A Second Chance

Pain…

Unimaginable pain exploded through my body...

I couldn't move, I couldn't think, I couldn't do anything with waves of fresh pain raking my entire being. I could feel the slow chill of death begin to take over me. I didn't want to die, I wasn't ready yet. I fought against the chill but it continued to grow until I was at my limit and on the verge of giving up.

There was a sudden flash of what felt like electricity run through my very soul and the chill halted then slowly began to disappear as the world around me began to fade and darkness closed in on me from all sides.

************

Slowly I felt myself reawakening once more, no longer in the endless void of black and white I found myself in previously but now returning to a realm of normality. I became aware of a dull pain very unlike the previous pain I felt, pounding throughout my body.

I slowly began regaining consciousness as the dull pain continued to throb throughout my body. I could make out the sounds of what I believed to be voices although it was only the sounds, I couldn't make out what the mysterious voices were talking about.

I continued to lie where I was for what felt like hours as the pain began dull to the point of becoming an afterthought. It was at this point I slightly opened my eyes, my eyelids felt heavy as though I hadn't slept for days. I was greeted with a blinding white light shining straight into my eyes causing me to hastily shut them once more with a soft groan of discomfort.

Another voice, much clearer this time presented itself from somewhere close by “Doctor, I think he is waking up” followed by a small clatter of what I believed were footsteps from a small distance away as the blinding white light was removed from the direct path of my eyes.

I endeavoured to slowly open my eyes a crack once more, my vision was blurry at best I could make out the faces of which I assumed where the voices I had been hearing. Another less intense light was shined into each of my eyes causing me to shut both in turn out of reflex “Reaction time seems good” said one of the voices, the one I assumed to belong to the character known as ‘doctor’.

“What happened?” I tried to ask but only managing a small groan as it seemed every part of my body was currently being uncooperative to my present thoughts

“How is he looking?” came a third voice from somewhere in the background

The voice of ‘the doctor’ spoke up “Well his vitals are all stable…” the voice trailed off “If I had to guess I would say the operation was a success and he is going to be perfectly fine, given some time to recover”

‘Operation?’ I thought to myself as I closed my eyes once more ‘what on earth happened to me'. I started to mentally probe my body as if trying to discover what part of me was injured… something was off, nothing about my body felt right… I once more opened my eyes to find that much of the blurriness from before had dissipated and I could no longer see any of the faces I saw before, all I could see was the sterile looking white tiles of the ceiling.

I raised my right arm up to try rubbing at my eyes, or tried to at least my body still seemed to unresponsive to my thoughts. I tried moving my arm once more diverting all my focus onto the sole purpose of lifting my arm and with a small grunt of exertion I found I was successful in my endeavour as my arm hovered lazily just above my eyes but what I was looking at wasn’t quite what I expected.

There in front of my eyes in the place of my arm was not arm… it was some kind of cylinder shaped appendage, it was dark blue in colour and was tipped with white at the end where my hand should have been.

I stared at my ‘arm’ for a few moments longer as the I tried to comprehend what I was looking at as a voice from somewhere to my right chimed out “Doctor, he’s moving” and another face appeared from the left side of my vision. My eyes shifted from my ‘arm’ to the face now staring down into my eyes, the face looked to be that of some kind of equine animal but the eyes were massive in comparison to any horse i'd seen in my life, its coat was a dark shade of green and was topped with a bunch of neatly combed black hair on top.

I could have sworn I heard a faint snapping sound echo through my head as my brain struggled to make sense of what it was seeing at the moment, which ended much as one would expect… it gave up and shut off as my ‘arm’ fell to its original position, my eyes started to close and the world slowly faded to black once more.

************

As I slowly began to come to again I noticed that the dull ache from earlier had all but faded now, I opened my eyes and was once more greeted by the sight of the white tile ceiling. ‘heh, what a crazy dream that was’ I thought to myself as I rolled over onto my side to get a look at my surroundings ‘where exactly am I?’ The room around me looked to be your typical recovery room you would expect within a hospital ‘Was I injured?’

There was a small click over from somewhere behind me, I rolled over to find myself looking a white door. It slowly begin to open and in walked the exact creature from what I had previously thought to have been a dream except I got a much better look at it this time, the creature was as I had first guessed some kind of horse although it was unlike any horse I had seen before.

The creature looked up at me and said with a smile “Ah, you're awake. It’s good to see you up and about again” he started walking over towards me.

My mind scrambled in an attempt to make sense of what I was seeing, one of the few coherent thoughts that made it through were “What the heck are you?” I asked out loud.

The creature stopped and looked straight at me with a querying look “Well that’s not the traditional way to greet somepony that just helped save your life, but it’s interesting to say the least ” - he chuckled - “ anyway how you are feeling today?” It was at this point I noticed the talking creature was sporting a horn on top of his head; the horn light up with a light green aura around it and a clipboard from somewhere behind me flew out and came to a halt levitating in front of him.

