//------------------------------//
// Chapter XVI 
// Story: The Prince and the Workhorse 
// by fellstorm 
//------------------------------//


The Prince and the Workhorse


Part XVI




Pinkie and Tombs lay next to each other on the bed. Breathless, exhausted, stupid. The bed was big and warm and pink. Tombs exhaled across Pinkie’s chest and watched her cotton candy hair ripple under his breath. Pinkie’s back leg twitched involuntarily in the air as vestigial pangs of pleasure crackled inside her. She exhaled a shuddering breath.
“Ohhh, golly,” she stretched and grinned “That was the best game of combination Bingo and Twister I’ve ever played! Your calves were getting pretty turgid towards the end, though.”
Tombs laughed.
“You were shouting ‘bingo’ so loudly, you probably scared the poor Cakes half to death,” he said.
“Sorry, I get carried away sometimes,” she smiled self-consciously.
“I noticed.”
Tombs looked up at the ceiling.
“You know you never really answered my question,” he said.
“What question?”
“What we’re doing together. Why we keep… colliding like this.”
Pinkie scratched his chest.
“Honestly? The first time was just drunken spontaneity, but you were just so good I had to go back for seconds!” she nuzzled him “Where’d you learn all those fancy moves anyway?”
“Manipuri,” answered Tombs, absent-mindedly stroking her mane.
“Oh, that’s so cool! Why were you in Manipuri?”
“I used to be in the Armored Cavalry, back when I was young.”
Pinkie giggled.
“I’d say you’re still pretty spry. You can’t be much older than Mr. Cake.”
“It was still a long time ago.”
“Is that where you got that scar?” Pinkie touched his belly, tracing the thin line of pale flesh that crossed his stomach like railroad tracks. Her hoof traced from left to right, following the same path the jagged chunk of Mark V did when it snicked his gut open.
Tombs rolled onto his back, a faraway look in his eyes.
“I got that in the Congo,” he said “Struck by a piece of shrapnel. They ended up cutting out some of my lower intestine to remove it.”
“Gross!”
“Mmhm…”
Pinkie watched him laying there, a faraway look clouding his eyes. The silence got to her after a few seconds and she became restless.
“You said you were looking for Rainbow Dash?” she blurted.
Tombs had completely forgotten the reason he’d come to Ponyville that morning.
“Yes, it’s actually quite important that I talk to her,” he said, sitting up.
“She’s at the Ponyville Cinestar Theater watching the matinee showing of the latest Daring Do adventure. It should be letting out in…” Pinkie looked over at the clock on her dresser “Four minutes and eighteen seconds.”
“You knew where she was all along and you still-”
“Also knew we had an hour to kill? Yes!”
Tombs sighed and kissed her full on the mouth. She melted into it and their lips parted with a soft “pop.” Her leg twitched. That was her Pinkie Sense telling her she’d just received an amazing kiss.
“Pinkie,” said Tombs.
“Yeah?” Pinkie murmured, still lost in her own little world.
“Whatever happens later, remember that things are not always what they seem, and I would never do anything to hurt you or your friends.”
“Uh huh…” Pinkie sighed.
Tombs rolled out of the bed and went hunting for his clothes; they’d been strewn far and wide in the heat of passion.
Pinkie sat bolt upright.
“Hey! Waitaminute! What does that mean!?” she asked.
Tombs had already left.


