> Boned Mind: A Tale of Flaming Psychic Zombie Squirrels > by A Random Guy > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > "It called me Femur!" > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boned Mind A Tale of Flaming Psychic Zombie Squirrels By A Random Guy The doors to the emergency wing of the hospital swung open as a white unicorn nurse pushed them open with her magic. The glow of her horn died out when she found who she was looking for: Dr. Law, a brown earth-pony in a medical coat, relatively fit for a middle aged stallion, as the nurse noted. He typically was the resident legal expert, in fact, he was giving legal advice to a hit-n-run victim, a poor colt pegasus who got knocked out of the sky and was lucky to be alive. That’s not to say the doctor didn’t know his medicine, in fact he could cure illnesses with vaccines like there was no tomorrow. But sometimes there’s a patient that comes in that demands a certain expertise for his treatment, even if he doesn’t mention it. This was one of those cases. “Excuse me, Doctor?” the nurse said as she tried to gain his attention, ignoring social protocol by interrupting the doctor-patient relationship he had with the poor downed pegasus. “Do you have a moment?” Dr. Law stopped his discussion of the legal ramifications his patient had to pursue and turned to look at the nurse through his spectacles. “A moment, what’s the question?” “More of a situation, a gentalcolt in exam 3.” “What’s the problem?” “That’s the problem, we’re not sure.” The doctor lifted an eyebrow before saying a few departing words of assurance to his current patient. “You got the chart?” The nurse floated a clipboard within reading distance of the doctor as they headed towards the emergency ward. “Right here.” Dr. Law’s eyes rolled through the document’s print, searching for any clues as they passed through the doors. “Not much here, is there?” The nurse shook her head as they stepped out of the way of a rushing gurney. “No Doctor, no obvious physical trauma, vitals are stable, no strange magic present, though he does have an odd deformity.” “Name?” “No sir.” They stopped as another nurse scurried out of one of the ER rooms, pushing a cart out filled to the brim with medicines and remedies. “Did somepony drop him off? Maybe we could speak to them. Let’s get some background on this fella.” The nurse shook her once more as the turned a corner in the corridor. “No ID. Nothing. And he won’t speak to anypony.” He smiled as they stopped at a curtain that was hanging off a track from the ceiling. “Well, let’s say hello.” He pulled the curtain back with a hoof as he walked in to greet the patient. “Good morning, I’m Dr. Law. Son, how are you today?” The pony that was sitting on the bed looked off into space with glazed eyes and mouth agape. The pony was teal, a unicorn. He had a blue mane with a cyan stripe, combed nicely to split evenly across his horn. The major thing Dr. Law noticed was the unicorn’s deformity, his horn. It wasn’t a typical pointy cone shape. No, it was a bone, a leg bone, half a femur to be exact. It was sticking out of his forehead as if somepony shoved in in when he was a kid and it just grew with him. The doctor ignored the femur horn, for it didn’t seem to be causing the stallion any obvious discomfort. He looked the at the unicorn’s eyes, which were vividly bloodshot, through his spectacles. The doctor spoke gently, like a parent comforting his kid. “Look son, you’re in a safe place. We wanna help in whatever way we can. But you need to talk to us. We can’t help you otherwise. What’s happened? Tell me everything.” He blinked, and the unicorn’s bloodshot eyes twitched to look at the doctor, which was the first instance the nurse could think of when the patient did anything else than stare off to the distance. Who could blame her? The horn was such a big ditraction that anything small the unicorn did could go unnoticed. “Everything?” Dr. Law gave a friendly nod in response, not breaking eye contact. The unicorn perked up. “All righty then. Picture this, if you will…” (0)_(0) It was between the hours of ten and two in the night. I don’t know if it was between ten and two where I lived, or in Manehatten. All I knew was that I live in Manehatten, but that’s not important. Nor was it important that I was doing ti-chue in my apartment, that’s a martial art I’ve been inventing. I’m teaching classes, you should come. Nor was it important that I was being strapped down, not by somepony, but by my hungry intestines. That’s a side effect of ti-chue. What is important is that my horn sensed that the universe was going to be bad soon, and I was chosen to be the only one to put her in timeout so she can learn her lesson. She never does learn. My horn was pointing my head to the soda fridge in