Equestria : 1940
Thursday 8 August - Hospital Outpatient Recovery Center
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
— Ephesians 6:12
Jon opened one eye and looked at his alarm clock.
His alarm clock looked back. Unfortunately, there was no way to turn this one off.
“It’s eight o’clock Mister Walthers,” chirped Laminia, who had plunged into the role of volunteer nurse with far too much enthusiasm. “We’ve let you sleep in enough, lazy monkey. Time to get up with the rest of the patients. Some of them are off to their jobs already.”
“I’m up,” he muttered, then when the nurse did not leave, he repeated the lie. “I said I’m up.”
It did not work. Laminia clamped her jaws down on the bedsheets and gave a brisk tug.
At least he still had his boxer shorts on, although the bandages around his hip made them sag in unexpected places, and forced him to keep the string fairly loose. He stumbled out of bed at the continued prodding of the outpatient nurse, took a limited sponge bath, and considered his shortened hair, which could probably go another day without shampoo. His shoulder had almost healed all the way up except for a bright pink puckered scar which twinged when he moved too fast, but the hip was going to take a few more weeks before he would be able to leave the cane behind.
Once the nurse had gotten him into his uniform jacket, Lieutenant Walthers looked almost military, except for the baggy sweatpants and the loafers. The full uniform would have to wait until he could touch his toes again, perhaps next week.
His fellow participants on the rescue mission had fared both better and worse than him. Jimmy had dropped him a letter every week, detailing his medical recovery but little else due to censorship, other than baseball team critique. Moondancer was recuperating in Manehattan, although her letters were being censored fairly hard, so she must have still been working on whatever heavy water project she had been under the Germans. Derpy was out delivering mail, and testing the structural integrity of the buildings by accidentally ramming into them at odd times during her erratic flights. And Nightshade…
“Come on, pokey butt. You’re going to be late.” Laminia walked very carefully into the kitchen where Jon was adjusting his tie in the mirror, stood up on her hind legs, and adjusted it for him. The two bullet holes in her dark crippled wing had almost healed up, and were covered by a pair of pink Band-Aides, while the bandage around her middle that covered a smaller bullet hole was merely a decoration by now. The dark pegasi healed remarkably fast, although part of that could be credited to Laminia’s iron determination not to be helpless in any way. Her coltfriend, though…
“So, are you planning on spending all day at the hospital with Anpan again?” asked Jon with a sideways glance. “I heard they’ve been pushing a bed up next to his so you can sleep together.”
“We talk,” said Laminia with a faint pinking tinge to her dark ears. “It’s just more comfortable to talk to him lying down, since he still has the catheter in, and they’ve only got part of the casts on his wings peeled back.”
“He picked up thirty-seven bullet holes and a cutie mark,” mused Nightshade, who took that moment to come strolling into the kitchen of the recovery center. She nuzzled her friend and fellow recovery-ee, then fixed her with a stern expression. “Be sure to remind him that the goal of a guard is to dodge the bullets, no matter what his special talent is. And speaking of bullet magnets...”
Moving on to Jon, Nightshade gave him a sharp tug on his baggy sweatpants, which remained intact. “Gonna get those off yet,” she muttered, giving him an affectionate nip on the leg instead.
“Once we’re both healed up and back in shape, we’ll talk,” countered Jon as he had every morning. “Until then, I believe you have an appointment at the hospital to see if you’re ready to get these—” he rapped his knuckles against the plaster casts across her back “—removed.”
“About time,” she groused, giving him a gentle nudge toward the door that only hurt a little when she bumped his hip. “My itches have itches. Gonna buy you a gallon of baby oil and spend a week doing nothing but having you rub ‘em.”
“After our jobs, of course.” Jon picked up the briefcase sitting on the table and the unopened packet that the night courier had delivered, along with several newspapers. “My orders fresh from my elders and betters at Washington D.C., the Times both New York and London, the Manehattan Sun, and a copy of the Quibbler for Twilight,” he quipped while opening up the seal on the packet. “Celestia’s spooks do good work. You could never tell it’s been opened and copied.”
