The Truth About Cutie Marks

by Magic Step

Rating: teen
Tags: Adventure, Alternate Universe, Apple Bloom, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Prince Blueblood
Length: 19723

Apple Bloom learns the horrors that await ponies who don't get cutie marks. Blueblood learns the sorrow that awaits ponies who do. Can this unusual team overthrow Celestia's tyranical reign? Probably not.

In a bizarre alternate universe where many things are opposite, cutie marks are chosen not by destiny, but by bureaucracy. Apple Bloom, unsure of her fate, decides to take an extra year to pick her cutie mark, but Diamond Tiara is unusually motivated to make sure that doesn't happen.
Meanwhile, Prince Blueblood, sort-of-kind-of-not-really heir to the throne and only son of the universally beloved Princess Celestia is having another average day at the Cutie Mark Bureau when a horrific attack leaves him without his own mark of destiny. What comes next makes him question everything he believed...

Can two such different ponies as these somehow manage to revolutionize Equestria forever?

...Well, no, because I never finished this story. It's something that's been sitting on my computer forever and thought I might as well share. But if enough people like it, I might be willing to reconsider... (although I'd have to edit what I have right now a bit)

Published 2016-10-05 05:30:01 UTC
Last updated 2016-10-05 05:30:01 UTC

Chapter 1

Nopony ever appreciated the air they breathed until they were suddenly deprived of it.

Apple Bloom was becoming acquainted with that concept firsthoof.

The powerful current slammed her into a rock, and she managed to stick her head above the water long enough to spit out her mouthful of river water and inhale. Then she was off again, flailing downstream.

“Apple Bloom!” Scootaloo called. “Catch the rope!”

Apple Bloom didn’t see any rope, but after a few moments she assumed it wasn’t within reach anymore.

“Sorry, try again!” Scootaloo shouted again. “Above you!”

Apple Bloom pushed off the bottom of the river and managed to propel herself up to catch the rope stretched between the two riverbanks. Scootaloo held one side of the rope, and their friend Sweetie Belle held the other.

After she was hauled to shore, Apple Bloom wrapped up in a towel and shivered while Sweetie Belle rubbed two sticks together with the intention of making a fire. Nothing seemed to be happening on that front.

“Guess we shouldn’t pick a swimming cutie mark,” Apple Bloom sighed.

“I don’t see what the fuss is,” said Sweetie Belle. “Just pick an apple-growing cutie mark like the rest of your family. Pinkie Pie’s story has gotten you all confused.”

“Yeah,” Scootaloo said, fluttering her wings rapidly. “I mean, it was fun to try all these sport-type cutie mark things, but y’know, I’m going to stick with my first idea and be a stunt flyer like Rainbow Dash.” She grinned. “Maybe if I’m lucky, it will come with a bolt like Rainbow’s- and then we’ll be in the Wonderbolts together!” She leapt into the air, squealing.

“I’m just going to go with dressmaking,” Sweetie Belle sighed. “I’d never pass the test for a singing cutie mark. But you’ve been working with apples since you were real little, Apple Bloom- you’ll do just fine.”

“But what if Ah don’t want to be just fine with apples?” Apple Bloom sighed.

***

Applejack raced across the field, smacking an apple tree hard. Apples rained all across the field.

“Hey, Apple Bloom!” she called. “Where are you with those baskets?”

“Wha- oh, sorry Applejack,” Apple Bloom sighed, dragging a heavy bucket of apples towards the tree and halfheartedly kicking some more apples into it.

“Still nervous about picking yer cutie mark?” Applejack asked. “Why? You could just-”

“Ah know, Ah know,” Apple Bloom half-snarled. “Go with apples.”

“Apple Bloom? Something wrong?”

“Well… you know Pinkie Pie, right?”

“She’s another of the bearers of the elements of harmony,” Applejack said. “If Ah didn’t know her, Equestria would still be trapped in night eternal.” She chuckled a bit.

“We-ell, she told me the story of how she got her cutie mark. She said she grew up on a farm, too, a rock farm, and that she thought she’d just work on the farm when she got older too, but then she tried throwing parties and realized she wanted a party-throwing cutie mark. And Ah figured… maybe what Ah want to do is out there, somewhere… waiting for me to discover what it is… but if Ah just pick an apple cutie mark… Ah might miss it.” She sighed.

Applejack didn’t say anything for a while.

“Apple Bloom,” she said, “you’ve heard the story of how Pinkie Pie got her cutie mark, but you don’t know how Ah got mine, at least not as well as you think you do. Once upon a time, Ah was just like you. Ah thought Ah was destined for greater things than just apples. Ah went to live with my aunt and uncle in Manehatten and attended a very prominent school and aimed to be a regular wonder in the business world, but… then… well, one morning, Ah woke up, and there were three apples right on my flank.”

Apple Bloom gasped. “You mean- your cutie mark chose you?”

“Ah know. It’s something special and doesn’t happen often, so Ah figured, if destiny is gonna go out of her way to point me the right direction, who am Ah to argue? So instead being of a business tycoon, Ah’m here where Ah belong, with my family, taking care of our farm. An’ Ah couldn’t be happier.”

“But- but- your cutie mark chose you?” Apple Bloom repeated. “But- but Ah thought only super special ponies, like Twilight, with super special cutie marks, like talent in magic, got chosen by their cutie marks!”

“You thought wrong, AB,” said Applejack, rustling Apple Bloom’s mane. “Ah guess some specialness made its way to little ole’ me. So don’t you worry about a thing. You may think there are great and big and important things you should be doing, but maybe destiny wants you right here at home with the folks who love you doing what you love to do. Now let’s get back to the apples.”

***

“Have you picked your cutie mark, yet?”

“Bug off, Diamond Tiara. Can Ah just get through one day without having to talk with you about my destiny?” Apple Bloom resolved, not for the first time, to try and find a different route to school… one that didn’t lead past Diamond Tiara’s house.

“You only have a few weeks before your cutceanera!” Diamond Tiara’s friend, Silver Spoon, sang.

“You wouldn’t want to be unable to decide, would you?” Diamond Tiara said, nudging Apple Bloom. “You wouldn’t want to be stuck spending an extra year making up your mind, would you?”

Apple Bloom brightened. “Yes! Thank you, Diamond Tiara. That’s exactly what Ah want to do!” She skipped off happily and banged right into Twilight Sparkle.

“Woah, there, little filly!” Twilight said, pushing Apple Bloom aside. “Something exciting happen?”

“Twilight, Ah just figured out what to do about my cutie mark!” Apple Bloom cheered.

“Really? So, what are you going to pick?”

“Nothing! Ah’m gonna spend an extra year as a blank flank!”

Twilight laughed slightly. “Where did you get that idea?”

“Ah always wanted to do it,” Apple Bloom said, “Ah just didn’t know we were allowed to do it before now!”

Twilight’s expression darkened. In an ominous tone, she said, “I wouldn’t want to do that if I were you, Apple Bloom.”

“But Ah can, right?” said Apple Bloom.

“Yes… you can…” Twilight said. “Do you know what it’s like to stay a blank flank, Apple Bloom?”

“Ah figure just the same as normal, huh?”

“No. No, actually, it’s very, very different.” She looked up at the two bossy fillies. “Do you want to explain to her, Miss Tiara?”

“N-no m’am,” Diamond Tiara said, shrinking away.

“All right,” Twilight Sparkle said. “Come on, Apple Bloom. Time for a field trip.”

Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon gasped dramatically.

“You’re not going to take her there, are you?” Silver Spoon cried.

“But she has school!” Diamond Tiara said.

“I’ll explain everything to the teacher,” Twilight Sparkle said. “And to the rest of your family, Apple Bloom… you’ll probably be a while.”

“No she won’t!” Diamond Tiara shrieked, grabbing Apple Bloom and pulling her away. “Apple Bloom is very very sorry and she won’t ever talk about being a blank flank again!”

“Hey!” Apple Bloom said, stumbling out of Diamond Tiara’s grip. “Ah can speak for myself!” She turned to Twilight. “Lead the way!”

She trotted proudly after Twilight, pleased to be receiving special attention from the pony that destiny had proclaimed to be the most important pony in Ponyville. She turned to sneer at the two bullies, who she was sure were just jealous.

What she saw made her hesitate slightly. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon didn’t look envious. They looked genuinely worried.

Apple Bloom put it out of her head and followed Twilight into the Everfree Forest. The sun was blocked by the huge trees, but Twilight lit the way with her horn.

“There,” Twilight said, pointing to a little-used path that branched off the main road. “Do you see her?”

Apple Bloom could just make out a gray pony with a golden mane trotting down the path.

“Follow her and see what you see,” Twilight commanded.

“Wait, aren’t you coming with me Twi? …Twi?”

Twilight had vanished.

Apple Bloom gulped and turned her attention to the trail. Well, Twilight wouldn’t put her in danger would she?

…would she?

Chapter 2

At that moment, on the other side of the social world from Apple Bloom, Blueblood was just going to his office.

As usual, he grimaced as he passed the statue of Discord on the lawn in front of the Cutie Mark Bureau. He wished they would put that somewhere else. He didn’t like living with the knowledge that the ancient demon of chaos could break out at any moment, and naturally the first pony he’d see would be Blueblood, who worked here every day. But Celestia had insisted it was too symbolic to pass up: the chaotic creature who had tried to destroy everypony’s cutie mark would now be forced to watch the place where cutie marks were made.

Well, not exactly. Each town had their own branch of the CMB to issue cutie marks to their inhabitants, but this particular building was special. Not only did it issue cutie marks for the capital city of Canterlot, but it also dealt with cutie mark reassignment.

Ponies who wanted to change their cutie mark were very rare, and ponies who actually got their petition through and received a new cutie mark were rarer still. But to Blueblood they seemed incredibly common, because he had to deal with them all day long. That was his job. Part of it. The part he didn’t like.

But his secretary informed Blueblood that she had some forms for him to work on first. Blueblood took the thick folder from her hooves and trotted into his office, setting the folder down with a satisfying thump that made him sigh with joy. Paperwork.

He spent nearly one whole hour, one blissful hour, filling out forms and authorizing transactions before his first interruption.

“Ma’am,” he heard the secretary say, “You really don’t need to talk to the prince-”

The door was thrust open by a dark green pegasus with her brown mane in a huge tower atop her head. She was dragging a little lime green colt in a very fancy suit behind her.

Blueblood tried to smile, but inwardly he cringed. “How can I help you?”

“How dare you tell my little Peabody here that he cannot ever be accepted in a position of influence in society? How dare you?”

Blueblood winced. An angry mother. He was terribly afraid of angry mothers.

“Ma’am,” he said, reciting the speech Celestia had made him memorize with the promise that it would fix situations like this, “I have no control over the content of the test for a leadership cutie mark, and would like to remind you that a leadership cutie mark is not a requirement for running for public office-”

The angry mother called Blueblood a series of names that made her little Peabody shrink away with embarrassment. “You know as well as I do that nopony without a leadership cutie mark has been elected to any office of any consequence during Celestia’s entire reign! How dare you suggest otherwise?” She advanced towards Blueblood, her hoof raised angrily.

“Guards!” Blueblood shrieked.

After the eye-rolling guards had born the hysterical mare out of the building, Blueblood picked up a Z-67 form and tried to calm his nerves.

“By the way,” a guard said, poking his head into the room, “We’ve started a new policy. We call it ‘The Prince Who Cried Guards Policy’. It means we’re only going to remove three ponies from your office today. That was one. You can only ask us to remove two more.”

“What?” Blueblood said, looking up sharply. “You- you can’t do that! I’m telling my mom!”

“Go run crying to the Princess Celestia if you must,” the guard said, rolling his eyes, “but I don’t think you’ll get much result from that quarter. At least not now. Your precious mother is visiting Trottingham and won’t be back for a week.”

“I know,” Blueblood said, “but I can still write her a letter…”

But he knew as well as the guard did that a letter would take time, and meanwhile the guards had him at their mercy. He sighed and prayed he would be left alone for the most part.

He returned to his paperwork, but this time only got a few forms done before he was interrupted again, this time by a green unicorn with a blue and yellow mane and a lab coat. His face was grim.

“Oh, er, Doctor, uh… Puppet?” Blueblood said.

“Marionette,” the unicorn said. “Doctor Marionette.”

“Oh, yes, you wanted to see my records for ponies with screw cutie marks, I remember you,” Blueblood said, calming down. Maybe this encounter wouldn’t go so badly. “Is there anything else I can show you?”

“There is some information I would like, yes,” said Doctor Marionette. “I want to know why the hay your insanity cutie marks are being thrown around like rice at a wedding. My psychology clinic is being flooded with a sudden outbreak of insanity. Do you want to know what else is odd about this?”

Blueblood froze. He debated the next words he would say very carefully. The last thing he wanted was an angry doctor. He was terribly afraid of angry doctors.

