HiE - A Hollow in Equestria

by Charlie_K

Chapter One Hundred Twenty Seven

Chapter One Hundred Twenty Seven

"Excuse me? Grubber?"

Said hedgehog paused his task, a shammy cloth clutched in his paw and an open bottle of polish at his side, as he looked up at the source of the voice addressing him.

Instead of it being one of the medical staff coming by to complain about the clutter all over the infirmary floor, it turned out to be the purple princess pony who was responsible for them even being here in Canterlot in the first place. As well as the reason Tempest was finally going to be able to get her horn back.

"Hi, Princess!" he greeted from his current spot on the infirmary's floor.

"Hello," she greeted in turn as she smiled at him in a genuinely friendly fashion. "What're you up to?"

"Polishing Tempest's armor. She's out like a light right now, but I don't wanna leave her alone in case she wakes up. And there's only so long you can spin in an office chair and slurp jello cups before that gets to be a bad idea," he explained. "One of the palace guards was nice enough to lend me a bottle of armor polish and a shammy so I didn't have to leave and carry all of this with me. Oh, and some oil for the leather straps so they don't get dried out and start cracking. That can be lethal in our line of work."

"Well that's very considerate of you. Do you need any help?" she asked.

"Eh. It's probably better if I do it myself. The boss is pretty picky about her armor, and if she wakes up and sees you messing with it she might get upset," he explained before going back to what he'd been doing before the interruption; which in this case was tending to one of Tempest's horseshoes.

"Oh. I suppose I can understand that," she replied, a hint of disappointment in her voice as she spoke. "Do you mind if I ask you a question?"

"Are you kidding? After everything you did to help her? Ask away, Princess!"

Again, Twilight smiled in response.

"Well it's sort of related to that subject, coincidentally," she admitted. "You've known Tempest for a long time, right? Do you... ugh, this is kind of awkward to ask... do you know if our message did her more harm than good? When she showed up she didn't seem at all like the Tempest I know back in my own reality. Did we... did we break her somehow?"

"Oh totally!" Grubber stated without an ounce of hesitation. "I mean, I don't know if it was just the message that did it, but she was pretty much catatonic for a while afterwards. I've never seen her like that before. She didn't snap out of it until she heard about the scorpio attacking. But before that? I was starting to wonder if I was gonna have to claw feed her or something."

Twilight felt her heart -and maybe her stomach- drop like a stone at Grubber's words all but confirming her worst fears to be the truth. Gone was the ability to maintain some sort of optimism and hope that things really hadn't been as bad as she'd feared. Instead those hopes were dashed as doubt and other negative feelings started to bubble up to the surface.

"But at the same time you did her a lot of good by letting her know the Storm King was gonna stab her in the back," Grubber continued as he looked over the shoe in his grasp, before finding it satisfactory enough to set aside and move onto another. "If you hadn't told her that, I don't know where we'd be right now, or what we'd be doing for that matter. We've had to do a lot of unsavory things because we didn't have much choice otherwise. But now? She doesn't have to do that stuff anymore. Tempest gets her horn, everyone gets to live happily ever after."

Those negative feelings were suddenly starting to feel very confused as Grubber continued speaking. She could almost picture them with confused looks on their faces as even they wondered what was going on right now.

"So we didn't hurt her when we contacted her? We didn't cause her any long-term psychological damage?" she asked.

Grubber shrugged in response. "That, I honestly can't tell you, Princess; you're asking questions way above any of our pay grades. All I know is that if you hadn't intervened when you did, we'd probably still be searching ruins in the wasteland for some stuffy artifact so our boss could conquer the world. Maybe even getting eaten by that scorpio for all we know. You probably saved her life and ours too, that's gotta amount to way more good than anything you could've done to harm her, right?"

