"Hi, how can I help..." A bored-looking unicorn staffing the desk immediately inside the clinic's entrance trailed off as Maple and Starlight's party entered, noticing Valey's condition with wide eyes as she finally stood up and stopped shadow sneaking. "Physical trauma? It looks like you've already been seen to recently? Better hope you're stable; there are a lot of higher-priority injuries due to the tournament right now."
Valey shrugged, pushing Maple forward. "Nah, not me. I'm good. You do the talking, Ironflanks."
Starlight watched from Maple's back as she introduced herself and stated her business, realizing with some irony that this was exactly the place they had picked Valey up from earlier in the morning. Adjacent to the colosseum, where else would a hospital be? If any of them had thought of it, they could have spared themselves the trip.
"You want someone to look at her horn?" The desk mare frowned. "We should be able to do that. Do you have any existing medical records in our system?"
Maple frowned. "You would know that better than I would, but I don't think so?"
"Alright, then. Wait over there, please. A nurse will be right with you..." The mare waved them further into the building with a slightly odd look. "You're a lot of ponies accompanying just one patient."
Amber grinned, bringing up the rear. "We were along for the walk, and want to get out of the rain. We'll get out of your fur, though."
The waiting room was largely empty, and most of the ponies and griffons who were there kept to themselves, faces buried in newspapers or magazines or else staring deadly into space. It didn't take long for the nurse to arrive, and Starlight zoned out as more pleasantries were exchanged. Shinespark and Amber stayed behind with Valey, leaving only Maple at her side as they trotted through a minimally-lit corridor and eventually stopped in an examination room.
"Let's get the routine stuff out of the way first, hmm, dearie?" the nurse asked, stooping to Starlight's level and wearing a smile so friendly, it certainly meant she wanted to brace her for something nasty. "Stand over here, and we'll take your height and weight. How old are you?"
"We don't really know," Maple apologized with a smile of her own. "She's adopted. Does it matter?"
The nurse looked at her, then shrugged. "Well, since she has no information on record, it would be best if she got a general physical checkup first. You said she was having horn issues, right? There are a lot of things that can cause that in a young filly, and most of them aren't magical. So, we should cover our bases, right? Tell me about yourself, Starlight. Anything in general that feels wrong." She lifted a clipboard in her wings.
Starlight opened her mouth to say everything but her horn was fine... until a harsh knock came at the door. "Doctor Gru!" a male voice called from outside.
"Oh?" The nurse blinked, looking up. "Looks like someone's here to see you already," she remarked, getting the door. "I guess the staff were feeling quick today! Sounds like you'll get a more magical look at your horn taken quickly!"
A prim unicorn with a short, curly mane and tiny spectacles entered wearing a white lab coat, looking down his muzzle with a smile that was probably intended to be friendly. "Starlight! You're my little patient? Word from on high was you were high-priority."
The nurse nodded. "Starlight, Maple, this is Doctor Gru, and he'll be able to diagnose your problems with far more accuracy than I will." She hesitated. "Doctor... I haven't even completed a basic assessment yet, and didn't put in the call for you. Are you sure your time is best spent on the basics?"
"Oh, no, no, it's no trouble at all," the doctor chuckled, patting the nurse on the head with his telekinesis. "Sounds like a management snafu, but guess whose favor it works out it? All of ours! You get seen to quickly, and between the four of us, I've had more than enough fun setting breaks and mending lacerations for today already. Now, tell me a little about your horn."
Starlight felt a faint tingle in the back of her mind as the nurse decided to leave, then lit her horn for emphasis. "It hurts when I use it too much and takes a long time to stop hurting," she answered, having no idea what would be helpful or what he was looking for.
"Mmm. I see!" Doctor Gru walked in a circle around her, peering closely with his spectacles. "And has it always been like this? Is it relatively stable, or has it suddenly gotten worse? Anything like this run in the family?"
"I don't know who my biological parents were." Starlight bit her lip. "And it only got bad a few months ago after I started using my magic a lot more than I used to and pushing it further."
Doctor Gru nodded. "Pushing it further? Lifting heavy things with telekinesis, I take it? Do you have an example of the heaviest thing you can lift without it hurting? How about a thick book?"
Starlight shrugged, lifting Maple for a second before setting her down with an apologetic nuzzle, all without breaking a sweat. "It's not about how much I push it. It's about that plus how long I push it for. Like there's an energy limit."
