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                        Make a Wish                        
                    -by CoolStoryBrony-                    
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               Chapter I – Unwanted Clarity                
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Chapter I – Unwanted Clarity
Make a Wish
by CoolStoryBrony
Chapter I – Unwanted Clarity
Scootaloo was living the dream.
With twin trails of vapor spinning helixes through the sky behind her wings, the cheering pegasus filly burst from the cascading mountain of clouds. Angling the tip of her left wing downwards, she arced around, her gradual descent betraying the speed with which she bulleted full circle into the marshmallow surface of the towering cumulus. A giddy smile tugged at the edges of her cheeks, pulling a glittering grin onto her orange face, and a feeling of unbridled ecstasy welled up within her, as if it would hurt not to smile. A thin layer of sweat left her coat with a glimmering sheen as she twirled and flipped, wingtips grazing the alabaster surface. The barest traces of a foalish giggle escaped her beaming lips.
Another daring pass beneath the front, and the furiously flapping pegasus forced herself skyward. Her flowing pink tail fluttered behind her as she rose up, up, up towards the ceiling of the world. A tickling sensation of anxiety took root in her gut, and as she slowed towards the peak of her ascent, she dispelled it with a deep breath of cautious optimism, eyes shut to the cloudscape before her.
In a single blink, the limitless expanse of the Equestrian sky lived and breathed before her. Each curl and wisp of the cirrus clouds, each deep rumble of the thunderheads, each reflection of the white sun off the immaculate surfaces that filled the sky.
She had never seen anything like this before. She had never cared to look to the world above for answers, when the world below had grown so bleak and cold with neglect and malice that tears bled her eyes shut with each passing moon. In her near catatonic state of reverence, Scootaloo couldn’t tell why, but none of that mattered. There were dreams to be had, and wishes to be fulfilled.
It started with a smirk. Scootaloo, holding herself stationary in the azure sky with a pair of steady, tangerine wings, allowed an ambitious smile to snake its way across her features, wiping away shades of doubt. A fire lit behind sparkling violet eyes, violet keystones to a dream—a wish—as they narrowed from stoic reverence to daring resolve. A frigid current of wind brushed her short pink mane out of her vision, as if nature too desired her unspoken dream to come true.
Her irises glimmered as a flash, an explosion of magic and beauty, danced across the sky of her mind’s eye. She saw the crackling waves of magic pulsing forth from behind a spectral comet as light and energy refracted across the Equestrian skyline, energizing everything and everypony graced with a view of the phenomenon.
A blink, and the sky was blue again. The cold wind whistled in her fluttering ears, which twitched involuntarily with the breeze. The smirk was gone, the ambitious glare having been transformed to a steely gaze of determination.
And she fell.
The biting chill of the high-altitude winds doubled, tripled, quadrupled, as Scootaloo rocketed down through the atmosphere. All the shades and hues of the sapphire sky fused into a single beautiful blur of blue as she shot down the gargantuan face of the cloud, the trail of pressure in her wake serving to split the grand nebulous giant in two. The tear in the storm front followed her reckless plummet, until she cleared the dew point and saw only green.
A brilliant speck, a glimmer of energy sparking and ripping through her pointed hooves, formed the point of the conic barrier that enshrouded Scootaloo as a stinging wind whipped past her face, drawing beads of moisture to her squinting eyes. A stabbing burn crawled its way upward from the tip of her hoof, the heat snaking its way up her limb and poisoning her body. She grew deaf to anything but the sound of her heaving lungs. Her wings strained as her body streamlined. The light at the tip of the cone became blinding, so that all she could see was a brilliant blazing white light that consumed her vision on all sides.
There was a thunderous explosion. Scootaloo nearly gasped, believing herself to have done the unthinkable, but stopped short of both the ever-present electric streaks of light forking out from the cone and the immense force keeping her jaw shut. Her mind raced as another powerful crack exploded behind her. The fiery sensation that spread wickedly from her trembling hooves to her heaving chest to her shuddering wings was becoming too much to bear, so she indeed did the unthinkable.
With a half-groan, half scream, Scootaloo flared her straining wings out in an attempt to slow her plunge. An indescribably painful force nearly ripped her wings from her back. She bit back a cry, and—cursing her weak spirit—pulled out of the mad dive.
The agonizing invisible force on her wings was proving to be too much to handle. Her left wing twisted, the tendons stretching and contorting, as the misaligned angle sent her into a terrifying spin. Scootaloo twirled violently through the air, her vision spinning from green to black to blue to green once more as she got a second’s glance skyward, and saw something that made her blood turn to ice.
The thunderhead from which she had leapt was split clean down the middle, each rumbling half crackling with an overload of electrical energy following the trail of her dizzying plunge. White bolts of lightning arced menacingly between the two black behemoths, surging violently towards her.
Scootaloo’s wings felt weighted—almost lifeless—as she struggled to level out and end her ludicrous spin. A numb fear spread through her heart like venom as a stray bolt flew, merciless in its blinding conviction, and exploded a patch of green earth close enough to spray dirt in her face.
Her mind spun as she shook the dirt off, struggling to find balance, when another explosion of electricity burst just inches from her gasping face. A sudden scream, and she whipped her shuddering body around, only to have yet another chunk of earth come into view, blasting apart in an explosion of light and fire.
Fear took hold of her actions. Scootaloo struggled—exhausted—to wobble through the air on utterly useless wings, wings that had given their all to the dream of a witless fool, only to fail when she needed them most. She cursed her ambition as another blinding bolt exploded behind her, the thunderheads rumbling and growling in contempt for the trembling pegasus below. Bolts of blinding fire were cast to her left, her right, before finally erupting just beneath her, nearly grazing her tail as it shot past her. The force of the shockwave sent her tumbling through the air. Disorientated, she plummeted face-first towards the cold, brown dirt below, flipping head over tail in a violent spin.
For less than half a second, her vision was skyward. A brilliant flash of deadly light rocketed toward her, screaming forth with an ear-splitting crash and a murderous desire to destroy, and her plummeting mind and body could only think to scream too as the bolt connected…
…With a gasp, a trembling Scootaloo shot up, eyes wide with terror, from a bed of straw and dirt. She clutched a hoof to her chest, a sharp ringing leaving her deaf to the gasps of her heaving lungs. Her twitching eyes registered an oaken wall of peeling red paint and a few bales of hay, but the images flashing through her mind were of a pale, lifeless sky, a searing shot of pain from her hoof to her wings, and finally a condemning explosion of blinding light.
Her skull felt as if it were about to burst. A shaken pink mane bobbed slightly as Scootaloo lowered her head and groaned, suddenly realizing the splitting pain that attacked her mind from front to back, splitting her concentration like an electric dive through a cloud. A sudden cough, and she blinked away what she could of the pain. She was regaining consciousness; the summer sun was rising, and she had to move.
Wiping a fresh coat of cold sweat from under her messy pink bangs, Scootaloo stood, stretched, and stumbled her way to the corner of the open wooden structure, where several piles of hay concealed a small brown saddlebag. Picking up the sack by a thin brown strap, she blinked some sleep from her eyes—dull phantom orbs compared to their usual glimmering selves—and walked slowly back across the dirt floor of the building, nearly tripping over a stone protruding from the ground. She settled back down at the strewn pile of hay and a few dull orange feathers that she had spent the night on, sitting with a heaving sigh.
A few objects lay scattered around the makeshift bed. A dirty hoof wiped across the surface of its cloth, and Scootaloo folded her torn Cutie Mark Crusaders cape that lay upside down on the opposite side of the “bed” from where she sat. Though it was obvious that it had either been blown or kicked off in the night, Scootaloo didn’t even pause to entertain the thought of tying it around her neck to keep it in place. Any of the sheet wasted in the tie was warmth she denied herself in the often chilly nights that fell over the southern regions of Equestria, no matter the time of year.
Grumbling quietly to herself about the stupidity of winter, Scootaloo packed the folded cape into her saddlebag with a resounding huff. The cloth that served as the only protection between her and the frigid nights of Ponyvillean winters would have to last her until that season and beyond, which was still several months away.
A stifled cough, and Scootaloo kicked a corner of the makeshift hay bed to reveal a tiny sack of golden coins, patched in several places by somepony who must have been a novice seamstress. Inside were no more than four golden bits, tarnished with bits of dirt, sealed away in the bag with a frayed string tied around the outside opening; the very same string that had been used to sew the patches of thin cloth to the makeshift coin purse. Several bent needles taken from Sweetie Belle’s room and an assortment of pricks and injuries were nothing compared to the pride Scootaloo felt every time she admired her fine—if not foalish—first “project”. She tucked the bag under the dirt-covered Cutie Mark Crusaders cape, hiding her extremely limited funds from any possible harm or loss.
A weak sigh of despondence escaped the pale filly’s parted lips. Lying on its side next to the bed was an old picture frame, its stand bent out at an awkward angle and its glass cracked on the bottom. The oval-shaped frame was a minty shade of teal, and behind the broken glass was a tiny cutout of a smiling pegasus pony whose coat nearly matched the same hue as the sunkissed pink sky that was visible through a crack in the roof. Gleaming emerald eyes stared lifelessly at Scootaloo from behind the frame, the ghost of a grin etched permanently upon the mare’s smooth face. A sudden sniffle, and the filly grabbed hold of the tiny photograph and held it to her chest, a pressure building up behind her firmly shut eyelids. She spoke for the first time since awakening, biting back a sob as she choked out a whimper.
“G-good morning, Mom…”
Holding the picture frame in front of her again, she tried to speak to the perpetually smiling mare in the photo once more, only to be interrupted by a fit of sporadic coughing. Her fit subsided with a groan as she also began to take notice of the fiendish rumbling in her belly, a taunting reminder that the last time she ate was almost two full days ago.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got anything for me to munch on?” She smirked in vain at the photograph. She tried and failed to bite back another sigh before ultimately burying the broken picture frame and its contents under her Cutie Mark Crusaders cape with the rest of her precious belongings. As she began pulling her hoof out of the bag, she felt herself rubbing against something thin—something plastic.
In curiosity and hunger, Scootaloo tossed the cape to the side to reveal a single candy wrapper and its contents. The thin plastic covered a chocolate bar, and as a lucky grin tugged at the edges of her cheeks, the memories of somepony’s generosity came flowing back to her. One of her classmates, Twist, had recently given this sweet to the hungry filly for a certain date: Scootaloo’s upcoming birthday. A shake of her head, a look at the sun through a window, and she indeed confirmed that it was the morning of her ninth birthday, as well as that shaking one’s head and staring at the sun did little to help a headache.
Shivering with sudden coldness, Scootaloo swiftly scooped up her prize and buried the dirt-covered cape back in the tiny brown saddlebag. Biting open the wrapper of the chocolate bar, Scootaloo took one last look around her makeshift shelter that had served her the past few nights. A glance behind the pile of hay she’d slept in revealed nothing that she desired nor required, and with that, Scootaloo lifted the cape-stuffed saddlebag onto her back and hastily trotted across the dirt floor to the entrance to the Apple Family Barn. A quick glance to the left, the right, and she trotted down the hill where the barn was situated as fast as her aching legs would carry her, to a rather large bush. From within it, she pulled a tiny scooter and helmet, which she climbed on and strapped on, before slowly trailing her way out of Sweet Apple Acres, the newborn light of the sunrise kissing her wings and back as she whispered to herself, “Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me…”
A haphazard buzzing lit the morning air as orange flaming rays burned over the horizon. Trailed by swirling clouds of dust and soil, a solitary vehicle rolled along the path leading away from the property of Sweet Apple Acres and into Ponyville proper. A squeaking blue scooter wheeled along, propelled by the periodic buzzing of foalish wings that fluttered rapidly—albeit weakly—as Scootaloo sought yet another shelter for the coming nights. A sputtering cough echoed hoarsely from her lungs, sending a heavy trembling through her chest. With each sudden exhale, she lurched forward slightly, a quivering foreleg clutching at her aching chest as she fought back wave after wave of baseless pain that spread from her quaking legs to her heaving lungs to her throbbing head. A tangible line of pressure traced agonizingly across her skull. Her nostrils flared once, twice, as she stopped momentarily to adjust the purple helmet overflowing with lifeless pink strands of a mane that hung limp underneath.
