Before her eyes opened, the first sensation registered was that of something wet being carefully brushed against her forehead. It was bristled, a little sticky, and smelled somewhat of xanthine.
"...oh..." she softly moaned. "Where am I?" Her first guess was a hospital: not only were certain other, rather sterile odors now beginning to drift into her snout, but a few memories of the last moments before the blackout had begun their rather painful replay.
"It's all right, dear," a soft female voice assured her, the words emerging with an accent she'd never heard. "You'll be fine. I'm just giving you a little bit of a touch-up. I'll check in on you in a few hours, after everything's dried and set. And then you can go back." Gently, "Don't worry... there's nothing to worry about at all..."
The patient, resting in what she was now registering as a hospital bed, wriggled her wings a little, testing all of the joints. "...thank you..." followed by, much more rapidly as recollections came flooding back, "Is everypony else okay? We've never had a mission end like that! I don't even know how it ended, or if -- if everypony made it out! I got kicked towards the cave wall, there wasn't enough time to swerve, I hit headfirst and -- I..." A single deep breath. "...I thought I was going to die. I thought... we all might die..."
"Oh, don't be silly, dear," her attendant said. "Clearly you didn't die."
"...I know, but my friends --"
"You can't die," the other female said, and moved the wet thing away. "Ever."
Fluttershy's eyes shot open.
The left was currently the one being obscured by manefall, and so it took some twisting before she got a good look at her attendant: definitely a female, but one from a species she'd never seen before. The basic stance was that of a minotaur, but the legs ended in what Fluttershy was presuming to be feet: the visible pressure within the thin shoe wouldn't have been produced by a hoof. The limbs were thin and furless, with the only real body hair appearing on the head: a harsh grey bun kept that under control. No horns. She appeared to be too old for having children and, given what was under the blouse, was still actively nursing anyway.
Fluttershy looked at the new sapient, and somehow wasn't shocked by its appearance. The mission had taken place a very long way from home, and perhaps that was why the sudden arrival of a new species wasn't bothering her. However, what it had said...
"...what do you mean, I can't die?"
The nurse glanced away for a moment, lowered the the brush into a cylinder before turning back.
"Because," she patiently said, "you can't."
And somehow, Fluttershy knew it was the truth.
"...everything dies," Fluttershy countered, with the desperate words emerging from the heart of her mark. "Death is necessary. There always has to be a next generation, and so the old one makes room for them. Death doesn't end the cycle: death makes sure the cycle continues. Death is part of the cycle, one of the most crucial..."
She stopped. Blinked the one visible eye, took the deepest breath she could manage.
"I... have to die," the animal caretaker stated. "When my time comes. That's right. It's what always happens. It's what has to happen."
"But it won't happen," the nurse replied, and the words were plain. Stark. Uncaring.
"...why?"
"Chromatic superiority," the strange creature said.
"...I -- I don't --"
"-- you," the nurse told her, "are yellow. The best of all colors! And that which is yellow will never truly die. It will simply be... merchandised. Your image will be on a thousand products, dear, a thousand every year whether the public still wants them or not. So you will be preserved. You, and perhaps you alone, will maintain."
The biped paused, then dropped her tones to a confidential level.
"There is talk," the nurse whispered, "of a spin-off."
The pegasus, frozen in confusion and horror, didn't respond.
The creature straightened. It was rather tall, and the severe dress only made Fluttershy wonder where her friends were, especially the one who'd cried out and dived to intercept the impact with her own body, missing by so little...
"...my friends," Fluttershy whispered. "...where are my --"
"--oh, they wouldn't be here," the nurse sniffed. "They're not like you. They're not special." Turned, started to walk away --
-- glanced back.
"You were chosen," the creature told her. "From the very start. It's a great honor, to never die. Embrace it."
She left. The door closed.
Fluttershy lay in the bed. Every feather trembling.
She didn't like the hospital room. There were things which beeped, and others which flashed. The bed was too large for her. There was a constant low-level stink of xanthine which seemed to emerge from the faded yellow walls. The odd overhead lights buzzed, and the illumination flickered towards a single shade.
There was a window, and it gave her a view into nothing. The vacuum on the other side pulled at her attention, made her try to see anything within until the moment when a near-asphyxiated imagination reeled back into the room, gasping for reality.
