"So you're 'Rainbow Dash'."
Everypony turned to look at Dom.
Rainbow Dash opened her mouth and held her hoof to her chest as if to boast, then looked at Dom. She closed her mouth and moved her hoof over her bandaged waist.
"Yeah," She said nonchalantly, "that's my name."
Dom frowned, "I just wanted to apologize for..." Dom couldn't think of a good way to phrase it.
"...For hitting me in the kidney so hard that I peed red for the past two - three days?" Rainbow Dash offered.
"...yeah..." Dom rubbed his neck, then slowly dropped his arm and stared at Rainbow Dash in shock, "Wait! How many days did you say?"
"Two or three..." Rainbow Dash repeated.
Clair grimaced in Dom's mind.
"You went under all sorts of treatment!" Pinkie spoke up in her usual cheery voice.
Dom tilted his head as he looked at Pinkie, morbidly curious.
"First they put this thing called a 'stomach pump' on you and sucked out all sorts of things! Then a team of unicorns pushed your spine around until it was just right!"
'Oh god no...' Clair grumbled in Dom's mind, covering her face with her hands.
Pinkie continued, bringing her fore-hooves on top of Dom's bed. "And then they stuck all these needles in you--"
Clair formed as fast as she could in between Dom and Pinkie. This time her clothes had a light blue heart with a band-aid over it, her hair and eyes were blue, and she had a blue night cap. She sat on the side of the bed next to Dom's head, just where Pinkie was about to jump up.
She grabbed Pinkie's shoulders, "Please stop!" She pleaded.
"...Why?" Pinkie asked, tilting her head and narrowing her eyes suspiciously, "You're not the one who was injured."
"Yes I was!" Clair said, "I-- Do you-- We only have one body!"
Pinkie tilted her head, "...huh?..." She looked around for clarity. Everypony looked to Twilight. Twilight shrugged.
Eventually, everypony looked back to Dom.
Clair scooted sideways, now sitting in front of his abdomen.
Rainbow Dash cleared her throat, "Yeah... if anypony should be apologizing, it's us." --Twilight, Applejack, and Rarity frowned slightly in disagreement-- "Apparently you just ingested a huge amount of poison before we attacked you..." She rubbed her neck, "You weren't visiting Ponyvillw to find a doctor, were you?" She cringed.
"Poison?" Dom and Clair asked in unison.
"Yeah," Rainbow Dash said, confused and slightly relieved, "The doctors think you ate a cockatrice or something." Fluttershy grimaced.
Dom and Clair stared at Rainbow Dash, blinking a few times...
"Ya know those things are poisonous, right?" Applejack spoke up. Clair and Dom stared dumbly at Applejack.
"Yeah," Rainbow Dash added, "you have to remove the poison sacs before you cook it."
Everyone turned to look at Rainbow Dash with surprised looks on their faces. Rainbow Dash glanced around.
"What?" She asked, "Gilda had one before."
This settled mostly everyone's curiosity.
"You still hang out with Gilda?" Pinkie asked, surprised.
"Huh?" Rainbow Dash looked at Pinkie, "No!"
...She looked down, frowning "...I haven't seen her since..."
A silence enveloped the room.
"Don't worry Rainbow Dash," Fluttershy flew up, smiling kindly, "I'm sure she'll visit you again some day."
"Thanks," Rainbow Dash smiled back, "but didn't she yell at you?"
Fluttershy nodded, "She'll find out it's better to treat friends kindly eventually..."
'Oh yeah,' Dom thought, 'that reminds me...'
'This does not have to be addressed right now.' Clair turned around and cast a warning glance at him.
'not directly...' Dom smirked almost imperceptibly.
'...If I even think your making enemies here, I will stop you. There is way too much at sta--'
'Agreed.' Dom interrupted.
"Oh yeah," Dom said, supposedly changing the subject, "Pinkie, can you affect probabilities?"
"What do you mean?" Pinkie asked, tilting her head.
"Well," Dom explained, "I read something about strange abilities some earth ponies seem to get."
"Ooh!" Pinkie jumped past Clair and maneuvered on top of Dom's immobilized body, pushing her muzzle to his nose, "What did it say?"
