A familiar chime played through the ears of those in the front lobby at Ponyville Hospital. The pony at the front desk looked up, delighted to see who it was walking into the building.
“Redheart! How are you doing, sis?” she asked her co-worker and sibling.
“As good as always, Cross,” the white earth mare responded, trotting into the reception area with her. Red Cross was one of the newer employees at the hospital. A sweet, young, aquamarine pegasus mare with a simple, laid-back lilac mane. She and Redheart had grown up together, and discovered they had the same talent. Ironically, Cross’ cutie mark was that of a heart, while Heart’s was a cross. The two embraced each other as Redheart looked over her notes.
“So, what’s Horse got you up to nowadays?” her sister asked.
“Funny you should ask. I just got finished with it actually,” she chuckled, “He had me go around Ponyville and take a Psychological Evaluation on everyone.”
“What’s the point of that?”
“Well, he decided, since Ponyville is always under a bunch of weird activity, it might be in our interests to have a record on everypony’s viewpoint of the situations that could occur.” Cross rolled her eyes. Heart leaned in and wrapped a hoof around her neck, quietly noting to Cross, “Between you and me, I’m pretty sure he just wanted to know everypony’s fears considering the oddballs we have around here. I mean, look at these questions!”
Cross took hold of the folder and pulled out a report, this one seemingly being that for the owner of ‘Quills & Sofas.’ She scanned the page thoroughly, noting that Heart was right.
“‘If you were to be in a state of complete panic or fear, what do you think would be the cause?’ What, he couldn’t just straight up ask, ‘What are you afraid of?’” Heart giggled, knowing that yes, while Dr. Horse’s methods were quite unorthodox, he did his job well.
“The sad part is that the responses from some of them really make you question the sanity of these ponies.” Cross read on in Mr. Ink Cushion’s report. She stifled a very loud laugh after seeing his answer to one of the questions.
“He is afraid to sit? Half of his special talent is selling couches for Celestia's sake!"
“I know, I know,” Heart rolled her eyes, “Well, anyway, I’d better let you get back to work, and I have to turn these into Dr. Horse.”
“Alright, well, talk to you later then. We still having Daisy stew for dinner tonight?”
“Yes,” Heart nodded, stepping out of the room.
Redheart took five minutes to check up on a patient in her care, a young filly with a heart problem. She’d be undergoing surgery soon, so she made sure that she was comfortable and well prepared. After that she set out to find Horse.
After a moment of aimless wandering, she found him conversing with the office’s new trainee. She trotted up to the two, butting into the conversation. She hadn’t talked to the trainee yet, so she hadn’t known about his thick accent. If she had to guess, she imagined he came from somewhere in Germaneigh.
“...you’re absolutely sure about that?” Horse asked him as she trotted up.
“Vell, not entirely. You see, zhe six hundred miles of desert between Los Pegasus and Appleoosa is a vast land. If I vere correct, zhen underneath zhe topmost layer of sediment is a minefield of an extremely valuable element,” the trainee explained.
“And if we got hold of this element?” Redheart asked innocently. Both stallions jumped, turning to her. Horse’s frown was slight and undone with a simple clearing of his throat. The trainee, having been given quite a scare, shook his head and adjusted his glasses back into place.
The two looked at her and back to each other. Horse shrugged.
The trainee cleared his throat, “Vell, technically speaking, if ve vere to get ahold of zis element, our technological prowess vould increase some zirty fold, possibly more. Our medical and scientific fields vould get a massive budget increase and many zhings vould be able to be cured or solved.” He sighed, “Still, it’s a generous estimate. Zis is over nine zousand cubic kilometers ve are talking about here.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll send a letter out to the Los Pegasus Hospital, and have them round up some workers to get out there and test the waters,” Horse patted his shoulder, “Thanks for sharing your theory with me, Medic. I’ve got business to attend to with Heart here, so you head on back to that filly and finish prep on the surgery.”
“Yes, sir.”
‘Medic’ trotted away, and Horse turned back to Nurse Redheart. He eyed the overstuffed manilla folder in her saddlebag, and put out a hoof. She got it out and handed it to him. The two started trotting towards a records area, using a magical copier on the most important data, and sorting the rest into the various cabinets filled with records of their patients.
Halfway through the task, Horse eyed a document he was holding. He then looked at the next few and had a similar shock pass through his mind.
“Heart, how did you get these files on not only all four of the princesses, but both princes as well?”
“Oh those?” Heart winced, “Well, when I went over to Princess Twilight’s castle, and started asking her the questions, she thought about Celestia, and which in turn, she asked if I wanted to know these questions about the other princesses as well. I decided it would be a good idea, considering how much of an important city is to the Quadarchy at this point. I decided having files of the princesses in the event of an emergency would be helpful, no matter how little.”
