//------------------------------// // Healing and Humiliation // Story: There's A Little Problem // by Agaris //------------------------------// The hamon's reaction startled Fluttershy, partly because she couldn't tell what it was supposed to be. He was coughing up blood at regular intervals - could he have been trying to laugh? Before she could make any real guesses, however, he stopped moving and just lay there, looking at her. His expression was another enigma; most animals wore their emotions very clearly, but Fluttershy couldn't see anything revealing in his face or his eyes. Uncertainly, she lowered herself to the floor to be on the hamon's current eye level. "I'm Fluttershy, and like I said, I'm going to make sure you get all better real soon. What's your name?" Maybe, just maybe, she'd learn how to communicate with it by learning its body language. Suddenly, she saw something in his eyes - a spark of something more than feral instinct. While she was looking at his eyes, he flicked them down toward his torso, then back up to her. He had to do it several more times before Fluttershy blushed and remembered he couldn't move. "Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to be insensitive... But I need to have something to call you. Um... why don't I try to find a name that you think is ok?" Zeke could hardly believe what he was hearing. Not only was this "Fluttershy" (he snorted internally at the name) treating him like an animal, she was going to try to NAME him now. There was no possible way this could end well, especially if names like hers were commonplace in - well, in wherever he was. He did his best to give a halfhearted shrug while injured and laying down. Surprisingly, it was even more difficult than it sounded. Seeing this acceptance, Fluttershy (Zeke suppressed another snort) began to list off names. "Let's see... you don't have much hair... Skinny?" What? No. Nonononono NO. Zeke wasn't about to take a damn cowboy name. He shook his head emphatically. It hurt again. "Monk?" No again. "Slim?" Again with the god damn cowboy names! "Tarzan?" What the... where did that even come from?!? How did they even have Tarzan? "Do you like salad?" Uh... pardon? Zeke looked at her with confusion. Seeing that he hadn't heard her wrong, he gave a small nod. "Then how about Caesar?" He pondered it for a moment. Sure, she may have meant it like the salad, but it was the name of one of the greatest human leaders in history. And also, he thought, grinning at the irony, it's the name of that monkey in Planet of the Apes. "Caesar it is, then," Fluttershy said, seeing the smile on his face. "Caesar, you're going to be just fine. Do you need anything? Food? Water? Another blanket?" Zeke's face fell as he felt a familiar sensation rising through him. No. No, not now, please, anything but that! His stomach began to heave, completely obliterating any sense of rationality or logical thought left in his mind. The pain only served to propel what was happening. He broke out in cold torrents of sweat and his eyes snapped open wide. His mouth fell open and emitted a high-pitched keening sound, followed by the inevitable result of painkillers, pain, and shock. In perhaps one of the most humbling moments of his life, Zeke hurled all over the couch and himself, stomach acid burning excruciatingly on his wounds. He began to shake in the aftermath, unable to comprehend anything but pain. Seeing the newly dubbed Caesar in such a pitiful state only reinforced Fluttershy's idea that something happened to make him wake up. With a sad look on her face, she whisked the blanket off of him and carried him to her animal bath. He really is defenseless, isn't he? She thought. I mean, he's smaller than a filly, he doesn't have real claws, or wings, or fangs, or anything to protect himself. I would hate to think what would have happened if I hadn't gotten to him in time. As the handle of the faucet squeaked and water came pouring out, she felt Caesar flinch in her hooves. Startled, she looked down at him. He was grimacing, staring at the water in what appeared to be horror. His eyes flicked up toward her, then down at himself, then back at the water. "Don't worry, Caesar, it's just water. I need to get you cleaned up, or your injuries might get infected." She smiled softly. "I don't want to see you hurt any more, so please, let me do this." The strange animal looked terrified, but he closed his eyes and nodded slightly. Well that was good. Fluttershy carefully lowered him into the tub and picked up a sponge. She wetted it and began to dab Caesar's chest clean. He winced with every touch, and every time made Fluttershy feel worse and worse. By the end, she was almost in tears. "I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't want to hurt you, I tried not to, I really did my best, and I'm just sooo sorry!" The apologies were getting seriously annoying now. Combined with the pain and the vomit and the overall awkwardness of being given a bath by a woman - a pony woman, but a woman nonetheless - all Zeke wanted to do was curl up and not do or see or hear or feel anything for several hours. And Fluttershy's incessant apologies were seriously cutting into the fourth stage of that plan. He wanted to scream, but he'd learned his lesson before. She laid him down on the ridiculously comfy couch again and asked if he needed anything. He looked to the blanket, and she covered him up. She stifled a yawn. "Well, if you're all settled in then, I'm going to go sleep... I mean, if that's okay with you. If