Dead on Arrival

THWACK!

Fluttershy slammed hard onto the steel dissection table. I glared at Danny and scolded him "Hey, careful! We don't want to break anything important!"

The dissection room was a fairly large open space with about a dozen tables and the same amount of sets of equipment. Mark had to look around for all the things we needed. Things like jars, preserving fluid, and labels, but we got everything we needed eventually. We locked the door so no curious passersby intrude on us and spoil the 'public' phase prematurely. Mark said that he couldn't use the MRI alone because he didn't really know how to use it that well, so we just jumped straight to the dissection; both a good and bad decision:

Good that we can get to the autopsy quicker, and bad because we'd be going in blind on a completely alien body. Still, I couldn't be more excited to finally have her under my knife. Sadly I forgot to research how to dissect equines before I left, so I'm really scared about botching this. I can't fail this, I just can't.

"Sorry! My fingers slipped!" Danny excused himself sheepishly.

"It's okay, just, she's already messed up already, yeah?" Fluttershy was still in the position I broke her into, but now her coat below her shoulders was stained slightly red from soaking in her own blood for so long, and her incredibly long mane had a line of red separating where it was dyed a pinkish shade of red, and where it remained its original salmon tone. Her tail was totally dyed red, since it was completely submerged. We all became so accustomed to the overpowering vanilla that we hardly notice it now.

Before we start the dissection, we need to examine the body and take plenty of pictures of it so we can show it as proof when we make this public. I whipped out my phone, started recording, and begun the examination:

I stammered to start an opening description "Okay, uh, yellow fur stained red, pink mane and tail, gigantic melon-sized green eyes, uh, yeah. Pretty much like Fluttershy from the show 'My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic', I mean," I probably wasn't the man for the description job, sadly. Actions speak louder than words, anyway.

I started examining and I recorded her from as many angles as I could. I stopped talking since I didn't really think that was necessary, as everyone began their own expeditions on her and I was so inept at explaining it. A picture is worth a thousand words, right? So a video must be worth, like, 30,000 a second.

I circled my prey just like the others when I came down to her groin. I began to rethink my idea of making her look more peaceful, as it was getting in the way of actually confirming the sex of my Fluttershy, but in all honesty I'd be surprised if she had any at all. I told them what I had to do. They were all a little bit disturbed, but they understood after I explained why.

It took the guys and I a lot of effort to crack and snap her legs back to their original resting place, but we did it. The fur on her chest where her arms used to be crossing her heart was still her original pale yellow, like a sunburn on your tummy with your hand over it, outlining your hand in the burn, except the UV rays were blood and the hand was her front hooves. Danny noted how that her original position looked pornographic and made him uncomfortable, but I didn't really listen to him. We all knew what I was about to do was going to look oddly sexual, but it needed to be done. For science.

I knelt down over her groin right between her skyward legs to inspect her privates, making sure to record that whole region thoroughly. After a few moments of living a rather perverted stallion's dream, I confirmed what I suspected: she's totally bare down there. There's nothing but a tiny puckered anus right below her huge tail and an even smaller pinprick urethra just above the groin area on her lower belly. I shuddered at the mess these two tiny things caused me this morning.

They were incredibly small -- almost like they were designed to be hidden -- but why? The censors, of course. They can't have huge horse anuses parading through Ponyville proper, can they?

Two small bags of fat that hid nipples under her fur were lined horizontally -- one on each side above her urethra and behind her flank. They were the same colour as her fur, and also seemed to be designed for a low profile. They were really more like bumps than actual teats, but they were still there nonetheless. If not for the gratuitous bite marks all over them I probably never would've found them in the first place.

I questioned why she had so many bites on them for a few moments until I finally concluded that she probably nurses her pets. Gross, but it rose a new question: She doesn't have children does she, so how would that work? Do horses have to bear children to produce milk? I don't know enough about alien horses to make any conclusions, but the fact that they're there in the first place means they have to give birth to young somehow; I I just don't know how they 'do it'. Maybe it's magic? Or maybe they're just hidden somewhere incredibly clever?

