall behind him and kicked it hard with her hind legs, causing it to rumble and flash with electric charge. It basically was prison cell to Skasis at that point; it was pretty obvious putting a charge into that cloud was meant to keep him from trying to leave on his own.
Skasis didn’t stand there staring at the shut cloud for long. He pretty quickly succumbed to how tired he’d been kept from realizing he was, and settled onto his narrow bed. It took him a long while to fall asleep, and he wondered and worried about Himmel as he laid there trying.
His pet, who had always been his brother to him, went to sleep lonely and miserable as well, back ahead through time in modern Equestria resting atop the roof of Skasis’s dorm building in Canterlot.
Author's Note
Next story portion.
I'll leave the reference for Himmel down here in the Author's notes for a while. Himmel is the name of Skasis's pet/familiar, a hawk who he's had since was a colt (since Himmel's been made a familiar -in magic terminology of most fantasy it means a wizard/sorcerer's pet- he will live as long as Skasis does) whom because of such, and because of Skasis having practically no other friends (except for Shooting Star -a fellow unicorn and student at the Royal Canterlot University back in present day Equestria-) Skasis literally feels that Himmel is his brother.
If question's arise to anypony feel free to ask and I'll add and explanation for all in the author's notes, unless the question raised regards something specifically being saved for a in-story reveal later down the line.
“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.
Beginning of a Paradgim Shift
“Sir, returning medical asset as instructed, Sir!” Lieutenant Stratomane announced, saluting as he and Skasis came to a halt just after entering the foyer of Commander Hurricane’s fort.
The Commander was standing just inside the opening on the wall opposite the large fireplace. It was a narrow opening, not even two ponies wide, and it led out to a small balcony that allowed a sweeping view of the entire half of the landscape that it faced. Even standing on the inside of the opening to it, as she had been, one could easily still overview much of the surrounding world.
“Dismissed,” she replied, returning his salute with a dismissal nod after turning to face the two of them.
The Lieutenant dropped his salute and exited the room, leaving the Commander and Skasis alone.
“So, what’s this I hear about you talking to my soldiers in a condescending manner, Prissy Hooves?” she asked suddenly, the instant the Lieutenant had left, catching Skasis completely off-guard and leaving him unable to even produce words. All he could do was simply experience the swift tensing of the muscles in the back of his neck, and the uncomfortable sensation of being hot under his fur that came with being under scrutiny.
The Commander stood waiting, examining his face with a piercing look.
“Do you think you’re better?” she asked with such a simple tone, as if it were just an ordinary question. All Skasis could do was begin to express his distress on his face.
“Do you think you’re better than us, Unicorn?” she questioned him furiously, barely holding back from a yell.
“What? No,” Skasis finally managed to force out at least a pair of words.
“Then why were you speaking like that to MY soldiers?” she demanded.
“Wh-th-that’s just . . . uh-how I talk . . . when ponies ask me stupid questions. T-that’s just how I am,” he answered, stuttering out the truth.
She lifted her head high and lowered it very slowly in a raised, acknowledging nod. “I see, so you’re Arrogant,” she concluded.
“ . . . What?” Skasis couldn’t even respond any other way; her words hit him so sideways.
“You’re arrogant,” she explained her conclusion so simply, “you don’t think you’re better than my soldiers, or better than Pegasi, you just think you’re smarter than everypony else.”
By that point Skasis was beginning to mentally cave in. He has no verbal reaction to her, he just stood there, shifting through facial expressions ranging from offended to confusion, until his internal self-image shield shatters from her precise strike. All he wanted to was shut down: just leave everything and go mope by himself like he always had . . . but that wasn’t an option now; he couldn’t escape anymore. He dropped his head and shifted his eyes’ focus to the side, deliberately avoiding looking at her.
“. . . Yeah,” he finally conceded to her . . . and to his reality.
The Commander relaxed her expression upon hid admition, and nodded once, as had become her usual.
“I see. It’s not surprising; vanity’s pretty common among you,” she said.
Skasis clenched his teeth together hard, trying to generate some sensation strong enough to overpower the pre-tear sting that was crawling up the ridge of his nose. His eyes, however, were already on the verge of watering. The moment with her that just passed had truly cut him deep.
“You asked to stay here, in MY city. That is by far THE most outlandish request I have ever heard, given the cirumcstances, from anypony. Despite how outlandish it sounded, I agreed to allow it BECAUSE of your value as a medical asset,” she told him.
The Commander stepped uncomfortably close, luring Skasis to raise his head and find her threatening war-face noses from his.
“I won’t revoke my acceptance of your request to stay with us, but understand this, Prissy Hooves,” she said, quietly and threatening, and almost with a growl, “that attitude has no place here. Got it?”
“Yes Sir,” he responded in the weakest, most hollow and submissive voice he had ever used in his life.
The Commander backed off after he did, and stepped several paces away moving towards the doorway to her own quarters. She stopped half way, looking back and taking notice that Skasis had been severely shredded by her concise assault.
“Skasis,” she called for his attention.
Skasis lifted his head back up in her direction, most of the will to do so coming from her having used his real name.
“I was also informed you actually took a position of authority and direction amidst the infirmaries you were taken to, as well as that you found the ability to project yourself despite your. I commend you. Those qualities are the beginnings of leadership, something all true soldiers possess. You’ve displayed a number of traits befitting of a soldier now. For one of your kind that’s exemplary, and I’ll give you my recognition,” she makes the effort to tell him.
Skasis’s eyes seemed to dry in seconds, and their irises swelled as before when the Commander removed her helmet to him outside of Private Pansy’s home. For him, her speaking so positively of him sunk in just as deep as her harsh attack had cut.
“. . . thank you . . . Sir,” he said.
“Is there anything else you would like to raise in this debriefing before I permit you to retire?” she asked him.
He had to think for a moment, not really positive of anything having been asked the question so suddenly after what had just transpired. “Ah-Is there anyplace I can take a shower? Or, I’m sorry, Sir, may I be allowed to take a shower?” he asked hesitantly.
“A shower?” she asked, with a disapproving raised eyebrow making Skasis instantly regret answering her question.
“Yes Sir,” he chose to just say something, since he had already trapped himself with his own response, “my coat is kind of . . .”
Skasis stopped when the Commander looked at him with an expression that clearly said that she’d had enough, and he just prepared to hang his head again.
“Vanity abounds in your kind,” she replied, shaking her head.
“I’ll see you at 0600,” she then said, turning about and walking away into her own quarters for the night.
With nothing else to do, Skasis dragged his hooves over into his narrow little room, and even used his magic to lift the charged cloud closed beyond him locking himself in.
He spent an hour trying to fall asleep, wondering again about what was becoming of Himmel in his absence, and about who he himself had once been . . . until just recently. And who he might now be collapsing into as the Commander landed blow after blow on his entirety of his identity.
***
The next two weeks went by at something of a normal pacing, with Skasis mainly being taken through the same routine every day. There were no such things as weekends, not amongst the Pegasi of this time period, and since he’d yet to be taken to treat ground ponies Skasis could only assume there was no such thing as weekends or time off at all. He just guessed that such a thing wouldn’t come about until the Princesses first came.
Day by day, Skasis got used to routine expected of him, and by the time two full weeks had actually passed it had begun to almost feel normal. The fact that it had begun to feel as much did unnerve him a little bit, just every other swift adaptation to unwanted changes he’d gone through in the past had as well. But, his submissiveness won out, and he resigned to the reality that was now his: he was here in this time period now, until either . . . until either The Doctor and Derpy returned for him, or he ended up dying here however long he might end up living after the recent founding of Equestria.
***
Skasis rushed through the air, carried by a strong Pegasus guard flying alongside Commander Hurricane and three others. They were flying in a sloping descent towards a large building of stone down in the dale below, the largest that Skasis could see amongst all that had been thrown together in the short time the tribes had been there for.
“So, Prissy Hooves,” Commander Hurricane suddenly spoke to him, “how are you taking to your new, disciplined lifestyle?”
“Really well, actually,” he responded, much to her evident surprise.
“I really actually enjoy having structure and a set routine. I just . . . I never had the self-discipline to impose them on myself. That’s why I loved the University so much, or—part of the reason,” he explained to her.
The use of the word university only incited confusion and its accompanying curiosity, though. “University?” she asked.
“The place where I learned everything I know,” he gave the simplest explanation he could, remember only after he’d used the word that no universities existed yet.
“I hardly believe that you ground-dwellers have anything matching the regimentation of MY military,” she countered back with a racist tone similar to that of Private Healed.
Skasis was overwhelmingly relieved at her focus on racism, however, and found himself able to speak without as much worry knowing she would likely default to it.
“Uh . . . no, i—it’s not anything close,” he assured her. “W—we just had classes-or instruction in certain subjects at specific times on set days,” he said after.
“Hmf, I still wouldn’t idly believe that you all could tolerate living under such conditions,” she reaffirmed her belief.
“Well . . . a lot of ponies did drop out first year . . .” Skasis had to admit, as even though he was just using her racism to try to get away from any actual questioning about what a university was, what he admitted was a true statistic.
The Comander let out a horse-snort. “I would suspect as much,” she said.
Skasis lets his head hang so that he faces straight downward to the ground. It served to make her assume he had deflated as he normally did after such comments from her, which he may have had the circumstances been different. However, it also allowed him to look down across the great spanning valley at all the moving shapes of different colored coats. There were so many ponies moving about in just this area . . . all having fled in a mass migration from their race’s former homeland in the north.
“Is there really still so much racism here after the unity?” Skasis wondered to himself as they flew on and the ground grew ever closer, “I wonder how much the Hearth’s Warming Eve plays must have been exaggerating the change in the leaders’ hearts?”
He picked his head up again suddenly upon recalling the immediate memory of finding Private Pansy the mate of an Earth Pony, and that the Private and Smart Cookie were good friends in reality.
“You’re different, Prissy Hooves,” the Commander said all of the sudden.
He snapped his head over to her, ripped out of his spacing gaze at all the ponies below.
“You’re a strange pony, and outlandish as I’ve already said. But you keep displaying qualities worthy of a soldier. You’re more relatable to a Pegasus than initially took you for . . .” she admitted, and in a manner that made Skasis believe it took a lot for her to do so.
Skasis had never, up until that point, considered being called a Pegasus a compliment, as . . . well to him, being from modern Equestria he just regarded all ponies as just that: just ponies. But from her, right then, the comment means the world to him. He even let his mouth fall open a ways in reaction to just how unexpected it was.
“Welcome, to the Valiant Commander Hurricane!” a tremendously projecting voice cried out from below, announcing their arrival. The five Pegasi landed on the stone outlay before the steps leading up to the large wooden double doors of the gathering hall. The guard carrying Skasis lowers him onto his hooves first, actually placing him onto the ground and not merely dropping him from a pony’s height up as the Commander had last time.
“I’m going to present you to other tribes’ assemblies, and disclose the information about your medical abilities. You will likely begin being taken to treat Earth Ponies and Unicorns soon after today,” the Commander explained to Skasis as they all walk up the steps.
“S-s-sir,” he begins to ask, drawing an actual look from her, “can I still stay in the clouds?”
She responded to him only with what was perhaps the strangest look she had given him yet, and then turned her head forward again and seemed to debate his request.
Before she can answer, the doors are opened and a grand hall with a long banquet table is revealed. Skasis followed as the Commander walked inside. The four accompanying guard entered as well, remaining just on the inside of the door: one pair on each side. Skasis went on with the Commander. She stops just before reaching the table, and he hesitates before trotting the extra two steps forth and to the left, standing at her side.
Author's Note
Well, here we are, at chapter 7. Another short one right before a long one, and our first REAL time-skip, though only jumping forward by 2 weeks.
No, for anypony wondering, Pegasi of the founding time period are not always dirty or anything, they just are kept generally clean by flying through the heavy rain of a good storm every so often, and just look down on the other two tribes' (in particular, the Unicorns) treatment of washing themselves as some kind of leisurely relaxation activity (i.e. long showers or baths).
Next chapter will be longer again, and you'll get to see/hear the other leaders and their associated assistants :)
Hope everypony's enjoying . . . though from thumbs count it seems a growing number aren't :(
Skasis stood beside the Commander at the near end of the banquet table. The table was arrayed with enough food for only a small assembly of ponies, 10 at most. The only other ponies present apart from them are the Commander’s guard squadron that had accompanied them, and four other dressed ponies from each tribe.
Grand Announcement, the Earth Pony who had called out their welcome just moments before suddenly shouts out again from outside the hall’s doors. “Cordial and royal welcome, to her High Regal Majesty: Princess Platinum!” he declares for all of the few ponies present to hear.
The doors opened behind them, and everypony turned about to see the Princess entering the hall. She entered wearing her natural facial expression, one showing how beneath her the action of walking was. A pony Skasis assumes to be Clover the Clever accompanies her, along with a nameless brown Unicorn gently levitating the princess’s royal robe for her so it didn’t touch the ground, while also carrying a finely tasseled velvet pillow for her seat.
“Good evening, Commander. And . . . associate?” she greeted her fellow ruler, only to become confused upon noticing Skasis standing beside the Pegasus mare.
“Commander? Is this not one of my subjects? Whatever do you have him in your company for?” Princess Platinum asked the Commander.
“This, is Skasis Paradigm, and YES he is a unicorn, one of outstanding medical skill,” she responded.
Skasis mentally sighed. “Why does everypony keep giving everypony else the wrong impression? If ANYTHING I’m a Pharmacist, and I don’t even match the qualifications for that,” he thought to himself.
“I’ve been making use of him for the last two weeks to help treat our infirmary patients in Pegasopolis,” the Commander went on to explain, after which the Princess gasped. “You’ve kidnapped him? How dare you!” she threw her accusation at the Pegasi leader.
“No, PRINCESS,” the Commander began to reply, “my soldiers found him wandering about up in the clouds, claiming to be an emissary. I then interrogated him, of course, and found out who he really was.”
“Hmpf! How absurd!” Princess Platinum respond immediately, sticking her nose up in the air. “Do honestly expect me to believe that your troops just found a pony who is not in any way a Pegasus, as far from one as can be, walking in the clouds?” she asked.
Skasis could see the Commander was quickly becoming furious, her face seeming as if she might be about to explode, concerning Skasis to the point he wonders if his presence in the past might end up disrupting the founding period of Equestria.
“Actually your Majesty,” Clover the Clever suddenly interrupted, “there is a cloud-walking spell certain unicorns can cast. It allows them to walk on clouds like Pegasi for three days, after which they need simply cast it again, if they have the magical skill.”
The Princess turned her head toward her advisor, and then Clover turned her own to look at Skasis.
“I’m sure he must have been using it if he was up there, or else he would have fallen straight through,” Clover affirmed.
“Well, I’ll take YOUR word that it is possible, my dear,” the Princess finally agreed, and then snapped her head back to match the Commander’s gaze with an accusing look glare. “But I still say YOU kidnapped this poor stallion,” she said, pointing a hoof.
“Ah-actually, ma’am—your Majesty, ah-I was already there,” Skasis stated, speaking plainly and calmly while inside desperately hoping his own testimony would defuse anything that this debate over his supposed kidnapping might start.
The Princess widened her eyes and paused in shock for a brief moment before she replied in anyway. “Well . . . I guess I can believe YOU, then, Sir Paradigm. And, it IS: Your Majesty, dear,” she said, and of course made sure to correct him.
Skasis nodded affirmatively, smiling in relief at the broken tension.
“But . . . how in heavens did you get up there?” the Princess then asked.
Skasis froze up for a second, his mind racing, and failing as it normally did often when he was forced to think fast. He just barely ended up being able to speak an excessively incomplete version of the truth. “Ah—I had friends that took me there,” he explained very loosely.
“Do you mean Pegasi friends?” the Princess asked in return, sounding extremely surprised.
“They would have to be; how else would he have gotten up there?” Clover suddenly spoke again, stepping in. “I think that’s wonderful, don’t you Your Majesty? Pegasi and unicorns befriending one another, and pegasi allowing a unicorn into the sky; it’s a great sign of how much our unity’s already come along,” she said with a truly genuine smile.
She took a second to place a hoof to the side of her chin as she looked Skasis over from her spot.
“Although,” she began, “I would still worry about ONE tribe passing their bad habits onto the other. Just look at this poor thing: he’s at least managed to keep his mane well kept, but even then his hair is greasing, he has dark patches under his eyes, his coat is stained, his fur itself is dirty and it looks as if it’s going to become soggy from . . . uhhckl, perspiration . . .”
Skasis, two weeks ago put down by the Commander for wanting to keep a well-groomed appearance, now felt embarrassed by Platinum’s comments. Negative comments hurt him coming from anypony, though for some hidden reason any comment from the Commander held more wait to him than anypony else, but what the Princess said still hurt in a way as well; it left him feeling as if he just couldn’t win. Still, he maintained his composure, not willing to allow his head to hang for her.
“You know WHY that is, Princess?” Commander Hurricane suddenly spoke out again, even taking a step part-way in front of Skasis as if she were protecting him. “That’s from him applying himself completely and absolutely all day, every day, doing HARD WORK! When was the last time you did any?” she proclaimed what she thought of Skasis, and in a way all but denounced Princess Platinum.
Skasis’s eyes swelled and his irises shrank as they drifted to the Commander, glazed and sparkling. His mouth hangs a third open again out of his utter shock at the words she’d just spoken of him.
“I beg your pardon? I spend my entire day ruling over my subjects!” Princess Platinum declared in an obstinately pious tone.
“Sitting on a throne doesn’t count,” the Commander just denounced her again, this time with the same unimpressed look Skasis he seen from her himself plenty of times.
The Princess opened her mouth to respond again, but Clover places a hoof on her shoulder, halting the young monarch’s speech.
“Princess please, we’ve just come into unity and I know it might be hard for a lot ponies to just throw away old differences and sentiments as if they don’t exist, but we can’t afford any of this. Think of all your subjects still migrating down from the Northern Land. You don’t want them to arrive in this beautiful new land and find chaos and unsettled dissent, do you?” Clover reasoned with her.