you need anything, Angel will be right here." The white rabbit Zeke had seen earlier looked up at her as if to say, "are you crazy?" She fixed her eyes on him and a strange warbling sound came out of nowhere. The rabbit, Angel, flinched under the force of the glare and bounded up to the couch next to Zeke. Zeke responded by simply closing his eyes. This... all of this, was just too much to take. He thought back over what had happened the past day or so. He'd been playing video games, then started floating and apparently was transported to another dimension or something, almost got eaten by a wooden wolf, then got sewn up by a big yellow pony with wings. Things could not have gotten any worse - or at least any weirder. That was when his stomach began to growl. Oh. My. God. He couldn't even talk, how the hell was he supposed to eat? Whatever the solution was, it couldn't end well. As his eyelids drooped farther and farther down, Zeke made a choice: cross the bridge on any and all problems when you come to it. It wouldn't do any good to worry about the future. And so, for the first time since arriving in this strange, colorful new world, Ezekiel Harrow slept voluntarily. And woke up a few minutes later with an earsplitting sneeze and a round of coughing that, once again, caused much pain. After a few more hours of groaning in pain and lamenting for what was left of his dignity, Zeke finally managed to fall asleep (with much difficulty of course), not looking forward to the next time he woke up. Later that day... Spike stumbled down the stairs at the Books & Branches Library, nearly tripping as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. It was a bit of a pain to have to wake up before noon, but Twilight had apparently gotten into one of her moods. She'd come bursting through the door yelling at Spike to get... something. Something about books, and monsters, and stuff. Honestly though, she couldn't have waited five more minutes? He was having such a great dream, too. It was the one where he and Rarity had finally - He blushed and shook his head, now wasn't the time to think about things like that. Twilight needed her Number One Assistant, even if said Assistant was still half asleep. "Twiligh'?" he said groggily, shuffling into the main room. "Whaissit?" Without even turning around from the shelf, the purple unicorn replied, "Spike, I need everything we have on monsters, the Everfree Forest, and monsters in the Everfree Forest, ASAP." "Uh... Okay." Spike had finally started to wake up fully, or at least enough for him to remember to not question Twilight. "Any specific reason?" He began gathering books from around the library as he asked. "Well Spike, I'm glad you asked. You see, I was planning a spa day with the girls today, but Fluttershy wasn't there, so Rainbow Dash flew off to look at her, and Rarity and AJ and I talked for a bit, and then Rainbow came back and told us that Fluttershy was shouting and there was a lot of blood, and so we went over there, and Angel Bunny was being stubborn as always, but then Fluttershy let us in and told us that she had to do a very urgent surgery and she showed us what she had to operate upon, and it wasn't anything I remember ever seeing, and so I was thinking that I should look and see if there was any information on it in the books because if there isn't that means it's a new species and that would be huge news to the scientific community, do you understand what this could mean?" Twilight had gotten right in Spike's face for the last part of this hideous monstrosity of a sentence and her eyes almost seemed to sparkle - in any case, her irises and pupils were at the very least three times larger than normal. Spike gently pushed her muzzle away with a single claw. "Okay, Twi, how about this? I'll do some reading, and you go and get some sleep, huh? You've turned into Pinkie Pie, and more than one of those is more than one too many." Twilight just burst out laughing. "Ha, ha, you're right, I'm just like Pinkie, maybe I will go sleep, yeah, sleep sounds good, it sounds really good right now, I think I'm gonna do that, you read, haaaaa." Her horn began to glow as if she was charging a spell, but she just fell over on her face, where she proceeded to motor her back legs and push herself across the floor. She stopped when her head hit the foot of the stairs, and her flank fell over, leaving her snoring on the rough wood surface. Spike just shook his head. Hours later, Twilight finally woke up with a terrible hornache and deep grooves dug into her cheek. Blearily, she looked around, only to see a purple blob surrounded by huge piles of different colored blobs. As she got shakily to her feet, the blobs coalesced into Spike and many towering stacks of books. "Spike? Why do you have all of these books out?" She asked in bewilderment. He lowered the book he was currently working through and gave her a deadpan look. "You told me to, remember? You said Fluttershy found a new animal, and - " "That's right!" Twilight exclaimed loudly. "I wanted to do some more research on the... hamon... there's something weird about it, that I can't quite put my hoof on. Did you find anything good?" "Well, no. But it isn't my fault! You never told me what the animal - you said it was called a hamon? - looked like. I marked some things that I thought you might want to look at - that pile over there." He pointed to a stack far larger than the rest, teetering precariously under its own weight. Looking up, Twilight gulped. "We have a lot of work ahead of us."