//------------------------------//
// Rude Awakening 
// Story: My Little Pony: Into the Wild 
// by MoonGuard97 
//------------------------------//

Starlight's entire body ached, but she didn't feel the strange sensation of being in a human body, like she did last time. What she did feel was a massive hornache.

"Ooooooh," she moaned. She tried to open her eyes and get a look at where she was, but they stubbornly refused to comply. Trying again, she started with one eye, then the other, and turned her gaze forward to see...

...an unsightly curtain of purple and turquoise. Groaning, she moved her disheveled mane out of the way with a hoof and took a look around. There wasn't much light, but it wasn't necessarily completely dark either, so she guessed it was just before dawn. In what little light the grey sky offered, her surroundings took on an eerie atmosphere. She tried igniting her horn, which only added to the creepiness, but also lit up her immediate surroundings. She seemed to be lying in some sort of stone basin. Above her, a stone sculpture rose out of the center of the basin.

Not a basin. A fountain.

The sculpture of the fountain seemed to depict a pair of outstretched wings, though one side was almost completely gone. The water spouts were exposed on two sides where the stone had crumbled away and rusted beyond any hope of use, and dried moss covered bits of the fountain. Looking out at the area around the fountain, she saw that everything else was pretty much the same. Crumbled walls standing freely and disconnected, rusty bits of metal scattered here and there, and dry, crusty moss growing between the cracks in the stones. A hooffull of bulky metal shapes also rested randomly around the landscape.

A weak groan reached her ears, and her instincts kicked in. Her friends needed her, and she wasn't going to let them down. Against the strong protests of her entire body, she slowly got to her hooves. Sweet Celestia, she was stiff! Rolling her joints around a few times and stretching her back with a satisfying crack-crack-crack-crack-crack, she slowly and painfully turned around and came face to rump with Fluttershy, who was laying draped aver the side of the fountain. The others were all scattered around as well. Scootaloo laid on top of a nearby wall, Applejack and Rainbow Dash on the ground below her. Rarity and Sweetie Belle rested in a patch of exposed dirt to her right. Rarity was not going to be happy about that. Pinkie Pie hung by her tail from a bit of metal framing, while Spike drooled from what appeared to have once been a window below her, the shards of glass not seeming to bother him. Applebloom was sprawled out next to where Starlight had been. Twilight laid in the midst of them in a pool of dried blood, her wings draped across her unmoving form.

"Oh no. Dear Celestia please no!"

All soreness forgotten, Starlight jumped out of the fountain basin and galloped over to her mentor. There were no obvious wounds on the exposed side, so she carefully rolled her over to get a look at her other side. Once again, their were no obvious wounds on her body, but there was a great deal of blood matted into her fur and feathers. Her left wing was definitely broken. Two bones jutted parallel to each other through the skin on one side of the break, with the other halves of the bones pushing against the skin from the inside. With a sigh of relief, Starlight realized that this is where the blood had come from.

As much as she wanted to help Twilight, Starlight didn't know the first thing about fixing a broken wing, so she decided to be helpful by going around and checking on the others. Everypony so far seemed to be mostly alright, though Rarity, as predicted, didn't take well to waking up in the dirt.

"Uh! How dreadful! My mane!"

"Unngh."

Starlight shot Rarity a glare dirtier than the muck in her mane.

"Great, you woke her up!" she whisper-yelled. "Do you have any idea how much pain she's going to be in, with her wing broken like that?"

"Broken wing?" came a slurred voice from her left. She turned and saw Rainbow Dash stumbling over to them, obviously still groggy. "Let me see."

As they trotted over to where Twilight lay, the alicorn, apparently oblivious to her injured appendage, attempted to lift herself to a sitting position. She quickly let out a cry of pain and collapsed back onto the ground with tears filling her eyes. For the first time, she seemed to notice the blood mixed into the dirt, and, following the pain with her eyes, caught sight of the bones jutting out of her wing.

"Easy, Twilight," Rainbow soothed as Twilight began to hyperventilate. "Easy. Don't freak out. Let me take a look at it, okay?"

Twilight hesitated, then nodded and eased herself back down to her stomach. Starlight came and sat in front of her as Rainbow circled around to her side, and Twilight rested her head in her student's lap. Rainbow began gently feeling around the wing, much to Twilight's dismay.

"Hmm."

Starlight glanced up. "What's 'hmm?'"

Rainbow met her eyes before circling back around to Twilight's head and heaved a heavy sigh. "Both your Ulna and your Radius are broken, but they're both clean breaks, and nothing else is broken, as far as I can tell."

"Can you set it?" Starlight asked. Rainbow nodded.

"Wing trauma care is a mandatory course for any prospective Wonderbolts. I can set it, for the most part. I'm not a doctor, so it won't be perfect, but it'll be better than letting it stay like that."

"Do it," Twilight grunted.

A brief flash of what Starlight thought looked like fear or concern shone in Rainbow's violet eyes, before quickly being replaced by a look of grim determination.

"Rarity, Fluttershy, Spike I need you over here stat!" The requested ponies (and dragon) quickly rushed over as Rainbow grabbed two small bottles of water from Twilight's pack. "Starlight, I need you to keep her still, no matter what. Fluttershy, gently stretch out her wing so I can set the bones. Rarity, I need a steady horn to hold that wing perfectly still once Fluttershy has it stretched out. Spike," she handed him one of the water bottles, "Heat this up please. It needs to be hot enough to clean the wound, but not so hot that it burns her."

They all set to work. A turquoise aura surrounded Twilight's entire body, keeping her from moving. Fluttershy gently took the tip of her friend's wing between her lips and slowly stretched it out to a nearly full wingspan, eliciting several cries from Twilight in the process. As Spike heated up one bottle of water, Rainbow handed the other to Rarity who, upon request, cooled the water to just above freezing before steadying Twilight's wing in her own blue field. With everything set, Rainbow Dash put her game face on and prepared to do her part.

"Twilight, I'm not going to lie to you. This is going to hurt. A lot."

"Just do it!"

Rainbow gripped the bottle of hot water in her teeth and slowly poured half of it over the area. Twilight screamed and strained against the two magic fields holding her down. Rainbow placed the half empty bottle back on the ground and traded it out for its frosty companion. The hot water had cleaned the wound well enough, but it had also thinned the blood in the area and dissolved any clots that had already formed, causing Twilight to start pouring blood like Neighagera Falls. The cold water would help to re-thicken the blood and stem the bleeding. Emptying only a quarter of its contents, Rainbow winced as Twilight once again cried out in pain.

Great. Now came the hard part. Placing both hooves on one of the protruding bones, Rainbow Dash grit her teeth...

...and pushed.