Chapter Only: Scootalooception
CRISIS OF INFINITE SCOOTALOOS
Chapter Only: Scootalooception
Just outside the main portion of Ponyville, everything was picturesque and serene on a fine, weekend afternoon. Birds were happily chirping, bunnies doing bunny things, and even Cranky Doodle Donkey found no reason not to smile for once. It was the kind of scene that would inspire a composer to write a work titled “Pastoral” even...even though there were so many different works named “Pastoral” that it drove the Royal Canterlot Symphony crazy trying to choose one. The building was still under reconstruction after Octavia Melody lost it after the last attempt to choose which “Pastoral” to play, but we shall speak of this no further.
This rare moment of peace for a town regularly besieged by literally everything that constituted a national emergency within the past three to four years was, naturally, interrupted by forces of nature far smaller than book burning, library-hating centaurs. In this case, it was three fillies: Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and noisiest of all, Scootaloo. In a blur, the orange pegasus filly flapped her wings hard enough to make very unhorselike noises, propelling her scooter at a great speed of twenty miles an hour, effortlessly pulling along the wagon in which the wingless members of the Cutie Mark Crusaders rode. As they whizzed by, they did such heinous things as scaring the birds, stopping the bunnies from doing bunny things, removing coconuts from laden swallows - European or African, no one could really tell or know as nopony had ever heard of either place - and knocking off Cranky’s toupee, causing him to decide not to bother smiling for the rest of the day.
Then Scootaloo spotted a bridge up ahead. “Hey, girls!” she shouted. “Check this out!”
With deft dexterity, Scootaloo did the unthinkable and unlatched the wagon from her scooter at high speed. Then, right as they reached the bridge, Scootaloo leaped up with her scooter, grinding it on the left side of the bridge’s railing while the wagon rolled behind. At the midway point, Scoot then jumped the gap, over her friend’s heads, and continued to grind on the right side railing. At the end, she returned the scooter to the ground and in one swift motion reattached the wagon.
“AWESOME!” cheered Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle.
“Yep!” was all the confident Scootaloo said in return, grinning all the way to their destination of Sweetie’s house. “Guess you could say that until I get my cutie mark, my special talent is just being me!”
Suddenly, Scootaloo’s butt started to glow without warning, startling the three and causing their little consist of scooter and wagon to topple over!
“Scoot!” exclaimed Apple Bloom, “Ah…Ah think ya got yer cutie mark!”
“What? I did?!” Eager to see what the visual image of her life’s calling was, Scootaloo immediately contorted herself to see what fate had given her. She…did not understand. “Why is there a picture of me on my butt?”
Puzzled, the unmarked fillies examined the butt of their compatriot more closely. As random as it seemed, Scootaloo had been right: her cutie mark was in fact…her. To add injury to insult, it wasn’t even depicting Scootaloo doing some kind of action pose, rather it was just a full side view of the filly looking straight ahead, though with wings opened to fully show the mini-Scootaloo was a blank flank. If anything, it looked much like a standard posed silhouette that one would see on a box carrying a plastic toy version of a small pegasus filly in a toyline created by a large multinational conglomerate, but again, we shall speak of these things no further.
“Now don’t that beat all?” rhetorically stated Apple Bloom.
“Like, what special talent is it supposed to refer to, exactly, anyway?” added Sweetie Belle.
Scoot shrugged. “Beats me, all I said was until I got my mark, you could say my special talent was being me-“
Suddenly, Scootaloo’s butt started to glow without warning, startling the three once again, though this time without causing them to crash to the ground.
“Oh no!” exclaimed a panicking Apple Bloom. “Ah don’t know how, but…but y’might have caught the Cutie Pox!”
“That doesn’t even make any sense!” protested Scootaloo, “You only got it when you messed around with Zecora’s magic potion stuff way back when, and the last time I drunk a potion was…uh…before that! Yeah!”
“Uh, girls, if Scoot had cutie pox…wouldn’t that mean she should have two different cutie marks on her flanks and start spontaneously doing random things?” Pointed out Sweetie. “I mean, that’s what you ended up doing, Apple Bloom.”