With an apprehensive shift, she bit off and slowly chewed more of the chocolate bar. The taste was bitter, an almost sour aftertaste coating Scootaloo’s tongue as she shifted the morsel around; Twist likely hadn’t mastered the craft yet. Scootaloo shifted the chocolate back and forth with her tongue, feeling the chocolate slowly melt. She once again pushed it into the roof of her mouth, as if she was unsure about swallowing. A sigh, and she slowed, coughed, and accidentally spat her breakfast to the clay and dirt below. She rode off again, kicking off as her wings twitched more out of habit than desire. A heavy soreness spread up her spine as she scooted away from her first meal in days. She wasn’t really hungry.
As the flare of morning sunlight rose into the sky behind her, Scootaloo continued mindlessly through the empty, dusty streets of an early morning Ponyville. Caution was superseded by exhaustion and disregard as her half-lidded eyes—dull in the vanishing starlight as it fled from the sun’s dawning rays—flicked back and forth between musty alleyways and the candlelit homes, warm amber light signalling the awakening of their inhabitants. A slight grimace burned across her face for a moment, only to be cast away by a winded sigh. Her exhale gave way to yet another fit of violent coughing, spreading hacking fire through her trembling torso. She groaned, leaning weakly over the ruby-red rubber handles of her scooter.
She crested a small hill just past the town square. Clearing a bump with a wince, she scooted lazily past a trickling concrete fountain. Scootaloo mulled over schedules for the week, homework she hadn’t touched, and other meaningless tidbits of thought as they fluttered and settled into her mind, only to be chased speedily away with another pulsating throb of her skull. One thought in particular managed to bury itself in the wake of the hacking fit: this wasn’t the first morning she’d awoken to the chilling blanket of a sheen of sweat, only to be assaulted by periodic episodes of aches and pains. This morning was simply worse. She breathily inhaled, and another stinging bout of coughs nearly toppled her to the dirt.
Much worse.
A burning sensation spread from the base of her throat with each wheezing exhale as she fought away the waves of pain that radiated so rapidly from her lungs with each breath. In or out, her throat was ablaze like a forest fire. Holding a hoof up to the base of her neck—all the while struggling to stay upright on the scooter—she pressed into it ever so slightly, as if to grant relief. A barely visible but hideously noticeable swelling had taken root there, throbbing against her hoof with each beat of her heart. She felt and heard the muscle pumping blood through her body weaker than she could pump her wings, each contraction accompanied with a burst of pain to her temples.
With a sudden gasp—which was accompanied with a violent raspy coughing—Scootaloo felt herself tumbling over. Her hooves remained in contact with the scooter, but even as she felt the reassuring firmness of the board beneath her, the world swam in colors and queasiness. A hazy pressure accompanied the dizzy spell and built up behind her eyes, forcing them shut. With a haphazard yelp, she found the pathway rushing up to hit her in the face.
Her saddlebag rolled and popped open, spilling a crimson cape and its contents across the dusty street. Nopony was around to notice or hear her brash cursing as she struggled to roll over, forelegs pressing hard into the dirt. Her tiny body lifted slowly, slowly, until her dust-smeared face finally lifted from the ground.
“Hnnngh—Gah!” A sputtering cry echoed from her dry, dusty lips as she collapsed the few inches she’d just gained. Her skull impacted the pavement with the force of a planet striking her forehead, splitting the hazy soreness of her headache open like an agony-filled egg.
“Nnnnngh...” She bit back what was very well a scream of pain. With broken resolution, she lay in the dirt, dull eyes flickering open for her to see the precious contents of her saddlebag, her only true belongings, scattered across the dirt road.
A groan and a heave, and she forced her protesting body to stand. Scrambling with what meager energy she could gather, the teary-eyed filly limped to her canvas bag and packed the few objects near it back inside. She didn’t even bother to clear the dirt from them.
She twisted her neck back with a stiff motion and bent down to lift up her saddlebag. She placed the tattered bag back over her spine, and—shivering in a sudden chill—trudged about a meter down the road to place her scooter right-side up with a well placed stamp on the dusty board. She mounted it, and hissed as her bruised leg kicked off the ground to propel her forward once more.
An early morning symphony of rustling leaves and chirping birds danced through the air on warm amber rays of sunlight. Then, as the quivering filly rode past the borders of Ponyville park, the tranquility was shattered by the coughing, squeaking mess that was Scootaloo. The smooth dirt roads became dotted with rocks and divots that jolted Scootaloo’s scooter as she passed over them. Each was a tremor to her, forcing her to grit her teeth to bite back any cries. A single drop of moisture leaked from the corner of her eye as she squeezed them shut, and a drawn-out breath serving to gather her senses.
She had to stay focused. She turned her head left and right, over her shoulder and up above, keeping a wary eye out for anypony that might see her this early. Shivering, she squinted up at a low-hanging cloud, expecting a pony’s head to peer over the edge at any second. For nearly a minute, she stopped, looked, and listened to everything around her. Finally satisfied, she let out a sigh that was punctuated by a vicious cough, burning her throat like acid. A grimace, and she spit a foul taste from her mouth and rode silently forward.
Her gaze flitted quickly between benches and fountains, bushes and trees. She was looking for something to conceal not only herself, but her bag and her scooter as well. None of the smaller bushes near the park’s entrance would be usable, not with how low to the ground they were.
Turning past a patch with a few assorted flower beds, she glanced nervously at the petals as they yawned opened to receive the kiss of the morning sun. A rumble from her empty stomach brought her attention to the white petals before her. Scootaloo slowed, and hopped off her scooter. Her legs nearly collapsed from under her as she landed with a grunt. She pulled open the flap on her canvas saddlebag and knelt down as she prepared to take a few snow-white daisies that were growing alongside the edge of the flower bed.
She paused. Scootaloo raised a hoof to cover a sudden onset of coughing, and when it subsided, grimacing at the flowers. It may be days before she found food like this again, fresh and waiting for her to save it for more frigid nights alone with nothing but herself and her thoughts, but she just wasn’t interested in eating anything, now or later. The thought of food seemed excessive—unwanted, even—as she swallowed and felt the tiny bulge under her throat. Moving slowly, her hooves worked to close her saddlebag, and Scootaloo stood with a strained grimace under its weight. Stepping back onto the board of her scooter, she beat her wings at a weaker pace as she continued on down the rocky pathway.
The bumpy trail slowly but surely bled into a smooth, almost hilly path. Scootaloo struggled to crest the first hill, having to cease relying on her drooping wings and push with her legs. Each step with the leg bruised from her fall earlier that morning sent a flicker of pain flaming its way up her limb, so that she hissed with every push. Reaching the top of the hill—panting—she pushed once more with a wince and slid down the other side smoothly. Her momentum carried her down past the base of the next hill in the path and drove her over its crest as well, as if the hill was a roller coaster and her scooter was the car. The speed of the rushing wind blew her pale pink mane behind her as Scootaloo squinted her eyes into the oncoming air. On most mornings, such a thrill would have excited her, maybe even dared her to go even faster. But on a morning like this, all she could manage was a tired smirk to throw into the wind as it passed her by.
As she came to the top of yet another hill, carried only by her previous momentum, she spotted something to her left that made her step out a leg to stop. Just beyond a pair of thin young trees, no more than ten meters from where she stood, was a bush thick with deep green leaves and glazed with morning dew. The smile that graced her features was the first sincere one she’d had all morning.
After double checking that nopony was around and dragging her scooter off of the path, Scootaloo pulled apart the immaculate leafy surface of the bush. The thing was thick with branches that stuck out in nearly every direction, light brown sticks with notches that marked each past years’ growth. Biting back a groan at this, she stuck her forelegs inside and pushed outwards. Scootaloo grunted to herself as she pulled a few of the branches aside, feeling the more brittle ones crack beneath her hooves. Shifting the branches at their bases and hissing under her breath as more than one of them poked into her sides, she struggled and fought until a sizeable hole had been made beneath the foliage. Not sizeable enough for her, but easily large enough for something like a bag.
She turned and lifted the saddlebag with her jaws. Though the only contents were a piece of shredded cloth, a few coins and a shattered mint picture frame, the weight of her thin canvas saddlebag strained her grip immensely. Her neck muscles felt as if she were lifting a fully grown stallion, and they remained stiff and sore even after she dropped the saddlebag inside the clearing of branches she’d made in the bush.
Scootaloo shifted a few more fresh emerald leaves over the bottom of the bush, effectively blanketing her saddlebag and its contents with a natural veil of green. With a satisfied sigh, she stumbled around the low growing shrub to look for her own shelter nearby. Peering over the leafy top of the bush, she found what must have been the edge of the park. A drainage ditch, coated with damp mud at the bottom, extended in either direction she turned her head.
Scootaloo bit her lip. It was less than glamorous, and she’d need to clean off in the lake the next morning, but she had stayed in far worse places before. Shuddering at the thought of an overturned trash can behind Sugarcube Corner, she turned away from the ditch and proceeded to back towards the path, a stinging fit of coughs echoing from her mouth.
The fiery sensation at the base of her throat was enough to make her whimper and lower herself to the cool grass. As the burning receded with every short, raspy breath, Scootaloo’s half-lidded violet gaze rose to the sky. The crimson shade of the sunrise was fading slowly, the ruby sky blending through rosy pink streaks as the last remnants of the night sunk beneath the horizon. The sky above was a pale blue, dotted with wispy cirrus clouds that appeared to glide and flow with the wind, swirling and curling in long strung ribbons that danced whimsically over the roof of the world. They had to be thousands of meters high, Scootaloo wondered, far beyond the reaches of any normal weather flyer wishing to clear them.
It was then that a prismatic streak burst through the thin blanket of clouds above, only to stop, turn, and shoot back up again, a trail of vibrant colors juxtaposed against white and pale blue. A childish grin lit up Scootaloo’s features, her eyes glimmering ever-so-slightly as the furiously flying pony shot back through the cloud layer, this time with a lacey trail of twisting clouds following in her wake. The rocketing pegasus spun left, arcing and dragging the thin cirrus clouds above into a sort of low pressure bowl. As she circled once, twice, three times, the sky coalesced on that single point, so that a tangible bubble of dew formed a single puffy marshmallow cloud. A triumphant grin, and two blue legs bucked forcefully into the surface of the fresh cumulus, scattering the previously aggregated bits into vapor that drifted into nothing.
Scootaloo ignored the burning in her muscles and bones long enough to stand for a single cheering hop, landing with a grimace that bled into a fit of coughing. Spitting a foul taste from her mouth, her shimmering amethyst eyes opened just in time to meet a prideful pair of rubies glancing at her from above. The grounded pegasus plopped her tail end to the grass and lifted a hoof to wave up to the sky blue speck of a pony hovering above. Rainbow Dash smirked pridefully, and with a salute and snappy flick of her colorful tail, she was gone in a prismatic blur, off to other regions of the sky still dotted with clouds.
Scootaloo remained sitting for a few moments, staring longingly with wavering eyes up into the cloudless sky. The sun rose higher as she remained motionless, the light scattering and painting the ceiling of Equestria a sapphiric shade of blue. She managed a momentary sigh without any hindering coughing, and—tearing her gaze back to the drab, grassy earth below—wobbled over to her scooter where it lay on its side in the dirt.