the living room. Yeah, my bone horn. He doesn’t talk much. He prefers pully action and stuff. My horn was being pulley though, and pulling me towards the fridge, and my empty intestines wanted the stuff in the fridge. So my horn signed a pact with my guts and mutually agreed that the living room fridge was the best place to be between the hours of ten and two somewhere. When I got to the living room, there was a dragon guarding the fridge. As good as my ti-chue is, I know I haven’t mastered the art of taking down dragons yet, even if it was a tiny baby purple dragon. So there’s a dragon at my fridge. I know what you’re gonna say, “Dude, you have three fridges in your house. Why not use a different one?” But I couldn’t though, five of them are broken, and my horn was telling me the living room one was the important one, and my horn is the boss of all my other organs, so I know I had to face my fears. So I walk up to the dragon, and I notice that it wasn’t eating anything. That didn’t sit well with me. It was a guest in my house. It’s impolite not to feed guests. So I tell the baby purple dragon, “Hey, do you want something from the fridge. I think there’s crackers in there, if I didn’t eat them.” Pay attention here, because this is where it gets confusing. The baby purple dragon was like, “Yeah, I think crackers would be great! Thanks Femur, you’re a great host.” Did you catch the confusing bit there? I didn’t at first, but then it hit me. So, to clear up the confusion, I asked, “Whoa, what did you call me?” The baby purple dragon said, “I called you Femur. It’s your name, right?” Can you believe it? That has to be the most mind blowing thing ever. It took reality as I knew it and shot it out of a cannon and blew up a building with it. It was wicked. It called me Femur! Yeah, I know it’s my name… Yep, that’s what my parents called me… Well, the way it said it, it was mind blowing. You had to be there, I guess… Oh, that’s a nice river you’re drawing, very humbling… No, those aren’t letters, that’s a river... I’m sorry sir, but I think you may need your eyes checked. You can’t seem to tell the difference between written language and a humble river. Anyways, the baby purple dragon, it’s called Spock, I think, it opened the fridge and now it’s going through my foods like a raccoon. My horn is going all twitchy now because it was going through my foods, he didn’t like it for some reason. But I ignored him, because it was a guest in my house, and denying him foods would be rude. So, Spock pulls out this stone spiky book thing, and my horn just goes crazy! He must have been saving that book for lunch or something, I don’t know, he doesn’t tell me these things. Then he goes even crazier when Spock eats it, which I don’t think was good for him, too much cellulose in the pages. It must have been the cellulose, since it looked like Spock was gonna spew. Its purple face turned greenish and it started wobbling all over the place. I wasn’t going to let a guest hurl on my carpet. My landlord would have a hissy fit and would probably never let me have guests over again. That little gusher went off before I could grab a bucket! Whatever forces of the universe there are, they decided that the bugger needed to be looking at me. I wasn’t that grossed out. I’ve slept in other ponies’ sludge before, nothing new for me. But that kid went off like a fire hydrant that got popped like a zit. That river just threw me into my bedroom like a train wreck. I ended up on my bed covered in its stuff, but it wasn’t the regular sludge stuff that comes out. In fact, it wasn’t even sludge at all! It was squirrels. That dragon hydro-pumped a pile of squirrels at my face, and I was strapped down to my bed by the little buggers that were crawling all over my head. You thought the spewing was nasty, the squirrels were worse. They were full-fledged zombie squirrels, rotten flesh and all. They were just shedding fur and skin and bones all over my bed! I have to sleep on that thing, but no. They had no consideration for my stuff. Typical squirrels, the grade-A jerk-faces of the animal kingdom. And they were on fire. Apparently, Spock set them on fire when it let them go. I haven’t gotten an apology from it for covering me with flaming zombie squirrels yet! I try to grab something to fight the little fire-crackers to keep them away from my precious brain, but I could only find my hula lamp. It’s a weird lamp, man. It looks like a tropical mutant hairless weasel wearing a grass skirt and coconut bra. And you can touch it to make it to make it bobble and make the weasel thing dance. I love that lamp. But I had to use it to bludgeon the pyre of zombie squirrels back to death. So, there I am, swinging at the little rodents like it’s the World Series, holding my hula lamp in my teeth, tiny