//------------------------------// // Part 15 // Story: Silent Ponyville: Reunion // by Chapter 17 //------------------------------// Silent Ponyville: Reunion On Corticosteroids. Part 15 ------ His newest wound was still raw but the bleeding seemed to have stopped. Lance didn't dare look down at his hooves for fear of what he would see covering them. After trudging through so much rust, dirt, mold, grime, and Celestia knows what else, not looking at them was the only way he could get himself to use those filthy hooves to apply pressure to a fresh cut. He supposed it wasn't worth worrying about at that point anyway; whatever was on his hooves, it probably wasn't nearly as bad as what had been covering the horn spike that had cut him. No doubt there was a fair amount of the same sort of contaminants all over the steam powered jaw that had plucked his wings off too, but the bumps on his back where they had once been weren't any more inflamed than he would expect sloppy amputation stumps to be, so perhaps it was just adding needless stress to worry so much. On the other hoof that was probably only because Posey had properly tended to them while he had been out cold. Whatever disinfectant had been in the med kit she had used, he most definitely needed to find some more of it. Lance wasn't about to do that lying there wallowing in fatigue though, a move made doubly unwise by the prospect of another monster finding him there. At least he wouldn't have to worry about the nurse pony anymore. He rolled onto his hooves again and pushed his body upward, finding that the cut in his chest did indeed make the effort more painful, but it was not so deep that he would lose any mobility in his fore legs. There were of course a plethora of additional scrapes and bruises all over his body after so much rough treatment, but when compared to his more debilitating injuries they pretty much failed to register at all. He looked over to the barbed, and now quite twisted nurse's carcass, still lacking any sort of answer for what had just happened between he and the sovereign. She only needed to get hold of something once to kill it, but there he was having thrice been in her clutches and he was not only still alive, but still adequately mobile. There had been nothing stopping her from doing far worse, nothing at all. Even when the deaf colt had stepped in she'd already had all the time in the world to tear off whatever she wanted, but had only chosen two things he could easily remain alive and moving without. In fact if it weren't for his torn up back leg he would probably still be fairly agile overall. It was the one injury that really plagued him, and she hadn't even been the one to do it to him. What had kept her from caving in his skull back on the streets? What had kept her from hopelessly crippling him back in the hall of the apartments? What had kept her from sinking her horn spike into his body instead of cutting him just then? "Posey's waiting and you're standing here wondering why you're not dead instead of doing something because of it," Lance scolded himself as he turned his attention back to exploring the building. He could run circles in his own head trying to make sense of this place that he already knew never made any sense after he freed his wife. The hall only had two doors that remain unchecked, Operating Rooms 1 and 2. Room 2's doorknob was functional but locked. Lance thought to try the key he had snatched from the far door in the operating theater but the lock wouldn't accept it. Given how close the key had been to the door he wasn't that surprised. The investigation of Room 1 proved even more brief, the lock being broken sparing him from having to check any keys. He turned, awkwardly made his way around the painfully twisted, black blood covered husk that used to be the nurse, and saw that the door to Operating Room 5 had been boarded over. The door after that though gave him a brief moment of hope. It was labeled 'Storage Room'. If there was anywhere to find good medical supplies, he couldn't do much better than a storage room on a floor with an array of operating rooms in a hospital. When the doorknob moved in a completely normal, unlocked fashion he felt a small but long sought after ray of hope...one that was promptly cut off once he had the door open. The shelves inside were completely bereft of anything remotely resembling medical supplies...or much of anything at all for that matter. A rusty metal pipe resting on the middle shelf on the far wall was the sole object occupying any of the closet's shelf space. Next to it was the stain of a long dried blood splatter that trailed downward off the front of the shelf, suggesting the pipe had been used as a weapon and then placed there. His eyes tracked it down to the floor, and after a brief thoughtless pause of shock he wondered how fixated he must have been on patching himself to have only now noticed this. It was a mannequin, unattached to any sort of stand, lying on its side with its hollow plaster head caved in. Its wide open head was surrounded by the dried remnants of a large pool of blood on the floor, with similar stains around the 'wound' itself, and a fair amount more spattered over the front of its body. The entire scene looked like somepony had struggled with the mannequin