//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 - I am Lazarus, Come Back From the Scrap Heap // Story: Beetle & Blood // by The Wind King //------------------------------// Morning in Ponyville might have shimmered and shone, even more so with a true friend at her side, but to Twilight Sparkle, one newly ascended alicorn Princess, this afternoon could kiss her star-covered plot. Overcast skies grumbled and growled as the rain started to come down in a graceless torrent, wild weather from the Everfree Forest rolling over the town in what was clearly a premeditated plan to ruin the one spot of free-time she had been able to find to spend a scheduled picnic with her friends. Now Rainbow had drafted herself into clearing the skies, and any offers she had made to help her other friends with their sudden onset of storm related chores had been swiftly rebuffed with the now usual “We’re sure a Princess has more important things to do than help us with these things”. Tartarus, Applejack hadn’t even let her clean up the remains of the picnic before she was trying to stop Twilight from “strainin’ her horn”. Well, she did have something more important than helping her friends with their chores. Spending what little free time she could find with said friends, and if such a monumental task just happened to involve helping them with their chores then she would. Now if only they would let her. Scuffing her hooves along the ground she kicked at the loose gravel as if it was personally responsible for her malaise, her malcontent mental state not preparing her to perceive the precipitation passing her over, leaving a perplexing preterition around the purple pony Princess. In fact she only noticed the lack of rain landing on her when the St Elmo’s fire started to crawl up her legs, and by that point it was too late for her to do anything but look up to the sky as the storm split open and a bolt of lightning bore down upon her with the full wrath of Nightmare Moon herself. * * * * * Twilight woke to the sensation of her ears twitching as they slowly attempted to rid themselves of whatever was buzzing around them. Her stiff body twitched erratically as she tried to get back to her hooves, but for some reason her limbs just wouldn’t obey her, her horn produced nothing but feeble sparks, she couldn’t blink the spots away from her eyes, and that damnable buzzing in her ears just wouldn’t disappear no matter how they fidgeted. Overcome with a wave of exhaustion she just flopped back down to the ground, the now much lighter rain pattering off her soaked coat, her occasional twitches turning the ground underneath her to mud. Somewhere in the back of her mind she thought of how powerful that bolt of lightning must have been if it was capable of knocking her out. Princess Celestia had taken her aside the night after her coronation and spent several hours going over just how much her new alicorn constitution could reasonably withstand, even using several of her own physical examinations, privately performed by the royal physicians of course, as an extreme baseline. Using the half-remembered numbers she set about trying to calculate the strength of the bolt, regularly testing to see if her legs could hold her weight yet. It was only once the buzzing in her ears faded away and she could hear the sound of rain hitting the ground that she noticed she wasn’t alone. She could hear the sound of another pony’s laboured breathing, the soupy gurgle bringing back foalhood memories of Grandame Nebula as the old mare slept in her hospice bed, medical machines and IV drips doing what they could to make her last few days as gentle as possible. Willing her still twitching body to twist and turn Twilight eventually managed to flip herself to the point where she could see the other pony sharing her mud pit. She would later swear that she hadn’t screamed loud enough to be heard in Canterlot, despite a certain rainbow maned pegasus’s insistence. At that moment however Twilight forgot all the aches and pains as she catapulted herself away from the monstrosity that had been laying next to her. It was a patchwork mockery of a pony; legs a different colour from each other attached to its body with wire and magic, prosthetic skin patches in varying states of disrepair covered its withers and flanks, impossibly shaped scar tissue wrapped around the thing’s chest and back twisting what little of its blue coat remained into a patchy, tufty mess that revealed more bare skin than it hid. But the worst thing was its false horn. Dark, graven oak spiraled upwards from the thing’s forehead like a towering alter to the demons of Tartarus, while its roots sank into the flesh of the thing’s forehead, black wood merging with pale bone as blood dribbled from the open wounds and baleful runes glowed with the very fires of the underworld. Two sets of thundering hooves dragged her from the panicked examination as she flopped away from the thing that was laid out before her. “Twi, Twi are ya okay Sugarcube? We could hear yer screamin’ out in the west orchard.” Vaguely Twilight was aware of the voice of Applejack as the orange mare and her brother cantered round the bend in the road that separated her from Sweet Apple Acres, but her lungs wouldn’t co-operate as she tried to call back to them to run. The monster had stolen her breath, she couldn’t warn her friends away before the siblings caught sight of what was lying in the middle of the road and they would be stuck in its trap, just like she was. “Oh mah Celestia,” the sounds of hooves clattering to a sudden stop told her it was too late. “Twi, what happened?” She couldn’t answer except for a choking sob, she had to get away, she had to get her friends away from this thing that shouldn’t be. Twitching, spasming hooves tried to push Applejack away, tried so hard to get her away from that awful gurgling breath, to push her to safety. It didn’t work, the orange mare instead pulling her closer, crushing Twilight against her barrel. “Twi, Twi it’s alright Sugarcube, we’re gonna get ya to the hospital, you’re...” The buzzing in Twilight’s ears returned full force as her shuddering breath escaped her, squeezed out by the thing