“Girls! Hey girls, look here! I’m gonna do the MLP!” yelled Pinkie Pie.

“Uh, what?”

With a questioning expression, Twilight looked in the direction where the shout came from. Pinkie Pie was ice-skating on a frozen lake outside of Ponyville, where she and her friends had met in order to take the last opportunity to do some winter activities before the upcoming Winter Wrap Up. It was already afternoon and, as usual, Pinkie was the last pony to still scramble about, doing physically most impossible figures, while the others were resting at the edge of the lake. Applejack and Rainbow Dash lay outstretched in the snow, recovering from their fierce snowball fight, Fluttershy had just finished building a giant snow-tree, and Twilight had been caught in a one-sided conversation with Rarity about the hardships of keeping a shiny coat in winter, when they were interrupted by Pinkie Pie.

As she started to skate on the lake in circles, steadily gaining speed, Rarity gave a disapproving sigh at the unwelcome change of subject before she explained: “MLP signifies 'Mountainously Leaping Pinkie', Pinkie’s most difficult stunt. As ridiculous as the name sounds, it is quite accurate. It’s—well, just see for yourself.”

Twilight couldn’t help but chuckle a little. Even after all the time she had spent with Pinkie since she had moved to Ponyville, her friend managed to surprise her with new oddities again and again.

She fixed her eyes on Pinkie Pie in anticipation. By now, the skating mare was nothing more than a pink blur on the ice, as she, still accelerating, circled towards the middle of the lake. When she arrived there, she got on her back hooves, crouched down, and with a shrill “Hooray!” she made a jump at full speed, vaulting herself over six meters into the air. That alone was enough to make the other ponies gape in astonishment, and what followed would certainly have left Discord himself speechless: Reaching the maximum height of her jump, Pinkie suddenly started to spin around in midair, which surprisingly caused her to move further upwards. She spun faster and faster until she was nothing more than a indistinct whirl—a grinning, pink tornado with four skates.

It was not until she was at twice the level of her original jump that Pinkie’s rotation slowed down and she didn’t gain more altitude. Eventually, she came to a halt and, while she remained in midair for a moment, shouted “Heeey!” and waved at her friends with a grin that was big enough that they could see it from the ground. Then she began to fall.

Twilight held her breath as Pinkie Pie started to roll over while she moved downwards towards the lake. One somersault… two… three… four… five…

With her tenth somersault, Pinkie got down on the ice again. She landed on her back hooves, made a single twist, and finally posed triumphantly with her front hooves outstretched and broke through the ice with a shriek.

That was amazing! was Twilight’s first thought.

The next one was: Huh?

The third one was—

“PINKIE!” screamed the five ponies at the edge of the lake with sudden realization.

Rainbow Dash was the first to react. With a powerful stroke of her wings, she flew up and raced towards the hole in the frozen surface that had swallowed Pinkie Pie. Paralyzed by the icy water, the pink mare was almost completely sunken, so Rainbow Dash quickly clenched her mane between her teeth and pulled her into the air with a groan. While Pinkie was choking and panting for breath, Dash grabbed her and carried her away from the hole to a non-fragile spot on the ice. The others were running towards them.

Rainbow Dash set the still choking Pinkie Pie down and gave her a few strokes on the back, until she vomited an enormous load of water that splashed in the approaching ponies’ faces.

“Ugh!” made Rarity. “My goodness, look what you’ve done to my hair!”

Rainbow Dash burst into laughter. “You should see the look on your faces! It’s almost as hilarious as Pinkie’s face when she fell into the lake!” At the thought of that, she laughed twice as loud as before.

“Oh yeah? Ah’ reckon if somepony had cared better for the weather conditions out here, the ice wouldn’t have become thin enough to break,” Applejack said mockingly. “Or maybe a certain pink pony should watch her weight and eat less sugary stuff,” she suggested with a chuckle.

“Um… are you okay, Pinkie Pie?” Twilight had the odd feeling that her question was out of place.

It took the pink pony another couple of seconds to recover her breath, then her wet, drooping hair miraculously returned to its normal curly shape and she cheerfully exclaimed: “Of course I am, silly! I’m fine like a changeling in a brothel. It’s not like that was my first time to fall into a frozen lake, after all—the MLP can even break thicker ice, that’s why I don’t do it when I’m alone. But the first time was actually when I was a little filly and wanted to find out if the fishes are frozen in winter, and when I couldn’t see them under the ice I made a hole to better my view, but then the ice around the hole broke and I a- ah- ah- ACHOO!”

