Fellowship is Madness

by Imperator Chiashi Zane

Overwork Day, Part 2

Fleethoof stared at the Thestral standing in her kitchen. The muffin was still smoking, and charred so black it was starting to crumble.

“I don’t think these will EVER be edible.”

“Aw, don’t be like that. It’s just a little over cooked. They’ll be fine, right? Food’s more tolerant of that than steel,” Hammer Soot tossed the charred muffin into her mouth and crunched her fangs through it. A couple of hard chews and some peculiar horking sounds from her friend, and the Thestral was done swallowing it, “Maybe a little hot still, but I think they’re probably ok.”

Fleethoof picked one up, poked it a couple of times, “Ok. I guess we’ll just sell them as a new flavor.”
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“Nurse, we’ve got another one!” An Earth pony doctor shouted over the head of the new patient he was bringing in. So many ponies were coming in violently ill that the hospital had been forced to set up tents out in the courtyard and even call in the off duty staff to get a few extra pairs of hooves on the grounds.

Nurse Redheart stepped up to them and pressed her hoof to the pony’s forehead, “Lemme guess, Chocolate Charcoal flavored muffin?”

The patient moaned, “Three of them. They were SOOO GOOD!”

“Well, sir, unfortunately, you’ll have to wait over there for the stomach pump to come around. We only have two.” Her eyes tracked over the heads of everypony in the tent, noticing that the majority of the sufferers were Pegasi and Unicorns, not known for their particular resistance to illness. A few were Earth ponies, even a few Zebras. Not a single Thestral. Not that she expected any of them to get sick. The Thestrals were a creation of the Nightmare, a thousand years before. Not only were there not a huge number of them, but they were notoriously omnivorous. If any of them came in for anything less than physical damage, she would be surprised.
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Hammer Soot stared at the sword she was hammering away at. Her eye had finally stopped blurring to the point where she could read the ingredients lists properly. And after the incident at Sugarcube Corner, her talons power crystals had needed changed again. They overheated so quickly anyway. She hadn’t really expected them to last through the whole day anyway.

Now with the new crystals, her talons were holding the blade securely on the anvil, while her wing struck it with the hammer, over and over. She blinked, realizing that the red glow was gone from the blade. She tapped it with the hammer again, watching it carefully for specific sparks.

Lifting the blade away from the anvil, she rotated it. The end was far too flat to be any good, and the tang was still far too thick. She tossed the metal to the side and grabbed a new bar, which slid into the forge to be heated anew. She sighed and turned around to see Iron Hoof leaning on the door-frame, “What do you want, Iron? I can handle this on my own.”

The stallion shook his head, then slid a pair of earmuffs over his ears and trotted in, the board on his back shaking with each step. She looked at it, then scratched her head.

[You beat that last sword to death.]

She frowned at him, even as he trotted past her and plucked a mouth-glove off the shelf. He shook it a couple of times to get the dust off. It wasn’t too often that it got used when the entire staff had wings and talons. He slid his face into the glove and secured the neck-strap behind his head before reaching into the forge and grabbing the tang of the sword-bar in his mouth. He moved it onto the anvil, ignoring the stunned Thestral standing there, and grabbed the hammer in one hoof, shifting his grip so he could see the glowing steel. With precise strokes, he began shape the steel into a sword. It wasn’t entirely perfect shaped, but it was certainly a measure better than what she had done in her mid-afternoon daze.

She took the blade from him as he hoofed it off the anvil, and began grinding it smooth before looking at him again. He was leaning against the anvil with a smirk on his muzzle, board beside him with more letters pinned to it.

[You can handle it on your own?]

She shook her head as she set the blade on the rack, “Of course I can. I only have two more to do today.”

[Did you go to the hospital yet?]

She sighed, and shook her head again, flinching as a bolt of pain lanced through her skull, “No. I didn’t want to be late.”

He reached over and grabbed her un-bandaged ear in his teeth, “Cmf oomph.” He started dragging her out the door, towards the hospital.
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“Nurse, please check her for a concussion. I think I whacked her in the head a few too many times during training earlier today.”

“Earlier? She should have come in immediately.”

Iron shrugged, “I told her to go straight to the hospital, before she went to help Fleethoof cook.”

“Help Fleethoof,” the nurse rolled her eyes and pointed at the tents outside, “Cook. Have you seen what that resulted in?” She held up a bag with one of the black muffins, which Iron grabbed.

He tapped the muffin carefully, then licked it. His face went from passively annoyed to wholly disgusted as the taste simmered on his tongue. He set the muffin back in the bag, then calmly walked over to the line of ponies busy throwing up into a trench several nurses had dug quickly because there wasn’t enough trash cans. His face paled as he retched into the trench for several long seconds.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure she has a concussion. No other explanation for how she thought that much brown sugar was part of the recipe.” He rolled his tongue around his mouth a couple of times, “And I’m pretty sure there was a bunch of shredded daisies in them. And what is that flavor…It tastes like degreaser.”

