Episode Three: Healers' Combat
Twilight Sparkle, M.D.
Ponyville Hospital, Day 7, early morning
Days start to blend into each other once Doctor Redheart comes back to work. I knew in advance that the hustle and bustle of the medical profession, even in a town as small as Ponyville, would prevent me from keeping a daily journal. However, I did not predict it would happen quite so soon as it did.
It’s a constant back-and-forth between Redheart and I, leaving little time for us to work out our problems even if we wanted to. Now that her patients have returned to her, she’s growing ever more distant, the way things were probably meant to be in the first place. In the meantime, each catastrophe that comes to me is no worse than the last; at the very least, unpredictable events come in steady paces here.
Oh, gosh. Only a week in, and I’m already starting to rationalize strangeness that should never be rationalized. It’s like Ponyville grabs ponies into its clutches and makes them think every little part of it is normal. Disgusting, really.
Anyway, I’m back at the pharmaromatherapist’s shop, yet another thing I should never have accepted as the norm. Even the word itself is no longer strange to me. I get the feeling I’ll be stuck with errand filly tasks like these for a while, but today, at least the shipment is there. Doctor Redheart isn’t trying to trick me this time.
However, the pharmaromatherapist is nowhere to be found, and nopony’s at the register. I do not have time for this.
“Fluttershy!” I yell, not caring who can hear. “I need you to ring up my shipment!”
Still no response, not even when I ring the bell on the countertop. With my luck, maybe she hasn’t even woken up yet. After all, the shop has housing just above it, making it all too easy for her to assume nopony would come at this hour.
With Redheart in my mind, telling me to at least try to tolerate this town’s ponies, I keep my cool as best I can. My eyes glaze over as they look over the various herbs and mixtures, not really caring about what a single one does. The rack of sunglasses near the front of the store catch my eyes a little more, and I make a mental note to pick up a particular pair once summer weather kicks in. Eventually, though, my patience wears thin once more after I’d managed to keep it for five long minutes.
My idle walk through the store has proven that Fluttershy is nowhere within its limits, so I hesitantly decide to walk into the pharmacist’s room. The “Employees Only” sign shames me as if it knows exactly what I’m going to do, and honestly, I’ve never disobeyed that sort of thing. I keep thinking there’s going to be some sort of siren that goes off once I trot inside, and that I’ll already have the Ponyville police on me on my first week of duty.
Instead, the room is completely serene, filled to the brim with soothing sounds. There’s a large desk inside, and the yellow pony that should be working the counter is deep in thought of some kind. She’s concentrating on a stack of paper, occasionally making slight pencil strokes and erasing them.
It strikes me with sudden sympathy, remembering the sorts of paperwork that show up at this hour. Medical professionals, to my knowledge, share this type of kindred feeling whenever they fill out more papers than patients; it’s one of the things I despise most about my profession.
The feeling fades just as quickly when I look down at what’s on the paper: what looks to be the second or third draft of a comic book. A well-drawn comic, yes, but still a comic.
“What in the name of Equestria are you doing?”
I try to keep my voice low, but Fluttershy still flinches to the point of almost falling off her chair. Even in fear, she twists her pencil away from the paper and ensures no stray marks will get on the drawing. Clearly, this exact scenario has happened enough times before and resulted in just as many mistakes.
“Um, drawing manga?” she finally replies once she calms down.
“I can see that,” I mutter with a deadpan expression on my face. “But why? Shouldn’t you be handling prescriptions?”
“I didn’t think anypony had shown up yet. Oh my, I’m so sorry for keeping you waiting!”
She starts grabbing medications left and right, something I’d warn her against if she wasn’t so good at finding them accurately. Somehow, she manages to get the whole task done in less than a minute, and by the time I leaving the room, she’s already seated at the counter.
“Again, I am so incredibly sorry, doctor. It’s just a hobby of mine. I won’t let it get in the way of my job anymore.”
Normally, I’d still tell somepony off if they made these types of mistakes, but Fluttershy’s nearly crying already. Even though ponies call me unpleasant from time to time, I do have limits.
Sometimes, I just wish they knew about them.
“It’s fine,” I reply with a slightly unconvincing smile. I figure I’ll play along, if only to placate her. “How long have you been working on this?”
“It’s my second volume,” she says, her eyes practically aglow with stars. “I started selling the first one in bookstores, and it sold really well!”
