It was on a cold Monday morning sometime near the beginning of October that a golden-brown piece of toast, baked at the perfect temperature for exactly one minute and forty-five seconds, leapt out of the toaster and smacked Sweetie Belle in the face.

When it landed on the ground, it did so on the side that Sweetie Belle invariably knew to be buttersidedown, no matter which side she would have actually applied the creamy dairy product to. This did not bode well for the day.

The teenaged pony let out a startled yelp and jerked her white hooves to the side, knocking over a tall glass of orange juice. This in turn splashed all over the stallion sitting next to her at the too-small table in the too-small kitchen.

The orange liquid soaked into his immaculately-brushed ivory coat, and he jerked his head up in annoyance, sending his blonde mane flying behind him.

“Insolent knave!” Prince Blueblood cried as he flew back in his chair, his gold bathrobe whipping around him like a cape.

Sweetie Belle cringed. “S-Sorry, Prince Blueblood,” she stammered.

Blueblood looked down from eyes ringed with dark circles at the filly with the purple and pink curls cowering back a little from him. His expression quickly softened.

“Oh, sorry about that, Sweetie Belle,” he said quickly. “I’m just tired . . . and you can just call me Blueblood, you know.”

Sweetie sighed. “Yeah, I know.”

“Something on your mind?”

“Just that big test I’ve got today,” she replied in earnest. “It’s all about music, but what if mine isn’t good enough? What if I really can’t sing?”

Her face burned red as her voice cracked on the last sentence, a trait that had only increased since she became a teenager.

Blueblood smiled a little. “I would find that very hard to believe, considering your special talent does seem to be singing.”

“Yeah, I guess . . .” Sweetie Belle reached back and gingerly touched her cutie mark—a black treble clef overlaying a pink heart—like pressing on it too much would make it disappear.

“See, no reason to worry,” Blueblood said.

“Worry about what?” Rarity asked, walking briskly into the kitchen. Unlike her sister, she had deemed it better to groom herself for the day before breakfast.

“My big singing test, of course!” Sweetie said. “What if I don’t pass it and they kick me out of school?”

“Oh, Sweetie, you have nothing to worry about,” Rarity assured. Grimly, she picked up a brush and started to work at the teenager’s unkempt mane. “Really, what you should be worrying about is this mop you call a mane. Didn’t mother tell you to get it cut?”

Sweetie Belle crossed her forehooves over her chest as her sister dragged the brush through her mane from behind. “It’s my mane. She can’t tell me what to do with it.”

Rarity finished brushing and sighed. “Well, I do suppose it looks better this way, once it’s actually brushed.” She looked at the clock. “Don’t you have to be on your way to school?”

“Oh, right.” Sweetie Belle grabbed Blueblood’s glass of juice, swigged it down before he could protest, and dashed out of the front door of Carousel Boutique to join her friends waiting outside.

“There you are!” Scootaloo said. “We’ve been waiting, like, forever!”

Sweetie Belle rolled her eyes. “Just my sister being my sister. Now, c’mon, we need to get moving.”

“Says the one making us late,” Applebloom grumbled.

The trio of teenagers trotted off down Ponyville’s main street toward the red schoolhouse and the classes waiting inside. Meanwhile, back inside the Boutique, Rarity used her magic to clean up the spilled juice and wayward toast.

Blueblood got up from his seat at the table and walked over to her.

“Since when does the Ponyville school have music tests?” he said.

Rarity shook her head. “They don’t; this test isn’t from that school.”

Blueblood’s eyes narrowed. “She’s not taking a test for the school I’m thinking of, is she?” When Rarity responded by lowering her eyes to the ground, he sighed. “Do you really think she’s ready for a school like that?”

“She’s my sister; of course I do.”

He nudged against her. “I just hope she knows what she’ll get herself into if she makes it through the test.”

“I do, too . . .” Rarity looked out the window, where she could see Sweetie walking with her friends to school.

When she turned back around, however, her eyes had an angry gleam.

“Now that that’s over,” she said, “what was that about calling Sweetie a knave?”

Blueblood backed up and tried to laugh. “It was just a, uh, slip of the tongue; you know I’m trying not to act like that anymore.”

Rarity nodded. “Oh, I knew you’re trying to act better, and you can do that from the couch tonight. Perhaps you can take the time to recall the promises you made me back at the Midsummer's Night Party, the one where I agreed to be with you?”

She walked off to prepare the dresses for the day, while Blueblood blew a stray strand of hair out of his face. “Great.”

Applebloom pulled at the bow wrapped around the red braid that hung down from her mane. “Why do you stay at Rarity’s all the time?” she asked. “The route to school’s shorter if we go from your house.”

“Because I like my sister,” Sweetie Belle said.

Scootaloo snorted. “Or you just like being away from your mom.”

