Fulfilling the Prophesneeze
Scootaloo would be beautiful. Not in a conventional feminine sense, despite Rarity's best efforts, but she would be toned and lithe and lean. And on someone's birthday, maybe Rumble's, maybe Button's, maybe Sweetie's, she would—
"Sweetie Belle!"
"Huh?" Reality reasserted itself. Sweetie was still in her sophmore year at Canterlot High. She was on the bus, sitting next to Scootaloo.
Said Scootaloo scowled. "You've been staring at me for like five minutes. And you're starting to drool."
Sweetie wiped at her chin. "Was not." She looked away, feeling her blush burn on her cheeks. "Just, you know, thinking about the future."
"I can recognize your thousand-year stare by now."
"Not quite that far." Even so, Sweetie knew that looking even a decade ahead gave a result that was roughly one percent actual clairvoyance and ninety-nine percent guesswork. Too much could change between then and now.
"Look, however far it was, it was getting creepy," said Scootaloo. "Besides, we're nearly at school, and I am prepared to flick your headgem."
Sweetie's hands went to her forehead almost reflexively. The oval crystal didn't have any nerves, but it was directly connected to her skull. The one time she'd accidentally slammed it into her bedroom wall was bad enough. "Point made."
Once the bus pulled up to the back of the school and the students all disembarked, the two of them walked around to the front, where Big Mac stopped in the Apple family pickup and dropped off the rest of his family.
Apple Bloom ran up to them as soon as she spotted them. "Heya, girls. What's new?"
Scootaloo gave Sweetie a sidelong glance as the three headed into the building. "Ask her. I'm not the one who spent the ride here drooling at the future."
"Was not!"
"Okay, so what were you drooling at?"
Sweetie crossed her arms and turned up her nose in a move that she definitely didn't copy from Rarity, and no one could prove otherwise. "Ladies don't drool."
Applejack whistled tunelessly as she walked past them a little faster than was strictly polite.
"Besides, I... I..." Sweetie's face twisted up. "Achoo!"
"Bless you," her friends chorused.
"Thanks." Sweetie's face twisted in disgust. She'd sneezed into her hands. Aside from being frowned upon in health class, she'd also sneezed into her hands. She had a packet of tissues in her backpack, but even touching the zipper wasn't an option right now. "Ugh, now I need to head to the bathroom..." She gave a sad wave as they came to a turn that would take her to one. "See you at lunch!"
"Yup!"
"You know it!"
Sweetie did... or thought she did. The cafeteria factored into her future, obviously, but something felt off. She frowned as she tried to probe that discrepancy in greater detail.
"Hey, watch it!"
"Eep!" Her body and thoughts both stopped short less than an inch before she walked right into a burly senior. "Sorry!" she said as she skittered around him.
By the time Sweetie had washed her hands and moved the tissues from her backpack to her purse—Rarity had insisted on her having one at the start of the year and now she saw why—she'd sneezed several more times, though she at least made sure to do it into an elbow. The worst part was how she could never see them coming until the tickle started in her sinuses. "Lousy allergies." November was the worst, with the leaves moldering and filling the air with invisible bits of suffering. Maybe she could learn some kind of air filtration spell. Or just wear a mask.
Sweetie stepped back out into the hallway and—
"Hey!"
"Careful!"
"What's the big idea?"
"Sorry!" She staggered from point to point, trying to aim for somewhere clear, but she always seemed to bump into someone else.
"Whoa there!" A hand on each shoulder kept her still. "I know that feeling."
Sweetie looked up to see kind, if uneven golden eyes looking back. Well, one of them looked back; the other was pointed at the ceiling. "Thanks, uh..."
"Ditzy Doo. Your sister's probably cursed my name once or twice."
"Wait, were you the one who got grape juice on her Spring Fling—" Sweetie cut herself off as she saw the wince. "So that's a ye— Ow!" A spike of blinding pain drove into her skull.
"You okay?"
Sweetie waited for a moment for the spots to fade. "Headache. I'll be fi... fi..." She pointed her head down, barely able to cover her mouth in time. "Achoo! Ugh..."
"Uh, Sweetie?" Ditzy said in a familiar "I don't want the little girl to know I'm worried" tone. "I think you should see the nurse."
Sweetie sighed. "It's fine. It's just allergies."
"Allergies don't discolor floor tiles."