After a long, intense decision making process, the word he chose was: “No.”

“For some, very strange reason, almost every officeholder in Hoofington suddenly had their cutie mark warped into a screw. Do you find that at all odd, Prince Blueblood?”

Blueblood managed to stammer, “T-the CMB holds no responsibility for cutie marks that suddenly transform away from the influence of a CMB certified machine, as such things are merely a physiological-”

“Understood,” Doctor Marionette said. “I just wanted to give you something to think about. That’s all.” He turned and left the room.

Blueblood sighed with relief, instantly blanking the conversation from his mind. Doctor Marionette turned up every once and a while questioning various screw cutie marks given to indicate the mental instability of the pony who bore them. Blueblood had long since stopped paying attention to him.

Nopony else came in until after lunchtime. Then two yellow unicorns with red manes barged into his office. One had a mustache and one did not, and their cutie marks showed different colored gears, but other than that they were identical.

“What is the meaning of this?” One of them demanded, slapping a piece of paper on Blueblood’s desk, sending other important forms flying.

Blueblood scanned the form hastily. “I-I take it your request for a loan was denied. That really isn’t my department- that’s the department of business-”

“They said we couldn’t get a loan without a patent,” the other twin said.

“Th-th-that’s not my department either. P-patent office-”

“And they said we couldn’t get a ‘p-patent’ because you told them we couldn’t!” said the one twin.

“Again!” said the other.

“You’ve blocked every patent we’ve ever applied for, and we’re sick and tired of it. You are holding up our entrepeneurship!”

“Er, uh, let me check the reason,” Blueblood said, skittering to a door in the back of his office and entering a room lined with filing cabinets. Just the sight of these wonderful devices filled with wonderful documents calmed him down, and he took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the paper.

But first things were first, and he had to placate these ponies somehow. He was terribly afraid of angry businessponies, after all. He yanked a form out of the F filing cabinet- F for FlimFlam Manufacturers.

He trotted back over to them, the paper held aloft in his telekinetic grip. “Ah, I see… I’m afraid you were rejected simply as a matter of maintaining the balance in society. It’s nothing personal.”

“Maintaining balance?” One twin demanded. “What the hay is that supposed to mean?”

“There are over 10,000 ponies with cutie marks related to the cider industry,” Blueblood said. “Your machine would potentially put each and every one of them out of business while providing no benefit to the world at large except to line your own pockets.”

“No benefit to the world at large?” Another twin demanded. “We’d be providing top-quality cider at a mere fraction of the cost to everypony in Equestria- and maybe even beyond! Everypony would then have more money to spend on other things!”

“But you’d put all the ponies with cider cutie marks out of business,” Blueblood repeated.

“We’ve already detailed that in our plan,” one of the twins said. “We need thousands of ponies to maintain the machines, run our stores, transport our goods-”

“Those ponies do not have machinist, storekeeping, or transporation cutie marks, Flim and Flam. They have cider making cutie marks. They cannot simply drop the job their cutie mark indicates and take up a new trade. That would be damaging to them physiologically and psychologically and therefore hurt society as a whole. You simply were not thinking, and simply must forgo these silly notions of revolutionizing this industry or that industry and stick with what your cutie mark is actually in- fixing watches.”

“We hate watches,” one twin grumbled.

“You see?” Blueblood said. “This is what comes from going against your cutie mark. Now you have Cutie Mark Failure Insanity Syndrome and now hate that which is the very essence of your being, and so you are seeking to spread this hateful, Discord-created disease, destroying yourself and everypony else, through these tyrannical machines of yours. I highly recommend you get professional help.”

“Pr-professional help?” one twin sputtered, seizing Blueblood’s neck with telekinesis and lifting him up into the air. “I’ll show you who’s tyrannical, you- you- tyrant!”

Blueblood gasped, finding his airflow magically blocked. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, couldn’t call for help, he was dying…

Oh, right. He had a horn.

He summoned the guards with a teleportation spell.

One fight that he didn’t pay much attention to later, Blueblood was sitting at his desk again, trying to reorganize the papers Flim and Flam had shoved around. The guards had been quick to tell him that this counted as dealing with two ponies, and that they would no longer provide him with any assistance in dealing with angry customers.

Blueblood was terribly afraid of angry customers.

Fortunately, the remaining few ponies who interrupted his work after this had fairly mild requests, easily met. Nothing too worrisome there.

Until the red pegasus with a bloody knife for a cutie mark walked through the door.

Blueblood tried to contain his terror.

“Um, hello,” the pegasus said softly, staring at the floor, at the walls, the ceiling, anywhere except directly at Blueblood. It was as though he had a fear of making eye contact.

Blueblood didn’t answer. He was trying not to scream.

“I, uh, requested a cutie mark change,” the pegasus whispered. “I, well, I didn’t really hear anything about that yet, so, uh… I thought I’d come and ask in pony.” His voice was oddly high pitched. His gaze flickered back and forth from Blueblood to the floor as he waited for a response.

Blueblood just shook his head.

“I-I was denied?” he asked, pain showing on his face.

Blueblood nodded. Please, please don’t make any sudden movements, he thought.

The pegasus advanced and put his hooves on top of the papers Blueblood had been working on. Blueblood shoved his swivel chair backwards into the wall, then pressed himself against it. The pegasus didn’t seem to notice, possibly because he wasn’t really looking at Blueblood; he was staring at Blueblood’s desk.

“Please,” he whispered, clasping his hooves in front of him. “Please. I- I need a new cutie mark. I just… can’t take it anymore. You… you have no idea what it’s like. Ponies I’ve never even met before, they j-just take one look at me and then… then…” his eyes flitted up to meet Blueblood’s for a moment before he stared at the desk again. “They do what you’re doing, pretty much.”

Blueblood was shaking. This was an emergency. The guards would understand.

“Guards?” He called out. “Guards?”

“And they do that, too,” the pegasus sighed softly.

“Guards? Please. This is important. This is a genuine emergency. Please, please don’t leave me here with a murderer!” Blueblood half-shrieked.

“See?” The pegasus said, his voice rising. “See? Everypony just looks at my bloody knife, and they all assume that I’m a sociopathic killer. I never killed anypony, honest! Just look at my record! I just broke into a few… buildings… and took some stuff, but I never even hurt anypony! I mean, except that one guard, but that was an accident and I made it right! I don’t deserve this!”

“GUARDS!” Blueblood screamed.

The red pegasus was sobbing now. “Everypony is afraid of me! Everypony shuns me! They hide from me, hide their foals, point to me as a pony to avoid… I can’t get a job, I can’t get a house, I can’t live, and nopony will ever love me again… not even my own family. I can’t take it. I can’t take it. Please. Please. I d-don’t even mind being a blank flank. Please.” He reached out and grabbed Blueblood’s suit collar.

Blueblood was unable to contain his fear any longer and screamed like a little filly. He was horribly afraid of insane murderers.

The guards showed up and managed to drag the still-sobbing pegasus off the prince.

“You owe me ten bits,” one said to the other.

“Should’ve known better than to assume Blueblood could handle this on his own…” the guard grumbled.

It wasn’t until half an hour later that it finally clicked with Blueblood that the guards had let the murderer in on purpose so they could bet on the outcome. He realized that was pathetically slow of him. But his mind had been on other things. That poor, crazy pony. He shook his head.

Only a crazy pony would have said he didn’t mind being a blank flank. What happened to blank flanks was something far too horrible for him to contemplate…

***

Apple Bloom had no idea how long she’d been walking. Twilight had told her to “see what she could see,” but it was so dark that Apple Bloom figured she’d failed. She still had no idea what this had to do with cutie marks. Far as she could tell, her silent gray pony guide had a magnifying glass, but Apple Bloom wasn’t sure what that meant. Apple Bloom had tried shouting greetings and questions to the gray earth pony, but she didn’t seem to hear her.

Abruptly, the path ended, and Apple Bloom stumbled into a bright sunny clearing. Once Apple Bloom was out of the thick tree cover, she thought the sun seemed to be shining twice as brightly to make up for the rest of the gloomy forest. She stumbled forward for a moment, her hoof over her eyes, as the brightness blinded her.

When she got used to the light, the gray mare was gone. Apple Bloom was standing in a town that seemed even smaller than Ponyville- the buildings were all simple huts and seemed to be built recently, and garden plots were everywhere. Colorful unlit lanterns hung from strings all over the town.

She trotted through the streets, admiring the decorations.

“Hey, there!” a loud voice called.

Apple Bloom whirled around to see a huge gray earth pony hanging a banner on a building. He drove a nail in place with his hoof, leapt off his ladder, and trotted towards her. “I don’t recognize you. You must be new. I’m Grayhoof, founder of Sunny Town. Have you come to stay, or are you just visiting?”

“Stay?” said Apple Bloom.

“Well, you just seemed of the right age where you’d normally be picking your cutie mark,” Grayhoof said. “Am I wrong?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. Twilight sent me here because Ah was thinking of staying a blank flank for a while.”

“Then you’ve come to the right place,” Grayhoof said, showing his blank flank to her. “This town is full of ponies who were fed up with the cutie mark system and decided to prove they could get on without them. As you can see, we’ve done quite well for ourselves.” He waved a hoof at the thriving vegetables and the nice huts.

“Well, uh, Ah didn’t really want to move just yet,” said Apple Bloom, wishing Applejack was there to help her.

“Understood. But you can look around, see how we live, try things out, see if you might like it, right?” said Grayhoof. “Come on, I’ll see if I can get Starlet to show you around. I mean, I would do it myself, but I have decorations to take care of.”

He cantered across town and knocked on a nearby door. “Starlet? Starlet?”

After waiting a moment, he sighed. “I guess she’s out… I’m sorry about this…”

“No worries,” Apple Bloom said. “What if Ah jist poke around by myself? Ah’m real responsible.

“All right, but don’t leave the village,” said Grayhoof. “No telling what sorts of monsters roam the Everfree Forest.”

“Understood,” Apple Bloom said.

She wandered the village, gaping at everything. She’d hardly ever been outside Ponyville before, so just the newness of the situation impressed her, but she also liked how simple it all seemed.

Everypony seemed to be an earth pony, and of course, none of them had cutie marks. They all seemed really friendly. A tan stallion waved at her as she walked past.

“Hey there,” he said. “The name’s Gladstone. You a prospective newcomer?”

“Something like that,” Apple Bloom said, shrugging.

“What brought us to your attention? Somepony from the village come find you?”

Apple Bloom shook her head, then paused. She’d forgotten all about the creepy gray mare that had lead her to Sunny Town in the first place.

“Uh, you don’t happen to know a gray mare, golden mane like sunshine, magnifying glass cutie mark?”

First all the colors in the world inverted, then went grayscale, then went dark. Wind rushed past with tornado like strength. Apple Bloom heard the words ‘magnifying glass cutie mark’ repeated backwards, felt like she was saying them backwards against her will.

The next instant the world was bright and visible again. Gladstone looked confused, then smiled at Apple Bloom.

“Gray mare with a glowing golden mane? That’d be Ruby. She lives with her sister in that hut over there-” he pointed to a nearby hut- “but last I saw, she went to see Three Leaf, our local healer and Ruby’s boss. She lives on the outskirts of town, closer to the wild plants… down that path there.” He pointed.

“Thanks a bunch! Er… she isn’t a mute or anything, is she?” Apple Bloom asked.

Gladstone blinked in surprise. “Uh, nope.”

“Ah, well, she just… didn’t say anything on the way here,” Apple Bloom said.

“What? And you just followed a random, silent mare into the forest?”

“Ah, er… Ah’d better be going.” Apple Bloom skittered off down the path to Three Leaf’s house and banged into a blue stallion.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, pushing Apple Bloom away.

“Ah just keep running into ponies today,” Apple Bloom sighed. Then she gave the pony a closer look.

“Hey, Ah know you,” she said. “You’re Diamond Tiara’s older brother, Jeweled Crown. Figures you’d be here, huh, since you were reluctant to get a cutie mark too, but why haven’t you visited home?”

The blue stallion blinked. “I… have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t have a younger sister.”

Apple Bloom shrugged. “Oh, sorry… you just look awful similar, is all.” She continued trotting down the path, but occasionally looked over her shoulder at the blue stallion. She had been so sure…

Three Leaf’s hut was truly quite a ways into the forest, and it was much darker over here. Apple Bloom could barely see. First she knocked, but after waiting a while, she pushed the door open and went inside.

It was completely dark except for the light of a few glowing embers in the fireplace. Dust was all over the floor.

“Uh, hello?” Apple Bloom called out. “Ah’m looking for a pony named Ruby? Is this the wrong house?”

After a moment, a whispery voice answered her: “No. You found me, Apple Bloom.”

“Ruby?” Apple Bloom said. “Where are you?” She headed in the direction of the voice; it seemed to be coming from… the fireplace.