before managing to smash its head in and placing the 'murder weapon' on the shelf. Still...it was just another mannequin...right? Lance stepped forward and leaned down to inspect it. Despite all of the old blood stains all over the place there was simply nothing biological inside the mannequins broken head. Had he really expected anything different? With one last act of caution that would under any other circumstance be considered insane, he gave the mannequin a poke with his hoof. Aside from the light plaster material being pushed along the floor maybe half an inch from the meager force he exerted, it did nothing. Lance couldn't help but give a soft sigh of relief, think himself perhaps too wary in this case. The monsters he had seen so far had all looked alive. True, they were unnatural creatures, several of which probably shouldn't have been alive, but they looked the part all the same. To think that a mannequin would just come to life and attack him was somewhat silly. Having dealt with his bout of paranoia he began pondering what use he could make of the pipe. It looked sturdy, and as he picked it up off the shelf he could feel it did indeed have some weight to it. Surely it would make a better means of defending himself than just his bare hooves in his condition. If it was to be his weapon that meant he needed to keep it some place easy to get to in a pinch, so he fastened it in one of the tool straps on the front of his saddle bags. Being that it was a blunt weapon he doubted he could get enough force behind it to make it useful while gripping it in his mouth. He would have to use his fore hooves then, which meant he couldn't move while using it. That suited him just fine really. If pretty much any of the monsters spotted him while he was any appreciable distance from a good hiding spot he wouldn't be able to outrun them anyway. The fact that it let him avoid putting the filthy thing in his mouth didn't hurt either. With nothing else of use in the room, he took his leave. There was only one hallway left to look through now, the one that the barbed nurse had been walking through when she first spotted him. When he limped over and looked down that last hallway he paused before giving an irritated frown at the sight before him. Every door was boarded up, save for two that were already standing open in another moment of suspicious convenience. It would have been nice to have his options so obviously laid out in front of him a while back when he had been fleeing from the barbed nurse. He probably would have preferred the two doors to have just been closed though...instead of standing open like there was somepony else roaming around silently. The thought that it could be Posey briefly passed through his mind but he knew there was no way she wouldn't have come running to help him by now after the racket the sovereign had made with him. Perhaps they had just been open all this time? No acts of some unknown entity required? Yeah, that sounded agreeable enough. There was no precedent that he should be so lucky as that but the idea was sufficiently reassuring to let him check the first room labeled Recovery Room 2 on his right. Recovery rooms were places where patients who had just undergone surgery would be kept whilst sleeping off their anesthesia, usually located close to the operating rooms in case of a complication. They were made to be very calm, quiet places that would minimize the stress a patient would inevitably feel when suddenly waking up in pain after having been cut open. This room fell well short of that standard. The bed missing entirely was sort of expected, and even though the cracked clay vase on the bedside table was full of wilted, rotted flowers it still meant somepony had cared enough to put them there in the first place so he supposed it wasn't that bad. The writing on the wall was another matter. It was raggedly carved into the plaster of the wall, small trails of dried blood leading downward at several points as though somepony had worn their hoof down to the quick in the process of making it. 'IN HEAVEN EVERYTHING IS FINE' Lance swallowed back the wave of anxiety and resentment the phrase inspired. The location and presentation was unsettling enough as it was, but there was something else to it, an edge only a doctor would feel. He never begrudged any of his patients for whatever they believed the afterlife to contain and he never would. But such beliefs were a luxury he could never afford to lean on. He was a doctor. His duty was to preserve the lives of his patients, to keep the reaper from tearing families asunder, to extend lives that would have otherwise been cut short. For any of his patients to openly seek comfort in the thereafter...it meant he had failed at even just making their lives in the here and now viable or adequate. Lance knew that feeling all too well, and he'd known it far before Posey had even become ill. Ponies always talked about how many lives he'd saved but they never spoke or thought of how many he'd let slip into the void. He didn't get that luxury to just forget them either. After momentarily closing his eyes and refocusing himself he gave the room one last search. There didn't appear to be anything of use, or even anywhere for such things to be hidden. He would not have refused any