The solve-it-all machine

“Hey!” joyfully shouted Pinkie Pie, appearing in the middle of the cutie mark crusaders clubhouse. “How are you doing?”

The three fillies raised their head to look at her, but stood silent for a long few seconds.

“We are okay… I guess.” replied Scootaloo, as the two others lowered their head back down.

Seeing that the girls weren’t in a good mood, Pinkie decided to immediately correct the situation, searched behind her whatever she could use to bring a smile back on the three faces and turned back with a giant cake.

“Look what I’ve brought you!” she victoriously stated, certain it was going to work.

It didn’t. They looked at the cake, but couldn’t find any interest to it at all. They weren’t feeling hungry. Quite on the contrary, their stomachs were hurting a bit.

“Okay, no cake…” recognized Pinkie Pie, throwing the cake away. “But what about a song?” she asked with enthusiasm.

And she started dancing, while singing “When you feel a little gloomy, you shouldn’t forget life is a party....” trying to bring the fillies to sing with her to forget their worries.

The song fell flat. The girls weren’t feeling like singing. Or dancing. Or moving at all.

“Maybe you want to play a game?” asked Pinkie Pie, who wasn’t ready to give up any time soon.

She drew several board games out of nowhere that she put in front of the fillies, as well as a volley ball, a basketball ball, a football ball, a soccer ball, a ping pong ball, a tennis ball, a baseball ball, a trapezoidal ball from a game from a parallel dimension as well as a few console systems from another parallel dimension.

As it still wasn’t getting the awaited reaction, Pinkie Pie tried to trigger a water balloon fight, giving them plenty of ammunition and poured a whole bucket of water on Applebloom’s head.

But even the cold water didn’t make her react. She just looked at her wet fur, sighed and went back to mourning.

“Okay. This is going to be a tough one.” whispered Pinkie Pie whose determination hadn’t diminished any bit. “Come on now.” She said out loud, embracing the three fillies and bringing them all together. “Tell aunt Pinkie what is bugging you so much.”

They didn’t respond, but Pinkie Pie looked into the fillies’ eyes and saw the roots of the problem. She could literally read what had happened in their desperate looks.

It had happened during the last few days. The cutie mark crusaders were at the new library to do some research for homework and quite enjoying themselves when Diamond Tiara had come to them with a smirk on her face.

“Here you are.” she told them with a tone of reproach.

“What do you want?” asked Sweetie Belle with a pinch of agressivity, as she knew Diamond’s presence was usually not a sign of good time.

“I just thought I would help you.” the little bully replied, seemingly taking offense for being greeted in such a way. “I thought you would want to know about those cutie marks of yours.”

She had already won with those simple words. Even if Scootaloo protested that there was no way she, of all pony, would try to help them getting their marks, it was clear the three fillies were ready to listen to what she had to say.

“You can stop doing that “crusading” thing of yours. You will be blank flank forever now.” Diamond explained.

“You lie!” replied Applebloom, furious.

“I do not!” told her back Diamond Tiara. “It’s all here in that book!”

And saying that, she threw a big book in front of the fillies.

“You don’t have to believe me, but you better believe what the book says.”

And knowing she had already done enough damages that she could enjoy later, Diamond Tiara saluted and went away, resisting the urge to burst out laughing.

The cutie mark crusaders read the books where it was explicitly explained that, by experience, in all of Equestria and in all of known pony history, it had been noticed that no pony that had grown after a certain age without a cutie mark would ever get one in their life. As the phenomenon was extremely rare, it was usually ignored by most ponies, even the teachers, but even if unexplained, had been accepted as a fact by the scientists studying the matter.

Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle and Applebloom turned pale. They had looked at the age written on those pages, the fateful moment where all hope was to be lost. Diamond Tiara was right: they could stop crusading. It was of no use anymore.

“This can’t be right!” Applebloom had immediately reacted. “They must be wrong.”

“Of course it’s wrong!” confirmed Scootaloo more to try and fight her own growing fears than anything else.

