=Aoi=

Sojiro stood over me on my bedside, wringing out a steaming towel to place on my head.

<<I'm gonna make you all better, Nii-san!>> He assured me, which was less of an assurance and more of a factor of worry... for my well being.

<<Aren't you a little too young to be handling hot water? You could burn yourself.>>

<<EH?! I'm 21 Now!>> I closed my eyes. Hopefully, if I tuned him out his nonsense wouldn't get to me. He looked less than 5, much less 21.

How old was I? I counted back to my first day in this world, I had been 24 then, I think it had been 2 years... no, maybe less, maybe more... I guess that put me at 26 and counting. At least I remembered today's date: December 1. Woo Hoo....

'WAIT! DECEMBER 1? SHIT! I need to send the letters!' I jerked upwards in my bed and lunged to my desk before I felt something jerk me back down into it.

<<YOU CAN'T GET OUT OF BED! You're still sick.>> The little cub was surprisingly strong for his size.

<<I need to send my letters, let me go!>>

<<NO! Sleep! Sleep or you won't get better!>>

"Grrr.... SOMEBODY HELP ME!!!" Immediately a dog came in ready to aid me. Unfortunately I underestimated him. he immediately conjured a rope and lassoed the dog into submission. A 5 year old with magic. I was screwed six ways to Sunday.

<<There! The last doggy got away, not this one!>>

I took my chance and grabbed Sojiro, taking off my obi and wrapping him up in a chair.

<<You don't attack people like that, Sojiro!>> I'll have to admit though, it was a good countermeasure. I untied the dog on the floor and lifted him up.

"Many thanks, you may go back to your--ACHOO! *sniffle* post!"

"Just doing my job," he slurred as he walked out, hearts fluttering around his head. I shook mine and grabbed the letters off my desk, and a handkerchief for good measure.

I shoved the letters in my mouth to free up my paws, retying my obi before any other dogs saw what was under my kimono (despite the fact that most already saw). I flipped through the letters one by one to make sure I had all the recipients accounted for: Wonderbolts, international guests, potentially Griffin once he gets out of the hospital. A quick trip down to the council chambers, crossing it towards the messenger's den, and off they went.

I crossed over a few tunnels to get to the mess hall, and one more junction to get to the main kitchen. Many cooks were asleep at the moment, having prepped the kitchen for the evening meals. Many ponies and a few griffins were either sliding down the counters of their stations, or curled up in a corner with toques slightly tipped over their eyes. I grabbed a generous amount of salt and dashed it into a simmering pot. Grabbing a rather large towel, I covered it over my head and the pot and breathed deep. The steam helped clear up my nostrils and relieve the pressure pounding in my sinuses. To a few slumbering kitchen hands, I did the courtesy of dimming some of the kitchen lamps. As I did so, I heard some yawns spread throughout the room. Tip-toeing over sleepless chefs, I counted the number of cooks in the kitchen: 143. A few stations had left some cookery on to simmer some long stewing meals, I could smell the savory scent of stewed pork and the pungent, clean and spicy scent of coriander.

A hundred and forty three cooked the meals of thousands daily. I had to admire their commitment to keeping everyone fed, and not only that but to keep the quality of the meals relatively high. I remember some sparring mates at the Agency having a military background, and the one thing they said had always given them the strength to fight was how the cooks there were always striving to deliver the closest thing to a home-cooked meal. Gossip floated around the den at time saying that other mares and hens would come in the kitchen to make their own meals for their families. Looking around, I could tell that the kitchen had enough spare stations to support the gossip.

Maybe if I asked Just Desserts, he'd let me use a station or two to cook some meals of my own. Back in my apartment, I'd often be the one to cook the meals for Keith and I, he having the culinary skills of a college student with a lackluster budget. The times I didn't cook, he would always order take out, everything from cheap shit imitation kaiseki cuisine to the surprising feat of managing to order Mexican food in Tokyo. After we ate, we'd always just chuck the shit that was left over in the sink, takeout boxes, greased up dishes, whatever, then deal with it at the end of the week. I distinctly remember a week where we ate nothing but Haagen Dazs due to a bad week of strep throat on my part. By the end of that week, there was nothing but small, miniature, paper cups lightly filmed on the inside with melted vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry ice cream. Even if I wasn't down with strep throat, me and Keith would go out to Osaka for the ice cream there just as the sun set, and for once, I could get him to shut up about his silly little memes for an hour or so.

The thought of ice cream brought my attention to the many silver coated refrigerators along the walls. I waved away temptation and made my way towards Just Dessert's office. The translucent glass in the middle of the door revealed a moving silhouette. I cracked open the door and peered inside to see the chef scribbling frantically on a swiveling chair, a harsh turn squealed the under greased pivot of his chair and he bucked to zoom across the room to a personal mini-fridge, taking out a strange assortment of foreign seasonings and a slab of what I could only assume to be dried fruits.

It was then that I knocked on his door.

"Oh! Aoi, What a pleasant surprise. I meant to ask, what did you think of my menu?”

I rubbed the back of my head, a bit embarrassed on recalling the results of consuming that phenomenal dessert.

“Well, if I had to describe it in one word, it was pretty... sensational.”

