Two Background Ponies Quickie: "A Health of Information" Aftermath · 7:00pm Sep 24th, 2017
As the Ponyville Hoofball team scored again and the crowd erupted in cheers, a certain blue stallion gave a hesitant clap as he looked around in the bleacher area for somepony. Not seeing him, he sighed and looked back to the time. It was nearly the end of the first and still no sign of him. He eased back into his seat momentarily and watched the game again.
Yet only a few moments later, he heard a loud set of squeaking noises. He looked to the source, and then did a take at what he saw. In a full body protective suit, a green stallion was squeezing his way through the aisle toward him. Naturally, the amount of respiration equipment on it and the size blocked multiple ponies' view, much to their anger and irritation. The blue stallion himself stared opened mouthed a while before groaning. As for the stallion in the suit, he looked rather stressed as if he hadn't slept in a couple days, and was trying not to touch anything. He only very slowly sat down in his own seat next to the blue stallion, and even then looked nervously around.
"Carl...what the hell? I thought you told me you got rid of that damn radiation suit!"
"This is a biohazard suit, Sam!" The stallion retorted in a strained snap. "And you'll pry it off of my cold, dead, flank flesh! I'm not risking walking around Equestria without it anymore!"
Sam gave a massive groan and eye roll. "Oh, now what...?"
"Now what? Now what?! I'll tell you 'now what'! We've had three reported cases of Equum Ligno in Ponyville, Sam! Better known by the common name 'Swamp Fever'!"
He groaned and shrugged. "Well, who cares?"
"Who...who cares? Who cares?!" He violently blew up. "Do you have any idea what that crap does to you?!"
Sam winced and shook his head, beginning to raise up his paper program guide for the game. "Carl, could you just focus on the game while I try to ignore your hazmat suit? Here, I got us a program... I already filled in the first-"
Carl snapped to the program, his eyes went wide, and he violently slapped it out of Sam's hands.
"Ow! Dude, what the-?!"
"You murderer! You're actually using paper products?! How do you know that wasn't somepony?"
Sam winced at the sudden outburst, as it started to attract stares. "Dude, are you off your sugar again or something?" He hissed in a loud whisper.
"No, Sam. I'm trying to tell you what the disease does to you. How would you like to be a tree?"
"Tree?"
"Tree!"
"...Tree."
Carl vigorously nodded as he made a nervous mumble. "Oooo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo...to be a tree. (:P) That's what this does to you, man. Think about it. Being anchored in the same spot unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to blink...forever! Stuck in a living nightmare for decades...centuries...hell, thousands of years, maybe! Your own body used to make more of those sick germ spore flowers to infect other ponies! And that crap is airborne! It passes as easy as the common cold!"
A food vendor peddling cinnamon churros suddenly walked by, turning to the two. "Churros! Get your nice hot churros here!"
Carl immediately snapped up, reached behind him, came out with a blowtorch, and incinerated the offered churros. The vendors screamed in panic, dropped them, and ran for it. Sam nearly jumped on the green stallion to knock the blowtorch out of his hand.
"Carl, have you lost your mind?!"
"You know how unsanitary these places are?!" He moaned as he sank in his seat. "I've been too afraid to eat non-canned food for days...and I've scrubbed my house so many times I think the bleach is making my hoof flesh crack. Anytime I see somepony cough I throw Listerine in my face..."
Sam groaned again and sank in his seat. "Carl, you're not going to get Swamp Fever..."
"You don't know that, Sam..."
"If you do, they can cure it, you know."
"The hell they can! Only one beehive in Equestria produces the cure! All we need is one bad fungal infection and this whole town could become a forest!"
His eyes suddenly widened on saying that. Sam cracked a grimace. "Not that look..."
"Dude...you ever wonder how many abandoned settlements and towns there are in Equestria?" He muttered in growing horror. "Ones that have, you know...nothing but trees growing out of them?"
"Carl..."
"Oh Celestia...what if those towns got hit with a pandemic and...and..."
"Please, Carl...just...just watch the game.... Think of something else. Like how we're able to play baseball..."
The green stallion looked away, cupping his hooves to his mouth. "We need to burn down the Everfree. That's the only solution. Burn that entire thing down and remove the ashes. Get ourselves some military surplus napalm and just start at Fluttershy's and..." He trailed off again. "Oh no, Sam... What...what if... Do you suppose the reason the seasons and the weather change all on their own in Everfree is because every last one of those trees is...?"
Sam tapped his hoof, and finally shrugged. "Meadowbrook! That's it, Meadowbrook! How she went from being a unicorn of the far east to being an earth pony of the southern bayou-"
Carl slammed his hoof down and wheeled on his friend. "All of our names are common nouns, Sam! At some point in history two ponies are going to get the same name!"
---
At Ponyville General Hospital, a nervous looking stallion mottled with brown spots sat on the examination table as the doctor conducted his test. Every so often he would sneeze lightning or cough bubbles, and the last time he had done the latter the physician had bottled one, corked it, and shook it up. Now he was holding it out in front of him, waiting for the color change result. He sweat nervously as he waited.
Finally, the bubble changed...to blue.
The doctor smiled. "Well, it's not red, which means it isn't Swamp Fever."
The stallion closed his eyes and sighed in massive relief. "Thank Celestia... So what kind of sickness is brown spots, cough bubbles, lightning sneezes, and a blue test result?"
"Well, before I tell you that, sir, I'll caution you that you should probably prepare a list of all of your, ahem, 'partners' over the past month."
There's probably (thankfully!) more than one hive of flashbees out there. Plus the trees themselves seem to be adapted to swamps, not the most widespread biome in Equestria. Still, when combined with flyders, I can't blame Carl for his reaction.
Unfortunately, I felt like "explaining" a joke in this one. The thought that kept running through my head in this episode was that this sickness could have granted Fluttershy's Season One wish.
I couldn't find a way to work it in, though, so I tried using a dialog gag.