Twilight flipped through a book, finally finding the passage she needed. "Cutie pox," she read. "This puzzling pony plague afflicted a population of ponies back in the paleopony period! Random cutie marks appeared all over the ponies' bodies, causing them to perform all the talents that came with them!"
"Yes, but what's the cure?" interrupted Applejack. "What's the cure?!"
"It says here there's no known cure! The cause of the breakout was never discovered, and the cutie pox disappears as mysteriously as they arrived!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Many years ago, during a time known now as the Paleopony Period, there lived a young, ambitious earth pony colt, and he had yet to get his cutie mark. His name was Brandon, the son of two unicorns, and all his peers had already gotten their cutie marks. Most of his peers didn't care that he was a blank flank, but there was one filly in particular that constantly teased him about his odd name and about being the last of his age group to get his cutie mark.
"You'll never get your cutie mark at this rate. Head for the hills, Brandon! Maybe you'll finally get it with somepony else!"
Sometimes her taunts made less sense and came across more awkward than others.
One day, her teasing had gotten pretty bad, and he galloped off so he could be away from his tormentor. He ran for as long as he could, her words cutting deeper with each jab she made. His eyes welled with tears, but he wouldn't cry until he was well away from his bully. Heaven forbid he give her yet another reason to bully him.
He kept running, with barely a break to rest at night or eat an apple from a tree on the way, not knowing how much time had passed. He fell to the floor of a jungle, exhausted, and immediately fell asleep. A lone unicorn eventually walked by and hid behind a tree when he heard the colt's sleeping breaths. He peeked out after a few minutes of listening, waiting for the predator he thought was there to attack or move on, but the sound didn't move. Finally he looked down, seeing the sleeping colt. He lifted him onto his back.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Brandon opened his eyes, the world around him a blur. He looked around as his vision slowly cleared.
"Good morning," said a stallion's voice, and Brandon started panicking. Where was he? Whose voice was that?
The strange stallion kept facing away from the young colt, hearing him stumble as he moved to the wall.
"Wh-where am I? What are you gonna do to me?"
"I found you outside. You fell asleep in the forest, so I brought you to my home to keep you safe and warm. This forest has many dangers to an adult pony, many more to a foal." He finally turned toward the boy, sitting at the nearby table. "Try to relax. I mean you no harm. May I ask what you were doing all alone in the forest?"
"I..." Brandon began, not sure if he wanted to talk to this stranger. Everything around him was strange and frightening to him. There was a moment before his stomach growled. He spoke again, holding his stomach as he realized he was famished. "I'm hungry."
The stallion put some food on the table, and Brandon told him how he ran from his family and his few friends because he was constantly being bullied. The stallion listened to his tale, staying silent through it all. Finally the boy finished, and the stallion spoke.
"So this filly has been endlessly bullying you since she got her own cutie mark."
"Yes."
"Perhaps she should be taught a lesson."
"Sir?"
"I think I have the ingredients necessary to brew a potion that would give her more cutie marks."
"More!? Then she'll just keep bullying blank flanks like me because she has two of them!"
"Not quite the case, Brandon. A natural cutie mark is a representation of what makes you special, but if I make this potion correctly, the new cutie marks will determine her new talents, making her unable to stop doing them. She'll become exhausted when she realizes she can't stop!"
"Okay," said Brandon with a smirk, taking no more than a few seconds to think it over. He'd had enough of her teasing. It was time she got a taste of her own medicine.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The potion brewed, the stallion and the colt made their way back to the colt's home village, and for the first time Brandon realized just how far he'd run. They neared the village, and under the guise of night, sneaked toward the bully's house, pouring some of it into her family's water barrel. Brandon thanked the stallion, and returned to his own home.
His house, made of crudely cut timbers and insulated with mud like all the houses in his town, was disheveled. As he looked around the rooms, he wondered if the house was in disarray because he hadn't been around to help clean it and his parents hadn't been able to clean all of it themselves, or if it had even been cleaned at all since he ran away. In fact, he couldn't think of a single reason for its disorder that didn't involve his sudden disappearance somehow.
