The festivities went on well into the night, and when they finally concluded, the Crusaders got treated to a rare sight of Lance and his cohorts being lugged to bed. They had confetti and streamers and balloons in their manes and tails, and a few lingering icing smears from where the soldiers had to wipe their mouths for them.
"'nough… chocolate… for a year…" Lance moaned as he was carried down the hall.
"It's a good thing we have poison-nullification pills, sir. You'd have probably gotten sick along with any gryphon who ate chocolate otherwise," the soldier lugging Lance said. "That much in one sitting, with gryphon blood in your veins? That would be short of lethal, most likely."
"Probably… gonna regret… this tomorrow…" Lance groaned, his stomach gurgling uncomfortably as he spoke. The Crusaders pulled back into their shared room when the parade ended with a door opening and closing, and giggled to themselves.
"Looks like they partied too hard," Sweetie Belle chirped.
"What else can you do when Pinkie decides you're not leaving?" Scootaloo asked. "Especially when you celebrate getting your cutie mark years after you got it?"
Apple Bloom was busy scribbling down some more information for their project. She had lingering icing smears on her face, and a big grin set on her muzzle as she worked. Her friends grinned, and Sweetie Belle asked, "So, whatcha got?"
Apple Bloom set the pencil down. "I got a lot," she said, grinning as she checked over the new additions to the list she had made the night before.
No. 8: Irongrey Aerie doesn't treat cutie marks the same way that Equestria treats them; where Equestria celebrates, the Aerie just shrugs its shoulders and says 'fair enough.' This is largely due to the rest of Fantasia's attitude towards cutie marks; except for a few locations, they revile cutie marks and wish to see them purged. Funnily enough, they're willing to display the cutie marks of the top brass on the largest flags, as seen in the photographs of the Aerie's city.
No. 9: The Aerie uses airships for defending territories during war as well as the transportation of goods. However, they also have devices called planes, used for scouting out territory and used primarily during the Trials of Attrition.
No. 10: The magitek the Aerie uses originally belonged to ancient felines, gryphons, and hippogryphs before Faust and Godcat were sealed. The Aerie has simply improved on the magitek, thanks to NoLegs, an important figure in the army as well as the only cat who actively serves in the military. The gryphons who help maintain the magitek are all wingless, but able to fly and fight as efficiently as any soldier, as they pilot special planes that are used for the aforementioned scouting and fighting.
No. 11: Before the Trials of Attrition occurred, an event called the Royale Catastrophe happened, a bloody gladiatorial game that pitted cutie marked foals against each other to die. This served two purposes: to rid Fantasia of cutie marks, and to entertain careless, bloodthirsty adults who wanted to watch the foals suffer. Due to a runaway magic surge, Matt, Natalie, and a stallion named Lazarus put an end to the affair once and for all, when they were barely teenagers. This is a large reason why cutie marks aren't celebrated on Fantasia; they're seen as ill omens, when they're acknowledged at all outside of provinces the Aerie controls.
No. 12: The First Unified Army, the military of the Aerie, seems to be willing to recruit those that have been rejected by the rest of Fantasia: besides the aforementioned cat and wingless gryphons and the survivors of the changeling hives, they're willing to recruit ponies, diamond dogs, hippogryphs and even wraiths, provided they make the cut. Racism is strictly outlawed at the Aerie, as is victim shaming and 'head-in-the-sand management,' where ponies and other sentients ignore problems until they get too big to ignore. They also seem quite receptive to the values espoused by Harmony and Friendship, making them a probable ally to Equestria.
In addition to that, the first framework of the report was coming along nicely, complete with marked pages that would help ponies keep their place in the report. Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle leaned over Apple Bloom's withers to better look at it as she beheld what she had penned. She handed the papers and pencil to Scootaloo so she could start writing out the next part of the Aerie's existence onto the report. Scootaloo giggled at the small table of contents that Apple Bloom had created.