The next semi-coherent thought to make it through the maelstrom that was my mind at the moment was that if this creature from before wasn't a dream, what about what I saw of my arm. In response I once more lifted my right arm up to eye level and sure enough it was exactly as I had seen it just before I blacked out, a dark blue cylinder shaped appendage.

“Wh…what is this?” I asked out loud not taking my eyes off of my ‘arm'

I heard the creature chuckle once more “You are full of interesting questions today aren’t you” I tore my eyes away from my limb to look at the creature “are you referring to your leg or your hoof?” he asked using one of his own limbs to point at the different parts of his other one.

I stared at him blankly for a few seconds before returning my vision to my own limb still hanging at eye level “W…why?” I said barely above a whisper

The creature spoke up once more “What was that?”

“W… why d... do I have this?” I asked pointing my dark blue limb at the creature

The creature looked at me with a look of absolute confusion; with a slight frown he proceeded to walk over to the wall next to the door it entered through and pressed a small red button located next to the door, next to the button was a small box like object which the creature leaned towards and spoke into it “Cross, can you please come in here?”, it then shifted its vision back towards the clipboard that was still hovering nearby.

After a few moments of silence the door swung open once more and a second creature similar to the first one entered into the room, this creature was white in colouring with long dull pink hair and tail and much like the first creature had a small horn on top of its head.

The second creature spoke up “Is something the matter doc?”

As it walked over towards the first creature I noticed two things; one that this creature was one of the voices I had heard earlier and two that the second creature sounded distinctly more feminine than that of the first and now seeing them stand next to each other I did notice some slight differences between them which I guessed to be general differences in gender for whatever these creatures were but much like the first creature this one too had a horn atop it’s head.

The first creature looked up at the second that was approaching it as the clipboard from before lazily hovered away from them going back to where it came from once more and the faint aura surrounding the first creature’s horn disappeared. The first creature leaned in close to the second and started talking in hushed whispers; I could make out a few words here and there nothing that made much sense to me though.

The two creatures continued their conversation for a few minutes until the second creature started to move away from the first “Okay, I’ll talk to Specs and get him to look into it for you” she said as her a soft pink aura appeared around her horn and the door she entered from slowly swung open and she made her departure through it.

As the door closed with a soft click the first creature returned his gaze towards me, a look of concern clearly evident on his face “Can I ask you a few questions?” he queried as he started walking towards me coming to stop just short of the bed. In an attempt to distance myself from the strange creature I tried to push myself in the opposite direction just to find the edge of the other side of the bed, not wanting to fall to the ground I was forced to settle for what little distance I had put between us.

“Please” I looked into his pleading eyes “I promise I’m not going to hurt you” he said

I gave a soft nod of my head which caused the creature to give a soft smile “Thank you, do you think you can tell me your name” he queried. At this point my mind was still running at a million miles an hour trying to process everything that had just occurred and I wasn’t too certain if I could trust the strange creature in front of me just yet. The look of concern from earlier returned to the creature’s face “can you tell me anything?” he pleaded staring me straight in the eyes. After a few more moments of silence the creature gave out a sigh and slowly started to turn around once more.

“B… Brian” I stuttered

The creature turned back to look at me with a look of complete surprise “What was that sorry?”

“My name… is Brian” I replied back softly

A smile once again graced his face “Thank you” he replied softly as the aura around his horn lit up again and the clipboard from earlier hovered over to stop just next to the creature. He turned to look at the clipboard just as the door from earlier opened once more and the creature from before poked her head in “Doctor, Specs is here and he wants to see you”

The first creature turned to face her “Oh of course, thanks for that” he then looked back at me “Will you be okay if I leave you alone for a little while?” I gave another small nod “excellent, try and get some more rest okay” he said as he started walking towards the door clipboard hovering along behind him.

I watched him leave until the door closed with another soft click, it was now that I realised I was still perched precariously on the edge of my bed from before so I shifted myself to the position I was in earlier. During this process I happened to once again catch a glimpse of my ‘arm’ reminding myself of that little fact, I once again raised it to eye level so to inspect it once more

‘That creature called it a hoof, sure doesn't look like any hooves I’ve seen before’ not that I was a professional of hooved creatures but something seemed off about my newly changed limb.

Suddenly a thought came to the forefront of my mind ‘if my arm has changed…. Has anything else?’ my eyes travelled down my ‘arm’ to where it connected to my body and sure enough my body was the same dark blue colour as my ‘arm’ was.

My lower body was still partially covered by the blanket on the bed, I reached down with one of my ‘arms’ and pushed the blankets away to see that just like the rest of my body my legs also resembled that of the creatures I saw before.

I averted my gaze from my now altered body and stared straight at the wall in front ‘what the heck has happened to me’ I thought as I tried to scour my memories for any clues as to how this may have occurred but for some reason it seemed like my more recent memories had abandoned me ‘I remember waking up and having breakfast…. But then it’s just nothing’.

I sat there for maybe five minutes trying to remember anything that might give even the slightest clue but to no avail, I rolled over so I was lying on my back and closed my eyes now becoming acutely aware of how mentally drained I felt, the last thought that crossed my mind before sleep claimed me once again was

‘What on earth are these creatures’…