supplies but he was thankful to be able to leave that 'recovery' room all the same. He turned to do so but before he could manage it he noticed something in the layer of dust covering the floor. It was a pair of trails leading outward, splitting into four out in the hall like somepony had pushed a four wheeled object out of the room and then turned. Had they always been there? Lance squinted and looked closer, seeing that they were unmistakeably fresh. The bare bit of white tile between the two ridges of dust didn't have a speck on it. So when had they been made? They were quite visible, but could he have possibly just missed them when he had been looking down the hall the first time? "Wait a minute," he muttered to himself as he looked up and down the hallway again, casting his light along the floor. The nurse had been patrolling right through there. He'd just seen the sovereign walk off around the corner along the very same route. Why did he only see his hoof prints leading to Recovery Room 2's door and neither of theirs?! Lance closed his eyes again and gave a quiet growl of frustration. The number of things he was having to just ignore in order to not waste time was starting to get to him. For now it was more productive to just follow the trails. They were leading him somewhere, and as there was only one other accessible door in the hallway it wasn't hard to guess where. Lance made it maybe two limps toward the door before he was suddenly brought to a halt by a stabbing pain in the wound on his chest. He gave a strained grunt as he felt what he could only assume was his own blood trickling down his leg. His mind scrambled for some explanation for the apparent tearing open of his cut but within three seconds the agony was completely over just as suddenly as it had begun. Being understandably confused, he stopped only long enough to let out the breath he had apparently been holding before checking himself over. There was plenty of blood already on his fore legs but it was all from having applied pressure to the previously fresh laceration; it was all dried over now, none of it was fresh like it would be if it had only now bled out. He tentatively touched his slashed chest again and looked at his hoof. It did have a little fresh blood on it but nothing all that alarming, certainly nothing that would've caused such a fuss in any case. Obviously something had happened to him but he seemed fine now. If there was anything to this he was sure it would come back and give him something more tangible to worry about soon enough. Once back outside his eyes followed the path of the four trails. They didn't go very far. Just as he had guessed they traveled past a single set of doors before turning left into the only other unblocked doorway. As he approached, a sign on the inwardly opened door came into view, so worn that it took a few more steps closer until he was able to read 'Nurse's Station' upon it. Lance stopped for a short moment, understandably hesitant considering recent encounters but reasoning that if there was another nurse waiting for him inside his watch would give him due warning. What he would do with that warning he wasn't exactly sure, but it seemed odd to let uncertainty delay him after having already jumped into a hole with no readily apparent way to get out again. With his watch still silent Lance looked into the room, keeping a bit of a gap between himself and the door, just in case. There was a wheeled gurney in the middle of the room, each of the four trails ending at one of the wheels. The metal was scratched, notched, and covered in the usual rust. Something or somepony was on top of it but it was impossible to tell who or what exactly. It was deathly still and covered by a...Lance wanted to call it a sheet but he wasn't sure if that was the best word for it. It looked like skin varying in color from light brown to an inflamed dark red, but looking closer he could also see tiny interwoven cloth fibers. It was as though somepony had taken a patch of skin, grafted it into the cloth's weave, and let it grow throughout. It was pulled tight and somehow held in place on the gurney's underside. The tight sheet of mysteriously fleshy 'cloth' was apparently inadequate to restrain what was beneath, as it was aided in this task by a trio of leather belts that were fused together where the buckles would normally be. His watch was still quiet, nothing in the room was moving, and he was in no apparent danger. It did little to alleviate the dread clutching at his chest though. Maybe he could just...pass up this room too? No...he knew he couldn't. It would be foolish to not look around and risk missing something that could make the difference between he and Posey making it out of there or not just for the sake of sparing his nerves further rattling. At worst the object on the gurney was a corpse, something he knew better than to fear. Lance forced himself forward into the nurse's station. There were a few file cabinets missing their drawers along the left wall, a paper holder above them that was supposed to hold individual nurse assignments and patient information, and a few chairs against the right wall that were all missing their seats. Above the chairs there was a keyring with three keys hanging from a nail that was pinning a