The Serenade of Silver Belles

by Your Antagonist

The Second Bell Rings- Where Flowers Bloom, Weeds Conspire

Sweetie Belle galloped hurriedly through the Ponyville streets with a reluctant and blushing Silver Spoon in tow. Their destination was the town’s most popular bakery, Sugarcube Corner. Silver Spoon was amazed at how quickly Sweetie could move using only three legs as she held Silver Spoon’s hoof in her own.

Sweetie Belle couldn’t afford to be late to this particular Crusaders meeting, for today was the day that the fillies would implement their latest surefire plan for earning their Cutie Marks. A scheme that Sweetie Belle had been excluded from the planning of. According to Scootaloo, it was so awesome that it had to remain secret from anypony, including herself, which was Scootaloo-talk for she didn’t really have anything planned.

It took Silver Spoon by surprise when Sweetie Belle stopped so suddenly and precisely in front of the bakery's door. "We’re here! Come on, Scootaloo and Apple Bloom are waiting for us.” The doors of Sugarcube corner had never looked so daunting or authoritative to Silver Spoon until Sweetie Belle chirped out the names of her fellow Crusaders. 

“Look, Sweetie Belle.” Silver Spoon jerked her hoof out of the unicorn’s vice-like grip. “I really appreciate you inviting me to hang out with you and your friends, I really do, but the thing is… well, I just can’t, okay?”

Sweetie Belle was confused, but undeterred by Silver Spoon’s words. “But, I thought you said you didn’t have anything else to do this afternoon?”

“Well, no I don’t, but—”

“Then there’s no problem at all!” Sweetie Belle beamed.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Silver Spoon sighed.

“Wrong? About what?” Sweetie Belle tilted her head quizzically. “You don’t have anything to do, I invited you, so there shouldn’t be a problem, right?”

Silver Spoon shook her head at the filly’s lack of understanding before looking at Sweetie Belle’s smiling face. It really was nice to see the filly happy, but she knew that nothing but trouble awaited her beyond those doors. “There is a problem. In fact there’s two of them, and they’re inside Sugarcube Corner right now.”

“Two problems in a bakery? Hmm… stale bread and hard cake? No, no, no. It’s got to be moldy muffins and crumbled cupcakes, or—”

Silver Spoon fought the urge to facehoof as Sweetie Belle delved ever deeper into the most inane prattle about bakery issues the gray filly had ever heard. “The problems are your friends.”

“My friends? Why would they be problems?”

“Well, for one, I'm certain that Scootaloo wasn't too appreciative that I called her a—" Out of consideration for Sweetie Belle who had gone out her way on Silver Spoon's account, she stopped herself from even uttering one syllable of the loathsome moniker. "Well, you know."

“Oh, right…"

"Look, I don't think there's a chance in Tartarus that she'll forgive me for that so quickly, and I'm sure that Apple Bloom won't be too pleased with me either." Silver Spoon looked up to see the elation in the unicorn’s face drain out slowly. As much as she wanted to accept Sweetie Belle’s invitation, she had to let the candy-maned filly down easy. She hated to do it, but she didn’t want to see any more conflict this afternoon, especially not on her own behalf. “I think maybe—”

"Well, you just leave them to me!” Sweetie Belle interjected.

“Huh?”

“I know how to handle Apple Bloom and Scootaloo. Just wait right here, I'll be back in a minute!"

"But—" Silver Spoon began to protest, but Sweetie Belle darted inside the bakery faster than the gray filly could concoct another argument. Silver Spoon contemplated leaving, but eventually decided against it. She told herself that she was only staying to humor Sweetie Belle, but somewhere in the back of her mind, Silver Spoon felt as if there might have been something more to it than that. For the time, she pushed those thoughts aside. She was just content to see Sweetie Belle smile.

Sweetie Belle burst into Sugarcube Corner and was immediately enraptured by the overpowering aroma of freshly baked bread. Having skipped breakfast and lunch, she couldn’t help but follow the delectable fragrance to its source. All the while she had forgotten just what she was supposed to be doing.

“Smell something you like, dear?” Sweetie Belle turned her head to face the source of the voice. Mrs. Cake stood behind the sales counter, smiling at the filly while taking meticulous care to frost a freshly baked double chocolate cake that had just emerged from the oven.

Sweetie Belle caught herself drooling at the sight of the pastry. After what seemed like a lifetime of staring at the captivating confection, the filly shook her quickly to regain her focus. “Oh, no thanks, I uhh…" Sweetie Belle's attention gradually drifted back to the rich, detailed texture, "got to find…" Sweetie Belle licked her lips as the last words slipped, absentmindedly, from her mouth. "Appleloo and Scootabloom, I think…"

“Oh your little friends? I think they’re over there.” Ms. Cake pointed to an alcove next to the counter, but the unicorn's gaze did not deviate from the cake.