Part I: Before the Aerie: Ragnarok, Hellfire, And Catastrophe
Part II: The Trials of Attrition: Birth Of War, Birth Of An Aerie
Part III: The Promise of Friendship: What The Aerie Is Like Now
Part IV: The Economy Of A Fantasian City-State
Part V: The Culture Of A Fantasian Military
Part VI: Magitek And You: A Beginner's Guide To The Aerie's Most Valuable Assets
Part VII: Food, Cuisine, And Cargo: What The Aerie Cultivates In Its Borders
Part VIII: Footnotes And References
So far, Apple Bloom had written out everything they had learned of the Catastrophe and the Trials of Attrition, complete with somewhat detailed drawings on the sides that featured the fearsome tank and Ragnarok in the appropriate chapters to better cement the piece. While it was largely done in pencil, complete with some eraser marks here and there, that meant there was more freedom of expression than drying ink could ever do for something like this. Scootaloo went to write right away, working on the third chapter of the report and smiling as it all began coming together.
This left Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom to sort out the photographs once again, except now the stack was even fatter with the pictures they had taken from aboard the planes. The newest photos showed off the Fantasian countryside, which spanned for miles around the Aerie, not unlike the sights that could be seen in Canterlot. But whereas Canterlot had plains and forests, the Aerie was a more mountainous region, with more mountains dotting the horizon on every side. It had enough plains and forests for its own cities below the ring of steel and within the ring of mountains if it so wished, but for right now it was its own shade of perfection.
Though, amusingly enough, there were some weird-looking devices in the stack of references. One featured a conveyor belt, with drones on it, either in pieces or whole. Others featured gears and chains, powered by glimmering crystals. Others still had changelings and gryphons in what seemed to be construction garb, complete with hardhats and working with wrenches and the like. "Is that a factory?" Sweetie Belle asked.
Apple Bloom considered the pictures, and went ahead and sorted through some more to find more devices being made. She nodded. "Why, you wanna check that out?" she asked.
"A factory?" Scootaloo asked, turning away from the report to peer at the pictures. "Given how many pipes the Aerie has, I wouldn't be surprised if they had one of those."
"So what do y'all think? Should we check it out tomorrow?" Apple Bloom asked. Scootaloo rubbed her chin with the pencil's eraser as she contemplated this.
"Well… we didn't get slime rancher cutie marks, nor did we get magitek pilot cutie marks… then again, we weren't really piloting the magitek so much as helping…" Scootaloo muttered, donning a lopsided frown as she weighed the options. "I dunno."
"Well, we probably need to look at it to complete the school report," Sweetie Belle pointed out. "We gotta know how the Aerie improves the designs of its magitek."
Scootaloo nodded, eraser still on chin. "True…" she conceded. "But factory worker cutie marks sound a little…" She made a face that was echoed by her friends. "It just… doesn't sound exciting at all."
"Yeah, but it could be exciting," Sweetie Belle argued. "At least, if we end up working here when we're older."
"And what would factory worker cutie marks look like, if we got them here?" Apple Bloom asked, tilting her head as she weighed her own question.
Another knock at the door had the trio wary, even as they turned to it. "Who is it?" Apple Bloom called.
"Maria," a young voice answered. The Crusaders shared glances, wondering what the young Fantasian hippogryph was doing this late at night.
"Come in," Apple Bloom said after a moment. The doorknob fumbled for a moment, and the door opened to reveal Maria clutching the knob with both front talons, her hind hooves dragging along the carpet as the door dragged her into the room. She let go of the knob, dropped to all fours, and trotted over.
"What are you doing?" Maria asked, her fluffy brown wings shuddering a bit. The Crusaders frowned; that was as obvious a question as they could come.
"We're writing a school report," Scootaloo said. Maria frowned. "Do you know what school even is?" Maria shook her head, her wings wilting.
"Haven't even got to go to a school," Maria said, head drooping somewhat in disappointment. The Crusaders shared looks again, taking pity on the poor filly. As boring as school was, even with the bullying and the bad days in between, at least they were learning things that would help them in their adult lives—and it seemed as though Maria didn't even have that.
Sweetie Belle piped up. "Don't worry," she said, trotting over to pat Maria on her feathery withers. Maria looked at her, perplexed. "It's never too late to get into a school. Sure, you might not choose which school you get into at first, but when you get bigger, and you graduate, you have your pick of the litter." Apple Bloom and Scootaloo gave her puzzled frowns. Sweetie shrugged. "What? It's what Rarity told me when I asked if I could pick a school later on down the road."
