The Mask of Equanimity

by Cinny_Spinny

Rating: everyone
Tags: Main 6, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Sad, Starlight Glimmer, Changelings, Original Character, Queen Chrysalis, Adventure
Length: 5439

When friendship was an unsolvable puzzle, Cinnamon Spinner developed an arsenal of "masks" to interact with other ponies. What happens when this pony pleaser is tempted by Queen Chrysalis that she isn't a "problem" needing to be fixed?

Can you imagine getting stuck with a cutie mark you didn't like? ~ Sweetie Belle ~
All her life, Cinnamon Spinner has been a pony pleaser who has tried to convince herself that she liked her cutie mark in her family's bakery. After a summons from the map, she, along with Starlight Glimmer and pegasus pony, Ricochet, are tasked with a friendship mission. When the mission results in disastrous consequences, Twilight swoops in to help. But, little does she know, Queen Chrysalis has plans to take advantage of Cinnamon and Ricochet's moment of weakness to reinstate her rise to power over Equestria.

Published 2016-07-13 21:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2016-07-25 22:34:20 UTC

Chapter One

Preparations. It was the one and only goal buzzing around inside the skulls of every organizer, cleaner, caterer, coordinator and technician. And that singular goal buzzed the loudest for the manager of each department as he or she barked orders in the final hours they had until the day when ponies would be pouring in from the furthest reaches of Equestria.

Anything short of perfection would be unacceptable for the Grand Galloping Gala.

All of those ponies scurrying around her didn’t have that crazed buzzing in their heads alone. It surged through their hooves too as they cleaned, preened and adorned every surface. All done with the greatest speed. This was not so in the case of a certain Cinnamon Spinner. She was a bronze-coated unicorn mare with snow-capped ears. Her mane was sepia brown with twin streaks of camel and raspberry that had been pulled into two spiraling buns on either side of her head. The ends of that hair weren’t tucked in but were instead fanned out on the top of each bun like a set of pinwheels.

Cinnamon was unconcerned with matching the breakneck speed of everypony around her. From atop the highest rung of her stepstool, she had the best view of the grand ballroom and how things were developing. It was a view that went completely unacknowledged in favor of her project: an eight layer cake taller than anyone could stand. The rest of the catering staff rushed to and fro. The restaurant’s publicist, Ruby Sunrise, engaged with the castle staff over the latest gossip while her eight-year-old daughter, Lovely Locks, ran amok blowing her new train whistle toy. And there was a nervous squeaking as a little critter tried to navigate the throng.

While in the midst of her work, the din surrounding Cinnamon became no more distinct than a school of fish blowing bubbles underwater. Finishing up with the seventh layer, she drew back to wipe the sweat from her brow.

She set down her shaping tool and reached for the final tool in her box. But her hoof patted over a bare stretch of table.

“What? I put my kit right there. Right there! Where did it go?”

It was one of her top vices with the rest of the staff. Cinnamon would get to work and set something down, somepony would move it out of the way, forget where they moved it to and claim to be too busy to find it again. Honestly, did she have to cast a sticking charm every time she-?

“Oh, Saoirse, perfect timing!” Cinnamon said, taking notice of her pet fox sitting down beside her for a short breather. “Turn around, okay?”

Cinnamon picked out a backup carving tool from Saoirse’s specially fitted utility belt. Saoirse had been trained to be both a portable toolbox and a castle-exclusive delivery service, where a pony would deposit something small into Saoirse’s pouch, say the name of the pony to whom they wanted it delivered and have the critter scurry off to fulfill the request. Cinnamon gave Saoirse a pat on the head, smiling in pride over how her clever pet had managed to memorize the names and faces of the entire catering staff. She didn’t think even she remembered them all. She made a mental note to use a locating spell for her lost toolbox later.

Taking a breath, she readied her final carving tool. She willed herself back to the place where the sound fell away of Lovely Locks plowing through an unwitting group of other foals and there was only the naked top layer of the cake before her.

But not soon enough. As Saoirse departed, two ponies gathered at the bottom of her cake tower. The arguing voices attached to them could only belong to a pair of event coordinators, who had come across her cake as the latest object to set their micromanaging sights on.
Distractedly, Cinnamon made herself aware of every pausing interval in their voices.

