//------------------------------//
// Medical Jargon 
// Story: The Replacement 
// by VeryConfused 
//------------------------------//

	"She's going into cardiac arrest!"
"Clear!"
An electric current ran through the patient's body and she convulsed.
"How did this happen? She was perfectly healthy when I ran the standard tests!"
"I don't know, I just walked into the room!"

Somehow, my medical abilities were so null that my first patient almost died not a minute after I stepped into the room.

That's probably a world record. 

...

Or something.

The nurse from earlier pulled me out of the room and gave me a glare.

"Do you want to tell me what's up?"
"Uh, the ceiling?"
She slapped me across the muzzle.
"Could you try to not be a smartflank for once in your life?"

Need to get out of this. Think. Think. Think. Think.

"Yes. I'll try that now." I grinned widely, sweating and shuffling sideways.
"Over there." I turned around quickly and galloped away from the nurse to somewhere else in the hospital. 

Just grab the meds and go. 

I took a turn into the hallway where the supply closet was, running as fast as I could. I knew impersonating a doctor for too long would lead to my inevitable discovery, and another failure on the long list of failures I've already had up to this point. Failure. FAilURE. Heheh. 'Sone of those words that sound funny when you say 'em too much.
I was running, I saw the door. 
I tried to turn. 
My hooves skid against the ground, kicking up into the air, flipping me over onto my back. My body slammed against the white tiled floor. The smell of soap filled my lungs and my ears registered a sloshing sound.
I lay there, groaning in pain when a face appeared in the corner of my vision.
"Floor's wet." He said.
The janitor pony stood over me, staring down at me with unconcerned eyes and a pleased-with-himself grin.
"Don't you have signs for that?" I asked, attempting to stand up and my hooves failed me, stretching outwards and sending my face back down into the soapy floor.

"Yup."

"THEN WHY DON'T YOU USE THEM!?"

The janitor stallion thought for a moment.
"Because watching doctors like you slip and fall is funny." 
"UGH!" I screamed through clenched jaws, forcing myself up back into a standing position.
I took tentative steps towards the door, trying not to slip up and fall again. I saw the janitor pony out of the corner of my eye, he was leaning on his mop, a satisfied smirk on his face. He picked the mop up with his mouth and continued his work on the floor. 
Bastard.

The door to the supply closet swung open. I searched the room for the new medicine, and found none. It must've been in demand, and I took to long to get here or something, but the point is that there was none of this new medicine in the supply closet.

Now seems like a completely stupid time to explain what this new medicine was. 

It was called Lecheniye, developed in Stalliongrad, it was a cure for a magical ailment called Lava Plague that was becoming an endemic. Lava Plague is exactly as feckin' menacing as it sounds, it slowly turns ponies into stone, and when they are fully petrified, they melt into lava. Lecheniye is a new medicine, and new medicine is worth a lot on the black market. 

You think Equestria could have some normal feckin' diseases. 

No, we have to have stupid shite like bloody Lava Plague!

Wait, if that kind of disease is a common occurrence, then how do I find it abnormal?

....

Feck.

....

Well, anyways.

I ran off quickly in search of another supply closet. I wanted to get out of this wretched hospital. All of my surroundings blurred together into a homogeneous smear of identical hallways, frenzied faces and the faint fetor of antiseptic as I ran down endless corridors with numbered rooms. Was I going in circles? Were the chemicals messing with my head?

The next few hours or minutes or whatever blurred together, but I'll attempt to piece together what I remember.

"I'm removing the tumor now."

"Err, doctor, that's not a tumor."

"Then what did I remove?"

"OH DEAR CELESTIA IT'S EATING ME FROM THE INSIDE OUT OH CELESTIA AAAAAHHHH!!!"

"THE BLOOD IS EVERYWHERE! SO MUCH BLOOD!"

"WHY THE BUCK IS THERE A GIANT BUCKING SQUID IN THE BUCKING RECEPTION ROOM!?"

"What is this?"	

"That's a spleen."

"Where's it supposed to go?"

"IT'S IN MY BRAIN HURRAAARRGLAB!"

Ugh, never mind, I'll skip to the important stuff.

Just as these thoughts passed through my head I bumped into somepony.
We crashed into the ground, sending whatever the other pony was carrying flying in all directions. The faint hum of unicorn magic filled my ears. 

She smelled familiar.

I looked at her, she didn't look like how she did back in the nightclub, her mane was green, tied up and hidden under a cap, she wore a stupid bushy mustache and her eyes were covered with a different style of shades. It was obvious up close, but from a distance one probably wouldn't be able to tell. For me, there was no mistaking that I had collided with none other than Vinyl Scratch.

