The Cutie-Marky Tales

by CrowMagnon

First published 16th of December, 2014

Eclipseverse: The bearers of the Elements of Harmony. The names are the same, but their places in life are very, very different. Curious about how to find their own special talents, the Cutie Mark Crusaders listen to the stories of the Mane 6.

An Eclipseverse story.

After another of the Crusaders' misadventures in trying to make their cutie marks appear, they turn to the Mane 6 for advice. One by one, they learn how Equestria's saviors discovered their special talents. This may sound familiar, but the tales these six heroines have to tell will not be.

(Cover art by Tom Preston)

Fluttershy's Fable

"Are you sure this is a good idea, Scootaloo...? You're up really high!"

"Yeah, maybe you should try it after ya can fly a li'l better?"

Scootaloo looked down at her friends. Her hat and cape fluttered in the breeze as she balanced on a tree branch high above them. "But then I might not learn how to do it right! What if I get my wing busted by some bad guy and I have to swing away, but I never figured it out because I always cheated by flying around? That's why Mare-Do-Well always grapples around everywhere!"

"Ah thought it was 'cause she's an earth pony," Apple Bloom shouted back up. "She's got th' grip strength ta swing around lahk that!"

Sweetie Belle looked over at Apple Bloom and asked, "Really? I thought she was a unicorn. I know she was casting spells in a few of those extra-big comics Scootaloo makes me read."

Scootaloo called down, "Okay, first off, those are trade paperbacks, and I never made you read them!"

"You wouldn't tell me where you hid Lord Plushington unless I did!"

"No, I said I'd tell you where that silly bear was if you gave Mare-Do-Well a chance. And I didn't hide it, it just fell under the bed!"

"Ya have a toy bear named 'Lord Plushington?'"

Sweetie Belle's cheeks flushed as she muttered under her breath, "His Lordship doesn't like being called a toy..."

Not hearing this, Scootaloo continued on. "Second, Mare-Do-Well doesn't cast spells. She uses gadgets and mind-tricks to make it look like she's got unicorn magic to take her enemies by surprise! Then she swoops in and rocks 'em like Commander Hurricane!"

Sweetie Belle squeakily shouted up to her pegasus friend, "But what about when she teamed up with Saddle Rager and... ugh, no, that's not the point! Scootaloo, I just don't think this is a good idea!"

"You won't be saying that when I've got my superhero cutie mark! Besides, I'm being careful. That's why we took that mattress out of Apple Bloom's attic, isn't it?"

The two fillies on the ground looked down at the filthy cushion that they had brought with them. Broken springs poked jaggedly out of it at every angle.

"Honestly... lookin' at it now, ya might actually be safer without it," Apple Bloom mused.

Picking up the grappling hook she'd carried up the tree with her, Scootaloo grinned bravely. "See? Apple Bloom believes in me! I'm good enough, I won't even need padding."

"That's not what Ah... Scootaloo, wait!" The two fillies could do nothing but watch, however, when their comics-obsessed friend swung her grappling hook around over her head a few times, then cast it out toward the branch of another tall tree nearby.

Both of them followed the hook's arc, their eyes slowly swivelling to track it as it sailed through the air toward its target. Then they watched as it fell short of the branch and started arcing down toward a pair of pegasus mares who were walking toward them. Walking alongside her friend Rainbow Dash with a peppy bounce in her step, Fluttershy noticed the two fillies and stopped to greet them with a cheerful wave and a smile. "Oh, hi girls! What are you two doing out here?"

Rainbow Dash, on the other hoof, saw that the fillies had been looking upward and turned her eyes to the sky as well. Seeing the errant grappling hook coming toward Fluttershy, she immediately shoved the yellow pegasus out of harm's way, putting herself in its path instead.

Up in the branches above, Scootaloo winced when she heard the clonk of the hook hitting Rainbow Dash's skull. While she peeked one eye open to see the young shaman nursing a growing lump on her head, Rainbow looked back up at her and locked eyes with the caped filly.

With a nervous chuckle, Scootaloo asked, "Soooo... guess I should've yelled 'fore?'"

Fluttershy finished carrying Scootaloo back down to the ground, where Rainbow Dash was coaching the other two Crusaders in how to apply an herbal ointment to the lump on her head. Sensing an opportunity to discover their special talents, they started arguing over which of them would get to do it, giving Rainbow even more of a headache. After getting nudged toward the injured pegasus, Scootaloo cleared her throat and said, "Sorry, Rainbow Dash... A hero shouldn't get innocent ponies hurt."

Rainbow looked down at the filly, and after hearing the contrition in Scootaloo's voice, she gave a forgiving grin and replied, "Well, teach always says I've got a thick head. If you want to make it up to me, why don't you put the medicine on, instead?" Taking the ointment from the other two Crusaders, she offered it to Scootaloo, who took the small jar in her hooves.

Letting out a dejected sigh at being left out, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle looked up at the mares. "What're y'all doin' out here, Mrs. Fluttershy?"

Spotting some baskets hanging from Fluttershy's wings, Sweetie Belle asked, "Were you two having a picnic? ... Out in the middle of the woods?"

Fluttershy giggled and shook her head. "No, Sweetie, I was just helping Rainbow here pick herbs for her potions. What about you three? Were you playing superhero again?"

"No, I was training," Scootaloo firmly corrected while applying the ointment to Rainbow Dash's head. "If I don't get really good at being a superhero, I might get my cutie mark in something else! It could end up being something lame like accounting or... or making dresses for a living!"

Sweetie Belle cheerfully chimed in, "I wouldn't mind making dresses!"

Thinking about the last time they relied on their unicorn friend to make some costumes for them, (along with the wrath of Spot Light, Ponyville's resident fashionista who had offered Sweetie one of the Best Pony Boutique's back rooms to work in, only to have to call the fire department that very same day) Apple Bloom suppressed a shudder and replied, "Well... still, ya should keep yer options open, Sweetie!"

"Oh, that's true," Fluttershy replied. "I remember what I felt like before I got my cutie mark. I was so unsure about what I should do with my life, but the day it came in, it was magical. I'd finally found my destiny." Smiling wistfully at the memory, Fluttershy looked back at her flanks and the mark which adorned them: A pony's hoof held gently in a hand.

"Yeah, that's exactly how I feel about it," Sweetie Belle replied. Bouncing up and down on her dainty little hooves, she asked, "How did you get yours, Mrs. Fluttersy? Please tell us!"

"Hey, yeah! Maybe if we hear how ya got yours, it'll give us some ideas!"

Fluttershy replied, "Oh, I don't think it really works that way. Besides, you don't want to..." She slowly trailed off when she saw all three of the Crusaders were staring at her, each of them with wide, pleading eyes.

Sweetie Belle's lower lip quivered.

"Well, if you really want to hear the story..." Fluttershy replied, succumbing quickly to the adorableness. The Crusaders let out a cheer, prompting her to laugh and urge them to sit. "Okay, settle down. It all started when I was a filly around your age. It was my first and last year at Flight Camp..."

You might find this hard to believe, but I used to be very, very shy. A lot of ponies liked to tease me about it... among other things...

Fluttershy clenched her eyes shut, shivering timidly while hoping that if she just curled up into as small a ball as possible, they might forget she was there. Or maybe she could make herself disappear altogether. That sounded like a better idea by the moment, but no matter how much she wished and prayed to the sun above, she wasn't anywhere but where she was; surrounded by fillies and colts all repeating the same chant over and over again.

"~Fluttershy! Fluttershy! Fluttershy can hardly fly!~"

It had seemed merely senselessly mean when it started. She wasn't a very good flier for her age... Whenever it came time to test her abilities, she would feel the eyes of everypony watching her... judging her... and her little wings would lock up against her sides. And even if she did manage to take off, she was so clumsy and slow that she usually ranked dead last in every exercise.

That had been enough to draw the attention of three colts who constantly made fun of her. Fluttershy would have been happy to avoid them, but there was nowhere she could go where they couldn't easily find her. And then it had gotten even worse.

"~Fluttershy! Fluttershy! Fluttershy can hardly fly!~"

One of them had started chanting that little rhyme. Over and over again. The others were quick to join in, and it was so catchy that a few of the other children had started to join in. Then a few more. Then it seemed like everywhere she went, whenever they had an opening, every filly and colt would start singing that same mocking line. Well, maybe there weren't so many who did it out loud, but everypony thought it. Because it was true. If she wasn't so timid and clumsy, ponies wouldn't be smirking and laughing at her all the time.

Reminding her that she just wasn't good enough, and she never would be.

"~Fluttershy! Fluttershy! Fluttershy can--~"

"Quiet! Shrike's coming!"

The fillies and colts quickly shut up. Moments later, Counselor Shrike approached the children. "Alright, everypony, flap over to the west fields! We're going to be doing some agility exercises today!" The others groaned in aquiescence and started taking off to fly to the designated area. Soon only Fluttershy was left, a tiny, trembling ball of yellow and pink so small that Shrike almost missed her.

Almost.

Glancing back over her shoulder, the camp counselor saw Fluttershy and turned back around. In a harsh tone, she asked, "Hey, did you hear me? I said the west field!"

Fluttershy squeaked in terror and tried to look up at the older mare. Out of all of the counselors, Shrike intimidated Fluttershy most of all. She always sounded so disappointed whenever she participated in activities, always telling Fluttershy that she should do better. The filly was sure that she, more than anyone else at the camp, knew what everypony else did... that Fluttershy was worthless and weak. But she was an adult, so Fluttershy had to at least try to do what she was told...

But she couldn't. She ended up shaking like a newborn foal who could barely open her wings. While she watched the shameful display, Shrike's expression shifted into what absolutely had to be disappointment. "Look... I, uh... I have to go keep the other kids in line," the mare told her. "You go ahead and take a few minutes. Head on over whenever you're ready." And with that, she spread her wings and took off to the west, leaving Fluttershy alone.

For several long minutes, Fluttershy sat alone on the cloud. She hung her head low in shame, the chant of the other children echoing in her head. It was true, she could hardly fly. She wasn't good for--

"Hold on!"

--anything? Fluttershy blinked and looked from side to side. She thought that she'd heard the voice of another filly, but she didn't see anypony nearby. Just cloud and sky.

"Don't give up! You can do it!"

There it was again! It wasn't a voice she recognized, but there was definitely somepony nearby. For a moment she flinched, thinking maybe one of the fillies had come back to tease her some more, but it didn't sound like that. It was a strong, encouraging voice.

When she realized that it was coming from somewhere above her, Fluttershy looked up, only to see a piece of paper flutter down toward her through a nearby cloud.

Fluttershy didn't really think about it. She simply opened her wings and pushed off, fluttering through the sky toward the lazily drifting paper. It was a strange thing to see, given that paper wasn't typically brought so high up. Maybe in the mountaintop offices, or places where they had to write records to be shared with ground-born ponies, but most sky-born pegasi didn't use the stuff, considering all of their architecture was built from water vapor. That made it rare, and it belonged to whoever was speaking, so Fluttershy caught up to the page and grabbed it in her mouth before flying up toward the cloud it had come from.

Just as she flew up high enough to see above the cloud, however, she heard a sound. A grating, grinding sound that immediately put images of terrifying monsters who hid in the skies and gobbled up naughty little fillies who didn't do as they were told. She couldn't stop herself immediately, so she simply clenched her eyes shut, but as she crested the edge of the cloud, the noise was already fading, as if moving farther away despite staying in the same place. When the noise was almost completely gone, Fluttershy dared to open her eyes again and saw...

Nothing. Not a trace of anypony. She thought she might have seen a faint shimmer in the air, like a mirage, but by the time her confused and frightened little mind realized it, it was already gone. There was absolutely nothing that shouldn't have been there, yet Fluttershy was certain that she had heard a voice. Not to mention the paper that was still in her mouth.

The paper! It was proof that she wasn't just imagining things, and also might hold some clue about who was there. She was nervous, not knowing where it had come from or why, but whoever had been speaking... well, they'd actually sounded nice. Telling her to hold on and not to give up... maybe it would be okay to find them and return what they'd dropped, so she landed on a patch of cloud and carefully held the page in her hooves so that she could read it.

There wasn't much to the paper. It looked torn and damaged to Fluttershy, like it had been ripped out of a book. The parts that were intact enough to read, however, made it look like a bullet list with the header, "l's Rules of Confidence"

"One: Don't be shy, look them in the eye," Fluttershy read out loud. Shaking her head, she told herself, "But if I do that, they'll just see that... I'm a little scaredy-pony. And they already tease me about that anyway." She swallowed nervously just thinking about it, but happy, confident ponies had no trouble looking each other in the eye, and they weren't the ones being made fun of. Maybe that was why she'd found it in the first place. Whoever had dropped it... maybe they were trying to help her?

Deciding that it was worth a try, Fluttershy continued reading. "Two: When somepony tries to block... show them... that you rock!"

A little while later, Fluttershy was making her way to the west fields, where Counselor Shrike was guiding the other children in their exercises, making them fly through a series of rings. The three colts who always tormented her were off to the side, though, hanging out between Fluttershy and everypony else. Her first instinct was to try to creep around them without being noticed, but one of them caught sight of her and flew over toward her.

"Hey, Fluttershy! It took you this long to catch up? You really are a lousy flier! They're gonna kick you out and send you to live on the ground!"

Fluttershy reflexively cringed away from the bully, but whispered to herself, "Don't be shy, look them in the eye..." She then forced herself to look back up, her voice trembling slightly as she asserted, "I... I'm not going anywhere. I d-deserve to be here j-just as much as anypony else..."

With that, she tried to move around the colt, only to be stopped when he moved to get in her way. With a mocking laugh, he asked the others, "Hey, you hear that? Fluttershy says she belongs here! You wanna fly around with the other kids? Go ahead." Fluttershy tried to get around him again, only for him to match her movements. "Come on, I thought you wanted to play with your friends. Oh right, you don't have any!"

"When s-somepony tries to b-block..."

The colt tilted his ear toward Fluttershy and asked, "What was that? Heh, what, are you gonna do something about it?"

Fluttershy gulped and squeaked out, "Sh-show them that you rock!" Rearing up on her hind legs, Fluttershy whimpered and randomly flailed her forelegs around, then fell back down to all fours and hit the clouds hard enough to disrupt a small patch directly beneath the colt. His friends saw his eyes go wide with surprise for a moment before gravity took hold and he started tumbling down the hole.

Fluttershy yelped, fearful that she'd done something horrible and sent a fellow child plummeting to their death! The other two colts were too surprised to move as she threw herself to the edge of the hole she'd created and looked down...

... Only to find the colt hovering in place, struggling only to keep from busting out laughing. A battle he quickly lost when he saw her frightened face. "Oh, wow! The look on your face! What, you forgot I'm a pegasus?"

The other two immediately snorted and started falling over themselves laughing as well. "What'd you expect? She can hardly fly. She probably hoped you were as lame as her!"

As the laughter beat against Fluttershy's eardrums, the little yellow filly should have felt ashamed. She should have been afraid of what the bullies were going to do to her in retaliation, or of being teased more. Instead, she heard the teasing and saw her vision slowly consumed by red as she felt something else rise up inside her.

"I... I was concerned about you! Even after everything you've done... as miserable as you made me... I didn't want to hurt anypony. But you just... you just keep making fun of me!"

Her words didn't have any effect on the colts except possibly to make them cackle even louder and more obnoxiously at her. It seeped into her ears, pooling and shifting into a low, angry roar like a thunderstorm as she grit her teeth in anger. "You laugh at me... I WRATH AT YOOOOUUUU!"

This actually succeeded in stopping their laughter as the shriek of primal anger from the timid and meek little Fluttershy took them completely by surprise. The one in the hole suddenly found himself being tackled as Fluttershy launched herself at him, screaming a primal war cry from the pit of her stomach with her hooves battering against--

"That was you?!"

Fluttershy trailed off, pulling herself out of her memory when Rainbow Dash suddenly interrupted. "Oh, um... yes. I guess you heard about it?" Fluttershy let out a chagrined chuckle of embarassment at how Rainbow's jaw was hanging open.

"Heard about it...? When I started flight camp, that blow-up was legendary. Geeze, you should've said something back when Gilda was in town. She'd have wanted your bucking autograph!"

Fluttershy coughed and replied, "Rainbow Dash, what I did could have gotten somepony seriously hurt, and I really don't deserve any praise for it," tilting her head toward the Crusaders, who were staring at Fluttershy in an awestruck mix of fear and, especially in Scootaloo's case, respect.

"Huh? Oh! Right, yeah. Violence is bad, and stuff," Dash lamely backpedaled.

Scootaloo asked excitedly, "But it was good there, right? I mean, that's how you got your cutie mark!"

Fluttershy shook her head. "Nope, I didn't get my mark until much, much later!"

Scootaloo deflated a little, leaving Apple Bloom to ask the obvious. "But then why in tarnation did ya tell us that story?" Then she eeped and quickly put a smile on her face, nervously adding, "If, uh... ya don't mind, Mrs. Fluttershy, ma'am...?"

"I really like your mane!" Sweetie Belle squeaked, not wanting to risk triggering the pegasus mare's wrath either.

Instead of being offended in the slightest, Fluttershy assured them, "It's okay, girls. That was a very long time ago, and I've learned much better ways of dealing with mean ponies since then. In fact, that's what this next part of the story is about.

After attacking that colt, Counselor Shrike ended up having to catch us. I was so angry, I didn't even notice how close we were to hitting the ground. After that, my parents had to pull me out of camp. It was so embarassing for them, and I had to go to a special class every week instead...

Fluttershy hung her head, trying to hide her face behind her mane as she walked to her 'special class'. At least, that's what her parents called it. Young as she was, Fluttershy knew what it actually was. It was a place for bad ponies like her, to keep the rest of Equestria safe.

Well, not just ponies. There were some griffons, too, and even a young minotaur. Everyone had been a troublemaker, though, and Fluttershy was terrified. Not of them, as she might have been before, but of what she might do if one of them tried to pick on her. All because of that piece of paper...

Suddenly, her head bumped against something, or rather someone. A squeaky but boyish voice grunted in protest, and her saddlebags slipped off her back as she backed up a step to see that she'd walked right into the minotaur of all creatures. He was taller than her by a bit, thanks to standing up on his strangely tiny hind legs, but also outweighed her by a considerable margin, being quite pudgy. "Oh... sorry," she said in a dull tone. "I'll watch where I'm going next time..."

The young minotaur's acne-spotted face scowled for a moment, but it softened quickly when she apologized. "Uh... 'kay. Yeah," he awkwardly replied before turning away. Fluttershy supposed that he didn't want to say anything more than that, so she lowered her head again and continued down the hall.

"Hey! Stop!"

Fluttershy came to a stop and looked back over her shoulder to see the minotaur coming toward her. At first she thought maybe she'd done something wrong again, but then she saw the torn piece of paper in his hand. "You dropped this. What is it, anyway?" He held the page up in front of his face. "Never apologize when you can criticize? Huh... sounds like good advice."

To his surprise, Fluttershy immediately snatched it from his hand, practically pushing him over in the process. "It's not good advice! It's evil," Fluttershy exclaimed, cramming it deep into the bottom of her saddlebag. Her eyes began watering with bitter tears as she started to sniffle. "I thought... maybe whoever dropped it was trying to help me, but they weren't! It was all a lie..."

After a few seconds, the confused minotaur asked, "Okaaay... so if it's evil, why are you carrying it around?"

"So I don't forget..." Fluttershy replied. "So I don't forget why I'm here..."

There was another brief pause before the minotaur asked another question.

"Why are you here? I've seen you with the rest of the group and you really don't seem like you belong here. You're way too..."

"... Scared? Weak? Pathetic?" Fluttershy offered.

"I was gonna say 'nice.'"

Fluttershy shook her head. "No... no, I'm not." And with that, she started to tell him everything that had led to her expulsion from Flight Camp.

When she was finished, the filly realized that she had been recounting her story for several minutes without interruption. "Oh... sorry," she apologized. "I didn't mean to bother you with my problems..."

"What, are you kidding? You're the first pony who talks to me like a real person since my family moved here," the minotaur replied bitterly. "Everypony else either calls me 'tubbo' or 'spots'... but most of 'em just call me a 'monster.' That's why I'm here... Figured if they were gonna call me a monster, I might as well be tough like one... Then nopony'd push me around..."

Fluttershy blinked and looked up into the young minotaur's eyes as his voice trailed off. He had a determined look on his face, but Fluttershy saw something familiar behind it. A certain self-loathing that she knew well enough that she never wanted to see it in another creature. "You're not a monster," she said emphatically, flapping her wings to support herself as she reared up to bring herself to his eye level. "You really aren't. I am..."

"Now that's a big pile of cowchips," the minotaur replied before adding, "Pardon my Tauren. But there's no way you're a monster."

"But I could've gotten somepony killed!"

The minotaur crossed his arms across his chest and glanced around before looking back at Fluttershy. "And you feel lousy, don't you? Monsters don't feel bad about doing bad stuff. They just keep doing it. There are some bad ponies here, but I don't think you're one of 'em. You just... made a bad decision."

Fluttershy blinked a few times and brought a hoof to her chin. She had never even thought of it like that before. She just assumed that she was horrible, but the minotaur sounded so sure. In a soft little voice, she asked, "Do you... really think so?" When he nodded in affirmation, she then asked, "What about you? Do you... feel bad about what happened?"

This time, it was the young minotaur's turn to blink in surprise. He brought a hand to the back of his head and eventually replied, "Well... kinda... yeah. I mean, I didn't want to. Those jerks started it, but... in the moment, I thought I'd feel like I won if I pushed them around, ya know? And my dad said I was just standing up for myself, but... I dunno. I'm probably just not as nice as you," he said with a shrug, looking away from her.

Despite dredging up all of the painful events that had led to her current situation, Fluttershy found herself smiling a little at the awkward young bull. "Well, I think you're nice," she told him. "If you're a monster, then I want to be a monster like you." Without even thinking about it or really understanding why, she took a deep breath, then let out a loud, "RARRRRR!"

The minotaur stared at her, blank-faced and wide-eyed as she growled. Beyond that, he showed no reaction, and Fluttershy thought she might have gone too far and hit a nerve. At least, that's what she started to think until he snorted and started laughing. He tried to stifle it for a moment, but that didn't last long, and he soon had to lean against the nearest wall to stay upright. "Oh... oh Minos! That is just... That's just adorable," he exclaimed, his voice cracking.

Fluttershy found herself giggling easily along with him. It wasn't until later that she would realize there was anything weird about it, but it wasn't like being laughed at by the bullies. The young minotaur had been kind enough to listen to her and reassure her, and it felt good to see him laughing and feeling better.

As their shared giggle-fit slowly died down, he chuckled and grinned down at her. "Thanks... I needed that."

Fluttershy smiled demurely and nodded, but her head slowly tilted down as her thoughts turned inward. "Yeah... me too. Maybe if I could've laughed like that, I wouldn't have gotten so angry."

"Maybe you should," he replied. Then, more firmly, he asserted, "No... maybes are for babies! You should be the one laughing, not those jerks who were picking on you!"

Fluttershy perked up, her smile returning at the minotaur's words. "You really think so?"

"I know so!" He held out his hand toward her. "Hey... you want to be friends? I'm Iron Will."

Fluttershy smiled. "I know. You're the only minotaur here," she replied as she reached up to place her hoof in his hand. "And I'd love to be your friend. I'm Fluttershy."

So we spent the next several months in our special class, but most of the best lessons we ever had were the ones we learned from each other, talking about our problems and supporting each other. Finally, the time came when we were asked to do a presentation in front of the others to show what we'd learned.

Fluttershy stumbled a bit as she tried to properly put on the tie that Will had given her for their routine. Doing so with hooves was awkward enough, but she'd started to go through a growth spurt, and her legs had gotten all long and gangly without giving the rest of her body a chance to catch up, making her feel like she was on stilts made of noodles every time she would walk around. Especially now that she was going to be out in front of everyone else. Everyone... staring at her...

Sweet sleepy Luna, she couldn't breathe! Her throat was closing up!

But then she felt a pair of arms reach around her from behind. Immediately, the worry started to fade as she leaned back against her friend while Iron Will loosened her tie and helped her get it on straight. "There ya go. You don't want to put it on so tight."

Fluttershy took a few deep breaths before she turned around to hug him. "My hero! Hope you aren't too nervous," she said, her own body trembling slightly.

Will just grinned back at her and replied, "Don't be silly. Of course I am! We could make fools of ourselves out there!"

Fluttershy's smile widened, and she nodded. "But even if we do, at least we can make spectacular fools of ourselves!"

Will snickered and took her hooves in his hands. "And either way, we'll have a good laugh when we're done."

Fluttershy nodded, and together they made their way to the stage where their lives would change. The counselor in charge of their 'special class', more honestly referred to as a therapy group, had rented out a small theater to give everyone in the group a venue to express themselves. Some of the meanest, angriest youths in Equestria were in the audience, but Fluttershy and Iron Will were as ready as they could possibly be. They stepped out into the middle of the stage to the forced applause of those in their seats, and a few heckling jeers before the counselors shushed them.

