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// 02 - Plan for the Future 
// Story: Sweetie Belle Gains a Soul 
// by Bad Dragon 
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I collapsed into the soft embrace of my bed, sighing with relief and exhaustion when I wiggled underneath the sheet.

It had been a long day. At least, it felt like it. Celestia probably hadn’t been slacking on the job of moving the sun. I was pretty sure she’d been performing her task proper, just like every day. Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer also hadn’t been messing with the time, again. Probably. Maybe. It had, most likely, just been the activities that made the day seem longer than it really was.

First, Scootaloo had persuaded us to attempt being Forest Rangers. It’d been an adventure that had gotten me not just two marks, but several. They weren’t only on my flanks as I’d hoped, but all over my body. None of them were of the sort that I wanted. Besides getting bumped and bruised, I had ended in the bush, covered in pine needles, tree sap and leaves. I’d suspected it would end up that way, the moment Scootaloo had suggested the mission. Most of it had fallen off by the time I’d come home. The rest had been washed away in a bath that Rarity had recommended for me after I’d whined to her about everything bad that had happened to me.

The pain in my horn had really worried me since the fall. Fortunately, the hurt mostly subsided. I decided to listen to Apple Bloom’s suggestion and just give my fragile cone some time to heal.

We had toned down on the action after the accident and had set out to do the interviews with grown up Ponyville ponies. Even though we managed to interview just two families, it took us the entire afternoon. We’d all gotten tired of it. I’d been relieved when the sun had set, and those two hinted that it’s time to call it a day. I had pretended to be stubborn to show them that there was nothing wrong with the idea. My silent prayers to Celestia had been answered. They were against continuing the interviews. After snorting and kicking dirt off the ground, I had pretended to give in. Scootaloo had called me a drama queen, which wasn’t nice of her. After that, I had just lifted my tail high in the air and walked away with my pride intact.

I had been so glad when I’d finally managed to shut myself into the room, away from the tiring world. My legs were sore, throbbing from all the walking. The muscles all over my body burned. They were tense, even though I already lay on my bed and wasn’t using them anymore.

My snout hurt from all the writing and drawing that I had done that day. I could have just let Apple Bloom do all the writing, but I never could read her scribblings. The interviews were my idea, and I wanted them done properly. They had lasted longer than the fellow Cutie Mark Crusaders and I had expected. Everypony had so much to talk about themselves and their cutie marks that we’d only managed to interview less than half a dozen ponies. Perhaps suggesting to interview everypony had been a bit too ambitious, after all.

With Scootaloo falling asleep every time somepony had said more than a few sentences, the mission had turned out to be very time-consuming. We didn’t have much to show for our hard work of paying attention to grown-ups. Perhaps it would have been faster if Apple Bloom and I had attempted the mission alone instead of wasting our time keeping Scootaloo focused. She had foalishly left her writing equipment in our clubhouse, but that wasn’t the real reason for her boredom. Even lending her my own stuff hadn’t helped. If anything, it’d made things worse. She’d stop listening altogether and had just drawn two-legged monsters instead of writing what the ponies were saying.

Scootaloo and Apple Bloom hadn’t said anything to me when we finished interviewing for the day, but I’d seen it in their eyes. They’d been tired of it. There had been no cheer in their eyes since the moment we’d started. It probably hadn't been because I’d been the one who come up with the idea. They'd surely be sighing even if one of them had thought of it. That meant I'd been scot-free because I hadn't even been a part of the failed plan. The idea itself was the stupid one and not me for voicing it. After all, I had caught myself sighing, as well. That meant I'd been on the same team as my friends.

I looked over my notes again before turning off the lamp on my nightstand. My teeth clenched from the pain, even though I lay on my less-injured side. The bruise on my chest had stopped swelling by the time we were done with the interviews. It was still a bit sensitive, but I seemed to be getting better. Slowly but surely. Scootaloo must have been right, and the injury really wasn’t as bad as I’d thought it was. I feared she might even tease me for not sucking it up or walking it off like she probably would.

When I threw the blanket over my aching body, I felt like a mummy getting bandaged all over. My skin itched where Blanky touched the hair on my coat.

I felt exhausted, yet for some reason, I wasn't sleepy. It was strange considering all the crusading my friends and I had done that day.

It wasn’t the good kind of tired drowsiness like at the end of a long camping trip. The tiredness within me was different. It felt like a failure.

“Argh!” I turned around and knelt on my bed. I punched at the pillow as hard as I could, again and again.