Brandon made his way to his bedroom, careful not to disturb his parents' sleep, but doubled back to the main door. He'd been gone for several days, and his parents had to be worried sick. The least he could do was write a note, letting them know he was all right and had returned, and slipping it under their door so they could start their day without worrying about him like they no doubt had since he ran away. He wrote the note and slipped it under their door before making his way back to his bed. He hopped in and closed his eyes, falling asleep quickly.
That night he dreamed his town had changed, not physically but significantly nonetheless. He walked down the main street, coming to the market place where several ponies were gathered around a stall that he didn't recognize. He was surprised, seeing that every flank was covered not just in their usual cutie marks, but their bodies were pockmarked with cutie mark after cutie mark. They were all arguing at the vendor over something he couldn't understand. He tried pushing his way through the crowd, but nopony paid him any attention. Brandon stepped around the other ponies, finally finding his way behind the vendor, whose body was also pockmarked with several cutie marks. He got the vendor's attention, and to Brandon's surprise, he was staring into his own eyes.
Brandon woke up with a start and rubbed his head. What did it mean? In any case, it was a ridiculous dream, and like most dreams it was fading quickly. Looking into his own eyes like that, however; that stayed with him.
He tried to get back asleep, but the memory of those eyes had his heart racing. Instead he got out of his bed and opened his saddlebags, taking his schoolwork out that was due a few days earlier. He hadn't had a chance to work on it, as he ran away almost as soon as school had let out, and guessed that he could at least get partial credit. At the same time, he hoped the teacher would be kind enough to accept it so late.
He finished his schoolwork just as the sun was rising, and he heard a noise coming from his parents' bedroom. They must just be waking up, he thought, a thought confirmed when he turned around and saw his mother coming through the door. As soon as she saw him, she wasted no time in running to him and holding him close. There were tears in her eyes, tears of joy after several days of crying only tears of sadness. Brandon squirmed a little with how tight she was hugging him, but was able to get a foreleg free to wrap around his mother.
"Merry, you just woke up," his father's voice emanated from behind the opened door. "Isn't it a little early to be cr--" He stopped mid-sentence when his wife turned around, holding their son.
"Hi, dad. I'm sorry that..." Brandon started, but couldn't finish when he saw his father walking forward sternly. He stopped in front of them.
The tension between Brandon and his father was thick. The kind of thickness where you could walk on it, like a pegasus on a cloud. The kind of thickness where you would need a specially sharpened knife to cut through it. Perhaps it wasn't as thick as that, but Brandon certainly believed it was.
"Thank goodness you've come back, son."
Brandon's father put his forelegs around his son and his wife, and just like that, the tension vanished. His mother, Merry, eventually let go to prepare breakfast while he started talking about what had happened in the few days he'd been gone. He decided to leave out the parts about the potion.
Having eaten, he packed his homework into his saddlebag for school, in which he'd also stashed the rest of the potion. He stared at it for a moment, wondering whether or not to keep it in or take it out. On the one hoof, he didn't need it anymore. On the other, he didn't really want somepony, especially his parents, finding and asking him about where he'd gotten such a thing. Ultimately he just pushed it to the side, keeping it hidden inside his bag.
"Bye, mom! Bye, dad! I love you both!"
Making his way toward the school, he heard a familiar taunt behind him.
"Well, well," said the bully mare. "Brandon's back with no brand on his flank. Such a shame... I'm so special I got a second cutie mark last night!"
Brandon finally turned to the bully, realizing that her comeuppance was coming sooner than he'd thought.
"What is it?" he asked.
"See for yourself, Blanky," she retorted, and showed her flank to him.
Brandon couldn't tell what it was. Positioned forward of her natural cutie mark, It was white and rectangular, but didn't have the clean edges natural cutie marks had.