note to the wall. He took the keyring first, pondering briefly how generous it was to suddenly find three keys all at once before stashing them in his bag. He then tugged the note free of the nail. It wasn't from the deaf colt, and it wasn't one of the vaguely threatening red inked notes he'd found either. It was plain college ruled paper with a nice black cursive hoof writing. Nurse Tender Care, We'll be bringing the first trainee up to observe today, but for some reason the administrator doesn't want to bring the second up quite yet. Something about devoting attention to them one at a time or some other such nonsense we haven't done in all the time I've worked here. In any case, we have the stock room tended to already so the second trainee won't have anything to do. I think he deserves something to do for showing up and being willing to help, and I heard your friend Clean Sweep needs some help fixing some things up, so if you could, send him to the basement to lend him a hoof. Thanks. "Been there done that," Lance muttered softly in sympathy. Then his watch was buzzing as loudly as it possibly could in tandem with the squeak of wheels behind him. He dropped the note and whirled around in panic about as gracefully as one would expect a battered, limping, wingless pegasus to do so, ending up stumbling sideways until his side impacted the wall opposite the door. The gurney was gone. No sooner had he made this discovery than his watch fell silent again. With an expression of alarmed bewilderment he cast his gaze about the room for any sign of anything at all that might want to splatter his insides on a wall, but found himself alone. After calming down a moment and regaining his hoofing, he limped over to the door and poked his head out looking off to his left to see nothing then toward the first door that he had found standing open. It was now closed and boarded over just like the rest. Even the tracks along the floor that head lead him into the nurse's station in the first place were missing. This obviously did nothing to improve his state of wide eyed confusion. Clearly not believing what his eyes were seeing he hobbled back over to Recovery Room 2 and pressed his hoof against the planks nailed over it. They were real, no questioning it. The wood was as worn, weathered, and dust covered as the rest of the interior of the hospital as well. This hadn't just been done while he had been poking about in the nurse's station. Perhaps it had always been there and he was only now seeing it for what it was. Lance dearly hoped Posey had been right back at the elevator. Right now the thought that this was all some external force just trying to mess with his very sane head was one of his only comforts. If she was wrong, if this was all just his mind slowly cracking as he dreaded it might be, it did not speak well for their prospects of escaping this place. Then again if this was all just in his head why was he actually getting injured? Hallucinations couldn't cut, maim, or dismember somepony, and he sure as hay hadn't been doing this to himself. ...hadn't he? His attempt at mental self diagnostic was cut short by the rising buzz of his watch and a quickly approaching sound to his right. It was the feminine sounding, desperate, yet unnatural steady panting noise again. "No." Yes. He looked over in time to see the barbed nurse limp around the corner and hesitate a moment to let one of her forelegs snap back into place with a sickening crack before going right for him. She was covered in her own blood that moved like various trails of ants going across her skin. Whenever it made contact with one of her wounds it would briefly ignite into a small black flame and sear the injury shut. The nurse could regenerate just like the deaf colt had after the sovereign had impaled him. Lance fled as quickly as he could manage but soon realized there was no point in doing so. She was faster than him. But now he had a weapon. Abandoning the already non existent hope of escaping, he instead pulled the pipe free of the tool strap and turned back to face her. "Stop! Don't come any closer!" he warned as he stumbled backward into a sitting position while using both hooves to hold the pipe threateningly above his head. She was undeterred, and in fact seemed spurred on by how her quarry had stopped for her. No idea why I thought that would work. He would only have one shot. She finally lunged for him, hooves extended to pull him into her excruciating embrace. Lance brought the pipe down, making a solid connection with the top of her head that sent her face planting to the floor with a nasty black gash. She was only dazed though, her movements after her fall being calculated ones to get her back on her hooves instead of the frenzied struggles of a creature mortally wounded. He wasn't going to give her a chance to hurt him. He raised the pipe and smashed it into her skull again, this time feeling something crack that sent her into screeching convulsions. Once more, another strike, a second cracking of her skull and she was gone, her head smashed in. Lance waited a good ten seconds to make sure she wasn't getting up just yet before he got back to his hooves. The strange guilt he'd felt killing the drowning mare while trying to get away from the sovereign in the apartments