Pain.

As Chrys slowly and torturously clawed his way back to consciousness, the only thing he could feel was pain. He couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t detect anything with his vampiric senses. His ears were filled with tinnitus, which, for a thestral, was agonizing.

He tried to moan, but couldn’t open his mouth. He felt warm liquid trickling down the side of his face, and coughed.

He felt something prick the crook of his elbow, and something cool flowed through his veins as blissful darkness overtook him again.

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After an indeterminable period, he woke again.

The ringing in his ears had disappeared and he could sense a few muted body signatures nearby, but above all else, he wasn’t in agony anymore.

In fact, now that the all-consuming agony had abated, he could feel something made of cloth resting over his eyes.

He reached up to pull the rather irritating item off, but as he raised his arm another cold trickle entered his system and he once again sank into unconsciousness a second time.

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At long last, after what seemed like an eternity of nothingness, Chrysanthemum woke up for good.

The obstruction was still over his eyes, but when he tried again to lift his arm and remove it, he found that the appendage was restrained.

Now that he was awake and relatively lucid, he noticed that all of his limbs were strangely numb. He also processed that he was lying on a bed of some sort with a thin and totally inadequate blanket over his lower body. His nose was filled with the sharp odor of hospital disinfectant and stale blood.

His ears perked up as he tried to determine more about his surroundings, but his hearing hadn’t fully recovered yet, and he heard nothing.

He suddenly realized that his throat was parched and coughed weakly. No sooner had the sound left his lips than he heard the rapid clicking of hard-soled shoes on a tile floor approaching.

“Lieutenant Colonel Chrysanthemum?” Asked a breathy, anxious voice.

“That’d be me,” he said in a hoarse whisper, then frowned. His voice sounded strangely metallic to his ears, “Wh-where am I?”

“Canterlot General Hospital,” replied the voice, “You’ve been in an induced coma for two weeks.”

“Are-?” He coughed again, “How are my men? Did they make it out okay?”

“I-I’m afraid I don’t know, sir,” the voice said timidly, “I’m just a nurse… But I can get someone who would know, if you’d like.”

“Please,” he rasped, “And could I get a drink? My throat’s bone dry.”

“Of course,” said the nurse. There was a rustling noise, and then Chrys felt a rubber nipple pressed against his lips.

“Thank you,” he said, and began sucking on the nipple. To his delighted surprise it was filled, not with water, but with mango juice. It seemed that someone had gone to the extra trouble to provide him with the thestral delicacy.

“You’re welcome,” the nurse replied, then there was the clicking of shoes as she hurried away.

Chrys drank his fill from the tube. The mango juice, while still delicious, was lukewarm and had a distinct plasticky taste from what he assumed was the bag it was stored in.

As he drank, he let his mind wander.

He found it rather strange that his limbs were so numb, but he had an inkling as to the cause. One simply did not walk away from a point-blank artillery blast in one piece.

He also wondered why there was a cloth over his eyes. His best guess was that the superheated gas from the explosion had seared his eyes and required surgery to fix. He’d heard stories of similar cases and knew that recovery could take several months in that situation. A little longer than he would have liked, but ultimately not an insurmountable obstacle.

The sound of approaching footsteps interrupted his thoughts and he hastily spat out the tube.

“Mister Chrysanthemum?” Asked a male voice, “How are you feeling?”

“Well enough,” he replied, “What happened? How did we get out of there? How are my men?”

The doctor shifted slightly, and Chrys sensed his blood pressure spike through his strangely muted vampiric senses.

“Well, what do you remember?”

He thought for a moment, trying to recall as much as he could about what had happened.

“We were retreating to the dropships,” he said slowly, frowning as he tried to recall all the details, “The Dogs were WAY better prepared than we expected, and routed us. I remember we had almost made it… But then a shell went off practically in my face and I got knocked out.

There was a soft grunt and a creaking noise that suggested the doctor had taken a seat before continuing, “Well, after you were incapacitated…”

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“MAN DOWN!” Staff Sergeant Lifeblood shouted, running back to where Chrysanthemum had fallen, “COVER ME!”

As the medic rushed to the stricken commander, Terminus swung around and emptied the remainder of his magazine into the oncoming Earthers before rushing to help Lifeblood.

Behind him, Lance Corporal Caster ran up to the pilot.

“HANG ON!” She shouted, shaking his shoulder, “WE HAVE A MAN DOWN! WE HAVE TO GET HIM!”

The pilot turned to her, fear etched into his face. “To hell with that! I have to take off! That artillery’s getting too close!”

As he spoke, another shell landed so close that the entire dropship was rocked by the detonation.

Caster reached down onto her belt and drew her M9 sidearm, racking the slide and jamming it roughly into the pilot’s neck and grabbing a fistfull of his hair.

“YOU KEEP THIS FUCKING SHIP ON THE GROUND OR I’LL BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF!” She screamed into his ear.

He let out a startled yelp and raised his hands off the control stick.