"Sweetie Belle?" Mrs. Cake asked, concerned.

Sweetie Belle did not respond. Driven by hunger, she only salivated and stepped forward.

"Dearie? Are you alright? Please stop looking at the cake like that.”

Sweetie Belle took another two predatory steps forward.

Having lived under the constant threat of a certain pink pastry graveyard who inhabited the room upstairs, Mrs. Cake knew exactly how to handle and dissolve this situation. The baker slowly reached under the counter for a stale muffin. If Sweetie Belle drew too close, Mrs. Cake wouldn’t hesitate to use it to its full potential.

“Hey, Sweetie Belle!” Scootaloo called from a booth near the counter, snapping Sweetie Belle from her cake-induced stupor. "It’s about time you made it here. Apple Bloom and I have been waiting forever!”

Sweetie Belle took one last look at the cake and trotted towards her friends, remembering that she had Silver Spoon waiting outside for her. Mrs. Cake heaved a sigh of relief and turned to resume frosting the masterpiece, only to find crumbs and a few strands of pink fur in its place.

“Yeah,” Apple Bloom said through a mouth full of cherry tart. “What took you so long? I thought you were just washin’ your mane.”

“Well, I ran into Ms. Cheerilee at the schoolhouse because somepony left their saddlebag, and to make a long story short, I wound up making a new friend!” said Sweetie Belle.

“New friend?” Apple Bloom and Scootaloo asked in tandem.

“That’s right.” Sweetie Belle paused to click her forehooves together nervously before continuing. “And I was kind of wondering if she could… come crusading with us?” she asked, peering up nervously from underneath her mane.

“Of course!” said Apple Bloom “Any friend of yours is a friend of ours!”

Sweetie Belle turned to Scootaloo, awaiting the pegasus’ gesture of approval which came in the form of rolled eyes. “Fine, but hurry up! I want to start crusading already.”

Sweetie Belle hadn’t expected anything less from her friends. “Great, let me go get her from outside.” Sweetie Belle turned away from her friends and galloped back out of the bakery.

Through a nearby window, Scootaloo could make out the top of Sweetie Belle’s bouncy mane as she talked to somepony just outside of Scootaloo’s line of sight. “Hm, I wonder who this new friend of Sweetie Belle’s is,” Scootaloo mused from across the table.

“Yeah, we’re pretty much friends with almost everypony in the class. Who could it be?”

“Hmmm…” Scootaloo took a moment to reflect on Apple Bloom’s words, but nothing came to mind.

“Well, don’t think about it too hard.” Apple Bloom pointed a hoof to the front door. “It looks like we’re about to find out.”

Sweetie Belle giddily bounced back into the bakery, beaming brilliantly. Behind her, Silver Spoon crept low, attempting to hide herself from Apple Bloom and Scootaloo’s view using Sweetie Belle as cover. Faster than Silver Spoon could react, Sweetie Belle had swept behind the gray filly, placing her forehooves on her new friend’s rump. “H-hey! Watch where you put your hooves!”

Ignoring the pleas of the silver-maned earth pony, Sweetie Belle pushed the skittish filly along the bakery floor until she was in front of the booth. “Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, I’d like you both to meet my new friend, even though you both already know her!”

The corners of Silver Spoon’s mouth began to tug upwards into a nervous grin. “Ummm, hi?”

“What is she doing here?” Scootaloo hissed.

Almost reflexively, Silver Spoon prepared to take up verbal arms against the pegasus, she could almost feel a defensive retort slide off of her tongue. Instead, she looked at the hopeful face of Sweetie Belle and sighed. That wasn’t who she was any more. That wasn’t who she had been for a long time, and this situation was exactly why she didn’t want to come in with Sweetie Belle. She knew that Scootaloo and Apple Bloom would be less than pleased to see her after what she’d said that afternoon, and Scootaloo’s behavior confirmed what she already knew. This whole situation was a lost cause.

“Now hold on a second with that, Scoots,” said Apple Bloom, waving off the pegasus’ hostility with a hoof, much to Silver Spoon's surprise. “Sweetie Belle said that she wanted to be friends. Shouldn’t we give her the benefit of the doubt?”

Scootaloo slammed her hooves on the table hard enough to launch the cake on her plate to the floor. “No way! She's Diamond Tiara’s lackey! In fact, I’ll bet that snobby little pain-in-the-flank put her up to this.”

