"Alright honey, I think she's gone," the mother said.
All they had wanted was a quiet, peaceful walk through the park, but the events that had just happened made the situation anything from peaceful.
As they were walking along, they started to hear multiple booms that they could feel in their chests. The explosions got quicker and quicker, just as the mother-filly pair found where the noises were coming from: two alicorns were dueling in the sky.
The mother knowing no good could come from this, she took her child and hid in a nearby bush. Their curiosities getting the better of them, they kept watching the two powerful forces fight in the sky.
At a certain point, the fighting became so fast, they could not pick up which blur was who. The fight abruptly ended when one of the alicorns, a white one, was thrown downwards from the fight and collided with the ground with a final, earth-shaking boom.
They could not hear the dialogue that occurred, but it ended with the dark-colored alicorn screaming at the top of her lungs into the sky, and then flying away, still screaming.
The events had been amazing, but the display of power had been frightening as well. The mother wanted nothing to do with it, and wanted to get her daughter home as soon as possible. Being a pegasus, this wouldn't be much of a problem.
She then noticed that her offspring was running towards the crater. The crater that still held an alicorn.
"Honey, what are you doing?!" the mom exclaimed after her foal.
"Mom, that pony is hurt! We have to help him!" The daughter exclaimed back.
"Someone else can help him, Dinky! Now come back here this ins-"
But it was too late. The young mare had already jumped into the crater. The mother jumped in after her. They slid down the side until they reached the bottom.
The mother, furious with her child, opened her mouth to scold the child, but closed it when she saw what the child was looking that. She turned her head to it as well. It was the alicorn.
He wasn't in very good shape. His back legs were horribly disfigured, bending in directions normal legs would not. His chest was bruised, suggesting broken ribs. His wings lied on his chest, probably broken. His right foreleg was the worst, the tip of the bone poking out of the skin. His mouth was open, with it and the ground around it stained with blood. His white coat was very dirty, probably from the ground he pushed away from him on his descent, the mother assumed.
She was not sure whether the alicorn was dead or not. She looked at his chest. He wasn't breathing. Walking up to him, she put a hoof on the pony's neck. Concentrating on what she felt through the hoof, she felt a pulse. There was a problem with it though; it was slow, and very weak.
She wanted to give the pony chest compressions, but she was afraid that the broken ribs would do more damage. She had to get someone that could help this alicorn. She knew who she needed to get.
She turned to her child.
"He is still alive Dinky. I'm going to get Nurse Redheart. I want you to stay here and keep an eye on him, ok?" She said.
The foal nodded.
In no other part of her life had she flew this fast. She knew that time was of the essence, and being a few seconds early or late could mean life or death for the alicorn.
The alicorn. The only two alicorns that she and the rest of Ponyville knew of were Princess Celestia and Nightmare Moon. There had been no other sightings of alicorns beyond that. How would she explain this to the Nurse?
She finally made it to the hospital. She crashed through the door, skidding to a halt in front of the wall where the receptionist's desk sat.
"Why hello Derpy! How can I help you this evening?" The receptionist said with a warm smile.
Still out of breath, Derpy managed to get the word "Redheart" out.
"Oh, you need to see Nurse Redheart? Okay." She rotated, facing the hall behind the desk. "Nurse, Derpy is here to see you!"
A few moments later, a white mare with a pink mane came through the door. She had a coat on, and carried saddle-bags.
"Derpy, it's a good thing you caught me before I left. What is the problem?" She asked.
Derpy, still breathing heavily from crossing the town, only managed to say "Pony.......Park.......Hurt.......Critical...."
"Derpy, breathe! So there is a pony, in the park, who is very injured?" She turned to the receptionist. "Tenderheart, is the paramedic squad still here?"
"Yes they are, Redheart." The receptionist pony responded.
"Tell them to meet us at the park, and to hurry." She ordered. The receptionist nodded back, and disappeared from the desk.
"We have to hurry if we're going to meet the paramedics there. Is there anypony currently with the injured pony?" She asked.
"Dinky is." Derpy responded, having regained her normal breathing pattern.
"Okay then."
"By the way nurse, we might want to be discreet about this." Derpy told Nurse Redheart.
"Why?" She asked.
"Erm....you'll see when we get there." Derpy responded.
They arrived at the park entrance, where the paramedic stallions had already arrived, towing a large ambulance card with them.
Derpy lead them to where the alicorn laid. Both the Nurse and the stallions were speechless at the giant crater.
"Momma!" Dinky cried from the bottom of the crater as the group slid down to meet them.
"Sweet Celestia." Nurse Redheart whispered to herself. She now understood why Derpy wanted to keep things discreet. The injured pony was an alicorn.
But now was not the time for curiosity. She nodded to the stallions, who started up the crater to get the stretcher. Nurse Redheart checked his pulse, which was still weakly beating, and then examined. She saw everything that Derpy did: broken legs, broken ribs, shattered wings, broken foreleg, and possible internal bleeding.
The stallions brought the stretcher down, a blanket folded neatly on top of it.
"Derpy, could you help us with the pony's legs? We don't want them getting trapped under his body." Nurse Redheart asked.