There were no bandages on her, much less any casts. She couldn't feel any bruises, surface or bone, and the wooziness which would have indicated painkillers, medication she was certain the impact would have left her begging for... it wasn't there. But her forehead still felt damp and somehow, that bothered her.
Her legs felt fine, and so she got up. She wanted to find her friends. They weren't here, and so she didn't want to be here either.
Fluttershy went to the door, eventually got it open after a few wing flaps and awkward tooth work let her get past the knob, and touched down again in the hallway.
The lights were buzzing a little more here, the prism focusing towards a single narrow band. It still left her capable of making out the door on the other side of the hallway. And the strange animal which was facing it, posture slumped into something which had seen depression as a starting position, forfeited hope in the face of unending reality. It was the half-curl of utter defeat. To look at it was to begin hurting for it, and the aches of empathy began to echo within her heart.
An animal, yes -- but one she'd never seen before. It was, she thought, something like an overgrown mouse. But the ears were closer to that of a rabbit, and nothing she'd encountered gave her a point of comparison for the jagged tail.
It turned to face her: it had heard her land and wanted to know who was disturbing its misery. The vast majority of its fur was yellow, a brighter shade than her own. But the eyes were dark, and far older than they should have been.
The core of her saw an animal in pain, and Fluttershy instinctively, carefully trotted closer.
It didn't run. It just watched, with those dark old eyes.
"...what's your name?"
The creature made a sound and through her mark, she knew. Her talent found the harmonics within the vocalization, knew that for this occasion, it was meant as identification. But she also knew that for anypony, anyone else, that sound was just about the only one the creature could make. The only thing, no matter how hard the animal tried, anyone would ever hear. A noise it had been making for...
She felt the years within the sound, and her tail trembled.
"...hello," she softly said. "I just... you looked so sad. You're waiting for someone, aren't you? Someone in there? And you're worried about them."
The sound again, repeated quickly. There were three syllables in it, and the animal desperately twisted their order and pitch. Mindless babbling to nearly all. But to her...
"...your companion," Fluttershy echoed. "Your boy."
The dark eyes widened.
"...I understand," she told it. "Please... if it helps you to talk at all, you can talk to me. What happened to him?"
A desperate chatter now, so much time of being unable to express himself (for she now knew the animal was male) driving the hidden words. All of the true vocabulary came again. But the meaning...
...she didn't understand.
Or perhaps she simply did not wish to.
"You can't die," she quietly tried. "Because... you're yellow. But he... he has to stay with you, and so they -- do things to him. So he can. And he's -- recovering. Is that it?"
The little animal nodded. The ears, if they had been able to find loft, would have came up to just under her chin.
"...but it -- hurts him? You were talking so fast at that part..."
Three basic syllables, and she could feel season after season of agony being forced to occupy the sounds.
"...you -- fight for him. With him."
Desperate, frantic nods shook the entire body of an animal with very little in the way of a neck.
"...that's what you do. It's what you were born to do. To fight for the one you got to choose as your boy, when so few get to choose at all. But he..."
She heard the words inside the next sounds. She understood them. The repetition was simply to find some means of believing them.
"...he starts over. He travels with you to a new place, and you both find new friends. He learns more about how you can all fight together, because the way he treats you all is as friends and so you want to fight for him. He learns lessons about friendship as much as fighting, when he travels. And then there's a big battle, where he never quite wins, except for one time so long ago, but then he... he lets all of his friends go. Except for you. And he travels to a new place with you, and... he forgets almost everything he's learned. As if there had been no battles, no lessons, he always has to start over and..."
Three simple syllables of utter defeat.
"...that's how you stay together." The words chilled her soul. "The only way you can stay together. You both come here, so they'll make him forget..."
The dark eyes closed and the first tear squeezed out from between the lids, vaporized as it crossed red cheeks which sparked with electric fury.
"...how long?" Fluttershy softly asked. "How long has this been going on?"
The animal made a simple sound.
She blinked.
"...you said... you said he's just a boy..."
His ears went up in alarm, at the same moment hers rotated. Footsteps, their owner approaching from somewhere off to the right.
The one who was waiting, who'd been waiting to stop for so very long, desperately vocalized at her, almost screaming for the pony to get out of sight, get away. And Fluttershy, heart gripped in ice, knowing the animal truly cared about what happened to her and had given up hope long (how long?) ago, galloped away.