that was pretending to be her friend. Her vision dimming to black as she fought for a breath that just wouldn’t come. * * * * * Applejack charged through the hospital doors to find the waiting room already in an uproar. Doctors and nurses rushing about in a chaos as a pair of gurneys were wheeled into sight with a speed that would’ve impressed Rainbow had the pegasus not been laid out panting on a waiting room couch, eyes closed in exhaustion. A stroke of luck had meant that the mare had also heard Twilight’s screams from where she had been wrangling the storm, arriving seconds after their friend had fainted. Before Applejack could even start to form an explanation for what she’d found Rainbow had already taken off, launching herself in the direction of Ponyville General and leaving the earth pony siblings to follow her fading contrail. A swarm of doctors descended on Applejack, one of them levitating Twilight from her back while nurses coaxed the earth pony to the side, a similar, if smaller, process happening around Big Mac. The medical staff clucking around the big, earth pony stallion’s unconscious passenger while biting back their revulsion at the mystery stallion’s injuries. Wordlessly she allowed the nurses to herd her to the same couch as Rainbow. Leaving Big Mac to speak with another doctor in the background, snippets of their conversation forming a patchy recollection of the last five minutes. The adrenaline was fading now, and her hooves shook as she settled down on the lumpy hospital cushions. They were good enough for short visits, barely, but when she had to spend hours waiting on the blasted things it was all she could do to not storm the administration offices and wonder why they couldn’t spare the bits to buy something decent. “Miss Applejack, may I have a moment of your time please?” She looked up at the voice to see the same doctor that had been talking with Mac, a clipboard and quill hovering in his aura. “Sure, but Ah don’t know what ya’d need me for” “I would like to know what happened from your point of view, Miss Applejack.” “Wasn’t that why ya were talking to Mac?” “Please, Miss Applejack,” The doctor sighed, and for a second the stallion looked far, far older than even Granny Smith, before continuing. “The newest Princess of Equestria is brought into this hospital, alongside a mystery stallion who has wounds of a severity that hasn’t been heard of for the last eight centuries. This has all the hallmarks of being another incident, we need to know all we can to avoid this blowing completely out of proportion, and I need to hand this information off to the Royal Physicians when they arrive, not to mention the Royal Guard if this is decided to be an assault, although I have no clue as to which of the two would press charges.” He finished almost vitriolically, before some sense of normality returned to him and his posture resumed the same professional stiffness. “Now, Miss Applejack, could you describe what happened in your own words?” The request caused Applejack to twitch; she’d shrunk back against the cushions during his rant, her ears falling flat to her skull at the stallion’s bitterness. “Ah was... Ah was helping Mac check the west fields for any dead falls when that massive bolt of lightning hit. Didn’t pay it no mind ‘cause it looked like it had landed in the Everfree or near enough, and that forest likes to handle it’s own fires.” The mare paused, waiting for some sort of accepting nod or reaction, only to see the doctor staring at her, his quill scratching away. “A-Anyway, me an’ Mac went to check it out, but real slow, didn’t want to rush an’ miss something. We were on the edge of the fields when we heard Twilight screamin’.” She paused again, her head falling down to point towards the tiles, her eyes darting from left to right before looking back at the doctor, tears beginning to build. “Can Ah not talk about this part? It don’t feel right.” “I know this is difficult, Miss Applejack, but we need to know.” “When, when the screamin’ started me an’ Mac hightailed it towards where we’d seen the lightning come down, thought she might’ve gotten hit and broken a leg or something. Instead she was like a fish that’d been out of the water too long, twitching everywhere, didn’t look like she could breath at all, it was almost as bad as she looked during that Smarty Pants incident. And that fellah, Ah don’t think Ah’ve seen anypony messed up that bad since Discord.” “You don’t think either of them attacked each other?” Green eyes narrowed as Applejack’s head snapped up to glare at the doctor. “Ah don’t think Ah like what yer saying there. Ah know Twilight well enough to know she wouldn’t ever knowingly hurt nopony, an’ Ah’m amazed that stallion’s still breathing. If he could actually move with those injuries, let alone try to hurt somepony, Ah’ll eat mah hat.” “I’ll hold you to that AJ.” Both ponies turned to look at a slightly opened ruby eye as Rainbow stifled a yawn. “Ah thought you was asleep, Dash.” “Nah, you know me, recovered from that little flight in ten seconds flat. I’m just saving my energy for when the rest of the girls get here, you know.” Her head flopped back onto the couch cushions with a jaw shattering yawn, before her eye started to fall shut again. “Yeah, Ah get ya Dash, Ah’ll wake ya when they get here.” The suggestion of a nod that might’ve just been Rainbow burying her head into the cushion was the only answer Applejack got before she turned back to the doctor. “Well, ya need anything else?” “No, Miss Applejack, I’ll leave you and Miss Dash to rest.” The clipboard and quill following him through the air as he made to leave, before they paused next to his head. “For what it is worth, Miss Applejack, with the Everfree forest so close by, I don’t believe that there are any better medical staff in Equestria—outside of the Royal Physicians of course. I’m sure that Princess Twilight will be fine by tomorrow, and we will do our very best for our mystery guest as well.” “Yer bedside manner stinks Doc,” Applejack settled herself into the cushions as best she could, odd lumps of stuffing poking her under the ribs despite her repeated shifting. “But thanks anyways.” Chapter End