A heavy sneeze interrupted Pinkie’s flood of words and confetti flew out of her nose, one of Pinkie’s numerous quirks that Twilight still found a little strange.

“Uh-oh,” said her friend with a touch of uneasiness. “Feels like I’m getting a cold.”

Pinkie’s voice had barely faded away when a sudden anxiety overcame the group. Rarity gasped. Fluttershy winced. Applejack hissed. Twilight had no clue what was going on.

“Darn!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash. “You better return to Sugarcube Corner right now, Pinkie. I’ll go along to make sure that nothing bad happens.”

Pinkie Pie nodded, and they galloped away immediately. When they were a few metres away, Pinkie sneezed again and the two of them vanished behind a cloud of confetti, leaving behind three excited ponies and one confused one.

“So, can someone do me a favour and explain what’s going on here?” asked Twilight. Again, her question seemed awkwardly misplaced, but Rarity was generous enough to overlook that.

“Well, as in many respects, Pinkie is rather unique when it comes to colds. Her usual sneezes may be harmless, but when she has caught a cold, she sneezes all sorts of dreadful things. It is better to be as far away from her as possible when she is in this state.”

“I see,” answered Twilight, her intonation revealing quite clearly that she didn’t. “But even then, it still doesn’t make sense. The sudden hypothermia through her immersion into the icy water may have weakened her immune system enough to make it vulnerable to cold viruses, but Pinkie can’t have been infected and shown signs of it so fast.”

Rarity sighed. “Darling, you must understand that Pinkie does not function that way. Her colds appear without warning. If she says that she has one, you do well to believe it. All we can do is wait for her to recover, since there is no treatment that works for her.”

Twilight silently disagreed.

__________

Later that evening, a purple baby dragon went anxiously back and forth in the Ponyville library and took increasingly nervous looks at an hourglass in his little claws. With every falling grain of sand, his suspicion that something terrible must have happened grew. Twilight should have returned from the meeting with her friends almost an hour ago—and Twilight was never behind schedule!

Just as he considered going to the town’s police station, the front door to the library swung open and the missing unicorn came in. Spike gasped in shock at the sight of her and let the hourglass slip out of his claws.

“Twilight! What happened to you?”

He hurried worriedly up to Twilight who collapsed before him. She was smeared with mud and her whole body was covered in scratches. “Spike…” she gasped with a stifled voice.

“What is it Twilight? Are you hurt? Shall I take you to the hospital?”

Twilight looked questioningly up at Spike for a moment, then she giggled and cleared her throat. “Now, Spike,” she said and stood up again, “I just have a dry throat. A glass of water will be sufficient.”

“Uh, but…” Spike was confused. “But why did you fall down? And what’s with all the dirt and scratches?”

Twilight waved one hoof dismissively. “I just fell down because I had a cramp in my right foreleg. My injuries came from a fight with a manticore in the Everfree Forest, but they are just superficial wounds, don’t worry.”

“Wha—what?” asked Spike, rather more confused now than reassured. “I mean, what? Why did you fight a manticore? Why did you go to the forest? According to the schedule, you should have been back an hour ago.”

“I know, but I needed to get manticore hair and wanted to go to the forest before it’s dark,” answered Twilight, pulling a strand of long, red hair out from behind her right ear.

Spike grimaced. “Oh, of course, manticore hair! That explains everything.”

“I need it for an elixir,” explained Twilight. “Pinkie Pie has caught a cold and the others claim that she can’t be cured, but I will prove them wrong. I’m going to make a potion according to an old recipe by the ancient physician Avicenneigh. The word is that it can cure every kind of influenza.”

Anybody else wouldn’t have heard the hardly noticeable sharpness in her voice, but many years as Twilight’s personal assistant had sensitized Spike to her emotional states. “I don’t know, Twilight,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Are you sure you aren’t obsessing about this? I mean, you know things aren’t so simple with Pinkie Pie.”

