Karyn poked her head into the kitchen. “Any breakfast ready?”

“You can make yourself some if you like.” Her mother was clearing away the dishes from her own meal. “If you’re going to sleep in, you’ll miss my cooking. But it looks like you were putting on your face. Are you always this formal now?”

Karyn flashed her teeth. In fact, she had done as she had at school and used her magic to appear in a fancy sundress with her hair perfectly combed and her face made up. She could feel the bed-hair still sticking to the side of her head. It was still a little unbelievable to her. Fooling strangers that she passed on the street was one thing, but this was her mother, who knew her every day growing up. Now she was staring right at Karyn and not really seeing her.

“I like to look nice. Even if it means making my own breakfast.”

“Is that a new dress? I don’t remember buying that. It looks expensive.”

“I didn’t pay anything for this. It’s looks a lot nicer than it is.

She slipped some bread into the toaster and dialed it down to light. Although she now had the added lead time of Derpy’s flight from school to home, she wanted to be waiting in her room for the arrival.

After gobbling down the toast and assuring her mother that she’d be around if needed, Karyn returned to her room and dithered around on her computer for a few minutes before hearing the window slide up and then down again.

“Hello, Derpy. All is clear for now.”

“Good. You’re looking well, even if it’s just magic and you didn’t actually make the effort.”

“You can tell?” asked Karyn.

“Not by sight, but I know how you are.”

“And how are you?”

Derpy went visible. “I’m not the type to use a disguise that actually fools people. I just let them not see me and be done with it.”

“I meant ‘how are you’ in the sense of your health and general welfare since the last time I’ve seen you.”

“Oh. Fine. Just fine. How are we for time? Can you spare an instant here?”

Karyn, still wary, poked her head out to make sure her parents were nowhere nearby. “You mean to go to Equestria? What’s going on?”

“I figured that I could give you that trip to Cloudsdale that I owe you.”

“You don’t actually owe it to me. It’s just a plan that we made. Not even that. A plan that you made.”

“Yeah, but I really want to.” Derpy knelt down and spread her wings, showing that she would not be denied. “As I was saying, I want to feel the clouds beneath my hooves again.”

“How about me? Should I get that cloud-walking spell done to me that I know Earth ponies and unicorns use sometimes?”

“Hmm. I wasn’t planning on it. I was kind of thinking that you’d just ride me the whole time.”

Karyn thought about that. “Well, if it’s not too long, I guess I can put up with that. But let’s get out of here while we’re safe.”

She mounted up, and Derpy took off out the window, making sure that no one was watching before she lifted for height. Once in Equestria, Derpy took stock of her position and glided for the ground. They landed in front of Derpy’s house.

“Ready?”

“Is there a reason we stopped here?” asked Karyn. “Did you forget to feed the cat or something?”

“No, I just find that it’s easier to get somewhere if I start from a place I know. You don’t do that?”

“I probably would if GPS didn’t exist.”

Derpy decided to ignore that in favor of getting in the air, but as she spread her wings once more, the sound of rushing hooves came from the other side of the house. “Derpy!”

“Who’s that?”

It was Karyn who recognized the pony galloping towards them. For Derpy, orange was probably a typical color for ponies. She only knew of one. “Scootaloo?”

“Derpy! Glad I caught you. I heard that Sunday was the day that you go to Earth, and that sometimes you bring Karyn back—hello, Karyn—and I’m glad that I got lucky enough to see you.”

“What’s up?” asked Derpy.

“I just got back in town. I’ve been away for a while.”

“Doing your cutie mark research?”

“Right.” Scootaloo finally came to a halt from her nervous fidgeting. “I’ve been out in Zebrabwe trying to determine if zebras get theirs any different from ponies. But that’s not important right now. We don’t get much news out there, and even less of it concerning humans, but word managed to filter through anyway.”

“Word of what?”

“That the changelings had returned! That in and of itself was a big deal. You two were part of it?”