The doctor's jaw hung for a moment. "You can lift a whole pony, can you? That's quite impressive for a filly your age. Most of the foals I see are just developing sparks and minor tricks, and the advanced ones are lifting things smaller and much lighter than they are. My first guess was that you have some sort of stress injury, but it sounds more like you're missing part of a limiter system to avoid hurting yourself. Most unicorns are capable of more powerful magic than they usually wield, but it's capped except in situations of extreme emotional stress to avoid long-term damage to themselves."
"Really?" Starlight blinked, then frowned. Was she just... too powerful for her own good? Or unable to properly check or regulate herself?
"That said," Gru continued, shrugging, "most kids having a magic surge are about as powerful as you showed off there, and you didn't even look like you were concentrating, there! So who knows what's up?" He winked. "I've got a machine just a room away that's used for measuring mana signals and signatures. I'd be very curious to hook you up to it and see what we find out, if that's alright with you?"
Maple frowned. "Hold on... how does this machine work? Does it involve anything that could potentially drain her or hurt her? If she's missing some sort of limit like you say, couldn't it potentially suck her dry?"
Doctor Gru chuckled. "No, it's a simple resistor that projects patterns forced through it onto a screen. Ever amused yourself by using your horn on a gemstone to make it light up for a while? It's exactly the same as that, only specially cut so we can learn things from it. You fine waiting here, stepmom? We'll be right back."
"Should I?" Maple stood up. "I can come too."
"Actually..." Doctor Gru moved over and swiped the nurse's abandoned clipboard, its paperwork mostly not filled out. "Since we sort of skipped the beginning, would you mind filling out the survey questions here for her to the best of your ability? It would save a lot of time."
"Oh." Maple took the clipboard as it was thrust at her. "Well, okay."
"Excellent!" Gru guided Starlight along with his aura, shepherding her out of the room. "We'll be back in less than five minutes."
The door swung shut behind him with a click, and Valey slowly rose out of the floor.
"Ah!" Maple stifled a gasp. "Valey, you surprised me. You didn't wait with Amber and Shinespark?"
"Nah. Kinda feel like snooping around." Valey shrugged. "I didn't feel it earlier, so either I was in a different part of the hospital or it wasn't close enough to night here, but I'm pretty sure there's a dusk statue somewhere in this place. I wonder if they use it to give dying batponies last rites, or something. But it was making me a little antsy, so I figured I'd do something with myself and follow along."
Maple smiled. "Well, glad to have you. Want to help me with this paperwork?"
The room Gru led Starlight to was small, dim, and didn't look abundantly packed with technology. In fact, it didn't look all that different than the one we had left. "Here?" she asked as he closed the door behind them.
"Right here!" the doctor said cheerfully, opening a cabinet and searching around inside with his aura. "One moment while I find this and get it set up..."
Starlight sat and waited, frowning. Something kept twinging at the back of her mind, like an idea that had been forgotten and was important to remember. A tug she needed not to ignore, but couldn't remember what it meant... She fidgeted. Something about her magic? About what he had said? That meshed or clashed with something she already knew? What was-!
Suddenly, his aura was in front of her, holding something to her nose. "Just one moment," Doctor Gru promised. "This won't hurt at all."
Starlight gasped in surprise and tried to back away... but her hooves were rooted in place by magic. She tried to light her horn, but as she drew in the breath, her head swam, and she teetered over, darkness edging into her vision until she slipped out of consciousness.
"How much physical activity does she get per day? Bananas, I dunno." Valey shrugged. "She usually rides around on you whenever you go anywhere, but she's pretty active sparring with me. I have her running and jumping a lot. She's not exactly an athlete, but she's in pretty good shape."
"Right," Maple agreed. "We'll say she goes with hard training for an hour a day, since it's longer than that but not as often. Now, next..." She trailed off. "Valey?"
"Oh bananas," Valey whispered, looking like she had been shot, surprise morphing to outrage on her face. "Oh bananas. Starlight just went from being two rooms away to several miles. She teleported."
Maple frowned. "They stimulated her into doing that? But the furthest I've ever seen her teleport is..."
"Uh huh," Valey growled. "Yeah, they totally did. Bananas, she's completely recognizable as being with me. Whatever kind of doctor that dude thinks he is, we'll see if he can patch himself up as badly as I can kick his teeth in."