“I know Pinkie has some idiosyncrasies that are not scientifically comprehensible. But this is about a cold, Spike!” Twilight objected. “There’s no way it can’t be treated medically.”

“If you say so…” Spike nerves had already been strained too much for the day to sustain a discussion with Twilight. Besides, she could hardly cause any trouble by trying to cure a cold. What could possibly go wrong?

“Nothing can go wrong,” assured Twilight confidently. “However, I still lack an important ingredient for the potion,” she said with an odd glance at Spike.

__________

At the next morning, a frosty blizzard blew through Ponyville. The weather agency in Cloudsdale had arranged it on short notice in order to dump the surplus from this year’s snowflake production. This will be bad for business, thought Mrs. Cake as she removed the “Closed” sign from the entrance to Sugarcube Corner. Nopony would come today.

At that very moment, somepony came. Mrs. Cake blinked in surprise when she got sight of a lavender pony that, shrouded in a pink force field, struggled through the storm towards Sugarcube Corner.

“Twilight! What are you doing here in this horrible weather? Come in, deary,” Mrs. Cake said, holding the door open.

“Thank you.” Twilight stepped in and dissolved the force field.

“My goodness, don’t you feel cold? Shall I make you some tea?” Mrs Cake asked, giving her a worried look. The unicorn wore nothing but a pair of saddlebags.

“No, thanks, Mrs. Cake. The air in my force field was magically heated to room temperature, so I’m fine.”

“Oh. Well, what can I do for you then?”

“I am here to give Pinkie Pie a remedy to her cold.”

“What?!” exclaimed Mrs. Cake shrilly. “Uh,”—she cleared her throat—“I mean, pardon? There is no remedy for Pinkie’s colds.”

“None that is known to you,” Twilight responded. She let her horn light up and a small, corked glass bottle containing amber-coloured liquor hovered out of one of the saddlebags. “This is a magical potion made of onion juice, manticore hair and pulverized dragon scales. It can cure every cold.”

Mrs. Cake frowned. “Deary, I don’t know if you are fully aware of what 'cold' means in Pinkie’s case. Her colds are not like any other ones. It is already dangerous enough to even come close to her.”

“It is at least worth a try,” insisted Twilight. “And regardless of how dangerous Pinkie Pie may be, I can protect myself from her just as from the blizzard with the aid of my magic.”

“A blizzard is nothing compared to Pinkie Pie at the peak of a cold.” Mrs. Cake was speaking very low and emphatically. “You should really think this over.”

Twilight smiled at her leniently. “Isn’t that precisely the point? If it is that bad, then Pinkie Pie must be helped. I assure you that I know what I am doing,” she declared and walked towards the stairs to the second floor without waiting for protest.

“She isn’t upstairs,” said Mrs. Cake with a strained voice.

“Huh?” Twilight turned around.

“When Pinkie Pie has a cold, we take her to an emptied storage room in the cellar,” Mrs. Cake explained. “Otherwise she would completely destroy Sugarcube Corner.”

“Oh. Well, I guess I’ll go to the cellar, then…”

For the first time, Twilight felt somewhat doubtful, but she tried to hide it. She sauntered to the kitchen with pointed nonchalance and, making sure that Mrs. Cake was following her, opened the hatch behind the dresser to the left of the door by demonstratively using her magic. Shrouded in a magenta glow, the hatch lifted up, revealing a wooden staircase that lead to a dark, narrow corridor.

Twilight was just about to walk down when Mrs. Cake came up to her. “I think that it is a really bad idea to go down there,” she said, “but if you want to do it at all costs, take this at least.” She put a light blue helmet with to vertical yellow stripes over Twilight’s head.

“Um, thank you?”

Twilight wondered whether the helmet would make any difference if her magical powers actually couldn’t protect her. Anyway, it couldn’t do any harm either.

With the glass bottle still hovering above her, she began to walk down the staircase, more timidly than she intended to. When she was downstairs, Mrs. Cake shouted a nervous “Good luck!” and shut the hatch with a loud crack.

“Hey!” squeaked Twilight, startled by the sudden darkness that surrounded her. Then she clenched her teeth, angry at herself. “Come on, Twilight,” she said loudly. “There’s nothing to be afraid of!”