"I'd certainly like to think so. I just..." Twilight sighed softly as she tried to properly organize her thoughts and words. "This is all new to me. I never contemplated the idea of possibly breaking a pony's psyche by extending a helping hoof. Yes, you're all alive. Yes, Tempest will likely get a new horn and she'll be able to use magic again. And yes, she'll no longer be forced to serve the Storm King in pursuit of an empty promise. Based on what Strife said earlier, I don't think any of you will be for much longer.

"But that's all short-term gains. After that we move into long-term gains and losses. That's where Tempest's mental state would come into the equation, along with whatever happens in the aftermath of the Storm King being dealt with. That's where things tend to get tricky and complicated, and leave me wondering just how much damage my meddling might cause through the law of unintended consequences. This gets even more complicated when we take into account there's not a one-to-one ratio between this reality and mine. There are various differences at play that could potentially affect everything in a drastic manner if caution isn't exercised."

"I hear what you're sayin', Princess. I might not understand everything you said, but I hear it," Grubber replied, pausing as he apparently spotted something on the shoe that missed his previous attention, and going back over it again. "You don't wanna do Tempest dirty, like a certain black market zebra shaman did in Klugetown years ago."

"Exactly! Wait, what now?" Twilight asked, caught off guard by the last part of his sentence. "What happened?"

Grubber paused, looking past her and back over at Tempest's current position and verifying she was still unconscious in the bed, before turning his attention back to Twilight.

"I'll tell you later. She'd be really upset if she woke up and heard me telling you what went down," he replied in a tone that was far more serious than what he'd been using just moments previously.

"Alright then," Twilight relented, "but still, you're right. I don't want to harm a friend while trying to help a friend. I was hoping you could share some information with me about... well, about anything relating to her so I'd have some idea what the help/harm divide is. I'm being asked to help in other venues with other possible crises and..."

She sighed and hung her head, trying to find the right words to express herself properly.

"I'm afraid, Grubber. I'm afraid of doing the wrong thing and possibly making things worse. When I heard that we might've broken Tempest psychologically, I started panicking about how things could go horribly wrong if I intervened and meddled in the matters of this world."

"Like saving us?" Grubber asked while quirking an eyebrow.

Twilight quickly shook her head. "No, that would be an example of things going right. Things going wrong would be if, by sparing somepony hardships that led to them growing emotionally as a result, it somehow led to the rise of a future political tyrant as a result."

"Oh," Grubber replied. "I get it now. You're worried about doing everycreature dirty by accident."

"... Essentially, yes. So I was hoping that you or Tempest could offer me some insight, or words of advice, or really anything that might convince me I'll be doing the right thing by getting involved in affairs that aren't my own. Something that can overcome this lingering sense of doubt that just won't go away..."

"Well I... I don't really know what to say," Grubber admitted, easily lost in all of this. "What would be the worst case scenario if you didn't help others like you helped Tempest?"

"Ponies could get hurt in ways that could potentially be avoided. And this world will have to continue addressing various threats as they arise, with Ulquiorra potentially having to kill some of them to keep Equestria from falling," Twilight answered.

"Us too, right?" Grubber asked, his tone doing a lot to suggest he already knew the answer to his own question.

He then set down the shoe, to better turn his full attention to her.

"So by getting involved you saved us from: the Storm King, that scorpio in the wasteland, and Equestria's very own messenger of death," he said as he flicked out one of the claws on his left hand for each item mentioned as if he was keeping count himself. "And you're still asking me for advice about doing the same for others. Is my fuzzy little hedgehog brain missing anything here?"

"... I'm being ridiculous, aren't I?" Twilight eventually asked in light of him laying everything out as he just had. Had she really done all of that? Had she saved them three times over just by getting involved?

"Way ridiculous," Grubber confirmed. "If there's one thing I've learned in this line of work, you gotta take the bad along with the good. And believe me, we've had plenty of both."

"Even if what I do to help might make certain things worse?" Twilight asked.

"Based on what you've been saying since you walked in, how would you ever know one way or another?" Grubber asked in turn.

