Cutie Mark Crusader Quest Log
Crusade Number: 211
Official Crusade Recordkeeper of the Week: Sweetie Belle
Applebloom was away on a family trip today (to see if she's related to Pinkie or something) so today's crusade was just me and Scootaloo. It was drizzly all day, so we decided it would be a good day to try something from the new Box of Indoor Cutie Mark ideas. We threw back the first couple because they're things I know Applebloom would be sad to miss, but eventually we decided on a new one that was just added: mushroom farming!
Or mushroom harvesting. Or really any sort of mushroom-related cutie mark.
I didn't even know mushrooms were a thing you could farm until recently, but apparently they are and it's something Fluttershy does on the side. I guess it helps feed all her animals? Anyway, we showed up pretty early and I think she forgot that she promised to teach us cause she was really surprised when we knocked on the door.
After she stopped
hyperventinghypervalentinghaving a mini-panic attack, she took us down to her basement and through a trapdoor that led to a big cavern covered in white fuzz. It was like being inside a pillow. A very, very dark pillow.I don't know how Fluttershy was able to walk around in the dark with no light and not run into anything. Scootaloo and I tripped a bunch even with a lantern and hornlight.
After a really long walk through some tunnels, we got to the area where she said the mushrooms were ready to be harvested. I expected it to be those long skinny brown ones you see in piles of dead leaves, but the ones she grows are short and fat and a bit bigger than an apple.
She taught us a lot about mushrooms. Way more than I knew there even was to learn. About how they use spores instead of seeds and store them in gills even though they can't breathe underwater. The craziest thing though is how all the white stuff on the walls was one giant mushroom plant, and the parts we harvested are just like the flowers of it. I bet if you balled it up it’d be bigger than most trees!
Aside from all the knowledge, she taught us some practical stuff too, like how to find the two little black marks on the stem and use them to tell how ripe it is. There's a trick to twisting the mushroom just right to make them pop off cleanly, but Scootaloo seemed to get it a lot easier than me. Mine kept tearing all crooked. Fluttershy just cut the stalks with a fancy golden knife she brought. She let me try it after I
beggedasked nicely, but I kinda destroyed the one I tried to harvest with it and she took it back.After we got two baskets full of red and white mushrooms, we headed back up. Fluttershy thanked us for the help and treated us to lunch (she tried to teach us how to cook something with the mushrooms, but no matter what recipe I tried mine ended up a pile of grey sludge). At least what Scootaloo cooked was still pretty tasty.
We didn't get any cutie marks today, but I did learn a lot and Fluttershy gave us a couple of extra mushrooms to take home. I might try planting one in the basement if Rarity'll let me.
Minuette’s Journal
35th of SummerClear weather today. Light breeze from the west. 24 degrees. No clouds.
Last night, somepony on second shift spilled something or other hazardous, so the whole building's shuttered while a crew detoxes the place.
Which means I got a day off with pay!
Thought I'd pop down to Twilight's to see if I can squeeze in some time working with the H-cube.
I still haven't gotten over how crazy that is. That I can just— go and teleport down to Ponyville whenever I want instead of sitting on a train for three hours. I never thought I'd even be able to teleport that far... even if right now I can only to Ponyville and back until I can crack how Twilight manages to cram a building sized runic array into a crystal that can fit on my coffee table. It's probably a good thing only specific registered magical signatures can connect to Twilight's beacons; otherwise the arrival room in the Town Hall would be crammed full like a tin of sardines!
Still, so convenient. If my job didn't pay so much I'd probably teleport down there every day to work on all of Twilight's new toys.
She already got one research paper out of it; I'm sure there's plenty more waiting to be discovered in her weird crystal room of randomly appearing magic.
I showed up after a late breakfast [one blueberry muffin and a coffee, 200 calories] and got to Twilight's about an hour before lunch. Bad news though: I got the schedule wrong and the H-cube was totally booked today. Lemon Hearts and Moondancer testing its deconstruction effect on potions in the morning, and Twilight attempting to synthesize enchantable metal alloys in the afternoon. (Good to see Moonie's interacting with ponies again, even if she was napping when I was there.)
