Chapter 4: Learning
The sun was just starting to rise when I woke up. A dark-colored bat-winged pony was leaving the room. A golden-armored pony had taken Solid Stalwart's seat. Neither was familiar to me. More guards, clearly. The night guard did not look back, but the day guard saluted me when I sat up.
"Solar Power, sir," he introduced himself. "Doctor Vital Signs and Nurse Redheart are on their way."
I asked "Why?" before I could stop myself. Reflex. Coming to check in on an unusual patient, and they must have some magical way of detecting when I woke up.
His answer was not as I expected. "To check you over before Princess Celestia arrives. She'll be on her way as soon as the sun is up."
I looked out the window. There was a golden ring around the sun. I didn't recall seeing that yesterday. My eyes watered after a moment and I had to look away. Staring into the sun, not a good idea, whether or not the local deity of that sun is well-intentioned towards you.
Solar Power saw where I was looking. "I haven't seen her push it that fast in years," he said. "Look, you can actually see her glow. Last time she rushed the sun up, she never did say just why. Rumor says vamponies."
I didn't dismiss the possibility. A talking armored unicorn reminiscing about watching the sun being manually lifted faster than usual made for an excellent reminder that I was a long way from having a functioning framework for understanding 'normal' at the moment.
The door opened, and Doctor Vital Signs rushed in. I turned away from the sight of the sun and its corona.
He started to take my vitals. "Are you feeling all right, Gus?" he asked. "Can you understand me? Do you know where you are?" Then another question, speaking too fast.
"I'm not hurting," I responded. "I could understand everything until you sped up. I'm in a bed in Ponyville Hospital."
He took a deep breath and nodded his head. "You gave us a nasty scare," he told me. Nurse Redheart caught up and came into the room. He read her my blood pressure, heart rate, breathing rate, and temperature, then continued.
"Miss Sparkle alerted us that something was wrong." His ears flicked. I assumed a connection. He confirmed it. "You'd think a pony who's fought as many threats to Equestria as she has wouldn't scream like that," he grumbled. "She told us what happened. She cast a gravity spell and you went limp. She and Lero couldn't wake you, so they alerted us. We ended visiting hours. For the week. We were monitoring you all evening until Twilight Sparkle came back with a message from Princess Celestia. She said to alert Princess Luna if anything changed overnight, and that Princess Celestia would be back in the morning."
"And I am," the voice from the doorway declared. Her mane was a shimmering sunrise. I was paralyzed once more. I tried to figure out why the sight of her hair gave me such a response.
Nurse Redheart developed a professional interest in the subject as well. "His heart!" she cried out. I could not turn my eyes to see her or how she knew my heartrate had escalated so suddenly. "Princess, help!"
Her mane turned pink. I was released from my hindbrain's grip. I supposed that "hold still so they won't see you" was an instinct, not an emotion.
"Doctor, Nurse. Lieutenant. You will not speak of this to anypony. It is an unfortunate coincidence." She was using the royal command tone of voice for that. "Please leave us. I must speak privately to our guest."
Solar Power saluted her. "Yes, your highness!" he declared, and escorted the other two ponies from the room.
When we were alone, she bowed her head to me. "You have my apologies, Gus Wainwright. I have once again misunderstood the human mind, and once again an innocent has suffered."
"It wasn't your fault, your highness," I said. "You weren't there." I wasn't sure what wasn't her fault, but she hadn't even been there when I passed out, so whatever happened couldn't have been her fault, right? So it was true. And even I could put together an unbidden apology and a bowed head to come up with 'she feels bad' and it would be unkind to not help.
"No, my little... Gus. It was my fault. I misjudged your injury, and I failed to leave proper instructions with Vital Signs for your care."
I never was a very tactile person, even before. But some instinct, some reaction below the level of my conscious mind drove me. I climbed out of the hospital bed and put my arms around her neck. "It's all right, Princess," I said to her. "It's all going to work out. I'm alive, I'm healing, and I can talk."
Her wing pressed around me. It was just as soft as Luna's was in the dream. Her body was very warm. When she released me, she smiled at me and her head was up again. "Then you have my thanks as well as my apologies, Gus. And you deserve to know the truth. As much of it as I can safely tell you."
Her wing released me, and I released her in turn. I sat back on the bed. The magical bandages on my limbs and chest kept me from feeling pain and the wounds were healing with a speed that would have been flatly impossible in a normal hospital, but Doctor Signs wanted me to not move the injured areas more than necessary. Celestia was looking straight at me.
"If a pegasus lost her wing as a child, she would still be a pegasus," she said. "One who examined her would find the proof of it. Veins where an earth pony would have none, lighter bones, a different kind of magic. And if an entire breed of pegasi lost their wings, they still would be pegasi. The same would be true of a unicorn who lost her horn. The same is true of you." She paused. I waited. She continued. "Your kind did have magic once. There are signs of it to one who knows how to look. Magic, or some kinds of magic, is related to how you perceive and interact with the world.
