• Published 23rd Sep 2017
  • 7,952 Views, 444 Comments

Repercussions - shallow15



After Sunset Shimmer is attacked and put into a coma, her friends try to figure out who did it and why. (Not an Anon-A-Miss story)

  • ...
10
 444
 7,952

Emergency Planning

Rarity had been pacing in the waiting area of the emergency room for forty-five minutes when the others arrived. Rainbow Dash was the first to barge through the doors, naturally.

“Where is she?” she loudly demanded. “Is she all right? What happened?”

“Lower your voice!” Rarity hissed. “This is still a hospital, Rainbow Dash!”

“Sorry,” Rainbow replied.

“Have you heard anything?” asked Twilight Sparkle.

“No. But she went in almost immediately after we arrived. I've been trying to get some answers,” She glared over at the admissions desk. “But they won't tell me anything since I'm not a family member.”

“Well, we've gotta find out somehow!” Rainbow said. “I seriously doubt they're going to believe her parents are a pair of magical talking ponies from another dimension.”

“Don't think it matters anyway,” Applejack said. “A while back, Sunset mentioned her parents passed away about a year before she came through the portal. Dunno if she's got any other relatives.”

“What do we do then?” Rainbow started pacing herself. Her voice started rising in volume as she moved. “We can't get any info because we're not related to Sunset, but Sunset doesn't have any relatives in this world. So basically, our friend is back there, hurt bad, and we can't find out how she is because the jerks here won't tell us anything! This sucks!”

A loud “Shhh!” came from the rest of the group. Rarity, Twilight, and Applejack looked over and smiled at the nurse manning the admitting desk, who was giving them a disapproving look.

“Sorry!” Twilight said, smiling awkwardly. “She's just worried. She didn't mean it.”

“Don't apologize for me!” Rainbow snapped. “I meant what I—MMMPH!”

“Come on, Rainbow,” Applejack said, keeping her hand over Rainbow's mouth and dragging her away from the group. “Let's get you a soda.”

Rainbow's muffled protests drifted away as Applejack hauled her toward the vending machines. The other four girls looked at each other. Fluttershy blinked.

“Oh! What about Miss Bookbinder?” she asked.

“Sunset's landlady?” Twilight said. “What about her?”

“Sunset probably knew something like this could happen to her, especially after the Fall Formal. So maybe she has Miss Bookbinder as her emergency contact.”

“Maybe,” Rarity murmured. “It's worth a try, I suppose. Does anyone have her number?”

The group turned as one to face Pinkie Pie, who had remained surprisingly quiet through all this.

“What?” she asked. “Ooohhhh! You think I might have her phone number because I know everybody in town and my contact list on my phone is, like, fifty gazillion times bigger than anyone else's at school so I could probably have Miss Bookbinder on it, right?”

“Something like that,” Twilight answered.

Pinkie pulled out her phone and scrolled down her list. “Baked Bads... Big Bopper... Blackberry Brambles... Bluesharp Babysplit... Ah ha! Miss Bookbinder!” She hit the “call” icon on the screen and held it up to her ear.

“Hello? Miss Bookbinder?” Pinkie took a deep breath and screamed into the phone. “SUNSET'S HURT AND WE'RE AT THE HOSPITAL AND NOBODY WILL TELL US ANYTHING AND WE'RE ALL KIND OF FREAKING OUT OVER HERE SO CAN YOU COME HERE AND TELL THEM TO TELL US WHAT'S WRONG WITH HER?!”

“PINKIE!”

Twilight slapped a hand over Pinkie's mouth, while Rarity snatched the phone from her hand. She motioned for Fluttershy and Twilight to take Pinkie over to the vending machines. She grimaced at the other people in the waiting area, who were glaring at them for the disturbance. Rarity let out a half-hearted laugh, then quickly turned her back and put the phone up to her ear.

“Hello? Miss Bookbinder?”

“I sincerely hope that you have a good explanation for why I nearly suffered permanent hearing loss just now,” came the voice of the landlady.