"... I guess I really wouldn't," Twilight admitted as the point slowly dawned on her.

Despite his apparent goofball status, she was starting to realize that Grubber was smarter than he let on. If this reality really didn't have a one-to-one ratio with her reality and the sequence of events that transpired, how would she ever know for certain if her getting involved truly made things better or worse for those that resided here? She could literally be worrying about absolutely nothing!

"I think you just wound up giving me all the answers that I needed," she stated with a smile and moved to his side to wrap a foreleg around him and hug him. "Thank you, Grubber."

Grubber wasn't the least bit shy about sinking into the hug, in stark contrast to Tempest's own reluctance for such contact.

"Anything for a friend, Princess. But if you really wanna thank me, I wouldn't say no to a cupcake with chocolate icing."

Twilight couldn't resist laughing in response, happy that at least some things between the two realities were consistent.

"I think that can be arranged. But first, I'd really like to speak with her when she wakes up. I need to figure out just who we're dealing with. Is she still Tempest, or is she the Fizzlepop that's behind Tempest," she explained.

"Uh, say what now?" Grubber asked.

"According to Ulquiorra, the Tempest we know may be a facade that Fizzlepop was forced to put on in order to survive in the world she found herself in; an act to serve as a shield for a scared, crippled unicorn to hide behind who couldn't let on that she was scared," she clarified as she slipped loose again. "And when we sent her our message that what she sought for so long was available, had been available all this time, it might've been such a shock to her system that it literally broke that facade and left nothing but Fizzlepop behind to sort through and pick up the broken pieces around her."

"Whoa..." Grubber replied slowly, almost breathlessly, as the explanation sank in.

Twilight nodded. "Admittedly it's just a theory at the moment. We don't really have any proof one way or another. So I'd like to clarify the matter before I proceed any further if at all possible. Who she is may affect how we proceed in her case."

"Yeah, I think I'd like some answers to that myself," Grubber confirmed.

Silence once again set over the infirmary, apart from the background noises one would otherwise hear in such a location and subsequently learn to tune out like white noise.

"I'm probably going to be here until she wakes up and can answer some questions," Twilight stated. "Would you mind if I at least examined her armor if I don't touch it? There's something about it that looks different from what I remember. And it'd give me something to distract myself from my own thoughts and worries about matters that're beyond my control."

Grubber looked at her, then down at the armor before him, then over at the bed their mutual acquaintance was currently resting on.

Finally he shrugged. "You know what? I don't think it'd hurt anything. You saved all our lives, it'd probably be the least any of us could do in return."

"Thank you."

---

"Well then..."

Celestia slowly looked up from the report before her, before passing it over for Luna to read for herself so she could finally quit fidgeting about anxiously.

Malar had been quite prompt in bringing his findings to her office the moment they'd concluded, even though he hadn't needed to come himself and could've simply had the report delivered. But it was that kind of service that was appreciated.

"Not exactly the sort of state you'd expect a would-be conqueror to be in," she noted.

"No I'd say not," Malar agreed and shook his head. "Dehydration, malnutrition, shoddy electrolytes, at least ten pounds underweight for a pony her size, sleep deprivation, eroded enamel from prolonged vomiting, an infected molar that could stand to be removed, to say nothing of the numerous physical injuries she's sustained from who knows how long ago. I don't know when she was last seen by a qualified physician."

Luna's response was an annoyed grunt as she scowled down at the file before her, as if it was deliberately responsible for her foul mood.

"It might not be my place to say, but I'm starting to think we were given bad intel, Your Highness. The Tempest Shadow we received doesn't seem like she could hope to live up to her own hype. Er, the hype of her counterpart. A stiff breeze could probably topple this one. In the condition she's in, she probably would've surrendered if we'd offered her a sandwich and a slice of pumpkin pie," Malar commented. "We wouldn't even need the whipped cream topping."

