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// A Cure For thier Disease 
// Story: Tales of Another Ponyville 
// by Paradise Oasis 
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"Stay with me, Daisy! Don't go unconscious!" I yell at her in a panic, propping her head up with my hoof. "Stay with me, dammit!"

"Devils! The Ponyvillians fight like devils!" One of the Equestrians cried out in terror, as he and his comrades fled for the hills. "Gallop for your lives, my brothers and sisters! Before the heretics send us all to Tartarus!"

Everything happened at once; Rainbow Dash flew into a rage at the sight of one of her dear friend's suffering, and the adrenaline from the rage giving her and the rest of us the strength to break those ropes. Dash and Blue Mist dive at the zealots with a blinding fury, stomping and kicking as the rampaged through the surrounding ponies. The cultists were too shocked at the 'inferior' pony's escape to fight back, and did little to fight back as the were pounded and slammed upon by the hooves of our angry friends.

I, meanwhile, galloped over and knocked the bubbling cauldron out from under our screaming companion. Unfastening the chain that held her aloof, I used my hooves to gently lower her to the ground. Rushing over to check her vitals, I am relieved to find Daisy still alive.

"Hey, Spring...." She smiled weakly, still obviously in a groggy and weakened state. "How it going, girl?"

Examining the mare's heavily damaged body, I discovered that the situation was not good at all. The lower half of her body was scorched a myriad of colors, her coat burned clean off and the raw skin showing. I've only ever seen this kind of damage om a pony's tissue with burn victims, after a house in Ponyville had accidentally caught ablaze. I've never seen this kind of burn damage having been done from an act of violence of one pony against another before. And quite frankly, the thought sickens me... 

My name is Spring Fever, and I'm the resident doctor and the Ponyville clinic and hospital. Since, I was a foal I had been fascinated by pony anatomy (my fascination with stallion anatomy did not come until my teen years... heh heh...) and the workings of a miraculous biological machine like the equine body. While other foals were  reading picture books and coloring, I was taking medical textbooks out of the town library, and reading them for fun. I could recite the name of every organ in the pony digestive system by age ten.

My mother also instilled in me a desire to compassionately help other ponies, as she had done with foals as the head of the town's day care. I apprenticed under our town's previous doctor to learn my trade, then hung my own shingle out when she retired. I've been serving as the town's doctor ever since, handling everything from a case of the sniffles, to emergency surgeries to save a pony's life.

"Wow, you sure look a little different today, Daisy."  I tell her with a nervous laugh, trying to add a little levity to the situation. "Are you trying a new coat dye?"

"Naw, just a new perfume." She giggled back, trying to hide her glaringly obvious pain. "You know how it is, trying to get the stallions attention, and all..."

The scorched smell coming from her lower half reminds me of charred chicken flesh, the kind I've smelled Spike cooking on an outdoor barbecue to eat. Now, in my years in the medical profession I've seen far worse than this; a pony who had an iron bar driven clean through her leg, a unicorn who didn't duck when he was passing under a low bridge on a motor scooter and had his horn sheared clean off, and even a Pegasus who had a bone sticking clean out of her wing. 

But those were all accidents. I had watched those monsters torture and try to kill my friends, and even enjoy doing it! Now, Daisy Paisley will have that mis-colored lower half of her body for the rest of her natural life, a hairless burn scar that will forever remind her of this horrible night. As I bandage up her wounds, I fight back a bloodthirsty rage I can feel building up inside of me; I have a sudden urge to track down each and every one of those monsters who did this, and boil them in acidic Equestrian pollution while slowly torturing them to death. But the thought of behaving exactly like them only sickens me further, and I force myself to put the thought of what had just happened out of my head altogether.

"Spring, we've driven the last of those cowards off into the woods." Blue Mist snarled, snorting in anger at what the Equestrians had done. "Hurry, and get Daisy onto my back! I'll carry her, while you have a look at Rainbow Dash's jaw."

I nodded quickly, loading the still groggy mare onto the stallion's back, before trotting over to my rainbow-maned friend. Her jaw is so painfully dislocated that it must really hurt for her to talk. The only thing I can do here with my limited pouch of medical tools is simply bandage her jaw up. I'll have to wait until we get back to my clinic in Ponyville before I can do any serious work on her.  But that look of blind rage burning from her eyes as I bandaged her up.... I'll never forget it as long as I live. 

"Hurry up, Spring!" Blue called out, galloping his way back in the direction we had come. "We gotta get out of here, before those crazies come back!" 

And so we ran, farther and faster than we ever had before, racing out way back towards  the safety of Ponyville. The four of us rarely talked about our adventure in the outside world after that, and even then we couldn't mention it without a shiver going down our spines. We also learned Wysteria's hot air balloon had in fact not flown outside of Ponyville, but rather under the rainbow waterfall to butterfly island. In other words, all of our pain and suffering had been for nothing. 

It wasn't until years and years later that we discovered who our attackers were; a crazy cult of Equestrian purists, who had had their minds poisoned by the toxic waste in their environment to the point of insanity. A traveling equestrian pony later told us that the lunar princess had eventually  had her soldiers hunt down and exterminate the cult, but it was small comfort to the innocent little ponies of Ponyville who had fallen victim to their terrible wrath.