//------------------------------// // No Answers // Story: Rainbow Dash Around the World // by MagicS //------------------------------// More scalding hot water from the shower poured down onto Rainbow Dash as Doctor Anathema stood under the shower head right next to her as the two of them underwent decontamination at the same time. The previous few hours were like a miserable blur in Rainbow Dash’s mind. After the visual inspections had finished (with the unsurprising result of there being no changes for better or for worse) they made sure all the patients had functioning IV’s and plenty of water. Rainbow tried talking with a few more ponies but none of them said anything to her. To be honest, her mind was preoccupied with Anathema’s promise. The doctor had said she would show Rainbow Dash what happened with ponies who died from the plague… why couldn’t she just tell her? Was it too complicated? Or more likely, was it something you just needed to see for yourself? Rainbow still had in mind some of the ponies she had seen back in the auditorium that she wanted to visit again. The ones who looked like they needed her the most. Later tonight she would come back after this business with Anathema was over and try her hardest to make things easier for them. Pinkie Pie or Fluttershy would be better suited for it, but Rainbow Dash would still try and bring smiles to these ponies’ faces. As soon as the shower was over with, Doctor Anathema led Rainbow Dash out but not towards the front of the auditorium like usual. “It’s tucked away in the northeastern part of the forest, away from the village,” Anathema said as she slipped on a new coat. “What is?” Rainbow asked her. “You’ll see.” And that was the only answer she got as the two of them left the auditorium and the others behind, traveling into the forest. Directly to the north, Rainbow Dash knew the green clouds and everything were there, but she couldn’t see any of it through the trees from her point on the ground. Anathema wasn’t even glancing at it, instead making a beeline at an angle away from the auditorium. She had gotten completely quiet now too with her face just an impassive mask of stone. Whatever they were traveling to had the doctor in an even more sour mood than normal. Rainbow Dash let out a deep breath and sighed, flapping her wings to start hovering alongside the doctor. She wanted to stretch them a bit after they had been kooked up in her jumpsuit for the rest of the day. “So how far away is this thing?” Rainbow asked just to break the silence. The light fluttering of her wings not enough to occupy her. “Not much further,” was the simple reply. Rainbow rolled her eyes but didn’t press further. It was obvious Anathema wasn’t up for talking much. Ahead the forest started to thin a bit and in the distance she could see hills rolling and rolling further towards the east. She doubted they’d be traveling that far though, whatever was done with the dead ponies… Rainbow couldn’t imagine the villagers would want their fallen family members to be too far away. Regardless of the disease. It was in another minute that she noticed something thanks to the slight height she had due to flying. But it looked like in the middle of a large clearing in the forest something had been dug out. The dirt was excavated in a rectangular shape, she was pretty sure. As she got closer she was able to see more, making out all the edges, and look down into it. A frown came to her face as she wondered what the hole was, it seemed about ten feet deep and there were a couple of piled up dirt ramps on the sides that you could walk down into it from. As Anathema made it to the edge she stopped and Rainbow Dash stopped along with her and looked down into the large hole directly under this side. She hadn’t been able to see into this side of it yet because of the direction they came from. Now that she could she was able to plainly see several dozen long boxes stacked up inside it. “Oh,” Rainbow Dash dropped to the dirt next to Anathema and folded her wings in. Those weren’t boxes. “We have to put them here, away from anything else. Their bodies are still covered in the green mold well after death,” Anathema said as she looked out across the coffins. “Just in one big grave?” Rainbow Dash asked her, a melancholic frown on her face. “It’s the most practical way to do things. We’ve been forced to be practical about things,” Anathema answered. “The coffins are all marked so we know who is who at least.” “Oh, great,” Rainbow sarcastically said. Anathema sighed. “I know. But there’s really not much better we can do right now. When… when a patient dies from the spores we wrap them in heavy, alcohol-disinfected sheets, and then seal them in one of these pine coffins to bring here. Eventually this will