Less than a year ago, such a thing would have turned the young mare into a quivering, nervous wreck. Instead, she chose to giggle and lean against Will's side for strength before she began to sing.

One day I fell out of the sky, so far down I thought I'd die

I would splat and turn into an icky, splattered Flattershy

"Ew," Will interjected, sticking his tongue out at the image, which earned them a few snickers from the audience.

I thought I was a goner

And the light almost went out

But Iron Will here came and saved the day

With his patented shout

"Remember, this is trademarked!" Will told the audience.

Fluttershy flitted between him and the audience to assure them, "And just to be clear, that wasn't the important part."

Iron Will tugged Fluttershy back by her tail. "Whattaya mean? I want to get paid for this! What's more important than that?"

This got a few more laughs out of the audience, so Fluttershy made a silly, ditzy grin and replied, "Well, they're paying attention, at least!"

Iron will seemed to mull this over a bit before shrugging. "Eh, gotta start somewhere. But after this, I'm getting an agent! So this is what I told her:"

"Flutters, you can keep right on falling

For the rest of your days

But in three little syllables

Your troubles can all melt away!"

Ha! Ha! Ha!

Fluttershy got up on her hind legs and spread her wings and shrugged her shoulders in confusion. "That's it? Just... laugh?"

Iron Will responded by playfully tapping her on the top of her head. "Hey, all the bad stuff seems so big when you keep it all stuffed up in here. Push it out with a big laugh, and it'll look a lot smaller!"

"But what about the stuff that isn't just in my head?"

"Then at least you won't have all those little problems cluttering up your noggin while you fix the real ones!"

Fluttershy smiled widely at that, and the pony and minotaur started dancing and capering out the stage. Fluttershy even flew around a bit, pulling a few small flips and twists while they sang together.

So I'll laugh at my bad luck

Have a gas when you get stuck

Titter at my tumbles

Snicker at your stumbles

Belly laugh at my bullies

Have fun with your follies

And when it seems like nothing's going my way, I'll take a deep breath and throw my head back, and from the bottom of my soul, I'll say--WAAAAAGH!

As Fluttershy launched into the big finish, she pirhouetted up into the air and did a figure-eight loop over Iron Will's head. At least, that was the intention, but one of her awkwardly long legs accidentally clipped his horn, yanking him off to one side and throwing her off balance. Both of them let out a loud grunt as they tumbled to the floor. Hard.

Will groaned and rubbed his head while Fluttershy picked himself up. "Uuuugh. Hey, you okay, Flutters?"

The pegasus shook her head... and then started to giggle. "Are you kidding? That was awesome! We couldn't have planned that if we tried! We just made spectactular fools of ourselves!"

Will blinked, then joined her in snickering, wrapping an arm around her shoulder as their laughter built up. "You're right! Wow, totally made our point there!"

The audience, unsure if this was part of the act or not, could nevertheless enjoy a good bit of slapstick. Soon, every creature in the theater was laughing, with even the more jaded ponies stomping their hooves in applause. And while they laughed, brightening the mood of the entire building, Iron Will raised a hand and curled it up into a fist, holding it out toward Fluttershy. She looked back into his eyes and grinned so widely, she thought her face might split in half as she raised a hoof to bump against his fist.-----"In that moment, I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I wanted to devote myself to helping ponies overcome their fears and worries, and I knew who I wanted by my side the whole way through. There was a flash of light, and my cutie mark appeared, symbolizing my passion for encouraging every creature to support each other through hard times, and to accept help in facing their problems."

"Neat! That was a nice story, Mrs. Fluttershy," Sweetie Belle cheerfully exclaimed.

Scootaloo protested, "But it took so long for her to realize what her special talent was." To Fluttershy, she asked, "Are you saying we're gonna have to do something for months before it'll get us our cutie marks?"

Fluttershy blinked and tilted her head. "Uh... no, that's not really what I..."

"Scootaloo's got a point there," Apple Bloom mused. "Most times, cutie marks show up all of a sudden, right? So Mrs. Fluttershy's story don't really help us much." Looking over to see Rainbow Dash gathering up some herbs from the surrounding area while Fluttershy was telling her story, she asked, "What about you, Rainbow Dash? Did you get your mark real slow, or was it from somethin' big an' fast?"

The Rainbow Witch of the Everfree raised her head with a mouthful of moss, and leaned over to place it in her saddlebags. "Who, me? Yeah... it was fast alright, but you don't want me to--"

Scootaloo perked up and interjected, "Yes we do! We need all the help we can get!" The other two nodded, neither of them feeling like arguing the point.

Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow, then shrugged and replied, "Alright... I think I've got enough for today. Let's head back to town, and I'll tell you along the way. Just don't say I didn't warn you."

Rainbow's Reminiscience

"Sooo... does this have something to do with how you got your cutie mark?" Sweetie Belle asked, tilting her head in confusion.

She sounded uncertain. They had been ready to follow the adult pegasi back out of the woods while listening to Rainbow Dash's tale, but just as they were about to move on, Rainbow Dash had stopped suddenly in her tracks.

Instead of answering Sweetie Belle's question, Rainbow raised a hoof to her lips and made a shushing sound while she surreptitiously slipped a few wing feathers into one of her saddlebags. When she drew them out again, the tips were coated with green dust, which trailed along the path her wing made as she flapped it once to create a breeze. Fluttershy and the confused fillies all watched as a line of the powder was carried along by that breeze, winding through the forest like a serpent until it drifted out of sight.

Moments later, the young shaman's actions were answered by the sound of a mare's startled shriek coming from above. The Cutie Mark Crusaders jumped in surprise as another pegasus mare, this one in Ranger armor, came tumbling down. They winced as she hit several branches on the way down, but she managed to spread her wings open just in time to come to a safe--if not particularly graceful--landing.

Seeing the Ranger make her rather undignified entrance, Rainbow Dash snickered and asked, "'Sup, Sunburn? Having fun spying on us?"

The blond-maned, burnt-orange mare flushed a bit and indignantly retorted, "I wasn't spying..."

To that, Scootaloo looked at her with a dubious expression and said, "Let me guess. Mom wanted you to keep tabs on us."

"... Okay, yeah, but I was just doing a quick fly-over to make sure you girls hadn't set the woods on fire. Then I saw you hanging out with these two," she said, pointing a hoof at the other pegasi, "and figured I wouldn't butt in."

"But then why'd ya scream?" Apple Bloom asked, to which Rainbow Dash snickered to herself.

Sunburn gave the young shaman a nasty look while she answered the filly's question. "Let me tell you something, kid. When you get married, the scariest thing in the world is seeing your wife's face looking at you like you forgot her birthday."

Fluttershy giggled at that. "This is true. There've been so many times where I got Will to do my bidding just by making him think I'm going to do The Face."

"'The Face?'" Sweetie Belle asked, her ears perking up in curiosity.

Fluttershy hopped up into the air and hovered over them with a serious look. "Yep! Just watch, but remember, girls... only use this power responsibly. If the secret of The Face spread too far, it could shift the balance of power, and bring ruin to Equestria! So first, I need you all to close your eyes, and count to three before opening them." The three fillies gulped and looked between each other, but they did close their eyes and made the count.

When they opened their eyes again, Fluttershy was right in front of them, her eyes crossed to the point that they were even more skewed than Derpy Hooves, and her cheeks puffed out with a hoof in her mouth as if she were trying to blow it up like a stubborn balloon. *

Startled, the fillies yelped and jumped back, but Fluttershy continued to hover in the air and follow after them, letting out a menacing growl muffled by her hoof while she made her eyes spin around. The Crusader's squeals quickly morphed into giggles, though, as Fluttershy chased them around. While this was going on, Rainbow Dash and Sunburn leaned against each other while guffawing at the fillies' plight.

After this went on for a little while, and Sunburn's laughter died down enough to get words out, the Ranger turned to Rainbow Dash and asked, "So, Dash, uh... weren't you gonna tell a story or something before you made that freaky dust of yours look like Spot Light when I haven't taken the garbage out?"

This pulled the fillies' attention away from trying to escape, and a giggling Apple Bloom skidded to a stop in front of them. "Oh yeah! Y'all were gonna tell yer cutie mark story!"

Apple Bloom's sudden stop caused her friends to run into her, knocking all three of them to the ground. Stopping her chase, Fluttershy let her face go back to normal and started helping them back onto their hooves. "Oof... yeah, can you tell us now, Rainbow Dash?" Sweetie Belle asked.

Scootaloo just stared at her, waiting expectantly. "Okay, okay, but let's get back on the road." Dash relented with a mocking grin toward the Ranger. "Sunburn can play bodyguard while we head home instead of acting like a stalker."

For most of the fillies and colts attending Flight Camp, it was a regular day. Some were playing, others were doing their daily exercises to build up their wing strength and stamina. But then something shot past them so quickly that they barely saw anything but a pale blue streak that left rainbow-colored contrails in its wake.

Back then, I was the hottest thing on wings, and every day was a blast.

Rainbow Dash shot a cocky smirk at the other pegasi, who all seemed to be in slow motion compared to her. Seeing a particular trio of colts, she zoomed past them so quickly and so close that they were sent spinning. Dash couldn't help but let out a guffaw as she looked back over her shoulder to see them drilling themselves down into the cloudbank. Unfortunately, this kept her from noticing the cloud that she was shooting straight toward until she punched through it, coming out the other end completely covered in cloudmass except for her wings and tail.

I... may not have had the best control, but let me tell you, I was fast.

Before Rainbow Dash could shake the fluffy clouds off of her, a brown blur suddenly shot past her, sending the pegasus spinning while bits of cloud flew away from her body in all directions. As she slowly came to a stop, the very dizzy filly held her head to regain her bearings and glared at a nearby griffoness who was laughing her head off. Her angry expression didn't last long, however, and soon shifted into a competitive smirk as she flapped her wings and zipped toward another nearby cloud.

Once there, Rainbow carefully lined up her shot, wiggling her hindquarters to get it just right before her hind legs shout back, shooting a chunk of the cloud away from her and straight into her friend's laughing mouth. Gilda chocked and sputtered a bit until she spat it out, but once that was done, the two of them shared in their laughter as they flew off together.

And I had an awesome friend who always pushed me to be my best. But then, one day there was a storm that put all that to the test.

A month ago, her dad had taken her and Gilda down to a movie theater in Fillydelphia. She couldn't really remember much about the movie itself thanks to having trouble sitting still that long, but her dad had painted the posters for it, so that was cool.

What she really remembered, though, was that before the film, they showed a cartoon about a mischievous rabbit turning the tables on a dimwitted griffon hunter. Gilda's heckling had been as hilarious as the cartoon itself, which ended when the rabbit tricked the hunter into slamming into a mountainside with a cave painted on it. The dopey griffon had wobbled around with a goofy, gap-toothed grin and little tweeting birdies flying around his head.

At the time, she had thought it was so funny that she had nearly snorted juice out of her nose.

Rainbow Dash hurt. She hurt in places that she didn't even know she had places. She could vaguely remember tumbling out of control and crashing into something, but she had always had clouds to crash into before, and those rarely hurt much more than her pride. It was funny, though. As much pain as she was in, she could swear she heard birds tweeting, just like in that cartoon.

Slowly cracking an eyelid open, Dash looked around and began to panic.

Darkness was a foreign concept to the little pegasus, as it was for most creatures who lived their entire lives above the clouds. Even at night, when only the moon and stars shone down, the cloudstuff that their homes were made of diffused and filtered the light throughout the room so that she was never blind to her surroundings. Even in the movie theater, her father and friend had been there to distract her from the absence of light in the brief moment between the dimming of the house lights and beginning of the show.

This was darkness. Everywhere she looked, her vision was blinded by shadow. The few tiny, frail flickers of light shining down like little stars only served to accentuate the fact that there was a wall between her and the sky. A wall of shadow keeping her trapped in an unfamiliar and hostile land.

Dash wasn't going to stay there any longer than she had to, though. Fighting the pain with every movement, every breath, Rainbow Dash planted a hoof against the bizarrely solid ground beneath her and rolled herself upright. She tried to stretch her wings out and give them a few test flaps, but the instant she tried to move them, she screamed in agony as she felt the pain of a hundred daggers jabbing into her spine.

She looked back over her shoulder, and as her eyes slowly adjusted to the grim dark of her surroundings, she shrieked at the top of her lungs when she saw the way one of her wings hung uselessly from its joint, the limb shattered and twisted almost beyond recognition.

"Holy hay, Rainbow! That's how you busted your wing?! How are you even alive?" Sunburn stared at Rainbow with wide, horrified eyes. She and Fluttershy both had their own wings clenched protectively against their sides.

By contrast, Scootaloo just looked like she was mildly annoyed. "And what's with this storm? It crippled you, but you skipped right over it! Same with that friend you mentioned. What about them?"

"Hey, it's my story, and I'll tell it the way I want," Rainbow testily replied as they reached the edge of the woods. The dirt road leading them back to Ponyville was nearby, so she led the way to it. "Besides... Gilda's a whole other story completely. As for the storm, it didn't matter how I broke my wing. I'm just sticking to the important stuff, like the bird."

"What bird?"

As Rainbow Dash's horrified screams faded, they were replaced by the sounds of her gasping for breath as she hyperventilated, her eyes locked on the mangled limb. She was trapped. Trapped on the ground, in the middle of the Everfree Forest. Even up in the clouds, they told horror stories about the monstrous, pony-eating monsters that lurked in the darkness created by the thick canopy. That the trees themselves would scoop up and devour little ponies who got too close.

In the sky, she had been all but fearless. Now, she knew what true terror was, and she felt like she was drowning in it. She was a wounded little pony, stuck in the most horrifying place in Equestria with no way out. A helpless snack for whichever carnivorous monster found her first. She needed to get out! She needed to fly away and escape back to the sky, where her mom and dad and best friend would be waiting for her! Somewhere where the trees weren't so thick that they were suffocating her while that constant chirping rang in her head over and over and over...

Clutching her hooves to her head, Rainbow Dash threw herself to the ground and sobbed, "Stop! Stop it! I don't wanna be here! I wanna go home! Daddy...! Gilda...! Mom...! Somepony help meeeeee!"

Despite her pleas, nopony came to her rescue. There was no grand fluttering of wings or beams of blessed sunlight shining down on her from above as her parents, Gilda, and the Wonderbolts themselves spread open the leafy canopy to carry her back home. Instead, what she got was the continued sound of frantic tweeting, and the feeling of something weakly beating against her hoof.

With a start, Rainbow jumped and shook her head frantically as she realized that something was moving in her mane! The sudden movement easily dislodged it, and she raised her hoof to stomp on whatever hideous bug might have been crawling in her mane, just seconds away from sinking its venomous fangs into her head and paralyzing her so the rest of its family could come out and eat her alive!

But it wasn't some disgusting little creature with too many legs. Instead, Rainbow Dash found herself looking down at a small yellow bird. It was just a chick, really, tweeting in distress as it flapped its tiny wings in vain, one of which looked bent the wrong way, much as her own was.

That the first animal she saw was such a cute, harmless little thing took Rainbow by surprise. She just stood there, watching it struggle for a few moments before lowering her hoof. "Wh-what are you doing down here? Don't you know how dangerous it is?!"

As if to answer her, the little chick momentarily stopped its tweeting and looked up at the filly with pleading little eyes. It then pointed its wing upward.

Tilting her head up, Rainbow Dash's found her eyesight had adjusted more to the darkness of the forest, allowing her to see a path of bent and broken branches that she had struck during her fall. One of them held the scattered remnants of a nest.

Rainbow felt a chill in the pit of her gut when she realized what must have happened. "You're hurt and trapped down here, too... because of me. I--"

"Monster! Run!"

Rainbow nearly jumped out of her skin, jolted out of her thoughts by what she could swear was a pony's voice! A search party? But it sounded like a filly's voice. Nopony would let a bunch of fillies fly down into the Everfree Forest. Oh no... oh, sweet Celestia! What if Gilda flew down alone to look for her?!

"W-w-wait! You actually heard that?" Sunburn interrupted.

Rainbow sighed and stopped walking for a moment to look back and the Ranger. "Look, I know it's crazy. There wasn't anypony or griffon it could've been, but I swear I heard a voice at the time. Voices, actually..."

"You have to carry her! Get her out of here!"

Just as Rainbow Dash was about to push her battered little body toward the source of the voice and try to help what she assumed was her friend, a second voice interrupted her. This one was higher and more girly than the other, but as confused as she was, the words 'carry her' struck a chord in the wounded filly. Looking back over her shoulder at the chick, which was still trying in vain to hop and flap back up into the safety of the tree branches above, she quickly realized how helpless it would be if anything came across it.

And it would be Rainbow Dash's fault that it was crippled and stuck on the forest floor in the first place.

Doing her best to jostle her broken wing as little as possible, Rainbow Dash hurried over to the chick and ducked her head down beneath it when it hopped up, letting the tiny bird land in her colorful mane. "Come on, we've gotta get outta here! I'll... I'll bring you back, I promise," she told it, meaning every word with all her heart.

Surprisingly, the baby bird actually seemed to understand what Rainbow was saying. Or maybe her messy mane just felt enough like a nest. Either way, it held onto her hair with its tiny wings and talons. Rainbow Dash didn't have much time to let the chick settle in, though, as she heard a twig snap nearby. She immediately turned her head to see who or what was approaching.

Just as immediately, she wished that she had taken the mysterious voice's advice and fled the instant she had the chance.

Two orange eyes glared at her from the darkness as paws that seemed as large as the filly herself stalked toward her, bringing the monstrous form of a hungry manticore into view. It kept its body low to the ground, but its scorpion tail was raised as it prepared to pounce on its weak and wounded prey.

Rainbow Dash felt her body stiffen with terror as her eyes locked on those of the huge predator. Death was creeping toward her, and she couldn't fly away from it. She was trapped as surely as if her hooves were bolted to the forest floor.

"That would have been the end of me, and everything I ever dreamed. But it wasn't as hopeless as it seemed," Rainbow told the Crusaders, pausing to lean in close. Despite it being the middle of the day, her face seemed to be cast in shadow as her voice took on an ominous tone. "Just as the monster was about to make me its lunch, there was a weird grinding, growling noise that sounded like something even bigger wanted to beat it to the punch! Maybe the voices I'd heard were just in my head, but the manticore sure heard this, and the instant it was distracted, I fled!"

With a flourish of her good wing, Rainbow darted away and vanished from sight. The fillies and pegasi then spotted her living up to her last name as she dashed and darted between between the trees, even as she continued telling them, "I was more a flier than a runner back then, but I knew I'd do whatever it took to survive! But I didn't know where I was running to until I finally arrived."

A flick of her wing into her dust pouch sent the green powder flying in front of Dash. The breeze she created made it take the form of a gnarled tree surrounded by frightening masks as she skidded to a stop in front of the group once more.

"I didn't stop running until I caught sight of a dwelling far away from civilization. As scary as it looked, all I could do was hope it would be my salvation."

Rainbow Dash gasped for air, even when it felt like every breath brought a stabbing pain. Her little legs were on fire, but she kept pushing herself forward. Even when it felt like she was about to collapse and simply give up, though, the chick in her mane would tweet or clutch at her head, reminding her that it was there. That she had to keep going, even if she didn't know where to go.

Still, determination alone could only take her so far. While the rest of her body hadn't suffered as badly as her wing, she was still hurt and exhausted beyond anything she'd ever felt before, and her young mind was overtaxed with the fear that the manticore she had narrowly escaped from might catch up to her at any moment.

She was on a path, though. The ground beneath her hooves was marked with adult-sized hoofprints here and there. That meant that there was somepony who actually traveled safely through this terrible place.

Or maybe it just meant that there had been somepony walking through at some point, and maybe they were killed and eaten ages ago. It wasn't like in the clouds, where hoofprints rarely lasted long. For all Rainbow knew, the hoofprints could be years old. Still, she followed them, dragging her tired body along until she saw a strange sight. The trail that she was following led straight to an old, gnarled tree.

By itself, Rainbow wasn't surprised to see a tree in the middle of the forest. What did surprise her was that there was a door and windows built into the side of it, and the inside looked hollow from what she could tell. She had never seen a house built into a tree before, but the fact that there was a house at all meant that somepony did live out in the middle of the wilderness.

What made this less than reassuring was the foreboding mask above the door. In the general shape of a pony's head, its eyes seemed to glare out at the little filly like a big 'Do Not Enter' sign. Not that she'd ever considered such things much more than guidelines in her reckless past, but it was desperation, not curiosity that led her to stagger and stumble toward the tree.

Unfortunately, that was when her hoof decided to catch on a rock in her path, causing her to trip and fall on her face. Rainbow tried to pick herself up. To push herself those last few yards to get to the door and maybe... just maybe find some safety. But her body had chosen to give up instead. She could barely scratch at the ground in front of her, let alone support her weight.

To top it off, her vision was swimming and she could barely even see in front of her as exhaustion came to claim her like a dark shroud. The last thing she was aware of before her consciousness slipped away was the sound of the chick in her mane tweeting frantically, then the door slowly creaking open to allow a dark figure hidden in a thick cloak to peer out at her.

When Rainbow awoke, it was to the sound of a mare's voice. For a moment, her tired mind almost thought that it was her mother. That she had been found, carried back up to Cloudsdale, and now she was about to be greeted by her friends and family.

There were a few things that immediately gave away that this was not the case. For starters, she couldn't remember the last time her mom had sounded so calm. Then there was the indecipherable chant the mare was doing that sounded like alien gibberish to the little filly.

And then, of course, there was what she saw when her vision came back into focus. She was inside the tree house, which had the layout of a small one-room shack. The bed she was resting in was on the side of the house opposite the only door, and all around her she could see more of those creepy masks looming over her, along with colorful bottles filled with things Rainbow couldn't even guess at.

She wasn't alone, either. There in the middle of the room was a firepit with a large iron cauldron bubbling away while a robed figure faced away from her and slowly stirred its contents.

"H... hello...?" Rainbow whispered. She then eeped in fright when the mare actually turned to look back at her, half-revealing a grey face with two large eyes that almost seemed to glow from beneath the shadows of her hood.

Suddenly (and most certainly without wanting to) Rainbow's mind returned to a time just a few weeks ago, when the other fillies and colts had been telling scary stories in the dim light of the new moon. Letting out a loud and very uncharacteristically high-pitched "eep," Rainbow clutched the blankets covering her tiny body and stammered, "A-are you the... the O-ol-olden P-pony...?!"

There was a brief pause, and Rainbow gulped as she saw the glowing eyes narrow at her.

"Ha... haha... hahahaha!" The robed mare started to laugh, and the easygoing, mirthful tone of it contrasted sharply with her intimidating attire. "Neigh, little one, it is not at death's door that you did fall," she told the filly while reaching up to pull back her robe's hood. When she did, Rainbow saw that the grey mare had a striped coat, and her mane was a stiff mohawk while large golden rings decorated her ears and neck. "... Nor am I a pony at all. Zecora is the name by which I'm known. What is yours, and how did you come to wander the Everfree all alone?"

Despite her somewhat unusual look, Rainbow felt herself growing more at ease upon seeing her rescuer's face. "It's Rainbow Dash," she replied before remembering something. "Wait! I wasn't alone...! There was a bird, and..."

Zecora interrupted Rainbow by raising a hoof and placing it against the filly's muzzle. "Now, now, no need to worry yourself sick. I've also tended to that little chick." She then pointed to a nearby shelf where some bottles had been moved aside to make room for a small, makeshift nest.

Zecora turned her attention back to Rainbow and smiled warmly. "I promise you that as long as you are with me, you have nothing to fear. Now, child, why don't you tell Zecora how you came to be here?"

By this point, the small herd of ponies had left Whitetail Woods and were walking past some of the farms surrounding Ponyville.

"So, I told her my story. My best friend, Gilda, dared me to fly into a big storm over the Everfree. By the time we realized just how dangerous it really was, it was too late. She tried to pull me to safety, but a bolt of lightning knocked me out of her grip and sealed my fate. When I was done, Zecora told me about where she came from. That she was a shaman from Zebrica before making the Everfree Forest her home."

Shifting her walking stance into a three-legged gait for a bit, Rainbow Dash reached back to feel her twisted wing. "She had balms to soothe my cuts and bruises, and helped me recover my strength with some nutritious juices. For my wing, though, all she could do was ease the pain. But she still did more for me than I can easily explain."

"Whattaya mean you can't fix it?! You have to! I can't fly without it," Rainbow Dash all but screamed. Now that she wasn't afraid of being pounced on and eaten at any second, the reality and consequences of her injuries was given time to truly sink in.

"I am sorry, Rainbow, but pegasus wings are delicate. I do not think that I can properly set all the bones in it," Zecora apologized as she gently bound the twisted appendage to a makeshift splint. It was tight and uncomfortable, but it kept her from moving her broken wing by accident and causing herself further pain. "A doctor of your own kind will be better suited to treating your condition. Until then, helping you to regain your strength is my mission."

