Rainbow Dash Around the World

by MagicS

Worsening Condition

Rainbow Dash and Doctor Anathema both retired to her cabin, making it back long after night had fallen due to Anathema’s steadfast refusal to allow Rainbow Dash to carry her. And because they had to change out of the jumpsuits and other safety gear they wore on their brief visit to the borders of the plague’s epicenter. Once they were back the two of them snacked on some leftover nutritional bars of food Anathema had and took turns washing up. It had been a looong day and tomorrow promised to be just as long.

The both of them were tired. The both of them couldn’t exactly say they were happy. But they were at least getting along better than before.

Elsewhere in the village, Honey Sight was once again on his roof. This time even though it was the middle of the night he was still bird watching. For it was around this time that owls from the surrounding forest would come combing through Pinetree Warren in search of mice and squirrels. His camera wouldn’t work well in this darkness so all he could do was watch silently with his eyes and take notes, but that was good enough for a passionate bird watcher like himself.

It was a warm night and he pleasantly sat still for a while before he saw the first owl. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, the light of the moon and stars being enough for him. It had flown in from the forest to the west and came to perch on the roof of a home just a few doors down from his. Honey Sight watched as the great avian predator stared at the ground below, its sharp eyes that could see far better than his right now looking for any sign of prey.

How he wished he had a night camera or something, at the very least the artistic tools and talent to draw the owl.

The bird’s head suddenly swiveled and its eyes locked on a target below. Honey Sight couldn’t see what it was looking at but he was still paying close attention to the owl. He wanted to see exactly how it moved, how it opened its wings and talons as it dove for its prey. The bird’s legs braced and it lowered its head as it prepared to shoot off from the roof—but then it froze.

Honey Sight frowned in confusion, wondering what it was doing.

A second later the owl took off, but not towards the ground in order to snag the prey it must have spotted earlier. Instead it flew above the roofs of Pinetree Warren and took off south in a flash. Soon becoming lost in the darkness and the trees in the forest beyond the limits of the village.

Honey Sight scratched his head. “Did something scare it?”

The sounds of flapping wings, cawing, and hooting reached his ears and he looked up to see not just owls but birds of all types flying overhead. They were coming from all parts of the forest around Pinetree Warren and were flying straight south. That wasn’t the only thing either, he heard scurrying from below and looked down to see mice, squirrels, chipmunks and other rodents running between the buildings, also going south. A stampede of animals was occurring in the dead of night.

“W-What’s going on?” Honey Sight asked as the animals continued to head away from Pinetree Warren, or perhaps away from what was north of the village.

Honey Sight gasped as he turned and tried to look into the northern forest, trying to see the green fog and clouds. But it was impossible at night like this to make anything out. He gulped and sat down, shakily moving a hoof through his mane.

---

Heavy pounding came to the door of Anathema’s cabin. Enough to wake up both mares inside after just a moment. Anathema fell off her chair and onto a pile of papers while Rainbow Dash sat up in bed and started to rub her eyes. The pegasus yawned and stared at the front door.

“Morning already?” She asked to nobody in particular.

“No,” Anathema said as she stood up, yawning as well and pointing to the window above the bed. “It’s still dark out.”

“Who’s coming here in the middle of the night?” Rainbow wondered and hopped out of bed.

Anathema frowned. “Whoever they are, I doubt they’re here for anything good.”

The two mares trotted through the mess and over to the front door where Anathema opened it up with her magic to reveal a frenzied and panting Walnut Grove. The moment he saw the doctor he grabbed her by the shoulder and gestured off to the north side of the village.

“D-Doctor! You have to come immediately!” Walnut Grove yelled.

“Why? What’s going on?” Anathema questioned while Rainbow Dash bit her lip and tried to see out into the dark as far as she could.

“The patients! It happened in the middle of the night shift, everyone started screaming in pain and writhing around in their beds. It’s like their infections just got worse all at once! Blue Rose and Heartwrench administered more medicine but it wasn’t doing anything! I came to get you and Heartwrench ran off to find Doctor Swab. W-We don’t know what to do!” Walnut Grove explained.

