Peppermint
The cave was dank, dark and moldy. It was also littered with corpses, mostly of my college bullies and a pile of gate-keeping "doctors".
Gretchen crawled up to me, her lion half replaced with the abdomen of a giant spider. She had already eaten my Editor (yay!) so who knew what horrors were next?
I was sitting wrapped up in a warm spider blanket in her web. She cackled at me. "Now that you're my prisoner little Miss Reporter, I'm going to do something truly horrible to you!"
She leaned in close. She had chelicerae, for some reason. "I'm going to eat your penis!"
I broke out in a grin. "Really? Awesome!"
Spider Gretchen rolled her eyes. "Pepper, you know this isn't as fun when you act all happy about it, right?"
I nodded. "Sorry. Um... Nooo... Don't eat my penis, anything but that..."
Spider Gretchen laughed an evil laugh. "Oh, but I just love eating cock! And not in the oral sex way... Well, that too. Why is it called 'eating' in that context? It makes it sound so painful and stuff."
I coughed. "Uh, Gretchen? Can we try not to get distracted? I still have this whole penis issue and..."
I froze, Princess Luna was standing directly in front of us.
There was a long, looong pause.
Then Luna sighed. "Don't worry. This isn't even in my bottom ten."
And then she woke me up.
Peppermint
I woke up in a cold sweat. I had a moment of panic when I realized I wasn't in my bed, but it subsided quickly when I spotted Gretchen dozing in the corner.
The hospital. That's where I was. I saw a nurse messing with my IV (funny how you don't notice there's a needle in your veins when you have bigger injuries to worry about), she turned to me with a smile, her pink curls twirling in the sun. "Oh good, you're awake!"
I groaned. The pain wasn't as bad as it was, but I still felt achey all over and whatever pain meds they had me on were making me really groggy.
The nurse leaned over. "It's okay sir, how are you feeling?"
I suddenly felt 10,000 times worse. "I'm a girl..." I mumbled, weakly.
She winced. "Oh dear... I think I may have to check your painkillers again."
"Pepper!" Gretchen called, startling awake at the noise. She rushed to my bedside. "Are you okay? Do you have a fever? Did they stitch red to red, white to white?"
The nurse held up her hooves, uncertain what to do when confronted by a giant griffon. "Ma'am, I assure you, your friend is getting the best care we can offer, but he needs his rest."
Gretchen narrowed her eyes. "She needs her rest. Seriously, how the heck do you not know she's trans? She doesn't even have testicles."
The nurse's eyes widened. "He's a trans mare?"
I groaned. "Yes, 'she' is a trans mare, I have the diagnosis of an MD, and a Clinical social worker, and have been on hormones for over a year. Can you please just tell the doctor I'm awake?"
To her credit, the nurse just nodded and cleared out of the room. She still looked confused though. I shook my head. "Why, why, why does that have to be all I talk about..."
Gretchen raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"
"I just got stabbed and people are talking about my genitals..." I eyed the griffon above me. I smiled. "Thank you, by the way."
The griffon's feathers fluffed up in embarrassment. It was kind of adorable. "Well, you know. Just doing what I did during the whole outbreak thing. No biggie."
I raised an eyebrow. "Wait, a minute, do you have formal medical training?" Her being a healthcare professional would look great on her citizenship application.
She shook her head. "Nah, I've got a lot of experience, but it was mostly because I got sick early and we didn't have a lot of claws to try and save people with. Pretty much everyone who lived through that hell did a little bit of medical grunt work." She looked down. "I may have picked up a bit more because I was having meaningless sex with one of the nurses that came to help us..."
I sensed there was more to the story, but the look on her face made me suppress my urge to dig deeper. I put a hoof on her shoulder. "Well, however it happened, you saved my life. Again." I smiled at her, rubbing my hoof through her feathers. "You seem to be pretty good at that."
She got an almost giddy look on her face. "Happy to oblige... So... What now?"
I leaned forward, thinking. "Did you call my job yet?"
She nodded. "Yeah... That Struck Chord guy's a real talker huh?"