Rarity winced. Miss Bookbinder (and heaven help you if you left out the “Miss”) was polite and always treated the girls well whenever they went to visit Sunset, but she did not suffer fools gladly. Pinkie and Rainbow had often been the targets of Miss Bookbinder's mastery of withering scorn and sarcasm.

“Yes, I'm sorry about that, Miss Bookbinder,” Rarity apologized.

“I would also be very interested to know how Miss Pie got my number,” Miss Bookbinder continued.

“Pinkie Pie has everyone's number,” she quickly explained. “But that's not important right now. We're at the hospital, Miss Bookbinder. Sunset's hurt.”

There was silence, then: “What happened?”

Rarity quickly explained what she had seen at the mall. “And, because none of us are related to Sunset, and her family is... unavailable, we were hoping that perhaps she had made arrangements with you to be her emergency contact for things like this.”

Another silence. Rarity felt her teeth clench, and her free hand began playing with the hem of her skirt. Please. Please let us be right.

“I'll be there in a few minutes,” The landlady's voice had softened. “Try to keep those friends of yours calm until I get there. I know a few people at the hospital. I may be able to wheedle some information out of them.”

Rarity let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding. “Thank you! Thank you so much, Miss Bookbinder.”

“I'll be there soon.”

There was a beep as the landlady ended the call. Rarity sighed again, and headed for the vending machines to find the others.


“She's an emancipated minor and estranged from her family. As you can see from this,” Miss Bookbinder slapped a piece of paper on the admitting desk. “This is a written permission slip from Miss Shimmer allowing you to disclose information about any emergency medical situation she has to me, and for me to make treatment decisions in the event she is unable to do so herself. You will also see that it has been properly notarized and dated. Perfectly legal and above board.”

Miss Bookbinder adjusted her oval-framed glasses. “Now, with all this clearly evident even to a bureaucratic cephalopod like yourself, will you concede that your behind is sufficiently covered and either kindly provide me with the latest information on Miss Shimmer's condition, or, failing that, find me the attending physician so he or she can do so? Or do I have to explain this all again to the hospital administrator, in a much less polite fashion?”

The nurse at the admitting desk looked from the permission slip up to the landlady. The yellow skinned woman wasn't that tall, but radiated an aura of no-nonsense efficiency, enhanced by her green hair pulled back into a severe bun. Miss Bookbinder wasn't much older than Rarity and her friends, but she seemed older thanks to her mode of dress and personality.

“Um... I'll get Doctor Cross,” he said, getting up and disappearing through the doors. Miss Bookbinder turned around, facing the girls, then folded her arms and gave them a confident smirk.

Pinkie leaned over in her chair. “She's scaaaaaary,” she whispered. The others nodded frantically.

A few minutes later, the doctor came out. “Miss Bookbinder?”

Miss Bookbinder stood up and motioned for the girls to follow her. The doctor quirked an eyebrow.

“I'm Dr. Cross. I understand you're Miss Shimmer's legal guardian?”

“Not quite,” Miss Bookbinder answered, “But it's close enough, legally speaking.”

“I see,” Dr. Cross looked at the girls. Miss Bookbinder saw his expression.

“These are Sunset's best friends. Anything you have to say to me, you can say to them.”

“Very well,” Dr. Cross cleared his throat and looked at the clipboard he was holding. “I'm afraid it's a mixed bag. First off, she's stable.”

“'Dead' is stable,” Rainbow snapped. Miss Bookbinder glared at her.

“Not helping, Miss Dash.”

“Well, fortunately,” the doctor said, “That isn't the sort of stable we're talking about. She's not in danger of dying and physically, aside from some cuts and bruises, she's fine.”

“But?” Applejack asked, flatly.

Dr. Cross sighed. “Miss Shimmer is comatose. We still need to do an MRI to confirm, but there doesn't appear to be any brain damage. But she is completely non-responsive to external stimuli. And to be perfectly honest, we have no idea why.”

The girls exchanged nervous glances. Miss Bookbinder remained focused on the doctor.

“So what do you recommend?” she asked.

Dr. Cross took her arm. “Let's go over here and discuss it.”

As the doctor and the landlady walked away from the group, they clustered around each other.

