Silver Spoon had been in Sugarcube Corner when Scootaloo met up with Pinkie Pie, and now that she knew the Cutie Mark Crusaders were having a marathon, she couldn’t resist the urge to play a trick on Gilt Eyes. She was still suspicious of him, as well as bitter about getting cake dropped on her at the block party. So she got an extra-large milkshake and waited behind the bakery watching for the racers. Soon, she heard running. Scootaloo came pelting around the corner, Apple Bloom right behind her. Silver Spoon sipped her milkshake, aimed her straw at the path, and waited for Gilt Eyes. To her delight, he was running alongside Sweetie Belle.
Splash!
Sweetie Belle didn’t notice as Gilt Eyes stumbled and fell over drenched in chocolate milk.
“How do you like that?!” cackled Silver Spoon from her hiding place.
But in an instant, she stopped laughing. Something caught her eyes.
“Hey! You’re not a blank flank!”
Gilt Eyes looked horrified. He looked at his flank. There, visible beneath a coat of chocolate milk, was an image of a gold hand mirror.
“Oh. Uh…” he smiled nervously at Silver Spoon as she walked closer to him. “Look at that. I just got my cutie mark.”
Silver Spoon was still smirking. She was looking at the puddle of chocolate milk under Gilt Eyes. There was some red liquid in there that was the same colour as his coat.
Silver Spoon started laughing again. “Why in Equestria would you want to be a blank flank?! Do you want ponies thinking you’re a nopony your whole life?”
Gilt Eyes face twisted with anger. Silver Spoon started running along the marathon path.
“Hey! Blank flanks! Gilt Eyes has a cutie-!”
Gilt Eyes’ horn shone like a lighthouse for a second, and then Silver Spoon stopped shouting and running. Something was wrong with her glasses. They seemed to be showing her the mirror image of what she was seeing.
“Hey, what did you do to my glasses?!” she demanded.
She looked back at Gilt Eyes, and she immediately felt dizzy. The very familiar Sugarcube Corner looked like a completely new place to her. She spotted Gilt Eyes running away, but she looked the wrong way when she tried to follow him. By the time she had looked the other way, Gilt Eyes was nowhere in sight.
“Why is everything mirrored?” she groaned, feeling off balance. She thought for a second. “The hand mirror! He can flip things! He must’ve flipped the words on that book to confuse Diamond Tiara!”
She looked around even though her head was spinning.
“Anyone around?!” she called.
Unluckily for her, there were no ponies about. She wanted to go to the Library and ask Twilight to fix her glasses. But she couldn’t see properly, and she didn’t want to get sick by taking her glasses off and walking around town. She decided she would try and navigate her own way to Twilight’s place. At least until she came across somepony who could help her get there.
Gilt Eyes was running faster than he had done when he was running in the marathon. He was heading for home at top speed hoping that nopony would see his cutie mark.
I gotta cover it up! he was thinking as he zoomed towards his house. If everyone finds out I have a cutie mark… or WORSE, if Bronze Medal finds out…!
Eventually, he was in his bedroom painting his flank to match his coat.
“Gilt Eyes?” his mother called from the other side of his closed door. “How are you?”
“Uh, fine, Mom!” replied Gilt Eyes. “I’m not staying long. Me and my friends are having a race!”
“What, right now?” joked his mom.
“Y- uh, no,” said Gilt Eyes hastily. “Um, in a bit. I’m in a hurry. That pony who gave us that block party’s setting up flags. I gotta get to the apple farm before she starts the race.”
Now that he’d covered his cutie mark, he opened his door and ran past his mother.
“Don’t tire yourself out before the race!” she called.
Meanwhile, Silver Spoon was zigzagging all over the place. She was sure she was getting close to the Library, but she started having doubts when she heard the sound of rushing water. She turned her head to the left.
“Whoa! I almost fell in,” she groaned.
She found herself by the river in the park. And to her annoyance, there was still nopony around.
The reason Silver Spoon couldn’t find anyone was because everypony who was out and about learned about the Cutie Mark Crusaders’ marathon set up by Pinkie Pie and wanted to go to the finish line to see who would win. The three fillies, who were completely unaware that they were down one contestant, were now nearing the finish line. Their competitive spirits lifted when they heard cheering. The turnout wasn’t big, but the Crusaders were still excited.