Ever so slowly, Sweetie looked down and saw how a few blue tiles had discolored and even curled up from the floor. "Oh. Yeah, you're right." Sweetie looked at the still crowded hallway, then turned to Ditzy. "Could you maybe help me—?"
Ditzy nodded midway through the sentence. "Sure. Take my hand... when you're through cleaning yours off."
Sweetie winced and got out the tissues with her dry hand. "Yeah, good call." She frowned as she got the worst off. There was something off about when Ditzy spoke, but she couldn't put her finger on it.
Once Sweetie was as clean as she could get herself, Ditzy took that dry hand and led her to Nurse Redheart. Even at walking pace, it was weirdly stressful. Ditzy seemed to delight in seeing how closely she could brush against other people, risking collisions that made Sweetie's earlier near misses look tame in comparison. She even walked through one guy—
Hang on.
Sweetie grabbed the tissues in her purse with her free hand and thought very hard about throwing them to test her suspicions.
She watched the packet of tissues arc through the air even as they stayed in her hand.
"Oh. Great. That explains that."
"Explains what?" Ditzy said as she turned to point one eye at Sweetie.
"I think my future sight is..." Sweetie gulped as Ditzy frowned. Or she thought she saw her frown. "It's stuck on."
"That doesn't sound good." And now that she knew what she was looking for, she could see Ditzy's mouth move before she heard anything.
Sweetie took a deep breath and shut her eyes. "My hearing's fine, at least."
"Don't jinx it. Still, we're almost to the nurse. Hang in there."
Sweetie just tightened her grip.
There are things one never wants to hear a health care provider say: "Oops," "That's interesting," "Wasn't I wearing a watch when we started operating?" When Sweetie finished listing her symptoms, eyes still closed, she heard Nurse Redheart say another:
"Oh boy..."
"Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous."
Nurse Redheart sighed and rubbed her temples. Well, she was probably doing that now; as far as Sweetie could tell after opening her eyes, the nurse was already halfway across the room despite her voice coming from a foot away. "Yes, yes it is. Open your mouth. We'll take your temperature and I can let your homeroom teacher know where you are."
Sweetie was pretty sure the pointed ears that came with being a unicorn aspect didn't actually enhance her hearing, but she still heard the nurse mutter "Damn it, Shimmer, what did you do to us?" when she probably wasn't supposed to.
Nurse Redheart walked back, digital thermometer in hand, then seemed to stutter in place as Sweetie opened her mouth, leading to another twinge of a headache. "Say... Ah, right. Future vision."
"Oree," Sweetie said around the thermometer.
"You're fine." The nurse frowned and took out the device without even looking at it. A few moments later, Sweetie felt it leave her mouth. "Well, actually, you're not fine. Even the thermometer's worried about you. You would be in no shape to attend class even if you weren't ahead of the rest of us. Which of your parents should I call?"
Sweetie shrugged. "They're both in Boca Rapone until next week."
"Rarity?"
"Rarity."
After a few phone calls, Principal Celstia's voice rang out through the PA system. "Rarity Belle, please report to the nurse's office."
"Count her in for me," said Nurse Redheart.
Sweetie smiled even as she blew her nose for what felt like the fiftieth time that morning. She watched her sister silently walk in, gape at her, and silently babble at Redheart. "In three, two..."
She pointed just in time for the sound to catch up. "Is everything alri—? Sweetie? What happened to you? Are you alright? Nurse Redheart, what happened? Does she need blood? Bone marrow? A kidney?"
Redheart's expression twisted into an uneasy mix of resigned eyes and a smirking mouth, and now Sweetie knew why. "Firstly, I'm not a surgeon and you two have mutually incompatible blood types."
"Ah. Yes. Well." That explained Rarity's blush. "All the same, how bad is it?"
"She has a cold, Rarity. She'll be fine. She just can't make it through crowded hallways because it's messing with her future vision. Can't say I've ever dealt with a detached retina in second sight before, but it should clear up with the bug. Probably." Redheart heaved a sigh. "I didn't expect to explore medical frontiers as a school nurse."
Rarity reached the point where she drew herself up with all of the poise and drama at her disposal, one fist clenched and staring into the heavens. "Well! My course is clear. Sweetie, I shall take you home and look after you while you are so indisposed."
Sweetie figured this was coming. She knew it would happen. But she still felt the need to make at least a token protest. "I'm just sniffly, Rarity. I can handle myself after you drop me off."
"I'll hear nothing of the sort!" said Rarity, already having gone from proclaiming to doting to Sweetie's eyes. "Wait here while I sort things out with the principal. We shall see you through this, you poor thing. Mark my words."