“What about Blueblood and Shining Armor?”
“Well, her Dragon...brother? Whatever, he started mumbling about Blueblood, some pretty bad stuff. Twilight overheard him and gave me some info on him as well before giving the little drake a time-out for his language.” she had an apologetic grin on now, “And Twilight in turn, thought about Shining Armor, whom is her brother, and decided to get back at him for some prank he pulled on her. So she gave me every last detail on him that she remembered. That alone is why I was gone for the entire duration of Wednesday last week.”
Horse scanned the Captain of the Guard’s papers. Stifling a chuckle, he read aloud one of the details; “‘Slept in navy blue hoofie-pajamas until he was eleven years old,’ Oh, that’s rich!”
Heart giggled, nodding before adding her two bits, “He also was a complete geek back in High School.”
“Him? Really?” Horse looked at her incredulous look, “He’s so good looking and brave though.”
“Well, your feminism aside, Doctor, you should never judge a book by it’s cover. It’s one of the first thing I learned as a mare.”
Horse blushed and continued copying the papers. The two laughed after a moment, and went back to work.
After a half an hour, Horse stopped Redheart, “You can go home now, Heart. I know Cross’ shift is ending and you’ve been all over town for the past several weeks. I’d give you a vacation, but...well, you are ‘#1 Nurse of the Year’ for a reason.” He gave her a soft smile and she thanked him, walking out to meet her sister.
Horse looked at the manilla folder stuffed full of copies of the info he was hoping for. He looked at one of the papers in his possession and hurried to clock out. He trotted home at a brisk pace and walked into his house, dropping the files on his dining room table. After making a quick sandwich, he went to the end of the hallway and knocked on the door to a bedroom. An orange stallion poked his head out.
“Yeah, Doc?”
“Got those documents you wanted. Money up,” the doctor said to his roommate. The stallion looked at him with a smug grin.
“Yeah, right. Let’s see what you ‘got.’” They walked into the dining room and he picked up some of the papers. He was stunned to see his roommate was telling the truth.
“Wow. You weren’t kidding. You got everypony in Ponyville, except for me of course.”
“Plus, the Princesses and Princes. You can thank Miss Princess of Rambling for those.”
The two looked them over for a moment longer.
“Well, Phobos?”
“These will do fine,” Phobos told Horse, pulling out a large sum of bits, “Now. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll need to be in solitude for a few days, to make sure that I can help these ponies overcome these things.”
“You sure you can do it? Medic was talking about assisting you with some element he found out in the Los Pegasus desert.”
“My special talent is removing ponies of their fears, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but it’s also invoking them.”
“Well, I’m helping this time,” Phobos stuck his tongue out at the brown stallion. He lit up his horn, a yellow-green glow enveloping it and the folder as he trotted to his room. “Bring me a sandwich and glass of water every day at noon. I’ll subconsciously eat and drink as I always do while I’m dealing with my spell.”
Horse sighed. “Alright. Just...don’t hurt yourself this time.”
“I’ll try not to,” Phobos muttered. He closed his door, opening up the folder and looking through the names of the ponies. His eyes flowed over one. He looked at it and smiled.
‘Okay. Twilight Sparkle; a young alicorn mare with a noticeable and terrible case of Atychiphobia. I share that one with you princess.’ He sighed, ‘Let’s hope that it doesn’t overwhelm me while I try to purge it from you.’
Phobos’ horn lit up, and a circle of his aura surrounded him. He closed his eyes in focus and let his imagination and power run free.
Author's Note
This is a story inspired by Nyctophobia by Avox. I was always sort of thrilled by the idea of Phobias, so writing a story on it seems like my kind of thing, considering I've already done it for a Science Project.
Anyways, Phobos and Cross are random OC's that I made up, but Phobos, as of twenty minutes before typing this very sentence, is going to be the main character despite having very little screen time. Medic is a reference. Take a wild guess. Same goes for his special 'element.'
Anyways, after Twilight's chapter, You guys get to pick who comes next. However, I want to go through the Mane 6 and CMC first. Once they're out of the way, it's fair game for the entirety of the show.
Keep in mind, every single one of the phobias I show are legitimate phobias, unless I explicitly say otherwise, but even then they could still be real, just with a different name I wasn't aware of. In some cases, I may be caught up between two phobias for a character, and I'll have the choice be up to the comments just as much. Majority rules here people.
Also, if you like the story enough, consider being a proofreader or editor? I don't actually have one, and I could really use one.
But, either way, that's all for the future. Have fun, everypony.
