Chicken and the Egg

Applebloom nervously looked at Discord and Fluttershy and Discord whispering to each other in the corner and turned to her friends.

“Have any of y’all heard of this scarlet fever thing?”

Scootaloo shrugged. Sweetie Belle bit her lip.

“I think they said something about it in class. A tribe of Griffons got it and was wiped out, but it wasn’t widely spread because Griffons live in small packs spread all over Equestria.”

Applebloom gulped and went wide eyed. “So, that means it’s something that can be passed from pony to pony?”

The sick filly coughed, and Applebloom and Sweetie Belle pressed themselves in a corner in the opposite end of the room. Scootaloo didn’t move, but instead looked at the sick filly, more curious than scared. Why would she be suffering in this world full of magic? Surely a unicorn could just poof the sickness away? What about Discord? He had all sorts of magic tricks, shouldn’t one be a cure-all? On that thought, she walked over to Fluttershy and Discord to find out.

“Um, Mr. Discord, can’t you just magic her better?”

Discord’s hard expression met her gaze.

“Young filly, do you know nothing about magic? If one wasn’t heavily trained in magic, they could mess up an important part of her while trying to fix her. And that’s not even considering her magical energy. Regular magic would be useless.”

Fluttershy injected. “Discord, she’s a filly, the school doesn’t start teaching about magic’s medical use on the body for at least a year.”

Fluttershy turned to Scootaloo. “Like Discord said, even if Screwball had regular magic, experimenting on the body with magic is a very hard practice and… hasn’t always improved some ponies’ condition.”

Discord interrupted “It’s filled more graves than check-out sheets.”

Fluttershy shot him a stern look. “Discord, she’s a filly, she doesn’t need to be told that!”

Scootaloo paused for a moment to take that in. Just then another question popped into her head.

“Fluttershy, you said she had magic, but she’s an earth pony. Only Unicorns have magic.”

Discord elected to answer her question instead.

“Do you see a horn on me, filly? I’m made of the parts of spare animals and I might even have more magical power than your friend Princess Twilight. She’s my daughter, so yes, she inherited my chaos magic. But given how my kind of magic isn’t made for precision, the only kind of magic left is dark magic, but that’s closely guarded by ‘Equestia’s beloved princess’.”

“Discord” Fluttershy comforted. “That kind of magic is as dangerous as chaos magic is unpredictable. It wouldn’t be safe. We’ll just have to do our best to help this sweet filly.”

“And how would we do that, Fluttershy? I’ve taken every medical book I could find from Canterlot’s library. None give an answer. And I can’t leave her unwatched for too long. What if she gets worse? And if I hire a babysitter, I can’t assume they won’t go to  Princess Celestia or Princess Twilight, who would certainly go to Princess Celestia.”

Scootaloo bit her lip and looked over in Screwball’s direction, noticing she had managed to open one eye, and was watching the conversation with a glazed expression. She didn’t know what caused her to, but she started walking over to the sick filly, not quite knowing what to do when she got there.

Discord noticed this, and started floating, rage visibly spreading, looking like he was about to curse Scootaloo for even daring to look at his daughter. Seeing this, he was quickly intercepted by Fluttershy, who placed a hoof on his shoulder and shushed him, waiting to see what Scootaloo would do.

Scootaloo put her hoof on the couch Screwball was resting on. She looked so sad, so troubled. Did she know what kind of state she was in? How sick she was? That she might never recover from the disability life gave her? The poor filly.

Scootaloo paused, then turned to look Discord straight in the eye.

“You need somepony to watch over her while you’re gone? You found your pony.”