The Cutie Mark Bakers
by Twippledash
"Ah'm outta ideas. You have anythin' in your mind Scootaloo?"
"Hmm... Hang gliding?"
"Just how are we goin' to do that? We don't have hang gliders or any bits to buy one."
"Good point. Zip-lining?"
"We tried that already. Tree sap and pine needles, remember?"
"Oh, yeah..."
The two fillies fell silent for a moment. The yellow earth pony and the orange pegasus were once again trying to come up with new activities for the day while waiting for their third fellow Crusader to come along. They were supposed to meet at their clubhouse ten minutes ago but the white unicorn filly hadn't shown up yet.
"What's takin' Sweetie Belle so long?" Apple Bloom thought aloud. "She'd probably come up with somethin'."
"Hmph..." Scootaloo snorted, rolling her eyes. "Her ideas are always so boring! I mean, who would like their cutie mark to be a flower or something when you could get something awesome like flames or thunderbolts!"
"Hey!" At that moment the missing Crusader came in trough the door. "My ideas are not boring!"
"Yes they are!"
"No they're not!"
"Stop arguing!" Apple Bloom shouted and looked at the unicorn. "Where were you Sweetie Belle? We were supposed to meet here ten minutes ago."
"Sorry," the white unicorn said, looking away and forgetting her little quarrel with Scootaloo. "Had to clean up the mess I made trying to help Rarity with her dressmaking again."
"You've been tryin' to help her as long as I remember, and you still haven't got your cutie mark," the apple filly pointed out. "Have you thought that your special talent maybe isn't dressmaking?"
"Yeah, I guess so..." the cotton maned filly lamented with a tiny chuckle. "I just wanted to be like her."
"Anyway," Scootaloo intervened, also having calmed down from her sudden burst of anger earlier, "you got any ideas what we could do Sweetie Belle? And you can keep any totally uncool ideas for yourself."
"Well..." Sweetie Belle hesitated, shuffling her hooves a little and trying to come up with ideas that Scootaloo wouldn't qualify as 'totally uncool'. Finally she came up with something and smiled to the orange pegasus. "Maybe we could try baking? I've tried cooking to Rarity a few times with not so much luck—I'm still wondering how exactly I managed to burn juice and liquify toast last time I did that—but baking is totally different from cooking, right?"
"Right," Scootaloo replied nonchalantly. "That works for me, at least it's a lot better than the flower picking you suggested last week."
"Ah don't know..." Apple Bloom frowned a little. "Ah once tried bakin' with Pinkie when we hadn't formed the Cutie Mark Crusaders yet. It didn't turn out well. Strangely enough Pinkie seemed to like those black crumbs which were supposed to be cupcakes, though..."
"Maybe you just had bad luck that one time?" Scootaloo suggested. "You'll never find out if you don't try again!"
"Okay then." Apple Bloom cheered up. "So where are we going? We don't have an oven or any ingredients here."
"I'd think Sugarcube Corner would be the most obvious choice," Sweetie Belle said. "I heard the Cakes are on a catering trip in Manehattan and I'm sure Pinkie wouldn't mind baking with us."
"What are we waiting for then?" the orange filly exclaimed. "Let's go!"
With that Scootaloo rushed out of their clubhouse, jumped on her scooter and fastened her helmet. She looked over her shoulder to see the other two Crusaders jumping on the wagon attached to the scooter as they also putted on their helmets. She buzzed her wings and launched towards Ponyville, shouting their war cry in unison with her fellow Crusaders.
"Cutie Mark Crusader Bakers! Yay!"
"Sorry girls, no can do! It would be super funerrific to help you with baking but it's a really, really busy day today!" The always energetic pink pony bounced around the Sugarcube Corner's kitchen, pulling a tray of muffins from one oven and sliding another tray of unbaked ones into said oven. "All of the ovens are in use and there's still zillions of orders to fill! It would be looong into evening until I could get one free for you to use!" She heard the service bell ring from outside the kitchen and turned back at the fillies. "Sorry, gotta go serve customers! Bye!"