Karyn squirmed. “You could say that we were the whole reason for it. Or at least I was.”

She recounted the tale in brief. Derpy interrupted trying to make it look as if she, or Dinky, was more heroic than she actually was. To Karyn’s mind, all she did was wait in prison and talk.

Scootaloo listened, enraptured. “And at the end, Chrysalis appointed you a changeling queen, right?”

“Yes.”

“And that means you can change your form, right?”

Karyn blinked and stared. “Really? That was intuitive to you? I spent months thinking that it was a purely honorary title with no actual benefits before the buildup of magic nearly made me choke.”

“Oh, no!” said Scootaloo. “If I had been here I would have spotted something different immediately. Well, maybe I would have. It doesn’t matter. You’ve been given something that nopony in Equestria has ever had.”

Derpy shook her head. “I’m not sure that anypony would want it. Meaning no offense to Karyn.”

“None taken. Ponies all have their own magic of some kind. Only on Earth are we complete muggles. So just to be able to do anything makes me feel special.”

“Whatever that word means.” Scootaloo moved her hooves like setting something to the side. “The point is that you’re also the only human with a cutie mark. It’s ironic if you think about it. All those ponies out there with cutie marks and it’s the human who I need.”

Derpy and Karyn looked at each other. “Need?”

Scootaloo knelt down and drew on the ground. Karyn had seen Derpy do the same thing, and wondered if it was a pegasus trait. She crafted a Venn diagram. “Here’s how it is. You have a cutie mark, but you can also alter your form. That means, in theory, that you could remove or even alter your cutie mark. That could give us new insight into exactly how cutie marks work.”

Karyn scratched her backside. She was still embarrassed about the pair of ergonomic keyboards that emblazoned on her rear, even though no one had seen them. The notion that her newfound magic could rectify some old magic seemed right to her. On the other hand, she wondered if it was right.

Scootaloo was carrying on. “Obviously we’ve never had the chance to investigate changeling magic on its own, since they’ve been enemies of all good ponies. But even now, I’m not sure they even know what a cutie mark is.”

“Wait just one minute,” said Derpy. “But don’t actually wait one minute. That’s an Earth expression that means to stop and think. The last time that some ponies wanted to use Karyn for research purposes, Princess Celestia had to step in and do some fancy political maneuvering to stop them. I want to make sure that this is going to be safe for her.”

Karyn flashed back, grinning. “Of course you do, your highness.” She drank in Derpy’s pained expression. “But this is Scootaloo, not those stuffy ponies from Canterlot. I’m sure she doesn’t want to do anything dangerous.”

“Of course not,” said Scootaloo. “I just want to ask you to do some transformations and activities and take some observations. It’ll be mostly writing on my part. I’ll buy you guys lunch afterwards. What do you say?”

Once more, Karyn and Derpy shared a look. “I guess it’s OK,” said Derpy. “On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“What exactly is the lunch?”

Everyone else had a laugh at that and they all started walking. On the way they chatted about Scootaloo’s research.

“I know that everypony thinks I’m just all about running around on my scooter or trailing after other ponies like Rainbow Dash. And that’s what I was, but I realized that if I wanted to break out of that mentality and grow up, I was going to have to work my brain and get smarter. I think I surprised Miss Cheerilee when I wound up at the head of the class!”

Karyn was a little surprised herself.

“And then, of course, you were there when I finally got my cutie mark. I sometimes wonder if I had stuck with scooting and emulating, if I wouldn’t have gotten it sooner.”

As Scootaloo carried on with her reminiscences, Karyn distractedly thought that her and Derpy’s plans had been disrupted, and while she didn’t mind helping the research, she wondered if they couldn’t do both.

“Excuse me, but Derpy and I were planning to spend the day in Cloudsdale. Why don’t you come with us and see all the other pegasi.”

“Oh. Yeah, we could do that, I guess.”