Hurting the bedding didn’t help, and I only got more frustrated. I laid my head sideways on the pillow. It sucked up the tear that formed in my eye. I had hoped that the interviews would go better than they did. Another mission to add to the pile of past failures...

I wasn’t sure if I would be able to convince Scootaloo and Apple Bloom to interview a few more ponies the next day. I wasn’t even sure I could convince myself.

Ponies we interviewed didn’t get their cutie marks for their deliberate attempts. These weren’t the kind of ponies we were looking for at all. They all got it for doing something they were either passionate about or enjoyed doing since they were foals. Often it was something related to what their family was doing.

“Family…” I spoke softly, as though tasting an entirely new word for the first time. I rolled around and sat up, quickly turning on the lamp. “Why didn't I see the before?” I whispered as I hoofed at my notebook. 

I was onto something big. Their cutie marks weren’t all that different. It was like with Granny Smith, Applejack, and Big Macintosh. They all had different cutie marks, but everyone of them was related to apple products in some way or another. And hadn’t Apple Bloom also said something about the family a while back? “That’s it! Runs in the family!” I repeated her words, as I remembered them. She might have been onto something there!

But what did all of it mean? If it runs in the family, is your destiny already set? Is gaining a cutie mark only discovering what you were already meant to do? If so, why do we ponies even have to wait for them? Why doesn’t everypony already have them, to begin with? I stared at my flank. Is it like a rite of passage, a stepping stone towards being an adult?

A soft pounding in my head let me know that I was overusing the brain. My gaze shifted to a darkened distance outside the window as I let my thoughts flow freely on their own. I was smart plenty even without thinking much. My eyebrows pressed together as I tried to remember what I had been on about.

“Cutie marks!” As I checked my flank again for a gazillionth time, I sighed at the sight of my blank flank. Why couldn’t they be like the color of my coat? I didn't have to wait for that to appear. My eyes wandered down my body. I was always white, and that wasn’t earned. A terrifying thought entered my mind. Is white even a color?

Perhaps besides being a blank flank, I was also blank colored? I decided it was best if I didn’t tell anypony about my finding. If Diamond Tiara learned I was white, she would surely tease me for it. I didn’t want to give her more ammunition to use against me. She probably didn’t think it was okay to be white. I was already a blank flank in her eyes, but at least with the cutie mark, I had some hope of getting it someday; unlike my blank coat, which would never get any color. Besides getting called Blankflank, I didn’t want to also get labeled as Coatie Blank.

If I really was a blankcoat, did that mean that Rarity was one also? She was even whiter than I was, yet she never seemed to mind it.

Or maybe I just didn’t notice the signs? I pondered while supporting my head on both forehooves. The doubts burdened my mind and even made my head feel heavier.

Perhaps there was a reason why Rarity stitched all those clothes for herself and me. What if she felt ashamed of being such a plain colored pony? Is that why she made me that black, itchy, tight body suit when I was learning how to swim? Was it because she wanted to cover up my whiteness? No, she’d made those even for non-white ponies...

My body shook as I remembered that my Daddy was also white. I indeed had a lot in common with my family. “Family!” I gasped as I remembered that I had already figured out something about that before getting distracted with myself. My destiny was for the taking; I knew it. Yet, it also felt kind of like the time I’d tried to catch my tail. So close, yet just out of reach. I had a hard time focusing since I’d fallen head-first on the branch. Being half asleep didn’t help with the concentration, but I had to figure it all out. I was onto something, I just knew it. Gaining my cutie mark might involve my family, somehow.

The future cutie mark, apparently, wasn’t out there for me to find. It was in front of my muzzle from the beginning. I just had to do what my family did and I’d get it. Rarity tolerated my presence the most, so it was obvious I should start with her. First thing in the morning, I’d confide in her and tell her all about my smart findings.

I hoofed at the night lamp until it flickered off. After covering up my body with Blanky, I eased myself into the soft embrace of the comfortable bed. Even after I closed my eyes, I still thought about Rarity. She was the key.

Her cutie mark was three gems. What if I was also meant to get something along those lines? She received hers when her magic activated and dragged her on a cross-country trek until it led her to a rock, which cracked after Rainbow Dash caused a rainboom.

Perhaps, I could learn Rarity’s gem-finding spell, and get a cool cutie mark like the one she got! I could then help her out in finding more gems. That would even mean spending some quality time with her for a change. She would appreciate having me around if I proved myself even more useful than I usually was! If I managed to find a really big gem she might even thank me for it without speaking through her teeth like she usually did whenever she talked to me.

While I thought about my gem-hunting adventures, a dream of bountiful treasures crept on me and stole me away.