Despite the zebra's kindness, Rainbow protested, "You don't understand! I live up in the sky... if I can't fly, I can't do anything!"

"And you may do so, yet. No need to shout," Zecora patiently replied. "The future is unknown and you still need to heal, but for now there is still something you can do to help me out."

Zecora walked over to the shelf where she'd placed the chick's substitute nest, and used her mouth to carry it over to the bed. With the chick presented to her, Rainbow could again see that one of its wings wasn't working right. Despite the herbal painkillers Zecora had given her, she still winced in sympathy pain at the sight. "What can I do? I'm no vet. I don't know how to..."

"Without our help, this bird will never achieve flight. I must ask you to help me set things right," Zecora replied. "I know it is not an easy thing of you I ask, but only your small hooves can perform this delicate task."

Rainbow Dash's body tensed up as the chick looked up at her and chirped plaintively, filling the young pegasus with a who new kind of fear. She was just a little filly! A flying prodigy and embodiment of awesomeness, sure, but... but she'd never been responsible for another creature before. Especially one that was so small and fragile. And now she was being asked to do something that would determine the rest of this bird's entire life. What if she screwed up?

Rainbow was grounded now, but she'd been flying for as long as she could remember. That feeling of absolute freedom. The rush of wind in her face as she beat her wings in defiance of a world trying to pull her down. But here was a creature that was depending on her, and if she failed, it would never know that feeling. It would be her fault all over again.

"I can't... I-I can't," she protested, trying to squirm back away from Zecora. "If I do something wrong..."

"Then it will be no worse than if you did nothing at all," Zecora gently interrupted. She reached out a hoof to reassuringly touch Rainbow's shoulder, but minced no words as she explained, "It cannot heal properly so long as you stall. Do as I say and I will tell you how, but if this creature's wing is to be saved, it should be done now."

Rainbow Dash swallowed and looked down at her hooves. They were trembling. Her whole body was. No more than a few hours ago, she had been afraid for her life. This was different. Here she was, with another creature's future in her hooves, and here she was so weak and frightened that she wouldn't trust herself to hold so much as a ball of cloud.

But there was Zecora, looking at her with calm blue eyes and face that betrayed no hint of any doubt whatsoever. "Try something else, then. Close your eyes and allow yourself to give in to the fear, but only until the count of ten. Fear is a warning which tells us when we must run, but never let it keep you from what must be done."

Rainbow looked back and forth between the kind zebra and the bird she'd hurt. The bird who was depending on her to make things better.

Taking a deep breath, Rainbow closed her eyes and began to count.

"One... two..." Flashes of terrifying things played out when she shut her eyes, like a movie being projected against the inside of her eyelids.

"Three... Four..." It seemed like it was playing backwards. The nervousness of approaching Zecora's dwelling. The terror of fleeing from certain death into the unknown. Finding herself alone in the darkness of the forest. But even before that...

"Five... Six..." When she got down to it, it was all her own fault. Gilda had dared her to play chicken with that wild storm. If she hadn't been so concerned with looking cool to her friend, none of this would've happened. She didn't have the right to think that she could just fix things like she wasn't the one who'd messed up in the first place.

"Seven... eight..." But she didn't have the right to do nothing, either. Not if there was anything that she could do that would give the bird at least a chance at a life.

"N-nine... ten." Rainbow inhaled again and opened her eyes. She looked at the bird, then to Zecora and asked, "So... what do I do?"

Rainbow Dash paused in her tracks and turned to look back at the fillies following her. "She could've done it herself, y'know," she told them.

"Whattaya mean?" Scootaloo asked, cocking her head.

"Zecora. She didn't really need my help, but she could tell that I did," Rainbow replied, slipping back out of rhyme. "Maybe she didn't know just how badly my wings were hurt, but it's like I told her; I'd lived in Cloudsdale my whole life. Not being able to fly up there means you can hardly do anything. It means being completely helpless, relying on other ponies just to get around. When she got me to help save that chick's wing, she was telling me that no matter what happened, I could keep living without just being a load.

"More than anything else she did for me, helping another broken creature get their life back gave me the strength to keep going. Even when..."

Rainbow Dash trailed off for a bit and turned her head, looking up to the clouds. "She helped me get out of the woods and into Ponyville so I could send a message to my folks. They picked me up and took me to a hospital in Cloudsdale. The whole thing's kind of a blur, but after the docs looked me over, they told us... it wasn't just the broken bones. Those could've been put back together if I went through the surgery for it, but there was massive nerve damage. Thanks to Zecora, I was in as good a shape as I possibly could've been, but my body's pegasus magic just couldn't get into that wing again, and there was no way to fix it.

"When they told me that, I was so stunned that I didn't even realize it until my parents started freaking out, and I saw that these had appeared." Rainbow turned her body to give everypony a clear view of her cutie mark. A cracked rainbow with wraps of gauze holding it together.

Scootaloo and Sunburn both winced at the thought. Fluttershy, however, became a yellow and pink blur that nearly tackled Rainbow to the ground while delivering a crushing hug.

"Ack! Hey, Fluttershy, it's okay! Seriously!"

Fluttershy sniffled. "I'm sorry, Rainbow! It's just so sad..."

Apple Bloom sullenly added, "Yeah... it'd be lahk gettin' mah cutie mark fer losin' mah buckin' legs."

"Or getting my horn snapped off before I get to learn any spells," Sweetie Belle squeaked fearfully, bringing a dainty hoof up to cover her horn.

"No... no, that's not what it means," Rainbow interjected, pushing Fluttershy to arms-length before she could start sobbing on her. "That's what my folks and best friend thought, too, but they were wrong. It's not about me being crippled. Yeah, I went into shock when the Doc said what I was afraid of; that I'd never be able to fly right again. For a little while, I tried telling myself that he was a quack and my parents would find somepony else who could fix my wing. Deep down, though, I was thinking something else. 'I can still live!'

"That's what my cutie mark means. Maybe I'm not mint condition anymore, but I held together, even when I should have broken, and the kindness of a stranger helped me do it. More than that, I could help other creatures do the same. That's why I went back down to live with teach. I mean... if I'd been smarter about it, maybe I could've gone and become a regular doctor, but at the time, things happened that made me feel like I had to leave. Plus, I wanted to learn what I could from the mare who'd helped me."

Rainbow looked around, hoping that the others would understand what she was trying to say. Fluttershy's eyes were still a bit watery, but was looking at her with a proud smile on her face. Sunburn looked like she didn't know what to think, but as for the fillies, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle seemed to be thinking it over while Scootaloo looked down at the ground.

Fearing that her story might have inadvertantly struck a nerve about Scootaloo's own trouble with learning to fly, Rainbow asked, "Scootaloo? You okay there, squirt?"

"You know, Rainbow Dash..." The little pegasus was quiet for a moment before tilting the brim of her hat back so she could look up at Rainbow Dash as if for the first time. And if the sparkle in her eyes was anything to go by, she liked what she saw. "You're actually really cool!"

Jumping up onto her hind legs, Scootaloo flapped her wings to make her cape billow dramatically behind her. "Not as cool as Mare-Do-Well, of course, but that's one hay of an origin story! A flying prodigy crippled in her youth, who ventures deep into a forbidden forest to learn the ways of an exotic mystic from a far-off land! You're practically a superhero!"

Rainbow snorted in amusement and reminded her, "Whattaya mean 'practically'? You forget about the time I... what was it again? Oh right. Saved Equestria."

"Yeah, that's cool," Scootaloo admitted with a shrug. "But that was a team effort. Mare-Do-Well could've done it solo."

"Oh come on, an army of vamponies, an ancient labyrinth and Eclipse? Nope, no way. Now, maybe Daring Doo could've pulled that off, but--"

Fluttershy let out a giggle, her spirits returning upon seeing Rainbow and Scootaloo engaging in playful bickering. "You know, I was there too," she reminded them before adding, "... and the Power Ponies would've had to rescue both of them."

"WHAT?! She never needs rescuing," both pegasi simultaneously snapped back in defense of their personal heroines. Before they could get in Fluttershy's face about it, though, she squealed with laughter and pranced off into Ponyville, having reached the edge of town. "Hey, get back here so we can tell you how you're wrong," Scootaloo shouted while Fluttershy led them down the street toward the Bean There, Done That.

Author's Notes:

* "The Face". Just imagine Fluttershy doing it instead.

Rarity's Retrospection

Afternoons were generally the quiet time in the Bean There, Done That. The breakfast and lunch rushes represented most of their business while Cuppa Joe and Pinkamena's poetry nights brought in a small but devoted herd of regulars, plus whoever decided to filter in on a whim that night.

Because of this, it was Mugga Joe and not his live-in employee or one of the part-time waitresses behind the counter. He was keeping himself occupied by reading the newspaper when the bell over the door rang to announce Fluttershy's presence. "Hi, Mr. Joe," she said in a sweet, lilting voice as she pranced inside. "Is Pinkamena around?"

"Upstairs," the big, gruff unicorn replied, tilting his head up toward the ceiling. "Taking a break in her room with some of your friends."

Fluttershy somehow managed to perk up even more at the news, hopping up into the air so she could hover excitedly. "Oh, that's great! That'll save us a lot of time!"

Mugga Joe raised an eyebrow, but lowered it again when the jangling of the bell answered his unasked question and heralded the arrival of two more pegasus mares and three little fillies. "Alright. Want anything to take up there?"

"Oh, don't worry about a thing, dear. I know a few ponies who know a few ponies in the theatre community, and I'm sure it won't be any trouble to--"

Applejack stopped short when a knocking on the door interrupted her.

"Were you expecting somepony else?" Rarity asked Pinkamena from off to the side where she was watching Spike and Gummy engage in a staring contest.

Shaking her head 'no', Pinkamena walked over to the door and opened it to find the small crowd of mares and fillies. Front and center was Fluttershy, who was carrying a large tray of cookies and drinks on her back, balancing it with the help of her wings.

"Heeeeeeey, girls~" the cheerful pegasus exclaimed as she stepped inside. "What do you have going on here? A slumber party?"

Applejack laughed at that and waved it off. "Far too early in the afternoon for that sort of thing, isn't it? No, we were discussing a little project that Pinkamena has in mind."

"I was actually going to talk to all of you about it," Pinkamena added as she stepped aside to make room for everypony to come in. Her room wasn't particularly large, but it was rather sparsely furnished, giving everypony plenty of space to enter. "I just wanted to run a few things by Applejack first, to see if it would be plausible."

Rarity interjected, "And since I was already talking with Applejack about investing in new tools for my farm, Spikey and I decided to tag along."

"Oh my, a secret project? That sounds exciting," Fluttershy gushed as she angled her wings to let the tray of snacks and drinks slide off of her back, settling down on the center of the floor without spilling a drop.

"I hope it will be," Pinkamena replied, though as usual, her voice betrayed no enthusiasm. "But what brings all of you here?"

While Apple Bloom sipped from a glass of apple juice and Sweetie Belle was busy struggling with her magic, trying and failing to form a telekinetic aura around one of the cookies, Scootaloo stepped forward and proclaimed, "We want to know how you got your cutie marks! Mrs. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash told us their stories already."

Pinkamena frowned slightly, which wasn't all that different from her typical expression except for the fact that it could be recognized as being an expression of emotion at all. "It doesn't really work like that..."

Rarity smiled warmly and replied, "Well there's no harm in it, is there?" Turning to her adopted son, she asked, "Spikey-wikey, do you want to hear a story?"

The little baby dragon gasped in delight, his head whipping toward Rarity. "Mommy's gonna tell a story? Yay! Story time! Story time!"

He started to pick himself up in order to toddle over toward her, but suddenly stopped and looked back at Gummy, who hadn't moved the slightest bit. He then hung his head and pouted, "Awww, I lost..."

Before he could get too sad, he found himself getting lifted up in his mother's light blue aura. She set him down beside her and lovingly wrapped a foreleg around him to hold him close to her. "You'll get him next time, my brave little dragon warrior," she cooed. "Now, who wants to hear how mommy got her cutie mark?"

Spike giggled, answering with a wholly sincere "I do!" One that was echoed by Sweetie Belle as the little unicorn gave up on magic and simply picked up a cookie with her hooves.

"Alright. This story starts right here in Ponyville."

Once upon a time, a long ti... not that long ago, there was a little filly. This little filly lived in a little town, went to school in a little schoolhouse, and played with her little friends every day. But even though this filly was little, she had big dreams. More than anything in the whole wide world, she wanted to be a fashion designer who would make fabulous clothing to bring out the true beauty of everypony who wore them.

Even at that young age, she was talented enough to make costumes for the school play all by her little self. They were quite good, too. The fillies and colts wearing them loved the little outfits she made, and so did the teachers. The only pony who didn't, in fact, was the filly herself.

Oh, she knew they were good, but that wasn't enough for her. She wanted to make them brilliant! They were just missing something special. Something extra that would give them a sparkle and brilliance that everypony would remember for a long, long time. But even though she made the best of what she had, she just couldn't find that one elusive thing that would make it all complete.

This bothered the little filly. It bothered her greatly. It bothered her right from the bottom of her little hooves, went all the way up her little legs, through her little body and little head, until it reached the tip of her little horn. That was when it happened. The magic inside that bothered little filly boiled over, and without even trying to, formed itself into a spell that suddenly yanked her by the horn and started dragging her away!

Now, at first the little filly was frightened. She didn't know what was happening, after all! Once she realized that it was her own magic's doing, though, she felt happy. Do you know why? It was because she knew deep in her heart that it was leading her to her destiny. She was being carried where she needed to go in order to find that one thing that she was missing! That thought filled her with so much anticipation, she just couldn't stop smiling!

... For about fifteen minutes, anyway. After that, she realized that she was in for a long trip.

Hours and hours passed as the bored little filly was dragged over grassy hills, through green forests and dry desert, until finally... finally, she felt it bump up against something before releasing its grip on her. The little filly picked herself up and turned, eyes filled with wonder as she looked to see what destiny had in store for her.

What she found was a big rock.

As rocks go, it certainly didn't look all that special. No glitter or sparkle or pizzaz to speak of. Thinking that perhaps the rock was simply in the way, she frantically began searching all around. There was nothing behind it or beneath it, though, and no invisible fairies of fabulousness sitting on top of it either.

She checked. Three times.

The little filly had wanted nothing more than to bring beauty into the world, and now her own magic had told her that her destiny was in this most dull and ordinary of objects.

That was when the little filly, her little hopes and dreams dashed upon the very literal rocks in front of her... went a little nuts.

"A rock?! That's my destiny? What is your problem, horn? You dragged me all the way out here for a ROCK!? Gah... DUMB ROCK!"

She gnashed her teeth in anger and focused every little bit of magic in her body into her horn until she felt like she was about to explode. Then she threw that magic at the rock as hard as she could! But the rock just stood there, mocking her with its plainness, so she hit it again and again with her magic.

Now, this is very dangerous for unicorns, and it made her feel very woozy after a while, but she didn't care. The little filly was much too angry, so she just kept hitting the rock over and over and over again, until her vision got blurry and she could hardly stand. But the rock just stood there and took it until finally, she clenched her little eyes shut, gathered up the very last specks of magic she could find within herself, and let loose one last little blast of magic.

And the last thing the little filly heard before her little legs gave out under her was a deep grinding noise, and the sound of stone cracking open.

The little filly lay there for what felt like a very long time. It was slow and her little head ached something fierce, but eventually, she was able to open her eyes again, and what she saw took her breath away!

The rock that her magic had pulled her toward... the one that she had been so angry at because it wasn't what she had wanted, had opened up like a Hearth's Warming present, and inside was a dazzling assortment of gems! Every color in the rainbow glittered and sparkled, and the filly's eyes opened up big and wide just to take it all in!

"That was when the filly realized what her magic had been trying to tell her. She had always thought that everything and everypony around her was too small. That her little school and her little friends and her little town just weren't big enough to make her dreams become reality.

"Once she started looking at the world with new eyes, she was able to see just how big and beautiful and full of possibilities everything was; even the things that had seemed plain and dull before. That was when she realized that there was a bright light behind her. She looked over her shoulder and saw this."

Pulling up the hem of her overalls with her magic, Rarity showed everypony in the room her cutie mark. Adorning her pearly white flanks was half of a hollowed-out rock that was filled with colorful crystals.

"It's called a 'geode'," she explained to Spike. "It's a special rock that looks completely ordinary on the outside, but on the inside, it's filled with beauty. The one I found taught me to look for those hidden treasures. That's why that little filly grew up to be a rock farmer, and how, when I found a certain purple egg not too long ago, I knew how to look past its unbreakable shell and find the most beautiful treasure I would ever see inside it. A cute little Spikey-wikey, with the most adorably tubby-wubby little tummy!"

With that, Rarity leaned in and planted her mouth on his stomach, then started blowing loud, wet raspberries on it that sent the baby dragon into an hysterical ticklish giggle-fit!

The rest of the ponies in the room (sans Pinkamena) snickered as Spike's chubby little arms and legs flailed around helplessly. When she eventually relented to allow both Spike and herself to catch their breath, she nuzzled her son, who hugged her back.

"Awww... too bad Ah don't have a horn ta lead me to mah destiny," Apple Bloom lamented once the laughter died down, reaching up to feel her smooth, round head.

She and Scootaloo both turned to look at Sweetie Belle, who was in the middle of stuffing her mouth with biscotti. "What? Don't look at me," she replied, spraying crumbs before swallowing. "I can barely even use mine as a night light!"

"Oh, are you afraid of the dark, Sweetie?" Fluttershy asked.

"N-no..." Sweetie Belle glanced from side to side before quietly squeaking out, "... But Lord Plushington is..."

Applejack sidled over to Apple Bloom and wrapped a leg around her little sister. "It's alright, darl-- I mean, sugarcube. Most ponies don't have horns, and even those who do aren't typically dragged to their destiny. I do know from personal experience what it's like to be surprised by it, though."

Apple Bloom tilted her head up to look at her metropolitan big sister. "Whattaya mean, sis? Ain't that why ya moved ta Manehattan in the first place?"

The older earth pony let out a polite little laugh at that. "Well, that was the intention, but it wasn't quite that easy. It all started when I was not much older than you..."

Author's Notes:

Here we go, a short, breezy little chapter to reveal the differences in Rarity's past. Applejack and Pinkamena should be about the same length, give or take, and will serve as a nice warm-up for Twilight's.

Applejack's Account

When I was little, a few years before Apple Bloom was born, it felt like my life was going nowhere. My day-to-day routine was to wake up early, do my morning chores, go to school, then come straight back home for more chores, then eat and spend time with the rest of the family before going to bed and starting all over again.

Please don't misunderstand me. I loved my family as dearly then as I do now, but I was also a restless little filly who had never experienced the world beyond Sweet Apple Acres and Ponyville. There had to be more to life, I thought. The outside world seemed so distant and exotic that even a city like Canterlot which can be seen from here felt like some magical fairyland.

I wanted to see it. I wanted to know what it was like to rub shoulders with those fancy ponies. To wear the latest fashions and dine on the finest cuisine. I might have never acted on those desires if dear old Granny hadn't seen my growing restlessness. Despite our parents' worries about sending me off to the big city alone, Granny made arrangements with our aunt Clementine and her husband to let me stay with them for a time.

They were both so gracious. Our cousin Tangerine hadn't been born yet, but they welcomed me into their home as though I were their own child. Sadly, though they did everything that they could to help me feel at home, I was unprepared for just how different everything would prove to be. To truly be accepted into high society meant far more than simply having a lot of bits or wearing pretty dresses. It was an entirely different way of life.

The first thing that she taught me was how to walk. It may sound silly, given that I had been walking quite adequately on my own nearly my entire life, but those lessons made me feel like a newborn foal. It was not enough to simply move from one place to another. Each step had to be a statement that told everypony else that you were a pony of importance and deserving of their attention.

The second thing that Auntie Clementine taught me was how to speak prope--differently. Among the upper class, the manner in which one speaks is an expression of one's station. A dropped G or overabundance of contractions would be taken as a sign of low intelligence, regardless of what was actually being said.

All of this and more contributed to what I found to be an uncomfortable truth regarding my fillyhood fantasies. There is something of a 'club' mentality, as those who manage to gain and keep such wealth are so few. This is especially true of those who are not at the top of the social ladder, but wish to improve their position. To them, anypony else who rises up to their level without having been born to it is seen as competition which must be beaten back down before they can become a threat.

Auntie Clementine and Uncle Mosely did their best to protect me from the worst of these elements, but it was so ingrained into the psyche of their social circle that any slip which revealed my working-class upbringing became a source of worry for them which had to be immediately covered up.

They were worried for my sake, but every time I tried to do what was expected of me, it felt like I was betraying my family and my very identity. I had spent the entirety of my life at Sweet Apple Acres, so any attempts to engage in a conversation without mentioning anything that I had actual experience with quickly became vapid and hollow. So it was that after just a few weeks of living my dream, the desire to return home took root in my heart.

One morning, I found myself staring out toward Ponyville, praying in my heart for a sign that would tell me where I truly belonged. I was afraid that even if I did return to Sweet Apple Acres, I would still feel limited there. At the same time, with nothing that I could connect to in Manehattan, my heart and mind turned ever more toward my foalhood home. That craving for something familiar had grown so strong that I would have given anything just to hear a rooster's crow.

Imagine my surprise when I actually heard one.

"Cock-a-doodle-doo!" As clear as day, and not off in the distance, either, but from up above! Well, I was so surprised that I tumbled right onto my back, but when I heard it crow a second time, I was back on my hooves and scampering up the stairwell until I reached the roof.

I threw open the door, not sure what I was expecting, only to find nothing there. No roosters, no hens, not so much as a pidgeon. Just me and a city that held no place for a little country rube sprawling out beneath me.

I stayed there for a good while, just staring off into the distance. I didn't want to go back down. Not so long as I had nowhere to go. I likely would have stayed there much longer, lamenting my decisions, if the door had not opened for a young stallion that I had never met before. Even without looking, I knew that he was a pony of wealth simply by the sound of his voice.

"Oh, hello, young lady. Was that your rooster I heard a few minutes ago?"

The question was asked with no ill intent, but I winced regardless, under the assumption that I was being mocked for my rural roots. "That's right, Ah grew up on a farm! Ha ha. That ain't no reason ta make fun of a li'l filly," I snapped, foregoing any attempt to mask my 'country' manner of speaking.

I turned around, wholly expecting to face either disgust or ridicule as a result of revealing my true self. Instead, I saw a well-dressed unicorn who, despite being barely out of his teenaged years, carried himself with a sense of poise and dignity that I have seen more fully grown ponies attempt and fail to imitate. He was clearly a pony of class and high standing, yet aside from Auntie and Uncle Orange, he was also the first pony since I had arrived in Manehattan to look at me with genuine warmth.

"I promise you, on my word as a gentlecolt, I simply heard the rooster's crow and it piqued my curiosity. Oh, but where are my manners? my name is Fancypants, and I think that you must be little Jacquelyn."

I will admit, I was unsure as to what I should make of this. I was just a humble farmpony, but even I knew that the Pants family had been on friendly terms with Princess Celestia herself for almost two hundred years. My own ancestors had met his while petitioning the princess for the land that would become Sweet Apple Acres, and Granny never tired of telling the tale.

"Uh... yeah. Ah mean... uh... It is my pleasure to make your acqu... acquai..." I was so flustered by the fact that a member of such an important family knew my name, or at least the version of it that Auntie called me by, that I found myself stammering and shifting back and forth between my natural way of speaking and a more cultured greeting for a good minute or so.

Oh, I felt so embarrassed that by the time I was finished, I was sorely tempted to simply throw myself off of the roof. Thankfully, Fancypants took it all in good humor and walked over to join me.

"I take it that you haven't been away from the farm for very long?"

"That obvious, huh? It feels like Ah've been away forever, though." Not wanting to bring myself down again, I opted to deflect the topic. "So, what did you want with Auntie an' Uncle Orange?"

If he noticed that I was just trying to change the subject, Fancypants never mentioned it, bless him. Instead, he explained, "Oh, it's something of a Pants family tradition that after graduating from university, we have to start a business of our own without access to our family's wealth. It's meant to teach us not to take our bits for granted.

"My room-mate and I have a few ideas, but banks in Manehattan are more concerned with investing in the stock markets than startups for small businesses, so I was hoping that your aunt and uncle would be willing to invest some seed money into our venture."

Now, keeping in mind that I was just a small filly at the time, I said, "Seed money? Uh... no offense, but ya sure don't look like a farmer."

"What? Oh, haha, no. No offense taken, my dear," he said, while tousling my mane. "As my poor departed houseplants would indicate, I don't have a green hoof by any means. What I mean by 'seed money' is an initial investment to pay for the costs of starting a new business. Leasing a storefront, obtaining the proper permits, equipment and materials, that sort of thing. Then, with some hard work and good fortune, that 'seed' will blossom into a profitable business, and we will be able to pay off our debts enough to grow it further."