Anathema grit her teeth. “I don’t understand… why so suddenly? It shouldn’t be like this. What about their skin? Was the green getting worse on any of them?”

Walnut Grove nodded. “Y-Yes, we didn’t check all of them but the ones we saw had their green spots growing bigger.”

“How in the—ugh, forget it! We can talk about the how later, now we need to help them, let’s go!” Anathema said and bolted off her cabin’s porch, Walnut Grove running after her after he finished catching his breath, and Rainbow Dash flying alongside her.

“What do you think’s going on?” Rainbow asked her.

“I don’t know! This doesn’t make any sense! None of the other patients had such a rapid deterioration in their condition. Maybe it has to do with them being all stuck together like that—or a side effect of some of the medicine and treatments we’ve used, or anything! This is so infuriating! I-I just hope I can figure out some way to help them...” Anathema almost started to cry as she ran.

“Hey, don’t worry about that. We’ll do something,” Rainbow Dash resolutely said to try and reassure her.

“Y-Yeah...” Anathema stuttered as she nodded.

The two of them made it back to the auditorium in record time, with Walnut Grove pulling up the rear. Anathema and him had to put on their jumpsuits but for this time the doctor didn’t force Rainbow to wear one thanks to the rush they were in. As soon as Anathema and Walnut Grove were ready, Rainbow Dash opened the doors and they walked inside the auditorium. Where they were greeted with a wailing chorus of moans and pained crying. Compared to the zombie-like state most of the ponies were usually in, this was a madhouse.

Blue Rose went from bed to bed in a panic, trying to get as many of them to drink water as they could and swallow down some pills. She was the only one inside right now, Swab and Heartwrench hadn’t returned.

Anathema clicked her tongue and glanced at Walnut Grove. “Sorry to do this to you after you just got dressed, but I want you to leave and go notify every volunteer and nurse about what’s happening. We’ll need everyone.”

“I understand,” Walnut Grove said. “I’ll get everyone as quickly as I can.” He nodded to her and turned about, heading out of the auditorium.

“It’ll take a while for that, he’ll need to decontaminate again thanks to stepping hoof in here. So it’s just us for now,” Anathema said. She looked at Blue Rose and shouted over to her. “Blue Rose! How much medicine is left?”

“Plenty, but it’s not doing anything!” The nurse shouted back as she held the head of an elderly patient and practically forced water down his throat.

“Doesn’t matter. Give them a dose and then start loading up everyone with sedatives. Even if it doesn’t fix anything in the long run we need to keep ponies calm and still to work,” Anathema ordered. She turned to Rainbow Dash. “Rainbow Dash, help out, try and calm ponies down and feed them their medicine and a sedative if they wont stop moving. Tell me if you see anyone whose green spots are getting much worse.”

“You got it,” Rainbow saluted.

“When Swab comes we can figure out a more lasting solution… if there is one. Now let’s move!” Anathema shouted and all three ponies went into double-time.

Rainbow Dash flew up a bit and used her sharp eyes and memory to pick out the ponies she thought would be most in danger: the very young and the very old. Those were going to be the first ones she made sure had what they needed. She dove down to the bed of a young colt and saw a green blotch practically crawling up his muzzle as it threatened to cover all the skin of his face. He was writhing around and sweating despite the cold, groans of pain wheezing up out of his lungs.

“Hey champ, you just sit tight okay? The doctor and I are gonna make you all better real soon,” Rainbow Dash told him, squeezing his hoof for comfort. She then flew off to where they kept the medicine, most of it she recognized from when it was used on her.

The sedatives were the only thing that actually did anything though. The green was unaffected by any medicine Rainbow and the others made them take but the sedatives at least calmed them down. Doctor Anathema was a mess as she went from bed to bed, checking each pony and seeing their green spots get worse. It was a horrific scene and they were running out of time.