burning corpses flying all over the place. You’d think that since I have a horn he would want to help. But no, my horn thought levitating junk and blasting spells at undead chipmunk-wannabes was below him, just like every other time my life depended on him. I like him, but sometimes he’s a bit of a jerk. I manage to get up from my bed, though I was still trying to figure out how to knock of the squirrels that were hanging off the flaps of my skin. I walk into the living room, and what do you know, the little flaming frackers were still shooting out of Spock’s mouth like a chain gun. The place was just smoldering with them. I lost several good paintings that day. My horn was buzzing around telling me that this was the universe going bad, and that I needed to put it in time out. Fortunately, there’s a special weapon in my kitchen that I had in case of emergencies like this one. It’s an ancient weapon, made for the use of the greatest ti-chue masters in history, passed down from master to student for generations, and only the most skilled martial artist could use it. So I go into the kitchen and pull my grenade-launcher out of the pantry- Yes, my grenade-launcher. It’s the weapon of choice for ti-chue masters… You’re going to have to check the law books, grenade-launchers are legal… Yeah, but that’s a cutie mark for medicine, not handheld artillery… At the Rainbow Falls trading grounds, it’s where I found most of my fridges. So I use my skills in ti-chue to take careful aim in the living room. I know Spock is still in there, but it’s a dragon, they have thick skin. The explosion might scare it, but it’d be fine. After taking careful aim, I pull the trigger, and a pill pops out of the tube and flies into the firestorm. Let me tell you, those frackers are every meaning of freaks of nature. They’re all over the floors, the walls, even the ceiling. They’re just crawling all over the place, it was chaos! But when I pulled that trigger, they all just stopped. Next thing I knew, I had thousands of tiny little glowing burning red eyes looking at me. It was like looking at the red sprinkles in a big bowl of flaming chocolate ice-cream! Granted, it was a zombie squirrel ice-cream, so a good bit of the lot were missing a few eyes, though a couple had a few extra. We’re just looking at each other, me and the sea of glowing red eyes. It was like when I had cold feet in at my kindergarten Hearts Warming Eve carol. The only thing missing was a giant phoenix setting a forest on fire, but we were already halfway there. It took me a moment to realize that the blazing hoard wasn’t looking at me, but the grenade I shot, which was floating in the middle of the air, giving off a red sparkly effect. It looked like it would do some critical damage if it touched something blue. I looked at the red glowing eyes, and I looked at the red glowing grenade, and then I put two and two together and came up with a brilliant conclusion. The grenade had become sentient, and was now controlling the minds of the zombie squirrel hoard! For some reason it wanted to be chucked at me. I know that because I had to dodge the thing as it got chucked at me. The resulting explosion took out a fair bit of my kitchen, but I managed to leave unscathed! Then a swarm of angry red glowing household objects started flinging themselves at me! Pots, pans, books, pencils, a couch, a giant cockroach, you name it, they all just whizzed by me as I make a beeline for the front door. I didn’t know what I did to make them angry. You would think they’d be angrier at the flaming squirrels! I’m going to have to talk with them just so we can alleviate some household issues the pots have been causing. I get to the door, and I’m trying to turn the knob, but it just keeps wiggling and laughing at me. How rude. Meanwhile, all manner of things are getting thrown at me, like a couple knives that were sticking out of the door. Then I got attacked by the flaming zombie squirrels again, and they just start chewing and biting and burning me all over! You’d think that regular squirrels are buttheads, but these guys didn’t even say grace before chowing down on me! Then out of nowhere, my horn starts buzzing again, and he was buzzing hard. I would too if I was being gnawed at by flaming living-dead rodents. But he just does that, and soon my entire body is buzzing. It wasn’t rabies. Rabies is more of a burning sensation. I was burning pretty hard, but my innards weren’t cooking as fast as my skin, so it wasn’t rabies. But my horn is doing his job, so the walls start melting. Yes, my horn can make the walls melt. They don’t really melt, it’s just what my brain does when it needs to visually interpret multi-universe travel… Oh yeah, just came from Ornean. By the way, I think Urghoy is a nice place this time of