Two Background Ponies Revisit Season Five

Crusaders of the Lost Mark

Carl rubbed his jaw in a bit of puzzlement with one hoof as he worked a pencil over a sketchpad. As usual, he was seated across from Sam and a plate of cookies. After a moment, he snickered to himself a bit and wrote down a bit more. He leaned up to say something, then suddenly blinked.

"Er...Sam?"

"Yeah Carl?"

"Didn't we...uh..." He looked around a bit. "Just...do thi-"

"No, Carl. We didn't already do this for this week thinking that the fandom would be enraged over the fact that Diamond Tiara did a heel-turn-face and that this ended up with the CMCs getting their Cutie Marks at long last when it turns out most people actually supported the idea after all that no one is really 'born bad' but gets warped by their adult influences which was ironically very much in the spirit of 'Friendship Games' and so rather than 'jumping the shark' the fandom actually loves this episode and, even if they didn't, the author thought it was well done so he shouldn't be encouraging the negative viewpoint and so he deleted that post and started over again from scratch in a more traditional format. Stop imagining things. That never happened."

Carl blinked a few times.

"Hey!"

Both Sam and Carl looked up to the giant brick wall enclosing one side of town, now lying in pieces with dust rising from it. An angry stallion pointed a hoof at them.

"You two are fixing it this time! I've had it!"

He threw down his hard hat and stomped off. The two blinked, then looked to each other.

"...Right. Actually, in regards to all of that, so those three fillies who bothered me about quality control finally got their Cutie Marks, eh?"

"Yup."

"...They didn't happen to get it in repairing wagon wheels, did they? Because the repairs on my Hevvy for that one wheel are running me 300 bits..."

"Nope!"

Both stallions looked up and to the side, and saw a trio of fillies coming up to them with multi-colored shield emblems on their flanks.

"Turns out we'll keep on bein' Cutie Mark Crusaders, only now we help other ponies crusade with their marks!"

"So...either of you two think you aren't living up to your full potential?"

Carl scoffed. "Please, what do we look like? A couple of bums who spend most of our free time just hanging around stuffing our faces with junk food talking about crap that doesn't matter?"

"Uh...Carl..."

The green stallion turned, and the blue one gestured around them. Carl's own face fell a bit at that.

"...You have to admit, if we looked any more pathetic, ponies would give us free bits for a bite to eat."

"Well, maybe you need to look at your Cutie Marks in a new way." The pegasus in the group went on. "Maybe you should try and see what you're really good at and aim higher."

"Hmm..." The unicorn murmured as she looked at Carl's mark...making him a bit uncomfortable after a while. "You can figure out inconsistencies...things that are wrong... What do you do now?"

"I'm a quality control operator."

The CMCs blinked a bit. "Uh...that's it?"

"What if your talent for finding things wrong can help other ponies? Like have you ever thought of reforming villains?"

Both Sam and Carl grimaced a bit at that, looking rather nervous at the idea. "That's...kind of hard, isn't it?"

"Not at all!" The one with a bow chirped. "Takes less than twenty minutes!"

"Sometimes the bulk of it happens when no one is even watching!" The unicorn added.

"It's easy." The pegasus concluded. "All you have to do is go up to the villain, invite them to do something friendly and talk to them, get them to expose something really bad that happened to them that made them the way they are, and then tell them 'let me show you a better way'." Her eyes narrowed as she jabbed a hoof out. "You have to say 'a better way'. That's the zinger. Otherwise it doesn't work."

"Ah'm sure with your mark for findin' out inconsistencies, you'd be great at findin' problems with villains!" The one in the bow cheered.

Carl looked up a bit at that, seeming to be thinking it over. "It does beat looking at a conveyor belt full of horseshoes until the mere sight of them makes me have a nervous twitch..."

Sam also seemed to be considering this, and lit up as well. "And since my Cutie Mark is an ear, I can have a talent for listening to people talk about their problems besides Carl!"

The CMCs blinked a moment.

"Uh...I was going to say since your Cutie Mark is a cashew, and everypony likes cashews, they'll open up to you." The unicorn suggested.

Sam frowned, but shook it off a moment later and looked to Carl. "Say...how about it, Carl? Rather than just doing mundane things with our special talents, why don't we give it a shot?"

Carl gave a shrug as well. "Why not? I mean...if the most anti-social nerd in town can do it, we can do it!" He smiled in enthusiasm.

Sam grinned. "We'll be...um...Two Background Pony Reformers!"

"Yeah!"

The three fillies stared at them blankly.

"It...doesn't really work unless it starts with the same letter."

The two stallions paused, then Carl shrugged.

"Two Background Pony Therapists?"

"But now you don't have the 'hard T' sound for alliteration."

"Ugh," Sam sighed, shaking his head and getting up. "We'll worry about the name later, Carl. Let's get out there...and reform the hell out of Equestria!"

Carl soon jumped up on top of the table, scattering the cookies and shattering it in the process.

"FRIENDSHIP! F*** YEAH!"

Some time later, in a deep cave in the Everfree Forest, a massive roar suddenly bellowed out followed by a jet of flame...lapping behind the heels of a pair of singed stallions who barreled out of it for dear life.

"Dragons don't care about friendship!"

A bit after that, within the murk of the Dread Fire Swamp, two stallions ran for dear life from the jaws of a jaguar, the lightning spewing of a ram, and the poisonous strikes of a snake...all combined into one hideous monster.

"Neither do chimeras!"

"There's too many places in Equestria that involve fire, Sam!"

Soon after that, the two stallions found themselves doing their best three-legged race possible, considering both of them had a leg turned to stone, as they hobbled for dear life from a hissing, spitting cockatrice chasing after them.

"This would be so much easier if most of the remaining villains in Equestria were fully sentient, Sam!"

"Can't we do that griffon?!"

"Too late! This year is big on reformation!"

Far on the borders of Equestria, a hideous, malformed, black and green hive made out of secreted resin loomed dark and ominous on a desolate mountainside. With a loud screech, a hellish swarm of Changelings suddenly burst from it, flashing their teeth and crying out terribly, before arching down and snapping at the heels of a pair of stallions fleeing as fast as they could from it.

As a hideous warped evil-thing-in-pony-form led the swarm, the two shouted behind them to her.

"We just wanted to talk to you about your upbringing!"

"My mother was a rotten acorn and my father was a unicorn's decaying skeleton, you half-wits! Now don't come back until you need me to try and conquer Equestria again!"

Finally, the two stallions found themselves standing in front of a dark cave leading into a bottomless, flaming pit deep beneath the planet, in which a monstrous three-headed dog, snarling and snapping as he stood eternally vigilant, glared down on both of them. They stared into the darkness a moment, then looked to each other.

"...Hell no."

"Reformation sucks. Let's go back to eating cookies."

"Er...somewhere else, preferably. I have to pay for the plate and those cookies where we just left..."

Well...since Equestria has universal health care coverage, it ended up being a fun time. Dangerous, but fun. Life-threatening, but fun. Emotionally scarring, but fun.

Yeah...but, heh, I kind of wish our author had gone ahead and not deleted the first one. I mean, it was kind of funny for him to break th fourth wall for.

Oh, Carl.

Er...gulp...

Do you remember what happens to little ponies who tell big lies about posts that never existed?

They...get locked inside the Shack of Shame and subjected to Chinese Water Torture until they beg to forget they ever existed, Mr. Sky...

Mmmhmm...now be a good little OC and don't tell big lies, K?