Pinkie was already hopping towards the counter to take an order from a gray, blonde maned pegasus mare. The three fillies sighed and exited the kitchen, waded through the crowd of ponies stationed around the tables in the main dining room, and finally finding their way out of the bakery. It was a hot and sunny summer day, so they gathered together at a shade of one of the trees in Ponyville's central park and lied down on the grass, Scootaloo's scooter with an attached wagon laying next to them. After a few moments, the yellow apple farmer filly finally broke the silence.
"So," she said, "should we try baking somewhere else?"
"Maybe Rainbow Dash would let us in to bake something for her?"
"There's just two little problems with that." Sweetie Belle rolled her eyes at the enthusiastic Rainbow Dash's fanfilly. "One, none of us can fly." She received a glare from Scootaloo for mentioning her inability to fly properly yet, but she just ignored it and continued, "And two, I and Apple Bloom can't walk on the clouds her house is built of."
"How about your sister, then?" Apple Bloom asked the white unicorn.
"I told you I had some... problems with cooking breakfast for her," Sweetie Belle said, looking down to her hooves. "And she's probably still a little mad at me for it."
"Couldn't ya at least ask her?"
"I guess we can try," Sweetie Belle complied, still looking unsure. "But I doubt she'll allow me anywhere near her kitchen for at least a few weeks."
"It's settled then, nothing better to do anyway," the orange pegasus said, already ready to take off with her scooter. "Hop on, let's go!"
The others hopped onto the wagon and they scooted towards the Carousel Boutique.
"Baking? You, in my kitchen?!" Rarity's eyes widened with shock. She had her little sister's previous escapades in her kitchen still fresh in mind as she tried to contain her building anger. She managed to keep her voice down as she continued, still keeping a strict tone. "You know you are forbidden to use my cooking equipment until I say otherwise, my dear sister. My oven still has a stench of smoke that simply won't wash off. Now please get out to play, would you?"
The little white unicorn frowned and looked her sister with pleading eyes. "I promise we won't—"
"No!" Rarity interrupted, raising her voice at the little filly, pressure building inside of her, but she still managed to keep herself relatively calm. "You darlings just... go out and play or something. I've got work to do."
Sweetie Belle looked around at the two other fillies standing beside her, trying to get some assistance from them. They just stood there, silent and unsure what to do with the fashionista who seemed like she was about to explode. Sweetie Belle looked back at Rarity and tried to convince her sister one more time.
"But sis! We—"
"NO!"
"But—"
"I said NO!" Rarity finally snapped. "I am not letting you into my kitchen! Now get out!"
Not wanting to make her sister even angrier than she already was, Sweetie Belle quickly turned towards the door and ran out after Scootaloo and Apple Bloom, leaving the fuming fashionista alone. They hopped back onto Scootaloo's scooter as they drove away from the Boutique, getting back into a shade of some lone tree beside the road they were driving.
"I told you this wouldn't end well..." the white unicorn filly said downcast.
"Hey, no big deal!" Scootaloo cheered her fellow crusader up. "We just have to find some other place for baking."
"Again," Sweetie Belle added, but then perked up. "But you're right, it's no big deal. When I come back home later tonight, I'm sure Rarity has calmed down already and is ready to apologise. This isn't the first time she's been mad at me," she added grinning sheepishly.
"Pinkie, Rainbow and Rarity are out now," Apple Bloom counted, looking at the other two fillies. "Who else could we ask?"
"How about your sister?" Sweetie queried.
"Nah." Apple Bloom shook her head. "Granny's bakin' apple pies for an apple convention mah family is attending tomorrow. She has traditionally always baked them all by herself so she wouldn't accept any help."
"That leaves just Twilight and Fluttershy left of your sisters' mutual friends to ask for," Scootaloo said and looked along the road where the tree-library was clearly visible just a few hundred feet away. She nodded towards the library and hopped back onto her scooter. "We could go and ask Twilight. Hop on!"
Once again the two fillies put their driving helmets back on and climbed onto the wagon. Scootaloo pulled them to Twilight's library at a leisure pace for once, parking her scooter next to the front door of the giant tree. They left their helmets on the wagon and knocked on the door.
"Come in, it's open," sounded a familiar voice from inside.
They pushed the door open and stepped into the hollowed out tree, looking around for the purple proprietor of the library.
