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// 16 - Easy Solutions 
// Story: Return to Equestria 
// by David Silver 
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Rhinestone led them quickly to a small building not far from where they started. "Doctor? Doctor?" she called out as she waved for the others to follow her. "We have a very sick creature that needs your help."

"A creature?" A new unicorn stepped into view. His gaze was penetrating and judging. Quite sharply, he saw the one non-pony that could qualify. "He's standing and moving on his own."

David waved as he came up to the counter to lean on lightly. "What I have doesn't kill quickly. My speech… will slow? I may get wheelchair-ridden eventually and stop moving much."

The doctor inclined his head. "Did you eat something that didn't agree with you?"

"I wish it was that simple." His left hand waved but bumped into Joypad, who was a valid petting target and didn't avoid the attention. "My immune system is busy feasting on the shells around my nerves, which makes them not work. Last I looked, which was a while ago, it was up here and down here, all along." He pointed up to his head and trailed a path down his spine. "Got any magic for that?"

Doctor Feel Good tapped at his chin thoughtfully. "So the symptoms are persistent and include gradual onset of physical impairment. I can work with that.” Doctor Feel Good nodded and jotted illegible nonsense on his paper notepad. “Are there secondary symptoms? Please describe them as fully as possible. I can’t make medicine to make you feel alright unless I know exactly what’s happening and how it makes you feel bad.”

David hiked a brow, a talent he had worked for months to get right. "Well sure. Going to the bathroom isn't easy more than half the time." That got a squint from the pony next to him. "Tingling on the right side of my body, and…" He hummed with thought. "A headache that's only gotten worse. Pretty sure they're all related. And you have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

Back's wings flared out. "Hey hey, calm down. We went to a doctor for a reason." She flashed a bright smile at Dr. Feel Good. "You know what he's talking about, right?"

“Alright, so you need a medicine that will at least hold back physical impairment, take care of a headache, make specifically your right side of your body less tingly, and help you evacuate your wastes… #1, #2, or both?”

David's expression became less happy. "You're treating symptoms. You can solve all the symptoms and I'm still going to go invalid." He squeezed the top of back, scrunching the skin over her spine as he leaned over her a little. "I appreciate it, really. But it doesn't sound like a fix."

Joypad took a measured step forward to not knock over the human leaning on her. "We'll take the bathroom stuff anyway. And the headache cure! Better than nothing."

“There is one more option.” Feel Good pranced nervously. “I have a medicine I’ve developed since magic came back… I haven’t tested it… but it’s only been formulated for unicorns. The idea is that a total transmogrification will override any existing ailment. If it works… well it’s going to turn you into a pony. I’m making it for cases like yours. Cases where I can only treat the symptoms.” 

Back clapped her hooves to her cheeks. "Our human!"

Joypad swatted at the panicked pegasus. "Our human isn't much good if they become a dead human, or a human in a wheelchair?" She looked over her shoulder. "How… uh… deadly is this, if you don't mind?"

David released Joypad to lean against the counter in full. "Not that deadly, from what I hear. It's one of those 'wish you were dead' diseases, eventually." He leaned back to discover there was nothing behind him and he casually toppled over to the floor in an ungainly display. "Dang it." He sat up, but slowly. "I thought this would… Did it get worse for you?"



That sounds pretty out of character.



"You wouldn't be bringing this up if everything was working out great." David snorted at the floating letters. "Unless this is the drama you thought up?"



Pretty good drama, you have to admit.



"Thanks, I hate it." Glancing around, he could see the others were stuck in time. No need for that while he conversed with the Text. "It's not that I hate the idea of being a pony. It was pretty nice last time."



But.



"I thought I'd stick to humanity longer this time." David clenched his left hand. "I thought I'd stick to it the whole time."



You knew the problems before you got here.

 The letters began to dance 

And you're aware this time, so you can't hide behind ignorance. So what'll it be?



"I don't want a warped childhood."



These ponies live a life you already know. What would you gain doing that? That sounds like agreement.



Life proceeded around David.

“There is a risk, of course. I’ve only made this medicine to work on ponies, specifically only turning ponies of the same tribe into other ponies of the same tribe.” Doctor Feel Good explained. “But I am 100% confident I can make a human safe version. But in the end, it’s your decision.”

Joypad sat down next to the sitting up but still grounded David. "We're not doing anything without your permission." She leaned in with a little smile. "We're only here because of you, idiot. We do nothing without your go ahead."

Back Story settled on the other side of the human. "You are going to become useless for marketing." A little smile spread despite that. "Good thing I don't work in marketing. You'll still answer questions, right?"

David tried to put a hand on either mare, and got neither mare, almost flopping over in a wave of fatigue. "Crap." He managed to right himself. "I'm… glad you're here, both of you. You seem… are. You are nice." He frowned at his seeming lack of vocal skills. "I can't live like this."

In a tiny game cabinet across town a doll screamed. “Do what you will!!!”