The Princess looked at Clover carefully for a good moment, finally letting everything go only after thinking clearly about everything her advisor had just said.
“No,” she gave in to her real desire . . . for peace for her subjects, “not after what we all endured under the power of those Winter demons . . . all of us.”
The Princess looked right at the Commander when she finished her sentence. Clover smiled, relieved at her monarch’s relent. The Commander continued to initially, but after a few passing seconds of feeling Skasis looking to her with worried eyes she too summed up the strength of her being to let everything wash away.
The Princess turned away and walked delicately to the other end of the table, Clover and her servant pony following with her. When she reached the other end and came about to face down the length of the table, she looked at Skasis peculiarly.
“Dear? Do come over here and rejoin us,” she said.
Skasis’s chest clenched up as he was forced to make a choice. He had no true idea how both leaders will react to one choice or the other. His choice felt clear to him, and he credited it to familiarity . . . but he still wasn’t completely sure how it would turn out.
“Uh-Actually, Your Majesty,” he told her, “ah-I’m fine with remaining here.”
The Commander, looking across to the Princess, couldn’t help but allow herself a victorious smirk for a few seconds.
The Princess, on the other hoof, was left looking completely void of comprehension.
“But . . . whatever do you mean, dear? Don’t you want to sit with your own tribe?” she asked.
“A-actually since I’ve been serving with the Commander, ah-I feel more in-place over here,” he replied.
The Commander let her smirk of victory subside, but only to glance at the white unicorn by her side with a strong look of approval. Clover the Clever smiled with gladness at Skasis’s statement, presuming his concern for their unity is as great as hers. The Princess, however, was still utterly dumbfounded.
One of the double-doors of the hall was suddenly opened again, and Grand Announcement stepped inside, looking to the Commander.
“I plead your pardon, Commander Hurricane, but there are two ponies requesting to be let into the hall, for the purpose of seeing you. One of them is one of your soldiers I believe: a Private Pansy,” he told her.
“Let them in at once!” she demanded.
“As you wish, Valiant Commander,” the Earth Pony bowed curtly as he agreed.
Grand Announcement vanished out through narrowly opened door, and a few seconds later the two doors are opened in full, and Private Pansy walks through the doorway with Grain beside her.
The Private looked so happy, though still giving off her timid demeanor, but she was smiling. Grain was practically beaming, keeping his eyes to his mended mate.
Skasis expected what he saw next: the Commander’s mouth opening to reveal shock for a moment, before giving way to what is by far the greatest display of joy Skasis had yet seen her give.
“Private . . . sister, you came all this way? You were able to leave your home?” she ask, astonished.
Pansy nodded back gently. “It’s amazing,” she said in her naturally soft voice, “it’s like I don’t feel frightened anymore. Well, I’m still nervous the same as I always was even back when I served you, but I’ve felt so much better ever since Doctor Paradigm gave me those . . . those little things.”
“Yes,” Grain began to add on more after Pansy had spoken, “it’s been so wonderful! She hardly feels anywhere near as queasy as she used to, and just yesterday, she didn’t even feel her belly bothered at all! She’s been able to walk around outside throughout the day again, she’s become only half as skittish as she was, and she’s been sleeping with peace, whole nights through; oh I’m so glad.” The brown earth pony looked so sweetly at Pansy as he spoke his finishing set of words.
The Commander was left actually speechless for the first time Skasis had seen, making him wonder how long Pansy had suffered her condition for prior to his treating it.
“Oh, Commander Hurricane, Sir,” Pansy said, raising her hoof to salute, “may we join you, Sir?” The Commander immediately returned her salute, allowing them both to immediately drop their hooves.
“Of course! You know well you’re more welcome than anypony else,” the Commander answered with a proud smile.
“Oh, thankyou Sir,” Pansy said.
To the surprise of most in the gathering hall, the Commander suddenly reached out and pulled Pansy to her in a pony hug. “It’s good to have your company again, sister,” she said as she hugged the frailer Pegasus,.
The Commander let her go and Pansy stepped over to sit beside her on her left, leaving her standing now with Pansy on and Grain on one side and Skasis on the other. Skasis turned his eyes back down the table for a few seconds. When he brought them back to the three ponies now on his left, he found the Commander looking back at him with a look he had only received once from her before, that of appreciation, only this time much, much greater.
“I misjudged you, Prissy Hooves, and even underestimated you. While you’ll get no apology from me . . . I do have much you deserve my gratitude for,” she said to him, not in a whisper but just quietly enough for only him to clearly hear.
Skasis added another eye sparkling moment to his list. Every positive comment from her was filling and lifting his spirit like Helium in an airship balloon.
“Oh! Ah . . .” Grain suddenly spoke up, “I beg your pardons, Princess,” paused to kneel in Princess Platinum’s direction as well as dip his head to the Commander after rising back up, “Commander, my sister is accompanying the Chancellor. They may be a bit late; she said the Chancellor’s been getting a little bit of a cold. But I’m sure Sir Skasis can easily remedy it!”
“Indeed, I’m more than certain it’s within his ability,” the Commander agreed.
“Humble welcomes to the . . .” Grand Announcement had to pause for a sigh before he went any further, “the inside-the-chimney-thinking Chancellor PuddingHead!”
The doors were opened once again, and the unmistakable Chancellor PuddingHead came springing in, with Smart Cookie following behind in normal step.
“I apologize everypony,” Smart Cookie said as they entered, “we were delayed by . . . the Chancellor trying to blow her nose . . . for half an hour.”
The Chancellor spoke up for herself instantly, and in an extremely congested, nasally voice. “I told you, it’s all about technique! Now if I just remember whether it’s a huff and a puff, or a puff and then a huff?” she said.
Smart Cookie rolled her eyes and then let them drift as they please.
“Sister,” Grain greeted her, “I was just mentioning before you arrived how Sir Skasis could probably cure the Chancellor.”
“Yeah, after what he did for Pansy, I wouldn’t believe there’s nopony he can’t fix up,” she agreed with her brother, and then looked over to the Commander. “Pardon me, Commander, but would it . . .” she went to ask, but stopped when she saw that Skasis was actually with the Commander right then and there.
“Well look at that, you’re already here!” she said in such thrilled manner to Skasis.
“Indeed he is,” the Commander said, “I intended on bringing him here specifically for the reason of introducing him to my fellow leaders.”
“Oh!” Grain suddenly suggests, “perhaps having him heal the Chancellor would be a much better introduction?”
“My thinking exactly,” the Commander agreed, to the shock of Grain, Pansy and Smart Cookie. She snapped her head back to Skasis. “Prissy Hooves, give whatever treatment you can to the Chancellor,” she ordered.
Skasis looked quickly from her to the Chancellor and back twice, his mind taking it’s couple seconds to catch up with the sudden command. He threw a quick, but correctly formed salute. “Yes Sir,” he responded.
Skasis retracted his salute and trotted around and over to Chancellor PuddingHead, who appeared baffled.
“Wait, what’s going on here?” she said almost accusingly, looking with shady eyes at everypony else in the gathering hall.
“This here is Sir Skasis, your chancellorship. He’s a doctor of sorts, and a pretty incredible one at that,” Smart Cookie explained.
“Are you sure Smart Cookie,” the Chancellor contested, and then suddenly went spouting off, “cause he looks a lot more like a really smart unicorn from the future who got stuck in the past when he tried to use a teleportation spell after his friends had only somehow he didn’t teleport to the same place they did but instead ended up in a MAAagical blue box with a time-travelling pony and a blond Pegasus mare that brought him to our time and then left him here about two weeks, four hours and twenty-seven minutes ago.”
Everypony in the room wass left with inflated eyes and shrunken irises, unable to fathom the perceived nonsense they had just heard. Skasis’s face, however, was racing from utter disbelief into real fear, wondering horribly just what this truth might end up bringing about.
Smart started laughing nervously, and tried her best to protect Skasis’s sanity in her eyes. “Eh-haha, ah-heheh, uh don’t mind the Chancellor when she does that, she . . . uh, well . . . uh, does that, sometimes . . . a lot. Just ask her whatever Doctor questions you need to and she’ll respond like a normal pony, mostly,” she tried to assure him back to a normal state.
Skasis’s eyes were still a telltale giveaway of the alarms going off within him, and two ponies did catch that sign of there being more than just the usual reaction to Chancellor Puddinghead’s nonsense, though for the moment they both held themselves quiet, wondering.
“. . . uuhhh, d-d-do . . . agh,” Skasis tried to speak, but still head to shake his head a few times, “w-what’s wrong, exactly?”
“Well, my nose is all stuffly,” the Chancellor responded in her nasally voice, “and like whenever I lie down, whichever side I lay on is the only one that feels stuffed up, and when I roll over it’s like I can feel whatever’s jammed up in there go from one side to the other.”
“. . . Are there any other symptoms?” he asked.
“Symptoms? OO! Are those like symbols that monkeys play?” she beamed up in response to what she thought he meant.
Skasis’s eyelids fell half-way down in an unamused stared. “Is there anything else wrong?” he corrected his own question.
Skasis thought for only a few seconds before he answered, “Pseudoephed.”
“Psupo-whatnow?” she asked the same everypony else had at every medication’s name.
“Pseudoephedrine,” he explained, “it’s a simple nasal-decongestant. Here.”
Skasis turned behind him to the banquet table and fired up a quick transmutation spell, removing a cubic inch of wood and producing twelve circular red tablets from it as his horn glowed. Clover the Clever watched on intently, intrigued by this unheard-of medical practice.
“My word! How brazen of you!” Princess Platinum suddenly shouted out. “I’ll have you know this table is made of FINE Ash timber!” she told him harshly. Skasis ignored the remark, while Commander Hurricane glared her annoyance at the Princess across the table.
“Swallow two of these now, then two more when you go to bed tonight,” Skasis told the Chancellor, turning back around and passing her the Pseudoephed tablets. “Go ahead and take two when you wake up and when you go sleep every day until they’re gone,” he said as well.
“OO, cherry flavor!” she remarked with thrill, at which Smart Cookie had to facehoof herself.
The Chancellor ripped two of the Pseudophed tablets out of Skasis’s levitation field and swallowed them down without water or hesitation, leaving Skasis wide-eyed, along with everypony else.
“Bleh! That didn’t even taste like cherry! What kind of candy is this?” she demanded.
“It’s . . . not . . . candy, it’s medicine,” Skasis almost could speak straight, lost at how exactly to deal with . . . well, this.
“Oh, why didn’t you say so earlier?” she asked as if he hadn’t.
Skasis wanted to facehoof himself so badly, but not with everypony’s attention on him. Behind the Chancellor though, he had seen Smart Cookie doing such to herself in his place, and now she even shook her head with her face still buried in her hoof as if she were trying to grind her own sanity away so the Chancellor’s lack of it wouldn’t bother her so much.
“Ah-yes, well, perhaps now we should all get around to conducting our delegation?” The Princess suggested.
“Indeed,” Commander Hurricane instantly agreed, for the first time anypony had ever heard.
“Yeah . . . Sir Skasis’s treatments take a little while to start working anyways,” Smart Cookie went ahead and agreed for Chancellor Puddinghead before the Chancellor could speak for herself.
“Right then, so—“ the Princess began, and the three leaders went into discussing of all of their most concerning matters. In the meanwhile, Cover walks away from the Princess and makes her way over towards Skasis, inquisitive about his strange treatment methods. Skasis had uncertainly stood in the same position near the Chancellor for the past moment, and was now casually making his way back to the Commander.
“Skasis Paradigm?” she asked for his attention, drawing him to turn around and face her.
“I’m Clover the Clever,” she said with a curt bow of her head and a single foreleg held across her chest while she did such. “I was wondering about those small-little items you gave Chancellor PuddingHead? I’ve never seen, heard or even read about treatment like that,” she questioned him curiously.
Skasis freezes again, his wits taking long to coalesce. He debates as quickly as he can what to do. The only conclusion was the one he came to: no matter how bad he was at lying, there was no way he could allow ponies to know of chemical medications two millennia before their time.
“Uh-i-it’s nothing, nothing significant. I-it’s just a c—condensed form of a simple remedy from where I’m from,” he tried to pass a false explanation off.
“Really? Where exactly was this in the old land?” she asked.
“Uhh . . . far in the North,” he answered.
“Really? What herbs and mixtures is this remedy composed from?” she just asked onward.
Skasis’s head lowered and tightened towards his neck, his desperation to be out from under Clover’s curious scrutiny rapidly rising. And, it wasn’t something she went without noticing.
“Ah-I honestly couldn’t tell you,” was the only thing he could think of right then.
Clover tilted her head and gave Skasis a questioning look, and all of the sudden her horn lights up, though in a faint enough glow not to be noticed by anypony else but him. And, as it did her began to glaze over quickly with different colors. He knew exactly what she was doing; it was a magic insight spell! Some could allow their unicorn caster to see when another pony was lying, and that’s what the Royal Guard in Skasis’s own time used them most frequently for, and some like his own allowed unicorn doctors to see how somepony’s physiology was functioning. However, they could see other things if the caster was powerful enough . . .
Upon viewing him through her insight spell for a few seconds, she let out a silent gasp. She can see his trailing timeline stretching back and forth across their land and time . . . and then warping off and away into the cascading temporal gulf.
Skasis might not have ever seen anypony cast such a magical insight spell before, but her reaction was more than enough to make it obvious what she’d seen.
“Great, you’re the first pony to know,” he said flatly before she could speak.
“When?” she demanded an answer, though still retaining the self-control to confine herself to a whisper.
“The future; far in it,” was all he answered. “Don’t . . . say anything, please?” he begged, though very, very simply.
Clover appeared confused for a few seconds, and then seemed to give considerable thought to his begging request.
“Ponies from this time have a hard enough time believing in many forms of magic,” Skasis decided to add on an argument in his favor, “I’m pretty sure time travel is pretty damn far beyond anypony’s belief tolerance level.”
Clover sighed after Skasis had finished speaking. “I’m pretty sure I understand you’re reasoning, and I promise shouting out your secret wasn’t at all what my mind what jumping to,” she said, sounding sad, actually, to Skasis’s surprise. “But,” she added, “I just really wish Star Swirl could have known about this . . . but not as much as I wish he could’ve lived long enough to see our unity.”
Clover spoke chords of history that Skasis never knew.
“He died before this whole set of events started?” he asked.
She nodded solemly in response before she spoke to answer, “I-it was two years before the winter storm and the Windigos. It’s the reason I’m the royalty’s advisor now . . . I really miss him.” Her head slumped down until her eyes and muzzle were aimed straight down towards the floor . . . and after a moment Skasis sees to wet dots suddenly appear on the floor beneath Clover’s eyes. He shifted his own eyes off the side, looking into the wall rather than at the grieving pony in front of him.
Clover seems to firm her face, and she allows herself ultimately no more than a minute of silence before lifting her head again, whilst the conversation between the three leaders continues.
“Alright,” she promised, “you have my word that I won’t reveal anything about you to anypony.”
“I can withhold you’re what I know about you,” she went on, “although since I didn’t exactly find out by asking, I think it’s only fair that I tell you everything else I know, that you might not.”
Skasis tilted his head a bit this time.
“And what, exactly, what do—you know about me that I don’t know about myself?” he asked, both curious and suspicious.
When I looked at you with my magical insight, I obviously saw your individual timestrand, and that its line of origin trailed off much farther into the temporal gulf than I could see . . .” she begins to explain, and glows her horn again, recasting the spell.
“There’s something more that’s . . . strange. You’re displaced from when you were, but . . . your temporal geometry matches the fittings of our timestream, of here and now, you seem more in-sync with our time than the time it looks like you came from, or at least more than your timeline seems to match everything around it in the direction it trails off in.” she explained as she looked through the spell’s vision one more time.
“I belong two thousand years from now,” Skasis tried to declare “. . . with mein bruder ...”
Clover understood what Skasis said even with no knowledge of the Germane language, and she feels a deal of sympathy for his disconnection, imagining it to be something possibly resembling the harshness of her losing Star Swirl.
“I’m sure it work itself out,” she said to try and lift his outlook, “Star Swirl always told me: “No matter how powerful chaos or the darkness become, the universe will ultimately never let them cascade, otherwise it would be its own undoing.”
“Clover the Clever,” Princess Platinum’s call suddenly interrupted their interaction, “come back to my side and carry these new agreement scrolls for me; we’re finished here.”
“Already? That fast?” Clover asked, genuinely surprised given it had only been twenty minutes at most.
“Yup!” Chancellor Puddinghead added herself in, “we were all talking about how we can’t fit anymore ponies into this spot underneath the mountain so we gonna talk about how to deal with it, but there wasn’t that much to talk about since the Commander’s recon troops found this awesome big island just a short journey away, and a really nice coastal flatland just a short journey too!”
Skasis instantly made the connection to the foundational settlements that would become Manehatten and Baltimare over the course of the next two millennia.
“Well,” Clover said, turning to Skasis one last time, “I guess I might being seeing you alongside the Commander at more of these meetings then. Farewell until next time.”
Clover walked away, rejoining the Princess and levitating a collection of scrolls up off the table. The Princess herself looked to Skasis, who was still in place, and unsure of what was exactly going to happen to him next.
“Dear, please by all means, do join with us,” she offered him, “I’ll even allow for you to enter the temporary palace if you don’t have a home. I’d always go out of my way to at least make sure none of my subjects are deprived of a bath and good hygene.” She gave a brief, disapproving look to the Commander when she said her last bit.
Skasis looked over at the Princess only once. He debated to himself for just a few seconds, but he felt the pull from within him and he knew what his decision was, though not whether the Commander would permit him to make it, although he desperately hoped she will.
“No thank you, Your Majesty,” he responded to her, “like I already said . . . I feel more comfortable serving the Commander. And, I really do love living in the sky.”
Skasis turns slowly back to see what the Commander’s expressive reaction at least would be, and he is so joyously shocked to find the same victorious grin from before aimed at him, although this is even closer to a smile, and with far less of a competitive air to it.
“Well, I guess his final choice has been made, if you’ll allow it Your Highness,” Commander Hurricane said matter-of-factedly, and with a clearly audible air of satisfaction.