I moved on to her flanks. Each of them were adorned with a trio of pink and blue butterflies to symbolize her natural talent with animals, tinged crimson, of course.

Other than that she was remarkably unremarkable -- other than being an alien from a world previously thought as existing in a purely fictional universe until earlier today -- she had nothing interesting other than the lack of genitalia. She looked exactly like she does in the show, right down to the wings, but tinged a possibly permanent shade of yellowish-red.

I took dozens of pictures, along with the video detailing every angle, nook, and cranny of Fluttershy's corpse. After I was done with her photo shoot, it was time to begin Fluttershy's organ harvesting / autopsy / dissection party. Yay. I gave the phone to Danny to record the procedure; He didn't seem to want to do any cutting anyway.

I grabbed my scalpel off the surgical tray and was just about ready to make the incision above her right shoulder; I would cut down the collarbone, which she had for some reason. Why does she have a collarbone? Shouldn't she be a horse? Do horses have collarbones? Well, we're about to find out.

There was something surreal about an autopsy. There was always an air of respect out of the human who gave their body to us, but this wasn't a human. It was a cartoon character, and it exuded a sense of ... alien curiosity instead of any sense of respect. Along with vanilla; it exuded that in spades. "Okay, you guys ready?"

"Yep."

"Sure."

"Nngh."

"Alright," As I hovered my scalpel over the butter-yellow pony, I hesitated. The memories of this buttery burden flashed through my memory just as I was about to start. All the adventures she's been on, her caring nature for animals, her adorable fear of dragons, her breaking of Rainbow's ribs, it all bounced around so suddenly.

I came to realize in seconds that it was all real now that she's here, and it made me think. Even though she's probably not even from our world -- maybe even our own universe -- I still knew her. I knew her mannerisms, her reactions to things, her likes, dislikes, and fears, her life in general all by heart. That's when that strange feeling in my heart sparked again, and it urged me to stop.

My cold steel came to rest on her fur, yet dared not cut through it. The feeling in my heart grew, and it made me swell a stone in my throat. I started to become remorseful of the things I did to her today: breaking her leg, crushing her wing, bending her so grotesquely in a vain attempt at making her seem at peace, when we just broke her back to the way she was anyway, I wanted to undo it all. Even though she didn't know me, I still knew her. She was there for one of the toughest times of my life and didn't even know it, and now she was right under my scalpel.

It was weird.

"You alright, Matt?" Mark asked.

"Uh, yeah," I answered with a creaky voice. It was obvious that I was having some issues with this, and it made the whole situation awkward.

As I was trying my best to suppress what were quickly becoming tears, something ominous caught my eye again: the strange shimmering sparked into existence once again with its telltale wind-chimes -- just catching the corner of my eye in the corner of the room -- right next to the door. I turned my head to see the spectre again, beneath its sparkling glass. The shadowy figure inside was squirming, struggling, and seemed to wriggle in terror. It seemed to claw at the shimmering from the other side. It gave me the chills, whatever it was. I was contemplating whether or not I should actually tell somebody about this, and the first time I saw it in my room, until my attention was snapped away when Andrew interrupted my observation.

"Here," Andrew took a scalpel from the tray and shuffled to my position. He bumped me out of the way, and cut for me.

He sunk the blade in her flesh with no remorse, treating her as if she were some nameless corpse instead of someone dear to the hearts of children everywhere. Yet to my surprise, the blade glided with expert precision down to the centre of her collarbone. Peeks of red shone through the flabby cuts of skin and fur. Andrew hastily started again at the other shoulder and cut down to meet the other cut with speed, impressing even me. He cut down perfectly down the chest cavity, just enough to puncture the skin and muscle, but leaving the organs unscathed. He finished the cuts and with some gumption, pried open Fluttershy's rib cage to reveal a plethora of organs, and a shocking surprise. Andrew finished a diagnosis:

"She's a human," Andrew was right.

"What? That's ridiculous!" I blurted at him.

Andrew didn't say a word, he just shuffled positions and began slicing open her gut, again with expert precision. He cut down the diaphragm horizontally, leaving a trail of red muscle, fat, and other tissues peeking through the slit of skin and fur, arcing across her barrel from one side to the other just below her ribs, forming a sort of wave of cut flesh.