"But how do I get into a school?" Maria asked, still frowning sullenly. Goodness, the poor girl had a lot of questions.
"Well, usually, you have to have an adult enroll you into one," Sweetie Belle answered. "They talk with the teachers, see how much they can teach you, and once you learn enough and get old enough, you graduate, assuming you get passing grades." At that moment, someone rapped on the open door, and all turned to find Rhinoc staring at them. He was looking squarely at Maria.
"Okay, I know you're not my foal," Rhinoc said, making Maria wilt a little. "But it's your bedtime."
"But I don't wanna go to bed!" Maria protested, wings snapping bolt upright. She stamped a claw and continued, "I wanna go to school! It sounds fun!"
Rhinoc sighed. "Yeah, but if you wanna go to school, you gotta keep a sleep schedule. That way, you have the energy to do schoolwork and whatnot," he said, lighting his horn.
Maria responded by shouting out, "You're not my daddy!" and bolting out of the room, zooming between his legs and knocking a hoof from under him as she dashed, causing him to faceplant into the floor.
Rhinoc got right back up and buzzed his wings, flying after her and shutting the door on the way out. Within moments, they could hear Maria protesting, albeit with some really colorful language that no foal should have been uttering. Naturally, the Crusaders plugged their ears with their hooves until they were sure that the foulest of words ever spoken in modern language were being uttered no longer. Upon unplugging their ears, they heard silence, and little else.
"Yeesh, that girl had a potty mouth," Apple Bloom said, shuddering. "If I talked like that back at the Acres, or in school, I'd get a switching and grounding."
"Who taught her those words?" Sweetie Belle asked, wincing. The door opened again, and another soldier trotted in, this one a golden-eyed changeling whose tired face screamed 'I have seen this exact scenario play out before, and it wasn't pretty.'
The changeling sighed. "Well, she's been picking up the potty mouth from Lance and the others, so… I'll inform them that they need to do something about it," she said, frowning. "But now she's in bed, albeit in time-out for now…" Her wings drooped. "I don't think time-out will be effective with her, but we'll see."
"Anyway," the soldier went on, trotting to the trio, "how's the report going?"
Scootaloo went back to writing. "It's coming together nicely," she said.
"Can I see?" the soldier asked. The Crusaders shared looks, shrugged, and waited for Scootaloo to finish whatever sentence she was on before handing the budding report over.
"So… why are you reading our work?" Sweetie Belle asked.
"Well… I'm actually under orders from Lance to make sure you keep the report foal-friendly… or as foal-friendly as you can make war, anyway," the soldier replied, frowning. "You can't scar your classmates for life, after all…" The soldier peered closer at the report, seeming to squint at something. She scanned the papers, flipped pages, and halted at where Scootaloo had left off before returning the report to them. "I didn't think you'd mention the Royale Catastrophe, but… you three have done a good job keeping it concise and blunt, but in a way that won't really scar other children."
"Well, we had to explain where the giant swords of death and despair came from; Cheerilee would've probably docked points if we didn't," Sweetie said somewhat defensively. "Besides, such spells aren't really tossed around like candy in Equestria. By Tartarus, we use the Friendship Beam more often than those kinds of magic."
The soldier nodded. "Yeah, I guess that would make sense," she agreed. "And we have our own rules and regulations regarding such spells anyway, so maybe you should include that in your report somewhere, just in case."
"Can do," Scootaloo said, going back to writing the report's third chapter. "Say, do you remember what the old changeling Kings and Queens were like?" The soldier frowned and sighed.
"Well… I had to ask about the other Kings and Queens from the other hives once the Trials of Attrition ended… and…" The soldier wilted.
Sweetie Belle tilted her head. "Were they tyrants?"
The soldier nodded. "Fortunately, not too tyrannical, but they were not quite good at their jobs either. But they weren't the sort to follow their own rules in many situations—rather, the vast majority were lazy, and tried to use the hives' wealth to fund their own lifestyles." She shrugged. "They thought the geased gryphons couldn't slay them, because of the fact that they were royal changelings. Alas, they didn't bother picking up how to fight at any point during their long lives, and… well, they got steamrolled."