Blah, blah, blah, cake. Blah, blah, blah, almond flavoring.

“Mmm,” she mumbled through the tool in her mouth.

Blah, blah, focal point, blah, blah.

“Mmm…”

Blah, blah, blah, blah, Sugarcube Corner? Could you blah, blah a bit?

“Mmm…”

“Excuse me!” one of them demanded, stamping his hoof. “Are you even-?”

Before Cinnamon could finish hearing the end of that sentence, several things happened in rapid succession. Lovely Locks had gotten the fool idea in her head to sneak up behind Saoirse and blast off her whistle in the little critter’s ears. The fox jumped in alarm and snarled out at the source of the noise. It made Lovely Locks back away, screaming and plowing right into the ladder. Cinnamon pushed the cake away with her magic to avoid taking a nosedive into it. The ladder clattered into the path of a distracted stallion carrying a cart filled with confectioner’s sugar. That stallion backpedaled in alarm and crashed into a second stallion pulling a cart. The latter’s load was a cart of bottled spells which collided with the sugar and exploded into a great green cloud.

Ponies hacked throughout the unplanned weather change indoors. Many caused further destruction from being unable to see. Somewhere Lovely Locks broke down crying. Something very large and heavy pounded to the floor and Saoirse squealed.

Cinnamon’s snow-capped ears shot up. She raced to where the cloud was its thickest. There, she was startled to find Saoirse’s tail trapped under an overturned vase. The antique looked heavier than a dragon that had binged itself on a hill of gemstones. Every other pony from every staff division crowded around the crying filly. The first to emerge was Ruby Sunrise, a blush hued mare who wore her shiny red hair up into a ballerina bun. Her cutie mark was a trio of sparkling rubies.

“L.L.! I told you, Mommy is very busy right now and cannot be disturbed.”

Lovely Locks’ eyes bounced left and right through the crowd. She suddenly clutched her foreleg. “The c-critter – it bit me! I was trying to pet it and it bit me! It hurts!”

Ponies’ attention panned to the sound of a squeak from a slipped hoof. Cinnamon had slipped on the smooth marble floor in her efforts to budge the overturned vase. She continued and, once they noticed the struggling critter, and several ponies broke from the crowd to help her. They managed to move it just enough to let Saoirse squeak out underneath.

Minding Saoirse’s limp tail, Cinnamon cradled her pet into a foreleg.

Voice ringing with incredulity, Ruby spat, “Did she seriously just choose her pet over another pony? Her pet?!”

The crowd murmured amongst themselves. Under a ballroom full of scrutiny, Cinnamon felt a cold shock ripple down her shoulders as Ruby began to encircle her like a shark. Narrowing her prey’s room to breathe with every hoofstep. It was a situation Cinnamon was far too familiar with. It filled her with just as much dread as the first time Ruby had done it when they were fillies. All eyes in the room boring into her. Whispering. Judging. The pressure of it all threatening to crumble her to pieces.

She had adapted to respond to such threats. Concentrating, a rack with ten pegs came to mind. It was empty, or seemingly so at first glance. Ghostly colors and contours swirled over the pegs. None formed a distinct shape. That is, until Cinnamon focused on a particular peg. Rock hard, untouchable, uncaring. She chanted those traits in her mind until a mask of forged steel materialized on the peg. Peppered with countless scratches and dents from combat, it was her Mask of Steadfastness.

She could hear Ruby implore the crowd again. “What kind of pony does that? Let me guess, the boss’s kid sister had her head in the clouds again and she couldn’t be bothered to mind the little beast.”

Random ponies from the crowd chipped in their two cents.

“Did anyone see exactly what happened? This is really unlike Saoirse. She’s never bitten anyone before.”

“Yeah, but she’s still a wild animal. And wild animals are unpredictable.”

“But she’s always been so helpful in getting us what we need.”

“Nopony else is allowed a pet on the staff. What makes that fox so special?”

Ruby let the rest of the staff volley the conversation back and forth for a while. She chose to only acknowledge those who had sided with her and continued, “Isn’t it obvious? This is blatant nepotism if I’ve ever seen it. If her brother wasn’t the boss, she’d never be permitted such special privileges.”