“Yeah…that’s true!” Apple Bloom then glanced back over to Scootaloo, seeing there was only one cutie mark despite the second flash, the mark of Scootaloo on the Scootaloo, a perfect scaled down replica that even had it’s own Scootaloo cutie mar-
“Am Ah startin’ to see things or did Scootaloo’s cutie mark just get its own Scootaloo cutie mark?”
“What?!” The afflicted filly and friends looked even harder at the orange furred butt, and for better or worse confirmed that the Scootaloo shaped cutie mark had indeed gained an even smaller Scootaloo shaped cutie mark.
“This is a problem,” flatly said Sweetie.
“Yeah, I couldn’t tell,” dryly replied an unamused Scootaloo, “my rear end becoming a portrait gallery of me totally is normal for ponies getting their cutie marks.”
Meanwhile, somewhere in Baltimare, a painter painstakingly attempting to paint a painting within another painting of a painting dropped his brush and tore out his mane, thus causing him to be taken to a place where life is beautiful all the time and he’d be happy to see those nice young colts with their clean white shirts and they’re coming to take him away, hah…
Again, back to our story.
Apple Bloom tapped her chin. “Well, if you keep gettin’ marks by sayin’ your special talent is bein’ you, maybe we can reverse it by making you not be you?”
Scootaloo raised an eyebrow at that. “How in all of Equestria would we manage that?”
Sweetie then started bouncing up and down excitedly. “Oooh! Oooh! I know how! C’mon, let’s get to my room, I have just the materials we need!”
With concern, Hondo Flanks walked up the stairs and knocked firmly on his young daughter’s bedroom door, unsure if it could even be heard over the ruckus he could hear going on inside being comparable to a construction site. “Sweetie, is everything okay in there?”
Immediately, the noise stopped. “Uh, yeah! Are my friends and I being too loud up here?”
“I’m afraid so, honey…uh, you aren’t trying to cook pancakes in your room with the easy bake oven again, are you? Your mother wasn’t too happy about needing to replace the bedroom wall you blew out, y’know…”
“No, Dad, I promised you guys I wouldn’t make pancakes inside the house after that, remember? Besides, my friends and I are just playing dress up!”
“Well, alright kiddo, can’t see a problem with you havin’ fun with your friends – just keep the racket down to a minimal level, got it?”
“Got it dad! Thanks dad!”
Satisfied, Flanks then turned and headed back downstairs. He had some important business with a fishing rod and his private lake dock to attend to, not to mention that case in Haywaii that he still had to solve.
After a few minutes had passed, the Crusaders dared to proceed, ignoring the whimsical toy oven made by a large, mammon-worshipping multinational conglomerate whose name shall not be uttered for legal reasons.
“So that’s why we heard the fire department head towards your house a few months ago?” asked Apple Bloom.
“Hey, I was trying to make breakfast in bed for mom and dad, but after I destroyed Rarity’s kitchen by accident I’m not allowed near real stoves anymore. But I had a smaller, filly-friendly version, so it seemed like a reasonable substitute at the time.”
“Sorry to interrupt,” interrupted the blue filly in the room, “but can we hurry this up? This powder is making my nose itchy.” For the past hour, Sweetie and Bloomie had subjected the third Crusader to what could politely be described as the makeover session from hell. The current end result of that was Scootaloo now having a light blue coat of fur and a mane shaded dark blue – in theory. Having completely ignored the hair dye instructions about how to properly prepare one’s body hairs for the process, Scootablue was only really passable from a distance, as only from a few feet away it could still be seen where the mane’s dark fuschia hadn’t been entirely covered up if at all. The fur coat on her body had practically been painted with the dye as it was a bit unnaturally thick in some places, and the centerpiece of the disguise being a piece of blue construction paper taped on each of Scootaloo’s flanks with a hastily scribbled golden archery bow for cutie marks. Scootaloo of course knew the flaws in this shoddy disguise and was thankful that if all went well, she wouldn’t need to go out into public looking like a lazy changeling trying to impersonate her fellow classmate Archer.
“Okay, I think that’s the best we’re gonna get,” said Sweetie. “Now, give it a go, Scoo-I mean, Archer!”