She squinted and stared in the darkness. After a few seconds she recognized the outlines of two doors at each side of the corridor. Under the crack at the bottom of the second door to the right, a faint streak of light shone through. That had to be the room Pinkie Pie was in. Twilight took a deep breath and went resolutely and dauntlessly towards—Ahhh! What was that?!

Twilight stopped with her heart racing when she heard a persistent clanking noise that sounded like the rattling of chains coming from the lighted room. In the oppressive narrowness and darkness of the cold corridor, it sounded scary and threatening. For a moment, Twilight thought about turning round, but then she stamped her hooves on the ground. She had read the collected works of Stephen Kiang—no horrors of any kind could frighten her!

She took another deep breath and ran resolutely and dauntlessly towards—Ahhh! What was that?!

Twilight stumbled back with a start when she stepped in something slimy before the door. She gulped and held a shaking hoof to her muzzle. The sticky liquid smelled like… cherry jam? She licked her hoof. It was indeed cherry jam. That was rather strange than dangerous, thought Twilight. She stayed indecisively in front of the door for another moment, then she took a deep breath again and finally went—resolutely and dauntlessly—in.

Holy horse dung! What is that?!

Twilight’s mouth fell open as she looked around the room, which was dimly lit by a flickering light bulb hanging from the ceiling. In her surprise at what she saw, Twilight loosened her magical grasp around the bottle for a moment, but luckily had the presence of mind to brake its fall at the last second.

The small storage room with emptied shelves along the side walls was littered all over the place with confetti, streamers, deflated balloons and other party supplies. Moreover, there were chunks of food and puddles of various fluids everywhere. Apart from the cherry jam at the entrance that had leaked through the door, there was ice cream all over the room, orange juice dripping off the shelves at the left wall, coffee on the other shelves, and cider dripping from the ceiling.

However, the real shock for Twilight was what she saw at the end of the room: In a small bed that leaned lengthwise against the rear wall, something that could only with a vivid imagination be thought of as the head of a pink pony looked out from under several thick blankets. The face was terribly swollen and yellowish green discoloured, so that it looked like a bloated apple, or maybe an orange, but a big orange, more like a grapefruit really…

“Pinkie?” asked Twilight, her voice involuntarily shaking.

The deformed pony sat up with a groan. The clanking noise that Twilight had heard turned out to be its breathing sound. Pinkie Pie blinked at Twilight with puffy eyes.

ACHOO!

Twilight emitted a surprised cry when something gluey shot out of Pinkie’s nose and right into her face. She furiously tried to wipe it down with her front hooves until she noticed that it smelled familiar. With a cautious licking of her tongue, she identified the substance as honey. Well, she thought, sighing in relief as well as in embarrassment, that’s a bit disgusting, but also not exactly dangerous.

An audible sniff drew her attention to Pinkie again, who rubbed her eyes and said with a wheeze: “Twilight? Is that you? What are you doing here?”

Twilight’s jaw dropped as she heard her friend speaking. Pinkie Pie’s voice was hoarse and severely distorted, making her sound like Nightmare Moon with a smoker’s voice. In her bafflement, she struggled to give a useful response.

“Pinkie, you—er…” she stammered. “Your voice—I mean, your face—no, I mean, your honey—um…” She cleared her throat and pointed at the bottle that hovered above her. “I’ve brought you a potion against your cold.”

Rattling breath. A sniff. Then, the creepy voice sounded again: “That’s nice of you, Twilight, but my cold can’t be cured. It’ll just abruptly vanish sooner or later, as always. You should better leave now, or else you could be hu—ACHOO!

Spaghetti flew out of Pinkie’s nose and spilled all over the floor.

“But that’s a magical elixir with special ingredients,” responded Twilight. “Besides,” she said with an amused look on the floor, “how are spaghetti supposed to hurt me? Maybe if I slip on them?”

“No, but—ACHOO!”

Twilight was still grinning when suddenly a thunderbolt shot towards her and missed her just by a few inches. When it struck the wall behind her with a bang, her grin turned into a horrified stare.

“Dear Celestia, what was that?”

“That’s what I’m trying to s—ACHOO!”

Pinkie’s response was interrupted by another sneeze. This time, a bunch of nails flew in Twilight’s direction. At the last second, she managed to engulf herself and the bottle in a magical force field from which the nails bounced off without effect. While she still contemplated how close she had been to be perforated, Pinkie got a sneeze attack.