“Where’s Swab?” Anathema moaned. She held a hoof to her chest and tried to calmly breathe in a few times. “If we had some ice, or could just make it colder in here...”

“Make it colder?” Rainbow repeated.

“Of course. You already know how cold it is in here, it slows down the disease’s progression—at least we think it does. Maybe if it was freezing it would stop it now too,” Anathema said.

Rainbow Dash narrowed her eyes. “Okay, I’ll take care of that.”

“Huh?” Anathema tilted her head at her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s about to get really cold in here,” Rainbow said and flew up towards the ceiling.

“What are you doing?” Anathema yelled up at her.

“Just sit tight, okay!” Rainbow yelled back and started flying in a circle around the perimeter of the ceiling.

In just a few moments she had started to form a small tornado, the winds were making the sheets and anything else not held down whip about but it was indeed also spreading the cool air around and making the temperature drop further. Rainbow Dash was acting like a living air-conditioner and filling up the auditorium with freezing cold winds. To her it was like she was back flying around in the True North. To everyone else it was like they were sitting inside a freezer. It was chilly enough where Anathema and Blue Rose were shivering and even most of the sedated patients were reflexively curling up or looking for more sheets to cover themselves with. With that happening, Anathema walked towards a few of the nearest beds and checked on the status of their green blotches.

“It’s-It’s actually working!” She shouted, looking up at Rainbow Dash. “Rainbow Dash, please keep that up as much as you can! We’ll find another way to get things colder in here soon.”

“No need to tell me twice!” Rainbow shouted back.

The auditorium was kept freezing even as Doctor Swab and a couple of nurses finally entered.

“W-What’s going on?!” Doctor Swab asked, his teeth chattering.

“Temporary measure to delay the disease!” Anathema said to him. “What took you so long to get here?”

“When I heard what was happening I knew we needed something different if the usual medicine wasn’t working,” Doctor Swab said as he swiftly walked over to her while levitating a box behind him. “I’ve strengthened the medicine, doubled the amount in one dose.”

“You can’t just do that!” Anathema roared at him. “The dosage for our medicine is carefully tested, this could lead to all sorts of adverse effects, if not just outright kill the patients!”

“Do you have a better idea? Or any idea at all? Nothing’s working, Anathema, let’s at least give them a fighting chance to survive for one more day. Sometimes we need to take risks as doctors too,” Swab countered.

Anathema bit her lip from behind her mask, looking at Rainbow Dash flying around, all the sick patents on their beds, and finally back into the eyes of Doctor Swab. “F-Fine, give them more of the medicine. Hopefully it’ll at least do something. Then we can work on keeping it freezing cold in here for as long as possible.”

The two doctors and the nurses worked as hard as they could to give dangerous double doses of medicine to every patient in the auditorium. Walnut Grove and the other volunteers came back in the middle of it and started to help out too. By the time they were done, it was morning in Pinetree Warren and Rainbow Dash was still flying to keep the temperature down as much as possible. She was only just starting to get a little bit tired. The good news was that all the ponies seemed to be in a stable condition, but at the same time the green blotches on their body had clearly gotten worse.

A tired Doctor Anathema leaned against the wall and looked up at Rainbow Dash, she shivered under her jumpsuit. “I think I have an idea on how to keep it colder in here at least.”

Doctor Swab—equally tired and standing right next to her—glanced over. “How?”

“Lots of fans and ice. We gather all the ice in the village, get a few fans in here and we’ve got an extra air-conditioning system going on. It’ll make things even colder and Rainbow Dash won’t have to fly around anymore,” Anathema explained. “All the nurses and volunteers should go clean up and get the stuff we need.”

She wiped her hoof over her brow, a pointless gesture. “Rainbow Dash, how long can you keep going?”

“Pff! I can keep this up for hours!” Rainbow answered.

“That’s good, because you’re going to have to,” Anathema said. She got off from the wall and stretched, looking out over the beds. “Come on, we should do another checkup to see how they’re doing and how much worse the green has gotten on each of them.” She said to Doctor Swab.