“Here goes nothing,” sighed Archaloo, before taking a deep breath. “My special talent is…being Archer!”
One bright flash later, the crusaders were not sure if they’d succeeded or not – the dye had needed to be applied so thickly over Scootaloo’s self-portrait marks in order to obscure them, it was impossible at a glance to verify if the marks had actually vanished at all.
So for thirty more undignified minutes, Scootaloo needed her friends help in washing her butt to see if the experiment had worked. “Well, girls?” the pegasus asked, immediately worried when a response did not come verbally, but from Sweetie having left the bathroom for a few minutes and returned with a magnifying glass.
“Well, uh…” finally said Apple Bloom, trepidation in her voice.
“Your cutie mark’s cutie mark has gotten its cutie mark…of you,” finished Sweetie.
“You have got to be joking…” groaned Scootaloo, needing to lean on the edge of the bathtub just to double facehoof.
“Actually,” started Apple Bloom with a hint of mischievousness, “it would be a joke if it worked when Ah said ‘mah name is Apple Bloom and mah special talent is bein’ Scootaloo!’”
After yet another flash from Scootaloo’s bottom, Sweetie confirmed that Scootaloo’s mark’s mark’s mark had now gotten its own Scootaloo cutie mark.
“Ah said if Ah said that!” exclaimed a horrified Bloomie. “Ah wasn’t actually serious about it!”
“Okay, that does it!” declared a frustrated Scootaloo. “You two are going to get out of this bathroom so I can wash out all this dye, before we go right to Twilight Sparkle and get an answer to why my butt thinks my special talent is being me!” The realization of what she’d just said hit her one nanosecond before her brain registered the flash signaling yet another addition to the series of layered Scootaloo’s on her butt.
“Um, I can’t tell if your mark’s mark’s mark’s mark has its own mark now,” said Sweetie, “it’s kind of hurting my brain just trying to look at your butt now and…” Scootaloo glared daggers at her friends. “How about we just leave you alone to wash and then we’ll go to Twilight Sparkle?”
“I don’t even know how to classify this,” remarked Twilight, gazing down through a thaumaturgical microscope positioned to gaze deeper into Scootaloo’s flank than any pony had gazed before. The thaumaturgical microscope - actually spelled “mycroscope” was recently sold to the princess from a store called “The Merrie Wy--” of which Twilight could not see the rest of the name because Lyra Heartstrings was busily changing the name for reasons unknown. However, Twilight could make out something underneath the previous coat that said “--iccan Wond--” as well as the hints of something beneath that.
Ponyville, she decided, was a silly place. We shall speak of this no further.
“What do you mean by ‘this’ exactly?” asked Apple Bloom. “The part where somepony gets a cutie mark of themselves, the part where a cutie mark keeps getting cutie marks, or the part where somepony else trying to get that cutie mark only makes the original mark get another mark?”
“D, all of the above,” answered the alicorn, adjusting the m~~y~~icroscope’s knobs slightly, before looking up and at Scootaloo. “But you somehow keep getting cutie marks?”
Scoot sighed. “Yeah, every time I say my special talent is being me, it-“ The flash immediately solicited a groan from the filly, too drained of cares to give at this point.
Eagerly, Twilight looked back into the microscope, not to be confused with mycoscope, which is used for looking at mushrooms. “Incredible! Your mark’s mark’s mark’s mark’s mark now has its own mark!”
“How many is that now?” asked Sweetie.
“Counting each cutie mark as it’s own mark, that’s about six in total.” Twilight’s vocal pitch was getting higher, which worried the crusaders as that meant she was getting excited about research. After having lived with Twilight for several years at that point, the entire populace of Ponyville knew that if you were a research subject when she got higher pitched, you had a long, long day incoming.
Oblivious to the feelings of the crusaders, Twilight giddily lept into the air from the microscope, fluttering over to a high shelf of reference books. “It’s not cutie pox-“
“Yeah, I figured that out for us rather quickly,” sarcastically pointed out Apple Bloom. Twilight ignored her.
“-so it must be some kind of magical, temporal anomaly! After all, none of those marks are genuine, truth be told.”
