Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows

Chapter Sixty, Separation Anxiety: Segregation.

-Ponyville Hospital three days later, Fluttershy-

Okay, the story was this, when the magic came back the Bug Bear, Manticore and other creatures started a ruckus that unintentionally freed a lot of the caged up mystical creatures. Given how closely clumped together the cage were, that was a given.

Mara, Maria and Marie had fused back together like all the other mystical creatures did, only it lasted for about ten to twenty seconds before they fell apart again.

Mara started off protecting Maria and Marie, Marie and Maria got involved in holding off the various freed mystical creatures at various points until Cerberus started to actively help and protect them.

Mara was seriously injured and was said to have chronic migraines whenever she was awake or lucid enough to be considered as such with her injuries. She’s been in and out of consciousness and Dr. Bones is making sure the blood transfusion Maria gave worked for both of her sisters.

Right now Mara wasn’t looking too pretty given she had been clawed up pretty badly by at least ten other creatures, but I think the chupacabra that went after Maria was the one that made some of the worst injuries on her.

Marie was mildly injured and, despite reacting to things instinctively, she never hurt her sisters on purpose aside from the point where she was incidentally squeezing the blood out of Mara’s wounds. She was the one that took out the cockatrice early on by poisoning it, thankfully long before it could turn any creature to stone and it would make a full recovery.

I and a lot of other people also learned something strange from this, snakes were either partially or complete immune to the stone gaze of a cockatrice. Testing the theory actively would be quite unethical, but a study would be done to see if that was true in the wild where snakes and cockatrice’s were prominent.

I seriously didn’t want to be a part of the group that did that, not after the trouble I’ve had with one before. Silver Stream was fairly interested in cockatrices and would probably get into researching them more.

Maria came out of the whole thing with the least injuries and to help her with her mental problem she was currently on prescribed medication to prevent herself from shutting down completely. Being her friend, I visited her frequently to make sure she knew I was here for her and her sisters.

Being separate from Mara must be quite a trying experience, like being a goat stuck in a place with an active chupacabra with nowhere to go or run to was. That definitely made for a harrowing experience and would be quite traumatic, I prayed that Maria didn’t get post-traumatic stress disorder from that as she was having enough problems as it is already with wanting to stay close to Mara.

The chupacabra had severe burns, seventy claws wounds and half of them were Mara’s, severe muscle damage, at least five poisonous snake bites and had more than seventy percent blood loss at the time of detainment. That it was still alive and somewhat healthy was both scary and relieving.

Scary that it was still considered to have seventy percent of its capabilities for running down a goat despite being mauled by more than twenty different creatures, relieving that it couldn’t do so and would make a perfect recovery. It was properly detained at this moment and no one would be stupid enough to leave it near Maria or within sight, sound or smelling distance of a goat.

There was a number of injured mystical creatures under quarantine that were separated from every other creature that got caught up in that fracas for their own safeties. Dr. Fauna was taking care of and rehabilitating most of them, along with the help of a pair of professional exotic animal detainment experts named Mane Allgood and Snap Shutter that quickly came in to assist with the mess.

Mara, Maria and Marie were also separated for study, until the doctors could figure out why they didn’t stay together the same way all the other animals had when the magic came back. They had fused back into being one being, there was ongoing research as to why that didn’t stick.

Thankfully The Cerberus healed fast, because he was fine by the time Luna was done personally escorting Cozy Glow to Tartarus on Celestia’s orders. He was perfectly okay, if a little bored. Cerberus apparently had a lot of fun stopping the riot, he still did his job despite how sad it was that he was the permanent guard at the gates of Tartarus with no one keeping him company.

Some pony should really do more for Cerby or at least keep him company every once in a while, he was a very good boy and I told him as much as we were getting all the badly injured mystical creatures sorted out.

I was waiting on Dr. Bones report to discuss this matter. She would tell me what’s wrong and what we could possibly do to help Maries, I don’t think Fizzle would like hearing about this before the situation was resolved.

Last I heard, Fizzle was in the Crystal Empire fixing a few small problems and had become a wandering hero for hire.

On the side of things that that wasn’t related to animals, which was absolutely my favorite subject in life, was all the devastation caused by Cozy Glow. Rescue workers and infrastructure specialists were all over the place trying to fix practically everything.

