Reality is confusing, ponies try to explain it as best as they can, but ultimately any attempt at explaining the universe is futile as nothing can truly be proven by any method. Science can disprove some things, but not all things. Maybe it's that way because reality isn't real. Think about it. Could this world just be data fed to your brain as some sort of sick experiment? Your brain would not be able to tell the difference between stimuli caused by magic and real stimuli,or maybe everything we know is just some hallucination or dream of some pony somewhere out there, and we'll all be gone as soon as they snap out of it, or maybe we are all just programs in some big-ass computer simulation, we would be programmed not to know we are programs, so there would be no way of knowing.
Frankly, I can't wait until the singularity happens, hyper-intelligent supercomputers would make better choices than you and I. I just can't see one being powered by steam and magic.
No, I don't know how this one ties in with the series of events that you are about to learn of. Just hang your disbelief from a flag pole once more and try enjoy the story.
I've heard quite a few ponies hate hospitals. The walls are stark white and the place smells strongly of antiseptic. I hadn't ever been to a hospital before, any injuries sustained were fixed by black market doctors or by disposable magic charms. I now understand what the complaining was about.
Why was I in a hospital?
A job, of course.
There was a delivery of an experimental type of medicine to the Ponyville hospital, and I was to steal some. Just one sample, it would be so simple to get a sample, and I had ample time to obtain it, but as you would have come to expect, I found some way or another to buck it up.
So, this is what happened.
The sky was clear and the air was crisp. I heard the rhythmic knocking of hooves and the rolling of wheels across the paved road. Three stallions pulled along the armored vehicle before stopping at the restrooms. They would have been pulling it for six hours straight by now, and this was the only rest stop for miles. I was sitting in a bench in front. I lowered my newspaper. One stallion would untie themselves and go to the bathroom at a time. What they would not be expecting was for one to be replaced by an exact duplicate. One walked into the empty bathroom, I took the appearance of a mare considered notably attractive and waited for a minute or so before following him in. He was washing his hooves and adjusting his helmet in the mirror.
"Ahem."
He looked down at me, slightly startled.
"Your armor. Remove it." I said.
He turned his head at me, perplexed.
"May I ask why, Ma'am?"
"I do love a stallion in armor." I fluttered my eyelashes at him and laughed in my head.
"Then why do you ask me to remove it?"
I fumed silently, putting effort into not showing it. Ponies with this kind of job are always are incredibly stupid.
"Fornication. Copulation. Coitus. Playing Pattycake. Making Love. Sex!"
"Oh."
We stared at each other awkwardly. He looked at me, and then his eyes shifted away, pretending to be interested in the stalls behind us. He scratched the back of his head with a front hoof.
"Yes, quite. Erm, take me now, and such similar phrases." I spoke, making flippant circles in the air with a dainty hoof.
"Ma'am, I have very important duties to-"
"STOP STALLING AND TAKE OFF YOUR DAMN ARMOR." I snarled and shifted back into my insectile default with a flash of green magic. His eyes widened in shock.
The stallion screamed, fell backwards and began to flail his legs in an uncoordinated, to say the least, attempt at self defense. I thought these guys were supposed to be well trained. The screaming was exactly what I wanted to avoid by taking this particular approach. I kicked him in the forehead to knock him out, it took a few blows, but I got it eventually. I stripped him of his armor and put it on as quickly as possible. One of the other ponies pulling the armored carriage called out to his comrade.
"I heard screaming! Has something happened?"
I went into a stall and stood on the toilet. I kicked a ceiling panel out of placed, threw the unconscious stallion over my shoulder and tried to push him up into the ceiling space, I missed and his head hit the ceiling, sending me falling towards the ground.
"No, um, a lady came into the wrong room, is all!"
I inhaled sharply and lugged the limp stallion back over my shoulders.
"Get out here already! I feel like I'm gonna explode!" The other yelled.
I forced him through the space where the ceiling panel was, and pushed him into opening.
"What's taking you so long!?"
I replaced the panel and ran outside. I tied myself to the armored carriage and let the poor guy go to the bathroom. From the look on his face you could tell he wasn't exaggerating when he said he could explode.
Can somepony explode like that? Hmm...
No, probably not.
Six-hundred eighty-two words without going off-topic. Is that a new record?
...
Is it?
...
Erm, anyways...
We waited for a few minutes for the other guard to get out. The time passed slowly, I occupied myself by looking at pictures in the clouds. Ooh, there's a noose, a gun, a knife, a splatter of blood, a physical manifestation of everything that has ever haunted me, the ever present clawing pain of the realization of- oh! I see a puppy!