"So, they were not really effective at the whole ruling thing?" Apple Bloom asked. The soldier shook her head.
"Nope. Just kept letting things get worse and worse until they died. Hell, if they came back as wraiths and demanded to reclaim their thrones, we'd just saw off their horns and chuck 'em in the Iron Hold," the soldier replied, wings buzzing for a moment. "Before that, they just kept passing insane laws that benefited only them at the expense of their subjects. Truth be told, I'm glad they're gone, even if we're working under another crazy bastard who's on a tight leash."
The soldier sat down. "You know how skinny our wraithling is?" The trio nodded. "Well, things got that bad across all ten hives, and the Trials of Attrition made it even worse. If we hadn't found that slimes were endless wells of love when we did, we'd have been goners."
That made Scootaloo halt her writing. She looked at the soldier, eyes widening. "Wait, you'd have kicked the bucket?" she asked, somewhat disbelieving.
The soldier nodded again. "Yeah, and what's worse is the old Kings and Queens were quite… rotund in their last days. And when they died, we didn't get a chance to see if they deflated or not from all the love they had consumed. In fact, the discovery that slimes could produce love, even when war is raging, is what lead to the slime ranch being constructed." The soldier grinned. "That ranch is practically one of the pillars that uphold society here."
"So how were the old hives structured?" Sweetie Belle asked. "I mean, you obviously had Kings and Queens at the top of the food chain, but where were the nobles?"
The soldier shook her head again. "The old Kings and Queens… dissolved the nobility across all ten hives, way back when I was a little grub. That way, noling could succeed them to the throne. None of them had any children of their own either, so that ended up ensuring the royal lineages went extinct." She shifted to lay down to look at the children evenly. "None of them managed to reach old age; the Kings and Queens before them died, they were young and inexperienced in comparison, and quite spoiled and entitled."
"That being said…" The soldier lowered her head to be eye to eye with the three. "As young and inexperienced as our current leaders are, we're teaching them to not be like the old Kings and Queens, citing what they did so they don't make the same mistakes. In that regard, that's one of the very few good things I can say about them unironically." She wore a diabolical grin as she spoke. "And the gryphons are doing the same, in regards to their previous leaders. All in all, we'll make effective leaders out of the current crop."
The trio grinned at that news. Well, at least the Aerie had that going for them. "Any massive blunders yet?" Apple Bloom asked.
The soldier shook her head. "In regards to law-making, no. Generally, if they're unsure about something, they'll have us gathered in the biggest auditorium available and ask us if the law sounds good, but that has only happened once." Her wings buzzed again. "And then, when it came out that that particular would-be law was penned by the old gryphon leaders in the Iron Hold, we promptly scrapped it."
"Wait… prisoners are allowed to suggest laws?" Sweetie Belle asked, tilting her head.
The soldier shook her head again. "No, but one night Blue Crow decided he wanted to party too hard. Next thing we know, he gets inebriated, waddles to the Hold with a pencil and paper, writes down the insane would-be law as the old leaders talk his ears off, plops it in the office where most of the laws and such go, and stumbles to bed with barely any memory as to how he got back," she said, smirking slightly. "He… got a firm reminder to stay away from the alcohol afterwards."
"After that, we increased security in the Iron Hold, so that something like that little blunder doesn't happen again. And we do have one-night holding cells, just so whoever gets that drunk has a chance to sober up. Then we had to make underage drinking laws, when Lieutenant-General Windwood, then a mere Major at the time, decided she wanted to get into the good stuff." The soldier sighed and patted the three on the head with a hoof. "We ended up having to isolate her until she sobered up."
"Why?" Sweetie Belle asked, trying her best to envision a younger, drunk Anna. The shenanigans that ensued in the vision ranged from tame by Ponyville standards, to needlessly violent over some perceived slight.
