Outbreak

Chapter IX

Classified Information

Once again, Twilight Sparkle stood before a large, blue-steel door guarded by two pegasi wielding their same strange weaponry. With her, she had brought several rolled documents from the Canterlot Archives, all detailing information on the past relations between the Changeling Kingdom and several surrounding areas, Zebrica included among them. Twilight approached the two guards and gave a courteous bow.

Both guards looked to the princess, giving a bow in return.

"Princess Sparkle." they greeted. "The princess is expecting you inside.

"Thank you." she replied, a bit uneasy about one particular piece of information she had found in addition to what Dr. Seymour requested. The guards in front of the door stood aside, allowing the young princess into the grand conference room, where Princess Celestia, Queen Chrysalis, Dr. Photon, and hopefully Dr. Seymour awaited.

The door gave a loud groan as it creaked open, revealing two ponies and a changeling empress all seated around the same marble table she had sat at earlier.

"Twilight, thank goodness you're here." Princess Celestia greeted.

"What took you so long?" demanded Chrysalis. "I could have molted into a new exoskeleton twice by the time you got back."

"Yeah, good to see you too." panned Twilight.

Celestia noticed that Twilight was alone- her partner nowhere to be found.

"...Twilight, where is your partner?" she questioned, looking at an angle to see behind her student.

"He isn't with you?" Twilight questioned back, scanning the room for any sign of the odd but quirky professor she had been paired with for her mission. "I thought he might be back here by now... It's been nearly an hour since he asked me to go into the archives."

"It would appear so." Chrysalis responded, rubbing her hooves together.

"I told you he is always late to the party..." grumbled photon. "But nopony listens to Dr. Photon, nope."

Twilight rolled her eyes at the grey doctor's words before setting her gathered materials down at the far end of the table.

"So, Dr. Photon..." she asked, turning her gaze to the grey unicorn. "Have you explained much of what you found yet?"

"The entirety." Photon replied. "Every gruesome detail we found in that book has been told."

"It's true." Celestia affirmed. "We are definitely dealing with something bad here, Twilight."

All four in the room had fallen silent. Queen CHrysalis seemed to be the most distraught of the present ponies, and glared intensely at the sun princess before raising her head to speak.

"Princess Celestia..." Chrysalis began. "We have beaten around the bush for long enough. And still you avoid my question... how do you, of all ponies know about this virus to such a great extent that written information has been published?"

"Chrysalis, I must inter-"

"She's right, princess." Twilight interrupted, causing the others, Celestia included, to look toward her in surprise- Celestia's own little pet project now looked to her with a certain degree of suspicion and concern- a crushing level of such emotions which would drown out all other activity in the room. "I was about to ask the same thing."

"Twilight..."

"When Dr. Seymour sent me to the archives to find some information on the virus, he asked that I look back over a twenty year span for ay relationships between the Changeling Kingdom and its surrounding provinces, including a large part of Zebrica." she explained. "But that's not all I looked into."

"Explain yourself, little Twilight Sparkle." Chrysalis demanded.

Twilight took her seat, preparing for the long line of questioning she had for the princess. In her search at the archives, she had found something that she believed her mentor had been hiding from the others, and she intended to bring the information in question to light.

"While digging through the parchment in the archives, I had a bit of an epiphany... much like you all are talking about." Twilight continued, bringing a rolled piece of parchment from a bag she had borrowed from the library. "Chrysalis, you say that this is something you've never seen before, right?"

"That is correct." the insectoid confirmed.

"...And Princess Celestia, you said earlier that you weren't aware of any sort of virus such as this one?"

"...I... did say that, yes." confessed the elder goddess.

Twilight nodded, setting and unrolling the parchment on the marble tabletop. Inside, several maps with detailed descriptions littered the unrolled pages, each detailing horrid, eerily similar sights to those she had witnessed in her new partner's books, and that Photon and Chrysalis had observed firsthand earlier that day.

Celestia, on the other hand looked fairly concerned- like an adolescent whom had just been caught doing something wrong.