Instead they saw another familiar purple creature. Spike was climbing up a ladder holding a book in his claws, an almost empty trolley with a 'returns' label sitting next to the ladder. He pushed the book he was holding into the bookshelf and climbed back down, losing his balance halfway as the ladder suddenly shifted a little. He fell on the wooden floor with a thump but stood up quickly, being just slightly dazed from the fall. He looked up at the three fillies with a questioning look.
"What are you doing here? Can I help you?" Spike asked, shaking his head a little to clear his thoughts. He suddenly looked a little worried. "I sure hope you're not trying to get your librarian cutie marks again... last time you tried that, it took me three hours just to collect and rearrange the books you threw all over the floor."
"No Spike," Apple Bloom said cheerily, looking around once more but still not seeing the purple unicorn mare anywhere. "We were actually lookin' for Twilight to ask if we could use her kitchen to try baking!"
"Sorry, she had some errands to run. I'm sure she'll be back soon though." Spike added the last sentence when he noticed their downcast faces. He then looked questioningly at the fillies once again. "Wouldn't it make more sense to ask Pinkie for that kind of favors? This is a library, while she lives in a bakery, you know?"
"We did ask her," Scootaloo said, looking at Spike shaking her head a bit. "But she was way too busy with apparently 'zillions of orders to fill'."
"Before you ask more," Sweetie Belle added, noticing Spike was about to reply, "we also though of my and Apple Bloom's sisters as well as Rainbow Dash, with no luck at all."
"How about Fluttershy?" Spike asked.
"Didn't ask her yet, but your library was closer," Apple Bloom said, looking a little remorseful as she added an afterthought, "Besides, I think we should give her a little more time to recuperate after we tried to get our cutie marks in animal caretakin' a few days ago."
"I'd rather not recall the memory of that..." Sweetie Belle muttered looking somewhat uneasy, then added with a smile, "But at least it ended quite well with no animals getting lost or seriously hurt."
"I don't even want to know about it..." Spike mumbled, turning back to the few books still left to be re-shelved on the returns trolley, taking another book and setting in on a low shelf next to him. "You can wait here for Twilight to come back if you wish, she should be back any minute now. Just don't make any mess, as I know I have to clean it up if you do."
After a few minutes of silence (or not actually silence, but it was more silent than usually around the three fillies) the purple dragon assistant had managed to put rest of the books into their places on the bookshelves and managed to keep the Cutie Mark Crusaders out of mischief. A few seconds more and the library door opened, showing the purple librarian mare carrying a set of saddle bags on her back as she stepped inside.
"Spike?" Twilight called, still at the door. "Are the Cutie Mark Crusaders visiting again? I saw Scootaloo's scooter parked—"
She was interrupted by the fillies in question as they all started to babble at her, each of them having something different to say. She could discern the words 'cutie marks' and 'baking' among the jumble before she silenced them by raising a hoof.
"One at a time, please!" she exclaimed, lowering her hoof as they fell silent. "Now, what did you want to meet me for?"
Sweetie Belle chimed in with a big grin on her face. "We wanted to use your kitchen to try our hoof at baking!"
"But wouldn't Pinkie—"
"We asked her already!" Scootaloo interrupted Twilight, raising her voice slightly annoyed having to repeat that again. "The bakery was too busy today."
"Oh, right. There seemed to be quite a crowd as I passed by the Sugarcube Corner," Twilight said, looking at each of the Crusaders. "But how about your own famil—"
"Tried them also," this time it was Apple Bloom who interrupted, "no luck with 'em either."
"Okay..." The purple mare looked slightly annoyed of being repeatedly interrupted, but then relented. "I guess you can use my kitchen then, but I'll have Spike to supervise you all the time. I don't want you to hurt yourself or set the whole house into fire." The tree-library was enchanted with powerful fire-resistance spells of course, but she wanted to play safe just in case. She then trotted upstairs leaving Spike again alone with the three disaster-prone fillies.
"Yay!" the three Crusaders shouted in unison and dashed enthusiastically towards the kitchen.
"Ugh..." Spike muttered shaking his head and shuffling after them lazily. "I have a feeling there is a lot of cleaning to do tonight..."