“That's excellent to hear! Tell me, did you happen to “explode in euphoria” if you catch my drift?”

My face immediately heated up to crimson.

“Well... I... um... if you mean... um...” I stammered. “*Ahem* If you mean what I think you mean... then... um... yes?”

“Excellent! I'm glad it worked then!”

“Wait, what do you mean by worked?”

“'Well, your doctor told me about your 'dilemma'. It gave me some good practice. My goal was to make a menu that was better than sex!”

I made a mental note to brutally torture Keith later.

“I must say, you—heh—do have a way with food.”

“But of course! You don't go from five stars to three, become horribly exiled in a foreign country for about three years, then come back to have a legendary review upon your return for nothing you know.”

“Right... In any case, I was wondering how the catering for the Ball was coming along.”

His expression became rather flustered at my mention of this. “A tad dismal, actually. You see--” He swirled around in his chair towards his desk with his assortment. “--I have been working on a bit of a project for Capitan Griffin, you see.”

“Oh?”

“Why yes. I take it you know ponies consider red meat to be a bit of a forbidden delicacy?”

“I suppose.”

“Well then, it just so happens that what I've been working on is a perfect culinary substitute for meat.”

“Is that so?”

He nodded. “Yes, except I haven't even gotten close.”

“Well, I'm sure you'll get it sooner or later.”

“Thank you for the encouragement, but I'm afraid that this may be a feat that is just simply beyond my level of skill.”

I smirk. “Hey, any chef that can make a dish that can induce an 'explosion of euphoria' can make anything possible with their cooking. I have faith in you.”

“I appreciate it,” he said, then taking a look at his sundry group of ingredients. “Do you think you can help me test some of my combinations?”

“Sure.”

He took a small bit of what looked like a prune sprinkled with some sort of orange powder and offered it to me. I picked it up from his hoof and popped it in my mouth. Surprisingly, it tasted almost like beef jerky, down to the dry chewiness; it even had notes of being honey smoked. What betrayed it as being nothing more than a fruit was the infinitesimal aftertaste.

“Close, indescribably close, and delicious too, but this is a date, isn't it?” I felt bad for having shot down his work while masked in a blunt compliment. I was quick to follow up.

“Don't feel bad though, even with the aid of special laboratory spices, the finest Canterlot cooks couldn't get to the level you've gotten with this experiment of yours. I'm sure with a few months-”

“A few months?! But, isn't the ball-”

“Relax, Besides, El Capitan of the Griffin Pirates likes seafood better anyway. He turned down bacon for battered perch.” I grabbed another piece of the poseur jerky and popped it in my mouth. “To be honest, I would have gone with bacon myself, crass I know, but still.” I swallow and savor the lingering taste of honey mixed with the slight fruity aftertaste. “Pork is a nice, sweet meat.”

It was then that I noticed a slight anxious, yet glazed look in his eyes, almost as if reminded of some guilty pleasure in his past life. Could it be?

“Again, color me quite impressed. The entire entourage of chefs at Canterlot Castle had to pry open out memories to get the tastes just right, you've done it with no experience of ever tasting red meat, isn't that right?” At this he shook himself from his daze.

“Oh yes, right.... right...” He averted his eyes. I knew. I wasn't about to pull out the inquisition though, and so let sleeping dogs lie.

“By the way, I can't let you give me a taste test of such an excellent morsel without returning it in kind. Would you mind if I came back another day and provide a crash course for kaiseki cuisine?”

He perked right up. “Oh, that would be splendid! Should I prepare anything?”

“Hmm, some tofu, lots of dried seaweed, dried mackerel, flour, starch, and soy sauce.” I would have to import the rest of the ingredients from elsewhere. “I'll remember to stop by with the rest. Hope your experiment goes well.”

As I was leaving Just Desserts' office, another figure was waiting for my, body leaned against the frame of the entryway, a cold look in his glassy eyes, an expression that glossed over my anatomy rather than seeking an audience with me. It was Stitch, wasn't sure if I should add the preffix of doctor. He pushed off the frame and turned around, leaving behind a glance as if to say, 'Find me if you want to talk, let me be lost if you don't.'

Seeing as all my business had been taken care of for the day, I decided to sate my curiosity by following him down to the airship bay, which lacked one white dragon and a couple of diamond dog bay staff grabbing a few diamonds for a luxury snack. Ubi was missing as well. The two probably decided to catch up with a flying session or something of the like.

I looked back at Stitch, who didn't even bother to check back to see if I was following or not, merely swaying back and forth as he trotted, as if constantly off balance... or drunk. I hadn't met him for long. Strangely enough, the burn marks that had marred his snout previously when I saw him after the Bitsburg incident were gone now, replaced with flesh I could tell wasn't his.

Traversing through the H.M.S. Rolling Thunder, I stopped tailing Stitch to get topside on the main deck. Spick and span, varnished to a brilliant sheen. There went worrying about the gore that had stained the deck. It nagged me that I had been forgetting the fact that I had been in bed for more than I realized, the world repairing itself while I was still dreaming. I slid a paw over the banister to feel it squeaky clean. On impulse, I licked both my palms and rubbed them on the banister, adding at least some grease to besmirch an unnatural cleanliness.

