I am so glad that the Shadow bolt armor was designed to be modular. I removed everything except the metal plate I was using as a splint. All other pieces of my suit where stashed under the arch of a bridge that crossed the river; leaving me with nothing more than my tags, goggles, and the makeshift splint. Between charging my flight goggles and tending to my broken wing, I decided a broken bone was more important. I shot a glance at the sky, mid to late day if I had to guess, around two thirty. My assumptions where confirmed when I heard the ringing of a school bell, then the hurried hoofbeats of fillies and colts heading anywhere but back to the red building. I watched as a large majority of the kids ran in the direction of the town, leaving five children slowly dragging their hooves. Three of these kids carried their heads low, obviously being teased by the other two. This reminded me of my past, and of my severe hatred for bullies. I decided to ‘confront’ the problem. I got within earshot before I spoke up.
“Well, blankflanks, it’s been fun but I can see you gotta fly!” The pink one was making stabs at the Pegasus. I put two and two together, she couldn’t fly. The three fillies didn’t even try to defend themselves.
“Hey! Do you two have a problem? Or are you just looking for one?” I shouted in my best drill instructor’s voice. I swear I made the two pricks jump five feet into the air, then they turned tail and ran away. The other three didn’t run, but I sure as hell made them jump too. The little white unicorn talked in a squeaky sad voice.
“Thanks, but you didn’t need to do that.”
“I can’t stand that kind of behavior, what where they picking on you for anyway?” I guessed they didn’t want to talk about it but I couldn’t help but ask.
“They pick on us ‘cause we’re the only ones our age with no cutie marks.” The little yellow earth pony explained. She had bright red hair, with a bow to compliment her style, and accent.
“So that’s the name they decided to go with huh? Still a silly name and it seems a bit petty; insulting somepony for not having a picture on their ass.” My lips imploded and my eyes widened when I realized I just cussed in front of school kids. “Ehh, sorry about that, it’s, it’s been a long day. Don’t repeat that.” My remark about the mark must have peaked their curiosity, because they started questioning me on the lack of having a mark of my own. By this point my wing began to throb with pain, and I could feel the circulation being cut off by the swelling.
“Can I ask you three something?” I had decided to put this conversation on a hiatus and get down to the point before my wing died from lack of blood flow.
“Yeah. What?” The little Earth filly responded.
“I need to find two things as soon as possible. A doctor, and a magically inclined unicorn. Preferably in that order.”
“Well, the hospital is just down the road, and Twilight is pretty good with magic. She lives n’ the library, close to the hall.” The earth filly gave visual directions. So it wasn’t just the folks in my town who gave directions like that. ‘Just go down that dirt road till’ you see a red barn, then turn left. If you hit the windmill you’ve gone too far.’ Those kinds of directions, make me feel at home.
“Yeah it’s a big tree, you can’t miss it.” The little pegasus clarified.
“Thank you girls, as much as I’d love to stay and chat; I got a broken wing to get checked out. I guess I’ll get to see if I get to keep it or Luna forbid I gotta’ get it amputated.” I mumbled that last part to myself.
“Will we see you at Twilight’s?” The little unicorn asked.
“Quite possibly.” I then turned, waved and headed toward the hospital. On my trip there I had two profound realizations. The first; holy shit, am I a physic? Just the other day I was thinking about how cool of a name Twilight would have been only to find out that there was actually somepony with that name. The second; what exactly is this doctor going to be able to do for me anyway? Put a cast on it? I already had something holding the bone in a position to reset. The only thing he, or she could really do for me would be to tell me if it was a crack, fracture, clean snap, or a spiral fracture. But oh how I hoped it was just a sprain. I was merrily making my way down the road to the infirmary when my stomach reminded me of how I hadn’t eaten in about a day. Then the heavenly aroma of baked goods stunted the pain in my wing, and amplified the hollow feeling in my gut. I followed the smell over to a bakery. “Sugar Cube Corner”. Cute, let’s hope the food is any good. I entered the building taking note that it was actually quite empty. Then again what should I expect it’s officially an hour and a half past lunch time. Before I could even read the menu a pink mare was bouncing excitedly behind the counter rapid-firing questions. Some of these questions didn’t make much sense but for whatever reason I answered them anyway.