"She was practically being helped down the ramp by two yetis when she got here. That assessment may not be very far from the truth," Celestia noted. "At least now we know for certain. I was afraid she was a lot worse off when I first saw her for myself this afternoon."

"If there are no objections, Your Highness, I'd like to begin treating Miss Shadow. Specifically I'd like to treat her in-house," Malar stated. "I still don't trust Canterlot General with a patient of this importance; not after everything that's happened. And small though it may be, she at least has some rapport with the infirmary staff. She may do better here than elsewhere, surrounded by even more unfamiliar faces and unfamiliar places."

"No objections," Celestia replied and shook her head. "I defer to your expertise, but at least coordinate with Canterlot General and requisition whatever supplies and assistance might be needed to get her back on all four hooves again."

"As you wish, Your Highness. I'll get started on figuring out who and what we may need to get nice and fattened up again. Those ribs of hers are far too visible for my own comfort."

The growl from Luna might've been missed by Malar's ears as he left her office, but it failed to avoid detection by Celestia's.

"Is there a problem, Luna?"

"Even as we speak, we have hosting a pony who has been severely mistreated for years, Sister. Worse is the fact that there is nothing I can actually do for her. I cannot even offer her simple comfort because she is asking questions for which I do not have any answers, because she is currently in no condition to be addressed in an in-depth manner so that we can get our questions answered first! That goes well beyond being a simple problem. This is Rainbow Dash all over again!"

Celestia sighed, trying her best not to let it be known just how frustrated she was currently feeling herself.

"I understand you're upset, Luna, but please don't exaggerate. We're not quite that bad off this time around."

"No. We are not..." Luna slowly huffed in annoyed agreement. "But it most certainly feels that way to me right now. I am just as useless now as I was then, and just as furious about it as well. What good is this crown that I wear upon my head, if I cannot fulfill my office?"

Celestia slipped over to Luna's current position to extend her left wing and drape it over her back before speaking.

"Fulfilling office is something that regrettably takes time, Luna. How many ponies have you met that needed multiple visits to resolve what was plaguing their minds, because one night was not enough time?"

"... More than I care to admit," Luna reluctantly admitted and huffed. "It is such an ultimate cruelty, 'Tia. We talk about how things take time, how things will get better with time, but for some of us time is of no consequence. You, I, and Ulquiorra Cifer are immortal beings, we will be here for the duration, however long it may take to resolve things, so what is the passage of even years to the likes of us? But others are not so fortunate. What about other key players who do not have the same benefit as us? They may pass away long before all is said and done, and leave us without conclusion or resolution as to what they set into motion. What will happen then, if they die before we can finish what was started by them? What will become of everypony, of everyone that is involved if that happens, and so many ends are left loose and unable to be addressed?"

"I wish I could say for certain, Luna. But sadly even I don't know the answer to those type of questions. I'm not sure anypony does," Celestia replied as she slowly stroked her sister's back with her wing. "All that we can really do, is do we can do with the time that we have available to us. If certain matters are left unresolved and without closure, I'm afraid that's well outside of our control. All we can do is accept that."

Luna's only response was a dissatisfied grunt, finding no comfort in Celestia's words, and the hairs on her back all but bristling at the continued contact.

"And Luna," Celestia continued undeterred, "you aren't the first one to think about such unpleasant thoughts. I think about such possibilities every single day. And they scare me greatly, contemplating just how many things may actually be contingent on the lifespan of a mortal being sufficient for us to address everything in need of being addressed."

---

"Wake up, dearie. Wake up..."

Twilight wasn't certain whether it was the gentle nudging or the soft voice she became aware of first. It all seemed to blend together in a seamless fashion as she stirred, just barely aware of the fact she'd actually been asleep for some length of time.

Against the wishes and protests of her body to the contrary, she stirred from her rest, stretched while yawning until she felt a satisfying pop, and took stock of her surroundings to refresh her mind on where she was.

