//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1 - Stolen Pie 
// Story: A Heart For Two 
// by Hot_Sushi 
//------------------------------//


Stolen Pie

It was a snowy night in Ponyvill. Redheart exited the operating room and walked to the near by sink calmly. She slowly pressed the soap dispenser as the door opened behind her. Two of the interns that helped her during the surgery walked in and proceed to take of there gloves and started to wash there hooves. 
"Amazing work in there Red." The closest mare said with a smile. " You might even get that promotion if you keep working at it." She added.
"The mares and I are going out to the club tonight, you wanna tag along Red?" The other nurse chimed in cheerfully. 
"No I think I'm just gonna go get some groceries and head home, maybe order a pizza." Redheart said."Common, it's about time you got yourself out there since-" The closest nurse stopped talking as her peer nudged her shoulder.
"What she means is, he would want you to move on, rather then becoming a hermit" the mare said nervously. The mare smiled as if to make her case more persuasive. Redheart didn't even respond as she left the bathroom and walked the lonely street she had chosen for herself.
Redheart arrived at her apartment at the stroke of midnight, she came barring two bags of groceries. She walked to her small kitchen. Thou it was small it had  all the luxury of an ordinary kitchen an oven, coffee maker and microwave were just to name a few. She glanced over to the window and to her surprise the pie that she had sat on the window sill to cool off had disappeared. She sighed as she sat the groceries down and locked the window shut. 
Redheart proceeded to unload her groceries but as she looked down onto the ground she noticed the strangest thing. A trail of crumbs and bits of Apple pie where scattered across the ground. Redhearts mind suddenly went to the worst case scenario. Somepony must have broken into her apartment, ate her pie and was now waiting for her to arrive home, so they could knock her out and steal her organs for the black market.
Redheart grabbed the nearest kitchen knife and hesitantly followed the trail of crumbs which continued down the hall to her bedroom. The door to her room was cracked slightly open and noise could be heard from in the hall. It sounded as if a wild animal had been savagely devouring something in her room. 
In one swift motion Redheart kicked the door open and lifted the blade up retry to attack. What she saw made her scream in absolute horror. A live changeling with its muzzle down licking the pie tin clean. The changeling looked small, in fact it was the smallest one she had ever seen.  She barely had time to react before the changeling vanished under the bed. 
Nurse Redheart ran out of the room in the hopes of escaping the monsters evil grasp. She ran to her bathroom and quickly locked the door and looked for ways to escape. She soon realized she had  trapped herself. She held the knife and waited for her impending doom.
An hour passed, and nothing, then another. Redheart started contemplating her situation. She thought about why a changeling would have broken into her home. It might have just been hungry, if so it might have already left. It didn't try to attack her ether, could it have been afraid.
Redheart slowly and carefully opened the bathroom door and walked to her bedroom once more. On the ground near the pie tin she saw a small puddle of a liquid she had seen frequently, blood. What ever was under her bed was injured.
If She could lure the changeling out she could get a visual of what type of injures it had sustain. Redheart walked back to her kitchen and opened a tin of cookies she had bought at Sugar Cube Corner. She placed a cookie at the edge of under the bed and waited. Eventually a shaky hoof reached out from the darkness and snatched the cookie.
"It's okay, I won't hurt you." Redheart said calmly as she put another cookie down a bit farther out. The changeling responded by reaching for the cookie but not leaving the safety of under the bed. "Come on out." She said backing away to give him space. The small changeling crawled shamefully out from under the bed towards the cookie. Redheart saw bruises across its body with some cuts. The creature looked desperately malnourished and in need of another cookie which Redheart was happy to give it. 
Then the realization suddenly hit her like a subway train."You're just a child." Redheart said in shock. It looked up at her with hungry eyes. It's legs where so skinny it could barely support itself and due to that reason it wobbled a bit. The creature made a wiper looking at the cookies. 
"Please stay put, I'll be right back. Here just take these." She gently put the cookies down on the ground. The filly waited until Redheart had left the room to approach the bag. By the time Redheart returned with her first aid kit the filly was already helping itself to the plentiful stash of cookies. 
"Can you understand me?" She asked as she approached it. The changeling looked up at her with crumbs along it's tiny face and gave a small nod. Redheart wasn't actually expecting for that response. 
"Okay uh, could you hop up onto the bed real quick, I'm just going to patch you up if that's okay." Redheart said as she tried to walk around the changeling. It only stared at her with a terrified glare. "I'm not going to hurt you, I'm a nurse see." Redheart said pointing to her red cross cutie Mark. The convinced filly walked timidly to the bed and looked up at the steep jump. Redheart noticed it's predicament and gently picked up the little menace. She was surprise of how soft the creatures insect-like skin was. She laid the creature down and opened her supplies.
Redheart took peroxide and dabbed it onto a small rag. "This is only going to sting for a second." She said as she pressed the rag down onto one of the large cuts. The creature suddenly yelped in pain and tried desperately to fly away. Redheart held the changeling down forcefully as she tore the gauze with her teeth and started to rap the wounds tightly. 
"See that wasn't so bad." She said with a chuckle as she let go of her patient. She was startled that it didn't run or fly away the moment she let up. In fact it stayed motionless. Her surprised face slowly turned to worry. "You okay." She said taping the changling's face. It gave no response but wheezy breathing. The poor thing must have passed out from the pain, from its condition she had to wonder how it was still breathing.  
What could have hurt this creature so bad that it would go so far as to steal pie from her window. She exampled the bruises that where practically covering the patint's body. Redheart put her hoof on his forehead and felt that it was freezing cold. By experience she knew that wasn't good. 
Redheart left her alone and returned with spare blankets from the closet. Redheart quickly wrapped her until he was bundled up like a newborn foal .(while wrapping her Redheart found out its a her gender) She smiled as the filly curled up to the blankets weakly. 
"Aw you're kinda cute. I wonder if your parents are looking for yo-" She was interrupted by her pagers familiar buzzing. She brought it up and saw it was an emergency. "Dammit, I have to go, just rest, Please don't get up, just here." She walked over to her fatback television set and turned it on. "See it' the news, fillies like the news right?" Said Redheart while rushing to get her makeup from the nightstand. She saw the news had a graphic of a changeling up and stumbled across the room to change the channel. She turned it to an educational channel then rushed out of the room. The tiny changeling groaned faintly in response to her slamming the door.
By the time Redheart arrived at the clinic luna's moon was already leaving the sky. She ran to the changeling station and put on her gloves and mask. One of the interns from earlier looked at her surprised of how lively her movements where. "Whoa Red slow down. Me and Twist already patched her up. What's gotten into you?" The intern questioned. "I was kinda in the middle of something." Redheart said slightly annoyed by her energetic assistant. "Oh my Celestia where you with somepony." She asked in disbelief.
Redheart looked at herself in the mirror. "Yah, I guess I was."