Catching up back to Stitch, I realized he still kept that lumbering pace, as if he never slowed down or sped up, knowing I would be right behind him eventually. Gradually, I felt myself getting light headed. Immediately, Stitch went into a three-legged gait and dug around in a coat pocket, bringing out a silver box and tossing it backwards, without missing that same haphazard beat. I got the box and opened it: a sticky note reading 'eat' and a few sticks that smelled like cake. I took one stick, dabbed it on my tongue to make sure it wasn't drugged, and—with confidence that it wasn't—shoved both sticks into my mouth, chewing voraciously and swallowing. It brought to mind that I hadn't eaten anything accept the sample of “fruit jerky” since I woke up.

I closed the tin and looked up at him, words caught in my throat on whether to thank him or not. I could only croak out, “T-Th...” but a strange air around Stitch left me awkwardly stammering. I still don't know what kind of aura he was portraying. My best guess would have been a cold disregard to the entire world.

He tapped a panel on the side of a door, signaling the hydraulics to slide the door open. He turned and went inside, performing a returning routine with the exact melancholy beat of his walk: loosening a button on his coat, signing a clipboard, changing an IV of a comatose patient (bless the poor guy), and finally easing down onto a chair, with a sigh that hissed like the hydraulics of the ship.

I managed to get a good look at his face. It was a bit different in certain aspects, the facial complexions were tighter, more like saran wrap, the stitches that patched his face together were close knit and less noticeable, almost like they belonged there instead of clearly marking that he had surgery. The last feature I was unsure about, as I couldn't recall exactly: it appeared as if his eyes were different than when I saw him after Bitsburg.

He rolled over to a small, gray chest and produced from it a vial labeled 'STERILE' with a tooth inside. Flashing an approving nod, he pocketed the vial and rolled back to his station. From a jar, he grabbed two lollipops and tossed one my direction. I caught it and unwrapped it at my leisure. He wasted no time in popping his into his muzzle.

“Keith told me you're partial to sweets,” were his introducing words. He leaned back in his chair, grabbing a nearby clipboard. “Where is he, by the way?”

I eased my lollipop into my mouth, letting the saturated cherry taste hit my tongue while I balled up the crackling wrapper within my paw.

“No idea. I did notice it was rather quiet in the bay.”

“Hmm,” he said with dejection.

I eyed the comatose patient lying on the bed. A griffin, female. She looked almost like she was asleep, except she was hooked up to an oxygen tank and her chest barely moved.

“She's been like that ever since the cleanup after that airship attack. During the cleanup, a piece of metal that was lodged in the mountain decided to become unstuck and fall right onto her head. Vital signs okay, but she hasn't woken up, no matter how loud it gets in this part of the ship. So don't worry, what we say is between you and me.” He flipped through the clipboard and jotted down an unknown detail, the handle of the lollipop jutting out of his mouth like a cigarette. I heard a muffled crunching sound. “Day's been slow, sit down.”

I obliged and built up the momentum to say, “You look different.”

He paused and rolled his pupil towards me. “It's surprising how little I actually hear that.” He caught a pen that slid out from the top of the clipboard and placed both on a small table. “Also, Keith told me extensively on your condition, and has said he feels a bit inadequate to stick you on a strict diet without force. I told him that I'd take care of that. So considering your current eating habits, I'm now threatening you. You eat less than 14,000 calories a day, I will personally come to your room at night and shove cake down your throat until you shit frosting. Luckily for you, that threat is hollow since as of last week, I am your dietary physician.”

The last phrase rubbed me the wrong way. “Wait you mean...”

“Oh no, your little 'accident' was Keith's idea. But the amount of calories that I told the chef to force into your meal was mine.”

I was slightly relieved, if only slightly. I flinched when I picked up the muffle sound of a bone cracking out of nowhere.

He wheeled over to a comm station and opened the line. “Nurse CiCi, bring up some wire from supply.”

I was rather taken aback. When I first saw him, I thought him more reserved than anything else. A few sentences revealed him to be a lot more: cold, blunt, and dominating. I felt like I needed to get control over the conversation, even though I had said very little to begin with. More and more of my sense of control was being robbed just by his very presence, like I was in a hostage situation and Stitch had a gun pressed against my temple.

The door opened with a gasp to let a pony in. The light blue coated pony held a package of sutures. I could tell by the look alone that she felt the same thing coming into the room. She placed it on the nearest table and quickly turned to get herself out before-

“One thing, Nurse CiCi.” She halted in her tracks, now visibly sweating. She slowly creaked her head back, eyes now wide, her terrified gaze hitting mine for a split second as if to scream “Help me!” without a voice to do so.

She swallowed and stammered, “U-Um, y-yes, D-d-d-doctor?”

He didn't even bother to look at her while sorting through some assorted records. “Your most recent report describe the cadaver having died of shock, a good start. However the internal bleeding was not limited to just the abdominal area. Remember that the cadaver's ribs had also been broken and a few pieces of those ribs migrated to the esophagus, puncturing it. You should be able to piece together the rest.”

Nurse CiCi's lips quivered, cracking open to attempt to make a response. I interceded on her behalf. “He drowned in his own blood.”

Stitch shot me an angered look. I overstepped a boundary. A glance back at Nurse CiCi managed to retrieve a quiet “Thank you”.