“Magic,” Applejack said. “It has to be magic. Ain't no other explanation.”

“Agreed,” said Twilight.

“Yeah, yeah,” Rainbow said. “But what are we gonna DO about it?”

Rarity looked up. “We're going to find whoever did this.”

The others looked at her.

“Are you sure that's a good idea?” Twilight asked.

“Of course it's a good idea!” Rainbow said. “What the hell, Twilight?”

Twilight frowned. “That's not what I meant and you know it, Rainbow. What I mean is, if this is someone else who's been corrupted by the magic, are we sure we want to pick a fight with them? All the other times we've encountered someone with magical abilities, we've all been together.”

“Except for Juniper,” Fluttershy said. “Starlight managed to talk her into giving up the magic.”

“Yes, but even then, Juniper didn't become fully corrupted until all seven of us were trapped in the mirror.” Twilight replied. “Before that, the magic was limited just to the mirror itself. Otherwise, with Gloriosa we were all together. And then you all fought the Dazzlings and Sunset herself together with the help of Princess Twilight.”

“I see what you're sayin',” Applejack said. “We generally don't whomp the bad guy until all of us are workin' together. Back at camp, the five of us had a hell of a time just tryin' to keep Gloriosa occupied so she didn't hurt anybody else. But she kept countering everything we did as soon as we did it, until Twilight and Sunset got there.”

“From what I've been able to gather from Sunset,” said Twilight, “the magic is at its most powerful when the seven of us are in harmony. But with Sunset comatose...”

“... we might not be able to beat whoever did this to her,” Fluttershy finished.

“Well, we just can't sit around and not do anything!” Pinkie exclaimed. “There's some big meanie out there with magic and Sunset sure wouldn't want them out there where they could do it again. She would say –“ Pinkie smoothed her hands through her hair, which instantly reformed into the shape of Sunset's hairstyle, somehow complete with lighter streaks of pink mimicking the gold streaks in her hair.

“Other people could get hurt, and it's our responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen.” Pinkie finished in an eerily similar voice as Sunset's own. She shook her head, restoring her hair to it's normal cotton candy explosion. The group stared wide-eyed at her for a moment, before Rarity spoke up.

“That settles it then. Danger or not, we are not going to let whoever did this to our friend get away with it. We are going to find them, and when we do, we will make sure they undo whatever they did to Sunset.”

“Right now?” Fluttershy asked, looking at a nearby clock. “It's almost midnight.”

“All right, first thing in the morning, then,” said Rarity. “We'll meet at eight at Sugarcube Corner. Agreed?”

There were murmurs of assent.

“Oh, wait! What about Ray?” Fluttershy asked, referring to Sunset's pet gecko. “He's all alone and is going to be worried about Sunset.”

“No problem!” Pinkie chirped. She reached into her hair and pulled out a keychain loaded down with dozens of keys. “I've got a key to Sunset's apartment!”

Twilight looked at Pinkie. “How did you get that?”

Pinkie shrugged. “Just happened. I have keys to all your houses too!”

“Why would you– Never mind, I really get the feeling I don't wanna know,” said Rainbow.

“All right,” Rarity said. “Fluttershy, you and Pinkie go over to Sunset's place tomorrow morning and make sure Ray's taken care of.”

“Might be a good idea to see if you can find the journal she uses to talk to Princess Twilight too,” Applejack said. “She and Starlight will probably want to know what happened.”

Rarity nodded. “If you do find it, bring it to Sugarcube Corner with you. We can figure out what to tell them. But, I think we should make it clear that they should stay in Equestria, unless we ask them to come through. In the meantime, we can send any sort of magical evidence we find to Princess Twilight and get her opinion. She may be able to give us some insight.”

“All right!” Rainbow cheered. “We have a plan, and we're totally gonna kick this guy's sorry butt. They're gonna regret ever doing this to one of our friends!”

Rarity gave a small smile at her friend's enthusiasm. She put her hand out.

“8 AM tomorrow,” she said. “For Sunset.”

The others placed their hands on top of hers.

“For Sunset,” they chorused.