Outside, Terminus grabbed Chrysanthemum’s mangled body and slung him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

“I got ‘im!” He shouted in a deep voice with a thick Shetland accent, “Let’s git oot’a ‘ere!”

He began sprinting back to the dropship, stumbling ever so slightly as a few low-caliber rounds from Dog pistols slammed into his back plates. Behind him, he heard Lifeblood shout profanities that he didn’t realize the kindhearted medic had in her as she returned fire with her sidearm.

He raised a hand to shield his eyes as the dirt kicked up by the first dropship lifting off slammed into his face through his visor, which had been shattered by a stray bullet and in the process had saved his life.

He made it to their dropship with Lifeblood not too far behind, and set his wounded friend in before turning and drawing his .44 Magnum Baby Deagle pistol.

“See what ye c’n do fer ‘im!” He told Lifeblood.

She nodded and knelt down beside Chrys, doing her best to stabilize him. It wasn’t easy, though. Both his legs had been blasted off at the knees, both arms were horrendously mangled by shrapnel, and his face looked like more like two pounds of hamburger than anything else.

Up in the cockpit, Caster holstered her sidearm and shouted, “GET US THE HELL OUTTA HERE!”

The pilot immediately complied, jamming the throttles for the dropship’s four massive engines to their stops and hauling up on the control stick. The dropship cleared the ground just as a shell that would have destroyed them whizzed underneath, so close that the casing actually sparked against the hull.

In the passenger area, Terminus spotted a hostile with a rocket launcher trying to target them.

He reached down and grabbed his last frag grenade. Using a special hook on the side of his helmet, he pulled the pin before hurling the grapefruit-sized orb as hard as he could.

The grenade landed practically in the rocketeer’s lap and the poor Earther only had time to glance down before it went off.

Suddenly, the dropship that had taken off before them erupted into an oily fireball as a shell scored a direct hit on the aircraft’s fuel tanks.

“FUCK!” He roared, pounding on the doorframe and watching helplessly as the burning wreckage fell to the ground.

Lifeblood glanced up briefly before returning to her work. She had managed to stop the bleeding from Chrys’s legs and arms, but she hadn’t known what to do with his face. In the end she had covered it with sterile gauze and hoped that they reached some doctors SOON.

Up near the front, Caster crawled into the starboard side point-defense gun. However, it soon proved unnecessary, as all three Wonderbolt fighters fell in beside them. Even flying backward to cover the ship’s vulnerable rear, they were more than able to keep pace with the slow-moving transport ship.

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“Your comrades landed at Ponyville General Hospital to get you stable in addition to getting themselves looked at, and you were transferred here shortly after for advanced care.”

Chrys bit his lip and nodded.

It pained him to hear that the other dropship had been shot down. His close friend, and one of the founding members of HADES, First Lieutenant Breakdown had been among those on board. The two of them had been buddies ever since boot, and Chrys had been one of the groomsmen at his wedding. A few weeks ago, the two of them had been discussing things, and Breakdown had mentioned that he had a daughter on the way, and was considering retiring after he finished his tour of duty.

To distract himself from those thoughts, he cleared his throat and asked the doctor, “What about my injuries?”

The doctor’s blood pressure jumped up, and Chrys could sense his nervousness.

“Both your legs were amputated by the blast, and we were unable to save your arms. Your left arm was amputated a few inches below the elbow, and your right arm was amputated a few inches above.”

Forestalling Chrys’s question, the doctor added, “However, a company called Rhaudor Advanced Medicine recently opened a branch in Equestria, and they offer a special Wounded Warrior deal. All four of your limbs were replaced with top-of-the-line bionics at no cost to you.”

There was the sound of shuffling papers, before the doc continued, “Let’s see here… Ah. RAM Mk. 3 bionics. They offer a full natural range of motion and even have an artificial nervous system to give the user a sense of touch. We installed them yesterday, and the artificial nervous system takes three days to properly sync with the user’s brain.”

“So that’s why my arms and legs feel so numb,” Chrys muttered, “Huh. That’s actually really cool.”

“Unfortunately,” the doc sighed, “that was all the good news.”

There was the sound of the doctor shifting in his seat, and Chrys felt a knot of worry begin to form in his gut.

“The explosion threw shrapnel into your face, and… You must understand, we did everything in our power, but your injuries were just too severe…”

The doctor’s hesitation only made the worry crystallize into fear, and he said shakily, “What are you saying, doctor?”

Chrys heard the doctor swallow, before saying, “Mister Chrysanthemum, I’m sorry, but we were unable to save your eyes. You are blind and as such, I’m afraid your military career is over.”

Author's Note

This chapter was very difficult for me to write given my near-nonexistent medical knowledge and lack of experience in the hospital. Actually, that's not entirely accurate. I should say that I lack knowledge of how a doctor would deliver such news to such a badly injured patient.

I may make another editing pass in a few days, just to clear up any issues. If you find any mistakes or have a way to potentially improve the chapter overall, please leave a comment down below. Constructive criticism is creator's Lifeblood (*rimshot*).

This is Lord-of-Rhodor signing off for now, and wishing you a nice day.

SEEYA!