Steel's Chapter Dump

“D…dead…?” Rarity whispers, looking from Twilight to Fluttershy’s shivering, sobbing form, to the Pegasus under her; Rainbow Dash, Equestria’s greatest flyer, the invincible Pegasus who would fight dragon and villain in order to protect her friends…dead from a flying accident? “But…how could she…how did she hurt herself this badly…?”

“I-I don’t know! She’s hit things far harder than a wooden roof or floor! She’s run full force into a CLIFF FACE and come out completely unscathed!” Twilight shakes her head, trying to process the situation. She’s crashed and flown into so many hard objects, that her skeleton had to have been made of STEEL in order to survive it all! Did she just get unlucky?

“We have to get her to a hospital, have her checked properly!” Rarity blurts out, a weak smile growing on her face, as if Rainbow will simply shrug this off like she’s always done.

“I…I…I ch-checked…myself…” Fluttershy speaks up between sobs, immediately grabbing the attention of the two unicorns beside her. She looks up, cheeks damp and eyes bloodshot, the waterworks still cleanly flowing. “She…she…” A hiccup interrupts her sentence as she looks back to Rainbow.

“Agh…look, we have to get her to a hospital. I know you have medical training, Fluttershy, but it’s best we just get the official word from a doctor,” Twilight says with a grimace as she picks up Rainbow’s slack form with her magic, shivering as she sees it move. “This…really doesn’t feel right…”

“Come, dear, we need to get a diagnosis. We may still be able to…well…get her heart started again, maybe?” Rarity makes her own grimace, moving over to the door. “We have to hurry though.”

“I think I can teleport us there, just let me focus…come over here,” Twilight beckons with a hoof as Fluttershy and Rarity close in. She lays Rainbow’s body on the floor a few inches from her hoof, and focuses. “C’mon…” She whispers, an image appearing in her mind; a hospital reception room, chairs lining the walls of the small room, a desk in the back with a door off to the right leading into the hospital proper. Her horn sparks up and envelops the room in a near blinding light, and with a crack and the suck of a vacuum, the group is gone.

The next thing the group sees as they come back into the world is several very shocked ponies looking at them, the receptionist behind the desk seeming the most surprised. He blinks a few times, staring at the group. “Usually, ponies use the front door…” He says with a bored tone, rubbing his hoof against the stubble on his chin. Twilight rushes up to the desk and stares the brown-coated Earth Pony straight in the eyes, panic possessing her like a demon.

“Listen! We need a doctor, NOW! My friend is in cardiac arrest and we need help!” She shouts, receiving a blank stare with a few blinks from the stallion in front of her, “NOW STOP STARING AT ME AND MOVE!”

“Y-Yes ma’am!” He says with a salute before throwing himself over the desk and heading through the white double doors on the right side of the room. Shouting comes through the shut doors before a doctor comes through the door, two nurses at his sides. Twilight looks at his forehead to see a horn; good, a Unicorn, treatment tends to be faster with them.

“Where’s the patient?” He says in a calm tone, betraying the worry written on his face, before he looks around the room, locking on the prone form of Rainbow Dash. “Nurse Breeze, get the Pegasus on the gurney and into the ER! Nurse Summer, come with me and we’ll set up the room!”

“Right, Doctor!” The Nurses reply as they go to their work, Breeze running over and picking up Dash with her hooves before hefting her onto her back. The Doctor and Nurse Summer run down the hall as Breeze carries Dash over to the gurney, placing the slack Pegasus onto it and pushing it down the hall with surprising speed.

“C’mon!” Twilight shouts as she follows the medical team, Rarity and Fluttershy looking to each other before registering that they’re meant to be running after the lavender unicorn, and not sitting there enjoying the scenery. They both dash down the hall, weaving around corners, trying to keep Twilight in their line of sight, while she tries to do the same with the Doctor and his assistants. “Grrr…great time to not be as fit as you can be, Twilight…those three are fast!”

She skids to a stop outside a room with double doors, but these lack windows, unlike the doors leading into the hospital area in the reception room. A red light blinks on over her head, and the clang of tumblers in the doors signal that the room’s been sealed off. “…Well…it’s in their hooves now…” She grimaces with a twinge of guilt for not being in there before the doors locked, when Fluttershy rounds the corner and slams right into her. “OOF!”

“AH!” The Pegasus squeaks as she gives her wings a flap, moving up off the tumbling Unicorn and crashing into the floor six feet away. “Ohhh…ow…”

“Fluttershy…you’ve got to look where you’re going…ngh, my head…!” Twilight rubs her forehead, now having a headache on top of her twisted stomach and tornado of negative emotions.