“I won't fault you for confusing one with the other, but be sure to thoroughly analyze other possible culprits.” He rubbed his eyes. “Also get some sleep, I know they can take long, but you need to learn to actually sleep. I can see the dark circles under your eyes from here.”

“Y-Yes, Doctor.” With lightning speed, she was gone. A brief pause allowed the silence to build up again, just in time for Stitch to brutally murder it.

“Aoi,” he called. “We'll have plenty of time to talk, so please, do not interrupt when I'm speaking with others, do I make myself clear?”

I gave a slight roll of my shoulders as a useless attempt to regain a firm posture. “Inescapably.”

He sighed as he shut the folder in his hooves and slid them in a metal cabinet. The air seemed to drop a few degrees, like his breath alone was subzero.

“Keith's off on some adventure,” he began. “He took Eol, Ubi, and Apple Jack with him.”

Oh God...

“I doubt they'll get into too much trouble, though,” he reassured me as he laid is neck over the top of his office chair, snout pointed skyward. “They went to Ponyville. Keith and Eol roped Apple Jack, Ubi and White Dust into something needing to go to Ponyville for. I saw them from off the port side.”

Now, I was worried for Ponyville.

“I have to warn you though, stop me if I ramble, I can be quite the chatterbox when I'm off-duty.” He pulled the remains of the lollipop out of his mouth, revealing a bone dry white stick where the cherry candy was. I took mine out to find out I haven't even gone through half of it. Without even looking, he tossed the stick squarely into a medical bin that read 'BIOHAZARD'.

It was daunting to try and describe his appearance. The closest I could come to describing him was like the monster of Frankenstein, but even that would be a poor bastardization. Half his face was divided on a diagonal between the eyes, one part ivory, the other part a pale brown. He turned around and kicked off a table, wheeling in my direction. He stopped right as the back of the chair was inches away from the table with a package of sutures, and about two feet away from me, as if forcing me to look directly at him. He brought his neck down and set his gaze right at me, that same glassy look as before, absent of any sense of emotion, or even life for that matter. He reached back behind his chair to grab the sutures, not even breaking eye contact with me. Even two feet away, with all my experience in interpreting body language, I could get absolutely nothing. No motive, no reason, no hint of what he was about to say next. He could be planning to stab me in the throat, for all I know. I was glued to my seat, attempting to anticipate his next move.

“You're not gonna beat me, you know.”

I blinked.

“See? I could last for days. It's difficult, don't get me wrong, but not impossible.” He handed me the package of sutures. I was trying to comprehend the fact that he thought I was in a staring contest with him.

“One moment.” He opened his mouth and reached inside, pulling out a bloodied, yellow, cracked tooth. He looked at it, tossed it like a miniature basketball into the 'BIOHAZARD' basket, sucked his remaining teeth and pulled out the vial, twisting it open and using tweezers to extract the tooth nestled inside.

“So, what did you want to talk about?”

After sitting there with more uncertainty than casualty, I shook myself awake and replied with a dumb, “What?”

“Well, you followed me all the way to my quarters, you must have something on your chest.”

“Um,” I uttered, slack with the mixed messages he had been sending me. I cleared my throat. At first I thought it was something he wanted to say to me, now there I was sitting on an office chair, fumbling about like a statuesque idiot. I searched through my brain to think of something.

“Well...” Small talk? Serious discussion? Condition on the comatose griffon? Anything!

“Keith told me you used to have a medical license,” I gulped.

“Did he now?” He reeled his hoof back. I slowly inched away.

*SMACK

Out of nowhere, Stitch punched himself in the jaw, then turned back to me without changing his expression for a single second, except now with a limp jowl that seemed to stretch like loose hanging putty.

“Do me a favor and hold my jaw down.” I reached over tentatively and pulled the loosely hanging bottom half down. He hovered the tweezers over the gap in his otherwise pristine upper row of teeth. He wedged the new tooth into the soft, exposed gum. Once the white chunk was safely in place, he noted, “You can let go now.”

I moved my paw away, but kept it near. “Um... is there anything-”

*Ka-Chunk

He brought his free hoof upwards as he uppercut-ted himself, plunking back down into his chair. The tweezers went on the counter to free up his hooves just in time to snap his jaw back into place with a pop. I was surprised he was able to take that much self-abuse without so much as a whimper. When I could get a good look at him again, I saw his chin was now bleeding, the tightly bound skin having been torn by the force of his hits.

He pursed his lips and sucked his teeth once more. “I'd like my sutures back now, if you don't mind.”

I almost wanted to refuse them from him. It was something he wanted, and I wanted to rob him of it, just to have some semblance of control and defiance against his very presence. But ultimately, I relented.

“Thank you.” He rolled back to his desk and brought out a needle, and did what I assumed was stitching his chin back together. After some snipping of excess sutures, he wheeled back around and faced me.

“Going back to your previous statement, Aoi,” he recalled as he swept back his greasy black mane, “There had been a time when you could say that I was a licensed practitioner. However, that time has passed, and, as of now, I am an unlicensed practitioner of medicine. Would you like to know more?”

I gulped and nodded once. He gave a hinted smile and kicked up his hind legs unto his professionally waxed mahogany desk.

