Twilight Sparkle stared down at her forehooves, pacing back and forth in front of the door to her spare bedroom. Every so often, the nervously impatient unicorn would look up at the yellow and black sign reading “Quarantined Area,” and would sigh with worry as she resumed pacing. On occasion, she would step up against the door and press her ear up against it, letting out a frustrated groan each time when the noise cancelling spell kept her from hearing anything. The only sound that could be heard in the room other than Twilight’s constant pacing, sighing, and groaning was the sound of a comic book’s pages being turned.
“You know, all of that’s not going to make the doctor come out faster, right?” asked Spike from behind the latest issue of Daring Doo’s Believe it or Not. Despite not looking, he seemed to know that Twilight had opened her mouth to protest when he spoke up again, “Besides, everypony knows it’s just the cold that’s been going around. You and Fluttershy both are just blowing everything out of proportion.”
The next thing he knew, his comic had been snatched out of his claws by a purple aura and was now being used to gently bop him on the head admonishingly. The comic was held out of his grip while the cross mare glared at him. He sighed audibly, preparing for the inevitable lecture.
“We don’t know that for sure, Spike! It could be something much more serious!” exclaimed Twilight before dropping the comic back into her assistant’s claws. “And we don’t know for sure how a pony’s cold could affect a human! Did you forget about all the fire you sneezed and coughed up after you caught it from me last week? You nearly burned down the entire library!”
“Maybe if you hadn’t made me keep working when I had it, we wouldn’t have had to call in the firefighters every fifteen minutes,” Spike muttered, opening his comic back up to where he had left off. Twilight either didn’t hear him or didn’t care since she just resumed her pacing. They weren’t left waiting for too long after that when the doctor walked out of the room, looking like she was trying not to laugh.
Doctor Soothing Remedy took a step back when the frazzled Element of Magic practically leapt towards her, already throwing out rapid fire questions. When the doctor heard the other unicorn ask if her patient had the completely made-up disease of “monkeynucleosis,” she absolutely had to shove her hoof into the noise hole to quiet it down. Once the seemingly endless stream had, in fact, ended, she cleared her throat, pulling her hoof away from Twilight’s mouth and wiping the spittle on Twilight’s coat.
“I regret to inform you that your human friend in there has caught an incurable virus,” she stated, pausing for the gasps of horror, “Yes, it’s true. A virus such as this has actually been quite the epidemic as of late. I guess that’s why they call it ‘the common cold.’ Unfortunately for him, he’s currently enduring an uncommon fever with it, but that’s nothing some bed rest and plenty of fluids can’t fix.”
Before Spike could say anything, Twilight spoke with a triumphant tone, “Ha! I told you, Spike! It’s not the cold that’s been going around! It’s worse than that! It’s the cold that’s been going around with a fever!”
The dragon just threw up his claws in exasperation before stomping out of the library, muttering about how he was going somewhere he’d be respected. Unfortunately, such a list would be short, somehow enumerated in the negatives.
Dr. Remedy simply shook her head at Spike’s theatrics before continuing, “His fever’s not life threatening, but it’s high enough to be messing with his cognitive function a little.”
“But that’s not good! Brick’s mind needs to be in perfect functioning order! How else will I learn from him?!” Twilight questioned frantically.
“Well, at the very least, you can get some entertainment out of it until it goes down,” said the doctor with a mirthful snicker. “Half the time I was in there, he believed himself to be in charge of a hostage situation. He said that if a Mister — “ she glanced down at a clipboard she had levitated out of her coat, “ — Crabs wanted his Crab Bee Pad Tee Formula back, he’d have to give him one billion doll hairs, a pool of nacho cheese, a hot tub of corn chips, and a sweet...moat or cycle. Not sure what all that’s about, but my coworkers are going to laugh for weeks.”
Dr. Remedy flipped over the page in her clipboard before scribbling on the next page, speaking as she did so, “Now, I’ve given him some medicine to help with his aches throughout his sickness. Your protective yellow friend in there can help with that. And you can take care of this.” She tore the page free and impaled it onto Twilight’s horn.