“But . . . but I just don’t understand,” the Princess said, “or, well, agh, I will not deny the young stallion of his rights. If he wants to live rough and tumble with you, he certainly can. But . . . dear, are you sure?”
“I’m fine,” he assures her with a smile of his own, “I think I like being roughed-and-tumbled.”
The Commander actually laughed right then, granted in a more restrained manner keeping her mouth close. But still, it was enough to well happiness up within Skasis when he saw it.
“Very well then,” she said to him, then turned and ordered her guards, “guard, disperse, you’re all dismissed early. I will return to Pegasopolis myself with the medical asset.”
All four the soldiers who had accompanied her and Skasis saluted, and upon her return of it they about face and file out the door, lifting away into the sky once outside.
“Are you ready to return, Prissy Hooves?” she asked him with a grin.
“Yes Sir!” he said, returning the same.
Commander Hurricane wasted no time, grabbing Skasis then and there, and flying them out and off into the night and clouded sky.
Author's Note
Well, here's the interaction/introduction of the other leaders & assistants as promised.
Not much else I can immediately think to comment on, just if you have any questions/uncertainties please ask as always.
I was also beginning to debate potentially creating an ask blog on tumblr at some point for Skasis & Commander Hurricane, either separately or both in one, along with maybe another for Lightning Dust+ from my other fic on this site. If anypony out there is a vetted-enough ( and I use this word very cautiously, since so many differ in its interpretation) fan to the point of caring/being interested in such a thing, please do let me know so I can at least gain some idea as to such.
Like a Ton of Bricks, to the Face
“YAAAAAHHH-HHAAA-HA!” Skasis screamed out in thrill as Commander Hurricane hurtled the both of them throughout the storming sky heading back to Pegasopolis from the meeting they had just left.
“So different in the sky than on your hooves?” the Commander asked rhetorically. Skasis looked up at his carrier in response, still with a beaming smile of the thrill he got from being flown.
“You have a relentless enthusiasm for flight, and quite frankly I like your attitude,” she said, to his pleasant surprise.
Both aimed and kept their heads forward as the Commander flew them at tearing speed through the storm that was coming down. Lightning flashed with frequency near and far, one bolt even blasting down right behind them. Skasis could feel the prickling tingle as his fur stood up and all but reached out in the electricity’s direction. At the same time, the falling rain was beating in Skasis’s face with the force considerable of a tropical cyclone, mostly because of the speed the Commander was going.
“You want to live in the sky?” she called to him, having to yell for him to hear even though he was hanging in her hooves right below. “Let’s see what you can handle Prissy Hooves!” she dared him without option, growing a grin of her own.
With no further warning, the Commander instantly spiralled them into circling slow-barrel rolls, making sure Skasis feels as much inertia and G-forces as she can make him. After a few moments of it, she threw the two of them downward and into a closed-loop sweeping turn. They whirled endlessly around a large circumference of air, faster and faster as they dropped lower and lower and the column tightened with every loss of altitude.
By the time Skasis realized she was creating a tornado through their motions, he was experiencing what he guessed had to be nearly five Gs and nearing six. He had never felt such a force acting on him before, crushing his body inward from behind and pulling outwards on him so furiously that he rapidly began questioning whether the Commander could even maintain her grip on him. It seemed as if . . . if the Commander let go, Skasis would have gone jetting away into oblivion.
The Commander took down to the ground, literally, driving the funnel wedge to its sharpest point, until the earth was no more than a meter away. And then she canceled the Higgs field with the mass-negating magic inherent in all Pegasi wings that allowed them to fly despite the proportion of their wings to their equine bodies saying they shouldn’t be capable of flight. Skasis could feel the disruption; the Commander inverted all of her momentum upward, averting the intentional near-crash, but leaving Skasis’s body to the first law of motion, still yearning to impact against the ground. The vertigo induced on him was so intense, his vision horizontally elongated out of any field of recognition.
Their climb back up towards the underside of the storm clouds was far more paced, enough for is vision to slowly blur back to normal over the course of it. The Commander almost seemed to be taking her time just to make sure that Skasis got thoroughly, thoroughly drenched by the downpour, despite his already being so from plowing through the rain just moments ago at half-mach.
Only once they climbed above the clouds, emerging out over the storm, did the Commander finally speak to him again.
“So? Enjoying yourself now?” she asked him, still with the same mischievious smirk on her face.
“. . . I’ve never done anything that exhilarating in my life!” he admitted more gleefully than anything he could recently remember.
She looked down at her with her final look of surprise, one that she then conceded quickly to a grin of pleasant disbelief.
“I’ll admit that I never believed a unicorn like you was possible, or any ground-dweller for that matter,” she told him.
“Well, I’ve always been a freak,” he dismissed her still-lingering surprise.
“A what?” she asked.
Skasis had to let out a small sigh. Apparently the word freak hadn’t been created yet either. “Even to other unicorns,” he said, “I’m not normal.”
“No, you’re exceptional,” she responded.
Skasis was hit so hard by the surprise of her words, that was as if he had slipped a fell jaw-first onto the ground while doing push-ups, the reference even only arising in his mind because she had been making him perform some every day.
She saw pretty clearly that Skasis was dumbfounded at receiving another compliment from her, so went ahead and explained herself. “You’ve put our differences aside more than any of us three leaders have, and more than I ever would have been able to do had I never caught you trespassing,” she said and then went silent for a moment, looking straight ahead across the night, reflecting. “You’ve made me more accepting than I was, just in these few weeks of your conscripted medical service,” she said to him then.
The amount of appreciation being directed at him, despite the Commander’s cold and harsh voice, felt more meanignful than any Skasis had ever received before, to point of him having no verbal reaction for it.
“Thanks . . . really, Sir,” he ended up eventually managing to say, unsure of what else to.
***
The Commander paced back and forth in front of Skasis as before, only swifter this time and without the piercing air of scrutiny.
“You, Prissy Hooves, Skasis Ignition Paradigm, have proven yourself capable of the soldier-worthy qualities I never thought any ponies but Pegasi could possess. You have also proceeded to trot past the differences that have kept our races apart for so long, and have shown a shocking development of strong loyalty to Pegasopolis, and to your commanding officer,” she said to him as she paced about and he stood in place.
The Commander ceased her pacing for a brief moment, shutting her eyes for a second before opening them again and resuming. “And you have done me an unforgettable favor, helping to bring back my sister . . . my one and only friend,” she said, with a softness in her voice Skasis hadn’t yet heard. It almost sounded . . . fragile.
Skasis is wide-eyed but straight-mouthed, letting the surging floodwaters that were her compliments drain into him, while wondering with uncertainity what this was leading into.
The Commander suddenly turned abruptly and stood right in front of Skasis, facing him directly.
“Understand that this has NEVER been done before,” she began, “and may NEVER be done again. You’ve showed me that you’re a soldier, or at least through your loyalty, that you could easily be made into one.” Her look was firm and resolved by the end of her words, after which a few instants passed in silence.
“I’m enlisting you in My Military,” she stated bluntly without any reserve whatsoever, though Skasis could the approval still in her voice, and his eyes lifted open even wider than they already were.
“You are now Private Paradigm,” she told him, “you will obey the orders of any other member of My Military with a higher rank than your own. You will be primarily under MY direct Command, and under the subsequent charge of Lieutenant Stratomane. Have I made myself clear, Private?”
“Yes Sir,” Skasis answered with a true and proper salute.
“Excellent,” she commended his acceptance. “Your duties as previously assigned will resume tomorrow,” she immediately went into explaining, “Lieutenant Stratomane will take you around the city to the last remaining families reporting ill fillies and colts. After this, I will arrange to begin having you taken to bring medical assistance to the Unicorns and Earth Ponies on the ground.”
“In a way, you’re going to become what you impersonated in the first place,” she said looking partway over her shoulder before continuing to walk off.
Skasis waited to observe if the Commander was going to turn around to say anything else to him. When she didn’t, he decided to look over himself, taking notice of how much off a cleaning job their rocketing flight through the rain had accomplished, and decided to go ahead and finish it real quick himself as he left the large foyer as well.
He went on going about using his magic to push the water still trapped in and beneath his fur back and forth as he walked off towards his small quarters. He only went about doing such for the moment it took him to reach the opening to his room and then ceased the process, magically pulling all the water he could concentrate enough to grasp with his horn’s aura out of his fur letting it fall away into and through the cloud beneath him as a fine mist.
Skasis only noticed afterward that the Commander had returned, obviously having heard the quite audible spell.
“What are you doing, Private?” she asked, mildly suspicious.
“Uh . . .” Skasis froze up for several seconds, struggling and failing to think of some way to explain without sounding awkward, “just, washing myself, Sir . . . with magic.”
She looked indifferent for the most part, and actually just shrugged before beginning to say, “Hmf, a bit excessive after such a flight through torrential rain, and still a fair display of Prissyness on your part, but not a prohibited action. I was never stopping you from doing anything of the sort, Prissy Hooves. It’s the lengthy soaking ground dwellers, and Unicorns in particular take in your bathing that’s looked on as vanity up here, not the action of washing yourself. In fact I was waiting to see if you’d show the courage to go ahead and do it yourself; I’d assumed you’d readily have some means with your magic to do so with. But you didn’t, so my taking you through the rain shower earlier this evening served a second purpose of doing it for you, the manner in which most of US typically wash.”
Skasis’s head began to fall slowly forward, per usual in the aftermath of a negative line from her, though now he kept from hanging his head completely . . . now that he’d really let it sink into him that she wasn’t just trying to degrade him because she thought little of him.
“Being willing to put yourself at risk is the greatest quality of a soldier, and by far the most basic and foundational,” she suddenly said to him. “No matter how small the first risk taken is, that first time you choose that path willingly, it will ALWAYS lead to the willingness of self-sacrifice,” she explained.
Skasis’s mind goes through a great revalation as he comprehends the truth of what she says.
“I have every confidence in you, after all that you’ve shown, Private. I feel it in my wings that you’ll find yourself at that point in time,” she declared just as she turned away again, leaving Skasis standing there with newly-lifted confidence and esteem.
In the mood her words had left him, he decided to go on and dry himself off, throwing his head up as his horn lit and a good waft of air was drawn in and up by the spell, breezing through his fur and mane, and even lifting his mane. At the sounds behind her, the Commander looked over her shoulder to find the sight of Skasis with his head tilted half-way back, his fur rippling with artificial wind and his forelock mane billowing upward in the draft.
The Commander . . . didn’t even know what it was she suddenly felt throughout that and the proceeding moments. Her eyes fixed themselves to Skasis in his brief, and unintentional display, and still remain on him after it ends and he brings his head back down to level and reopened his brilliant green eyes. For a unicorn stallion, he actually began to appear to her . . . like a stallion. There was muscle under his fur, un-toned and un-built, but she clearly observed that he was not entirely physically delicate, or elegant. His stature, his fur, his mane, his eyes, the feeling itself lost on her, she is begging to feel an attraction to him, the first she’s ever felt towards any pony in her life.
Her mind comes back into clarity as Skasis starts to comb his mane into its normal, well-kept style. She felt oddly drawn to look upward at her own mane, seeing an unkept, greasy, course, black set of hair as short in the front as Skasis’s and with her flat-end military cut assuring none of her bangs varied in length from the other.
Skasis then looked up and saw her making an offset face at her own mane. He felt compelled to say something reassuring to her. But, as the thought of making some kind of approachful comment to a mare entered his head, his body began to run cold, or feel so on the outside, while slowly starting to sweat at the same time as the triggered cold transitioned over to heat.
Skasis let his heart go and go, and after it reaches one hundred and fifty, he made a pounding choice to cross a line that he had never conceived. He tried so hard not to sound awkward, and actually succeeded by a half, he thought.
“Your mane looks really lovely . . .” he said to her, physically wrought with nervousness.
Skasis watches as the Commander’s irises constrict from the surprise as she brought them back down from looking up to her mane. For a single fleeting instant, their expressions are unchanging, his of neutral fear, and hers of her surprise at what he had actually just said.
But then . . . Skasis’s heart sunk so fast when Commander Hurricane’s eyebrows dropped down. Her eyes narrowed, very slowly, and her chipped ear began twitching. The worst part of all however, and the most frightening, was how her pupils so tightly, like something looking onto a target.
“Watch your words, Prissy Hooves,” she threatened him an unnervingly level, but still chilling voice. “Such comments have NO place whatsoever between you and me,” she said.
With her final words uttered, the Commander finally entered her own quarters, and kicked the cloud shut behind herself with a force that could shatter Diamond.
Skasis was left saddened, and alone, slowly turning his head after a moment and taking the final steps into his own room, sealing himself in.
“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! RRR! . . . Why?” Skasis yelled and demanded from himself in his thoughts as lied on his back on the small little cot.
“What is this? Why did I do that?” he started yelling at himself in his head, “Why did I do EVERY STUPID thing I’ve ever done in my life? EVERYTHING I do is a mistake to somepony. EVERYTHING I do just ends up making me look like . . .” he stopped just to exhale forcefully out of his stress. “I’m not anything impressive or special like Cobalt Shroud, I’m not powerful like Shooting Star, and I’m not the doctor everypony here thinks I am, and I’m not even smart no matter what the University’s stupid exam scores and thesis records say. I’m an arrogant, condescending, stuck-up, PRISSY, selfish, spoiled-brat of a coward. I’m a pony nopony wants to be around . . .”
And then the answer to the why he’d thrown at himself regarding what had just happened with the Commander finally hit Skasis like a ton of bricks, in the face.
“. . . and I’m in love with her . . .” he realized.
Skasis laughs, physically, outside of his thoughts, for just a few seconds.
“Me, me and her,” he went on thinking, “wow, what a GREAT social pair. What the Hay am I doing! And why? Why do I have to be like this!? Why her? Why here, why now? And why . . . why couldn’t Himmel have at least been stranded her with me?”
Skasis let his vision onfocus the way one can if they delve so deep into their thoughts their eyes begin to drift about without a mind-directed focal target.
“Because you’ve somehow managed to fall in love with her. But why?” he kept berating himself for answers, thinking there on his narrow bed. “No explaining,” he thought to himself, while his mind randomly jumped back to a memory from one of the astronomy courses he’d taken, “like a singularity . . . like a black hole. It doesn’t matter that a gravitational force powerful enough to reverse the direction of photons would have to consist of the equivalent of infinite mass. You don’t argue with a singularity that it’s only composed of one collapsed star . . . you just get pulled in.”
Skasis sat up then and looked out the small window at the few stars he could see, more than ever right then wishing so desparately that he would see his brother’s silhouette flying in towards the window. But there was nothing: no hawk-shaped shadow cast against the light of the stars, just the blinking dots of white alone by themselves . . . just like he was.
“Himmel, warum bist du nicht hier bei mir?” he asked the empty air in Germane as if his pet hawk were actually there
He said one word out loud, just before he forced himself to just shut down and go to sleep. It was just a whisper, “Commander . . .”
Author's Note
Well, here's chapter 9. Sorry to anypony/everypony who enjoys it but the gaps between chapter uploads are probably going to jump up to an average 4-5 days between chapters instead of the usual 2-3. Just for the next few weeks, as I'll be travelling about and such for this last month of summer before Fall semester starts up here at UAF (my university: University of Alaska Fairbanks)
To explain references in case anypony missed them in previous author's notes, Cobalt Shroud and Shooting Star were Skasis two friends back in modern/present-day Equestria (not modern as in "modern", but as in when the show takes place, you know what I mean).
Also, once again, Himmel is the name of his pet hawk, whom he obviously calls his brother rather frequently. And yes "Germane" is literally just real-life German, I'm not making up the words I'm using for it. And Germany/German hadn't been pony-punned yet by anypony I know so I jumped on it.
Final note, I'll state again that I was debating creating a Tumblr Ask blog for Skasis and Commander Hurricane, together as a pair in one blog. If anypony is even remotely interested in the potential creation of such please, please do let me know, as it would definitely motivate me to actually start doing it :)
Time carried on; a whole two months passed Skasis by from that day he’d been enlisted. He’d gotten more set into his routine than most any other before. Living in the clouds had begun feeling so natural that he’d even had two close calls with forgetting to recast his cloud-walking spell every three days. Luckily it wasn’t a spell that just instantly ceased, the caster always had a thirty-second grace period once the spell began to wear off, long enough to notice oneself clearly sinking slowly through whatever cloud they were standing on. In fact, Skasis got so used to his new circumstance-forced life, that he actually began to go almost whole days without wondering when or whether The Doctor and Derpy would ever come back for him. Only when he thought of Himmel now, did his mind wander.
***
Skasis trotted across the clouds with Lieutenant Stratomane, both having just returned from another of Skasis’s ground excursions, or deployments, as the Commander referred to them. During the past two months he had been taken on numerous such deployments, usually for the length of a day, and when not, he’d been regimented into doing “rounds”, checking into each of Pegasopolis’s infirmaries one at a time each day and putting his Pharmacology knowledge and Pharmaceutical abilities to use as needed.
The two of them were passing by one of the young-flyer training grounds when the Lieutenant, and then Skasis because of him take notice of a young filly with an extremely glum look on her face, in front of whom the apparent flight-training instructor who was in the midst of speaking to what appeared to be her parents. He was talking whilst wearing a visibly unimpressed expression, and all the while the little filly’s parents, the father more so than the mother, continuously cast sternly disappointed looks at her.
The Lieutenant only took a second to make his decision: he deviated from their path and walked over to the group, Skasis following by default.
“And after all that was finished,” the instructor was saying to them, practically exhaling frustration, “I decided to stop trying for the day and just LET her do basic wing exercises, but then she just kept saying she couldn’t even do those!”
“I had a bad feeling she was going to be a disappointment from the start,” the father said through a cold sigh, “she was never anywhere near as active as any of the other foals, and she ALWAYS—”
“What exactly is going on here?” the Lieutenant inquired as he and Skasis approached.
Everypony turned to see Skasis and the Lieutenant approaching. The filly gave a wide-eyed look of surprise at the presence of a unicorn, but the others had apparently all heard of him by that point.