year… Well, um, I never had to explain that before. Ornean is the name of the universe I’m living in. You know, like it’s 193 Fillydelphia Hospital, Fillydelphia, Equestria, Earth, Urghoy for you… Urghoy is the universe you live in, right? I thought I was in Urghoy… So the walls are melting, and the squirrels are melting, and the angry swarm of household objects is melting. It was all melting into a nice big slush of mud, and I was still feeling like I was being burnt and eaten alive at the same time. Dang squirrels don’t know when to quit. Then everything drains out of the cosmic bathtub and I’m in some other apartment in some other world. It’s just like my apartment, but much bigger, and cleaner, and there’s more food, and there’s monkeys having a dinner party. Yep, monkeys, and they were having a dinner party, the most boring kind of party out there. They got food on plates everywhere, and it’s the little party square foods, the stuff you’re supposed to take nibbles on. I don’t like those kinds of food, too small of proportions. And everyone’s so serious, trying not to be rude with jokes and things. I don’t see myself as a rude pony, but it was a party full of monkeys! They’re supposed to be laughing at all the rude jokes in the book, not standing around being serious! Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. It was racist. Things get switched around when you go to new worlds, like how my front door turned into a window. I didn’t eat any magic leaves that morning, so there wasn’t a chance that I could fly out of that window. No sir, not flying out of that window. I already had to deal with a bunch of bite marks. I was not adding getting splattered against pavement two stories below me to that list, no sir. Nor was I jumping out of a wall anytime soon. My other option was to walk through the dinner party and risk being bored to death with all the boring jokes getting thrown around. That was something I didn’t want to go through, and I was ready to give up then and there. But my horn pulled me into perseverance, so I sucked it up and charged on through. It was a bullet-storm of boringness! My ti-chue was useless to fight against it, so I had to curve around the conversations about how the kids were doing, and dodge the topics of corporate ladder climbing, and backflip over talk about small weather or something. There was a nasty bomb I had to run from when a guy monkey started talking with a funny voice to this girl monkey. She obviously didn’t like his voice. After all my careful maneuvering, I rolled out of the crowd and into the front door. I slipped out before anymonkey could see me and dragged me in and forced to me talk about how I’m doing in medical school or something. Sheesh, I’d hate to imagine having to talk about being a doctor. That’s about the worse job I can think of! No offence. So I’m through the door and out of the apartment complex and in the streets of whatever city I’m in. It was a monkey city, no pony in sight. I wouldn’t be surprised if they called it some monkey pun, like Manhattan. Maybe not, maybe they went with a normal city name like Manehatten. I didn’t ask. My next order of business was to find a way to get rid of all the zombie squirrels back at home. I tried coming up with a plan, but my horn was swinging around as it thought of what to do next. And he was swinging around, and my head was swinging around with him. He does that sometimes. I tell him to stop, that I can think better if my head wasn’t spinning, but he thinks he can do everything himself. He never listens to the sticky notes I leave on the fridges. Then he stops swinging, and starts pulling me down through the sidewalk. With all that spinning stopping, I finally had a chance to think straight, albeit with a headache. I was going to follow him anyways. He doesn’t have to be all pulley about to. I mean, whatever plan he came up with, I don’t think I could come up with a better one, since the only thing I could think of was a newfound hankering for orange slices. We’re bobbing and weaving down the sidewalk, passing by several groups of monkeys on the way. I kept on getting weird stares from a bunch of them, and I don’t know why. I passed by a couple primates with shirts that had pony faces on them, so I thought seeing a pony running through the street would be normal for them. Maybe it was my bone horn that scared them. My horn stops in front of a pet store at the corner. I thought he wanted to look at the puppies in the window, which I thought would be a nice break. But no, he pulls me in through the door, which couldn’t be pushed open. I figured that out after ramming into it and trying to push through it for a few more minutes than I’m willing to admit. After finding out I had to pull the door open, we rushed right into the