“Uuh, what’s this?” asked the confused unicorn.
“My bill. It’s a little higher than usual because of your aforementioned protective yellow friend. She kept smacking me with her wing whenever she thought I was hurting him. Which was any time I touched him,” the doctor explained, tucking her clipboard into her bag and swiftly making her exit while calling back. “By the way, he’s lucid at the moment! Go ahead and go talk to him if you can get past her!”
Twilight levitated the bill free from her horn and stared down at it for a few moments before muttering to herself, “I’ll just have to dip into the rainy day fund again. Don’t know why Spike insists on calling it his college fund. Like he’ll ever go to college.” Absentmindedly, she placed the bill on the dragon’s cluttered and overloaded desk, as she stepped into the room where her sick friend was recuperating.
As soon as she stepped inside the room, she heard what sounded like a growling neigh only slightly louder than the squeak of a mouse. When she looked on the bed, she saw Fluttershy flaring out her wings in an ineffective attempt to look more intimidating. Twilight deadpanned at the meek mare’s actions, clearing her throat pointedly.
Quickly, Fluttershy folded her wings with a sheepish look and giggled nervously before she spoke, “Oh, sorry, Twilight. I thought you were that mean doctor again. I think she got her degree off the back of a cereal — EEP!” Her inexplicably mean comment was cut off by the feeling of a certain purple unicorn’s magic moving her aside so she wasn’t blocking a sick human from view.
Said human’s unfocused, emerald green eyes fell on Twilight and he waved tiredly before speaking in a raspy, exhausted voice, “Heeey, Twilight. You got any magic medicine or just magic to get rid of all the sick in me? I feel like...something bad...I can’t think of a proper analogy for.”
The unicorn either ignored or didn’t notice Fluttershy’s affronted look, placing her forehooves up on the bed to give herself a better view of Brick. She tried not to laugh at how his time in bed had left his usually neat auburn hair sticking up at odd angles before replying, “Sorry, Brick. The most we can do is make you comfortable while your immune system fights off the cold. Right, Fluttershy?”
At being addressed, the pegasus stopped throwing dirty looks at her oblivious friend and leaned down to nuzzle her cheek gently against the human’s. “Mm-hmm. Is there anything you need, sweetie?” she asked in the same motherly tone she took around her pets.
“Well, it’s...it’s kind of a stretch, buuut…There is something that’s supposed to help with colds and I’ve always found it to be…effective,” he said with hesitation.
Twilight perked up at the thought of learning something new, even while her usual source for new knowledge was dubious at best for the time being. Eagerly, she asked, “Really?! What is it?!”
“Ugh, I can’t remember which way the saying goes, but it’s something about feeding or starving a cold,” said Brick, talking around Fluttershy fussing over him. “Not sure where you’ll be able to get it, but chicken noodle soup would be amazing right now.”
Twilight’s eyes nearly popped out of her head at his answer. She smiled nervously and stuttered out, “I-I don’t suppose y-you’re referring to a soup with noodles in the shape of little chickens, are you?”
“Oh, no, Twilight. Brick explained it to me earlier. It’s noodles and bits of chicken in chicken broth,” Fluttershy explained nonchalantly, making sure the human’s pillows were fluffed up. She rolled her eyes at the other mare’s shock, continuing, “Everything’s gotta eat, Twilight. And you and I both know that he needs the protein, especially now.”
“But...But...I don’t want to touch it!” the other mare exclaimed.
“...You have magic. You don’t have to,” deadpanned Fluttershy. She then waved her wings in Twilight’s face. “Shoo! Go get some!”
The unicorn yelped at the sudden pushiness before tripping over herself to gallop out of the room. Brick stared at her retreating form before turning to address the pegasus behind his head, “Should I have told her that vegetable soup would probably work just as well?”