“Roosevelt should just make her a second copy,” groused Nightshade while sticking a couple of carrots out of the icebox into her carrying bag. “It would take all of her fun out of it.”
“She’d just have to compare copies to make sure I’m not getting any secret orders from the General Staff.” Jon flipped back a few pages. “Not much unclassified on mine. The USSR annexed a couple of countries I can’t pronounce. Germany still hasn’t invaded Britain yet, but they’ve nipped a bit around the edges. Yours?”
“Not much. The St. Louis finally got that engine problem fixed, so it’s going to put out from San Franciscolt tomorrow and head back to Germany. For some reason, none of the Jewish passengers wanted to go back, so Celestia’s giving them a spot to stay until she can send them somewhere else. I’m starting to think the mechanical failure that made them dock in Equestria wasn’t accidental.”
“You’re just being paranoid,” said Jon while checking the comics. “Anything else?”
“A few things Celestia wanted leaked your way. I put the whole packet in your briefcase so you can carry it for me like a proper gentlecolt.” Nightshade yawned broadly. “Come on, let’s get over to the hospital. When we’re done, we can grab lunch and hit the library. You can read the lies in the newspaper, study, and write up stuff.”
“While you nap in the cushions,” added Jon.
“And I’ll watch over the lunkhead in the hospital,” said Lamina, who had left her traditional cloak off in the baking heat of the Ponyville summer sun. Since her near-death experience with the hostage rescue team, she liked showing off her scarred back to all of the town’s ponies. Jon secretly thought it was just for the shock value, although she claimed it was just a happy coincidence. She bounced over to the door and held it open, calling over her shoulder, “Come on, don’t be such lazybutts.”
Laminia trotted ahead of Jon and Nightshade, who walked together slowly down the narrow cobblestoned road, him with a cane and her with him to lean against. Ignoring the flouncing batpony up ahead, Jon ran his fingers through the shortened mane on Nightshade’s neck and gave out a short huff of breath. “At least we should have a more peaceful time of our lives now. Two dragons, a human, and six ponies⁽*⁾ never came back. Our peace was purchased at a high price.”
(*) An incorrect sum, since one dragon, a human, and two ponies had just returned after a trans-Atlantic flight to Peru, because they had to take an unstable magical artifact back to its Aztec temple before it exploded and destroyed the world. For details, check your bookstands for Daring Do and the Teyacapan Heart, out soon.
“I’ll take it, since I don’t think Celestia or Luna will be dropping us into anything more exciting than papercuts and report writing,” said Nightshade. “The great powers of the world are going to war, and Equestria is just a mouse compared to them.” She wrinkled up her nose and gave Jon an endearing squeak, much like a squeeze toy.
“A mouse that bit them on the butt pretty hard.” Jon held his tongue for a while as they walked. Being a military advisor for two divine horsie diarchs as the sole human representative for a hundred or so miles was still a pretty heavy responsibility, although with little chance of getting shot. It did come with an awful lot of paperwork, and he had typed more pages of reports on the manual typewriter in Twilight’s oak library than he had ever dreamed of before. Loud noises still made him flinch, and Ponyville thunderstorms were less an act of nature and more of a performance in percussion from the weather team, which did not help. “I think I can take a little boredom for a change. Maybe write a book, if I can find anything interesting to write about in this dull old town.”
Nightshade snorted, then turned her head and looked at a flier on the pony streetlight, which stood at about Jon’s nose level. “Hey, The Great and Powerful Trixie is doing a stage show this evening.” She thought for a moment with a frown. “Sounds familiar. Anyway, wanna go?”
“As friends, and fellow convalescents,” said Jon, “I would be honored. It will be a nice way to relax this evening after you get your casts off and take a nap in the library while I’m typing. Just the two of us and a show. It could be fun.”
“Are you sure?” Nightshade stopped and patted him on the chest. “After all, you’re a fragile human, and some pony entertainments can be pretty stressful.”
“Oh, relax,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s Ponyville. What could possibly happen?”
And that evening, as they were running in abject terror from the house-sized stellar bear that turned out to be the star of Trixie’s show, he made a note to never say those words again.