The EUP was frankly busy coming up with new emergency protocols in case all the magic in the world was drained from it again, you think they would have reacted sooner when Tirek did practically the same thing.

Cloudsdale was currently requiring almost every pegasus to work in a concerted effort to fix the damage done to it. That’s where Rainbow Dash currently was at the moment, she was with the Wonder Bolts doing a lot of rescue and emergency service work.

The good news was that the foals, fillies and other winged ponies that couldn’t fly or glide very well were put on the ground once it was found out that magic was disappearing from all over. Until Cloudsdale was fixed, Rainbow Falls would be currently hosting an excessive number of pegasi.

Various hospitals throughout Equestria had a lot of issues with keeping patients healthy during the magic blackout and they didn’t necessarily succeed in preventing fatalities for those that had required immediate magical assistance. It was worse at hospitals that were primarily unicorn run that didn’t have staff that could improvise well enough to stabilize critical patients.

Speaking of unicorns, various other places had tons of problem without magic and it was mind boggling to even look at the list of issues that came up.

Surprisingly, out of all the problems caused by the temporary loss of magic throughout Equestria, the earth ponies had the least amount of damage done to their infrastructure. Food wasn’t going to be a problem this winter and nature mostly took care of itself without them micromanaging the crops.

The earth ponies’ infrastructure was fine, but the earth ponies themselves weren’t. A large number of earth ponies didn’t have the strength to do things without magic to empower their muscles and give them resilience, also the hospitals were now incidentally filled with earth ponies whose immune systems that hadn’t been working as well as they should have.

I’ve been running myself ragged with taking care of ponies’ pets, familiars and other assorted animals that came out of the woodwork while also doing shifts at the hospital here. I’m really quite tired and this was the first time in the last few days that I’ve been able to take a break this long without someone asking for help.

At least Pinkie was keeping up morale around here, she was always around to ask if I was okay and if I was pushing myself too hard.

“Hello, excuse me, are you listening?” Oh no… what was it this time?

I’m a veterinarian, my nurse credentials weren’t meant for much more than the volunteer stuff I was already doing.

I was given limited access to work on ponies based on my expertise of medical knowledge in an emergency and while a crisis was still ongoing, like right now. I don’t think I should handle some pony entirely on my own.

I was basically a volunteer with no personal authority in medicine, except when in my personal field of animals, that has to defer to more talented or appropriate individuals in the field of medicine who were actual doctors or full time nurses

I turned my tired and ragged form to gaze up at who was going to ask me for help. I froze when I saw a very familiar pair of kind eyes holding a cute little griffon cub. The robes and the witch hat screamed friendly to me and I knew who this was, it was Kurilian La Perm

“You look like you’ve been through a lot these past few days Fluttershy, do you want to talk about it?” Kuril sat down next to me and held out the smiling griffon cub to me, I took him and he started to curiously look me over.

He looked at Kuril curiously, then chirped merrily as he snuggled against me happily flapping his tiny wings. He was so adorable.

“Kuril, it’s been a while…” I said trying to keep the despair out of my voice as I nuzzled the little griffon.

“Yeah, it really has been.” Kuril patted my back with her left paw. “I want to introduce you to my grandson Gavin, he’s such a well behaved cutie. So I take it these last few days have been quite awful?”

“You can say that...” I’ve been through several days of nonstop constant work. “I guess you’re here about Maries.”

Ponyville has been trying to get a better emergency services budget and that’s been an uphill battle for our beloved mayor. Unlike the actual doctors and nurses, who could hardly catch a break, I actually got to go home and sleep, even if I worked just as hard to help those affected by the magical blackout Cozy Glow had caused. The emergency service ponies around here, who are working for less than they actually deserve when a disaster happens, are complete saints.

“Well not just Maries, but I would seriously like to know what is happening to them unless it is a private matter. I’m actually here to see how Dr. Bones is doing.” Listening to Kuril explaining her presence, I rubbed the griffon cub on the belly and he started giggling happily while batting at my hoof with his talons while lying on his back on my right leg.