She’s already in daydream mode, ready to rant about her hoof-drawn baby. I make a mental note to duck out as soon as I can, but stay for the first few moments.
“It all started a year or so ago, when I found out the artist for Skipper Sun was a pharmacist just like me. I’ve always been good at drawing, so I figured maybe I could follow her example and make my own magical filly manga. But instead of pirates and planets, it’s all themed around aromatherapy!”
Of course it is, I think to myself. Taking a look at the cover, I groan internally yet again.
Scent-sational Perfumer Cassia. Does everypony in this town speak in bad puns?
“Right now, the team’s made up of Cassia, Cedarwood, and Lemon, and they just found Perfumer Rose. But Rose doesn’t want anything to do with the rest of them and would prefer to fight the evil on her own. So she gets captured by a second-level villain, and the main three combine their powers into the Legendary Bath Bomb!”
There’s a display of bath bombs on display, and predictably enough, Fluttershy runs straight to it and grabs the first one she sees.
“In the volume I’m working on, they’ve just unlocked its power. It gathers magical power until it’s placed in a water source. Then, it amplifies it in a rush of pressurized water, takes the enemy by storm, and gives the room a lovely lemon-cinnamon scent. Only four bits!”
Of course, these sorts of stories were always meant to sell merchandise, but this is just ridiculous. That said, I buy two anyway, if only for the delightful way their scent wafts through the air.
Before long, I walk out of the pharmaromatherapist’s with all needed prescriptions, two Legendary Bath Bombs, and an advance copy of Scent-sational Perfumer Cassia. The only reason Fluttershy let me out of the store as soon as she did was because I told her I’d be her prereader.
“It releases in a month, so give it back with edits as soon as possible,” Fluttershy calls out as she left. “Thanks so much, Twilight!”
I would protest about her addressing me without my title, but another item pokes inside my bag. It’s the rose oil relaxation set from before, with Rainbow Dash’s Earl Grey tea bags attached.
“Consider it my gift,” she says as I notice. “I really do appreciate you trying to reach out to Nurse Redheart.”
I want to yell out to her that it’s Doctor Redheart, and that I’m not trying to reach out to her. I could care less about anything that stubborn mare says, but my mouth can’t keep up with my thoughts, and I just end up staring into space.
“She does so much for everypony, yet I’ve never seen her with a friend. I hope you’ll be the one to change that.”
I’m not going to be. Even if I were to believe it, Redheart would never let me in. And now I’m in the street, late to work, and stuck with the most lovey-dovey aromatherapy gift set possible. Stuck without an excuse.
****
Twilight Sparkle, M.D.
Ponyville Hospital, Day 7, (later) early morning
I trot into the office as quietly as I can, hoping nopony else has noticed my tardiness. Sure, it’s only been a half hour, if even that, yet just walking in, I get the strangest feeling that somepony is watching me.
Sure enough, somepony is. The exact last pony I need to see right now. I’m going to have to come up with an excuse far sooner than I would’ve liked.
“You’re later than usual,” Doctor Redheart mutters as I walk by. I swear I can hear the tiniest scoff out of her mouth, but she already has her perfect-doctor smile on. Of course.
“Fluttershy told me to give you this,” I answer bluntly, wanting to get this out of the way as quickly as possible. “I was just going to get prescriptions, but she was talking me up about how glad she was that you got well, so…here.”
I unceremoniously give her the package, filled with oils, bath gels, and all sorts of other instruments of relaxation. The thing’s probably worth at least thirty bits, all the more reason for me to pass it off as a gift from Fluttershy. For what it’s worth, it actually cheers Redheart up enough for her to pass a real smile in my direction. Then she realizes where she is and who she’s with, and she’s already back to her usual snorts of annoyance.
“I wasn’t out for that long,” she replies. “I mean, I appreciate the thought, but…don’t get the wrong idea.”
“About what?”
“About me being some incompetent doctor who’s always getting herself sick. It’s bad enough that ponies are showering me with gifts, but not being able to put up my A-game in front of you…”
Redheart looks at the box with the utmost disgust, as if she knows what its true intentions were. However, it only takes her ten seconds to get back to the way she ogled at it before. She’s ranting about how she’s going to take it straight back to Fluttershy, probably because she assumes the sheer sight of a get-well present will lead me to exploit her every weakness, before she finds the hidden compartment.