The paradox headache was the only thing keeping Sweetie going by this point. "But—"
"Mark them, I say!"
"Okay, fine, they're marked."
By the time Rarity pulled into the driveway, Sweetie realized just what her current circumstances reminded her of: Server lag. Button Mash had once tried to show her an online shooter only to end up stuttering about the map in a way that made Sweetie uncomfortable on an almost instinctual level. Here, it was the opposite. Instead of performing actions and waiting for the server to acknowledge them, Sweetie saw everything long seconds before she could actually interact with it.
Inverse Ping wasn't a bad name for a girl...
But she'd cross that bridge when she came to it. The only part of reality she had to deal with for the next few hours was her bedroom. Video games were out, even offline ones, but Sweetie was happy to just nestle under her covers, listen to showtunes, and read, even if things got weird just before she turned the page. All she needed on top of that was a box of tissues.
Unfortunately, what she had was a fully armed and operational older sister.
"The tea contains turmeric and black pepper already, but I've added elderberry extract and manuka honey to help boost your immune system further."
"Gee. Thanks." Just looking at it, Sweetie could tell it would taste like the time Pinkie Pie had tried to make a dessert using only Tasty Treat takeout. None of which was itself dessert.
"I have some lovely chicken noodle soup in the microwave, and I'm preparing some whole wheat toast with it if you're still feeling peckish afterwards. It is almost lunchtime, after all."
"Uh huh." It was easier to just go on autopilot, and not just because watching Rarity go increasingly out of sync with her words was getting ever more confusing.
"And I'll stay with you the whole time just in case you need anything else."
That made Sweetie look up from her book. "Wait, what?"
Visually, Rarity was leaving the room, but the way she said, "How can I do any less?" told Sweetie she'd put on her "I help you and this is the thanks I get?" pout. Then the microwave went off, and Rarity left before Sweetie could get a word in edgewise.
Only after the soup—which was admittedly very nice—and refusing the toast did Sweetie manage to say her piece. "You really didn't have to stay with me."
"Nonsense!" Rarity said from her seat at Sweetie's side, where she'd planted herself once she had finally decided Sweetie wasn't about to keel over. "I am happy to stay by your side through this ordeal." Then she actually looked up from her phone. "Do you need more tea? Another blanket?"
Sweetie rolled her eyes, gaze fixed on the novel. Aside from her frustration, actually looking at Rarity would just get confusing. "Rarity..."
"Yes?"
"Nothing." Sweetie just read her book for a while, with few notable incidents.
"Just lean on big sister, dear. I'm happy to help however I can."
"I can get myself to the bathroom, Rarity."
Few. Not none.
After a lengthy, surly silence, Rarity spoke up. "I'm fully aware you're growing up, you know."
"Are you?" Sweetie hadn't meant to say it, but her patience had worn thin over the day.
And yet that got a titter rather than any outraged Rarity noises. "I deserved that. I suppose I have been a touch overbearing today, but, well, just because I know something in my mind doesn't mean I know it in my heart. I still haven't fully accepted that Mash boy sniffing after you, even if he does seem mostly harmless. Though you could do better."
"Rarity."
"I deserved that as well. My point is that this may be the last time I get to look after my darling little sister before she grows up into the wonderful, independent woman I know she'll become. And I'm going to miss that." Rarity cleared her throat. "Hence my earlier... melodrama, let us say."
"Oh." Sweetie had, ironically enough, not seen that coming. "I appreciate the thought, but you could've just told me that from the start. At least then—" She cut herself off as she registered motion in her peripheral vision.
"Ah. I take it we'll have visitors shortly?"
"Should be any second—"
"Hi, Sweetie Belle!" Scootaloo and Apple Bloom cried long after Sweetie saw them come in.
She couldn't help but smile. "Hi, girls."
"We, uh, brought your homework. Sorry." That explained both the papers Scootaloo brought with her and her rubbing the back of her head as she'd presented them.
The smile dropped. "You could've emailed that."
Apple Bloom beamed, getting way closer than she probably should've. "Sure, but an email ain't gonna tell us how our friend's doin'!"
"Not until I write a reply. Or you could've sent a Disqourse message."
"Or we could just come ourselves!" said Scootaloo, joining Apple Bloom in what Sweetie couldn't help but think of as "the splash zone."