“Oh! I’m sorry!” Fluttershy says as she comes into Twilight’s view, a sigh coming from neither of them.

“Ladies…this is a hospital. We shouldn’t be running, let alone crashing into each other,” Rarity comes into the bottom of Twilight’s view, offering a hoof to help her up. Twilight takes it, getting up into a sitting position, and she places her left hoof on her temple, drawing slow circles to try and soothe the pain as she looks at the door. “Did you see anything?”

“The doors locked before I could get a good look. I know about as much as you do right now…” Twilight lowers her hoof, looking down at the ground. What kind of injury could Rainbow have suffered to put her in such a state? Broken neck, concussion, heavy impact sending her brain on a roller coaster ride in her skull…what else?

“Fluttershy, you checked Rainbow, didn’t you? Did you find anything out of the ordinary?” Rarity interrupts Twilight’s train of thought, Twilight stumbling over an answer before turning to Fluttershy, the question being aimed at her. Fluttershy simply blinks in response before looking at the ground, drawing a slow circle in the ground. “Fluttershy, you have to speak to us…”

“I…she…” Fluttershy simply shivers, trying to assemble a coherent sentence that would at least half-answer the question, but nothing representing a solid train of thought could fight its way through the storm of despair currently clouding her mind. She simply squeaks before looking away from the pair.

“Guess we’re going to have to wait for the doctor,” Twilight groans. Nothing about this is right…not even what she’s feeling right now. Her friend is, for all she knows, DEAD, and all she can do is take an analytical approach to what injury she could’ve sustained? “Get your mind out of it, Twilight…” She whispers to herself, starting to feel alienated by her own thoughts.

“Shall we head back to the reception area then…?” Rarity asks the pair, both of them pulling their eyes off the floor to look at the white unicorn. They exchange a glance before nodding, and the trio starts their slow, uneventful walk back to the reception area.

The next half hour drifts by in complete silence, the ponies preferring to sit away from each other, despite the occurrence. Despair seemed to hang over Fluttershy’s head like a terrible thunderhead, while simple confusion turned Twilight’s mind into a hurricane; Rarity seemed to sit between them in mentality, unable to tell how she should feel. Even the other ponies in the room seem weighed down by the atmosphere, a single look at Fluttershy own pathetically saddened eyes being enough to crush your own soul.

A glorious break in the silence comes with the doctor stumbling into the room, looking as if he’d just seen something that doesn’t seem to work; a puzzle piece that seems part of the bigger picture, but it just doesn’t fit with its brethren in the design. He clears his throat, looking over at the trio who brought him his mystery patient, “Er…i-if you three could come with me, please?”

“Of course,” Rarity quickly answers, hopping off her seat and walking up to the doctor. Fluttershy and Twilight quietly follow her example, and the four head back into the hospital proper.

“Now, if I’m right, you three are Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, and Fluttershy, correct?” The doctor turns his head, his accent a note of Canterlot’s higher style of living, as he heads left down a hall.

“Yes, we are,” Twilight nods in confirmation.

“And the Pegasus you brought me is a Miss Rainbow Dash?”

“That’s right.”

“I apologize for not knowing you beforehoof, I’m a new transfer from Canterlot, and I’ve always been more tied up in my medical terminology than the goings on of celebrities. The only thing I heard about Discord’s defeat was how he went down, the names never stuck. My name is Sye Ringe, most of the ponies here simply call me ‘Doc’,” Doc says with a quick nod and a smile, before it fades into the more serious look used by doctors with a lot on their shoulders.

“Pleasure to meet you, Doctor Inge. Have you found anything out with Rainbow?” Twilight asks, bracing herself for the answer.

“That…seems to be the problem. Miss Dash has suffered no surface, muscular or skeletal injuries; her spine, skull and brain are all in perfect shape. How did she end up here?”

“She…crashed through the roof of my shop, and we found her there. Fluttershy was the first to check on her, but couldn’t tell us anything…Twilight said her heart wasn’t beating, so we brought her here,” Rarity says, looking over at Fluttershy, whose eyes seem locked to the floor.

“I see…well, I can tell you now that she didn’t suffer from any injury related to a broken neck. For everything that we’ve checked…she shouldn’t be in this state at all,” Doc grimaces as he speaks. “I’ve never seen a case like this in the past, where the patient simply enters cardiac arrest for no reason at all. I’ve still to see her medical record, but a quick look over her body revealed that she is quite fit and healthy.”