The whispery voice continued, “This town is a strange place, full of strange thoughts. They have forsaken cutie marks, and did not take kindly to me the day I received mine…”

Apple Bloom peeked into the fireplace, then reeled back in shock.

It was filled with white pony bones.

“Noooo!” She shrieked, fleeing the hut.

Author's Note

Don't know if there's anypony who doesn't know this already, but Sunnytown and the affiliated story come from The Story of the Blanks by Donitz.

Chapter 3

Blueblood checked the clock. 6:15. He considered the possibility of pulling another all-nighter. On one hoof, he would have tons and tons of paperwork to do. But on the downside, the night guard was smaller and would be more likely to be called away to stop a burglary, leaving the perfect opportunity for some unhappy customer to sneak into his office and… and…

Blueblood shut his imagination off. To continue on those lines of thought was just asking for nightmares.

He’d decide his hours later. Now, it was time for dinner. And he knew just where he wanted to go.

He waved goodbye to his secretary and stopped in the restroom on the way out. Checking he was alone, he put on his magic disguise. One spell later, he now was a tan unicorn stallion with a plum mane in an entirely different hairstyle from his usual one. His cutie mark was still the same though: a compass rose. He had no intention of changing that, no matter what his form. It wasn’t that suspicious, however, because most ponies who worked at the CMB had a map-related cutie mark; it was related to how they helped ponies find their path in life.

His disguise complete, Blueblood left the building and trotted through the streets of Canterlot before he reached the small coffee shop. He took the usual table with the pink flowers and waited.

This is stupid, he told himself. How probable is it that she will be here, on this particular day? Especially so late after regular dinner hours? She isn’t coming.

Oh well, he thought, placing an order for a panini and some coffee. The food was good, even if he couldn’t share it.

Only a few minutes later, however, a white unicorn with a pink mane and emerald green dress approached his table, smiling brightly.

“Well, hello, my dear Prince Charming,” she cooed in her sweet Southern accent. “Working late again?”

Blueblood smiled at her. “You know me, Twinkleshine. I hate to leave my job.”

“Anything interesting happen?” Twinkleshine asked. To the waiter she said, “Ah’d like an Italiano Panini and some coffee, please.”

The waiter trotted off, leaving them in peace.

“Nothing much, just a bunch of angry ponies as usual,” Blueblood sighed. “I wish ponies would stop complaining about things I have no control over. Cutie marks are just as much biological as they are buearaucratic, and not everything is under our control. Ponies who go insane have their cutie mark change to a screw- or a bloody knife, if they are sociopathic murderers. Law of nature. Fact of life. I wish ponies would just get that through their little thick skulls.”

Twinkleshine gave Blueblood a weird look.“Ah don't see why ponies would want to accept that they are unalterably insane. You ever consider that maybe they're just coming to you out of desperation?”

Blueblood stared at the table. “You... wow. How do you do that?”

“Do what?” Twinkleshine said, looking coy.

“Every time I meet you, you twist my worldview around and make me look like a jerk. And yet I still always hope to see you when I visit this cafe. How? It makes no sense.”

“Just doing my job,” Twinkleshine chuckled.

The waiter brought their sandwiches, and they ate in silence for a moment.

“You know,” Blueblood said, “you somehow knew everything about me from the moment you saw me, and yet I still don't know anything about you except your name. What do you do when you aren't talking to a boneheaded monarch?”

“I'm an actor,” Twinkleshine said, shrugging. “Not a very famous one, so I doubt you've seen many of my acts, but... but I don't care about fame. I don't mind being noticed less than others... which I'm sure you sympathize with, since you insist on sneaking around in disguise.”

“Ah, well... It would be kind of nice if I was just a regular old beauraucrat instead of royalty, so that newspaper folks wouldn't keep publishing stupid stories about me. But, then, I like having the princess for my mom, so...”

“Is she a good mother?”

Blueblood hesitated. “Well, I love her, she helps me do my job, and she does some things that I ask her to. So, yeah, I guess.”

“You... love her?” Twinkleshine asked.

Blueblood hesitated. “Well... sure. What are you trying to say?”

“Does she love you?”

Blueblood paused. “I make her laugh, and she loves to laugh, so she loves me. Really truly.”

“Celestia laughs at a lot of things,” Twinkleshine whispered. “And when she laughs at you, are you happy?”

Blueblood bit his lip. Well, no, he didn't particularily like being laughed at, but he liked making his mom happy...

“Well, look, I dunno, okay?” Blueblood snapped. “I mean, if she doesn't love me then who does?”

Only after he said that did he realize how depressing that sounded.

“Don't you have any friends?” Twinkleshine asked.

“You. And, um, my aunt Luna. And… Cadence… well, she enjoys spending time with me. And, well, my, uh... my secretary?”

“All your secretaries ask to be reassigned in a few years.”

“I just annoy them by trying to do their jobs as well as mine. And by asking them to work overtime.”

“Friends would be understanding of that.”

“Okay, so I'm a lonely friendless jerkish boring lame pathetic unloved monarch, I get it!” Blueblood stood up and marched off.

Who did Twinkleshine think she was? Just some old mare who walked up one day and started chatting. Of course, Blueblood never asked her age because that would be blatently rude, but judging from appearance he'd assumed her to be a recent empty-nester who'd needed somepony to cure her intense loneliness. He'd thought he was doing her a favor by letting her mother him, but now she'd gone too far.

He flung his magical disguise off as he approached his office building. Nopony could see him anyways. He had every intent to stay all night.

His secretary had already left. His secretaries tended to get ticked off if he tried to keep them longer than their assigned hours. Oh well, he didn't need the secretary's help badly.

He pulled out several forms and began filling them out. Hours turned to minutes as the work absorbed all his attention.

After a while, he checked the clock. Two AM. He yawned. Well, it wasn't like he hadn't stayed up ridiculously late before. Once he hadn't left his office for weeks, until Celestia had informed him his neck cramps were only to be expected from somepony who fell asleep at his desk every day, and he'd decided there was wisdom in using a proper bed.

Then he heard hoofsteps. Probably the guards, he told himself. Then he remembered that he was kinda supposed to inform the guards before he started working overnight, lest they assume the CMB building didn't require very much attention, being empty.

The guards weren't in the building, and some strange ponies were.

This couldn't be good.

Blueblood crouched under his desk in a fetal position, hoping nopony would think he was there. With magic, he turned off the lights. Then cast a listening spell. This created a small ball of light that was, for all intents and purposes, an extra ear (although it didn't look like an ear because a floating ear would be just silly) that he could guide wherever he wanted. He sent the ball out of the office and down the corridor, listening carefully. The hoofsteps got louder as the ball got closer. Then he heard somepony say, “It's ready. Only needs something to go in the tank. I was thinking bleach.”

“Bleach? Brother, where magic is concerned, we'd be better off with something at the other end of the pH scale. Though I've heard that fire, or hot iron, works too...”

“Well, bleach ought to work just fine… to start with, if you know what I mean.”

“We’d better hope he’s in his office. I don’t want to have to break into the royal palace.”

Oh my gosh, Blueblood thought, they’re coming for me.

He tried to make himself very small. It didn’t work so well.

Terror was rendering him unable to concentrate. His listening spell winked out, and for the life of him he couldn’t manage the energy to cast another spell. Not even a teleportation spell, which would have been ridiculously useful. His mind was completely blank.

The door opened.

“Bluuuuuuueblood?” Flim (or Flam; it didn’t matter which) cooed. “Where are you?”

The desk shifted, then levitated into the air.

Blueblood screamed.

Flim and Flam laughed. One of them grabbed Blueblood and hauled him out of the office. Blueblood flailed around with his hooves, trying to hurt his captors enough to make them let him go, but they didn’t even seem to notice his attempts at escape.

They threw him down in front of the cutie mark creator.

“My brother and I thought about what you told us about societal balance,” one twin said, “and we’ve reached a conclusion. Obviously we can’t ask ponies to go against their cutie marks, so all our problems would be solved if they simply didn’t have any cutie marks! So, we’ve made a few modifications to your machine so that instead of adding cutie marks, it takes them off!”

“What?” Blueblood gasped. “Y-you can’t do that! Ponies can’t survive without cutie marks! Without a special talent, they are untalented! It’s like I said that one time, you want what Discord wants!” He couldn’t speak straight.

“But of course, we are ponies of science, and do not wish to subject innocent bystanders to untested theories. So we need a guinea pig. Somepony who won’t be missed.”

“Guinea pigs don’t have cutie marks,” Blueblood said.

One of the twins smacked his forehead, and the other rolled his eyes. The eye-roller said, “That is, we need somepony to run through the machine that this world would be better off without.”

Blueblood felt cold. “Are you talking about me?”

The twins leered at him. “You bet,” they said, in perfect unison.

Blueblood was levitated into the air and fastened into the machine. Various metal bands and leather straps were tightened around various body parts to prevent movement.

“Y-you can’t do this,” Blueblood stammered.

“Oh, we will,” one twin said, flipping some levers.

“You- I- could help you- what do you want? What can I do to make you stop?”

“Nothing,” the other twin said. “It’s too late for apologies, Blueblood. Now for judgment.”

“But I- I don’t want- you don’t want- help- MOMMY!”

Acid poured over the entire lower half of his body, and powerful scrub brushes polished the mark of his destiny, his life, his purpose from his flank.

“No!” he cried. “Noooo!”

***

“Nooooo!”

Apple Bloom fled down the path, but she couldn’t get the image of the bones out of her head.

Ah don’t want to live here! she thought, over and over. Ah don’t want to live here!

She crashed into the same blue stallion and screamed.

“Oh, sorry!” he said. “I hope I didn’t startle you.”

He smiled at her.

Apple Bloom blinked. Here, in the sunshine, among the bright colors of the town and the smiling ponies, what she had seen in the hut suddenly didn’t make sense.

“Jeweled Crown?” she asked.

“Yes?”

“So that is your name!” Apple Bloom said triumphantly. “Ah knew it! Don’t try and tell me that there are two identical ponies with identical names who don’t want cutie marks! Ah won’t believe you! You are Jeweled Crown and… and…”

Apple Bloom’s logic began catching up with her memory. If this was Jeweled Crown, then why didn’t he remember his younger sister?

And did that make Jeweled Crown… a murderer?

“J-jewel?” she asked. “Do you know a pony named… Ruby?”

“Ruby?” Jeweled Crown said. “Oh, she was a nice pony, very clever and bright.”

“Was,” Apple Bloom said. “Why are you talking about her in the past tense?”

Jeweled Crown paused. “We… there was… she…”

“We had no choice.”

The words were spoken by all the ponies at once, in a haunting chant.

“No choice, no choice, no choice…”

The sky darkened and the village went grayscale. Jeweled Crown stopped smiling, and his voice took on a monotone as he spoke in unison with the rest of the townsponies, who were slowly stalking towards Apple Bloom.

“Sunny Town must be kept safe,” they moaned. “We are safe. She was safe. We will keep you safe. Don’t you want to be safe, Apple Bloom?”

Jeweled Crown raised one hoof, reaching out for Apple Bloom. The townsponies who had gotten close enough followed suit.

“No!” Apple Bloom screamed. “Let me out! Ah don’t want to stay here! Twilight!”

The little filly frantically spun around, trying to look for a way to escape, but the ponies had pressed into a tight circle.

Suddenly the sky turned black and the village and villagers burst into flames. The black, glowing townsponies turned around, their eyes and coats glowing like embers.

“The marks!” one of them cried, his voice no longer monotone, but filled with unearthly rage.

“Ponies with marks have come in our midst!” a female flaming pony cried.

“Destroy them!” a flaming stallion shouted. “Destroy them!”

“Destroy! Destroy! Destroy!” The ponies chanted, stampeding off.

Some filly far off screamed. “No! Stop! Apple Bloom! Where are you?”

It was Diamond Tiara. She had just scrambled up a tree, which the firey ponies were ramming against, threatening to topple it over.

“You must join us!” the small flaming colt who probably was Jeweled Crown shouted to Apple Bloom. “You must destroy her! It is your destiny as one Unmarked!”

“No!” Apple Bloom shouted. “No! Get away from her!” She smacked the monsters a couple of times, but they didn’t even notice. Desperate, she pretended one pony was a tree and apple-bucked it with her back hooves.

The pony turned around. “I would advise you not do that,” it said in a voice that sounded like Grayhoof’s. It lunged forward and bit Apple Bloom on the neck.

Apple Bloom screamed as a warm liquid trickled down her skin.

Suddenly, a bright light blinded her. When it faded, she was standing on the path to the school building next to Diamond Tiara. Twilight Sparkle stood before them. The sun was nearly set.

Apple Bloom burst into tears and seized Twilight’s front leg. “Ah’m sorry Twilight! Ah’m sorry Ah said Ah want to be a blank flank! Ah’ll never say something silly like that again! Honest! Ah promise! Ah promise!”