She slowly became aware of the fact she was in the palace infirmary. Specifically she was resting on one of the empty beds, with Grubber currently curled up and occasionally snoring away by her back hoofs near the other end of the bed. She also became aware of one of the nurses being in close proximity to her, and likely the one who woke her up.

The name of the particular nurse escaped her at the second, all she knew for certain was that it wasn't Goodwill. Had they been introduced yet? She didn't know, but didn't believe so.

She was right in the middle of trying to figure out how to politely ask just what her name was without potentially coming off as rude for not knowing/remembering it on her own, but those thoughts stopped as she took in the greater scope of her surroundings and saw that Tempest was also awake.

Not just awake either, she was wide awake! She was sitting up on her bed, tucked under the top sheet as she currently gripped a plastic fork in her right hoof, and all but shoveling food into her face from tray of food in front of her as fast as she could eat.

If she had to guess, going by what she could see from her angle, it looked like scrambled eggs, hash browns, toast cut into sticks, and a serving cup of what she believed was strawberry jam.

"I figured you'd want to be awake to talk with your friend," the nurse continued with a smile.

Twilight absently nodded in agreement and appreciation, looking between her, Tempest, and Grubber who was still currently asleep. She gave him a gentle nudge in turn, but he seemed unwilling or unable to stir from his own rest. That more or less left her and Tempest alone as the nurse moved aside to tend to something else in the infirmary; almost as if she intended to let them talk in private.

Tempest spared her a brief glance, but made no effort to speak up as she continued eating. Not that she could really blame her, based on everything Grubber had told them. This was probably the first real meal she'd had in days. And she wasn't about to make her stop eating just to get some answers from her; that'd just be plain rude.

But that didn't mean she necessarily had to sit in awkward silence.

"If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you something. You don't have to answer it right now, just... think it over, alright?"

Tempest paused, not speaking up, but turning more of her attention to Twilight and nodded as she listened and waited.

"I have questions that won't go away, that I can't answer on my own, and you might be the only pony I can speak with, who can actually tell me once and for all what I need to know, so I can figure out where to go on from here. To that end, Ulquiorra suggested that I speak with you, and hear what you might have to say on the matter. But to do that I need to know exactly who am I talking to: Are you Tempest Shadow, the Storm King's lieutenant and enforcer? Or are you Fizzlepop Berrytwist, the mare behind the mask of Tempest Shadow? Who exactly is the real you?"

That served to grab the mare in question's total, undivided attention, forcing her to stop chewing and swallow forcefully as she stared at Twilight, with her non-scarred eyebrow arched as high as it could go in utter confusion.

"Uh... could you run that by me again?"

"I can try to at least," Twilight replied, pausing momentarily to try and get her thoughts organized before continuing. "Princess Luna said she met with you, I'm guessing through your dreams, based on how long you've been unconscious. She said something that was very... concerning, something that I haven't been able to shake. She... thought that we might've broken you psychologically by sending you our message.

"I spoke to Ulquiorra about Princess Luna's concerns, and he said I should speak with you directly and hear what you had to say on the subject. Specifically he suggested I speak to Fizzlepop Berrytwist, the pony that you were, rather than Tempest Shadow, the pony that you were forced to become when you served the Storm King. At the time it sounded like it made a lot of sense; this world apparently has a medical procedure for restoring broken horns -something I didn't even know existed- so the entire reason you had for becoming Tempest Shadow in the first place is effectively moot. Something of that magnitude happening like it did... I didn't think about it at the time, but the impact it must've had, must've been a doozy."

"You're not exactly wrong," Tempest agreed, before sighing as she set her fork down in order to pick up a stick of toast to plunge into the cup of jam and scoop out a sizable portion, before tossing the whole thing into her mouth to chew. "What even is that thing anyway? He just tore out his own eyeball like it was nothing! And the next thing I know I feel like I'm surrounded by the three of you, having a face-to-face conversation as you're telling me I've been wasting the last fifteen years of my life, serving a treasonous monkey who never had any intention of holding up his end of the bargain. And the worst part of it all? I could feel you telling the truth. I don't know how, but as easily as I'm feeling the cotton of these bed sheets, I could feel the honesty and sincerity practically radiating off all of you like the heat of a campfire."