“I'm going to put this a bit bluntly: I could tell you each and every microscopic detail about my life story, yet it remains to be seen whether or not you would know anything about me. How good are you at listening?”

I clench my fists at his statement, “I can listen just fine, thank you very much.”

“There's a good lad,” he grinned. “Tell me, how old do you suspect me to be?”

I looked him up and down, he seemed to be in his prime, but his black hair betrayed some wisps of gray. Fairing on the cautious side, I answered, “I suspect you to be around your mid-fifties.”

“Oooh, you're the closest yet.” He reached a hoof over to a drawer and pulled out a small bag, ripped it open and took out a glistening golden potato chip. “Still wrong though. Let me blunt again, I consider my conversations with Keith to be the more enlightening ones, who'd have thought in your world, these things are toxic to us ponies. And here I had been taking them for granted as a commonplace snackfood.” He tossed one up and snapped it out of the air. “Oh, yes, about my age. I'm actually going on 95.

“I take it I'm giving you a bit of a surprise. Keith told you that I was a bit reclusive, right? That I'd have a tendency to talk to no one except him?”

“You'd be correct on that.”

“And you're probably thinking to yourself, 'How come now he starts talking when before he'd barely say more than four or five words at most?' Well I'll tell you why, because you're too damn afraid to admit it.”

“Admit what?”

“You have no bucking idea what's going on in my head.”

“What?”

“Obviously.” He stared at me for a second. “You know Keith often lauded you as a person able to tell when a person is lying just by looking at them the moment they tell a lie, and size them up. I'm not seeing it, seeing that you've had your eyes glued at me the entire time, I've lied to you twice, and you have yet to call bullshit on me. I'd rob you dry if we were playing poker.”

“Lie?”

“Yes, the thing that people tell when they don't want a person that they're talking to to know the truth!”

“I know what a lie is!” I snapped.

“GHEHAHAHAHAHAHHA! BULLSHIT!” He had a genuine grin of enjoyment on his face, the only emotion that I could truly get out of him. “If you know what a lie is, then you should be able to call me out on it, now granted the second lie I told was hard to gather, but the first one was so damn obvious you should have picked it up! After all, lies are in part contradictions.”

I stopped and relayed the previous ten minutes back in my head. “I see... I guess I need to call you out then: Why did you ask me where Ubi, Keith, and the others were?”

“Now you're back up to speed. To answer your question, I wanted you to see how piss poorly you've been keeping up with your own—as you'd put it—family. And for all you know, they could have been kidnapped by Varg and sold into slavery.”

“Ridiculous, Varg would never-”

“Do anything like that? Gheheheh, obviously you don't know Varg like I do. He offers you hospitality because you're extra leverage. After all, an undead has-been like Varg suddenly housing the Lunar Legend, the prophesied Savior of Gem Fido . You are a prize, Aoi! To simple minded pup of the lowest genetic caste run of Omega, you are a god made flesh! It's fascinating how things like faith in a person can generate such a large amount of influence. Don't you remember when you and Varg made 'delegations' to five other clans?”

“I thought those were made rather pe-”

“PEACFULLY?! Pop some steroids and call me a body-builder! You forgot that three clans wanted neutrality rather than outright join your little 'cause', and one wanted to declare war on Varg, that is, until you showed up. Out of the five clans you AND Varg visited, only one pledged allegiance: The clan of Quaretzel, who's clan is—after you talked to them—known to be particularly linked to Varg. Now what does that say about Varg in particular?”

He did bring up a rather valid point, but to be swayed on simply an instance of deduction would be foolish. I decided to drop a bit of naivety. “He has grudges, and old allies, so does everyone.”

“You're an idiot.”

I winced. “Now I--”

“I'm not finished,” he snapped, “Oh no, definitely nowhere near finished. I'm seriously disappointed in you! Here I am, thinking that you of all people would hold the most feelings of suspicion, but no, you are just freely and willingly eating out of the hand shoved in your face. You never questioned why Varg gave you hospitality in the first place?”

I opened my mouth to object, yet failed to do so.

“We're in an unlocked cage, Aoi. Benign in nature, ulterior in motive. We've got protection, food, water, few rules except reasonable ones, so how in the world has others not joined Varg's clan seeking hospitality? Because deep down, he's as power hungry as the rest of the Alphas. Peace he preaches, I'm sure, but one does not simply preach it with a blade behind his back. It's story time Aoi, want me to tuck you in?”

I shook my head.

“Didn't think so. Long ago, Varg did the same thing that he's doing right now. He swayed Alphas into making pacts with him, earning their trust with bread and circuses, vowing to care for every clan member he could. In fact he did so with absolute efficiency. Don't get me wrong, his way of caring for business is fascinating the way he can, without ever leaving a trace of how he did it.”

I made the connection almost immediately.

“Quaretzel.”

He gave a slick grin, one stretching the stitches that went diagonal across his face.

“Precisely. Quaretzel was his right hand, no one knows for sure his relation to Varg. In fact, very few know actually know of Quaretzel's continued existence. Emphasis on 'continued'.”

“He's undead like Varg?”