***

Even nose-deep in her bag of popcorn, Rainbow Dash couldn’t take her eyes off the flickering screen. She licked the unpopped kernels and butter from the bottom of the bag as she watched a fifteen-foot tall Sophia Sorrel smooch lustily with a towering Clarke Stable in vibrant black and white.
Rainbow Dash loved Sophia Sorrel’s portrayal of Daring Do. She was smart, strong, confident, and brought a wit and charm to the role that really brought the character to life exactly as Rainbow had always imagined her in books. She hoped Clarke Stable really appreciated how lucky he was to have her tongue in his mouth; it’s not everypony who got to play opposite such a talented actress.
In the darkness around her, all the little foals who’d skipped school to come to see the matinee squirmed.
“Ughhhh!”
“Not the gushy part!”
“Gross!”
Rainbow snorted.
“Pipe down! I can’t hear the end!” she hissed.
Applebloom’s Pegasus friend, Scootaloo was there too. She adored Rainbow Dash and followed her everywhere. When she saw Rainbow was going to see Daring Do and the Curse of the Warlock, Part 5(the Thrilling Conclusion!) she just had to skip school and go, too!
“Yeah!” yelled Scootaloo from her seat nearby “Rainbow Dash can’t hear the end!”
“I thought I said pipe down!” Rainbow snapped at the darkness.
Scootaloo squeaked and sank into her seat cushion.
The credits rolled and the house lights came up.
“Aw, shucks,” Rainbow grumbled “I missed the part where he said he loves her…”
“I love you, Rainbow Dash…” whispered Scootaloo, so quietly not even the pony sitting next to her could hear.
Rainbow dropped her empty popcorn bag in the trashcan by the door and trotted out into the bright daylight.
“Rainbow Dash!” somepony shouted at her.
Rainbow shielded her eyes with her hoof and allowed them to adjust. Somepony was standing in the middle of the road outside the theater. It was that fancy little butler that trailed Blueblood around. What did he want?
“Whaddya want?” she shouted back.
“If you’ll pardon the liberty, ma’m, I’m calling you out!”
“Oh yeah? For what?”
“I heard you recently delivered an opprobrious remark about my employer that happened to also reflect negatively on me,” said Tombs.
Rainbow Dash waggled her ears and tried to clean one with her hoof.
“Bwa huh?”
“You called him *ahem* ‘gay’ and implied that he and I were involved romantically.”
“Yeah? What of it?”
“I merely find it surprising that a fillyfooler such as yourself has the brass balls to originate such a hypocritical implication.”
Rainbow Dash was in Tombs’s face before the image of her standing in the theater door could fade from his retinas, giving him a brief impression of two Rainbow Dashes. The closer one was extremely pissed.
“What did you say?” she growled.
“You heard me, fillyfooler,” said Tombs, unflinching.
“Where do you get off calling me a fillyfooler?”
“Well, you fly like one, for one thing,” he said “You were once so distracted by some filly’s flank that you didn’t look where you were going and crashed into a tanker truck full of liquid rainbow, causing more than fourteen thousand bits in damages.”
“How do you know about that?” Rainbow Dash asked, slightly panicked “And I wasn’t distracted by her flank!”
“So you’re more into hocks, then? Or is it a nice set of withers that get your motor wet?”
“Shut up! Why’re you hassling me?”
“Aren’t you a little old for Daring Do films?” he continued, looking over her shoulder at the marquee on the Ponyville Cinestar “Or maybe you’re just a dedicated Sophia Sorrel fan?”
“Hey! I watch it for the plot! It’s very sophisticated!”
“And firm?”
“Yes, and firm… Hey!”
“Face it, Dash, you’re a fillyfooling faggot. Everypony can see it.”
“I’m not a faggot!” she shouted, flaring her wings. Traffic in front of the Cinestar slowed to watch the commotion. Scootaloo saw what was going on and gasped, zipping away to find help.
“You’re gonna get me angry in a minute, bub,” she poked his chest with her hoof.
“What’s a prismatic poofter like you gonna do about it?” Tombs poked her back.
“I’m gonna paint the town with your guts if you don’t shut up is what I’m gonna do!”
“You’re one to talk about guts when you’re too scared to admit the real reason you got kicked out of flight school!”
SPANG!
Tombs’s vision swam with stars. He realized he was lying on his side. Rainbow Dash stood over him, teeth clenched, her barrel heaving with anger.
“Maybe I was wrong; you don’t kick like a dyke,” he said, spitting a little wad of pink-tinged saliva into the dirt “Maybe you should call your gryphon friend, Gilda. I bet she knows how to buck like a real-”
KRAK!
Rainbow Dash’s next blow caught Tombs on the shoulder, sending him rolling out into the street.
“Nothing happened between me and Gilda!”
“Then” he coughed “Why’d you both get hauled before the Board of Discipline for fraternization?”
“Who’s been telling you these things!?” Rainbow yelled.
“Everypony knows,” said Tombs, rising on unsteady legs.
“Everypony’s wrong! I’m not a fillyfooler! That’s not even why I got kicked out!”
“That’s true, you got kicked out for showboating. Who were you trying to impress?”
“Nopony!”
“Was it Gilda?”
“No!” Rainbow shouted, pawing the ground, lowering her head to charge.
“Was it Fluttershy?” he yelled.
SKABLOOIE!
Rainbow Dash charged him, jamming her forehead beneath his chin and slamming upwards, spinning Tombs through the air and landing him on his back. He rolled onto his side and pushed himself up on one hoof, breathless. Still conscious.
“You were trying to show off for her!”
“No I wasn’t!”
Watch me do a loop-the-loop, Fluttershy!
“You love to make her smile!”
“No, I don’t!” she advanced on him.
Watch me dive, Fluttershy!
“You live to hear her cheer!”
“Shut up!” she spun on her hooves, exposing her hind legs.
You’re so amazing, Rainbow Dash! Woohoo!
“You broke the sound barrier for her!”
“AAARGH!”
Rainbow’s kick caught Tombs square in the stomach. The force of her blow lifted him through the air and sent him sailing through the window of a drug store, shattering the glass and sending him sprawling across the counter.
“So what if I did!?” screamed Rainbow Dash “I still broke it! I still made the Sonic Rainboom! I made it for her but I still made it!”
The dam burst. Tears streamed down her face. Fluttershy was the most beautiful mare who ever lived! Anypony who couldn’t see that was a damn fool! Why had she spent so much time denying it?
“Rainbow Dash, what’s going on?”
Twilight Sparkle galloped to her, Scootaloo buzzing at her heels, her little scooter kicking up a trail of dust.
Pinkie Pie and Rarity ran to the scene as well.
Rainbow Dash couldn’t answer. She curled into a rainbow-colored ball and sobbed in the middle of the street as the crowd gathered around her.
“Rainbow, are you alright?” Pinkie, Twilight and Rarity did their best to disperse the crowd and console their friend. Pinkie looked around, panicked.
“Where’s Tombs?”
“Pinkie Pie, honestly!” barked Rarity “Focus on something important for once!”
Pinkie didn’t listen. Her Pinkie sense was tingling something awful. Her knees were pinchy and she didn’t like it at all.
“Tombs!” she called. Twilight frowned.
“Pinkie!” she hissed. Rainbow Dash was bawling like a foal, there was a crowd of restless ponies all around and Pinkie Pie was choosing now to spout her nonsense?
Pinkie spotted the shattered window of the drugstore.
“Move it!” she bellowed, shoving her way through the crowd.
Her hooves crunched on the glass inside. Tombs lay sprawled across the counter like a ragdoll. Mr. Rolaid, the druggist, was feverishly trying to sanitize his cuts with a bottle of iodine and a cotton swab.
“Tombs!” she pushed Mr. Rolaid aside and put her hooves up on the counter.
“Tombs, are you okay?” she shook him. He didn’t respond. His breaths were so shallow.
“Get an ambulance!” she yelled over her shoulder at Rolaid “Get an ambulance now!”
Pinkie turned back to Tombs.
“Please be okay, please be okay…”