She picked her scooter up and blew to clear a few bits of dead grass and debris from the board, but her exhale did little to shift the pale green litter. Frowning, she mounted her vehicle and buzzed her wings with as much vigor as she could. Biting her tongue against the waves of pain from her limbs, Scootaloo lurched forward with speed and scooted off, leaving behind the phantom presence of Rainbow Dash and herself as the two of them soared through a false sky.
“Roll call! Everypony say ‘here’ when your name is called!” Came a drawling voice. “Sweetie Belle?”
“You know sh-she’s not here, dummy,” Scootaloo said with a grimace as a tickle rose in her throat. “She won’t be back from Canterlot for almost a month, what with her stupid singing classes.” She sat hunched over near the door of the Cutie Mark Crusaders Clubhouse, cradling a foreleg that stung with a dozen cuts. The blood had ceased flowing to the wounds, which hadn’t even begun to appear until well after she’d left the bush and her saddlebag behind her.
“I’m just readin’ the roll call list, Scootaloo.” Apple Bloom lifted the sheet of paper that lay on the podium before her. “No need for y’all to get so snappy, sheesh.”
Scootaloo groaned and rolled her eyes. She swallowed hard to hold down the stinging fit of coughs she knew was coming as Apple Bloom cleared her throat and continued.
“Scootaloo?”
It took a few seconds to answer, as a spraying series of burning coughs burst forth when Scootaloo opened her mouth. “H-here!” She managed to wheeze out between coughs.
“You alright there, Scoots? We could always postpone the meeting...”
“Nah, don’t be crazy.” Scootaloo managed to surface a smile over the pain. “I’m totally fine, I’ll bet—like—everypony feels crappy this time of year.”
“It’s summer.”
“Whatever.”
Apple Bloom gave her friend a cautious glance, her amber eyes scanning Scootaloo’s passive exterior as the pegasus stifled another cough. A shrug, and she continued reading. “Apple Bloom?”
Nopony spoke. Scootaloo raised an eyebrow at her friend as Apple Bloom looked around the clubhouse—grinning—as she read aloud once again, “Apple Bloom?”
Scootaloo snickered at her friend. “What’re you—”
“Now where could Apple Bloom be?” The pony in question giggled, her giant pink bow bobbing once as she continued pointing her head in all directions, a foalish grin on her face.
“Yeah, now who’s the dodo, sassafras?” Scootaloo giggled, swallowing back a cough. She made a face at the taste. “Cut it out, we’ve got thinking to do so we’ll have plenty of ideas to try when Sweetie Belle gets back!”
“Okay, okay,” Apple Bloom conceded with a smile. “Let’s get to it!”
Half an hour later, both ponies sat still beneath a dangling lantern, silent as stone. Apple Bloom’s lip jutted out slightly as she blew a lock of her cherry red mane out of her eyes. Her coat shone a creamy yellow in the square of sunlight that found its way in through the window, kissing the two ponies with a glowing heat that radiated throughout the room. Scootaloo wiped a scratched hoof across her brow with a wince, the salty sweat stinging the wounds on her leg. She lay back down in a slump, her head throbbing maliciously in the heat.
Apple Bloom shifted slightly. A deep sigh, and then, “Anythin’ yet?”
“Nope,” Scootaloo mumbled into the floorboards. She could feel the swelling at the base of her throat was worse than earlier that morning. A sputtering fit of coughs into her folded legs, and she grumbled, “I guess we forgot who the smart one is, huh?”
“H-hey!” Apple Bloom was up in a flash. “I’m plenty smart!”
"Meh."
Apple Bloom's anger fizzled. "Meh."
“Meh.” Scootaloo rolled over on the floor, closing her eyes and rubbing the base of her neck with a hoof. Bending her limb was surprisingly painful, as if they were stiff from weeks of atrophy. She sprawled her leg back out with a sigh, which inevitably led to yet another sputtering series of coughs.
“Nnnngh... Just spit up my freakin’ lungs already,” she groaned. Her eyelids flickered open as she heard hooves trotting spryly up the wooden ramp to the clubhouse. Shifting her head, she saw a set of orange legs step into the doorway.
“Landsakes, is this what y'all have been doin’ all day? Layin’ out in the sun to rot?” Applejack said. She lowered her head and leaned into the clubhouse, her look of disapproval falling right onto Scootaloo’s half-lidded gaze.
“Well good morning to you, too,” Scootaloo droned.
“Aw, stick a sock in it. C’mon, it’s way too late for y’all to be lazyin’ around in here!” Applejack stamped a hoof for emphasis. “‘Sides, AB here needs to get her caboose movin for that l’il somethin’-somethin’ tonight?” She said with a wink to her sister.
“H-huh? What’re—Oh!” Apple Bloom jumped up with a start, amber eyes popping. “Y-yeah, I gotta get goin’ Scoots, sorry!”
“Meh.” Scootaloo sniffed, before the words registered. “W-wait, what?!” She shot up on the spot before falling back to the wood with a thud in a heaving fit of coughing.
“Woah there, girl!” Applejack was at her side in an instant. “You alright, sugarcube? That’s quite a nasty cough you’ve got goin’ there.”
Scootaloo shrugged off Applejack’s hoof from her shoulder, biting her tongue at the screaming pain the movement caused. “Y-yeah, I’m fine, but why’s Apple Bloom gotta go?” She forced herself up, ignoring the waves of pain best she could. “We didn’t think of anything, it’d be a whole day wasted!”
“Uhhh, well y’see...” Applejack stuttered.
“Don’t worry ‘bout it, Scoots. We can totally hang out later today!” Apple Bloom interrupted with a beaming grin. Her sister turned, her quizzical gaze hidden to Scootaloo. Apple Bloom winked once, sighed, and winked again.
“O-oh, yeah, uhm,” Applejack continued, “Y’all can totally hang out later today! Why don’t you stop by Sugarcube Corner around...”
She paused. Scootaloo stared, one eyebrow raised, and Apple Bloom put a hoof to her face. Applejack mumbled something to herself. “Five...? Awww, shoot. Is it five? No, six...”
She looked back up, confusion masked with a toothy grin. “Stop by Sugarcube Corner 'round six, y’all can totally hang out!” She turned to the exit and ushered her sister with her. “Now c’mon Apple Bloom, time’s a’ wastin’.”
“W-wait!” Scootaloo sputtered from the window. “Won’t that cut into your something-something?”
“Oh, just show up ya chicken!” Came the shout back from Apple Bloom.
“Pffft. ‘Chicken.’ Eat my feathers.” Scootaloo plopped back to the floor with a groan. Looking around the room, a yawn overtook her next breath, morphing into another spitting cough. She grimaced at the burning in her throat, stood quietly, and stumbled to a corner of the room.
It was still morning, albeit late in the morning. Scootaloo wobbled over to the wall and rested on it, sinking slowly, slowly, slowly until her aching head hit the floor. Her eyes closed with a heaving sigh and one more cough that came out with more of a popping sound. Her eyelids twitched only once before she was fast asleep.
Warm streaks of amber light brushed against her eyelids, coaxing them open. With a groan, Scootaloo struck out weakly with a hoof, as if to bat the intruding brightness away. She retracted her limb with a wince, her eyes fluttering open slowly, ending her dreamless sleep.
It was late afternoon. The sun had passed overhead, now beaming through a window in the clubhouse. The square of soft light had pulled itself across the floor until it painted Scootaloo’s corner with a celestial warmth, dredging her rising form from the depths of slumber. A slight wobble, and the blinking filly regained a standing balance, her mind turning sluggish pinwheels in her head as consciousness rushed back to her. On a whim, her gaze flicked past a green clock hanging on the opposite wall of the room and to the door.
She took a few steps, then paused. Her eyes swam through the orange sunset light back to the clock, where they came to rest upon both hands standing in a vertical line, bisecting the clock face in two.
Scootaloo's pupils shrunk to the size of pinpricks. “Awwww, ponyfeathers, six! I gotta be across town by—” Her exclamation was cut short by a stinging fit of coughs that left her trembling, gasping for breath. Despite this, she took determined steps towards the exit of the clubhouse, her gait devolving into a stumbling limp as her bruised leg nearly toppled her over. Slowly, like the wood beneath her was ready to collapse, she descended the ramp and found her way over to her scooter, which lay haphazardly on its side. Biting her tongue against the fiery sensation radiating from her wings, Scootaloo took off in the direction of Sugarcube Corner.
The ride was agonizing at first. Her breaths came short and weak, forcing her to slow and nearly stop her wings on several occasions to pause and gasp for air. Each inhale brushed across a stinging spot in the base of her throat, sometimes forcing her lungs into fierce convulsions. A few droplets of moisture gathered precariously on her lashes, blurring the edges of her vision. She buried a grimace with a frown and continued onwards.
Rolling past the first in a series of identical cottages, Scootaloo felt herself numbing. It was a sudden pleasant feeling, the burning and aching seemingly melting away into nothing but a numb sense of fatigue. Her mind was tranquil, like serene blue waves on an endless ocean. Her thoughts were tiny and scattered, like a handful of forgotten islands. She coughed once, twice, three times, but she barely even noticed.
She sputtered and coughed once more. Something lodged in her throat, and she coughed again, a stabbing sensation cutting its way up her throat. She lurched forward and tumbled off her scooter, landing in a collapsed heap not ten meters from the door of Sugarcube Corner. She felt something dribbling out from between her lips, and on a whim she rubbed her chin with a hoof and glanced at it.
Her normally vibrant orange hoof was painted a hideous shade of scarlet.
Immediately, a wave of dizziness struck her. Scootaloo tried to stand, only to succeed in tumbling over into the dirt once more. Another cough, and the sickening sight of her own bloody hoof fell into vision. Her lungs continued to convulse, heaving coughs racking her chest as any screams she had died in her throat. An attempt to inhale ended in coughs and another spray of blood, this time from her nose.
Scootaloo’s body was on fire. Flaming waves of pain wrapped themselves around every screaming inch of her body, suffocating her. Her skull was going to burst. Her limbs weakly twitched in desperation. She thought she heard somepony scream, but the sound was alien, distant, as if she were drowning under leagues of murky water.
Blackness crept upon her from the edges of her vision. Anything she could see was blurred by a layer of tears that covered her eyes, streaking down her face and into the dirt. Blind and desperate, Scootaloo tried to scream, but the raspy sound echoing up from her chest wasn’t hers. The world grew cold around her as her eyelids pulled themselves shut.
Her leg planted itself in the dirt, its blood-caked twin doing the same. Scootaloo fought against waves upon waves of merciless, burning pain, struggling to push herself away from the ground that was soaked in blood. Her blood. Her eyes opened for a single moment as her legs gave out beneath her. A prismatic flash, and then her world was the dirt road beneath her.
Just before she hit the ground, her vision went black. She landed with a thud, and everything was gone.
The first thing she noticed was how warm she was.
Motherly warmth stretched the length of her entire body, soft brushstrokes of alien heat bearing lightly down on her chest and limbs. Except, she noticed, her left foreleg. It felt frigid, strangely so, as if the coolness was emanating from within her body. The inside of the joint stung slightly, with the surrounding area being completely numb.
Scootaloo’s eyes flickered open, her half-lidded gaze finding a completely dark room. To one side, a soft, almost melodic beeping sounded at regular intervals, and with it she saw the ceiling of the room she was in light up with a dim green. No other noises were heard, save for her own raspy breaths.
Her mind was numb, drifting in an open blue sky. Questions appeared in a white flash—why was she here? Where was here?—only to be scattered into nothing like clouds into vapor, leaving nothing but emptiness.
