//------------------------------//
// Chapter 36 - Physician, Heal Thyself 
// Story: Equestrian Celestial Forge 
// by TheDriderPony 
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Twilight's eyes glanced over the top of her medical textbook like a tiger peering through the grasses of the savanna. Pages whipped by blindly until she stopped at a random spot, glanced at it, and launched her attack.

"Name the six primary pelvis nerves."

An easy question. Foalish, even. "Femoral, obturator, gluteal, sciatic, tibial, and fibular."

"Hm." Twilight didn't confirm it, but she knew she was right. She knew the names of the nerve clusters as well as she knew the names of her friends.

Pages flicked again as she rifled for a new question. "What do macrophages do?"

Another slowball. Was Twilight going easy on her? "They find and get rid of harmful bacteria and viruses, as well as activate other parts of the immune response."

Twilight's brow furrowed. "Alright." She snapped the book shut. "Last question. Where is your carbuncle located?"

A smile crept across Fluttershy's face and she had to fight back the urge to giggle. She'd been having to do that a lot lately. "Trick question. I don't have one, but you do. It's right at the base of your horn. Pegasi do have a similar organ at the joint of each wing, but it's more commonly known as the "flight core" and is a biologically distinct organ despite doing a similar function."

"Correct. Again." Twilight stood up and set the book down. "Well, you seem medically competent to me. Or at least as far as this textbook's review questions can determine."

Acing a test, and being fully confident in her answers, was a surprisingly thrilling feeling. Was this how Twilight felt all the time? This assurance in her own knowledge? She liked it. But now that she'd proven herself in basic biology, Fluttershy felt up for a bit more of a challenge. "Maybe we can try some more difficult ones?"

Twilight gave her a look that was hard to decipher. "Fluttershy, that was a university level textbook. I don't have anything harder."

"That was... it was?" She felt lightheaded. Like the floor was suddenly far away. If those were the hardest she had, why had they all felt so... obvious?

Twilight continued nodding, unaware of her sudden spiking uneasiness. "Right! You know, for a lot of those I had no idea if your answers were right or not until I checked the answer key. It's really quite impressive."

Smarter than Twilight. She was smarter than Twilight Sparkle. In one very niche field of knowledge, but still. It was a strange thought to have. Stranger still that, as a whole, she didn't feel any smarter.

There had been a split second of dizziness as the power arrived, but after that it just felt... normal. Natural. Her head didn't ache like a shelf full of textbooks had been crammed in. She didn't have extra memories of going to medical school like Applejack had gotten with her combat training.

The information was just... there. Obvious. One plus one is two. Yellow plus blue is green. Here's how you fix a compound fracture and suture the wound shut. The major components of the vascular system are as follows.

"It's fascinating," Twilight remarked as she added more notes to her copy of their linked journal. "There seems to be more of a theme to the ones you've gotten than the rest of us. The ability to grow and cook healing food, a tool to harvest plants perfectly, and medical knowledge. I know three data-points isn't much, but it's starting to look like a pattern."

Fluttershy couldn't deny the synergy. Before this new power, she'd only had a vague idea which of her magical foodstuffs would heal a little and which could heal a lot. Now, with an encyclopedic knowledge of the equine body worked, she could.

Mostly.

It wasn't perfect, more like a much refined intuition than anything else. And she was still fuzzy on exactly how some mushroom powder and store-bought cake mix and a few apples could patch up a scraped knee, or why some recipes also restored energy or stamina or magical power, but it worked all the same.

"We still should ask Rarity to take a look at it with her Hoarder's Eyes and see if there's anything non-obvious about it," Twilight continued, "But as far as perks go this seems pretty straightforward. Congratulations, Fluttershy. You're now a medical— well, not a professional. You don't actually have a degree or any certifications—"

"I have a veterinary certificate." And, now that she thought about it, an odd hodgepodge of trivia about some animal anatomy as well, specifically from ones she'd help recover from severe injuries. Something to look into later.

"Medical quasi-professional then," Twilight conceded before stifling back a yawn.

There was one other aspect to this new power that they hadn't really touched on. She didn't have any new senses that let her sniff out injury or disease, but with so much raw knowledge about the body's functions she found she could read a pony's symptoms like a book.

And Twilight was written in extra-large print font.

"Then, as a medical quasi-professional, I'm unofficially officially diagnosing you as stressed and sleep deprived."

"Whaaa-" Twilight tried to object before her body betrayed her with a jaw cracking yawn. "I'm not sleep deprived. I just haven't had my coffee today. Spike's been busy helping Rarity."

She wasn't buying it. She could see her bloodshot eyes. The slight twitch in her muscles. "What time did you go to sleep last night?"

"A very reasonable hour."

"When?"

"It was... ah... hm..." Twilight's confidence drained quickly. Her face morphed between emotions like a watercolor painting in a fogbank. "...it was definitely before the sun came up."

