Pinkie Pie was bouncing all over Ponyville shouting excitedly.
“Block party by the old Gooseberry’s place and you’re all invited!”
“The old Gooseberry’s house?”
“Yeah! They sold it! There’s a new family moving in!”
Pinkie Pie’s welcome to Ponyville parties were always fun, but sometimes they weren’t fun for the newcomers. You might recall Twilight’s mood when she walked into the Library for the first time expecting peace and quiet and ended up hunched over a sink for several minutes slurping water from the faucet to get rid of the taste of hot sauce. And we all know what Cranky Doodle Donkey thought of Pinkie’s welcome wagon. Most of these parties end with the newcomers trying to figure out what the flying fish just happened, but the family of unicorns moving into the Gooseberry’s old house were delighted to enter the town and find a block party in their honour. Pinkie Pie introduced Mr and Mrs Gold to the Royal Taskforce, and when Applejack told Apple Bloom that their young colt didn’t have a cutie mark, she was almost as excited as Pinkie Pie.
Mrs Gold told Apple Bloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle that her son was shy, but when the young unicorn came out of the house, his eager yellow eyes showed no sign of shyness.
“Hi! I’m Gilt Eyes,” he smiled.
“I’m Apple Bloom.”
“I’m Sweetie Belle.”
“And I’m Scootaloo.”
“We’re the Cutie Mark Crusaders!”
Gilt Eyes was delighted. “A club for ponies with no cutie marks? Can I join?”
“You bet!” smiled Apple Bloom.
“We can take you to our headquarters right now if you want,” said Scootaloo.
“Thanks! That’d be great.”
In no time, Gilt Eyes was standing in the middle of the clubhouse, and after Scootaloo was done banging on the drums, Sweetie Belle took the podium.
“Please rise for the revised initiation speech.”
Apple Bloom, Scootaloo and Gilt Eyes were all upstanding, and Sweetie Belle cleared her throat.
“Welcome to the club.”
She raised an eyebrow and looked down the rest of the scroll. There was nothing else written there.
“That’s it?” she asked Scootaloo.
“Yeah. It’s shorter, isn’t it?”
“It’s too short,” frowned Sweetie Belle.
Scootaloo banged her head on the drums. “First it’s too long, now it’s too short. Why don’t you try writing one?”
“Fine. I will,” replied Sweetie Belle before remembering Gilt Eyes was waiting for his cape. “Congratulations Gilt Eyes. You are now an official member of the Cutie Mark Crusaders.”
When Sweetie Belle gave Gilt Eyes his cape and he put it on, Apple Bloom could swear she saw a tear in his eye.
“I wish there were more ponies like you in Walton on the Neighs,” he said, marvelling at his cape.
Apple Bloom had a hunch. “You had a bully problem in your old home, didn’t you?”
“Not just me,” Gilt Eyes was still smiling, but he sounded solemn. “My best friend Bronze Medal and I had to deal with the exact opposite of this club. In Walton on the Neighs, all the little ponies who got their cutie marks have their own club. No blank flanks allowed. For the longest time, me and Bronze had all kinds of tricks played on us. Now he’s on his own.”
“You know,” said Apple Bloom, “Bronze Medal can join up. My cousin Babs Seed from out of town is a member. She runs the Manehattan branch of the Cutie Mark Crusaders.”
Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle liked this idea. “We could make Bronze Medal the head of our Walton on the Neighs branch.”
“Hmm. He’d be the only one in school,” said Gilt Eyes, “but I’m going to be visiting him once a month. We could do our club activities together.”
So Gilt Eyes and his new friends went back to the block party to write a letter to Bronze Medal. Then they were about to dive into the fresh mound of cakes Pinkie Pie had just brought when Gilt Eyes had his first encounter with Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon.
“Oh, no. Not another one,” Diamond Tiara groaned in a snobby manner. “This problem’s getting serious, Silver Spoon.”
“You gotta stop recruiting,” sneered Silver Spoon. “You’re polluting Ponyville with your blankness.”
Their laughter was interrupted by a loud splat. Apple Bloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle were surprised.
“You can levitate things?” asked Sweetie Belle.
“Yeah, I figured it out a little while ago,” smirked Gilt Eyes, admiring his handiwork.
Silver Spoon brushed the chocolate icing off her glasses and gave Gilt Eyes a look of absolute hatred.
“What? You’re Silver Spoon, aren’t you? Who doesn’t like a spoonful of cake?” laughed Gilt Eyes.
Unfortunately for Gilt Eyes, his parents found out he’d thrown cake at those two fillies and ordered him to go into the house. He was unable to enjoy the rest of the party, but his parents allowed Apple Bloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle to accompany him in his room.
“This is great,” he said. “The horseshoe’s on the other hoof now.”
“What horseshoe?” asked Sweetie Belle, looking with confusion at Gilt Eye’s horseshoe-free hooves.
They ignored her.
“How’d I do?” asked Gilt Eyes. “I probably could have been more subtle, but I can work on that.”
“What are you talking about?” Scootaloo asked. “We don’t go around pranking ponies who have their cutie marks.”
Gilt Eyes gave his head a bit of a shake. “You don’t?”
“No. We formed this club to explore as many possibilities as we can,” said Apple Bloom.
“We’re trying to find our own special talents so we can earn our cutie marks,” said Sweetie Belle. “We’re not like that club you told us about.”
“Oh.”
“But what are you going to do when you get your cutie marks?” asked Gilt Eyes. “Leave the club?”
