The Takeover

The E.A.E.A. HQ's Infirmary

Khan

As I regained consciousness, my body was taken over with pain. My left wing being the source of the most pain. My back was aching and the back of my legs and hindquarters were extremely sore. And my head! Celestia my head was hurting. I felt like shit and there was no other word for it.

I opened my eyes and immediately closed them again, the brightness of the solid white room being too much for me to handle. I blinked several times to gradually get adjusted to the light. Once I could look around without the light hurting, I tried to figure out where I was at. It was obviously a hospital of some sort, but it wasn't Ponyville's hospital. The door was to the left and was ajar and there was another door across the room from me and to the right that was completely open and I could tell it was a bathroom from a quick glance at the layout. To my right, there was a solid glass window, with the morning sun rising, the light flowing through to cast a shadow just below the window, where I saw a couch that was currently unoccupied. I felt like shit and there was no other word for it.

I heard a conversation in the hallway, the mix of words and hoofsteps starting from far off but moving closer. My door slowly came open the conversation dying off as the two ponies -griffin and pony, my bad- entered my room. The griffin had a uniform of some sort on, seemed to me like a drill instructor uniform. The pony had a pair of glasses on and a lab coat with a clipboard and a pen floating alongside him. He had a red and white mane and tail to match with a green coat. He looked over at Nova first before looking over at me.

"Ah, you're awake." He said as he walked over to the monitors I was unaware that I was hooked up to. "How are you feeling?"

I thought about it for a minute, "I feel like I should know where I'm at first."

"You're in the E.A.E.A. HQ's Infirmary." The griffin said to me in a stern voice. The doctor looked over at him with an 'I-could-have-told-him-that' look.

E.A.E.A. HQ? What the hell was that? "That doesn't tell me where I'm at."

The expression on the griffin's face soured. "How about you stop worrying about that and more about what Dr. Mosley asked you."

I looked between them both, back and forth before looking to the doctor and stopped on the doctor and said, "I feel like I was just in a plane crash." I paused for a second because the doctor kind of gave me that 'you-were-just-in-a-plane-crash' look. Then I continued, "but that's just physically. Emotionally, I feel like I just lost everypony who meant anything to me." I took my gaze away from him and turned my head so that I was facing the ceiling.

Why'd I bring that up? It only made me feel worse. My way of handling things, especially bad things, was a bad way to say the least. If it's something I don't feel like I can handle I just shove it into the deepest part of my mind and sleep it off, like I think it'll go away by the time I wake. It's a broken system, a flaw, but I've done it all my life and I didn't show any signs of fixing it.

There was a moment of silence during which I saw the griffin and Dr. Mosley look at each other and back at me in unison. "Well, regardless of what you are feeling, you are alive and you don't show any signs of anything otherwise." I look out the window as he continued, "But you haven't lost everypony."

My head snapped back to him so fast it hurt, but the sense of hopefulness washed over me was becoming a relief in itself . "Who?" I asked urgently. If there was nothing else this doctor could tell me, it better be who else it was that survived the crash.

"I believe she said her name was Nova."

Nova was still alive? How? The last that I remembered of her was telling her to go the cockpit and see what she could do to keep the plane from going down.

"I need to see her!" I said leaning up as fast as the various tubes and needles would allow but my effort was in vain because a rush of pain arced up my back and my head, sending me right back down on to the mattress and left me squirming.

"Not so fast. You are in no condition to be walking about." I put all my strength into pressing my forehooves against the mattress, an automatic reaction to help steady the pain.

"Can you go get her?" I said through gritted teeth in a dangerous tone.

"I think you need to-"

"I don't care what you think!" I exclaimed. "Go get her!" The yelling definitely made my head hurt worse and caused a lone to tear to leave its warm trail down my cheek. My heart rate was rising and it was obvious by the beeps coming from the vital monitors. Everything would be better if I could see her. The doctor seemed unimpressed, maybe even a little disappointed but why should I care? He doesn't know me and neither does that griffin.

"Sergeant Coldfire, go get Nova for me please." The griffin turned around, obviously reluctant, and walked through the door and disappeared around the corner to the right. My breathing slowed, and the beeps returned to the pace it was at before.

The doctor watched Coldfire leave and turned around to look at me again and let out a defeated sigh. "I'll let you see her but you've got five minutes."

Five minutes? That wasn't enough! "That's not-" I started before the doctor interrupted me with a slightly raised voice.

"It's not negotiable." Mosley stated firmly. "The only reason I'm letting you see her is so you don't overexert yourself trying to get to her. You've been asleep for a while but that isn't going to be enough."