“Apple Bloom and Scootaloo are neck and neck!” came Pinkie Pie’s voice. “This could be a tie, folks! Here they come! Who’s it gonna be?! Apple Bloom or Scootaloo?! They’re almost there! And it’s… it’s Apple Bloom! Scootaloo is second! And here comes Sweetie Belle! Still going at it even though she’s last! And she’s across! Hang on a minute! I forgot about Gilt Eyes for a second! Is he coming?! He must be very far behind! I can’t see him! He’s nowhere in sight. He…”
Pinkie Pie went on and on for a while. Apple Bloom’s disappointment at not getting a cutie mark for marathon running was soon replaced by concern for Gilt Eyes.
“Can I have my scooter back, Pinkie Pie?” asked Scootaloo. “I could go find Gilt Eyes.”
Pinkie Pie looked from side to side. “Have you learned to fly yet?”
“What? Why?”
“Because your scooter got shot into the sky.”
“What?!”
“My party canon got plugged up so I used your scooter to unclog it,” explained Pinkie Pie. “And POOF! Shot up with the confetti. So, I guess we’re walking. Unless there’s a pegasus here who’d like to fly over the track for us.”
But the only other pegasus there was Featherweight and he wasn’t someone a pony goes to for quick flying.
By the river, Silver Spoon had resorted to taking her glasses off. But she quickly found everything she was seeing nauseating. She hadn’t gotten far from the river before she felt really sick. At the same time, Gilt Eyes was on the other side of the river stopping to catch his breath.
“My friends must’ve got to the finish line by now,” he said to himself. “I’ll just tell them I got exhausted.”
He looked at the river and frowned sorely.
“I hope they don’t believe Spoony when she tells them I have my cutie mark,” he moaned. “I wish I didn’t have that stupid thing.”
He looked around. Silver Spoon was obscured by the bridge walls. When Gilt Eyes didn’t see anyone, he stepped to the riverbank and looked at his reflection.
“What use is the power to mirror images anyway?”
He concentrated, his horn lit up, and the image in the water’s surface changed. But Gilt Eyes’ spell didn’t have the desired effect.
“What? Where’d my reflection go?”
Gilt Eyes didn’t realize that his magic had sent his reflection to the other side of the river.
By now Silver Spoon was hunched over the edge of the bridge on the verge of throwing up. She’d dropped her glasses on the bank. Gilt Eyes still didn’t notice her because he was trying to figure out why he’d made his reflection disappear instead of flip. Something else he didn’t see was a scooter falling out of the sky. Gilt Eyes was about to cast his spell again to see what would happen when he heard a big splash.
“What was that?”
He walked quickly to his side of the bridge and looked at the water. He saw Silver Spoon’s reflection trying not to vomit. But to him, it looked like Silver Spoon was in the water unable to breathe.
“She fell in!” he cried.
He dived into the river. He hit his hooves on the metal scooter that was sitting beneath Silver Spoon’s reflection. As he resurfaced, he realised that Silver Spoon was on the bridge. But he couldn’t paddle with his injured hooves and he started sinking.
“Help me!” he cried, swallowing a bit of water.
Silver Spoon had stopped gagging and saw the blurry image of Gilt Eyes trashing about it the river. She started calling for help too, as she didn’t think she could help Gilt Eyes with her bad vision. Fortunately, Pinkie Pie and the Cutie Mark Crusaders were nearby. When Pinkie Pie ran up to the bridge and saw what was happening, she jumped into the river. Apple Bloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle watched and in seconds, Pinkie leapt back out of the water acting uncannily like a dolphin (she was even squeaking like one). She had Gilt Eyes by the tail and Scootaloo’s scooter by the right handle.
“You OK, Gilt Eyes?” asked Apple Bloom when the young colt was back on solid ground.
Gilt Eyes spat out some water. “Yeah, I’m fine. I hit my hooves on the scooter though.”
Sweetie Belle’s eyes were wide open. “Look!”
The water from the river had washed the paint off Gilt Eyes’ flank. The gold hand mirror was there for all to see.
“Wow! When did you get that?!” exclaimed Apple Bloom.
Silver Spoon’s voice boomed from the bridge. “He’s had that the whole time he’s been here! He can mirror things! He zapped my glasses and now I’m all sick!”
Gilt Eyes buried his face in his pained hooves. “It’s true. I know what my special talent is.”
“You can mirror things? What does that mean?” asked Sweetie Belle.
