//------------------------------// // Part 20 // Story: Silent Ponyville: Reunion // by Chapter 17 //------------------------------// Silent Ponyville: Reunion Stay away. Part 20 ------ "Posey, before I say or do anything, I need you to promise me that what happens here never leaves this room," Mannie requested of the pregnant mare with all due seriousness. She took a step back and looked around. They were in one of the campus labs. The blind over the door window was shut, and the lights were off save for a single table lamp in the far corner of the room so that they would not be spotted outside. The trip over there had been just as sneaky and secretive, and now with the unicorn graduate making her take a vow of silence on top of everything else, she felt that she was entitled to at last get some answers before proceeding any further. "Why?" she asked pointedly. "It's like I said before, neither of us has a medical license to practice, and as though that weren't already bad enough, the thing we may or may not be doing here hasn't been put through formal testing by the Equestrian Medical Association yet, so it's not even approved for medical use by doctors who do have a license. If word gets out that we were even back here talking to you like this, we could be in deep trouble," he explained while maintaining the same grim expression. "How deep?" she prodded further. "Approximately 'never allowed to touch a scalpel ever again' deep," Mannie clarified. Posey's eyes widened a bit and she looked back at Lance and the scalpel adorning his flank, the worry on her face quite obvious. "I...I don't want to do this if it's as dangerous as it sounds...doubly so if it's going to get you in that much trouble." Lance stepped forward and gave her a gentle, assuring nuzzle. "Posey, it's not dangerous at all, this is just a red tape issue. We're not going to get caught either, everypony else has either left already or they're still at the party." His words didn't seem to have all that much effect. She was left standing there looking down at the floor, silently weighing all of what she had just been told. ... "You're sure?" "I'm sure honey." Posey gave a last long pause, then drew a deep breath and let it out in a sigh of resignation before turning back to Mannie. "Okay...I promise that what happens here won't leave this room." He smiled, content to now proceed in a bit less of a heavy hoofed fashion. "Excellent! Now, even though I'm fairly confident we won't get caught, I'd like to avoid tempting fate by getting through this as quickly as possible. Just stand right there and I'll get the easy part out of the way, then Lance can field any questions you have." He pointed a hoof as he spoke, indicating an area of the lab fairly free of such trifles as tables and chairs. Posey strolled over to the indicated spot but stopped midway as something occurred to her. "Wait, you're not going to try using a spell of scrying are you?" "Oh no, trust me, we know much better than to try that," he replied with a nod as she stepped into just the right position. "Right there's good, have a seat." She complied, her expression still worried yet now fairly curious as to what was about to happen. Mannie took a step forward, examined the area around her as though trying to eyeball the measurements of the space, then closed his eyes before his horn lit with a soft blue light. Within moments a magical field in the shape of a dome materialized around her and the cerulean unicorn opened his eyes again to survey his work. Whilst he was doing that, Posey looked around her at the clear shimmering barrier, reaching out a hoof on a whim to try and touch it. To her surprise it was not really a barrier at all and her hoof passed right through it, not even feeling the usual soft tingle one typically felt upon contact with magical energy. "What the..." "Yeah, that's not actually a barrier, you can walk right through it. Seems to be stable too, so if you please, would you kindly stand as still as you can and close your eyes?" Mannie requested as he very purposefully strode to a certain spot outside the barrier. "Why?" she asked as she fulfilled his request, sitting patiently with eyes closed despite her lingering reservations. "You'll see, this will only take a minute or two." "Fine." As she sat there with her eyes closed she heard the quiet shimmering of two low level spells being cast in front of her, then two hoof steps as Mannie moved a bit to her right, still outside the dome from the sound of it. He cast another pair of spells and moved a bit to the right again, repeating the process until he had gone round her full circle. "Alright we're done, you can open your eyes now," Mannie said once he had finished the last pair of spells. Posey opened her eyes. "Gah!" she exclaimed as she flinched backward slightly. There was a set of two perfectly round red