Despite the durability of its design, the mask Cinnamon envisioned was a particularly slippery one. She’d set her face hard and yet that mask still threatened to fall off her face as Ruby lectured on about how her daughter was surely infected with rabies. Cinnamon kept her focus squarely on Saoirse so she could drown out Ruby’s exact words.

At a pained moan from her pet, Cinnamon eyed the crowd for an escape route. Only to have Ruby block her way.

“Saoirse’s injured,” Cinnamon growled under her breath.

“It can wait.”

Cinnamon had been told to wait when her pet was cowering in pain. She stood silently as Ruby’s daughter took a moment from her tearless crying to take on a look of glee at the unfolding scene. She had no doubt that Lovely Locks was nursing to her breast a perfectly unbitten foreleg. But Cinnamon also knew that she would never be permitted to get close enough to prove it.

Cinnamon found herself shaking with anger. That anger forced the words from her reluctant mouth. “Y-you…you have the entire floor coddling your daughter. All 150 of them. Isn’t that enough?”

“Isn’t that enough?” Ruby repeated mockingly. “It should have been 151! What do you have to say for yourself?”

At the end of her demand, Ruby mouthed the words only Cinnamon was close enough to see: Poison Sinner. It was the nickname she had rebranded Cinnamon with in their grade-school years. “Poison” for the spice she was named after and its ability to cause toxicity when consumed in large quantities. “Sinner” for Cinnamon’s sins, otherwise known as her inability to say anything right amongst the company of her peers. It was the name that, over the years and in certain hushed circles, had stuck to Cinnamon more firmly than her actual name.

Cinnamon moved her lips to speak. Lovely Locks looked on in anticipation as her mother loaded her next round of verbal ammunition.

“Bye,” Cinnamon said as she vanished in a wisp of magic.

Since teleportation was her choice method of retreat, Cinnamon’s aim was never more than a few feet off. She reappeared before the castle’s veterinary clinic.

The words echoed in her head: What do you have to say for yourself?

Plenty, Cinnamon thought as she dropped Saoirse off at the clinic. I can tell the difference between a scared cry and an injured cry. And I know which one comes first, regardless of the species.

Once she was out of earshot, Cinnamon’s thoughts turned to grumblings. “I’m Ruby Sunrise and I got knocked up when I was a teenager. I’m Ruby Sunrise and I saddled my daughter with the most pretentious name in all of Equestria. I’m Ruby Sunrise and without me your little family business would’ve been trampled underhoof by the all the other restaurants dying to cater for the Gala.”

Cinnamon invested so much energy ruminating what she should have said if she had been a stronger pony that her body went into auto-pilot. She only realized that she had wandered into the mare’s powder room when she placed a hoof to the door to exit it.

The door whipped open and Cinnamon narrowly avoided being run over by a mob of fashionista ponies. They were the entertainment planned for the gala’s events and the mob that came with it. Named for its singing trio of beautiful, blonde mares, they were known as the Blondtourage. A band composed of Crystallina Glitter, the bombshell with the neon blue coat, High Roller, the party girl with the pumpkin coat and…

“Cinny!” A pony pounced on Cinnamon.

And the final member: Jemmika Stargazer, a.k.a. the cute one. Far lesser known as Cinnamon’s little sister. Jemmika had always been the celebrated centerpiece amongst her earth-toned family. She’d been gifted with a bold color palate of a hot pink coat and shimmering gold/magenta mane, not to mention a prodigious singing talent.

“You’re coming clubbing with us, Spinny, right? Right?”

Cinnamon pulled out a schedule. “Jem, the gala is the bakery’s busiest time of the year and I’m on a rigid schedule. I need to go to sleep exactly at 10pm if I’m going to-”

With a giggling snort, Jemmika handed the schedule off to the nearest groupie. That groupie passed it along through every other pony in the crowd until it made a full circle back to Jem. The end result was something that looked like it had been run through a spin art machine.

Jem jabbed a hoof at a 10pm time slot that read: “ROCK OUT!” “That’s so sweet that you penciled in some super sister time! And I can fix your droopy eyes too! Take a swig of this, sis!” She plugged up Cinnamon’s mouth with a pint-sized vial of energy elixir. The elixir was down Cinnamon’s throat in an instant. And, with Jemmika’s forceful hoof, the vial nearly went down the same route.

Cinnamon coughed it out before she could choke.