“Nothing to be bothered with,” the instructor tried to assure the Lieutenant, “just another WEAK little filly destined to join the other cloud-grounded fillies and colts.”
“And we’re the last of our families on both sides,” the filly’s mother said, distraught, “we were hoping so desperately that she wouldn’t turn out with anything wrong with her . . . but now this has to come about.”
“I suppose we can always try to have another foal,” her husband offered the suggestion, though even he didn’t sound too keen on it.
Right at that, Skasis witnessed something he has never seen before in the Lieutenant up to that point. The LIEUTENANT was actually becoming visibly angered, and very, very much so.
“Is this your display of concern for your child, soldier? Or is she the same to you as your armor and helmet are? Because that’s what your attitude suggests to me, and I do NOT find it at all appropriate for a parent of any race and any rank!” The Lieutenant vented his outrage, his voice climbing in volume with each sentence.
“This is a matter between the filly, her parents and myself, you have no responsibility and no authority to—” the flight instructor had just begun to say, until he recognized the Lieutenant just too late.
“I am Lieutenant Stratomane, Head of Commander Hurricane’s evening guard squadron! Who the hay are you!? A flight instructor: don’t even try to convince me your rank is anything above Sargent,” the Lieutenant’s words bit into the instructor fiercely.
The instructor took a second to respond, and did so slowly and with a bitter expression. “. . . Sargent ThunderHead, Sir,” he said to the Lieutenant and saluted him.
“Ah . . .” the filly’s father began to voice, uncertain if the Lieutenant wanted their identities as well. At the Lieutenant’s turning of his attention to him, the father went ahead and spoke, “gh-Captain VelvetCloud, S-Sir!” he said with a salute.
The filly’s mother then stepped forward and spoke up as well, “Breeze VelvetCloud, formerly Corporal, de-commissioned for maternity, Sir.”
The Lieutenant nods a few times, looking one pony to the other, intentionally making them hold their salutes for longer than what would have been a normal time.He saluted them back, and they all lower their hooves.
Meanwhile, Skasis had taken notice that the little filly was breathing rather heavily, and wheezing frequently as well.
He walked over to her, able somewhat now to ignore the gazes of the other ponies that were suddenly drawn to him. Since his arrival he had been able to adapt to the feeling of eye pressure more than other things, since he frequently found himself under it. Dealing with little fillies and colts . . . not so much, he still felt extremely awkward talking to them, particularly in trying sound “parently nice or gentle”. Still, his stupid, and ever further magnetizing moral compass wouldn’t allow him to ignore them.
“Hey. Hey, are you feeling ok?” he asked her the question he obviously already knew the answer to, just to get her attention. It wasn’t exactly at the absolute forefront of his mind, but he did sound distinguishably less awkward when he tried to speak gently to her than when he’d first tried with the Lieutenant’s son two and a half months ago.
“Yeah, I’m just—” she was stopped by the need to wheeze before she could go on, “. . . it hurts, and it’s hard to—” she was interrupted yet, again, now by a sudden episode of coughing.
“What hurts?” Skasis asked, though he already knew the answer.
“My . . .” she answered him, though she had to stop first for a deep, struggling breath, “my thwoat, and-and . . .” she tried to finish her sentence, but ended up wheezing again, as well as not being able to find the word she wanted. She ended up just poking her chest with her hoof, not knowing the name for it, but still obviously wanting to tell Skasis.
“Your chest? Both your chest and your throat hurt, and it’s hard to breathe?” Skasis asked, letting her assure him that his presumption was already correct, which she did via rapid nodding. She seemed so thrilled either that Skasis had gotten it right or that somepony finally cared, or both, not really caring about his awkwardness.
Skasis places his own hoof against the filly’s chest, and then leans in with an ear to it quickly before leaning back out to examine with his Life Sight for the final confirmation, and he discovers exactly what he already suspected.
“She’s just weak; she can’t tolerate flying,” herr father declared with some audible disdain.
“She’s asthmatic,” Skasis corrected him, and with an edgy tone.
“She needs to be grounded,” the instructor declard to the lieutenant.
“She NEEDS Cortico Steroids, Skasis interceded again, growing swiftly agitated.
“And just who are you, ground stallion?” Breeze suddenly questioned him.
"HE is Private Skasis Paradigm, Medical Officer an Emissary, under the direct command of Commander Hurricane," the Lieutenant suddenly broke in on her, "HE has been given full medical discretion by the Commander to treat whomever he deems in need the treatment he can provide. HE may be the lowest rank in Her Military, but right now his authority far overrides every feather bristle of your husband’s, this Sargent’s, and yours if you still had any. Is that understood, Ma’am and soldiers?”
All three of them responded in synchronisity, “yes Sir!”
Skasis looked back at the situation behind him, but the Lieutenant nodded him back to the filly in front of him, so he proceeded with his intention.
His horn lit and alchemical lightning fired, beginning a collective transmutation, transforming the Hydrogen and Oxygen from the clouds, along with the Nitrogen ever present in the air and the Carbon from his own breath to synthesize a decent floating quantity of Cortico Steroid powder, and larger, separate bubble of Albuterol aerosol next to it.
He deliberates how to contain each, wanting to make a twist-back inhaler for the cortico-steroid powder like they were usually given in, as well as a shake-puff one for the albuterol, but not sure whether he had enough magical energy in him right then to pull those off. The debate lasts a decent twenty seconds that seem an hour, and Skasis makes up his mind, just as with the Lieutenant’s son, and just as with Private Pansy, he has to try.
A new wave of alchemical-spell lightning appears, but this time become quickly concentrated, and then slowly focused into a set of rhythmic ringwaves of light. Skasis has to force hard, obliterating the atoms’ fundamental order completely and forcing them to alter their lattices, proton counts, and phasial structures, until he finally formed a lavender, sliding twist-back inhaler around the powder.
When he finally released his focus, he found the little filly staring up amazed at everything she has just watched before her. It wasn’t exactly an uncommon sight at this point. Then he floated the inhaler carefully over to her.
“Here; just slide this over,” Skasis explained to the filly, showing her how to use the special inhaler, “bite down on this right here, and breath in really really fast. Ok? And then with this one just shake it up, and push down on the top while you bite here and breathe. Ok?”
The little filly looked back and forth from the half-awkwardly gentle-smiling Skasis to the two inhalers, and then nodded her head a couple times. She did exactly what Skasis said, and sucks in the Cortico Steroid powder and Albuterol, right after which she couldn’t help but giggle, and tell him, “they taste yummy!”
Skasis genuinely laughed in response to that. “Yeah . . . yeah they do,” he agreed.
Skasis knew he needed to drive in a necessary point, but also knew how he sounded when usually does, so he tried his best to be nice about, forcing himself to consciously remember that she was just a little filly.
“Sulfur, now listen to me, I’m really sorry if I sound mean, but DO NOT do that with this unless you start to feel like you did today, or unless I come and tell you too. OK?” he explained to her, and she nodded with a confirming smile when he asked. Then he began to go on, “Sorry to sound mean, but—”
Skasis was abruptly stopped by the little filly suddenly hugging him, or at least hugging as high of him as she can reach, which was his lower chest.
“You’re a nice pony,” she said to him.
“. . . What?” was all he could pull together to say.
She looked up at him, blinking. “You just wanna help,” she spoke her interpretation of him.
Skasis just stared back down at the little yellow Pegasus filly wrapping her arms around his forelegs, and was set into self-reflection.
“Now,” the Lieutenant suddenly spoke, looking right at Sulfur’s parents, “the two of you, listen to ME, very carefully. You are follow whatever medical instructions Private Paradigm gives you for her. Is that at all clear?”
“Yes Sir!” the two of them gave a synchronized, compliance response, though strictly out of military discipline.
“You are dismissed,” he said to the flight instructor.
“Sir!” the instructor confirmed and saluted before he turned and flew off.
“And as for you,” the Lieutenant began, throwing his head back over to the filly’s father specifically, “I BETTER see a change in your attitude towards your daughter. I hope THAT is more clear than anything.”
Velvetcloud held the Lieutenant’s gaze for an extended moment, until he visibly swallowed his pride for that instant to allow himself to answer. “. . . Yes Sir,” he said.
“Private,” the Lieutenant addressed Skasis finally.
Skasis had gone from self-reflection to observation of the Lieutenant’s unusual display of assertive authoritarianism. It wasn’t common sense, which Skasis did not have a normal assortment of, but the fundamentals he remembered his one and only Psychology course that inclined him toward the conclusion that the Lieutenant was an extremely caring parent, and thus projectingly concerned for this filly as well, as Skasis remembered how caring the Lieutenant was with his own son and the only time how spoke sternly to Skasis was with matters concerning foals.
Nevertheless, at the Lieutenant’s address, Skasis broke away from the little filly’s embrace, doing so rather roughly, but not enough for Sulfur Cloud to care.
“Alright,” Skasis explained to the two of them, “this is a Cortico Steroid inhaler. I just showed her how to use it, and it’s really quite simple anyways. She need to breathe in from it any and every time a constriction of her airways gets triggered.” “What happened to her today,” Skasis added on immediately, not even waiting for the confused looks he expected. Both parents gave delayed nods of comprehension.
"You should also probably have her breathe in some right after she wakes up every morning, just to be safe. I’m kind of depleted of intrinsic vitalitarionic energy right now, so I can’t make her any more till another time, and she’ll need more; Asthma can’t be cured, it can only be alleviated, so she’ll have to always have one to have one . . . at least so long as I’m here, but I’m pretty sure at this point I won’t ever be leaving . . ." he explained to them also, and then started including his own thoughts in his words.
“What?” each of them said, one right after the other.
“Nothing,” Skasis answered with a single head shake, “just . . . you’ll need to come and find me in a week or so, both so I can do a follow up on her and since by then I should be fully recharged so I can make her at least a half dozen more.”
“Is that it, Private?” the Lieutenant asked Skasis
“Yeah,” Skasis confirmed, at which the Lieutenant turned back to the two parents again. “Very well then, you two are dismissed,” he said.
As the family of three and the pair of two turn to part from each other, a realization of a problem suddenly strikes Skasis. He came to the full understanding that he just gave Sulfur Cloud a plastic inhaler, and many, many other ponies plastic bottles almost two millennia before plastic should even exist. His chest pinced in tight for an instant, driving him to do the only immediate thing he could think of to begin to correct the situation.
He spun around to catch the young filly before she and her parents left.
“Hey!” he called out and moved quickly over to the three of them. “Hey, hey, can I ask you a favor?” he asked only Sulfur Cloud, who of course nodded rapidly and gleefully. So, Skasis explained carefully to her, “every time you’re done with one of these,” he paused and surrounded the inhaler with his horn’s aura just to emphasize, “make you give it back to me whenever you see me, OK?”
“OK,” she said, still with a smile.
“Ah, what’s your name?” he asked her as kindly as he could sound.
“Sulfur Cloud!” she gleefully spouted out.
The way the little filly beamed up in delight as she told him . . . even Skasis found it too adorable not to smile. “I’m Skasis,” he said nicely, and actually reached out a hoof to place on top of her head for a second.
Author's Note
Sorry I couldn't get this up last night when I uploaded the 4th chapter of Drug Dust. I was already 3am East Coast Time when I uploaded that, and I wanted to get SOME sleep, and be able to make it to the hotel's breakfast restaurant this morning. Can't wait for BronyCon to begin tomorrow!
Here we have another time skip in the story, this time a decent jump by two months.
We also have a cute little filly, because everypony loves adorableness, who understands something about Skasis that adults seemingly don't, and that Skasis himself hasn't even really considered about himself.
Enjoy everypony, please and for real though if any of you are here at BronyCon COME SAY HI or something :)
The Lieutenant finished explaining the situation that had transpired earlier that afternoon to the Commander, having started upon his and Skasis’s arrival. The Commander paced about at a slower pace than normal, and has definitively irked look about her face, although that had already been present when the two of them returned.
“I trust you used your best judgment, Lieutenant,” she assured him, “and I undoubtedly trust Skasis with what he’s permanently assigned to do, thus the matter is of no concern to me. Only bring it to me again if the situation changes for the worse in any manner.”
“Yes Sir,” he responded and raised a salute.
“You’re dismissed, Lieutenant,” she informed him immediately after returning the salute.
“Sir,” he confirmed with a nod.
“The Private will be under my personal charge tomorrow since I’m requiring him to attend the unity celebration assembly. You have no duties whatsoever for tomorrow, Lieutenant, take our new holiday as a day of leave time,” The Commander told him.
“Sir,” he just repeated, but now with a very grateful smile. He lingered a few seconds to chance his commanding officer had anything more to say, and when she didn’t he departed for the evening.
Skasis was left with the Commander as always once the Lieutenant left for his own home. He took a more careful notice of the Commander’s slightly off-set behavior when she glanced at him in mid pace with a look that would have spurred fear had he just done something he believed would have angered her.
“Are waiting for an invitation to speak, Private Prissy Hooves?” she questioned him, and did so sounding more aggravated than he though she should have been, especially since he hadn’t done anything.
She didn’t exactly catch him ready to respond, so he only just barely created one. “Ah . . . no Sir, I-I was just . . .” he couldn’t even finish his sentence.
She stopped and turned to face Skasis directly, glaring at him as she had been at everything Skasis had seen her look at since that morning. He was forced to contemplate quickly how to not exactly let anything come out wrong to her of all ponies, under fear of death.
“Yes?” she prodded him on, only growing in irriation.
“. . . you looks as if you’re bothered by something,” he worded his observation as carefully into a suggestion as he could.
“Oh,” he started to say back, perking up at the potential to help her, “I can give you something for it if you want; Tramadol if it’s enough to bother you, or if it’s really nothing just some Ibuprofen or Acetamino . . . phen?” his last word broke apart as he just watched her expression shift into fury.
“I’ve given you an indefinite order to treat my soldiers and the other tribes’ citizens, Private! I will not be part of any such medical treatment, however. I’ve survived twenty-eight years without it, I’ll live another day!” she shouted in pure and plain defiance.
One quick idea coalesced in his mind upon remembering that the anniversary assembly of The Founding was tomorrow. “Um, Sir, the assembly—” he tried to say, but fell short again, only this time from her cutting him off.
“Is that clear, Private?” she demanded a positive confirmation out of him before he ever finished attempting to speak.
“Yes Sir,” he submitted as he always did to her, though for the first time ever he did so with reluctance.
“Now, you’ll leave the matter of my condition aside. I recommend you catch some rack time as soon you’re permitted; tomorrow is going to be a longer day than you’re used to even under MY command,” she informed him then, starting to calm down.
“Yes Sir,” he just confirmed again.
When the Commander finally took her focus off of him, stepping away to look out just over the outer balcony’s edge from the balcony exitway, Skasis hurried trying to activate his still-new medical insight spell quietly, wanting to know what exactly was wrong with the Commander, regardless of whether or not she didn’t.
Skasis had already mentally noted that it appeared to only be her two back legs that she displayed evidence of pain when stepping with, so that’s where he started, from the hooves up.
“No splits, sprangs, pulls, tears, fractures, joint displacements, hemoraging . . . nothing,” Skasis thought to himself as he peered into her hind legs from the distance he stood.
Everything appeared fine, until Skasis continued to raise his gaze without complete realization and passed over the Commander’s flank. When his medical vision came over it he suddenly a fierce red aura flaring out, one he’d come to recognize as a signature of bacteria. It was urinary tract infection. On one hoof Skasis is relieved to discover that’s all it is, although his inexpressible sympathy becomes endearing as he has some unpleasant comprehension of how painful they can be.
“Nothing a good course of Aminoglycoside antibiotics won’t solve . . . but, she’d never willingly take med—” Skasis froze in the midst of his thoughts, his face flushing and turning red swiftly at the sudden, dawning realization that despite the fact that it was through a medical diagnosing spell, he was still by all means just staring right at Commander Hurricane’s flank. He shut his eyes tight faster than he ever had before and deactivated the medical insight spell, opening them again only after he’d made sure to turn his head in a different direction.
Skasis jumped then, at the sudden voice of his and the Commander’s usual rations courier. “Commander,” the stallion said, drawing the mare’s attention, “yours and the Private’s evening rations.”
The Commander nodded a brief response back, “Dismissed, Corporal.”
The courier put down their rations and then saluted before leaving. Skasis eyed the bland food and decided that this could be his best chance, and hoped so desperately that the Commander will look away from her food right at that moment just long enough for him to transmute a few milligrams of it into Aminoglycoside.
“I assume you have already renewed your cloud-walking spell per usual?” the Commander asked him, forcing him to turn away from her plate and back to her.
“Yes Sir,” he confirmed with a very proper, affirmative nod she had been drilling into him.
“Then as far as I’m concerned, you’re dismissed for the evening from this point onward,” she told him, turning back to her viewing of the landscape out below.
“Yes Sir, thank you, sir,” he said back, waiting to see if she was about to turn back again, but she didn’t; she nodded in response to what he said, but without actually looking back over at him, leading his hopes to quickly rise.
Skasis’s mind warped and his heart accelerated at a nearly dangerous rate, faced with the potentially seriously risky choice. He had never disobeyed her, and he had never heard of any pony who ever had, so he had no idea what would become of him if he did . . . but still . . .
Skasis made his choice in the end, choosing to risk himself for her sake. He fired up the sparking fingers of his alchemical influence, and did his best to work a minor spell to quiet the sound of them at the same time. The attempt succeeded, for most of the transmutation at least, and he was able to convert a scattered portion of the food into clusters of Aminoglycoside molecules: none of any noticeable size.
Just as Skasis was ending the process, however, the Commander begins to turn around enough to the point that he realized she was guaranteed to see something. The circumstance cornered him, and for once in his life he managed to think quickly, throwing his energy into a raw creation spell directly in front of his own face and beginning forming a ceramic tea mug.
“And just what are you doing, Private Prissy Hooves?” she shot her question at him harshly, with a scowl left on her face in its wake.
Upon the situation turning into a social interaction, Skasis’s wits fled away.
“Uh . . . I-I-I was just making this . . .” he stuttered out to her, indicating the tea mug.
