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// All work and no play 
// Story: Short stories about ponies and whatnot 
// by shutaro 
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	It was the last day of school before the summer holidays and Rarity and Applejack were reduced to walking bundles of nerves. The fashionista looked like she hadn’t slept in days and Applejack reeked of her namesake. Both chewed on a package of hay stalks Applejack had bought “for her brother”. It was a filthy habit but it was either this or a straightjacket in a padded cell over it the special wing of the Ponyville hospital.

“Three months!” Rarity whispered, “Three bucking months. We’re still paying off the bills and invoices they heaped up over the winter.”

“Have you noticed that Mr Frame now has bills with our names and addresses preprinted in?” Applejacks voice was a bit slurred. “He only has to pen in the amount.”

“No, but I overheard that Bon Bon doesn’t clean her windows anymore. She just waits until our sisters break them again.” Rarity was close to tears.

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The next morning saw the Cutie Mark Crusaders at sunrise at their clubhouse. Had this been a school day none of the three fillies would have even been awake at this hour, but it wasn’t a school day. Rarity and Applejack lay in a bush a few hundred horns from the treehouse and watched their sources of despair through binoculars.

“For goodness sake! Do you see the mountain of books they brought? They must be planning something big. I hope we can stop it in time.”

“Let’s not get our hopes up, darling. Sabotaging the Summer Harvest Parade was big. This might be huge. Just look at their faces. I haven’t seen Sweetie so eager since the day she almost burned down Sugarcube Corner in an attempt to learn baking magic.”

The day crept by and by, the highlight of the day was a mosquito that bit Rarity in the flank but the only thing the desperate ponies saw in the crusader's headquarter was dedicated research. The three fillies didn’t come out except for dinner. And they didn’t say a single word about what they had done all morning. Only that it was a surprise.
Applejack almost choked on her oatmeal when she heard that.

Day two was not much different than day one, except that this time the fillies used all the day to build a miniature model of Canterlot Castle out of plaster. With little pony guards and the princesses made from pipe cleaners. Around noon-ish Big Mcintosh found his sister and Rarity and told them that he didn’t mind if they dated, but Granny Smith might oppose them if she didn’t see some great-grandkids first. Applejack threatened her brother to lose no word about this or somepony might find out what he kept in that box under his bed.
And to bring her some more hay stalks, she was running dangerously low.

Day three turned out special. Rarity was on watch duty as Apple Bloom threw a book out the window. Scootaloo jumped after it and caught it before it hit the ground. She couldn’t understand any of the shouts that followed but it was clear the Crusaders were arguing. Maybe things were not as bleak as she had thought. Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo wrestled their fellow crusader to the ground and a few minutes later Apple Bloom ran up to the farm. Maybe not all was lost.

But by the next day the fillies got it together again and started working again, muzzles deep in their books. Applejack was close to tears again. “I wish they would only put half of that energy into their education and chores. We could send the whole bunch to Canterlot U next year if they worked like that at school.”

Friday morning Applejack was alone at dawn at the hideout. Rarity had slept in and arrived two hours late. By then the crusaders had planted something in a flower pot, poured through one and half-ish notebooks of unclear content and were now drawing some kind of picture or map. Come afternoon, Sweetie Belle stood at a speaker’s desk and obviously made some presentation to the others. Rarity was quite impressed that her sister levitated the cue cards and only one of them had to be dropped in the emergency bucket of water next to her desk.

The weekend had no meetings for the crusaders, Sweetie Belle was in Canterlot with her parents for a change and Apple Bloom had to help her sister in the orchard because for some strange reason only half of the apple trees had been bucked yet. But every day Applejack saw Scootaloo at the clubhouse and she wrote something in one of the notebooks.

Monday morning, second week of the  summer holidays. Rarity had to pull the morning shift alone, Granny Smith had read Applejack the riot act for spying on her sister and neglecting her work. So Applejack would not take over before midday. The fashionista watched as the three fillies pulled up some beach chairs and watched the sunrise with big smiles on their faces. They seemed to talk about something important because they laughed and talked very excitedly. Apple Bloom waved her arms then Sweetie Belle fell out of her chair from laughing so hard. At some point Scootaloo went up to the flowerpot, looked at it, then took out one of the notebooks and wrote something down.

 Scootaloo closed her notebook. “There, all done for today. We completed three months of assignments in one week. I don’t know about you girls, but with this behind us I feel that this will be a great summer for the crusaders! I already have a few ideas that we should try this week.”