Twilight smiled and hugged Apple Bloom close. “Shh, it’s okay. Don’t cry. I’m sorry that happened to you. It’ll all be fine, trust me.” She picked Apple Bloom up and draped the little filly across her back as she walked slowly away. Diamond Tiara watched Apple Bloom go, tears in her eyes.

Chapter 4

“Blueblood?” the alicorn called, entering Blueblood’s room in the palace.

Blueblood looked up. “Mom! You came!” He hugged Celestia tightly, crying.

“No business of mine could ever be more important that making sure you are okay,” Princess Celestia said, smiling. “Stop hugging me before you burn to death.”

Hugging Celestia was like hugging an oven. Celestia said that she burned with the energy of the sun even as she walked among mortal ponies. So there was a perfectly logical explanation for why she never showed Blueblood the normal physical signs of affection that mothers usually showed their children.

“So, are you okay?” Celestia asked, shoving Blueblood away from her.

Blueblood let go sadly. “No, Mom. I’m not okay.”

“The doctors told me you would have to be careful with your legs for a while so as not to ruin the bandages, but you should be ready to go back to your job tomorrow morning, as there is not much physical work involved.”

“But I can’t go back to my job,” Blueblood said. “Mom, you can’t see because of the bandages, but, but, my c-cutie mark is gone. Gone. Erased. I’m j-just a blank flank.” He tried not to cry. Celestia usually got upset when he cried.

Celestia waved a wing dismissively. “I’m sure you can perform your job admirably, the same way you always have, until we can reapply your cutie mark.”

“No I can’t!” Blueblood said. “I can’t do paperwork properly without it. My judgment will be impaired, my knowledge incomplete, my understanding hampered. Mom, you know what ponies without cutie marks are like. I have no talent anymore. I can’t do anything properly.”

“My prince-to-be,” Celestia said, smiling at Blueblood, “you don’t really mean to say that somehow you think your mind is affected by your flank?”

“Of course it is, Mom. That’s what you always tell everypony!”

“But I’m sure you can manage for a few days without-”

“No! I need my cutie mark now!”

“You can’t. Not until you’ve healed. Nopony will notice it isn’t there under all the bandages.”

“But I’ll know it isn’t there.”

“Just deal with your lack of a picture on your butt for a few days. How horrible could it possibly be?”

“I can’t do my job without my cutie mark. It gives me ability. It makes me me. Celestia, please, I need my mark back, please!”

Blueblood saw the warning signs. Celestia was about to snap at him. He’d seen this often enough to know how it would go.

“Oh, will you stop whining already, you pathetic little brat? I mean, do you have any idea how much work I and my agents have to do, day and night, to keep the population ignorant and unquestioning? But you- you eagerly devoured every bit of propaganda that I spoon-fed you, and loved it. I may wish most ponies were like you, but you- you make me sick. For the love of me, grow a spine!”

Blueblood blinked. “Wh-what are you saying?”

“You dense, thick-skulled moron!”

“I-I don’t understand. Propaganda?”

“Cutie marks don’t do anything!”

“…What?” said Blueblood softly.

Princess Celestia took a few deep breathes to gain control of her emotions.

“Cutie marks don’t do anything?” Blueblood repeated.

Princess Celestia flicked her wing dismissively. “Oh, hay no. I just use them to make sure the working class ponies are content to stay working class ponies for the rest of their lives. It works perfectly: the ponies who work for nothing on a farm that supplies me never try to rise above their station because they’re all afraid of Cutie Mark Failure Insanity Syndrome, which, by the way, is just as fake as cutie marks.” She gave Blueblood a disparaging look. “At least, I thought I’d made it up… until today.” She sighed.

“Cutie marks… don’t… do… anything?” Blueblood repeated.

“The method has other benefits too,” said Princess Celestia. “Nopony would think of electing anypony without a leadership cutie mark to office, and who gives out the leadership cutie marks? I do. Democracy at its finest- when it serves its superior’s purposes! Ha!”

“Cutie marks… don’t… do… anything?” Blueblood repeated, his voice becoming impossibly soft.

Princess Celestia, in fact, didn’t even know he was talking, and continued over him: “Society has been nicely conditioned to accept that you must never listen to anypony with a screw for a cutie mark, as anything that comes out of their mouth is sheer nonsense- which allows me to get rid of my opponents easily. And those silly fools in Hoofington thought they could rebel against me- as if!”

Blueblood looked up at his mother. He had heard her use this tone of course, usually when discussing her subjects (“As foolish as sheep!” she would say, continually).

Celestia had frequently played pranks on Blueblood, his whole life long, where she did her utmost to convince Blueblood that a lie was truth. Then one day she would laugh at him for believing her, point out all the things that he could have noticed to prove the whole thing unreal, and then either congratulate herself for being a good liar or berate Blueblood for being thickheaded, depending on her mood. Once she had convinced Blueblood that he wasn’t the heir to the throne, and actually his childhood enemy Shining Armor was. Another time she told him he was adopted. Yet another time she had informed him that the great parasprite menace was threatening Equestria and would only leave if she gave them her beloved firstborn foal, so for the good of the kingdom he was expected to sacrifice himself with a smile. She had gone disturbingly far with that one; after a week of recommending he do various fun things ‘while he still could’ she had bundled him into a ceremonial box for delivery to the parasprites… and then, after several minutes, had opened the box and laughed at him. She and Cadence had enjoyed themselves immensely, and had laughed so hard they’d started crying. Blueblood had been crying too… for other reasons. Fortunately, Celestia had been in too much of a good mood to criticize him for that.

He’d always been upset whenever he learned Celestia had been playing a prank on him, but now he prayed this was a prank. He looked at Celestia’s eyes and tried to tell if she was lying. She wasn’t laughing yet, but that meant nothing. She could keep an incredibly straight face when she wanted to. Asking her if this was a prank would reveal nothing at all if she answered no.

“Mom?” he said. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“One gets a little tired of nopony ever realizing one’s absolute genius,” Celestia said, shrugging. “That, and… it’s important for you to know this. I’ve had you busy with cutie mark assignments forever, and you are now familiar with the system. You need to know all this if you are to become… not the permanent prince, to be sure, since I have no intention of ever needing a replacement, and you, being mortal, will inevitably die long before I do, but even a princess needs a vacation… and you would be in the perfect position to rule Equestria while I take a break. But in order for that to happen, you need to know the truth about cutie marks. You need to understand their power.”

“Cutie marks do nothing,” Blueblood said, stunned.

This couldn’t be a prank. No matter what lie Princess Celestia had told him, it had never been a lie that benefitted him. Ever. Celestia had said that she didn’t want the thought of having raised Blueblood’s hopes and then dashed them on her conscious. She’d always felt it was more honorable to be able to give him good news at the end of the day.

“What have I been doing all day? What have I been doing all my life?”

“Giving ponies purpose. Guiding them in their life. Allowing them to find fulfillment even when they are destined to do nothing of much significance. There will always be ponies who must do menial labor, to make the kingdom run. Your job is to make ponies happy. You make everypony happy. How is that living a meaningless life?”

Blueblood took a deep breath. “I… understand. Th-thank you… Celestia.”

Princess Celestia smiled. “I’m very glad we talked about this now. I understand it must come as a shock, so, if you want to take a few days off of work to recover…”

Blueblood sat up as though he’d been electrocuted. “No! No! I mean, no. No. I don’t want that. I really don’t want that. I need to work. Please.”

Celestia stared at him for a moment, then shook her head, smiling. “You are a silly pony, Blueblood.”

***

“What do you want with a leadership test?” Twilight asked Apple Bloom incredulously.

“Ah just wanted to look at it. See if Ah might stand a chance of qualifying.”

Twilight shook her head. “You can’t just ‘look at’ a leadership test. Leadership tests have to be conducted in pony. Those are done at the Cutie Mark Bureau, and I doubt you would want to travel all the way there.”

“Yeah,” Apple Bloom said, thinking about how she’d never been out of Ponyville, and the stash of food and the train ticket she’d saved for a special occasion. “Yeah, like Ah’d do something like that.”

***

“How dare you tell me that Peabody will never be important?”

“I need a new cutie mark. I can’t take it anymore.”

“You tyrant!”

“Every councilpony in Hoofington suddenly had a screw for a cutie mark.”

“I can’t live.”

“Do you love your mother?”

“You’re making ponies happy. Isn’t that what you want, Blueblood?”

Blueblood woke up in a cold sweat. He hadn’t realized he’d managed to fall asleep. He felt more tired than he had last night.

Well, it was morning, and time to go back to work. Everything would be just like normal.

He rolled out of bed, wincing as he applied weight to his hind legs. They still ached like crazy, but that was normal after healing magic had been done. His breakfast had been delivered to his room- eggs, waffles, and his medicine. In addition to being essentially an alicorn born without a couple of limbs- namely his wings- Blueblood had also been born with a rare magic condition that made his magic powers prone to become self-destructive if he wasn’t constantly on medication. Twice he had forgotten to take his medicine. Celestia had been very unhappy with him… but for once, her opinion of him had been irrelevant to Blueblood. He’d been in too much pain to care. At first everything had been normal, and then he suddenly got hot, and then it started. All his magic turned on him at once. It had felt like his flesh was boiling, warping, twisting, like he was exploding, like he was being roasted alive. All he’d been able to do was lie on the floor, screaming and crying, until Celestia had rushed over to him and used her magic to save him.

But it hadn’t happened in vain. For a week after each of the incidents, Celestia had given him as close to her undivided attention as Blueblood had ever had, and all of it was gentle, comforting, and warm, without criticism or lies or any harsh words from her. All she had cared about was making sure that he was okay. If Blueblood ever doubted his mother’s love for him, all he had to do was remember those days.

The medicine was a thick black substance, like chocolate syrup, except it tasted more like licorice than chocolate. Not an unpleasant taste at any rate, though Blueblood always washed his medicine down with plenty of milk to make sure the sticky liquid was cleared out of his mouth, and it made him feel groggy afterwards.

Breakfast taken care of, Blueblood escaped out the window and headed to his office. He didn’t feel like seeing anypony today. He didn’t want to talk with anypony.

As he walked to his office, gloom settled around him. He couldn’t let the shocking truth he learned yesterday affect his performance. Celestia would be furious.

He was making ponies happy, he reminded himself. That was all that mattered.

As he entered the building, the first thing he saw was the Cutie Mark Application Machine, as of late been retooled into a Cutie Mark Removal Machine and now being repaired by a group of busy ponies with clockwork cutie marks. Well, Blueblood thought, there were now two ponies with clockwork cutie marks he would never have to worry about again. Flim and Flam had both been captured by the guard and were waiting for the CMAM to be repaired so they could receive their new bloody knife cutie marks.

Thinking of bloody knife cutie marks reminded him of the shy red pegasus who had visited him the other day. He certainly hadn’t seemed very happy.

He shook his head. He could endure. He just had to keep himself from blurting out the truth, and he would be fine.

***

Apple Bloom couldn’t close her mouth for the life of her.

The buildings were so huge… and majestic… and rich… and different.

Apple Bloom walked slowly through the streets of Canterlot, marveling at everything. She was sure she looked like a country hick, but oh well, she was a country hick, and her mouth just wouldn’t stay shut.

It took her a long time to notice that the buildings she was now wandering among were actually the back alleys of Canterlot. Even the alleyways looked nice. But it was time to face reality: she was lost.

She ran up to the first pony she saw, a red pegasus shuffling around in a pile of garbage.

“’Scuse me, mister,” she said, “can you tell me how to get to the Cutie Mark Bureau?”

The red pegasus looked at her and blinked, then hastily shifted his gaze to the ground in front of him. “You… who are… what are you doing here?”

“Can you answer the question or not?”Apple Bloom said, impatient.

“We-ell,” the pegasus said, drawing out the word, “I… could take you there, but, um, are you sure you want me to?”

“Course!” Apple Bloom said. “Why would Ah be asking you if Ah didn’t want you to take me? Lead the way to destiny!” She struck a dramatic pose, pointing down the street.

“Well, I guess… I-I mean, if you’re sure that’s okay,” the red pegasus whispered.

He lead her to a more main street.

“Where are all the ponies?” Apple Bloom asked.

“Hiding,” the red pegasus whispered.

Apple Bloom turned in time to catch a pink earth pony yanking her filly indoors and shutting the door. “Hiding from what?”

The red pegasus just sighed. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Suddenly another pegasus picked Apple Bloom up and carried her into the air.

“Hey! Help! Ah’m being foalnapped!” Apple Bloom shrieked.

The pegasus set her on the roof of a nearby building. “Calm down, ma’am. We know. We have the situation under control.”

Apple Bloom gaped at her captor, who turned out to be a member of the royal guard. “Huh?”

“It’s Celestia’s policy of allowing murderers to roam free because supposedly their cutie mark warns other ponies of their intentions beforehoof. It just creates more work for the guard,” he sighed.

