Splitting aMid the Night

"We came as quickly as we could! Is she alright?"

Midnight just stood in front of the five friends, her mouth open as if she was pondering what to say next. The awkward silence that resulted from it was simply delicious, especially considering she was actually just thinking about how good friends they really had to be and enjoying the situation. She dragged it out as long as possible to watch the hope in their eyes slowly die and be replaced by fear of what Midnight wouldn't dare say. However, there was a certain degree of fun to be had with friends where it became just plainly cruel, so she went into the next stage.

"Well, she's been struck by lightning and crashed onto her face, nearly demolishing mine in the process, I might add, so... I'm sorry, everypony. If anything, she'll be paralysed from the shoulders down for the rest of her life."

"If... anything?" Twilight asked, unable or unwilling to comprehend what Midnight meant.

Now that she had said it out loud, her joke felt a lot more inappropriate than it had in her head. She would've liked to remain silent and watch them spiral into panic, but their friendship demanded that she acted right then. "Ha, the looks on your faces. Heh, sorry for playing that one on you. She's doing fine, the impact's given her some concussions and bruises and the likes and there's obviously a few burns where it hit her, but somehow, she managed to keep her bones intact. I'm sure she'll be happy to see you all came to visit her. You should be careful though, everything that's happened didn't leave her in the best mental or physical state altogether, so don't be too hard on her. If there are no more questions, I'll show you to her room then."

Midnight led the visibly relieved Elements of Harmony into their desired room where a butter yellow pegasus was currently having a cute little nap with her head and forehooves being the only things sticking out from under the blanket, lined up as if she were locked into a pillory. Five out of six ponies standing in the room gave a small d'aww at the sight. Midnight preferred to instead walk over and gently wake her up.

"'Shy... little murderer," she whispered, unheard by the others. "Your friends have come to visit you."

The pegasus sleepily blinked until she managed to keep her eyes open. "Uh, hi girls," she spoke out in her usual barely audible voice. Midnight wondered how she even managed to get through the day with such behavior.

"Actually, I just remembered," Midnight stepped in before anypony could say anything else. "We gotta regularly test her pupil reaction to make sure there's no permanent brain damage, so if you don't mind, I'll perform that right now."

"Sure, go ahead," Applejack said, confirming that it wouldn't scare off the friends. Midnight hadn't meant to do that, of course. She just wanted to make sure she was on time. She conjured up an orb of light and examined the pegasus' eye reaction.

"Ooh, pretty!" Pinkie Pie exclaimed. For obvious reasons, Midnight couldn't see her expression, but she assumed it included lots of smiling and superfluous happiness.

"Pinkie, is there something that doesn't amaze you? I mean, it's a simple light spell. Fillies could perform it. Detaching it from the horn is a bit tricky, but easy once you figure it out," Twilight explained. Midnight could see her face before her with the usual omniscient expression on it even though the visage taking up most of her vision belonged to a completely other pony.

"Of course there are things that are not super duper awesome, silly. Like burnt cupcakes or sad tears or broken horns..."

"Huh? What's wrong with a broken horn?" Midnight could answer that, but officially, she was not listening, so she left it to the bookworm to educate Pinkie.

"Isn't it a really big deal, like, mostly deadly?" Sparkle had set a trap and Pinkie ran right into it. Midnight could recite the words her soon-to-be marefriend was about to say by heart from the only book she had ever felt necessary to really study.

"Who told you that? True, the less of it remains, the harder it gets to use your magic, but it'll just regrow. Actually, I once broke off a splinter already." Twilight took a short break. Midnight assumed she indicated towards a small knob on her horn, invisible to the untrained eye, in that time. "What did you expect to happen? Like, me breaking my entire horn trying to protect Ponyville from an Ursa Major and falling into a coma, then everypony falls into a crisis even though I'm obviously going to wake up? Hey, do you hear something?"

"That's just the sound of someone laughing over the reference. Too bad it's not that way. We could have infinite 'Get well' parties. Although I guess you wouldn't have much of them... but slumber parties would work! At least you would be queen in the slumber part..."

"Let's jus' stop it right here 'fore it's gettin' real awkward."

"Okay!" Pinkie Pie was incredible in that she could draw infinite happiness even from being kindly told to shut up.

"Looks alright," Midnight then concluded. For a few seconds, everypony awkwardly looked at her, as if waiting for her to leave. "What? I've been informed that we're friends, so I personally don't see the problem with me staying. Also, she's still a patient and I have to observe her behavior. Besides, I'm bored. Anypony want to sit down?" She directed the group's attention to three chairs standing in the corner.