“Ohmygosh hi! I’m pinkie I haven’t seen you here before are you new in town? Are you from around here? What’s your name? How’d you hear about Sugar Cube Corner? You wanna be friends? What’s your favorite color? Why are you wearing that metal thing on your wing? Are you from Cloudsdale? Are you here for the Summer Sun Celebration? Cool goggles, are you really fast? Do you like pets? Why don’t you have a cutie-mark? Do you want to come to Gummy’s birthday party, he’s my pet alligator!” She spat questions like a train at high speeds spat hot steam from its pistons. My eyes dashed left to right rapidly as if I was in the sleep stage of REM before they stopped and I replied.
“Yes, but just passing through, Just call me Hatchet, smelled it, maybe, plaid, broken wing, don’t know what that is, yes, yes, long story, maybe alligators are cool.” I responded, each of my answers corresponding to each of her questions in chronological order. ADHD I know her type, hyper very friendly, high tendency to be obnoxious if you aren’t tolerant. Then she looked at me with dead serious expression that took me by surprise and addressed me with a cold voice.
“There is still one thing I need to ask you.” She was eyeing me down as if she where my mother catching me playing with matches.
“What can I get’cha?” the pink mare’s hyper-sunny disposition returned with a sudden high pitched squeak.
“A loaf of bread or a muffin, one of the two; whatever I can get for this.” I casually placed a few coins on the counter. They tacked on the glass of the pastry showcase and skid across to the pink mare. That’s when I noticed another pony enter the room from behind the counter. A stallion, yellowish with an under bite, he had an apron and a hat that lead me to believe he was the owner of the shop.
“Okie dokie, wait. Mr. Cake? How much is this? I’ve never seen these coins before.” Pinkie turned to consult with the stallion behind her. Not certain on exactly the value of the coins. Mr. Cake looked at the coins on the counter in bewilderment.
“Where did these come from?” He was confused. So was I why the hell is money something you need to get the manager in the room for? I’m here to buy a loaf of bread; this isn’t a black market deal.
“What? It’s money.” I or my stomach rather, was getting impatient.
“Well, yeah but these are stamped like old school coins. And I’ve never seen any silver coins, let alone with a moon stamped into the metal.” The stallion turned around taking a magnet off of a refrigerator and placed it on top of the coin. He then attempted to pick up the coin with the magnet. The coin didn’t move.
“Oh my. This is pure silver.” He seemed astonished.
“Yeah, what else would it be?” I was trying to ignore the feeling in my stomach, but it was growing ever restless.
“On second thought give me both a loaf of bread and a bag of muffins.” My stomach spoke for me. The stallion took one coin out of the five on the counter, placed it in the register and pulled a metric shit ton of cash from the register and handed it to me; then preceded to hand me my order.
“Thank you, come again!” Mr. Cake announced as I turned to walk out of the bakery. Then I began to put the pieces together. Apparently the Lunar Republic was stacked and rolling in cash. One of our coins was worth a sack of cash in Sun Dollars. I once again confused myself in my own mind. How is it that I can answer a barrage of questions like I had a few moments ago, no problem? But it takes me two minutes to put two and two together about currency values. By the time I finished racking my mind I found that the muffin bag was now empty. I tossed the bag into a nearby bin and continued my march toward the hospital now moving on to consuming the bread. As I trekked on I got another disturbing thought. Was I a deserter? Or does this make me A-wall or a traitor? I mean I just bought something from a business from the rival Empire, is that not technically aiding the enemy? No, I was using a false identity. If they don’t know who I really am I should be fine.
I entered the front lobby of the hospital and was met by a receptionist wearing a nurse’s hat. She was a white earth pony and from what I could guess, she was reading a book behind her desk instead of doing her job, but I would probably be doing the same thing. The mare looked up and greeted me through her reading glasses.
“Hello, do you have an appointment?” The mare at the reception desk asked.
“Negative, I hadn’t planned on breaking any limbs earlier. Next time I’ll be sure to let you know a day in advance when I decide to break a wing.” I gestured to the wing locked in the metal wing brace. She smirked and showed me to an empty exam room. She said the doctor would be in shortly. Awesome, I get to spend the next hour messing with all of the nifty doctor’s supplies in the drawers before the doctor actually shows up! As soon as the door closed I wasted no time jumping into the rolling chair. I outstretched my good wing using it to gain speed as I spun around and around gaining more speed as I went. A smile was staining my face and in that moment I was happy. My squad thinks I’m dead, I don’t know where I am, I broke my wing, almost got eaten by a hydra, and was slightly cooked all in one day, and I don’t give a buck I am having way too much fun in this moment to care! I started to laugh, but was cut short when the chair became unbalanced. I was thrown across the room landing upside down, back to the wall, facing the door. The spinning chair was also knocked over. That’s when the door opened and the doctor walked in, she was actually on time. She looked at me with a look of ‘what the hell did you do?’ written all over her face. All I could do was smile while still upside down and against the wall.