“Hey, you!” A female voice shouted below.

Apple Bloom peered over the edge of the roof and saw a gray earth pony with a bright golden mane and sunglasses approach the red pegasus. She looked oddly familiar.

“I don’t appreciate you and those who share your Mark running amok throughout my town,” the gray mare said in an oddly familiar voice, “but I was willing to tolerate your presence, for the sake of my princess, as long as you laid low. But clearly you can’t restrain yourself, can you? Do we have to resort to more drastic punishments?”

The red pegasus’ reply was unintelligible from Apple Bloom’s position.

“What are you saying?” The gray mare snapped. “Do you dare doubt our justice system? We were more than generous with you, and now you are abusing our kindness to you, you parasprite.”

Apple Bloom gasped at such naughty language. Foals who called other foals parasprites were suspended from school for a week in Ponyville, though Apple Bloom suspected that was partially motivated by their teacher's desire to cut down class sizes to make her job easier.

“Hey!” she screamed. “He wasn’t foalnapping me! Ah asked him to take me somewhere because Ah’m new in town!”

The gray mare looked up. “Don’t try to defend this ruffian. He deserves what he will get.”

“No!” Apple Bloom leapt off the roof.

In retrospect, she thought as she spun towards the ground headfirst, this was not one of her better ideas.

The red pegasus quickly launched into the air and caught her gently, using just the right speed to first slow then stop her descent.

Apple Bloom took a moment to recover from shock, then shouted, “See! This here pony is one of the good guys! Your soldier didn’t even do anything to save me!”

The guard pony tried to look invisible.

“Put that filly down now,” the gray mare shouted.

“Yes ma’am, yes ma’am,” the pegasus stammered, setting Apple Bloom on the ground. “G-go home, little filly.”

“Ah’m not going home,” Apple Bloom insisted. “Ah’m going to the Cutie Mark Bureau, and you are gonna guide me there, no matter what that gray mare…” Apple Bloom got her first close up look at the gray earth pony, and saw that her cutie mark was a magnifying glass. “Ruby?”she asked.

The gray mare took off her sunglasses. “Yes?”

Apple Bloom stammered, “Y-you’re dead!”

Ruby looked confused, then shook her head and put her shades back on. “I think you must be thinking of somepony else.” She waved her hoof. “All right, kid, it’s your funeral if you want to trust this creep, but don’t worry. We’ll be watching.” She strode away regally.

Apple Bloom watched her go, marveling at how powerful she looked without needing a crown or a fancy outfit. She wondered if she could walk like that.

She turned back to the red pegasus. “So, mister, what’s your name anyways? You just saved my life, so Ah figure Ah oughta know.”

The red pegasus’ eyes darted around. “Well, most ponies call me Shifty Gaze.”

“No shocker, I guess,” Apple Bloom said, trying to follow where the pegasus was looking. The effort nearly made her cross-eyed. “But what should Ah call you?”

“Well,” the pegasus said, smiling slightly, “I guess… I guess, if you want, you could call me… Autumnshy.”

“Autumnshy, huh? Okay. My name’s Apple Bloom.” She shook his hoof.

“Have you, um… have you even noticed my cutie mark yet?” he asked as they started walking again.

“Huh what?” Apple Bloom checked his flank. “Oh, huh. Bloody knife. Ah just saw a knife and assumed you made salads or something, pretty silly huh? Okay, off to get my cutie mark. Don’t feel offended if Ah don’t want to pick yours, huh? Ah mean, why do you pick cutie marks like that? Applejack says it just makes the ponies who have them feel miserable.”

“We don’t choose them,” Autumnshy whispered.

Apple Bloom didn’t really hear him and kept on talking. “Applejack used to give food to this one pony with a cutie mark like that. She said we can’t ever hope for these ponies to change if we never show them love. But the other ponies put a stop to that, ‘specially Fluttershy, who said that it was endangering all the animals as well as the ponies to let murderers feel welcome at our town. Who’da thought that little pegasus had it in her to be so outraged?”

“You know Fluttershy?” Autumnshy asked. “How- how is she?”

“Hmm? Oh, well, okay Ah guess. Has a house full of animals, so she’s pretty happy.”

Autumnshy smiled. “Well, she would be.”

“Oh, speaking of which, you hungry?” Apple Bloom stopped and pulled a roll out of her lunch sack. “Here.”

Autumnshy stared at the roll in disbelief for a few seconds. Then the roll disappeared so fast it was like Autumnshy had inhaled it.

“Woah!” Apple Bloom said. “And Applejack says Ah eat fast. Well, all the better; Ah want to get to the beaurau fast.” She scampered down the street.

“Um, it’s that way,” Autumnshy muttered, pointing down a side street.

***

Blueblood had been staring at the same form for ten minutes and he still hadn’t filled in a single blank.

This had never happened to him before. Usually he threw himself into paperwork with a passion. It was the thing he enjoyed more than anything, although Celestia didn’t seem to understand that. It was… it was…

…his talent.

Celestia had been right. She’d spoon-fed him cutie mark propaganda, and he’d joyfully swallowed the poisonous ideas and begged for more. But the sudden truth that had been forced down his throat, to continue the metaphor, was reacting badly for somepony who’d lived on a constant diet of lies, and now he literally felt ill. He had no idea how he’d keep anypony from noticing. The only reason his secretary hadn’t noticed was because she wasn’t in the office yet; she had a personal vendetta against arriving for work any earlier than 9 o’clock and leaving any later than 5 o’clock, and Celestia was tired of trying to replace Blueblood’s secretaries and never reproached her for this.

Somepony knocked at the door. Blueblood braced himself. Try and act normal, he thought. What was normal? How could he tell if he was being normal?

“Hello?” He said softly, with the vague hope that they might think he wasn’t in his office.

Then he realized that he could very well have pretended he wasn’t in his office and gotten away with it. The beaurau wasn’t supposed to open until 9. He felt like banging his head on his desk.

The door burst open and a little yellow filly bounced into the room, her pink bow flapping with each bounce. “Hay, there, mister, where do Ah go to get a leadership cutie mark?”

Her Southern accent reminded Blueblood of Twinkleshine. Of course. Why hadn’t he thought of Twinkleshine before? She would know what to do.

Could he tell Twinkleshine the truth? Or would she just think he was making it up?

The little filly waved a hoof in front of his face. “Hey, mister! You asleep or something? Ah need to know what Ah need to know to get a leadership cutie mark!”

“S-sorry,” Prince Blueblood said, pulling the appropriate form out of a drawer. “Er, I’ll need your parent or guardian’s permission before I can let you take the test.”

“My parents are both dead,” the filly said matter-of-factly, as if she was explaining she wasn’t a griffon.

“Well, then, uh, who is your legal guardian?” Blueblood said, a bit unnerved by her casual tone.

“Oh, dang it… uh, hold on a second!” the filly ran out of the room.

A moment later she came back, shoving a reluctant red pegasus into the room. “Will he do?” she asked.

The pegasus instantly stared at the floor and backed off. “I-I’m sorry, she dragged me here, please don’t call the guards, please, I’ll just leave you alone now…”

“If you don’t act as my legal guardian, Ah won’t give you anymore food!” the filly shouted at him.

That made the pegasus hesitate for a moment. “You… were going to give me more food?” he asked.

“Not anymore,” the filly said.

The pegasus looked up at Blueblood briefly. “I-I can’t,” he sighed.

“No, wait, don’t leave,” said Blueblood.

The pegasus stared at Blueblood in surprise, before realizing what he was doing and shifting his gaze to a picture on the wall instead.

Blueblood hadn’t realized he was about to say that. The words had just spilled out.

“I-I mean,” he said, “um, are you this filly’s legal guardian? Because, you could, you know, sign this form for her if you are. I mean, um, there’s nothing that prevents you from signing just because you are a convicted felon.” Blueblood felt stupid. He sounded like… well, the red pegasus.

The pegasus continually looked from Blueblood to the floor. Then he whispered, “What has happened?”

Blueblood wanted to kick himself. So much for acting like everything is normal. But the universe would decide to send the red pegasus in as his first test for normalcy. The way he saw it, what was normal for him was to… make this pegasus’ life even more miserable. It had been one thing to treat the red pegasus like a threat when Blueblood had thought he was a murderer, but now that he knew that the knife cutie mark meant nothing… now it felt wrong. No, now it was wrong.

But he didn’t say anything. He couldn’t say anything.

Nopony spoke.

“Hey,” the little filly said. “Ah don’t have all day here. Ah need to get my new cutie mark, okay?”

“Um, well, I’m not actually Apple Bloom’s legal guardian. Actually, I just met her today, so I guess I have no point being here. Um, should I leave?” He stepped back, and then forward.

“Well, um…” Blueblood hesitated. “Listen, uh, mister…”

“Autumnshy,” Apple Bloom filled in. The red pegasus shot her an annoyed look before he shifted his gaze to another area of the room.

“Mister Autumnshy, I just wanted to say… I’m sorry for overreacting yesterday. That was uncalled for, especially since you aren’t a murderer. Um, that’s all I wanted to say. Now, you can leave if you want… I guess…”

Autumnshy closed his eyes.

“Something wrong?” Apple Bloom asked.

“N-nothing,” Autumnshy said. “H-how… Why are you…”

He took a deep breath. “I just can’t get over this, I mean, so many ponies, they just look at me and run, or call the guards, and you- you understand cutie marks better than anypony else, and… and… I can’t believe you believe me. I just… thank you.” He took Blueblood’s front hoof in both of his. “I can’t believe, knowing what you know, that you’d do this just to make me happy.”

“Y-yeah,” Blueblood said. “No, no. No! I’m not nice, okay, and I don’t want you to be happy. No, I do. I mean- stop thanking me. Please, I can’t help it. I just… can’t… take it!”

Blueblood slammed his head on his desk.

“Hey, am Ah gonna get a leadership cutie mark or not?” Apple Bloom demanded.

“Are you okay?” Autumnshy asked, rubbing his hoof on Blueblood’s head.

“Cutie marks are fake,” Blueblood mumbled.

“What?” said Autumnshy.

“Cutie marks are fake!” Blueblood shouted, throwing his head up and flinging Autumnshy’s hoof into his face.

“Ow,” Autumnshy whispered.

“Oh, gosh,” Apple Bloom said, gaping at Autumnshy. “Even your cries of pain are cute-sounding. Are murderers supposed to be so feminine?”

“Cutie marks are fake,” Blueblood repeated, in a daze. How the hay was he so incompetent that he just spat out the truth as soon as somepony was around to spit it out to? Celestia was right about him.

“What did you say?” Autumnshy asked.

“Cutie marks are fake.”

“Huh?” said Apple Bloom. “What, we’ve got counterfeiters on the loose again?”

“No,” Blueblood said. “All cutie marks are fake. Useless. They don’t mean anything. They don’t affect our minds or our bodies or anything. They’re just a picture.”

There was a long pause.

“What?” Autumnshy whispered.

“Ah’ve been lied to! This ain’t funny! Ah want to complain!” Apple Bloom announced.

Blueblood rested his head in his hooves. “How do you think I feel? My job is to give people these stupid pictures and make sure they’re happy with them. I see ponies all day… ponies who think these pictures are important… and I’ve been telling them what they believed…”

Tears formed in Blueblood’s eyes. Dang it, he thought. Celestia must hate me now.

Autumnshy hugged Blueblood.

Blueblood gave a little start.

“Shh,” Autumnshy whispered. “It’ll be okay, you’ve just had a hard day. Just calm down…”

After a while, Blueblood wiped his tears away.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Autumnshy asked.

Blueblood sighed. “Sure.”

***

“Sheesh, and everypony always says Celestia is the good princess,” Apple Bloom said. “Makes me wonder what happened with her so called ‘evil sister’ Nightmare Moon a while back…”

“I don’t know,” Blueblood said. “I really don’t know anything anymore…”

“So… what are you going to do now?” Autumnshy whispered.

Blueblood sighed again. “Oh, I don’t know. Try to act like everything is normal, I guess…”

“Like hay that’s gonna work,” Apple Bloom said. “Not when you blurted out everything to the first ponies you saw.”

“I know that,” Blueblood said. “But what am I supposed to do? I can’t change the system.”

Apple Bloom brightened. “Why the hay not?”

“Huh?” said both stallions at the same time.

“Ah know what we’re gonna do!” Apple Bloom shouted.

“We?” said Autumnshy.

“We’re gonna overthrow the alicorn sisters and start our own kingdom!”

Nopony spoke for a moment. Then Blueblood laughed nervously.

“That’s very… cute of you, young filly. I dare say you can do that.”

“No you don’t. You’re just saying that because you think fillies’ shouldn’t have their self-esteem damaged. But Ah don’t care; Ah’m gonna do it anyway. Come on, let’s get moving!”

She trotted out the door, then came back after a moment.

