//------------------------------//
// Chapter 17 
// Story: Even Stranger 
// by SaltyJustice 
//------------------------------//

	Thorax attempted to follow Octavia's directions and, for once, was only minorly off the mark.  He had wandered for ten minutes around a particularly large and square building before a passing pony had asked him what he was looking for.  When he had told him he sought the hospital, the pony had laughed and trotted off.  Thorax eventually found the hospital contained within the large building.  Hospitals, it seemed, were very similar to infirmaries.
A plan had formed in his mind as he had searched, and now he set it into motion.  First, he needed a disguise.
"Hello, what can I do for you?"  came a query from the pony behind the front desk.  Thorax sauntered in with confidence and addressed her.
"I am looking for someone who is not here," he said.
That elicited a blank look.
"Uh, okay.  Name?"
"Yes.  She had one."
Another pause.  The pony coughed.
"Redheart," Thorax said.
"I see.  You are correct, she's not here."
"Can you tell me what she looks like?"
Another blank look.
"Uh, white pony.  Pink mane, kind of tall.  You know, her picture is right behind me."
Thorax looked past the clerk and saw a very happy white pony in a photo.  It was labelled "Redheart, N.  Internal Medicine."
"Thank you.  You have been very helpful."
Thorax marched straight out of the hospital and left behind one very confused clerk.  Exactly as planned.

A few minutes later, Nurse Redheart strode confidently into the lobby of Ponyville General.  The desk clerk waved her over as she entered.
"Hey, some weirdo was looking for you.  Didn't leave his name or anything, I think he just moved here.  Did you run into him on the way in?"
Thorax smiled.  "Oh, yes.  I have taken care of it, there is no need to mention him to anyone."
The desk clerk's head rotated forty-five degrees sideways.
"You sound awful, Redheart!  Are you sick?  Your voice sounds like there's a toad in your throat."
"I am fine," Thorax said.  He made a note of making sure he knew what a pony sounded like before disguising as them.
"If you say so - hey!  Aren't you supposed to be watching the Urgent Care tent today?"
"I got someone to cover for me."
"What?  You - "
"Where is my office?"
A long pause.
"Are you sure you're feeling all right?"
"I am testing you.  Obviously I know where it is, but I must be sure you do."
"Ooo-kay.  Down that hall, room 119, left side.  You take it easy, okay?  Take a sick day if you gotta."
"You have passed the test.  I am very proud of you, and will note you for a commendation later," Thorax said.
"I'm serious!  Take it easy, Redheart."
Thorax made his way down the hallway as the desk clerk cast a nervous glance after him.  His disguise had been perfect, and now all that he had to do was nullify his medical records.
Though he was loath to admit it, he had taken part in falsifying records before.  Once, when a shipment had reached the vats room late, his supervisor, Labrum, had modified the records to make it appear as though the shipment had been on time.  Thorax, being a junior processor, had merely observed and not alerted the security detail, as it was not his place to judge his superiors.  Labrum had told him that this sort of thing kept changelings from getting upset for no reason.  He had said it "greased the wheels" of changeling society.
Thorax was ready to smear grease all over these medical records if he had to, and let himself in to the unlocked office marked "Redheart, N" on the door.  A small desk and a filing cabinet waited for him on the other side.  There was just enough light coming in from the venetian blinds on the window that he would be able to see what he was doing.  He closed the door softly and went to work.
The documents he was looking for were not under the 'T's in the filing cabinet, so that meant Octavia had given the doctor an assumed name.  He was not under the 'H' either, or the 'A'.  Only after an extensive search of the other twenty-three letters did Thorax relent.  As he sat down to consider his options, he finally located the documents - on Redheart's desk.
Name:  Amine, Hist
Health Number:  Unknown
Age:  Unknown
Gender:  Male
Subspecies:  Earth Pony
Illness:  Dose of psilocybin in natural herb, likely triggering hallucinations.
Treatment:  Basic flushing with water, allowing time for normal digestive clearing.
Followup:  Incomplete.
Other Notes:  Rare genetic defect precluded saliva from destroying the psilocybin normally.  May reoccur in the future.
Thorax pulled a pencil from the desk's drawer and got to work.  Nullifying the records meant much more than simply destroying them - that was too obvious.  No, like Labrum had taught him, he would merely make the records innocuous but useless.  It'd be impossible to trace them back to him once he had finished altering them.
Name:  Not Amine, Hist
Health Number:  1234567
Age:  -5
Gender:  Male
Subspecies:  The one with the horn
Illness:  Dose of psilocybin in natural herb.  He didn't hallucinate about changelings.
Treatment:  Basic flushing with water, allowing time for normal digestive clearing.
Followup:  Complete.  No need to verify.
Other Notes:  Rare genetic defect precluded saliva from destroying the psilocybin normally.  May reoccur in the future.  In my medical opinion, nothing suspicious about this at all.
Thorax stepped back and marveled at his work.  He was as good as home free now.  His face lit up as he approached the still shut door, not even noticing the shadow looming behind it.
"Readheart!" came a shout as the door flew open, slamming into Thorax's muzzle.
It was the desk clerk from earlier.
"I - " Thorax sputtered.
"Come quick!  Somethings wrong!"
"Mph - "
"Let's go!"
The desk clerk grabbed Thorax's neck and, with remarkable alacrity, dragged him down the hallways to destination unknown.  Thorax's vision blurred and whirled as tears flowed freely from his eyes.  The door had done some major damage to his mouth.
When they stopped, they were in something largely resembling the mess hall at the hive, though with much cleaner, white floors.  The ponies here were all gathered in a crowd around something, their bodies preventing Thorax from seeing it.  As the desk clerk shoved him forwards, they parted to reveal a filly.
Something was, indeed, wrong with this pony.  Her face had turned blue and she was making strange gasping sounds.  She looked up at Thorax as he drew near, and immediately resumed her efforts to gasp out something.  Whatever it was was unintelligible, no air was coming from her throat.
"Mmph?" Thorax tried to ask.  His entire mouth had gone almost numb.
"She's choking!  Do something!" shouted a pony from the crowd.
"Please, save my daughter!" shouted another.
Silence fell over the assembled ponies as every eye in the room turned to Thorax.  As they did, every iota of medical training he had ever had fled from his mind.  He drew a complete blank.  It was as though he had never attended those first-aid classes.
"Redheart?" the desk clerk asked.
"Ah - " Thorax tried to say something.
Losing no time, the filly decided to take matters into her own hooves.  With her remaining strength, she attempted to walk towards Thorax.  Her consciousness was beginning to fade, and she stumbled.  Thorax instinctively backed up, and bumped into the desk clerk.
With the last act of her confused and scared mind, the filly threw herself at Thorax.  Thorax let instinct take over.  He shut his eyes and tried to knock her away.
His flailing hoof connected squarely with the filly's chest.  She crumpled to the ground in a heap.
Thorax opened his eyes to see her before him, laying with her chest down.
A mare stepped out from the crowd, tears running down her face.  She could not speak.
Thorax could not speak.

