Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows


Chapter Sixty, Separation Anxiety: Mitosis.

-Ponyville Hospital, Maria-

Goats should never travel to Mexicolt without ample protection, Chupacabras are really scary and monstrously resilient to permanent injury of any kind. My dreams could be haunted by those eyes, teeth and claws for the rest of my life.

Getting that thought off my mind, I glanced around the room.

I was sitting in a room with several other people, including princess Celestia, Luna, Fluttershy, Kuril, her grandson and our possible nephew Gavin, Zecora, Twilight Sparkle and various doctors including our very own Dr. Bones.

Gavin had little clue what was going on, but he was certainly a bundle of energy that Celestia was currently keeping busy by playing with him. Gavin’s been recently fed and has been taken to the bathroom by Kuril, so he shouldn’t cause any problems or a fuss during this meeting.

“Okay, to start things off, does anyone have any questions about the information I’ve given out about the three subjects in question?” Dr. Bones asked, I personally looked over the document myself and looked over the section about the mental trauma we were going through. It was a lot of dry reading, but it spoke of our situation and I needed to know what was going on with my sisters to make any possible decisions for all of us. “Also, have you been taking your medication Maria?”

“Yes ma’am, just as you prescribed to me.” It’s been working so far and I had no complaints about taking more if needed, I was only taking the recommended dosage and everything. Both my sisters needed me to be in good health, mentally and physically.

Dr. Bones eyed me for a minute, then nodded to me and went back to looking to the rest of the crowd that seemed to be silently contemplating the information they have on our situation. Everyone, aside from Celestia, was paging through the documents and didn’t have any questions yet.

I was currently on anti-depressants and they seemed to be working quite well for the situation my sisters and I were in. If the side effect was me being able to keep a positive mood, then I wasn’t complaining one bit and Dr. Bones said she had an idea or two to force us back together.

“Yes, I would like to go over what makes Maria, Mara and Marie different from all the other animals that have already fused back together without problem.” Pegasus doctor Falls Positive, a doctor with the special talent for recognizing when any test results were off on a document. He’s saved quite a number of lives by catching things that other doctors might have missed.

“Okay Dr. Positive, for that I’ll just start off with the most common thing among them all. Each animal that fused back together without a problem had simply had their erstwhile traits displaced and given form, they only split into two animals with little in their minds at best. The split off traits didn’t have much of a mind of their own to begin with and the animals were all left in a daze with very little movement from within a given range, aside from the reported anomalous movements of the scorpion. Mara and Maria both confirm this to be the case.” Yes, that is what we saw Dr. Bones and it’s been really weird having my own body. It was really quite lonely in my own head, I miss the commentary of my sisters. “The only two beings there that were split into three were The Cerberus and Maries.”

“Then shouldn’t Maries have returned to normal like The Cerberus?” Falls Positive didn’t know how sorely I wished that to be the case. “They share quite a few similarities.”

I was in good enough condition to be acting as a lawyer and our health insurance was still active so fixing our separation was a medical expense that we could easily pay. We weren’t really using that money for much and had been storing it away in Sekhet’s treasury. No thief could take what wasn’t theirs to begin with from Sekhet’s home, not without serious repercussions. Having a goddess protecting your money really makes for a secure bank.

“You would think so, but no. There are some major difference between The Cerberus of Tartarus and Maries of Airship Mauled.” Dr. Bones looked to Twilight. “Do you want a crack at what those differences are Princess Twilight? You are certainly looking eager with the way you are waving your hoof around.”

Twilight blushed and lowered her hoof, she then calmly cleared her throat.

“Is it because The Cerberus became three dogs, all of which are of the same species and have similar enough mindsets to not be a problem, whereas Maries are three completely different species and are of three completely different minds?” Yeah, that sounded like a problem to me, give the friendship princess a cookie. “I’m actually fairly interested about our capacity to handle medical emergencies at the school of friendship. While it hasn’t come up yet, do we have doctors here that can actually handle the special needs of the various students that are coming to my school from abroad? I had problems with finding medical help for Spike previously and… might have taken him to a veterinarian trying to get any kind of help for him. That whole 'greed growth' thing wasn’t pleasant, but I’m thankful we managed to sort that out without Spike getting seriously hurt. While it might not happen to others, there is the distinct possibility that we are not ready for any serious medical problems that might befall my more unique students.”

