//------------------------------// // Exposed // Story: Brothers // by Pennington Inkwell //------------------------------// Dear Twilight Sparkle, My dear and faithful student, I often receive letters from you and your friends regarding the lessons you've learned about the magic of friendship, and is always warms my heart to read them. Recently, though, the question has arisen in my mind: if I were to learn my own lesson regarding friendship, to whom would I write a letter? I decided that I would write to you. I recently made a new friend, who will remain anonymous at his own wishes. At first, he seemed very threatening, but eventually proved himself to only be afraid, himself. I found those with whom he chose to keep his company questionable at first, and two of us started off our friendship very suspicious of one another. A poor start, I know. Due to... certain qualities, I was intrigued enough to find him again. As we talked, I realized that where he had been and what he had done gave him a very unique perspective, one that put a new angle on almost everything I see regarding the "questionable company" he has chosen to keep. I'm seeing many things in a fresh light, one that doesn't just include the singular rays of the sun, and I'm finding some factors I had never questioned as greater variables in a larger equation. This new view has helped me to improve my overall decision-making skills to be fairer and better balanced, along with Luna's. I suppose the moral of this story is to always try to view things from different perspectives. Before making judgment, try to understand both sides of the story, and never factor out who or what might be affected by your actions. Sincerely, your ever-learning mentor, Princess Celestia. Celestia smiled at her work and sent it on its way. Her task finished, she walked over to Luna's room, pushing open the doors without hesitation and walking over to her sister. "Are you ready to go see Eclipse? Visiting hours at the medical wing are about to start!" Luna was working quickly with a scroll and quill, jotting down a letter of her own. "Yep! I'm just finishing off a letter to Pennington! I thought that MY protege ought to know what I've learned, too!" She scribbled down her parting remarks, sealed the letter, and sent it away in a puff of smoke. "Okay, I'm ready to go!" She rushed ahead of her sister, then stood at the door, tapping her hoof impatiently. Celestia laughed and trotted over, trying to appease her sister's rushed tempo. When they found themselves outside of the medical ward, however, their ears did not allow them to visualize Eclipse as being peacefully lying in bed, trying to recover... "What is that? I'm not going to eat THAT! Are you kidding me?" Celestia cringed at the sound of Eclipse's manic shouting. "HEY! If you try putting anything in my IV, I'll rip it right out of my arm, no matter WHAT you do! Oh, yeah? Say that to my face!" Luna rushed in through the doors just in time to see Nurse Redheart grumpily stomping out of the room, her hat knocked backwards and her snout high in the air. Eclipse was standing up in his bed, trying to get as far away from his doctor as the length of the IV would let him. The doctor was holding a large, purple pill on a tray in his mouth, and a medicated IV bag in the hoof that he wasn't using to prevent himself from falling on his face. "Mr. Tumult, you're going to have to trust me when I say this will HELP you! I am a trained professional in medicine, and I know exactly what I'm doing!" He tossed the tray and pill onto Eclipse's bed and hung up the new IV bag. When he tried to hook it up to the tube leading to Eclipse's arm, however, Eclipse grabbed his end of the IV, threatening to pull it out and leaving the two at a standstill. "Trust you? Doc, I don't even know you! Are you a 'trained professional' in draconequus anatomy? I wanna see your degre- ULP!" Eclipse sat down when the pill levitated into his mouth and straight to the back of his throat. He hacked and coughed for a few seconds before spotting Luna and Celestia. "L- Luna, did you do that? What are you trying to do, kill me again? You don't even know what that was!" In his distraction, the doctor managed to hook up the new IV bag and slip out of the room. "I may not know what it was, but Doctor Hooves knows exactly what he's doing, so I trust him with my own medical needs and know he'll treat you well." Luna tucked in the sheets around him and gently patted the top of his head as if he was a little colt needing comforting. "His cutie mark doesn't even have anything to do with medicine..." Eclipse grumbled, folding his arms stubbornly across his chest. "It's an hourglass..." "Well, we would appreciate it if you would stop terrorizing the staff, Eclipse. They're here for you, and considering the fight you just put up, they're doing a good job!" Celestia chastened. She couldn't help but laugh a little inside, though. The sight of Eclipse doing all of this had made it easy for her to picture Discord doing the same thing. "I'll try..." Eclipse muttered, looking just a little ashamed of himself. "But they need to explain things to me, or I'm not going to want to cooperate!" "I'll see what we can do about that." Luna smiled. "Maybe if we brought in an expert on taking care of sick animals... She's very good at calming down injured creatures, whether they're ponies, birds, or even bears..." Eclipse vigorously shook his head. "No! No more new ponies! It's bad enough that these ponies have to know about me..." He eyed his new IV bag evilly. "I swear, it makes my skin crawl, having to entrust my well-being to somepony else. I've taken care of myself for the past 1300 years!" "And I think that it's time..." Celestia pulled up a chair and sat down. "You had a little help! You're skinny as a flagpole, your mane looks like it hasn't been trimmed in several years, you seem to struggle terribly with paranoia, you live off of a steady diet of whatever you can conjure up or find in the forest, and you have spent the past 1300 years mourning the one who had taken care