As soon as he stumbled and fell to the ground, Applejack knew Matt's fight with the misplaced animal was about to go south in a hurry. Seeing it pounce on her friend caused her heart to nearly skip a beat and all she could manage to do was desperately call out for him. Her legs refused to listen to her when she commanded them to run in to help, but it wasn't until his scream of pain and the splatter of his blood did they respond.
With her mind overflowing with a mixture of terror and rage, she recklessly dashed in, ignoring Fluttershy and Twilight as they begged her to stop. Even if she had heard them, it wouldn't have made a difference. She had already lost two loved ones in her life; she wasn't about to lose another.
However, she grinded to a halt when the beast suddenly shrieked in agony of its own, but that wasn't what made Applejack come to a stop. A split second after connecting with Matt's head, its body almost seemed to flicker in and out with a yellowish hue the way a unicorn's horn would when its owner was struggling with magic. It only lasted a few seconds, but whatever happened seemed to knock the cat senseless and it collapsed in a heap on top of the curled up, twitching body of its enemy. It struggled against itself to stand back up, still mewling and shaking in pain.
Everypony who had been watching the struggle stared in confusion, including Applejack and her friends, at what had just transpired. The Elements had never seen anything like it in all their travels and didn't know what to think or expect. The panicking apple farmer found herself once again stuck to the ground.
As she had frozen up, Fluttershy had noticed something else just as peculiar as what happened to the large cat out of the corner of her eye. From several feet behind the cowgirl's apple stand, it almost looked like whatever the sudden blur was that affected the mountain lion had done the same to Matt's red vehicle. She paused a moment, wondering if she was only seeing things but ignored it upon hearing Matt's distressed whimpers.
Beneath the animal, Matt had grabbed onto his head, the slew of stabbing pain nearly unbearable. A red river flowed from the wounds, soaking his hands and face. He wasn't sure if his right eye had been sliced open or if it was just from the pooling blood that it burned.
He sluggishly rolled left, hissing through clenched teeth and barely managing to keep open his good eye when he spotted one of his blades laying beside him. Though he was unaware of the bizarre occurrence the beast had just gone through, he didn't bother to stop to wonder why he was suddenly not being pulverized. With his arm shaking, Matt reached across his chest and took the knife in his hand.
Using every last bit of energy he could muster, he swung back around and drove the weapon deep into the animal's neck. The massive cat howled and clawed at the human's chest and legs as it slowly lost its battle against death, its talons fortunately not digging through his clothes and into his flesh too deeply. Regardless, the tears and scratches still stung.
Matt's free hand took hold of the handle's base and forced the knife in as far as it could go, finally finishing off the cougar for good. With its last breath, its massive body slumped hard on top of its prey, pinning him down. Exhausted – and relieved it was over – Matt let the blade go, letting his free arm tumble to the ground. His head and face continued to throb as the blood kept steadily coming.
Three sets of hooves galloped up to the war zone now that the fight was over, Applejack arriving several steps ahead of her friends. The beast glowed purple and was set down a few feet away, allowing Matt to breathe easier with the weight off his chest. The girls hid their gasps behind their hooves as they surveyed the damage.
Most of his hair was matted in dark, bloody clumps. The top of his right ear was barely holding on. Much of his face and neck were soaked and a small puddle had formed in the soil. Each rapid pulse just made his agony worse, leaving him quivering like a leaf.
"Oh jeez, he's a mess!" Applejack hollered.
They needed to get him to a hospital in a hurry. The farmer darted her eyes around, looking for some kind of transportation. Ugh, if she had hands, she could have just used that Blazer thing! It didn't seem too hard to operate the few times she watched Matt control it.
Thankfully, sitting beside her apple stand was the wagon she used to bring her wares to the market. Perfect! She was off in a flash. While Applejack sprinted for the cart, Twilight concentrated and conjured up several small towels overhead.
"Stay here a moment," the unicorn said to Fluttershy. "I need to get some water for these rags."
The pegasus nodded as Twilight made for the fountain in the center of Market Square not far away. Hoping to calm Matt down even a little, Fluttershy took his hand in her hooves and caressed his forearm. As she waited patiently for her friends to return, she glanced over at the fallen animal and quietly mourned its passing. She wished things had gone differently, but with all the strange events happening recently, she didn't know what to think. All she knew was that, for whatever reason, she had been unable to communicate with it and Matt was badly hurt.