Lemon Hearts' work also gave me an idea to test next time I can book the H-cube. We know if we input an enchanted object and set it to deconstruct, we get multiple objects with either weaker or partial enchantments. But what would I get if I put those reduced enchantments back in again? And again after that? How far can it reduce a spell down? There has to be a limit at some point, but what does it look like? If we keep going down would we eventually reach some kind of fundamental spellform that can't be reduced any further?
I can smell the academic accolades already.
But since they were busy with the H-cube, I just loaded up my saddlebags with a few trinkets from the "figure out what this is" shelf. Rarity's knack for objective identification gets us names, but I bet some of the equipment at work could tell a lot more.
After that I got a quick lunch [rose and daffodil stuffed wrap with honey mustard glaze, 310 calories] and took a stroll around the scenic sites of Ponyville.
Nearly forgot! I had the greatest discovery while I was walking down a backroad.
I found Colgate!
That silly filly disappears for three years and it turns out she was just one town away all this time. I guess that's my little sister for you.
She was still her usual grumpy self (if she smiled I'd get worried she might be a changeling) and responded to my gleeful sisterly embrace with an "Oh no. It's you". Her and her jokes, I tell you.
We didn't have long to catch up—she said she had to get to work (local dentist, good for her!)—but it turns out she never wrote because it just totally slipped her mind! I'd call it crazy, but on the other hoof this is the same filly that left her graduation ceremony while half her class hadn't gotten their diplomas yet, then was completely moved out of her dorm room before we got back to party with her. She forgot to leave a note saying where she was going that time too...
I wonder if I could enchant a notepad that would remind her to leave notes and letters? Maybe Twilight could help. If I'm lucky, she might just manifest a whole magic notepad out of nowhere by the time I ask.
Teleported home after that, listened to the news on the radio, had some dinner [green bean casserole with cheese biscuits and a slice of cherry pie, 750 calories], and logged the day in my journal, finishing with this sentence.
Daily Calorie goal: 1260/1500
Dearest Associates at Velvet Hoof Publishing,
It is with great regret that I must cancel my subscription to Keepsakes and Tchotchkes magazine. As much as it pains me, I can no longer spare the expense to continue purchasing your twenty-seven part collection of dining ware embossed with the faces of famous figures from history. I only wish that my collection did not have to—
Authentication Gem recognized
Magical signature... Matched
Decrypting...
Displaying message
The mission continues without significant progress from my last briefing.
While Targets One through Six continue to acquire new abilities and trinkets (none additional since my previous update) they’ve thus far continued to be little more than novelties and skills comparable to average, if unusual, cutie mark talents.
In light of this, I would once again like to formally request that this be reclassified from a Yellow level mission to either a Chartreuse (or possibly even Green), and it be reassigned to a squad of junior agent observers, or even contracted civilian assets.
None of the targets have shown any trace of malicious or uncharacteristic activity, and in my professional opinion I wouldn’t assign half of them a threat level higher than two. Only Targets One and Two I'd rank higher (the former who has a standing rating of five for her sheer magical talent, and the latter who’d I’d tentatively consider a level three if only for her anomalous hoof-to-hoof combat skills on par with a trained Agent’s) and Target Four is so passive I'd give her a negative threat rating if I could. I doubt she could bring herself to cause something harm even under duress.
Threat parameters aside, the proximity of this mission to my civilian identity poses a constant and untenable risk of discovery. Any attempt to probe beyond ‘neighborly curiosity’ is likely to bring undue attention.
Please pass my recommendation directly to Overwatch and return her response in all due promptness.
Agent 8011
Agent 8011
Headquarters thanks you for your recommendation. Overwatch is still unconvinced of the claimed benign nature of the Event and its aftereffects, and has reiterated their orders for the mission to continue as is. Your service to your nation is commended.
-Mission Control
This message will self-destruct in fifteen seconds.