“You must be Hatchet. I’m doctor Rosebud.” The doctor began.
“Affirmative.” I responded with a salute, I still hadn’t moved since I got flung into the wall. So here is exactly what this scene looked like. A full grown, but very immature grey pegasus stallion with a broken wing is propped up, upside down against the wall of a hospital room, with an absolutely ludicrous look of seriousness on his face and saluting. Anyway, I got back to my hooves as the doctor picked up her stool.
“So what happened?” She began.
“Well, the nurse said you’d be in in about two minutes which usually means one hour, so I started playing with that spinning chair to pass the time. I fell off the chair, and then you came in and asked me my name, then what I was doing. And here we sit.” I spoke with a strange pep in my voice for what I had endured the last few days; but I was happy and I’d be damned if I was going to let anything ruin my day.
“No I mean the wing.” Rose replied flatly
“Oh that, broke it.”
“How long ago?” Rose pulled up a clipboard to take notes.
“Well, if it’s four now. I’d say about five hours ago?” I was giving a rough guess.
“Why did you wait so long to get here?” The doc seemed confused as to why anypony would wait so long to treat a broken bone.
“Well, I had to help out these kids who were being picked on. Then I was hungry. I knew I broke it; I didn’t need anyone to tell me that. I don’t need a cast either, I already have a splint. I just want to know how bad it is, so I know about when I can use it again.”
“Well, let’s look into just how bad it is then shall we?” She had paused for a moment to take in why I had delayed my visit before answering. After her comment she reached into a cabinet for a black sheet and a book. I caught a glimpse at a few words on the page of the book. Then once again two and two added up to fish and I realized another bizarre fact that I had to ask about to be sure of.
“Hey, is that a skeletal imaging spell?”
“Yes, how could you guess?” Rose asked without looking up from the medical book.
“It depends, who wrote the thesis for the spell?” I needed to be absolutely sure I was right before answering this clearly.
“It’s an old school spell written by Star Swirled the Bearded. Why?” Rose replied, still reading the passage in the book.
“You’ll think I’m crazy, but Star didn’t write that. That there’s my doing, Star just published it.”
“Heh you’re right, I do think you’re nuts. How could you have written it?”
“I was there, here’s how it happened.” I cleared my throat.
“I flew over to Star’s lab per-usual. He told me he had been tasked with finding a quick way to identify problems with a pony’s wellbeing. I had thought about it for a few minutes before I noticed something through a window across the way. I called Star over to see it. He didn’t see what I saw. He looked and delivered a punch to my side with a disapproving glare, accompanied with a ‘Have some decency man!’ he saw the silhouette of a pony in a shower and thought I was being a perv. Then I began to elaborate. ‘No look you can see the denser objects through the thinner curtain of the shower. Think about it. If you could generate the right kind of light, you could in theory see the denser bone through the thinner skin. And if you used the right kind of film you could burn the image into the film and find out if a bone was broken and even what kind of break it is.’ He then proceeded to refine my ideas looking for pitfalls and bridging the gaps until the spell would work.” She had a look on her face that could only be described with a voice speaking the words ‘Yall’ serious?’ in a way that tells me the thinks I belong in the psycho ward. And I probably do but not for the reasons you’d expect. None the less she continued to look at me as if I had two heads.
“Never mind, just do the thing with the thing.” I finally broke her stare. Rose took the image and told me I had a spiral fracture.
“I’m afraid to ask, how’d you manage to break it this bad?”
“You want the believable story, or the real story?”
“Both, I’ll pick which I believe by the end.”
“Story A: I was fighting a hydra on my way from a top secret location doing a mission that would be considered high treason if I told you what about. Story B: I fell off a roof”
“Yeah, I’m going with story B.” The doctor completely ignored the true story.
“Fine, but answer me this, why would I have broken a bone from a fall if I can fly?” I tried to debunk her choice with logic that she continued to ignore.
“You’ll have to keep off the wing for at least eight weeks, and if I where you I’d keep off the cider, like forever.” She joked.
“Ouch, I am wounded. How could you say such a thing?” I replied in a sarcastic tone. Then I put the brace back on my wing and left the hospital, so I could head over to the library. I only had children’s directions to follow, but I was fairly confident I could find the place.