Two Background Ponies Revisit Season Five

The Cutie Re-Mark

It was a rather quiet day in Sugarcube Corner.

Rather dead silent, to be exact.

On one end of the outdoor eatery, all of the regulars had crowded to one side. Their food and drink remained untouched, because all of their eyes and attention spans were on the other side. This included the eyes of a certain blue stallion and his green friend...although, in the case of the pony with a Find-a-Difference picture for a Cutie Mark, he was twitching a bit, and his pupils kept shrinking and dilating.

On the other side of the eatery, staring back silently at the entire group, was a pinkish-purple mare with a purple mane streaked with pastel green and a Cutie Mark of a falling star. No one said a word or moved.

Slowly, the mare reached a hoof up to cough.

Everypony spasmed and recoiled for a moment, until they saw she wasn't doing anything. Very slowly, they eased down again.

She blinked. A hoof raised. "Hello."

"Don't unmark me!" Sam screamed in reply loud enough for one pony couple to knock their glasses off the table. After doing so, however, he realized she had only said hi and as a result slowly eased down. "I...uh...I...um...that is...uh...hello."

After a moment, she pointed to the green stallion. "Is something wrong with your friend?"

"Huh?" Sam turned and looked to Carl. "Oh."

Grimacing, he reached over and clonked him on the head with a hoof. Immediately, Carl shook his mane, blinked a few times, and then seemed normal. "You see...his special talent is finding inconsistencies, so it seems that all of those inconsistencies that you generated last week have all converged into his head as a result of a spell Twilight used on him about a year back, so he's kind of experiencing six different realities at once...at minimum."

"...And I'm perfectly happy with that!" Carl suddenly interjected, sweating a bit at Sam's choice of words. "Because even though it's a talent that few ponies appreciate, it's what makes me unique! So I'd appreciate it if you'd not take it off me or anything!"

Sam blinked a few times. "Actually, I-"

Carl quickly seized him by the head and yanked him down to his level. "Don't encourage her! She starts with one and she won't stop until we're all living in an Orwellian nightmare!"

The mare began to frown, but was interrupted a moment later when Mrs. Cake...shaking all the way and gulping frequently...walked up to her with a tray. Very, very slowly and carefully, she picked off an order of a latte and set it down in front of her. "Y-Y-Your d-d-drink, M-M-Ms. Glimmer..."

She looked up to her. "Thank-"

"GAH! Don't touch me, you psychopath!" She screamed before throwing the tray and running away.

Mr. Cake stepped out from the back room just in time to see his screaming wife run past. Immediately, he began to sweat as he looked out with a sheepish grin. "Er...sorry about that! Please don't mind my wife! She gets jittery on Sundays, that's all! Nothing to worry about! Certainly no reason to lock us in a cellar blaring out brainwashing equality cultist mantras for 24 hours of sleep deprivation! Your latte is free!" He quickly ducked inside.

"Please don't kill me!" He threw out over his shoulder.

The mare let out a long sigh. "You know, I kind of expected this when the truth came out a couple days ago, but you all keep looking at me like I'm about to shove you all into meat grinders or something."

Carl frowned.

"Oh really? Gee, you think? I wonder why that could be... Could it be the fact that you're as powerful if not more powerful than an alicorn and you created a cult-like commune of Stepford Smiling ponies so obsessed with equality that you created the worst type of socialist dystopia imaginable, which you enforced through basic thuggery, mind control, and propaganda, before you attempted to alter history multiple times out of a shallow, selfish, attempt at revenge that nearly killed everyone here and left Equestria a wasteland..."

His gaze narrowed.

"And all...all...because your childhood friend got their Cutie Mark before yours?!" He threw his hooves up in disgust. "For the love of Celestia! That is the most shallow and petty thing I've ever heard of! That's like if King Sombra conquered the Crystal Empire because a crystal pony beat him in a first grade spelling bee! That's like if Tirek wanted to rule Equestria because a pony broke his window playing ball! Of course everypony's scared of you! They think if they look at you wrong you'll start breeding orcs in mud pits! If they give you your food order wrong you'll start building a Death Star!"

Sam gulped as he began to put his hooves up. "Uh...um...chill out, Carl." He looked to her. "Er, sorry about him. He gets that way sometimes. Please d-"

"Please don't 'Cutie Unmark' me." The mare sighed, beating the blue stallion to what he was going to say.

"...Right. Now Carl..."

"And another thing...really?" The green stallion went right on shouting. "Your friend broke things off with you so you turned yourself into Nurse Ratched meets Napoleon? You know how many friends I've driven off with my insane rambling over the years?! You don't see me warping the space-time continuum about it, do you? Sure, I get angry sometimes. Bitter that no one listens to me. I enact the occasional prank or petty vandalism in retribution...and sometimes I get into hooffights with guys at work. Once in a while I'll even grab the nearest deadly object and try to injure them with it...but not because I was snubbed by people when I was younger!" Pause. "...Except maybe that one orange stallion. Always thinking he was so better than me. And maybe my first girlfriend... Oh, so you're too good for a quality control operator, huh? Well I bet Mr. Owns-His-Own-Business doesn't have mob connections in Manehattan and can't call up guys to have certain studs' kneecaps broken..."