“I got your back,” Ragdoll asserted. “You left a square in my mind.”

"Was it a square?" David debated geometric shapes, but not the placing of them, with a moment of squinting. "I'm getting off topic… Our options! Options, right. We try to treat the symptoms." He counted on one finger. "Or we do nothing." Out went a second finger. "Either of those results in paralysis and unfun times, but one is more comfortable about it."

Joypad inclined her head. "Not gonna lie. Those both sound like bad endings and I would return the game with them and hurl it at the vendor. What's the other option?"

“If it works, he becomes a perfectly normal unicorn.” The Doctor assured them.

Back Story clopped her hooves together sharply. "Too easy." She leaned forward at the Doctor with a knowing smile. "If I coded this, or designed it, there's no way you just happen to have the ingredients to a 'mysterious creature to unicorn' potion just lying around. So, where do we have to go?"

Joypad slapped one hoof to a cheek. "Good point. That would be strange. What sort of mysterious mountain top do we have to climb?"

“Ha, ha!” The Doctor guffawed. “Is that how pegasi and earth pony medicine works? No, I have all the ingredients on horn but two, and your biped friend has those. I just need a hair and blood sample and I can have the medicine by morning.”

David raised his hands at his two equine protectors. "Maybe he's full of it, or not. It probably won't kill me, right?"

Joypad thumped David in the chest, just to have to hurriedly get a hoof in the way to make sure he didn't flop over. "That isn't entirely out of bounds. This is a mysterious doctor with sudden solutions to a problem that didn't exist yesterday."

Back Story closed in with a wing raised to block the view. "This isn't something we can test, but maybe he has a point. What's the other option? I want our human as a human, but I'll settle for a human brain in a friendly body." Her ears rolled back. "Oh, what if he goes ahead and makes you some sort of monster?"

“Ahem,” Feelgood cleared his throat, “I’m standing right here. I assure you I am not some kind of mad scientist, nor am I in any way ‘mysterious’. I’ve been practicing medicine in this village for over twenty years. My medicine doesn’t hurt ponies. It doesn’t kill ponies. And it certainly doesn’t turn them into monsters. My one failure was that I couldn’t make a medicine to stop the voices in Gloomy’s head,” the doctor chuckled, “but it turns out that was because her doll was actually talking to her.”

"There is one question." Joypad crossed her hooves, eyes set on David. "What did you mean 'this time?' Was there a first time? Spill the beans! This is hardly the time to be coy about it."

Back's right ear danced. "She has a point, I think. We want to… go ahead with your best interest, so share, please."

That was awkward, to say the least. David rubbed behind his head in thought of the concept. "Where to even start… I wrote a… No…" That made little sense. "I wrote about it, another world, that had ponies, but wasn't quite like this one. The ancient one, the old one?"

Joypad inclined her head. "You wrote about the old pony days, alright? What does that have to do with anything? You're a writer, you write."

Back's eyes shined. "You write? We have even more to go over." She clapped with obvious joy and a big smile. "But first, not dying." She squinted at her current human. "Or going invalid to the point you might not be able to talk much. Is that a common human problem?"

 “Sorry we’re late,” Ragdoll waved from his perch on Gloomy’s beret, “Had to deal with work things. Can the Doc help?”

“He’s really a very good doctor,” Gloomy said with a bored expression, without the slightest hint of irony, “He invented my antidepressants. I owe my sunny disposition to Doctor Feelgood.”

The idea united Pegasus and earth pony in looks of disbelief that Gloomy once had a more subdued option. Joypad turned to the doctor fully. "So, this thing. You haven't tried it, right?"

“On ponies… no…” The doctor admitted. “I made an earlier version when magic came back for a foal’s beloved pet that was afflicted with feline leukemia. I had a burst of inspiration that I could use my magic to make my medicine better. Maybe I could do more than treat symptoms and make ponies ‘feel good’. So I made a pill that would turn Baron Flufflepaw into a healthy kitty. He’s an orange tabby, instead of gray, but a perfectly healthy kitty with all his kitty memories of being a loving companion.”

“And he seriously helped Gloomy. Since she was a filly, I always told her to trust the doc. He ain’t never steered us wrong.” Ragdoll nodded solemnly. “The ‘voices in her head’ thing were kinda my fault…”

“I made the unicorn version of the medicine for a filly named Blue Skies.” The doctor sighed. “She has a lung disease. I can make medicine to treat the symptoms, but she’ll never not need the medicine, and eventually she’ll need stronger medicine. I’ve honestly been waiting for an adult unicorn to try it before I give it to a foal…”

"I'm an adult." David sounded as if he was at least partially joking with the statement.

Joypad placed a hoof over her face. "This can only end up badly." But that turned into an annoyed grunt. "But what's the other option?!"

"Not many." Back flumped onto her belly with an agitated swish of her tail. "There's no backsies, huh?"

“To make a human version, I would need a healthy human subject.” The doctor blew an errant bang out from in front of his eyes. “We are lacking in those.”