"Well… you know how Pinkie Pie is normally, right?" the soldier asked. When the trio nodded, the soldier went on, "Well… Anna's like that when drunk. Except she's both happy and sad somehow. One moment she wanted to party like no tomorrow, and the next she was bawling her eyes out over something… really, really sensitive." The soldier's smirk fell, and she shuddered at the memory. "And no, we're under orders to not discuss that sensitive thing with anyone, at least… presently. It's a bit of a personal matter for her."
"Did the old leaders try to poison her mind?" Apple Bloom asked.
The soldier shook her head yet again, her frown still firm. "No, we didn't give them the chance to. Besides, I'm pretty sure they'd have given her grief for not being a pure gryphon anyway, which… wouldn't have helped her mood in the slightest," she answered. "Before you three ask, she's one-quarter gryphon. I know, she doesn't look the part, right? But we ran tests and confirmed it ourselves."
A door creaked open down the hallway, and the shuffling of what sounded like hooves could be heard from it. The soldier turned and sighed when a weary, wavering Anna shambled into the room, eyes glazed and tongue lolling out of her mouth. The soldier rose and moved to stabilize her. "Can't sleep?" the soldier questioned.
Anna shook her head with a small, unintelligible grumble. The only thing the Crusaders could make out was something about a sugar coma. The soldier nodded and turned to the three. "Pardon me for a moment, I gotta escort someone back to bed." With that, she escorted Anna out of the room and stayed in the hallway for a bit, followed by the sound of another door closing a bit of a distance away.
A few moments later, the soldier was back, sighing. "Sorry about that; she… might have eaten too much at Pinkie's insistence," she said, shuddering. The Crusaders winced, knowing full well how their stomachs felt when they were stuffed past capacity, and could only go one way or the other.
"Will she be okay tomorrow?" Scootaloo asked, wings drooping somewhat. The soldier nodded.
"She should be fit as a fiddle tomorrow," the soldier replied, some confidence leaking into her voice. "She's taken far worse than an upset stomach; besides, she's climbed the ranks anyway, so it's nothing too serious. We just gotta tell Pinkie to let them moderate how much they eat."
"But aren't coffee and chocolate toxic to gryphons… or those with gryphon blood in them?" Scootaloo asked, tilting her head.
The soldier mulled it over for a bit, then shrugged. "Well… I'm pretty sure Godcat created the gryphons and hippogryphs without that in mind… but so far, the only cases we've had of chocolate and coffee killing any gryphon are those who didn't take poison-nullifying pills to counter it…" She sighed. "Of course, Lance is… technically allergic, if he has too much in one sitting. So are Anna and Sarah, but they managed to bargain with Pinkie to take their medicine earlier."
The Crusaders tilted their heads. "Lance has gryphon blood? But he doesn't look like it..." Apple Bloom muttered.
The soldier shook her head. "No, he doesn't. But once the magitek was set up and tests could be run, we found that he's one-eighth gryphon, I think…" She scratched her chin with a hoof. "Or was it one-sixth? Hrm… I'll have to double-check with him…"
The trio shared looks. Apple Bloom piped up again, "So, y'all have a factory, right?"
The soldier nodded, snapping out of her reverie. "Yeah, why?"
"Can we check it out tomorrow?" Apple Bloom asked, smiling. "We wanna know how the Aerie makes new magitek to use, and improves any old rigs it finds."
The soldier frowned a little. Apple Bloom kept grinning at her, and the expression was soon matched by her friends. "There's no getting out of this, is there…" she muttered.
"Please?" the Crusaders chorused in unison.
The soldier sighed and wilted. "Alright. I'll have someone chaperone you to the factory in the center of the hivemass-mountain-thing tomorrow," she said. As the trio opened their mouths to shout in glee, she hastily cut them off with, "But, there are some places in the factory that we can't take you to—for instance, where the lava slimes are at. Or where the computers are; every other week, viruses keep trying to hijack our machines."
Apple Bloom frowned. "Like, how?"
"Well… they keep getting sent in from elsewhere, and somehow, the viruses come to life and wrench themselves out of the computers into the room they're in," the soldier said, frowning. "And every time this happens, our higher-ups have to beat the viruses senselessly to banish them to the hereafter. It's not a pleasant sight."
