Upon arriving at the hospital, Sunset immediately walked up to the front desk, knowing that her face alone commanded respect as she was the Princess's personal student, which should help with getting an emergency room right away for the colt that she had found.
"Hello, Miss?" She said, getting the attention of the hospital receptionist.
"Well if it isn't Sunset Shimmer" the receptionist said in a very dry tone. "What brings you to the hospital today, Miss Shimmer? Did you burn yourself again?" The receptionist asked, weary.
"Not this time around I'm afraid." Sunset said with an impatient tone. 'Honestly to hear this mare talk about it you'd think that I get burned once every week or something! Of course, seeing as how I'm the only Pyromancer in living memory that isn't Princess Celestia, it's more like once every three days, but there's a colt's life at stake here!" She ended up shouting in frustration. She immediately began to try to apologize for shouting in the hospital, as she had been told that if she did so again, she'd be kicked out as her shouting wasn't conducive to the other patients recoveries, but was cut off by the receptionist.
"Colt? What co..." the receptionist started to ask before looking over her desk and seeing the barely breathing colt on the floor next to Sunset Shimmer. "We have a Code Blue at the Admissions Desk! Repeat! We have a Code Blue at the Admissions Desk!" The receptionist said into the communication device that was at her desk.
"I'm not going to insult either of our intelligences by asking if you are responsible for the colt's current condition, Sunset..." the receptionist started to say before being interrupted by Sunset Shimmer.
"What?! Of course I'm not responsible for his current condition!" Sunset said, angrily. "One second I'm looking at a secret mirror in the castle and the next I'm anchoring a teleport onto a magical disturbance and I wind up outside of the wreckage of what appeared to be his completely destroyed home!"
"Our unicorn doctors felt the same disturbance, but they just waved it off as something that you did again, Sunset, hence why I said that I wasn't going to insult either of our intelligences by asking if you are responsible for his current condition." The receptionist said, placating Sunset for the moment. "Now, how long has he been breathing like that?" She asked, letting a hint of worry show on her face so that Sunset would understand the importance of the question.
"For about as long as I've known him, which would be since I saved him from the destroyed wreckage of what appeared to be his completely destroyed home. The only time that he has ever breathed normally that I know of is the time that he woke up for a few seconds when I was moving next to him to get ready for a side-by-side teleport and asked for his mother." Sunset said, with worry in her tone.
"Well, our unicorn doctors only felt the disturbance around fifteenminutes ago, so there shouldn't be any significant damage..." the receptionist said, before continuing with "especially if he woke up and asked for his mother. That shows that he at least has a good chance of surviving this with his memory intact. He did ask for his mother, right?" The receptionist asked, wanting to make certain that Sunset wasn't misinterpreting what had happened.
"Well, actually, he kinda looked up at me and asked 'mommy?'" Sunset said, sheepishly. "Either he was asking if I was his mother, or he was asking for her. And considering my own experienceswith family, I'm really hoping that it's the second option there."
"You might not have a choice with how long he's been breathing like that, you know." The receptionist said, serious. "With the amountof time that his brain hasbeen without oxygen, as well as his apparent age, he could have imprinted on you."
'Those med school courses I took back in the third century have really paid off!' Celestia thought to herself, before turning her disguises attention back to her daughter, who she had been afraid had entered the magical portal by accident after Celestia had looked all aroundthe palace for her after being told by one of the palace staff that the "street urchin" had been seen running to the room where the mirror was kept with tears streaming down her face.
It had taken Celestia a few minutes to figure out who the staff pony had been talking about, but when she did, she immediately went into the stallion's mind not caring about any pain that she might have been causing the pony, in order to find out how many of the palace staff had the same opinion of her daughter.
What she found shocked her. Apparently almost all of the palace staff considered her daughter to be beneath them or unworthy of their time, and the palace staff that didn't think this way had apparently all made a mass exodus for the midnight shift when they wouldn't have to see Sunset being constantly belittled by the other staff. It wasn't until Sunset had already left that Celestia realized that Sunset had been talking about going back to the destroyed house where she had found the colt to see if she could find any more survivors among the wreckage. 'That's my girl.' She thought with a small smile on her face. 'Now...what was that magical disturbance earlier, if it wasn't Sunset going through the portal then?' She thought to herself.
Sunset Shimmer's P.O.V, a few minutes earlier
"...imprinted on you."
As soon as she heard about this possibility, Sunset knew that she had to make sure that the colt's actual mother was with him when he woke up for good and that she was nowhere to be seen during their reunion. "All the more reason for me to go back to the destroyed house to look for other survivors, then!" Sunset said, as she began to teleport back to her previous location. "Wish me luck! With how badly damaged that house was, I'm going to need all the luck I can get." She said, as the spell finished forming.
Upon arriving at the house, Sunset immediately saw two Earth Ponies standing outside of the wreckage talking to each other with angry looks on their faces. She immediately began to walk up to them to ask if that had been their house and to let them know that their son was alright, but as she got closer, she began to hear what they were saying to each other.
"I knew that we shouldn't have taken that street urchin in!" The stallion said to his wife, angrily.
"But I heard a rumor that Celestia did it, and the quickest way to climb up the social network around here is to emulate the Princess!" The wife argued back.