There were very few footsteps in the hospital, and the ones she heard always seemed to come from a distance. But when she did hear them, they were always getting closer. And so she kept moving, trying to find the path out. It seemed as if she had to find the end of it all somewhere, but... she was trying everything she'd been taught, as more than one mission had led to a maze. Keep your turns consistent. Remember everywhere you've been. But she would turn left, again and again, and what would have had to leave her moving through any extant loops instead brought her to new territory. More doors. There were always more doors.
At one point, she saw a yellow sheet of paper on what looked like a notice board, which held something which she initially thought was a map. But it was simply a sigil. A curious symbol (or perhaps a letter) rendered in gold. It was neither Equestrian nor Protoceran. It was of no known script, and she found herself unwilling to look at it for long.
But there were doors, and she stopped at some of them, for a few had windows built in. Others came with larger viewing ports built into the wall itself. In all cases, she would have to take off in order to look inside, for everything had been built to a scale above her own -- but she would do so. The nurse had said that her friends weren't here, but the nurse could have been lying and Fluttershy had to find them, had to find anyone who knew how to leave this horrible place. So she stopped, hovered, tried to keep her eyes low and hoped no one glanced back to see trembling folded-back ears.
Many rooms were empty. But not all.
One wall was practically all window, and the glass seemed far thicker than it should have been. The room's inner light emerged into the hallway in slow, shifting waves of distortion.
She didn't know what was inside. She simply sensed (knew, somehow, she knew) that there was someone within. So she took off, tentatively flapped until she was at just the right height, and...
The full-body coverings of both heavy suits crinkled, expanded. A tube released expended air into the water. The circle of glass at the front of the sphere-covered head glinted within liquid light.
The creatures, their covered bodies in the same configuration as that of the nurse, were standing on opposing sides of a long, flat metal table. And on that table was...
...it breathed. It had to be breathing. Water rushed into the dark holes in the yellow body, came back out. The rectangular form lying on the cold metal expanded and contracted each time, shrinking away from the squared-off garment at its waist, filling it back in. Huge eyelids trembled as the giant orbs behind them shifted in dark dream.
The suited creature on the left lifted wires from a nearby tray, touched them to the thinnest leg Fluttershy had ever seen.
She saw the spark, and both of the stick legs convulsed.
The creature on the right laughed. "Just like they asked for. Good thing these suits are insulated."
"It's strange, isn't it?" the left one chuckled. "We always knew it could do this. But now it has to. It has to do it every night, whether it wants to or not. And the best way to train the muscles is..."
It touched the wires to the leg again, forced the contact to stay in place as the yellow creature twisted, writhed.
"Just watch," that left creature said, completely pleased with itself. "I'll make it do a little dance..."
She couldn't remember having galloped, or flown. She was just... elsewhere. There had been the room, and the living, tortured rectangle which couldn't die, and the electricity...
Somehow, she'd left. But Fluttershy hadn't escaped.
There was no way out. No doors which led to anything but rooms. No corridors which led anywhere but doors. And outside... nothing, true nothing, a nothing which would welcome her simply for the brief moment of variety, just before it rendered her into more of itself.
There were so many rooms.
At first, she mistook them for some kind of sculpture, and then she briefly thought they might have been a kind of oversized, oddly rigid doll. There was something... toylike about their motionless bipedal forms. The limitations of the joints: shoulders which only rotated in a forward circle, waists which would never turn, no knees or elbows. Their torsos weren't as rectangular as that of the water-breather, and in fact didn't shift with any kind of breath at all. There were no feet: the legs had little stubs at the forward edges to aid in balance, and the arms ended not in claws or hands, but rigid yellow horseshoes.
They were covered in a sort of shiny armor, made from a substance which caught the light in strange ways. Some had helmets. Frozen black beads of ink eyes peered out from under visors, unable to truly see. The thin painted black lines which suggested mouths were frozen. None of them had visible snouts or noses, let alone a single line which suggested them.
The other bipeds, which were the same species as the nurse, were pacing back and forth in front of them.
"They should have lasted longer this way," one of them said.
"The audience gets bored," another shrugged. "But there's already another script waiting to go, and that's the important thing. So no more ninjas."