store. I think we scared the monkey at the cash register, but we ignored that. Instead, we went right for the Aquatic Pets isle. I thought we were going to be looking at the fishies, but nope. My horn disappointed me again. Not intentionally, of course. I was curious what my horn was planning, then we stopped in front of a particularly large fish tank, then I figured it out like I figured out the door! I was on a roll today. That tank was filled with the most toughest weapon that my horn thought was available. They were 50s greaser piranhas! They’re the natural enemy of flaming psychic zombie squirrels! Yeah, 50s greaser piranhas… They look like they came out of a 50s highschool Broadway show about 50s greasers. You know, black leather jackets, crazy greased up 50s hair which they constantly comb, they got the whole pseudo-badboy look going on, and they’re piranhas… Actually, 50s greaser piranhas are the only known fish to be scientifically proven to be the ones with hair… Your bathroom is safe, they only live in city slums. They don’t like to go near authority figures. So I grab the side of the tank and everything starts melting. I was just borrowing the fishies. I’ll be paying back the store manager for any that were lost. Do you know if monkeys accept bits? If they do, then I’m in trouble . I spent all my bits on bananas. I know that’s racist, but I was thinking with my horn at the time. We melt back to the other universe, with the fishies’ tank, and… The horn pulling? Well, he’s a bit aggressive with it. I wouldn’t call it violent, but he sometimes goes a bit overboard… Sometimes. I don’t get headaches unless he’s really going crazy… Most of the time it’s a four, but occasionally it’s agonizing enough to be a seven or eight… Head trauma, why would you say that?... An X-ray? Heck yeah! I want to see what my ribs look like! I got the fishies’ tank to my world, and we end up in the streets. Well, the worst had come to worse, and the entire street was covered in a blazing dray. Buildings were burning, angry trashcans with that red glowy stuff were getting thrown around, the little zombie suckers were gnawing at all the ponies that were still in the road. But when I pulled out the fishie’s tank, all the squirrels stopped. They looked at the tank, and the piranhas looked at the squirrels. If looks could kill, theirs probably would have. It was like getting caught in the middle of a battlefield where imaginary lasers and flames were shooting from everyone’s eyes. But that’s a simile, of course that couldn’t happen. Everypony knows that flaming psychic zombie squirrels and 50s greaser piranhas can’t shoot lasers out of their eyes. Well, the party wasn’t gonna get started on its own, so I yelled, “Learn to swim, you three-ringed circus sideshow of freaks!” and I tipped the tank over. Water spilt all over the place, and the piranhas were splashing everywhere. You’d think piranhas would just stay splashing there, but no. They made eye-contact with the squirrels, and like the rules of animal battles dictated, they engaged and had at each other. You’d also think there’d be an epic battle in the streets, but you’d be wrong. When the flaming squirrels picked up their acorn bullets and the greaser piranhas pulled out their switch blades, they decided the most civilized place to fight would be inside the Kitten Orphanage they were standing in front of, so they just start pouring in the place as they’re slashing at each other. That wasn’t good, since zombie squirrels and greaser piranhas like to eat kittens when they get hungry, and fighting makes them very hungry! That was a building full of kittens, and it was filling up with angry carnivores! I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I let any of those cute little critters get harmed by the nasty little critters. So I did what any heroic pony would do, I risked my life, limbs, and face in that ocean of tiny monsters, and I ran in to save the little fellas! Or I would’ve, if my horn decided to come along with me. I knew what was gonna go down, so I tried to make a dash to save all the little kitties, but my horn was going, “Nopenopenope, don’t wanna get eaten in there”. He didn’t outright tell me that, but he was trying to pull as hard as he could in the opposite direction. I got the message, but I wasn’t going to listen. “Come on,” I told him, “We got to go in and risk our lives and save the kittens from being eaten by flaming zombie squirrels and 50s greaser piranhas!” But he wasn’t listening. Apparently, saving an orphanage of baby kittens wasn’t risking you getting eaten alive by tiny predators. So we get this all-out tug-of-war going. I’m trying to save kittens, and he was trying to get away. It’s a stalemate! I step a few inches backwards, he pulls a few inches forwards. It was