Fluttershy spun her head to the sound of wheels grinding and a set of familiar hooves approaching behind her. Applejack came to a stop just past the pegasus with the wagon securely around her waist.
"Come on, we gotta get a move on!"
"What about Twilight?"
"What about her? She's not the one who's bleedin' all over the place!" Applejack growled.
"She just went to get some water for the wounds. She can't be much longer!"
Okay, cleaning out the wounds didn't seem like a bad idea, but what could be keeping the mare? Gritting her teeth, the farm pony stomped impatiently for what felt like an eternity when a burst of purple magic appeared next to them.
"It's about time!"
Ignoring her orange friend's scolding, Twilight wasted no time in gliding down the first of the wet towels. "Try and sit still, Matt." Whether or not it even registered with him was anybody's guess.
The first rag patted lightly on his face, specifically his blood-soaked eye and cheek. It didn't take much for the cloth to be completely stained pink. Tossing that one aside, Twilight took the next and cleaned off what was left. They breathed a collective sigh of relief when he just barely managed to open his right eye and saw it was in one piece. The unicorn dabbed gently at the side of his head, the most damaged area. Matt winced hard at the cool water. It stung more than rubbing alcohol on a scraped knee; the slices must have been deep.
With each soft touch of the towel, the biting sensations subsided but they never completely went away. Every time the young mare managed to get most of the streaming blood cleaned from his wound, another fair amount would have already made its way to the surface. It took several more cloths for the flow to diminish at all.
"Come on, we gotta get him to the hospital! Now!" Applejack hollered, rapidly losing what little patience she had left.
Quickly wiping Matt's neck clean, Twilight decided that she had done all she could and lifted him onto the wagon, hopping in right beside him. She continued to put gentle pressure on the lacerations though the bleeding never fully stopped. Fluttershy fell in next to them both and took his hand again. He seemed to have calmed down a bit but was still shaking, the trauma from the injury and the blood loss obviously taking their toll. With her friends finally ready, the cowgirl sprinted off.
-----
An hour or two must have passed while Applejack paced back and forth in the hospital waiting area. Maybe it was three, maybe it was six – she didn't know or really care. The sun had already gone down and the moon was halfway in the sky. Needless to say, their night out together was beyond shot.
As the time ticked away, one by one, Pinkie Pie, Rarity and Rainbow Dash had arrived, having heard what happened thanks to the talkative townsponies. Twilight and Fluttershy did most of the clarifying; Applejack barely said a word to any of them. While they waited, the girls nervously argued to each other that he was going to be alright, remembering how he had been in worse spots before and came out okay. Even so, the apple farmer didn't add to – or even acknowledge – their conversation. She was too busy going out of her mind.
Like every time before, the opening of the double doors nearby snapped Applejack's eyes up from the floor. Unlike every time before, however, a surgeon and nurse were rolling out their bipedal patient on a hospital bed. Half of his head was wrapped like a mummy in bandages but fortunately, both his eyes were uncovered and he could see fine.
As the farm girl sped up and greeted him a step or two before the others, she couldn't help but notice how much he was bobbing and weaving, probably due to how utterly exhausting the whole experience had been for him. He barely was able to summon the strength to wave hello at them.
"How's he doing, doc?" Applejack tensely asked.
The golden-maned unicorn removed his glasses and guided them into his coat pocket. "Lucky, after everything you said happened to him. It's a good thing you got him here as quick as you did. Fortunately, we were able to prevent things from getting even more serious than they already were." He hovered up his notes and glanced over the details for them. "Those lacerations nearly cut all the way to his skull. I had him get X-rayed, ran a few tests, just to make sure and fortunately, the animal's claws didn't penetrate through to his brain. There simply isn't much between a pony's – or a human's – skull and their skin, but if those slices went much deeper, I wouldn't have been able to release him so soon."
The nurse delicately removed the bandages while the doctor continued, slowly revealing the train tracks along the side of his head. Applejack and the others winced and bit their lips at the grisly sight. "He needed nearly fifty staples, and it wasn't easy keeping his ear together, but we managed to stitch it up. We gave him some antibiotics to stave off infection and he'll need to keep everything dry for a day or two while my healing magics do their work. He did have a bit of blood loss, but fortunately, you kept from getting too out of control. Still, we determined during our tests that his blood pressure was a little low, so we gave him some blood."
"Wait," Twilight spoke up, "you mean pony blood is compatible with his?"
