Ponyville School Playground

10 years later; present day

You’re running. Galloping as fast as your little hooves can carry you. Three assailants are seconds behind you. Three crazy, blank-flanked and possibly cootie-ridden assailants.

“We nearly have him, girls!” the leader of the group yells, keeping up her brisk pace, “We’re gonna figure this out once and for all!”

“Cutie Mark Crusaders Interrogators! Hooray!”

See, now that’s a good enough reason to keep running. With your youthful vigour, you leap over the playground’s sandpit in a single bound from your earth pony legs. Rumble, a little tyke from the lower years, doesn’t seem to mind you jumping clean over him and his sandcastle.

He does mind, however, the three fillies that tumble past him in your pursuit, knocking over both himself and his sandy creation. This does nothing to slow them down.

You get an idea. Just as you can sense them closing in, you change direction, heading straight for the play swings. A few of your classmates are merrily swinging to and fro, shouting profanities (“Silly head!” “Dumb-dumb!”) as you weave quickly and recklessly between them. Your pursuers aren’t so nimble, as evidenced when one of them ends up in a swinger’s path. The teeny white unicorn of the group is hit with a squeaky “Oof!” and gets knocked right out of the chase. One down, two to go.

From there, you make for the climbing frame; luckily there weren't as many kids around that one. You slip through the gaps of the metal thing flawlessly, without slowing down in the slightest. The earth pony leader of the group does the same, but the second-in-command, a short-maned pegasus you remember mistaking for a colt when you first met, gets a hoof caught in the metal frame and falls flat on her face. Two down, one to go.

Now for the great escape up the ladders of the twisty-tube slide! You bound up the playground ladder’s steps with the intention of getting the leader to follow you. Once there, you leap down the slide and, hopefully, by the time she’s made it down, you’ll be long gone!

Wait, where did she go? She should have been following you and- Oh for pony's sake, she’s waiting at the bottom of the slide!

You can’t escape! You can’t just jump off the slide, because it’s a twisty-tube one! You have no other chance but to go head-on into her and hope she doesn’t get the chance to cling onto you.

This plan, of course, fails miserably. No sooner do you try to leap past her at the bottom of the slide, than she anticipates your actions and jumps at you with perfect timing. A half-second of struggling later, you’re on the dusty playground floor, being pinned down by the earth pony herself.

“I got him, girls! I got him!”

Your captor’s name is Apple Bloom. She’s in the same school year as you, but one of the few left still waiting for her life’s calling to slap her on the rump. She’s got two gleaming orangey-peach eyes that look you up and down in triumph as you fail to tussle yourself free from under her. Two of her creamy-yellow hooves have your shoulders pinned to the ground, while her back legs are nestled firmly (and uncomfortably) on your tummy, keeping you securely under her arrest. The most attention grabbing feature of her, though, was the bright pink bow that sits atop her reddish mane. It’s almost like she’s trying to declare to the world; ‘Hey look, I’m wearing a bright pink bow! I’m such a darling li’l filly!’

She isn’t, though. She really isn’t. She’s rough and rude, and silly, and she’s a smelly girl, obviously covered from head to hoof in cooties. A sticky, horrible creature, with all the gross things little girls like her do. Like tea parties and pretending to be princesses, no doubt.

And she’s sitting on your tummy! The nerve!

“Way to go, Apple Bloom!” you hear her friend’s voice (the tomboyish pegasus called Scootaloo) call out as she rejoins her fellow Crusader.

“Scoots, you grab his hind legs.” the bow-wearing Bloom orders, “Sweetie Belle - ah, there you are - you keep his forelegs down. I’ll do the interrogatin’.”

Sweetie Belle (that would be the daintiest member of their brigade) shakes away her dizziness from her little accident at the swings and holds you down to ensure you don’t escape their questioning. Then, and only then, does Apple Bloom have the decency down get of your now slightly sore tummy.

“There, now we can get down to business,” she gloats, “Are ya sittin’ comfortably?”

“No!”

“Then I’ll begin. You know what we’re after, don’cha?”

You shrug as much as Sweetie Belle’s grip would allow you to, “Not really. You just pointed at me and yelled ‘There he is, get him’!”

The leader rearranges the bow on her head, as if trying to look as professional as a… little filly you guess, “Ah, but do you know why we did that? And why we hadda chase you down?”

“If I did, I’d probably have avoided it.”

“Oh, ya couldn’t avoid it, silly,” she explains, “After all, we’re talkin’ about that!”

She jabs a hoof towards your butt. Or at least, the latest addition to it; an image of two different-sized gears working perfectly in sync with one another.

“…my Cutie Mark? You want my Cutie Mark? Come on, you know I can’t just give you my Cutie Mark. That‘s impossible!”

“Not your Cutie Mark, dummy,” she corrects you, “We want A Cutie Mark. Any at all! And you’re the most recent pony here to get one!”

“So?” you ask.

“That means you’re the only pony here that remembers best on how to get one! You only just gained it, after all!”

“Is that what all of this was about?” you try to sit up in disbelief, but the white unicorn holds you back down again, “You didn’t need to chase me down just to ask a couple of questions about Cutie Marks.”

“Then why did ya run off when we tried to reach you then?” Apple Bloom retorts.

“Because you didn’t try to reach me,” you groan, “You just pointed at me, screamed, then suddenly I’m being chased down by three fillies!”

“Oh yeah. We’re talkin’ in circles here, ain’t we?”

To your relief, the distant ringing of the school bell carries over the playground. Most of the kids stop what they’re doing and calmly make their way back to class at the beck and call of the gentle teacher Miss Cheerilee.

“Aw, shucks!” Apple Bloom hoofs the ground in frustration, “We didn’t even get to the interrogatin’ part yet!”

“Um… sorry to hear that?”

You totally aren’t sorry. It’s best to find a way out of this foal-napped-by-fillies issue; you’re a smart pony after all. Smart for a kid, at least. “Look, if you really want to know more about Cutie Marks, we’ll meet up at lunchtime, okay? We‘ll have the whole lunch break to talk about it.”

“Ain’t we in the same class?”

Darn. You mean, “Yeah, but not the same row. We don’t wanna get in trouble with Miss Cheerilee for talking or passing notes in class, do we?”

“Hmm…” Apple Bloom scratches her chin with a hoof. She nods towards her two friends/crusaders/cooties-ridden minions as a sign to let you go. “Lunchtime it is. Just don’t make any attempts to run away this time, okay?”

“Sure thing,” you sigh, “wouldn’t dream of it.”