With the advancement of technology, magic is waning in Equestria and ponies are beginning to earn their cutie marks later and later, sometimes reaching adulthood with a blank flank. In an effort to help ponies know their calling, Princess Twilight Sparkle founds an organization known as the Cutie Mark Bureau as a temporary solution while she searches for a true answer for the phenomenon. The Cutie Mark Bureau, informally known as the CMB, finds a way to inject magic into a pony to create a temporary magical surge large enough to allow a cutie mark to manifest.

The bureau has stood as a shining light in a time of worry, eventually becoming a normal fixture in Equestrian life after standing for nearly a century. However, their latest patient has suspicions that not everything is as bright as everypony else believes it to be.