Scootaloo took a deep breath, and Karyn felt a rush of blood to her face. She sped her walking pace as Scootaloo slackened hers. Once Derpy caught up, Karyn whispered, “Did I say something wrong?”

“You didn’t know? Her wings are underdeveloped. She’s really not welcome in Cloudsdale. She’d need a cloud-walking spell just like an Earth pony or unicorn would.”

“Oh, I didn’t even think about that. I’m such a heel. I should go apologize to her.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Derpy. “It would only make things worse.”

Lagging so as to let Scootaloo catch up, Karyn racked her brain trying to think of how to make it better. “So, with this research you’re doing, do you think you’ll write a book or such?”

“I might. I’m more interested in gaining the knowledge, but I suppose that other ponies will want to know it too.”

“Mmhm. When you’re not out in the field, do you work out of your home?”

At last, Scootaloo’s spirit returned. “Oh, no! I’ve got a nice research position at a private school just on the edge of Ponyville. I guess I’m kind of a research professor. They don’t let me teach, or at least they haven’t asked me to yet!”

“I’d love to see this school. I didn’t even know there was that kind of school out here. The only one I’ve seen is the School for Gifted Unicorns.”

“Well, let’s go!”

Scootaloo was all energy now, and it was all that Karyn and Derpy could do to keep up. The school wasn’t on Derpy’s mail route, and it was a part of Ponyville that she almost never got to. In Karyn’s mind a school was large stone buildings and fancy grounds, but it turned out to be closer to the one-room schoolhouses of the past on Earth.

“Yeah, scholarship isn’t big among ponies, at least around here,” said Scootaloo. “Fillydelphia and Manehattan have more ponies into that thing, whereas here most ponies go right from Miss Cheerilee’s class to work.”

“I wonder how she actually gets money,” whispered Karyn to Derpy.

Derpy shrugged, and Scootaloo led them inside. There were only a few ponies there, and Karyn wondered if more weren’t engaged in field research as Scootaloo had been. She led them past a few classrooms, and said, “Here’s my office.”

A moment later, Karyn turned to see Derpy, and wondered if she wasn’t going to have to administer CPR.

Bookshelves lined the walls, but the books were thrown every which way, some on their sides, some facing backwards, others lying open. On the two guest chairs, notebooks and loose paper had been piled up, with the corners sticking out at odd angles. The main desk had a scroll falling off it and an inkwell—empty, thankfully—on its side. Broken quills lay strewn about the floor near the rubbish bin, and a few intact ones were bound together on the desk.

“Did—“ Derpy tried to speak. “Did somepony else do this as a prank?”

“Oh,” said Scootaloo, scratching the back of her neck with her hoof. “I guess it’s a bit messy, but I came back with so many notes, and then I started to collate them, and…you know how it gets.”

“Not really.”

Scootaloo lifted the piles of paper off the chairs and dropped them unceremoniously on the floor next to the desk. “Sit, sit! Let’s start getting into the details of what it is I want to record.”

Derpy was still reeling from Scootaloo’s less-than-fastidious nature, and particularly at the dumping of the papers. She trotted right past the chairs and tried to organize the notes.

“Don’t worry about those, Derpy,” said Scootaloo. “They’re not relevant to what we’re doing now.”

“Forget it, Scootaloo,” said Karyn. “She can’t hear you right now. Think of it this way. If what she sees is clutter, her mind will melt into clutter itself, so she has to arrange her environment so as to keep her brain in order.”

“Well, if it’ll make her happy.” She reached in her desk drawer and rummaged around. Karyn watched another vein throbbing on Derpy’s neck. But Scootaloo shut the drawer and set to work with a new scroll and quill. “OK, name, Karyn. Species, human. What does your name mean, by the way?”

“Huh?”

“Well, like Scootaloo means ‘one who rides scooters,’ and Derpy, for example, means ‘cross-eyed.’ What does your name mean?”

Karyn recalled when she had looked it up. “Well, passed through a dozen different languages and spellings, it means, ‘a pair’.”