“Why the hay aren’t you following?” she asked. “We can’t overthrow the alicorn sisters from this teeny weaponless office! Come on, we gotta get reinforcements!”

“From where?” Blueblood asked. “You can’t just walk through the street, announce your intention to overthrow Princess Celestia, and expect anything to happen other than getting arrested!”

“Well, can you guys think of anypony who would help? Doesn’t Shifty Gaze know anypony?”

Autumnshy looked around the room for a moment.

“I thought you had a bunch of partners to help you with your various heists,” Blueblood said.

“Hey. Hey, you’re right. I do know someponies who’d help.” Autumnshy smiled.

Blueblood stood up. “Come to think of it, there’s somepony I’d at least like to talk to…”

“See?” Apple Bloom said. “Once we add your friends to my reinforcements, we’ll be ready in no time!”

“What reinforcements?” Blueblood asked. “You can’t possibly know a group of ponies who’d be ready and willing to join something like this on short notice.”

“Ah know someponies who don’t like cutie marks and are pretty good fighters,” Apple Bloom said, a malicious grin on her face. “Ah’ve got a village full of ‘em.”

Chapter 5

Blueblood left the building and looked over his shoulder. He was sure everypony who saw him would somehow know he was now involved in a conspiracy to overthrow his mom. Even though he was now wearing his magical disguise that he always had on when he went to see Twinkleshine.

Though, admittedly, having a red pegasus with a bloody knife for a cutie mark walking with him would not improve his image to the random populace, but he didn’t think he could leave Apple Bloom and Autumnshy alone. He thought they needed to meet Twinkleshine too… for some reason.

He had no idea why he was going along with this little rebellion, and if he paused to think a moment he instantly realized how ridiculous it was. But somehow he didn’t feel any reason to stop doing it… and anyways, Apple Bloom was right. He couldn’t expect things to go on like normal now that he knew about cutie marks. He just couldn’t shut up and hide the truth.

He was pathetic. He was aware of that. And now his patheticness was leading him to be suicidal. But somehow he couldn’t make himself care. He felt so… removed from all these events, as though this was just a book he was reading and not what was actually happening to him, as though at some point he would stop reading the book and then his life would be normal again.

Some part of him knew that wasn’t the case, but he ignored it.

He hadn’t even reached the café before he realized something was wrong. Ponies were crowded around in a curious mass. Guard pegasi hovered around in a cloud in the midst of other curious civilian pegasi.

“All right, official detective coming through!” a gray mare shouted, holding up a badge and somehow making her way through the tight crowd with just three legs. “Well, my precious guard ponies, what do you have here?”

A pony that Blueblood couldn’t see laughed nervously. “Why, nothing. Ah’m just enjoying a sandwich. Ah hope Ah’m not in trouble.”

It was Twinkleshine. Blueblood felt cold.

“Regret to inform you that you are, in fact, in trouble, ma’am,” said the gray mare. “More trouble than you know. We’re on to your secrets, your highness.”

Twinkleshine paused. “Your highness? Why are you saying that? Ah’m not the princess.”

“Not the princess, no, but a queen. Queen Chrysalis, I presume.”

“Who?”

“Queen of the changelings.”

The crowd gasped.

So did Blueblood, so, he reflected, he fit right in. A changeling? More than that, the queen of the changelings? And he ate dinner with her at least once a week! Why was a changeling- more than that, the queen of the changelings- leading him on like that? What purpose did that serve? Changelings fed on love, didn’t they? Was Blueblood just especially loving or something? He sort of doubted that Or… was there a more nefarious reason? Everypony knew that changelings couldn’t be trusted.

Well… actually… Blueblood wasn’t sure anymore. He wasn’t sure about anything anymore.

“So, Queen Chrysalis, it appears we finally found you,” the gray mare continued. “You must have known your reign of terror wouldn’t last. So are you ready to return to the Everfree Forest?”

“You have no proof,” Twinkleshine said, standing up. Blueblood saw her head poke into view briefly.

“Oh, no,” the gray mare said. “I don’t need proof. I have this.”

Blueblood couldn’t see anything, but the ponies in the front of the crowd and the pegasi flying above the crowd gasped.

“What is it?” an annoyed stallion standing near Blueblood demanded. “I can’t see a thing!”

“It’s the Wand Of Everfree Summoning,” a pony cried.

“And as you will soon find out,” the gray mare said, “it also works in reverse and becomes the Wand of Everfree Banishing. Obviously, if you aren’t a changeling, it will have no effect. But, judging from that little bead of sweat on your brow, you most certainly are a changeling.”

The gray mare rose the wand dramatically above her head. “Prepare for banishment, you parasprite!”

“No!” Twinkleshine shouted.

“Hay!” The annoyed stallion standing next to Blueblood said, pointing at him. “This pony ate dinner with Queen Chrysalis all the time. I saw them together.”

Blueblood tried to scoot away, but a couple of ponies grabbed him. “Banish him too! He’s one of them!” they shouted.

“No I’m not!” Blueblood shouted. “I-I’m… I’m…”

Somehow, he couldn’t spit his name out. He couldn’t make himself save his own life.

Autumnshy had a horrified look on his face, but clearly didn’t think that his word would be worth much in a frantic crowd. Apple Bloom was sighing and smacking her forehead.

Blueblood was passed from pony to pony until he was thrown in the little clearing in the center where Celestia’s head detective, Ruby, stood next to Twinkleshine. Twinkleshine stared at Blueblood in horror and shook her head, as if trying to persuade herself that he was an illusion.

“Two changelings at one go,” Ruby said smugly. “I should get a raise.”

She raised the wand above her head again and chanted,

“Fly over mountains, meadows and seas,

“To a land full of monsters beneath deadly trees.

“Isn’t this how you want it to be?

“Away from my sun, you are Everfree.”

Violet light surrounded Blueblood and Twinkleshine. Then they were launched into the air as though flung.

They soared over Canterlot, which got smaller and smaller as they traveled up into the blue. It was very beautiful up there, but Blueblood couldn’t appreciate it.

He turned to Twinkleshine. She was surrounded by a lavender fireball, but she didn’t seem to be in pain. She turned to Blueblood, tears in her eyes, and grabbed his hoof. She smiled slightly.

“My prince,” she whispered.

Then she kicked him hard.

Blueblood gasped as he spun away from Twinkleshine. The dark patch on the ground that was the Everfree Forest filled his vision as he plummeted towards the ground. He closed his eyes.

SPLAT.

Blueblood opened his eyes. He had landed in some soft mud. Judging from the pain in his legs, sides, and head, he had broken something, but he wasn’t entirely sure what. He lay his head back in the mud and wished it would stop.

Then he realized that the sun was still shining.

He lifted his head and looked around a bit. The Everfree Forest was within his range of vision, but he wasn’t inside it. He was lying in a patch of mud. A barn was nearby.

Blueblood laughed. It hurt to laugh, so he stopped instantly, but he still thought it was funny. He’d fallen short of the Everfree Forest. For once, somepony besides him had failed pathetically. It was just too funny. He could almost understand why Celestia got such a kick out of his failures.

Blueblood lay his head back on the ground and found that with his ear to the ground, the thundering of hooves drowned out everything else, even pain. It was almost soothing.

“Oh my stars, are you all right?”

The thundering hooves stopped.

Blueblood looked up to see an orange earth pony kneeling over him, her face full of concern, panting slightly.

“No, I guess not,” he replied.

“Okay, don’t worry about a thing, sugarcube,” the orange mare said, a note of urgency in her voice. “We’re gonna get you some help, and everything will be just fine, Ah promise. Big Mac!”

A red earth pony appeared in Blueblood’s vision. The earth pony was huge and muscular. He looked like he should have been working in the royal guard.

“Okay, you’ve got the planks… here, help me lift him, and be gentle,” the orange mare said, working her hooves under Blueblood’s front shoulders.

The red earth pony took his back hooves, and together they half lifted and half slid him onto a few planks strapped together as a makeshift stretcher. Blueblood gasped with pain and tried to stop himself from crying. Not in front of strangers, he told himself.

“Shh, it’s okay,” the orange mare said. “We’ll make sure you get proper medical help, no worries. Ah know it must hurt, but it’ll all be over soon. Trust me.”

And Blueblood did, he realized. Maybe because her accent reminded him of Twinkleshine. But there was just something about this mare…

The two ponies lifted the stretcher onto their shoulders and carried him slowly toward the barn.

“Can you talk okay?” the orange earth pony asked.

“S-sure,” Blueblood said. It didn’t hurt to talk; it just felt weird.

“Keep talking, okay?” the orange mare said. “Let us know you’re staying conscious, Ah guess.”

“Um… I don’t know what I’m supposed to talk about,” Blueblood said. “Uh, what’s your name?”

“Applejack, but that ain’t important. Uh, how ‘bout you tell us why you were soaring through the air like a meteor? Did heaven send us a present?”

“Oh, well…” I was mistaken for a changeling and was almost banished to the Everfree Forest somehow didn’t seem like a smart thing to say right now. “Uh, messed up a flying spell I guess…”

“Really? You like flying?”

“Not anymore.”

Applejack laughed. “No, Ah figure not anymore…”

Blueblood sighed. “It’s so hot out here…”

“Huh, feels cool to me, since autumn’s getting started… but then we’re out all the time and are used to hot temperatures. Summer ends late here in Ponyville.”

“Well, I’m inside a lot I guess…” Blueblood said. But the heat just got worse and worse. And unlike the heat from the sun, it wasn’t just the parts of him in the sunlight that got hot; it was everywhere… like a fever.

Suddenly panic gripped him.

“What time is it?” he panted.

“Uh, gee, Ah dunno,” Applejack said. “11 something?”

Blueblood’s throat felt dry. How long had it been since he’d last taken his medicine? Four… five hours?

“Stop, please,” he said, starting to hyperventilate. “I need my medicine…”

“What medicine?” Applejack asked.

“I… um... magic… stuff…” Blueblood had been told the name of the medicine multiple times, but it had been something like ten syllables long and had just gone in one ear and out the other.

“What kind of medicine?” Applejack continued. “For what? What’s your problem?”

“…hot…” Blueblood moaned. “So… hot…”

“Uh, we have an icehouse, if you want some ice…” Applejack said.

“Ice. All of it. So so hot…” Blueblood babbled.

“All right, Big Mac, change of course. To the icehouse, and quickly!”

The ponies trotted, though still slowly and cautiously, towards a wooden door in the ground.

“How much?” Applejack asked, opening the door.

“All of it,” Blueblood moaned.

Applejack blinked at him. “Okay, will you be all right if Ah leave you in here while Ah fetch the doctor?”

“Please,” Blueblood sighed.

The two ponies lowered him onto a block of ice and shut the door. The total darkness was frightening, but Blueblood was more worried about the pain that he knew was coming. He wondered if anypony would be able to hear him screaming.

He flailed out with his hoof and struck a block of ice. He dragged it closer to him with the vague idea of covering himself with it, but it only fell on his nose, which hurt. He nudged it off, and heard a crashing sound as the ice fell on the floor.

How do you prepare yourself for agony?

The only thing his fevered brain latched on was the time he’d heard a street preacher telling people to repent and turn to God before it was too late and they went to hell to be judged by fire, or something like that. It was kind of hard to believe in an eternal God high above the clouds when you had the goddess of Equestria living in your house as your mother.

But, then, if Celestia was a goddess, why would she be bothering with ‘fake’ cutie marks? Why couldn’t she use her god-powers to create working cutie marks? Actually, that bit about being a goddess might well be a lie too. Maybe Celestia wasn’t even immortal.

That was a scary thought. If Celestia died, what would happen to Equestria? They’d be destroyed by Discord and changelings and other Everfree monsters. And their neighbors in the Griffon Empire would eat all the ponies alive. Perhaps there was a reason Celestia didn’t tell her subjects the truth about cutie marks…

But on the other hoof, if Celestia was lying about cutie marks, then maybe… maybe… she was lying about Discord, the changelings, and the griffins too. Though on second thought, it was hard to believe that a freak dragon crossed with half a dozen other animals, a creature that looked like a zombie pony and lived on love while impersonating other ponies, or a lion-eagle hybrid (eek!) would be anything other than evil.

Blueblood had done a good job distracting himself up to this point, but suddenly the fire began.

The ice beneath Blueblood cracked and started melting. His blood felt like lava, his limbs like they were wrapped in red hot iron. He screamed and cried, and his tears turned to steam. He kicked out, smashing ice blocks. If his legs had been broken before, they sure didn’t feel like it now; all he could feel was the fire.

His eyes started burning, and his tears stopped. They just wouldn’t come anymore.

The door opened, flooding the room with light. “Are you okay?” Applejack asked.

Blueblood didn’t answer. He was biting his hoof, half to try and keep himself from screaming and half in hopes that it would somehow stop the pain.

