//------------------------------//
// Chapter 15: Manifested Nightmare 
// Story: The Strange Case of Dinky Hooves' Cutie Mark Curiosity 
// by Fluttercheer 
//------------------------------//

“Okay, stir it a little bit faster!” Scootaloo looked up from the book in her hooves, directly at Pipsqueak. The colt's head was adorned by a chef's hat and in front of him stood a big bowl filled with a thick dough. His face did not look happy. Teeth clenched, he tried to follow Scootaloo's command, but had hardly success with executing it.
Scootaloo furrowed her brow. “Hmm, maybe we have used too much flour..... We should throw it away and try it again.”
Pipsqueak stopped stirring the dough and sat down on his pillow. He wheezed slightly and his head had turned red.
“Or maybe baking cakes isn't my special talent and I'm just not good at it,” he said after catching his breath. He looked over the messy table, that was sprinkled with pieces of pastry and fine layers of flour, then at the three cutie mark counselors at the other side of it.
They looked at each other. “Do we try something else?” Scootaloo asked towards Apple Bloom.
“Hmm.....” Apple Bloom played around with a pencil in her mouth, trying to make a decision.
Seeing her hesitation, Sweetie Belle took the bowl into her magic and hovered it away from Pipsqueak and over to her. She grabbed the spoon with her right hoof and tried stirring the pastry on her own. She barely had to put pressure on the cooking instrument.
“It's easy,” she said. “Do you really have problems with this?” Her face showed disbelief and surprise as she looked at Pipsqueak.
“Well, ah guess that's one talent ta tick off,” Apple Bloom stated the obvious. She took the pencil out of her mouth and crossed out “Baking Cake” on the list in front of her.
“I knew this is not my special talent,” Pipsqueak said, removing the chef's hat from his head. “Just because my brother is good at this, does not mean I am, too.” He threw the hat into a box to his right. “What are we trying next?”
Instead of answering straight away, Apple Bloom let her eyes wander over the table for a few seconds, observing the mess. “Cleanin',” she said then. “Might as well try and see if ya good at this while we do that.”
She put the pencil back in her mouth and looked at her list again. “And then, if we still have time left today, we go and try c–” She did not come to finish her sentence, as the door to the operation center suddenly got flung open and struck the inner wall of the building. All four of them twitched as the sound startled them, then they looked at the door to see who the intruder was.
Champing with rage, Dinky stood in the doorframe. She was met with eye-rolls by the Crusaders and Pipsqueak gave her a fierce glance, but before anypony of them could say something, Dinky shot a hoof at Pipsqueak.
“YOU!” she yelled loudly, her anger getting carried over to the table by her voice. “Everything is worse now and it's all because of you and your lies!”
Pipsqueak looked at her unimpressed. “I don't know why you are upset. If you would have told them the truth, then everything would be fine for you. You brought this on yourself, Dinky.”
“FINE?!” Dinky shouted right back at him. “Do you call THIS fine?” She turned around and revealed her flank to him.
Pipsqueak opened his mouth, yet failed to comment on the sight in front of him.
At the same moment, Apple Bloom's pencil fell out of her mouth, as she showed a similar reaction. “W-What is it doing?” she stammered.
Dinky's flank was glowing in a bright blue, so much, that the four other foals almost felt the need to shield their eyes. In the middle of it, there was a cutie mark in the shape of a star, but before they could really get a look at it, it disappeared and was replaced by a shovel. A split-second passed and the shovel turned into a tomato, then into a cage. One cutie mark after another was flashing up on Dinky's flank, just to disappear again almost immediately.
The faces of Apple Bloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle were marked with a mix of astonishment and shock. “Is this real?” Sweetie Belle asked, her pupils growing ever bigger.
Only Pipsqueak stayed calm. “So, I guess the cutie mark potions you take all the time finally had a side effect. I told you that you shouldn't use them.” He closed his eyes and shook his head.
Furiously, Dinky retracted her flank again, making it easier for him and his counselors to see. She glared at Pipsqueak.
“All the time?!” the enraged unicorn filly burst out. “I just took one for the first time ever, because you forced me to it and now I have to deal with THIS!” She presented her flank again. “Now I'm getting cutie marks every second!”