"Well look what happened! We left for all of a few days, and when we come back, our house is completely destroyed and he's nowhere to be seen!" The stallion said to his wife, clearly blaming the colt for what had happened to the house.
"Don't worry about it dear! It's not like we don't have the place insured against unicorns, after all!" The wife reminded her husband.
At this point Sunset immediately changed her mind about what had happened that morning with the mirror and the magical disturbance. After hearing what those two Earth Ponies thought about their adoptive son, she immediately reversed her decision on what the fact that Celestia had an artifact like that meant.
'So...she's not complete horse dung...' Sunset thought to herself, 'She's just blinded by grief about what happened to her sister. After all, if there had never been a magical disturbance this morning...' Sunset shuddered as she thought of what the colt's life would have been like, as she began to teleport back to the hospital.
Upon arriving at the hospital, the receptionist immediately spoke to her, saying "Celestia's looking for you, you know."
"Celestia can wait." Sunset said, with worry in her tone. "Now, how's the colt doing?"
"So you found the corpses of his parents, then?" The receptionist countered.
Sunset told the receptionist that, while the parents were still alive and well, they wouldn't be getting the colt back, and then proceeded to tell her about what she had heard the parents saying.
After Sunset got done telling the receptionist about what she had heard from the parents, the receptionist had the same look on her face as Celestia did whenever she had to deal with particularly obnoxious nobles in Day Court. "Tell me, Sunset, where exactly are these lovely ponies?" She asked in a sugary sweet tone that sent chills down Sunset's spine.
"M...Mom?" Sunset asked, stammering as she had never before seen her mother so angry before. "Exa...Exactly how long have you been impersonating the receptionists at this hospital, and w...why have you been impersonating the receptionists at this hospital?" Sunset asked, trying desperately to regain some of her composure.
Upon seeing what her barely contained rage had done to her normally sure and confident daughter, Celestia immediately dropped the illusion around herself and broke down crying, something that caught Sunset completely off guard. "I'm sorry, my little ray of sunshine! I didn't know that the staff were treating you like that! I never meant to make you feel like you were just a means to an end!" Celestia said, as tears streamed down her face.
"Could we take care of family business in private, please?" Sunset said, strained. "I've come to realize that what happened this morning was necessary, but we can't be seen acting like this out in public!" Sunset said, pleading with Celestia to stop carrying on the way that she was.
"You're right, of course." Celestia said, sniffling. "Boy qm I glad that I've had to attend countless meetings over the past millennia." She said, calmly. "The practice at hiding behind a mask really comes in handy when I realize that I've screwed up. Sorry about that. It's just that when I saw that you were actually scared of me, well...all of the day's stress just hitme all at once and then some."
"Sorry, mom." Sunset said, apologetically. "It's just that I've never seen you that angry before."
"I thought that I was hiding my fury rather well though!" Celestia said, in dismay. "What gave it away?"
"The tone that you said the phrase, 'lovely ponies' in, actually. But that's besides the point. Why are you so angry? I know that it isn't just because of what they were saying, because last week a noble in day court demanded permission to 'bed me' and you just laughed at him as you said, and I quote, 'go ahead and try!' Of course, it was rather fun to have a moving, thinking target that you were...oh. That's why you said that, isn't it?"
"I'm sure that I have no idea what you're insinuating, my little ray of sunshine, but, if I did I would be fervently agreeing with your astute deduction." Celestia said with a wink.
"Right, the old 'See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil' strategy. Got it." Sunset said with a smile. "But back to my question. Why were you so angry? Even if they just did it because you did it, which I agree is wrong, you sounded ready to go against the highest law in the land and kill them over it! While what they did was wrong, it certainly doesn't deserve that!"
"Right." Celestia said with a tone realization. "You were gone for that, weren't you? Have I mentioned how proud I am to be able to call you my daughter recently, Sunset?" Celestia said, trying to distract her from what she had accidentally said out loud.
"Gone for what, mom?" Sunset asked, not taking the bait.
"I mean, not only are your studies coming along well, but you proved that you are selfless in ways that I haven't seen from my ponies in a long time!" Celestia continued, hoping to distract her.
"Mom, what exactly was I gone for? Is something wrong with my son?" Sunset asked, hoping to distract her mother from distracting her.
"Wait...your son?" Celestia asked, shocked.
"Well, you did say that it was possible that he had imprinted on me, right, mom?" Sunset asked, smiling up at her mother. "And you did want me to make friends, right? And I'm pretty sure that neither of us want him going back to his old family, or, at the very least, I know that I don't want him going back to his old family, if the most important thing about the situation they're currently in to them is the fact that their house is destroyed, do you?"
At this, Celestia immediately had to try very hard to remember that Sunset had no idea what she was implying by asking that question. She opened her mouth to respond, thought better of it, performed a mental calming exercise, and then opened her mouth again. "You have no idea what you're playing with, daughter. What's happened to your son is beyond your scope of comprehension. That's why I can't tell you about it. If I did, you wouldn't even begin to comprehend what I was saying." Celestia said, deadly serious.
"I'm sorry, mom." Sunset said, worried that she had pushed too far. "I'm just worried for my son's health"
"I know, Sunset. Trust me, I know all too well how it feels to not know how your loved ones are doing." Celestia said, sadly. "Just trust me when I say that between the two of us we should be able to help him."