Don't be the end.

by TwiPON3

It Affects Your Friends

"Is Luna or Celestia Faust here?" Midnight asked the receptionist, slurring his words slightly.

"Who's requesting a visit?"

"Family," he lied.

Well, not completely a lie, seeing as how Luna adopted him to get him away from his parents before Sunburst's family adopted him after an attempt by his mother to sabbatoge both sisters' careers by replacing a cup of soda with drugged alcohol and tried, semi-unsuccessfully, to take him back and get CHS out of the picture entirely.

"Room 527 on South."

Starlight and Sunburst followed Midnight to an elevator linked to the south wing of the hospital.

"Why did you lie to the receptionist?" Starlight said as the elevator closed with them in it.

"Touchy subject," Sunburst warned.

"Sorry."

"I'll spare you the details, but long story short, I would gladly have Mom, my mom, along with my dad, shot and killed. Because of her, I spent six months straight in the hospital. She put livelihoods at stake, my own motherfucking life at stake, all because they were jackasses. The last time I saw either of them was a month into my hospital visit when Sunburst's mom was doing the legal stuff to make me a part of their family. It suits me better, and Sunburst's mom took my parents to court, took me away from them, and had a restraining order enforced," he explained as the door opened to the fifth floor.

Quickly, they headed to room 527, then Midnight pounded on the door for ten seconds before going in, only to be greeted with a jolted-awake Celestia and still-comatose Luna.

"What are you doing here?"

"I had a bad feeling," Midnight replied, "About Luna."

"Why?"

"I lived with you two for five months, and when I turned onto the freeway, I had this dead-sickening feeling and has she started coughing up blood yet?"

Celestia looked at her sister and indeed saw some blood on her face, quickly panicking.

"I hope she just bit herself," Sunburst said, not knowing until it was too late.

"Sunburst," Midnight said, "We parked next to Celestia," he shoved his carkeys in his face, "Take my People's Car, sorry Yugo, and go get us breakfast. Bring me back tons of caffeine."

Sunburst took this as his cue to leave before he became the victim of a violent crime.

"Starlight, come on with me!" Sunburst said, taking the keys and Starlight out with him, closing the door and running down the hall.

"Did you have to be so harsh?" Celestia asked, checking her sister for the umpteenth time.

"Sorry," he said, making sure she was breathing, "NEC. And I thought I had the PC Jetta for a minute."

"Right..."

He noticed something, so he propped her head up, facing down, and saw a small trickle of blood.

"I hope to Christ she doesn't have the Birus Hilgarria virus."

"What is that?" she said as he collapsed in a chair

"Super rare virus that has a 99% chance of killing whoever contracts it," he replied, reaching over to a sink and washing his hands, "Please let Lu be the 1% with a plasma mutation."

"What... do you mean?" she replied as he shut off the sink.

"Well, if there's a certain blood plasma mutation -yawn-, Jesus, then she'll be immune to it because -yawn-, because it won't be able to -yawn- lock onto the fluid properly, preventing the deadly -yawn- payload because its incompatible, the same way -yawn-, the same way you can't run Windows viruses on Fedora -yawn-," he leaned back, "This is the one and only reason I didn't go back to bed or straight to the restaurant."

Redheart came in a minute later with two cups of coffee.

"Sunburst scrambling for the elevator gave you away," she said, handing him a cup which was emptied in a matter of seconds (surprising the other two in the room), and one to Celestia, who took her time.

"I'm an addict with insomnia and I'm damn-proud of it."

"Do the doctors know what it could be?" Celestia asked.

"They have a whole-"

"Is the Birus Hilgarria virus on the list?"

"I'm sorry?"

Midnight, too tired to bother to explain, pulled his Moto z³ out, opened the Encarta app, went to the page, and gave the phone to Celestia and Redheart, yawning several times in the process, "I'm too tired to explain it, so Encarta will."

Reading the article, the two women became increasingly disturbed, giving him the phone back before they made it halfway through.

They were all thinking the same thing now.

Don't let it be the Birus Hilgarria virus.

Comments

[Dusk Melody]

Is Encarta still a thing? I remember it being big in the late 90's.

[TwiPON3]

In my stories, Encarta, USSR, DDR, and all of that still exists. Just not IRL, though.