Rainbow Dash Around the World

by MagicS

Testing Your Limits

“I need to get sick again.”

“Rainbow Dash, that. Is. Insane.”

The two ponies fumed at each other as they stood in the forest north of Pinetree Warren, still at a safe distance from the plagued area. No more than an hour had passed since Honey Sight had come to them with the revelation that for some reason the green plague had spread even further and Rainbow Dash had gotten another signature dumb idea in her head. Naturally Doctor Anathema was there with her in an attempt to curb any dumb, suicidal, ideas. Which is what brought the two of them to an impasse.

“Is not,” Rainbow Dash stomped a hoof on the ground. “We know I’ll be okay. Maybe if you get a look at me from start to finish and see how my body fights off the disease you’ll learn something!”

“I will absolutely not allow a pony to willingly infect themselves with that plague! Especially when being okay is not a guarantee!” Anathema shouted back at her.

“It is!”

“The green has just now acted in an unusual way compared to how it’s acted before! There’s no telling whether you will be as immune as you believe yourself to be! Not to mention that you still almost died and could potentially harm yourself if you go through more of those spores again.”

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Why can’t you just put a little faith in me?”

“Because it’s illogical, unreasonable, unscientific, and negligent! I can’t, as a doctor and as a thinking pony, allow it!” Anathema nearly headbutted her in response, glaring right into Rainbow Dash’s determined eyes.

“Take a risk! I’m the one putting myself in danger here anyways, not you. We both know how bad things are now, if you’re not willing to take bigger risks to stop this plague then what are you going to do?” Rainbow countered.

Anathema bit her lip and looked down. “There’s… there’s no reason for you to hurt yourself over something pointless.”

“Anathema...” Rainbow sighed.

“I’ve been refusing to accept how pointless what we’re doing is. But I can’t anymore,” the doctor shook her head. “The patients in the auditorium are doomed—and soon we’ll have to abandon the village entirely. It’s hopeless, Rainbow Dash. Don’t hurt yourself chasing a pipe dream. Don’t make a pointless sacrifice for some village in the middle of nowhere that isn’t even your home.”

The words of Barnaby echoed in her head once more and Rainbow shook herself to ignore them. She grasped Doctor Anathema by the shoulders and stared intently into her eyes.

“Don’t ever give up hope. And especially don’t ever count out what I can do.”

Anathema sniffled. “This is too reckless...”

Rainbow Dash snorted and let go of her shoulders, flapping her wings and hovering above the ground. “Reckless is practically my middle name. It’s never done me wrong before now.”

“That’s not reassuring after the way I met you, you know?” Anathema said, but a smile still appeared on her face.

“Well it worked out, that was my luck kicking in too,” Rainbow Dash cockily shrugged and grinned down at the doctor. “Don’t worry about this at all, just a quick dash around the outsides so I can get some spores on me and then I’ll be right back out before I go unconscious. You can watch over me the whole time, I’ll be fine.” She grimaced. “Okay, well, maybe not at first because it’s going to be really painful and uncomfortable but that’s what you’re here for.”

Anathema sighed and nodded. “Yes, that’s what I’m here for. I’ll make sure you’re okay.”

“Okay then,” Rainbow Dash saluted her. “Time to do something awesome, dumb, heroic, and Rainbow Dash all at once.”

She zoomed off towards the green fog of spores, keeping low to the ground so if it made her seize up all at once she at least wouldn’t crash so hard. In the back of her mind her instincts were screaming “Stop!” but she ignored them. Still, she couldn’t help but sweat the closer she got, it was an unconscious reaction after what her body had been through the first time. It was like holding your hoof over an open flame.

Rainbow Dash breathed in to calm herself. She didn’t need her heart beating in her chest like crazy while she was doing this. She started to come in towards the fog at a curve so she could just skirt alongside it and get right out as she flew past. There was no need to throw her whole body into a cloud, she just needed to come in contact with the spores a little bit. And she didn’t want to breathe any in and choke either.

As soon as she hit the border of the green fog, she felt the tip of her wing start to burn once it dipped into the airborne spores. A quick glance showed her a green blotch growing over it, climbing up the rest of her wing. Rainbow Dash grit her teeth and threw more of her body into the spores. All four of her hooves and her belly became covered in the green, it caused her to wobble in air and her body was screaming in pain and protest. Sensations of burning and numbness traded off across her body and her muscles started to seize up and disobey her orders. Rainbow Dash put all the strength she could into her wings and shot herself away from the spores.

Her wings gave out pretty much right after and she fell to the ground, rolling to a stop over the grass and dirt. Even though she hadn’t breathed any spores in this time she was having trouble breathing and all of her limbs felt like lead. It was impossible for her to stand up and she couldn’t see where Anathema was from where she was lying on the ground.

Rainbow Dash was wheezing and moaning, trying to shift around until she heard hoofsteps coming up to her.

“I swear, you’re going to get yourself killed one day doing something like this,” Anathema said to her.

Rainbow Dash tilted her head to look up at the doctor and grinned.

---

“She’s already fighting the disease off considerably even after just a few minutes,” Doctor Swab said as he looked over Rainbow Dash’s sleeping form while she lied on a bed in the auditorium again.