A while? I looked out the window again where I saw the rising sun shooting beams of light across the room and giving the forest below the window a yellowish glow. I assumed it was the next morning but Mosley didn't make it seem that way. "How long was I out?"

"About two and a half days."

I leaned my head back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling. Two whole days? "You mean a literal two days?"

"A literal two days being two twenty-four hour intervals, yes."

Before I had the time to let the shock of being K.O.ed for two days straight settle in, Coldfire walked into the room and took a post to the side of the door. A pink and black mane belonging to Nova rounded the corner and her entire face lit up.

"Khan!" She gasped, galloping across the room towards me. I leaned up as far as I could to intercept her hug but I couldn't have been more prepared. I couldn't believe I was holding her in my hooves right now.

She was almost up in the bed with me, but I didn't care. I couldn't say anything as she buried her face in my chest her mane almost completely covering my face. I could hear her choke back a sob, her ears were completely pinned back. I hugged her back, as much as I could and I heard her say, "Celestia, I thought you'd never wake up."

I heard the door shut and looked up and saw that Mosley and Coldfire had stepped out. "I thought I was the only one who survived the crash." I said back, me holding the only pony who made it out causing the rush of feeling I had pinned up, out. A surge that I couldn't control. I cried more than I ever had. I tried to speak but it didn't work, my sobs took the place of every word. I hugged her tight, wing draped over my right foreleg and I didn't want this to end. It reminded me of us when we were in high school, the night her mom had died.

She pushed up from me, her mane was down in her face I moved it to the side and tucked part of it behind her ear. She had a small cut going down her lip but other than that she was completely unharmed. Although it did make me wonder how it got there. "What happened to your lip?" I asked, wiping the tears from my eyes.

She kinda looked reluctant to tell me. "I-," she started but couldn't seem to continued.

"It's okay," I told her. "We're okay. Tell me what happened."

"There was this pony out in the Everfree Forest, there was something wrong with him," she paused to wipe tears from her cheek. "He um...he hit me. Two or three times, he hit me."

This discovery lit a fire in me, "Do you remember his face?" There was nothing that fanned my flames worse than a stallion hitting a mare. It wasn't right.

"There's no point," she said.

"Of course there's a point, Nova, he hit you."

"He's dead." Dead? Surely Nova didn't...kill somepony.

"Did you-," I started before she quickly interrupted me, apparently already knowing what I was going say.

"No!" She exclaimed before I could finish. "It was the ponies who saved us. Well, ponies and griffin, who saved us."

"Coldfire?"

"Yeah," she said sadly. "He saved me but...that colt couldn't have been older than thirteen."

She laid her head back down against me.

"It was you or him," I said, trying to comfort her. "I'm glad it was you."

She laid there for a few seconds longer without a response, when she looked up and asked me, "What was it you said you would tell me if we lived through that?"

"What?" What in the world was she talking about?

"Whenever I found you, I barely got you awake, but I was helping you back to where Sergeant Coldfire and his team was. About halfway there you tackled me and a spell hit the tree behind us." She stopped for a second. "You said something about you not letting me beat the shit out of you again."

"I don't remember any of that happening but I know what you're talking about." I looked down at her before continuing, "I had this dream the night of our last concert. Suddenly I was falling and I woke with a start, eventually going back to sleep. The second dream, you had gotten hit by a spell and you were knocked unconscious and I dragged you behind a tree to get away from whoever was doing it." I paused trying to remember what all had happened. "The last dream I had, you were a unicorn, and you had a bunch of tiny hexagons for pupils, and you picked up a piece of wood and I'm pretty sure you killed me."

Once again, she had her head laying against my chest, under my chin. When she spoke, I could feel the vibrations of her vocal cords, "So, I was one of those things?"

"What things?" I asked.

"Unicorns were the ones attacking us. According to Coldfire, they're who brought the plane down."

My eyes went wide, "What?"

"They weren't normal, there was something wrong with them, but they had the same hexagons in their eyes as I did in your dream."

I looked back out the window and at the late morning sun. "So all of that's real." I said it was as more of a statement than a question.

This was a lot to take in and it made my brain hurt. So the way Nova's eyes had looked in my dream was going on out there. There were other unicorns out there, that were acting the same way she had. They brought down my plane. They brought down the plane that had my entire life since I was about ten years old in it. More importantly, they brought down the plane that had my entire family in it. My band was my family and Smokey was no exception.

I couldn't let that slide. That was not something I could just let go. I felt a hatred boiling inside me I had never felt before.

"Khan?" Nova asked, a concerned look on her face. As I was pulled out of my thoughts, I heard the machine next to me going crazy, the entire screen glowing red with blinking numbers, my blood pressure was going up and I could feel my face burning up.