“Wait, what?!” the CMC cried in unison, Scootaloo adding “But the flashes and the whole thing about special talents and-“
“It’s a bit complicated, so I wouldn’t expect you young fillies to get the concept,” interrupted Twilight, returning to the ground with several books in her magical grasp turned to various chapters. “But essentially, none of the cutie marks of you are genuine because the last Scootaloo in the series always lacks a mark. Therefore, all the marks could mean is Scootaloo’s special talent is being cutie-mark less, which is impossible as you’d have to not have pony magic at all otherwise – cutie marks are tied into the inherent magic in all ponies: earth, pegasus, unicorn, and alicorn.”
“But y’cant fake cutie marks,” reminded Apple Bloom, a guilty party of having tried to do just that multiple times in the past and once even with Twilight’s help, “but Scoot keeps getting marks even when other ponies are sayin’ they have her special talent of…you know. How does that even work?” As if to underscore her point, Apple Bloom gestured to the bored looking Scootaloo, whose cutie mark was now being studied under the microscope by a curious Spike.
“I’d need to look more into that, but in simple terms, nothing is actually really stated by saying Scootaloo’s special talent is being Scootaloo, so-“
The resulting bright flash from Scootaloo’s seventh cutie mark was followed up by Spike, exclaiming in agony “OH CELESTIA I’M BLIND!”
“Well, maybe it’s something for a purely theoretical paper write-up, as we can’t have Scoot going around flashing everypony now, can we? Plus, since it’s probably something of an external anomaly, it should be easily rectified like so…”
Igniting her horn, Twilight muttered a few incantation phrases, before a magical beam shot from her horn tip right into Scootaloo’s rear. Like an eraser, the beam moved up and down, procedurally removing the marks until nothing was left.
Stopping her magic, Twilight smiled. “Ok, you know what to do Scoot.”
Scootaloo sighed, not having much faith but not much else to do either. “I’m Scootaloo and my special talent is being Scootaloo.”
When her butt did not flash again, everypony sighed in relief at the situation being over. Spike, being not a pony, was still screaming his head off about having gone blind, at least until that problem was fixed by Owlocicious dropping a heavy book on his head and restoring his sight by that means.
“How’d you get rid of whatever was causing Scoots to keep flashing her butt?” asked Apple Bloom. Meanwhile, on stage in Manehattan, Sapphire Shores was twerking to the boredom of her entire audience, because she wasn’t flashing enou…
You know what? I’m not getting paid enough for this. Back to the story.
Twilight grinned. “Actually, it was a simple anomaly nullification spell – something from my earliest lessons with Princess Celestia. It’s a spell that takes a minor issue with how magic is operating in a point in space-time and puts it somewhere else where it won’t bother anypony or anything. Granted, I don’t know where it went, but it’s nowhere near the planet anymore so it can’t pose Scootaloo any more problems!”
The door opened with haste. “Oh thank God you’re here!”
“Well, y’said it was an emergency so-“ Before they could react, the two were yanked inside the doorway and up the stairs into a semi-clean bedroom.
“Look, you two promise to not tell a soul outside this room about what I’m about to do, got it?”
“Is this something we’re going to regret seeing?” asked the other individual summoned to the crisis.
“I honestly don’t know,” was all the response given before Scootaloo yanked her pants down and elicited a gasp from her friends Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle. There, on Scootaloo’s hips, was a near photo-quality image of a cartoonish, orange filly – a pegasus, based on the wings open on the filly’s back. “I just woke up and found these when I was getting ready to shower – I know I didn’t have them last night, let alone how I got them and most importantly how I’m going to get rid of them!”
“You always could just hide them, right?” Suggested Apple Bloom.
“I could, but then I’d never be able to go swimming again – no girl’s swimsuit is going to hide this! If my parents find out they’re gonna kill me for somehow having gotten tattoos – they’re not going to believe I can’t explain where my hips spontaneously got cartoon horses drawn all over them!”
“Look on the bright side, at least,” said Sweetie, who after a few taps on her smartphone, turned the screen to face the distraught Scootaloo. On the screen was what looked like a plate of Chinese food. “You could have gotten spontaneous images of orange chicken instead!”
Author's Note
I regret nothing.