Once the scalpel reached the other end of her belly, he moved on to her pelvis. He used the same technique as the chest. He started at one side, and slid the scalpel like butter through the Flutter to the other. He finished cutting the basis of a kind of flesh curtain, so it was time to cut it open. He moved the scalpel to the centre of the top cut, pierced a hold for the scalpel, and slid down, making sure to cut through the tough muscle and sinew of her underbelly while keeping just above the organs. The fat above seemed to convex slightly, much like a balloon. His scalpel passed through it without skipping a beat, and the balloon in her stomach popped; that allowed the death-gas to escape her GI tract.

When scalpel finally met the bottom incision near her groin just above the nipples, the stench of vanilla -- now combined with the foul odour of feces -- blasted our nostrils with its combined strength, shattering through our acquired tolerance like a rocket-powered battering ram and caused us all to retch at its detestability.

"Oh sweet Jesus," Danny commented on the overpowering stench. He used his unoccupied hand to lift his shirt over his nose. The pleasant aroma of fabric softener dulled the pungent malodorous vanilla and gas mildly.

Andrew took hold of both sides of her soft, furry yellow-belly -- unfazed by the horrific stench -- and peeled it open, revealing the snaking tunnel of the intestines, a pinkish stomach, dark purple liver, and just below the lower intestine on the left side, tucked away in the folds of Fluttershy's digestive tract, was an appendix.

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Everypony in the TARDIS stared at the aperture to another world with wide eyes, the Doctor still standing next to it. He broke the eerie silence with a cheery

"Allons-y!" He gestured his hoof out the door and turned back to the group, "For you."

"Wait, why aren't you coming?" Twilight asked, annoyance in her tone.

"Well I don't know what sort of unimaginable interdimensional terrors could be out there, and you all look quite prepared. Besides it was you who wanted to come here in the first place, and I merely offered a taxi service," he argued effectively.

"But, you look like-"

"Also I don't have a suit to protect me."

"But there's a spare on the floor!"

"Yes, that one with the flappy wing pockets and is entirely too small for me?"

"But- er- ugh! Fine!" Twilight groaned. She didn't have time for this. She looked at the door nervously, and by extension the cold white hallway outside. She gulped and hesitantly stepped to the door nervously while the rest cowered behind her, just inches from her tail. The Doctor shuffled back to the control panel to make room and to watch from a distance.

Twilight reluctantly peeked her head out the door with her eyes shut, gradually passing her head through the door like a slightly speedy glacier. The realization hit her like a ton of bricks the moment her horn passed through.

The sensation to what Twilight felt is akin to a bat suddenly going deaf, or an eagle suddenly blinded. In response to this incredible system-shock, she pulled her head back from the magical dark, felt her 'hearing' return, and revealed to the rest of the crew something vital to the success of the mission: "There's no magic here!"

Rainbow looked puzzled. She shrugged her hooves and asked dismissively, "Why does that matter? Isn't magic supposed to be everywhere?"

Twilight turned to her hovering sky-blue friend with frustrated eyes and explained loudly, "Have you forgotten that we're in a whole other dimension? Not another planet, but an entire dimension!? This place could've never even heard of magic, and magic is the whole reason we're all alive right now!"

She gestured a hoof to Rainbow, "You can't fly without it," she swung her hoof to Applejack, "you'll lose all your strength," and finally to herself, "and I can't use magic!" She shifted to lecture gear, "Magic surrounds us, it binds us, it penetrates us. Every cell in our bodies depend on it. If the natural presence of magic is cut off, our heart and lung systems in the medulla oblongata will go haywire, causing intense heart palpitations, difficulty breathing, drastic vasoconstriction, extreme lethargy, and your cells will start degenerating at an incredibly accelerated pace from extremely rapid cell wall destruction and immunodeficiency, allowing the magically independent decomposing bacteria in your gut to go into overdrive! It's like air. If you get cut off from it, you'll live off what you already have in you, and unless you can't get back to it, you'll die," Twilight tried as hard as she could to emphasize this, and it worked. Everypony in attendance knew the dangers now and quickly grew sombre faces, because Twilight just accidentally discovered and announced the terrible truth about their lost friend at the same time. A balloon popping could be heard near Pinkie's position.