Mosley ran into the room and stopped for a split second, Coldfire following him in. "Coldfire, get her out of here."

"What?! No!" I shouted, the beeping gradually getting faster. Coldfire quickly grabbed Nova and pulled her off me, the cold air cooling the places she had been lying on.

Coldfire jerked her around towards the door, she was trying to fight back but couldn't match his strength. "You've done enough damage already," I heard Coldfire say to Nova as he was holding her across the chest.

"Stop spouting your bullshit!" I hollered at him trying to sit up, adrenaline now pumping through my veins. Mosley was putting a restraint on my right foreleg now and two nurses came through the door and walked past Coldfire and Nova towards me.

"If you hurt her I'll fucking kill you!" I yelled at him in the fiercest tone I could muster. The vital monitor was going haywire now and with Mosley barking orders to the nurses to hold me down, the beeping from the monitor adding to the chaos.

Coldfire had made it to the door with Nova hugged to his chest and was about be through the door way, when I called after him as loud as I could, "You hear me you piece of shit?! You hurt her, I'll rip off your claws and cut your fucking throat with them!"

I looked to the side as Mosley had completely put my arm in a restraint and had a syringe held in an aura of magic. Floating to the tube opening on an I.V. stand that was connected to me, I saw his magic fluctuate as he emptied the syringe into it.

"I'll fucking kill you..." I started to say but couldn't continue, the medicine working fast and getting to me. "I'll...kill..."

That was all I could say as my eyes closed and I was once again back asleep.

<--------o------O------o-------->

9PM the same day, Nova's hospital room.

Nova

My eyes fluttered open, the first thing I saw being my pillow in the left eye and the blank vital monitors in the right, my vision blurring the two together because my were crossed. I refocused and pulled the sheet off of me and I turned over and sat up. I let out a yawn and threw my hoofs into the air and fully extended my wings and stretched.

My neck was still sore from wear Coldfire had stuck another needle into it, the muscles still a little tight. I rubbed the muscles with my hoof, trying to get it to ease up but it didn't work. Oh well. It's not like it was hurting.

The only light that was on in my room was the lamp on the table to my right. The window to my right had nothing to display besides the summer night sky. Jeez, what time was it?

I wiggled to the edge of the bed and slid out of it and onto my hooves. I walked over to the bathroom and flipped the light on. The first thing I did was look in the mirror. My mane had really taken a number from my struggle with Coldfire. I had nothing against him, he saved me, I had no reason to. My desire to see for myself that Khan was okay was unreasonable and out of control.

What I saw of his condition when I first walked into the room, it grabbed me. The underside of his legs from what I could see was raw and a bright pink. His left wing was in bandages and he had another bandage rapped around his head.

You've done enough damage.

Coldfire's words echoed in my mind, although I don't see what I could have done, they still hit me hard.

I remembered my first day of being here, I woke up in the same room I was in now, and it was right about noon. The only things I asked the doctor was where Khan was at. He assured me he was fine but he wasn't in any condition to have visitors. I accepted that. I haven't seen much of this place, the only thing I knew was I was in the infirmary. I've kept my mind occupied with books that I had requested, my argument being 'If you're going to keep me locked in here, at least give me something to do.'

A pen and blank sheets of paper would have been better as I was a lyricist at heart and it was what I did but apparently I wasn't trustworthy enough to have a sharp object in my possession while I was unsupervised. So, I read. All I did was read. I passed the time by turning pages. In fact, when Coldfire had come to tell me that Khan was awake and that I could see him, was the first time I had left the room.

The hallway looked like any hospital hallway; white tiled floors, white walls, and high ceilings. A nurses station in the center of the two hallways parallel to each other. The various documents and record books scattered around and one nurse measuring some kind of medicine in a vial before sticking a needle into the rubber piece at the top and pulling back, the syringe filling up. I had seen elevators at the end of the hallway, but where they lead to I didn't know. From what I could tell from the window in my room, we were about three stories up.

It had been a long two days while Khan was asleep and me being the worry wart that I am, had exhausted myself. The second night I had been here I went to sleep so easily. It was a lot easier to go to sleep than it was to be awake and face your problems. Khan and I shared that trait, although I'm pretty sure I wasn't like that before I met him.

As far as what I was going to do now, I didn't know. I guess just try to look my best. I picked up a brush from the counter and stared at it for a second. This was one of those nice brushes that had a hoof-handle that you could slip your hoof and the brush had an extended handle, making things easier. Celestia bless whoever came up with that invention.

