"The legend." She stated. "Said the leader was a man in a blue shirt."
But, you may ask, what was the real wording of that legend? This is the story of what that legend means. A planet on the brink of collapse is saved in a manner that nopony thought was still a medical possibility. But, enough of that useless nonsense. You want to hear the legend right? Well, here it goes...
Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there were two regal sisters who ruled together and created harmony for all the land. To do this, the eldest used her unicorn powers to raise the sun at dawn; the younger brought out the moon to begin the night. Thus, the two sisters maintained balance for their kingdom and their subjects, all the different types of ponies. But as time went on, the younger sister became resentful. The ponies relished and played in the day her elder sister brought forth, but shunned and slept through her beautiful night. One fateful day, the younger unicorn refused to lower the moon to make way for the dawn. The elder sister tried to reason with her, but the bitterness in the young one's heart had transformed her into a wicked mare of darkness: Nightmare Moon. She vowed that she would shroud the land in eternal night. Reluctantly, the elder sister harnessed the most powerful magic known to ponydom: the Elements of Harmony. Using the magic of the Elements of Harmony, she defeated her younger sister, and banished her permanently in the moon. Or so she thought... It was prophesied that on the longest day of the thousandth year, the stars would aid in her escape and she would bring about everlasting darkness. However, it was also prophesied that on this day, a vessel from the stars would come to our planet and due to a force none other had seen before, would break through the bonds holding the younger sister to the moon. She escaped onto the planet below and brought the vessel down with her. At this time, the Elements of Harmony had been lost for some time and there was no way of stopping the force driving through Equestria. But, then, there it was. The vessel and her crew and with their help, they were easily able to defeat her.
But, that is not the real reason why they are here, the real menace they will have to defeat will come in the form of something so small that it almost cannot be seen. This menace is what they call Influenza and the leader of this intrepid resistance is a human in a blue shirt. he is the one who helps us the most.
Well, do you want to know what happens to them? Sit back and relax and enjoy the story.
This is my 1 year anniversary of being stuck on this planet to help grow immunities to their diseases and get knowledge on how their medical system works. These ponies are starting to get to me. Princess Celestia says that they hav intercepted a transmission from the Enterprise saying that Starfleet has told them to orbit around this planet which they have renamed from Exeter to Equestria. Ih ad a feeling they would rename it to something involving horses. The horses diet involves no animal protein. The doctors on this planet use primitive methods of curing diseases. I don't know how they'll survive when exposed to human viruses. I really do fear more towards that now than ever because Commander Samuel Jones has arisen yesterday with a case of the Influenza Virus. We shall keep him contained for now. We have identified and named two new diseases within the Equestrian population, they are the Cutie Pox and Rainbow fever. Cutie Pox give the infected a case of getting too many cutie marks all at once. Rainbow Fever is caused when an Equestrian is exposed to poison joke. It causes the infected to laugh at everything, effectively laughing themselves to death. It's a nasty disease if I do say so myself. To build an immunity, i had to infect myself with it. What I found to be strange, though, was the fact that humans are immune to most of the Equestrian diseases. Interplanetary relations have been better now more than ever. One of the little equines has taken a liking for me. The one they call Applejack is thinking about going into my line of work so, she can spend more time with me. Stand by for more word on the matter.
I sit down the Chief Medical Officer's Log and look up. My desk is clean for the first time in the two weeks I'd been in this room, thanks to Applejack. She, right now, is sitting in a chair in my office of the Canterlot Castle looking at me like I'm her soon to be husband. The Enterprise is hurrying back here with Lauren Faust so, I hope they get here quickly. I don't think I could stand one more day with these ponies.
I turn on my computer and look at Applejack again.
"Applejack, can you go get me a cup of coffee? Sugar, no creme." I ask of her.
She gets up from her chair, sits her hat on her desk and walks out. I decide it looks cool so, i put it on. The hat is obviously Corinthian Leather. I took it off and looked at the label on it. It was a Stetson. Very fine quality, i must say, she has good taste. That is when she came back into the room with a cup of coffee and said,
"Oh. I see you have found interest in my hat."
"Yeah, I saw it was a Stetson. You have good taste."
" Thank you."
She then came around the desk and said,
"Now for me helping you, your payment is going to be a scratch behind my ears."
So, I obliged and she took to trying to scratch her ear herself but, to no luck. I ceased after awhile and that's when Celestia entered the room.
"Leonard, I have intercepted a transmission from the Enterprise. It's like none I've ever seen before. It's just a bunch of beeps in quick succession." She said.
"Like Morse Code?" I replied.
"What's that?'
"Never mind that. What you're describing sounds like a distress signal from a Constitution Class starship. Since you said the Enterprise, it sounds accurate. Let me hear the distress signal. If I can't translate it, I'll have Samuel Jones transported here to decode it."