“I’m doing fine Kuril, I know when to stop and sleep. This hospital is a bloody mess! Even when one of the things I can’t have is coffee, these yahoo’s don’t know how to work or function properly without it!” The red furred diamond dog in a doctor’s coat approached us. “Been getting all these ninny headed idiots to get their stuff in gear and to get on top of things before they worsen. I’ve been successful when I’ve pointed out that my hospital was one of the few that wasn’t experiencing an emergency.”

“Well you do run a tight ship Zen.” As soon as Kuril finished saying that we heard two notes played on a drum and then a symbol clanging. We all turned to Pinkie sitting in a drum set and then went back to our conversation, ignoring her presence.

“My hospital is a cruise liner, so I have a right to run it tightly because it actually is a ship!” She sat down with us and the little griffin cub sat up and looked at Dr. Bones innocently.

“Ven-ven!” The griffon cub shouted with glee and wiggled his rump.

“Oh no, not you again you wee little monster, couldn’t you have left Savannah to watch him?” The griffon cub happily pounced on and started to snuggle against Dr. Bones right arm, she sighed heavily and started to check his little fluffy down. The little griffon looked so happy and was giggling up a storm as Zen checked him over. “Still as healthy and happy as the last time I saw the bugger, you’re food is doing wonders for him Kuril.”

“Aw, but Gavin really likes you Zen, also it was either me or leave Gavin with Sekhet and she’s kind of in the middle of a war of bureaucracy with Celestia. Savannah is currently watching my restaurant and I wasn’t about to leave my grandson unattended.” Kuril seemed oddly reluctant to leave Gavin under the protection of a goddess, I wondered why. “I don’t want to leave Gavin alone with Sekhet, especially not when she might be going into a one sphinx war with the current goddess of the sun. They are currently on cease fire until the current crisis has been averted, which should last another two days. ”

“Well enough gabbing about! Get up and come with me, I’ve something to show you two.” As Zen stood up, she tried to pry Gavin off of herself. “Could someone take this little nuisance?”

“I’ll do it, here Gavin, let uh… auntie Fluttershy hold you!” Gavin looked from Zen to me and he seemed torn about snuggling against the doctor and coming to my welcoming, smiling face and open hooves. He looked towards Kuril, she nodded and he happily started clinging to me. I had to hover to follow the two as we were led to the ward where Maries’ three separate parts were kept. “How are Mara, Maria and Marie doing?”

“See for yourself, this room has a terrarium containing Marie. She reacts to stimulus, but she’s not all quite there if you catch my drift.” We nodded, because we did catch Zen’s drift. “I’m going in to feed her now.”

We watched as Zen went into the enclosure and held a cooked piece of fish over the terrarium attracting Marie’s attention, she sniffed out the fish and opened her mouth. Zen dropped the fish into her mouth and she immediately swallowed. Zen then closed up the enclosure securely.

“Why does she keep staring at the wall like that?” After she swallowed the fish, I noticed that Marie went back to staring at the wall she had been before Zen entered the room.

“Next room over is your answer.” Being led to the next room over by Dr. Bones, we saw an unconscious Mara. She had some parts of herself in a cast, there were many bandages wrapping her form and she had two different IV drips, one of which had her sister Maria’s freely given blood in it. “We don’t know how Marie knows, but she instinctively seems to know where Mara is at all times and we put them closer together. It makes Marie less agitating to deal with the closer they are. We’re keeping those two separated until Mara is well enough to handle having Marie wrapped around her. Now onto Maria.”

“She doesn’t look happy.” My words were met with something like agreement, as Gavin whined sadly at the figure sitting at the back wall of the room facing the corner with her head down.

“They’ll be back together soon.” Zen seemed sure of it, she turned to me. “I’ll be needing your friends help though.”

Author's Note:

A little more world building and Fluttershy is getting some much needed spotlight.

Comments

[Herald of Opera]

Mane Allgood and Snap Shutter

Apparently, having moved to Season 8 wasn't enough to make you stop doing Early-Bird Cameos. >_>

[Booster Spice]

Still have no idea what the Author has decided is the problem, the only thing I can think of for form blocking, is Snek is Egged.

I would think the Zebra were least affected because of them being primarily Earth Pony magic class, and anything they used their magic to handle, would have been affected before loss of potions and other such Nature artifacts?

the Griffons though, loss of flight in a primary flight based enviroment, at least as complex as Cloudsdale, even with the ground for some communication?