of you up to that point!" She gave him a soft-but-firm stare. "If Luna and I are going to be your friends, let us help you!" Eclipse tried to sit up, but found himself quickly pushed back down again by Celestia's magic. "I don't care about my mane, I am NOT anorexic, Discord just had a bulkier build than me, paranoia has kept me ALIVE in the Everfree forest, and I- oof! -spent the past 1300 years mourning my brother!" He continued struggling, but was no match for Celestia. "Look, if I need help, you two will be the first ones who come to mind, okay? But I don't!" "AND you need help admitting that you need help." Luna smiled and held back Celestia's grip, allowing Eclipse to sit up again. "Eclipse, you're too prideful. Celestia and I are just offering a friendly hoof to help you." Eclipse rolled his eyes. "The doctors did their job, I'm not dead. I'll be fine from here, I know exactly what I need! Look, I'm as fit as a fiddle!" He snapped his fingers, and a half-formed violin fell into his lap. He stared at the semi-liquid structure oozing into his lap. "Oookay... So, I might still have a few bugs to work out of my system..." The fiddle soup began to bubble and quickly evaporated away. "It's no reflection of my physical condition!" "Sure, just like how you eat a zap apple every morning before you get out of bed..." Celestia's sarcasm fell a bit flat, but she didn't get many opportunities to practice. "Look, you seem to be recovering in leaps and bounds. I'm sure that the doctor will we willing to let you out of the hospital by tomorrow!" "Um, excuse me, your highness!" Nurse Redheart ran back into the room. "Princess Celestia, you have a visitor! I tried to stop her, but she unfortunately knows how to teleport, so I couldn't!" Behind her, Celestia could see Twilight Sparkle bouncing up and down in front of the door. It took less than a second for her to pull the curtain around Eclipse's bed. "Twilight, how good to see you! What are you doing here?" Twilight smiled and confidently trotted into the room. "Well, I received your letter this morning, and after reading it, I wanted to meet your anonymous friend! So, I jumped onto the express train to Canterlot! When I heard that he was in the hospital, I was shocked, and came as fast as I could! What happened?" She tried to go and peek behind the curtain, but found herself picked up and lifted backwards by her mentor's magic. "Oh, Twilight! I do wish you had sent me a letter instead of dropping in unexpectedly like this!" Celestia sighed. "I'm afraid that he's in no condition so see anypony... Luna and I had invited him to dinner, but he failed to mention a severe allergy of his... When he took a bite of zap apple pie, well, it wasn't pretty..." It's not lying, I'm just being vague... "He's been trying to rest and recover for the past few days, and it's going well, but he's still not ready for visitors. Meanwhile, inside the curtain, Luna had her hoof jammed into Eclipse's mouth to keep him quiet. Unfortunately, his nerves were still beginning to get the better of him. A single, minuscule cloud of cotton candy materialized in the air, slowly but steadily dripping chocolate milk. Luna grabbed a nearby glass to catch it and prevent it from falling onto the floor. This won't last long... Hurry up and get rid of her, Tia... "Well, if he's not ready for visitors, then why are you here?" Twilight didn't want to be suspicious of her mentor, but it wasn't like Celestia to contradict something that she had already said. "Well, I just feel really guilty about what happened, so I've been staying here to watch over proceedings." Celestia was getting rather nervous, herself, making sure that the curtain was pulled tightly against the wall. "You really should go, Twilight, they were just about to give him another round of treatments..." "I could stay and watch! I'd love to learn a bit more about the treatment of allergic reactions, just in case of an emergency!" She pulled a quill and scroll out of her saddlebag to take notes. The glass was almost filled, and Luna was trying to stop the rain with her magic, but it only made it fall faster. She raised the glass to her lips and downed most of it, but not before a few drops slipped past her and fell to the floor. "Twilight, I would really appreciate it if you would go, I doubt that he would like anypony to be wat-" "Is that chocolate milk?" Twilight pointed to a small stream flowing out from underneath the curtain. "Where did that come from?" "Oh, he must have spilled the drink on his lunch tray!" Celestia grabbed the edge of the curtain and pulled it down, soaking up the mess. "He's so weak, he can barely hold a glass to his lips!" As Luna needed to empty the glass again, another stream, thicker this time, came flowing out. "He has two drinks?" Twilight eyed her mentor warily. "Princess, is there something you're not telling me?" "No! No, there's nothing else you need to know! I thought that he would spill his first one, he has almost every time!" She laughed nervously and tried to soak up the mess with the curtain again. "So I gave him a self-refilling glass! It's a new spell that I found in the archives! Would you like to come see it?" She stood up and began walking towards the exit, expecting Twilight to follow. Instead, she was horrified to she her student pull aside the curtain. "To be honest, I'd like to see HIM! You made him sound like a very interesting... p-p-pony..." Twilight had braced herself for the sight of a bedridden, weak pony, perhaps even broken out in hives and hooked up to machines to help him do what his body might not be able to. Instead, she saw Princess Luna hovering upside down, trying to catch a torrent of chocolate milk in her mouth, a cotton candy cloud so loaded down with rain, it had turned as deep a lavender as her coat... and a draconequus sitting in a hospital bed, looking as absolutely terrified as she did, with Luna's front left hoof stuck in his mouth. "Hello, Twilight Sparkle..." Luna said as she pulled herself out from under the hopeless rainfall. "Fancy meeting you here..."