//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3 
// Story: The Truth About Cutie Marks 
// by Magic Step 
//------------------------------//

	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.