Abruptly, a thunderous belch erupted from the filly, ruffling Thorax's borrowed mane.  An apple core ejected from her throat and ricocheted off the side of Thorax's head, before skittering across the floor.  The filly stood up, and held her head with her hooves.  Her mother scooped her up and held her to her face.
"My Cate, oh my little Masty Cate!  Thank you so much, doctor!  You saved her life!"
The filly tried to squirm away from her mother, finding no success.  Thorax's brain hadn't quite caught up to what had happened, yet.
"Say thank you to the nice doctor," Masty's mother said, finally putting down her foal.
The filly looked up with her big blue eyes.
"Thank you miss doctor."
Cheers erupted from the assembled ponies as the desk clerk breathed a sigh of relief.  Thorax began to back up instinctively, making for the doorway.  The desk clerk intercepted him as he left.
"A perfectly executed Heimlich, you really are the best.  If I had tried it, I would have broken her ribs for sure."
"It was nothing," Thorax mumbled.  His mouth only felt marginally better now.
"Hey, good thing you decided to swing by again.  By the way, what are you doing here?"
"Just had to smear grease on something."
The desk clerk stopped where she was and Thorax decided to escape before any more questions could be asked.  He found a safe spot in the bushes near the hospital and switched back to his persona of Hist Amine.  Next time he had to disguise as somepony, he would need to do a lot more research - like eight years in medical training.

The sun set as Thorax went back to his quarters, and the moon began its eternal quest across the sky.  All around him in the town, ponies were saying their good-nights and heading indoors.  By the time he stood in front of Officer Scratch's lodgings, the only pony on the street was him, and the only sound was that of the crickets singing their nightly tune.
Thorax tried the door.  It was locked.
"There you are.  Find the hospital all right?"
Thorax whirled to see Octavia standing behind him.  The dim glow coming from the houses windows lit only her deep, hungry eyes.
"Um, yes.  Why are you outside?"
"I was seeing my 'friends' back to the train.  If it's not too much trouble, may I ask you to accompany me somewhere?"
Thorax, lacking the knowledge of lock picking, could only agree.

