Sora trotted out into the hall where Yukito and the masked stallion were waiting, and she quickly explained to them what sort of injuries Starbreaker had sustained, broken horn notwithstanding. "I-infected? And she c-can't hear out of it?" Yukito stammered once Sora had finished, his eyes wide and his glasses shifting to sit a little lopsided on his muzzle.

Sora nodded. "It oozes like a damned abscess. Sooner or later, that's gonna need to be fixed," she stated. "But she's not strong enough to handle one surgery, let alone a few consecutive ones handling whatever other problems she has."

The masked stallion nodded. "Yes, she will need at least a few more pounds on her before we can remedy her ailments. We need her alive, and…" He stopped abruptly as something landed in the floor very close by, followed by something breaking and somepony screaming bloody murder. Sora twisted around to the room she left from moments ago, her eyes wide.

"Starbreaker?!" Sora cried, immediately making for the room in a harried gallop. Yukito and the masked pony followed after her as the door opened, wasting not a second to see what was wrong this time.

The trio instantly found Starbreaker on the floor, groaning and clutching her right pastern in her left fetlock. They collectively winced as they looked at the pastern in question, seeing an unnatural bump jutting out from under the fetlock. On top of that, the hoof attached to said pastern split and cracked in three different directions, and in one particular crack that stretched all the way up to meet with flesh, blood was fast welling up.

The masked pony trotted right to Starbreaker and knelt before her, eyes narrowing as he studied the most recent affliction she'd acquired. "How did you manage this?" he asked in as level a voice as he could muster, turning away from the hoof to look at his quarry in the face.

"My… my legs just gave out, and…" Starbreaker squealed as her fetlock connected with the jutting bump in her leg. "Fhaaa…" she hissed, eyes scrunching shut in an instant as pain flared tenfold.

"Gonna take a gander here and assume your atrophy's to blame?" Sora piped up, a hint of worry in her voice. She tried her best to keep a straight face, yet when Starbreaker's eyes snapped open and turned to her in narrow slits, her brow slanted slightly.

"Why I oughta—" Starbreaker stopped short of outright exploding as a blue aura took hold of her body and hefted her effortlessly into the air. She turned to Yukito, finding his horn aglow with the same aura as he used a spell to set her onto the bed belly-side up.

Doing that enabled the group to see very small, very crude scrawlings all across Starbreaker's inner thighs and crotch. Just the sight of it made Yukito blink, turn to Sora, cancel out the glow of his horn with widening eyes, and promptly do a double-take. "Sh-she… ah… what…" he stammered, unable to articulate what he was seeing. Starbreaker took the hint, lifted her tail up to hide her crotch and crossed her rear legs together, though evidently not fast enough.

"Let's… not discuss that," Sora said slowly, turning to Yukito with a frown.

"Who would stamp 'penalized' and 'punishment order #13' on a teat?" the masked stallion queried as he turned to the other two, unaware of a particularly heated and blush-addled glare Starbreaker started sending his way in that moment. "It just seems… off. And not to mention crass beyond all reason. What do they even mean?!"

"Can it!" Starbreaker shouted in a shrill voice, causing the masked pony to turn to her and see her red-faced scowl. She sat up, as if about to lunge, but another blue field grappled her by the shoulders and pushed her back onto the bed with minimal force.

Yukito, horn glowing again, turned to the masked stallion. He gave a heavy, almost tired sigh. "Tsukumi, I don't think it would be particularly wise to… speak of Starbreaker's…" he paused, searching for the right word, "bodily drabbles. If need be, we'll have those surgically removed at a later point in time. For now…" He turned back to Starbreaker and finished in a low voice, "You need to eat something before you go to sleep tonight."

"I'll help her eat since she broke a hoof, but not until she's at least bandaged somewhat," Sora piped up again, turning to Tsukumi as she spoke. "Where're the bandage rolls at?"

Tsukumi sighed, trotted to stand at Starbreaker's side, and mutely lifted a hoof to gesture to the dresser at the side of the bed. Sora nodded and trotted over to it, pulling one drawer open with her mouth once she was close. Inside were some gowns and basic medical supplies; band-aids, rubbing alcohol, cotton swabs, squeeze-tubes of antibiotic ointment…

She closed the drawer and opened the one below it, smiling as she found a few gauze rolls all sitting upright and stationed rather tidily into a corner. Swiping one with a raised hoof, Sora nudged the drawer closed with a wing before opening the first one again and fishing out the antibiotic ointment in her mouth, being careful not to bite down too hard. "Hol her 'own," she said through the squeeze-tube.

"On it," Yukito replied, and in an instant Starbreaker found herself almost completely immobilized by a field of blue that washed over her entire body.

"H-hey, s-stop!" Starbreaker shrieked, eyes widening as her right leg was lifted into the air against her will, holding up the busted hoof for all to see. "Wh-what gives?!"