Fluttershy thought about the question for only a second before shaking her head and answering with a smile, “Nope. Besides, it’s better for your recovery to have more nutrients.”
Twilight walked out of her library while simultaneously applying a disinfectant spell to herself, so she wouldn’t spread Brick’s cold to those who haven’t caught it yet. Mentally, she made a list of restaurants and various eateries in Ponyville that she knew of, ranging from most likely to least likely to have this “chicken noodle soup.” She then felt an overwhelming desire to imprint an exact replica of her face into the bark of her tree-house by way of repeated cranial trauma. However, banging one’s head on a wall would not fare well for a unicorn’s horn, so she just resigned herself to getting soup for her friend.
After all, his very well being depended upon the healing properties of soup! Or at the very least, it’ll speed up his recovery process and he can get back to teaching her things that’ll benefit all ponykind! Like how to make the perfect bean burrito or how to peel a satsuma all in one go. With such important knowledge at stake, she hesitantly added Discord as a possible source to her mental list, mostly as a last resort.
While asking the Spirit of Chaos for something usually ended in a bad way for the receiver, he seemed to go easy on Brick and requests centering around the human, seeing as how he said that he felt a miniscule amount of responsibility for such a foreign being’s appearance in Equestria. As Twilight galloped through town with her first destination in mind, she thought about the circumstances of Brick’s arrival in Ponyville and his subsequent period of adjustment to living there.
~~~Flashback~~~
“Worry not, little purplecorn! I’m taking my probation from Madame Sunny No Funny, Shouldn’t Be a Bunny seriously,” Discord practically sang, pinching Twilight’s cheeks and squishing her face around. Right when she was about to voice her annoyance, he let go with a falsely reassuring smile plastered on his face. “You’ll find this performance quite tame and limited, especially seeing as how Pinkly Pop wrote the material for us to perform.”
Twilight rubbed her sore cheeks with both hooves, seriously doubting the draconequus’ sincerity. It had only been a day since he had received his probation for turning Princess Celestia into a talking rabbit during one of her “boring” speeches. Admittedly, it did liven up the speech and had made the princess’s voice squeaky and adorable, but it was completely out of line. Especially since it was a speech dedicated to thanking Discord for not causing any disruptive chaos for over twenty four hours.
Later, during the performance, she had to seriously second guess her judgment of Discord when he seemed to be using his powers modestly for one of Pinkie Pie’s impromptu comedy performances. The first joke had left all gathered to watch confused, since it was a joke about an eccentric pony who wanted to build a house with just ninety-nine bricks. However, the pony had been forced to purchase a hundred bricks and had simply dropped one in a well, which Discord illustrated by dropping a brick into a hat then making the hat disappear. Then, Pinkie moved on with her next joke without even concluding the first.
At the conclusion of their performance, Twilight had to go back to her original line of thinking when a joke about a pony going to get water turned an otherwise flawlessly non-chaotic comedy show into a full-blown stampede of confused, curious ponies crowding the stage. After all, when Discord pulls an unknown, sleeping creature out of a hat in the middle of an otherwise innocuous joke, who wouldn’t want a closer look? It didn’t help that the Spirit of Chaos took one look at what he had caused, then looked at the hat a little closer before mumbling, “No doubt about it. I gotta get another hat.”
When Pinkie finally realized what was happening, she sped to the front of the stage and nervously announced, “And now here’s something we hope you’ll really like!” As quickly as she could, she closed the curtains and pulled a dazed Octavia onto the stage, placing her on a stool and pushing her bow and cello into her hooves. The cellist briefly protested about how she had been in her sitting room relaxing, but reluctantly began playing when Pinkie explained that it was an important cello emergency.
Later, after the initial shock of not only waking up where he had not gone to sleep, but also being prodded awake by an overly energetic, sapient, pink mini-horse, the human managed to introduce himself as Brandon Richard von Wolfsburg the Third. However, all present felt that was a bit of a mouthful, and seeing as how he’d received similar complaints from his previous peers, he agreed that he would simply go by the moniker of Brick. When everything calmed down, Twilight decided that it’d be best if he’d follow her to the library to both study him and try to find a way to send him back, especially since Discord disappeared when the hullabaloo started to avoid punishment.