Sweetie Belle glared at her pegasus friend. Scootaloo’s wings, as usual, were tucked tightly to her orange body and only flapped occasionally to help push her along on the scooter she constantly rode.

The flaming scooter wheel on her flank spoke about just how fast she could get the little machine to go if she wanted to.

“Why are you two in such a hurry anyway? It’s not like you have anything waiting for you at school,” Sweetie said.

“Well Applejack said I couldn’t go to the Canterlot Rodeo this year if I keep skipping school,” Applebloom said.

Scootaloo nodded. “If my grades get worse, I can’t go to see Rainbow Dash’s show next month.”

Sweetie Belle looked at her two friends in shock. “What about us skipping?”

“We just can’t do that anymore,” Applebloom said. “Besides, you can’t either. You’ve got that big test today, don’t you?”

The three of them moved out of the way and Pinkie Pie bolted down Ponyville’s main path, followed closely by a large cloud of sparrows and Spike, who was dressed like a caterpillar. Without a second glance, the three continued on.

“What kind of test is it, again?” Scootaloo asked once they had passed the outskirts of Ponyville and were in sight of the schoolhouse.

Sweetie Belle sighed. “Just some kind of stupid test for my singing to see if it’s good or not. My sister wants me to take it for some reason. And, ugh, my parents.”

“So are you going to take it?” said Applebloom, who picked again at her bow.

“I guess. I mean, it’s singing, right? That’s not so hard.”

“What song are you gonna use?”

Sweetie Belle tapped her chin. “I don’t know, I was thinking of using some new stuff instead of our, you know, kid songs. There’s this new band called Jenny Eat World—”

The school bell rang, and their conversation ceased as the three former members of the Cutie Mark Crusaders bolted toward the red, clapboard building.

Several years before, the growing number of children had forced Ponyville’s citizens to add another wing onto the schoolhouse to accommodate the two age groups of the students. Mrs. Cheerilee kept to her flock in the new wing, while Twilight taught the younger fillies and colts in the old classroom.

Sweetie Belle barely made it to her hard, wooden desk at the very back of the classroom before the bell quit ringing. Even then, Mrs. Cheerilee had already started droning through another lecture, and a few of the students were taking notes.

She made a motion of taking out a pencil and piece of paper, but Sweetie was too focused on other things to actually take notes. Instead, she lifted up the lid of the desk and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper that she used one hoof to flatten out.

The scribbled writing on the document wouldn’t have been legible to the average pony, but Sweetie pored over her writing with a meticulous attention to detail.

She repeated the written words under her breath where she thought nopony could hear. “Hey, don’t write yourself off yet . . .”

“Sweetie Belle!” Mrs Cheerilee called from the front of the room.

Sweetie’s head shot up. “Hmm, wha—?”

The other kids in the room started to snicker, even, to her detriment, Scootaloo and Applebloom, who sat closer to the front.

Mrs. Cheerilee tapped on her blackboard with a ruler. The surface was covered in a chalk drawing of the Restored Crystal Empire and surrounding territories. “Were you even paying attention?”

“Well, uh, no, not really.”

More laughs. Mrs. Cheerilee fumed and her she glared at her pupils until they were quiet, then focused again on Sweetie Belle. “While I thank you for your honesty, Sweetie Belle, I am afraid that I will have to give you another detention.”

Sweetie Belle sighed as Mrs. Cheerilee went back to the lesson. Sweetie tried to pay attention, she really did, but her eyes kept drifting back to the lyrics.

All that history and math that Mrs. Cheerilee taught was boring to the point of tears, but music?

Sweetie smiled as she read over the words she had spent an hour meticulously copying beside Rarity’s record player.

Music was natural.

The bell for lunch eventually rang and all the students filed out to the field outside to eat. Sweetie Belle thought she saw Mrs. Cheerilee roll her eyes when she passed by, but she wasn’t sure.

Then again, her teacher must have figured out by now that the last student who paid her any attention was Sweetie Belle.

Outside, the sun was shining and the air warm except for the occasional cooling breeze. On the grassy field that surrounded the schoolhouse, the foals ate their lunches near the jungle gym, where they would play afterwards. Meanwhile, the older ponies sat near a small stand of trees to eat.

Sweetie Belle found Applebloom and Scootaloo hanging out near a group of bushes farther away from the red schoolhouse, and up the lane closer to Sweet Apple Acres.

Applebloom passed Sweetie Belle a fresh apple as she walked up. “Another detention?”

Sweetie shrugged. “They’re not so bad. Mrs. Sparkle usually lets me write in there, and I come up with a whole bunch of lyric ideas while I’m in there with nothing else to do.”

“Your own lyrics?” Scootaloo asked. She took a bite of bread slathered in zap apple jam. “I thought you just copied other songs off the radio?”