circles in front of her, the images held inside of the field one atop the other. Inside of each was a silhouette of her own shape, made up of all the colors of the spectrum in an arrangement she couldn't quite decipher as anything in particular. She turned her head side to side to see that she was surrounded by similar pairs of red, silhouette laden circles, all portraying her from different angles. "Heh, see? No way somepony wouldn't flinch if that suddenly popped up right in front of them, hence the closed eyes," Mannie explained briefly. "Yeah I guess...so um, do I just...step out or...?" she asked after looking about again a bit awkwardly. "Yep, don't worry, physical matter won't interfere with the images." Mannie's gaze did not meet hers as he spoke, the unicorn now completely occupied applying a critical eye to the many images on the dome he had just created. Posey gave a mental shrug and stepped out of the dome, approaching her husband with a veritable swarm of questions buzzing about her head regarding what had just happened. "What just happened?" she queried as she settled back to a sitting position again at his side. "Want me to start from the beginning?" he asked, smiling at her like a pony being asked to tell a story they really enjoyed telling. "Hehe, sure." She giggled a bit, the expression on his face putting her somewhat more at ease. "Well about six or so years ago the researchers over in Canterlot discovered that there's a very, very low level magical energy permeating pretty much every location in the known universe at all times. Furthermore they discovered that it moves through different types of physical matter and reacts to various types of magic in a very predictable fashion. When Mannie read about this in one of the scientific journals he has scattered all over his house-" "I'm helping you see your foal and you're criticizing the clutter in my house, nice," Mannie remarked without bothering to look away from his work. "-it got him thinking about how we've needed an alternative to the spell of scrying for a long time now, something we could use for medical imaging that wouldn't cause complications when used on patients with weakened, or in an unborn foal's case, undeveloped metabolisms. We looked into things a bit deeper and found out about one of the spells they used in their research; a flat magical field that would mark where background magic passed through it over a certain speed, and even color code it to show how fast it was going." "Wait, so you just blasted this background magic stuff right through both of us?!" After mentally piecing together what he'd just said, her expression changed ever so slightly to that of a mare whose offspring may have just been threatened, which rest assured was none too pleasant a thing for one to have aimed at them. Lance seemed confident enough to continue without stammering an apology though. "Yes actually, every image on the dome was made by Mannie using his own magic to nudge a bit of background magic through you and out the other side of the dome in a cone shape. But the thing is, we didn't do anything except move something around that our foal, and every foal, have already been constantly exposed to since the very second of conception with no ill effects. It's about as dangerous as standing in a light breeze," he replied. Initially his explanation had no effect and his wife kept glaring at him pointedly until she appeared to conclude that she might be overreacting. "Fine. You never struck me as the mad scientist type who would endanger his own kids so...I'll let you off the hook for now," she relented in quite the begrudging tone. "But I swear to Celestia, the second she comes out with three wings or a hoof coming out of her forehead or something I'm divorcing you!" "Fair enough," Lance replied with a smile and a nuzzle, grateful to have her trust. "So those colors inside my silhouette on the images he made, are those supposed to be my insides? They didn't really...look like anything," she pointed out now that she was a bit more familiar with the procedure. "Yeah we noticed the same problem. The only way I could see the technique working was if we were somehow able to take many images from different angles and compile them together into something more coherent, so Mannie modified the spell to make that happen and, voila!" he answered, ending with an exaggerated, theatrical motion of his hoof toward the dome and the unicorn graduate currently working on it. "Since we only want to see your foal, I'm going through each image and erasing the visual data we don't want right now that would cover it up," Mannie chimed in as he finished erasing the bulk of the last image, then moved to place himself between the young couple and the dome. "I've got the general area isolated, let's take a look!" The dome flashed white, the array of trimmed down