Naturally, this analogy gave me some food for thought. "So, ya plant the seeds, ya grow the business... then when it bears fruit, ya have more 'seeds' ta expand? Huh, that actually does sound a lot like farmin'. But why wouldn't the banks help ya? Ain't that what they're for?"

"Supposedly, yes, but their primary concern is make as much money as possible, and the surest way for them to do so is to keep ponies who borrow from them in debt. If I were to take out a small business loan, then by the time we got our doors open, the high interest alone would greatly eat into our profits, let alone paying back the principle."

"Sounds lahk a Code V," I replied. Seeing that he was unfamiliar with the term, I explained, "It's what mah Granny calls it when we have varmints back on the farm. Two years ago, we had a real big flock o' vampire fruit bats move in. We'd push 'em out of one part o' the orchard, and they'd move right in somewhere else, suckin' the juice outta every apple they saw! It took so much work ta drive 'em away fer good that we only just barely got enough apples ta market ta keep the farm runnin'!"

I still remember that proud, beaming smile Fancypants gave me then. It was the first time that a member of the upper crust who wasn't family had looked at me like that. "Why, that is a very good analogy, young lady. Alas, much like your 'varmints', it is the nature of banks to maximize their profits by whatever means are available to them, and that often means keeping ponies in debt their entire working lives."

"But if ya do that, then they can't afford ta make their business better! It'd be lahk sayin', 'here's some land, but ya can't fertilize it or do crop rotations.' The soil wouldn't be any good after a while, even with earth ponies workin' it, an' then it wouldn't be any good fer anypony! What if..."

And so it went that we had a nice long chat. To my surprise, I found it rather easy to think about finance and business ethics when putting it into agricultural terms. In time, I asked him, "Fancypants? How come it's so easy to talk to ya? 'Cept fer Auntie and Uncle Orange, every fancy pony Ah've met here's looked at me lahk Ah've grown an extra head when they find out Ah'm from the country. Uncle Orange tried ta introduce me ta some of his friends, an' they didn't even know what a rooster was!"

"Travel, young lady," he replied with a fond look to the horizon. "Too many ponies don't do it, in my experience. I don't really blame them, though. It is a part of who we are as a species. Most of us never stray far from home. Even to this day, with the advance of civilization and hardworking ponies like Luna's Rangers keeping us safe, there are dangers that lurk just outside the borders of every city and town.

"We are conditioned by the realm of Harmonia itself to seek safety and comfort in the familiarity of our herds. All too often, especially in large cities like this, the meaning of a 'herd' is restricted even further to those of our own social class or shared upbringing. Despite ourselves and how far we've come, most ponies tend to be intimidated by things with which we are unfamiliar, as primitive instincts warn us that the unknown could represent a hidden threat."

"Even roosters? That don't seem right..."

"Hmm. Well, let me pose it to you this way. When you arrived, you were confronted with many things that you had never seen or dealt with before. I imagine that, while your aunt and uncle were teaching you how to blend in with their social circle, much of it seemed rather frou-frou and unnecessary, correct?" I reluctantly nodded to him, and he let out a laugh before continuing.

"No need to be embarrassed, young lady. It is a perfectly natural reaction. You may be surprised to learn, though, that much of what they taught you was originally born out of necessity, in a time when proper etiquette was more than merely fanciful tradition. In ancient times, when ponies first started to build cities and faced the dangers posed by the spread of disease in densely populated places, they understood just enough about how sickness could be spread to create etiquette as a means of avoiding mass outbreaks.

"You, on the other hoof, have spent your life in a wide open place close to nature, perfectly suited to developing a sturdy immune system. Not to mention that you work with the earth and with animals far more than any city pony, so what is normal to you would seem strange and possibly dangerous to somepony who had lived their whole lives being taught that ponies need to behave a certain way for the good of the community."

"Huh... Nopony ever told me that," I replied, allowing myself to think back to the lessons Auntie Orange had tried to instill in me. I still didn't fully understand everything at the time, but when Fancypants put it that way, it did start to make more sense to me. "It kinda sounds lahk you're tellin' me Ah should've stayed on the farm..."

Fancypants placed a hoof on my shoulder, then, and looked me straight in the eye as he told me, "Not at all, young lady. After all, there must always be a few outliers in any herd whose role is to reach out and expand the boundaries of what is known and familiar so that those who lead more stationary lives can learn and benefit from the experiences we bring back. Not to mention finding common ground with those who we would see as outsiders, and forging a new, larger sense of community with them. That sort of generosity of spirit is the foundation of the values which formed our beautiful nation, and the unification of the three tribes.

"In the time that we have spent chatting, I have gained a sense that you have the potential to do that. Perhaps you will return to your farm, but you will do so bringing back the understanding of what we have talked about today, and it may serve you at some point later on. Or perhaps you will stay here and continue to learn the ways of high society, and in doing so, you will expose others to the values which you were raised with.

"Whichever you choose, young lady, I have little doubt that you will succeed. It takes a certain brand of determination and drive to leave one's home for the unknown at such a tender age. Whatever comes next for you, that determination will serve you very well."

When the sun rose that morning, I had felt so low and hopeless, but I had asked for a sign. Hearing Fancypants say those things made me realize for sure that I had gotten one. Sure, it wasn't a sign telling me what was right and what was wrong, but his words had opened up whole new worlds to me, and in that moment I realized that it was not a matter of where I did or did not belong, but whether or not I could put forth the effort to reach out to other ponies as he had to me.

I looked out at the horizon facing Ponyville and thought about all that we had talked about, such as the many ways that money could be used to better the lives of hard-working ponies. I knew that if I returned to Sweet Apple Acres, I could happily devote the rest of my life to tending the trees and animals alongside my family, and never look back. I also knew that if I stayed and devoted myself just as much to learning everything that I could about finance that I could turn that knowledge toward helping many families like mine improve their lives.

I was about to tell my new friend that I had made my decision, but as I turned to tell him, he was already beaming warmly. "Well, I see that you have decided! Congratulations."

For a moment, I did not know how he could tell, but then I saw the last glimmer of light out of the corner of my eye and looked back to find that my cutie mark had appeared! Bits growing on an apple tree, signifying to the world that my talent would be for growing and nurturing wealth. Not just for myself, but for others as well.

"We should go find your aunt and uncle and tell them the good news," Fancypants said as he turned back toward the stairs. "I am sure that they will want to celebrate their little Jacquelyn getting her cutie mark."

I paused for a moment, then, but smiled and followed after him. "Applejack."

When he momentarily stopped and looked back, I smiled back at him and gave a curtsy. No longer feeling so stiff or awkward about it, I made use of the lessons Auntie Orange had taught me and said, very properly, "I apologize for not introducing myself properly, sir Fancypants, but my proper name is Applejack. I hope that you do not take offense?"

Fancypants laughed softly and turned back to bow in return. "Charmingly rustic, and I shall be sure to remember that. If I might say so, I believe that both high society and the world of finance could use a few farmers. Now, would you do me the honor of joining me inside, miss Applejack?"

"I would be delighted to be accompanied by such a fine gentlecolt," I replied, and we managed to hold straight faces for a good five seconds after that before we both gave in to the sort of laughter shared by those who were destined to be life-long friends.

Pinkamena's Poem

As Applejack finished her story, Rarity held a hoof over her heart and let out a swooning sigh. "Taken under the wing of a mature, considerate, ravishingly handsome stallion... do you have any idea how jealous I am of you right now?"

Her lip quirking into a small smirk, Applejack replied, "I can't imagine why, darling. I was a filly when we first met, and I know that you're aware my weathervane doesn't even turn in that direction."

"That's even worse! Such wasted opportunity," Rarity protested, a blush tinting her pale cheeks as she lost herself in fantasy. "If it were me... oh, he would see me as a little sister at first. He would be far too much of a gentlecolt to even think of anything beyond that, but my little heart would be captivated. For years, I would nurse dreams of marrying my beloved, but would be too shy and embarrassed to ever express it. But it would be there... wistfully gazing at him when he isn't looking... a touch that lingers longer than it should...

"As I blossomed into marehood, he would find his own eyes turning toward me more often, but would find himself confused by his growing attraction, unable to reconcile it with the image he held of the sweet, innocent filly he had first met. Feeling guilty over it, he would distance himself for a time and attempt to find comfort with other mares, but none of them would ever be quite right for him. Then, at a masquerade ball, he would meet... her. A refined and elegant lady, her body a work of sculpted beauty lovingly caressed by the perfect dress even as her identity is hidden behind a mask.

"He would walk over to her from across the room, drawn by some unexplained feeling of connection, and ask for the privilege of a dance. She would play a little hard to get, but would soon join him on the dance floor. They would gaze into each others eyes, their movements in perfect harmony as the rest of the world vanished from their minds. He would finally realize it. This was the one! The one perfect mare for whom his soul had yearned his entire life! The dance would end, and the time would come for everypony to remove their masks, and..."

Without warning, Fluttershy suddenly jumped in. "And it would be Derpy Hooves! He would swear his undying love for her beautiful golden eyes right then and there, and they would live happily ever after."

"Wh-what? No... what?! I... why Derpy?"

Fluttershy pouted and replied, "Why not Derpy? She's a sweetheart!" Leaning in, she whispered, "besides, you were starting to drool," which turned Rarity's face as red as a tomato.

Not being as tactful, Spike said loudly, "Mommy does that when she's reading her speshul books!"

Rarity looked around the room, seeing the looks on everypony's faces as Rainbow and Sunburn in started snickering behind their hooves, and lowered her head. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle just stared, and little Scootaloo couldn't even look at her, hiding her face beneath her hat. "Yes... well... it's a good thing I don't mind getting my hooves dirty. I can just dig myself a nice hole to bury myself in." Turning to the stoic Pinkamena, she said, "at least you won't make fun of me."

"Sorry, Rarity, but I'm laughing on the inside," she replied, her deadpan delivery causing the two pegasi to lose it and start rolling on the floor in mirth.

Getting back to the more important topic, Apple Bloom took stock of things. "Okay, so Fluttershy got her cutie mark after a long time..."

"And Rainbow Dash got hers after a life-changing accident," Sweetie Belle added.

"Sis got hers by stickin' with her childhood dream..."

"... And Rarity got hers by giving hers up."

The two fillies looked each other in the eye, and Apple Bloom finally threw her hooves up in frustration. "Well how in the wide, wide realm of Harmonia is a filly s'pposed ta get her cutie mark?! There ain't nothin' in common 'tween any of 'em!"

Sweetie Belle let out a little sigh and looked down at the floor. Then, as an idea struck her, she began rubbing her chin in thought. "It's like it's not even about 'how', but... more like a choice. Like everypony has to find a moment of... self-discovery or something like that."

Apple Bloom raised an eyebrow and looked over to Scootaloo to see what their pegasus friend thought of that, but she was lost in her own thoughts, so she just asked, "What're ya gettin' at, Sweetie Belle?"

"I'm thinking... we should ask Pinkamena!" Turning toward the pink pony, she smiled brightly and asked, "You're all about expressing yourself and things like that!"

"Hey, yeah! Pinkamena ought ta know a trick fer gettin' our cutie marks!"

Pinkamena blinked a few times, then looked away. "I'm sorry, girls. I know enough to know how much I don't know... and that my story wouldn't help you..."

"Pleeeeeeeeeease?" Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle pleaded in unison, pouting at her. "We've already heard everypony else's story! 'Cept fer Sunburn, there."

Hearing her name, Sunburn picked herself up. "Huh, what? Oh, right. I flew too close to the sun when I was a filly. Broke the flight camp altitude record, big whoop," she hastily replied, patting the sun-shaped cutie mark on her burnt orange flank. "Come on, everypony else has told theirs, so now I really wanna know your side of the story, too!"

Pinkamena shot Sunburn an odd look and sighed. "I told you, my cutie mark story won't help you... because I don't remember getting it."

This caught everypony's attention, and all sound seemed to vanish from the room save for the faint, wet squelching sound of Gummy blinking. At least, it did until Fluttershy cleared her throat and said, "Okay, I think I speak for everypony here when I say, 'Whaaaaaaaaaaa?!?!' ...Soooo, could you elaborate, please?"

Pinkamena sighed and twisted her body to reach back behind herself. "There's a hole in my memory. All I remember is what happened before and after, not what actually triggered it."

Seemingly producing them from thin air, (a feat which no longer took anypony in the room by surprise) Pinkamena pulled out her bongo set, on which Gummy was now perched.

Nopony had even seen the toothless alligator move.

Pinkamena picked Gummy up and placed him atop her beret, then tapped the bongos a few times until she settled on a slow, dreary rhythm. "Well, I suppose you won't stop being curious now, so I'll tell you what I do remember. I don't think you'll like it, though."

shining cold 'pon barren stones
move them to the western field
sunshine cannot warm my bones
move them to the southern field
life and color muted, dull
move them to the northern field
screaming echoes in my skull
move them to the eastern field

no smiles

no laughter

only rocks

drab and dreary, aching, weary
move them to the southern field
tiny pink hooves chipped and worn
move them to the northern field
I wander from the path set for me
move them to the eastern field
since the moment I was born
move them to the western field

I beat the stones in my frustration

aggravation

syncopation

then, temptation

celebration

and elation

the beat flows through me

listening
the rhythm of Harmonia

it is approaching
my eyes open wide

it's found the quarry
and see

WHAT IS THAT?

drip

drip

drip

drip

sorrow wets my cheeks

see again as others see

calling me to return
parents standing over me
see again as others see
cadence of other ponies
shadow play of reality

"What happened to me, Father?
Why do you and Mother weep?"
"I cannot tell you, child.
This is a secret we must keep.
Lost in a trance, you whispered
truths which made it all too clear
that whatever fate awaits you,
you can not find it here."

They showed to me my cutie mark
which had appeared upon my flank.
My true destiny set in stone
on a tablet left quite blank.
Mother hugged me tightly while
tears streamed from her eyes.
Father gently touched my head,
and I knew they told no lies.

a search for meaning without end
take the order dutifully
fill the void with word and pen
pour the coffee carefully
to keep from being empty again
deliver it with artistry
seek the wisdom of my friends
the source of all my poetry

Pinkamena's drumming gradually wound down, and she punctuated it with one last beat which brought her audience back out of a fugue state that they hadn't even realized they had slipped into.

"That's all I remember of that moment. While working on the family rock farm, I began drumming on a stone out of boredom. It made me feel a connection to something that I can't describe, and..."

Pinkamena hung her lead low. "... And that's all I remember. The next thing I knew, my parents were standing over me, crying. I could never get them to tell me what I said or did, but it changed everything. Eventually, my father took me out here to live with his old friend, Mr. Joe, and I've been here trying to make sense of it all ever since."

Rainbow Dash was the first to approach and wrap her forelegs around Pinkamena in a tight hug. "Hey... if you ever need to talk to somepony... uh... well, y'know..."

She was quickly joined by a teary-eyed Fluttershy, who practically tackled them both. "That goes double for me! I'm so sorry, Pinkamena... I had no idea!"

"It's okay. I never--" Pinkamena replied before finding Rarity, then Applejack joining in on the group hug. Even little Spike found a spot to reach his stubby arms around her back. Completely surrounded by the love of her friends, Pinkamena nuzzled them back. "I never told anypony but Mr. and Mrs. Joe about it, so you couldn't have known. But don't worry about me, I'm alright. I promise."

Meanwhile, Sunburn gently nudged the fillies, who still seemed to be a little out of it from the poet's tale. "Hey... hey, you alright, squirts?"

Apple Bloom slowly stammered, "Ah... Ah think Ah need ta go home an' hug Winona... lahk, right now."

"Y-yeah... I'm not sure I want to hear any more cutie mark stories," Sweetie Belle replied.

Scootaloo, however, lifted her head with a steely glint in her purple eyes. "No, girls. We're not done yet!" She reared up onto her hind legs and resolutely pointed toward the window. "There's still one pony we need to talk to... Twilight Sparkle!"

Author's Notes:

Well, this was fun.

Twilight's Tale

"So... do you mind telling us why we need to see Twilight?" Sweetie Belle huffed slightly as she jogged along. The walk to and from the woods hadn't taken much out of her, but the pace Scootaloo was setting was pushing her harder than she was used to.

"Yeah, Scootaloo, Ah ain't really feelin' it anymore. Maybe we should just head over ta Sweetie's place and play a board game or somethin'." Apple Bloom, being more physically fit, was able to follow along without any trouble, but held back to stay with her unicorn friend. Besides, after hearing Pinkamena's story, she had lost much of her motivation.

Scootaloo kept going, however, barely turning her head toward her friends. Still, she slowed down enough that they were able to catch up to her. "Look girls, it's... I don't want to say anything until I'm sure, but I think I'm on to something. If I'm right, it's something big, and Twilight Sparkle's cutie mark story could be the key."

Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom shared a look. Sweetie Belle then turned a dubious face toward Scootaloo and asked, "Scootaloo...? This is starting to sound like that time you thought Diamond Tiara was running a speakeasy."

Under her breath, Scootaloo muttered, "One of these days, I'll prove that's not 'tea' at those parties... but that's not important right now! Let's get to the Ranger station, and--"

Scootaloo was cut off by a shadow passing low overhead as Sunburn caught up to them and said, "Hey, squirts. You're heading the wrong way."

Coming to a stop, Scootaloo huffed in annoyance at that. "Hey, I've been to the station plenty of times! I know where it is."

Sunburn smirked. "True, but that's not where the boss is." Sunburn pointed off to the large tree growing in the middle of town. "She said she had an appointment at the library, so you'll want to go thattaway."

"Oh. Well... okay then," Scootaloo replied, quietly, turning toward the library.

Along the way, the Crusaders found themselves reconvening with their sisters and the other mares, sans Fluttershy. "Sis? Ah thought y'all were still busy."

"Oh, that. Don't you worry about it, darling," Applejack replied, waving it off. "Pinkamena and I decided to visit Twilight so that she can unveil her grand idea with all of her friends present."

Rainbow Dash added, "Plus, after hearing the cutie mark stories of the rest of these guys, I really want to hear Twi's. Whenever she talks about her past, she gets really dodgy and starts to twitch, but this curiosity's bugging me like an itch."

When the small herd of mares and fillies reached the shade cast by the branches of the Golden Oak Library, they were just about to head in when they heard a cry of "I GOT IIIIIIIIT! OhgoshRainbowcatchme!"

"Wha?" Rainbow Dash turned along with the others and barely had a moment to see Fluttershy hurtling toward her before she got sent tumbling into a heap of colorful fur and feathers. "Nnnh... why me? Why is it always me?"

Fluttershy let out an embarrassed giggle. "Sorry, Rainbow Dash. I was in such a hurry to get back, I pushed myself too hard to brake." She ditzily stuck her tongue out and thumped her hoof against her forehead before extricating herself from her friend. She then took out a yellowed and torn piece of paper, showing it to Sunburn. "So, you really think Dewdrop will be able to find out where this came from?"

"Oooh, is that the page ya were talkin' about in yer story, Mrs. Fluttershy?"

"Yep! I held onto it as a reminder that I should be careful not to go too far in the pursuit of confidence," Fluttershy explained, looking down at the tattered page with an odd sort of fondness. "Of course, if I hadn't that one time, Will and I probably wouldn't have ever met, let alone fallen in love with each other. This little piece of paper probably changed the course of my entire life."

"Ha, yeah, life's sure funny that way," Sunburn muttered before flapping on ahead to reach the front door. "And Dewey's the biggest bookworm this side of Canterlot, so if anypony in Ponyville can tell you where it came from, it'll be her. We'll just get both taken care of at the same--" Just as her hoof was about to touch the knob, the door suddenly flew open and smacked the Ranger off to the side. "--time..."

Unaware of Sunburn's presence, an athletically-built pegasus stallion with a lavender coat and a blonde mane in an androgynous, almost feminine style, flew out and called back inside, "Thanks, girls! And Twi, I'll see you later for a full debri... debrief..." Despite clearly attempting to speak in a suave manner, the stallion's voice squeaked like a teenager's, causing him to cough a few times to clear his throat. "Wow, okay, that'll take a little getting used to."

Turning to fly off, he noticed the mares gathered around and paused for a moment, giving them a sultry grin. "Oh! Well, hel-lo, ladies. You're all looking as beautiful as ever. I don't suppose any of you'd want to..." His gaze then lowered to catch sight of the Crusaders, and his voice began squeaking again as a look of panic flashed across his face. "Ack! Ah.. ahem... smaller ladies! Sisters! Totally inappropriate! Okay, I'll just be... getting out of here before... uh-oh, that's not good..." Practically doubling over to cover himself with his hooves, he flapped away as quickly as he could, muttering to himself in a voice that faded with distance, "Think about something else... Hoofball... Granny Smith... Granny Smith playing hoofball...!"

After a long beat of stunned silence, Pinkamena mused, "... Well. I did not see that coming."

While Sunburn groaned and slowly peeled herself away off of the wall of the tree, Rarity looked to the sky. "This is why I can't find a good stallion in this town. The ones we do have are either taken or crazy!"

"I'm just gonna pretend that never happened," Rainbow Dash muttered as she led the way inside.

In the middle of the library, Dewdrop Decimal the librarian and Twilight Sparkle, currently in her civilian clothes (which was, to say, nothing) were leaning over an open book surrounded by papers filled with fresh notes and arcane scribbling. The blond-maned unicorn adjusted her glasses and leaned in closer. "Wait, Twilight, I think you made a miscalculation, here."

"Hmm?" Rather than the expected reaction when telling Twilight Sparkle that she had made a mistake, the off-duty Ranger simply glanced over and then broke into a wicked grin. "Oh, that? No, that's not a mistake. I just lied."

"You... lied? But that means the duration of the spell is actually just--"

"Assuming Cloud Kicker's average flight speed is consistent, her tendency to 'take in the sights' (with the most attractive ponies who are most likely to be spotted along her route taken into consideration), and the indeterminate effects that being the opposite gender might have... best estimates are she'll switch back about two to ten minutes after she starts hitting on Nooo-iiiiice to see you, Scootaloo!"

Upon spotting her friends and the Crusaders stepping inside, Twilight quite abruptly shifted gears and hurriedly began shoving the notes out of sight with her magic. "Hey! What's up, girls?! Monster attack?! Elements of Harmony business?!"

Once again, the others were momentarily lost for words. This time, though, it was Rainbow Dash who asked, "Sooo... Cloud Kicker? Why'd you turn the town weather manager from a mare to a male?"

Twilight gave her friends an embarrassed little smile. "It's... complicated. See, she wanted to... um..."

When Twilight trailed off into an inaudible mumbling, Rainbow interjected, "Actually, never mind, that can wait. We were kinda hoping to hear about your cutie mark tale."

Twilight blinked and sat up straight, taken by surprise. "My cutie mark? Wh-what about it?" She glanced back at her flank, and the starburst compass rose adorning it.

At that, Scootaloo pushed herself to the front. "Please, Lieutenant Sparkle? We've already heard all your friends' stories!"

Sidling up to Twilight, Fluttershy explained, "It started with me and Rainbow, and sort of snowballed into a whole thing. Don't worry, I'll fill you in later so nopony has to repeat themselves, but none of us have heard how you got your cutie mark."

Twilight looked around at the mares and fillies. Even little Spike was looking at her from his seat on Rarity's back. The way he was staring at her with such a cute, innocent smile felt like somepony was squeezing her chest. "I... I guess I could if you really want me to, but my cutie mark isn't really something I got on my own." Pointing a hoof toward Spike, she sheepishly admitted, "It all started years ago when I was trying to pass the entrance exam for Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, and they brought in a large purple egg as part of the test..."

"Come on... come onnnnn...!" Twilight clenched her eyes shut, straining with everything she had to force magic through her horn. She wasn't even trying to cast spells anymore. She had tried everything that she could think of, already.

Ironhorn's Instant Incubator? It hadn't even gotten warm.

Subtle Quickanger's Sonic Shell Shaker? All that had done was make her ears ring for a few minutes.

Elderbard the Effervescent's Egg Exploder? Overkill really, if the spell hadn't simply bounced off of it without so much as chipping the shell.

After that, Twilight had only grown more desperate, trying every spell she could remember in case there was a trick to this test that she wasn't seeing. Nothing worked. Nothing even gave her a hint that she was making any progress whatsoever. Her magic was just too weak to make her spells do anything, so all she had left was to just gather as much of it as she could in the desperate hope of making something happen!

"Alright, I think that's enough. Thank you, Ms. Sparkle."

Twilight gasped, her eyes opening as the magic in her horn fizzled out. She looked around to see the proctors with their blank, impassive faces scribbling their notes. She looked back and forth between them, her parents who were standing off to the side with reassuring, pitying smiles, and the egg, which mockingly remained untouched by her magic.