“More like Undying. Interestingly enough Quaretzel gained his hands on forbidden magic. Magic whose origin is how I came upon all this information. Quaretzel possesses a branch of Necromancy, one that is linked to a sect of the underworld that many necromancers ogle, but never touch. You see, Quaretzel's soul is rooted here, on the surface, and will forever be rooted because he exchanged his soul for his body.”

“That's possible?”

“You say that like it's a surprise. Anything is possible, but legal and ethical? That's a can of worms for another day. What you met when you visited him was not his physical form. It was a doll.”

“A doll?”

“Or puppet, but doll to me sounds more malicious in a morbid connotation. Quiz time! If Quaretzel exchanged his body to root his soul to the surface, then how did he make the doll that he currently resides in?”

It took me a few moments, but I eventually put two and two together. “You made it for him.”

“Excellent! You get a cookie!” He reached into a jar on his desk, pulled out a cookie and threw it at me. Without thinking I snapped it out of the air. Mmm... chocolate.

He snickered and brought me from my moment of instinctual bliss back to the reality of the situation.

“No no, keep going, you're adorable when you act stupid.”

I shot daggers at him, but to little effect.

“Oh don't be like that, Aoi, not many people act smart when they literally eat out of someone's hoof. Or metaphorically for that matter. See, here's the general play here. There was a reason Varg wanted to keep his existence a secret until now. Although he's undead, he's weakened, he's not the brave, valiant hero anymore cause he's... well dead, so therefore, he's not as strong as he once was. He used to command not just clans but an army that he controlled with whispers. Now, he has to start from scratch. Or does he? With you as his little flagship doggy, that's two actual wolves in existence in the same clan at the same time. Well, more or less, depends on how long you still want to roll with the idea of 'Clan Nanashi' now, doesn't it?”

Stitch shifted his hooves over the arms of his chair and made that cold plastic expression everyone on board knew him for. Something didn't add up, though.

“Back track a few steps, if you're about 95, and Varg and Quaretzel's been dead—excuse me—undead for the past 300 years, how is it that Quaretzel managed to contact you to make his doll in the first place?”

“Huh, didn't expect you to go in that direction, but at least I know you've been listening. Quaretzel's a sneaky dog, no pun intended, so he himself has rather... dark connections. You know the daggers he gave you? No ordinary daggers. They're hexed, bound by magical contract, one dagger, one soul.”

“I'm sorry, I must have misheard you, soul?”

“Soul, the thing that necromancers toy with in order to obtain some semblance of immortality. Personally, I don't deal with things like this unless I'm paid nominally. I digress, the black daggers are relics of the underworld, made in under-the-table dealings between Hephaestus and Hades. Mainly they're saved for capturing escaped convicts of Tartarus, but like any other plane of existence, they're not always used as intended. Many are sold in markets of the blackened variety, because they are in fact illegal weapons in many parts of the world due to their soul trapping nature. If you brought them into Equestria, a minute field detecting such relics would immediately set you from law abiding citizen to wanted dead or alive.”

“So you're telling me these-” I take out the three black daggers of Quaretzel's gifting. “-can steal someone's soul?”

“Congrats, Aoi, you've graduated from ordinary mercenary to soul hunting hitman. So who're you killing.”

“I'm not 'killing' anyone, not yet anyways.”

“Good, cause killing someone with those instantly makes you go from wanted dead or alive to Public Enemy Number One, according to Equestrian laws concerning murder, regardless of the country of action.”

“So. Quaretzel doesn't want these targets dead, he wants their souls as well? For what?”

“I'll give you this one, since you are not familiar with necromancy, or necromancy as it ties to summoning. Unfortunately I do, which is partly why Varg keeps me here in the first place, he's afraid of me.”

“And how is it that you know necromancy? You're a medical doctor.”

“Non-licenced, might I remind you.”

“Right...”

“Both can be answered in another little story, I hope you haven't drunk your wittle glass of milk cause this might take a while, and I need you to take my words as gospel in order for any of this to make sense.”

At this, he took out a locket and placed it on his desk, at the sight of the locket, his stretched face took a despondent look.

“There once was a surgeon. He was one of the greatest surgeons known, able to perform surgery with a 99.9% success rate, even once performing tonsilitis on Prince BlueBlood himself without anesthesia as His Royal Ass was allergic to certain anesthetics (He still has the gall to call on occasion). His cutie mark was an adorable heart with a cross of bandages on it. One day, he met himself a little sweetheart, a young mare with the loveliest face that not even a plastic surgeon couldn't best. They met, they wooed, they made exchange of vows, and over the course of several months thought themselves inseparable. Then one day, her brother, who she cared for since birth, fell deathly ill, and required life saving surgery. The surgeon looked over the brothers case and found the operation too risky, and there was a high chance that the brother would not survive. Unable to cope, his sweetheart begged the surgeon to forego the risk if it meant saving her brother. He...”

Before Stitch could continue he went into a coughing fit. “Blasted lungs.”

“The brother didn't make it did he?”

“Heh, I guess you've heard it before, haven't you.”

“Somewhat.”

“Then I guess you know what happens next.”

“The surgeon's sweetheart turned out to be not so sweet?”

The muscles behind Stitch's latex-like skin softened and despondency morphed into weariness.

“I guess I don't have to tell you who that surgeon was.”

“I could tell it wasn't just a fairy tale. So what happened afterward?”