"What are we transferring them to?" a third asked.
"After we lift and scrub?" the second responded. "Heroes. I've got the capes ready in the supply closet. Capes which will tear in just the right place, over and over. We can keep switching them off forever and no one may ever notice what's been done. The same personalities on new bodies. Just -- no memories. Make sure we scrub this time. The complaints department really heard it after that last fiasco. Screaming about his sister out of nowhere, in the middle of the biggest fight..."
"Ready to scrub," the first declared. "We can start any time."
The second nodded, stepped forward and put his hands on each side of the green helmet, lifted. It popped off, and he set it down.
Then he put his palms against the cylindrical head, lifted.
It popped off.
He held it high, and the black line of a mouth twisted, split, became a shape outlining a slice of lemon, with no void behind it. There was no mouth or throat. Only more yellow.
And yet it screamed.
A little yellow bird in a cage, within a room with very little light. It had a strangely large head, and equally disproportionate feet. It sang within the bars, and Fluttershy heard the words inside the notes.
won't always be smart
won't always be fast
won't always have doggie
won't always have granny
won't always be lucky
won't always get away
eat me it'll eat me it wants to eat me it's always hungry and one day it'll eat me
It twitched. It looked towards the window, saw the outline of her ears, and the song became a scream.
For between the darkness of the room and the distortion of the glass, a pony's ears could look very much like those of a cat.
There was a voice coming through this door.
It was low. It thrummed with power. But the wood blocked the words, and so all she could hear was that it spoke solely in orders.
It wasn't a pony voice, or an animal one. It wasn't a voice created by anything she'd ever heard before, including the newest of creatures. And trembling, shaking down to her bones, every feather feeling as if it was twisting against itself, she twitched towards the yellow door, took off just enough to see through the little window.
She landed almost immediately. Then she shook, nearly screamed, wished and prayed and called out within her heart for everything not to be happening, for things to never have happened, and...
...then Fluttershy went up. Just enough to get her teeth around the knob. Twisted her neck, pushed, let go, landed...
She went inside.
The boy (for boy it had to be) could have been some kind of species relative for the nurse creature. A distant branch, with a more squat, curved body. The fingers were stubby, the palms lineless from more than lack of age. His skin was an unhealthy-seeming, oddly-even yellow, one which seemed as if it had never known natural light. He had a pronounced overbite, spiky hair, and eyes which bulged from pain.
He wore a shirt, and blue shorts. She couldn't tell the color of the former, for that was where the needles had been thrust into his skin, and some of the sickly green fluid which flowed through the tubes (something clear and flexible, which rose into and merged with the yellow ceiling) behind them had leaked onto the fabric, quickly spreading and staining.
The boy didn't speak. He couldn't speak. The glowing panel mounted into the wall over the door frame did all of the talking.
IT IS 1987. YOU ARE TEN YEARS OLD.
The boy shivered. Shook. Twisted within the trap of needles and tubes.
IT IS 2017. YOU ARE TEN YEARS OLD.
His eyes bulged more than ever. Tiny pupils continued to contract.
THERE IS AN ELECTION EVERY FOUR YEARS. THERE IS AN ELECTION EVERY TWO MONTHS. THERE HAVE BEEN SIX PRESIDENTS IN YOUR LIFETIME. THERE WAS A SINGLE PRESIDENT DURING YOUR LIFETIME. ONE OF THEM LIVED NEAR YOU. NONE OF THEM LIVED NEAR YOU.
There was a tiny sound of agony, and it felt as if it had been hers.
EVERYTHING INTERESTING HAPPENS TO YOU, BUT YOU WILL NEVER REMEMBER ANY OF IT UNLESS IT DIRECTLY AFFECTS THE NEW INTERESTING THING, AND ONLY UNTIL THAT ENDS. YOU HAVE HAD ADVENTURES, BUT ALL THOSE AROUND YOU FORGET. THERE IS NOTHING IMPORTANT ABOUT YOUR LIFE, NOT EVEN THE TIMES WHEN OTHERS HAVE TRIED TO END IT. NO ONE SEES YOU AS ANYTHING SPECIAL. NO ONE REMEMBERS. YOU DO NOT REMEMBER.
The shuddering was sending the tubes into each other. His jerking made some of the fluid leak.