"Actually it's not. We asked him a short while after the Discord incident if he would be so kind as to donate a sample of his blood for us to study. He did so and we put it on ice. We've done some fascinating research with it since then. But he needed some now, so we simply gave some back to him, in a manner of speaking," the doctor explained. "Other than all that, he should be alright, but again, he got extremely lucky."
"Anything else?"
The doctor stepped back, allowing Matt to slide down off the bed. Rainbow grabbed onto his shoulder as his first step left him a touch off-balance. "You'll find a painkiller in a bag in his shorts pocket. After the Novocaine wears off in a little while, it's going to feel rather uncomfortable to say the least. What you should do for now is bring him home and have him get some rest. The painkiller should knock him right out not long after he takes it. Matt, I'll have the receptionist put you down to come back, say, Tuesday to get those taken out. You should be healed up completely by then."
Groggy and barely coherent, he nodded at the surgeon and mumbled, "Sounds good."
"Alright then. We'll mail his bill out on Monday once everything's been added up and–"
The cowgirl cut him off, shaking her head. "Uh uh, you send it to Sweet Apple Acres instead, okay? I'll take care of it."
"A.J., you don't have to do that," Twilight interjected. "I'm more than willing to chip in some bits."
"Me too."
"Mmhmm."
"Don't you dare, any of you," Applejack insisted. "Just send me the bill. It's alright."
"Are...you sure?" the doctor asked.
"I am," she said with a firm nod.
"Well...okay. I'll make a note of that. Does he need a ride home by any chance? He's still pretty woozy, as you can see, and I don't want to see him getting hurt even more trying to walk home on his own."
"Thanks, but my wagon's still waiting outside. We'll be okay."
"Excellent." He gave the human a pat on the back as he headed back inside. "See you Tuesday, Matt."
-----
The walk back to Matt's home felt impossibly long and was littered with quiet, concerned chatter, most of which was directed at him. Exactly what kinds of things they said were lost on him as his dizzy state made their queries and statements sound like a cacophony of noise more than anything else.
Rarity kept Applejack company as she pulled the cart. She didn't want to see the farmer make herself sick with worry seeing Matt in the shape he was. Still, she couldn't deny that she would have been just as traumatized herself if something that horrible had happened to Sweetie Belle or her parents or any of her friends.
As they plodded along, they came across the Blazer, still sitting where Matt left it hours ago. Fluttershy ignored the conversation as the wagon passed, staring curiously as the vehicle. Nothing looked out of the ordinary about it. What exactly happened earlier? Was she just hallucinating from the stress?
Putting the questions in her mind aside, the pegasus glanced just beyond the SUV and past the apple stand behind it to where the horrific fight took place earlier in the day. The animal was gone, probably carried off by animal control and hopefully taken care of in a respectful manner. Her ears fell as the events replayed in her head. She was hoping to say goodbye to it one last time before it was removed.
However, there was something else from the fight that someone else may find important. She got up from the wagon and fluttered over to the former battlefield, causing Applejack to pause. After a minute of searching, she returned to the group hanging her head.
"You okay, Fluttershy?" Twilight asked. "I know that couldn't have been easy for you to watch earlier."
She sighed deeply, confirming her friend's suspicions. "It's okay. At least Matt's alright. That's what matters. I, uh...I didn't find either of those knives. I know they were important to him, but it looks like they were taken away."
"Maybe we can just replace them after all this blows over."
"I suppose so," Fluttershy whispered. "We should go. We need to get Matt home and make sure he gets to sleep."
With a nod, their trek home continued.
-----
Roughly twenty somber minutes had gone by when Applejack unhitched herself from the wagon. Slowly, clumsily, Matt staggered out of the back and to his feet, leaning against its floor for balance. The girls escorted him inside and to his bedroom with Rainbow Dash and Applejack providing him the most support.
He slipped the tiny bag with the painkiller from his pocket and set it down on the nightstand. Almost stumbling, he turned and sat hard on the bed, removing his shirt and tossing it to a random corner of the room. Though he typically didn't sleep with anything on, he was feeling too out of it to muster the energy to remove his shorts and slipped under the covers.
A purple glow lifted his upper body just enough to grab the pillow and fluff it for him. As Twilight set him back down, Matt ran his fingers over his injuries several times. If only he could have just gotten a scab from bumping into a sharp edge and bleeding a little instead of getting mauled by an animal and bleeding a lot.
"Is there anything we can get you, Matt?" Fluttershy asked.