images disappeared, and the two expectant parents were briefly left craning their necks trying to see what the cerulean unicorn was looking at. "Huh...triplets." "WHAT?!" Posey and Lance both exclaimed before they could manage to slap their hooves over their mouths and stare at Mannie in wide eyed terror. "Heh, kidding! No way I'll be able to see your kid yet, there's still plenty of imaging to delete. I'm just checking to confirm I'm on the right track before I keep going," he said with a mischievous grin before another touch of his horn caused the dome to flash white and return the images to their former positions. The two pegasi said nothing, opting to instead express their severe lack of amusement via a set of icy cold stares. "Oh come on, that was the only time I'll get to do that without getting sued, cut me some slack." ------ The only thing keeping the pain throughout his body from feeling any worse was how much more his head hurt in comparison. Things were not improved in that regard by the grating sound of squeaking wheels beneath him that seemed to bite into his temples every time he heard it. The mechanical buzzing was no help either but at least it was a constant noise instead of a periodic sharp jab in his ears. Lance could feel that he was moving, and as he finally forced his eyes open just the slightest bit he could see the blurry image of a ceiling moving overhead of him. He'd caught somepony's attention though. His ears started to buzz again, the sound quickly overwhelming all others. His body grew numb and heavy again as he was pushed back into the blackness. ------ When Mannie had said 'the easy part' earlier, he probably should have said 'the quick part' instead, or so Lance mused as he gently stroked Posey's mane. She had fallen asleep about an hour ago and now lay leaned against him, chin resting on her fore leg while she snored quietly. He looked up at the clock to see that about two hours had passed since Mannie had begun, and despite his earlier confidence he was starting to worry that the janitorial staff might stumble upon them. There was no way he was about to rush his colleague though. Having a thorough grasp of the intricacy of the equine body made him appreciate how daunting a task it was to isolate one particular part using nothing but a series of images that looked like little more than tie dye patterns to the untrained eye. As it was, his patience was rewarded. "I think I did it," Mannie said finally, wiping a bit of sweat from his brow. He wasn't some kind of magic wonder kind so maintaining such a complex spell for such a long time had left him feeling rather worn out. "Really?" Lance half whispered, not wanting to wake his wife unless it was absolutely necessary. "Yeah, take a look," Mannie said with a tired smile as he turned and stepped aside for him. Lance's eyes widened at the sight, his lips curling into a much more energetic grin as he began nudging Posey awake. "Mm-wha?" she mumbled as her eyes fluttered open drearily and she lifted her head. "Posey, look." He pointed over to the magical projection that Mannie had spent the better part of two hours crafting. She rubbed her eyes a moment before following his hoof to squint blearily at something inside of the dome. A spark of recognition hit her, her brain drifting further out of its sleep induced fog as she stood up and moved closer while her eyes slowly widened, sparkling with wonderment. "That's...?" Posey only began to ask as she circled around the edge of the dome, looking with barely repressed joy at the magical projection inside of it. "It is...I had to make a few adjustments to factor in for the little bit of moving she did while I was taking the images, but that's her," Mannie replied, the combination of his own fatigue and the tears welling up in the pegasus mare's eyes convincing him to sound a bit more reverent. The three dimensional magic projection of their daughter was colored a flat white as a result of all the colors from each flat image combining, but that hardly mattered to her. She saw a tiny little pegasus foal waiting to be born, curled up, comfortable, and healthy, looking exactly as a pegasus foal should. Posey had seen images of that sort hundreds of times in various books she had taken to reading since becoming pregnant, but this had one obvious advantage over the others. This was her foal...or rather, it was their foal. She took a seat and wiped the tears from her eyes before turning to Lance, beaming at him brighter than any sunrise he could remember. The short laugh that followed was genuine and warm, a sound not heard by him since the combination of advanced pregnancy and worry had begun sapping the spring from her step. "I told you it was a filly," she all too happily gloated as he retook his place next to her. "And I told you she was perfectly fine," Lance fired back as he found