Panic seized little Twilight's heart as she realized what had happened. She had failed. All those nights of studying and practicing to strengthen her weak magic, and she had fallen short. Turning to the proctors, she pleaded, "No... no, please, I... I can do it! P-please, just give me one more chance! I'll do it this time, I promise!"

"That won't be necessary," the one who had interrupted her replied. He gestured for the ponies who had brought the egg to remove it. She wanted to stand in their path and stop them, but her legs felt numb as she watched the egg be carted away, and all of her hopes and dreams with it. "Twilight Sparkle, Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns receives thousands upon thousands of applicants each year. Of those, only those who show the most potential and talent can be accepted. In your case--"

"NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" Twilight found herself screaming at the top of her lungs so that she wouldn't have to hear it. She had failed. She was a failure! She wasn't strong enough, or she didn't know the right spell, or... or... Tears began streaming down her face. She could see her parents coming toward her to take her home.

Home, where she'd get to see her BBBFF's hopeful face fall in disappointment that she wouldn't be following him into Celestia's School.

With a sob, Twilight found her legs, and before anypony could reach her, she had already bolted for the door. Nopony was prepared to stop her, and her eyes were too full of tears to see where she was going, so she didn't bother to keep them open. She didn't want to see the sad, pitying looks that everypony would have when they found out how badly she'd failed, anyway, so she shut her eyes and blindly raced out the door.

She didn't get very far, but not because any adults were prepared to stop her. Instead, she made it out the doorway and had just enough time to hear a filly saying, "This is for grandpa... I feel great! I feel powerful! I! Can! Do! ACK!"

Then Twilight collided with the other filly. There was a flash of lavender light bright enough for her to see behind her shut eyes followed by a weightless falling sensation that lasted for just a moment before a second flash sent the two little bodies tumbling to the floor.

Twilight clenched her eyes shut and brought her hooves up to cover her head. Any moment now, her parents would be coming to pick her up and carry her away. To tell her how disappointed they were that she couldn't even hatch an egg. That she'd embarrassed them by throwing a tantrum and even failing at running away!

Instead, what came next was the other filly shrieking in panic. "Why's it so dark? Why can't I light up my horn?! Celestia, I can't see! I'M BLIND!!"

And now she'd blinded some innocent pony! But... she wasn't hearing anypony else, so she nervously allowed herself to peek at her surroundings.

Instead of the hallway that she was expecting, she and the other filly had somehow ended up in a dark room, all but completely devoid of light except for what at first looked like a floating purple cone. As Twilight picked herself up to get a better look, she saw that the 'cone' was actually the top of a pointed hat, illuminated from within by the horn light of a panicking unicorn filly whose head was stuck in it.

Confused and growing a little scared, Twilight approached the other filly and grabbed the tip of the hat between her teeth. She then yanked backward as hard as she could, causing it to pop free and allow magical light to spill out into the room.

Momentarily disoriented by the light from her own horn, the other filly briefly shrieked and flailed her hooves around. "Stay away from me! I-I'm the G-g-great and P-powerful Trixie Lulamoon, and I'll destroy anypony who tries to foalnap me!"

Twilight's jaw dropped open at the name, causing the filly's hat to fall to the floor. "L-lulamoon? Your name is Lulamoon?"

The filly, Trixie, gradually stopped flailing blindly and blinked several times at Twilight. She was about the same age as Twilight, with a light blue coat, violet eyes that matched both her hat and the little cape she was still wearing, and a silvery-blue mane that was probably well-brushed and styled before Twilight charged into her. She looked at Twilight in confusion and replied, "Um, yeah. Wait, you don't look like a foalnapper. Who are you? And where are we?!"

Twilight eeped as she felt that sinking feeling again. "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry! I-I didn't mean to run into you. Tesla Lulamoon is one of my heroes! The way she taught herself magic when she was just a filly, and all the magic machines she made, and what she did with airship engines was--"

Before she could ramble much longer, a hoof abruptly placed itself over her mouth to cut her off. "Who are you...? And where are we...?" Trixie asked again, slower and louder as she glared at Twilight.

Blushing slightly in embarrassment, Twilight stammered, "T-twilight. Twilight Sparkle." Then, for the first time, she took the time to take in her surroundings.

It was a dark room that the fillies found themselves in, with only Trixie's hornlight providing illumination. Wooden crates and shelves full of knick-knacks were covered in a layer of dust and cobwebs. One particularly large object, covered in a white cloth, caught Twilight's attention. Pulling the cloth aside a bit, Twilight was momentarily startled to see her own reflection looking back at her from a large standing mirror. "I guess we're in some kind of storeroom?"

"But how did we get here? You didn't knock me through a wall, did you?"

Twilight actually checked to see if that was the case, but no. If there were, they'd see the hole. The only way out that she could find was a single shut door. When she realized the implications of this, she gasped with delight. "Teleportation! Oh my gosh, you can teleport?!"

Trixie's eyes widened. "Wait, what? Who said I can teleport? That's--"

"Impossible for most ponies, I know, but you're a Lulamoon," Twilight gushed, punctuating her admiration with a squee. "And you teleported us to a whole other place without even realizing it!"

Trixie stared at Twilight in disbelief, but as she started to think about it, she straightened her back and replied, "Well, I... I am great and powerful, j-just like the rest of my family! It's foal's play! I just... uh..." She looked at the door and beckoned toward it with her horn. "I... don't know how to get back, so we'd better go on hoof."

Twilight nodded and made her way toward the door. Her attempts to use her magic to open it, however, resulted in nothing more than a few dim sputters out of her horn.

Seeing her struggle with it, Trixie walked over to join her and wrapped the doorknob in an aura of pink magic. "Is there something wrong with your horn? It's not even magic-proofed."

Twilight's good cheer faded, and her ears drooped with the memory of how she ended up there in the first place. Unable to look Trixie in the eye, she replied, "I'm sorry... my magic isn't very strong. I cast every spell I knew, but I couldn't even hatch an egg."

"Oh... Sorry, I didn't know," Trixie replied in apology. She twisted the knob, allowing the door to open out into an empty hallway which, based on the marble and the stained glass windows, suggested that they hadn't left the Princess's palace. Despite that, there was no sign of anypony who could guide them back to their families.

There was no sign of anypony, period.

"Where is everypony?" Trixie asked, looking around nervously as she picked her hat up in her magic and floated it back onto her head.

Twilight joined her in doing so, and echoed Trixie's anxious tone. "This isn't right... My daddy works here. He says no matter where you go, there's always somepony running around like a maniac. Especially when he's carrying a lot of reports."

"Well, if we just look around, we'll find somepony eventually, right? It's... it's not like we got sent to another world that's been taken over by pony-eating zombies, is it?"

Twilight eeped, feeling a cold tingle run up her spine at the thought. "No! No no no! That can't be true! Shining says zombies only eat bad little fillies who look under their BBBFF's beds!"

"... What?"

"Oh, it means Big Brother Best Friend Forever," Twilight off-hoofedly explained.

Trixie groaned and rolled her eyes. "That's so dorky, and not what I meant. I meant the zom--" In mid-word, and without any warning, an equine-shaped figure suddenly lurched out from around a bend in the corridor! It looked liked a unicorn stallion in Royal Guard armor, but its breath was raspy and guttural as it shambled toward the fillies, reaching out to them.

"ZOMBIES!" Twilight and Trixie both let out a shriek and clutched each other in terror while the zombie pony continued to lurch toward them for a few more steps.

And then it stopped.

That wasn't to say that it fell over, or had stopped and was now standing on all fours. It continued to be positioned in mid-step, reaching for the fillies without moving so much as a millimeter.

When the two of them stopped screaming and realized that the 'zombie' pony wasn't coming any closer, Twilight gulped nervously and let go of Trixie in order to get a closer look.

Trixie hissed, "What are you doing? It might start coming after us again!"

"I... I don't think it can," Twilight replied as she crept up toward the stallion. When he continued to not move, Twilight brought herself close enough to reach out her little hoof and tap it against his nose.

When she was rewarded with the sound of her hoof rapping against a hard surface, Twilight sounded no less afraid as she told the other filly, "Trixie, this isn't a zombie pony, it's a regular pony! But... he's been turned to stone!"

Everypony in the room gasped at the direction Twilight's story had taken. Whether in fear or disbelief, all eyes were locked on the young Ranger.

"I know, it's probably not what you were expecting..."

"That's putting it mildly, darling," Applejack replied.

Rainbow Dash added, "No kidding. I mean, I had some crazy stuff happen to me, but that was right in the middle of the Everfree!"

Meanwhile, the three Crusaders stared at Twilight, mouths agape at the tale's new development. Even Scootaloo, who was always the most gung-ho about monsters and heroes, huddled close to the others. "What do you mean, turned to stone? Ponies don't just turn to stone, do they?"

Twilight looked rather chagrined over telling the fillies such a story, but couldn't help but laugh a bit to herself. "Funny. Trixie said the exact same thing. Only when she did, it was more like--"

"What do you mean, turned to stone?! Ponies don't just turn to stone! ... Do they?"

Twilight shivered as she looked up at the petrified guard. Up close, she could see that his face was frozen in fear and panic. "S-something did this to him," she stammered, turning back toward the similarly fearful Trixie. "We've got to get out of here! It could be--"

"Behind you!" Trixie shrieked in terror, pointing a hoof past Twilight.

Twilight looked up over her shoulder, and saw a creature about her size perched atop the guard's head. She gasped, quickly recognizing it from Starswirl's Summary of Sinister Species.

A cockatrice.

There was a cockatrice loose in the royal palace!

It had the head and general shape of a rooster, but the rest of its body, including its wings, were scaly and reptilian. Her eyes widened in panic at the sight, and the monster smirked as its own horrible red eyes gazed into hers, trapping her in its stare. Twilight tried to move. She tried to turn her head or close her eyes, but she couldn't. She could barely even breath, and only the terrified pounding in her chest told her that she hadn't been petrified yet.

That would have changed very quickly if a bright pink firework hadn't exploded right in front of the cockatrice's face. It screamed in pain from the bright light, breaking its hold on Twilight as it covered its eyes with its wings.

Twilight's knees were made of jelly, her mind overloaded with the knowledge of what had almost happened. Her body still felt paralyzed, trembling as though she were caught in an earthquake until she felt Trixie's magic yank her back away from the monster. "Run, Twilight!"

Twilight stumbled, but with Trixie snapping her back to reality, she was able to get her hooves under her and take off down the hall beside the little magician. Behind them, they could hear the cockatrice let out a menacing squawk.

As fast as their little legs could take them, Twilight and Trixie ran down the halls. They raced around a corner and found themselves running down a corridor lined with office doors. Despite the danger, Twilight reflexively glanced up at the nameplates on the doors, then blinked as a familiar one flashed across her eyes. "Trixie! In here!" she whispered as she pushed the door open and pulled the other filly in with her.

Once inside, Twilight shut the door behind her and braced her body against it. Both she and Trixie panted heavily for air, and she looked around for the occupant. When she found him, though, Twilight let out a worried whimper. "M-mister Dotted Line..."

Trixie turned to see what Twilight was looking at, and very nearly screamed again before she muffled herself with her hooves. There were two desks. One, bearing a nameplate reading "Night Light," was empty. Behind the other desk, though, with an expression of grumpy confusion, was what looked like a statue of a very short, very shaggy unicorn. A tipped-over cup rested on the surface of the desk, the source of a lukewarm puddle of tea that slowly dripped over the edges.

Twilight whimpered softly and found herself sniffling at the sight. "D-daddy always said if I got lost here and couldn't find him... I should look for Mr. Dotted L-line. He... he said Mr. Dotted Line would h-h-help..."

Trixie could see the tears welling up in Twilight's eyes as the lavender filly tried to choke back sobs of despair. Before Twilight could go too deep, she whispered, "What was that thing, anyway? How could it do this to everypony?"

Twilight sniffled again and wiped her eyes. "You... you don't know...? It's a... a cockatrice," she explained, reaching into her memories of what she had read. "They... they mostly eat bugs and small animals, but they're very terror-torial." She grimaced a little, pretty sure that that wasn't quite right, but continued on.

"They aren't very strong... um... but they can turn you to stone if you look them in the eye. If somepony or something goes into their territory, they jump out and trick 'em into looking in their eyes... Then the statues scare away everything else."

"So... like it did with you?" Trixie whispered back. "If you knew what it was, why'd you look at its eyes?"

"I didn't know what it was until I looked," Twilight pouted. But then she looked at Trixie and smiled modestly. "But you saved me. If you hadn't cast that spell, I'd have been a statue, too. You're a real hero, Trixie, just like Tesla!"

Trixie blinked at that, then looked down at the ground. "Y-yeah... anyway, we're safe in here, right? We can just wait until a grown-up sees the stoned ponies and tells the Princess," Trixie suggested hopefully.

Twilight's ears flattened as she shook her head. "The book said it could be really, really bad for a pony to be turned to stone for too long. There's no telling how long it'll take somepony else to show up without the cockatrice catching them!" She lowered her head in thought, then smiled sadly toward Trixie. "... I'm going out there."

Trixie boggled at the other filly as Twilight reached up for the door handle, then rushed over to grab Twilight and try to pull her away. Hissing into her ear, Trixie harshly whispered, "What are you thinking?! It'll get you if you do that!"

"I know! I know," Twilight whispered back. She struggled at first, but then sighed an explained, "But there's nothing else I can do. I'm too weak, but while it's turning me to stone, you can zap it with your magic. Then you can find the Princess, and she'll be able to turn everypony back to normal."

The instant Trixie heard this idea, she looked horrified. "Are you crazy? I can't do that!"

Twilight did her best to put on a brave smile. "It's okay. I'm pretty sure it won't hurt, and you'll get the Princess in time to--"

Trixie cut her off by roughly grabbing Twilight in order to look her straight in the eye. "No, you idiot! I mean I... I can't do that!"

"Sure you can," Twilight assured her. "Tesla zapped all sorts of things that were a lot scarier than this when she was our age."

Trixie clenched her teeth, her eyes watering. "You think just because I'm a Lulamoon, I'm some kind of superhero?! I'm not! I'm... I'm not crazy-strong like Tesla, or Mystral, or Sorcere, or... or any Lulamoon you've ever read about. I don't fight monsters, I just do tricks!"

With that put out into the open, Trixie slowly let go of Twilight and sat on her haunches as she removed her hat. Fretting with the brim, she said, "If you go out there, it'll get you... And then it'll get me... and then neither of us'll be able to get to the Princess or the Guard or anypony who can help!

"I'm not a Great and Powerful Lulamoon. I'm just... Trixie the Pretty Good..."

Twilight slowly approached the depressed Trixie and wrapped her forelegs around her in a comforting embrace. "I'm sorry, Trixie. I didn't know," she said before adding, "but that's not right. You are a hero. You saved me once already with that firework! Right now, that makes you the strongest, greatest, powerfulest unicorn here, and... I need your help."

Trixie slowly raised her head at Twilight's supportive words. "But what can I do...?"

Twilight smiled warmly and replied, "I dunno. Why don't you tell me what you can do? Then maybe we'll think of something."

"...You really mean that?" When Twilight nodded back at her, a small, timid smile formed on Trixie's face. "Well... okay, then I guess I can do that."

Trixie took a deep breath to bolster her confidence as she broke out of Twilight's hug and turned to face her. "Okay, so you saw my firework. I made it myself, but it takes a lot of my magic to make something that bright, so if I have to use it again, I can't do much else. I can move things, obviously, but I couldn't lift you or the cockatrice." She then gave Twilight a more genuine smile as she pulled off her hat and put it off to the side.

"I also learned this from my grandpa, the most magical pony in Equestria! Look at my hooves," she said, sitting back on her haunches so that she could raise her forelegs and let Twilight curiously inspect her little hooves. After several seconds of this, Trixie then pointed at her horn. "Now, watch my horn."

Twilight did so and asked, "Okay, but what am I supposed to be seeing?"

Trixie answered Twilight's question by clapping her hooves together. "Nothing but magic!" Spreading her hooves apart again, Trixie revealed that she was now holding a golden bit in one of her hooves.

Twilight gasped, looking back and forth between the coin and Trixie's horn. "But... but your horn! I didn't even see it glow! How...?" She reached out her own hoof to tap the coin and ensured that it was indeed real.

Trixie giggled. "Sorry, but a showpony never reveals her secrets. That's what grandpa Quartermoon always says."

Twilight's eyes widened at that. "Quartermoon? Quartermoon the Magnificent? Oooh, mommy took me to see his show once! Shiny said it wasn't real magic because he's an earth pony, but couldn't tell me how he did any of his tricks!"

Trixie grinned proudly at that. "Yeah, grandpa's the best! He taught me to get ponies to look at my horn so they won't see what I'm really doing! If I did it like this, you'd know it was just a spell." Her horn glowed, and a second coin materialized in her other hoof. Twilight went 'oooh' and poked at this second coin, only for her hoof to pass through it. "He says real magic is--"

But Twilight wasn't listening. She felt her breath catch as a dozen different thoughts began swimming through her mind, twisting and turning around each other until they began to fit together like the pieces of a puzzle. Ideas formed and merged together until she interrupted Trixie with a cry of, "THAT'S IT!"

Startled by Twilight's shout, Trixie fell onto her back. Almost immediately, though, she was back on her hooves and using one of them to muffle Twilight. "Twilight, what're you doing? It'll hear you!"

Pulling back a bit, Twilight excitedly replied, "Sorry, but I know how you can beat the cockatrice now!"

Then, without any warning, she picked up Trixie's hat with her hooves and jammed it down over Trixie's eyes once more.

"Ack! Wait, what're you doing?! I don't get it!" While she was protesting, Twilight stuck her tail right in Trixie's face, which tickled her nose and caused her to sneeze. "Ah-choo! Seriously, Twilight, what're you doing?"

Despite the sneeze, Twilight kept her tail where Trixie could feel it. "It's part of the plan, Trixie! Grab my tail with your mouth. Then I can lead you, and the cockatrice can't get you!"

Trixie frowned at the idea, but admitted, "Okay... so it can't turn me to stone, but what about you?"

"It's okay, Trixie, I won't let it get me, either. Do you trust me?"

There was a long moment of hesitation from Trixie as she took her time thinking about it, but then the office's door knob started to rattle.

"Eep! What was that? Is anypony out there?!"

When nopony responded, Twilight replied, "It's the cockatrice... Trixie, please trust me! Grab my tail!"

Trixie was still hesitant, but as she heard the doorknob rattle and start to turn, she chomped down on Twilight's tail.

"Ow! Don't bite it off," Twilight yelped, but while she sounded pained, the lavender filly braced herself and faced the door. "O-okay, when I say 'go', start running and turn when I say so, okay?"

Trixie nodded, and whimpered in fear when she heard the door start to creak open. Once it started to move, the door suddenly slammed open, followed by the sound of the cockatrice letting out a terrible crow.

"Go!" Twilight shouted over the cockatrice, cutting through Trixie's fear and prompting her to start running.

The cockatrice was taken by surprise when, instead of facing it as every other creature tended to do, Twilight kept her eyes focused down on the ground and charged straight at it. She didn't even given it time to dodge out of the way as she rammed into it with her stubby little horn.

She winced when she felt the impact, and a jolt of pain exploded in her skull. There were many good reasons why unicorns didn't use their horns for anything but controlling magic (and some things her parents had said they'd tell her about when she was older). It didn't matter that it hurt her, though. Just that it hurt the cockatrice too. It didn't break through the monster's scaley hide, but hit it hard enough to knock it away and leave it wheezing just long enough for the fillies to push past it.

"Trixie, turn right!" Doing her best to keep a steady pace while Trixie's mouth was holding onto her tail, she turned and led the little magician down the hall. With the cockatrice giving chase, she kept her head low, but then she heard it flap its scaley wings as it leaped up onto Trixie's back.

With nothing but her cape to protect her from the cockatrice's talons, Trixie screamed in fright, letting go of Twilight's tail in the process. Twilight started to turn around, but had the presence of mind to clench her eyes shut. "Trixie, duck!"

Hoping as hard as she could that Trixie did so, Twilight spun around and threw her hoof at the place she knew Trixie had been. Thankfully, it was scales and not fur that she hit, causing the cockatrice to stumble and lose its balance, taking Trixie's cape with it as it fell. This had the benefit of buying them a few more seconds as it got tangled in the garment, and Twilight reached around to find Trixie and helped her up again so that they could continue on.

Daring to peek ahead, Twilight saw that they were close to their destination. "We're almost there! When we get to the door, use your magic to turn the knob!"

"O-okay," Trixie stammered as Twilight led her the rest of the way, keeping a hoof on her back the whole time. Soon, Twilight told her to stop and took her hoof to place it against the wooden door. As fast as she could, Trixie groped around blindly with her magic until she felt it wrap around the doorknob and twisted it, practically tumbling inside as it swung open.

Once on the other side of the door, Twilight slammed it shut. She winced when she heard the cockatrice's talons scratching and scraping against it, but it couldn't turn the knob and push the door inward at the same time so long as she braced herself against it.

At the same time, Trixie used her magic to pop her hat free again and look around with wide, hopeful eyes. Eyes which soon turned toward Twilight in disbelief.

"This is where we teleported to in the first place," Trixie shouted in nervous frustration as she gestured around the storeroom. "How're we supposed to get to anypony from here? There's only the one way out, and the cockatrice knows we're in here this time!"

Twilight took a deep breath as she held herself against the door. "Trixie... we can do this!" When Trixie scoffed, Twilight said in a commanding tone, "Trixie! Look me in the eye! We can do this, just look me in the eye!"

Trixie begrudgingly did so, turning toward Twilight. When she did, she saw the lavender filly, as scared as she was and even more powerless, looking back at her with a determination that took her by surprise.

"We can do this," Twilight told her. "You can do this. Do you trust me?"

Trixie still wasn't entirely sure, but the look of steely resolve and confidence in Twilight's eyes helped to bolster her own courage. Glancing over her shoulder at her naked back, she turned back to Twilight and nodded. "That was my favorite cape. It's going down."

"Great! Okay, the first thing you need to do is turn that big mirror around...

Twilight was about to continue, but paused a moment when she heard a high-pitched keening in her ears. She looked at the fillies, who were simply staring and listening in rapt attention. Turning her attention slightly to the side, though, showed Fluttershy looking at her with big, wide eyes, a big, wide grin, and making an "Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!" noise.

Slowly, everypony turned to look at the excitable pegasus. Pinkamena eventually interrupted her squealing by saying, "Fluttershy? You sound like you've sprung a leak."

"Yeah, pretty sure my mom's hearing that from across town," Scootaloo replied, even as she fidgeted in her seat, herself.

Showing no embarrassment whatsoever, the noise Fluttershy was making segued into a giggle. "Come on, girls, this story is amazing! I just wish I had popcorn!" When Pinkamena passed her a bag, the pegasus gasped in delight and began munching on the salty snack.

"This's a lot better'n a board game," Apple Bloom admitted to her fellow Crusaders, who nodded enthusiastically.

"How'd you beat the cockatrice?" Scootaloo asked, leaning forward eagerly. "Did you see some kind of trap in all the stuff the first time?"

Twilight smiled a bit and replied, "Well... sort of."

After ensuring that she had Trixie's help, Twilight had directed her to move a few things. Once that was taken care of, Trixie took her position behind a large crate.

With everything else in position, Twilight took a few deep breaths, then moved away from the door and stepped back to face it while still being in full view from the doorway.

Moments after she moved, Twilight could hear the doorknob turning, soon followed by the door itself creaking open. The cockatrice pushed its way inside, brightening the dark room a bit from the light spilling in from the hallway. Spreading its wings menacingly at her, the cockatrice stepped toward Twilight and glared at the filly.

Twilight glared back, staring straight at the cockatrice as it approached. "Y-you want me? Come on then... I'm not scared of you," Twilight said, only stammering a little as she taunted the monstrous fowl.

Whether it understood her or not, the cockatrice didn't care for her tone, and narrowed its eyes, focusing its petrifying gaze upon her.

Much to the cockatrice's shock, nothing happened. It flapped its wings and let out a chilling crow which made Twilight flinch a bit, but there was no sign of its stare having any effect on her. Slowly, step by step, it continued to cluck threateningly as it crept toward the filly, only pausing to attempt to turn her into stone again with its gaze.

Each time, it was surprised to find a flesh-and-blood filly continuing to stare defiantly back at it.

"Come on, aren't you gonna turn me to stone?" Twilight smirked as she stared back at the monster, slowly taking a step back until her rump bumped against the large cloth-covered mirror behind her. "I thought you were a scary cockatrice, but you're just a big bald chicken, aren't you?"

Growing nervous by its inability to petrify the filly, her snark only served to redouble its resolve. Letting out a frustrated squawk, it narrowed its eyes and focused harder than it ever had before on turning her to stone! And yet, instead of being immobilized as she was before, Twilight planted her hind legs against the face of the mirror and pushed as hard as she could, causing it to swivel on its hinge.