“You taught a bright one Celestia, she’ll be a good leader even if that isn’t the entire answer to the problem.” Dr. Bones bowed her head to the sun princess and turned to Twilight. “Close, but not the whole story lass. The three different minds and species are definitely big problems for the three of them, but the biggest problem is that you actually gave them complete bodies to move around in. Three dogs fusing together isn’t a problem, the lost traits of the other mystical animals didn’t have any problems fusing back together either. Maries was three intelligent, almost thrown together, beings working in harmony that you magically broke apart and when it came time for them to fuse back together…”

“Oh… they couldn’t because their magic rejected the fusing process after a short amount of time as they now have perfectly working bodies that they’ve never had before. Two with mostly working minds to fill them, given the third traded her mind to keep the other two safe.” Twilight’s ears wilted as she realized what she had done. “We didn’t exactly do much once we left Tartarus. If we hadn’t left, then Maries would still be a chimera. I am so very sorry about all this Maria.”

“It’s okay, as long as my sisters are still alive and can live well enough. We could sue you for this, but it wouldn’t fix the problem and would just make a further mess of things.” I reached up with my right hoof to scratch at the base of my horns. “Hopefully Dr. Bones will tell us how she’s getting us back to being one being.”

“If you want to hear the most unethical options I came up with first, I’m willing to get started on telling them to you. Quite frankly, as your doctor, I suggest that you say no to absolutely every single one of them.” Dr. Bones hopefully had some ethical options to get us back together. Now everyone in the room was looking to me and I was a bit self-conscious. I didn’t have my sisters here to support me mentally and therefore I had to be the one to be our voice here. “So what say you?”

Fluttershy placed her right wing on my back, she was sitting right next to me and her kindness felt wonderful.

“I wouldn’t mind hearing them, but if they are as unethical as you say… I will definitely say no to all of them and trust that you have my best interests at heart.” I was not exactly the bravest sounding individual at the moment, because I was not supposed to be a single individual like this! I was the fight or flight response of Maries, I couldn’t run from myself nor could I fight anything to solve this. I feel rather helpless. “If you have some ethical options for me afterwards, then I would be far gladder to hear those.”

“That I do. First the most unethical option here is to surgically chop up the three of you and sew the correct parts of you back together while using magic to keep you alive until we can use magic to fuse you all back into one coherent being. This would have a ninety five percent fatality rate even with all the best magic users’ alive working on it.” Yeah, no, we’re so not doing that Dr. Bones. Everyone in the room was clearly horrified with the idea, even Princess Luna was looking green in the face. “The next unethical option is to get Tirek’s help, as he was a part of the magic used to separate you in the first place. That is not a great idea.”

“Hopefully you’re leading up to some really great ideas here doc, my sisters wouldn’t like the idea of trusting Tirek with anything. Much less waking up to someone yelling ‘it’s alive’ at the top of their lungs.” I was kind of worried that she didn’t have any good options. “Your kind of scaring me with the idea that you don’t have any ethical options.”

“My next unethical option would be to get Discord’s help.” Everyone in the room winced at once as soon as Dr. Bones said that, even Fluttershy.

“Why I never! Well mostly because I can’t, and I’m fairly sorry for it, but there are reasons as to why I cannot fix the chaotic wonder that is that lovely three piece chimera set. Collect them all for a limited time only! I do hope you can get them back together again as it would be quite sad to keep them apart for as long as ‘they’ have been. ” Discord popped out of Celestia’s mane and spooked both her and Gavin for a second, his last statement was aimed at a random wall for some reason. The griffon cub looked up curiously at the amalgamated chaos god. He chirped and swatted playfully at Discord’s beard a few times. “Don’t worry about a thing Celestia. I’ll get out of your hair soon enough, even if it is quite comfy in here. I’m sad to state that I can’t do anything here, I’m under some rather specific rules and I really can’t do anything to help with this one specific thing no matter how much you have the beautiful Fluttershy beg me. So good bye! Oh, by the way, your grandson is adorable ma’am.”