her smile altogether too contagious to resist. "No, you told me there was..." she paused mid sentence and let out a soft chuckle again. "You know what? It doesn't matter what you told me anymore. This is...this is incredible," she acquiesced, turning to again marvel at the image of their little filly. "So think you'll rest a bit easier now, even though I can't console my wife worth beans?" He looked at her with a brief sidelong glance, now also quite content to admire Mannie's magic work. "Yeah...our little angel's perfect." She proceeded to practically squeeze all of the air out of his lungs with the ensuing surprise hug. "Thank you so much Lance..." "Erhem." "...and Mannie," she added gratefully with a nod toward the unicorn before letting her husband breathe again. "You're welcome. I'm just sorry we can't transfer it to something more permanent for you yet," Mannie said with an apologetic look back at the projection he would soon have to dissipate. "But even if we had already figured out a method to do so, it's too big a risk to leave any evidence that we did this." "I understand," she replied reluctantly, looking again at the image of their daughter and trying to cement it in her mind's eye as thoroughly as possible. "I'd like to keep it too... but we'll be seeing Fluttershy in full color in a few weeks anyway, so it's not so bad." "Alright...if you're sure." Even though the magic needed to maintain the spell had become quite a drain on him he wasn't about to let the image disappear until the mother got her fill of it. ... "Yeah...I'm sure," Posey finally said after taking one last long moment to look at her precious little Fluttershy. The dome and the projection within both flickered and then winked out of existence, Mannie letting out a sigh of relief now that he could finally relax. "Whew...now let's get out of here before somepony finds us and asks for an explanation huh?" Lance and Posey nodded in agreement with him and fell into step behind him. "Thank you again Mannie, that was incredible. I really hope it catches on so you two get as famous as you deserve to be," she repeated while Lance broke from the group to grab the robe he'd left on a chair near the door. "It still needs some work. Either we need to find a way to make it more magic efficient, or else it's going to have to become a procedure for a specialist. I can't imagine being a general practitioner and having to go through that spell every day," he replied, a somewhat sheepish expression on his face. When Lance picked up his robe he heard a quiet metallic jingle from one of the pockets and was reminded of something rather important that he should do before he forgot. Rather than toss the ceremonial garment across his back as he had planned to, he set it back on the chair and stuck his hoof into the inner pocket. "Are you coming or not?" Posey asked teasingly from her spot standing in the door Mannie was holding open for her. Lance pulled the object he sought from the pocket before turning back toward her. "Yeah, just giving your dad's watch back to you before I forget. Tell him I said thanks for letting me borrow it." He held the silver colored watch out to his wife as it began buzzing for no apparent reason. ------- The mechanical buzzing sound bolted him awake, the good doctor feeling more energetic than he ever had before whilst waking up in that place. How long had he been out to have apparently rested away the deep lingering pain he'd felt before? But, more importantly, why could he suddenly not move?! His face was pointed toward what looked to be an oddly clean tile wall, and that was all it was going to be pointed at for the foreseeable future. When he tried to move his head he found that it was strapped tight to whatever surface he was lying on. As he tried to move his legs he found they were in a similar state of immobility, prompting another bout of panic to begin seeping into his veins. He struggled to free himself to no avail, and then upon involuntarily blinking a black inked note appeared, nailed to the wall where a quarter second prior there had been nothing. "Oh...you weren't supposed to be awake for this part... But hey, let's look on the bright side, at least now we can see if this works instead of waiting, right?" "See if what works-" He was interrupted by the agonized scream that ripped its way out of his throat. His injured right rear leg suddenly felt as though it had been pierced through to the bone by a thousand red hot needles all at once. The sensation shot up his leg and spine, stopping at the base of his skull and causing his entire body to reflexively convulse in his restraints in an effort to get away, but to no avail. When his lungs had been emptied of air by his outburst, he was left taking ragged breaths trying to maintain his sanity as the pain spiked and then slowly began receding until he felt