“Rumors, Lies, Betrayal, Ruin, Exile. Read between the lines if you want those blanks filled. But here's where the story continues. From Exile leads to rebirth twisted by old and cankerous longing. A muddled and twisted desire to not only be the best surgeon in the world, but the best in any world. You can see the end result of such a desire,” he stated, pointing to himself with a hoof.

I nodded.

“Wandering with a drunken goal and a foetid wrench in my heart led this surgeon to an unforeseen checkpoint in his life, a ship-wreck, a scalpel to a tentacle monster, and a rather undesirable meeting with a deity who had never heard of the implementation of a well fitting brazier led me to hone my skills to the next level. I learned, I theorized, I implemented. Now what exactly did I implement? I'll let you guess.”

I wasn't in the mood for guessing games, but I thought it best to play it safe. His face changed drastically from when I last saw him, could it be?

“You learned self surgery.”

“Mmhmm, go on, c'mon that's only 15%.”

What? Only 15%? What was the other 85%? I looked through all recorded memory of him, searching through the most miniscule bits of data... or what was thought to be miniscule. Conversation, action, appearance, profession.

What was it, what was it? My mind was winding up, whole months of being dormant, and the computer within my head was only starting to boot back up again, things felt fresh and new again, information began pouring into my head faster than I could process, and when I did process it, things jammed and collided with the most fervent electrical intensity, until.

*click

I crossed my legs, my mind was wide awake again. No more meandering or aimless, useless drivel of too much information, now was the time for deduction, induction, hypothesis and conclusion.

“Wherever you went, you said 'next level of skill', what could be 'next level' for one of the greatest surgeons in the known Equestrian world? The common medical dogma of surgery is to aid someone by cutting and binding back together, but what has been bound back together carries back the mark of a stitch or scar, thus carrying the weight of irreversible change. The surgeon bargains with death to implement irreversible change on a patient in exchange for the patient's life. Applying that dogma here, if the skill of the greatest was to bargain with death by stitching things back together that has become undone, the next level would be to cheat death entirely, you perform surgery as if you were never there, as if there was no change at all, because with the change of surgery there remains a difference, something that wasn't there before, and with a difference, comes denial to accept this difference, if you cannot accept it, you must therefore reject it.

“Wherefore then, you, have grafted the skin of several onto yourself yet you yourself show no form of biological rejection? Though the skin is clearly grafted on, it still looks as though it was your skin, you still look like you, if only with a paler shade of skin or an odd seam misplaced. If you can do this with skin, you can, in fact, retain a youthful appearance, even after 95 years, but even after 95 years, youth is deeper than the skin. You walk with no limp, have muscle control of your face befitting that of a male in his prime and to even perform the surgery that you do requires intense muscle dexterity, one that would surely degrade over time. You didn't just replace your face, you replace everything when it outlives it's usefulness, and without having to pay the price of irreversible change, you do not just replace, you assimilate. The time when the Griffin impostors attacked our ship, you harvested body parts, the undamaged parts you can save in order to replace when needed: bones, organs, blood, plasma. I thought it commonplace you would harvest for future need as you were a surgeon and fortunately for you, we have griffin's on board that could use the body parts, however, blood, now blood is something problematic, since you have the dilemma of blood type and yet when collecting, you didn't seem to care if blood mixed, you only cared if it was fresh. I thought it quite negligent if you were planning on using that blood in other patients but now I don't have to, I know why.

“Call it extrapolating, but then again, this is what you wanted from me, isn't it? To figure it all out on my own, to get me back to my prime mode of thinking, to question minute details that once clustered my mind palace but had been dumped into a recycling bin once things settled down for once in my life. I really have to hand it to you, getting me back in the swing of playing mind games and all it took was a little push in the right direction. But I digress, you aren't a unicorn, but from what you've told me on your connections to necromancy, you may not have immersed yourself in it, but you've stuck a nose into it to see the magic that could be called a science, such as Griffin would call his off brand of magic that he so constructs into a science. Because you've the thinking of an empirical scientist, you've formed your own branch of necromancy into something more practical, more reliable, more innate. I'm not versed in this world's magic, so this is where my expertise ends, but from what I've gathered, every single being is capable of some form of magic, whether it be through Keith and I's magic cups, through Kokuryu, or through Griffin's use of his sword to perform magic. Now, from what I've seen Unicorns perform direct feats of magic, where as Earth ponies and Pegasi perform indirect feats, the indirect feats linking to these particular marks that ponies have on their flanks, these marks before I met Keith again, I brushed aside as tatoos, but now I see relate to their talent, which they are able to perform to an extreme degree. Now this next part requires some empirical data. So, Stitch, let's see your cutie mark.”

By this point, Stitch had a full grin reaching from ear to ear.

“I'll happily oblige.” He got down from his chair and walked around his desk. After turning profile he pulled aside his coat that covered the cutie mark and showed a different cutie mark than earlier described: no longer a red heart with a cross of bandages, now a black heart with a clean white cross inset into the middle.

“And here I thought you were just a battle-torn soldier, you surprise me when I most expect it. I thought you would try to base things on logic as logic ran your world to a tee, however you've astounded me with how much you knew philosophy had in play in this universe's laws.”