'This is bad,' Clair thought, 'If Twilight looks for such a book--'
'We could just say we lost it,' Dom suggested.
'And Twilight will hate you for that...' Clair sighed internally.
"...It-- It was an attempt to explain some of the seemingly impossible things done by earth ponies," Dom started, "Like predicting certain events, bending into impossible shapes, and even having prehensile hair." Pinkie leaned in closer with each word.
'You idiot!' Clair shouted in Dom's head, 'What if she made that hair!? What if she made those other things?'
"What else did it say?" Pinkie asked in an entranced voice. If it was possible, she was even closer to Dom than before.
'We-- we may have another problem...' Dom swallowed.
"It-- It's theorized that-- that if earth ponies could affect probabilities..." Dom choked. He didn't know what to say! He was going to be found out, and--
"If earth ponies could affect probabilities," Clair continued, only a slight wavering of fear could be detected in her voice, "they could affect the probability of their hair or other objects moving. They could affect the distances between the... between the--"
"Atoms?" Twilight suggested.
"Mhmm." Clair nodded, relieved. "And..." she thought, "if they could sense probabilities as well as affect them, they could 'feel' future events too... Unlike how unicorns affect the world directly, earth ponies would affect it indirectly."
"Hmm," Pinkie raised herself off of Dom and looked out the window, out into the distance.
"Interesting..." Twilight scrunched her face in thought.
'Huh,' Dom thought, 'I thought I'd be getting aroused or something with anything my female and close to my size that close to me.'
'You're not healthy enough to get aroused...'Clair grumbled, 'Also... gross...' A picture of a large frog with holes on it's body for holding eggs moved into Dom's mind.
'Okay...' Dom stared at Clair, 'Maybe the list is a bit shorter than whatever I said...'
Pinkie hopped off the bed, still thinking. She occasionally glanced to the ground, then the window, then to some random object which she stared intensely at.
"Where is this book?" Twilight asked, genuinely curious.
Dom blinked, then formed another lie, "I found it somewhere... out in the open, in the castle of the royal pony sisters... and..." Dom cringed.
"And you put it back in its shelf, right?" Twilight glared.
"I think I lost it when I was attacked by timber-wolves," Dom cringed again.
Rainbow Dash looked at Dom, surprised. "You were attacked by timber-wolves?" She asked.
"Yeah..." Dom said.
'That could've gone worse...' Clair sighed, relieved.
'What were we doing again?' Dom asked.
'Befriending everyone,' Clair answered tonelessly, 'starting with Rainbow Dash.'
"Oh yeah," Dom spoke, directing his voice at Rainbow Dash, "Word of advice, when you're about to start a fight, don't yell as loudly as possible if you want to have the element of surprise."
Rainbow Dash furrowed her brows and leaned back, offended, "Why would I want to be sneaky?"
Dom raised an eyebrow, "So you win?"
Rainbow Dash smirked and rolled her eyes, "ch'... If I have to resort to cheap tricks to win a battle, then I've already lost." She glared.
Dom glared back, "You shouldn't care about your own pride when your friends' lives are at stake."
Rainbow Dash glared back, "I can save my friends in any situation and still be awesome!"
Dom squinted, "You wanna go?"
Twilight stepped in the way, "Alright alright, break it u--"
"Anytime," Rainbow Dash sat up, smirking, "Anywhere."
Dom tried to sit up, but fell back down when an enormous pain shot through his abdomen. Clair clutched her abdomen and clenched her teeth in pain. She fell over to the left and scooted further down the bed. Now she wouldn't be in the way.
Rainbow Dash burst out into laughter.
"I said, break it--"
"Well," Dom sighed, ignoring Twilight, "we obviously can't fight each other, so... choose a game," Dom challenged.
"Huh, okay then," Twilight stepped out of the way.
Rainbow Dash grinned, "you up for a round of battleship?"
"You're on!" Dom held out his hand. Rainbow Dash considered spitting on her hoof before shaking with him, but remembered the cast on his hand. In the end, they bumped appendages.
"Now all we need is--" Rainbow Dash started.