nothing. He laid there panting for air, recovering from whatever the hay had just been inflicted upon him when he barely managed to focus his eyes on the note and notice that the text had changed. "That looks good enough. Out you go." Lance gave another twitch of surprise as he felt a needle sink into his neck preceding the burn of an injection. ------ "Oh, thank goodness I found you!" "Hrm?" "Yeah, I've been looking all over the place for you, we need your help!" "You do?!" "Yes, something's come up, something that needs your unique talents! Only you can help us!" "Alright then, what's the problem?" "Well, Ms. Oakie is complaining about the sun in her eyes so we were really hoping you could go grab a cloud and put it in a nice place in front of her window." Graduation from a prestigious university, magna cum laude, valedictorian, a royally attended graduation where the princess had personally spoke to him, he'd even helped pioneer what was sure to be a revolutionary medical imaging technique... And for all his success he'd spent nearly a month doing what could be called 'grunt work' with little to no exaggeration. It had been positively surreal. The second he and Mannie had stepped into Manehatten General seeking medical training and internship they had been met with open hooves as though they'd been a couple of expected heroes. They'd been put through the usual orientation, everything was going smoothly, they'd both gotten their hospital passes...and then Mannie had been whisked away to be instructed by some of the best doctors in the city whilst Lance had been assigned trivial tasks the likes of which the janitorial crew usually dealt with. Of course, he'd asked about this situation, repeatedly and insistently, but every time he'd been fed some line about the hospital staff wanting to give each of them their full attention instead of diluting their training...whilst having taken in three graduates other than himself in the weeks since then anyway. Meanwhile bills still needed to be paid, and though they were somewhat fine for the moment, Lance and Posey would need significantly more money upon Fluttershy's birth. Lance subconsciously put a little more force into closing the apartment complex's front door than he had intended, producing a slam that lightly rattled the wall. "Hey, wise guy, that ain't your door, handle with care, yeah?" the gruff looking stallion seated at the front desk with a magazine in hoof berated him. "Sorry...bad day," Lance muttered in reply as he stepped past him. "Whatever, I've heard it all pal, you're nothing special," the stallion said dismissively as he returned to his reading. "Apparently..." He sighed and opened the door into the first floor hallways, pushing the negative thoughts aside. Posey wouldn't need his moodiness to deal with in her condition. As though fate had been reading his thoughts, the first thing he saw after opening the door was the very mare in question standing in the hallway. "Lance!" she said, her voice unsteady, as was her stance. Her breath was fairly labored and she was wearing the white saddlebags they had packed ahead of time with supplies they would need for a surprise hospital vis- "Oh my gosh, Posey! Give me that!" he exclaimed, bolting over to her side and hefting the weight of the packs for her. "Come on come on...wait, where's Bluebell?! She was supposed to stay here to help in case this happened!" "I sent her to get another bottle of cranberry juice almost an hour ago!" she replied as they made their way out the front door past the apathetic, magazine reading stallion. "An hour ago?! There's a corner store two blocks from here, what's taking her so long?!" ------ "Fifty-seven bits forty-eight cents...fifty-seven bits forty-nine cents...fifty-seven bits fifty-seven cents...oh wait...that's not right...um..." the elderly pony said, pausing to try and remember his place before shrugging and casually pushing the massive pile of one cent pieces back to the other side of the counter. "One cent...two cent..." There was a predictable chorus of groans from the massive line of ponies behind him waiting to pay the store's single cashier for their purchases, the expression of frustration reaching a crescendo as one particularly aggravated colt galloped out of the store screaming. Among the many ponies in line was a blue earth pony mare with a light purple mane holding a bottle of juice bearing the likeness of a cranberry on the front of the label. "Oh for pony's sake, they'll probably be celebrating the baby's first birthday by the time I get out of here," Bluebell grumbled. ------ "Wait, seriously?! You couldn't wait for me to get home and then send her?!" he asked in exasperation as they emerged into the sunlight. "I need my cranberry juice Lance!" she retorted ever so reasonably before groaning as another wave of labor pains hit her. The two