was absent this time. It was most likely kept in check by the knowledge that the barbed nurse would probably regenerate the damage soon anyway, probably even faster than before. If it had only taken her that long to recover from having her entire body broken piece by piece she would probably shrug off the single but grievous injury in barely any time at all. He had to get away from her before that happened. The floor's exit leading to the elevator and stairwell was pretty much just around the corner so it wouldn't be difficult. After putting the blood covered pipe away he limped out and immediately felt a bit safer once the door was closed behind him. Now that he was back in familiar, monster free territory, taking a breather seemed more of a good idea than a death wish. He needed to gather his thoughts anyway, take stock of what he had picked up in there and what he needed to do nex- "GAH!" Lance cried out as he reflexively flicked his hoof to dislodge whatever he had suddenly felt slithering down his leg. All he managed to accomplish was to splatter some black substance onto the floor that immediately began moving back toward him. Upon lowering his gaze he saw there was a fair bit of it still on his fore leg moving down toward his hoof as well. Without thinking he placed that hoof to the floor in preparation to back away but then, curiously, the black liquid that had been covering it started moving along the floor in a path leading around him and under the door behind him, soon joined by the portion that he had first flicked off his hoof. None of it seemed to care about his presence in the least. He stood stone still, not daring to look away. When it had all slipped beneath the door leaving him unharmed, he let out a breath that he was very aware he'd been holding. What had that stuff been? Why had it suddenly been on his... ... Following a hunch he looked down at his pipe to see that it was now completely clean of the nurse's blood. That explained it. She couldn't regenerate if she didn't call all of her pieces back after all. Lance grimaced as that realization lead to a second, far more disturbing one. When the sovereign had cut him the nurse's blood had been all over her horn. That meant the sudden spike of pain and the trickle of liquid he'd felt down his fore leg earlier was most likely the bit of that blood left behind in his wound forcing its way out. He shivered in disgust and fought back a brief wave of nausea at the thought of it having been slithering around just below his skin all that time. Even if he did find a medical kit and a safe place to clean and re-bandage himself soon, he'd be lucky to not just slowly die of infection if the monsters somehow failed to do so. "Nothing you can do right now, nothing you can do right now, nothing you can do right now," he muttered with closed eyes to try and stop his skin crawling. It wasn't working. He mentally reached back and felt about in his mind for the track he'd been derailed from, needing something to distract himself. What had he been-...right, taking stock. The doors to Operating Rooms 2 and 6 were both functional but locked; he would need to find a key or some other way into them. Speaking of keys, he had four now. The three on the keyring were pretty easy to figure out, the note they were found with had mentioned the basement and he knew for fact there were three locked doors there. The fourth loose one that he had plucked from the floor in the operating theater before his last beating was more of an enigma though, as it had been devoid of any identifying marks. He had no idea of what use it was so he would just have to keep it at the back of his mind. "I'm okay..." he reminded himself now that his mind was back in order and his skin didn't feel like it was the victim of a swarm of imaginary parasites. It was probably a wise next move to head back down to the basement and unlock the doors down there, surely he'd find something interesting in at least one of them. When he turned toward the elevator his plans changed. The door to the stairwell was right next to it, free of any obvious barriers. It was worth a shot at least, though after the view of the vast empty space between floors he'd gotten he wasn't sure how much. The doorknob clicked obstinately. Somehow he wasn't the least bit put off by this and simply pulled the unmarked key from his saddlebag, unlocked the door, and opened it before putting the key away. He took one step forward before his brain caught up with the rest of him. ... Okay, just where the hoof am I? Lance was sure of it. There hadn't been any process in his mind wherein he'd realized the door was locked, remembered his key, and then thought to try it. Those had been the unthinking, automatic actions of somepony who had performed a certain task countless times before. The door and the key had individually failed to spark any memory but together they had spanned the gap and touched upon something. He knew this building was a hospital already, apparently one he'd already been in a great deal. It was definitely not Cloudsdale General though which meant that it could only possibly be one other building...but he didn't accept it just yet. Better to wait for some other proof before reaching a conclusion. For the moment it was simply less unsettling for