The Commander’s eyes narrowed, significantly. “Tea?” she asked with disdain in her voice that would have made her opinion of tea quite clear in itself had Skasis not already known it.
“I was going to make my own . . . natural derrivatives taste a whole lot better than alchemical fabrications personally . . . but . . .” Skasis went on, dragging out his turn of speaking and actually just begging inside for the Commander to just take over the whole conversation and begin berating him about weakness already. Standing there trying to pretend to explain himself to her was agonizing in its level of embarrassment, and he was already completely overheating under his fur.
Eventually, after the Commander’s eyes narrow by another margin, Skasis knew nothing else to do and just threw on a sour look and lets his eyes defocus and drift downward and away from hers while he canceled out the spell he’d begun to cover up what he had really been doing, in turn annihilating the floating half of a tea mug he had formed. By the time he has finished wiping his half-creation from existence, Skasis looked back up to find her already walking away from him without having said anything, taking her altered food with her.
“I expect you up at 0500, Prissy Hooves, the assembly and celebrations begin at dawn,” she said in cold sternness as she walked away.
“Yes Sir . . .” he responded with a weakened, crushed voice, not needing her to hear him since she had already gone.
With her having gone into her own quarters, Skasis, as always had nothing left to do but wander into his, taking his rations with him as well. He did as he has done for the past two and a half months: he laid down on his cloud cot, with no access to listen to the night sky . . . and still without Himmel. He just laid there wondering: wondering about Himmel, and . . . about Hurricane.
Desperation clogged his heart and a part of his mind as it had every night and almost every day since he first fell into the TARDIS: desperation to even sense his pet’s presence again, let alone possess his beyond-brotherly company. Now though there was even more mixed into his thoughts; he wondered Commander Hurricane . . . and about whatever possible future he might have here in this time . . . and with her. He even fantasized about the two of them, to a point.
In his own conclusion, Skasis arrived at the hardened reality that none of even his most plausible fantasies had any chance at all of becoming any kind of reality. Even if he had even only a few hundred of the parts per million of courage necessary to approach a mare, any mare to begin with, though the thought of approaching her of all mares . . . in his heart he still refused even to hop that her response to him would be anything positive or accepting.
***
Skasis awoke drearily over the course of a moment, though not to the sound of the Commander admonishing him for not already being awake, however. He instead opened his eyes to look up and see her standing next to his cot glaring irately down at him.
“On your hooves, Private!” she ordered him at the first opening of his eyes.
Skasis obeyed, moving with dread, but at an acceptable pace. He tossed himself out onto the cloud floor and snapped into an at-attention position in front of her.
“You created something, didn’t you: last night, in my evening rations?” she demanded to know, though from the way Skasis’s expression fell she gained her answer without him even saying anything.
Skasis’s heart sank even further than it already had bottomed out at, and his voice all but gave that away too “. . . Yes Sir.”
Skasis brought himself to a stop in the middle of his half-truthed explanation, defeated by her furiously unimpressed look. He knew, she knew he was lying, at least partly lying. Mentally, his last standing defense mechanisms broke down, and all he saw left to do is admit what he believed to be the real truth behind most of his actions, even though he himself only just saw it fully right there and then, no matter how pathetic she might find the sentiment.
So he spoke the truth as he knew it, in his broken-most, practically miserable-sounding voice, “It . . . has nothing to do with the ceremonies. It’s just you: you in pain, you suffering somehow, anypony suffering,” he broke for an instant only to sigh, “I’m an arrogant, condescending, know it all; I take everything seriously and every negative comment offensively, even from my friends when it’s just supposed to be a joke. I misunderstand almost everything anypony says that isn’t direct and clear, and I don’t even have any communicating of social skills to begin with. I’m not a pony other ponies really enjoy being around or like putting up with . . . except for a few. But I care about other ponies besides myself, despite how intolerable I may be, and how disgustingly stuck-up and selfish I know I seem like . . . and really am. I can’t stand watching other ponies suffer, or at least not anymore. I’ve never been able to act or behave or talk like a likable pony, but I’m still going to try to help ponies . . . regardless of whether or not they appreciate me for it."
A moment of silence passes as Skasis looks at the Commander across the terrifying short space separating their faces. She was reading him, reading him so thoroughly, reading into his face while in her head overlaying its changes with the words he had spoken just then.
After a moment, she looked as if she was in the midst of relaxing her glare, that was until the sound of trumpets was heard by the both of them from a distance outside. Then her glare returned, though not entirely as intense as before.
“There will consequences for these actions later,” was all she left him with before forcing him out to be flown off with her to the ceremonies.
***
Skasis stood before the pacing Commander, something that had become a frequent procedure for the two of them.
“You disobeyed MY direct orders, Private Prissy Hooves. Do you have any idea at all how serious the actions you took were? The strength and functioning of this Pegasi society, and of MY military relies on proper military discipline,” she said, stopping her motion at the those three words to slap one hoof down into the other, once for each word for emphasis. She immediately resumed afterwards, “And one of the things that has always been included in that, above all else is following orders. You broke that most fundamental principal.”
Skasis braced himself, even physically, expecting only the harshest ramifications . . . until she proceeded on with the words, “I commend your actions.”
Skasis was so beyond dumfounded that he had no reaction whatsoever, not even a single alteration to the expression he held.
Skasis remained without a worded reaction to this situation, although his face finally underwent and expression shifting sequence, running through bewildered, regular surprise, and settling for the moment on a restrained version of aweing.
“You’re a real soldier, Skasis,” the Commander kept on, “you’re not as fit as one, don’t know any proper drills, and as far I’m aware have no particular skill or belonging in combat, but, you possess the true fundamental qualities of one, and I have no regret for making you one. As of this moment, I’m promoting you to Corporal.”
Skasis’s mouth was quite open by that time, which with him meant about halfway, and his eyes were locked wide open with rippling shimmers glossing over them.
“And . . .” Hurricane redrew Skasis’s attention yet again, though before she said what she intended to her eyes went down and away from his. “I offer you my apology,” she said, “my orders last night were not in the interest of everypony I represented today, while your decision was. What I ordered you last night was self-conceited and stubborn, and I expect you make aware if and when those same conditions are so again, and remind me of this conversation. Is that clear, Corporal Prissy Hooves?”
“Y-yes Sir,” he answered, through unsteady breathing.
“Good,” she affirmed almost instantly, “now, there’s something we need to discuss.” She waited right after, until Skasis had removed every other expression from his face except for a serious and obediently attentive one, which he did not take long to return to. Once he had completely, she went on once more “I have been what I consider compassionate with you Prissy Hooves, and I’ve granted you more reprieve than I should have. But now your time is effectively up, and you ARE going to obey this order blindly.”
Skasis could do nothing but shortly nod.
“Anser me,” she ordered in a perfectly calm voice, for her, but one that bore more underlying sternness and authority than Skasis had ever heard, “Who are you? Where are you from? What, are you doing here?”
It took Skasis only a few seconds to start speaking out his reply, much to his own surprise. “Alright . . .” he initially began, pausing for another second to think just a little bit longer, “I’ll tell you everything, just please . . . please believe me.”
Skasis proceeded on to tell the Commander the entire story of his generalized life up to his University years, and then the greater complexity of those, and most particularly the last few months of it consisting of what he could only really call random adventures, led by The Doctor, and now his brief military service in a time period two thousand years in the past from his own.
The Commander’s eyes waxed and waned from wide in momentary disbelief to her normal calm glare throughout the two-hour audio auto biography, also nodding a few times.
At the end, Skasis nervously held her gaze, having no idea what kind of reaction to expect, but at least perceiving it to be negative. She studied him for more than a minute even afterward, and then turned away, for the first time in the past two hours, from staring him down.
“I believe you,” she said, as simply as could be.
“. . . What?!” Skasis actually almost shouted at her belief of the utter nonsense he had just told her, the fact that it was the truth holding practically no weight to him in the assumption of how she or really anypony should have reacted.
“You’ve given me nothing to believe that you’re lying,” she told him further, “. . . and you certainly are outlandish enough to fit your story.”
“Really?” Skasis had to question again, as his own disbelief at her lack of disbelief was unsubsiding.
“I can read ponies, Prissy Hooves,” she told him what he’d already been able to tell for a while, “I find it easy to see who’s lying and who isn’t . . . and you weren’t. For all I know, you could just be a deranged pony, but your actions and behavior have been far too coherent to ever convince me of that.”
The Commander took a pause amidst Skasis’s silence. She looked down at the ground in front of her, away from him so he couldn’t see her face. Her eyelid fall for once, instead of narrowing, and her face takes on a glum demeanor.
“There is nopony you know then, alive now, that you wish to spend this evening of celebration with?” she asked, sounding . . . like she actually was feeling sympathy for him.
“No,” he said with a brief second of silence after, “nopony I know is even going to be born for another nineteen centuries.”
The Commander nodded solemnly, though still facing away. “You’ll just have to remain here for this holiday’s passing then,” she told him, though for the first time she removed the forceful implication her voice always held towards him.
“I’m fine with that . . . Sir,” he responded. Her eyes opened completely back up in a slow and weary manor when Skasis calls her sir again. For a moment she holds it, and then her expression returns to her natural appearance of mild agitation, and she turns around to approach him again. “So be it,” she began, once again directly facing him, “do not take my proceeding actions lightly, Prissy Hooves, and do NOT expect them to become a frequent allowance either.”
Skasis couldn’t help but inch his head forward in rising curiosity.
“We may not hold such a high value on possesions and things of the matter up here, but I understand well enough the rest of you do,” she started to lead, “ . . . and that during celebrations of this significance you, and even some of my own Pegasi have made it a custom to give gifts with some kind of meaning to each other. So because your exemplary service thus far . . . and what you’ve done for me, I’ve done so for you.”
Skasis was left utterly clueless for a few seconds, hearing such a thing coming from her, until she reached into her pony pocket with the tip of her wing and pulled a hoof-full of something out with her feathers. When she extended her wing forward to drop them on her hoof, and then holds it out to Skasis he saw that it was four tea packets and his head shot back up at her in complete surprise.
“I never restricted you from it, but I did make it clear to you that I viewed it as weak and something for ponies with unsettled nerves, and that hasn’t changed,” she started, “however so it may be, it’s more than obvious it’s something you particularly enjoy, or used to, so I’m allowing you that privilege now . . . and I may again in the future, if continue your service as you have been doing.”
“Thank you Sir,” Skasis responded gratefully, and wasted little time surrounding the little pouches of tea with his levitation aura, though he didn’t notice that Hurricane flinched and shivered, albeit only for a brief instant when his magic actually contacted her hoof.
“Now I have a request to make of you, Corporal,” she said, after he transferred the gifted tea to his own pocket. “Sir?” he asked for her to go on.
This time, she actually closed her eyes before she spoke. “I would like to make you my officer’s assistant,” she said to him.
Skasis was thrown into his millionth shock of the evening, being askd to take the position that Private Pansy once held, to the point of not being to pull out any response to what she’d just said other than the obvious question, “You really want ME to—”
“Accompany me and answer directly to me except when specified otherwise,” she cut him off with the specifics of the position.
The Commander took another pause, and intentionally looked down away from Skasis, though only with her eyes, still keeping her head raised and level with his.
"I haven’t had one since Private Pansy was discharged. I haven’t had any other pony resembling that role. As procedural as I am . . . I’m not without some flawed desire for at least conversation beyond being answered with yes or no sir,” she said, a bit to his shock, specifically just for the fact that she’d admitted as much about herself.
“She was my only friend,” Hurricane told Skasis, “and she still is one to me even though she’ll never return to service. But now . . .”
The Commander cringed almost, like a little filly or colt being forced to say sorry for something they don’t believe is wrong.
“I’ve . . . thought you were a friend,” he said to her, quietly and nervously.
The Commander stops, more surprised than Skasis previously was. “You already gave me that kind of designation?” she asked, sounding somewhat close to being as surprised as she looked.
“Of course I did,” he said, “of everypony I know here, you’re the pony that cares about me the most.”
The Commander for once was literally left without understanding of the context of what Skasis had said, and for the first time Skasis had seen, her mouth dropped open, though only by little more than a mere centimeter.
When he saw, he kept going, trying to spell clearly what he meant, “I’ve changed . . . from who I was, a good portion, I’ve changed more under you than I ever have in my life. You’ve pointed out flaw after flaw, found everything that was wrong with me and just threw it in my face . . . you . . . just crushed me, every day, so many bucking times.”
Skasis stopped and motioned his head to shake a few times, though only moving it so by an inch or so each way. His mouth hung a third of the way open while his analytical mind searched for his next desired set of words.
“I can’t stand it when anypony does that; it’s so . . .” he said with a cringe, “it’s just one of the feelings I have the least tolerance for. But every time you did it, whatever you would say was so true,” he broke again, but into a brief snicker of all things this time, “I-I just felt guilty, for whatever it was.”
The Commander’s face had returned to normal over the course of Skasis’s words and she looked at him intently as he went on.
“I had no humility,” he confessed onward, “not before. But now . . . I finally just realized looking back on it just a few days ago: I took it so much more deeply when you said it because you were doing it to try to help me. Cause after every time, whatever it was that showed me: I buried it. I stopped it. I though long, and hard about it . . . and I don’t know . . . I think I realized just what I was really like.”
“There are a lot of changes in you I have noticed,” she spoke up to tell him, “and many of them you would be considered honorable to have made so willingly.”
“Oh I’ve changed,” he agreed with another quiet, nervous snicker, “hah you saw to that.”
The Commander was left wearing a mild grin of satisfaction.
“Whoever I came here as . . . he’s dead,” Skasis declared, “just two months—just TWO months, and you’ve killed me . . . and replaced me.”
Skasis’s word choice that time left the Commander actually agitated at him for that particular moment “Is this one of you unicorns’ pointless word arts of saying something that could have easily been spoken exactly?” she interpreted.
“Yes, Sir . . .” he responded, becoming almost instantaneously sullen, “sorry Sir.”
“Hmph, I build soldiers, Prissy Hooves,” she declared of herself, “I am the Commander of this army, of this Air Force of Pegasi, in whatever purpose we choose to serve. I can turn anypony entering service from a self-serving, arrogant, disrespectful civilian into a selfless, disciplined, contributing officer, but I hardly do it out of . . . care.”
That one time, Skasis actually spoke a kind of sternness in his own voice, “you have to care somehow, or else you wouldn’t act.”
“I doubt it’s the same as what YOU think,” she insisted bitterly, “. . . I no longer carry such sentiments; I can not allow myself to, not in this position, through the times that all pony kind has just gone through.”
“You cared enough to want to change me; it would have been a lot easier just to have dumped me on the ground where I belong,” he insisted right back.
“How dare you speak of yourself in such a manor, Corporal!” she snapped out of nowhere, “you are a second-ranked officer of the Air Force of Pegasopolis, you belong here,” she stomped her hoof into the floor, “in the clouds! With US!”
Skasis was shocked and caught off guard by the Commander’s sudden hostility, after such a long, meaningful conversation. The fact that they had been speaking in such a personal manner then also struck him, and he quickly regrets potentially damaging what had been their loose relationship by doing so.
“. . . Ah, uh-I’m sorry, Sir, and for speaking to you openly—freely, without your permission like I’ve been doing for the past few minutes,” he said.
The Commander raised her eyes in an odd manner of unexpected regret at Skasis’s reaction.
“Your casual manner of speaking is . . . fine, here . . . Skasis, though never on duty.” she told him, at which his eyes widened.
“I-I can speak to you personally?” Skasis was nearly stranded in disbelief yet again.
“We’re friends now, Prissy Hooves,” she admitted herself, and went on to answer him, “your needing my permission to speak freely when it is you and I alone is henceforth nullified. Within these walls from 1700 to 2000 hours you may speak as you will.”
“Commander, then, uh . . . can I ask something of you?” he approached his own question with caution. “At will,” she responded, clarifying his new freedom.
“Nopony back in my time really knows anything about you, or any of you, or I . . .” he stopped and realized he had to confess to a plausibility, “probably just never cared to study history extensively all that much, but, can you tell me your story?”
The Commander’s head uplifts and retracts, and her eyes stay the same, but somehow gave off the appearance of uncomprehending surprise. “Why?” she asked.
“Because I care about you . . .” he admitted to the sentiment, but not to its magnitude, “regardless of whether or not you think you care about me or anypony else.”
Skasis hesitated when he went to go on. His heartrate rose and rose into ranges it had never been before, spreading that familiar flushing heat of nervousness and pre-embarrassment. He struggled so hard against his emotional and mental blocks, he wanted in that moment to say what he really desired to more than anything else . . . but he couln’t.
“You’re my friend, Commander,” Skasis told her, and followed with a gentle salute.
“That will no longer be necessary, Prissy Hooves, not after 1700 hours, and not in here . . . if we are friends . . .” she said in reaction to it, almost sounding tentative.
“Thank you Sir, for putting me through all this, and forcing me to change . . . and letting me be your friend now. Ha-even though it mostly consists of me having my identity destroyed, I really enjoy being with you,” he admitted to her without venturing anywhere near the full reality of how he felt.
“. . . I’ve come to prefer your company as well,” she said back, “disciplining you and molding somepony with your . . . former living accustomment’s proven quite the odd challenge, and it’s been a good sport facing it.”
A semi-awkward moment passed between the two afterwards, at the end of which the Commander quells her ever-firey eyes before she grants Skasis his request. “Very well, Skasis Paradigm, if you truly desire to listen . . . and if this is what a friend would do, I’ll tell you the short end of my memories. Understand plainly though . . . there are things still that I will not be telling you of.”
After she spoke, the two of them ended up migrating towards the fire and sitting down. Skasis made himself a cup of tea, a drinks it slowly over the course the next hour or so, in which Commander Hurricane tells him her life story, or a summarized overlay as it were.