***

Tombs was still unconscious when they reached the hospital. Lights strobed by overhead as the EMTs rushed Tombs’s gurney through the halls of Ponyville General. Pinkie galloped behind the gaggle of nurses keeping Tombs alive. A nurse unicorn in a white hat and smock used her magic to pump a plastic bulb full of air into Tombs’s lungs at regular intervals.
“Why isn’t he breathing?” Pinkie begged.
“Someone get her out of here…” Doctor Stable ordered in a businesslike tone.
“No! I have to be with him!” she struggled against the nurses.
“It could be internal trauma…” muttered the doctor “But we don’t even know where to start. He’s been beaten all over. I don’t know if it’s a piece of glass somewhere or…”
Pinkie’s ears perked up.
“He’s had surgery on his lower intestine! Check his stomach!” she yelled over the shoulders of Nurses Redheart and Whiteheart.
Doctor Stable brushed the hair on Tombs’s stomach aside. The flesh was a sickly patch of red and purple spreading from a scarlet arc roughly resembling the tread on the bottom of Rainbow Dash’s athletic horseshoes.
“Go get Doctor Lancet, have him prepped for surgery, now!” he commanded. A small filly, barely more than a foal in a nurse’s uniform nodded and scampered off on her mission.
Pinkie’s knees were still pinchy.


