//------------------------------// // The Visit // Story: The Winds of Change // by AgentSnail //------------------------------// The Visit "What do you mean, 'she's in the hospital?!?!'" Jason asked Scootaloo. "I don't know completely, something about the storm over the Everfree, and some horrible crash she had while trying to keep it from spreading." Jason hurriedly turned to the audience. "I have to cut this short, guys, sorry." There was a groan from the audience, and Jason turned back to Scoots. The manager came up with a bag, presumably filled with bits. "Come back sometime." He said, smiling. "Hope everything goes okay." "Yeah, hopefully, but I kinda doubt it. Thanks for this." He shook the bag, and turned back to Scoots. "Lets go." Jason set down his guitar and trotted after Scootaloo, who had already gotten a fairly large head start. He caught up to her in the street. She was galloping at full speed, which was only a brisk trot for Jason. Finding this movement speed to be too slow, he turned to Scoots, motioning for her to stop. "Hey Scoots, hop on, we're never going to get there like this." He stopped, and helped Scootaloo onto his back, situating her between his wings. "Where to?" She pointed forward. "Go to the end of this street, and then take a right." He galloped off, careful to keep Scootaloo from falling off his back. "Turn here." He stuck out a wing, and attempted to use the drag to help him make the corner that Scoots had left him unprepared for. Scootaloo almost rolled off his back before he stuck his other wing out to catch her. She quickly recovered, and re-situated herself on Jason's back. "The hospital's right over there." She pointed to a large white building with a red cross on the building's face. He put on a final burst of speed, and upon reaching the building, slowed down and pushed the glass doors open. He walked in to find most of Dash's friends, and the rest of the CMC. Applebloom noticed the duo's entry first. "Where were ya, Scoots, could you've gone any slower?" "You try running all the way to that fancy restaurant in town, then all the way back. It's not like I have my scooter; I left it at the clubhouse." Jason ignored the resulting argument, dropped off Scoots, and walked over to Twilight, who was slumped in one of the hospital chairs. He figured that if anyone knew about what happened, it would be her, seeing as no one was behind the front desk. "What exactly happened, Twilight?" She looked up, a few lingering tears in her eyes, and tried to speak. "S-she was apparently trying to stop a storm over the Everfree, but the weather team couldn't make a dent, or stop it in any way, and then the storm started to send down a tornado spiral." She took a ragged breath. "The last time Ponyville had a tornado, most of the town was wiped off the map." She paused again. "The point is, Dash flew over to the vortex, in an attempt to stop it before it got to the ground, because there's no way to stop it after it touches down. Let's just say, she succeeded, and Ponyville is no longer in danger." "But she obviously got hurt, judging by your general demeanor." "She was flung into the ground by the tornado, and landed on her wings, which were horribly mangled and broken. She's lying in a hospital room right now." She looked like she was going to cry again. "So is she stable?" "So far, yes, but the main concern is over the eventual status of her wings. I've never even seen wings that broken before." A doctor walked out into the room, flipping through a pad of paper on a clipboard, and sighed, looking around. "Is there a Twilight Sparkle present?" Twilight rose from her seat. "Yes." she walked over to the doctor, who proceeded to whisper some things to her, while making a few gestures. Her expression got steadily worse, which Jason had previously thought impossible. Evidently the doctor didn't have good news. The doctor finished whispering to her, and retreated back into one of the hospital rooms. She slowly walked back to Jason, a mortified expression on her face. "What's wrong now?" "T-they said, well the doctor said, he s-said that--" "Out with it!" "They said that they have to amputate Dash's wings, he says they're too mangled to save, that even if they could get them back together, Dash would still probably never fly again." She shut her eyes. "Oh, fuck no!!" Jason pushed past her, attempting to get into the hospital room. "You can't go in there Alternis!!" She tried to grab him. He threw her back with his magic. "Get off of me!!" She looked completely confused, sudden burst of magic from a pegasus and all, and before she could react, he turned and threw the hospital room door off its hinges with his magic, slamming it into the wall opposite. The ponies in the hospital room all stared, slack jawed, at what they had just witnessed. Jason ran inside to find a terrified group of doctors staring between him and the removed door, who looked like they had not started the operation yet, luckily. He moved towards the form of Dash, but some of the doctors tried to stop him. He pushed them up against the walls with his magic, and held them there. He pulled the sheet part of the way off of Dash, and recoiled slightly. She was on her stomach, and sported the most mangled wings he had ever seen, partially covered in blood. Not that he had really seen that many mangled wings, but they were far worse than the last time he had needed to heal her. At least she didn't look too injured other than what had happened to her wings. He sighed, and without another thought, started to heal her, attempting to do so as quickly as possible. Twilight ran around the corner, looking enraged. "Who are you and what have you done with Alternis?" He sighed. He didn't expect that he was going to lose this new identity so quickly. He could feel his disguise starting to falter with the huge amounts of energy rushing into Dash. "There never was an Alternis! I thought at least you, Twilight Sparkle, would be able to figure that out." He needed to buy some time, so that he could finish healing her wings. They were currently spasming around as the bones snapped back together and set into the correct places. Jason looked at it with disgust. Twilight followed his gaze, and flinched. "What are you doing to her?!?! Making her wings worse?" She cast some sort of spell at him. He blocked it with a shield. "I'm fixing her." He looked down at his arm. Part of his disguise flew off like a piece of burning paper, quickly disintegrating into a small green flame. The transformation slowly spread along his fore arms like a kind of weird rash, and onto the rest of his body, slowly pulling off the rest of his disguise. Dash was almost healed. He was getting weaker by the second. As soon as he finished this spell, he realized, he would be unable to fight Twilight, and would have to immediately make his escape, or face capture. As he thought this, the walls turned a light shade of lavender. He assumed that Twilight was doing something, and he hoped that it wouldn't impede the healing spell. Said spell ended as the last of his disguise burned off, and his shield involuntarily fell. Jason charged up his horn, trying to teleport away. All he was left with was a horrible pain in his head, and no change of venue. The spell Twilight had done with the walls must have crated some sort of prison, or at least an anti teleportation zone. 'Great, so now I have no escape and no power. Things are looking great right now.' "I'll ask you again, what did you do with Alternis?" Jason stared at her in disbelief, amazed that she was so adverse and suspicious to him when he arrived, and was now assuming that he was never a changeling. He didn't answer, and instead moved some of Dash's hair gently out of her eyes, and smiled slightly. Twilight picked Jason up in her magic, and slammed him into the ceiling, which promptly cracked some of the chitin on his back. The wooziness he was feeling from the teleportation attempt intensified. "Where is he?" "He doesn't exist!" "Wrong answer." She slammed him into the floor, creating a crack in one of his legs, and a large dent in the floor. Jason tried to get up, but only managed in partially propping up the front of his body with his uninjured fore leg. He reached an arm towards her, trying to form words but only ended up removing some of the blood that had pooled in his mouth. The action of him stretching out his arm splattered her fur with some blood that had already begun to come through the crack on his arm. He pulled his arm back, and stared at the new crack. Then he passed out.