“I know who will be able to show how wrong it is.” said Sweetie Belle with hope. “The most intelligent and wise pony there is in all of Equestria.”

They all knew who that pony was and shouted:

“Applejack!”

“Rarity!”

“Rainbow Dash!”

They looked at each other. Applebloom’s look was making it clear that she wasn’t trusting Rarity’s or Rainbow Dash’s judgment on the matter. Scootaloo wasn’t trusting Applejack and Rarity. As for Sweetie Belle, she simply didn’t trust the wisdom of Rainbow Dash. Not that she was trusting Applejack wisdom that much more, but she was mostly doubtful about Rainbow Dash.

“Let’s just go see Twilight.” sighed Scootaloo, who was regretting the lost occasion to spend some time with her unofficial big sister.

But when Twilight had finished reading the book the three fillies had brought her, she didn’t give the comforting words they were expecting. In fact, she didn’t say anything at all at first.

“What?” asked Applebloom. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s just…” began Twilight, not sure how to put it. “I recognize the authors and the methodology of that book. It is genuine. I can’t believe I never read about this until now: I never knew.”

“But it’s all lies, right?” asked Sweetie Belle, focused on the only important thing and far away from any consideration about how much trust one could put in a book.

“I…” Twilight said, trying to find the good words.

“Yes?” asked the three fillies, their faces lightened with hope and the corollary high expectations.

“I need to do some more research.” the alicorn finally explained.

“About what?” asked Scootaloo. “Is what is written true or not?”

“It’s not that simple…” tried Twilight to elude the question.

“How can it not be simple?” Applebloom asked, pressing the new princess. “Just tell us if it’s true or not.”

Twilight looked around her to find an escape to the situation, didn’t find any and so sighed and said:

“I don’t know. I really don’t know. You will have to wait until I can confirm or infirm what is written in there.”

She dismissed the three fillies who directly went back to their families to tell the whole story, complain and basically express all their fears in every way they could feel appropriate.

Three days later, Twilight brought the response they had been anxiously waiting for, to the relief of Rarity, Applejack and Rainbow Dash who had had to manage the fillies during that time as well as their own anxiety about the matter.

And the news came as a hammer: the book was right.

“I directed a search on what has happened to all the blank flanks after the given age.” Twilight explained. “In the last hundred years, I couldn’t find any exception in all of our records. None of them ever got a cutie mark.”

There wasn’t much more to say. Or to do. Nopony knew how to react.

Neither did Pinkie Pie in the cutie mark crusaders’ club house. The pink pony was feeling like a soldier who, while she was advancing forward, suddenly realizes she is in the middle of a huge minefield where every movement can trigger the last firework of her life.

So she did the only thing she knew couldn’t be wrong: she smiled.

“Come on now. You shouldn’t let that get you down. The sun is still high in the sky, you’ve still got so much to accomplish in your life!”

She looked in their eyes again, and saw the effects of the problem. She could see what had happened the next day, when they came back to school, after the news had spread and every filly and foal knew they would stay blank flanks forever. Pinkie saw the shame, smelled the mockeries, felt the insults and heard the scent of total defeat.

“Okay, this is actually very bad…” she acknowledged in her awkward way.

Her mind went racing as she still wasn’t even considering giving up on bringing a smile back to the three fillies. It might be so that her brain was mostly filled with cotton candy, but there were still some hidden stuff that could usually come in handy in such a situation.

She found one and turned pale so fast a violently that the cutie mark crusaders noticed it and backed away from her a little, suddenly worried for her well-being.

She had to decide. She could either solve the fillies’ problem and see them smile again, or she could follow her deep feeling and just let things as they were. She looked at the three sad faces and already knew what choice she would make.

“I’ve got a solution.” Pinkie told them with an unsaddling confidence, creating a new hope in the fillies’ heart.

And the impossible words came from her mouth:

“I’m going to give you each a cutie mark!”