A. K. never liked getting a physical. Few doctors would examine patients who wore identity-concealing cloaks, the ear exam meant the cloche hat was out too, and doing it as Daring wasn't an option. Fictional characters didn't come for checkups, no matter how much they needed them to stay in top adventuring form. Right now, the only things keeping her secret identity safe were a pair of glasses, doctor-patient confidentiality, and too few backup plans for her taste. And given all of the different ways her enemies could bribe, coerce, or magically dominate the stallion, she—

"Ms. Yearling?"

A. K. blinked. The clinic room came back into focus, with all of its informational posters and faint antispetic smell. "Sorry, Dr. Prognosis. I was thinking about work." She settled herself on the examination bench and gave a smile with the right blend of politeness and sheepishness for her current body-shy introvert character. "I hope everything is in order?"

Prognosis looked at her like she'd just risen from the waxen sarcophagus of Queen Bumble before turning back to the clipboard held in his magic. "In all honesty, Ms. Yearling, I might call you a medical miracle, but I think the better description would be 'medical horror story.'"

"What?"

"Your wings alone show unbelievable signs of abuse. There's barely an inch of skin without some sign of lacerations, burns, broken bones..." Prognosis shuddered. "I think you've broken your alar bones more often than any three other pegasus patients at this clinic put together."

A. K. kept her eye roll internal. Everypony always said she overused broken wings as a plot device. It wasn't her fault they were an obvious weak point. "I'm still able to get airborne, doctor."

"That's the horrifying part. From a medical standpoint, they're barely even wings any more. You're flapping two hunks of scar tissue." Prognosis pulled an X-ray out of the stack of forms on the clipboard and backlit it with his horn. A. K. had to admit that the bones looked more blobby than the ones on one of the posters.

"Is there anything else?"

"Anything else? Try [i]everything[/i] else!" cried the doctor, his eyes nearly rolling in their sockets. He began to pace about the room. "More broken bones, more poorly healed lacerations, the worst hooves I've seen on any pegasus, the worst rope burn scars I've seen at all, signs of stress in virtually all of your vital organs, and according to the atmic scan, your soul has been torn out of your body at least [i]three times[/i]."

"Yeah, that was a pretty wild weekend." A. K. realized she said that aloud when Prognosis's eye began to twitch. "Uh, I mean—"

He held up a hoof. "Save it. I don't know if you're in an abusive relationship, if you're in some subcommunity I'm better off not knowing about, or if your special talent is just finding new ways to hurt yourself. All I can say is if you keep this up, you may not live to see forty."

She frowned. "I'm thirty-six."

Prognosis more than matched her expression, his scowl as furious as a storm cloud. "I know what I said."

"I see." A. K. got off the bench and walked to her cloak.

"Please sit down, Ms. Yearling. I have more concerns here and seeing you move at all is slightly terrifying."

"Just a moment, doctor," said A. K., waving him off with a wing.

She heard Prognosis sigh. "Alright, but we still need to discuss long-term physical rehabilitation. Moons if not years of it. I can recommend..." He went silent and still.

A. K. watched as the Memory Stone she'd taken with her pulled in the ribbon of thoughts. "Helpful little thing, aren't you? A shame I could never find your sister." She slipped it back into her cloak as Prognosis broke out of his stupor. "Thank you, doctor. Glad to know I've got a clean bill of health."

"Wha?" He blinked a few times, shook his head, and looked around the room. "Where? Oh, yes. Clean bill of health." He nodded, signed a few forms without really seeing them, said, "Have a nice day," and managed to walk out of the room on his second try.

"Well," A. K. said to herself as she got dressed, "at least this time I didn't have to break out of physical restraints 'for my own good.'"