• Published 27th Jun 2013
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Sick Week - CosmicAfro



Twilight Sparkle sneezes and an adventure begins!

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This wasn’t the way Twilight had intended waking up early in the morning, floating above the floor which was also on fire, despite nothing in the room being combustable. Celestia and Luna were still asleep and floating as well along with all of the medical equipment, nodding off as if nothing was amiss. She flailed her hooves around in the air and remembered she had wings. She gave a smile that practically said, “Oh, right!” and then flew herself to a wall where she landed vertically. She ran across the wall and to the door where she opened it from the topside. She peered outside and watched with amusement and fear as the earth pony guards tried to air-swim to any tether possible with no results. There wasn’t much time to lose. She needed to act quickly. Syndrome and Psyde, her nurses, seemed to be doing ok as they bounced off of the walls, performing tricks to outdo one another. She rolled her eyes, wondering how they ever got a position here. “Hey, what’s going on?”

“Good mornin’, Princess Twilight!” Psyde greeted with a wave of his blue hoof which knocked into his friend’s head as he floated by. “Woops, sorry.”

“Yer fine. Ahh, Ms. Sparkle, the most wonderful thing has happened.” He curled up into a red ball and began to do front flips.

“Gravity has lifted! Why, I’ve never felt so alive!”

“Y’know, Syndrome, it’s not polite to flip off a princess,” he jeered, poking him in the ribs.

“Ah course. I apologize. I’d stop if I could,” he chuckled. He extended his legs into a cartwheel but continued to spin endlessly. His pal grabbed onto him, but got caught in the momentum. “I’d actually heard about this in my classes. The princesses would have these bizarre side effects under Nullam Constantium, as you know, but one of the best was while under a fever. Luna’s was known for lifting gravity for a short while, and Celestia’s... well I thought the fire gave it away really.”

“And you two aren’t going in there to help them?”

The two pushed against each other to land safely against a wall. They shook their heads, removing the nausea they had acquired from too much spinning and then returned their attention to Twilight. “I wish I could,” Psyde said, “but there hasn’t been anything developed in ages to treat their specific fever. No offense to you, Princess, but I wouldn’t go in there, the room’s on fire!”

“Then why are you two goofing off!? Call for some water, get Dis-” Twilight stopped. “Doctor, get Dr. Cooperation.”

“The fire’s harmless.” Syndrome grabbed his hat and pushed himself towards a trail of fire running across the floor out of the infirmary. He swooped his hat through it and put it on his head. “See? The fire don’t- er, doesn’t even have heat. My hoof is on fire too. It doesn’t even sting.”

“Oh no, Syndrome, now your head’s on fire.”

“Why I do believe it is.” He ran his other hoof through his flaming hair and licked the magic embers off. He ran his tongue across his lips and then made a popping sound. “Would you like some?”

“Free fire?” Psyde rubbed his chin as if in very deep thought. “I suppose I can’t say no to that.”

“Where would you like it?”

“Oh, my back right about there. I’ve heard of hot rocks soothing ponies, imagine what a flame could do!”

“You’re a genius!”

My nurses are complete blunder-heads. They probably couldn’t stop themselves from running into a parked carriage. “Where’s Dr. Cooperation?” she asked, tapping a hoof against the apex of the door. She knew for a fact he could solve this.

“I’d try the mess hall. He stayed up all night finding rooms for those poor ponies caught up in the rolling ball accident. He’s probably guzzling down more coffee than he can handle again.”

Pegasus guards flew down the hall, carrying lengths of rope in their mouth. One by one, they stopped at any floating citizen and carefully tied them down to an anchor. One such helper flew to the concerned princess. “Princess Twilight, we have begun securing all civilians in the absence of gravity. Are there any other orders?”

She nodded. “Yes, Mr...”

“Back, Feed Back, your highness.”

“Mr. Back. A magical, non-threatening fire is going to be spreading through the hallways. I need you to alert everyone in the castle not to panic. According to... my nurses that are acting like cogwheels at the moment...”

“Oh come on! When are we ever going to get this chance again?”

“C’mon, have a bit of fun! Just because you have wings and can push air around doesn’t mean you can’t tuck them in and enjoy yourself.”

She shook her head and returned her attention to the guard. “Right, well then. The fire can even be consumed and it apparently tastes fine.” She leaned in closer and whispered, “Keep an eye on these two, make sure they don’t try to play pinball or something down the hallway.”

“Yes ma’am,” he softly replied. With much more vigor and volume, he activated his helmet. “Attention all staff-”

Twilight saluted him and flew down the hallway, occasionally gently pushing down the floating noble down to earth.

~~~

This wasn’t the way Big Macintosh had intended spending his early morning bucking some early ripened apples off of the trees. He had managed a couple of buckets and had plenty of energy for several acres more, but he had more important matters to deal with. At first, he should have noticed the signs that apples were floating out of the basket. It was cured with a simple push down of his hoof so he figured some unicorn, somewhere was using his or her powers to mess with him. Not that he minded much as long as no harm was done and everything went back in place.

That was... until he himself started to float. His legs felt lighter and he figured those extra hours he had been putting in at the local gym had finally been paying off. Then he couldn’t feel the ground. There wasn’t a magical aura around him or anything, so it couldn’t have been any pony magic he knew of. His mouth gripped a sturdy branch in the tree to keep him from flying away.

“What in tarnation,” Applejack huffed as she walked to him, using a pair of rake heads tied to her front hooves to grapple the ground, “is goin’ on here?”

“I can’t say I know.” He swatted an apple back down into the bucket. “Think Twilight might know?”

“Maybe. Lot of strange things have been happenin’ around here. I tried to send a letter to Twilight but I can’t seem to find Spike anywhere these days.” She looked straight into her brother’s eyes. “Think he’s a little lost without Twilight. I don’t know if he can handle runnin’ that library all on his own.” She flipped over a bucket with enough apples just below the top and slammed it into the dirt.

“Eeyup.”