"Shit! I mean, uh-" Vinyl cleared her throat and deepened her voice in a poor attempt at disguising it. "I apologize for running into you, I'll just be on my way."
"Hey, could I get one of those?"
She looked left and right.
"Uh, no." She grinned widely and started backing up.
What did a bloody DJ need with the drug? Did she think she could get high off of it or something?
"Why not?"
"Uh, they're mine."
"They're yours."
"Yup." Her grin grew wider and her forehead started sweating.
"I need it for... uh... a patient."
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
Her eyes narrowed and she waved her hooves at my face slowly.
"These aren't the drugs you are looking for." Vinyl Scratch said as she ran away with the one thing I needed to obtain for this job.
"Hey! Get back here!"
I scampered after her through the sprawling labyrinthine corridors of the bewilderingly voluminous hospital. 
It seemed bigger on the inside. It looked quite a bit different on the inside, actually. The hospital had a rustic, gable-roofed look with warm colors on the outside, but the inside was modern and annoyingly, bleakly white.
She lowered her head and sped up, gaining distance from me rapidly. She was fast.
Vinyl turned her head to the left, and I prepared to make a left turn closely after her.
She ran down the corridor to the right, her hat flying off and attaching itself to my face. I pulled the hat off just in time to run straight into the glass window of a doctor's office. My face and hooves were smashed against the glass. The doctor looked up at me from his papers with a bespectacled glare. My body peeled from the glass with a comical stretching noise and collapsed backwards onto the floor.
"Pppffftt HAHA AHA HA!" Vinyl took a sharp inhale and threw herself to the floor. "HA HA HAHAHA-"
She took deep inhales between fits of giggling and stood over me, her face entering my field of vision.
My eyes crossed and there were two of her.
"Uh, dude? You okay?"
I felt the blood rushing to my face, turning a bright red as my scowl deepened.
"GIVE ME A DAMN VIAL." I felt as if I was shooting steam out of my nose.
"I'm sorry doc, I'm afraid I can't do that."
With that though she ran away once again. Now I was mad as hell.
"I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!"
A green light encased me and I changed back to my default appearance. Ponies screamed and ran in all directions. The hospital became a melting pot of madness before my bloodshot(?) eyes.
My insectile wings unfurled themselves and I shot after Vinyl. She looked up at me.
"I knew you seemed familiar!" She smirked, "Thanks for the whole life-savey thing. That was rather nice of you."
Vinyl swerved past a cart, it toppled over and fell on top of the pony pushing it. I flew above the wreckage.
"You know how you could pay me back?"
Vinyl looked at me inquisitively.
"Can I get you a coffee?" Hmm, I could use a coffee. Gah! You know what caffeine does to you! Not now, chase scene.
"Give me a vial!" 
Vinyl turned into the stairwell, I narrowly avoided smashing face-first into the wall.
"I said no!"
She turned with the stairwell, and the vials slammed into the side of the wall, some vials slipped out, i positioned myself to catch it, but Vinyl caught it first with her magic.
"Why not?"
"WOI NAUT!" Vinyl mocked.
"Stop it!"
Vinyl sped around the corner, passing a floor.
"STOOPIT!"
"I don't talk like that!"
"OI JOON'T TAWK LOIK TAHT!"
"AAARGH!"
Vinyl opened her mouth to reply, but closed it, and scrunched up her face in thought.
"Um, hm. No, that sounds the same."
We were approaching the roof of the building rapidly. The door was in sight. I mustered all my strength and tackled her. Our entangled forms slammed into the door, knocking it open. Vinyl kicked upwards with her back hooves, flipping me over onto me back. Damn, she was strong. Vinyl got up, brushing dirt off of her with her hoof, sending dusty clouds floating in the air. The vials, coated in a light blue glow floated around her like moons around a planet, the sun reflecting off of them and lighting the ground with an odd pattern. She stood over me, looking down at me from above, her stupid mustache fell onto my forehead and her sunglasses slid down the bridge of her nose, revealing her glaring magenta eyes.
"Catch ya later." She grinned and walked to the center of the roof. 
I got up and lunged after her, she kicked me in the jaw. 
"I just need a vial!"
"Tough luck, buddy."
She didn't turn around, she just continued to walk.
"Where the hay are you going?"
As soon as I asked that question, a blinding pillar of red light shot from the sky onto where Vinyl was standing. There was a low hum and the pillar, Vinyl with it, suddenly blinked out of existence. When I say blinked out of existence, I mean suddenly, without fanfare or a flash of light, the pillar and noise just stopped.
Yeah, I dunno either.
I'm fairly certain that happened, but as I go on, I begin to question my sanity. Some things, in retrospect just don't make any sense, so trust me when I say this; that was not the weirdest thing to happen by a long shot.
Light glinted off of the falling vial as it spiraled downwards in a collision course with the hospital's roof. As soon as I noticed this, I dove to try to catch it before it inevitably shattered on the hard concrete. As it turns out, that concrete was a really rough surface, and had too much friction to slide across. So instead of a dramatic slide, I basically just fell on my stomach and watched helplessly as the vial fell. Something somewhat unexpected happened when the vial hit the ground. It exploded, and in the smoke, there was an image of a skull with red glowing eyes. It caught me off guard, to say the least. It should also go without saying that one should pay attention to their surrounding area before deciding to recoil in horror.  I thought as I found myself hurtling off the edge of the hospital, spinning too quickly to catch any wind and fly.

I was really glad that I landed in a tree instead of on the sidewalk. 

I wasn't in the mood to be goo that day.