"I can't tell what it is," he replied after taking a few moments to try and figure it out. "It's blurry. Are you sure you didn't just draw it on?" The words had slipped out without him realizing it, but... it felt good belittling his bully, even if it was a small victory. A very small one.
The bully scowled. "Of course I didn't draw it on."
"But what is it? A marshmallow or something?"
"It doesn't matter what it is. What matters is I have two cutie marks, and nopony else does!"
"Uh-huh."
That night, Brandon was sleeping in his bed, when suddenly Brandon heard a scream pass through the town, emanating from the house where Brandon's bully lived, and Brandon woke up with a start. He made his way toward her house, where a small crowd had already gathered. Where the day before the filly had two cutie marks, she now had three. The third cutie mark was a speaker, and whatever had happened to give her the third cutie mark, it was making her very loud.
"I DON'T WANT THREE CUTIE MARKS!"
Everypony winced, and some covered their ears. Her voice was piercingly loud, and many ponies backed away, as little good a few feet of difference would make.
"Why not?" asked Brandon "I thought you liked having more cutie marks than anypony else."
"NOT THREE OF THEM! HAVING THREE CUTIE MARKS IS WEIRD!"
Brandon winced. "Wow, you're loud. I guess that's what your third mark means. Can you whisper? Maybe everypony's ears will survive."
She nodded. "How's This!"
"Better."
"Say, I Just Noticed Other Ponies Have Gotten More Cutie Marks Too!" The crowd looked around at each other. Sure enough, every third pony or so had gotten a second cutie mark overnight. "But You Still Don't Have One, Brandon!"
At first Brandon thought she'd been teasing him again, but her voice was softer. He looked into her eyes and saw something he'd never seen in them before: fear.
"C'mon," he said, putting his hoof on her back. "Let's go somewhere and figure out what's going on. Somewhere your newly loud voice won't alarm anypony."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"WHAT!"
Brandon winced. "Yeah, I know. I was mad at your teasing and wasn't thinking clearly when I poured it in, but now I've got to fix this. I saw fear in your eyes earlier, something I'd never seen in them before." She looked at the ground. "I'm sorry, and I really do want to fix this, but I can't if I don't know what's going on. You can say anything here. Nopony else can hear you."
"You Sure!"
Brandon looked around them. They had traveled miles away to a ruin that Brandon had noticed on his way back to town.
"Yup. We're too far from anypony else. So what happened after I spiked your water barrel?"
The filly thought for a moment. "I Did Wake Up In The Middle Of The Night To Get A Drink, But I Don't Know If That Was Before Or After."
"Well," he said, "that's as good a start as any."
"So What Do We Do Now?"
There was a pause. "I have no idea. I was only able to make the potion because of somepony else, but I have no idea where to find him to see if he has any ideas." Then he remembered that his saddlebag still contained the partially used potion bottle. He opened up his bag and took it out. "This is the rest of it. Maybe we can get somewhere with this."
Sitting on his haunches, he tightly closed his eyes and began to think, pressing his temples with his hooves. For several minutes, he sat there, thinking as hard as he could. What was in the potion? I didn't really pay attention to what he put in it. How could one family drinking the water with the potion in it affect the entire town, except for himself? Was he somehow immune to the effects? Could somepony really be immune to something as random as what the potion was able to do?
"I never wanted this," he spoke quietly, both to the filly nearby and to nopony in particular. "I wanted to get back at you for bullying me so much, for hurting my feelings so much, but this is way worse than what I wanted, and now I regret it."
Then fix it, said a voice in his head.
"What?"
"I Didn't Say Anything," the filly replied, backing up a little, "But Your Forehead's Glowing."
You have the ability to fix this, said the voice in his head, and Brandon recognized it as the voice of the unicorn stallion whom he'd met several days earlier. While you were sleeping, I felt compelled to make sure you were all right. I cast a spell that showed me that you were fine, just tired, but it also told me that you're not an earth pony.
So what am I? I'm not a unicorn like my parents.
Yes, you are. Your horn never grew past your skull, but your magic still focuses where your horn would have been.