***

Things weren’t going well. Pinkie’s information may have saved Tombs from dying on the examination table, but everything they could do was only delaying the inevitable.
“The damage is too extensive,” said Dr. Lancet “the wound’s turned septic, we’re gonna lose him if we don’t get this shit cleaned out!”
Seconds stretched like hours as the doctors worked frantically, but it was stacking sandbags against a rushing river. Dr. Lancet’s long, narrow horn flickered and flashed, casting out magic with the fine-tuned precision of a concert violinist. There couldn’t be any distractions…
The doors of the operating theater burst open.
“Back away and drop the knife!
I can save this pony’s life!”
Zecora stood in the doorway, the saddlebags across her back drooped with gourds and herbs.
“Who let that Zebra in here?” demanded Dr. Lancet. Outside, the orderlies who had been watching the door lay unconscious in a settling cloud of sparkling pink dust.
“I’ll say again, if you act quick
I’ll solve your problem in a tick!”
Zecora strode to the center of the operating theater and stood over Tombs, chanting something in Zebrican. The nurses stood by, frozen, unsure what to do.
“What’s going on here?” asked the doctor again.
Zecora reached into her pack and brought out a fat gourd that sloshed with liquid. She dumped it unceremoniously into Tombs’s open viscera. The purple fluid stank to high heaven and splashed out onto the operating table, staining the white wax paper and cushions a dark purple.
“No! You’re insane!” Lancet reached out to stop her.
“Let her help!” Twilight Sparkle trotted in, accompanied by Pinkie Pie and the rest of her friends. Blueblood and Big Mac craned their necks to see.
“Oh, Tombs!” Blueblood was nearly as distraught as Pinkie Pie. He sniffed back coltly tears for his injured comrade.
Zecora continued her cryptic chanting; it had reached a fever pace now.  She was muttering so fast that even a speaker fluent in Zebrican couldn’t have followed her words. She reached into her other pack and brought out the black needle and silver thread.
“Thread this needle, I request
You will see this way is best.” She instructed the doctor.
Lancet hesitated.
“Do it, please!” urged Pinkie Pie.
“Hang in there, Tombs,” said Applejack, pulling her hat down over her heart.
“Tombs, I’m so sorry!” Rainbow sobbed.
Doctor Lancet used his magic to thread the needle and gave it back to Zecora. They worked together to close up the wound, first in his ruptured intestine, and then in the flesh of his stomach. Zecora stitched furiously, her eyes intense, the world beyond Tombs and the frantic flitting of her mouth did not exist. There wasn't much thread left. The last inch disappeared from the spool just as Zecora tied off her work. There wasn’t a centimeter to spare.
Dr. Lancet was furious.
“I don’t know what you all think you’re doing, but you’ve just killed this pony!” he shouted at them. Twilight looked nervously around at her friends. They looked to Zecora, desperation in their eyes.
Zecora’s only response was to point to Tombs’s heart rate monitor.
The glowing green bug flittered across the oscilloscope.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
His heart rate was erratic, but stabilizing. Within minutes Tombs was breathing softly, but steadily, his heart beating as if merely in a deep sleep.
Dr. Lancet was agog.
“What did you do?” he rubbed his eyes with his hooves.
“I’ve saved this pony once before,
Though it was fifteen years ago, or more.”
“But, how!?”
“Look and see the magic thread,
it’s the reason he’s not dead.”
Lancet and the Nurses gathered around the unconscious Tombs. They peered close at the shaved patch where they’d cut him open. The seam of Zecora’s stitch work traced a silver line across his stomach. The cut between the stitches was healing before their very eyes, the skin sealing and the mottled, bloody flesh beneath clearing up like fog in the sun. Even the bruising around the area had decreased. Before long, no sign of his injuries in that area would remain except a thin, white scar that looked like railroad tracks.
Zecora pulled some berries and herbs out of her packs and started to mash them, making a poultice to tend to Tombs’s other injuries. Lancet didn’t try to stop her.
“Zecora… how?” he begged “What is that thread? Where can we get more? Do you know how many lives we could save?”
Zecora nodded, gravely.
“Wondrous is Ananse’s magic
We just used his last. Tragic.”
“What does that mean?” asked Twilight.
Zecora sighed and continued to tend Tombs’s injuries. At length, she spoke.
“Your Princess has a soul of beauty
She did what she felt was her duty.
For we were by her presence awed
And Ananse was a jealous god.
He raised a cry against your throne
And into war, our lives were blown.
In the middle, I was caught
I hated war, and yet I fought.
My tribe did not balk at the cost
We threw the dice. They rolled. We lost.
Ananse fell that awful morn
From his husk, his powers torn.
The miracle you saw today?
A souvenir I took away.”
Everypony spent some time pondering Zecora’s words. Only Twilight showed any understanding.
“Ohmygosh!” she said “You were at the Battle of the Five Armies!”
Zecora nodded.
“Then that means…”


The End of Chapter 16


To Be Continued…