"Your injury was related to the same things, and the ones who took you... They toyed with you, Gus. I must not speak more of them, but they toyed with your wound. The same as if they took that flightless pegasus and grafted an eagle's wing onto her simply so they could pluck out her feathers."
I took a moment to digest that. A form of synesthesia, then. That made sense. And since I lacked the wetware to process the signals, other parts of the brain were handling them instead. "Can you heal it?"
She slowly shook her head. "I do not dare try again. I removed their mark from you before, and I thought with that gone you would heal on your own. But your mind does not respond as a pony's does. I could harm you worse than ever if I did anything wrong. Like our eagle-winged pegasus, to remove the graft could be a worse injury than leaving it in place. And just as she had to learn to feel the wind against her wings and never fly, you may have to learn to live with magic's touch affecting you."
I did not miss the grammatical slip away from the hypothetical. She had to learn. Not 'would have had to learn.' I let it pass. "I didn't feel anything strange when Doctor Signs healed my burns," I said.
"It is a sensory organ like any other," she told me. "If your head stays outside of the magical field, you should be unaffected. I hope."
I nodded to her. A thought came to mind and it became important to pass along. It wouldn't be nice to leave anyone else feeling guilty over me either. "Please make sure Twilight Sparkle knows," I said. "It wasn't her fault."
Celestia bowed her head. "I will tell her what I can. If I could teach her of this, I have little doubt she would exceed my own skills in short order. But that must wait until she has reached a different milestone in her progress. I trust you will not tell her too much either." She smiled at me again. "She will be relieved to know she is forgiven. She has a tendency to overreact."
"Thank you, Princess," I said.
She smiled once more, and turned. "You are extraordinarily welcome, Gus. Close your eyes."
I did. I heard her walk out. I opened my eyes again in time to see Solar Power returning to the room. She must have restored her tail's colors before leaving.
***
Doctor Signs refused to let Twilight Sparkle back in without taking precautions to make sure she wouldn't start casting spells again. It made our conversation distinctly staccato.
"It's called a horn inhibitor, it OW!" Twilight winced and rubbed her head with a hoof. "Ow ow ow..."
Lero joined in with rubbing her head. "Stop trying to cast, Twilight. You know that's exactly what it does."
"It's reflex! I've never had a horn inhibitor on before and I'm used to casting any time I want! OW! OWOW! OW!"
"How does it work?" I asked. They'd been in the room for fifteen minutes and most of that time was spent with Twilight rubbing her head. If I could find out why it hurt her, I could make it stop. That seemed to be a cruel device, whatever it was.
The lavender unicorn stopped rubbing her head. She could, I had already determined, be distracted by having a chance to explain something. Until she tried to teleport teaching materials to her side, anyhow. "Oh! That's easy. A unicorn horn is usually inert, but when there's magic actively going through it, the horn becomes very sensitive. So a horn inhibitor is just a hinged cuff with a jagged ring around both ends. Don't cast anything, no problem. Charge up your OW!" She dropped to the ground and rubbed her head with both forehooves.
Lero knelt, picked her up, and kissed her cheek. "Twilight is a magical prodigy," he explained, standing. "So I think we'd better get out of here before her head explodes."
"No, Lero!" she protested. "I'll stop! I'll stop! Please! He's got so much to teach me! And there's so much left to know!"
The numbers came. No pain this time. The numbers were different, too. There just aren't words to explain it right. These numbers were... friendlier. They didn't come in. They made a space for me instead. Nature abhors a vacuum. I filled the space.
When I could see again, I was outside. I was standing, somehow wearing some sort of robe, with both arms raised over my head. I had two heavy hooves on my shoulders and two hooves in my hands for stability. At a rough estimate, half the hospital population, staff and patients alike, were arrayed around us in various positions.
Nurse Redheart came up behind me with a not-quite-large-enough wheelchair and bumped it into the backs of my knees. They folded under me and I dropped into the chair. The pony on my shoulders let out a sound of alarm and fell. Now I could see who it was. Twilight Sparkle. The horn inhibitor had come off at some point. She rubbed her flank.
"What were you thinking, jumping into a song like that in your condition!" the nurse scolded me, yanking the chair around and hurrying back inside. "I thought humans couldn't even hear the Music of Harmony, let alone turn it into a duet!"
Lero was rushing to Twilight's side. I turned to look. She was looking back at me with an expression I couldn't yet classify.
I was completely blindsided by the pink missile that sent me sprawling out of the chair. I landed on my back. There was a pony face pressed to my nose. It was pink. Intensely pink. with a smile I shouldn't have been able to see given our relative positions, but like Twilight Sparkle's blush, apparently some things in Ponyville transcend optics. She inhaled.
"Pinkie Pie, I assume?" I said first. If there was a pony pinker than this, I couldn't imagine her.
She gasped. "Psychic powers! Singing and dancing and psychic powers!"
"I don't have psychic powers," I said. Then, given everything else I'd encountered thus far, amended that with, "That I know of."
