Peace Celebrations

Officer Warrant of the Solar Enforcers looked through the one-way mirror with a mixture of horror and sick fascination. He watched the medical ponies dart in and out of the room, their green scrubs stained crimson. Each pony in the room on the other side of the glass, save one, wore a white medical mask in an attempt to keep whatever the victim had contracted contained.

The victim, an earth pony mare in her late twenties, lay limp in the bed and stirred only to cough up blood or to laugh hysterically. It was creepy and sad at the same time. The mare’s coat and mane, which had been a bright, shiny orange when she was admitted two hours ago, was a dulled grey. Splotches of navy blue, black, and dark purple covered her face and legs. Her eyes, whenever they fluttered opened, were unfocused and glazed over. As far as the doctors could tell, the mare wasn’t aware of anything at all; she was a vegetable.

The illness the mare had contracted was of a magical origin and there was little the doctors could do to help her. They estimated that she only had a few hours, if that, left to live. One the mare died, Warrants case went from being Malicious Use of Magic, which was a minor offence, to Murder by Magic. That was when Warrant was officially on the case.

Warrant was the lead investigator of magical crimes in the Solar Enforcers. With the strangeness of this case, the chief wanted his best stallion on it. Warrant had seen everything from muggings to murders; once he’d even seen a stallion that had been turned inside-out, but something about this case unnerved him.

Perhaps it was how quickly the disease worked. The sick mare hadn’t shown any symptoms before she had passed out on the Sunray Express on her trip to the capital of Sol, one of the ruling bodies in the Solar City-States. Maybe it was the fact that Warrant didn’t know if the sickness was contagious. At any rate, he was uneasy about the whole thing.

Loud beeps and alarms drew Warrant out of his thoughts. The doctors and nurses were running around faster than they had before. The machines were buzzing and whizzing around, bells and whistles were going off as well. Through all the business going around Warrant couldn’t really tell what was going on.

After a few minutes, the excitement in the room died down but Warrant didn’t think that was a good thing. His suspicions were confirmed when one of the head doctors came out into the hallway. A somber look was plastered onto his face but Warrant could see that he didn’t really care.

“The mare has passed on.” The doctor told Warrant. “She’ll be sent to get an autopsy but that could take a few days. The results will be sent to your office once they’re compiled.”

Warrant nodded and shooed the doctor off; he needed time to think. The dead mare hadn’t been identified yet so that was where he needed to start but beyond that, for the first time in a while, Warrant was at a loss.

Shrugging it off, Warrant got ready to leave the hospital. He collected all the data he could from the nurses and from the doctors, making sure to get every piece. He slipped his notebook and the medical file into his saddlebag along with his pen. Trotting to the front door, Warrant was half way out when somepony called out his name.

“Officer Warrant! Wait, Officer Warrant!” A small, blue coated nurse called out. “We’ve got another patient with the same symptoms as that mare that you were asking about. He’s in room 503. He’s awake but the doctors don’t think he has much time left.”

“Are the sure it’s the same illness? I mean really sure.” Warrant asked.

The nurse nodded. Warrant sighed and trotted to the room. He made it just in time to see the machines in the room flatling and the doctors scrambling about. This guy had lasted even shorter than the mare had. Warrant needed to get back to the office and do some research.

As Warrant turned around, he saw another pony being wheeled in on a gurney, blood trickling out of the corner of his mouth. He looked exactly like the mare did when she died. Three victims within an hour; this was not good.

Whatever this illness was, it was spreading fast and killing ponies before Warrant could blink. He wouldn’t be able to solve this on his own. This was going to become an epidemic within a day; a pandemic within a week. If he didn’t find out how to cure this, ponies were going to die. Hundreds of thousands of ponies were going to die.