~~~

It didn’t come as a surprise to the friendship princess when she was greeted to the sight of “Dr. Discord” slurping on a cup of coffee at an upside down table. She ignored the plates of food roaming about in the air or the airborne streams of orange juice flowing in a hypnotic spiral. As much as she wanted to use her magic and nail everything to the floor, she restrained herself with the reminder that such use could make the disease stronger. Even if that was a facade, she didn’t want to take that risk with the master of chaos himself. All she needed at the moment was to get this deal out of the way.

He looked up and waved, rubbing his eyes with his other hoof. Out of habit, she pulled a chair along with her and sat at the table with him.

“Good morning.” Discord took another sip and then peered into the bottom of his cup. He grimaced as he threw it over his shoulder. “Did you sleep well?”

“Cut the crabapples, you know why I’m here.”

He summoned another cup out of thin air. She noticed that her omnipotent caretaker didn’t give himself a horn. Not that it mattered if he did conjure coffee, no one was around to see it except for her. He inhaled the scent of the dark liquid and said, “I’m afraid I don’t, actually.”

She pointed a hoof behind her at the general nonsense. “The gravity? Fire?”

“Yes?”

“Could you be so kind as to, I don’t know, stop it?”

He looked above the rim of his cup and furrowed his brow. “Somepony woke up on the wrong side of gravity this morning.” He waited for a moment, holding his hoof in the air to tell her he wasn’t finished. After three loud gulps, he slammed the cup back down on the table. “If you haven’t forgotten, Twilight Sparkle, I have been disguise as a doctor. I’m not one for keeping acts up for so long and your work with the last symptom has made mine far worse than any previous occasion.”

The doctor ran a hoof through his disheveled mane. “Even chaos magic can only do so much. I’ve been awake for one hundred and forty-eight hours. Not bad, if I do say so myself. By the time my twenty three cups kick in-”

“Twenty three!?”

“-please, don’t shout. Yes, twenty three cups kick in, Celestia and Luna will have awoken and this will have been a moot point.”

Twilight rotated herself in the air so they could look each other eye to eye. “So, there’s really nothing I can do?”

“I’m afraid so, Princess Snarkle.”

She sighed. “Fine. I suppose I should go help the guards tether everyone down.”

He summoned a large coil of rope and passed it across the table. “I think this might help you. I don’t see why you would want to, they’ll wake up in the next half hour.”

She caught it in her hooves and gave her enemy a suspicious glare. “What’s the catch?”

“The guards, I thought.”

“I mean, why would you give me some rope?”

“Oh, right. That’s enough rope to tie down every citizen, noble, and useless patrolstallion inside the entire castle. All I ask is that you don’t inquire what happened when you got your fever when you were asleep.”

She put the rope on top of the table. “I’ve already had my fever?”

“You want to know why you didn’t have any dreams? I was up all night fixing yet another one of your blunders.” He downed the last of his drink and pushed himself up further into the air. He landed on the ceiling and pointed to her, smiling. “If you thought I was a menace, you don’t even know what you’re capable of, Twilight.” The caffeine kicked in at that moment as the calm pony/draconequues she had been talking to returned to his normal chaotic mannerisms. “That hit the spot! Ahh. Now then, Twilight. Here’s what we’re going to do. I can force Celestia and Luna to stay in their fever dream state for another two hours, or you can sacrifice the knowledge for the sake of your castle. Oh, and I’ll return their fever effects to their normal state. I was just waiting for that morning drowsiness to leave.”

Twilight slammed a hoof on the table. “You can’t just do that! The fire has probably spread across the entire castle a-and I told everyone it was safe!”

“Oh no,” he mocked, clasping his front hooves to his face. “Well I guess little Twilighty can’t know what she did then. Such a shame, it really was quite the spectacle. It took me forever to fix.”

Twilight stared at the rope in front of her. If she really said no, she could save the castle by using the sprinkler spell. But using that much magic could strengthen the tie between her and Discord and make her disease even stronger. If she said yes, she’d lose out on the knowledge of what she does during her fever and what Discord meant by “fixing it.” And he’d get away with his pranks. Again.

She was being toyed around with. Ever since she woke up, he must have known she’d try to handle the fire and guards as a princess would and then go to meet her. He’d stall by drinking coffee...

Twilight wanted to grab him by the horns and shake his head like a rattle until-

She spread her front hooves out as if all her anxieties were piles of papers and she was pushing them aside with a deep breath.

“Ok. Fine.” She took the rope and Discord gave her a salute before poofing into the unknown. Twilight rested her forehead on the top of the table and moaned. I have to tell Celestia and Luna what’s going on when they wake up. If he keeps getting away with this, what kind of princess am I?

As if on cue, Psyde and Syndrom entered the hall as one might expect, one rolling on top of the other, imitating two rolling pins on top of one another.

“Princess? Are you alright?”

“You don’t look too good.”

She mumbled through the wood, “I’m ok, I just need a cup of coffee.”

~~~

Applejack saw the new field had been cleared.
And even the hills had been exceptionally tiered.

Rarity was ecstatic at her new clientele.
She couldn’t fathom how her business had gone so well.

Pinkie discovered a present at her door
Which gave her a tool for an instant dance floor.

Angel bunny stopped acting so misbehaved
and there was an abrupt end to the pranks that he played.

And Rainbow Dash felt faster than ever
as if she had been given a lighter, but stronger set of feather.

And to make a short tale shorter about an exceptional day
None of them knew how it happened that way.