"Oh Twilight." She shook her head through the unicorn's blustering explanations and excuses about a breakthrough and laid a hoof on her shoulder. "As an almost-doctor, I'm prescribing you two fried eggs, a honey candy, and an hour of fur therapy."

"Fur therapy?"

"There's nothing better for relieving mental stress than cuddling with an adorable animal." There were better options. Medicine, actual rest, direct stimulation of certain glands. Yet, in this case, she could tell a simple solution would work better than normal, partially because she'd been the one to prescribe it. An oddly circular bit of logic, but her new intuition said it was valid.

"Let's head back to my cottage and I'll find you some kittens to pet."

"That does sound nice..."





Pinkie Pie had never focused on a book so intensely before.

Okay, so maybe she had once or twice with some really good cookbooks but this was her first time reading a book that updated itself.

She'd already had it open an hour ago (jotting down some new neato chemical reactions that had come to mind) when her Pinkie Sense had gone off with the familiar warm tingle slowly building in her body of a new power coming in. But then something changed and it bounced off in a different direction before it could finish. Which was a bit of a disappointment but also new and different and neat. Sure, it meant she had missed out on something new (but honestly she was still coming to terms with her multidisciplinary expertise) but it also meant that somepony else got a new surprise!

Thus, the series of events that had led to her eagerly flipping through the book for the past way too many minutes to count, waiting for somepony to update their entry.

And then, like magic (cause it was), a new page appeared in Fluttershy's section but Twilight's hornwriting.

She couldn't help but gasp as she read the details and understood their true implications.

"I can't believe it! We're Doctor Buddies!"





At roughly the same time, Rarity was practically grinding her teeth to a powder in frustration. She'd finally booked some time working with the Cube to try and replicate that fabulous fabric she'd made for fashion week, only to find it a bigger challenge than she'd expected.

Not even Spike's earnest suggestions and steady supply of low-calorie snacks could keep her spirits up.

Curse her younger self for not writing down the recipe, and curse the Cube as well for being so exacting! She didn't want to sacrifice a thousand-year-old tapestry for each bolt of fabric, but even a slight change in ingredients produced wildly different results.

Two hours of experimenting had produced a lot of novel fabric that wasn't quite right, but also a large pile of useless mishmashed junk that would have to be thrown away (unless someone wanted to spend just as much time separating its component materials with the Cube. Maybe Moondancer would like to do it. That mare was… an odd one).

She nearly jumped out of her skin when Pinkie's voice shouted from behind her.

"New skill update!" Rarity whirled around in a near-catastrophic fall turned last-second into a graceful stop to find...a pink muzzle poking through a door barely big enough to accommodate it.

It was odd enough to displace her displeasure at being surprised. "Pinkie? Is that... did you use your key on your breadbox again?"

"Yes! Not important! Fluttershy's a doctor now!"

Rarity blinked. "Oh? Good for her, it certainly suits her."

"I know, right?!" There was absolutely no reason to shout, yet Pinkie continued to do so anyway. "And it means she and I are Doctor Buddies! Can you make us matching outfits?"

Rarity’s breath caught in her throat. She’d never consider it before, but now that she was… both Pinkie and Fluttershy did have coats that lent themselves well to white. Add some color coded lapels... Fluttershy could pull off a short—no, remember her modesty—a long jacket, yes. Something shorter for Pinkie, more casual and approachable but still professional. Maybe if she could get them to put their manes up in buns... try on some glasses...

Oh.

Oh-hoho!

Now that was a look.

"Pinkie Pie, darling, you just might be a genius."

"I know! I have many degrees!" The muzzle disappeared for a moment, sniffed, then reappeared. "Whoops! Gotta go! My piranha juice is about to burn!"

The door winked away as Pinkie no doubt removed her Key and rushed off to deal with... whatever piranha juice was. It didn't sound terribly tasty to her.

But the brief visit had had a wonderful effect on her mood. Gone completely was the storm of frustration, replaced by the bright sunshine of inspiration.

Rarity had a new project, and it was going to be fabulous.

“Hey!”

She jumped once again as Pinkie came back just as quickly as she’d left. “Yes? What now?”

It felt oddly fitting to call Pinkie’s disembodied grin ‘cheshire’. Or at the very least, quite smug. “I got a new one too!”

“What, another?” she asked. That was strangely fast. Usually there were a few days in between new arrivals. 

“Yepperooni! I don’t get exactly what it’s supposed to be, but I think I’m immune to boredom now!”

Rarity felt her chest clench as her heart missed a beat. A Pinkie who couldn’t get bored. Out of everything that had changed since that fateful day when Twilight cast Starswirl’s spell, this was perhaps the most alarming thing yet. 

She eyed the Cube and wondered just what kind of ingredients she’d need to combine to invent an explosion-proof fabric.