“Oh my stars, there’s Rainbow Tea in here, too?” she nearly shouts, becoming more and more like Fluttershy with every passing second. She’s basically devolved into a schoolfilly version of herself, holding my front leg up against her and gesturing closer to the tea. Almost as if, in this moment, she mistakes me for a friend.
“You don’t get how hard this is to find, do you? It’s right up there with Sweet Apple cider as the best-selling beverage in Ponyville, and it only comes out once a year. I’d thought every last box of this had sold already!”
I’ve already gotten one lecture like this today, and I certainly can’t put up with another. I opt to interrupt her as soon as she goes through my bag and starts squealing about me being Fluttershy’s prereader.
“You really are bad at hiding your emotions, aren’t you?”
Just like all the other times, it only takes a few split seconds for her to return to normal. It’s almost as if these moods are caused by some sort of magic spell, with one fading into another as easily as they begin.
I don’t realize it now, but as soon as she goes back, part of me almost wishes it’d lasted longer. Wonders how things could possibly turn out if we could be friends.
Seven days in, and the pharmacist has managed to get to me as much as the city itself has. Here I am, playing right into her plan. Thankfully, Redheart’s there to set me straight.
“It’s a skill you’d do well to learn,” she says as she twirls on her back legs. “For one, there’s no way I’d act the way I did if I knew Fluttershy had bought that for me.”
Am I really that transparent? I ask myself as she winks in satisfaction. Suddenly, memories of all the times I’ve had to lie and hide secrets from ponies, even the tiniest ones. Was I always like that, or is this just another recent development?
Yet again, she chooses to swerve in a different direction, shifting the conversation towards the subject of a parasprite epidemic in Ponyville. Apparently, even though the creatures themselves have moved on, the bites they left are still causing trouble around town. With the most hesitant tone possible, she tells me that she knows nothing about these sorts of insect bites, and her voice fights against itself as she asks for my help. I tell her that I have everything under control, like always.
“I know what Fluttershy’s trying to pull with us,” she says. “She’s done it enough times with me, and none of her friendship matches end up working out. I don’t intend for it to work out this time, but if I had to quit hiding my feelings, I’d say…thanks for bothering to try harder than anypony else did with me.”
Everything, I figure out as she leaves, except for her.
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I'm not sure whether I am reading 'General Hospital' or 'House' - an interesting read nonetheless.
8287449
Come to think of it, I've been home all summer and my mom watches General Hospital every day...I don't pay attention to it, but that still begs a few questions.
8287456
One Life to live all the way fools should have never been canceled.
8287643
Mom's the same way about All My Children.
I'm sure Sparkle is gonna have a real magical time prereading for Fluttershy. Too bad she won't be able to get that explosive relief when she goes back for her bath although seems that Redheart can certainly smell a fib quite easily.
I usually don't read fics until they are complete . Too many are abandoned.
However, the blurb sounds like Doc Martin (PBS British import) meets MLP
Fluttershy drawing manga. I'm amaze how similar and yet different this story is from the main show, this is A.U. at it's best.
This isn't an antho story, yes? So it's should be hoof-drawn or wing-drawn since it's Fluttershy.
I would totes read that AU!
8287957
That's exactly what I was going for with it. I've been hooked on it recently.
8288054
I actually came up with that on a whim as soon as I made Fluttershy a pharmacist. I remembered that Naoko Takeuchi was a pharmacist before writing Sailor Moon, and besides the fact that Fluttershy's good at drawing in canon, the whole idea of "your local pharmacist draws manga on the side" is kind of amusing to me.
Between the Sailor Moon merchandise that's still being made to this day*, and being married to the mangaka behind Hunter x Hunter, I think it's safe to say she's not a pharmacist anymore. If only because people probably wouldn't stop hounding her about who she is...
* I'm pretty partial to the excellent Garnet Orb keychain I found at last year's local anime convention myself.
I am very happy to see a new chapter out. Keep up the good work!
8326022
Since I have a habit of releasing it on the 8th or 9th of the month, another new one should be coming really soon!
NOTE: This habit started off as a coincidence, but I liked it so much that I'm keeping it.
I want to read Skipper Sun now....
I don't want to be curious but I wonder how the duo would respond to a mass casualty?