I turned back to the mirror to see myself staring back. I brought the brush up with my hoof and began to bring it back to my signature look. That's much better. I put the brush back down on the side of the sink, letting my gaze drift from my reflection. I grabbed the hoof towel from the holder on the wall to the left and turned on the warm water in the sink and put the top half under the steaming stream of water. I rung it out and put the towel to my face and with both hooves, wiped it up and down my face. When I felt like it had done some good, I turned it over and used the dry side to dry my face. I started with my forehead and slowly went down and when my eyes were uncovered I opened them and gazed directly into the mirror.

What I saw was myself, but not myself. I saw what I must have looked like after the colt had gotten a few hits on me, my lower lip bleeding, the blood trailing down my face. My mane was a mess, more so than I would ever willingly allow it to be.

It stared directly at me, the towel I had in my hooves not present in the reflection.

My blood went cold and I took a few steps back from the mirror, I wanted to look away but I couldn't. My reflection's face had a sad expression on it and it said, "You could have saved them."

I didn't know what to do or say. My doppelganger looked as if it was gaining satisfaction from the sadness that had washed over me at that statement. Despite my fear, I actually spoke back to it. "I tried," I said in a shaky voice.

The reflection's smile distorted for a second and when it stopped, it now had gritted teeth and a look of pure hatred, "You call what you did trying? Ha!" It laughed in my face, it's word stinging like hell fire. "You keep telling yourself that."

It continued laughing and I covered my ears with my hooves in attempt to block it out. It was just as loud as before, my efforts in vain. Then the laughing stopped.

I was in tears now and after a second of staring at the ground, I got the courage to look up. It was still standing there, my doppelganger's face now back to the way it was when it first showed, lip still bloody.

The mirror behind my doppelganger began to distort, the shower behind me turning into a bunch of trees. In the midst of a small clearing our plane being the center of the picture. Wrecked and the remaining engine on fire, it was completely torn in half and the nose of the cock pit was split in two, the inside of the co-pilot's side of the two halves that was now the cockpit, I saw a pony sitting in the seat and head down against the controls. The entire left side of the pony was charcoal black. It was a pegasus, the left wing having been completely ripped off. The right side was...me. My coat was covered in blood, what was left of the colored parts of my mane was glued to my head with blood and my right wing drooped down, almost touching the floor.

"This is what trying to save them looks like."

The only thing I wanted to do was look away. But I couldn't. My eyes swelled with tears and I was well past the sobbing point but I couldn't look away.

The scene right beside the half of the cockpit that held my body began to distort. Other figures starting to form next to it, my doppelganger still in the center of the mirror. The figures took shape of four unicorns, standing side by side. They were all burnt to a crisp. The one on the far left had a pole going through his chest at an angle and coming out the top of his skull above his right eye, a bass guitar leaning against his left shoulder. My heart sank and hit the very bottom of my chest.

It was Cayne's guitar.

The horror settled in as I looked across the others. Griel was to the right of him the burnt flesh on his right cheek was sagging down below his jaw, his signature Blue Lightning guitar leaned against his left shoulder. The next one was Stone, two drum sticks were dangling from his mouth and I could see two cracked ribs protruding out of his chest. The last one had a scorched manila folder in his mouth, one of his eyes missing completely. Smokey.

I was finally able to look away, my head hanging low, and tears falling fast and frequent. I tried to hold back the sobs, but I couldn't do it.

I couldn't say anything. There wasn't anything I could do or say. I looked back up the mirror now only showing the four of them standing in a row all staring at me. The image faded away and my doppelganger took its place in the mirror again, this time it looked like me now, my eyes completely puffed up and face completely wet with tears, it staring at the floor. It slowly lifted its head up with its eyes closed. Tears slowly making their way down its face.

Then its eyes shot open, the pupils completely filled with hexagons and it said calmly with my voice, "You could have saved them."

I brought my hoof around and hit the doppelganger square in the face and screamed, "Fuck you!"

The mirror made a loud pop noise and shattered on impact, the doppelganger replaced by the rusted metal that sat behind the mirror.

I brought my hoof back and fell down against the wall, no attempt to break the fall. I sat there and cried harder than I ever had. I could hear the doppelganger as if she was still here saying, "You could have saved them."

It was tearing me apart and there was nothing I could do. I cried so much my neck and shoulders were hurting, but that didn't stop the sobs. I started coughing, them being so forceful it made my chest hurt and the lack of oxygen burn. When it finally stopped I fell over on my side, whimpering, the tears still flowing.

"You could have saved them."

I responded with a quivering whisper.

"I tried."

I closed my eyes and before I knew it, I was asleep.