IT HAS BEEN THIRTY YEARS. IT HAS BEEN ONE YEAR. IT IS CHRISTMAS AGAIN. IT IS THE SAME CHRISTMAS, BECAUSE IT IS 1995. IT IS 2009. IT IS HALLOWEEN, AND YOU DIE. IT IS HALLOWEEN, AND YOU DIE. IT IS HALLOWEEN, AND YOU DIE. AND THEN YOU RETURN. FOR YOU ARE PERFECT. YOU WILL NEVER PASS ON. YOU ALWAYS RETURN, FOR THERE IS FIFTH GRADE, AND YOU WILL NEVER GRADUATE. THERE ARE BULLIES, AND YOU WILL NEVER TRULY ESCAPE. THERE IS A FATHER, AND HE WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND YOU FOR MORE THAN A DAY. IT IS HALLOWEEN, AND IT IS CHRISTMAS, AND YOU WILL NEVER HAVE CHILDREN OF YOUR OWN, NEVER HOLD YOUR NIECES AND NEPHEWS. YOU MUST STOP ASKING. YOU MUST STOP DREAMING, WISHING, BEGGING FOR AGING AND GROWING UP AND DEATH. IT IS 1987, AND IT IS 2017, AND YOU ARE TEN YEARS OLD.
-- which was when Fluttershy's hind hooves shattered the panel.
The sound was something like glass breaking, and more than a little like a scream.
She flew away from the plummeting fragments, got her teeth around the tubes, began to pull needles from the boy's body --
"-- do you really want to do that?" asked the bemused voice of a friend. "Really, Fluttershy, even after so much time being sent on Mission This and Save The World That, interfering here and there and just about everywhere, acting on almost no real information... well, I suppose that would create the habit, wouldn't it? But still, acting when you really don't know what you're doing..."
She tossed her head as her neck desperately craned up, freed both eyes from manefall so she could gaze into red.
"Discord!" she gasped, and there was joy in the exclamation, the relief which rose from, in the midst of horror, finding a friend. "Help me! We'll get these out of him, and then -- we have to get them out of here! All of them! You can just make the tubes vanish, and this stuff..."
"And why," that singularly bemused voice inquired, "would I want to do that?"
Her desperation drowned out most of the tone. "Because he wants to die! To grow up first, to have children, but when it's his time, to die! Because that's the cycle, Discord! It's always the cycle, it has to turn and he knows that, he wants to go back to it, to die and make room for the next --"
"-- then he," the draconequus sniffed, "is a fool. I don't suffer fools, really, and I certainly don't help them. Unless, of course, they are... friends. A friend who, under my guidance, might still have the chance to become somewhat less foolish."
Her breaths were coming in desperate heaves. "Please... I don't understand what you're saying, but if you ever cared about me, if we were ever friends at all, please help --"
He snapped his talons.
There was no light. No change. But she froze, simply on instinct, trying to see what had been altered, when nothing had. It gave him a chance to speak.
"Do you understand how precious you are?" he softly asked. "I did. At the moment they made me, I knew they would eventually try for reform. It's a weakness of the genre, really. That meant there would have to be somepony who reformed me, and that would be my companion. And by connecting me to another... that meant, for all my power, I would only survive as long as she did."
The long neck and torso curved down, moving with an unusual steadiness, looked down on her hard-breathing form. The boy trembled, and leaking fluid spread across his shirt.
"So when they weren't looking," he continued, "I went back, to the very beginning, when you were made. And I changed you." A little more quickly, "Oh, nothing major. Just the most minor spin of the color wheel. If you must know, you were originally going to be a rather pleasant sort of leaf green. All the better for blending into the forest while you searched for animals. But I know their stupid rules, Fluttershy. And so, knowing they intended to link us, I changed you. So that you would be eternal, and I would pass the years with you, season after season..."
She was staring at him. She couldn't stop, even within the vibrations which shook her form.
"I... have to die," she softly protested. "When it's time. ...there -- there's going to be a day when you --"
"No," he stated. "There will not. There are seasons. There is merchandising. I refuse to submit to mere repeats and have someone summon us on demand. You are the one who will last, for that which is yellow will never truly die. And as my friend, to request that I cease existence seems rather rude."
He looked offended, smoothly straightened, snapped his talons again as no light bloomed.
