Hey guys! This is a (sort of) plot bunny that wouldn't go away after I finished reading Voltaire's "Candide". There's a character in it by the name of Pangloss who happens to be a philosopher, and...well, after you read this, read the explanation at the end xD

Disclaimer: I don't own MD:TAS or Voltaire's "Candide"

EPILOGUE

Later that night…

Duke walked across the Infirmary floor, still in hideous teal scrubs, lugging a special machine behind him that Tanya said would take an automatic blood pressure of whoever was hooked up to it, as well as their temperature, heart rate, etc. He had been assigned the duty of staying the night with the recovering-from-surgery teenager.

Why, he asked?

Tanya's reasoning was simple; because he was the one of the group who was a tad of an insomniac and would be up anyway.

So he did what he was told - for once - and stuck around in the Infirmary. This was the first round of many that he'd have to get up and take the kid's vitals, so it seemed like it would be routine.

But then again, this was Nosedive we're talking about, Duke thought, managing to bring the machine up to the kid's bedside. Then he poked him in the shoulder. "Hey kid, wake up."

The somewhat-doped up teenager groaned. "Wha' time izit?" he asked, opening his eyes a little, only to shut them again when Duke turned on a nearby light.

"A little after eleven," the older drake answered. "Tanya left awhile ago to get some sleep, so I'll be here all night with you."

"Where's Wing?"

"After you fell asleep, he stayed in here until Tanya left. He had fallen asleep too, so Tanya figured it'd be better if he went back to you guys' room and do whatever he needed so that you don't have to do certain stuff….well, and sleep of course." Duke picked up the teenager's left arm, slipping the cuff of the machine onto Nosedive's arm. "Here, just let me do this real quick and you can go back to sleep."

The machine now attached to the teen duck was humming as Duke straightened the mask where it sat on the table next to the bed. The ex-thief had wondered why Wildwing hadn't taken the object back, but hadn't questioned him when the leader had gone back to his and Nosedive's room.

What he wasn't expecting was the question that came up from the kid next to him.

"Hey Duke?"

"Yeah?"

"How'd you get the chip in your beak? Or lose your eye?"

The older mallard just looked down at the kid, surprised. "Why?" he asked. "It's not a magnificent story."

Nosedive half-shrugged. "I dunno, I just always wondered."

Duke sighed, then muttered something incomprehensible. "What?" Nosedive asked. "I couldn't hear you."

"…I said it's from syphilis."

"…what?"

Duke rolled his eyes. "It's when a loose, trashy duck-"

"I know what it is!" Nosedive exclaimed. "I meant how did you get it."

The ex-bandit shrugged. "Same way any other duck does," he answered.

"But I thought it went away with medicine?" Nosedive asked.

Duke sighed. "Not back then," he said. "When I had first joined the Brotherhood of the Blade, we had brutal training. As new recruits, we had to do everything the leader could throw at us. And after the day of training was over, we were exhausted.

"Well, eventually a duck gets used to training routine and meet the members who are higher up. One of them was a beautiful gal by the name of Roxana. One night, after a few weeks, she came to my room and…well, one thing led to another-"

"Oi, I get that!" Nosedive quickly said, feeling his face heat up. "So what happened after?"

The vital machine then stopped humming, indicating that it was done. Duke looked at what the various screens were saying. "Looks like you've still got a fever," he said. "But it ain't too bad. Otherwise, it looks like you're doing alright." He pulled the cuff off of Nosedive's arm and put it back on the machine. "See ya in a few hours," he said, turning to leave.

"Aw c'mon, you can't leave me hanging!"

Duke sighed, turned around, and sat on the bed facing Nosedive. "Well, for a few days after Roxana and I - got together - everything seemed alright. But then I started feeling really sick, so bad that I went to the Brotherhood's doc at the time. See the chip here?" he pointed to his beak. "After they found out what was wrong, they decided to take care of it."

"….and removing your eye and part of your beak is how to fix it?"

"Well, kinda," Duke answered. "I don't remember much about the process, but the doc found that part of my bill was infected, thus this chip here. Then he found out that taking my eye out would help a great deal. Why else do you think I have a digital red eye under this patch?"

Nosedive looked at the older drake's eye patch, seeing it in a new light. "So, what happened to her?"

"Oh ya, I haven't gotten to that chick yet," Duke realized. "After the 'treatment' was done to me, Roxana came in feeling horrible as well. That's when they put two and two together…and well, they killed her."

"What?!"

"That's what they do to the women in the guild," Duke said, shrugging it off. "See, even though it's called the 'Brotherhood of the Blade', they still take female recruits, though few and far in-between. The policy was that if a female member did something to that extent, then she'd be killed, especially if she was a higher ranked member."

Nosedive looked at him in disbelief. "But why?"

Duke shrugged. "That's just the way things were," he answered. "Probably had to do with the whole equivalency of males, how the recruits had to prove themselves, and see if they could even be members."

Nosedive just let this sink in. "Whoa," he finally uttered. "That must've been terrible."

"Nah, not so much now that I'm looking back on it," Duke said. He patted Nosedive on the shoulder. "Just go back to sleep now, alright kid?"

"…okay..." With that, Nosedive gave into the medicine that was still in his system and fell asleep.

Duke took the machine back over to the corner of the room, a smile on his face. Then he walked out of the Infirmary, to laugh his head off at the story he had just told to the youngest of the group.

Okay, now you're probably wondering what syphilis has to do with dismemberment. Well, in Voltaire's "Candide", the sage Pangloss got syphilis from a servant girl that had attended their Baroness, and the cure to his syphilis (apparently) was to lose an eye and an ear. I dunno why, but after awhile, whenever I saw Pangloss's name in the literature, Duke popped into my head. So...ya! That's where I got the idea for this epilogue from. Since nurses and/or docs go and check on their patients after surgery, I figured something like this would be good.

Hope you enjoyed the story!