About five more minutes passed and he didn't come out.
"We have a schedule to follow! Get your ass out here!" The guard shouted at the one in the bathroom.
My feckin' ears rung. He's got lungs, that one.
Why was this gobshite taking so bloody long? I was getting a little afraid it might have been because of a mistake I've made. I make a significant number those.
"I'd better go check on him." I said, unlatching myself from the harness.
"Yeah, you do that."
I walked back into the bathroom, knowing something was wrong, but hoping that I was just being paranoid.
I wasn't.
The door on one of the stalls was broken to reveal two unconscious stallions and a broken ceiling panel. The world was actively working to rustle my jimmies. Consider my jimmies rustled thoroughly. That's an expression, right?
What were the chances that he would use a stall, and choose that particular stall? Like, one in ten?
Eh.
That's actually pretty believable.
I looked at the two ponies in front of me and facehoofed. What was I supposed to do?
I struggled to push the unarmored stallion back into the ceiling panels, and did my best to make sure he didn't fall out again. I'm not entirely sure what happened to him afterwords. I suppose he got out eventually, but I feel sorry for whatever poor bastard who discovered him after he fell out from the ceiling panels. I took off my helmet, filled it with water and splashed it onto my fellow guard. That didn't work.
"Clean yourself up, and let's go, we have a schedule to stay with!" I yelled at him.
That didn't work.
I slapped him a couple of times.
That worked.
He shook his head and looked at me oddly.
"Did you fall on me?"
"Are you okay, do you have a concussion or something?" I tried my best to sound sincere.
He looked around and scratched the back of his head.
"Er, no. Let's go."
He washed his hooves, and then followed me outside to the carriage.
Behind the carriage were three ponies in ski masks. Could they be any less inconspicuous?
"Hey, guys." I said, pointing towards the obvious would-be robbers.
We beat them up until they ran away and continued to pull the carriage towards Ponyville Hospital.
It was about two hours longer until we got to the hospital. Waiting for us at the hospital were a bunch of hospital staff, ready to help unload the delivered items. We opened the doors to the carriage and began to unload. We stood, passing the crates onto ponies with wheeled carts, and they headed off to wherever they were needed.
A problem occurred to me, how was I supposed to steal a crate if we were passing them along? I couldn't just pick one up and run away. They were really bloody heavy.
Only hospital staff, like doctors and nurses could take any out.
I had to become a doctor. Or, y'know, a nurse.
"Excuse me, but I haven't gotten my shipment of the new medicine yet." A stallion with ridiculous poofy orange hair and a surgical head mirror broke my train of thought.
I looked at him, he looked back at me.
"I know that your lowest common denominator blue collar brain can't possibly comprehend that Dear Celestia, a doctor in a hospital?" The doctor pony put up his hooves against his cheeks in mock surprise. "I thought that those were the kinds of ponies that mommy and daddy wanted you to be, but all you wanted to do was read your stupid comic books instead of studying, in the hopes that some day, you'd be discovered by somepony famous, because you're oh-ho-ho so naturally talented, but it didn't happen, did it? You're stuck with this crap job with hard long hours and low pay. Now that you are trapped in this dead end, you might as well, instead sitting there of gawking at me, here's an idea: Do your job!"
"You're perfect."
"How about we stop stating obvious things, and you take this crate into the supply closet near my office. Does that sound good to you? Because I truly care about your opinion."
This was going to be fun.
I had duct taped him to the chair his office, he squirmed and raged, trying desperately to curse me out through the confines of the neigh-indestructible (ha ha) tape and strangle me with his sheer glare.
"Listen, buddy. It was either this or knocking you unconscious and leaving you in the morgue, which, I'm not a doctor, but I played one once," I took his shape and grinned. "-and I can tell you that being knocked unconscious is not healthy for the brain. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some medicine to take."
"MMMPH!!"
I walked towards the door.
"Like, take as in steal." I added, turning around quickly before stepping outside.
I locked him inside and went to the supply closet to retrieve what I was looking for, and was stopped by a nurse. Her light blue eyes glared at me for a split second before she spoke.
"Where do you think you're going?"
White fur. Pink hair.
"Um-"
"Your patient, Winter, has been waiting for you for over an hour, what the hay are you doing?"
"I, uh-"
"What are you waiting for? Let's go!"
This was not going to be fun.