The cloth fell down as its spun, and Twilight quickly stepped back, bracing herself to catch the mirror as it swung toward her. In the process, the cockatrice, now turning the full brunt of its glare on her, suddenly found itself staring at its own reflection.

The cockatrice let out a startled squawk and reflexively tried to shut its eyes, but it was already too late. Caught in its own gaze, it found its body stiffening up, trapped by the reflected stare. The petrification started at its talons and slowly crept up its body as it was forced to watch itself turn to stone bit by bit until finally, the effect moved all the way up to its head and the baleful crimson of its eyes was replaced with blank grey.

"Is... is it over?" Trixie's voice asked from behind her hiding place after several seconds of hearing nothing but her own breathing.

Twilight slowly poked her head out from behind the mirror, and when she heard no other movement, she opened her eyes. This caused the illusion cast on her eyelids to rise up, making it look like she had a second set. Upon seeing the cockatrice completely immobilized, Twilight let out a cheer of pure joy. "We did it!"

"We did?" Trixie peeked out from behind her crate, then came out to join Twilight in cheering at the sight. "We did it!" She reached up to pull off her hat and wave it around in celebration, her horn glowing with magic which faded as Twilight's 'second set' of eyes vanished. "Classic misdirection! I can't wait to tell grandpa!"

"And now we can find a grown-up, and the Princess will fix everything!"

"Yes!"

"Yes!"

The two fillies began hopping and dancing around each other, excitedly reveling in their victory.

"Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!"

"Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!"

Everypony stared while Twilight bounced around the library, chanting. Off to the side, Dewdrop stared slack-jawed while Sunburn smirked and leaned in to whisper, "My kingdom for a movie camera... You can recreate this, right?"

"Depends... do you want your boss to teleport you into the sun?"

"Point," the burnt-orange pegasus conceded.

"I'm thinking more about the cockatrice..."

"... Yeah."

All the while, Twilight continued to dance around like a filly on a sugar-rush until Sweetie Belle asked, "So, was that when you realized you got your cutie mark?"

"Yes! Yes! Yes! Y-erk... ah... I mean no," Twilight replied, blushing as she came to a stop. Her good mood slowly faded to a small, rueful smile as she sat down again. "That didn't appear until a little later. We were able to find one of the Guard, eventually. I... I guess we'd been teleported to the other side of the castle grounds, so while most of them were busy searching for us near the testing area, the cockatrice petrified the few who were still patrolling near where we actually were.

"Everypony who was attacked by the cockatrice got turned back to normal, and nopony was hurt, but we'd still distracted everypony by disappearing like we did, so when we found out Princess Celestia wanted to talk to me and Trixie alone, I didn't know what to expect."

Twilight waited patiently, but every so often she would glance nervously at the door. Trixie had been invited in first, but hadn't come out yet.

Meanwhile, that slight bit of movement on her part prompted her mother to squeeze her again. "Eep! Mommy... too tight...!"

Twilight Velvet just continued to hold her daughter, though she did let Twilight have just enough room to breathe. "My precious little baby...! I am never, ever letting you disappear on me like that again! I don't want to hear about you running off and fighting monsters, understood?"

"Well, for what it's worth, I'd say she's got a talent for it," a cream-coated earth pony stallion with a forest-green mane and a cutie mark of a stringed instrument interjected. When Twilight's mom glared at him, he chuckled lightly and said, "Oop, sorry. Name's Lute Drops."

"Oh, I think we've met," Twilight's father, Night Light, said. "You're the dangerous creature specialist, aren't you? I manage your expense reports."

Lute Drops nodded. "That's me. The Princess wants me to take care of relocating that cockatrice somewhere it won't bother anypony ever again. Just wanted to say congratulations to you and your little one for how well she handled herself."

Smiling to Twilight, Lute told her, "I've got a filly about your age. I wouldn't want her to get in the sort of trouble you went through... not without a lot more training, at least. Still, if she ever does, I hope she'll be as brave and resourceful as you were."

Twilight blushed at that, and this time she shrank back deeper into her mother's embrace. "Um... thanks, Mr. Drops. I didn't really do much..."

"If you say so," Lute replied, waving as he walked off down the hall. "Take care of yourself, hero girl."

Moments after he was gone, the door they were waiting for opened, and one of the palace's servants announced, "Twilight Sparkle? Princess Celestia will see you now."

Twilight looked up at her mother, who looked right back down at her with a worried expression, though she sighed and very reluctantly let go of her daughter. "It's okay, sweetie. We'll be right out here..."

"You don't have anything to worry about," Night Light said reassuringly to both Twilights. "I'm sure the Princess just wants to thank you. Once you're done, we'll all go out for a nice dinner."

"Yes... yes, that sounds nice," Twilight Velvet replied, but she couldn't help watching Twilight every moment as she was ushered through the doors.

On the other side, Twilight was led into a cozy reading room lined from floor to ceiling with bookshelves, each one absolutely filled with countless tomes. Ordinarily, Twilight would be giddy to be surrounded by so much literature, and would probably be climbing the shelves to find a good book to spend several hours with, but ordinary circumstances didn't have her walking into a room inhabited by Princess Celestia.

The Summer Sun Celebration, a little less than a year ago. Each year it was held in a different city or town as a way for the Princess to say that the sun's light shone for everypony in Equestria, as did the Princess's love for her subjects. Every tenth year, though, it was traditional to hold the festival in the capital. Technically, Twilight had been in attendance the last time it was held in Canterlot, but she had only been a a months-old foal at the time, and didn't remember a thing about it.

It had been before dawn, of course, making it really early, but Twilight had been filled with an incredible restless energy. She had started out walking with her family and foalsitter down the Canterlot streets, but as soon as she saw the crowd gathered, she couldn't hold herself back and took off ahead.

The crowd was dense, ponies packed together as closely as they could in order to see their Princess. There was a dull roar of chatter as friends and neighbors chatted amongst themselves. Most were excited like her, though a few sounded concerned about the Princess's age, and whether or not she should be doing such public appearances.

Twilight didn't pay any attention to those. She was too focused on using her small size to dodge and weave between tightly-packed bodies, even squeezing between their legs until she got close enough to see the stage on which Princess Celestia was standing.

Twilight's eyes told her that the Princess looked old. Thin. Frail. A blond-maned colt not much older than her was at her side, seemingly to help her stand. And yet, mere moments after Twilight had gotten close enough to see, Princess Celestia gave the gathered ponies a calm, gentle smile and spread her great wings.

She pushed herself up into the sky, her horn shining with a golden radiance that seemed to pull the sun up over the horizon as she rose higher. Most of the crowd immediately averted their eyes from the brightness, but while Twilight brought a hoof up to shade her eyes from the initial glare, she peered up at her ruler.

Backed as she was by the sun's light, Twilight could no longer see the wrinkles or the thin frame, or the wispiness of her mane. Instead, Twilight felt that she was getting a glimpse of something truly wondrous.

Princess Celestia, ruler of Equestria since ancient times, Warden of the Sun. In that moment, Twilight thought that she could see a vision of the Princess in the prime of her life and height of her power. Gentle, quiet, yet unyielding strength. Wisdom tempered by the ages and directed by love for her nation and its people.

It was inspirational. She had always been bookish, but seeing the Princess in such an awe-inspiring light drove her to push herself even farther in her studies. She had been fortunate enough to witness a magic greater and deeper than anything she had ever seen in her short life, and wanted nothing more than to touch even a small fraction of that greatness.

And now here she was, in the same room as her idol. Princess Celestia rested comfortably on a large cushion and looked straight at her with a smile of sweet, grandmotherly affection on her lips. Somehow, without putting on a show as she had done for the Summer Sun Celebration, she still managed to radiate an aura of quiet power that would have pushed Twilight right out of the room if not for the inviting atmosphere.

The Princess slowly opened her mouth to greet Twilight, but before the words came out, a light blue cannonball suddenly launched itself at the lavender filly.

Crushing Twilight in a tight embrace, Trixie gushed, "Twilight! Twilight! You won't believe it! The Princess said I didn't have to take the entrance exam! I told her all about what happened with the cockatrice, and she said I wasn't just good enough to get into the school... she wants to teach me personally! Can you believe it?!"

Twilight gasped in shock, which quickly turned to delight as she hugged her new friend back. "That's great, Trixie! Wow... I thought it was amazing to get into the school, but being taught by Princess Celestia herself? That's super-amazing! You totally deserve it!"

Trixie let out a squeal of excitement before pulling back to hold Twilight at foreleg's length in order to look her in the eye. "We deserve it," she corrected. "I couldn't have done anything to beat that monster without your ideas! Maybe I'm not crazy-strong, but the Princess says I can still be great and powerful!"

"And I meant it," Celestia interjected, her soft voice cutting through Trixie's excited rambling. Instantly reminded of whom she was summoned by, Twilight reflexively shoved herself out of Trixie's embrace and dropped to the floor to bow toward the Princess.

"Ow! Hey, what was that for?"

"Sorry!"

Celestia raised an eyebrow at the fillies' antics. Her horn began to glow with a warm, golden aura that picked up the little unicorns and placed them both in front of her. "There, there. I appreciate the respect, but there is no need to bow right now, and there is especially no need to push your fellow student."

"I'm sorry, Princess... and I'm sorry, Trixie, I just-- Wait... 'fellow student'? But I... I failed, didn't I?" Twilight blinked in confusion up at the ancient alicorn.

Celestia smiled warmly down at her and shook her head. "Oh, child, nothing could be further from the truth. That egg that you were presented with was a dragon's egg. One which is preserved and protected from harm by so many layers of enchantments that the most powerful unicorns in Equestria have tried and failed to hatch it for two hundred years. While it would have been a truly miraculous thing if you had succeeded, it was never required of you."

The princess rolled her eyes, then, and let out a sigh. "Which is what Dramatic Pause would have told you if he didn't so love to build suspense."

Twilight's ears flattened against her head, her confusion making it feel as though the floor was sinking beneath her. "It wasn't required...? But then how was I supposed to pass?"

Celestia replied by asking her, "Twilight, do you know what a 'magic block' is?" When Twilight shook her head, the princess patiently explained, "Then let me tell you a little story. Almost eleven years ago, now, I held the Summer Sun Celebration here in Canterlot. There was a large crowd, as there usually is, including a young couple with their newborn daughter.

"I opened the holiday as I always do, by raising the sun. When I did, the sudden brightness hurt the little baby's eyes. I barely had time to hear her cry out and see her little horn glow brightly before several dozen ponies vanished out of the crowd in a flash.

"Fortunately, they were found mere hours later. Given time to study the truly extraordinary amount of magic left behind, we were eventually able to follow the trail to the crystal caverns within the mountain. There, we found every single pony who had vanished, safe and sound, including a baby filly crying in her mother's embrace.

"Ever since, the filly never showed any great talent in magic after that. Although she continued to possess incredible potential, it was buried deep inside. You see, she had scared herself. That innocent little child had only wanted to get away from the bright light, but the spell she cast caused her to become lost in the dark, surrounded by frightened ponies. She was far too young to understand anything about her situation beyond the fact that her power had caused her distress, and so she 'blocked' most of her power away where she couldn't reach it.

"Now, this is actually fairly common among especially powerful young unicorns. Often, those who have a magic block will seem no stronger than those around her until either they discover their special talent and accept their power as a part of it, or they receive a bit of a 'push' which causes them to draw upon their true strength."

Princess Celestia paused a moment to allow Twilight to absorb all of this information. She looked down into the little filly's wide, sparkling eyes as the light of understanding reflected back at her. "So... you wanted to give that filly a 'push'...?"

Celestia nodded.

Twilight leaned forward. "And... and she's...?"

Celestia smiled and nodded. "Yes, Twilight. That filly was--"

"Oh my gosh, Trixie!" Twilight gasped and turned to stare at the blue filly in wonderment. "When I ran into you, it broke your block! That's amazing!"

Trixie blinked once, then pulled her hat down so that she could groan into it.

When she was done, she threw her hooves up and shouted, "Twilight, you dummy, it was you! I can do tricks, but I can't teleport... yet!"

Twilight turned a shade paler and started to shake her head. "No... no, I couldn't have... I can barely turn the page of one of my books," she protested.

"Only because a part of you connects your true strength to something which caused you fear, Twilight," Celestia gently explained. Shooting a stern look in Trixie's direction for a moment, she added, "That does not make you a 'dummy.' It merely means that in order to test your true potential, we had to employ an unorthodox test to encourage you to draw it out."

She paused for a moment in thought, then chuckled softly to herself. "And I suppose this is how Dramatic Pause felt. I assure you, Twilight, there was no malice in what we did.

"By giving you a near-impossible task, you were forced to push yourself farther than you have before. Even if you did not have great strength within you, the sheer variety of spells that you attempted to use was most impressive. But you do, Twilight Sparkle, and when you began to call upon the true depths of the magic within you, the block began to crumble, and everypony in the room with you could see just how extraordinary you are.

"Unfortunately, you ran off before anypony could tell you that, and when you collided with young Trixie here, all of that magic that you had been calling upon took the form of a teleportation spell, leading to the little adventure you both found yourselves embroiled in.

"That is why I have summoned you here as well, Twilight. Trixie has already accepted, and now I want to offer you both a place as my personal students."

Twilight stared up at Princess Celestia, stunned by the offer. The Princess had inspired her to study and practice so hard just for a chance to get into the school... now she was being given a chance to learn from the Princess herself alongside her new friend? It was so much more than she could have ever hoped for!

And yet... she hesitated.

Seeing her hesitance, Celestia's grandmotherly smile faded ever so slightly. "You and Trixie both have great potential, Twilight. With the proper teaching, I know that you will each grow up to be fine mares who will do well by Equestria. Even greater than that, though, is what you have proven yourselves to be capable of when working together.

"I believe that with the two of you cooperating and challenging each other, you will be more than capable of overcoming the... the obstacles of some of those who came before you," Celestia said, her gaze dropping down to her hooves as her voice trailed away.

Twilight similarly twiddled her hooves in thought, barely noticing when Trixie started nudging her. "Come on, Twilight, what are you moping about? This is the best day of our lives!"

Twilight whimpered as Princess Celestia shook her head in disappointment. "Honestly, Twilight, you had such potential. Why can't you keep up?" It had been like this for a while, now. While Twilight had started strong when she first became Celestia's student, she had quickly hit her peak while Trixie continued to improve at an astonishing pace, prompting Celestia to give them more and more challenging assignments. Now, Trixie was outside basking in the adoration of her classmates while Twilight was left behind in the aftermath of yet another failed test.

Twilight gasped for air as the dark, eldritch shapes wrapped around her, crushing her ribs. "T-trixie...! Why...?"

Standing in the middle of the nightmarish horror was a little blue filly, hat and cape discarded in favor of a black dress more befitting the evil sorceress she had become. Trixie sneered at her, glowing red eyes looking at Twilight as if she were a particularly ugly little bug. "You thought you were so great. Always lording it over me just because you were born with power. I worked even harder than you did, but I could never crawl out of your shadow! Fortunately, I found some friends there. Now who's Great and Powerful?!"

Twilight felt the shadows hold her even more tightly, slowly squeezing the life out of her. Twilight's last thought among the living was wondering how she had failed her friend.

Twilight blinked in confusion as Trixie pulled back from the kiss that had (to her) come out of nowhere. "Wh... wha...?"

Trixie's hopeful smile turned into a frown. "... That's it? That's... seriously? All that time we spent together? All those times you hugged me and told me how special I was to you, and... Gah, I'm such an idiot! Of course you don't feel that way!"

Twilight stammered under her breath, not knowing what to say. She tried to reach out to Trixie, only for her friend to turn away with tears in her eyes. "No! Don't come near me!" Her hoof accidentally stepped on her cape, though, causing her to lose her balance. And as Trixie tumbled over the balcony railing and plummeted toward the ground far below, Twilight knew that it could have been avoided if she simply hadn't failed to read other ponies.

Twilight sifted through the rubble of her family home, crying out for her mommy and daddy. The return of Arlok, the Dalk Lord, had come without warning except for a passage in a book that she had started to read, but had set aside in favor of going to a party with Trixie and their friends from school. His army of twisted abominations had sacked Canterlot with a swift and terrible ferocity, and the whole way there, she had passed the bodies of friends and neighbors.

Her search for her family was cut off by a dark growl coming from behind her. She slowly turned to see an immense white beast, her mother's mangled corpse hanging from its jaws. Overwhelmed with sorrow and despair, Twilight let out a pained scream as she fired a blast of magic from her horn...

... Only to watch it bounce harmlessly off of a pink bubble of magic which manifested around the monstrosity. Twilight's eyes went wide as she saw the mutant horror turn just enough for her to see its flank, and the distorted, yet clearly identifiable mark of a blue shield. "Shiny... no..."

If only she hadn't failed to warn everypony.

Everything was fine.

Everything was just fine.

Everything was completely, totally, undisputably the definition of fine.

She was getting excellent grades. She had great friends, including a best friend who could both challenge her and keep her grounded. Her home life was great. Princess Celestia was a wise and fair mentor who always inspired her to do her very best. Equestria was as safe and happy and beautiful as it had ever been.

Everything was fine in Twilight Sparkle's life, except for Twilight Sparkle.

Every test that she took, every single question or task, she worried that there was some hidden meaning behind it. Every interaction with a classmate was another secret test. Every event, whether planned or accidental, could be another attempt to determine if she was truly worthy. So far, she had passed every test put before her.

So far.

The price for passing every test, though, was that she was failing to truly live the amazing life that she had been given. Every moment of every day. Failing.

Failing. Always failing. A million thoughts crawling through her young mind leading to a million failures, all coming from one common point of origin.

Twilight turned her head up to look at Trixie and Princess Celestia, both of them grinning warmly and invitingly at her. That was what made her insides twist themselves into knots as she told them, "I'm... I'm sorry. What you're saying is so amazing... but I can't be your student, Princess."

"Why not?" Trixie asked, utterly baffled by Twilight's reluctance. "You made me think you were smart. How can you not want this?"

"I do!" Twilight snapped back at Trixie so emphatically, the little magician actually leaned back. "It's the sort of thing I always dreamed of! But I can't do it... It's not right for me," she said, and when she looked to Trixie, pleading for understanding, she instead saw the other filly pointing at her flank.

Twilight looked at where Trixie was pointing, and saw a bright flash. When it faded, a cutie mark of a compass rose had appeared on her once-bare flank.

Princess Celestia leaned in closer to look as well, squinting slightly to see it clearly. When she did, she nodded in understanding. "I see. Well, then, while I am sorry that I will not be taking a personal hoof in your growth, Twilight, it seems that you truly do have a different destiny in front of you."

Trixie asked, confused, "Wait, huh? What'd you get your cutie mark for? What does it even mean?"

"Yeah, what does it mean?" Sweetie Belle asked. "I always just thought you had a good sense of direction."

Twilight chuckled a bit at that. "That's actually not too far off the mark. My special talent is 'navigation', but not in the sense of maps or charts. I mean, sure, I can read a map as well as any other pony trained in the Guard, but what it means for me is being able to take what I know and plan ahead, seeing all the bad outcomes until I find a good one that I can act on. In that case, it seemed that the best outcome came out of finding a different direction for my life."

"Wow," Fluttershy mused. "Hey, do you think it might have gone differently if you hadn't been tricked about the egg thing? I got the feeling that it bothered you."

Twilight shook her head. "I don't know. The Princess thought so for a while, I think. Like I was upset with her over it, but it couldn't be further from the truth! I'm happy that she cares enough about her little ponies to try to help one little filly be the best she could be. That test did get me to tap into magic I'd forgotten I had, and I even found out later that she helped pick my foalsitter so there'd be somepony around who could help if I broke my magic block in a bad situation. That's why I wanted to find a way to serve her and Equestria, even if I wasn't going to be her student."

With a bit of chagrin, she added, "To be honest... knowing what I do now, I probably could've taken the Princess up on her offer without destroying Equestria. I was a filly with a vivid imagination at the time. That doesn't mean I have too many regrets, though. Let's face it, as neurotic as I am now, imagine if I had the pressure of being the Princess's disciple to live up to on top of everything else."

Rarity asked, "I have to admit, even with what you said, I'm a little shocked that you turned down such an amazing opportunity. It sounded like Trixie was upset that you weren't joining her, too."

"Yeah, I couldn't really make her understand, so she was annoyed with me at first, but I think she got over it pretty quickly."

Trixie scoffed and started walking away from Twilight. "Why would I ever want to be friends with some loser who throws away a golden opportunity when it's hoofed to them? What, do you think you're too good to learn from a Princess all of a sudden?" After only taking three steps further, though, she turned and haughtily declared, "You know what? When Princess Celestia starts teaching me all sorts of crazy-awesome spells you've never even heard of, you're gonna be the first one to see me pull them off just to remind you what you missed out on!"

"Heh. In her own way, at least," Twilight added, grinning at the memory. "Oh, you should've seen her when they made the announcement that Princess Celestia was taking on a student. Come to think of it, Dewdrop, do you still have all those old copies of the Canterlot Times?"

The bespectacled librarian startled a little at suddenly being addressed. "Huh? Oh, sure. Just tell me what day you want me to look for, and I'll pull it out of storage."

"Well, it would be the day after the cockatrice attack, so the 8th of Fidelious, 991."

As one, the other five Element bearers all gasped in surprise, causing Twilight to look around to see if some sort of monster had suddenly manifested in the library. "What? What is it?"

Rarity exclaimed, "That means you got your cutie mark on the 7th? That's the exact same day that I found mine!"

Rainbow Dash interjected. "The 7th was the day I crashed into the Everfree! I bet if you look in the paper, there'll be a blurb about me!"

"And that's when I received my cutie mark as well," Applejack mused in disbelief. "What are the odds of that?"

"Pretty incredible, because that's the day Will and I put on our first show," Fluttershy replied.

"It isn't about odds," Pinkamena said, her voice as calm and even as ever, which served to make her stand out amidst the confusion. Looking around at each of her friends, she said, "Even before Waking Night, the six of us were connected by destiny. Cause and effect don't run in just one direction. Our friendship transcends time, and connects us in our past as well as our future."

Fluttershy brought her hooves to her mouth and squealed quietly into them while Rarity put a foreleg around her and smiled. "That's actually a really sweet thought, Pinkamena." And while he didn't understand it, little Spike smiled and joined in the hug from his mother's back.

Applejack followed suit and chuckled. "Well, I've never been one for destiny, myself, but after everything we've been through with you girls, it's hard not to believe."

The other three soon gathered around to join in, and while all six cuddled together, Fluttershy exclaimed, "We should sing a song!"

Immediately after that, the door to the library was pushed open, and a very female and mildly annoyed Cloud Kicker fluttered inside. "Twilight, you liar, you told me that spell would last at least four hours, and... and..." She trailed off, looking at the six mares snuggling and nuzzling each other for a moment and mentally omitted Spike's presence before concluding, "And all is forgiven. Well played, Sparkle. Well played."

Author's Notes:

Finally got this one done! As you can see, this one's the longest of the six and took the longest for me to get it how I envisioned from the beginning due to all the stuff that happens in it.

Tesla "Bolt" Lulamoon is a character from a tabletop game I'm running with my friends, set in this universe but two hundred years in the past. In the game, she's still a young filly but has fought vamponies, rescued children from a tribe of jacked-up earth ponies, battled a canine warrior strong enough to kill dragons, and earned her cutie mark by repairing the engine of an airborne cruise ship when it was sabotaged by Sombra-esque dark crystals.

Trixie's magical ability and versatility is quite a bit above average, but she feels inadequate at times due to the pretty massive horseshoes she has to fill.

Dotted Line is the creation of the much-more-talented-than-me GhostOfHeraclitus, and is used with permission. If you haven't read his stuff yet, go check out Whom the Princesses Would Destroy (the first chapter of which has a dramatic reading HERE). In this universe, Nightlight is one of his co-workers in the Civil Service Bureau.

Quartermoon the Magnificent is Trixie's grandfather from the Lunaverse created by RainbowDoubleDash. He is an earth pony stage magician, and is absolutely adored by his grand-daughter, who aspires to be more like him than like many of her unicorn ancestors.

Lute Drops is something I came up with after it was revealed that Bon-Bon (a.k.a. Agent Sweetie Drops) is canonically a badass monster-hunter. I got to thinking that maybe it ran in the family.

As for Twilight temporarily turning Cloud Kicker into a stallion... it's complicated.

And regarding the month name, it made sense to me that in Harmonia, especially the Equestrian territories, they would have months based off of the Elements of Harmony, along with certain historical figures. In the case of Fidelious, it's a Summer month equivalent to our August, and its name is a reference to the Element of Loyalty.

But the story isn't quite over yet. What was it that drove Scootaloo to find out all of the Mane6's stories? Has she uncovered something important to the fate of Equestria, or is it all in her comic book-fueled imagination? We'll see!

The CMC Conspiracy

Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle made their way between the trees of Sweet Apple Acres until the old, abandoned clubhouse that the Crusaders (mostly Apple Bloom) had restored came into view. Seeing the windows and door shut tight, Sweetie Belle turned to her friend and asked, "She's gotta be in here, right? I mean, if she wasn't at her house..."