Jemmika clopped her hooves together. “This rave is gonna be the pony’s pajamas! DJ Pon3 has the best mixes in all of Canterlot!”

“You know I don’t like raves, Jem. I have to wake up at the crack of-”

“Snap that claptrap with the yap, yap, yapping! With all the frosty cider they’ll be serving up tonight, I’m going to need a designated mare to walk me home. And that mare is you. Can I get a woop-woop, girls?”

“Woop-woop!” the mob shouted back.

The wardrobe ponies wheeled in their portable rows of clothes and accessories.

“Oh, sweetie, you can’t get through the bouncers wearing nothing at all.”

“So dull, so drab. Shall we fix it?”

They didn’t wait for an answer. Wardrobe zipped Cinnamon through twelve outfits, all the while arguing amongst one another, before they were satisfied. They passed her off to the manedressers whom tugged, sprayed and curled her mane into a fabulous up-do. Manedressers who then pushed her over to Makeup whom powdered, painted and bronzed her face. Cinnamon fought off a sneaky manedresser who tried to spray her mane blonde. With her attention focused on the left, another mare closed in on the right and wiped the lingering bit of frosting from Cinnamon’s cutie mark. It was a mixing bowl with a swirl of batter and a mixing spoon.

Cinnamon looked away. It would have been just as well to have left it be.

“Ready to party!” Jem decreed. “And don’t forget you’re with the-”

“Blondtourage!” the band said in unison as they all packed in crushingly close with Crystallina Glitter stamping Cinnamon’s face with the band’s trademark logo, High Roller flashing a thousand-watt smile and Jemmika snapping a photo of it all.

Partying was dead last on the list of things Cinnamon wanted to do that night but at the same time knew that there was no conceivable way of getting out of this without making a scene. Again Cinnamon returned to her mental mask rack. Oblivious, selfish and adored by all: the definition of Jemmika Stargazer. She repeated those traits in her mind and the mask materialized on the peg. Its surface was so overstuffed with feathers and jewels that it just screamed gaudy: her Mask of Pomposity.

She felt it blend over her face like a second skin. Not a difficult task, since it already felt like she was wearing a pound of makeup.

Turning to her sister, Cinnamon beamed, “Sounds like a blast, Jemmy!”

Jemmika bounced on her tippy hooves. “Yay! I am so pumped!”

The band’s presence got them through the front gates ahead of the long line and into a private booth. Cinnamon kept her smile going strong despite the club’s knack for overwhelming every one of her senses all at once. Every beat from the speakers felt like it was going to rupture her eardrums. The strobe lights were a series of laser pointers burning into her retinas. She could even taste the bubble-gum coated chaos.

It was too much. When nopony was looking, Cinnamon inserted a couple of earplugs into her ears. She patted her saddlebags, searching for something else.

Noticing, Jem fell back. She snapped out a pair of bedazzled sunglasses and pushed them onto her sister’s face.

“Thanks, Jemmy,” Cinnamon said, breathing a little easier. The earplugs and sunglasses dialed back the external stimuli from an 11 to a more tolerable 8.

The mob crammed as many bodies as possible into the booth but still many ponies were pushed out and made to look elsewhere.

Cinnamon instinctively tensed up at being packed in so densely with other mares. A duo of eager bartenders gathered on either side of the booth and passed out an assembly of rainbow colored drinks. Every sentence spoken in the club had to be shouted over the pumping music.

“On the house!” one bartender said.

“Big fans!” said the other.

Cinnamon blinked at the drink before her. She moved a hoof towards the sour gummy worm. But Jemmika snatched the glass away.

“Ah, ah!” scolded Jemmika. “No drinking, Designated Daisy!”

“Bottoms up!” High Roller called down the row. They chugged their drinks. Jemmika swirled both of hers down her gullet at once. One of the fangirl presidents finished hers first and slammed it down on the table. And so followed all of the others.

Cinnamon kept smiling despite her very dry mouth.

“Woo! What a rush! Hey, sis, I think one of those was cupcake flavored! Do you remember that time we were working at the restaurant and you tried to make apple cinnamon cupcakes with a half cup of cinnamon and it poisoned everypony and they had to go get their stomachs pumped? You remember that, don’t you?”