Surprisingly, the walk to the library went without incident, probably due to Octavia keeping the majority of Ponyville entertained with her musical prowess. However, inside the library was a different story. Once Brick had solved the complex issue of navigating an entrance meant for quadrupeds half his size, he settled himself down on the couch while Twilight sent Spike out for repair supplies so he could fix her now broken door. She didn’t mind too much, especially since every other day she had to do the same thing for Rainbow Dash’s destructive tendencies. That, and a new species with a whole new way of thinking was sure to pay off in knowledge never before heard of by all ponykind!
Her plans came crashing down the moment Fluttershy walked in, who stared in confusion at the broken door.
“Uuh, Twilight? I thought Rainbow Dash broke your door yesterday. Why is it still broken? Did Spike get lazy?” the shy pegasus asked, not breaking her gaze.
“Well, Rainbow Dash didn’t break my door...this time. My new friend did when he tried to get through,” Twilight explained, motioning to the human that was currently taking over her couch.
When the words registered in her preoccupied mind, Fluttershy tensed up at the idea of meeting a new pony, but tried to steel herself, as a new friend of Twilight’s would surely want to meet all of her friends. She turned, saw the other mare pointing at the couch, and slowly turned once again, ready to duck behind her mane for that feeling of security she gets from doing so. When she finally saw that said new friend was not actually a pony, but what appeared to be a large primate wearing somewhat formal-looking clothes, she squealed in excitement before flying to him as fast as she could.
“OMIGOSH! Such a big cutie! Where did you get him, Twilight?! Are you going to keep him?!” she excitedly asked, gently rubbing the top of his head where the only fur on his body seemed to be.
Before Twilight could explain that Discord needed a stern talking to and that the big creature on her couch was actually intelligent, said creature spoke up, sounding amused yet tired simultaneously, “She better not. I was supposed to be back at my desk after my nap or my boss said he would make it his mission in life to make sure I never end up with a cushy desk job ever again. Call me Brick.”
Fluttershy let out an astonished gasp, practically squeeing as she spoke, “You talk too?!”
“Only when I feel like it which tends to be when it gets a little too quiet for my tastes. And I get what you’re trying to do with the petting, but could you stop messing up my hair? Maybe a hug instead?” Brick asked. Immediately, she swooped down and wrapped her forelegs around his torso with gusto.
From that moment on, Fluttershy seemed to adopt the human as one of her own, completely ignoring the fact that he was less than a year older than her. Despite the library’s front door being fixed to be larger to allow him in and out of the library much easier, he ended up moving in with Fluttershy. He stayed there for about two weeks before he claimed he was allergic to Angel, moving in with Twilight shortly thereafter.
~~Flashback over~~
“Ahem. Excuse me, miss. If you would be so kind as to space out someplace else, that would be wonderful. Thank you very much,” snarked the stallion maître d’hôtel of Le Sac D'alimentation, startling Twilight out of her memories.
“Oh! Sorry! I was just thinking about a friend. Speaking of, he’s sick right now,” she explained with a nervous smile.
“...My condolences. I have to ask: does this look like a hospital to you?” inquired the stallion, flipping through his reservation book idly.
“Well, I’ve already called in the doctor for him and it’s just a cold and uuh. Well, he said he wanted some soup. Some uh...chicken noodle soup,” Twilight finished lamely, smiling far too largely to be natural.
The stallion stared at her with a blank look for a few moments before answering, “There are a few problems with your request, miss. Number one, we do not cater to walk-ins. Number two, we do not do ‘take-out.’” He closed his book with a sharp snap. “And finally, we do not cater to carnivores. Please take your business elsewhere.”