“Why thank you!” Kuril said pleasantly as a smiling Discord’s body disappeared back into a wide eyed Celestia’s mane.

That draconequus was a strange and frightening being.

Celestia’s right eye twitched slightly, she didn’t say anything for a few moments and then just silently went back to focusing on keeping Gavin entertained.

“So... Discord can’t help us.” Fluttershy rubbed her left hoof against her chin while looking towards the ceiling. “He’ll probably explain to me later why he couldn’t help.”

“Getting three differing minds and differing bodies back together into one wonderfully discordant mystical creature seems like something he’d be capable of doing.” Right there with you Dr. Bones, that was very strange. “Well those were the entirely unethical options. Now let’s move on to the less disgusting options that will take some consideration.”

“Agreed.” Luna stated quickly looking a bit pale.

“First up, we leave you separated to live your lives as is.” Dr. Bones didn’t bat an eye as I let loose an angry blast of fire from my mouth into the air, no guesses what I thought about that. “I understand that you’re angry, but the three of you can survive this way. All we would need to do is fix your minds and the options to do that are fairly easy to accomplish. Just know that if we fix you’re minds from being as they are, you might never be able to return to being a chimera.”

“That’s an option…. maybe.” While I could become okay with the idea of being my own personal being, I would always miss having a head next to mine in the morning. “Keep going Dr. Bones, I’d take the more than likely options if you will.”

“We use the staff of Sacanas on you. It might not be able to heal wounds like in Fizzlepop’s case where it couldn’t fix her horn, but it can fix things that have already been done by magic. We’ll try this option first to try and fuse you back together.” That sounded okay, it didn’t sound nearly as bad as the previous ones Dr. Bones. “If that doesn’t work, Celestia, Luna and Twilight will try to reverse the process of what Twilight did to you in the first place by forcefully fusing you three together. It may cause you some pain or permanent magical harm if they do that.”

“Have any more than that?” She nodded to my question, I then asked Dr. Bones. “What exactly is the best case scenario here?”

“Fluttershy, Rainbow, Rarity, Applejack, Pinkie and Twilight use the powers of harmony on you and hope that it doesn’t make things worse.” Dr. Bones turned an eye to Twilight, the princess wilted. “As far as I know they can’t exactly do that on command.”

“We can’t, it’s only in certain circumstances that we can pull that out, usually when the fate of the entire world is threatened.” Twilight looked away from my gaze directed at her. “It’s sad to say that you’re problem isn’t big enough for it, I really want to help you three.”

“Why?” That actually made her turn towards me. “You don’t know a thing about us.”

“Because you’re the friend of some of my friends and they care about you.” Twilight looked to Fluttershy, who has been comforting me this entire time.

“We do have other options than the best ones, we could always use Zebra alchemy. I could also try and use a phoenix feather on you to see if that will undo whatever magical problem is going on with you.” Great leader Kuril offered, we could trust zebra alchemy if it came from Zecora and or her magical alchemy personally.

“I might have something for that, it probably won’t leave you... too fat.” Zecora muttered over the file she was looking over.

“I would like to try all the ‘good’ options we can feasibly do.” It’s what Mara, Marie and I would want.

“Whit’s fur ye’ll no go past ye’.” Dr. Bones stated while nodding. “If nothing works, then we’ll just keep trying until something does. Fixing your minds will be the last thing we do, but at least we can stabilize the three of you so that you can at least live your lives to the fullest.”

“How soon can we try these methods of getting the patient back together?” Falls Positive asked.

“We can start tomorrow morning.” What Dr. Bones said next made me gulp. “With the shifts I’ve worked, we’ll have plenty of people on standby if something goes completely wrong.”