an epic battle of epicness over the lives of abandoned felines! Quite frankly, all that going in opposite direction stuff took a big toll on my neck, but a visit to the chiropractor would be a small price to pay for the safety of those kittens. If I could just find a way to break my horn’s hold, or convince him to go with me. “I know going in is dangerous, but we can’t let those monsters get to the kittens. They’re kittens, man! Don’t you want to save the kittens?” My horn did a little shake to say no. Clearly this wasn’t going to go anywhere, and I didn’t know what to do. I was stumped. There wasn’t anypony else around to go in and save the kittens, nor would they likely risk their life just to save a few animals. Cruel world with cruel ponies, I know. I was the only one that could save them! That burning orphanage, now burning from the squirrels, was going to be lost and with all the kittens with it, just because my horn didn’t want to go in! Then I heard it. I heard thousands of “meows” sounding off from the building! It was like a thousand souls screaming at once, only cuter, and it was tearing me up. How could you be so heartless that you couldn’t even think of helping those sweet things? Well, my horn is literally heartless, being a bone and all, so I guess he fits the bill. But when I heard those little wittle pleas for help, it tipped me over to the point where I had enough. Power coursed through my body, and I overcame the pull of my horn. His pull dissolved from me! I overcame his pull! I had become stronger than the pull! I can be stronger than my horn! I burst through the doors to that place, ready to get down to business. Business was going to have a hard day, though. There were all manner of fights and battles going on everywhere. Fishies were fighting rodents, rodents were fighting fishies! A group of greasers had a group of zombies cornered with their switchblades. A bunch of squirrels were jumping around the ceiling and chucking acorns and random objects in the red glowy stuff at the fishies. A whole bunch of piranhas were chewing up a whole bunch of zombie squirrels! I made a run for the stairs, were I kept on hearing the meowing. Both squirrels and piranhas jumped up and latched on to my skin once I ran through the crowd. They started tearing at me, burning and ripping and scratching and causing one heck of a pain fest. Heck, a piranha and a squirrel were dueling on my back with a knife and floating lamp, respectively, and they were fighting dirty. But I kept running. No matter how much of my flesh the little demons bit and ate, those kittens were more important than my wellbeing! I reached the stairs and ran up to the second floor, where the little monsters were just barely pouring in to do their fighting. I rushed down the hall as I listened, then I heard the meows come from the room at the back, I burst through the door to see all the kittens, all unscathed. But they wouldn’t be unscathed for long if I didn’t work fast enough! It was a big room, and kittens were scurrying through every nook and cranny. I needed a way to get them all to safety, somehow. Too bad the orphanage owners didn’t install emergency exits in case of zombie squirrel invasion, and too bad my horn wasn’t helping me with any ideas. It was a terrible time for his passive aggressiveness to come up. A group of zombie squirrels was getting pushed back into the room by a bigger group of greaser piranhas, so I only had so much time before they all start spilling into the place. I started frantically looking around, trying to come up with a plan and beat the clock at the same time. I closed the door to cut off the rest of the battle, which wouldn’t last long against the flaming squirrels, and distant parts of the building were already on fire, so it was only a matter of time. Then I came up with an idea. I went to a nearby cupboard to see if it contained the object of my desire, and lo and behold, there was a jar of catnip! Cats are addicted to that stuff, and they’ll follow it anywhere. Without thinking, I opened the window and opened the jar. All the cats just freaked when they smelt their favorite pastime substance. All the kittens looked at me, those that were hiding poked out their tiny heads to see what I was holding. When I knew I had their attention, I chucked the jar out of the window, and they all just bolted for it. They were a tiny furry storm of cuteness blasted past my face! Once the last one had jumped out, I smiled at how proud I felt for having come up with a brilliant idea, but then the thought hit me, would they be safe jumping out of a two story window after a bit of catnip. Out of paranoia, I looked out of the window to make sure they were safe. Fortunately, there was a thick grassy area that all the kittens landed on. None of