She squealed and hugged me. "Your first psychic powers and your first musical number in Ponyville and your Welcome-To-Ponyville Party! This is the best day EVER!"
And then I couldn't make out a word she said after that. I couldn't tell if she actually was breathing in. I was pretty sure I wasn't breathing in. I couldn't interrupt her, though. She was just so happy.
I'm not entirely sure how long she kept going. I was running out of air and the thought never occurred to me to do anything about it for some reason. It only stopped when she relaxed her grip and pulled back on her own. She tilted her head at me.
"So? Isn't that just super-duper-splendarooniusly great? Aren't you happy? Or... something? Some ponies aren't always happy at first but they get mad or something until they have their party and loosen up and stuff."
Nurse Redheart and some other medically-garbed pony were able to extricate me from under Pinkie Pie and put me back in the wheelchair. I answered her question before they could turn me around.
"I can't feel anything, Pinkie Pie."
I had a new expression I could recognize. Existential horror.
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Man now I visualize Stephen Hawking everytime the wheelchair is mentioned.
I do believe dear Pinkamina has finally met the un-cheerable, and worse yet she knows it.
Pinkie's worst nightmare: a sociopath
Wait wait wait...he broke out into song?
What the fuuuuuu--
Oh my... he got caught up in the music of harmony and went on a lovely little musical number, of which he has no control, no knowledge, or memory of. Most interesting... I wonder what Faust will think once she talks to him. Also, the cat's partially out of the bag regarding him and magic it seems...
2877278
You keep using that word.
I don't think it means what you think it means.
2877561
Yeah, in case the metaphor was too oblique, his captors jammed a magical brain lobe into his head in his injured spot, without bothering to integrate it properly, so now he has reactions to magical things in uncontrolled, unpredictable manners.
yeah the Fae F'd up his head sounds like something an unseelie Fae would do.
Pinkie Pie in an existential crisis. Oh shit.
Interesting; so Guy's brain damage has stricken him of his ability to feel emotions but it has triggered the magical sensitivity that is normally totally suppressed in humans, so he can feel Equestria's Song. I wonder if that's the balance at work - the price he pays for magic is his ability to feel.
Wait, at the end it says "I had a new expression I could recognize. Existential horror."
Shouldn't it be "She had a new expression,"
2880647
Gus now has in his mental inventory of expressions the one titled 'existential horror.' He has to reconstruct his ability to recognize body language like collecting trading cards.
2880671
Oh! I remember that. The grammar of that sentence threw me off a bit. Thanks!
It was a great chapter! I loved the existential crisis that happened to Pinkie.
And yet... I feel that you missed a golden opportunity by not spelling out what happened in the musical number! I'd have like to seen Gus go all 'Gene Kelly!'
2882329
First-person limited. If Gus wants to find out what the heck he was doing just then, he'll have to wait for someone to tell him. And so will you.
Totally gave this a chance when Mike commented about it in Asked the Swapped. It is definitely interesting, and Gus and his problems are definitely original as far as I know. A little surprised by Lero's reaction. It sounds like he chose not to forget what he can't remember so he is still deathly afraid of Celestia's Mane. He also commented that Twilight is his wife but she is still a unicorn, not alicorn. Are there other none canon events we need to be aware of?
Regardless it looks like it will be entertaining. And I loved the Pegasus with eagle wings example. Very dark in a subtle kind of way.
2897858
Time-wise, this is sometime after the original Xenophilia, but before Twilight's ascension.
Lero knows he was afraid of Celestia's mane, and that Celestia cast a spell that reduced his fear, both in the original story. I posit that the spell doesn't last forever, so it's worn off by now. Lero declined to have it cast on him again so he can try to work through his issues with Celestia that stem from the bad first meeting. So I suppose making that decision would have been an off-camera event, but I don't see several characters being satisfied with 'emotional anaesthesia' as a long-term solution to his problem with her.
As for Twilight being Lero's wife, that wasn't a direct quote; Gus isn't aware of the difference between 'mare in my herd' and 'wife.' Gus has to learn those subtleties himself. Or not get around to it unless and until it matters to him. Either way.
The anti-Pie.
2897929
I always figured Lero's terror was a learned instinct that unfortunately carries over to Celestia's mane, which is why she renders it lifeless and pink and he calms down immediately, although he still fears her to some degree because of her intimidation tactic.
That popped trough my mind suddenly....it just seemed to fit so well.
GGRRrr
[So whenever a musical number comes up, he can sing and dance but unable to remember it?]
GGRRrr
[Damn, that is awesome. This is my second time reading it, only this time with an account.]
Now that's just cruel
Too bad we won't get to enjoy it mid-2019, as "This video is unavailable."
I'm generally strongly against including any sort of external dependencies - music, pictures, the like - in stories, because they tend to go stale quite quickly. If they're somehow part of the story, the story itself is made less without them when that happens. Thus - "don't do it" and "find a better way".
I suppose people forget that these archives tend to survive for rather lengthy periods of time, so me reading this in 2019 is equally as possible.