Compared to how much green had covered her when she was brought in, a large portion of it was already gone and back to its usual sky blue color. Anathema, Swab, and Nurse Cough Drop stood around her, checking her vitals and analyzing everything about her condition. Rainbow Dash shivered in her sleep at the cold while with every passing minute the green spots on her body got smaller. It seemed like she had been right about being fine. However, that also gave Anathema and the others less to work with.

Doctor Anathema levitated a syringe from a bedside stool and brought it towards one of Rainbow Dash’s legs. “Let’s take some blood samples and cultures while we can. I don’t expect finding much but it will be better than nothing.”

They worked tirelessly and relentlessly during the brief time they had to try and uncover both the mystery of the disease and Rainbow Dash’s unique resilience. Even more attention and care was paid this time than before, now with things in much more dire straits. And with the crunch of time bearing down even harder.

“If there was just another pegasus in Pinetree Warren who had gotten sick we could at least see if her immunity has to do with pegasus physiology or not,” Doctor Swab sighed in frustration.

“No sense crying about what we don’t have. Now even if another pegasus flew here from the Weeping Mountain we couldn’t ask them to get sick to find out,” Anathema said.

“I’m just trying to think,” Swab said.

“I know but… let’s just work. We haven’t found anything yet and we’re not going to unless we give this our utmost focus. This plague is like a medical lockbox, or puzzle, there’s never been something so difficult to understand and decipher,” Anathema said. “After all we still don’t even really know what it comes from.”

“If we were able to get to the origin point and harvest some direct samples...” Swab muttered.

“That’s another pointless line of thought. We just have to work with what we have. And what we have is Rainbow Dash,” Anathema said.

“Speaking of which-” Doctor Swab said and looked over at Cough Drop. “How are her vitals?”

“Stable, Doctor. And she’s breathing well,” the nurse replied.

“Good, get her some water too,” Swab said.

“No, hold off on that,” Anathema cut in. “I don’t want us to give her any water or medicine. I don’t want any sort of outside interference going on, let’s see exactly how her body and her body alone fights off the disease.”

Cough Drop and Doctor Swab both shared a look with each other but the other doctor still nodded right after.

“Believe me,” Anathema said to them. “Rainbow Dash would be more than confident in herself to stay fine.”

As the ponies continued to work, Anathema brought a magnifying glass up to her eye and focused on some of the remaining bits of green around Rainbow Dash’s hooves. A microscope would’ve shown her far more but she couldn’t fit a hoof under one. At least with the magnifying glass she could watch as millimeter by millimeter the green spots dissolved and disappeared as if they had been exposed to acid. It was so vexing to see, there wasn’t anything on Rainbow’s skin or anything wrong with her coat that would explain this behavior.

Doctor Anathema sighed and put down the magnifying glass. Was this just it? Another fruitless series of tests where they were no more closer to figuring things out than before?

Why is this happening to us? Anathema thought as she took another blood sample from Rainbow Dash.

Medicine was her special talent. But she couldn’t figure out how to cure this disease. She became a doctor because she wanted to help ponies. But so far she hadn’t been able to help anyone. Pinetree Warren was her home. By the rate things were going, they were all going to have to abandon it. Despite all her studying and effort it felt like her entire life was pointless just because of this plague.

Looking down at the blue pony she remembered how when she first saw her how she thought they had finally found salvation. She thought this pony would be the key, they could find something with her body that would help them cure the others. But it just never materialized. Rainbow Dash had certainly brought some much needed positive energy, but deep down Anathema still hated how she had allowed herself to get hopeful.

Where were the answers?

In another hour, Rainbow Dash was pretty much back to normal. Unlike the first time, Anathema expected her to wake up less than a day after falling unconscious.

“Do we have anything?” Anathema asked Swab.

“It’s just more of what we already knew,” he shook his head. “At best I could say that maybe a blood donation from her might do something, but not everyone has the same type of blood she does, nor does she have enough to give in the first place.”

“And we don’t even know if it will work, her blood has always appeared completely normal. It’s no more of an answer for her strength than anything else,” Anathema said. She turned to Cough Drop with a sigh. “Nurse, please clean up Rainbow Dash and have her ready when she wakes up. And you can get her some water now too.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Cough Drop nodded and walked away to get some.

As she did, Anathema took a deep breath—and kicked a nearby stool as hard as she could, sending it clattering down past bed after bed, startling the nurse and Doctor Swab. Nurse Cough Drop gulped and kept walking on her errand while Swab sighed and shook his head.

“You may have just broken your hoof, you know?” He said.

“I don’t care.”

---

Rainbow did wake up only a few hours later. The hopeful mood she had before reinfecting herself was unfortunately brought down by Swab’s silently shaking head and Anathema’s absence. Her latest bid of bravery had failed, and the doctors were still left with nothing.

Comments

[redmar]

That's the kind of thing Rainbow would do. A shame it didn't result in any answers though. I really hope that they will be able to make some progress soon.

[TheCommunistDog]

In today’s chapter: Nothing seems to work.