"I'll get it," Twilight said before walking off. But a doctor passed by the room, and they didn't look very busy.
"Doctor!" Rainbow Dash shouted, "Doctor!"
"DoctorDoctorDoctorDoctor..." Dom said.
'Dom, what the hell do you think you're doing?' Clair turned around to glare at him.
"DoctorDoctorDoctorDoctor..." Dom continued, trying not to laugh.
"Doctor!" Rainbow Dash shouted again, "Doctor!"
'Where do you think you are?' Clair thought as she glared. She playfully hit Dom in the abdomen, it wasn't meant to hurt. It did.
Dom clutched his stomach as an ice-cold thunderstorm of pain ravaged his body. Clair clutched her stomach, froze, and coughed up blood before falling forwards off the bed and hitting her forehead against the rail on Rainbow Dash's bed.
"GAAAAAAHH!" Clair and Dom screamed and clutched their foreheads at once. Interestingly, there was a bruise on Clair's head, but not Dom's.
The Doctor finally walked in. He was a light brown Unicorn.
"My goodness," He said, looking at everyone in the room, "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were having a party in here... Can I join?"
"Sure," Rainbow Dash smiled, "You bring the games, you got battleship?"
"I'll be sure to make a request," he smiled, then looked at everyone else, and noticed Clair still clutching her forehead. He paled for a second, noticing what she was, then noticed her cringing and--was she whimpering?--as she clutched her head.
"Jeez," he rushed over, his history as a doctor outweighing his knowledge of history, "let me see that," he used his hooves to part Clair's head from her hands. Already there was a huge bruise. "Wow," He said, "I'm gonna have to check for a concussion."
"Don't worry," Clair smirked, "I should be able to heal--"
Clair concentrated on healing herself, but was surprised to feel the same throbbing pain as before. She looked up and stared at Dom, wide eyed.
"I can't..."
Dom stared back, wide-eyed.
'Really?' he thought, scared.
'I can't-- Heal-- At all...' Clair thought back.
The doctor frowned, sat close to Clair, then held the back of her head with his left hoof. "I thought your kind went extinct, and rightly so... And now I'm checking one of you for a concussion..." He pulled out a small flashlight from his saddle back and shined it in Clair's eyes.
"One of my kind..." Clair said, "You mean a tulpa?"
"Pupil dilation's normal... I think... a what?"
"A tulpa." Clair repeated.
The doctor cast a worried glance at her. She was obviously a human, now she was making up words? This could be pretty bad... "...how many hooves am I holding up?" the doctor raised his hoof.
Clair looked at him, amused. How many hooves could he possibly hold up? "Ten." She smirked.
"...I really hope you're joking..." the doctor smiled.
Clair smiled back.
'Aww' Dom thought, smiling.
'Can I turn into a pony?' Clair asked.
'I don't think so,' Dom thought. Clair frowned in response, 'It's not that I'm not allowing it, I don't think you can if you weren't able to heal...'
Clair concentrated. '...Nope...I can't...'
Then she opened her eyes and slowly smiled. She had an idea.
'Maybe you can fade away this time,' Clair thought, 'And we can use my body.'
...
'How do I do it?' He asked.
Clair thought, '...I don't know... just... kind of...calm down... then think of fading...'
"What are you thinking so hard about?" the doctor asked.
"Huh?" Clair snapped back to reality.
The doctor sighed, "...I think I really am going to have to check you in for a concussion."
"Wait," Clair spoke up, "I think I'm fine."
"Really?" the doctor asked.
"23*27 is 400+140+60+21 equals... 621." Clair said.
"Well, your math certainly is good," The doctor complimented. "Are you sure you're not feeling..." the doctor shrugged, "I don't know, woozy?"
Clair fell forward, embracing the doctor in a hug, "Soft..."
"Um... there there?" He patted her back, then gently pushed her away. "I'm sorry, but I think I should be going soon. I have to set you up for a scan and check on the other patients."
Dom stared intensely at his fingertips while concentrating as hard as he could, yet also remaining as calm as he could. He willed himself to fade away and trust and rely on Clair to protect him. He swore his fingertips were disappearing up to the knuckle, but then Clair notified him, breaking his concentration. He glanced around.