"Carl, shut up!" Sam shouted, getting the green stallion's attention. "The important lesson to learn from all of this was that friendship is such a special and beautiful thing that even something seemingly as meaningless and inconsequential as the friendship between six individuals can change the world! Which is why you can't ever give up on it because that means each new friendship has the potential to have greater downstream effects!"

"Easy for you to say... You don't have memories of losing your legs to a falling boulder from a minion of Sombra, living on a diet of mashed up grubs in the Everfree Forest, and having your circadian rhythm permanently shot to Tartarus from eternal night all colliding in your head at once, Sam..." He paused, then snickered. "...Although what Discord did to you what kind of funny in his universe...and what he did to No-Neck was downright hilarious... I'm still getting a kick out of asking him if he needs a sponge every morning... But anyway...that brings me to the latest problem."

The mare raised an eyebrow. "...Latest problem?"

Sam had already facehooved and was slumping in his chair. "Yeah, now that you live here you better get used to hearing that from him...a lot."

"All of this time travel loop stuff wasn't really a case of a single dystopian alternate universe from stopping one event. It was more of an illustration of Neigh Branberry's 'A Noise of Lightning'. A single tiny change in the past leads to a vastly different outcome in the future."

The blue stallion looked up slightly. "How do you figure?"

"Well, every time 'Eleanor Shaw' over there..."

The mare frowned and rolled her eyes yet again.

"Went back to stop that one event from happening, she succeeded but she also caused a vastly different universe by small actions."

"...So?"

"So...the mere act of simply going back in time and doing anything different would actually produce a totally different result. So even if all she and Twilight did was make up and then go back to the present, it still should have messed things up royally."

"Except it didn't, Carl. Ponyville is standing. Sugarcube Corner is back. The Castle of Friendship is back. Everything's back to the way it was before and the timeline is restored. Maybe some things are more important than others. Maybe some parts of history are simply inevit-"

Suddenly, Sam was cut off by a booming "Royal Canterlot" voice sounding throughout the entire region of Ponyville and beyond.

"Attention all subjects! The Greatest and Most-Powerfulest Princess Trixie is about to grace you with her presence! All ponies are to line up to kiss Trixie's hooves immediately!"

Instantly, all ponies began to rise from where they were and hurried out as fast as they can, as if fearful for being executed for being late, including Sam and the Cakes. All that was left in a moment was a cloud of dust, and when it cleared it revealed Carl and the mare, both of them still sitting there looking rather dumbfounded and stunned. Slowly, Carl's gaze narrowed as he turned to her.

"...I don't suppose you memorized that spell, did you?"

The mare grimaced. "It's the scroll I need, not the spell..."

"Terrific. Where in the world are we going to find another way to travel through time?"

As if on cue, a brown-maned doctor with a necktie and a gold hourglass for a Cutie Mark ducked his head in and waved at both of them. On spotting him, Carl looked back to the mare.

"See? Having different Cutie Marks does help things out."

And there we have it! Season Five!

So...why didn't the author call Starlight Glimmer by her name during that one?

Well...seems, similar to a number of episodes this season, he didn't 'take as well' to it like he did the others. Luckily he looked up the fan-reactions before writing it this time...but I think he's got the superstition that maybe if he doesn't say Starlight Glimmer's name she won't end up joining the cast and/or replacing Twilight Sparkle.

Hmm...well, you're still spacing out a lot, Carl. In fact, that's been happening a lot ever since that one night...

Uh...well...er...I try not to let it bother me, Sam. I'm sure it'll go away once...I don't know...my brain recovers or something. Besides, I'm getting used to it. It's not like it's the sleepwalking...

...Wait, what?

Oops...

Sleepwalking? Carl? You're sleepwalking now?

Uh...er...ugh. I didn't want to say anything about it because I knew you'd overreact, Sam...

Well, of course I'm going to react! That could be a legitimate mental disorder! You could have brain trauma!

It's nothing, Sam! Forget it!

You could be in trouble! People get into all kinds of crap sleepwalking!

I said it's nothing! Farrah watched me and she said I was fine! All I do is lie in bed with my eyes open, sometimes I walk downstairs and listen to a record, then I sit on the couch for a bit, and then I go back up and to bed! Nothing! Nothing at all! I'm sure it'll go away soon!

...Well, I'm not your doctor, but...alright, if you say so. Just...go to a specialist if you do something bad.

Sigh...Sam, writing a message in ketchup on the kitchen table that's nonsense is hardly 'bad'.

...Wait a second, you did what now?

Celestiadamnit...here we go again...

What message?

Sam, I said it was nonsense! It doesn't mean a thing!

Just, as a matter of interest...can you tell me what?

What does it matter? It's nothing! Just gibberish! I was dreaming of something and probably tried to draw a team playing baseball or something...

Well, what did it look like? Some sort of baseball diamond?

No...it looked like somepony wrote: 'THE WORLD WILL END IN 14 DAYS, 3 HOURS, 11 MINUTES, AND 55 SECONDS".

...

...What?

COMING IN 2016...

TWO BACKGROUND PONIES ENDURE THE APOCALYPSE

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!