Apple Bloom looked back to the curly-maned unicorn and furrowed her brow. "Ah just hope she'll tell us why she ran off in the first place. Y'all were friends fer a while b'fore Ah joined up. Do you know what's goin' on in that filly's head?"

Cloud Kicker stood ogling the six saviors of Equestria. Without warning, Scootaloo shouted, "It's all connected!" Then, in a blur of orange and purple, she dashed out the open door without any further explanation.

Sweetie Belle pursed her lips before replying, "Last year, Carrot Top treated Rarity to a spa date and got her mane styled. That was the same day Scootaloo heard about 'The Trotford Wives.'"

When Apple Bloom tilted her head in confusion, Sweetie Belle explained, "It's some movie where there's this town, and this scientist takes all the mares and... the point is, for a whole week, she thought Rarity'd been replaced by a robot! She spent the whole time trying to splash water on her to prove it."

"Soooo, you're sayin' we should be prepared fer anything?"

When Sweetie Belle nodded, Apple Bloom said, "One o' these days, you're gonna have ta tell me how y'all became friends in the first place," and knocked on the clubhouse's door.

From inside, Scootaloo's voice called out, "Who is it?"

"It's Apple Bloom! Sweetie Belle and Ah've been lookin' for ya since ya ran outta the library." After a short pause, she added, "And we ain't robots or anythin'!"

It opened, and Scootaloo poked her head out, her hat and cape hung up on a hook by the door. Arching an eyebrow at her earth pony friend, she asked, "Uhhh, yeah, I know you aren't robots. That's kinda weird, Apple Bloom. Are you feeling alright?"

"That's what we want to ask you," Sweetie Belle squeaked, pushing forward to poke a hoof against Scootaloo's chest. "Scootaloo, please tell me you're not going to try to make us all get cockatrice-hunting cutie marks!"

Seeing her oldest friend staring her right in the eye with intense concern, Scootaloo took a step back to let the others inside. "Relax, guys. This isn't about our cutie marks," she reassured them. Such assurances gave way to worry again, however, when they went in and saw what she had been working on. Scootaloo completely missed their looks of dismay and cheerfully added, "It's about theirs!"

With very little light coming in through the shuttered windows, the dim clubhouse was illuminated by a firefly lantern which shone on the fruits of Scootaloo's labor. The back wall of the clubhouse was dominated by a corkboard panel with crudely drawn crayon sketches stuck to it with tacks, lengths of string connecting each of them to at least one of the others.

Taking in the sight of their friend's handiwork, the other two Crusaders saw that the board focused on six points representing each of the Element Bearers' cutie marks. From there, they were each connected to several other sketches or notes, some of which were connected to multiple marks.

"I started to think something was fishy after hearing Fluttershy's and Rainbow Dash's story," Scootaloo explained. "Both of them hearing voices that shouldn't have been there, and having it lead them to getting their cutie marks? That's just weird. Rarity getting dragged for miles? Pinkamena blacking out? Applejack hearing a rooster in the middle of Manehattan? A cockatrice showing up in the Royal Palace without any explanation? All these things leading to six fillies getting their cutie marks on the exact same day, and those six fillies all grew up to get the Elements of Harmony, beat up Eclipse, and wake up Princess Luna. You tell me, girls, how does that happen?"

Apple Bloom immediately retorted, "Coincidence?"

"Destiny?" Sweetie Belle piped in.

Scootaloo slammed a hoof against the corkboard. "Conspiracy! Your sisters and their friends were chosen by powerful, hidden forces. Forces that worked from behind the scenes to secretly set them on the path to defeating Eclipse and restoring Princess Luna!" Seeing the dubious looks on her friends' faces, she added, "And okay, that's a good thing, but how do we know what their real agenda is if we don't know anything about them? Maybe they're friendly now, but what if they change their minds and decide to turn on Equestria? As long as they stay hidden, there's no way we can stop them if they turn out to be bad guys. That's why we need to find out who they are and what they want! And until we know that, we'll refer to them as this!"

With a dramatically hard slam, Scootaloo pinned a note to the corkboard with the letters "CMC" in sinister red letters.

Sweetie Belle let out a gasp. "Scootaloo! Are you saying we're the bad guys?!"

Scootaloo blinked and glanced back and forth between the unicorn filly and the note before facehoofing. "No... No, Sweetie Belle, just... it's short for Cutie Mark Cabal. They're the ones we need to find."

Apple Bloom interrupted by asking, "Okay... so, how're we s'pposed ta find 'em?"

Scootaloo replied, "Look, they got the Element bearers their cutie marks. I bet they've still got agents placed nearby. Infiltrators posing as ordinary Ponyville citizens. That way they can keep track of the Elements of Harmony. That means it's our duty to find out if they're friends or foes! And I'm gonna get to the bottom of it, with or without your help."

"Don't say that, Scootaloo. We're your friends," Sweetie Belle pouted. She took a minute to look over the board. "It is kind of strange. Somepony should try to find out if you're right about all this, buuuuut..."

"But what?"

Sweetie Belle pointed to the "CMC" note on the board. "Are we going to have to change our name? Because that's just confusing!"

At the same time, Dewdrop and Sunburn made their way to the Best Pony Boutique. Dewdrop waved in greeting when she saw Derpy Hooves flying overhead on her daily rounds, and the ditzy mailmare excitedly waved back without stopping until she smacked into the side of a house. Dewdrop winced, but sheepishly continued to wave as Derpy simply picked herself back up and gave them a cheery smile before continuing on her route.

"All these years, and I'm still not used to that," Sunburn mused, though after a moment's thought, added, "though I guess it's kinda like me working with Sarge every day."

Dewdrop nodded slowly. "I suppose. But Derpy's a very good friend."

"At least you can be yourself all the time. I'm always a little worried I'm gonna slip up around Sarge, somehow. You never know what those ears of hers are gonna pick up. At least we've both got a better deal than Spot," Sunburn muttered as they approached the Boutique.

They arrived just as two little fillies, Diamond Tiara and Silver spoon, were exiting. They were followed by an elderly servant who carried a tall stack of boxes and packages, balancing them on his back despite the shaking of his joints.

"Come on, Randolph, pick up the pace! We still have three more stores to get to!"

Once Randolph was out of the doorway, the proprietress stuck her head out and cheerfully called out, "Thank you for visiting (and being) the Best Pony! Feel free to come back any time you want to be your absolute best!" She kept the smile on and waved until the fillies were well out of sight, then immediately replaced it with a grimace of clenched teeth and seething anger. "Stuck up, ungrateful, snobby little..."

Sunburn walked over to the upset mare and gave the pink, white-maned mare an affectionate embrace. "Hey, babe, it's okay. It's over now, and I'm here for you."

Anger gradually gave way to a softer, sorrowful expression as Spot Light started to relax into her wife's embrace. "Sunburn? I thought you were out on patrol," she said before noticing the librarian standing nearby with a look of supportive concern. "Dewdrop too?"

"I'm sorry, I know it's a bad time, but we found something you need to see," Dewdrop replied. "I could come back later if you need some time..."

Spot Light sniffed and wiped her eyes as she shook her head. "No, no, it's alright." She scowled a bit in the direction the fillies had gone, but held the door open to invite her wife and friend inside. "I might have to deal with that Tartaros-spawned brat, but at least that last binge means I can close the shop for a while." Both of the other mares gave her supportive, understanding smiles as they stepped inside, and Spot Light set the "Closed" sign out on the door before latching it shut behind them.

Once inside, Dewdrop used her magic to close all of the curtains in the shop, then formed a small ball of light that drifted up to the ceiling and lit up the room like a tiny sun. At the same time, Sunburn was holding her wife and consoling her. "Babe, I swear, you were never that bad. Well, okay, almost never, but everypony has bad days! And sure, you had more than most fillies, but--"

"Ugh, why can't you ever just stop after the first sentence? I swear, if I didn't love you so much... you'd better just be grateful I love you so much."

Sunburn grinned and squeezed the earth pony mare in her hooves. "I am. Every day."

Spot Light lightly punched Sunburn in the shoulder. "Shut up..." she muttered, though the blushing smile that spread across her face made her true feelings clear enough.

"Umm... sorry to interrupt, but I think you should take a look at this," Dewdrop said, holding out the yellowed and tattered page with her magic.

Still snuggled into Sunburn's embrace, Spot Light peeked at the scrap of paper and looked over the words typed on it. A moment later, her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates, and she shoved Sunburn away so hard that the pegasus hit the wall all the way on the other side of the room while Spot Light snatched the page out of the air. "Wha...? Where...? How did you find this?!"

"Fluttershy," Dewdrop replied. "She's had it for years, apparently, but that's not even the incredible part. 'Sunburn' here heard the whole story, so she could tell you better than I can."

The pegasus walked back over, rubbing her head, but otherwise looking more miffed than hurt. As her hoof moved through her mane, the fainted sign of purple roots could be seen at the base of her bleached-blond hair. "Okay, so I was out in the woods, checking up on the Crusaders, when Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy showed up..."

While Sunburn began to tell the story, Dewdrop stepped into the back of the store to find Spot Light's kitchen. Familiar as she was with the layout of her friends' home, she barely needed to think about it as she used her magic to pick up their teapot and levitated it to the sink. While it gradually filled up, she looked into the water while her thoughts drifted back into the past.

Years ago (relatively)...

"Momma...! Momma...!"

The little unicorn filly who would one day be known as Dewdrop Decimal sobbed, even as the wagon she was riding in was pulled along at a truly reckless speed.

"Are we almost there?" The pegasus pulling her and the wagon along called out to her, but she could barely hear it. She didn't want to hear anything. "Hey! Are we going the right way or not? You're the one who's met the guy!"

The unicorn tried clenching her eyes shut, but the darkness behind her eyelids only made the memory worse. Darkness.

Not blackness, but the opposite of light. An entire spectrum of darkness... an evil rainbow that twisted everything that was good and kind into mindless hatred.

The memory of a single huge, golden eye focusing on her sent a stabbing pain through the filly's chest. There was no love there. No warmth. Nothing at all but hate.

She let out a scream of agony and forced her eyes back open as her friend screeched to a stop. "Woah! Are you okay?"

The unicorn gathered herself and shook her head slowly. "No... but you were right... We can't let anypony else..." A choked whimper started to rise up in her throat, but she swallowed it back down and looked about. They were at the edge of a quarry near what what was left of their hometown. "Over there," she said quietly, her voice cracking a bit as she pointed to a boulder sitting out in the open.

The orange pegasus nodded grimly and helped her out of the wagon, letting the unicorn lean against her as the two of them made their way toward the rock. Once they were close enough, the unicorn pressed her hoof against its surface. For a moment, nothing happened, but then an accented male voice said, "Companion identity confirmed. Access granted."

With that, a rectangular seam began to form on the surface of the rock. It then started to swing open like a door, but before it opened all the way, another filly's voice cried out, "Waaaaaaait!"

Panting heavily from being weighed down by her own saddlebags, a pink earth pony ran up to them. Before she reached them, though, the pegasus put herself between the newcomer and the rock, then reared up on her hind legs and threw her forelegs out to either side. "What're you doing here? Go back home!"

The earth pony came to a stop and gasped for air, unused to so much exertion. Once she caught her breath, though, she glared and snapped, "No! I heard what you two were talking about! You aren't leaving without me!"

"And you're not coming with us! You still have family here! You didn't lose everything like we did!"

"I will if you go away," the earth pony snapped. Glancing back at her cutie mark, she asked, "Do you know what my special talent is? Accessorizing! I know when things go together, and... and we go together, or we don't go anywhere! If you leave without me, you'll just do something stupid and... and you'll never come back, and I can't let that happen!"

Dropping back down onto all fours, the pegasus opened her mouth to argue, but any counterpoints that she might have made were cut off by the earth pony's soft lips. Her eyes went wide, little wings reflexively springing straight up as she froze in a startled posture that persisted for several seconds after the other filly pulled back. "Buh... guh..."

"You tried to block... I had to show you I rock," the earth pony said, blushing despite the hard, determined look on her face as she stepped around the stunned pegasus. Looking past the unicorn, she asked, "Speaking of rocks, are we supposed to go in that thing?"

"If you wanna," the unicorn replied, stepping in through the doorway.

The earth pony followed, only to end up as gob-smacked as their pegasus friend as rough stone quickly gave way to a room of metal tiles which was far larger than the boulder outside should have been able to contain. It even had doors leading into other rooms! "It's... it's bigger on the inside..." she marveled.

Immediately after saying this, she was startled by the sudden appearance of a brown earth pony stallion wearing a green necktie smiling down at her. "Indeed it is, young guest!" While the earth pony screamed and quickly backed away, the stallion simply smiled to the unicorn and said, "Greetings, Dinky. Is this one of your companions?"

Dinky Doo nodded slowly, her eyes downcast and sullen. "... Yeah. Doc, this is Diamond Tiara. And that's Scootaloo," she murmured as the pegasus came in to join them. At the same time, Diamond Tiara pulled a thick self-help book by Iron Will out of her saddlebag and hurled it at the stallion's head.

When it passed straight through and bonked Scootaloo instead. Diamond's eyes widened. "Ahhh! Ghost!" She then darted behind Scootaloo for protection while the pegasus rubbed her sore head.

"He's not a ghost," Dinky murmured.

"Quite correct. I am Doc, the Digital Organizational Companion," the intangible stallion cheerfully replied, introducing himself to the others. "While the master is recuperating from his own battle with the enemy, I manage the operation of this vessel."

Diamond Tiara looked around until she saw a word painted on the wall above the door they'd entered. "Air...lock? That's a weird name for a ship," she replied.

"Oh, no, that is not the name of the vessel. It is this room's primary function on occasions when the external environment is inhospitable to organic life," Doc gently corrected. When Diamond Tiara simply glowered at the faux-stallion's verbosity, he cheerfully continued, "You are aboard the DALC, which is short for Dimensional Anomaly Location & Correction."

Scootaloo asked, "So... this rock'll be able to take us where that monster went, right?"

"Yes, although any who wish to be companions must--" Doc started to reply, but cut off in mid-sentence. In a literal instant, with no transition in between, its expression went from cheerful to deadly serious. "Alert! Alert! Enemy magical signature approaching rapidly!"

Diamond Tiara clutched Scootaloo tightly, her pupils shrinking in shock as she looked at Doc. "What?! But I thought the grown-ups beat him!"

"The enemy should have abandoned this timeline by now," Doc grimly agreed. "Emergency power routed to Dimensional Flux Agitators! Brace for--"

Before he could say what they should brace for, it made itself known to the fillies. The door began to close shut automatically, but couldn't finish before something hit them so hard that the room itself tilted, and the three ponies went tumbling and sliding across the smooth metal tiles toward the open door. It had been daylight when they stepped inside, but in just the minute since they had entered, that had been replaced by a darkness deeper than Luna's night.

"Evasive dimensional flux underway! Guests and companions are advised to keep all appendages inside the DALC," Doc informed the fillies over their screaming as they slid through his intangible form, and toward the waiting darkness as the "vessel" they were in was lifted up by a huge, twisted shape in the dark.

Just as suddenly as the attack began, though, there was a brief lurch of vertigo. The darkness outside flickered and changed so quickly that they were all momentarily blinded. Diamond Tiara, the closest one to open door, tumbled out onto the ground outside and felt herself roll down a slope until she hit a tree trunk hard enough to knock the wind out of her. Blinking her eyes a few times to get her bearings, she looked around to find that the dry, rocky quarry from before was now replaced with an intimidatingly dense forest.

"Wh... what? How'd we get here?!" She wheezed, confused and disoriented. Her ribs were killing her, but as she looked at the tree she'd hit, she was surprised to find that, the way it was cracked and bent, it actually seemed to have taken the worst of the impact. More likely something else had hit it first, but either way it didn't matter. She had to get back to the others, so she started looking up the incline that she had fallen down.

"Scootaloo? Scootaloo! Help me up," she demanded, hoping to see the pegasus's lovely violet eyes looking back at her, ready to swoop in and rescue her with a swift, daring maneuver.

Instead, she heard a rustling in a nearby bush. Of course, she probably wasn't the only one who'd been thrown out of the DORC, or whatever that weird Doc thing had called it. "Scootaloo? Come on, let's... let's..." She turned look and saw a pair of eyes looking back at her.

They weren't purple, though.

They were red.

Dinky and Scootaloo groaned, having avoided falling out the open door by instead smacking into the wall on either side. Scootaloo was the first to pick herself up and rubbed her head again before noticing the dimly-lit forest just outside the doorway. "Ow... huh? Did we actually... move?"

Materializing beside them, Doc's body flickered in and out of sight while his voice became slightly fuzzy and distorted. "Indeed, guest Scootaloo. We escaped by following the enemy's quantum trail. We are no longer in your native timeline. This is the one that he now currently inhabits, but... oh dear."

Dinky got her hooves under her and looked outside. "So... we can still save this one, right? We can warn ponies, and... and nopony has to..."

"Hold that thought, Dinky." Scootaloo looked at the flickering stallion and asked, "What do you mean 'oh dear?' Are we safe or not?" She then glanced around the room and asked in a growing panic, "What about Diamond Tiara? That monster didn't get her, did it?!"

Doc replied to the young pegasus, "No. Guest Diamond Tiara was ejected from the DALC after our escape, but a scan of the area confirms that we are presently located in the region known as the 'Everfree Forest.'"

Both fillies immediately shrieked, "The Everfree Forest?!"

As if punctuating their question, they heard Diamond Tiara's voice off in the distance as the earth pony let out a scream worthy of an old monster movie.

"Yes," Doc replied, showing no change in expression at the sound of Diamond Tiara crying out for help. "To ensure her safety, you must retrieve your companion as quickly as possible." Dinky and Scootaloo could hear that he was saying something more, but they were already out the door and racing as quickly as they could toward the edge of the slope their friend had fallen down.

Diamond Tiara was at the bottom, her body trembling as she stared into some brush. "H-help... help m-me..." she stammered, her usual bossy attitude replaced entirely by fear. Dinky gasped when she saw that Diamond Tiara's legs had turned grey, and that the effect was very, very slowly creeping up her body.

Scootaloo didn't wait to see that. She was already sliding down the slope and flapping her little wings in a rapid buzz that increased her descent even more, though in a more controlled manner. "I'm coming, Diamond! Are you okay?"

The earth pony let out a whimper. "Scootaloo...? No, d-don't... there's a..." The assistance of Scootaloo's wings proved to be more potent than the pegasus expected, though, and she ended up actually lifting a few inches away from the ground, tripping her up. With a yelp of her own, she tripped over herself when her hooves hit the slope moving again, and ended up tumbling into Diamond Tiara.

"Ow... Scootaloo...!"

"Oof... sorry. Call us even for the book thing," Scootaloo said with a bit of a cheeky grin. "Come on, we've gotta get you outta--"

Instead of letting her crush finish, Diamond Tiara shouted at the top of her lungs, "MONSTER! RUN!"

"Wha?" Scootaloo started to turn to look, but Diamond Tiara twisted her body to roll the pegasus away from it. "Don't look, dummy!"

That was when Scootaloo felt Diamond Tiara's legs. They hadn't simply changed color, but were completely petrified! "Wha... what happened to you?!"

Up above, Dinky shouted, "YOU HAVE TO CARRY HER! GET HER OUT OF HERE!" The sinister clucking of the creature behind them also helped Scootaloo focus, even while her heart and Diamond Tiara's both pounded so hard, the other could feel it.

Scootaloo knew that while she would have been able to climb up the slope easily on her own, the formerly-wealthy and unathletic Diamond Tiara would have had trouble even if her legs hadn't been turned into unmoving stone. The pink filly was staring into her eyes, her own wide with a fear and vulnerability that she never showed anypony. Ever.

Scootaloo decided that this was too weird to deal with.

Wrapping her legs around Diamond Tiara, which drew a surprised gasp from the other filly, Scootaloo set her jaw and turned her focus upward. "Hold on! I'm not letting go," she assured Diamond Tiara as she began flapping her wings.

There was no reason to expect it to work, but without any other way to carry a partially-petrified earth pony back to the DALC, she pushed her little wings harder than she ever had before. To her surprise as much as anypony else's, she could actually them feel them catching the air like they never had before. Even with the extra burden of Diamond Tiara and her stone limbs, she was actually starting to lift up off the ground!

Seeing that its targets were starting to get away after Scootaloo broke its gaze, the cockatrice decided that it wasn't going to allow that to happen. It leaped out into the open, flapping its own wings in order to get in front of the little pegasus, but almost as soon as it revealed itself, Dinky let out a yelp and shot her magic downward in an attempt to push it away from her companions. Her aim was off, though, and instead hit the ground between them and the cockatrice.

The ground promptly exploded.

Not all of it, but the patch that Dinky had hit blew up with enough force to knock the cockatrice back and while propelling Scootaloo and Diamond Tiara upward. The two fillies screamed, holding onto each other while Scootaloo's wings buzzed furiously to try and keep them heading on a straight course. "Try" may have been the operative word, but she did manage to keep them from hitting the slope until they rose up and tumbled back onto flatter ground.

Scootaloo blinked a few times, not comprehending what just happened as she disentangled herself from Diamond Tiara's petrified limbs. "Dinky? ... Since when was your magic that strong?"

The wide-eyed little unicorn's mouth hung open, just as surprised as her friend. "It... it isn't! ... Wasn't. I don't know! W-we should get back to the DALC. Then we can ask--"

Dinky was interrupted by the angry clucking of the cockatrice. Though disoriented by the magic blast, it was still pursuing them with both the intent and ability to turn them into statues. Its wings helped propel itself up the slope while its talons found purchase in the dirt, allowing it to climb up after the fillies.

"Pick me up! Pick me up," Diamond Tiara all but shouted, still unable to move her legs. Scootaloo was already doing so, though, and urged Dinky to help lift her up so that they could race back to the "boulder" that had brought them there.

Through the open door, the fillies could see Doc waiting for them. "You must hurry if you do not wish to be left behind," he called out. "The DALC is beginning to slip!"

With no time to ask what that meant, Scootaloo and Dinky pushed themselves as hard as they could. They could hear the crowing of the cockatrice catching up behind them. Dinky tried to turn her head in order to fire another magic bolt, if only to slow it down, but Diamond Tiara to bite down on her mane and yank her head away. "Don't look back! Don't look back," she shouted, so Dinky focused solely on what was in front of her, even as she could hear the cockatrice gradually closing the distance between them.

With one last push right at the threshold of the DALC, Scootaloo and Dinky leaped into the vessel just as they heard the harsh, grinding sound of space and time being distorted through the open door. As they and Diamond Tiara slid across the metal flooring, they felt the same lurch of vertigo as before, and the DALC vanished--

--then reappeared in Manehattan, at the very top of the Orange Hotel. Scootaloo groaned, then looked to Diamond Tiara with a worried frown. "Do you get it, now? This is why I didn't want you coming along! You're gonna get yourself hurt!"

"Companions and guests," Doc started to say, trying to talk over the pegasus.

Despite her petrification, Diamond Tiara twisted her body to point one stoney limb at Scootaloo. "And I wouldn't have if I'd stayed?! You saw that thing that hit us! If I'd left when you told me to, I'd be dead now, or... or worse!"

"It is imperative..."

Diamond Tiara looked into Scootaloo's eyes, her own uncharacteristically watery. Her cheeks flushed slightly, her voice catching as she ignored Doc to say, "But you saved me, Scootaloo. From the darkness... from that monster that tried to turn me to stone... Even if you think I'm just some spoiled brat, you still saved me! You're my hero, Scootaloo! That's why I... I..."

"Please shut your eyes," Doc shouted, his voice filled with synthetic concern.

"COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!!"

The crowing of the cockatrice jolted them, and very nearly made them turn to look if not for Doc's warning. They and Dinky screamed and immediately clenched their eyes shut as the monster stalked toward them from just inside the doorway.

"Please do not panic," Doc extolled them, even as Dinky started blindly firing her magic in the general direction of the doorway. "The master has been informed, and is overriding medical safety protocols in order to provide assistance! Local space-time is unusually fragile, causing the DALC to 'slip', so it is imperative that you remain calm and follow my instructions."

The fillies were in too much of a panic to listen, however. Without being able to aim her magic, Dinky only succeeded in blasting the "I" and "C" of the "Airlock" sign above the door while the cockatrice dodged out of the way. Scootaloo stood over Diamond Tiara and blindly lashed out in every direction with her hooves while the earth pony just screamed as she found herself unable to so much as flail her stone legs.

The DALC lurched again just as freckled orange filly opened the door rooftop access door and looked around to find the area devoid of either poultry or ponies.

It reappeared in a region of barren stone. Inside, the cockatrice maneuvered around the frightened fillies. As aggressive as it was, it knew how to wait for its moment. The ponies were frightened and would open their eyes eventually. Then they would serve to mark its territory, as the sight of such dangerous creatures would surely drive away greater predators. All it had to do was keep out of their reach and either wait for a moment of weakness or create one.