Twilight flinched, unprepared for the level of detail Tempest was currently sharing with her. The conversation she'd had with Princess Luna hadn't prepared her for hearing about what'd been experienced firsthoof. It was undoubtedly something that was going to need further research.

"In my defense, I had no idea what you'd be subjected to when he delivered our message to you," she stated. "I wish I could tell you about him, but I know almost nothing about what he is, beyond being some sort of ghost."

Tempest opened her mouth to respond, before promptly closing it back up again and shaking her head in what could only be described as disbelief and unwillingness to discuss the matter further.

"Well as much as I'd like to help you with your question after everything you did for us, I can't really do that," she stated instead in an obvious change of subject. "I've never really stopped to ask myself who I am, or whether I'm one pony or the other. I've always just thought of myself as me, you know?"

"I suppose that makes sense," Twilight reluctantly agreed and nodded, figuring she wasn't going to get the answers she was looking for that way.

"But if it's any consolation, Princess, thank you for sending him out to find us like you did. You probably saved all of our lives, and possibly years of our lives that would've been thrown away serving that worthless baboon," Tempest continued. "Maybe I'm just odd, but I'd much rather be alive and faced with the fact I was played like a fool, than dead and certain I was at the very edge of actually achieving my goals. Being tricked and taken advantage of, I can move past that. But being dead for no good reason, that's a lot harder to get over."

Twilight couldn't help but smile at hearing that. While it wasn't exactly the answer that she'd been looking for, it still told her exactly what she'd needed to know, in order to decide just how to proceed from here on out.

"And thank you. I think I can continue with what we were doing, now that I'm certain about the good that can come from what we're doing," she replied with a smile.

And then the moment was ruined by the loud growl from her stomach that chose right then to make itself known, much to her own embarrassment.

"It sounds like I'm not the only one who could use a good meal," Tempest commented, doing her best to suppress an amused grin by shoving a forkful of hash browns into her mouth.

"I guess not," Twilight replied sheepishly, before quickly glancing over at the clock on the wall. Was it really that late already? "It's been a long time since lunch. And I guess I should wake Grubber up while I'm at it. It's probably been just as long for him, if not longer."

Tempest said nothing, opting instead to focus on her own food as she set the fork down to pick up the serving cup of what remained of the jam, and fiddled with it until it was clasped firmly in her hoof, allowing her to bring it up to her muzzle so she could thoroughly lick out the remnants of its contents.

Comments

[Emperor of Jurai]

Better to feel the painful sting of truth, than to stumble about in the haze of a lie.

[Shisarakage]

Can't recall where I'd first heard it, but a phrase I heard over twenty years ago comes to mind with this chapter. "Tis better for the soul to be subject to a bitter truth, than to suffer needlessly the cursed nothings of a sweet lie." It certainly fits with Tempest's situation, and to some measure of the meaning, Grubber's as well, considering he's part and parcel with Tempest. Let's all hope she has a fairly swift but completely beneficial recovery.

[Fireeaters]

"If there are no objections, Your Highness, I'd like to begin treating Miss Shadow. Specifically I'd like to treat her in-house," Malar stated. "I still don't trust Canterlot General with a patient of this importance; not after everything that's happened. And small though it may be, she at least has some repertoire with the infirmary staff. She may do better here than elsewhere, surrounded by even more unfamiliar faces and unfamiliar places."

*Rapport
"Repertoire" is the word for your collection of things or ideas.

[Black_Knight]

Dang, that Tempest was really a wreck. Well at least she'll be better where she is now and Twillight is at peace of mind once more.

[Bloodytomb]

Nice mah dood