Pipsqueak blinked, yet did not comment on it further.
“Pip?” Apple Bloom turned to him. “Didn't ya say Dinky was just fakin' a cutie mark every time we saw with her one?”
“Mhm.” He nodded. “For years. Dinky is doing this for a long time already.”
It caused another angry reaction by Dinky. She did a thrusting step towards him. “I told you I don't–”
Apple Bloom interrupted her. “But this never happened before..... Doesn't look like it's just the potion doin' it.” She raised an eyebrow at Pipsqueak.
“I..... I.....” Noticing the reaction, he began to stammer. After repeatedly failing to put his thoughts into words, he slid down from his pillow and approached Dinky carefully.
“And this is actually real this time?” he asked, as he trotted closer slowly, trying to get another look at Dinky's flank.
“It. Was. Real. All. The. TIME!” Dinky hissed at him. “And now, thanks to your jealousy and your lies about me, you made it worse!”
Pipsqueak inched back a little, trying to avoid the filly's wrath.
“Worse?” Scootaloo asked now. “How?”
Dinky answered, yet did not avert her eyes from Pipsqueak. “After you didn't want to help me anymore..... Because you believed his lies.” She growled at Pipsqueak. “I was drinking the cutie mark potion that you saw falling out of my saddlebags yesterday. It was supposed to give me a cutie mark and it did, almost instantly.” She huffed. “But then, a few hours later, it disappeared again and got replaced by another one! And with each new cutie mark, it happened faster and faster and now it's completely out of control!”
Dinky sat herself into motion again, now slowly trotting towards Pipsqueak, as she seemed at the end of her efforts to contain her anger.
“Because of you and your jealousy after they chose me first, my flank is acting like disco lights now!”
Scared, and now visibly embarrassed, Pipsqueak retreated from the angry filly. “I-I'm sorry, Dinky. I could not know anything like this would happen. B-But I was not lying..... Maybe jealous, just a little. But I said the truth, I really thought you were making all of this up!”
It was a confession that came too late, one that only seemed to fuel Dinky's anger even more. Lowering her head, she stomped on the floor with one hoof, then dashed at him with her horn at face level. Pipsqueak winced and closed his eyes.
“ENOUGH!” Apple Bloom's voice rang out. Swiftly, the yellow filly stepped in front of Pipsqueak and, with one sharp movement, brought a hoof down on Dinky's horn and shoved it to the side. As a result, Dinky lost balance and found herself on the floor a second later.
“Have ya two gone crazy?!” Apple Bloom shouted, equally furious now.
Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo joined her side, the latter helping up Dinky, but keeping a close eye on her.
“Everypony?” Pipsqueak asked a question in return. “Not me, but Dinky did!” he said, pointing at the unicorn filly. He was visibly agitated after Dinky's attempted attack.
“What? Did you just call me 'crazy'”? Dinky clenched her teeth. “Take it back!” She tried to lunge out at him, but Scootaloo was holding her back, hooves tightly clasped around her chest.
“Calm down, Dinky! It's over now, he apologized already!” She struggled with keeping the outraged unicorn under control.
Apple Bloom spoke a word of command again. “Ah said it's enough!” she scolded both Dinky and Pipsqueak, then turned towards the latter. “Pip, ya go home, right now. We'll give ya another appointment later, but we need ta deal with Dinky now.”
Pipsqueak frowned. “But you promised that you will help me–”
“Now!” Apple Bloom cut him off sharply.
Startled, he nodded. Apple Bloom shielded Pipsqueak from Dinky, who was still full of rage, while Sweetie Belle accompanied him outside. As she had closed the door of the operation center behind him, she returned, just to see Apple Bloom turning towards Dinky.
“What was this all about?! Did ya try ta stab him with ya horn or what?”
Dinky opened her mouth to shoot a response at Apple Bloom, but then she bit her lip and just looked down on her hooves instead. Now that the offender was gone, her confidence disappeared with her anger. She just felt empty inside now.
“What was this all about, Dinky?” Apple Bloom repeated her question. “Why did ya do this?”
Scootaloo, who had let go of Dinky in the meantime, poked Apple Bloom's side. As her friend looked at her, she shook her head. “Just stop, Apple Bloom. It's not like we don't know why.”