"If you haven't seen this sort of an outbreak before..." Twilight pressed. "...Then why is there so much printed information on something called Zebrican Hemorrhagic Fever, or as you like to call it, Ebola?"

Celestia fell silent, lowering her head in a mix of disgrace and guilt.

"...I knew it was only a matter of time before you uncovered the truth, Twilight." she admitted.

"Princess... why didn't you just tell us?" Twilight pressed, visibly saddened and scared- had her teacher not trusted her? Did she want to hide something wrong that she had done, even from her most loving and understanding subject and friend? Why did she not just come clean to her, of all ponies?

"...I didn't think you would be ready to handle the truth if I just told you right off the bat." confessed Celestia. "Twilight, you don't understand. This isn't like anything you have ever seen in your life... I know you've faced your fair share of troubles and crises, but this time is just so different."

"...Why don't you trust me, princess? Even after everything we've been through together..."

"Because, Twilight, this virus is probably one of the scariest things I have ever seen in my three-thousand years!" the princess retorted, causing twilight to shrink back in fear.

"I-I just wanted to-"

"...Twilight, forgive me for that." Celestia apologized. "It's just that I didn't think telling you would be a wise idea, I thought you would eventually find out on your own... and you did."

"Does that mean you're finally going to fill us in, princess?" Chrysalis intervened. "Are you finally going to give us some real information, or are you just going to sweep this under the rug as well?"

"...I suppose it is time for me to explain myself." Celestia admitted. "Twilight, are you sure you're ready to hear this? It only gets more gruesome as the story goes along..."

"Princess, we need that explanation- it could help us figure out how those changelings got infected." affirmed Twilight. "Please, just tell us the story."

"Very well." sighed Celestia. "I suppose that I should start from the very beginning..."

In a land far from Equestria, across the great waters of the ocean stood the tall, lush canopy of a vast jungle. Blue skies hung overhead, rolling mountainous hills covered in trees loomed in the distance. The call of birds rang in the air, leaves rustled in the wind. The setting was truly as primal, as untouched as could be...

...Until the serene backdrop of jungle sounds was interrupted when a large explosion shook the rainforest floor, throwing several pounds of dirt into the air in all directions.

The jungle floor, hidden by the pristine canopy, lay soiled with the blood of the fallen- many small, repetitive metallic pops rang through the steamy air as two conflicting armies sent volleys of lead slugs through the jungle with lethal, tube-like weapons hidden from common civilian knowledge. The scene was nightmarish- soldier after soldier fell to gaping wounds in their bodies while others covered their respective retreat or advance.

This was jungle warfare at its finest- and most gruesome.

...It was thirty years ago when we first observed the Ebola virus in the jungles of East Zebrica. Zebire had been in the throes of the Zebrican Civil Wars for more than a year when we received a distress call, asking for our assistance to repel a tyrannical government force which had been laying waste to the country for decades. The zebra population finally had enough of their government's constant degradation, smuggling, warmongering, and fascist ways. With help from some of our own carefully-selected soldiers, we agreed to assist the struggling resistance gain their basic freedoms, as we have with many despotic third-world countries throughout history.

In the middle of a large clearing, soldiers bustled about behind a fence of logs between various small huts and thatched buildings. More dirt tossing explosions erupted from just beyond the hastily erected barrier between the camp and the violent jungle, startling those who carried supplies and injured warriors into and out of the slum-like campsite.

Near one large hut adorned with several white sheets stood a small squadron of Equestrian Royal Guard pegasi wrapped from head to hoof in black hazmat gear, each protecting a large, imposing figure in the same fashion of clothing- a figure which could be identified as none other than the benevolent monarch herself, Princess Celestia.

Three weeks into our own ground forces being deployed in hostile territory, I received a worrying letter that one of the jungle refugee camps we were supporting had fallen victim to an outbreak of some sort of mysterious illness. Naturally, I went there myself to observe the situation- some of our own stallions had been positioned there, and the message stated that several of them had fallen ill. Once we arrived, I met with the main doctor on the campsite, he showed me what we were dealing with.