ACHOO!

Knives crashed against the magical barrier.

ACHOO!

A cascade of rocks poured over Twilight.

ACHOO!

A battleaxe

ACHOO!

A spurt of fire

ACHOO!

Used diapers

ACHOO!

A javelin

ACHOO!

A rain of arrows

It’s as if I’m on a battlefield, thought Twilight behind her force field. All that’s missing is combat sounds. Just as she thought of that, Pinkie sneezed again and instead of something substantial, the sound of battle cries, rattling armour, and explosions came out of her nose.

Twilight stared at her with slightly twitching eyes. “Are you kidding me?!” she screamed at Pinkie.

Pinkie Pie seemed to understand what Twilight was getting at. “Sorry,” she said apologetically, although it sounded rather mocking with her distorted voice. “I really can’t control what—ACHOO!—what my sneezes produce,” she assured and plucked the flower bouquet that she had just sneezed from her nose.

“Nevermind,” said Twilight with a sting of conscience at her outburst. “But as you can see, I am safe from whatever you sneeze thanks to my magic, so I can safely give you the elixir.” She walked towards the bed, carefully stepping around the weapons on the floor.

“No! You don’t understand!”

Twilight stopped, startled by the absolutely unusual severity in Pinkie’s voice. Or did it just sound like that due to the deeper pitch?

Pinkie’s rattling breath got faster: “This isn’t even my final stage!” she exclaimed. “The sneezing is just a prestage of a totally fatal cough that—oh no!” She interrupted her announcement with a horrified mien, or rather with what Twilight thought to be a horrified expression on her bloated face.

Then she began to cough.

Twilight opened her eyes wide in alarm. With a glistening flash of her horn, she tripled the resisting force of her magical field to protect herself against the approaching… bubbles?

“Um, that’s all?”

Pinkie Pie coughed a second time.

Again, Twilight anticipated the worst, ready to withstand an apocalyptic impact. Instead, a lavender plush ball flew out of Pinkie’s mouth and rolled harmless against the barrier.

“Huh?” made Twilight.

Suddenly, four legs emerged from the ball, followed by a purple-streaked horse tail that seemed somehow familiar to Twilight. Then the ball unfolded completely with a Pop! and before her stood—Twilight Sparkle!

Twilight stared at Twilight in utter astonishment. So did Twilight. Then, Twilight’s—the original one’s—eyes began to twitch furiously and she clenched her teeth.

“Is something wrong with you?” asked her double worriedly. “You look like you don’t feel well. Do you have a headache? That could be a sign of a cold.”

“No!” shouted Twilight with a shrill voice. “It’s just impossible. You’re completely impossible!”

The other Twilight stared at her blankly and scratched her head. “You’re right!” she said with an astounded look and vanished in a lavender cloud of smoke.

The remaining Twilight sighed. “Oh my, that was even weirder than the other time...” she murmured. In her confusion, she missed two things: Firstly, she had unintentionally reduced the energy input for her force field during her conversation with her self, and secondly, Pinkie’s body began to shake vigorously. Next, another cough attack overcame the bedridden pony and a number of fireworks shot out of her mouth. Twilight could not react in time.

Several fireworks crashed into her shield at once with an enormous bang. It collapsed in a deafening explosion, and Twilight was tossed vehemently against the wall beside the entrance door. As she slumped with a pained cry, her magical grasp around the bottle loosened and the glass that had miraculously survived the explosion ultimately had to face its inevitably downfall. It didn’t face it, though, because it didn’t have eyes, but it fell down nevertheless and was shattered to pieces as it hit the ground with a clank, spilling the magical potion among all the other ridiculous things on the floor.

“Twilight!” shouted Pinkie Pie and wriggled herself out of her blankets, intending to get out of the bed.

“No, Pinkie!” Although her entire body hurt, Twilight sat hastily up and raised her front hooves defensively. “I—I’m fine. Stay in your bed, it’s better for both of us.” With a groan, she got back on her hooves and stared grimly at the spilled elixir. “I guess I can still pick the potion up with my magic and—”

 “NO!”

Twilight cringed at the loud exclamation.