It looked at the unicorn, who was still shooting her deadly magic in a direction it was no longer in. One of those bolts shot straight out the open door and off into the distance.

Far enough away that she couldn't hear the screaming, an exhausted little unicorn filly clenched her eyes shut and summoned up every last little bit of energy she had in her and focused all of her anger and magic on the rock in front of her. What came out of her horn was a wispy little ball of blue magic that lethargically flew toward the stone, and popped like a soap bubble against its surface.

The very next instant, though, a golden beam slammed into the stone and split it open with a tremendous crack. When Rarity opened them, her big blue eyes sparkledwith joyous surprise at the glittering bounty that had been waiting inside the unassuming rock.

Elsewhere, a similarly deceptive stone vanished from sight before she ever realized that it had been there in the first place.

The next lurch came faster than the last, and for those inside, the feeling lingered as if they were in an elevator which was moving in every direction simultaneously. If anypony had opened their eyes to see, the view outside would have been utter chaos; a swirling, roiling sea of places and objects that would only briefly form a coherent picture before washing away like waves. This only increased the disorientation of not being able to see anything and made them panic even more.

"Dinky! Dinky, are you still there?" Scootaloo shouted. Her little wings were spread out, instinctively trying to appear larger and more intimidating than she was. She frantically twisted her head this way and that, turning her ears in a desperate attempt to hear their attacker.

"Y-yeah," Dinky stammered. "D-d-do you know where it is? Did one of us... hit it?"

The cockatrice crept up silently behind Dinky. It knew little of ponies, but it was intelligent enough to deduce that her magic made her the most dangerous of the three. Even if it was able to begin petrifying one of the other two, she would be able to attack from a distance, so it crouched and readied itself to pounce. It didn't matter how strong Dinky was. Once it got her to look its way, she would be trapped in its gaze.

The large brown pony spoke, but the cockatrice paid it no mind. It had no smell. It had no substance. Whatever it was, it was no threat and therefore there was no reason to pay it any mind. And since the cockatrice didn't speak Equestrian, it didn't realize that what the large brown faux-pony was saying was, "Companion Dinky, please listen to me. Guest Diamond Tiara's book is directly in front of you, so please reach out for it with your magic."

Dinky whimpered faintly and did so, feeling around with her magic until it wrapped around the heavy book with a golden aura. "Very good," Doc told her while the cockatrice lowered its body, preparing itself to pounce on the unsuspecting unicorn. "Now... quickly levitate it above your back, and use it as a shield!"

Just as the cockatrice leapt toward her, talons bared, Dinky's magic roughly yanked the book up off the floor. It spread its pages open as it came up to block the cockatrice, and the surprised monster crowed angrily as it started tearing at the pages.

Dinky could hear the ripping of paper while the cockatrice attacked it, filling her mind with fearful images of what it would do to her. "Doc! What do I dooooo?!"

The voice that answered her was not Doc's, however. A door leading further into the DALC swung open, and a tinny, mechanical voice proclaimed, "DO NOT BE AFRAID, FOR I AM HERE!"

Dinky gasped, and despite the situation, she opened her eyes. "Mr. Rollypolly!"

Emerging through the doorway was what, at first glance, looked like a giant pepper shaker with a toilet plunger and an egg beater sticking out of it. Some of the armored plating of the "pepper shaker" was damaged, revealing exposed machinery, but hovered just above the surface of the floor as it moved inside and focused its eyestalk on the cockatrice. There was a moment of shocked silence as everypony but Dinky, even the cockatrice, stared at the odd sight.

Then Scootaloo realized that there was an opening, and narrowed her eyes. She then started running as hard as she could, flapping her wings to give her more speed as she threw herself toward the monster like a big orange bullet.

Not seeing the incoming pegasus, Rollypolly aimed the "egg beater" at the cockatrice. It began to vibrate, and a nearly-invisible ripple in the air shot out, striking the reptilian creature with raw force that knocked it back and sent it careening toward the DALC's exit.

Scootaloo's momentum was carrying beyond her ability to stop, though, especially when her wings unexpectedly lifted her off the floor once again, and she lacked the control to keep herself from getting caught on the edge of the blast. Unable to control herself, she also went tumbling toward the door. The cockatrice fell straight through just as the view outside briefly showed them a glimpse of marble corridors, which vanished along with the monster a moment later.

By contrast, Scootaloo was flung toward the door at an awkward angle, and instead of falling straight through, she hit the edge and wheezed as she just barely managed to hold onto the edge with the tips of her hooves. At the same time, a torn page from Diamond Tiara's book was picked up by the breeze, and flew into her face.

"Scootaloo!" Diamond Tiara shrieked, struggling to move while Rollypolly hovered toward her.

"DO NOT PANIC," the Dalek told her, despite looking and sounding like a killer robot from a low-grade science-fiction movie. He aimed his "plunger" at her in order to grab hold and pull her back in, but was thrown off when the DALC suddenly shuddered again.

"Master, the DALC is unable to find a suitable landing zone, and is beginning to fall through time into the further past," Doc informed him.

"WE MUST STABILIZE THE DALC'S COURSE UNTIL SCOOTALOO IS INSIDE! STABILIZE! STABILIZE!"

"Attempting to do so, but the DALC is approaching a bubble of space-time. Please brace for impact."

The panicking Scootaloo struggled to keep her grip and screamed, "I don't know what anypony's talking about!"

She soon found out when the swirling chaos that she had only barely avoided falling into suddenly snapped into a clear image of blue skies, fluffy clouds, and green fields sprawling out far, far below. The DALC hovered in place in the air, but not without a violent shudder that caused Scootaloo to lose her grip completely. She flailed blindly with wings and hooves as the paper fluttered off of her face.

As it turned out, a small cloud happened to be passing by beneath her. Despite her terror, her reflexes were still sharp and she just barely managed to stop her fall by grabbing hold of the cloudmass. It was soft and malleable, and felt like it could crumble apart at any moment, but the little athlete managed to hang on as tightly as she could.

"HOLD ON!" That was Dinky, calling out to her. She didn't need to shout so loudly. They weren't even that far away, only a few dozen feet.

Still, to a pegasus who had never been able to keep herself hovering for more than a second or two, it might has well have been a few dozen miles. Her grip started slipping as the cloudmass tried to flow around her hooves, but she grit her teeth and adjusted her grip. "Dinky...! Pick me up with your magic or something!"

Dinky chewed her lip. "I-I'll try, but my control isn't great!" A golden glow surounded her horn, and started to do the same to Scootaloo, but despite the power of her earlier blasts, Dinky wasn't able to lift her friend. She didn't feel any weaker, but was no more able to levitate Scootaloo than she had been in their native timeline.

While she tried, Rollypolly turned to Doc and asked, "CAN YOU MOVE US CLOSER?"

"I am sorry, master," the holo-stallion replied. "We are still not stable. If I were to attempt to do so, we would begin falling through time immediately. As it stands, I do not know how much longer I can hold us here."

From deeper inside, Diamond Tiara gasped. "No... no, we're not leaving her!" She clenched her teeth and struggled even harder than before to move her petrified legs.

With a sound like rocks grinding together, her legs actually began to move slightly as grey stone began to slowly turn pink.

At the same time, Dinky continued to strain and push her magic as hard as she could. "It was... stronger... earlier! Why... won't it... work...?"

"THIS IS NOT GOOD," Rollypolly replied. "MY MOBILITY UNIT IS STILL DAMAGED. I WOULD BE INCAPABLE OF HOVERING OUTSIDE OF THE DALC."

"Then what good are you?!" Diamond Tiara's slightly muffled voice snapped as stone hooves pattered and clanked across the metal tile. With a rope clenched tightly between her teeth, she leaped toward Rollypolly and tied one end around his eyestalk. While Dinky and Rollypolly were momentarily stunned, she then held the rope between her hooves and leaped out to into the open air.

"THIS IS ILL-ADVISED," Rollypolly called out as Diamond Tiara held onto the rope as tightly as she could with her hooves and teeth, summoning up all of her (typically unused) earth pony strength to keep her from falling.

There was a rough jerk that nearly caused her to lose her grip when the line suddenly went taut, but the sight of Scootaloo clinging to the tiny cloud drove her to hold on like never before. Instead of falling to her doom, she held on and swung in an arc toward Scootaloo.

"DON'T GIVE UP! YOU CAN DO IT!" Dinky shouted down to them at the top of her lungs, and winced moments before they collided. Instead of knocking Scootaloo off her cloud, though, Diamond Tiara was able to stretch out a hoof to scoop the pegasus up.

"Oof! What the buck?! What were you thinking?!"

"That I wanted to save your life," Diamond Tiara retorted around the rope in her mouth. As she and Scootaloo swung around, they could feel it start to rise from Rollypolly reeling them back in. Despite the frown on her face, her heart pounded in her chest, and not simply because of the adrenaline.

"But you could've fallen right out of the sky! If you had a rope, why didn't you just throw it down to me?" Scootaloo pointed out, too busy hanging on to notice.

There was a moment when Diamond Tiara's eyes widened, and her grip slipped ever so slightly before she grit her teeth again and scowled at Scootaloo. "Yeah, well... why didn't you just flap your way back to the DALC? The cloud was holding you up! All you had to do was push it!"

Scootaloo opened and closed her mouth a few times. "That's... because I... uh..."

As an embarrassed flush crept across Scootaloo's face, Diamond Tiara's scowl softened, and she started to giggle. Scootaloo looked thoroughly mortified, but as Rollypolly and Dinky pulled them back up into the DALC, she let out a snort and started giggling along with the pink filly.

"You just wanted to grab the spotlight, didn't you?" Scootaloo asked. "Risky stunts are my thing."

Diamond Tiara scoffed as she giggled at the look on Scootaloo's face. "You wanted me to come to the rescue for a change. Look at you, you're blushing so hard, you look like you've got a sunburn!"

"What? No I don't! ... Hey, why'd you even have a rope with you in the first place?"

Diamond Tiara blushed a little, herself, and leaned in to kiss Scootaloo on the cheek. "In case I had to tie you up and drag you back home."

Scootaloo snickered at that until it sank in, then immediately turned several shades paler. "Wait... seriously?" When she nodded, Scootaloo gulped nervously.

"It is good that we were able to make a successful rescue," Doc interjected, shutting the door behind them before the vessel lurched again. "Any longer, and we would have started falling through time without you."

Dinky looked up at Rollypolly and asked, "Can't you stop it? It's a time machine, isn't it? "

"ORDINARILY, YES," Rollypolly replied with grim seriousness. "BUT THESE ARE NOT ORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES. THERE IS NO TELLING HOW FAR THROUGH TIME WE WILL FALL BEFORE FINDING A SUITABLY STABLE LANDING ZONE. FOLLOW ME, CHILDREN."

As Rollypolly turned toward one of the doors leading deeper into the DALC, the rope around his eyestalk untied itself and fell to the floor. Dinky followed right behind him down the quiet, sterile corridors, with Scootaloo and Diamond Tiara needing a moment to pick themselves up before doing the same.

"ACCORDING TO THE DALC'S SENSORS, THE BASIC FOUNDATION OF THIS TIMELINE IS FAR LESS STABLE THAN ALMOST ANY OTHER THAT I HAVE VISITED," Rollypolly explained. "THIS IS WHY YOUR INNATE PONY MAGIC SEEMS STRONGER, DESPITE YOUR INABILITY TO LIFT SCOOTALOO. LOCAL REALITY IS MORE MALLEABLE THAN YOUR OWN. LIKEWISE, DIAMOND TIARA'S PHYSICAL CAPABILITIES AND RESISTANCE TO MAGIC ARE GREATER BY COMPARISON. IF THAT COCKATRICE HAD BEEN FROM YOUR NATIVE TIMELINE, SHE WOULD ALREADY BE COMPLETELY PETRIFIED, AND IN NEED OF A COUNTERSPELL."

Scootaloo's eyes widened. "Woah... you mean we're like superfillies here?" She looked back at her small wings and grinned, rapidly buzzing them. "So I should be able to fly, right?" She crouched down and pushed herself up into the air, but despite straining her wings to keep aloft, she ended up falling back to the ground and tripping onto her face.

Diamond Tiara picked her up off the floor and replied, "you already did, remember? When you saved me from the cocka-whatsit."

"SHE IS CORRECT. OUTSIDE THE DALC, YOUR BASE ABILITIES WILL BE NOTICEABLY ABOVE AVERAGE, THOUGH YOU WILL STILL NEED TO NURTURE THEM FOR WHAT LIES AHEAD. I WILL DO MY BEST TO TRAIN YOU TO YOUR FULLEST POTENTIAL WHEN I SEE YOU AGAIN."

Dinky came to an abrupt stop. "Again...? Wh-what do you mean again? Where are you going?"

Rollypolly continued on a short way before coming to stop at a door marked "Lifeboat". He then turned his eyestalk toward the little unicorn and somberly told her, "NOT ME. YOU THREE MUST LEAVE THE DALC. AS I HAVE SAID, THERE IS NO TELLING HOW FAR INTO THE PAST THE DALC WILL FALL. WITH SPACE-TIME AS UNSTABLE AS IT IS, IT WILL NOT BE ABLE TO TRAVEL INTO THE FUTURE. THE DALC IS DAMAGED, AND MY TECHNOLOGY MIGHT NOT BE ABLE TO PRESERVE YOU LONG ENOUGH TO RETURN TO THE PROPER TIME. YOU WOULD DIE..."

Dinky shook her head and backed up a step into her companions. "No... no, you can't... Momma... Scootaloo's daddy... everypony we left behind... they're gone! You're all we have left!"

The door to the lifeboat opened, and Rollypolly moved back to Dinky slowly, extending his "plunger" toward her. "DINKY... LISTEN TO ME. IT WILL BE ALRIGHT." The mechanical limb gently reached down and stroked her mane as the little unicorn's golden eyes watered. "I PROMISE THAT I WILL FIND YOU. I HAVE BEEN DOING THIS FOR A VERY, VERY LONG TIME. I AM ABLE TO TAKE THE LONG ROAD, BUT FOR YOU, IT WILL HARDLY BE ANY TIME AT ALL. YOU WILL SEE."

Dinky closed her eyes, and two small tears dripped down her cheeks as she nuzzled the robotic manipulator. "But... but what if you can't find me... or... forget?"

Rollypolly tilted his body to look down at her. She looked up into his eyestalk as it looked back down at her, and even though he obviously couldn't make any sort of facial expression that she could see, she could almost feel that something inside the metal shell was smiling at her. "I HAVE TRAVELED TO MANY TIMELINES, AND MET MANY DINKYS, BUT I HAVE NEVER FORGOTTEN A SINGLE ONE. YOU ARE MY COMPANION, AND I WILL TREASURE THAT, NO MATTER HOW LONG IT TAKES ME TO RETURN TO YOUR SIDE."

A small hoof came to rest on Dinky's back. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw Scootaloo looking her straight in the eye with an intense gaze. "It's okay. If this is what we've gotta do to get back at the monster who killed my dad... no matter what happens, I'll watch your back."

"Me too," Diamond Tiara added with a resolute nod. "If Scootaloo's with you, then so am I!"

Dinky sniffled and lowered her head. "Where... where should we go so you can find us...?"

"PONYVILLE," Rollypolly replied. "IN ALMOST EVERY CASE, THAT IS THE AXIS POINT AROUND WHICH THE FATE OF THE WORLD TURNS. IN MANY WAYS, IT MAY BE DIFFERENT FROM THE TOWN YOU KNOW, BUT YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO--" He stopped suddenly, cut off when a tear-eyed Dinky threw herself at him and hugged herself against the cold metal shell of his mobility unit. "DINKY?"

Dinky squeezed her body tightly against Rollypolly and whispered, "You've gotta come find me... Y-you've gotta..."

"ALWAYS, DINKY DOO... AND I DO WISH THAT THIS WAS NOT NECESSARY, BUT WE DO AS WE MUST. NOW PLEASE, GET INTO THE LIFERAFT. IF WE WAIT TOO LONG, IT MAY BE TOO LATE."

The little unicorn nodded and slowly pulled away. Scootaloo and Diamond Tiara both walked beside her as they stepped into the closet-sized "liferaft," which had several seats designed for adult ponies.

From the other side, Rollypolly told them, "NOW I NEED YOU TO REMEMBER A FEW THINGS: FIRST, YOU WILL SEE CHANGES IN PLACES AND PONIES THAT WERE ONCE FAMILIAR TO YOU. SOME WILL BE FOR THE BETTER, SOME WILL BE FOR THE WORSE. LEARN WHAT YOU CAN OF THIS NEW TIMELINE, BUT WHATEVER YOU FIND, TRY NOT TO ACT SURPRISED. SECOND, REMAIN INCONSPICUOUS UNTIL I FIND YOU. THE ENEMY IS PRESENT IN THIS TIMELINE, AND I DO NOT WANT TO TAKE THE RISK OF HIM FINDING YOU BEFORE I DO. THIRD, IF YOU HAPPEN TO SEE ANOTHER OF MY KIND WHO IS NOT ME... HIDE, AND GET AS FAR AWAY AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN."

Diamond Tiara climbed up into a seat while he was talking, then blinked at the last instruction. "Wait, what? Hey, you haven't even told us what you are." The door began to close between them while Rollypolly and Dinky looked at each other. "Hey! Don't close that door while I'm trying to talk to you! Dinky, what kind of rude alien monster are you friends with?"

Dinky wasn't listening either, though. She placed a hoof against the door and whimpered softly. "Please... please come back soon, Mr. Rollypolly..."

The filly trio felt the lifeboat shudder as it disengaged from the DALC, and for a while after that, they drifted through the sea of chaos on waves of space-time.

"Are we there yet?"

"I don't think so."

"How'll we know?"

"I dunno. It just feels like we're still moving."

Scootaloo looked back at her wings and flapped them in a rapid buzz before letting out a sigh and slumping down in her seat. "You said it's gonna be a whole other world, right, Dinky? Like... our world, but all turned around?"

Dinky nodded. "That's how Mr. Rollypolly explained it to me. Like, in one timeline, you might even be a faster flier than Rainbow Dash."

Scootaloo scoffed at that. "No way! Rainbow Dash is the best ever!" After a moment's thought, though, she rubbed her chin. "Hmmm... but you really think so...?"

"I think so," Diamond Tiara replied. Her hooves were almost completely pink again, so she moved them around and touched everything in reach. "Rollypolly said all of our magic was super-strong here, right? I bet once she sees you fly, that lazy good-for-nothing--" She quickly cut herself off, seeing the scowl form on her crush's face, and corrected herself to say, "--I mean, the super-awesome and amazing Rainbow Dash'll be begging to teach you all her cool moves! She might even make you her honorary little sister or something!"

In an instant, Scootaloo's frown disappeared. Her eyes sparkling with glee, she zipped over to Diamond Tiara and pressed her face up close to hers. "You really think so?!"

"I... I... uh..." Diamond Tiara's face turned bright red as her field of vision was consumed by Scootaloo's smiling face and beautiful purple eyes.

Despite everything, Dinky found a small, timid smile creeping across her face while watching the other two. It had been bad enough having to leave Rollypolly behind so soon, but if it weren't for the other fillies... no, her friends, because what else could she call ponies willing to leave their entire world behind to travel with her? Without them, she knew that she simply wouldn't be able to handle it at all.

They might be lost and adrift, heading toward some dangerous, uncertain future, but at least she wouldn't be alone.

And that was when the knocking started.

All three fillies jumped, startled when they heard it. A steady, rhythmic tapping that came from all around them.

"Ack! What's that?!" Diamond Tiara frantically looked around. "Is the lifeboat falling apart?!"

Dinky listened as carefully as she could, though fear of the unknown made it difficult to focus. "I dunno! I don't... I don't think so?" She said this more out of hope that it was true than certainty, however.

Scootaloo's ears flicked around, and she hissed, "Shhh! Listen!"

All three pricked their ears, and to their horror and confusion, an ethereal filly's voice began to echo faintly inside the lifeboat, seemingly coming from all around.

As I was walking up the stair

I met someone who wasn't there

He wasn't there again today

Oh how I wish he'd stay away

For when we do meet in the flesh

"What might be" and "what is" will mesh

The trickster's trap will then be sprung

And darkness will ensnare the sun

There is nothing you can save me from

When the appointed hour comes

For if I stay here on this soil

My time will end knowing naught but toil

Dreary seconds ticking with the clock

No smiles, no laughter, only rocks

But let me meet this fate in another role

And you may lose me, but save my soul

Every word I speak is true

I shall see the end, and so shall you

There is no hope within my rhyme

Just a world made still in the death of time

As the melancholy words faded away, the three fillies looked at each other. Scootaloo was the first to speak, asking, "The buck was that?"

Neither of the others had any answer to give, nor did they have time to come up with one before the lifeboat suddenly lurched to one side, sending them tumbling together into a pile in the middle of the floor. A hiss of hydraulics pierced the air, and the door slowly cracked open, letting the bright light of the sun shine into the cramped room.

Dinky shielded her eyes with a hoof and blinked as they adjusted to the sudden brightness. Slowly, the outside world came into view, and she could see rolling green hills spreading out before her and blue skies above. And there, off in the distance, looking so familiar...

"Dinky? What's out there? We're not stuck in the middle of the Everfree again, are we...?" Diamond Tiara asked. "I don't care if I'm stronger or not, I'm not ready to see another monster!"

"... Ponyville. It's Ponyville," Dinky replied as she stepped out into the light.

Scootaloo and Diamond Tiara joined her, the former staring in awe. "Woah... it hasn't even been touched. Everything's right where it's supposed to be!" She set her jaw and added, "And we'll make sure it stays that way... right?"

Dinky and Diamond Tiara nodded. "We'll do what Mr. Rollypolly said," the little unicorn told them. "We'll find out what it's like down there, and wait for him. He'll find us... he promised."

The present day...

With a sharp whistle, the cries of the teapot snapped Dewdrop, once known as Dinky, back out of her reverie. She adjusted her glasses out of reflex and picked the kettle up and placed it on a tray along with three cups. She then headed back out just as "Sunburn" wrapped up her telling of the story.

"Spot Light" just stared, mouth agape for several seconds before shaking her head. "That freaky lizard thing... you're telling me it got booted into Canterlot Palace... and that's why Twilight Sparkle ended up a Ranger instead of a librarian? That's just..."

"A crazy coincidence? Destiny?" Dewdrop found a table to set the tray down on and began pouring the tea. "I don't know what to believe, but somehow, us just coming here pushed those six where they needed to be to so they could get the Elements of Harmony and save Princess Luna."

Dewdrop placed the teapot back down, then levitated her spectacles off her face so that she could set them down and look her friends straight in the eye. "After that, Gertrude broke out of her icy prison... then the Shangwe incident. There's no way that's a coincidence. If the pattern continues, next it'll be the Sun Dog, and then..."

"Tirek..." Sunburn seethed, her teeth clenching in anger as if trying to bite the name as it slithered out of her throat. Even when her wife put a foreleg over her shoulders, that only soothed her rage slightly.

Dewdrop nodded. "He's been locked up in Tartaros for over a thousand years, but this has his stink all over it. Somepony or something is helping him here in Harmonia, and we're running out of time to figure out what his plan is. Girls? It's time we stopped sitting on the sidelines."

Narrowing her eyes, the young librarian furrowed her brow. "Some time after Mr. Rollypolly landed in this timeline, something was done to him, keeping him from getting back to us. We did what he wanted. We made new lives for ourselves, we laid low and kept training in secret so we'd be ready to fight with him. I say we're done with that now. We're as ready as we're ever going to be, and the enemy isn't going to wait for us to be prepared. We're going to find out what happened to Mr. Rollypolly.

"And then we're going to get him back."

The other two nodded and put their hooves forward. "We're with you, Dinky," Sunburn replied.

"All the way to the end," Spot Light added, and Dewdrop extended her own hoof to join theirs.

Author's Notes:

Alright! And with this, the Cutie-Marky Tales comes to its true conclusion.

Fans of a certain other, much more prolific AU, will probably recognize certain traits among the "Cabal" trio. This is entirely intentional, though this story is in no way shape or form canon to that AU. It's more of a tribute, which is why I kept descriptions of their native timeline deliberately vague.

Rollypolly the Dalek on the other hoof, is the creation of defender2222, and first appeared in The Many Secret Origins of Scootaloo. He is intended to be the same character, and is used with defender2222's permission.

I actually had a scene in mind after they landed where they met a teenaged Derpy and found out a little more about this timeline, but cut it because I felt like that would drag it on a bit overmuch. Still, I'm sure that there's a story to be told about their first days in the Eclipseverse and how they settled into their new lives in Ponyville. I doubt I'll have the time to get to it myself, but anyone who has some ideas and the urge to give it a shot, by all means feel free to volunteer!

As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the mind-screw.