Ponies burst out in laughter. High Roller draped herself over Jem’s shoulder and remarked how adorable she was. Cinnamon did remember the occasion but not quite in that way. It had been Jemmika who had tried to make cookies with too much nutmeg.

“Haha, yeah, that was really funny!” Cinnamon agreed, trying to match their enthusiasm. “I’ll never do that again!”

“Nopony will!” said a fangirl. “Cause too much cinnamon is bad for your health!”

More laughter.

Instinctively, Cinnamon jolted. She repeated to herself: She was talking about the spice, not you. She meant the spice, NOT you. She catalogued that these ponies seemed to enjoy funny family stories. Once she had another one, Cinnamon surveyed the crowd for an opening. “There was the time that…on Jemmika’s tenth birthday party our brother said…he said that her birthday cake had a funny smell to it! And then…when she bent down to smell the cake he shoved her face into it for the family photo!”

The party laughed on cue.

“Bah!” said Jem. “Just wait, I’ll push big bro’s face into that mile-high cake tomorrow! That’ll show him!”

Please don’t be serious, Cinnamon pleaded in her head.

Crystallina licked off the last bit of sugar from her glass rim. “Those poor, sweet ponies out there! They’ve gone without our presence for far too long! What do you say, Blondtourage? Let’s make an appearance on the dancefloor!”

Ponies cleared out from either side of the booth. High Roller held out a hoof to stop Cinnamon. “Hey, hon? Guard our stuff from the rabid fangirls, will you? After a couple songs I’ll send somepony to tag you onto the floor, kay?”

Cinnamon held back in surprise. “Oh…okay! Have fun!”

The Blondtourage trio pranced onto the floor, muzzles held high. The crowd went wild. The band mixed themselves into the dancers hoofing it up on the dancefloor. Cinnamon busied herself with rubbing out a smudge from the borrowed sunglasses. She alone until an aquamarine pegasus slid in next to her. He had a spotlight cutie mark and wore the all black cap and vest of a stagehand. Fatigued beyond all hope, he grabbed up the pitcher of ice-water and, like it was a feeding trough in the old west, dunked his entire head in it. As he chugged and chugged heaping gulps of water, Cinnamon’s eyes grew wider and wider. He resurfaced and, with a wave of his drenched goldenrod mane, he shot a refreshed smile her way.

“Heya! Are you the Designated Dagwood too? Kidding, I’m Ricochet! Sounds and lights extraordinaire from the illustrious Twin Talons Productions Agency of Cloudsdale!”

Cinnamon blinked slowly. Sitting next to him, she had gotten the brunt of the watery backlash. The two glamorously curled locks framing her face now drooped in wet tendrils. Her heavy-set eyeshadow bled black stains down her cheeks.

Her tongue absentmindedly moved to make words come.

“Cinnamon Spinner…Whinnyapolis…Poppy Meadows Restaurant…”

“Oh, my bad, fillydoll! I can fix it!” He beat up a mini whirlwind and let it loose on her. With a fashionably inept hoof, Ricochet proceeded to use the tried and true spit shine to tame her frazzled mane and re-blend her ruined makeup.

Again Cinnamon slow-blinked, feeling less that she’d been fixed and more like she’d been dumped into the ocean only to be “rescued” by a passing tsunami. She gave the stallion a sidelong glance, expecting to see on him the same oblivious expression she’d come to expect of these party ponies. Unexpectedly, Ricochet had hit the pause button on his party remote control. He scratched the twin cowlicks on the back of his head, like he was awaiting a full-blown drama queen meltdown.

She nodded that it was okay. Looking sorry was ample enough apology for her.

“Lucky you, scoring a prime seat with the band!” he said, all smiles again. “Shame they have to tone it all down tomorrow and play the slow versions of the Blondtourage songs for all the old grey mares at the gala!”

Dread slammed down hard at the thought of the Blondtourage seeing the makeup apocalypse on her face. With Jem’s makeup case in hoof, Cinnamon bolted for the mare’s room. She undid the lock and the top of the kit expanded out into six intimidating trays. Her eyes widened as the left and right sides expanded into an additional four.

“Uh, no problem, this should be second nature for any mare.” Cinnamon dipped a hoof into a sparkly powder. “This one’s eyeshadow…right?”