She lay awake there for at least ten minutes before a door opened with a click. A blindingly bright light filled her vision, forcing her eyes shut. She heard two sets of hoofsteps enter the room, and when she opened her eyes again—squinting—two ponies stood before her.
The first she recognized as Nurse Redheart, who had patched her up many times after various crashes and schoolyard fights. The nurse stood closest to her, sapphire eyes shimmering with empathy as she glanced at the sickly filly. Nurse Redheart moved slowly over to a tall machine that was next to Scootaloo’s bed—the source of the beeping, Scootaloo realized—and lifted a clipboard and pen and began writing something.
The other pony, a stallion, stepped forward to Scootaloo’s side and knelt down from the great height he stood at. “Good afternoon Scootaloo, it’s great to see you’ve finally woken up. You’ve been out for a few days now,” he said, running a tan hoof past his horn and over a slick brown mane. “My name is Dr. Stable, and I’m going to be taking care of you.”
All Scootaloo could manage was a tired nod.
“Right then, first things first. When you were brought in, we were told you were in a great deal of pain. On a scale of one to ten, can you tell me how bad the pain was?”
Her mind swam backwards through memories of every agonizing wingbeat, every burning cough. Fire clawed its way up from her lungs and spread through her limbs, forcing her to the blood-stained dirt and suffocating her.
With a wince, Scootaloo spoke in a scratching, raspy voice, “Twenty.”
“Mhmmm...” Dr. Stable gestured to Nurse Redheart, who scampered over to the bed and sat down with her clipboard, scribbling something. “And how would you rate it now?”
She thought for a moment. Her head was still splitting down the middle, and her throat still burned with the fiery residue of previous coughing fits. Scootaloo tried to shift a leg upwards, but found herself either too numb or too exhausted to do so.
A weak cough sputtered out of her throat. “Nnnnngh... F-five...” She grimaced as the nurse winced at her and continued writing.
“Alright then,” Dr. Stable said with a nod. He exchanged glances with Nurse Redheart, who merely nodded back at him. A quick sigh, and then, “Do you know why you’re in the hospital, Scootaloo?”
“C-cause I’m sick, right?” She managed, her voice weak but gaining back some of its volume. “Why else would I be here?”
“You’re right about that, Scootaloo.” Nurse Redheart sniffed, speaking for the first time. Her voice was wavy, nearly trembling. “Dr. Stable is... He’s an oncologist here at the hospital. Do you know what an oncologist is?”
Scootaloo blinked. “I dunno. Sounds made up, to be honest.” She found the strength to lift a hoof and press it to her neck, feeling for the swelling from earlier. She felt nothing, until her foreleg was suddenly grasped by Nurse Redheart. Scootaloo looked up at her in confusion, only to see moisture dotting her lashes.
“Scootaloo, this is serious. I need you to listen to me,” Dr. Stable said. “An oncologist is somepony who...” He paused, biting his lip, as if unsure of how to continue.
Nurse Redheart finished for him, her voice shaking. “An oncologist is s-somepony who helps ponies w-with cancer, Scootaloo...” She stifled a sudden sob, and then, “A-and that’s why he’s here to help you.”
Author's Note
Is it as good as it could be? Probably not. Was I getting sick of writing and rewriting this, only to remember that it's nothing but a springboard to the stuff that I actually enjoy writing? Indubitably. I hope you like coughing and cheese.

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                  Chapter II – Summerset                   
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Chapter II – Summerset
Make a Wish  
by CoolStoryBrony  
Chapter II — Summerset
With a click and a ding, the thick double doors of the Ponyville General elevator slid open to reveal a hallway of stone-gray plaster and cheaply laid white tiles. A young earth pony filly with a scarlet mane stepped apprehensively out of its confines and into the soulless hallway. Her gaze flipped from left to right, a bright pink bow in her mane bobbing ever so slightly as her head turned back and forth between two halls at an intersection. Finally, with a deep, pensive breath, she set her course to the left and trotted forth with steely determination. If anypony had looked closely, they might have seen beads of sweat under her low-hanging bangs.
Apple Bloom's eyes flicked between the labels positioned beside the doors of the rooms she passed, her hooves clopping softly on the hard floor beneath. Her breathing was becoming slightly more noticeable, and she shivered as she cantered somewhat faster through the corridor. The flickering flourescent tubes above shone with cold light, blinding more than comforting. The oppressive atmosphere was complemented by the stench of disinfectants.
Apple Bloom ran now, trembling, neck swinging wildly from sign to sign, her gasping breaths coming quickly. With no sense of direction, she thundered down the hospital hallway—until she ran face-first into the legs of Nurse Redheart.
"Oof!" Apple Bloom tumbled backwards, falling flat against the tiled floor.
"Oh my goodness!" Nurse Redheart stumbled, a clipboard in her mouth clacking as it fell to the ground. "Sweetie, are you alright?"
"Nnngh..." Apple Bloom shook herself as she wobbled to her hooves. "Y-yeah, I'm alright... Sorry, I shoulda been watchin' where I was headed..."
"Oh, don't worry too much about it. I'm more worried about you!" Nurse Redheart sat on her haunches, leaning down to inspect Apple Bloom.
"Oh my, this looks serious!" she said with mock surprise. "But don't you worry, sweetie, it's nothing a few stitches can't fix."
Apple Bloom's pupils shrunk, and she shifted with an audible gulp. A nervous twitch, and she squeaked out, "S-stitches?"
"Of course, just a few to make sure you'll be okay," Nurse Redheart proclaimed, biting back a chuckle. "It's not so bad, I promise!"
"N-no stitches for me, th-thanks..." Apple Bloom cringed behind a toothy smile.
"Oh, are you sure you'll be alright though? That was quite a nasty tumble you took, deary, and you are in a hospital after all." The nurse tussled the farm filly's mane with a white hoof. "It wouldn't be difficult, just a few needles here and there." She drew a line across Apple Bloom's forehead with the tip of her hoof to punctuate.
Paralyzed, all Apple Bloom could do was whimper, eyes twitching slightly as she fell to her rump.
"Are you sure you'll be okay?"
"Wh-what? Okay? I'm Apple Bloom. I-I mean, I'm okay! I'm Apple Bloom and I'm okay!"
"Well..." Nurse Redheart snickered as she placed the clipboard in a transparent green tray hanging on a nearby door. "If you insist. But you have to promise not to go running around so recklessly anymore, alright? Next time you might get really hurt, and nopony wants that," she said.
"I-I won't! Promise!" Apple Bloom shook her head vigorously, her bow shaking to the side and hanging off her mane..
"Heeheehee... Mmmm. Well if you say so, sweetie." Nurse Redheart smiled, trotting over and shifting Apple Bloom's bow back into place. Apple Bloom flashed a sheepish grin, and the nurse continued, "But would you mind telling me why you were in such a hurry? Maybe I can help find whatever you were looking for?"
Apple Bloom's face fell, her ears folding back and her gaze dropping to the floor. Pawing a hoof across the dusty floor, she let out a melancholy sigh before answering. "I... I'm here lookin' for my friend. Sh-she's kinda sick, so I thought I'd stop by and say hi, maybe cheer her up a bit..."
"Well aren't you just the best friend a pony could ask for?" Nurse Redheart said sweetly. "I'm sure I can help you find whoever you're looking for. What's your friend's name?"
For a moment, silence. Then, Apple Bloom mumbled something to the floor, her gaze never once shifting from her hooves.
“Scootaloo...”
The nurse shifted, squinting as she said, "I'm sorry, sweetie, could you speak up?"
"Sc-Scootaloo..."
Nurse Redheart's blue eyes softened, and she held back a somber frown while forcing a comforting smile to her face. "Of course, Miss Apple Bloom. I'll show you to your friend's room. Just follow me."
Apple Bloom sheepishly nodded. The nurse turned the way Apple Bloom had come from. Mentally berating herself for being so clumsy, Apple Bloom followed after Nurse Redheart, tiny yellow legs reaching a canter to keep up.
A few minutes of walking, and the two ponies came to a large wooden door on the left side of the hallway. The space for the label was empty, and though Apple Bloom could see the lights were on under the door, no sound was heard from within.
"I'll leave you two alone," the nurse said, stepping aside. "I'll be sure to come back in a little while and see how you're doing, okay?" Apple Bloom did nothing to respond, instead staring blankly at the door. It seemed to be growing taller by the second.
A quick sigh, and then, "It's alright, sweetie, just go ahead. She'll be happy to see you, I promise." With that, Nurse Redheart walked slowly away, eventually rounding a corner. With a deep breath, Apple Bloom suppressed a shudder and marched forward, nudging the door open with a hoof.
A skipping earth pony filly drifted melodiously through the somber building, her hooves clopping joyously across the tile floor of the Ponyville General hallway. She danced past doors of occupied and empty rooms—humming all the way—as her cheese-colored coat caught the pale light of the fluorescent tubing above. Atop her head was a somewhat goofy black top hat, bouncing around her bare scalp with each stride. She rounded a corner, finding one of the hospital staff’s nurse ponies removing an overburdened clipboard from the transparent green plastic bin affixed to one of the doors.
“Heya, Miss Tenderheart! How’s the morning been?” she chimed like an early morning songbird.
A surprised jump, and the nurse yelped and dropped the clipboard to the floor in a clattering mess. The hinge that had struggled to hold back the tides of paper and ink gave in, sending various pages and documents dancing through the air and fluttering around in a blizzard of records and reviews. What few pages that hadn’t been caught in the maelstrom somehow found themselves coating Nurse Tenderheart from head to hoof, leaving only a pair of glowering eyes visible.
“Heeheehee—Whoops!” Summerset giggled to herself, holding a hoof to her to stifle back any more smirks. “Looks like you’ve got this—heeheehee—covered! Snnkkkt-hahahaha!” With that, she skipped away, leaving a stunned and exasperated mare to clean up the mess of a hallway.
The prancing filly hummed a melody to the hospital’s lonely walls. A hop, skip, and a jump, and she nearly tumbled over her own hooves—giggling madly the whole time—as she skidded to a stop just outside a towering pair of cyan double doors. Without even a second’s thought, she leapt forward.
She stood before a large cafeteria room containing various tables and food stands. A few scattered ponies were spread around the room, chatting in hushed tones or otherwise silent. She took a single moment of stillness to close her eyes and breathe deeply of scents, a blissful smile dancing gracefully across her features as she inhaled. The smell of pastries was the first thing she noticed; most likely muffins—probably blueberry—with a hint of sugar lacing them.
Her giggling fell back into a hum once more, the same melody blessing the air about her that had followed her hoofsteps all morning long. She scampered excitedly across the checkered floor, making a foalish game hopping only on the darker tiles. She bounced over white speckled squares, between tables and the ponies alike, before coming to a stop in front of a glass counter housing a variety of sugary sweets. She propped herself up against the glass that separated her salivating taste buds from the cupcakes and candies and muffins within. Her oversized hat wobbled as she pushed off the glass and landed back on all fours, and began pacing back and forth, back and forth, in front of the hospital cafeteria’s confectionary.
She hopped up and down, jingling with the sound of coins, trying to see over the counter with whatever height her tiny stature would allow her. It took a few more jumps before she spotted a turquoise—and rather plump—earth pony working in the kitchen beyond the counter of sweets.
“Hey! Hey, over here!” She shouted towards the back, waving her front legs wildly at the apex of each whimsical hop. “Ya can’t just dangle these sweets here and not let me pay for ‘em!”
With each foalish leap to peek over the counter, she saw the pony look at her, turn, and walk towards the counter, each action like a still picture from a flipbook. At last, the mare on the other side of the counter peered over the line of sweets down at the sweetly smiling filly with her hat tilting haphazardly off the side of her head.