I smirked. "Yeah, you could say that." Then the color drained from my face. "What did he say about my absence? Did you tell him about the tree branch...?" Oh crap, I was so fired.
She held up a claw. "Relax, you're fine. Apparently Equestria's got some crazy disability laws, so you're getting 80% of your pay until you're patched up and then you can start working again."
I let out a breath, which hurt a bit, but mostly felt good. "What about the others? That storm was huge. Our Apartment house couldn't have been the only one damaged."
She frowned, thinking. "I actually saw more than a few people in the break room with similar injuries, but I don't know how much jacked up the town got. I've... kinda just been in here with you."
I smiled. She really was a sweetheart. "Fair that... Would you mind throwing on Algiraffa?"
She blinked. "Uh... What?" She looked completely lost.
I pointed to the ancient TV in the Corner.... Well, ancient technologically, it was actually pretty new. In the press release they had said something about 'deterring slipper theives', but I'll admit some details slipped past me. "The news Gretchen... Okay, granted the storm is probably not Algiraffa material, they're mostly international, but the local channel should be broadcasting. At the very minimum the Weather team is going to make a statement."
Her eyes lit up in recognition. "Oh! Cool, one sec." She reached into the side table next to me and pulled out a remote. She blinked at the two huge buttons with 0 and 1 on them and the code listing. "Uh... Pepper?"
Oh, right. "It's made for earth ponies so the channel numbers are in binary. You just type out the number and hit submit. PBC should be fine."
She nodded. "Nifty, but I have to say, the whole 'hooves' thing sounds rough."
I shrugged. "We've got some other stuff going for us. Now let's see what people are saying."
She flicked on the T.V.
"In our top story today, Barnyard Bargains has gained 10 stock points over their success cutting costs in their industrial division..."
Gretchen tilted her head. There were way bigger stories than that. "Okay... Maybe it wasn't so... Okay, that thing was horrible, but maybe they already talked about it?"
I grit my teeth, the gears turning. That storm was horrible enough for the weather patrol to not be able to control it. It should still be the 'top story'. Still... I suppose we were next to the Everfree Forest, so this sort of thing happened occasionally... "It would definitely be in the paper then, could you snag me a copy?" Every hospital has a news stand.
She nodded. "I'll be back in just a sec okay?" She smirked, "Just promise you'll save me the comics."
I snorted. "Promise."
She wandered off and the TV continued to blather on about minor corporate shifts... Seriously, I knew a lot of TV news stations were terrible, but shouldn't the local Ponyville station, run with Princess Twilight's blessing, provide you with a little more data?
When she came back she was carrying a small stack of papers. "Um I wasn't sure which one of them you wanted... So I kind of grabbed them all?"
I smiled. "Good impulse. I should probably be thorough." I felt a bit of a stab in my gut, totally unrelated to my injuries, when I saw the Canterlot Times... But I couldn't avoid it forever. Just to cauterize the wound, I picked it up first...
Nothing on the front page. I switched to weather. Still nothing.
I blinked. Canterlot was in the same region as Ponyville. That story should have made the news. I checked the Manehatten Bugle. Nothing. The Ponyville Tribune, a local paper. Nothing.
I dug through the entire damn pile, my twitching intensifying when I finally found something. Four lines... In the Foal Free Press.
I twitched. Gretchen was staring at me in my little pile of newspapers. They were starting to crumple in my grip. "Um... Pepper?"
"Nothing?!" I shouted. "There's seriously not a single freaking news outlet covering that storm?! It shut down businesses, it caused property damage, it... it...!" I pulled back my covers just to show the tube in my chest. "It injured people! And what? Now it's just getting brushed under the rug? Where are the reports from the weather patrol? Where are the disaster relief discussions? Where is... Where's everything!"
I gnashed my teeth and glared at the papers, hoping I could set them on fire with my eyes. This was a journalistic travesty. No, this was a coverup.
Gretchen looked more than a bit unnerved. "Um... Peppermint? Are you okay? This seems very unlike you."
I narrowed my eyes at her. "Maybe... but it's a heck of a lot like Pepper Punch." I glared at the Times, how far it had fallen. "I think it's long past time I picked up where that Stallion left off..."