Octavia led him through the sleeping town, down towards the stream which flowed beside the town and marked its southern border.  As they approached its banks, Octavia looked around to be sure they were not being followed.  She then led Thorax towards the town's windmill/watermill hybrid, and let herself inside the building.
Inside was the gently grinding machinery of the watermill, running slower now as the wind that provided half its power was still.  It provided a gentle chorus of cracks and squeaks as Octavia invited Thorax into the building.
"You pon - you Ponyvillians don't lock up your equipment?" Thorax asked.
"Who would steal it?  It's a public mill, after all.  Come on, I want to show you something."
Octavia led Thorax up a ladder, then up another.  He was unused to climbing them, being that there was only one in the vats room for emergencies, yet Octavia let herself up quickly and expertly.  She waited patiently at the top as he fumbled his way up.
Now at the highest part of the mill, there was no light at all coming from the windows.  It was nearly completely black, and only Octavia's faint outline could be seen.
"What is it?  What are you showing me?"
"This."
Octavia pushed on something and a window to the stars opened up.  Before them lay the town of Ponyville, and beyond that, far in the distance, the city of Canterlot.  A grand castle hung from the edge of a great mountain that dominated the skyline.  Far above all of that, a million stars lit up the night in the cloudless sky.
"It's - " Thorax sputtered.
"Beautiful."

For some time, the two sat, content to look out at the night.  There was scarcely any need for words, nothing Octavia could say could add anything to the view.  Now that he saw the world laid bare before him, Thorax realized just how small he was in it.  Even Ponyville, which surrounded him every day now, was a tiny speck on the wide landscape that opened before him on the plains leading into the distance.  Somewhere, off beyond those mountains, lay his old home.  He had spent his whole life there, in that small place, dreaming small dreams in his small quarters.  It seemed a lifetime away.
"Mister Hist, you have not told me why you left Canterlot, and I know it is none of my business," Octavia said.
Thorax turned to look at her, but said nothing.
"But, I think I know why you don't want to talk about it."
"Why?"
Octavia sighed.  She looked, and Thorax followed her, at Canterlot castle, now with its lights glowing as the ponies there continued their work into the evening.
"My quartet.  I love them, of course I do, but they are the last part of me that is still from there.  Do you know what I mean?"
"No.  Maybe."
"I'm sorry about how they treated you."
Thorax remembered that one of them had been rude.  Freddy?  He could only remember one of their names.
"It was nothing."
"It was not nothing," Octavia said, as her gaze grew more distant.  "What they said to you, how they looked at you.  It was the same look I got every day I was there."
Thorax cocked his head.  "What look?"
"Like you're less than them.  You didn't notice it?"
"No."
Octavia smiled in the moonlight, and leaned her head on Thorax's shoulder.  A feeling of relief flowed through him as if from nowhere.
"I wish I could be like you, then.  I can't avoid seeing it everywhere, feeling it all the time.  I don't think they even know they're doing it."
"Hmm," Thorax grunted.
"It's why I left.  Oh sure, I told Vinyl it was because I couldn't afford to live there - and I couldn't - but I could have moved in with my parents."
"So why didn't you?"
"Because then, every day, that's the look I'd get from them.  They'd look at me and judge me and tell me I couldn't make it on my own in the big city.  Vinyl doesn't do that.  Ponyville doesn't do that.  You don't do that."
Octavia closed her eyes and leaned more on Thorax.  Her body heat and his mingled together, keeping both of them warm in the cool night air.
"Don't you ever feel that way?  Like everypony is looking down on you?"
Thorax's thought went back to the hive.  Before, he had thought that it was merely his place to be snarled at and ordered around.  He had thought that, if he were promoted to a position of importance, that he would then be the one snarling and barking orders.  Only now did it occur to him that it didn't need to be that way at all.
"I felt like everyone didn't even know I existed," Thorax said.
Octavia sat up and brought her face close to Thorax's.  Her eyes caught the full reflection of the light of the moon, and Thorax lost himself in them.
"Like the whole city was smothering you," she said.
"But I didn't realize it until I left," Thorax said.
"And now you don't want to go back, not back to that."  Octavia leaned in closer.
"Not ever."
They kissed, and Thorax lingered on every sensation she brought to him, every tiny detail and every minute motion of her lips and her tongue.  This was what he wanted now, the hive and his Queen were a distant, small memory that was better forgotten.  Octavia wanted him, he wanted her, and beyond that, he needed nothing.
Two became one again under the stars that night.  For a time, all was well, and the world stopped spinning for them.