How are you talking to me inside my head?
Magic. I've been keeping an eye on you since we parted ways.
So how can I fix this?
I believe you can figure it out. You're smarter than you think you are.
Brandon spoke again, but the unicorn's voice didn't respond. Either he chose to stop responding, or he chose to leave. Either way, Brandon soon realized that he couldn't rely on the stallion. He turned toward the filly next to him.
"You might not believe what I'm about to say..."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Brandon asked his former bully. "There may be unintended consequences."
"After Carefully Considering The Risks And Rewards, The Rewards Outweigh The Risks," she said, then added, "Just Do It Before I Talk Myself Out Of It."
Brandon nodded, and touched his forehead to her flank, having not yet come up with a better way for him to cast spells. There was a flash of light, and when Brandon opened his eyes the speaker cutie mark had disappeared! He cast the spell again, removing the white... blob... cutie mark from her flank as well.
"It worked! Your extra cutie marks are gone!"
"And you have your cutie mark, Brandon!" She giggled. "You finally got your brand on!"
After celebrating the each accomplishment for a few minutes, they hurried back to their town as fast as they could. When they neared the town, what they saw made them stop dead in their tracks. Everypony was covered in several cutie marks, each pony acting out what their cutie marks seemed to be forcing them to do. It was chaos.
"Oh no. The old stallion warned me about this. Come on. We've got work to do."
They went from pony to pony, removing as many cutie marks as they could. Pretty soon, ponies were lining up to have their cutie marks removed, but as the sun set, there were only a few ponies with all the extra cutie marks removed.
"Everypony, please return to your homes. Our magic is almost all tapped out. Anypony who already has their extra cutie marks removed and wants to learn the spell to help the others tomorrow." Two adult unicorns joined the foals, and spent the greater part of the night learning the spell, as well as suggesting an improvement or two. The next day was much more effective; with four unicorns removing cutie marks, there were now five times as many newly unmarked ponies as there had been the day before.
"You know," Brandon said off-handed to his new filly friend, "Maybe we could do this forever. Whenever somepony gets... whatever it was that made everypony else get too many cutie marks, we come in and remove them. Like we'd be a secret club or something like that."
The filly agreed. They still had a ways to go before their town was cured, but she had no doubt that he was right. It felt good to be helping him instead of bullying him.
It has been many centuries since the cutie pox epidemic, and all but the vaguest details were lost to the sands of time. They did still exist, however, tucked away in a very secluded corner of Equestria. Over the years, the local climate had become hotter, the vegetation more sparse. The snowy mountains made a stark contrast to the arid desert below.
With the disappearance of the cutie pox, the group that Brandon had created to remove the extra cutie marks became smaller, consisting of only a few ponies at a time. As the years passed, the group eventually and very subtly lost its original purpose. As teachings were passed down, words became twisted, and the group designed to remove unnatural cutie marks became a group that removed unwanted cutie marks, then a group that encouraged others to give up their cutie marks. It is this last form of the group that a young mare named Starlight Glimmer was about to discover.
Starlight Glimmer ran, not knowing nor caring where she was going. She weaved through forests, the trunks of which were blurred through her tears. She had reached the arid desert by the time she had no more tears, and her legs were tired. The sun was setting, and Starlight was starting to feel the chill of a desert night. She found her way to a cave, gathered some twigs, and lit them with her horn. She lay down, her head on her hooves.
Silence.
The only sound surrounding her was silence. She could hear her heart beating; she could almost hear the thoughts in her head as if somepony were standing next to her talking to her.
Had she not been so absorbed in her thoughts, she would have heard the sound of hooves on the cavern floor coming toward her.
"Girl, why are you crying?"
The voice startled Starlight. She got up and backed up a little towards the entrance of the cave before she answered. She faced before her an aging pony wearing a dark hooded cloak.
"I got my cutie mark," she replied quietly.
"Don't you like it?"
The question caught her off guard. She'd never even considered that as an option.