“Heh heh, well shoot, I oughta’ve known it was you, Summerset! How ya been, girl?” The hefty mare leaned further over the counter and pushed the bald filly’s hat back into place. “Haven’t seen ya ‘round here in ages—not that that’s a bad thing, mind ya.”
“I’m doing great, Miss Sweet Treat! Momma and I were here so I could get ra—“ Summerset paused, the curves of her lips leaving as she lowered her head in thought. “Ra-Ray… Radio…” Her smile returned and her hairless, hat covered head snapped back up. “That laser thingy! And Momma said if I was really good and didn’t squirm too much, then I could come and get somethin’ from the Sugar Shop here in the cafeteria, and I was reeeeally good and didn’t move a muscle! So here I am!” She paused to take a breath, while the mare behind the counter just shook her head and chuckled in hearty amusement.
“Well, little one, I’m sure I’ve got somethin’ that’ll tickle your fancy. So what’ll it be, Summerset?” She knelt down and peeked at the her from behind rows of glass and sweets.
“Hmmmmm… Mmmm-mmmm-mmmmmmm…” Summerset licked her lips in thought, tilting her head and causing her massive black top hat to nearly topple of her bald head once again. Her eyes darted between candies and cupcakes, cookies and ice cream bars, all the while squinting and peering to the next in the line of sweet tooth satisfiers. With a pensive breath and a nod, she rose her hairless head from inspection and loudly declared, “I wanna cupcake! Lotsa icing!”
“And whaddya say when asking for something?” Sweet Treat smirked down at Summerset.
“Oh! Um… I wanna cupcake with lotsa icing please!” Summerset corrected herself, eyeing a rather large pink confectionary on the bottom shelf. “And, uhh, could I have that one? Please?” she asked, pointing with a creamy yellow hoof.
“Why yes, little Miss Summerset, yes you can.” Sweet Treat took the spiraling pink cupcake in a hoof and placed it delicately inside a tiny brown paper bag. “That’ll be two bits, please.”
“Sure thing!” Summerset shook her head vigorously, causing the large hat to finally topple to the floor with a soft clinking of metal. The now completely maneless pony stuck her hairless head inside the hat and from within it retrieved a small leather pouch of golden bits, each coin a shade darker than her coat. She flipped the bag over in her hooves and two bits rolled out, shimmering under the plastic lighting above. Placing the bag back inside the hat and placing the ridiculously oversized thing upon her head once more, Summerset lifted the two golden bits up to the shopkeeper. “Trade ya!”
Another humored chuckle, and Sweet Treat hoofed over the paper bag and its sugary contents to Summerset, who was licking her lips in anticipation. In turn, the beaming filly tossed the pair of bits over the counter, not even bothering to look back and see that they had far cleared their target and landed somewhere in a vat of icing behind the glass. Sweet Treat’s gaze was caught by the spectacle. She shook her head, but by the time she turned back to see Summerset off, she was long gone, prancing and giggling and singing out the door and down the hall.
The tall wooden door creaked open, and Apple Bloom—trembling—poked her head through the crack. Soft amber eyes flicking back and forth, her gaze shifted around the room, taking in the dreary surroundings her friend was subject to.
The windowless room couldn't be larger than the inside of the Crusaders' clubhouse, and had but a single source of light in a ceiling: a short flourescent rod that stretched the space of two of the room's cheap plaster ceiling tiles. The light had a cold glow that chilled more than illuminated, similar to the blinding lights of the hallway. To Apple Bloom's right was a set of cabinets, both fitted with locks and painted a sickly shade of green. The garish colors of the cabinet contrasted with the otherwise gray wallpaper that clung to the confining walls of the hospital room, peeling, cracking, and curling along the edges and corners.
To her left, a series of thin metal hooks were suspended in the drywall, each with various bags and medical tools hanging whimsically from them. Further in the corner was a single round trash bin, constructed of cheap aluminum and missing its cap. Apple Bloom could smell the faint but familiar stench of molded, uneaten apple slices drifting from the trash can as well. Her friend had not been eating her food.
There was a rack that stood in the back corner of the tiny room. With a yellowish base and a set of bent plastic wheels, the rack seemed especially lofty to the little filly in the doorway, almost in an intimidating sense. A strange metal box was fixed to the top of the thing, an off-white cube with a flickering black screen on one end and a bundle of colorful wires coming out the other. The wires snaked their way down the rack and into a nearby socket in the wall, and the screen itself was covered in various data that Apple Bloom couldn't hope to translate. Numbers and abbreviations lined the borders of the obsidian-like face, with a few various thin lines trailing lazily through the center. One thicker line spiked every so often, and with it came a dull beep that, though especially soft, seemed to pierce through Apple Bloom’s ears and drive a spike into her brain.
The thin metal structure had suspended from it a single clear bag, half empty with a transparent liquid that trickled out the bottom of the pack and into a miniscule cylinder beneath with a maddening dripping sound. The droplets inched their way down a tube that led away from the rack, and over to the sight that caught Apple Bloom's fearful gaze.
In the center of the bleak, silent room, lay a single bed. This bed was clearly made for a full-grown pony, not somepony as young as Scootaloo. The wheels on the thing looked to be slightly larger than Apple Bloom's own head in diameter, while the bed itself was high enough that she needed to take a standing hop to confirm that it was indeed her pegasus friend that lay on it. The mattress that lay atop the base of the bed could be more aptly described as a cot: no more than a few centimeters in height, made of some sort of gray foam, and clearly not comfortable to sleep on. The thin blanket that stretched the length of the "mattress" was a soft blue, almost peaceful and relaxing if not for the pathetically tiny area it covered. It shifted up and down, weakly, inconsistently, as its occupant did nothing else to shift it for warmth.
And it's occupant was otherwise still. Scootaloo lay in the bed, unmoving, save for a few shallow breaths. Her mane, often lively and sleek, was messy and dull. Her normally vibrant orange coat was browning and pale, and a tube trailed over the thin threaded layers of the blanket and down beneath the sheet. Clear droplets of saline trickled down the rubbery pathway, hydrating the motionless pegasus. A feeding tube ran into Scootaloo's body as well, providing nutrients through a transparent solution that traveled through the tube and up Scootaloo's nose. On any other occasion, Apple Bloom would have found this to be hilarious. But this was no such occasion.
Apple Bloom blinked the moisture from her eyes, and when they opened again they held a weak resolve, but resolve nonetheless. A momentary deep breath, and Apple Bloom trotted into the room, her mind shaking off any and all sights around her but her friend. Another deep breath, a resounding sigh, and then, a whisper. "H-hey, Scoot..."
She waited for a response. Something, anything from Scootaloo to let her friend know she was there. One second. Five seconds. Ten seconds.
"Scootaloo?" she squeaked out, a little bit louder this time.
One minute, and nothing. Her friend was asleep.
Her pleading eyes closed as her expression drooped. Apple Bloom groaned at herself for not coming sooner; she'd been putting this off all day, never letting it leave the forefront of her mind as she worked up the courage to see her friend who needed her. Another sigh, softer this time. With one last glance at the sleeping Scootaloo, she lifted a hoof to leave—but stopped short of turning.
"Sheesh Apple Bloom, what kind of friend are ya?" she scolded herself under her breath. "Y'all ain't the one in the hospital, so do your part and help the pony who is!"
The farm filly flipped her drooping mane up and out of her eyes, where some resemblance of determination had taken seed. Her rosey bow rocked back and forth as she trotted a few hoofsteps closer to the bedside.
"H-Hey, Scootaloo. Sorry I haven't visited you in here before today, I've been... a l'il held up..." She paused momentarily, a brief hope flickering through her mind that her friend may wake up and respond. A few seconds of silence, and Apple Bloom let out a breath she didn't even know she'd been holding.
Nothing. Still asleep.
"I see you've got a bed with wheels," Apple Bloom spoke slowly, softly, almost as if to herself. "Maybe one of the nurses might let you ride it down the hall a few times, y'know? Like a scooter?"
A few more involuntary blinks freed a tear that had been hanging near the bottom of Apple Bloom's eye, blurring the base of her vision. It tickled her cheek as it rolled down it before sliding off her face. She caught the teardrop in the cup of her hoof, and, tilting her foreleg from side to swaying side, gently rolled the droplet around until she could no longer see it.
"Sweetie hasn't heard yet, what with bein' up in Canterlot... I just found out this mornin’, to be honest...” She bit her lip, sighed, and continued. “B-but I'll be sure to let her know, so then Sweetie can send you a letter or somethin'. Maybe even come and visit!
Another half a minute passed, and no sound was heard but Scootaloo's shallow breaths and the dull piercing tone of the machine perched on the rack. Apple Bloom shuffled in place pensively, her gaze shifting away from her friend and down to her hooves that kicked absentmindedly across the floor.
More tears freed themselves from the slipping grasp of Apple Bloom's eyelids, trailing down her face and dripping to the floor. "I... I hate seein' you here like this, Scootaloo... T'ain't natural, y'know? You're supposed to be the loud one, the pony runnin' the show... Now look at you..." She sniffed quietly as she could manage.
"Y-you gotta promise me, Scootaloo... You gotta p-promise me y—" Apple Bloom cringed, choking back a sob.
The blanket shifted and the bed squeaked. Apple Bloom didn't hear; all she could hear was her own weak sobbing. All she could feel were the tears sliding down her trembling cheeks, like a salty stream of despair. The beeping from the machine on the rack sped up ever-so-slightly, but Apple Bloom didn't notice it beneath her own whimpering pleas.
"I... I c-can't..."
"Nnnnnggghh... Wha—" Scootaloo groaned, her voice scratchy and weak. "Apple Bloom...?"
"I can't do this! I'm sorry!"
Apple Bloom's despair exploded like a pressurized bomb. Sobbing, she scrambled up to her hooves, eyes shut and ears down. Scootaloo struggled to make sense of the situation she'd just awoken to, fighting to lift a hoof beneath the tangling intravenous tube and the threads of the blue bedsheet.
"A-Apple Bloom! Wait!" the sickly filly tried to shout out from beneath a sudden fit of coughing, but it was no use. Apple Bloom sprinted madly for the door, paying no heed to advice about safety and stitches, ramming the two-way door open in a mad dash and bursting out of the room. Her cries of apology trailed behind her and drowned out her friend's brittle pleas.
The sound of hooves clattering down the hallway echoed into nothing. Scootaloo's weakly held hoof fell to the bed as confused tears sparkled to existence and fell from her eyes. Alone with nothing but abandonment and a half-hearted apology to run on, she began to draw her own conclusions. At first, it was just tears. Then, she was shaking. Then, sobbing, wailing, cursing after her friend as Apple Bloom ran from Scootaloo, just like everypony did in time.
"Some friend you are, Apple Bloom!" she screamed out the doorway, which had been left ajar. Heaving sobs strained her lungs as Scootaloo flipped herself face-first into the pillow and stained it with her grief, chest lurching with every shuddering breath.
A white hoof appeared in the doorframe, and Nurse Redheart pushed the door open with a gasp. In a moment she was gone.
Scootaloo lay in a tear stained pillow, her mane matted wet by tears and sweat, as she breathed haphazardly the vapors of her own despair. A few soft hoofsteps were heard behind her, but she paid them no attention, too absorbed in the most recent betrayal of her short life.
Suddenly, things became warm. The feeling of alien heat began to comfort her around her flanks, spreading to her still heaving chest as a pony dragged what felt like a thick heated comforter around the sobbing filly. The warmth stopped just below her neck, where a white nose nuzzled her gently before pulling the comforter up to her ears, effectively coating Scootaloo in motherly warmth.