"Sorry, standard procedure for injuries we can't treat right away," Yukito replied, rolling his eyes as Sora whirled around and tottered to Starbreaker on three legs, spreading her wings for balance. "As bad as your hoof had just become, we can't let it swing about and risk more injury."

"He's right," Tsukumi stated as Sora set the gauze roll on the bed next to Starbreaker's head to fumble with the squeeze-tube in her maw. He watched as the tube was opened, pried out of a pair of teeth, held in a fetlock and then lifted up to the raised hoof. In that moment his eyes fell on Sora. "A small amount of that stuff; the bleeding wound there isn't critical," he chastised.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Sora scoffed, applying pressure to the tube. A clear, thin line of gel snaked out of the end of the tube, whereupon it was promptly dabbed on the bleeding cut that ran the vertical length of the hoof in a sparse few droplets. She turned to the gauze roll, only to find it likewise seized in a blue aura and hefted into the air, already unravelling in seconds.

The bandages flew to the hoof and swiftly coiled around it, tightening as the first loop formed. Starbreaker screamed as pain flared anew from the limb, and as another loop of gauze formed her cries rose a good octave higher. Yukito flinched as he continued to work while the screams carried on unhindered, but a hoof from Tsukumi flew to Starbreaker's mouth and wedged itself firmly between her teeth, gagging her on the spot.

She still continued to release screams as the bandages coiled around and around her hoof, although now they were muffled. This carried on for two minutes before the roll stopped in mid-air, approximately half of it still encircling itself. Sora lifted a wing up and very carefully severed the roll in two with a blade, watching as the still-coiled half of the roll flew back while the other newly-cut end was lifted and tucked snuggly under itself.

Tsukumi pried his hoof from Starbreaker's mouth, his ears twitching as she gave him a sidelong glare. "How does your hoof feel now?" he asked, his tone still level.

"Like it got crushed by a machine gun," Starbreaker snapped, still scowling. She jerked when a hoof started prodding at her lower regions, and she turned her sidelong glare onto Sora, who had a hoof still raised mid-prod and clutching the antibiotic tube.

"Good news about the writing… it's only stained the coat. I don't see any ink or whatnot on the skin," Sora stated, turning to Yukito.

Yukito smiled at that. "Oh? So all we have to do is shave her a little?" he asked.

"Sounds about right, if the writings don't just wash off," Sora confirmed with a nod. "But first… we gotta cleanse what's left of her missing ear, bandage her head and feed her."

Starbreaker slumped and let out a groan, and her stomach gave a gurgle in response. "Just get it over with," she complained. "The sooner I get better, the sooner I can torch you all."

"On it, Starbo," Sora replied, with a slight mocking inflection in her tone. Starbreaker shifted to glare at Sora and opened her mouth to utter something else, only to gasp when some sort of transparent mask with a tube attached to some kind of container appeared from a flash of light all at once and the mask clamped itself on her muzzle immediately after.

Then, a hissing sound graced her one ear, and her eyes widened as she spotted an aura turning a little valve on the canister, followed almost immediately by a sickening, pungent smell that flooded her nostrils. It took her only seconds to close her eyes and conk out right after, barely registering her head hitting the pillow as consciousness left her.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Starbreaker awoke sometime later, eyes blinking dazedly as she came to. Her vision refused to focus, and the room around her was so blurry she couldn't make out what was where. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth, numb and drooling with saliva. She tried to groan, and she felt air rushing from her throat, but if she managed one sound then she simply didn't hear it. She wasn't even sure if she did groan at all.

As awry as everything currently was, it did not escape her notice that a purple form with a blond top was in the room with her, moving about in a manner akin to sliding. The features, though, were hazy. Starbreaker blinked a few times, trying to crystallize her sight, and that was when she registered the first few sounds: somepony spoke to her, accompanied by hoofsteps. "... you… fucked… huh?" was all she could make out, however.

Starbreaker tried to reel in her tongue and speak, but only managed a groggy "Hzzbah?" in response before her jaw dropped and the tongue tried to jump ship again.

The moving splotch ambled closer to Starbreaker, almost swaying about in a manner that not only suggested some form of inebriation or perhaps injury, but a manner that made bile start to rise up Starbreaker's throat. "... you… fucked…?" the form tried again, but alas, whoever it was may as well have had a severe speech impediment if this was all the dazed mare could make out.

Reeling in her flapping tongue once more, Starbreaker stared for several seconds before slowly shaking her head. "Arthzznah?" she tried, prior to swallowing before the bile could make it to the top of her throat. That seemed to settle it for the moment, as it trudged back down with an irritated gurgle.

As the form got closer, Starbreaker saw pools of green framed just under the blond mop on the figure's head, and slowly, her sight finally began to clear up. Within seconds she could make out a very familiar face, albeit marred by a frown of concern. "You… okay?" Sora asked a third time. garnering a slow shaking of the head as her answer.