About fifteen minutes later Twilight's kitchen looked like an earthquake had hit the library; a full sack of flour and sugar were littered all over the floor and tabletops, several eggs were smashed everywhere, and all kinds of bowls and cooking utensils were lying on every flat surface. Amazingly enough the three fillies managed to make some kind of batter also into a bowl, though it was so sticky that the wooden spoon Apple Bloom used to stir it had snapped. Spike was just watching at the disaster shocked and jaw wide open, knowing that he would have to clean it all up before bedtime.
Scootaloo had found a muffin tray and set it onto the flour-coated table as Sweetie Belle put a chunk of their sticky batter into each cup. Scootaloo and Apple Bloom then took a hold on the tray and together pushed it into a preheated oven closing the oven door after it. They all glanced at their flanks... just to see that they were completely covered in white flour. After quickly brushing the flour off their flanks, they saw that none of them still hadn't received their cutie marks. They frowned a little, but soon enough they all were again at their normal cheerful attitude.
"Now we just wait twenty minutes," Sweetie Belle said reading the recipe they had been following. "We could make the icing while we wait."
"Yeah!" Scootaloo exclaimed. "I hate to just sit waiting and doing nothing, so let's get on with making the icing already!"
After another fifteen minutes of wreaking havoc around the kitchen they managed to create a few bags of icing, each a different color. A few more minutes and then Apple Bloom pulled open the oven door, expecting a puff of black smoke like the last time she had been making cupcakes. Instead, she was met with a surprisingly good smell and beautiful brown small cakes.
"Looks like we actually did it!" She was almost bouncing in excitement as she pulled the tray out using a pot-holder and put it on the table next to oven.
"Yay!" Scootaloo was buzzing her wings in excitement and grabbed a bag of icing with her front hooves. "I can't wait to taste them once we get the icing put on them!"
"Whoa." Spike, who was still quite shocked about all the mess they had made, watched at their product with a blank, expressionless face as Scootaloo started pouring red icing on one cupcake. "They actually look good! Whatever I expected, it wasn't this."
The three fillies ignored Spike's last remark as Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom joined Scootaloo in decorating the cupcakes. Soon they had a tray full of decorated cupcakes, and also a hoofful of icing splashed all over the table adding even more to Spike's cleaning chores that evening.
The three fillies then bumped their hooves together, yelling one of their trademark Crusader war cries.
"Cutie Mark Crusader Taste Testers! Yay!"
Each of them took one cupcake from the tray, and they bit into their confectioneries simultaneously.
...just to gag a moment later and throw away their inedible cupcakes.
"What the hay?!" Apple Bloom exclaimed with a frown. "How can anythin' made out of mostly milk, flour and sugar be that hard? Ah almost chipped a tooth on that cupcake!"
"Yuk!" Sweetie Belle was at the water tap trying to rinse the taste out of her mouth. "Did somepony confuse salt with sugar on that icing?"
"These were the most horrible cupcakes I've ever tasted!" Scootaloo joined the two in blaming the confectioneries they had produced. "Even Pinkie's experimental spinach-broccoli cupcakes with icing made out of liquid rainbow were better than these!"
The three sat in a silence for a moment, glaring at the tray of good-looking, but totally inedible cupcakes. They then noticed that it was missing four cupcakes, even though each of them had taken only one.
They looked at the purple dragon who had been supervising them, happily munching in a cupcake with red and blue icing. They just stared at him with expressionless faces.
"What?" Spike glanced back at them, taking another bite of his cupcake. "This is great! It's a little crunchier than Pinkie's cupcakes and not as sweet, just how I like it!"
The fillies stuck out their tongues in disgust. They looked back at each other, noting that nopony had got their cutie marks and decided just to leave after another complete failure in gaining their cutie marks.
They started to head towards the library door as Apple Bloom turned back to Spike, who was looking confused at the leaving fillies.
"Ya can keep those cupcakes if you really like them," she said with a frown. "We'll be headin' back at our clubhouse to find out another ways to get out cutie marks."
"Huh?" Spike confusedly raised an eyebrow. "You don't like them? These are the best cupcakes I have ever tasted! Well... maybe with an exception of that sapphire cupcake the Cakes once made me for my birthday."
"Ugh..." Apple Bloom was feeling somewhat nauseated just thinking about eating those cupcakes. "Ah don't know if you're just tryin' to be kind, or if you're really genuine with your words... but yes, you can keep 'em all, we won't miss 'em."