Scootaloo wrote that down, and Karyn wanted to ask if it mattered or if was just her curiosity at a foreign naming system.

“Age?”

“Twenty.”

“Age when you got your cutie mark?”

“Nineteen.”

“All right, that’s all the preliminary stuff, now for the fun part. I’ve had to become quite a good artist over the years.” Scootaloo took out a series of colored paints. “Let me see your mark so I can take it down.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Scootaloo acted as if she hadn’t asked anything personal. “I want to draw your cutie mark.”

Karyn realized once again that, when in Equestria, she was going to have to do as the Equestrians did and not concern herself with nudity. She took off the sundress and lowered her underwear. “There you go.”

Scootaloo picked up her quill and started sketching, occasionally dipping into the white or grey paint. Karyn had a laugh as she saw the moment out of context. If she had been told, two years prior, that she’d be stripped bare in another universe as one pegasus sketched a picture of a keyboard using her rear end as a model while another pegasus tidied up the office, she would not have believed it.

After a few minutes of this, Scootaloo said, “All right, hold still. I want to make sure I have the measurements of your cutie mark.” Karyn had to stand still while Scootaloo ran a tape measure over her butt. Once that was done, she was finally able to dress again and sit down.

“Is all that really necessary?”

“Ponies who are into cutie mark theory like to see pictures of cutie marks. Having one from a human will probably get me into the journal next month. Actually, it definitely will.”

“How can you be so sure?” asked Karyn.

“I’m the publisher.”

“Ha, that would work.”

Derpy, meanwhile, had finished with her cleaning. The room still wasn’t to her standards, but at least she could walk around without tripping over anything, and look at the desk without having apoplexy. “So, if you’re doing research on Karyn’s cutie mark,” she said, “you should take measurements of it first. It’s too bad that you can’t draw a picture. Wait! I bet Karyn can take one with her phone.”

Now it was Scootaloo and Karyn that shared the significant look. The picture was on the desk, and Scootaloo picked it up and showed it off.

“Ooh, I didn’t know you had a printer here,” said Derpy.

Scootaloo did her push-aside gesture again. “Beyond that, I have a question about this cutie mark.”

“I’ll try to answer,” said Karyn, “but you’re the expert.”

“My question is fairly simple. What is it?”

“It’s a cutie mark.”

“Yeah, but what does it represent?”

“Oh! Yeah, you wouldn’t have keyboards here. It’s part of a computer.”

Scootaloo grinned. “I see. And that is?”

Karyn wondered where to start, but Derpy came to the rescue, explaining the basics of what computers did and how Karyn worked with them. Whether it was because they were both ponies or because Derpy was a novice, Scootaloo figured it out from her explanation.

“That sounds cool! I want to see you using one, so I can record your talent.”

“I guess if Derpy brings me home briefly I can grab my laptop.”

“No, no!” said Scootaloo. “I want to see you using a computer, not a laptop.”

One explanation and two universe-hops later, Karyn unfolded her laptop and showed it to Scootaloo.

“It doesn’t look exactly like your cutie mark.”

“No, those keyboards are fancy and an option. I don’t even think they could work with this one.” Karyn decided not to explain about USB versus PS/2.

“Well, we’ll do what we can. Make it go.”

Karyn didn’t expect to find wi-fi in Equestria, so she was limited to offline activities. The games that came built-in would have been the most visually impressive, but they used the mouse more than the keyboard. She decided to just open the word processor and dash off a quick letter.

“That’s cool,” said Scootaloo. “Now change into something else and try to keep doing it.”

Karyn had practiced mostly with similar human forms to herself, as well as a larger male disguise for when she felt in peril. But she had been specifically told to change to something else, and the only non-human form she had experience with was a pony. She concentrated and reappeared as the pegasus who had been tossed into the tornado.

“There. What do you think?”

“It’s good, and you’re certainly a lot prettier, but you still have the same cutie mark. Can you change it?”