"Men wounded in battle we can handle." spoke a dark-skinned zebra wearing circular glasses and a medical apron as he led Princess Celestia and her accompanying guards through a makeshift field hospital. "But this strange disease..."

To either side of the group lay the wounded- Zebrican and Equestrian soldiers on surgical tables being tended to by nurses and similar staff. This was not the group's destination, however, as the real reason for the summons lay on the opposite side of a large, white sheet draped from ceiling to floor, a crude black biohazard symbol spray painted upon it. Inside, more than a dozen lay sick, displaying symptoms of fever, profuse sweating, and a cough.

"...Forty men dead this week, nineteen the week before." explained the Zebrican doctor.

"...H-Hey, y-your Princess Celestia...!" one of the ill Equestrian soldiers, a white earth pony with blonde mane, called out in a weak, raspy voice. "P-Please, you gotta get me out of this shithole!"

"Shhh... do not worry, my little pony." the princess comforted, retrieving a rather large hypodermic needle from a pouch on her suit. "We'll get you back home... but first I just need a little blood sample, okay?"

"Th-The back room..." the infected pony sputtered. "They take you there when you get sick... and you don't come back out..."

"The disease is spreading like a fire." The doctor interrupted as Celestia stuck the stallion's hoof with her needle. "We need supplies: plasma, penicillin..."

"Do not fret." Celestia spoke through her re-breather, pulling the plunger on the syringe to collect a vial of the earth pony's blood.. "We'll get you what you need as soon as we can."

"I-I'm gonna die, aren't I?" sniffled the suffering stallion. "I'm gonna die here..."

"No, no no no... You're not going to die, dear." Celestia tried to console, rubbing the stallion's forehead with a well-protected hoof.

"Listen, you gotta t-tell my girl I love her..." begged the ill pony.

"No, you can tell her that yourself when we get you all better... Okay?"

Once we collected a sample to research what was making those poor soldiers so sick, the doctor on site took me around to that back room that the stallion had mentioned. That was where they were keeping the bodies of the deceased, a sort of storage area before the bodies would be burned en mass. When I saw what was under the tarps they used to cover the bodies, I nearly became sick myself. It was one of the most horrifying things I had ever witnessed.

"The only way we can hope to control the disease is by burning the bodies... but even that has its limitations. We are losing much of our hospital staff to the ravaging illness, and soon we fear the camp will be history." the doctor explained, pulling back a blue, blood-coated tarp to reveal a mass of dead bodies- zebra and pony. "The men in there are in the early stages of the disease... within several days, they will look like this..."

"...By the sun's rays..."

"...We were supposed to have a shipment of supplies delivered to the camp, and to return with any of our sick and injured troops." Celestia began to wrap up. "But before we could, the campsite had already burned to the ground, we didn't have any explanation as to what happened."

"That's... That's terrible." commented Twilight.

"I know... It was a tragedy beyond belief." Celestia sighed. "But since that outbreak, we've never seen any other occurrence of the disease caused by the Ebola virus- not even in Zebrica. The civil war resolved itself in time, and the outbreak faded into history... whichever parts of it weren't written down, at least."

"And I'm guessing that you were the one who selected just what was written?" Chrysalis suggested, lowering a brow in suspicion.

"I did not want to cause a panic, Chrysalis!" Celestia defended. "My ponies have never seen such gruesome means of death, they just weren't ready to know of the event on a large scale. We've never had any reason to pursue the matter since then, either way."

"...I think I understand now, princess." Twilight comforted, placing a hoof to her mentor's large shoulder. "You did what you needed to do, but things just didn't work out in the end regardless... I'm sorry to have pressured you into revealing such a traumatizing event."

"Twilight, it isn't your fault." Celestia smiled to her student. "This whole thing just happened on its own. It's nobody's fault..."

"I wouldn't say that just yet..."