"Wait," Dom spoke, "What all do I have?"
"Oh, um..." The doctor stumbled, "I'm sorry, but I don't have the files with me."
The doctor turned and hurried out of the room.
Dom went back to concentrating. He trusted Clair, he was just... scared.
'Don't worry,' Clair thought to him, 'If you do succeed, nothing will happen to you that hasn't happened to me.' This calmed Dom, but Clair actually had no idea whether something bad would happen to him or not. It was a calculated risk.
Suddenly, Clair got up, as if filled with a new-found purpose. She stumbled to the other side of Rainbow Dash's bed, not caring how the ponies were staring at her. She stood next to a confused Applejack, "You stay away from--", she ignored Twilight and sat down cross-legged next to Applejack. Twilight didn't quite see a threat, so she decided not to move Clair away with her magic, yet. Clair leaned to her left, then enveloped Applejack with her arms and leaned into her.
"Oh," Applejack laughed, "hey there..."
Twilight stared at Clair, squinting.
'You're way too huggy,' Dom thought.
'Hey!' Clair thought, 'This is the first time I can touch any living things other than you. And do you know how soft these guys are?'
Another Doctor walked by the room. This one was a light blue unicorn, taller than the first doctor.
"Did you bring battleship?" Rainbow Dash yelled.
The doctor turned to the voice and walked into the room, "Ahuh," he pulled the game out of his bag and handed it to Rainbow Dash. "Oh," He looked at Dom, not noticing part of his arms and legs were faded, and pulled out a list, "You were treated for spinal trauma, cockatrice poisoning, a broken hand bone, and severe dehydration."
Clair grimaced. At least it sounded like there wouldn't be any long term damage.
"And you," He turned to Claire, "Please, follow me."
Clair got up, "I don't think I can--" Clair looked at Dom's bed, Dom was still having trouble fading.
"You don't think you can what?" The doctor asked, still walking. Eventually, he turned around when he noticed Clair wasn't following.
"I can't move too far away from Dom," Clair pointed, "...magic," She shrugged.
The doctor glanced between the two humans a few times, then finally shrugged "I suppose I can move him back to the scanning room as well."
"But my game!" Rainbow Dash held her hooves to her head.
"Looks like you'll just have to play with one of us," Twilight smiled, relieved.
"Actually," Clair said, "Can they come too?"
the doctor looked back, "I can only push one gurney."
Clair smiled, "I hit my head. I can still move."
the doctor considered it, and finally shrugged, "Okay, the scanning room should be pretty empty right now anyway."
"Yes!" Rainbow Dash pumped her hoof.
Clair walked over to Rainbow Dash's gurney and grabbed it by the hoof end.
Twilight stepped up beside Clair, "I see what you two are doing," she glared, "trying to get us to trust you."
Clair frowned and held her hand to her forehead, "Gah... not this... not right now..."
Twilight considered saying more, but... it just didn't feel right.
Clair neared the scanning room. Dom was down to just a torso and a head now.
Clair smiled in satisfaction. It looked like they might start being friends with the mane six, despite whatever history there was between humans and ponies. Then, once they were good enough friends and Twilight cooled off, the mane six could convince Celestia to open a door to Earth. Then there wouldn't need to be any made up explanations for why Dom was gone.
And it was good she knew that now too. She felt like she could pass out at any moment and there was a blackness around her vision.
She pushed the gurney containing Rainbow Dash into the scanning room. She heard a strange voice, it sounded out of place. She turned. There was Discord in nurse attire.
'Crap!' She thought.
'What?' Dom thought. Opening his eyes, he was surprised to find himself back in his mind-space, except now it felt more real than ever.
'We forgot Discord...' Clair stared at him in horror. The edges around her vision finally turned everything black. She gripped Rainbow Dash's gurney, hard. She panted. She was so thirsty, and her stomach hurt, and her back hurt... Eventually it was just too painful to stay awake.
She collapsed.
Discord looked over to the noise and spotted something strange, "Is that a human?" he pointed a claw at Clair.