“Aw, hush with that stinkin’ thinkin’. I for one think we should give her a chance.”

The protest in Scootaloo’s voice was evident. “But she’s—”

"Tryin' to be neighborly." Apple Bloom smiled and winked at Silver Spoon.

Silver Spoon was bewildered that Apple Bloom of all ponies was giving her the benefit of the doubt after the year and a half of grief she and Diamond Tiara had given the farm filly.

Sweetie Belle read the atmosphere and Scootaloo's face and decided this was the time to unleash her endgame technique. She threw herself to the ground before Scootaloo and looked up with wide, pleading emerald eyes. “Please Scootaloo?”

“But—”

Sweetie Belle could sense that Scootaloo’s resistance was beginning to falter. Taking advantage of this lapse in hostility, Sweetie Belle fluttered her eyelashes and pouted, making sure to keep eye contact with the pegasus.

“Gah! Fine. Okay, okay, just stop looking at me like that!”

Sweetie Belle smirked at Scootaloo as the pegasus ceded under her will-breaking puppy-dog stare. For the second time that day she had successfully bent her friends to her will.

“She can come with us, but only on a pro-proba- proba…”

“Probationary?” Apple Bloom finished for her struggling friend. “That the word you’re lookin’ for?”

“Yeah, that word! She can come but on a proba— whatever Apple Bloom just said basis.”

“Good enough for me!” chirped Sweetie Belle. “Isn’t that great, Silver Spoon? You get to see what Cutie Mark Crusading is all about.”

Silver Spoon returned Sweetie Belle’s enthusiasm with a weak grin, but withdrew it just as quickly when something occurred to her. She turned her attention to her flank, gazing sadly upon the only flaw in the Crusaders’ plan: her Cutie Mark. “But, there would be no point…” she concluded sadly.

“No point? What do you mean no point?”

“I already found my special talent.” Silver Spoon turned away from Sweetie Belle, adding an air of melodrama to the atmosphere.

“Shucks, that don’t mean nothin’,” said Apple Bloom. “I mean, just because you already got your special talent doesn’t mean you can’t do other stuff. Why not just do it for fun?”

“For fun?” Silver Spoon perked up thoughtfully at the sentiment. She hadn’t had any real fun since the novelty of insulting the very ponies who were presently offering her such a wondrous opportunity had worn off. It was a truly ironic situation.

“Yeah!” Sweetie Belle excitedly jumped back to Silver Spoon and took hold of the gray filly’s hooves. This simple act, once again, elicited a small blush from Silver Spoon. Thankfully it went unnoticed by Sweetie Belle as she began to rant. “Who knows, you could find something else you’re good at and end up with another Cutie Mark! Wouldn’t that be awesome?”

Apple Bloom shuddered at the memories Sweetie Belle’s remark stirred up. "Trust me, y’all don’t want more then one of them things. It does somethin’ to you. Somethin’ weird…”

“Ahem!” Scootaloo coughed, garnering the attention of her fellow Crusaders. “If it’s alright with you, I’d like to get started with today’s planning meeting.” Scootaloo reached into a bag on the table and pulled out a rolled up piece of tattered parchment. Flattening the paper out on the table revealed a crude, but accurate, map detailing some major landmarks of Ponyville proper. A closer look at the map showed that most of the landmarks had been crossed out in red crayon.

“Hey, Scoots, ain’t this the same map we used on the day of the talent show?” asked Apple Bloom.

“That’s right,” the Pegasus confirmed proudly.

Sweetie Belle raised an eyebrow bemusedly. “Then your idea is to go to the same places as last time?”

“Well, not exactly—”

“You know that we didn’t get our Cutie Marks for that stuff the first time, right?”

“Yeah, but this—”

“We can’t do things we already did before. It ain’t fruitful,” said Apple Bloom. “We ought to go somewhere new and excitin’ to search for our Cutie Marks, so we can’t use this.”

“But I—”

Apple Bloom slid the old map off the table, where it floated to the ground before Silver Spoon’s hooves. Curious, the gray filly adjusted the map and noticed something that the other two had completely overlooked.

“I did pick somewhere new to to search,” Scootaloo grumbled under her breath.

“Alright, Sweetie Belle, I guess it’s up to you and me to plan things out for today.”

“Actually, I don’t think that’s going to be necessary,” said Silver Spoon. She pointed a hoof to three very lightly shaded pencil scribblings on the lower half of the map.

“I didn’t want to draw a whole new map, but there wasn’t a lot of space on this, so I just marked the bottom,” Scootaloo admitted.