"Can… you hear… me?" Sora quizzed. That time, Starbreaker slowly nodded, realizing her hearing was getting better as well. A purple blotch was lifted and held up to Sora's left, and it took Starbreaker a few moments to register that it was a gesture before turning her head in that direction. She blinked to clear out her vision some more when she saw another splotch with her coat and mane colors, and before long she found a solid reflection staring back at her with widening eyes in a mirror that wasn't there before.

The first thing that registered was that the stump of her horn had somehow gotten shorter, and instead of ending in jagged spikes, ended in a perfectly round shape as flat as tile. Now merely an inch in length, it could barely part her forelock, and the blood on her face had been cleaned. The second was that bandages had covered most of her head; only her horn and a small section of forehead around it, muzzle, and eyes were left exposed. Even her torn ear was bound up. Her broken hoof was left suspended by a rail that was drilled into the ceiling above her bed, further tied by bandages just to stay there. Most curious of all, she'd been draped in a patient's gown.

Starbreaker turned her head back to Sora quick as a whip, mouth fruitlessly working as gibberish tumbled out thanks to her still-numb tongue. "Fhwas isht mreaa—"

Sora shifted a raised hoof and wedged it in Starbreaker's mouth, instantly shutting her up. "Got good news and bad news, so stop rambling and listen, please," she ordered calmly. When she pried her hoof from the mouth, Starbreaker gave a slow nod and clacked her jaws shut. "Bad news, couldn't save your right ear canal, so that… had to be surgically dealt with sooner than we thought. We also had to file down your horn short, because otherwise recovery could be severely jeopardized if we didn't."

Sora gave her charge a moment to let that soak in, seeing her pupils shrink to pinpricks. "The good news is, your horn can and should grow back to full length within a matter of weeks. The writings on your body came off with a basic application of soap and water; no shaving was necessary, and we took the added step of cataloguing those scribbles before they were cleaned, so we'll be keeping an eye out for anymore just like them. We also tube-fed you after surgery, since you were out for the last three days," she stated. Starbreaker shivered. Three days? She'd been out that long? That explained a helluva lot, now that she thought about it. "And you have also gained back a bit of weight, which means health-wise, you're not too far gone yet."

"But," Sora continued, leaning in close until she and Starbreaker were nose to nose, "you're not going to be casting any spells until your horn is fully healed. As it stands, your alicorn—the muscle that makes and produces the magic with which to cast spells—has been compromised by your attempted castings and other, as of yet unidentified external forces. As such, we put a little chip of a special magic-soaking stone juuuust behind your horn as a safety measure while you get better. It's not going to come out until you're more or less out of the woods."

Starbreaker growled and tried her hardest to cast a spell, glancing sideways at the mirror in doing so. She felt a tingle, a fizz, a slight pain… and no aura would conjure from her stump whatsoever. She tried again, but the results were the same. A third time after that, and no luck. It was at that point she noticed a little bump in her forehead, from which a diamond-shaped chip of a black stone protruded out, pulsing with red mana.

It was only thanks to her slightly-parted forelock that she could even see the damned thing. The more she kept attempting to cast, the more the little stone glowed. It took several minutes for her to stop, but that was only because somepony who was once again too close for comfort decided to throw in an additional two bits, free of charge.

"Oh, and you're going to be bedridden for a few weeks yet," Sora stated, her utterance causing Starbreaker to halt her fruitless attempts to cast so much as a spark and freeze in wide-eyed panic. "You have a few fractured leg bones, and some strange substance covering your ribs, which may have protected them from fractures and breaks as a result, on top of that break in your rear right leg. They should heal on their own… save for the break, which was bound in a cast. That bump in your shoulder? Turned out to be a lipoma that needed, and has been, summarily removed."

Starbreaker wiggled the leg in question, but found she could not move it very much. She turned to it to find that it too was raised, bandaged to hell, and hoisted up and anchored on the bar that held her hoof. There was also a second layer of thick blue cloth, tightened around her haunch and jutting rather rudely out from under the blanket. At this, she paled, opened her mouth, managed a horrified croak, and did nothing more. "So I gotta keep everypony else off your ass until you can trot again," Sora added in a tone of finality.

The uncomfortably close pegasus leaned back and ruffled her wings a little. "Since you just woke up and received your news… how are you feeling?" she asked.

Starbreaker gave a snort of annoyance, and a bit of feeling was starting to return to her tongue. Still, she didn't answer with words, figuring that the huff of air was enough of a reply. Sora seemed to sense her unspoken meaning and gave a slow nod in return. "Yeah, I get you. I felt like shit too, after the military modified my wings," she said, turning to look at her blades with a rather… rueful expression? Starbreaker did a double-take, shaking her head and blinking to confirm that she wasn't seeing things. The slanted purple brow, ears folding back and that frown deepening were genuine, and their presence told her all she needed to know.