Author's Note
Well, here I am, finally uploading another chapter of something. I'm sorry all of you, I'm not stopping anything by any means, but I'll forewarn everypony now, my upload rate is going to probably decrease to one new chapter per week of any of my three stories, and sometimes the delay may be near two weeks. My Fall Semester is starting at my University, and I have an 18 credit courseload this semester, including Organic Chemistry (year-long), Human Anatomy and Physiology (year-long), as well as Chemical Equilibrium and Acidity and Pharmacology of Vitamins and Essential Minerals, the first three of which have labs as well. AND I'm constantly working on my world lore and maps/adventure/campaign layouts and designs for my Dungeons&Dragons group that I'm the DM of. (Yeah, I'm like a hardcore humiliated-to-exist-type nerd; D&D, Diablo, Diablo 2, Call of Duty, I'm pursuing a Pharm D (Doctor of Pharmacy = Pharmacist ) of all things, yeah) Point is, things are picking up.
“Commander.” Skasis addressed and saluted his leader upon finally returning just after sunset. In response, she turned to face him, and he went to speak further, “I’d like to request permission to speak regarding . . .”
She stopped him, unintentionally, without even doing anything. He hadn’t completely perceived everything when he first came into the parlor, but now his eyes did, and the subtle shock was just enough to make him pause. She had been standing just inside the open way out to the balcony as he often returned to find her doing, and had now already turned to face him instead. But . . . she wasn’t wearing her armor. No helmet, no cuirass, nothing. She had removed her helmet frequently enough as a sign of respect to him, but he had never once seen her without armor, no matter how at-ease she’d become at any point.
“Something concerns you Corporal?” She asked.
Skasis stuttered in response. Not that he didn’t normally, but now he was stranded amidst trying to explain himself. “It-I . . . uh, it’sss-I’ve only ever seen you without your helmet on two or-no three times . . . You’ve never actually taken your Armor off . . . uh-or at least by this point I kind of subconsciously thought you probably never did.”
“Amongst only our own company . . .” she had a brief pause, finding just the slightest difficulty in admittance, “I’ve come to allow myself to see you beyond just being another of my soldiers. I don’t feel it a dishonor to stand before you without a uniform.”
Skasis couldn’t produce any verbal response, but he did feel his face beginning to lighten.
The Commander waited for a few more seconds before her irritability claimed its natural place. “You were going to address me regarding an undoubtedly more important matter?” She led him with the question.
“I-it was regarding the position of another soldier.” Skasis answered at her demand.
One of her eyebrows went up before she spoke. “Go on then, Corporal.” She encouraged, her curiosity plainly evident in her voice.
“It may not be my place to say or recommend such thing,” Skasis started, “but, are you familiar with Private Briskly Healed?”
“The Private assigned to daylight hours at the southcloud medics’ unit?” She asked in order to confirm, which Skasis did with a quick, short nod. “You’ve monitored her performance to some degree?” She then asked.
“I believe at this point in time she has proven enough to warrant a promotion in rank,” Skasis told her, and then held out for a second only to go on when she didn’t display any signs of a negative reaction, “if my opinion is of any consideration in such matters.”
“Of course I trust your word, Corporal,” she responded immediately, and then spoke on whilst walking up to him, “With what you’ve proven of yourself, the value of your opinion isn’t something that I would question. I hold it too high for that . . .”
Skasis was being internally struck by the same waves fulfillment that always came when he actually received praise from her.
“You are my friend, Skasis,” she suddenly said, going on, and catching him so blindsided that anything he’d been about to say was gone for that moment, “. . . and I pledge to you that I will never deny such a thing again . . . you are the only one I have after all.”
“You had Private Pansy before me.” Skasis felt to remind her, after a few seconds of silence passed between them.
The Commander’s eyes fell, and she looked downward as she responded to him. “I never even cared to understand the sentiment while it was there during the time she served under me . . . my own sister. And I owe her so much more than I have ever given her for it. She was the only pony that was ever a friend to me . . . until now.”
“You’re the only other friend I’ve ever had.” She told him, looking eye-to-eye.
Skasis looked away, just off by a small distance, looking into his own memories. “Yeah, you’re basically mine. I’m not really the most likeable pony-“
“-But your concern for your comrades is more admirable than most ponies.” She found herself protesting.
“. . . No, my concern and care is biased . . .” he said, shaking his head slowly, and then undergoing a short, nervous laugh, “extremely biased.”
Her eyes narrowed by a degree as she reminded him, “You know that I can tell when somepony is concealing something, Skasis.”
All Skasis could even do then was shut his eyes hard for a fraction of a second and regret being such a give-away.
“If we are friends,” the Commander went on saying, although now . . . with a tint of uneasiness buried somewhere in her voice, “shouldn’t you be able to trust me with whatever it is?”
Skasis bit down on his teeth hard, pressing the two halves of his jaw together as his face began to redden. He felt his heart beginning to accelerate. Only when he was able to look over at the growing insecurity in Hurricane's face did he finally cross over the line he’d both forced himself to ignore and hidden from her, and so greatly feared. He made that one choice, emptying all of his resolve into a single set of actions, using it to replace the courage he didn't have.
When Skasis finally looked straight back into her eyes, with his newly-reddened face, he forced his heart out of himself, before he could stutter.
“I’m in love with you.”
The Commander inhaled sharply, almost as if it were a reflexive response. And for the proceeding moment tried to consciously process what Skasis had just said. At the end of it, she realized that she was becoming short for breath, with the memory lost of the last time her lungs were ever so strained. Her face was utterly torn between expressions, though all mostly resembling one of being confounded and lost. Her eyes shifted a great deal, mimicking her mind’s turbulent search for an answer to what she had just heard . . . and what she felt.
“With . . . what!?” She shouted. It was all she had.
She even began acting on a compulsion to shift her hooves excessively, pressing each one hard into the cloud every time she placed it back down to lift the other.
“Explain yourself!” She managed to demand.
Skasis’s face was so beat red, he was quite visibly sweating as he let himself walk and unbalanced path of trying to answer her. “You’re beautiful, to me,” he went off, “Your mane, it’s s-so cutely short and I-I-h’I I’m really weird for it but I love the way it looks so greasy. Your missing ear tuft ... And y-your nose . . . your nose is so hoofing a-adorable. I’ve never even used the word adorable before.”
The Commander’s face was beat red as well at that point, if anypony could have seen through her crimson fur. And her eyes were open and huge.
And Skasis went on, “Your voice . . . your voice is-is like . . . tasting HydrOxyzine. S-so harsh, and bitter . . . but so soothing at the s-same time. And just . . . your attitude, the things we do together. Rrgh-it’s more, so much more than I know I’m probably making this sound like. Agh, I never even cared about . . . thinking about mares . . . until I met you . . . Commander-“
“Skasis . . .” she finally cut him off. Her voice, when she did so, was edgeless. It wasn’t even the same calmed version of her normal commanding voice that she lowered to when talking in private.
She stilled her eyes and straightened her gaze back out to look him in the face again, finding his eyes giving away all that he was, and all the truth of what he had said. She could feel from him how much it had just taken for him to tell her just now. But, what this was . . . what . . . she felt overwhelmed. Commander Hurricane felt overwhelmed for the very first time in her life.
“Skasis . . .” She even sounded lost when she spoke his name again.
Her eyes narrowed at him for a flashing instant, fiercely, but then they relented. She took a broken, fettering breath, the kind one does at the last instant before crying, and took a step closer to him, closing the last of their distance. And then she darted forward with almost all of her combatant swiftness, but reached out only to throw her right foreleg around the back of his neck, forming one half of a pony hug. It was a half that Skasis matched, with only the faintest delay, wrapping his hoof around her more tightly than any object or pony he ever had. Their cheeks brushed past each other as they both pulled each other close, until her chest actually stopped against his and both their muzzles reached behid the other’s neck, his jaw resting on hers and her muzzle burying itself in the fur of his.
“Skasis Paradigm,” she tried to say with her natural harshness, but there was still a quiver in her voice, “Private Pansy, my own sister, was the only pony even close to friend to me before you arrived here. But,” she grit her teeth so much that had he been able to see it he would have perceived her as furious, “nopony’s ever cared for me alone as much as you have . . . you do. I . . . I’ve preferred having you with me, these months you’ve been here, much more than not. But I don’t—ugh, I’ve never . . . felt like this, or anything like this, about anypony . . . or ever thought . . . I-I don’t—know what to do.”
Skasis slips off his foreleg, gently letting her go, not knowing what really to do himself. But, at least feeling some instinct to look her in the eye again.
She did the same, though more hesitant, never having been so unsure of her actions before.
Skasis brought his face back in front of hers, leaving their muzzles barely more than a nose away from each other. She looked into his shining green eyes again, seeing from them the resolve of the decision he had made, and the fear that he had overcome to make it.
The Commander’s head recoiled back for a second, and her face . . . what happened to it would probably never happen again: it showed fear. She had trouble exhaling, taking oxygen in easy, but releasing carbon dioxide in short, forced huffs.
Her expression shifted into something else, between the appearance of fear and disgust. “. . . Yes . . . Prissy Hooves.”
Skasis’s eyes widened for a second, letting down again with his development of a smile. Her calling him by that pet-name gave him the reminder and the push to release his own naming desire that he'd held of her for the longest time. So he leaned forward, until he touched his nose to hers, scrumpled as hers was.
“Scrumple-nose.” He said, nervous, but sweet.
The name left her eyes narrow and almost burning, until she made them relent, not by time but her own choosing.
And then, with his mind breaking down it’s normal pathways as it struggled to reclassify what had been a fantasy into a reality, Skasis did something he would have never, EVER imagined himself to even remotely close to doing. While they still had their noses touched to one another, he tilted his head upward, lifting her nose with his, and bringing their muzzles together until their lips become joined.
Skasis’s eyes shut. Hurricane’s shot far more than open.
She blinked hers hard once before they just closed. Her wings beat twice in an alarmed fidget, but she stilled them and brought them nearly back against her sides, though they refused her command to fold back into place completely. And her so normally collected, calculating, authoritative mind was thrown so far out of her reach by rushing feelings that she could neither devise nor enact any reaction to.
Hurricane did speak, with a very, very grudging voice “. . . you . . . that—was . . . nice.”
“I thought a Pegasus and a Unicorn being together was outlandish to you?” Skasis oddly felt like he couldn’t help but ask.
“Shut Up!” She blasted her voice at him upon the realization that she was now a hypocrite. Skasis took due notice that her face had vaulted again into true fury, and his own fell into his innate timidness because of it. The Commander was unable to hold it for long, however, and her expression broke after a period of ten tense seconds . . . she broke.
“If this is some sickening attempt on the part of your kind to subvert our command structure,” she suddenly flung herself into half-heartedly trying to accuse him, “. . . it’s worked.”
“It isn’t . . . you of all ponies Have to know that I’m not lying.” He said back, calling on her discerning ability.
“I shouldn’t be like this,” she started making declarations, “I shouldn’t be Weak Enough to succumb to some Feeling of this sort! I,” she paused for an instant as she found her breath trembling, “I . . . H-I can’t!”
For the first time Skasis has ever seen, the Commander hung her head. She hung it entirely, a full dead weight to her shoulders and inactive neck muscles. Only then did a portion of Skasis’s well-educated mind reactivate itself, and the severity of the psychological trauma she was clearly going through finally came down on him.
“Commander . . .” He tried to say something, but felt, not decided, to do something else.
Skasis struck down his fear again with a brief intake of air, and reached out to bring the very pony he had feared more than any other in his life into another hug, which the Commander then seized control of the instant it began. She reached both of her front legs around him and pulled him in so close against her that he felt tangible pressure restricting his lungs. He responded as close to being in kind as he was physically capable of, holding her close with all that he could but lacking her strength. His lungs felt as if they were being crushed further and further each passing instant, but he so fittingly found that he enjoyed the struggle to garner them an oxygen flow.
The Commander began to cry. Skasis could feel both the sudden points of dampness in his fur developing right where she has her face buried against him, and the hyccuping spasms she started experiencing that he knew to be sobbing.
After a moment the sobbing convulsions come to a stop, but the crying continued at a more steady, even and unfettered rate.
“It was never in my mind at all that anything like this was ever even going to happen to me,” he felt compelled to admit to her, “and then out of all the possible ways . . . I get dropped two thousand years through time . . . to you. I love you. I love you more than any pony . . . only my brother could still be equal to you. And I wish he was here, so much more than I did even when we first got separated. Cause then if he was, I would never leave, even if there was a way back.”
She was silent for the moment that followed, and then she lifted her head off the back of his neck just enough to talk without being muffled. “You . . . stupid . . . Unicorn. You’ve taken the only thing from me I can’t duel you in combat to win back.”
She held herself from speaking for a moment, and as she did begin to again, she reached out forward with both her wings wreathing them as far as they could go around Skasis’s neck and dragging his head down with them until it lied against her neck just as hers did his.
“I wouldn’t even be able to,” she said, “I discipline ponies to make them strong. I do so with all of my soldiers, and I’ve done the same with you from the first day.”
“I know.” He just answered back plainly.
“I might even discipline you physically,” she went on to admit what had just become a new reality for her, “. . . but I could never harm you . . . and not ever now after what’s become of my integrity this night.”
A breeze of cold air drifted in from the open way to valley-viewing balcony, leading Hurricane’s gaze to it, and then to the not-yet-burning fireplace.
***
Two minutes later a pair of sizeable logs were burning, and the wooden balcony door was closed. And the two of them rested next to each other on the floor, her with her eyes shut and brows narrowed, and Skasis with his aimed into the hearth fire. Hurricane pressed her head upward, the back of it resting against Skasis’s throat, and the top of her head against the underneath of his jaw. And she wrapped one wing over him at some point, and Skasis’s eyes grew dreamy . . . sitting next to her like this . . . and staring into the gentle fire.
(cue music)And this becomes their song
Author's Note
Alright! It's finally here, BRAKDOWN TIME!
Oh no, White House Down! Olympus has Fallen! WHITE OLYMPUS HOUSE HAS FALLEN DOWN! . . . yes, I HAD TO, even the cinemasins combination title too . . . LOLz and laughs everypony :D
But seriously, you understand once you read :)
Anyways, I'm back, been back for a good 10 days now, written more in these past ten days than any other same-time length period in my life, and I don't even think I've ever written this much in an entire month before! I'm uploading this, the next chapter of Drug is practically ready, just need to edit it. Plus there's all the writing in my actual original stories that I've been doing which obviously are not seen here.
I really hope you enjoy this one, it's built up, and it's been such a long wait. I'm honestly sorry for falling into one of those absentee periods.
And don't forget about these two's Ask Blog :)
Four weeks: It had been four weeks since Skasis Paradigm, a young unicorn stallion, graduate student at the Royal Canterlot University, was practically “abducted” by The Doctor, and The Doctor’s close companion Ditzy Doo, whom The Doctor adores calling Derpy Whooves. At least, an abduction is what Skasis has been calling it, despite the fact that his ending up in the TARDIS initially was neither his nor The Doctor’s intention, but rather an almost impossibly-timed accident, one in which Skasis’s pet hawk, or his “brother”, as he called him, was separated from him and left behind in present-day Equestria. And, unfortunately for Skasis, as fate for those who enter the TARDIS in any way with The Doctor had always seemed to have it, Skasis was taken for “a ride” instead of being dropped back off where he’d accidentally been picked up from.
***
The TARDIS shook with consistent violence whilst seemingly swaying back and forth at the same time.
“Hurry! Skasis, hit that button that looks like a blue clown’s nose!” The Doctor shouted from where he stood, back pressed hard against the inside of the TARDIS doors.
Skasis scoured the control panel with his eyes until he found the button the Doctor had indicated. He slammed it with his hoof, and the resulting pulsation travelled throughout the structure of TARDIS around them.
“Derpy, throw gold lever on your side!” The Doctor called out.
“Right!” she yelled back immediately and scrambled to find it.
The Doctor continued his struggle to hold the TARDIS doors closed against whatever unseen force was trying to open them from the outside. Meanwhile, Derpy found the golden lever and threw it with some minor difficulty. And at that, a sudden “doonn” sound that even Skasis had already learned to recognize as a time-lock echoed throughout the control room.
The Doctor’s eyes shot wide at the sound, and yelled to Skasis one final time. “That’s it! Skasis get us out of here!”
“You know, there’ve been a few RARE times where you reminded me of my uncle and actually made me believe that you know what you’re talking about. The rest of the time I really can’t make up my mind whether I would want to bet on it being insanity or death-seeking!” Skasis vented out the entirety of his opinion of The Doctor that had formed over the past several weeks.
“Hey,” the Doctor offered up his own defense, “how was I supposed to know that lovely tri-sun beach had been transformed into a daunting fortress of the Inter-Galactic Cult of Space Dragons? And it’s a mixture of both really, something like 99% some times and 1% the other.”
“And which is which, exactly?” Skasis muttered to himself in thought.
The Doctor just kept on with his whimsical smile, leaving Skasis to face-hoof and Derpy to only sigh at the whole situation.
“Well, now that we’re out of that situation, let’s see just where we’ve landed. Those coordinates should have us somewhere near Canterlot Mountain around about the founding of Equestria,” The Doctor guessed, before finally removing his back from against the doors and turning around to open them. The doors opened to reveal an unfathomably massive horde of armed, raging minotaurs charging in their direction as if they were racing to clash against some other army behind where the TARDIS had landed.
The Doctor slammed both doors shut again and spun back around with a nervous smile. “O-kay so we may be a few centuries or millennia early but that’s an easy fix! Skasis, take us away again!”
Skasis’s let his head fall down against one of his hooves for the second time in less than thirty seconds even as he simultaneously used his magic to force the travel lever back up and then jerk it down again. The TARDIS lurched in a single violent shake before beginning to push its way through time, and within another few seconds it was jolted by a thud, coming to a halt for the second time.
“You know, if you’d just let me cast a transparency spell on that door, we could actually see outside BEFORE we open it?” Skasis suggested very chidingly, to which he received nothing but another cheerfully dismissive reply. “Oh nonsense! Where would the fun be in that!?” The Doctor asked the common rhetorical question.
The Doctor retained the same care-free smile and immediately flung the door open, revealing a pre-diarchy Canterlot Mountain.