So, Celestia, Applejack and I walked to the dish room and got to Celestia's computer, I put on the headphones and listened to the beeps, calculating the message in my head. I took off the headphones and said,
"This is a distress signal from the Enterprise. It says they have been intercepted en route to Equestria... by a Klingon Battle-cruiser. I can't decode the rest of it, there's too much static."
"What are you going to do about it?" Celestia said.
"Well, back in the shuttlecraft, we have some static decoders but, Samuel Jones is the only one who knows how to use them."
"So, he's kinda like your go-to guy?"
"You could say that."
That's when a blue-shirt came running into the room dragging a hospital hoverbed behind her.
"Samuel Jones, sir, you requested him." She said.
"Yes, I did. Samuel, do you know how to decode things covered in static?" I asked him.
"Yes sir, I do." He replied.
Good, put these on." I said as, without thinking, I gave him the headphones. When I turned on the remainder of the transmission, his face lit up. He pulled off the headphones and said,
"Sir, one good thing and one bad thing. Good thing is that they have the Influenza cure. Bad thing is that the power levels on the Enterprise are at 25% and falling rapidly. They've called Starfleet to send the Shackleton to get here with the needed supplies."
So after two days, the Federation's fastest, newest, and most heavily armed starship hadn't arrived yet and Samuel had spread the Influenza virus to 18 other ponies, including Princess Celestia, who had spread it to 300 other ponies. So, we had accounted for 318 ponies infected as well as 1 human and an estimated 200 other ponies unaccounted for. This planet's population being in the 1-2 million, it hadn't turned into a pandemic yet but, with these ponies immune systems, I believe it will soon. Magic has no effect on the human strand. So, we're left waiting for the cure to get here. I sit down in my chair in the banquet hall and look out the window. There is a freshly fallen layer of snow on the ground and my mind starts to think, Is the weather causing the Shackleton to delay?
Boy, was I horribly wrong...
Out in the Targus System, 210 parsecs away from Equestria, the Shackleton was reviewing its star maps looking for where this 'Equestria' was. For a starship that could be labeled down as a sentient being and operate without single crew member, it was doing pretty horribly with a compliment of 3500. What makes it even worse, the crew built the ship, so, they should know how it operates. Captain Kevin Thomas Reynolds pushes his shoulder-length blonde hair out of his face, pushes his glasses back up in front of his dark blue eyes, and gets up. He'd just been beaten down by his first officer and chief medical officer, Rhomulus Mharlow.
"We are trying to find this planet as fast as we can, Kevin! Your father, the admiral, might have said that you were 'captain material' but, you are not acting like it!" Rhomulus said.
"You know this is my first time commanding a vessel, right?" Kevin said.
"Yes I do. But, you need to act more like a captain."
Kevin bowed his head as his helmsman, John Karton spoke up,
"Kev, sir, I have found something. A planet named Exeter was renamed Equestria last year. We need to look for a planet named Exeter on our star maps."
Kevin sat in the Captain's chair and said,
"Make it so."
Two days later, back on Equestria, I had just gotten my coffee for the morning and started drinking it when i got the news, a royal guardsman had contracted to virus, broken into a shuttlecraft, stolen a Phaser, and had shot himself with it. He was found dead this morning. I got up, finished and my coffee. I sat the cup on the table and walked to my office, knowing Celestia would blame us for this. I sat in my chair and looked at my computer. The fate of this planet rested in my hands and there was nothing I could do about it. The Shackleton should be here by now but, it isn't. The snow outside had stopped falling as I opened up the text document on my computer and changed the numbers of infected and dead. The virus had been spreading for four days and our situation looked bleak.
I thought about the last line for a bit and with one-quarter of the world's population being either infected or dead, I backspaced the last line and typed in the most feared words of any disease. The line looked like this,
By the time help arrived, 90% of the world's population were either infected or dead. The most ponies any city had that weren't either of those was Ponyville with the slim number of six. I was desperately rummaging through the papers on my desk that morning, searching for what to do when Celestia came in with a transmission.
"If it's not hopeful news, don't tell me." I said.
"Well," She said. "You've been fighting this disease for 8 weeks now with no help so, I guess Starfleet decided to help you."
"Why do you say that?!?! STARFLEET DOESN'T CARE! If they did, they would have already sent help by now!"
Celestia put her hoof on my shoulder and said,
"Leonard, calm down. The Starfleet does still care. The starships you hope for are in orbit now. Those starships are both the Shackleton and the Enterprise."
"Good. Send them a transmission. Tell them to beam down the cure."
So, along with the small vile of the cure, the Shackleton's Captain Kevin Reynolds beamed down along with Kirk and Spock. After the beaming process was done, I went over and hugged my two crew mates.
"I'm so glad you guys are safe. Where's Lauren?" I asked them.