"I'll be around if you need anything, Scootaloo," Nurse Redheart spoke softly from the doorway. Scootaloo didn't move a bit in response, but the nurse continued. "I'll be by to check on you in a little while, sweetie. If there's anything I can do for you, just ask, okay?"
Scootaloo shifted a bit, as if to nod. Nurse Redheart smiled at her from the door frame. “She’ll come around in time, Scootaloo,” she added, before reaching up and flicking off the flourescent rods in the ceiling, filling the room with a tiring darkness. The door was left barely open, a thin streak of light stretching across the bed sheet. Scootaloo squeezed a few more tears out from her eyes and rolled over in the soft embrace of the comforter.
Haunted by Apple Bloom's fleeing, Scootaloo lay weakly on her side, her wings twitching as she groaned helplessly. Her eyes shut once more, trying in vain to find peace in slumber again.
Summerset practically danced down the hallway, bounding past stone-gray walls of plaster lined with cheap decorative wallpaper, skipping as her coat shimmered under the pale glow of the fluorescent tubes that lined the ceiling above. The same melody that had trailed behind her previous canter followed her still, filling the air around her with the echoing reverberation of carefree song. Waves upon waves of her humming voice bounced between the walls of the expansive hallway, overlapping to form chords no other pony could create by themselves. The wobbling black top hat that rested upon her maneless head jingled and jangled with every step she took, adding a chorus of bell-like percussion to the one-filly symphony that cantered down the hall, a permanent beaming grin transfixed upon her face. Her prize, the spiralling pink cupcake that bounced around at the bottom of the brown paper bag that hung from her jaws, wafted a scent of sugary sweetness through the air behind her, so that her very presence painted the somber hospital halls with dreams of song and sugar.
Something grim reached her twitching ears, though it didn’t register in her mind until a few heartbeats after she had passed the source. A brief pause, and Summerset skidded to a stop on the floor, spinning and sliding as her hooves kicked up a puff of gray dust from the tiles. She tilted her head, the hat atop it swerving along with it, and raised an ear. Sitting motionless off to the side of the hallway, Summerset heard the sound of a filly crying.
She shifted, her sapphire gaze stretching over her shoulder and down the hall to the elevator doors. Her eyes twitched, glancing between backwards and forwards, help and home. An inevitable sigh, and she propped her hat back into place and traveled back in the direction she had just come from.
The source of the crying intensified ever-so-slightly as Summerset peered between signs, between doors, her shifting ears as open as her scanning eyes. Eventually she came to a stop at a tall wooden door, with the name card empty and the door slightly ajar. The crying became sobbing—shuddering, coughing sobbing—as she lifted a foreleg to lightly nudge the door open with a little kick.
Inside, Summerset saw a sickly scene play out before her. Resting atop a thin, gray bed was a sobbing mess of thick linens and dull orange fur. A dampened face lay upon the thin uncovered pillow, staining it with moisture that trailed from squinting, misty eyes. The filly under the sheets grumbled as she sniffed loudly, cursing some unintelligible name.
With a cautious measured hoofstep forward, Summerset closed the gap between herself and the base of the bed. Her squinting gaze softened at the sight of a sickly pony sobbing in bed, and she placed the brown paper bag and its contents on the floor. Struggling to clamber atop the end of the bed with her forelegs and prop herself up on the plastic cot, Summerset felt her hat tumbling down to the white tile below as she scaled higher. A moment to pause, and Summerset leaned forward and took a deep, pensive breath, as if to whisper…
“Hi, crybaby!”

//-------------------------------------------------------//
                   Chapter III — Sisters                   
//-------------------------------------------------------//
Chapter III — Sisters
Make a Wish  
by CoolStoryBrony  
Chapter III — Sisters
“Gaaaah!” Scootaloo shot up in a screaming tangle of sheets and feathers, her bloodshot eyes wide with terror. It took barely a moment to register the beaming yellow earth pony dangling off the edge of her bed by two scrawny legs.
It took another moment to realize what the filly had said. “H-hey! I’m not a c-crybaby!” Scootaloo stuttered in defiance.
“Heeheeheehee… If you say so, crybaby!”
Scootaloo wiped away a traitorous teardrop from her now rosy cheek. “Quit calling me that!” she fumed, glaring dull daggers at the snickering filly.
Reflex lifted Summerset’s hoof up to her lips to stifle a rude giggle, the gesture causing her to lose her grip on the bed and tumble backwards, out of Scootaloo’s vision. “Woah-oooah!” She landed on a her flank right next to her paper bag. “Whew, that was a close one,” she snickered.
“Who even are you?!” Scootaloo shouted, quivering with anger. A cough sputtered forth from her lips as she tried her hardest to stare down the intruder as Summerset poked her head back up from behind the base of the cot. She grimaced, her throat burning. “Where did you c-come from all of a sudden, I don’t remember inviting you in here!” she spat in anger as her now exposed wings twitched.
“Oh yeah, silly me! Forgot all about introductions and the like,” Summerset sang gleefully, blind or ignorant to Scootaloo’s fuming rage. “Name’s Summerset! I’m Amber Leaf’s l'il angel, I’m eight and a half, and I totally thought my cutie mark would have to do with bedside manner until today! Snnnkt—heeheehee!”
She waited innocently for a response from the sickly filly. Scootaloo, however, was completely transfixed on something—something that had passed unnoticed until it shook her to her frail core. Unable to speak, all the slightly shivering pegasus could manage was to half-lift a hoof towards the sight of the completely shaven—or otherwise bald—scalp of the blinking filly before her.
“Y-you…” she stammered in confusion, “Why’re you—I mean, w-where’s your mane gone?”
“Oh, this?” Summerset spoke with no embarrassment, her eyes peering up under a maneless scalp. “That’s one of the things that the key—Umm… Aww, shoot, what was it called?” With a heave, she pushed herself up a bit higher on the bed and kicked her hind leg over the sheet, eventually clambering onto the surprisingly warm linen comforter. All the while, “Hmmm’s” and stuttering consonants were muttered as she pondered. “Kay—no, that’s not it… Chee-ma, key-mo…”
At that last utterance, Scootaloo visibly cringed as some realization dawned upon her anxious features. Failing to suppress a gulp, she squeaked out, “Ch-chemotherapy…?”
“Yeah, that’s the one!” Summerset nodded, her eyes lighting up. “If I had the digits to snap, I totally would right now!”
Scootaloo, however, deflated considerably at this. “Seriously? I’m gonna go bald, too?!”
“Whatcha mean by that, crybaby?” Summerset said, absentmindedly running a hoof over her maneless scalp.
“Sh-shut up! I’m not a crybaby!” Scootaloo snapped.
“Were ya crying just now?”
“N-no, I was just mad is all! That doesn’t make me a friggin’ crybaby!”
Summerset flopped on her back, her head towards the head of the bed. “Aww, I’m just teasin’, ya silly goober! You don’t have to be a crybaby if you don’t want to!”
“Good, ‘cause I’m not!” Scootaloo folded her forelegs with a huff. She groaned, a splitting ache raging and pulsing through her skull as she grew more awake.
“So what was that all that snot about goin’ bald or whatever you were groanin’ on about?” Summerset rolled over onto her belly, shifting her head off the bed in the process. “It’s not over-the-counter crud that does this to ya!”
“Uhm...” Scootaloo shifted slightly, rubbing her neck with a hoof. “The d-doctor said something about a key-mo therapy? I thought it was like the stuff they make Rainbow Dash do after she breaks her wing, but you said it made you go...” She paused, looking up into space.
A sudden snarl, and then, “What they hay, kid?! I don’t have to explain myself, I don’t even know you!"
“Woah-ho, no need to get your feathers in a pillow!” Summerset snickered. “I was just curious is all, sheesh!"
"Well cut it out!"
"Being curious?"
"Being annoying!" Scootaloo spat. It was then that her lungs convulsed fiercely, and she collapsed back to the bed with a groan.
"Yeesh, you alright, crybaby?" The maneless filly winced. "S-sorry, I didn't mean nothin' by it..."
"Nnnnngh..." Scootaloo fought back tears as she curled herself tight with the practiced speed of having spent many frigid nights without shelter. "I'm n-not a crybaby..."
"Uhm..." Summerset bit her lip. With a wayward glance away from the sniffling, bedridden filly before her, she spotted her paper bag sitting on the cold tile. Her face lit up with a sudden smile, and in an instant she was standing up and hopping off the bed, her hooves landing solidly on the ground.
"Summerset?" a mare's voice called from outside the room. "Summer, sweetie, where are you?"
The filly in question spun around, away from the door. She bent over and picked up the paper bag and its contents, before making her way back to Scootaloo's bed. Hopping once, twice, three times, she finally managed to climb over the foot of the bed. With an apologetic glance at the shivering pegasus, Summerset dropped the bag at Scootaloo's hooves.
"H-hey, uhm..." she stammered, as if her talkative demeanor had also been whisked away by Scootaloo's coughing fit. "I-I think I get what you meant, or... or at least I think I do."
"G-go away..." Scootaloo choked out between suppressed sobs.
Summerset grimaced, her ears drooping. "I didn't mean to be such a nincompoop." With one last forlorn look at Scootaloo, she muttered, "You're not alone, y'know."
With that, the sobbing stopped. The silence was almost eerie at first, broken only with a sniffle that punctuated Scootaloo's breathing. Slowly, the teary-eyed filly shifted and sat up, her violet gaze falling on the paper bag that had appeared on the foot of her bed.
Summerset climbed down from the bed in silence. She picked up her top hat and placed it over her maneless scalp, shifting the giant thing around until it no longer threatened to topple off. She walked towards the door at a painfully slow gait, as if something were fighting to keep her in the room with Scootaloo.
"Summer? Are you hiding in the heated blankets again?" the mare's voice echoed from the hall. "You know what Nurse Tenderheart said about wrapping yourself in sheet cocoons, you're not going to turn into a pegasus or a butterfly!"
Summerset couldn't help but snicker at that. Just as she was about to shout back an answer, a voice squeaked from behind her.
"S-Scootaloo..."
"Huh?" The maneless filly turned to look over, and saw Scootaloo sitting up and uncovered by her blanket, staring down. The sickly pegasus' wings twitched, and she lifted the cupcake from where it sat in the bag.
"My n-name is Scootaloo," she said, her gaze never leaving the spiralling dessert.
Summerset felt a grin pulling at her cheeks. "You've got a bald-buddy in me, Scootaloo," she said.
"Summerset, please! Come out here!"
"Coming, Momma!" her voice squeaked. With a wave to Scootaloo, she pulled the door open and trotted swiftly into the hall. She looked to her left, and saw a golden-coated earth pony coming around the corner.
"There you are!" Amber Leaf smiled at her daughter. "I can't take you anywhere without you wandering off, you little explorer."
"Sure beats the boring crud you wanna do!" Summerset said with a snicker. "Shopping for hats? Pffft! Boooring!"
"Oh, really? Then you won't mind if I take this!" Amber Leaf popped the top hat off of Summerset's head.
"Noooooo, Momma! Give it back, give it!" Summerset giggled.
Amber Leaf held it just out of her hopping daughter's reach. "Oh, but I thought hats were boring. Unless you take it back?"
"I do, I do! Gimme it back, my head's all cold now!"
She sighed, finally lowering her hoof and allowing Summerset to snatch the oversized headwear back. The two of them began walking back down the hall Amber Leaf had come from, Summerset humming softly to herself.
"So where'd your treat go, Summer?" Amber Leaf asked, catching her daughters blue gaze. "Don't tell me you finished it already!"
Summerset looked down in silence, her hat shifting forward slightly.
"Summerset? Is everything alright?" Her mother's voice was suddenly full of concern.