this to be coincidence inspired déjà vu instead of a second building ripped from his memory and implanted into the landscape...quite literally in this case. Continuing in now that he sorted out the rogue automated process in his brain, he saw that the stairs leading up were blocked by another set of rusted iron bars, while the stairs leading down were clear. He started having second thoughts about venturing downward as he remembered the aforementioned vast expanses of empty space between floors. If he was going to reach the floor below, there would be a preponderance of stairs he would need to make his way down. Lance was reasonably sure he could make it down even with his leg taken into account, but that same leg ensured that a trip upward of similar distance would be horrendous at best assuming it was even possible for him in the first place. He supposed a quick look to check how far down the stairwell extended couldn't hurt though. Carefully minding his rear leg he descended one flight of stairs and looked downward, catching sight of the door that would lead into the next floor down if there even was one in the first place. Somehow he doubted the building had 303 floors... ------ "What's this?" "Well you said you were nervous last night so this morning I dug this out of the closet. It was a gift from my father, I'm letting you borrow it for today." Lance cocked an eyebrow. "Stepfather," Posey clarified with a deadpan stare. "Ah, yes, sorry!" "Anyway, back when I had opened the flower shop and gotten my first order for a floral arrangement, I was really nervous. It was my first customer ever, it could've made or broken my chances of being able to do what I loved for a living. He saw what a wreck I was and gave this to me, telling me he'd had it when he'd opened his first shoe shop that had ended up making him a success, and that he hoped it proved just as much of a good luck charm for me. I know this is just your graduation but you're not going to have a career that's so neatly summed up as just opening a shop somewhere, so I suppose it's close enough." she continued while checking Lance over to make sure his gown and cap were both on straight. "I suppose...although, from what you're telling me this helps with financial success more than making speeches-" "You're doing that thing where you think about something too much and accidentally sound like a jerk about it again dear," his wife interjected. "-but I'm sure it will help with those too and I really appreciate your lending it to me," he concluded after making a sharp turn in his sentence to acknowledge Posey's observation. "Better," she replied with smile and a nod. Her husband looked down at the object he held in his hoof briefly before foolishly deciding to open his mouth again, "How long was this in the closet though? I mean, you did clean it right?" Posey opened her eyes wide in surprise before sighing and placing a hoof on her forehead in irritation. She wanted to yell at him for that, she really did, but for one thing she would be remiss to make a scene on such a special occasion for him, and for another she knew her husband well enough by now to know that his bouts of germaphobia were just his reaction to being nervous. "Just...just put it in your pocket with the cue cards...I swear you are so lucky I know better than-" "Oh my gosh why did just say that?!" Lance interrupted as he realized the true depth of his faux pas and felt compelled to at least properly voice his bewilderment at his own rudeness. "...I didn't clean it, no, I was under the delusion I was giving it to a normal pony," she said, managing to at least sound somewhat good natured in her teasing. "I can give you something else though that I did clean." "Hrm?" "Yeah, just this morning I brushed it clean with a paste-like fluoride solution," she went on with a soft smirk on her face before pulling him into a good luck kiss. Predictably Lance couldn't find anything at fault with it. Once their lips parted they were left smiling and looking into each others eyes just like so many times before, his nervousness and her irritation both forgotten for the moment. "Thanks. I know how much you don't like going out like this but it means a lot to me that you came," Lance told her as they took half a step back from each other while ignoring the loud requests to procure a room from his less mature classmates. "My hubby only gets to graduate once, I wouldn't miss it for the world...and neither would Fluttershy," Posey replied as she followed him over to where the graduating class was lining up to wait for the band to start playing. "Heh...c'mon honey I was fine with calling our foal 'she' but you really should at least hold off on using the filly name we picked until we know for sure one way or the other," he said as he took his place at the front of the line in front of Mannie. She giggled, still hardly believing she was only a few weeks from becoming a mother, and gave her husband one last affectionate nuzzle, "Fair enough. Now get out there." "Yes ma'am!" Lance replied before his wife wandered off to join the other friends and family of the graduates. "Ready Mannie?" "Quite, you?" "In the sense that I know you're there to restrain me if I attempt to flee once we get in front of that huge crowd of ponies, yes." "I always