"So does that mean? Fluttershy?" Pinkie squeaked in complete devastation. She looked just about ready to bawl. Her voice was creaky, her eyes watery, mouth quivering, and mane all but popped of its liveliness. Twilight's face snapped to a shocked expression as she came to realize as well as her friends that Fluttershy is dead, and Twilight can't help but feel her eyes water as she felt her incredible guilt surface again. The terrible remorse swelled along with her tears, but she can't get distracted now. She had to boost everypony's morale before one of them suggests to scuttle the mission altogether. Coming all this way for nothing wasn't an option.

"I guess so, but that's okay!" Twilight tried to mask her overpowering sadness and crippling guilt with a happy tone.

"What do you mean by 'okay'? Fluttershy's dead!" Rainbow responded angrily, throwing her hooves in the air, her eyes welling with tears. Losing your oldest friend can take a toll on you.

"It's okay because I remembered that I have a spell back at the library that can bring anypony back to life!" She didn't. Well she might, but at least it made Pinkie's mane spring back to life.

"Well either way we still have to retrieve her! I simply cannot stand allowing one of my friends to decay in some Celestia forsaken tartarus!" Rarity exclaimed dramatically.

"But what about the magic?" Spike asked.

"Remember when I said these suits were 'magically insulated'? What I really meant was 'Magic Insulator'," Rarity explained.

"Actually you didn't say anything about the suits, but what about monsters?" Spike raised a valid point. Nopony in the history of ever could predict what the natives could be like. Twilight failed to stammer an answer and mulled this over in her mind when The Doctor jumped in.

"I may offer some helpful advice? The best solution is to run back here as fast as you can. Works every time!" he prescribed. He seemed independent of the sadness caused by the death of Fluttershy, but then again he hardly knew her.

"Okay, but what if we get lost?" Spike continued his role as devil's advocate.

"It's only 20 meters, Spike. Even though we're all used to the imperial system, I'm sure we'll be fine," Twilight and the gang -- except The Doctor -- were psyching themselves up to go where nopony -- except maybe Starswirl the Bearded -- has gone before.

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"You're still crazy," I said as I looked down at Fluttershy's blood drenched innards, but the evidence didn't lie. Everything inside was an exact replica of a human cadaver; right down to the arteries, everything was in their proper place for a human. She even had a human gallbladder and appendix. But she wasn't a human, she's a horse isn't she? Everything else is cartoon equine but her guts, but ... Why are her innards caked in blood?

Ah, must be massive internal bleeding; that's be how she died, but what caused it is the real question. I ended the dissection section and initiated the autopsy portion of our operation, there wasn't much to dissect, anyway. I turned back at her chest cavity -- where most of the blood seemed to come from.

I did a look-over of her entire system, trying to trace the blood concentration to the source of the trauma; this led me to her heart. I noticed something a little off about her ticker as I inspected it for any cuts or ruptures, so I reached down and inspected it closely.

After a few moments, I noticed something interesting: there was a small tear in the pericardium.

"Look," Andrew usurped my investigation again. He took a scalpel and carefully worked it up the meaty sack containing the muscle, clutching it tightly for support. Chunky red blood gushed out as the pressure applied by his hands squeezed it out with a sickening squirting noise. Andrew finished cutting open the pericardium and flapped both sides open -- like a butterfly's wings -- to reveal a gory mess of what I assume was once a heart.

"It's like it ... exploded?" Mark asked curiously.

"Yup," Andrew confirmed. "See the left ventricle? The one that pumps the blood across the body? It's totally ruptured, and the aorta is just split in half," Andrew made his diagnosis. Looks like we found what killed her, but why? What would cause a heart to explode in the first place? I honestly don't know.

"Just look at her arteries, they're tight as a tiger. It could be what caused the ruptures," Andrew elaborated. Looks like we know how a heart can explode now.

"Ew," Danny remarked, still recording the whole procedure with my smartphone.

"Well, she always did have a weak heart," I joked.