“It’s useless, Twilight,” said Pinkie Pie, her voice still raised. “Don’t you understand? It doesn’t matter how effective your drink is against colds because my cold is not like a normal one and can’t be cured. If you stay here, you will only get hurt. Be reasonable!”

This finished Twilight off. She had honey gotten tossed in her face, repelled a rain of arrows, been bombarded by fireworks and had an encounter with herself. But being lectured about reason by Pinkie Pie in a Nightmare Moon smoker’s voice was the most unsettling experience of her whole life. Overwhelmed by this surreal occurrence, she sat down and stared blankly into space, trembling uncontrollably.

The short silence that followed was interrupted by another outcry from Pinkie.

“Twilight! Get out of here—my tail is twitching!”

This announcement pulled the devastated unicorn out of her trance. A coughing Pinkie Pie with a twitching tail was a clear indication of a catastrophe! With new-found energy, Twilight managed to stand up and limped towards the door on shaking legs. Just then, Pinkie coughed again.

Considering the madness of the last few minutes, one could think that Twilight was prepared for any impossibility that came with this cough, but to her own surprise, she was surprised again by what she saw coming towards her. Thus double-surprised, she forgot to generate a force field to shield herself against Avicenneigh’s Potent Potions—the very book from which the recipe for the potion she had made was.

Twilight stared open-mouthed at the bright red binding with the golden inscription for a split second before the book flew right into her face with remarkable precision. The force of the impact and, not least, the incredible irony of the situation caused her to sway. She stumbled a few steps to the right and bumped headfirst into one of the shelves at the wall. What a luck that I’m wearing the helmet, she thought. Then, a sudden realisation flashed through her mind: Wait a minute—tail twitching!

At the last second, she prevented the shelf from toppling over with her magic and already believed herself safe when she heard Pinkie Pie’s deep voice: “Twilight—above you!”

She looked up, but it was too late. A big bag of flour that had been left at the highest shelf had slipped forward through the previous collision and fell down on Twilight’s head. As it hit her helmet forcefully, her vision turned black.

__________

Panting and trembling at the whole body, two paramedic ponies heaved the stretcher with the unconscious unicorn into the ambulance that parked in front of Sugarcube Corner in the raging blizzard. Then they looked at each other, horror etched in their faces.

“Has this just really happened?” asked one of them, his voice shaking.

“The pain feels very real, at least” replied the other one and pointed, grimacing, at a burn hole at the right of his orange rescue service jacket.

“Even so—exploding cupcakes! And a tornado! How is this possible?! I have become an ambulance man to save lives, not to be almost coughed to death!”

“Honestly…” The paramedic with the burn nervously ran a hoof through his mane and looked towards Sugarcube Corner. “Say, where is Jeff? If we park in the blizzard any longer, the ambulance will get stuck.”

Moments later, a light blue unicorn stepped out of Sugarcube Corner onto the street and hastened towards them. “Sorry guys,” he shouted, and pointed at his jacket that hovered rolled-up above him. “But guess what I’ve wrapped in my jacket! When we ran out of this darn cellar, the freaky pony choked a bunch of Playmare-Magazines after me!” he said with a big grin.

“Oh, shut up, Jeff!”

“What? I’ll share them with you…”

__________

The first things Twilight noticed when she woke up were the soft mattress she lay upon, a terrible headache and the beep sound of a heart monitor. While she slowly recovered consciousness, she tried to digest these impressions in her martyred head and with some effort, she came to the conclusion that she had to be in the Ponyville hospital.

Her assumption was confirmed when she finally managed to slowly open her eyes. She caught sight of the fuzzy outlines of a hospital room and of six coloured blurs around her bed which she recognised as her friends and a doctor. The former immediately burst into excited murmuring when they noticed that Twilight was awake.

“Is she gonna be okay?”

“Oh, I’m so worried”

“Is her face going stay that way?”

The situation somehow seemed oddly familiar to Twilight. As she blinked and shook her head in order to focus her crossed eyes, she heard Rainbow Dash asking: “How is she, doc?”

The amber unicorn in the white coat seemed slightly annoyed. “Well, I wouldn’t have let you in for a visit if her condition wasn’t all right. She’s going to be fine, it’s just like all the other times when one of you had a bizarre accident and—uh, I mean…” His face turned red and he finished with an embarrassed grin: “… all she needs is some rest.”