did get the interesting work," Mannie mused with a smirk just as the band began to play, signaling the beginning of the procession on stage. He did wind up having to prod Lance with his hoof when he briefly froze up at the sight of so many eyes right on him but other than that the trip to their seats went smoothly for everypony involved. Fairly soon they were left bored out of their minds quietly talking amongst themselves whilst the speeches prepared by the faculty and other students went on one after another. "You know for this one single moment right here I'm sort of glad you beat me to valedictorian. You have to actually pay attention to this," the cerulean unicorn remarked. They both had plenty of friends outside of the university, but within its walls they had spent years maintaining a rigorous study schedule, which meant that aside from one another, Mannie and Lance did not have anypony they would call 'friend' while attending their classes. So while the rest of the graduating class who had come to know each other very well were emotionally invested in the words being read at the podium, the two magna cum laude graduates failed to feel the impact. "It's not that bad. Besides, this is the last time we'll ever see most of these ponies, maybe switch topics to something less, I don't know, snide?" Lance suggested, keeping his voice low. "Good point I suppose, uh...how's Posey?" Mannie asked after taking a moment with a hoof at his chin to think of another topic. "Well medically she's fine, a little under a month until she's due and no signs of trouble," Lance replied while his eyes drifted off in thought on that topic. "You don't sound-" The conversation was briefly interrupted as one speech concluded, warranting a hoof stomp applause that quickly died down as the speaker stepped away from the podium so that the next graduate could take their place. "You don't sound very sure," Mannie continued after taking his seat again. "No, I'm sure there's nothing wrong. But that doesn't stop her from worrying herself to pieces every night when she tries to get some sleep anyway," Lance replied, looking back at him. "...did you tell her about any of the more subtle birth defects that can possibly happen completely at random?" his friend asked with a very suspicious look as though he already knew the answer. "No....well...I may have admitted they exist but I didn't tell her about any of them," he answered in all honesty. ... "You idiot." "What was I supposed to do, lie to her?" Lance asked defensively. "YES!" Mannie scolded a bit too loudly, drawing glares from several of their nearby classmates. "Sorry..." he apologized meekly before turning back on his friend. "She's a first time mother Lance, when you don't see any signs of anything going wrong you just tell her 'everything will be fine' not 'there's a .0001% chance your foal might be born without a frontal lobe'! How am I not even married and I know this better than you?" The soon to be first time father half opened his mouth to reply but then immediately shut it, stopping and looking away with a furrowed brow to think of anything to defend himself but coming up short. "Okay. I messed up, bad. You're right. I just have...I just have to...oh for crying out loud how am I supposed to fix this?" "I kind of doubt it's possible at this point really. Just be glad you didn't do it sooner, it's not as if you're the first husband to say something stup-..." "I've got to at least try, I can't just let Posey stack this on top of the stress she already must be feeling from the pregnancy alone, especially after she came out here tonight for my sake," Lance said before falling into another brief period of thought, heedless of Mannie suddenly being struck silent. "...wait a second, do you think that side project we were working on would be feasible if we lowered the...Mannie?" He was stopped mid sentence after looking back up again to see Mannie staring wide eyed at something behind him. Before he could properly investigate a regal yet gentle voice politely spoke up in the same direction. "Excuse me, this spot wouldn't happen to be taken would it?" "Well uh, we had seats assigned but I guess if you really need to you can..." Lance managed to say before turning around completely and being struck by much the same expression as Mannie was wearing. There before him was Princess Celestia in all her royal splendor, smiling warmly as her polychromatic mane and tail gently floated in the unseen ethereal current. She was flanked by two royal guard unicorns, one of which immediately stepped forward and aimed a menacing glower at the two graduates as he advanced. He was colored a dull brown with piercing yellow eyes and a very visible scar across the top of his snout. The emblem on the front of the golden armor that denoted his captain rank bore a recreation of his cutie mark, an angular steel grey shield with a single white glint pattern near the top corner. When he spoke, he did so in a severe but hushed tone indicating he was quite aware of the potential disruption of their sudden presence on stage. "You heard the Princess! Get your flanks up and move five meters back, then maintain that distance at all times or else!" Just as he had finished speaking a golden glow gripped his tail and pulled him back to the