Derpy felt a deal of sympathy for the poor unicorn and tried to reassure him. “Aw just don’t worry too much about it, Skasis, you get used to him after a while . . . somewhat," she said, unable to escape having to add a degree of realism to her own promise.
“I feel practically compelled to doubt that," he responded with a flat expression.
“Wait a tic,” The Doctor said suddenly, drawing their attention back to himself, “we’re in the clouds! Well that’s certainly odd; I mean the TARDIS is reading it as solid ground.”
Skasis flared on an examination sight with his magic to look at the functioning of the TARDIS control panel while Derpy walked up next to The Doctor, staring at the open door to the history of hers and Skasis’s world. From all Skasis could grasp of the portions he could at least loosely understand, everything within the panel appeared to functioning just fine.
“Wait, didn’t it do that before that one time we went to Cloudsdale when you had turn yourself into a Pegasus colt and enter the best young flyer competition to keep 2/3 of the universe from being destroyed?” Derpy’s words catch Skasis’s ears and all but physically turn him around on their own with the sheer amount ridiculousness the story she’d just mentioned was full of . . . or at least what he would have called ridiculous up until he found himself in the TARDIS with those two several weeks ago.
The Doctor rubbed his hoof against his chin for a few seconds. “Haha, I do remember that one!” he finally said when the memory struck him, “I’ll have to say flying with actual wings was one of the most thrilling things I’ve done in my fourteen centuries.”
“Centuries? Now you’re back to saying centuries again? For the past two months you’ve been telling everypony we meet that you’re EIGHT THOUSAND!” Derpy contradicted him. In response he of course just waved it off again, “Bah, what’s it matter, age is just a number after all. It’s not the number of years that count but the adventure you fill them up with I always say.”
“Regardless, I do believe you’re probably right Ditzy. In fact-” The Doctor paused to stick his head out the door, looking up down and all around. “I think this is the early Cloudsdale, or at least I guess some pre-princesses version of it.” He said as he peered around.
“It’s Pegasopolis then,” Skasis corrected him.“Hm?” The Doctor responded, looking back. “Skasis is right, the first cloud city in Equestria was Cloudsdale, but it was called Pegasopolis at first,” Derpy added on a further explanation for him, and then Skasis finished their incredibly brief version of the most prominent Pegasus city’s history. “Until the princesses defeated Discord in the fifth century and their diarchy came to power," he said.
The Doctor’s face only brightened up more at just the little bit they were teaching him. “Awe fascinating!” he spoke up, thrilled. “Let’s get on and have a look around now, why don’t we?” he asked, as if it was actually a question, but he still just went to step right out the door.
“Uuhhh, Doctor,” Derpy spoke up, holding a foreleg up in front of him to keep him from stepping outside. "You can’t walk on clouds, remember? And Skasis can’t either,” she reminded him.
“What are you talking about? He’s a unicorn!” was The Doctor's response. “He can just use his magic to give me a pair of wings, and a nice set for himself if he fancies exploring Pegasus cities. Right Skasis?” he asked the white unicorn stallion.
Both of them turned to Skasis, The Doctor with an expectant and yearning face, and Derpy with a slightly more doubtful one.
“Uh, yeah-no; I don’t have the medicinal magic skill to alter anypony’s anatomy,” Skasis answered plainly, after a single blink.
Both Derpy and The Doctor were left appearing confused. “What was that?” she asked for the both of them. “A generic cloud-walking spell,” Skasis answered quite simply. "It's a lot easier than altering somepony's actual body to give them wings," he added.
“True, maybe, but I still say having wings is much more fun,” The Doctor still protested even as he stepped right up to the doorway’s edge again. “Wait!” Derpy through up her foreleg to stop him again. “Skasis are you sure is gonna work?” she asked, still just being extra cautious for The Doctor's sake.
It was far from the first time one of them had questioned the functionality of a spell of his, granted usually it was regarding ones that could easily yield bad consequences. But nonetheless, Skasis’s reaction vented a clear deal of his frustration. “Yes! Blowing things up isn’t ALL that my magic is good for!”
Derpy pulled back a step and rolled her eyes. “Sorry, sheesh, somepony’s more grumpy than The Doctor when he doesn’t get his butter,” she said.
“Hey!” The Doctor yelled out in protest at her comment. “I do not get “grumpy” from a simple deprivation of butter, although I could easily sympathize with anypony who does,” he affirmed his position.
Then she reaffirmed herself, and the two of them just started going back and forth.
“What are you talking about? You do to!”
“I Do NOT!”
“Yeah-hah.”
“Nah-ah.”
Skasis quickly developed a bland, unamused look and eventually trotted around them both. He stepped out with a small amount of cautious hesitation onto the expanse of cloud outside, testing it with one hoof first just make sure the spell had taken effect.
A squadron of armored Pegasus flew up and by from below cloud level a short distance away, drawing Skasis to approach the nearest cloud edge and gaze over at the vast swathing landscape 500 meters beneath him.
Across the fields and meadows, enormous collections of tents of greatly varying sizes and newly constructed stone-and-mortar houses and halls spread in all directions, with thousands of ponies moving about in all different manors, including some groups just arriving at the fringe of the grand settlement loaded with satchels, saddlebags and back-loaded possesions.
“The great migration . . .” Skasis thought to himself, recognizing the still occurring migration of the three pony tribes from their race’s former homeland in the north.
Just inside the TARDIS door, The Doctor checked to be sure that Skasis is no longer immediately near. “Are you sure we really have to do this Doctor?” Derpy asked him in a hushed voice.“Yes, I’m absolutely certain,” he did his best to assure her. “I know it might feel wrong to be deceiving him like this, but this is where and roughly when we first encountered him, and HE said that a pair of us that already knew him left him here. Remember?” he asked, to further his effort for sake.
“Yeah,” she said after thinking it over for a moment, “but it doesn’t make me feel any better about it. I mean, think of how scared he’s going to be in the beginning.”
“Oh don’t worry, he’ll be fine. Besides, he said that phase ended pretty quickly anyways. Although he did mention an awful lot about how terrible it felt being separated from that bird of his,” The Doctor willing admitted, placing his hoof to his chin for a second.
“Are you sure he’s gonna be alright?” she still asked again. “Of course I am! We leave him behind, he meets a certain somepony, feels something he’s never felt before, we meet him for the first time, and then you know the rest from there. It’s all already happened, remember?” he asked rhetorically to drill in their own past one more time, hoping his unyielding confidence in the success of what they were doing would win her over like it had practically every other time.
Derpy took another moment to remain worried before she finally agreed that he was right. “Yeah, I guess. So, do we have to leave him now?” she then asked. “No, not just yet, we have to make sure he gets reported to the Commander, then we leave,” he answered her with the specifics of his intent, whilst they both look back out at Skasis sitting at the very edge of the fluffy white expanse.
Skasis continued peering over the cloud edge as a light-grey Pegasus stallion wearing a helm, but no armor, approached him, neither immediately aware of the other’s presence. The Pegasus was half-limping and gritting hard, bearing the pain of each full step rather than skipping the landing of his seemingly injured leg.
“Agh . . . Mmhph . . . hyh . . .”
Skasis heard the Pegasus grunting with each wince as he was passing behind him. He turned about to see the stallion walking in quite clear pain, and hesitated for a moment to debate drawing attention to himself before raising his voice. Before long, his aggravating conscience overtook his desire to get away from it . . . or at least what he’d always perceived to be so.
“Uh—Are you alright?” he ended up asking, somewhat awkwardly.
The Pegasus stallion only saw Skasis out of the corner of his eye, keeping his gaze focused at the cloud ground in front of him. “I took a grazing bash to my foreleg from a boulder earlier; I was passing close by in a flight drill maneuver," the soldier answered Skasis clearly.
“Did it feel like anything fractured?” Skasis asked the obvious and most urgent question to him. “Fractured? You mean break? No, no, I would have felt that. It was just a hard hit; it’s nothing I can’t deal with,” the stallion made the effort to assure him.
“I could give you something to take for the pain, if you want,” Skasis instinctively offered, only suddenly realizing the potential implications of giving fairly modern pharmaceutical medicine to a pony from nearly two millennia before the time such treatments existed.
“Give me something for the pain? What does that even—“ the stallion began to question, stopping and turning to give Skasis a quizzical look, only to realize upon looking straight at him that he is a unicorn. His face changed abruptly to shock and disbelief as his eyes leaped from Skasis’s horn to his hooves and back again, twice. His eyes enlarged greatly as they finally came to rest beholding Skasis’s hooves resting firmly on the cloud just as his own were.
Finally he raised his head back up to look Skasis in the face. “H—uh . . . –uht . . . WHAT?” were all the sounds and single word that immediately escaped from him.
Skasis, inept at handling rapidly developing social situations, defaulted to spitting forth the first response he could produce, which was fittingly the obvious truth. "Magic," he said. He even let his horn glow a second or two after the fact, just to add tangibility to the point.
The soldier momentarily froze up in denial. “That’s not possible!” he declared.
“Y—yeah, it is. I’m standing right here,” Skasis confirmed reality, with some bit of condescension.
The Pegasus shook his head for a few seconds, and then his expression oddly enough shifted into one of rising suspicion. “Wait a minute, what are you even doing up here?” he demanded to know. He took a more hostile stance, completely unsure of what to make of Skasis or his presence up in the clouds. Behind him, Derpy and The Doctor both emerged from the TARDIS after having observed most everything.
“Oh well there’s a simple explanation for that,” The Doctor said as the two of them approached.
The Lieutenant spun about sharp. He was left equally astonished again, seeing now an Earth Pony walking upon the surface of a cloud as well.
“You see, we’re all emissaries,” The Doctor spun up a quick, but witty lie. “It’s our duty to go around promoting the unity of our three tribes, and that includes up here in the magnificent clouds of Pegasopolis,” he kept pretending to explain.
“Emissaries?” the Pegasus stallion still questioned him, to which The Doctor of course gave another expounding response. “Of course! I mean even just look at us, three ponies, one from each tribe. Perfectly fitting, eh? I think it’s just brilliant! Here is our royal decree of emissarial duty by the three leaders of our tribes, if you’d like to inspect them by any means,” he said a mouthful, though paced enough to still be easily understood.
The Doctor produced a large, parchment-like piece of psychic paper, which the bewildered Pegasus easily perceived to be exactly what The Doctor had claimed it to be. He stood still running his mind through for a good moment before reacting.
Derpy noticed just as quickly as Skasis had. “Are you hurt mister?” she asked with her natural concern. “Uh, it’s not anything I can’t deal with, and I there is no other option for me anyways; I’m to be one of of the Commander’s accompanying ranking officers to the three tribes unity summit this evening,” he told her, and consequentially Skasis as well.
“With your foreleg hurting that bad?” she persisted, only resulting in another response on his part of solidifying his position. “It’s as I already said, ma’am, it’s nothing that I can’t deal with. And besides, I don’t have any other choice,” he said.
“Sure you do! There’s got to be plenty of other willing soldiers you could trade positions with,” The Doctor threw his enthusiasm in along with his own suggestion. “Or couldn’t you also just tell the Commander that you don’t feel well enough to be on duty tonight? I mean you want to make sure you’re as capable as can be when you’re supposed to serve, right?” Derpy added in right afterwards.
“Of course I do!” the soldier snapped back at the two of them. “But what in the world beyond the sky would she do to me if I displayed that kind of weakness?! Asking her to take even a night’s leave, with just this excuse for an injury!? It’s not even broken!” he ranted, and as he did an audible edge of dread crept into his voice. His eyes even widened and his pupils swiftly constricted when he mentioned the possibility of the Commander taking disciplinary action against him. He went on, once his face returned to what its norm had been throughout their conversation. “I would probably get demoted for even asking something like that. And NO, I'm afraid there aren't plenty of other willing soldiers who could fill my position, I'm a senior officer! I’m sorry my emmissarial Pegasister, but I’ll be reporting for my duty tonight regardless of this pain,” he affirmed his intent to her.
“Now wait just one minute,” The Doctor objected, “if you’re not going to let Miss Doo talk you out of it, then you should at least allow Skasis to aid you as best he can,” he ended with the offer, pointing a hoof in Skasis’s direction.
The Lieutenant looked back over his shoulder at Skasis and then back to the two ponies in front of him again, seemingly unsure. “In what manor do you mean?” he asked.
“Well Skasis is quite the nifty medical magician,” The Doctor responded, with a benign amount of boastfulness.
“I’m a chemist, with magic,” Skasis sharply corrected him.
“. . . A rather capable magical fellow,” The Doctor semi-corrected himself after Skasis had, though without any change in his voice whatsoever. “I’m sure he could easily conjure you up something to at least just take that pain away for a fair share of time,” he promised the Pegasus.
“Yeah! He made those anti-bio-things for me when I was sick last week. I’m sure he can make pain-reliever stuff,” Derpy piped up with her own testimony as to Skasis’s capability.
The Pegasus turned about to directly face Skasis again, his face changing to one that looked quite convincing that he was debating giving in. “Are you some sort of Unicorn medic, or doctor, I believe you call them?” he asked Skasis.
Skasis was very thorough in his explanation of himself, wanting to be perfectly clear about what he could and couldn’t do, since The Doctor’s apparent way trying to help Skasis raise his self-esteem, which Skasis had never really had any of, was to consistently inflate Skasis’s image to others when speaking about him. “Not exactly,” he began, “my studies weren’t focused on medical practitioning, they just went into medical chemistry. I know what medical chemical compounds can treat certain things, so I can give you something to take, but that’s about it,” he finished saying.
The soldier tilted his head slightly to the side in a confused manor. “So . . . you just said . . . you’re not a doctor, but you are a doctor?” he asked, utterly lost. Skasis let out a sigh before he said anything else. “Ugh, just don’t worry about it. Do you want something to take or not? I’d really recommend it,” he asked and then added his own opinion.
Derpy flew around the Pegasus stallion to hover in front of him next to Skasis. “Please mister, you said you always want to be at your best. So if you have a chance to make sure you are, shouldn’t you take it?” she pleaded with him, not relenting on her encouragement for him to accept their help.
The soldier looked down and away, and then shifted his eyes over to his right leg, moving just an increment to test the pain. The end result was a sigh and him looking back up at Skasis.
“Alright, I’ll try whatever treatment you’re capable of giving,” he finally conceded and agreed. “It’s not a treatment,” Skasis corrected him, “I’m just going make a pain reliever for you to take.”
“What do you mean by take?” the soldier asked, looking for some clearer meaning. “Swallow, usually with water, depending on the form of the medication,” Skasis explained. “And you know what you need to give me to swallow?” the Lieutenant tried to lead with his question. “Well, not yet,” Skasis had to clarify, “I need to determine a few things first, at least the ones I know how to. I’ll need to see if there’s any actual bruising visible on your leg first.”
The Pegasus stallion looked down at his leg and then held it up and for Skasis to see. Skasis sifted and parts the Lieutenant’s leg fur with his magic and almost right away saw what looked like bruising just shy of being severe. He bared his teeth and lowered his eyebrows for a few seconds in the midst of a judgment call he felt unsure he was really qualified in any way to make, and then finally relented back to his normal composed expression, raising his head back to being level with the Lieutenant, who withdrew his foreleg after Skasis released it.
“It looks bad,” he said after looking it over, “but still well enough that it should probably heal on its own. The pain doesn’t seem to be too severe, since you can still walk and move your leg freely, so you shouldn’t need anything above some generic Hydrocodone at most," he ended up concluding.
Skasis slid one hoof across the underside of his chin for a brief moment, something he’d subconsciously picked up from The Doctor over the past weeks. “Hm, are you allergic to anything?” he asked. The response Skasis got was a lost look. “I . . . don’t even know what that means,” the soldier told him.
Skasis went on to elaborate for him. “Is there anything that you can’t eat, drink, smell or go near because bad stuff happens when you do: like your eyes get really watery, your throat swells, your stomach gets upset, or you start itching anywhere or all over?” he asked specifically.
“No, I’ve never even had anything like that happen, er, not suddenly," the stallion answered.
“If it wasn’t a sudden or a quick onset then it wasn’t a severe allergic reaction, so pretty much anything should be fine,” Skasis confirmed then.
“Uh, how long do you need this to last?” he questioned the Lieutenant again. “Um, my duty is over when we return with the Commander at midnight," the Pegasus answered again.
Skasis looked up to the sky, observing the position of the sun. “A little less than twelve hours . . . alright,” Skasis responded and thought for a few seconds before he came to a decision. “I think Tramadol would probably be best. It’s decently strong and it’s a lot less likely to give you any of the physically-impairing side-effects that the higher-order ones would. I’ll make it a really condensed tablet so it’ll hold a steady, gradual release," he told him.
Skasis lifted his head back and took in a very deep breath, then leaned down all the way to the cloud surface and exhaled. As he breathed out, his horn illuminated itself moderately and some alchemical lighting sparks up. Over about fifteen seconds, tiny strands of cloud seem to reach up to meet Skasis’s breath, and where they do a fine cherry red powder begins to form in the air amidst the lightning. After a certain amount, the formation of the red dust shrinks and compresses in on itself until it hardens into a little red tablet. A tiny tuft of cloud beneath it crushed itself down into a parasprite-sized floating sphere of water, which Skasis let the Tramadol tablet to sink down into before levitation it up to the Lieutenant’s lips.
“Here, this should be enough to swallow with,” Skasis told him. The Lieutenant nodded, and stared peculiarly at the tiny little tablet-holding water ball for a moment before opening his mouth wide and closing it down and completely around the floating water. A second later he visibly swallows and looks hesitantly at Skasis as if he is unsure of what to expect next. “You should start to feel a difference within about ten minutes,” Skasis explained to him, “and then most of the pain will likely be gone in half an hour.”
“Skasis Paradigm,” Skasis gave his name at the prompting to.
“Thank you Emmissary Paradigm. I am Lieutenant Stratomane, leader of the 4th squadron of the evening guard," the Lieutenant identified himself. He saluted Skasis, though with a visible flinch at the pain of doing so, having only taken the Tramadol moments before. Skasis gives something of discomforted look at the soldier’s salute of him, the same that usually came from him receiving praise.