them seemed to be injured, and they all seemed happy just to roll around in the pile of catnip that was all over the place. All I could see was a sea of fuzz-balls! Before I could relax, I heard another meow, one that came from the hallway. I opened the door and braced for the wave of flames and rodents and fish and knives that I tripped over. The hallway was teeming with anarchy, and sitting on a shelf at the end above the fighting, there was a small tabby, too scared to jump down. Even the life of a single kitty was one worth saving. The sea of monsters was getting thick and choppy, but that didn’t matter to me. I charged down the hallway, running through the frenzy of the carnivorous monsters. I got between their fights. Several of them bit into me deep, I could feel teeth rip through muscle. Several of the zombie squirrels spat fire into the wounds they carved, cooking my insides and searing my flesh. Several of the greaser piranhas just stabbed me, it was just rude. The shelf that the kitten was sitting on was about to burn up in flames, and I was not gonna let that happen! The only hope that tabby had of being saved was me, and I still had a hallway of monsters to run though! I could feel myself getting weaker and weaker with every new cut inflicted every new burn that grazed me, every new slice with ever blade that went across me. It was painful, but I kept on going. I wasn’t going to let any of it get to me! I yelled, then I jumped! Everything went into bullet time as I soared over the throngs of violent critters. That shelf was about to crack, and I was about to catch the kitten. The kitten looked scared, and it looked pitiful with the flames licking up to grab it. I wasn’t going to let those flames get a taste. It was a race between me and the burning shelf. Before the shelf could collapse, I grabbed the kitten in midair, saving the tabby from falling into the pit of flames and demons! The kitten was safe, but only if I could get it out safe, and I was still soaring in the air. Not knowing how to control myself midflight, I ended up crashing through the weakened wall, and found myself soaring out of the side of the building, flames exploding out of the hole behind me as I flew away. I escaped the hoard, and saved the tabby kitty, too, and I was flying through the sky, which was what earthbound ponies could only dream of! Unfortunately, I was soaring two stories above an asphalt parking lot. I hear those things are hard. (0)_(0) “… I don’t remember much after that. I think my horn pulled me back to the apartment, since I was in my bed. I couldn’t find Spock anywhere, so I guess he either left or got eaten by the zombie squirrels. My hula lamp was also busted, which is a shame. I really liked that lamp. At some point I heard that the squirrels killed off all the piranhas, and the squirrels were allergic to the moonlight, so that’s taken care of.” Dr. Law nodded as the patient concluded his story, scribbling a few notes down on his clipboard. “That sounds very heroic of you, but when I said ‘tell me everything’, I meant tell me how you got here. I don’t see any injury consistent with your story.” “That’s because all that happened a while ago. I’m all healed up now. I was just thinking of that story when you were talking to me.” “Do you always think of stories like this?” The patient shook his head. “Not always. A lot of what happens to me is horrible and unmentionable to the average pony, but I like that story because it reminds me that I don’t always have to listen to my horn. And that’s when I got my kitty, Daisy. She’s the one I jumped out of the building with.” The nurse pulled open the curtain walked in with a folder. “Here are the results. Surprisingly, the blood test came up negative in everything, nothing in his system. But the X-rays do show significant head trauma and neck strain.” “Do the police have what we asked for?” The nurse shrugged. “They didn’t have anything. No arrest record. Also, Insurance doesn’t have a Femur registered.” The doctor thanked the nurse as he took the folder from her and started flipping through its contents. “I’ve never seen anything like this. That horn is definitely a part of you. And looking at these X-Rays, I’m surprised you’ve managed to live this long.” The patient chuckled at the comment. “It’s been years since the last doctor said that to me. Trust me, I’ll be fine. My horn won’t let that get in the way.” “In this case, and after listening to your… story, I recommend getting immediate treatment. Do you still get headaches? They’re only going to get worse.” “I can deal with the headaches. Can we not talk about this? It’s not what I came here for.” Dr. Law’s eyebrow rose. “Why are you here?” Femur lifted a hoof up, and pointed to a small spot on it with his other. “I have a paper cut.”