"All right." Spike shrugged, tossing the piece of cupcake in his hand into his mouth and taking another one out of the tray. "Bye then. See you later."
"Bye, Spike." Apple Bloom smiled and trotted out the door after Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo who were already waiting outdoors for her to come.
Spike looked around the kitchen and sighed aloud, taking a brush and a dustpan out of a closet and started cleaning off the flour and sugar littered all over the place. At least I got some tasty cupcakes for a prize, so I don't have to clean up this mess for nothing, he thought to himself emptying the dustpan into a waste container.
"Ah'm still outta ideas. Anythin' in mind Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle?"
"I've got nothing."
"My head is as empty as the sky after Rainbow Dash has cleaned the clouds out of it."
The Cutie Mark Crusaders were lying in their clubhouse together as bored as they were a few hours prior, still without cutie marks of course. Only difference was that there was one cutie mark idea more added into their list of failed attempts, which was already getting alarmingly long.
They just laid there in silence, nopony saying anything until Sweetie Belle got an idea seeing the Ponyville's primary post pony, a blonde maned gray pegasus mare, flying past their clubhouse.
"Have we tried to get mail delivering cutie marks yet?" the white unicorn inquired.
"Hmm..." Apple Bloom thought, then smiled. "Ah don't think we have!"
"That's a great idea Sweetie!" Scootaloo perked up. "With my scooter we're sure to be the fastest mailponies in whole Ponyville, if not even whole Equestria!"
"All right!" Apple Bloom trotted back outdoors, jumping on the wagon attached to Scootaloo's scooter, the other two fillies following. "Let's go fetch some mail to deliver!"
"Cutie Mark Crusader Mail Deliverers! Yay!"
And so Scootaloo once again buzzed her wings and they zoomed off to another crusading adventure.
Twilight trotted back downstairs and walked into her kitchen for the first time after the last visit of Cutie Mark Crusaders. Spike was still cleaning up the kitchen, which didn't look like a hurricane had hit the library anymore, but more like a kind of mess Pinkie Pie makes every time she's baking. Which is to say, still quite a mess, but nowhere near a Cutie Mark Crusader kind of mess.
"Wow, the Crusaders left, what, an hour ago? And you're still nowhere near cleaning the place. They really must have made a mess here..." Twilight looked around for a few broken eggs here and there, as well as splashes of cupcake icing on a table. She then looked at the cupcakes they had made, having a surprised look on her face. "Huh? Did they make those cupcakes?"
"Uh-huh," Spike answered, taking another bite of a cupcake he was holding. "And they are delicious!"
"They sure look delicious!" Twilight exclaimed and levitated one cupcake out of the tray. "I wonder why they left them here?"
She took a bite out of her cupcake.
...or would have taken a bite if it weren't too hard for her teeth.
"Ow!" The purple mare dropped the cupcake, rubbing her jaws with a hoof. "How can you eat these, Spike? I can't even take a bite out of it with my teeth! And this icing... did they put a cup of salt into it?" She stuck her tongue out.
"Why does everypony complain about there cupcakes?" Spike looked at Twilight with a little frown. "They taste great! I've never eaten cupcakes this good! Except that one sapphire cupcake."
"Well... you eat gemstones as snacks and managed to digest those 'baked bads' which made everypony else violently ill. I shouldn't be surprised."
Twilight walked out of the kitchen, leaving Spike to finish cleaning the place and to eat those inedible cupcakes away. She walked outdoors to check her mail, levitating a few envelopes out of her mailbox, reading the addresses.
"Rainbow Dash? Pinkie Pie? Lyra?" She looked at the addresses and names confusedly. The addresses matched right names, so the mailpony had apparently just made a mistake delivering her mail. She decided to give the envelopes to their rightful recipients later as she looked around the quiet streets.
She noticed the familiar three fillies zooming past the library, carrying a mail bag with them. It didn't take a genius to connect the two points. I don't know how they managed to convince the ponies in postal office to trust them into mail delivering duty, but I know there's going to be a lot of exchanging of letters today, she thought to herself sighing aloud and shaking her head a bit before trotting back indoors.