“I can be original!” Sweetie Belle took a bite out of her apple. “Though it is tempting to just sing covers all the time.”

“Do you think those ponies giving the test will care?” Applebloom asked.

“We usually don’t,” a voice from behind them said.

The three teenagers whirled around to spot a semi-familiar grey mare with a purple treble clef cutie mark. Octavia.

She looked down at Sweetie Belle. “You need to come with me; it’s time you took your test.”

“But it’s still lunchtime!” Sweetie protested. “I’m not ready yet.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Sweetie Belle looked at her friends one last time, waved to them, and followed Octavia back toward the schoolhouse. Her stomach felt heavy with fear. Not just of failure . . . but of success, as well.

Scootaloo and Applebloom watched her go until their friend was inside the building. Applebloom scratched at her bow.

“Do you think she’ll do okay?”

Scootaloo laughed. “Duh, she’ll do fine. I just want to know why we always have to talk about her.”

“Maybe because you’re boring?”

“I am not!”

“Are too!”

The two’s conversation dissolved into bickering as the rest of their classmates eating closer to the schoolhouse snickered as they overheard. All, that is, but for Diamond Tiara.

The pink earth pony stared at the door Sweetie Belle had gone through, thoroughly ignoring her lunch.

“Are you okay?” her grey friend, Silver Spoon, asked.

Diamond Tiara turned away and refocused on her previous conversation. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Mrs. Sparkle’s classroom for the fillies and colts had been converted into an impromptu judges’ stage, with a small area on the floor cleared out specifically for Sweetie Belle.

Seated rather uncomfortably at three desks near the front were the judges. Octavia sat in the middle, with Vinyl Scratch on her right, and, to Sweetie Belle’s surprise, Twilight Sparkle herself sat on the left and introduced herself as the Princesses’ representative.

Sweetie Belle walked to her designated area, and looked around. They had dragged in a record player and speakers into the room, and the record Sweetie Belle had requested was already on the turntable.

“When do I start?” she asked.

Twilight smiled warmly. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Sweetie gulped and looked at the record player. The knot in her stomach had grown much larger since she got in the room.

She couldn’t do it! How could she even think that she would be able to sing in front of these ponies? Singing in front of her friends was bad enough, but this?

Sweetie backed away from the player a little. She couldn’t do it.

“Hey, what’s the hold up?” Vinyl called.

Octavia elbowed her in the ribs, then turned to Sweetie Belle. “Are you having any trouble? Do you need more time?”

Sweetie Belle took a deep breath and let it out. She wanted to leave, but when she looked at the judges’ faces, especially Mrs. Sparkle, she found herself rooted in place.

Mrs. Sparkle must have seen her looking, too, because she mouthed to her, “You can do it!”

Sweetie nodded and, with the help of her magic, lowered the player’s arm onto the record and turned it on.

As the scratching of glass on vinyl filled the speakers. Sweetie Belle repeated the lyrics in her head: Everything, everything, will be alright . . .

The music started and Sweetie Belle snapped her attention to the music. The guitar led into the song, so Sweetie paused and waited for the lead singer’s voice to come for her to start singing along.*

Hey, don’t write yourself off yet,

It’s only in your head you feel left out, or looked down on.

Just try your best, try everything you can,

And don’t worry what they tell themselves when you’re away.

The raspy, cracking voice that Sweetie Belle had presented the judges with almost seemed to melt away as the Jenny Eat World song continued on.

Octavia found herself faintly surprised, and looked at both Vinyl and Twilight to see if they were having the same reaction. Vinyl was blinking while Twilight, who had fought to be the representative, looked smug.

Still, Octavia noted, there was one test she’d still have to pass beyond a good singing voice. Her eyes narrowed as Sweetie moved out of the chorus and into the next verse.

Hey, you know they’re all the same,

You know you’re doing better on your own, so don’t buy in.

Live right now, yeah, just be yourself,

It doesn’t matter if it’s good enough for someone else.

Sweetie Belle was lost in the music. The same song she had played over and over in her room after a fight with her mom or another day of getting laughed at by the kids in her class.

She didn’t even have to think. Just feel: feel the music that swelled inside her until it burst out on her voice.

Unbeknownst to the teenage singer, a pink pool of magic had begun to gather around her hooves. The solid magic rippled and flowed to the music, spiking up on high notes and flattening on the low.

Vinyl nudged Octavia on the shoulder when she saw it, but Octavia had been watching the magic closely.

It was time, she decided, for the final test.

When Sweetie Belle reached the final chorus, Octavia was ready. A small, silver blade was held in her hooves as she waited for the teenager to reach her peak.

When she did, Octavia flung the blade through the air towards Sweetie.

It just takes some time,

Little girl you’re in the middle of the ride.