“Right,” Swab said and joined her.

More hours passed by, the hectic night had turned into a new busy day and most ponies that didn’t have the energy reserves of Rainbow Dash would probably be getting pretty tired. But there was no rest for them when it came to this sort of work and all the ponies relying on them. The entire village was pilfered of all its ice and every spare fan that could be found. Every last thing that could help was scrounged up over the next few hours, much to the concern and confusion of the villagers. By the time it was done, every single pony inside the auditorium was shivering as the temperatures were kept at a freezing level. Anything more than this and it would’ve been just as dangerous to the patients as the disease itself was.

“I-I think I’m really going to enjoy that hot shower out back after this,” Doctor Swab said.

“In truth it feels mostly the same for me,” Anathema frowned.

“I’ve felt colder than this but it still isn’t a lot of fun...” Rainbow Dash said.

Anathema nodded and turned to her. “Thank you for your quick thinking, you really helped us out.”

“Just doing my part,” Rainbow shrugged.

“I’m still wondering why this all happened in the first place,” Doctor Swab said. “Just in the middle of the night, completely out of the blue...”

“That’s what Walnut Grove said too. I don’t understand it,” Anathema said.

“If it was just one then maybe we could chalk it up to a pre-existing condition or something, but all of them?” Swab shook his head.

“There has to be a reason for it. This disease has been an enigma to us for too long, we have to figure out what’s going on,” Anathema sighed and held her head in her hooves. “There must be a key or trigger that we’re missing.”

While the three of them sat there, stuck in this quandary, Heartwrench walked over to them after receiving notice of something from outside the auditorium. She tapped Doctor Anathema on the shoulder to get her attention. “Doctor?”

Anathema looked up at her. “Nurse? What is it?”

“Um, apparently Honey Sight has something important to tell you and Doctor Swab. He says he’s seen something again,” Heartwrench told them, her eyes looking back and forth between the three ponies.

Anathema furrowed her brow. “What could it be now?”

“Not good news, likely,” Doctor Swab sighed.

“Hey, no need to be super pessimistic about everything,” Rainbow Dash said. “Come on, let’s get cleaned up and see what Honey Sight’s got to say.”

---

“It’s bigger,” Honey Sight said to the three ponies.

“What do you mean?” Doctor Swab said.

“I’m telling you, it’s gotten bigger,” the bird watcher repeated.

The four of them were standing outside the quarantine zone on the edge of the auditorium, the two doctors and Rainbow Dash having just gone through decontamination, and Honey Sight was reiterating to them something he had allegedly discovered. Ostensibly, the part of the forest that had been overtaken by the spores and green haze had grown last night.

“You’re saying there’s more green smoke and clouds? It’s expanded outward?” Anathema asked him.

Honey Sight nodded. “That’s right. Late last night, all the birds and animals in the forest and in the village suddenly ran away or flew away in a fright. I saw owls, and squirrels, and everything else just heading south. I-I knew it had to have something to do with that plagued part of the forest. But it was so dark out I couldn’t see anything until morning. Once the sun came up I checked from my roof and… it’s bigger. I’m telling you that it’s taken over even more of the forest.”

Rainbow Dash frowned and shared a look with Anathema. She then flew up into the sky and looked over the auditorium, towards the north and the green death in the forest. There were green clouds and the green fog rolling around it the same as always and… it might have expanded outwards a bit. She clicked her tongue and looked below at the other three.

“I think he’s right! The whole place might’ve grown a bit!”

Anathema and Doctor Swab now shared a worried look and the mare thought about all the patients on death’s door inside the auditorium. The sun continued to shine down from above, by all accounts it was a beautiful day.

Comments

[StarzGecko]

Something is there… lurking isn’t it

We about to see… Zombies

[redmar]

That's not good. But there is something causing all this it certainly is all connected.

[TheCommunistDog]

Hmm

In today’s chapter: The plague spreads!!!

[RoboRed]

Pinetree Warren is very much on limited time right now if they don't figure out something about that plague soon.