Phobos sighed calmly, walking along the route he was on. Celestia’s sun had just risen above the horizon and the birds had just awoken. A refreshing chill was remaining on the air from the night prior and the grass along the side of the dirt road had trace amounts of dew covering it’s blades.
Pulling a letter out of his saddlebag, he took a better look at the invitation he received. It was a simple letter stating that the youngest class at the Ponyville schoolhouse was beginning their short unit on cutie marks. Cherilee requested several citizens from the town take about twenty to forty minutes of their time to explain the story of how they got their cutie mark and what it means.
It perplexed him as to why she chose him, but he was sure it had to do with teaching the foals of Ponyville how diverse ones’ talents may be.
“Come on Cloudy, we’re going to be late!” he heard an excited voice calling out from behind him. Turning his head he saw a pink unicorn filly with an equally pink mane and tail pushing a blue pegasus filly with a white mane.
“Sugar, I can walk at my own pace,” Cloudy told what seemed to be her friend, “I know you’re excited about seeing aunt Maud at the presentation, but she’ll probably be there later than we will.” Sugar let out a groan.
“Fine, I’ll see you when you get there, slowpoke!”
Phobos blinked, watching the filly run to the schoolhouse that he could start to see ahead. “Ah, Pinkie Pie’s daughters,” he realized. ‘Pinkie’s sister is going to be there? That will be an interesting tale I might stick around for.’
Phobos came up to the school, entering along side the several foals and sparse number of adults into the building. Taking a spot by the wall in the back of the room to sit by, he looked around the room at some of the stallions and mares that would be giving presentations. Talking to Cherilee with some earnest appeared to be Applebloom and Pipsqueak, the latter of which did not seem to have kept his name’s sake into adulthood. Chatting together by the door were some of the random farmer folks from the east side of town, however he also noticed Zecora in there.
“Excuse me, sir, do you have a moment?” Phobos heard somepony ask with a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see Filthy Rich, a now elderly stallion with some business application still running through his veins.
“Hello, Mr. Rich. What can I do for you?”
“I simply wished to know who you were. I have been out of town for several years and haven’t had time to catch up with all the new residents in town.”
Phobos nodded, thinking it true that he had only seen photos and heard stories of the stallion in front of him. Though, he was far younger in those tales. “My name’s Phobos. I’m a rather low-key citizen. Y’know, not really showing on the surface much, but still there if you care to find me.”
Rich hummed in thought, “What do you do exactly? Your cutie mark suggests astronomy, however, your name gives me darker ambitions.”
Phobos waved a hoof, ignoring the implication, “I do background work for Ponyville Hospital. I’m a-” he thought for a moment “-Psychiatric Ward of sorts.”
Rich smiled, “Do you take house calls?” he cackled, earning a chuckle from Phobos as well. After a moment, Filthy spoke again, “Although, in all seriousness, my daughter probably does need some kind of help. Whenever she thinks she’s alone, all she does is mutter about ‘a wasted childhood’ or something along the lines of ‘backstabbing apple filly.’”
“I’ll let my roommate know.”
After another moment, the bell rung, and the classroom quieted down. The adults spread around the back walls, some foals offering the older citizens like Zecora and Filthy their seats, while the remaining foals took their assigned seats at their desks. Shortly after, Cherilee cleared her throat at the front of the room.
“Alright, so, for starters, I’d like to thank everypony for attending the Cutie Mark Expo. If at any point, you have any questions, I’d like you to address them with my daughter, June Bug,” she stated nodding towards a young mare with a magenta coat whom waved from behind a small desk.
“Now, the point of this is to introduce these little ponies to the greater world of possibilities. This way, we’re showing that any which way they go in life, they’ll find something to make a passion.” She smiled. “So, with that being so; Archer, would you start us out?”
After several hours, and a quick lunch break, the number of adults in the room were dwindling. The students had been well treated by several stories, such as Filthy’s recollection of Barnyard Bargain’s time of being handed down, Pipsqueak on his adventures in Zebrica and the lands dominated by the dragons and griffons to the south and north, and even a quick snippet that proved to be touching, yet philosophical, Applejack’s childhood revelation.
“Let’s see,” June said quietly, “Next up is...Phobos.”
Said orange stallion nodded, walking through the rows of foals to the front of the room. He heard diverse mutters and general silence compared to the noisy interest towards the others’ stories.
Phobos walked behind Cherilee’s desk and grabbed a piece of chalk in his magic. He lifted it to the board and wrote a quick couple of characters and a symbol.
After such, he faced the room.
“I’ll start with the story of how I got my cutie mark. However, I do have to warn, the tale is as scarring as my talent is to some....”