all be buried, but not before we find a cure. I may not know how these spores work completely but I’m not taking the risk of a new batch growing from here, even though there’s been no evidence something like that could happen, I don’t want to contaminate the forest and the land around Pinetree Warren further.” Rainbow Dash looked at the coffins, not wanting to picture their insides. “So Turnip’s mom and dad are in there?” “Yes,” Anathema nodded. “Initially we thought maybe we should cremate the corpses but there were too many variables and potential dangers involved. What if the smoke is toxic and spreads the disease? What if there’s some unknown chemical reaction with the green mold? It’s pretty much the same reason we haven’t just set fire to the whole part of the forest where the spores come from.” “No one’s brought any flowers or anything, have they?” Rainbow asked, noticing the lack of, well, pretty much everything around the large mass grave. Anathema bit her lip and momentarily shook her head. “N-No one has wanted to come out here, for obvious reasons. And getting close to the body before it’s boxed up is...” “I know. Sorry,” Rainbow shrugged, just tired. “Maybe when this is all over ponies can come pay their respects.” “I hope so too,” Anathema said. Rainbow Dash glanced at her. “Thanks for bringing me here, er, sort of. It wouldn’t have really hit the same way if you just told me. And… I didn’t know this many ponies had died from it. I don’t blame anyone in your village for not being able to smile.” “There’s going to be more too. I hate to admit that but I know it’s true,” Anathema said, staring at the coffins. “I’m trying my best, we all are, but it’s just delaying the inevitable at this point. Look at how much extra space is left in this grave—we dug it that big for a reason.” The two of them silently looked at the grave for a little while longer. The pine boxes stacked up along the bottom of it a grim reminder of what the plague had done to Pinetree Warren. No matter how quickly a cure was found or what was done to help the ponies currently afflicted, nothing could undo this. A bird flying overheard briefly distracted Rainbow Dash, she saw its shadow flying over the pit as it went east—far away from the green clouds of death. Her eyes ended up drawn back to that zone of disease and suffering. Where they were now she could only barely see a vague green fog above the trees in the distance. Rainbow Dash blinked and stared at it for a full minute before she found her voice again. “Hey, Anathema?” The doctor turned to look at her as she was still staring to the west. “Yes?” “I want to see the spores and the green mold and everything up close. I want to see exactly what I’m dealing with and learn everything I can about it,” Rainbow Dash said. “I’m going to that epi-whatever you call it.” “Rainbow Dash, that’s dangerous, and you’re not even a doctor or scientist to begin with so just what do you plan on learning?” Anathema asked her. “Doesn’t matter,” Rainbow resolutely shook her head and faced the doctor. “I don’t know what I can do here yet, but just like with this grave I need to see it for myself. That’s just the kind of pony I am.” Anathema grimaced, her eyes drifting in the direction of the green fog. “I can’t exactly support going close to it for anything less than an emergency… but I know I can’t stop you either.” Rainbow Dash grinned and opened her mouth but was quickly silenced by the swift slicing gesture from Anathema’s hoof. “However. We’re going to take the necessary precautions and you are going to listen to me. Understand?” Anathema raised an eyebrow at the truculent pegasus. The grin never left Rainbow’s face. “Perfectly.” She had thought just the jumpsuit was uncomfortable enough but now that she was bedecked in the full protective outfit she realized how wrong she was. The rubber boots over all her legs, the suffocating mask on her face, and the eyewear all made her wish she could tear them off right now. But she had promised to listen to Doctor Anathema and follow her safety protocols so she was just going to have to live with it for now. Even though she probably wasn’t in any danger. She wasn’t planning on getting close enough to come in contact with the spores and she would heal from them on her own anyways. Or for all she knew she was completely immune to the plague after her first encounter. But Anathema refused to take any chances or do anything unsafe, which Rainbow Dash could understand. There wasn’t any reason for her to bother the doctor about it and stress her out anymore than she already was. It took some time getting it all together, but now Rainbow Dash was standing in the northern forest with the green fog and particle clouds of spores directly ahead. It was so thick on the