“Oh. Huh.” Apple Bloom slid out of the booth and began looking at the spots Silver Spoon had pointed out. “Sorry about that, Scoots, guess I jumped the gun there.”

Sweetie Belle also craned her neck to get a better view of the map “Hey, these markings look like they’re dangerously close to the Everfree Forest. What are we going to do in there?”

“Don’t worry about that, I’ll let you know when the time comes.” Scootaloo grabbed her saddlebag before sliding out of the booth. She kicked the the map lightly, causing it to roll up before seizing and stuffing it into her bag. “For now, let’s head up to my house, I’ve gotta get some stuff for what I have planned.”

Apple Bloom raised an eyebrow. “What kind of stuff?”

Scootaloo rolled her eyes at Apple Bloom’s question. “Like I said, you’ll know when the time comes, now come on!” With no further words, Scootaloo turned and bolted out of the bakery.

“Hey, wait up Scoots!” Apple Bloom cried, following the pegasus.

 “Alright, let’s go, Silver Spoon!” Sweetie Belle turned to pursue her friends, but quickly found she was unable to move. She turned her head to see just what was hindering her movement, and found that Silver Spoon was holding her cotton candy tail with her mouth. “Silver Spoon?”

“Look, I just wanted to say thanks for all of this. After what happened this afternoon, I—” Silver Spoon stopped herself and contemplated whether or not it would be wise to say anything further.

“What happened this afternoon? You mean the fight with Diamond Tiara?”

Silver Spoon shook her head, dismissing the thought. The truth could wait. “Don’t worry about it. I just wanted to say thanks, Sweetie Belle.”

Sweetie Belle smiled in response to the odd show of gratitude. “Come on, we’ve got catch up with the others.” Sweetie Belle grabbed her new friend by the foreleg.

Silver Spoon noted that the unicorn had been awfully liberal with all of the hoof-holding. She wondered if this was a regular behavior of Sweetie Belle’s or perhaps something else.

Her train of thought was derailed as, faster than the earth pony could perceive, Sweetie Belle dragged her out of the bakery, galloping merrily along the way to Scootaloo’s house where a new adventure awaited their arrival.

Unbeknownst to the pair, they were being watched from afar by none other than the very filly who had, unwittingly, set these events into motion.
 
It was already bad enough that Silver Spoon had completely and utterly insulted Diamond Tiara, but that was something the spoiled filly could tolerate. Something she could admire even. But the sight of her former best friend running hoof-in-hoof and giggling with one of the blank-flanks Diamond Tiara had sworn a vendetta against disgusted the filly to no end.

Diamond Tiara ground her teeth furiously as she accepted the fact that Silver Spoon had betrayed her to befriend the enemy. No, Silver Spoon was her enemy. She had been all this time. After all, what Silver Spoon had said couldn’t have been spur of the moment: those words had to have been pent-up, backed by time and conviction. It became abundantly clear that Silver Spoon had been planning to betray her all this time.

“That traitor, she’ll pay for this…” Diamond Tiara growled as she watched Sweetie Belle and Silver Spoon disappear around the corner of the street. Diamond Tiara held her glare for only a moment longer before something clicked in her brain. Sweetie Belle and Silver Spoon were holding hooves. Silver Spoon was a filly-fooler. The only ponies who would hold the hooves of a filly-fooler had to be filly-foolers themselves.

A cruel grin befitting of Nightmare Moon herself slowly crept across Diamond Tiara’s lips. She knew exactly how to make Silver Spoon pay for her duplicity, and as a bonus she’d get to drag Sweetie Belle into the muck as well.

The filly dropped her saddlebags to the ground and began to root through them. A moment later she resurfaced with a small, black, leather-bound book with small plastic tabs ranging from A-Z lining the pages. With a flick of her hoof, she bypassed the first five sections, landing on “F”.

She began to sift through the pages which contained the names of various ponies, their addresses, and most importantly to book’s wielder, their scandalous, shameful secrets. “Let’s see… Fluttershy… Flim… Flam… Fine Print— aha!” The filly’s eyes slid predatorily across the name of a particularly unlucky colt who had an exceptionally large column beneath his name that continued onto the next page. And yet, the fact that he was easy to blackmail was merely a bonus for Diamond Tiara. She was more interested in his particular set of skills than his rap-sheet.

Kicking the book closed, Diamond Tiara tossed the tome back in her bag before setting out to find the residence of her soon-to-be “recruited” subordinate. “Hope you didn’t have plans this weekend… Featherweight.”

Chapter 2 End.