"Y-yeah, I'm all good, Momma." She yawned, a little shudder travelling up her spine. "Somepony else was just hungrier than I was."
Amber Leaf smiled gently. "Generosity is its own reward, sweetie."
The two of them found their way back to the hospital's main entrance. Stepping outside, Summerset breathed deep the fresh afternoon air, feeling a light wind brush past her.
In an instant, the gentle breeze exploded into a veritable windstorm as a streak of color shot past them. Summerset's hat tumbled off, floating briefly before falling to the ground. The prismatic blur turned a full vertical circle before slamming to the ground between the filly and her mother, kicking up a cloud of dust with the force of two powerful blue wings.
"Summer? S-Summerset, are you alright?" Amber Leaf's voice rang out as Summerset coughed and sputtered, feeling around for her hat.
"Y-yeah, I'm okay!" she squeaked, finding her dust-covered hat and placing it back over her maneless head. As the dust cloud settled, Amber Leaf cantered the few feet over to her daughter, hugging her tight.
"My stars, the nerve of some ponies!" she grumbled. Looking up from the embrace, her sea-green eyes glared furiously at the pegasus who had so barbarically smashed into the dirt before them. "Don't you have half a mind to watch where you're going? You could have seriously hurt somepony!"
She didn't get a reply. Instead, she saw the pony stand up, flipping dust and an unkempt mane out of her eyes. Ruby eyes squinting in anger, the colorful mare closed her wings and trotted forth into the hospital. On her back, a tiny canvas saddle bag covered in twigs and thin leaves shifted with her every step. The double doors closed with a slam behind her.
Amber Leaf scratched her head. "Whatever that was about, it's not going to end well."
~*~*~*~*~*~
"Excuse me, may I help you with something?" a staff mare behind the front desk asked—quivering slightly—as Rainbow Dash stormed into the room. The tiny saddle bag resting on her spine jostled slightly as she shoved her way through the set of double doors to the left of the hospital's entrance.
"H-hey, you can't go in there!" the mare shouted after her. "This is a hospital, ma'am, and I'll ask you to respect the rules!"
Rainbow Dash snorted, but ultimately stopped and turned around. "I'm here to see Scootaloo," she said, her frown on the vestiges of a snarl. "Brought her here a few days ago. Good enough?"
The mare blinked. A slight squeaking sounded from behind the desk as she backed her rolling chair away from the unmoving pegasus before her. "J-just one m-moment, please," she stuttered.
She pulled herself away from Rainbow Dash's furious gaze. She flipped through a few papers, nodding her head. "Y-yes, Miss Rainbow Dash. Go right on back, she's in Room 224."
Rainbow said nothing. Instead, she spun around and stomped off down the hall, growling and grumbling to herself the whole way. The mare behind the desk called something else out to her, but Rainbow Dash ignored it. She had other matters to deal with.
Ascending the stairwell with a few powerful wingbeats, she slammed open the door to the second floor. A quick glance at a sign on the wall turned her gait left. Turning the corner, Rainbow Dash saw the number she sought etched in a little plate on a door.
She paused. A deep breath, and she turned to look at the littered, torn canvas bag on her back. A small crimson rag hung out of it, glittering golden fabric adorning one side of the cloth. Rainbow Dash bit her lip, apprehensively lifting a hoof.
Shaking her head, she turned her steely gaze forward once more. Wasting no more time, she pushed the door open with a firm but gentle hoof.
"Eep!" Scootaloo squeaked in surprise as Rainbow Dash stepped into the room. "R-Rainbow Dash? Is that really you?" she gasped.
Rainbow didn't speak. She instead walked into the room and slammed the door behind her with a kick. She turned her head back—nostrils flaring— and grabbed the tiny saddle bag from her back. With a grunt, she tossed it to the bed at Scootaloo's hooves.
"Just when the heck were you gonna tell me about this?!" she shouted.
Scootaloo was silent. Her chin twitched, as if there were some elaborate excuse she'd had planned for ages that somehow lacked the courage to come forward. She blinked, and felt moisture forming in the corners of her eyes.
"What the crap, kid?! You've been living on the street, and you didn't tell anypony?!"
"Th-that's not... I-it's not what y-you—"
"Oh, it's not what I think?!" Rainbow fumed, stomping a hoof. "Enlighten me then, Scoot! Just what the in hay is it?!"
At a loss for words, all Scootaloo could do was whimper.
"Did you not think this was a big deal?! You're just a foal, for pony’s sake!" Rainbow Dash yelled as if it had been her own flesh and blood living in squalor.
That last quip bit into Scootaloo. "H-hey, I'm not a baby!" She grimaced at the pounding in her head as her voice rose. "I don't need you or anypony else!"
"Scoot, are you kidding me?!" Rainbow Dash shouted. "I found this crap next to a drainage ditch! You barely have anything to eat!" She didn't even notice as she hovered off the tile floor, slowly leaning into Scootaloo's face. "And worst of all, you hide all this crap from your friends?! From me?! Sisters don't friggin' lie to each other!"
Scootaloo was silent. Rainbow Dash was breathing heavily from her outburst. For a few brief, tense moments, nopony said a word.
Then, came the tears. Scootaloo had tried to fight them back, but failed, as she always did. She sniffled once, coughed, then felt her convulsions turning into sobs. Curling into herself, she fell to her side pulled the blanket over her shivering features, knocking a spiralling pink cupcake to the floor.
Rainbow Dash winced. With a deep breath, she touched her hooves back to the tile and took a step towards the now wailing Scootaloo. "K-kid, I... I'm sorry, I should've kept a lid on all that."
Scootaloo continued crying. "I-I'm s-sorry..."
"I j-just... I care about you, y'know? To find out you're living alone, out in the dirt?" Rainbow Dash sighed again. "It's just stupid. To think you've been on your own for Celestia knows how long, and I haven't noticed it yet?"
Just then, Dr. Stable burst into the room. "Scootaloo? Rainbow Dash? What's going on in here, why is half the hospital complaining about shouting in this room?"
Rainbow Dash jumped slightly. "H-hey Doc, just talkin' it up with my favorite filly here," she said with a sheepish grin.
Dr. Stable frowned, raising an eyebrow.
Rainbow gave a heaving sigh. "Alright, look, we need to talk. Somewhere that isn't here." She gestured to the still sobbing Scootaloo.
"My goodness, what did you say?! Scootaloo, are you okay? What's wrong?"
With a hiccup, Scootaloo squeaked out between sobs, "M-my h-head hurts..."
The doctor stood up and nodded. Trotting over to a cabinet, he produced a syringe and a small vial of clear liquid. Rainbow Dash watching, he proceeded to use the syringe to put the liquid through the rubber tube leading into Scootaloo's foreleg. He stepped back, and within moments the filly was asleep.
"H-holy hay..." Rainbow Dash said breathily. "What did you give her just now?"
"All I can, I'm afraid," Dr. Stable replied grimly.
"H-huh? Whaddya mean by that?"
"I mean, I can only treat the symptoms of Scootaloo's disease." He telekinetically placed the syringe into a plastic box labeled with a biohazard symbol. "Without the consent of a parent or guardian, Equestrian law prohibits me from administering drugs that would cause harm to her bodily functions, which are unfortunately necessary to treat her."
Rainbow Dash cringed, and the doctor saw it. "Miss Dash, is there something you'd like to tell me? I feel I should remind you that every second counts when treating a disease like leukemia, especially considering how long Scootaloo has gone without aid."
"Y-yeah, about that..." Rainbow Dash said, "She doesn't really have a 'guardian,' so to speak..."
She waited for some kind of response. She expected shouting, similar to her own reaction, or even complete disbelief. Instead, she heard, "Alright, then we have two options."
"H-huh?"
"I said we have two options," Dr. Stable repeated.
Rainbow Dash blinked, then shook her head. "Okay, shoot," she said.
The doctor looked at the sleeping filly, still clutching her blanket as she would a precious stuffed animal. "Well, the first option would be to work out a way to give the hospital custody over Scootaloo until she is healthy again."
Rainbow Dash nodded. "That sounds easy enough, what're we—"
"It could take weeks, Rainbow Dash," Dr. Stable said solemnly. "There's no legal process in place for something like that. In the time it would take for me to gain permission to treat Scootaloo, we could very well lose her to the cancer."
Rainbow Dash sat down, stunned. "Sh-she's really that s-sick?" she stammered.
"Leukemia can be very aggressive. Based on how developed Scootaloo's disease is, I'd guess she's been sick for at least two months," he said. "Maybe more."
Rainbow Dash looked back at Scootaloo's slumbering figure. With a light stroke of her wing, she brushed a few stray mane hairs from the sleeping filly's eyes. "So what's option two?"
"The only other choice—the fastest choice—is much more straightforward." He looked Rainbow Dash in the eyes. "Somepony would have to temporarily adopt Scootaloo and act as her guardian, and provide the permission I need to treat her."
Rainbow Dash said nothing. Her gaze drifted back to Scootaloo, to the filly's chest as it rose and fell. She sighed, for she knew the words that would come from her mouth before she even spoke them.
"T-temporary?" she asked.
Dr. Stable blinked at that. "Yes, temporary," he confirmed. "At least until she no longer needs treatment, and possibly afterwards depending on her recovery."
Rainbow Dash sat down, her wings drooping. She kept staring at Scootaloo, at how her face was stained with tears, tears of a life spent living alone amongst the dirt and garbage of Ponyville. Memories of a rushing waterfall, a warming embrace beside a river, and a filly held on Rainbow's outstretched hoof flashed before her mind’s eye.
In a blink, she stood up. "Where do I sign?”

//-------------------------------------------------------//
                  Chapter IV — Priorities                  
//-------------------------------------------------------//
Chapter IV — Priorities
Make a Wish  
by CoolStoryBrony  
Chapter IV — Priorities
"Let's just turn right in here," Nurse Redheart said serenely. She pushed Scootaloo's bed into a small room cut off from the rest of the hall by a curtain. Rainbow Dash followed close behind.
"So, uhm..." Rainbow muttered softly, as if she were trying to avoid waking somepony up. "Fill me in. What'd the doc wanna do today?"
"The first step to starting chemotherapy is giving Scootaloo a port," the nurse said. "It's a simple procedure, just some local anesthetic and about an hour in the operating room."
Rainbow Dash shivered at that. Her hoof brushed the tile slightly as she leaned against the wall. Nurse Redheart didn't notice as she pulled the curtain closed behind the three ponies to give them privacy.
"Wh-what's a port?" Scootaloo asked, her jaw stretching in a wide yawn that ended with a squeak.
"It's a thing we use to help us give you the medicine you need to get better." Nurse Redheart smiled at the bedridden filly. "It lets us get you started on treatment quicker and easier, too."
Scootaloo said nothing, her gaze finding its way to the ceiling. She laid her head back on her pillow, blinking away moisture from a sharp ache that was rooted in the base of her neck. Out of the corners of her vision, she saw Nurse Redheart come to the bedside with a velcro strap attached to a tube. With a groan, she closed her eyes, dreading what she knew was coming.
"I'll need to check your vitals before we can get started, Scootaloo," the nurse said as she began wrapping the velcro strap around Scootaloo's foreleg.
"Yeah, yeah..."
"C'mon, Scootaloo, I know it's not fun—"
"You mean you know it sucks," Rainbow Dash interjected. "That stupid leg-squeezer is like getting snagged by a kraken."
Nurse Redheart let out a sigh. "I know it sucks, Scootaloo, but it has to be done. Just close your eyes and think about something else, and it will be over before you know it."
Scootaloo said nothing, crossing her forelegs with a glare.
"Oh, don't be like that," Nurse Redheart chuckled, rolling her eyes. "It's gonna get worse before it gets better."