forest floor, not like the clouds and the vague smoke above the trees that she had seen when she first flew into it at all. It was dark looking into the heart of it and impossible to see completely through to the other side. The green and the spores was far too dense. Even just a few trees in it started to turn into total blackness while up above more of the haze continued to lift off into the sky and form the clouds that had almost ended Rainbow’s life. Doctor Anathema was standing ten feet behind her, also wearing full protective gear and not coming any closer. “Well? Have you seen what you wanted to see?” Rainbow Dash didn’t answer her yet. In part because she didn’t even know what she wanted to see in the first place. She had come here on a whim because she felt that it was important. That heart of the plague looked so unnatural, so wrong, because the particles and spores were so thick in the center it almost seemed alive with how it moved. Like something was animating the plague and had turned it into this freakish nightmare. “You should know that even for you you can’t go in there more than a few feet. The spores will eat right through your protection and then your body in that kind of concentration. Your “immunity” won’t help you, Rainbow Dash. It wouldn’t be like getting sick, it would be like a bath of acid.” Anathema told her. “For me, I would become infected and near death just from breathing in or coming into skin contact with some on the outskirts of it. As would every other pony in Pinetree Warren.” “What do you think it’s like in the middle of all that? What do you think the place where all the spores are coming from looks like?” Rainbow asked her, pretty much ignoring the warnings. Anathema frowned. “The origin point? I would imagine a huge pile of mold or fungus, or perhaps some kind of flowering plant that’s spreading the spores everywhere. I’m not a botanist, no one in town was sure what to make of it. Why? You had best not be getting any dumb ideas.” “I’m always getting dumb ideas,” Rainbow Dash snorted. “But no, I’m not planning on flying into it or anything.” If Twilight was here she could just put up a magical shield or something and walk on in, Rainbow Dash bet. But if Ardent Elm hadn’t done something like that already she doubted any of the unicorns here could. Rainbow wasn’t a botanist either, she just felt so dumb and useless not being able to offer anything right now. If only her stupid blood had actually shown Anathema the answer to curing this disease it would’ve been a happy meeting. She would’ve had a big party with Pinetree Warren, everyone would be healthy, and she’d be flying off south somewhere else right now. There was no leaving yet though. It didn’t matter if this wasn’t her village, or if Anathema wanted her to go so she wouldn’t get sick again. She had to help. That was the only part that mattered. “Have you tried like, catching any spores in a glass jar and taking them back to your lab to look at?” Rainbow Dash asked. Anathema shook her head. “Too dangerous. Too risky to bring spores back to the village. I won’t take that risk and put the rest of the ponies in Pinetree Warren in danger.” “Yeah, don’t blame you,” Rainbow said as she kept looking at the dark green epicenter. “Come on, Rainbow Dash, let’s go. You’re not going to get anywhere just staring at that place,” Anathema said. “You don’t know that. Maybe I’ll come to an epiphany or something. There’s gotta be something special up with this, this, thing!” Rainbow said to her. “If there was anything special up with it I think it must also have something to do with you. But we couldn’t figure it out even with all the tests we ran on you,” Anathema said. “You’re the only pony who has shown a different reaction to the spores.” She sighed. “Not even a different reaction, you still got sick the same way, you just recovered on your own somehow.” “I want to just say it’s cause I’m awesome but I know that doesn’t really help,” Rainbow Dash shrugged. “Unfortunately.” “There’s gotta be something I’m missing—that you and everyone else is too,” Rainbow Dash furrowed her brow. “Seriously nothing you’ve tried has worked on curing the ponies that are sick?” “We’ve only been able to delay and stall out the disease so far, but no pony except for you has actually shown an improvement and fought off the green,” Anathema told her. “We have treatments. Not a cure. And we’re nowhere close to finding one by the look of how things have been going.” Rainbow Dash groaned and turned around to look at the doctor. “This bites.” Anathema rolled her eyes in amusement. “Tell me about it. Let’s go back to my cabin, after today we both need a good night’s sleep.” “Do I still get the bed?” Rainbow raised an eyebrow at her. “Yes, you still get the bed.”