Little Truths

by EbonQuill

Kindness

“Enemies you threaten gather allies.
Enemies you destroy gather dust.”

- Poison Pen

“Alright, bring them in.” Professor Apple Polish’s normally crisp tones had lost their luster. She sounded tired.

Lemon Hearts knew exactly how she felt. With the assistance of several other ponies, they'd managed to bring all of the blighted into the Medical Wing. No two of them looked like the rest, with one student swollen up like a balloon and another’s teeth sprouting into living branches that threatened to engulf her head.

Chaos magic, Lemon shuddered.

“If you're not afflicted, raise your hoof,” Professor Polish said.

A small grove of hooves appeared, Lemon’s among them. Polish’s horn sparked briefly, and each hoof’s owner glowed a faint seafoam green.

“Of you, which of you have some knowledge of alchemy?”

Only a few hooves, this time. She flared her magic and caught them with a faint tangerine aura.

“If you have both colors, stay. You'll need to decontaminate yourself. If you don't know where the scrubs are, have somepony show you.” She sighed, tossing her straight brown mane out of her eyes. “If not, make room for those who do.”

Lemon Hearts took a deep breath, and tried not to panic. Her forehooves shined with both colors.

Looking around, she saw that Green Fields’s did, too. He was standing in a group of older students, who were discussing possible causes and treatments. As she moved through the afflicted ponies around her, and pushed past those leaving, she could only just make out their conversation.

“— doesn't do this, Fields,” a unicorn mare with a two-toned purple mane and a dusky brown coat was saying. “Trust me, this is some heavy-duty transmutation. A simple Alteration cross-contamination wouldn't even come close to this bad.”

“Well, what about Starswirl’s Nullification Mat— oh, hey, Lemon!” Green Fields’s face lit up as she approached. “You're sticking around, sunshine?”

Lemon nodded, glancing down at her multicolored hooves.

He smiled. “That's really cool of you. Oh!” He turned back to the pony he had been speaking with. “Rasp, this is Lemon Hearts. She's a first-year. Lemon, this is Raspberry Tart. She's the best transfigurist I've ever seen.”

Raspberry jokingly clipped him on the shoulder with a hoof. “Oh, stop. Anypony can do Alteration magic.”

Green Fields winced playfully, and continued. He turned again, this time to the beautiful amber unicorn from earlier standing beside him. “And I'm sure you've heard of Sunset Shimmer. She's heading up the treatment efforts, after Apple Polish diagnoses the problem. We’re grateful for her time.”

Lemon quavered a bit. Of course she'd heard of Sunset Shimmer. Brilliant, talented, beautiful, personal apprentice of the Princess… “H-how do you do, Miss Shimmer?”

Sunset laughed a little, and nodded back amiably. “Call me Sunset, please. And it’s great to meet you.”

Lemon glanced around at the ponies around them, each with a stranger disfigurement than the last. “Likewise. I wish it were under better circumstances.”

Raspberry Tart snorted. “Nah, this is perfect! You only really get to see what a pony is like under pressure. And you're a fighter, Miss Hearts.”

Sunset smiled. “Indeed. Now scrub in, we got work to do.”

It only took a few minutes for Professor Polish to identify what the liquid was, and to start assigning the gathered helpers to the necessary tasks to brew a counteragent. Somepony had distilled poison joke and had hidden it in the rafters of the meeting hall. Its rapid evaporation had been accomplished by carbonating it.

Lemon Hearts had been able to use her skills from Hoofington to help Green Fields filter the mash to allow for a clean brew. They'd talked while keeping the steel mesh even, and the temperature hot.

She'd even gotten him to laugh a couple times, and had managed not to get too tongue-tied.

She'd also watched Sunset take charge of their response, and whip them all into an effective assembly team to manufacture enough counteragent for everypony.

Afterwards, as the first batches of counteragent soaked into the worst cases, Professor Polish asked who amongst her helpers had Autumn Liege aspirations. Sunset's hoof went up immediately, followed by a couple of others.

Before the count was tallied, Raspberry Tart wrapped Lemon’s forehoof in her magic and raised it for her.

“What’re you doing?!” she hissed. “I'm just a—!”

“— brave first-year who ran towards trouble, and not away from it. C’mon, Lemon. I think you'll make a great Autumn Princess.”

And she let go. Lemon wavered a bit, but kept her hoof raised.

Professor Polish's muzzle twitched a little, seeing her. “Excellent. I'll pass on the word. Superbly done, my little ponies. Now, the fun part. Miss Shimmer?”

A case of fizzy cider clinked as Sunset's teal magic set it down in front of the other helpers.

“These were placed above the assembly, and filled with the extract,” she said. “Analyze these, and tell me what you find. Magical traces, alchemical residue, something. Anything.”

Sunset’s eyes glittered dangerously. “We're going to catch these jerks.”

Lemon couldn't contribute to the investigation very much, so she'd gone back to establishing her daily routine. A few days later, she'd heard about the suspension of two rising stars in the alchemy classes, Mulberry Bush and Ashen Aster.

It had been Aster’s cider habit that had given them away. Nopony else drank enough of the stuff to have so many bottles. After that came out, the two of them had been caught with poison joke seed husks and a text on zebra alchemy stolen from the Restricted Section of the CSGU library in their lockers. They swore blind that they'd never do such a thing, but Professor Inkwell said anonymous sources came forward and placed them in the Restricted Section earlier that day. After Professor Polish confirmed poison joke residue in their alchemy lab alembics, that was all Dean Slate needed.

Six weeks suspension, and a black mark on their records. This meant that they couldn't publish their midterm papers in the school's esteemed academic journal, and dashed Ashen Aster’s hopes to become the first Autumn Prince in a decade.

All of that over a prank. Lemon almost couldn't believe it, but she knew better than most how stress could change a pony.

Or rather, Sour Lemon did.