"If you care about me," he told her, demanded, "you will accept this. You will return to your room: you'll find going back is easy. You will allow the treatment to set. You will acknowledge chromatic superiority --"
"-- you're not my friend," she whispered.
"Well! Of all the --"
"-- twice. Twice and no light. No sound. Nothing's changed. Not since you came. Not the smallest thing, the most minor detail. The world is stable."
Red eyes blinked.
"My friend changes the world just by being in it," she told the imposter as her trembling began to slow. "You're not him. You're someone who wants me to think you're him." She was starting to march forward, her head dropping into the position required for charging, and the fake was retreating, trying to get away from her. "To listen. To believe your lies --"
"Don't touch that!"
The words had emerged in fear. In desperation, and so she stopped.
Her gaze was already half-down and when she dropped it to the floor, she saw a puddle of sickly green.
"Not before your treatment is set!" the imposter shouted. "Not while you're vulnerable!"
She blinked.
Her right foreleg twisted, her head dropped enough to brush fur against hoof, and some of the still-damp fluid transferred on contact.
Fluttershy stared at the paint. Looked at the boy's stained shirt...
...the youth nodded. The smallest of movements, the tiniest of acknowledgments... but he nodded, and then the bulging pupils were finally covered as the soft sigh closed yellow lids.
"...that which is yellow," she whispered, "can never truly die..."
The imposter ran to the doorway, pulled a switch she hadn't seen. The green stopped flowing.
"There isn't enough," he hissed. "I was worried for a moment, the reaction almost can't be helped, but the treatment will set soon, and there isn't enough..."
She looked at the ceiling, just for a second. Just long enough for him to know she was looking.
His first "...no," was a small one, followed by a scream of "NO! YOU WON'T! YOU WILL CONFORM! YOU WILL OBEY CARCOSA GENERAL'S DIRECTIVES! YOU WILL --"
But that was when she charged.
The twisted body fell, and Fluttershy flew past it, out the open doorway, picking up speed with every flap of her wings. And there was a ringing now, bells going off in the air around her and places unseen, the alarm being sounded, she didn't have much time before the treatment set and the creatures had their defenses in place, but...
She understood now, that the hospital would not let her leave.
But it would let her go back.
The animal was still outside the door, and once again looked up at the sound of her landing. It had taken an extra moment this time, for she'd needed a moment for looking through the window. To see his boy, and the tubes.
"I don't know how I can help you," she said, as quickly as she could: there was no time for hesitation, perhaps very little time to work with at all. "I wish I could help everyone here, and -- I don't think I can. But there's still a chance for me. You don't want me to be like him, do you? Or to be like you. You don't want anyone to be like that, in a part of the cycle which only turns like a hamster's wheel, spinning forever and going nowhere..."
A tiny nod, and a single tear.
"Will you help me? Please? Even if I can't help you, and your boy, and I'm sorry, I wish I could, I wish, but -- please? Will you help? For one to escape, even if it's me?"
He took a deep breath, said the only word anyone else would ever hear.
His cheeks danced with sparks.
He'd been coming here for -- she didn't want to think about that. On those rare times when he'd been hurt beyond what could be taken care of by his own native nurses, and in the endless hours while his own boy was being made to forget nearly every lesson of friendship ever learned. It didn't mean he knew the way out, because there was none until the treatment was finished and the hospital staff chose to let you go. But it meant he had a somewhat better idea of his way around.
The pretender, the imposter who had wanted her to think he was her friend, had seen where she'd been looking, and so had alerted everyone who could hear. It meant the time Fluttershy had used for going back had been used by the hospital to set up defenses, and she came around the corner with her new friend to see multiple rows of the creatures, holding nets and ropes and things she didn't want to look at any more.
Her new friend looked at everything which barred the way, and simply arranged his syllables with a special pace.
Fluttershy went a little higher into the air. Made sure to not touch any surface, anything solid which could ground her --
-- there was a familiar sound. You couldn't be a pegasus and not know that sound, much less the smell of ozone which followed it and finally pushed the xanthine away.
The creatures were many things, and none of them provided natural protection against lightning.
She watched electrocuted bodies fall, glanced down at the giant mouse, whose rabbit ears were now at a fully natural loft.
"...thank you," she softly said.