briefly ceased their bickering as they were confronted with the sight of carriages and carts blocking the road entirely, as was usual for Manehatten rush hour traffic. Their plan to grab a taxi to get to the hospital wasn't going to pan out. "Um...um, okay! Wait here!" Lance said after a moment's thought and took to the sky. "What?! Lance what are you doing?!" she yelled up at him as he flitted about grabbing up every stray bit of cloud he could find. "We're flying there!" he called down. "Are you insane?! I can't fly like this!" she pointed out with actual reason this time. Lance dropped to the ground with the large cloud he'd assembled. "I know, that's why I'm going to push you there on this," he said, motioning for her step aboard. "What?! What if I fall?" Her husband groaned with frustration, briefly placing a hoof to his forehead before leaping back into action and reshaping the cloud a bit to include some impromptu safety rails along the edges. "There!" "Are you seriously suggesting a few cloud rails are going to keep me from falling if we run into anythi-" "Posey we need to get you to the hospital as soon as we can and there's rush hour traffic and I don't know what the hay else to do right now so please just get on the cloud!" he snapped as he more firmly motioned for her to step onto the cloud. "Okay...you're right, you're right, we need to just get there, we shouldn't be arguing," she relented as she boarded the cloud. "Right," he agreed as he placed his hooves on the cloud and took to the air, trying to maintain a balance between speed and caution as they started their hopefully fast trip across the city. "Good." "Excellent." "Alright." "Great." Five minutes passed. "Did your wings shrivel up without doing weather duty all the time or something?! Why aren't we there yet?!" Posey yelled, eyes squeezed shut as another wave of pain hit. "Maybe we would have been there two hours ago if somepony had realized she was going to foal sometime before her water broke and said something to her friend!" Lance retorted as they flew over a gridlocked intersection right next to a construction site. "Well excuse me for not picking out the one weird thing among the eighty-seven bazillion weird things my body's been doing for the past year! You did this to me anyway when you didn't-" her voice was drowned out by the loud honk of a horn, "-before-" and then another honk masked the end of her sentence. "Are you kidding me?! I wanted to get a-" Beep beep! "-but you kept pulling me back and then looked back and told me to-" appropriately enough his voice was then overwritten by the noise of a jackhammer below. "It's your fault for listening to me! You should've known I was close to-" her utterance was forever rendered a mystery by an oblivious construction worker's use of an impact wrench. "YOU didn't even know!" "THEN...um...uh....we're here!" she said in a blatant attempt to change the subject. "I know!" he confirmed as they flew in through the sizable door of the lobby balcony meant specifically for incoming pegasi. "Great then!" she yelled at him in a voice rather at odds with her stated mood after they landed. "Good!" he replied in much the same manner while helping her off of her cloud. She was immediately set upon by a duo of nurses who didn't have to ask many questions given her appearance and the way she was verbally tearing the throat out of the nearest stallion. As soon as it was clear that she would be properly tended to by the hospital staff, Lance turned and galloped off to get himself a set of medical scrubs. "I love you!" she shouted after him, no less angrier for the tender words she was using as the two nurses lead her away toward the maternity ward. "I love you too!" he replied over his shoulder before barely managing to avoid knocking over a stock colt's cart as he cantered down the hallway toward the nearest supply closet. Lance was even more efficient than usual given the occasion, and in almost no time at all he had procured the sought after hospital wear, found out which room his wife had been taken to, and finally arrived. To Posey however that 'no time at all' felt considerably longer, and being separated from her husband for so excruciatingly long a time allowed her unstable mood to dull just a bit. "You made it," she said adoringly, managing a somewhat strained smile as she reached out her hoof for him...a hoof that went ungrasped as her husband proceeded to look over the machines monitoring her vitals and briefly chat up the two attendant orderlies regarding her condition. Posey would have listened to the words being exchanged, but she was far too busy becoming irate all over again while seemingly being ignored. "Any time now Lance!" she seethed. "Sorry, I had to check everything. You're doing fine Posey," he answered as he finally took her hoof in his and squeezed affectionately. "I