Princess' side. "Captain Gleaming Aegis, I appreciate your vigilance as always, but that will not be necessary. Please wait for me outside, I would like to disrupt the proceedings as little as possible," Celestia explained as the glow of her horn died down, releasing her royal guard captain who promptly saluted, shot Lance and Mannie another glare in order to ensure they were on their best behavior, then headed for the exit in tandem with his fellow guard as ordered. Having spent half of his life in Canterlot, Mannie was the first of the two to recover from the surprise presence of royalty and give a bow as protocol dictated, "Your highness." "Oh no need to bow, this your day in the sun after all," she assured the both of them with a slight wave of her hoof as she stepped closer and took a seat next to Lance. "I apologize for my captain's behavior, he comes from times much harder than these and I fear he is often heavy hoofed in his interactions with the public. I can only hope his successor is a bit more even tempered." Finding that his eyes had indeed not been fooling him, Lance shook the surprise out of his head and finally found his voice again. "Uh, no problem your...Highness!" he managed to awkwardly reply, making it clear he was entirely new to speaking with royalty. Celestia nodded in acknowledgement, wearing a thoughtful smile as always, "I take it you're the Strongshy fellow everypony's talking about?" What little poise Lance had managed to cobble together once again vanished at that question, replaced by yet another confounded express, "What? What do you mean your Highness? Why would everypony be talking about me?" It was now the Princess' turn to wear a confused expression, though as always she managed to be orders of magnitude more graceful about it, "Why wouldn't they?" He was silent a moment before looking away towards the crowd, not really looking at any of them but finding it was a bit easier to search his memories while not looking royalty in the face as she awaited his answer. At his continued puzzlement she decided with an amused but pleasant chuckle to give him a hint, "Mr. Strongshy, look at your classmates. Do you see a single set of wings amongst them?" Lance snapped out of his internal search and took the Princess' suggestion, looking past Mannie to the array of seated graduates beyond. He saw many unicorn horns, and a few plain earth foreheads, but everypony's back was bare. There was not a single wing among the graduating class that was not amber in color and attached to him. "No," he replied before turning back to look at her, "but why is my being the only pegasus in this group of graduates suddenly such a big deal?" "It's not, Mr. Strongshy. Your being the first pegasus to graduate from this institution on the other hoof, is." ------ He blinked. Twice. Lance then rubbed the sore feeling out of his eyes and looked at the door again. 303 was predictably absent. What was in its place looked like somepony had tried to make a cement wall only to have a hole melted through it later. Judging from the size he wouldn't have much trouble ducking through it even with his bad leg. Ducking through it to what though...that was the key question. Just looking in to see couldn't hurt tho- ... Oh who was he kidding, looking into things in that place ended up hurting far too many times to ever develop a sense of security about it. Still, looking down at the hole in the concrete barrier, he couldn't help but feel compelled to investigate out of some grim curiosity, like he was standing at the edge of a pit resisting the inexplicable tug to throw himself over. Foolish as he knew it was, he started limping toward the next flight of stairs leading downward...well, not just the next flight, but the last flight. Any further progress downward was blocked by another barricade of iron bars...and a pair of the gurneys he had seen in the nurse's station. There were more trails in the dust behind them, going through the bars like they had somehow been pushed through them. Lance still found them just as unnerving as before, even more so now that there were two of them. "So...what, you left to get a friend or something?" Lance remarked in a misguided attempt at lightening the tension gripping at his gut. If anything it just made it worse. His watch was still quiet though so he decided to move along instead of talk to inanimate objects anymore. Rather than just duck through the hole away from the gurneys as he wanted to, he managed to maintain enough good judgement and wait next to it for a few moments and give the watch time to warn him of anything on the other side. He took the continued silence as either a good sign or an indicator that there was nothing on the other side of the melted hole in the wall, just as his earlier elevator ride had suggested. When he ducked down with a quiet groan of pain to shine his surgical light inside however, his observations suggested otherwise. Either the floor to which he had just descended had only then appeared, or the trip one floor down in the stairwell had somehow covered the cavernous distance he had seen in the elevator. "Well that was convenient for once," he muttered before stepping through the hole, his slightly crouched stance making the few hoof steps sting just a little bit more than usual.