“Rest?” Twilight sat up with a groan and clenched her teeth when the headache intensified after the sudden movement. “I can’t afford to rest, I have a schedule to follow!” She took a nervous look at the clock at the opposite wall in order to find out how much time she had lost.

“Wait, I’ve been unconscious for five hours?”

At the sight of Twilight’s horrified face, the doctor hastened to calm her: “Oh no, no, don’t worry, Miss Sparkle, it isn’t as bad as it looks like. Actually, you had already regained consciousness after five minutes, but we decided to put you to sleep for a while because you wouldn’t stop rambling about scientifically impossible sneezes. Nevertheless, you need to stay here for the rest of the day, whether you like it or not.”

Twilight snorted and darted an angry glance at the doctor, what looked unintentionally funny due to her eyes still being a little out of focus. However, she couldn’t deny that she was hardly able to do any work with her head feeling like Celestia had dropped the sun on it. With a sigh, she dropped her gaze and muttered a sullen “If I have to…”

Rarity trotted to the edge of the bed on Twilight’s right and gave her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, darling, we will gladly help you with your work as long as you’re indisposed.”

“Yeah,” said Pinkie Pie, who apparently had reverted back to her normal state, in her usual high voice. She moved to the other side of the bed and gave Twilight a soft hug. “I’m really super-sorry for your flour knockout and that your tail was incinerated.”

“It’s okay, Pinkie, it’s not—what?” Twilight folded her blanket back. Her tail had indeed burnt down to a stub. “Uh...” She needed a couple of seconds to regain her composure.

“Anyway, that’s no problem, I’m sure I can find a spell to fix it. What I wanted to say is that you don’t need to blame yourself for what happened. I am the one to blame because I carelessly ignored all warnings and I am the one to apologize for causing trouble. I think I’ve learned some valuable lessons through the recent events.”

Twilight was about to lie down again in order to rest her throbbing head when she noticed the expectant looks of her friends.

“What is it?” she asked. Then she understood. “Oh, of course, you want me to talk about it. Well…”

She pondered for a moment before she went on. “To begin with, I have learned that if you are a unicorn with the ability to teleport, you should remember to make use of this talent if necessary, be it if you are in an underground cave with your former babysitter or if you need to escape from a friend who has a cold. But more importantly, you should try to prevent situations like these from the start by believing others if they tell you to be wary of someone who you believe to be harmless. It is always better for your own safety to expect the worst from others!” declared Twilight with a satisfied smile.

Rarity returned the smile and patted Twilight on the shoulder. “This is indeed a very valuable lesson, darling,” she said. The others nodded in agreement and Applejack gave the doctor an inconspicuous push.

“Um, yeah. Yeah, a really excellent lesson,” confirmed the unicorn eagerly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me for a moment…” He went out and looked for a nurse in order to let her give Twilight another sedative injection. When he left the room, the door closed behind him with a growl.

“What was that?” asked Twilight. “Doors aren’t supposed to growl.”

“Oh, that’s just my stomach,” explained Pinkie Pie. “When my cold vanished, I was veeery hungry from all the sneezing and coughing, so I ate lots of cupcakes and candy and chocolate and jelly and doughnuts and pies and I guess I overdid it a little.” She thoughtfully tilted her head. “I just hope I don’t get diarrhea.”

As she said that, a sudden anxiety overcame the group. Rarity gasped. Fluttershy winced. Applejack hissed. Twilight had a horrible premonition.

“Darn!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash. “Shall I tell the major to prepare the evacuation of Ponyville, just in case?”

“Well, we shouldn’t take any risks when it comes to diarrhea,” Pinkie answered gravely. Rainbow Dash buzzed off immediately, leaving behind five anxious ponies.

Twilight gulped. “So, what is going to happen if you have it?” she asked nervously.

“Hmmmphhh,” made Pinkie as her attempt to answer was hindered by Applejack putting a hoof in her mouth. “No, Pinkie!” whispered Fluttershy to her. “You can’t tell her in her current condition.”

When Twilight wanted to protest, Rarity patted her shoulder again and looked her warningly in the eyes.

“Believe me… you don’t want to know.”

Thanks to Nietzsche for editing