Experimenting, Cinnamon painted different applications on either side of her face. She turned her head left and right, mulling over which side was closer to the glittery perfection that was a Blondtourage groupie. Then her ears perked up at the approaching voices of Crystallina Glitter and Higher Roller. She teleported into a stall a moment before they and several groupies poured into the powder room. The doors were thick enough that they could take a short reprieve from shouting.

Crystallina took up the prime mirror spot. “Whew, I didn’t think I’d get my buzz back. The DJ mixing up our new track sure did the trick. Who thought it was a good idea to let Jemmika’s kid sister tag along?”

Cinnamon’s smile vanished.

High Roller sprayed a bit of flyaway hair. “I know, right. She’s such a stiff. Do you think she’s still waiting for us to hoofbump her onto the dancefloor?”

“Probably. And you know what else? I ran into Ruby Sunrise earlier.”

Horse apples! Cinnamon could tolerate being mislabeled as the little sister of the pair but it was a whole other story when Ruby Sunrise was thrown into the mix. She knew she should have teleported out of there the second she heard them mention the despised name of her worst enemy.

But she couldn’t help listening in.

“Ruby was on her way to the castle’s veterinary clinic. She wanted to get a word in about putting down a dangerous animal. And do you know what Ruby said? She said that Jemmy’s sister has always been a shut-in weirdo. Always spending her time with critters instead of having real friends and choosing Shop class over Home Ec.”

“What kind of filly chooses a colt’s class?” High Roller giggled. “Especially since her family’s in the catering business.”

Cinnamon’s lips set hard. A crack ran through her Pomposity Mask.

“Ruby doesn’t know how Jem’s sister got a baking cutie mark when she keeps flubbing up special orders and can’t keep up with the rest of the staff. She says she would have gotten fired ten times over if the boss wasn’t her big brother.”

The group shared a bout of unkind laughter.

“It’s too bad that there are some ponies out there that don’t really have a special talent.” Crystallina held her hoof out expectantly, waiting for a groupie to deposit a hair pin on it; which one eagerly did. “Oh well, the night is still young and we can’t let Jemmy eat up the attention out there. Big smiles, everypony.”

As the band left, Cinnamon’s mask shattered. She couldn’t for the life of her fathom why Ruby had always felt the need to make other mares hate her before they’d even met her. She forced that train of thought out of her head before any more negative sidecars could latch onto it and immediately equipped her Mask of Neutrality. Grey and featureless like stone, it was a mask she was all too familiar with.
She wiped her face free of makeup, pinned her hair back up into her signature pinwheel buns and returned to the booth. There was hardly a couple minutes for Ricochet to gauge that there was something wrong before the current song ended and the band and groupies gushed into the right side of the booth. Cinnamon and Ricochet were pushed around the C-shaped booth with such force that Ricochet came tumbling out the left side. Cinnamon could barely stabilize herself in time to keep herself from crashing down along with him.

Ricochet hesitated for a moment and then made a break-style pose like he had meant to do that. “See you at the show tomorrow, fillydoll!”

Jemmika was getting tipsy and it showed with her bobbing head and apple-y breath. She nudged Cinnamon. “Aren’t these beats a blast to stomp to?!”

Cinnamon opened a book. “I wouldn’t know.”

Jem wasn’t so out of it that she didn’t immediately notice. “A book?! That had better be a mixology book with a fake geek-girl bookcover, Cinny!”

“Yo, Jemmy’s little sister!” High Roller said, turned away and chatting up the groupies. “Pass me a soda from the cooler! An orange one!”
Cinnamon Spinner turned a page in her book.

“Hey! Chop, chop, I’m thirsty!” High Roller clopped a hoof on the table and held it out expectantly, as if waiting for the soda to materialize there.

With her red tinted magic, Cinnamon levitated a soda from the cooler and placed a quick charm on it. The charm vibrated faster with every inch it drew nearer to High Roller. When it reached her hoof, the charm detonated, blasting a volcano of orange sugar water into High Roller’s shocked face and onto anyone near her.

“Cinnamon!” Jem snapped. “Pay attention!”

Cinnamon didn’t look up. “Oops. Some rabid fangirl must have shaken it up.”

High Roller had gotten an uncomfortable injection of soda right up her nostrils. With very loud and exaggerated sobs, she ran to the powder room, groupies in tow.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” Crystallina demanded of Cinnamon. “Roller’s going to have to wash her mane at least three times to get all that stickiness out! And that much washing is going to make her mane lose its luster! Its luster!”