"It's not that, it's just... a while ago my best friend got his cutie mark, and abandoned me. He was sent off to Canterlot to study magic, and I was left alone without my only friend."
"And getting your own cutie mark brought up that horrible memory, didn't it?"
"Yes, and just when I thought I'd finally gotten over it and allowed myself to make a new friend."
"Was your friend special, or just a normal pony?"
"He was a normal pony."
"Was he any better than you?"
"Not until he got his cutie mark. I was pretty much ignored after that."
"Then perhaps it was his cutie mark that made them think he was better than you. What a shame, to have such a small thing control your life. If only everypony didn't have them, perhaps you two could be equal again."
Starlight liked the idea that she and Sunburst could be the same again. She longed for the days when they would play together, the days that were torn from them when he was torn from her life.
"I'm ready. Take my cutie mark."
"Unfortunately, I cannot. I'm a pegasus, and the last of my generation of members. Deeper in this cave, however, is a copy of the spell that my organization's founders left for just this situation. Since you are a unicorn, you can learn it, cast it, and introduce others to our ways. You will want to have your cutie mark removed last."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some time later, the pegasus Starlight had met in that cave and Starlight herself lived in a two-story house not far from the cave. Starlight had insisted they live in a proper house, and allow the cave to become a monument to the cult. While gathering materials to build their two-story house, Starlight also found a peculiar-looking stick. By this time she'd memorized the spell, but finding this stick inspired her to take the spell a step further, so she reworked it so that it would not only remove a pony's cutie mark, but give everypony she cast it on the same cutie mark, a gray equals sign. One day the pegasus returned to the house, shivering and limping. She helped him to and asked what had happened.
"It is time, Starlight... I don't have much longer..." His breaths were labored, and he looked like he was in pain.
"Time for what?"
"In the mountains not far from here is a white earth stallion. I saw him skiing, and I started a snowstorm. He took a nasty spill. I stayed a little bit, watching him, but he wasn't moving. Find him, Starlight. Befriend him, Teach him our ways, and grow our numbers. Equestria must learn that life will be better without cutie marks to tear ponies apart. Go. I'll be all right."
Starlight made her way into the mountains, and found the earth stallion that the pegasus had mentioned. He introduced himself as Double Diamond, and they made their way back to what would eventually become their town. Once they arrived, Starlight discovered that the pegasus had left, leaving to her the responsibility of leading the town, and by extension Equestria, into a new era of equality.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Double Diamond set down his pen and leaned back in his chair. The last section of the history of Our Little Village he'd written sounded a bit awkward; then again, any time he wrote he found that comprehension waned when he was hungry, and this was no less true today as he smelled the delicious smells emanating from the downstairs kitchen.
Night Glider knocked on the door with her hoof, and asked how it was coming. Although this particular piece of history was something they all remembered vividly and wished had never happened, all the ponies in Our Little Village had agreed that it was necessary for others to learn what had happened here so as to prevent somepony else from taking advantage of their pasts.
"It's coming along," he said. "What's Sugar Belle cooking down there? It smells delicious."
"A special Hearth's Warming feast for all of us. It's almost ready. Are you coming?"
Double Diamond grinned and got out of the chair, heading downstairs. He always worked better on a full stomach anyway.
Author's Note
The bully's second cutie mark was a pillow, because after she drank the spiked water she went back to sleep.
Fun fact: the only time Starlight's village is referred to as "Our Town" in the show is in the song. Every other time it's "our village" or usually "our little village".
I started writing this on May 2 after I saw "Appleloosa's Most Wanted". For some reason I was thinking about "The Cutie Pox", and realized that it was entirely possible that the original cutie pox incident in the Paleopony Period and Starlight Glimmer's obsession with removing cutie marks could be connected. Thus, this story was born. I'd set it aside to work on "The Princess That Equestria Always Had", but with the season 5 finale (which gave me a bit more material to work with for Starlight), being several chapters ahead for "Always Had", and Christmas nearing, I decided to sit down and finish this one-shot.