“Yeah, Dinky wasn't lying to us. And now it has become even more bad.” Sweetie Belle pointed at Dinky's flank, which was still glowing brightly, with a plethora of cutie marks flashing up on it.
Apple Bloom looked over her friends, then at Dinky, who still eyed her hooves.
“Fine.....” she said then, after contemplating the situation for a few seconds. She pointed in the corner, where the book with Mage Meadowbrook's recipe and the tow sack were resting. “Let's get it done.”
Half an hour later, the potion was ready. After chopping and mixing the ingredients and a spark of magic from Dinky's horn, a bottle with the finished potion stood on the still messy table. The potion was of a dirty, green color, akin to swamp water, and Dinky almost retched in disgust as she looked at it. Despite this, though, she grabbed the bottle swiftly, opened it and gulped down the content in one go. Her face scrunched, she bent forward as she had emptied it, and erupted into a few coughs.
“I never..... never had something that tasted as icky as this!” she managed to say in-between two coughs.
Sweetie Belle shrugged. “Well, it's medicine. I guess that's just what it is supposed to do.”
“Does it work?” Apple Bloom asked Dinky. “Ya feelin' anythin'?”
Dinky shook her head. “Not yet. Does it do anything? How does my flank look?” She turned her head around, taking a look herself without awaiting an answer.
“It's still looking the same.....” Scootaloo answered anyway. “So far!” she quickly added then, as she noticed Dinky's disappointed expression and her ears going down. Unfortunately, the correction came too late.
Feeling defeated once again, Dinky sank down on her haunches. “It's not working..... Nothing does,” she said weakly. “And nothing will.” The young unicorn sighed. “I guess that's it..... I will just have to live with it, to be the filly with multiple cutie marks for all time.” Her voice sounded more resigned than desperate now.
Like on command, Apple Bloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle sank to the floor, too. Their hooves resting between their stretched out hindlegs, they let out a collective sigh as the feeling of defeat washed over them.
“If only there would be an expert for cutie mark magic.....” Dinky whispered after a few seconds had passed.
Apple Bloom looked at her for a short moment, then down again. “Well, there's one.....” she said.
Dinky looked up at her, curiosity in her eyes. “Who?”
Apple Bloom shook her head, sadly. “But she ain't helpin'. She hates cutie marks.”
Now Sweetie Belle looked up. “You mean Starlight Glimmer?”
“Mhm. By what Twilight told us about 'er, she would be the last one ta help a filly gettin' a cutie mark. She much rather takes them away instead of givin' them.”
The hope got crushed for Dinky before she could even feel it. “Taking cutie marks away,” Dinky whispered. “Just like the mare in my nightmares.....”
Scootaloo pricked her ears at these words. “Nightmares? You mean the one you had in the Crystal Empire?”
Dinky looked over to her, a bit of fear in her face now. “Mhm.” She nodded. “There was a mare and I thought she would take my cutie mark, but the nightmare was over before she could do anything.”
Scootaloo raised an eyebrow, then glanced to the side, at Apple Bloom. Before she could ask the question that was on her lips, though, Apple Bloom already started to address Dinky's words.
“And that wasn't the first time ya had this dream, right?”
Dinky shook her head. “No. I have this nightmare for years already. It happens a few times a month and it always ends before the mare can do anything. Sometimes I wake up screaming, but the end is always the same, the mare promises me that I will feel better in the morning and then I wake up.”
Now all three Crusaders looked up. They exchanged glances between them, glances that showed that all three of them had the same suspicion.
“Ya'll thinkin' what ahm thinkin'?” Apple Bloom asked her friends.
“That's the same question I just wanted to ask you..... I do,” Scootaloo replied.
“Starlight Glimmer.” Sweetie Belle nodded affirmatively.
The sudden, mysterious behavior of her three counselors made Dinky feel uneasy. She looked around between them.
“What are you talking about? It was only a dream. Just a nightmare..... right?”
The three counselors got up together and Apple Bloom walked at Dinky's side. She placed a hoof on her and prompted her to do the same.
“We'll explain ya on the way. But now, we need ta see Twilight.”