"She's up on the ship. She's so. . . ready to see the planet she created 230 years ago." Kirk replied.
I stopped hugging them and walked over to Kevin,
"Kevin, it's very nice to meet the son of Admiral Tony Reynolds." I stuck out my hand for him to shake.
He shook it and said,
"I don't know how well the replicators will be able to make more of the cure. The replicators are still a relativity new concept."
"Well, let's try it anyway."
So, we went to the Shackleton, entered the replicator room, stuck the vile in the copier...
and waited...
and waited...
So, finally, it came out with a cure for, not the flu, but for mumps and measles.
So, I had an idea. Take a dead body and get the dead flu virus cells out of it.
So, after beaming back down to Canterlot in the middle of the night, we went to Canterlot Cemetery, dug up an infected body, beamed it back up to the Shackleton, and began work to extract the dead flu virus. We rushed the dead horse to Med Bay 4 on the Shackleton's deck of the same number. We put the colt on the operating table and prepared him for surgery to get the magical gland near the kidneys.
"Rhomulus! Get over here! Doctor McCoy needs your help!" Kevin Reynolds said.
"Aye-aye, Captain." Rhomulus responds.
As Rhomulus pulls down the lamp to give me more light, I tell him,
"I would have never thought I would have a Russian help me in the med bay."
"You know, this is my med bay, right?" He says.
"I know. Hand me the scalpel."
So, we cut this colt open, pushed the kidneys out of the way and find the magic gland still glowing with a soft blue light, showing it was diseased. I cut it out, put it in a bowl, put the bowl in the sink and took off my gloves.
"Well, there she is. The magic gland that contains our supply of dead Influenza viruses." I say as I wipe my hands off with a rag. Kevin sequentially gagged, and then vomited in a trashcan near the door.
"Are you okay?" Kirk said.
"I've just never seen so much blood before." Kevin replied.
"That is why you will never make it as a doctor."
"That is why I applied for the helmsman post when I got out of the academy."
I take the magic gland out of the sink and walk over to Rhomulus.
"Take it out." I said to him.
"What do you mean?" He said.
"Extract the dead viruses out of it."
"Okay, doctor."
He went and extracted the dead viruses, scanned a ball found inside, and said,
So, surprisingly, we put the dead Influenza viruses in the replicators and it made more of the cure. The next day, we beamed down to Canterlot and delivered the cure. Later, we discovered that someone at Starfleet purposely sent us the wrong cure. So, after all the remaining ponies had been given the cure, we decided to have a party and celebrate. I walked into the banquet hall and found Celestia.
"Hey, Tia. How's it doin'?" I asked her.
"How's what doing?" She replied.
"Yourself. You were one of the first to contract the disease."
"I'm an alicorn. Alicorns don't die."
"Dang. I wish I had that ability."
"Leonard, do you have any fears?"
"I have a big one."
"What is it?"
"Aviaphobia. It means fear of dying on--"
"--Something that flies. I know. Kirk told me that is what you told him when you met."
"When did he tell you that?"
"Let's just not talk about it. Tell me about space, Leonard."
"Space is okay... i guess. What do you want to know?"
"tell me what you think when you're up there."
"What.... do you want to know what I think or what probably everybody else thinks?"
"What you think."
"Please don't let me die."
"Now what everypony else thinks."
"Well, there was this qute that I heard once. It went, 'In the vastness of space, there is only yourself, your ship, and your crew. It is a space in time without end. It is easier than you think... to get lost. But, sometimes, it is when you get lost that you find the most about yourself, who you really are and who... or rather... what you were always meant to be.'"
"Tell me about Earth."
"Earth. It's just... beautiful... Agreen, blue and white ball sitting in the expanse of space. With one moon. It's really disheartening, though."
"Why is that?"
"We know more about space than we do our own planet. It makes a person... or in your case pony think; is space truly the final frontier?"
"I agree."
So, i stopped conversing with Celestia and walked over to where Kirk and Spock were.
They were looking up at the great hulks of the Enterprise and the Shackleton out above Canterlot, spreading light on objects below.
"So, Bones, are you ready to go back to Earth after 2 years?" Kirk said.
"Rainbows and ponies are not for me so, yeah, Kirk. I am." I replied.
So, after the party, we beamed back up to the Enterprise and left the planet; hoping to find something greater than ourselves...
...Again.
But, does it really make you wonder?
It's like the Shackleton's captain oath states in its first line.
Space is not the final fronteir...
Is it really? Or is there something out there greater than Space itself.
I believe time will tell but, there is really no guarantee.
![https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/13/f2/9f/13f29f108d37f49d078930c88180a7b4.jpg[/img]](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/13/f2/9f/13f29f108d37f49d078930c88180a7b4.jpg[/img]){kind=link}