"Me, please," Rainbow Dash said.

Twilight cocked an eyebrow. "You, of all ponies?"

"Actually, not really. I just wanted to say something." Obviously, Rainbow Dash was untiring, flying above the rest for no apparent reason other than habit, although Midnight saw her occasionally play with Applejack's mane or hat from above, which their owner visibly despised of, though she didn't resist.

"How long will she be here exactly?" Rarity asked.

Midnight took a moment to bring a hint across by visibly checking Fluttershy's file at the tail end of her bed, then responded, "Depends. There doesn't appear to be any kind of real brain damage. Nurse Redheart wants to keep her at least until tomorrow evening in case she shows some odd behavior we haven't noticed yet, which is also about the time I'll need to work the burn down to something discreet. I'll have to come here during my free time, but... no, darling, no objection, it is my pleasure to help a friend of mine's friend, even on my day off. After all that's happened, I think Fluttershy also just needs a good night of sleep."

Later, the Mane Seven, which didn't quite have the same ring to it as Mane Six, composed of a murderer, two filly fooling fiancees, two ponies Midnight had already found a reason to dislike, a bookworm literally living in a library, and a perfectly sane and normal unicorn, sat collected around a small pile of objects. Midnight would have offered to come up with a better name for them, but since nopony could tell her why they called themselves the Mane Six, she just went with adding herself in, for reasons five out of seven ponies were soon to discover. To be completely accurate, only six ponies actually sat, three on the ground and three on the chairs Midnight had offered them earlier.

She herself was standing outside of the circle, not participating in the board game Pinkie had pulled out of her mane, occasionally looking over somepony's shoulder or joining in in the conversation, but mostly just tending to Fluttershy. Healing burn wounds was a tedious task.

"What exactly are you doing, anyway?" Sparkle asked as Midnight conjured her second special magic another time, eyeing her closely as she brought the ball of energy down onto the back of Fluttershy, who was sitting directly opposed to Twilight.

"What does it look like?"

"Anything between healing and futher hurting her," Twilight replied to the counter question with a shrug, indicating she didn't really mean the second option.

"Well, do you see this?" Midnight pointed towards two stacked boxes in a corner of the room, on which hippopotami were drawn. "Those are hippo crates. Question answered. Also, there's the hippo Crates, who, as you may know, invented the whole 'Do no harm' thing. In my opinion, medicine got boring after he did that, but meh. In other words, I'm supplying her wound with energy so that it can heal faster."

"I've never heard of a spell like that. Please, tell me more." Twilight looked around to find everypony looking back at her. "Looks like you've drawn interest."

"Actually, Twilight," Rainbow Dash said with a grin, "it's your turn."

"I'm not sure how it works myself. Somehow, it just speeds up natural healing, which is also why it can be dangerous if overused. You see, usually, this process doesn't really draw that much energy from the body, but if it's sped up to quickly mend, then you might run into a shortage, which could end up with the subject's death, if they were close before. Also, it's useless on deeper wounds." Midnight averted her gaze from the most beautiful thing ever to check back on her patient, seeing that she had gone rather pale. "Oh, don't worry, that's far out of your league of hurt."

"Don't you mean nutrients?" Twilight asked while executing Fluttershy's turn for her.

"Pardon me?"

"Injuries need mostly blood and nutrients to heal."

"Where's the bloody difference?" Midnight saw that her work was temporarily done and removed her magic.

"Nowhere, I just... it might be a very limited time manipulation spell. I'd love to learn it if it is."

"Sparkle," Midnight drily stated while walking to her until her head was right next to Twilight's, where she continued with a whisper everypony in the room could understand, "since when are you allowed to copy signature spells? That's mine, you shouldn't be able to do it."

"Well, I shouldn't if my special talent wasn't magic. I mean, I already know Rarity's spell, which is quite handy to determine if Spike found the gem jar again, I must say."

"Hey, no fair. That's my job and I'd like to keep it." Midnight exclaimed before putting an intentionally overdrawn pout onto her face. "By the way, what's your signature spell?"

"I... I honestly couldn't tell you. They say that every unicorn has one to help them with their special talent, but what if a pony's talent is magic itself?"

Suddenly, Fluttershy's started to jerk itself up rhythmically. Midnight showed her displeasure, but kept calm, "Bucket."

