Talons clicked. They clacked. Clipboards were shaken, papers were rustled. Sharks were jumped. Cats sat on keyboards.

“-She’s waking up. That should be impossible. What in celestia’s name is happening here?” Grah... I didn’t like this, whatever was happening. I’m Catastrophe, by the way. Like you even needed to know that. Pfffft.

My head hurt, at any rate, I think I should mention. Like a rusted nail throbbing under my skin, like a tattered tossed blanket full of holes straining out molten lead... But I’m getting ahead of myself with detail right now, so let’s just make it clear that it hurt like a kick to my mother fucking head and leave it like that, yeah?

Point is, I was in pain, and by reflex, I reached for where my pouch should be for some poppy seeds to take away quite a bit of it. Bad habit, yeah, we’ve fucking covered this so bite me if you want me to stop, but more importantly, I became aware that it wasn’t there.

That, and I felt like I was being watched. After awhile, the feeling stopped. I think the doctors walked away.

Oh, another thing. I couldn’t see worth a damn. Everything was blurry, like my eyes were way too watery, like the inverse of not blinking long enough. Damn... Felt a bit like...

I had a flashback which I won’t go into too terribly much detail with where, upon waking up from one of my many airship crashes that I had the same experience, where I had been dosed with magic and they had had to use eye drops of me, something about magic resistance being innate or some shit like that...

Ah. Then I was in a hospital. This made sense... Happened quite a bit when you were as dangerously... dangerous as I was. Probably... got...

Hurt. Yeah... Hurt..

Gasping pain. I could remember that. Just, quick shots of it... Fuck. Shit. Damn. Fuck.

Grah...

I managed to stand up on the bed, ignoring, for the most part, the mass of equipment that had been stretched over me like a mechanical cocoon.

Someone slammed open the door, and it took me less time to recognize who it was then it took me to launch myself at the zebra of her contentment, Ivan the zebra, my zebra!

I blinked a few times as something subtly shifted in the air. Like the world was in chorus for a long moment, perfectly sounding true. A lot of other babble that wouldn't make too much sense description wise, but I assure you it made sense at the time through whatever pain medication they had me on. It was like... I could smell how solid the air was...

Wait, that didn't matter! I was in the air while I was still sluggishly thinking this, and I ended up wrapped around my current... complicated relationship partner. Wheee! Oh...

Yes... This was better. I could feel the quiet quiver of his flesh, the scent of terror that had so thoroughly infiltrated his own scent... Hm... Had he taken a bath lately? I needed a bath, too, unless the hospital had bathed the blood off of me... What had happened to me? I was shot. And now I was clinging to Ivan, which was all the better.

Oh wow... Pretty colors and suddenly dizzy.

I, Catastrophe, passed the hell out on top of my zebra.

Also, I was high.

It is at this point, that I should fairly mention, if not outright point out that obvious conclusion that may or may not grace someone who is just now joining us, that is, that every character in this story has their own chapters to go through, and, regardless of Ivan being the so called main character, all are important in their own ways. It just so happens that Ivan’s conflicts are often more interesting than that of the normal conflicts of Boss, who gets her way through plain old intimidation and violence, or of myself, I having my own share of fun healing the wreck of a crew I had been dealt.

This is Canary, I might add.

If there is any confusion, I suppose it is only in that everyone has their stories and everyone’s stories are not just additives to the main story line, but far more like twined and frayed rope. Sometimes, all the different strands are together and agreeing with each other and sometimes, there are knots in it that impede proper understanding. I suppose if you pinch and pull enough at the knot you might unravel the real truth. I guess that sometimes, people just want their rope story to be hanging by a thread. They want to be able to follow a single path line at a time for fear of forgetting something.

But why would you ever use a frayed rope? You want one that is dependent upon all of the strands. You want strength. That makes sense, right?

I think so, at least, and sometimes I feel like I’m the last of the truly sane around these parts.