“Oh my gosh,” Applejack said. “No, you ain’t okay. Hold up…”

Thanks for the observation, Blueblood thought. His eyes and limbs stopped burning as much, and he just felt a kind of all-around hot sensation. He started sobbing again.

Applejack came back with a hose, which she blasted Blueblood with. The water turned to steam at first, but eventually the coolness got to Blueblood. It felt so good…

After a while, he was simply a drenched pony in an icehouse. His body temperature seemed normal… or at least, closer to the temperature of a pony and farther from the temperature of the sun.

He hadn’t known it was possible for that to happen. He’d assumed Celestia needed to handle it and that he’d need to take a huge dose of medicine instantly or risk it coming back.

“Th-thanks,” he stammered, wiping tears from his eyes and wet mane from his face. “Thank you. I think… I think you can turn off the water.”

Applejack dropped the hose and ran out of Blueblood’s sight. The water stopped.

Blueblood still felt kind of hot, but only like he had a fever. He looked around the room. All the ice had melted and was vanishing down a drain in the floor.

“Sorry about your ice,” he muttered.

“Aw, hay, it’s not that important,” Applejack said. “Are you okay?”

Blueblood smiled shakily. “Yeah… yeah, you know what? I am, actually.” He lay down on the floor and laughed weakly.

“Anything Ah can help with?” Applejack asked. “Anything you need?”

Blueblood debated whether or not he should ask her to contact Celestia. But he could always ask that later, right?

“Maybe you’d like to get inside?” Applejack asked.

“O-okay,” Blueblood said, slowly getting to his hooves. “Do you have any-”

“Don’t try to walk!” Applejack shouted. “We’ll help you up!”

“Why…?” And then Blueblood remembered that his legs had been broken a few minutes ago. “Oh, well, actually… Actually, my legs are fine.” He blinked with surprise. “In fact, everything is fine. Wow… even my back legs.” All the acid damage had just vanished. Acid damage couldn’t even be healed with magic. “I’m just a bit stiff, I guess.”

“Don’t try and be tough, now,” Applejack cautioned.

“Oh, I’m not, I’m not. I figure any dignity I had went out the door a minute ago…”

“Don’t worry about that, sugarcube. My opinion of you ain’t changing.”

“Then it must have been awfully low to begin with…”

“No. You’re just a pony who needs help. No shame in that. Heaven knows Ah had the hardest time accepting help from other ponies before…” She smacked her face with her hoof. “Oh, dang it. Ah forgot, Ah invited some friends to do the harvesting while Big Mac and Ah watered the fields over here. Ah shouldn’t leave them hanging… tell you what, how about Ah get you set up at the house with a bed and whatever you need, and then Ah’ll see to my friends. Work for you?”

“Okay…”

Blueblood half walked and half hobbled after Applejack towards the farmhouse. She mostly walked ahead, but towards the end she fell back and kept pace besides him.

Then she gasped. “Oh- my- stars!”

“What?” said Blueblood.

“You’re- you’re an alicorn?”

“What?” Blueblood blinked. “No! Wait, I haven’t suddenly sprouted wings, have I?” he craned his neck to look over his shoulder.

“No-no,” Applejack said, putting out a hoof to stop Blueblood. She stood on her hind legs and ran her hoof along Blueblood’s shoulder blades. “Ah know you can’t exactly see your own back…”

“Hold on a sec,” said Blueblood. He could create a spell to project his sense of vision as easily as he could project his sense of hearing; he just usually didn’t do that because it was more disorienting. So he closed his eyes before casting the spell, then moved the magical ball that was, for all intents and purposes, an extra eye, around his body to take a look at his back. “Okay, tell me what I’m looking at.”

“See the scars?” Applejack asked, tracing a pattern on his back. “That’d be where your wings were.”

She was right. Two white scars, kind of curved, were on Blueblood’s back. He hadn’t noticed them before, nor would anypony else have noticed them- they wouldn’t have shown up on Blueblood’s usual white coat, but against a tan background they were just barely visible.

But why would he not have his wings? Who could possibly have gotten into the castle to cut them off? Wouldn’t Celestia have stopped them? And wouldn’t she have told him that he used to have them?

Unless…

No, why would Celestia have cut off his wings? Celestia only did mean things for comedic payback, and him just plain not having wings wasn’t funny. Not even in Celestia’s sense of the word. It just… didn’t make sense.

“Wow,” was all Blueblood could say. “Are… are you sure that’s what those scars are? They can’t just be from some other injury?”

“We-ell, Ah suppose maybe, it would just be an awful coincidence,” Applejack muttered, starting off for the farmhouse again.

“How do you know what to look for to tell if a pony had wings, anyway?” Blueblood asked.

“Aw, that,” Applejack sighed. “It’s kinda a sad story…”

“Go on,” Blueblood said. “I want to hear. I mean, if you don’t mind.”

“No, Ah guess not…” Applejack took a deep breath. “Ah had a pegasus for a cousin- he was adopted- who lived with my rich aunt and uncle in Manehattan. He just loved flying. Ah rarely saw him with his hooves on the ground. He wanted to be a stunt flyer when he grew up. Ah was living with said aunt and uncle at the time, and he’d tried living at the farm- sorta a trading places thing, except his parents demanded he come home before Ah was ready to trade back, so then we just both lived in the city for a while, but he really loved it at the farm. Still wanted to go for stunt flying, though… until the day we both were chosen by our cutie marks, and we both were destined to be farmers. Am Ah boring you?”

“No, keep going.” They were almost at the farm house.

“Okay, well… anyway, so we were gonna be apple farmers. Which was all well and good, but it seemed like we’d have to go work on one of Celestia’s private farms, not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just that we both really liked the farm I grew up at, but that one had lost a whole lot of money- parasprite attack- and we didn’t have enough money to rebuild, so it looked like it’d have to close down… and then, one day, my cousin comes up to me with a whole bunch of money, and said he’d like to help rebuild the farm. Ah asked where he’d got the money, and he showed me his scars… scars like yours. He’d sold his wings on the black market.” Applejack was clearly trying not to cry at this point. “He just said… said it didn’t matter anymore, his cutie mark wasn’t in flying, it was in farming, and he didn’t need wings to farm. It… Ah just… can’t get over it.” Applejack swiped a hoof across her eyes.

“What- what happened to him? Does he work here?”

“Nah. We tried to make it work, but… he knew he wasn’t helping us enough for the money it cost to keep him, so he left to work on Celestia’s farms. But he’s happy enough, knowing that our farm is here, and that he’s fulfilling the destiny his cutie mark showed him. What more could he ask for?”

Blueblood felt ill again.

Chapter 6

“Here you go,” Applejack said, pulling a few pillows out of a cabinet. “We have a bunch of guest beds upstairs, if you’d rather, but Ah’d like you to be close to me… just in case.”

“Thanks,” Blueblood said, lying down on the couch.

“How are you, then?”

“Still a bit hot… but not like I’m going to burst into flames. Yet, I mean.”

“Why? Do you expect it to happen again?”

“That’s usually how it works, yes.” Which was why he’d had to do nothing but rest in a case of icy lead for a week after each prior incident. The only comfort he’d had was Celestia’s constant attention and devotion, and that had been enough. “I’ll… do my best not to set your couch on fire. Actually, maybe I should leave…”

“Who cares about the couch?” Applejack said. “Ah’d rather make sure you’re safe. Though Ah’ll admit Ah appreciate your concern.”

“You met me ten minutes ago and all I’ve done was make a huge hole in your field and destroy all your ice,” Blueblood almost shouted. “Why do you care?” His eyes grew wide. “You… who are you? This is a trick, isn’t it?”

“What?” said Applejack.

“You’re working with Celestia, or you might even be Celestia in disguise, and I don’t care what you say, I’m not as gullible as you think I am, and none of this was funny. At all.” Blueblood hid his head under one of the pillows, wondering how much of this entire incident was a prank. The part about him actually having had wings? The part about him being banished to the Everfree Forest? The part about Twinkleshine being a changeling? Or the entire bit about cutie marks?

If he could have his choice, what would he want to be false?

Probably the whole thing.

But why did the thought that everything that happened today and yesterday was actually a lie make him feel like crying?

“Sorry, sugarcube… what are you talking about?” Applejack said.

“You’re working for Celestia,” Blueblood whined.

“No, no, that was my cousin. Remember? Or… does… your memory get affected when you do that heat thingy?”

“No, look,” Blueblood said, whipping the pillow off his head and leaping to his hooves. I’ll prove it to you!” Blueblood ran through all the things Celestia had told him about spotting deceptions. “First, how likely was it that that particular felon would happen to walk into my office the day after, at such an inopportune time? Obviously a set-up, right? And that whole thing with Twinkleshine- completely random. And most of all, no real pony would be acting like you. I mean, you’re taking on the form of a poor pony, but you didn’t even think twice before you told me it was okay that I destroyed all your ice and don’t care about the couch. Nopony acts like that. It just makes no sense. And then that thing about the wings- you have no reason to cut off my wings, just like you had no reason to make Shining Armor the acting prince instead of me. And then, you said ‘your’ cousin was a pegasus with no wings working on Celestia’s farm, but why would Celestia’s farm want to hire a pony like that? He has no earth pony magic to help the trees, but he has no wings to help with the weather. So, this is all a fake.” He sat up and smiled. “Are you proud of me, Mom?”

Applejack blinked.

“Oh, uh, sorry, I just assumed you were a disguised Celestia… can you take me to my mom now?”

“Wh-wh-what?” Applejack said. “Wh-who is your mom?”

Blueblood blinked. “Celestia, of course.” He took off his magical disguise. “You must know I’m the prince, right? Since you are in on this, obviously, since you’re obviously acting, right? And you have to work on that, because no real pony would act so nonchalant about me destroying stuff. Especially in these times.”

Applejack just gaped.

“Uh, yeah, I-I know Celestia probably told you I’m really gullible, and, well, I just don’t know why this suddenly became so clear to me… heh heh… uh, maybe Mom’s lessons are sticking? …After, uh, twenty years, maybe I’m finally getting the hang of it?”

“Oh-h-hhhh, my starrrrrs,” Applejack moaned.

“Um… uh, was I right?”

“You’re- you’re the prince?” said Applejack.

“Yeah…?” Blueblood said slowly. “Well, uh, actually, no, not technically, I mean, everyone calls me the prince, but actually I’m just the potential future prince, and any actual prince would be Celestia, Luna, or Cadance’s husband if they had one. Which… Cadance will probably have any day now, the way she and Shining Armor are getting along, so, well, there go my chances, but…”

“Ah-ah have the prince in my farmhouse?” Applejack half-shrieked.

“Um. Didn’t you… sign up for that?”

Applejack seemed to be having difficulty breathing, and her eyes were wide open.

Blueblood sat back on the couch and rubbed his forehead. He really thought he’d done a good job there. Celestia must just be trying to throw him off, right. She did that sometimes.

Oh gosh, he felt hot… hotter than before.

“I-I think…” he stammered. “I’m going outside. I-I’ll try not to set any trees on fire, okay?” He raced out the door and tripped over Twilight Sparkle.

“Oh, sorry!” they both exclaimed at once. Blueblood crashed to the ground, but Twilight remained standing.

“Are you okay?” a soft voice asked. Blueblood looked up a saw a yellow pegasus offering him her hoof. Her blue eyes shone with concern.

“I’m perfectly all-” Blueblood tensed up and writhed with pain.

“Oh my!” another pony cried.

“What’s wrong?” the yellow pegasus said.

“He needs water,” Applejacks’ strong voice rang out above the confused pony voices. “Rainbow, fetch me that hose. Fast.”

“No, he doesn’t need water,” Twilight said. “He needs the Princess Celestia’s help. Rainbow, fetch Spike. Fast.”

“I can’t fetch both!” Rainbow snapped.

“Fetch the hose! It’s faster!” Applejack shouted.

“No, fetch Spike and I’ll fetch the hose!” Twilight cried.

“Fine, fetching Spike! No arguments! Bye!” A blue blur with a rainbow trail crossed Blueblood’s range of vision, and a cool breeze ruffled his hair.

“Okay, here’s the hose,” Twilight said. “See how fast that was? Now what the heck do you plan to with it?”

“I’m going to spray him with it,” Applejack said, taking the hose in her mouth.

“I don’t think you understand the situation,” Twilight said. “Blueblood suffers from Physiomagical Radial Inversion, and you can’t cure that with a stupid garden hose!”

“It wrkd b’fre,” Applejack muttered with a mouthful of hose.

Blueblood tried to just concentrate on breathing as he dug his hooves into the ground and squeezed his eyes shut. Please let this be quick… he prayed.

Applejack blasted him with the hose. The cold water made him cry out with shock, but in a moment he was glad for it. It made his pain more tolerable, though he still fought to keep tears back.

“That’s just a temporary fix!” Twilight Sparkle insisted. “A mere home remedy, a trick to ease pain. It won’t save all of Ponyville from turning into a firey crater when his symptoms increase!”