Twilight bit back the sarcastic, scathing, and factually accurate comment about how Brick was an omnivore, not a carnivore; instead, she chose to just leave. She mumbled to herself about how that snooty Prench cuisine would only make his cold worse. That, and their snails were incredibly disgusting. She hadn’t seen worse since Canterlot’s ultra snobbish and traditional Prench restaurants her parents took her to when she was just a filly.
Not to mention, the owners of the restaurant just let them crawl around on the restaurant floor! They’d make ponies slip and slide in the slime or worse! The crunch of the shell under a hoof was one of the most disgusting sounds!
Those thoughts carried her all the way over to the Germane restaurant that just opened in town. Twilight always thought the name was weird because it was nearly untranslatable. What sort of name for a restaurant was Schadenfreude anyway? It just translated out to “harm-joy” and that made no sense at all!
Her interaction with the front of the house was short, strange, and somewhat cruel. It had started out relatively tame until she managed to blurt out that she needed chicken noodle soup for her sick friend. The hostess just stared for several seconds before her composure broke and she started snickering and giggling.
“PFFT! What are you, crazy?! Chicken noodle soup?! In Ponyville?!” she asked incredulously. At Twilight’s confused and hurt look, she just started laughing as though she’d heard the funniest joke of all time. “That’s rich! Ahahaha!” When the unicorn turned to walk out the door, the hostess called after her, “Hey! Don’t forget to come back and tell me when you don’t find any! I could use another good laugh!”
Twilight immediately thought of how much of a mistake her final choice of food vendor was when a voice sang out from the back as soon as she entered.
“Hello! And welcome to Bon Bon’s Honeypot!” Said mare stepped out of the back room with a large bowl of wrapped caramels on her back, not paying attention to who walked in as she continued her spiel. “Our specials for today are ‘Does Celestia Have a Flan for Me?’ and — ” Her eyes finally fell on the mare standing in front of her counter. A tense moment passed before she finally pointed accusingly at Twilight and exclaimed, “YOU!”
“Oh, uh, heh-heh. H-hi, Bon Bon. I don’t think I’d make a very good special,” the unicorn stuttered out before smiling nervously in a transparent attempt to break the tension.
“UH-UH! OUT! I spent weeks rebuilding my shop after you tried to ‘improve’ my candy with your so-called magic! Need I remind you that I still have a restraining order?!” Bon Bon told Twilight, venom lacing her tone. “Now, are you going to get out or do I have to throw you out?!”
When the earth pony mare hopped over her counter and took a threatening step forward, the unicorn waved her forehooves wildly, speaking frantically, “Waitwaitwaitwait! I’m here as a customer and it’s reeeeeeeally important! Just hear me out!”
Bon Bon briefly contemplated saying nothing and throwing her out anyway, but one look at Twilight’s dishevelled appearance and the strained countenance she had told her that the unicorn had obviously been having a bad day. She sighed with resignation, “Alright, fine. You have one minute. Go.”
She almost regretted not allowing more time when Twilight launched into a rapid-fire explanation; however, she then remembered how much of a pain it had been to excavate her counter out of the crystallized sugar. She did pick out key details in Twilight’s story about how she’d been all over town, trying to find the soup in all sorts of places all over Ponyville. That snobby Prench place and the weird Germane place made at least an iota of sense, but the rest of the places she’d tried didn’t at all.
Hayburger was only greasy fried food for ponies who were too lazy to just munch on a carrot or something. And since when would Sugarcube Corner, of all places, have any kind of soup or anything without a cartload of sugar?! She did, however, have to give Pinkie Pie credit for having a vegetable soup with noodles shaped like little chickens ready for a joke. Finally, why in the world would Applejack, of all ponies, have chicken noodle soup at a cart selling apples?!
Even when Twilight had collapsed at her forehooves begging her to help, Bon Bon had to wonder exactly what was wrong with that mare’s brain when she herself had spotted an inconsistency in where she’d been.
“Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease…” begged the unicorn ceaselessly.