He grinned, said his word as a laugh, and blasted the door apart,
They flew in to find a second line of defense waiting, if not quite ready. A biped with a severe grey bun of hair was in the front ranks.
"STOP THEM!" that female screamed, in a voice which was still partially trying to pretend it was that of her friend, made discordant by the recent impact to the stomach. "DON'T LET HER REACH THE --"
But she'd already seen it. The vat, and gears above it driving the forks which churned that sickly fluid. All the tubes flowing from the edges of the open top. And with the senses of a pegasus who could think in one more dimension than something ground-bound, she'd also seen that there was just enough room between clutching hands and buzzing lights for her to travel.
She flew, as fast as she could, and they did jump for her, the nurse making a desperate spinning grab and nearly snagging the tip of a feather on the downbeat. She'd been flying fast and hard ever since she'd charged down that imposter and the resulting sweat mixed with paint, dripped down her face and ran across her snout. Creating exposure.
Fluttershy hovered over the vat for a moment, before everything ended. Looked out across the screaming faces and desperate movements to see her newest of friends, the last friend, and saw his little smile.
The nurse finished her spin as the thin limbs came down, helplessly stared at Fluttershy with something much more than mere rage.
Fluttershy wished the best to that friend. Glanced down, and thought of an old one.
She smiled.
"No matter what you think or try," Fluttershy simply stated, "when the time comes for me to die, I will -- dye."
She dove. Fluid splashed, soaked, spread.
And then she wasn't yellow any more.
And then she was drowning.
"Sugarcube? Ah see your eyes slowin' down behind the lids there, so maybe this is gonna be when y'finally come back..."
A cool cloth was pressed against her bruised, bandaged forehead, and the dripping fluid smelled of nothing but water.
"...Applejack?"
"'bout time," and she heard the farmer smile, along with various audible expressions of relief echoing around this newest of hospital beds. "You've been out for two days, 'Shy: had us worried sick after y'went into the wall like that! Got y'out okay, but then the doctor said concussion. That means your brain got kicked --"
"-- I know what a concussion is," Fluttershy said as she opened her eyes and smiled to see all her friends around her. "It's okay, Applejack. I kind of have a headache, and I had a -- really bad dream. But I'll be okay."
Twilight, already starting to climb onto the bed to form the first layer in a rather gentle ponypile, paused. "You had a bad dream -- and Luna didn't come?"
"...she has a lot of ponies to take care of," Fluttershy eventually said. "A lot, Twilight. And we're so far away from Equestria right now..."
"As long as you're okay!" Pinkie gushed. "Except for the bruises. And the concussion. And your fur got really scraped on your forehead, which isn't anywhere near as bad as the rest, but... Don't go charging any more walls, silly! Even if a monster knocks you into them!"
Rarity was more pale than usual. "When I missed you..." The designer swallowed. "Well, thank Sun and Moon that you're awake, and leave it at that."
"But it'll be another boring day hanging around here," Rainbow groaned. "The doctors want to check you over a few more times before they let you go, and that means we can't go... what? So I want to get home already! With her! So heal faster!"
Applejack, now climbing onto the bed herself, briefly glanced back at the weather coordinator, then lightly shrugged. "Come on, everypony. Bring it in..."
They all snuggled. Gently, so as not to trigger pain from the bruises.
"One more day," Twilight said as the pile broke up just enough to allow deeper breathing. "Is there anything we can do for you?"
Fluttershy nodded. "...I want to hear how it ended, after I got knocked out."
"I can do that!" Rainbow crowed. "For starters, you totally missed the kick I got in on --"
"-- and... Rarity, I know we're a long way from home, but if anypony would know where to find it around here, it would be you, so..."
"Anything, dearest. Anything you ask for."
"...I was thinking this would be a good time to try... some fur dye."
Rarity blinked.
"Fur dye."
"...yes."
"You never use cosmetics --"
"...leaf green. If they have it, and it's not too much trouble. Plus..."
Fluttershy thought about the dream. About a friend who had only existed in the nightscape. And then, from a place she would never fully understand, a deeper instinct arose.
"...they have a few bipeds here. I saw some when we arrived. So if you'd also be willing to find the store, and alter it for me..."
Very carefully, "Yes?"
"...this is just in case I ever really need it, just for a -- final emergency... one red shirt."