Still reading, Cinnamon gestured to her ear like she couldn’t hear over the music.

“Her mane!” Crystallina shouted even louder. “You ruined her mane!”

Cinnamon gestured to her ear again.

“MANE!” Crystallina screamed loudest of all. “HER MANE! HER MANE!”

The extreme infliction she was using made her voice give a dangerous crack. Crystallina gasped. She sprayed her throat with a special tonic. As Crystallina anxiously sang through her do-rae-mi’s, Cinnamon finally decided to take notice of her.

The two stared at each other. And Cinnamon tapped her ear a third time.

Livid, Crystallina looked ready to lunge across the table and give Cinnamon a good pounding. The tip of Cinnamon’s horn let out an instinctive spark of magic to defend herself. Jem jumped in to intervene and the rest of the booth waited with baited breath.

Then Cinnamon felt an odd rumbling from her lower quarters. A rumbling that was most certainly not coming from her stomach.

“Cinny, your cutie mark,” Jemmika gasped, perplexed. “It’s…glowing.”

Glowing?

Glancing down, Cinnamon saw her mixing bowl cutie mark wasn’t just glowing but also vibrating like the mixing spoon was stirring up a hive of bees on her flank.

“Hmmph,” Crystallina said, turning away with a whisk of her blonde mane. “Somepony’s desperate for attention.”

“I…I’m not doing this,” Cinnamon stammered. She knew how her body reacted to the cusp of a confrontation and this wasn’t one of them.

“Looks like she’s not the only one,” said one of the groupies said.

The party looked to where the groupie was pointing and discovered the exact same thing was happening to Ricochet and his spotlight cutie mark. He rolled with it and used the extra attention to tear it up on the dancefloor.

The clock tolled two before the band called it a night.

“Woo hoo, Cinny!” Jemmika cried, bobbing her head along to the thumps coming off Cinnamon’s still glowing flank. “Pump it, pump it all night long! Keep the beat going ‘til the break of dawn! Untz! Untz! Untz!”

“By Luna’s bloody horn, Jem, I’m not a disco ball! How many times do I have to tell you I’m not the one making my cutie mark glow?”

Cinnamon sighed, realizing she was may as well have been speaking to the street sign next to her for all that her sister was listening. As the designated walker, she had to constantly nudge Jem back on track whenever she would swerve or lose her footing. More than once, she prevented Jem from stumbling into the path of an oncoming carriage as she dizzily waved goodbye to her many fangirls.

They stopped at a crosswalk and waited for the light to change.

“Hee.” Jem draped herself over her sister’s back to poke at her cutie mark. “It’s sooo preeetty. You gotta tell me the spell you cast to make it all glowy like that! I hope your flank never stops – what? It just stopped glowing! Boo!”

Cinnamon exhaled in relief. The light straight ahead of them still stubbornly refused to change. From her right peripherals, she noticed a different trot signal light up.

A purple rocket of a mare shot past. The force of her slipstream bent the two mares into a severe right tilt. Cinnamon patted down her windswept bangs. Their light finally changed and she figured it was safe to pass. Her mistake nearly cost her the tip of her nose as a second mare whisked by.

“Twilight, slow down!” the second mare called, this one a shade of fairest lavender.

“Twilight?” Cinnamon repeated, giving them a second glance.

“As in Princess Twilight? Ooo, inspiration! Sing with me, Cinny!” Jem grabbed hold of her sister for a duet but Cinnamon didn’t join in. “Hey, hey, everypony! We’re here to shout, that the magic of friendship is – hey, she didn’t even slow down!” She shook a hoof at the departing mares. “My voice is the voice of a generation and it rarely performs for free! Ugh, it’s no surprise she’s a snob. I always say that nopony should have too much fame and power. It’ll all go straight to your-”

Cinnamon plugged up her sister’s drunken rambles with her hoof before any more concentrated stupid could come dribbling out. She continued to watch as Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer high-hoofed it to the castle with the greatest of haste.

“What in the wide world of Equestria are they in such a hurry for?”

Author's Note

This is yet another re-do of the opening chapter. Hopefully the last.
Saorise is pronounced Seer-sha.