“What?” said Blueblood.

“Twilight, isn’t that a bit of an exaggeration?” the white unicorn said. “How could a single unicorn wield so much power? And haven’t you always said the prince is an underpowered and, er, useless, um… never mind…”

“Physiomagical Radial Inversion magnifies the power of the sufferer by multiple orders of magnitude,” Twilight said.

The cold water wasn’t enough. Now it felt like putting water on a sunburn: Blueblood thought it would be soothing, so his subconscious expectations did a bit of the work, but ultimately it just stung.

Firey crater? he thought, whimpering slightly. Celestia, please…!

Celestia claimed she could hear the prayers of her faithful subjects, but had told Blueblood that he didn’t count because he was her son. Maybe she made that up, maybe she didn’t, but it had never worked for Blueblood.

“Ice?” he whined.

“Twilight,” Applejack said, throwing the hose down, “this ain’t working. Don’t you have some kind of ice spell or something to help him until… whatever more permanent cure you want is available?”

Twilight sighed. “Whatever.” She cast a spell and put a block of ice around Blueblood.

It felt so good.

Blueblood could tell the other ponies were still talking, but he could no longer hear them. He thought he saw a rainbow flash and wondered if that meant Rainbow was back, but other than that he could hardly see anything. Nor did he much care right now; he just wanted to relax in his pleasantly cool prison.

Until it started melting…

Thankfully, the ice and his fever seemed to be vanishing at about the same rate, and when he found himself on the grass, gasping for air, he also felt mostly okay. He also felt numb all over, but his senses, from hearing to seeing to feeling, were returning gradually.

“How the hay were you breathing?” Applejack demanded.

Blueblood just shook his head.

“D’oh, that’s not important,” Applejack said. “You okay?”

“Still hot, but yes.” Blueblood sat up, and then…

…it started.

Blueblood would struggle to explain what happened next for years to come. The best he could do was that, you know how some ponies talk about having a sixth sense? Well, in regards to this imaginary sixth sense, it was like Blueblood had been blind, and now all of a sudden he could see- all at once. It was overwhelming and he didn’t understand any of it, anymore than a blind pony suddenly understands what the strange shapes he’s suddenly become aware of represent.

It was dizzying. All sorts of new information was being pumped into his brain, and all in a foreign language.

A blind pony who suddenly received sight would probably close his eyes, but Blueblood didn’t quite understand how to turn this sense off yet. So he just closed his eyes, plugged his ears, and curled up into a ball. That didn’t stop the information from coming anymore than closing your eyes stops your sense of hearing, and in the same way that hearing allows you to construct an idea of how things should look, this new sixth sense was still constructing a way that things should look or hear. He knew, for example, that somepony was approaching him, and that she was very worried.

And very wounded.

He still didn’t quite understand what the information meant, but his sense seemed to be telling him that this pony was badly hurt.

He reached out to her, and then realized he was somehow touching the pony while keeping both front hooves on his ears. He wondered briefly if he’d now grown extra limbs, but that was all he had time to think about.

Now he was trotting up a set of stairs. Without moving his legs.

Actually, no. He was flying up a set of stairs. Without moving his wings. Which he didn’t have.

Then he started singing to himself. In a female voice.

Blueblood couldn't control any of his actions. It was more like he was now seeing, hearing, and feeling everything somepony else was seeing, hearing, and feeling.

He flew up to a dingy door marked with a number. 419. His apartment number. How did he know that? He didn’t have an apartment. This mare had an apartment. It was her apartment number. The apartment number for the mare whose mind he was invading. This was awkward. How did this even get started?

He/the mare opened the door. Then he/the mare breathed a sigh of relief. It was a very soft and high-pitched sigh. Then, as the mare adjusted a painting on the wall, Blueblood saw that the hooves were yellow. Light yellow.

Oh, he thought, I’m that sweet little pegasus… did he know her name? No, not really…

The yellow pegasus sighed again. Blueblood was overwhelmed with her intense cuteness.

There was a thump.

The yellow pegasus froze. Blueblood could feel her heart thumping.

The yellow pegasus flew up to the rafters and pulled down a frying pan that was hanging there. Then she flew towards the thumping sound, moving only a few inches at a time.

She yanked a door open and shouted.

The pony in the room screamed too.

It was Autumnshy. He was crouched under a kitchen table and looked about ready to die of fright.

“What do you want?” the yellow pegasus demanded, swinging the frying pan threateningly.

“I… I’m sorry, Fluttershy,” Autumnshy whispered. “I wanted to call ahead, but you always tell me… when I do that… that… you tell me I can come any time, and I really… really needed a place… You have no idea what I-”

“I’ve never seen you before in my life,” Fluttershy said.

Autumnshy’s eyes widened and filled with tears. “Wh-wh… what?”

“I don’t know you,” Fluttershy repeated, pointing the frying pan straight at Autumnshy.

Autumnshy crawled out from under the table and flapped his wings a bit, sort of hopping into the air as he headed for Fluttershy. “But- I’m your brother, Fluttershy! Don’t you-”

The frying pan clanged against Autumnshy’s skull.

“Don’t touch me!” Fluttershy shrieked.

Autumnshy slumped on the floor, rubbing his head and sobbing.

“Don’t try and make me pity you, you evil creature!” Fluttershy said. “I know what you are.”

“D-don’t you… remember me?” Autumnshy all but whispered. “I’m Autumnshy.”

“No you aren’t,” Fluttershy said. “My brother, Autumnshy, is a dutiful soldier who serves his country well and is honored by his peers. Because that’s how I raised him. And he says he loves me, and he’d never go against what I’d taught him. Never.”

Autumnshy shook his head. “I’m… I’m so sorry… I’m so so sorry…”

“You murdered my brother,” Fluttershy said. “I can never forgive you.”

Autumnshy looked up, right into Fluttershy’s eyes. “Fluttershy…”

What happened next was weird. Blueblood felt like all the blood suddenly rushed to Fluttershy’s head, that her eyes were suddenly looking at a bright light and bulging out of her head. But his experience with magic told him that this was a commanding spell- that was somehow being cast by a pegasus. Through her eyes instead of her horn.

“Leave this apartment,” Fluttershy said emphatically. “Leave this city. Never come back. Never try to see me again.”

Autumnshy stared, horrified, at Fluttershy throughout the duration of the spell. Then, when Fluttershy’s command spell ended, he slumped to the floor, shaking.

“P-please,” he sobbed, “please, Fluttershy…”

“Go!” Fluttershy shouted.

Autumnshy sighed heavily, then launched into the air and flew out of the room.

The vision seemed to collapse on itself, fading and growing smaller. Blueblood blinked- and found himself looking up at Fluttershy. She was kneeling down over him, feeling his forehead.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Blueblood blinked up at her. “Do… you… have a younger brother?”

Fluttershy stared at him and didn’t say anything.

“Oh, why hasn’t Celestia replied yet?” Twilight wailed.

“It’s hardly been an hour,” Spike said. “Maybe she’s busy. She has a lot to do.”

As though Blueblood had only just stopped becoming cross-eyed, the information from his eyes and this strange new sense were starting to line up. Fluttershy was the terribly scarred pony. And he noticed things about the others too.

Rarity was the flickering, tiny light; Twilight was a blazing red sphere wrapped with a yellow rope, and Applejack…

“Oh- oh wow…” Blueblood said, staring at Applejack.

“Blueblood?” she was saying. “Are you okay?”

“You…” Blueblood tentatively reached out a hoof and stroked Applejack’s mane slowly. “You’re… radiant.”

The dropped jaws of the other ponies were audible.

“Wh-wh…” Applejack stammered, staring at Blueblood in shock.

Blueblood sat down so that he could run both his forehooves through Applejack’s mane. The tie had come loose somehow, and her mane was loose and flowed about her face. But that wasn’t what made her beautiful. If this new sense of his had been the sense of taste, Applejack would be apple pie. If this new sense had been the sense of smell, Applejack would have been a field after a rainstorm. Pleasant, simple, wholesome. That was how Applejack seemed to this new sense.

Overcome with emotion, Blueblood seized one of Applejack’s forehooves in both of his own. “Marry me?”

To Blueblood’s eyes, nothing changed.

To the new sense, Applejack quavered and shrunk back, horrified. Her fear hid everything else and shocked Blueblood to his senses like a slap on the face.

“I-I’m joking,” he said quickly, dropping her hoof. That was Celestia’s one-size-fits-all excuse.

Applejack laughed weakly. “Heh, for a second there, A-ah thought you were serious.” She smiled.

Blueblood smiled back. Her smile made his heart flutter, even as it was sinking.

No, he hadn’t been joking. Not really. But of course the thought of marrying him would give her such horror. Who was he, anyway? A pathetic weak pony. The whole time she’d known him, he’d been too weak to take care of himself, or even stop himself from destroying her property. He was a monster.

A bright light attracted his attention.

A golden chariot descended from the sky, pulled by two pegasus made of flame. In the chariot was Princess Celestia, radiant with brilliant sunlight. Besides her were two attendants, high ranking officials in the CMB. Blueblood didn’t know either one very well, but they were easy to recognize by the heavy gold chains they wore around their necks, with a gold and silver compass rose charm hanging from the chain. The compass rose matched Blueblood’s cutie mark, which had been a good sign. At least that’s what he thought the day he’d gotten his cutie mark. Now it was meaningless.

Celestia descended from the chariot regally. “My dear prince-to-be-”

“Mom!” Prince Blueblood shouted, rushing over for a hug.

Celestia reared up on her hind legs and kicked Blueblood with her front legs, sending him sprawling on the grass. Somepony gasped; maybe Fluttershy.

“Blueblood,” Celestia sighed heavily. “Honestly, it’s bad enough when you act like an infant when we’re alone. Must you behave this way in public?”

Blueblood buried his face in the grass and whimpered. “Sorry.”

Celestia smiled slightly. “I’m sorry, too. That was hasty of me. I just assumed you wouldn’t want to be burned up again after all you’ve been through. Speaking of which…” she ran her front hoof across Blueblood’s forehead, being careful to only touch him with her power-limiting golden shoes. “We should get you to Canterlot Hospital, stat. Don’t worry; soon everything will be fine.” She smiled at Blueblood and petted his mane.

In the same way that just because you look at something doesn’t mean you are tasting it, or just because you listen to something doesn’t mean you see it, so too just because Blueblood had been looking at Celestia this whole time didn’t mean he’d been using his new sense on her. He didn’t quite know how he controlled it. But now he somehow turned it on.

And he saw chains.

Balls, chains, shackles, bindings, ready to strap him down, every muscle, every word, every emotion, every thought, and keep him locked up and never let him go, ever.

Coming from Celestia.

Blueblood screamed.

“What is it?” Celestia asked, drawing back, looking concerned.

His sense suddenly turned off.

It had been so surreal. Blueblood wondered if it had been his imagination, or if it had been the product of a deranged, sick mind. Maybe he really did need help. Now.

“M-mom?” he said softly.

“Yes, dear?”

He was going to ask if they would go home now.

Instead he found himself asking, “What are those guys for?”

“To pull the chariot.”

“No, the other guys.”

“Oh, them?” Celestia gestured to the members of the CMB standing behind her.

“Y-yes.”

“Oh,” Celestia said, shrugging and smiling causally. Blueblood feared that casual smile. “When I realized you were in Ponyville, I knew I had to go and fetch you in pony, and… well… I thought, while I was in the neighborhood, I’d bring a couple of assistants. This town, you see, is in dire need of a cutie mark audit.”

Blueblood could almost hear the Ponyville residents cringing behind him. But he smiled and crawled to Celestia’s hooves on his knees.

“Can I please please stay and watch, please?” he said, assuming a begging posture. “I’ve always wanted to see a cutie mark audit and you never let me and now I especially need to know what they’re like…” he paused and frowned briefly. In the excitement about getting to watch an audit, he’d forgotten what he now knew about cutie marks.

“Wellll….” Celestia smiled slightly. “I suppose it couldn’t do much harm. But,” she held up her hoof, “you need to take your medicine first. And you have to wear a lead suit when you come with us. And you aren’t allowed to say anything. At all. The minute a word slips out of your mouth, you’re going home. And Cadance will look after you until I get back. Which could be a while.”

The thought spending time with Cadance under any circumstances made Blueblood quiver. The thought of Cadance looking after him while he was in a weakened state made him feel like melting into a puddle of pure terror.

“Not a word,” Blueblood said. “Starting now.” He made a zipping motion across his lips.

“Good,” Celestia said. “Now, medicine.”

Author's Note

Why, yes, this is the chapter where I forgot about Apple Bloom's existence. Blueblood was just more fun to write about.

This is where I stopped because I had too many ideas that would require heavy editing of previous bits to implement. If anyone's interested I could have another chapter that sums up the remaining plot... or maybe I could work on it again; I still think it has potential. I'm just not that motivated to at the moment...