The soldier lit up her horn and projected forth a screen. It revealed a myriad of magitek computers, wired together and stacked atop one another in towers reaching the ceiling. The higher-ups of the Aerie, and NoLegs, were in the room… whaling at something. Gunshots, arrows, magic and blades clashed with an entity that looked garbled. It seemed to cycle through various forms, from slimes to bush-like creatures to distortions of the faces of those that fought it. It was painful to look at, as though Discord had gotten drunk and unleashed his magic on the unsuspecting technology just to see what would happen.
Unsavory cursing not meant for young ears filled the room as the entity dodged many attacks, and seemingly absorbed others with its mass distending and distorting to fill the room. It stretched, then flattened, and reformed—the attack didn't harm the quintet, without a scuff or scratch to be seen, yet somehow it was able to knock Anna out despite that, throwing her to the ground in a painful faceplant inches away from her strewn arrows. Natalie cast a quick spell, and she got up with a grumble to glare at the constantly-changing beast that was besieging the room.
"Again with this nonsense! How many more times is this damn thing going to keep bothering us?!" Anna yelled as she wobbled on her hooves.
"I'm starting to see why Whitefall's waste disposal plant gave this magitek to us before they tore it down! We've got to find a way to permanently end this thing!" Lance called, firing off bullets from a gunblade.
"I'm going to blame Redpine for this, until I have proof of their innocence regarding this situation!" Natalie hissed, throwing forth a shower of golden, hollowed-out stars that rained on the entity.
"Redpine isn't the least bit innocent in anything, and you know that!" Matt called as the creature stretched again to fill the room. Before any more could be shown, the projection shut off, and the soldier groaned and rubbed the back of her head with a hoof.
"Yeah… that thing, whatever it is, is hostile. We're still trying to figure out who made it and why," the soldier muttered. She patted the trio's heads with her free hoof. "But we have alarms for if it shows up, and they blare throughout the mountain, so the threat is quickly contained, at least." She grinned. "But, we can still do the factory tour tomorrow, even if the alarms sing. The… thing isn't given a chance to take over at all."
The Crusaders grinned and nodded. Tomorrow would probably be a good day to learn, even if the strange, eyeball-hurting thing dared show its shifting face again. Apple Bloom asked, "What're y'all gonna do with the Sunnytowners?"
The soldier shrugged. "Probably just lump them in with the ex-villagers of Greenwood, after informing them of the rules. We'll have to make sure both parties will get along first, anyway," she answered. She stood up and made for the door. "A'ight, you three get to bed soon. I'll have to watch the General to make sure he doesn't hurl." With that, she trotted out of the room and shut the door behind her, leaving the children to see if they could weasel in some more work on their project before sleep could claim them for the night.
Scootaloo resumed writing, grinning. "This project is gonna be so awesome, even if we don't get our cutie marks here," she said, wings buzzing as her enthusiasm drove her to keep going. "I can't wait for Cheerilee to see what we do with this report!"
Her friends started to share the enthusiasm, their own matching grins spreading on their faces. "I wonder if the Fantasians have a printer," Sweetie Belle said. "We could make backups of our report that way, if they do!"
"We gotta finish it first, but yeah, that would be amazing!" Apple Bloom agreed, jittering in place. "I can't wait to see the looks on Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon's faces when we roll out what we've got!"
"Forget that, the whole class'll be shocked when we finish this thing!" Scootaloo said, her grin widening as she wrote. "Maybe even the entire school will stop for the day when they hear what we did!"
Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom began prancing in place at the prospect. "It'll be even better, if we get our cutie marks here!" they exclaimed in unison.
"Oh, now that would be super duper amazing!" Scootaloo agreed, continuing to write. Her hoof was a flurry of motion, the pencil scritching and scratching as it scrawled out the words onto the page in her other hoof.
"Well, what if we read it aloud as we write?" Sweetie Belle asked, causing Scootaloo to look at her. "What? Rarity makes me read out my homework whenever a writing assignment is involved. She said it has to have proper form, on top of sounding natural. She said it was for a better grade or something when I asked her the last time we worked on a report together."