don't exactly feel fi-" A green unicorn mare in surgical scrubs much like Lance's then stepped into the delivery room with a light brown unicorn stallion in similar attire at her side. "Alright sweetie, Posey was it? Let's see how you're..." The doctor paused, looking at Lance. She recognized him as somepony that worked at the hospital, but he wasn't anypony who worked under her. "Who are you?" "He's-" "Wait, I recognize you! You're that pegasus the administrator told us to keep away from the patients!" she interrupted again as her brow furrowed into a glare. "What?!" Lance and Posey both exclaimed simultaneously. "Nurse, remove this pony from my delivery room." With a commanding wave of her hoof the stallion at her side nodded before his horn lit with magic and Lance found himself lifting into the air surrounded by a telekinetic aura. "No no he's-" "Don't worry ma'am, we'll make sure he's dealt with. He's some political stunt of Celestia's but we're not about to let that sort of thing make us pair our patients with patently unqualified ponies," the doctor explained as she levitated a clip board with Posey's medical information in front of her face. "Hold on a second, put me down, she's-" Lance wasn't able to finish his sentence before the nurse stallion stepped out of the room and pulled him along whilst his hooves flailed uselessly in the air. With no hope of reaching the doctor's ears he turned his attention to the pony currently levitating him away from the door. "You have to listen to me, I'm-" "Save it, I don't know what made you think you could barge into a delivery room like that but I'm sure the board of directors will love to hear about it," the nurse replied dismissively. "I thought-" "Not interested buddy," he cut him off again. "Would you just-" "Not. Interested," he repeated, shooting the pegasus stallion in his magical grip a cold stare that clearly indicated things would only get worse the more he protested. However, two could play at that game. "Hey." Lance put as much intense force behind his words as he could, and it most definitely made the nurse pay attention. The unicorn's face was initially that of somepony responding to a bothersome, unworthy challenger, but as he turned his head his confidence almost audibly shattered. He was captured by the most intense stare he had ever witnessed, the pegasus putting every ounce of his frustration behind his eyes as they sought out his captor's willpower and mercilessly crushed it into a fine powder. "Put. Me. Down." There was but a moment more of silence between the two before the unicorn's magic released him and Lance's hooves fell back to the floor. With that bit of business out of the way he was about to fully explain himself and get things sorted out now that he had a captive audience, but as fate had it, none of that was necessary. "Nurse!" the doctor called out from the open door of the delivery room. They both turned to see that an absolutely livid Posey had her trapped in a headlock, whilst meanwhile one of the orderlies sat slumped to the floor in the delivery room behind them, stars practically circling his head as he reeled from a blow that neither of them had seen land. "Could you bring him back please? Apparently he's the father." ------ Sweet Celestia...what had been in that needle? Lance wasn't sure if he was awake or even alive as he raised his head off of the bed. He tried to ascertain where he was but the room wouldn't come into focus or stop spinning. There was a lingering sort of nausea but he couldn't tell whether he was actually the one feeling it or not. His brain was so dysfunctional that the sensation came off as him being aware of somepony else feeling it. At least he knew his ears worked, because for one he was able to comprehend that he didn't hear the warning buzz of his watch watch anymore, and that he did hear something messing with what sounded like a nearby doorknob. It was a persistent, repeated rattle, coupled with a periodic groan of metal that made it sound like something was trying to chew it from outside. But as he listened, things changed. The buzzing sound of his watch slowly eased back into existence, joined by an odd panting noise approaching. All sounds of metallic rattling and chewing stopped, replaced by hoof steps frantically fleeing in the opposite direction. He knew that he should know what all of those sounds meant, but that was about as far as his thoughts could carry him. The state of his brain...he just hated it. It wouldn't let him do even the slightest thing save for lying there confused like a big brainless slug. The only thing he could do for it was retreat back into his head, so he closed his eyes and covered his ears, shutting out the rest of the world and forcing himself to go back to sleep in hopes that whatever was swimming in his veins would have run its course when next he woke.