With a huff, Scootaloo stuck out a foreleg. Glancing to the side, she saw Nurse Redheart flip a switch, and she immediately winced as a growing pressure squeezed her limb. Scootaloo shut her eyes, grimacing, as her leg began to go numb and cold. While the velcro strap grew tighter and tighter, she held her breath, counting the seconds of the torturously slow process until the death grip on her limb finally released. In an instant, the warm flow of blood rushed down her leg, and she let out a grateful sigh, opening her eyes.
She was greeted with the sight of Nurse Redheart holding a syringe in the crook of her hoof.
Scootaloo's eyes shot open. With a gasp that devolved into a fit of coughing, she shuffled herself back from the unholy sight.
"You really don't like needles, do you?" the nurse asked wryly.
"D-does anypony really like n-needles?" Scootaloo squeaked.
"Fair enough," Nurse Redheart said. "Nopony likes getting poked and prodded—"
"Let alone stabbed," Rainbow Dash quipped.
The nurse stifled a groan. "You're not helping, Rainbow Dash. Here, make yourself useful and comfort the poor filly."
"H-hey! I'm not a little kid, y'know!" Scootaloo asserted.
Shrugging, Rainbow Dash took a few steps further into the tiny room and stood by Scootaloo's bedside. She blinked in confusion as Nurse Redheart shot her a glare before turning her attention back to Scootaloo.
"Getting a shot is always pretty crummy, Scootaloo, but it's something you’re gonna have to do," Rainbow said.
"Wh-why's that?" Scootaloo's shrinking pupils never left the syringe in the nurse's grip. "Can't you just do whatever it is y-you're gonna do without stabbing me?"
Rainbow Dash snickered and looked away.
"We could, but it would just hurt even more," the nurse said. "This is a local anesthetic, something that's going to numb your thoracic region while the doctor is putting in your chemotherapy port."
"Nnngh..." Scootaloo shook her head. "Too many big words."
"It'll make sure you don't hurt while we're starting on getting you better."
"Uhm... sounds g-good, I guess?" Scootaloo turned to Rainbow Dash. "It's good, right?"
Rainbow nodded, her face bearing the slightest of smiles. "If it's gonna make you right as rain, then heck yeah, it's good!"
Scootaloo managed to force a grin. Just then, a stinging pressure shot through her foreleg.
"Ow! What the hay was that for?!" she shouted.
"All done!" Nurse Redheart said as she placed the empty syringe into a white plastic container, closing the lid with a click.
Scootaloo blinked at that. "H-huh? Really?" She did nothing further to resist as the nurse placed a folded piece of gauze over the point on her limb that had been injected.
Nurse Redheart nodded. "Really, really. No more needles for today."
"Uhm... Th-thanks, I think..." She shook her head quickly. "W-wait, just for today?"
"C'mon, Scoot, it's not that bad. You're way too tough for some stupid pointed stick to scare you," Rainbow Dash said with a wink.
Scootaloo was silent for a moment, her wide eyes staring up at the pegasus beside her. "Y-you really think so?" she asked.
Rainbow Dash grinned, stretching a wing over Scootaloo. "I know so.
Finishing peeling the velcro strap from Scootaloo's foreleg, Nurse Redheart spoke. "Alright Scootaloo, the medicine should start working in a few minutes. In the meantime, I'm going to take you down to the operating room."
"What about Rainbow Dash?" Scootaloo spoke up from beneath Rainbow's wing.
"Hey, yeah! What about me? I'm not too keen on letting anypony mess around in Scoot's thor ass kick region if I'm not there to keep 'em in line!"
"Thoracic, Rainbow Dash," the nurse deadpanned.
"Only bugs have those, ya wingnut," Rainbow said with a smirk. "Shows what you know."
Nurse Redheart gave Rainbow Dash an unamused stare, her half-lidded eyes rolling. With a deep breath, she turned back to Scootaloo, smiling. "Rainbow Dash is going to stay in the waiting room, and let the doctor do his job."
Scootaloo sunk a bit into the bed.
Frowning, Rainbow Dash tightened her wing's grip on the filly. "Why do you gotta put this thing in her, anyway? Wouldn't it be easier to—I dunno—just use that clear tube thingy you've already got in her leg?
"The intravenous drip, Rainbow Dash, isn't something we can just leave in for the duration of the treatment. I'm sure Scootaloo could tell you it's a bit uncomfortable, and we'd need to change out the needle every few days as well."
Scootaloo shivered. "I don't like needles..."
"And that's why we're using a port instead. Less needles." With a smile, Nurse Redheart knelt down to Scootaloo's level. "Ready to go?" she asked.
Scootaloo bit her lip. She looked up at Rainbow Dash, who was fidgeting uncomfortably, as if she was struggling to keep quiet. She turned back to the nurse, who was smiling gently, waiting patiently for Scootaloo to speak. With a deep breath and a nod, Scootaloo squeaked out, "Y-yeah, let's go."
Nurse Redheart stood up and pulled the room's curtain aside. She positioned herself behind Scootaloo's bed, forcing Rainbow Dash to step aside. As Scootaloo felt herself being pushed into the hall, she heard Rainbow Dash's scratchy voice call out from behind her.
"Good l-luck, kid! I'll be waiting for you!"
With a sigh, Scootaloo slumped down into the bed. Her foreleg was beginning to lose feeling where the nurse had given her the shot, the strange sensation prompting her to poke at the numbing region. Several doors and curtains passed through the edges of her vision, leading her to wonder just how many ponies like her had come and gone through this place, and how many were still in here with her. Surely she wasn't the first pony to ever have surgery.
"H-hey, N-Nurse Redheart?"
"Yes, sweetie?"
Scootaloo swallowed a lump in her throat. "H-have you ever had a surgery before?"
Nurse Redheart paused, and Scootaloo felt the bed slowing down. "Yes, I have," she heard the nurse say.
"D-did... Did it hurt a lot?"
Scootaloo heard a soft laugh from behind. She bit her lip, feeling stupid for having asked such a question.
"It's okay to be scared, Scootaloo. It's a very brave thing to admit it."
"I didn't s-say I was scared!" Scootaloo said in protest, her raised voice leading to a short spurt of coughing.
The bed stopped, and in a blink the nurse was at her side. "Easy, easy now," she said softly. "Take a few deep breaths, and we can go when you feel better.”
Scootaloo slouched into the bed, her gasping breaths interrupted every so often by a cough. She groaned, struggling to roll onto her side and hide her face.
"Don't worry, sweetie," Nurse Redheart said softly. "You won't feel a thing, I promise." She paused. "I know! How about I get you a cupcake from the confectionary after this is over? Sugary sweets can be good for you at times, no matter what some ponies say."
With that, Scootaloo's thoughts turned to the filly that she'd met the day before, to the loud, annoying, happy pony that had surely been to this room before. Suddenly, she felt the bed beginning to move once more. Her every breath was painful, and her eyes shut to hold back tears of uneasy fear. As Nurse Redheart pushed the bed into the operating room, Scootaloo felt a cold shiver run up her spine.
Voices of doctors and interns and nurses echoed in Scootaloo's ears. As Nurse Redheart and another pony helped move her to a small metal table in the center of the room, Scootaloo's mind fixated on Summerset in disbelief, unable to grasp how anypony could go through what Scootaloo was going through right now, and come out smiling on the other side.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Pale moonlight shone through a tiny window in the recovery room, casting a cold glow over Rainbow Dash's slouching figure. She sat in a tiny metal chair in the corner of the room, staring at the floor with her wings splayed out awkwardly behind her. In the center of the room, Scootaloo snored lightly in a bed much larger than her previous one.
Rainbow Dash's mind was a blank slate, most of her worrisome thoughts wearing themselves thin in the long wait during Scootaloo's operation. Rainbow stifled a yawn, fighting to stay awake and keep an eye on Scootaloo for as long as she could.
She lifted her head, her baggy eyes finding a heart monitor across the room. It was silent now, but still drew spiking lines across its tiny screen, each blip an indicator that Rainbow's little friend was holding on.
A slight pressure built up behind her eyes. She let out a heaving sigh, slumping further into the chair, and turned her gaze to Scootaloo.
Rainbow Dash thought of every moment in the past few days that had revolved completely around the filly. Every waking moment had been about her, from the moment Rainbow found her collapsed in a pool of her own blood. She shivered, her memories of that gruesome image of Scootaloo falling, a lethargic, half-lidded gaze in her eyes. Even that morning, when Rainbow Dash heard Scootaloo wheezing out each word, she could tell that the filly just sounded tired.
Just then, the door clicked open, and a thin sliver of light bled in from the hallway.
"Wha-huh? Who's there?"
"Rainbow Dash? You're still awake?" Nurse Redheart asked as she stepped quietly into the room. "It's almost three in the morning!"
Rainbow Dash struggled to sit up. "Y-yeah, well—Nnngh!—somepony's gotta keep an eye on the squirt here."
The nurse held up a clipboard, and said, "That's actually exactly what I'm here to do."
"Doesn't mean I don't wanna do my own li'l midnight watch, okay?" Rainbow Dash said.
"By all means, stay up as late as you want. You're a grown mare, far from me to tell you what to do."
Finally sitting up straight, Rainbow nodded. "Ya got that right!" she said with pride.
"Shhh! Quiet down or you'll wake her up!" Nurse Redheart scolded.
"O-Oh, right, sorry..."
Nurse Redheart walked slowly around the bed, filling out a form on her clipboard silently. Rainbow Dash watched, still standing. She fidgeted, her eyes moving between Scootaloo, the heart monitor, and the nurse. For about a minute, she stood motionless, save for flexing her wings once or twice. Finally, she spoke up. "Uhm, h-hey, Redheart? Can I ask you something?"
"What is it, Rainbow Dash?" the nurse asked through the pen in her teeth.
A deep breath, and then, "I-Is she gonna make it?"
Nurse Redheart stopped writing, looking up from the clipboard. "Excuse me?"
"Look, I'm not as big of an idiot as you'd think," Rainbow Dash said flatly. "I can tell things are pretty grim, so just give it to me straight."
"That's really something the doctor would know more about." Nurse Redheart sighed, dropping the pen. "But if you really want my opinion..."
Rainbow Dash held her breath, nodding.
"You are correct that things are pretty grim. Most ponies come in and can be treated before the symptoms are too severe, but in Scootaloo's case, she's likely been sick for months and not known it."
"So wh-what's that mean, then?" Rainbow Dash asked. "You can still do something about it, right?"
"Yes and no," Nurse Redheart said. "Leukemia can be extremely aggressive, and in Scootaloo's case, the cancer has spread far too much for us to guarantee that we can treat it with things like chemotherapy or radiation."
"W-Well what then?" Rainbow Dash's voice rose slightly. "You've already given up on her?"
"Absolutely not!" Nurse Redheart covered her mouth with a hoof, looking to make sure Scootaloo was still asleep. After confirming the filly hadn't woken up, she continued. "What I meant, Rainbow Dash, was that it's going to be a long, difficult fight for Scootaloo. I want to have every confidence that she'll pull through, I really do..."
"Yeah, yeah," Rainbow Dash droned, "Don't expect a miracle. Well I'm friggin' made of miracles, lady!" She made her way to the window in a blink, popping it open.
Nurse Redheart gasped at the sudden chill. "Rainbow Dash, where are you going? Close the window before Scootaloo wakes up!"
"You go right ahead and close it when I'm gone," Rainbow Dash said, rising from the floor with a single flap. "I'm going to call in a favor."
She twisted around and shot out the window, leaving Ponyville General Hospital and the nurse behind. Each beat of her wings rose her higher and higher as she flew north through Ponyville, and towards the city of Canterlot.