Scootaloo halted, and tapped her chin with the eraser. "Hrm… my aunts usually have me do something similar, but only if I'm really proud of the assignment or whatever…" She shrugged. "And… I'm not proud of most assignments like this." She turned to regard Apple Bloom. "Does Applejack have you do that, too?"
Apple Bloom shook her head. "Sometimes Granny Smith does, though," she answered. "Big Mac does as well, but only when he's done all his chores."
Scootaloo nodded, and laid out the papers on the nearest table, where the picture stack and the list were already located. She beckoned her friends over, and both of them trotted over to behold the first part of the report. Sweetie Belle grinned, lit her horn and, after receiving nods from her companions, proceeded to trot to another table with the report in her magical glow. She climbed onto the table like it was an impromptu stage, and shuffled the papers so they were orderly before she read the first part aloud in her best, and most dramatic, voice.
"Part I: Before the Aerie: Ragnarok, Hellfire, And Catastrophe. Not many ponies outside of Equestria have dismal tales regarding their cutie marks, and if they do, it's usually kept under tight wraps. Indeed, it seems the opposite holds true of Fantasia: whatever cutie marks appear there always have something bleak regarding them, whether misused or, in some cases, completely catastrophic wherever applied. For this reason, not many who are from Fantasia are willing to share their cutie mark stories, for the fear of being persecuted."
Sweetie Belle looked at her friends, who looked at her with nods. Taking that as her sign to continue, she went on with the report—they had to psyche themselves up after all, to see this thing through and be able to read it aloud to an audience.
"The persecution of cutie marks went above and beyond in Fantasia for uncounted years and years, to the extent that those who obtained them were essentially marked for death. How they killed off ponies who obtained their marks was through a series of gladiator 'games,' pitting anypony with cutie marks against one another in gruesome battles that did nothing else but entertain those who wanted to see cutie marks purged. Not even foals were safe—many lost their lives, scared, traumatized, and scarred by the 'games' in their last moments."
"This type of cutie mark persecution only ended ten years ago, when the architects of the gladiator 'games' met their match after foalnapping the wrong ponies. Only three unicorn foals were left at the end of this batch of 'games,' each given a weapon and told that only one would be able to trot away. The foals didn't have their cutie marks yet, but were taken simply for the crime of crusading for them."
"The foals threw down their weapons, and were then cornered by adults who moved in to cut their lives short. When the adults grabbed the foals, the foals' horns lit up—and a magic surge unlike any before erupted from the three. A portal in the sky opened up, bringing forth giant weapons of darkness and shadow, cast in a crimson light and the massive meteor-sized flames of raw magic that orbited them."
"The crowd who wanted to purge cutie marks stopped their chanting and looked up, before mass panic overtook them. They tried to run away, as the architects were trying to kill the unicorn foals, and all failed miserably. The swords and flames rained down on everypony who tried to hurt the foals, destroying and altering the landscape around the stadium, as well as the stadium itself. This would later be known as the 'Royale Catastrophe,' an event that only the foals who had the magic surge would be able to walk away from."
Sweetie Belle looked at her friends, who grinned and nodded. "Cinched it!" Scootaloo said, wings buzzing. Something hit her suddenly, and she grinned wider. "The soldier said that Lance ordered her to look at our assignment to keep it 'foal-friendly,' right?" At the confused nods of her companions, she began prancing in place excitedly. "Well, what if we end up reading it to Lance when we finish it?"
Apple Bloom grinned. "And get his hoofprint of approval? Well, light me up and say I'm whistlin' dixie! A hoofprint from him would be the perfect thing to end the report with!" she said.
Sweetie grinned. "And not to mention the other higher-ups' hoofprints, too. That would be the cincher for the report!" she chirped. "That's, like, the highest seal of approval we could get here!"
"Oh yeah, are we reading it to the higher-ups?" Scootaloo asked, only to receive nods of affirmation from her friends. Sweetie Belle hopped off the impromptu stage and trotted up to them with eyes sparkling. "Then we'll make this the bestest report they ever heard of everything that gave birth to the Aerie!"
"Cutie Mark Crusaders Historians, yay!" the three chorused in unison, clapping their hooves together at once.