"No, I'm good," he mumbled after a long moment of staring at the ceiling. His eyes were getting heavier with each passing second, but thankfully, his injuries hadn't started to hurt yet like the doctor said they would. He glanced at the yellow mare, remembering the attack. He really never had a chance to ask her, for obvious reasons. "You okay?"
"Y-yes. Thanks. I'd be better if you hadn't gotten hurt though."
He shrugged, barely. "Eh, I'll be fine."
The girls exchanged a look. It wasn't the first time he'd been in serious trouble. That didn't diminish their concern for his well-being though.
"We should head out and let him sleep," Twilight softly suggested, nodding at the door. "We'll stop by to see you tomorrow, Matt. Get some rest."
Behind closed eyes, he nodded as his company left one by one, heading into his living room. Applejack, however, was still sitting by his side, and Rarity noticed this as she turned to leave. She walked up to the farmer and wrapped a comforting hoof around her shoulder, receiving a thankful squeeze in return. The country girl looked at the designer, her green eyes barely holding back their tears. Rarity nuzzled her cheek and let her go, leaving Applejack where she needed to be.
The dressmaker closed the bedroom door behind her and followed Pinkie Pie out the front. As the group was about to say their good nights, Rainbow asked, "Applejack still in there?"
"Just leave her be. They were supposed to go out tonight, so I'm sure she'd like a few minutes," the white unicorn answered.
"Yeah. So, uh...I guess we can meet up here, say, three?"
"Sounds fine."
"Okay."
"Alright, cool," Rainbow sighed. "See you all tomorrow."
-----
Applejack sat silently as Rarity had shut the door behind her, leaving her alone in the moonlit room watching over Matt. It looked as if he had managed to nod off as her friends left. As he shifted to get comfortable, the farmer noticed some of the staples just barely shining from the soft light coming in from the window. She sobbed under her breath and a tear slid down her cheek.
A grunt from the bed caught her ear and she quickly wiped her face clean, acting as if she merely had an itch. "Hey," Matt groaned, having heard her whispered sorrow.
"H-hey."
He sat himself up and leaned against the headboard, stretching his back out as he spoke. "Thought you left with the others."
"I just...I just wanted to make extra sure you were alright, is all."
"Yeah, I'm good," he said with a yawn. His fingers seemed to find the wounds on their own again and ran up and down the staples and the sutures in his ear. "So much for our night out, hm?"
"Stop playing with those," Applejack scolded, snatching his hand. "You don't need to make things worse."
"They feel funny," he snickered. Before long, his head began to throb steadily and he winced in annoyance. "Great. I think the Novocaine is wearing off."
"I'll go get you some water so you can take the painkiller." Applejack didn't bother to wait for an answer as she headed to the kitchen.
While she took care of his needs, Matt grabbed the tiny bag beside him and fished out the small, white pill. Once the mare returned with a glass, he threw the medicine down his throat and chugged a mouthful of water to force it down. Blech! Tasted like chalk. Even in Equestria, doctors don't seem to like the idea of slapping a liquid coating on pills too much.
He finished up his drink and set the glass on the nightstand. "Thanks."
Applejack sighed and shook her head. "Why'd you have to go after that thing, Matt? Me and Twilight could have dealt with it just fine."
"Just didn't want to see you girls get hurt," he mumbled, shrugging. "Would have been fine if I hadn't slipped."
"And you almost got yourself killed! You and I both know this isn't the first time you've done something like this."
"I know what you're referring to, but that was different. We know why that bear didn't want to go home."
"But you don't need to show off or whatever if that's what it is you're trying to do now! Me and the girls have been keeping Equestria safe for a while. I know you mean well, but you don't have to go risking your neck like that for us. I..." She paused, catching herself from speaking the most honest truth. The night hid her glistening eyes just enough for Matt not to notice them. "W-we don't want to see anything happen to you."
He smirked and chuckled to himself. "What, are you getting sappy on me, A.J.? That ain't like you."
"I'll get sappy if I want," she frowned, poking him in the side. "Come on, Matt, after all this time, do you really not understand how much to mean to m...to all of us?"
The sudden guilt he felt in the pit of his stomach took a back seat to the mare that wrapped a limb around him and was weeping into his chest. He honestly didn't know how to respond at first; she had never done anything like this before. Seeing her breaking down crying left a twinge in his heart, and he felt his eyes begin to water. He slid his arm out from under her and reassuringly caressed her neck and back. Her tight squeeze told him that it was helping, even if only a little.