“Alright, Twilight, listen — “ started Bon Bon, only to be interrupted with more and more utterings of “please.” She let out a worn sigh before leaving the inattentive, pleading Twilight on the floor to slide the bowl of caramels closer to herself. She unwrapped one, set it on the counter, unwrapped a second, stuck it to the first, and repeated until she had a big enough wad of caramels to plug up Twilight’s noise hole. Of course, she had to be careful not to make it too big so as to not choke her before she paid for them.
Carefully balancing on three hooves to hold up the wad of caramels in one of her forehooves, she sat down in front of Twilight, lifted her up with her free foreleg, and shoved the sticky wad into her mouth. The unicorn let out a few more muffled pleas before finally stopping and chewing the large, delicious candy slowly.
“Good. Now that you’re actually listening, I have a few things I’d like to tell you, then you pay for the caramels and leave. Got it?” Bon Bon asked, continuing after Twilight’s affirmative nod. “Alright, let me make this clear. I have not nor will I ever serve any type of soup here unless it’s ice cream soup or something to that effect. Second, I have not nor will I ever include any meat in my candy because that’s just weird and a little wrong. Third, if you wanted meat for Brick, why didn’t you try Gustave’s place?”
At the confused look on Twilight’s face, she rolled her eyes and continued, “Gustave le Grand? The griffin baker? I mean, he’s just a baker, but he has other griffins on his staff for his restaurant in town. How was his place not the first thing on your mind? Especially since you yourself have to keep refreshing the air freshener spell around it every month to keep the smell of cooking meat away from everypony downwind?”
Twilight chewed pensively on the caramel in her mouth for a short time before letting out a long, muffled scream of frustration. She materialized the checkbook for her rainy day fund and a quill, wrote Bon Bon a check for the candy, and galloped out of the earth pony’s shop toward the one restaurant she forgot to check.
“...She overpaid for those. Oh well, don’t look a gift pony in the mouth...Especially when she has caramel in it,” muttered Bon Bon as she headed to the back room to get a mop to clean up the sticky, caramel-laden spittle that Twilight had left.
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, Twilight, I do appreciate all the trouble you went through to get this for me. I’ll pay you back next time Mayor Mare gives me my paycheck,” said Brick happily, sounding quite a bit less nasally now. While Twilight had explained all the day’s events, he had eagerly eaten the chicken noodle soup she had brought him in record time. After the medicine Fluttershy had given him and the hot soup, the blockage in his sinuses was nearly completely eradicated.
“Oh, that’s fine. I’ve got plenty of bits in my rainy day fund for this sort of thing. And I don’t mind helping a friend in need!” exclaimed the unicorn. Once everything fell into place, it was simple enough to walk into Gustave’s restaurant, order a bowl of chicken noodle soup to go, and bring it back in her magic.
“...I thought that was Spike’s college fund?” questioned Brick, setting aside his now empty bowl.
“He just likes to call it that to make himself feel better and smarter. We all know he’s not going to college. After all, he has to stay and help me with my research,” explained Twilight.
“Speaking of Spike, where is he? Shouldn’t he be here cleaning everything up?” asked Fluttershy as she helped Brick settle into bed for a nap.
“...I ‘unno,” answered Twilight, “but he better not be getting into trouble again.”
“And that’s when I said that I’d be going someplace where I’m respected!” finished Spike with a proud smile on his face.
“That’s nice, dear,” said Twilight Velvet absently, stirring the pot containing the vegetable soup for her and her husband’s dinner, “but shouldn’t you be with Twilight cleaning up the messes she and her friends make? Are you really becoming as lazy as she’s been telling me?”
The proud smile slid off of Spike’s face slowly, until a brick materialized over him and fell down onto his head with an audible *THWACK*. The dragon wobbled around dazed before finally falling over unconscious.
Discord teleported in with Pinkie in tow, pointed at the dragon and the broken brick next to him, and exclaimed, “There’s that pesky brick! I told you it’d turn up eventually, Poinkie Pan!”