None of them answered. They hadn’t really thought that far ahead. For the longest time, they’d been planning activity after activity. They never considered a sort of decommission system.
“I guess…” Apple Bloom considered, “that if one of us earns a cutie mark, they could stay in the club and guide the other members in the right direction.”
Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle nodded in agreement.
“Well, alright,” said Gilt Eyes. “So what kind of things do you do?”
“We were planning on having a marathon across Ponyville tomorrow after school,” said Scootaloo.
“Oh. Well that sounds fun,” Gilt Eyes smiled again.
“So you’re up for it?” asked Sweetie Belle.
“Yeah, I’m in,” said Gilt Eyes enthusiastically.
And the four of them hoof-bumped.
The next day at school, Cheerilee was passing around a book for her students to read aloud. They were on page 28 of The Canterlot Derby. This was where Scootaloo got the idea to have a marathon through Ponyville. Button Mash was asked to read the first paragraph. Before he was halfway done, Gilt Eyes noticed that he didn’t have a cutie mark either.
“Psst,” he whispered to Sweetie Belle, “Is he a member?”
“Button Mash? No. He’s not interested in joining,” Sweetie Belle whispered back.
“Why not?”
Cheerilee caught sight of Gilt Eyes talking while Button Mash was reading.
“Thank you, Button,” she said. “Gilt Eyes?”
Gilt Eyes jumped.
“You can pick up where Button Mash left off,” said Cheerilee.
As expected, Gilt Eyes had lost his place. The class chuckled, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon the loudest in the class.
Gilt Eyes had to read on to page 30 before Cheerilee was satisfied.
“You next please, Diamond Tiara.”
Diamond Tiara took longer to start reading than Gilt Eyes did.
“Um, Miss Cheerilee,” she said, “Is there something wrong with this book?”
“I don’t think so,” Cheerilee replied. She took a look. “No, it looks alright to me. Just start there, please. ‘The seven mile mark…’.”
But when she set the book down in front of Diamond Tiara, she still seemed to have trouble reading it. The class began to chuckle again. Apple Bloom, curious about what Diamond Tiara was struggling with, asked if she could try to read the page. Cheerilee passed the book to her, but Silver Spoon shouted out before she could start.
“Hey! Gilt Eyes’ horn’s glowing! What are you doing?”
“Just picking up my pencil,” said Gilt Eyes, his pencil hovering next to him.
Apple Bloom began reading.
“The seven mile mark had drink tables set up on either side…”
Diamond Tiara snatched the book back and looked at it. Immediately, she looked like she was in way over her head. Silver Spoon could swear she saw Gilt Eyes’ horn light up again and was just about to say so when suddenly, everything went out of focus.
“Maybe you need glasses,” she heard Gilt Eyes say. “Try these.”
“I don’t need glasses!” protested Diamond Tiara as Gilt Eyes magiced Silver Spoon’s glasses towards her face.
Scootaloo was grinning at Silver Spoon. She was sitting still as a statue. She looked like she was scared to move a muscle even slightly.
“Gilt Eyes, kindly give Silver Spoon her glasses back,” Cheerilee said sternly. “She gets dizzy without them.”
Silver Spoon sighed deeply when her glasses were put back on her.
Diamond Tiara still had no luck. Twist offered to lend her glasses to Diamond Tiara since her vision wasn’t completely ruined without them, but Diamond Tiara refused them and gave up on trying to read. She claimed that what she was seeing on the page was written with weird symbols, but to everyone else in the class, they looked perfectly legible.
After school that day, Scootaloo was riding her scooter across Ponyville setting up marker flags for their marathon route. As she passed Sugarcube Corner, she suddenly found she had a passenger.
“Hi, Scootaloo!”
Scootaloo stopped in surprise at Pinkie Pie riding on the back of her scooter.
“What are those flags for?” asked Pinkie Pie. “Is there a race going on?”
“Uh, actually it’s a marathon,” Scootaloo replied.
“I never knew about this,” said Pinkie Pie.
“Well, it’s kinda something the Cutie Mark Crusaders are doing,” explained Scootaloo. “Um, do we need permission from the Royal Taskforce to do this?”
“I don’t think so,” said Pinkie Pie, “But just in case you do…” She got off the scooter and cleared her throat. “I, Pinkie Pie, fourth member of Ponyville’s Royal Taskforce, hereby give the Cutie Mark Crusaders permission to have a marathon in Ponyville.”
“Thanks, Pinkie Pie,” said Scootaloo, starting to scoot away.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Pinkie Pie pulled Scootaloo back, “you can’t ride that scooter. That’s cheating.”
“I’m not gonna ride it during the marathon,” insisted Scootaloo.
Pinkie Pie cleared her throat again. “I, Pinkie Pie, fourth member of Ponyville’s Royal Taskforce, hereby confiscate your scooter until such a time as the marathon has come to a conclusion. Furthermore, I shall set up the rest of the route as I am not taking part in the marathon.”
She grinned, obviously loving how important she sounded.
“Do you think you could write an initiation speech for us?” asked Scootaloo.
Later, Scootaloo went back to the clubhouse where the starting point was.
“That was fast,” said Sweetie Belle.
Scootaloo told them that Pinkie Pie was setting up the rest of the route and that she would send them the signal to start the marathon soon. So Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle and Gilt Eyes got ready, looking over the apple trees for the signal. Then, after several minutes, a cloud of confetti shot up in the distance, and they were off.