The nurse stared at him for several long, uncomfortable moments, “Uh, what?”

“Spend twelve years in the Guard, eating nearly identical slop, and you learn to pick out the ingredients just for the entertainment value.”

“And you know what degreaser tastes like?”

“You’re an Earth pony, ever tried polishing a lead-slinger with your tongue?”

She shook her head, “No, I don’t think I ever have. It’s not sanitary to hold things in your mouth at a hospital. Now about this patient. Bring her inside.”
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Hammer Soot blinked at the nurse, unable to hear her without the crystals in her ears.
“I can’t hear you. Can you write what you are trying to say?”

The nurse slapped a hoof against her forehead, then grabbed a clipboard and a sheet of paper, [Please remove your eyepatch.]

She slid one talon across the patch and disconnected the metal latches holding the leather sheet on her face, before peeling the piece away, exposing her left eye, a crystalline construction with enough gears and springs in it to make a watch jealous. They twirled and spun off kilter, shifting the myriad of sheets of glass inside.
The nurse leaned in with a small flashlight, pointing it into the array of glass. After a couple of seconds, she moved away and scribbled something else on the board, [You aren’t tracking right. I need to bring in a doctor to fix that.]

Hammer shook her head, then pressed her talon over the lens, “Your doctor won’t be able to fix it. Only me and Master Bruin know how to fix it. Same with my talons.”

More staring, then some more scribbling, [Not that eye. The organic one.]
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Doctor Helping Hoof stepped into the room and looked at his newest patient, and possibly most recurring. With a sigh, his horn lit up and started scanning over her head, “Another concussion this time? Not burns? No broken limbs? Cuts? Skewering? Grinder burns?”

Nurse Redheart shrugged, “Not this time. Her escort says he clonked her over the head during training.”
Helping Hoof turned to the Guardspony and just gawked, “Training for what? Her eye socket’s split, and you dislocated her jaw. It’s a miracle she even made it to the hospital conscious.”

Iron Hoof shrugged, “She wanted to learn to fight. I’ve been training her every day, during her two hour lunch-break at work. She’s taken harder hits than that.”

“Really? Because my scan says she’s been walking around with a dislocated jaw for at least four hours, and if she wasn’t already deaf, she would be. I’ll have to reconstruct her ear canal before she can even use those hearing aids again. She definitely has a concussion, but I can fix it all. Again. Let her recover for at least twenty four hours before she does anything requiring fine motor control, like flying or grinding anything.”

The Guardspony sighed, “Can she still use a hammer?”

A glare from the doctor made the Guardspony sit down on the chair, “No. She is going to sit on her haunches and do nothing. For a whole day. Is that PERFECTLY CLEAR!”

Iron sighed, and pointed at the blacksmith on the bed, “She has two more swords to forge tonight to keep on schedule.”

“Not happening. I will keep her here until tomorrow afternoon if you can’t keep her from trying to work. The schedule will just have to wait.”

Iron scowled, “Good luck convincing her of that. I’ll see what I can do about the schedule, since this is my fault anyway, well, mostly. She’s the one who wouldn’t accept help in the Smithy with Master Bruin out.”
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Hammer stared up at the ceiling, “Come on! Can’t I do something! I know I can’t do anything strenuous or precise, but I can’t just stare at the ceiling! I’ll go crazy!”

“How about a book?” Nurse Redheart was glad that her patient’s other ear was at least in good enough shape that her hearing crystal didn’t slip off, so she could at least hear.

“Ha, right…I’m a blacksmith’s apprentice, not an egghead. Besides, doesn’t turning pages count as precision work?”

The nurse just snickered, “Yeah, it does, so somepony will have to read it to you.”

“AWW! I Don’t want to be stuck here! I feel like a cripple!”

Nurse Redheart pointed at the brass talons sitting on the sheet, “You know, I recall a little filly saying those exact words to me fifteen years ago. In fact, I’m pretty sure you do too.”

The Thestral scowled at her nurse, “I know, I know. Look, can you read me a book then?”

Redheart smiled, “Yes. We have some excellent books I think you would be interested in. It’s all about the things you like. Action, adventure, and machinery.”

“Really?”

“Daring Do. So, here we go.”

Daring Do looked around herself, then at the map in her wing. “Ok, so if I head left at the river,” she looked at the clear water flowing in front of her hooves, “Then I go five kilometers along the riverbank, the temple should come into view.”

She was just about to start when she heard a low growl, which turned out to be coming from a rather large feline. And with her wing out of commission thanks to that stupid carriage accident, she couldn’t fly away. She lunged forward, driving her hoof into the cat’s ribs…

“YEAH! Go Daring!” Hammer Soot’s talon leapt into the air, then dropped to the side of her head as she moaned in pain, “Right…Ear…”