“Look at the water,” Gilt Eyes told her.
Sweetie Belle couldn’t see a thing on the surface of the water until she looked across the river.
“This is weird!” she said.
Pinkie Pie was ecstatic. She zipped across the bridge, nearly knocking Silver Spoon over as she stumbled nauseously towards Gilt Eyes, and ran to where Sweetie Belle’s reflection was.
“Can you see me, Sweetie Belle?!”
Sweetie Belle laughed as Pinkie Pie’s reflection made faces at her.
“I cast my spell on it, and now the reflections are on opposite sides,” Gilt Eyes explained gloomily. “Watch this.”
A flash of light from his horn later, Sweetie Belle and Pinkie Pie had their own reflections at their hooves.
“Now fix my glasses!” demanded Silver Spoon. “I can’t take it anymore!”
Gilt Eyes gave Silver Spoon a dirty look, but he did as she wanted.
“That’s better,” she said, happy to be able to see again.
“So why did you cover up your cutie mark?” asked Scootaloo.
Gilt Eyes sighed as Silver Spoon gave him a snide look and walked away.
“I really hate ponies who get their cutie marks,” he said. “They turn into jerks.”
“Hey!” shouted Pinkie Pie.
“Well, they grow up eventually,” said Gilt Eyes hastily. “You’re OK, Pinkie Pie. But I mean foals. All the ones with cutie marks in my old school were jerks, and now I have to put up with Spoony here and her snobby friend.”
Close by, Featherweight was looking offended.
“They’re not all bad, Gilt Eyes,” Apple Bloom insisted. “Featherweight here is alright. So is Twist. And Snips and Snails… well they may be kinda dumb, but they’re not jerks.”
Gilt Eyes looked moodier still. “I still wish I never got my cutie mark. If my friend, Bronze Medal finds out, he’ll hate me as much as we hated all our classmates in Walton on the Neighs.”
“Look, Gilt Eyes,” said Pinkie Pie, who had swum from the other side of the river and drenched everyone when she shook herself dry, “you shouldn’t cover up your talents. You should embrace them.”
“But my talent’s useless,” groaned Gilt Eyes. “Who wants to see a flipped image?”
“You’ll find a way to make use of it when you’re older,” Pinkie Pie smiled reassuringly. “You could get a job in photography or entertainment.”
Gilt Eyes’ mood was not improved, especially not when Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo told him that they didn’t want him in their club anymore.
“That doesn’t mean we don’t want to be friends anymore,” Apple Bloom said quickly.
“It’s just that you had your cutie mark before you joined us,” said Scootaloo. “Our club is for helping foals with no marks, and you never needed help getting yours.”
Gilt Eyes understood, but he was still glum.
“Hey, is one of you Gilt Eyes?!” came a voice.
Derpy came trotting up to them carrying her mailbags.
“I’m Gilt Eyes.”
“Your mom told me I might find you if I follow the flags,” said Derpy.
Sweetie Belle noticed that Derpy had a flag stuck to one of her hooves.
“I have a letter for you,” Derpy handed Gilt Eyes an envelope she had tucked under her wing.
“Hey, it’s from Bronze Medal!” said Gilt Eyes when he saw the return address.
He opened the envelope and took out the letter.
“Dear Gilt Eyes,
I’m glad to hear you found a group of blank flanks to make friends with. I know you asked me to start a group like that here in Walton on the Neighs, but I don’t think I can.”
“That’s all he wrote,” said Gilt Eyes after reading the letter out loud. “I knew it. He’s afraid of starting a club for blank flanks when he’s the only one in town.”
Pinkie Pie was grinning. “Look at the back.”
Gilt Eyes turned the paper over and gaped. Bronze Medal had written his letter on the back of a photograph of himself. But he wasn’t quite how Gilt Eyes remembered him. Plastered on his flank was a shiny trophy. And written on the bottom of the photograph were the words “Please don’t hate me.”
Gilt Eyes didn’t feel hatred at all. He felt pride and delight.
“This must mean the others aren’t picking on him anymore!” he beamed.
Then he looked at Featherweight.
“Have you got your camera?” he asked.
“Oh, you’re going to send him a picture of your cutie mark?” asked Sweetie Belle.
“Yep,” smiled Gilt Eyes.
But the first shot Featherweight took didn’t turn out right. Diamond Tiara had turned up and thrown a jam donut at Gilt Eyes from the other side of the river.