Karyn bent her neck around, not used to such flexibility, but sure enough the keyboard was still right there, albeit in a less embarrassing position. “Did I have that last time?”

Derpy looked. “I’m not sure. To me it’s natural for you to have those. I think you did, or I would have noticed a blank flank.”

“That’s probably the easiest change to make.” She focused again and two small green patches of light erased the marks.

Scootaloo passed her the laptop. “Now, try to type that same letter again. Make it as close to the first as possible.”

Karyn reached out with her hooves, but immediately saw the problem. “I can’t—“

“A-ha! This was what I hoped for! Evidence of a link between the existence of a cutie mark and the talent it implies. By taking it away, even by changeling magic that’s just supposed to alter its appearance, it’s messed with your ability!”

Karyn looked at Derpy, but she was just as excited. She shook her head. “I’m not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your conclusion there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m not a complete expert on the scientific method, but I believe that you want to control as many variables as possible. In this case, I think it’s far less likely that covering up my cutie mark is what’s stopping me from typing, and more the fact that I no longer have any fingers!”

She began in a casual tone, but accelerated her speech as she became increasingly agitated that neither pony seemed to understand. At last Scootaloo said, “You may be right. You should become a cutie mark researcher yourself!”

“I think it would be difficult finding subjects. But now, are there any other tests that you want to try?”

She rifled through her notes. “If we can, why not try giving yourself a different cutie mark and seeing if you can use the associated talent?”

“Ooh,” said Derpy. “If that works, you could have a lot of powers.”

Karyn tried to think of a cutie mark that she could try. Neither of the two in front of her were useful—she didn’t have any eye issues and was only studying cutie marks to please Scootaloo.

The useful cutie marks she could envision—Rainbow Dash’s speed or Fluttershy’s talent with animals—all needed some sort of implement not in the office just then. She looked around and saw only the stacks of paper. Could she make use of them?

Standing in the middle of the room, the green light encircled her body. She came out identical, but with a wrapped scroll on her flank.

“You stole the mayor’s cutie mark?” said Derpy. “Better hope she never finds out.”

“I’ll get rid of it soon. What I want to do, for Scootaloo, is to see if I can wrap these up in ribbons with any kind of skill.

Scootaloo found a stopwatch and, amazingly, some ribbon. “I have all sorts of odds and ends around this place. All right, you’ve got the scrolls. See how many you can roll in one minute. Ready? Go!”

Karyn did as best she could with her hooves. It was an unfamiliar task, and more than once the scrolls creased as she rolled. But they didn’t unroll, so the tying was easy. When Scootaloo called time , she was just finishing her eleventh.

“Hmm, that was good,” said Scootaloo, “but I think I could do about the same. I’ll try it later to compare. I think as a partial conclusion, we can assume that this cutie mark didn’t give you any excess skill.”

“I guess not.” Karyn stood up, and straightened her dress. Assuming a commanding voice, she said, “Therefore, I declare this experiment…officially closed!”

Both ponies stared for a moment. Derpy was the first to recover. “We just had the wrong talent.”

“Nah, I’m just messing with you,” said Karyn. “A cutie mark is a reflection of who you are inside. It doesn’t make you who you are.”

“I suppose that’s a conclusion on its own,” said Scootaloo.

Author's Notes:

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“And to you. Can I go visible?”

“I wouldn’t, if I were you.” Karyn poked her head out the door. “The Parent Patrol is downstairs now, but they’re around, and we don’t want them poking their heads in because we’re careless.”

“Understood. You seem happy this morning.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Derpy seemed to ponder that for a moment. “Can I ask something else?”

“Of course.”

“What are we on line for?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Well, it kind of made me miss Dinky again. We haven’t seen her for a while. What would you say to me inviting her around or us heading to see her next week?”

“We wouldn’t be studying, would we? She’s off for summer too, right? Because I don’t even want to help a unicorn study on vacation.”

Derpy chuckled. “She’s off too. Just a fun visit.”

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