This relates back to the matter at hand. It relates that we, we being Boss and I, were dwelling next to the very people that had shot down the liability of our crew, Catastrophe. Really, the griffon, for all of her bluster and fuss and growling and slashing talons was a complete mess when it came to fighting more than one person, and it was going to get us killed if we weren’t careful. Careful, I guess, was not the reason why I was also almost out of magic. Thankfully, I managed to not pass out dramatically like Ivan did (the drama queen) so I managed to stay out of the detested hospital.

I detest hospital rooms, not anyone else I’ve referred to. Though they might detest them, I am referring to my own hatred of them which managed to get me removed from the chance of being in such a disease covered landscape.

It was, of course only a matter of time or so I believed, before Ivan finally noticed that I had been the one who had stolen his little book he had taken so long to decode. Or maybe he wouldn’t discover that, considering he had forgotten about the thrice damned mystery.

And a mystery it was. “A guide to basic metamagical theorems.” I muttered. Well. It rolled off the tongue.

That was a lie, if you couldn’t tell.

The rest of it was... about as straightforward as a brick. It was all about making runes, except the runes were made out of smaller runes which were also made of smaller runes that were arrayed in a tesseract pattern that allowed one to make runes inside of runes inside of runes that were already inside of runes except in a theoretical pattern that only existed outside of three dimensional space, thus allowing for near infinite imbuing of enchantments and a proper enchantment of the thaumaturgical constant when it is divided by the innate magical resistance squared, but only when it is allowed to by being x distance away from a sufficient source as to not make it to the cube power, which is only during an excess of 500. It mentioned things like something on magical string theory and how the threads of fate were actually literally strands of pure magic woven into the ground as ley lines and that by mirroring that into runes and runes within runes, Meta runes, you could-

Ugh... What in the gods’ names does that even mean?

Of course, all of this was covered in statements like; the exact runic methods for this have long since been lost and that nobody knew the exact methods and that it was actually considered impossible for anyone short of an alicorn to do anything... Which begged the question, why did the text even exist? If it was impossible to do anything in the book, why did you even write the bloody thing?

All I really managed to get out of the text was a new spell... That needed blood and the feather from a griffon in love; a pen spell. It just. Let you draw. On stuff.

If it wasn’t obvious where I was going to get that feather, you REALLY haven’t been paying attention.

I paused from my internal monologues and looked about the room I was in. It was... adequate for housing the party that had almost caused Ivan to turn into a horrible spell beast for the seventh time.

...Actually... I looked around and spotted the vibrant red griffoness that I had noted at one point when I had been busy healing Catastrophe from her near fatal wound. Eh... Did I ever get her name? Probably should. After all... Maybe I could get the feather from her?

Speaking of which, though this might end up being a disappointing plot thread adjoining that of Catastrophe's stay in the hospital, I REALLY needed to learn more about magic. It just seemed weird... In theory, of course, the reason why zebra healing spells worked was because they were transferring the life force contained within a fruit to the injured being, and that almost made enough sense that I didn't need to question it, but what about the fireball spell? What was it about certain gems which helped to power spells better than other gems? Was it some intrinsic property? Was there just the right kind of magic in something that wasn't there in something else? It almost seemed like some zebra spells made sense and others didn't... One was creating fire from nothing but gems and others was just a transfer.

Like this new spell. This writing spell. It was made from a griffon in love's feather, which almost made sense considering that you can use feathers to write with, but without that connection, it seemed more foolish to think of that. So... I'd classify that spell as a chaotic... spell...

What if that was the answer? That there were ordered, transferred, alchemical... zebra spells... and that there were chaotic spells that seemed to go without real sense? Like the chaotic spells, the fire, the shields, everything of that sort seemed to be more in the way of destruction, but also seemed to be centered around from drawing something from very little of something else.

I widened my eyes a bit and started writing. Damn. This was going to give me all the reason I could ever want for learning new spells.

-----

A spider and a snake met in the barrier between metaphysical spaces. They stared, seemed almost sad for once and turned away without another word.

"Watch out for Wave. She's on the prowl." The spider said.

"Watch out for Zephyr. She's out for blood." The snake said.

Two gods met in the middle of the world and didn't speak again.