“It’s confusing us just as much, Doctor,” Twilight says, wearing a serious look to cover up the derailing trains of thought in her head. She wasn’t injured in the accident? Her heart still stopped, randomly at that! Was she doing something in secret? Drinking? No, that’s not like her at all…

“My staff are currently drawing blood for a test…that said, where are they?” Doc stops in his tracks, looking down the hall. “Around the corner is the ER…they should have run past us by now…”

“You don’t have the equipment in the operating room?” Twilight asks, walking up to his side.

“No, the equipment is too large to move from room to room, so we have a central lab where we perform our tests. It’s all within walking distance of the numerous holding areas and operating rooms. What are those two doing…?” Doc furrows his brow and moves forward, rounding one last corner before coming to the door that separated Twilight and her friend before, the red light above it now off. He pushes the door open, seeing the two Nurses staring back at him. “Both of youl Why haven’t you-“

“Doc! We-We’ve got a problem!” Nurse Breeze blurts out, empty syringe in hoof. She looks like she just saw a ghost!

“A problem? What do you mean?” Doc asks as he walks over, the nurse whispering to him. He quickly nods, looking back over at the trio. “Did you see any blood when you found Miss Dash?”

“N-No, we didn’t. Why?” Twilight blinks. Why ask about blood? The floor was as clean as it usually is, except for all the shrapnel from the roof…

“Then this is going to sound very strange…there’s a reason my staff couldn’t perform the blood test. That reason being…well…there’s no blood to use for a test.”

“No…blood…?”

“None. She’s been bled out…” Doc turns back to his staff, “Did you see any kind of hole? Any spatter or blood stains?”

“No, just these bite marks…” Breeze answers, pointing to the half-circle of cuts in the right side of Rainbow’s neck.

“What the hell…?”

“Wait, what does this mean, then!? I don’t know of any monsters that can fly!” Twilight steps forward.

“I-I don’t know! This is completely new to me! The Guard needs to be informed, there’s something out there; this injury isn’t in any way natural,” Doc says before heading to the door.

“Hang on, I can get a letter sent straight to the Princess! Just give me a minute!” Twilight shouts, and Doc turns only to see her wink out of existence.

“T-Teleportation…?” He says, rubbing his eyes. A Unicorn that can use teleportation? “Letter sent to…so that’s why the name seemed familiar.”

“Doctor, is there anything else we can do here?” Rarity taps him on the shoulder, breaking his short trance.

“Uh, no, I don’t think so. With no blood for the heart to pump…well…it doesn’t really matter if we can get the heart started again or not…” He looks at the ground, then over at his staff. Everyone stares back at him, as if seeking answers for this. “Just…record the time of death and add it to her record…keep the body in the morgue, ready for release upon request of friends or family.”

“…Right,” Nurse Summer answers, moving to the counter to collect a clipboard and pen.

“Miss Rarity, Miss Flut-“

Thud.

“Fluttershy?” Rarity looks over at Fluttershy. “Fluttershy!?”

“She must have fainted, hang on,” Doc says as he walks over, feeling her neck. “Yes, there’s still a pulse…the poor mare must be having a hard time.”

“A harder time than you would want to know, Doctor Sye…” Rarity looks over at Dash’s body, now being covered up with a white cloth. A harder time than anypony would want to know, and now Equestria’s most gentle pony has to endure it…

“Give me a hoof, we’ll move her out to the reception area.”

“No, don’t worry…I can do it,” Rarity lifts Fluttershy with her magic, placing her gently on her back, and still holding Fluttershy up so she can handle the weight, Rarity walks out of the room, leaving the Doctor and his nurses to their work. A small magical explosion catches her attention, turning to see Twilight through the open door. Twilight looks around before settling on Rarity behind her, and walks over.

“Did they find anything?”

“Dash has been drained of blood…she was a lost cause before we even got there…” Rarity slowly shakes her head. “Fluttershy just fainted, so I’m moving her out to the reception area.”

“So…she’s really…dead?” Twilight looks at her as if Rarity were a book that contained all of Equestria’s worst nightmares, spells summoning horrors as soon as the pages were opened. Dash couldn’t be dead, not now!

“Yes, dear…and now Fluttershy has to deal with the heaviest burden of us all…”

“Tell me when you get back to the library.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve got some reading to do,” And without another word, Twilight winks out of space again, leaving Rarity and an unconscious Fluttershy to their walk.

“Reading? What could she possibly read at a time like this?”