"Sure thing, Nurse Redheart," the pony responded.
They all lifted the alicorn onto the stretcher, except for Dinky, who watched from a distance.
Nurse Redheart then remembered, discreet. She took the blanket and covered up the alicorn's lower half, obscuring the wings and legs.
She then turned to the stallions as they finished loading him into the ambulance.
"When you get back to the hospital, signal a Code Four. Also, tell the ponies that come to not remove the blanket until they are in private quarters. Am I clear?"
The two stallions nodded in agreement, and hooked up into the ambulance. They were gone a few moments later.
Nurse Redheart let out a sigh, and then turned to Derpy.
"Are you going to be coming to the hospital?" She asked.
Both Derpy and Dinky nodded.
Seconds ticked by like hours as the two ponies waited in the waiting room for news of the mysterious alicorn. Dinky had fallen asleep, and was leaning on Derpy. If it weren't for her, Derpy would've never sent for Nurse Redheart, and the pony could have died.
A few more hours passed. The sun was rising. They had been there all night, waiting for news on the pony's condition.
Finally, a very tired and worn-out Nurse Redheart came through the swinging doors. She had bags around her eyes for being up all night like Derpy.
Nurse Redheart spoke first.
"He's currently in a stable condition, although he's still out cold. Besides the broken bones and such, he also had a pretty severe concussion as well." She reported.
Although Derpy's appearance made her look stupid, she still understood everything that Nurse Redheart was telling her. She nodded as the Nurse continued.
"Besides that, he should recover within the next couple of hours, but we still don't know much of what happened or anything about his race. He could be out for days, or years for all we know."
Derpy's face drooped into a frown. Nurse Redheart saw this, and put a hoof on Derpy's shoulder.
"Go home, get some rest. You'll be the first to know when he wakes up." Nurse Redheart said encouragingly.
"Thanks Nurse." Derpy responded. She then looked down to Dinky, who was still fast asleep on her shoulder.
"Could I possibly borrow a saddlebag from you to carry Dinky in?" She asked.
"Sure thing." She answered.
"Thanks."
"No problem."
Derpy returned to her house, Dinky still sound asleep in her saddlebag as she quietly opened the door quietly, and closed it behind her. She laid her child down in her bed, pulling a sheet over her. She would explain to Cheerilee why she was not in school later. She had to get her mail deliveries done.
As she made her rounds, she didn't get many complaints for her lateness. She guessed that her being seen walking with Nurse Redheart after the ambulance (which had woken most of the town up) answered enough questions.
She got her rounds done, and then headed in the direction of the schoolhouse.
"Have a nice day, Derpy!" Cheerilee called after her.
It seems that pretty much everypony had been woken up by the ambulance. Even Mrs. Cheerilee. She could not mention that the stranger was an alicorn, so she said that it was a friend. Cheerilee, not being aware that Derpy had friends, took this with a grain of salt, but eventually accepted it.
As she left the schoolhouse, a pony called her name. She was from the hospital.
"Derpy, Nurse Redheart wants to see you at the hospital right away!"
As she rushed with the mare to the hospital, one question sat in the back of her mind: Was he awake?
Nurse Redheart turned towards the door as Derpy entered. She gave a quick look to Derpy, and then looked around at all the patients in the waiting room. Derpy realized that talking about the patient wasn't something to do out in the open.
The Nurse walked her to a room towards the back of the hospital, nodding to two nurses that guarded the door.
The door shut behind Derpy as she got the first look of the alicorn since last night. His coat had been cleaned, and now shimmered the bright white it truly was. He was very bandaged up, his wings, legs, right foreleg, and torso all wrapped up. He had many IVs in him, and a tube down his throat, probably to assist with breathing.
"I thought you would be interested in the patient's progress." Nurse Redheart said as she put a series of x-rays of his right foreleg up on the scanner and flicked the back-light on.
"The first picture is from when he first came in." She said. The bone was still lurching out of his skin.
"During the surgery, we noticed the bone trying to re-form itself as we worked. We found this weird, so we set this limb up for bi-hourly x-rays. Look at the progress." She pointed to the x-rays beyond the two.
The mare realized why Nurse Redheart had brought her in.
His bone, judging by the x-rays' time stamps, were healing at a speed that was almost unpony. Looking at the last x-ray, the bone had already sealed itself into place, and was repairing the crack.
"This is..." She started, but couldn't find the words to finish her sentence.
"I was about as amazed as you are right now. I never knew alicorns had such amazing healing powers."
"Nurse Redheart, if this is true, wouldn't this mean that all of his other limbs are healing at this rate as well?" Derpy asked.
"We're not sure, although I assume so." She replied.
They stared at the x-rays for a few moments before a beep went off behind them.
Nurse Redheart knew this beep. The air-tube was meeting resistance from the patients lungs. He was breathing.
Both mares went to either side of the patient's bed. The Nurse carefully removed the breathing tube, being sure not to do any damage to the pony's windpipe. Once it was out, the irritation of the tube caused the patient to cough lightly.
He then opened his eyes.