"Girls, I appreciate the thought, but I'm sick. And if this cold does weird stuff with my magic, it'll hit you t... t..." Sweetie turned away from them and added ten years to a patch of wallpaper. "See what I mean?"
When she turned back, Apple Bloom stood a step further away, eyes widened. "Um, yeah. Bless you." Meanwhile, Scootaloo looked... thoughtful.
"How'd you even get here?" said Sweetie.
Rainbow Dash's voice came in from the door. "Looks like someone forgot who just got her driver's license."
"Limited license," said Twilight Sparkle. Sweetie turned to see both of them just outside her room, mid-argument. "Technically, you shouldn't have had that many passengers."
"Hey, you rode shotgun. What are you, a cop?"
"No. That would be my brother."
And that explained Dash's cowed look. "Uh..."
"But I'm given to understand some degree of casual and inconsequential lawbreaking is a part of friendship, so I won't press the issue. Also, there's the promise of the uncharted domains of thaumopathology..." The pause gave Sweetie context for both Rarity's warning glare and Twilight's nervous look back at her. "Not that I would do anything without Sweetie's permission, of course."
"Of course," Rarity said in a tone that made everyone else in the room shiver.
And then came the question that explained Dash's scowl. "Okay, Rarity, why are you sitting on the opposite side of the room?"
Rarity raised an eyebrow. To be fair, her chair was as far from Sweetie as possible, but her counterpoint began by lifting another box of tissues with her magics. "One of the lovely things about telekinesis is that I can wait on Sweetie hand and foot without actually getting close enough for many germs to touch."
Dash moved closer to Sweetie. "Come on, so she's a little sniffly. It's not so—"
Sweetie would've said something if the sneeze hadn't been building for what had felt like a small eternity. And, in her defense, by the time it finally escaped, she didn't see that Rainbow Dash was still standing there.
And, if she had the timing right, Dash had ducked out of the way in time anyway.
Dash's head peaked up back over the edge of the bed. "Uh, gesundheit."
Gasps sounded across the room, and Sweetie could replay the scene in her mind as it unfolded.
Rainbow Dash looked around, confused. "What? What is it?"
Scootaloo just stared in horror, jaw dropped. Apple Bloom tried to snap her out of it, starting at waving a hand in front of her face and moving on to progressively harder smacks. Twilight took notes.
And Rarity did her very best to hold back a smirk as she said, "Well, darling, when the time comes, don't hesitate to ask me for tips on dyeing it."
"Huh?" Dash looked up, pulled a hair out of her scalp with a wince, and took a look at it.
It was still striped. It was just striped off-white and pale blue.
Rainbow Dash, far less accurately named after Sweetie had sneezed her gray, just stared at the hair and said, "Oh."
Rarity nodded and removed the barrette that had held up her up do, revealing the streak of silver running through her own hair. "As I said, one of the lovely things about telekinesis is being a bit further from the germs. Another is making sure Sweetie doesn't age any of the rest of me. Staying out of the 'splash zone,' as it were."
"Sorry again," said Sweetie.
"My fault, really. You were right about being able to get to the restroom yourself."
"Sunset should be able to restore that," Twilight said as she examined her friends' hair. "Indeed, Apple Bloom may be able to."
And at that point, Sweetie now understood why her friends were both standing eagerly in front of her. "Just a little, Sweetie. We wanna get into R-rated movies, but we don't want a senior discount."
Scootaloo nodded. "Any time you're ready, just say so."
Apple Bloom's hand inched closer to its target. "Or I could—"
Scootaloo slapped it away. "Hey! Hands off the neck!"
"I just need one feather."
"It's sensitive. Besides, it's not going to be long enough. We need pepper."
Sweetie just sighed. "Girls, I'm not going to sneeze on you so you can fake being older."
"I was going to say something myself," Rarity said with an approving nod, "but it's good to hear you've moved on past such silliness."
Sweetie chose not to say that she wasn't going to only because it was gross, and there'd be no way to she could join them without sneezing on herself, which would be even more gross.
"Hang on," said Dash, "why don't we just ask Sunset to cure Sweetie? Shouldn't that be something she can do?"
"I was wondering if someone would ask that." Sunset manifested in the increasingly crowded bedroom, then looked around and lit her headgem, making the walls push back and opening up more floorspace. Then she'd looked at Sweetie and frowned, at which point Sweetie's vision had frozen for the better part of a minute. Finally, it started up again. "I can at least sync your sight with the present."