Everything, everything will be just fine,

Everything, everything will be al— aiiiiieee!

Sweetie Belle shrieked as the knife flew toward her. Before she could try to move out of the way, a massive shield of pink light sprang to life in front of her. The shield crashed through the floor and the record player beside her, shattering it into a hundred pieces.

The knife vibrated in place, stuck halfway into the shield. After a moment, Sweetie Belle’s breathing had calmed down a little and the shield disappeared, leaving the blade to sink into the wooden floor with a dull thunk.

Sweetie stared at the weapon, and at the ring in the floor where the shield had been. “Wh-What was that?” she asked.

Octavia stood up from her seat.

“That,” she said, “was you passing the test. You may now leave. Go home; you have been excused from your classes for the rest of the day.”

Sweetie Belle gulped and shakily nodded before backing out of the room, her eyes never leaving the knife.

Outside, she stopped short when she found Diamond Tiara outside on a bench, waiting for her. The former bully looked up at Sweetie, opened her mouth as if to say something, but closed it instead.

After a moment, she stood up and walked into Mrs. Sparkle’s room.

Sweetie Belle took her time to get home. Everything else felt numb and unimportant to her anyway.

She had passed! Really, really passed!

Though, her success left her with more questions than answers. Why the knife? What was with the shield?

Sweetie paused underneath a tree and looked at her hooves. Normal . . . all normal. How had she conjured up magic powerful to stop a weapon in midair? Her own magic had never been that good . . . was it the music?

Was music powerful enough to change her magic like that?

By the time she got back to Carousel Boutique to tell her sister, she felt like she had more questions than answers She slowly edged into the kitchen to be met by a smiling Rarity and Blueblood, standing next to her.

“We heard!” Rarity said, wrapping Sweetie Belle into a hug. “Congratulations!”

Blueblood smiled and nodded. “To pass that test is quite the accomplishment for a girl your age.”

“Yeah, uh, definitely,” Sweetie said. In the back of her mind, she wondered what happened to the ponies that didn’t pass the knife test.

They gave her a few more congratulations and started to talk about going out to dinner with Sweetie and Rarity’s whole family when Blueblood and Rarity, both still facing the door, stopped.

Sweetie Belle turned around to find Octavia standing in the doorway, the wind outside lightly toying with her mane and tail.

“Congratulations, you passed,” she said.

Sweetie Belle nodded. “Yeah, we’re going to go celebrate it tonight . . .”

“Good to hear.” Octavia cleared her throat. “Don’t stay up too late, however. You need to be in front of my house tomorrow morning at eight sharp if you wish to catch the bus.”

Sweetie tilted her head. “Bus to where?”

“Your new school: The Canterlot Music Meister Academy. You start there tomorrow.”

Before Sweetie Belle could ask any more questions, Octavia spun around and departed without another word.

The trio watched her go until Rarity shut the door and tried to put on a smile. “Now, how about that party?”

The party went as well as she could expect, especially with her parents involved. The restaurant had been nice and the food delicious and hard to pronounce.

Still, when Sweetie Belle found herself in her old bed in her mother’s house, she stared up at the ceiling instead of sleeping.

Canterlot Music Meister Academy: a whole new school? How was she going to handle that? All of her friends were in Ponyville, and then to find out in one day that she’d have to give all that up at the drop of a hat was almost too much.

She rolled over in her bed and tucked the covers to her chin. The worst part was that she should have known. That poster had talked about "special opportunities."  Of course there weren’t special opportunities in this stupid place!

As sleep began to take her, she thought about just quitting and refusing to go. She dismissed the idea just as quickly.

She looked down at her hooves. If she didn’t go to the school, then how was she supposed to find out where that shield had come from? How could she accept a life in boring Ponyville listening to Mrs. Cheerilee now that she knew what she could do?

But . . .

From where Sweetie lay, she could see the picture that always stood on her dresser. It was the three of them on the day of the second talent show: the day they had gained their cutie marks.

Sweetie Belle sighed as she remembered the day, and pressed a hoof to the frame. “We are the Cutie Mark Crusaders, on a quest to find out who we are . . .” she sang.

Suddenly, though, a pink spark of magic lashed out and cracked the glass on the photo, right where Sweetie’s head in the picture was. The real Sweetie cried out and tried to rub at it in a vain attempt to remove the crack, but to no avail.

When that didn’t work, Sweetie settled for hugging the picture to her chest and lying back on the bed. It was going to hurt leaving her friends, but it would hurt worse if she stayed.

Besides, she was still a Crusader, wasn’t she? And until she knew just what this new magic was, she wasn’t done with her cutie mark quest. Even if her quest took her away from her friends for a little while, they would always be Crusdaers.

By the time sleep took her a few minutes later, with the picture still clutched against her, she had made her decision, for better or worse.

She was going.