“And there you have it fine sir, our Skasis sure is quite the pony to keep around,” The Doctor just then even started boasting about him. “Yeah, he can make medicine sometimes, but he’s also Really awesome at blowing stuff up sometimes,” Derpy added as she shifted back to hovering by The Doctor’s side.
“I’ll second that!” The Doctor threw on additional praise to their unicorn friend, who only grew more uncomfortable upon receiving it. “There’s no way we wouldn’t escaped from the fortress of the Intergalactic Cult of Space Dragons without him, what with him blasting through eight walls in a row and all.” The Doctor finished their recollection of their most recent adventure, or so he referred to them.
The Lieutenant turned to give them possibly the most horribly confused and confounded look in the universe, switching it as he turned his head back to Skasis to one that conveyed the message that he was questioning whether or not they were insane. Skasis tilted his head down a little and shook it in an extremely slow manor. The Lieutenant nodded his head just slightly enough so that only Skasis took notice of it, and then he took a few steps out from in between the three of them.
“Well, I thank you again. Is there anything I might be able to assist the three of you with while you are here? I can provide with direction to anywhere in the city, or I can serve as your accompanying guard if you wish, until I have to report to my assigned duty,” the Lieutenant both thanked and offered the three of them.
The Doctor’s stomach conveniently growled just at the same moment, leaving him perked up at the Lieutenant’s offer to lead them around. “Ah, yes please, could you possibly allude to the closest dinning locale so we might enjoy a fair bit of lunch?” he asked the soldier.
“Certainly,” the Lieutenant immediately confirmed. “As welcomed emissaries you should be treated to the Ranking Officers’ Dining Hall at the very least. I’ll come with you and explain your presence, although some of my fellow senior officers may still ask to see your regal-decree parchment,” he said, and forewarned them.
“Fantastic,” The Doctor responded with excitement, “let’s get a move one then, I’m sure we’re all quite hungry.” “Yeah, we haven’t eaten anything since before SOMEPONY lead us headlong into that cult-fortress place!” Derpy decided to add, glaring accusingly at The Doctor.
Both Skasis’s and the Lieutenant’s eyes widened for a few seconds at the other two’s revival of their previous subject, as the Lieutenant lead them into the newly-founded city of clouds.
Author's Note
Ok, to answer a few things that might come up with the context of this story:
Yes, I do hold the headcannon of Doctor Whooves literally being The Doctor, and I hold Derpy as his companion like most. They don't play an overtly huge part in the story, at least not after their role in stranding Skasis in the time period of the founding of Equestria.
Yes, I'm just stating before any reader might ask: Commander Hurricane is a MARE to me. And, the cover art image for this story, drawn by the credited artist, is how I pictured her when writing this.
For the Pegasi military ranking system, I devised my own using rank-names from different military branches. Lieutenant in the Pegasi military of the founding time period is much higher rank than I believe it normally is in the real-world officer system, depending on the branch.
Anything else that is asked or brought up as a question I will gladly answer in the author's notes of the next chapter (so everypony can see it, though I will also still reply in the comments to whomever originally asked).
Please read, and hopefully enjoy :) I've put more work into this story than any other. I have somewhere near 200 pages completed on my laptop, and just need to edit each portion before I upload. I should be able to hold a rate of a couple chapters per week for the next month or two.
To Belong . . . and to Still Long
Skasis’s cup of tea was empty and disintegrated, and his eyes were hollowed out of a pony’s normal life while his eyelids hung just ever so slightly with weakness. the rest of his face too reflected his internal conflict not knowing what to feel after all he has just heard, but still wanting to feel something for her.
The Commander’s eyes were closed and her face aiming a minor portion downward. She remained so for a full-lengthed minute after finishing the recollection of her life up to that point. After a minute, she raised her head back up the short distance to normal level and reopened her eyes in full, though only to a calm, hardened expression, not to her full natural glare.
“. . . What kinds of things do you ponies allow to happen to each other?” he asked after she had opened her eyes again.
“Life is harsh, Prissy Hooves. It may not be so where and when you come fom . . . and I’m more glad at the idea of this hopeful . . . and peaceful future you speak of than I’ve been at the delivery of any other news I’ve ever received, be it truth,” she answered him.
“I wish I could show it to you,” he said, after a moment, “I-I really do . . . it’s just . . . I couldn’t remove you from now, from this time, you’re too important. But, it’s like I can’t even do anything . . . I don’t even know how this happened in the first place, but I’m pretty damn sure there’s nothing I could ever do about it,” he ended, resigning inside to his fate time-stranding.
“I see sharing my personal past with you was a mistake, it’s permitted the return of your former attitude of incompetence,” she responded, that particular response being much to Skasis’s surprise.
“Wh-uh . . . no,” Skasis started up, “this has nothing to do with me doubting myself, what I was . . . what happened to me, there’s no Unicorn spell of any arcana powerful enough to do . . . not for any pony, not even an Alicorn could go back in time, only look and observe, and even that would only last for a few seconds as long as they could hold it.”
“Then just HOW do you propose that this came to be?” she sternly demanded.
“Ach-I don’t—know!” Skasis said all he could for an immediate response, impairment coming over him from the rising social anxiety.
She looked at him in a greyed judgement, seeing that he was telling her the truth while who she is kept driving her to demand more out of him. But she waited for him; she knew him, by now.
“Look, I’m really smart. Not . . . as much I used to arrogantly credit myself for, but I don’t how this possibly could have happened,” he affirmed, with admittance.
“I’m well aware,” was all the response he got.
He took the harsh bluntness of the retort as he’d come to be able to, accepting it as her genuine form of compassion.
“I won’t question you any further for information you don’t have,” she told him, rising up and turning half-way in the direction of her private quarters before looking back over at him.
“You are relieved of any responsibilities tomorrow,” she suddenly said, “except for the requirements of an emergency. However, there will be NO acquisitioning of extra rack time on your part. Am I clear, Prissy Hooves?”
“Sir,” he responded, with and immediate, sharp nod.
She nodded her head back extra slowly and seemed to almost unknowingly keep it down for length of time much longer than normal, an entire five or so seconds. Her loose, messy, greasy, unkept and frazzled hair fell down as much as it could with its lack of length, forming a mess of a shape that could only resemble a short-bristled chimney Swiffer.
Skasis, of course, was rather amused by it, although he’ well enough learned to restrain himself from displaying humor around her . . . especially any involving her, not that he exactly found or believed himself really capable of being humorous anyways. Still, he couldn’t help but stare, at least until she lifts her head back upright and turned away to her quarters once and for all.
He went to his own, suddenly finding himself more and more un-at-ease as he does. All he was able to do for the next hour was fight with himself inside, his heart desperately trying to overpower his fear and self-doubt, and his heart still losing.
***
Skasis trotted with a content, belonging smile across the still-unmolded clouds of the Western edge of Pegasopolis. He wore a satchel bag slug over one side marked with an ancient version of the universal medical symbol. His fur has never appeared so messy: formerly sweaty, and greasy with follicle oil. His eyes though, his eyes were gleaming with a true feeling of content . . . of belonging.
As he walked along toward the edge of the conglamoration of cloud structures that made up the city itself, and a familiar little grey colt come bounding up to him. Skasis recognized him right away as the Lieutenant’s son, Soot Blizzard.
“Mr. Unicorn!” the young Pegasus cheered in thrill at the sight of Skasis.
Some ways behind the little colt Skasis could see his father, walking with Soot’s mother, both unable to avoid a smile at their foal’s thrill upon seeing his solidified hero.
“Hey Soot!” Skasis tried to greet Soot welcomingly without, honestly putting in effort to not come off awkward. He still felt like he sounded it though, and probably always would.
“What did you just do? What did you just do?” Soot all but jumped out of his own hooves begging to know.
“Ah, I gave some Lorazapam to cloud artisan who almost fell over the edge with an injured wing since he started having a panick attack right afterward,” Skasis told him.
“What’s Loras-pama?” the little colt asked, trying his best to pronounce the strange word.
“Ahh-ha-ha-ha—just h’about the most powerful tranquilizer you can take,” Skasis answered him through a nervous laugh.
“What’s a tran-quilizer?” Soot went on at the helm of his curiosity.
“Uh nevermind,” Skasis went with ending the chain of questions for the moment, realizing it would likely be endless. It left Soot looking confused as to why Skasis wouldn’t tell him any more, but right at that moment his parents reach the two of them.
“He still regards you as his greatest hero,” the Lieutenant told Skasis as he and Soot’s mother reached the Unicorn and their son.
Skasis actually produced a faint smile where he would have once cringed or remained indifferent six months ago just after or before his arrival.
“Yeah! I wanna be a medic too! Please please please please please teach me stuff? You have to teach me everything!” Soot blared out, quicklky becoming enthusiastically demanding.
“And,” the Lieutenant said, casting his eyes at his son indicatively, “that’s why we’re all out here today.”
“Looking for me?” Skasis immediately interpreted.
Sunrise, the Lieutenant’s wife, answered Skasis after giggling for a moment at her son’s behavior. “Stratus was given the entire day off as leave, but as soon he arrived home little Soot wouldn’t let him rest until we agreed to come and find you.”
Soot was tossing his head back and forth from Skasis to his parents and back again with unbound enthusiasm. “So can I?”
“Perhaps if you request permission from your superior officer correctly he might grant it to you,” the Lieutenant suggested to his son with a strong, leading tone.
Soot instantly threw his head back to Skasis and his hoof up to his head’s side in imitation of a salute. “Corporal Unicorn, Sir! Soot Blizzard requesting permission to . . .”
“Accompany,” his father inserted for him at his sudden trouble.
“. . . Accompany you for training porpoises Sir!” Soot then finished on his own, Skasis’s eye twitching almost unnoticeably at the specific mispronunciation of the word purpose. Though Soot’s father corrected the colt for something else.
“That’s Corporal Paradigm, Soot,” he said, leaving a look of alarm to shoot through his son’s face.
“Oops-no! Sir, Corporal Paradigm, sir, I’m sorry . . . sir!” Soot made the most verbally uncoordinated correction of himself that only came as terribly amusing to the three adults around. His parents, even, barely withhold their laughter, ending up giggling in a manner with their mouths still closed. Skasis was completely unable to escape either, and had to burst out in a snickering laugh that soon turns into a full-blown regular one.
Soot seemed almost unphased and just maintained his salute until the laughing subsided, his face mostly just still showing anticipation and hopeful thrill.
“So? What do you say, Corporal?” the Lieutenant asked.
“It’s fine. That’d be—I guess kind of awesome if he follows me around for a while,” Skasis agreed to it, much to Soot’s sudden, explosive delight.
Soot sprung right up from his spot and went about sporadically jump-flapping around Skasis in circles. “YEAH! Yeah! Yeah! This is gonna be the best day ever!”
“Watch your conduct, young Pegasus!” his mother scolded him out of it eventually, after the first few seconds.
Soot came to a halt in mid-jump and dropped back down. “Sorry Mom . . .” he responded with that universally unmistakable, slow-worded speech fillies and colts resorted to whenever their parents forced them to do something. That much truly did amuse Skasis, the fact that even now, two thousand years in the past that was still, or rather was already prevalent.
“You’re perfectly fine with us leaving him with you then?” the Lieutenant asked a second time just to be sure.
“Yeah, that’s definitely fine,” Skasis assured him.
“He’s in your charge and under you care then, young Corporal,” Sunrise told Skasis as she and Stratus turned to leave.
“Yes ma’am,” Skasis responded with a sharp nod as the two of them continued off, lightly hovering away.
“He actually knows when ma’am is appropriate to use?” Sunrise asked her husband as their voices faded out with the growing distance.
“So! Where are we going and what are we doing?” Soot wasted no time whatsoever in asking once his parents were out of his immediate sight.
Skasis paused in a stare out of the sudden awkwardness he felt from being left alone a child, however Soot interpreted it differently. “Sir!” he corrected himself, or at least believed he was doing so. Even Skasis couldn’t avoid a fleeting laugh at it, suppressed as he may have kept it. He started walking off in the direction he had needed to, and Soot moved with and next to him in perfect instance, taking the first few second to watch Skasis’s hooves closely until he could match his steps so they were each moving the same hoof at the same time.
“Well I Was on my way to the southcloud medic’s unit,” Skasis finally started to answer Soot as they went, “and obviously now you have to come with me as well.”
"Do I get to do anything?" the questions from Soot just kept coming and coming.
***
Skasis and Soot enter into the South Medical cloud, the same medical unit that Skasis was first brought to demonstrate his treatment capabilities when he’d first been stranded over six months ago. The lengthy room of the bedded care unit was actually only two thirds full, which was an uplifting, but unusual sight. Almost all of the pegasi who were conscious in the unit took an immediate, surprised notice to the presence of Soot, unused to seeing little fillies or colts except for those who had children of their own who visited them.
“Who are all they?” Soot asked as they kept moving.
“Soldiers of the Recon Corps,” Private Healed answered without looking at first, though after a second she looked over her shoulder with curiosity, realizing it wasn’t Skasis’s voice she’d just heard. One ear tilted sideways and her head a few degrees with it at the site of the little soot-grey colt following Skasis into the medical cloud.
“They’re well-trained soldiers that go out and explore parts of this new land that we still haven’t seen yet,” Skasis explained to Soot, able now after half a year to speak plainly of things that weren’t yet known in the time he now lived in without his former condescending tone, no longer making it sound as if it should be obvious.
“Coooool,” Soot reacted with expectable wide eyes.
“. . . Yes, well,” Briskly had to comment about those particular three, “despite how strictly they were trained, that doesn’t seem to keep some of them from making decisions that are both irrational and stupid!” She threw a scolding look at a row of three rather young stallions infirmed on the left side of the room. Skasis looked cautiously with the expectation of some kind of retaliation, but to his surprise they all actually just displayed a set of guilty grins and smiles, which only left Skasis having to ask, “And these ideas were? . . .”
She went ahead and explained, but not without an extrodinarily aggravated expression. “These three found a massive waterfall somewhere up northwest of the Albaneigh dale, and dared each other all to lock their wings to their sides, and jump into the water to fall down over the edge!”
“Is hitting water really hard,” Soot Blizzard suddenly piped up to ask, “cause they all have broken bones?”
The Private and Skasis both gave an astounded look at the little colt now standing in between them looking from soldier to soldier.
“W-why, uh yes, it is as a matter of fact,” the Private answered him, recovering from the shock of the little colt’s deduction.
“Exactly point seven four times the impact resistance of the common compact dirt you’d hit if you slammed into the ground,” Skasis added just to confirm.
“The same thing, basically,” Briskly said with a roll of her eyes.
“In this case. What exactly ARE their conditions?” Skasis asked the Private.
“The two on either side of the one in the middle both had compound fractures of their right forelegs. I pressed the bones back inside the legs and set them as fit as I could and sutured the open wounds where they’d punctured out closed,” she stated, then amplified the stressing of her words as she went over the middle soldier. “The MIDDLE one here managed . . . managed to come back with greenstick fractures on three of his cervical vertebrae . . . it’s only a relief that his spinal chord didn’t rip.”
Skasis looked over to the Private to find her appearing genuinely concerned for the first time. Beyond that though, after the first few seconds which would have been perfectly normal to stare at a worrisome patient, she kept looking on at the young soldier in the middle with something in her eyes Skasis found all too familiar.
“What are you giving them?” he asked, at which she snapped out of it and answered him, “The topshelves, initially, and now the first downs.”
She’d been unable to memorize all of the names of the endless medications Skasis kept the unit and every other supplied with, so she’d come to refer to each by its place on the shelves that held its group.
“OxyCodone, now down to Vicodin, that’s good,” he confirmed to himself. “What about center here?” Skasis pointed a hoof at the one soldier in between the other two.
“I . . . I have him on the topshelves still, but he is down to only needing the smaller ones from the far right,” she answered, the earlier concern from her look carrying over into her voice.
That’s pretty fast to drop past Hydromorphone and Morphine for an injury that sever,” Skasis commented aloud, and narrowed his eyes by a margin for a second. “Don’t let him go down any further,” he suddenly told her.
The Private’s nod to that was swifter than Skasis thought he’d ever seen out of her.
She moved on to keep leading them until Soot suddenly become enamored with speaking to a soldier from his father’s former unit and the two of them are left alone in the aisle along the room’s center and she immediately turned about to him.
“Corporal Paradigm, do you th-is he going to be able to recover?” Briskly Healed asked the instant she turned to Skasis, twice as much concern leaking into her voice as the minute before.
She motioned to indicate the soldier in the middle of the group of three they had left, though she didn’t need to.
“Yeah, he’ll be able to come back from that,” Skasis told her, then sharply shifted his tone of voice, “just DON’T let him move his head for at least another twelve weeks.”
Skasis’s ending tone was very stressing and stern, leaving her wide eyed and nodding with affirmative confirmation that she understood the severity of the condition that soldier was in. She couldn’t help herself but to glance over at him one more time. She wanted to look longer than a single instant, but she couldn’t . . .
“You, middle-bed, state your identity, soldier,” Skasis ordered the stallion Briskly Healed kept looking at.
“Sir! Corporal Falcon Dive, Sir!” the incapacitated soldier promptly responded.
The Corporal was incredibly careful to make sure the only movement made by his head was that of his jaw. Skasis gave Private Healed an look that could have held a smile were straight lips not Skasis’s natural disposition.
“Falcon Dive . . .” he caught Briskly Healed whispering to herself.
Skasis couldn’t avoid feeling a heavy tang of envy that arose inside him. Although on its counterbalance he hoped the Private would at least try to approach Falcon Dive in a manner of openly admitting feelings . . . something he knew was beyond the realm of him ever being able to do with Commander Hurricane.
Author's Note
Alright, here's finally another chapter of Hurricane Paradigm for those few that like it. I know this one's a little short and sparse, or at least feels it, but I promise that's because the next chapter is going to be . . . let's just say BIG and settle on that, and I don't mean just in terms of the next chapter's length either, I really mean Content, which also means it will probably be lengthy.
Well, 3:51 AM my time (Alaska time zone), so once again, I'm out.