Sweetie rubbed her eyes. "Thanks." She turned to Dash. "And don't worry, your hair will grow back normally."
"Worried? Who said I was worried?" And thus Sweetie learned where Scootaloo got her 'desperately trying to act cool while worried' face.
She wasn't even trying to hide her concern right now. "Why can't you just snap Sweetie back to normal?"
"You make new bodies fer yerself all the time," added Apple Bloom.
Sunset sighed. "The key word there is 'make.' I don't heal them, I just return the old one to raw magical energy and conjure a replacement out of it."
Both gave her the best puppy dog eyes they could. "But-"
Sunset just held up a hand. "Look, Equestrian medicine is actually a lot like human healthcare: Hospitals, surgeons, nurses, even similar monitoring equipment. It's based around crystals and runes rather than circuits and code, but a lot of the same principles apply. Unicorn magic isn't designed to work like that. It can change, but healing means trying to change a disrupted and complex system into the one arrangement that works rather than the countless others that don't. And that's just physical injuries."
"Come on, Sunset," said Dash. "You're so awesome, you juggle galaxies. How hard can it be?"
Sunset just gave her a look. "A galaxy is ultimately a bunch of gas and rocks following simple rules in predictable ways. A body is a complex machine made of other complex machines made of other complex machines that all got cobbled together over billions of years of 'good enough to make it to the next generation.' And this one is currently at war with invading forces.
"Like I said, medicine isn't really a unicorn specialty, it's an earth pony one. Fixing physical injuries comes down to giving a body more energy to reassemble itself according to its own instructions. I can pull off that kind of harmonious reassembly with nonliving objects, but I'd rather start small and work my way up with people. But curing disease? That's a form of precision-targeted necromancy that's way too intricate for me to even consider before I get some more experience under my belt."
"In other words," said Twilight, "darn it, Rainbow, she's a spirit, not a doctor."
Sunset smiled at that. "Dork."
"Nerd," Twilight countered with a grin of her own. "We've been over this."
Sunset shook her head and turned to Sweetie. "Sorry, Sweetie Belle. No deus ex machina for this one."
Sweetie shrugged. "It's fine. I'm okay with waiting to get better, especially if you can keep my second sight under control."
"It's definitely easier than fixing your first sight would be."
Sweetie awoke to... well, not exactly sunshine and birdsong. It was still November. But she still woke up feeling nowhere near as stuffed up as the day before. She yawned and stretched, and was delighted to see her own movements right when she expected to.
"I guess it was just a twenty-four hour bug," she said to herself.
"Wuzzafuzza... No, Applejack, not those boots..."
"Huh? Rarity?" Sweetie turned, and sure enough, her sister was still in that chair, head leaning against the wall giving Sweetie a clear view of her sleep mask.
Rarity grumbled. "Sweet-thirteen, stand down."
That got an eyeroll. The robot dream again. Honestly what was with that one? "Rarity."
"Sweetie?" Rarity stretched and grimaced, no doubt stiff from however long she'd sat there. "Goodness, what time is it?"
Sweetie thought ahead, worked backwards, and made a mental note to look at a clock in five minutes. "A bit before seven. Did you actually sleep here all night? I thought I heard you close the door when you went out."
"I couldn't sleep. I kept tossing and turning with worry." Rarity coughed into her elbow and gave a most unladylike snort. "And other problems."
"Oh no." Sweetie got up and moved to Rarity's side. "Did I give you my cold?"
That got a rueful smile. "Let's be honest, I gave it to myself by hovering over you as I did. Ah... ah..."
Sweetie didn't need her powers to see where this was going. She jumped back just before the sneeze.
A strange creaking sound made her pause and look at where she'd stood. Even as she watched, small blue crystals grew out of her carpet. "Um..."
"Sweetie?" She turned back at Rarity's tone. It was the slightly urgent one she took on when trying to seem like she was less worried than she actually was.
Rarity had taken off the sleep mask, revealing more of the blue gems crusting her eyes shut. She pawed at her face, feeling the contours of the crystals, before gulping. "I, uh, may need some assistance."
Sweetie couldn't help but smile as she took Rarity's hand and helped her stand. "Don't worry, sis. I'm here for you."
Author's Note
Just to lower the fridge horror, rest assured that the pseudosapphires are temporary and magically soluble. Rarity has not, I repeat, has not been blinded by her own magic.
Also, there's definitely a joke in here somewhere about a rhinovirus only affecting unicorn aspects... as far as we can tell.