"That's kinda gross, Matt," Danny commented. Ah well, ya can't win 'em all. Now for the harvesting!

"So you got the jars?" I asked, reaching for the large pair of surgical scissors.

"Oh, sure. I didn't know we were doing that yet. What were you gonna take out?" Mark waddled to the jars. Each one was filled with a clear preserving fluid, all labelled with different major organs except for a few extras just in case.

"How about the lungs," I suggested like a kid in a candy store. There was a lot to do before she was scooped clean, might as well take out the larger organs first.

Mark took one of the larger jars named "fluttershy - lungs" and dropped it on the side of the table with a loud CLANK!.

"Hey, careful! You might bust it!" Danny warned.

"Sorry" Mark apologized as he screwed off the lid.

I grabbed a pair of surgical scissors and started snipping at the bronchial tubes. The cartilage was stiff and rigid as my scissors snipped through the tissue -- almost like construction paper -- sounding and feeling like it, too.

The tingling in my heart was mostly silenced, but it was still giving me a gentle urge to halt my progress. I can't stop when we're this far in; there's no turning back now.

Once the lung was free, I grabbed the two floppy sides of the lung at their sides, and dug my fingers underneath them for a better grip. After I gained a good grasp on it, I lifted it out, making a nauseating tearing noise as the membranes severed underneath. I plopped it in the jar; the fluid splashed a little as I dropped it in. I snipped and ripped the other one out, too, sploshing it right next to its buddy. The fluid in the jar started getting tinged red because of the blood they were caked in from the ruptured heart, but it's no big deal. Danny was getting more and more disturbed by the minute; his stomach was churning and his skin was turning white.

"If she's a human -- or at least her innards are -- then why are we cuttin' her up?" I answered that question quickly.

"Because she's still an alien. We could learn a lot from the chemistry of her guts. They may look human, but they might still surprise us," Once the jar was full of lung, it was time to start on another organ.

I decided to pick the stomach at random, so I asked "Mark, do you have the jar for the stomach?"

"Sure," Mark handed me a smaller jar labelled "fluttershy - stomach" and placed it on the steel table next to Fluttershy, taking the lung jar back to the trolley where the other jars were, and rested it on top.

"Thanks," I aimed my snippers to the bottom of her esophagus -- right where it connects to the stomach at the cardiac sphincter -- and snipped it away. The nagging sorrow in my chest was growing, so I pushed it down further as I asked "Do you have a jar for the, uh, 'contents'?"

"Oh, uh, sure," Mark handed me an empty unlabelled jar with a hint of disgust. I grabbed it, murmuring a

"Thank you," as I dug my fingers under her cold, pink, slimy stomach.

Once my grip was in place, I positioned the jar so that the hole I just cut was inside the jar and wouldn't spill any of her dinner in her partially hollowed out carcass. I squeezed the muscular bag like a tube of toothpaste, running my fingers from the bottom pyloric sphincter to the upper cardiac. As I worked my way through, a horrible, putrid, sour stench assaulted my nostrils as the black, mushy slime oozed out and into the jar.

Danny gagged -- making sure to record every last bit I squeeze -- and trying not to hurl in the process. Most of it was out now, so I took my middle finger and thumb down to where the end of the stomach meets the duodenum, squeezed them together against the slimy smooth texture, and ran them over her stomach and to the cardiac sphincter as I pushed out the very last of the vile mush.

"Okay," I said, lifting the stomach up so I could get a clear cut at her pyloric sphincter. I took the scissors and snipped it off, the elasticity of the stomach stretching the connecting tube down as I made the last few clips as I held the muscular bag in the air. I dropped the scissors in the hole where her lung used to be temporarily so I could use it to open the jar.

I moved the now free stomach over to the jar and plunked it in, making a noise akin to dropping a pebble in a pond. Danny looked like he needed a break, fast.

"Uh, I'm just going to go to the bathroom real quick," Danny announced queasily.

"'Kay. Just pause the video, we'll start again when you get back," I responded. I took the scissors out of her chest and plunked them back on the tray with a clink. Danny speed-walked out of the room -- the smartphone still in hand -- and into the hallway.

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