"Bucket?" Twilight responded with a look on her face betraying her confusion at all that was happening.

"Bucket." Midnight repeated. Sparkle shrugged and levitated the metal object she saw below the bed over. "Finally. What kind of surgical assistant are you?" Midnight asked as she stepped back behind Fluttershy, providing the pegasus with a target for her oral relief other than her own lap or the game board.

She didn't feel nearly old enough to perform such an action, but nevertheless took the task of whispering soothing words into Fluttershy's ears, "Shhh, let it out. Don't worry, that's uncomfortable, but normal." She looked up to find five ponies with shocked expressions. "Erm, what's the deal exactly? Nausea, vertigo, reduced cognitive ability, that's a regular concussion. To be honest, I didn't expect poor Fluttershy to hold everything in that long."

Mentioned pegasus kept heaving far beyond the point where everypony had expected her to be empty. Technically, such an occurence would be her cue, but since she was too busy to speak, Rarity took over her part instead, "Oh my."

At long last, she finally managed to get herself under control. Midnight gave the bucket's contents a quick glance, faked adding to them, and poured them into the sink before going to fetch Fluttershy the necessary equipment to clean her mouth. After gladly accepting and using them, Fluttershy mumbled something inaudible.

"Excuse me?" Midnight asked, looking for support from the other ponies, but finding that nopony had understood what she had just said.

Fluttershy took another sip out of the glass of water Midnight had brought her. "Hunger."

Midnight inhaled and kept her breath in for a bit for dramatic effect. "I'd love to oblige, but... no. You might start again any second, I'll bring you something if you wait an hour. If nothing has happened until then, you should be fine for the moment. And, if you'll excuse me, I'm technically still at work, so I have to check on other ponies. Don't wait for me, y'all."

Midnight couldn't believe what she was doing. She left one of her love interests to spend time with somepony else, worse even, a foal. Fortunately, she didn't really care about her standards any more. She could have gone all out and asked Twilight for a date right there and then, in front of the only other Mane Seven that knew. Looking back at it, telling Fluttershy maybe hadn't been such a good idea. If she decided for Shimmer, events might spiral out of control very fast. She didn't think much about that possibility, though. She still had much to set up with Shimmer, anyway. Before she could enter Ruby Pinch's room after having cleaned and returned Fluttershy's bucket, somepony that had been quiet for an unusually long time reported back again.

Why you no follow your heart?

Oh, tell me, what do you think about this mess, as that will probably be what I truly want?

Comparing options and weighing factors. We... are patient.

Make me not do the same pun again. Oh, it'd be so fitting!

Imagine if we had a creative talent, such as drawing. That'd suck. You can hardly make new puns.

Aw, great. Now you spoilered a plot element. Thanks for that, stupid.

But... I...

'But I'-ing won't help now. You just ruined the fun for everyone.

Sorry.

Midnight had great plans. Thus, after briefly stopping at home to refreshen herself, she went out again, ignoring her room mates' hidden snickers. She had somewhere to go and somepony to visit, even though she couldn't explain to save her life how any affection resulted from what had happened between them. After a little trot, she arrived at a standard house with no visible details that'd differ it from the others. She didn't really look, though. She was more interested in who was inside. After ringing, she had time for thinking about her situation.

Why exactly, pray tell, am I nervous?

Maybe because you're about to meet somepony you can imagine spending the rest of your life with?

After she ruined the part that has already happened. She owes me indefinitely. Nah. That's Fluttershy. She owes me indefinitely minus one.

"Uh, hehey, Midnight. What brings you here?"

She sighed. "Look, let's skip to business. You came begging for a second chance, you'll get it if you use it right. I'm free the next three days. I'm now accepting offers."

Shimmer was visibly taken aback by Midnight's directness, "Sure, I mean, um, tomorrow night? I know a fancy place for dinner."

"Great. When shall we meet?" Midnight made sure to exploit every opportunity to demonstrate her superiority, acting with complete certitude, even if it was just feigned. She wanted to hate that filly, but couldn't help feeling attracted to her. She felt reminded of Sparkle, who had put her into the same spot a few months earlier.

"Seven o'clock?"

"I accept. Don't bother coming to my house, even though you'll be paying for the foods, I'll come over."

When Midnight had already turned and was walking away, she heard Shimmer from behind. "Midnight? Thanks for forgiving me."

She gave her a politely restrained chuckle. "Who said anything about forgiving? I've given you a chance, better redeem yourself."