“I had a pink horse and a crack addicted biochemist to thank for that. They were the ones who showed me that you can easily remove logic from the equation and things still move like clockwork. Logic in my world used to be the rules of thought in which you proved or disproved a situation if something didn't fit the logic, either the logic was wrong or the situation was wrong, there was no middle ground. With this world I've realized logic serves more like guidelines than actual rules, and the middle ground stretches as far as the eye can see. Logic puts bounds to possible. A logical me is a me that is still half asleep, as you can plainly see. Thank you for the wake up call.”

“You're very welcome. I hate you a lot less now.”

I chuckled. “You hated me?”

“Of course! You got something I never got and will never get. Tit for tat, I hate your guts regardless, and no amount of surprise is going to change that. What makes me hate you less is that the awake you is a lot more pleasant to talk with than the half asleep you, as I can now explain things without you having a stupid expression on your face.

“Now that you know that I hate you, I can let you in on a little secre: my deep dark secret that has kept me alive through the entire time I was busy in exile. It has two parts, and you'll know which part is which. Now, the only condition is that you can tell the first part to anyone, but the second part only to the person you hate the most. Do we have an accord?”

Interested, I nod. It was the one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made in my entire life. He trotted over to me like a giddy schoolgirl and whispered his darkest secret to me. I half wish he had never told me. As I heard it, I wished that what I heard I could take in even the slightest off-chance that he was lying, but deep down his words hit me harder than a nuclear missile soley because this was the truth. Before then, I was only slightly unsettled that he was my stand in medical doctor for Keith, now, I was absolutely terrified that he was my medical doctor. And now, this secret belonged to me as well, it was mine. All secrets are weapons in their own regard, but this one... this one was a doomsday weapon held in words. But the worst part was that he was the one who revealed it to me, and therefore I could not use it against him. He was bullet proof, and I would forever have the largest target painted on my backside for the rest of my life. I wished he had killed me right then and there.

He went back to his desk with a bastard smile and took a cough drop out of his desk.

“Would you like a cough drop? I have peppermint and cinnamon and ooh, even lemon drop.”

I could only sit there agape with horror, eyes widened. At first his cold exterior was what I thought to be the worst of him, I was wrong. So... fatally... wrong... What I would fear hereafter would be the smile that would betray the thought behind it. Why in particular him was because I saw myself in him, not my current self, but my old self. Stitch the surgeon with a 99.9%- no... a 100% success rate, Did a better job at being the old me entire LEAGUES ahead of what the old me could have ever accomplished.

Forget ancient dragons, forget demons, forget other alphas, forget death, forget whoever rules endless punishment after death, a surgeon devoted to saving lives through medicine, had me more afraid than anything else. And it was not even because of what I had done, after hearing his secret, what I had done seemed like child's play. It wasn't even a special power or something he had from my past that gave him so much weight against me. It was the right words placed in the right order.

A person I thought was working for me, within the span of a conversation, has turned into my worst enemy. He had found a permanent nestling place in the back of my mind, and there was nothing I could do about it. To other people, he was the reclusive hermit surgeon with a heart of gold, and when people would speak of him they would in all sense, be right. But he didn't hate other people, he hated me.

His talent was indeed surgery, but he had another talent far surpassing my own, one that made him bulletproof. All my other enemies I could, can and will fight with swords, cutlasses, battle plans, armies, negotiations, guns, cannons, ammunition, magic, diplomacy, but Stitch, I couldn't fight him with that. He was above all that, he had a complete mastery of a skill in which I was only a novice in comparison. All it takes is an enemy to have a greater mastery than you at the one skill where it matters most for him to beat you, and Stitch had beaten me ever since he met me-no... ever since he KNEW I existed in this world. If Celestia was the one he hated, he would be ruling Equestria right now under an Era of True Peace. If Griffin was the one he hated, Griffin would be wishing he was in Ponyville earning an honest living if only to avoid Stitch. But I was the one he hated.

I would forever be going back through my memory, remembering the times when I would check out Conan Doyle from the library and read to full capacity, and connecting the name of Sherlock's enemy to Stitch. Whenever I thought of Stitch I would think of that name. I would wonder of what manner of fate could produce such a creature such as ourselves, then spin the wheels to define that magnet of an emotion, hatred. Compared to what Stitch had against me, I would consider my vengeance against the man who slaughtered my family a mercy killing.

What separated him and I was that I wasn't content until my target had been slain. His satisfaction however would not stop if he simply killed me. The only way to stop this game he started would be either his death or mine, yet we both knew we could never kill each other. He was the paragon of a mortal enemy, the epitome of what it means to stop at nothing until you are through with the person you despise the most, the master of how to make the one you have a festering grudge against dance for your pleasure. The simplicity of his name deceived him, he was not simply the pony surgeon, Stitch.

No...

He was Moriarty...

MY Moriarty...

Author's Notes:

DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!

Now to go to bed and rest easy knowing that I at least updated ONCE during the course of this year, even though it was at the very last month. Hopefully this will not become a trend.

Tune in to Falling Feathers where I help BlackWing-senpai write ◯◯◯◯◯◯◯, God help us all...

Kusanagi AWAY!!!

*Turns into a rocket ship and flies into bed*