//------------------------------// // 2 - A Show of Good Faith // Story: Cutie Mark Crusader Superheroes // by infernape612 //------------------------------// Rainbow Dash was livid. She entered Twilight Sparkle's castle, roughly pushing her way past Twilight's two new bodyguards and making her way to the throne room. She encountered her six best friends having a discussion about... well, she didn't care at the moment. Applejack was the center of attention. "...didn't expect her talent to be fashion, of all things, but ah ain't complainin'. Apple Bloom's been lookin' forward to this since who knows when... Oh, hey, Rainbow Dash! I was just tellin' everypony...." Rainbow Dash flatly said, "Shut it, Applejack, I'm not in the mood for this." That got everypony's attention. Rainbow Dash could be haughty and arrogant at times, but she wasn't usually this cranky. The bodyguards entered the room in a huff, having finally caught up with Rainbow Dash. Biggs, an orange pegasus stallion with a shaggy brown mane and a sword for a cutie mark, spoke first. "I'm sorry, your highness, she just came barging in..." His partner, Wedge, a maroon unicorn stallion with a close-cropped blond mane and the number 7 for a cutie mark, interrupted him. "Maybe if you hadn't been napping on the job, this wouldn't have happened!" "Well, we wouldn't be able to stop anything that had a serious chance of hurting the princess..." "Obviously, that idea is slightly flawed seeing as you just let somepony waltz in through the front door..." "She's one of the Elements of Harmony and one of the Princess' best friends!" "She could have been a changeling in disguise or some-" "QUIET DOWN!" Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship (and probably 97 bajillion other titles nopony wanted to remember) finally interrupted their argument. "Biggs, the Royal Guard doesn't pay you to nap all day. You need to show some discipline once in a while." Having defused the situation before it could get out of hand, she turned to Rainbow Dash. "So Dash, you were the one who called us all here. You seem really worried about something..." Applejack muttered under her breath, "Worried ain't the word I'da used..." Twilight glared at her before continuing. "What's going on, Dash? What happened?" Rainbow Dash simply pulled a newspaper out from the wind she had tucked it under and threw it on the ground in front of them. "You all have five seconds to explain before I turn violent. And two seconds have just passed." Twilight telekinetically lifted the newspaper and began to read. "Mare Do Well Returns! ... Last night, local musician Lyra Heartstrings was rescued from a mugger by none other than Ponyville's hometown superhero... ...Whoa." "Who. Was. It." Her six friends gave each other worried glances, while Biggs and Wedge simply looked confused. Fluttershy immediately went into caring mother mode, dashing over to Dash and taking hold of her shoulders. "Rainbow Dash, you need to calm down," Fluttershy said sternly. "Take deep breaths... in... out... in... out... OK. Feeling better?" Rainbow grumbled, "Slightly less worse. How could you guys do this to me? I thought you Pinkie Promised that Mare Do Well was finished!" Biggs and Wedge glanced at each other and mouthed the word "huh?". Pinkie Pie promptly piped up, "Of course we did! We would never break a Pinkie Promise... right girls?" She looked at her friends, and gave an especially dirty look to Applejack. The others nodded vigorously. It was Rarity's turn to speak. "Dearie, we wouldn't bring back Mare Do Well without telling you first unless we had a very good reason, and neither you nor anypony else has given us one!" Spike mused, "If it wasn't any of you guys, then I figure it must be a copycat... Well, either way, it's not my problem. I'm leaving for Wrestle-mane-ia IV tomorrow with Discord, so..." At this, Biggs finally broke the confused silence of him and his partner. "Uh... forgive me for speaking out of turn, your highness... but are you seriously saying... YOU WERE MARE DO WELL?!" Everyone except Wedge and Rainbow Dash responded by giving each other sheepish grins. Twilight Sparkle spoke up. "Well, I guess that cat's out of the bag..." She laughed nervously. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WARNING: EXPOSITORY INFODUMP INBOUND -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Remember when all of those random disasters struck Ponyville and Rainbow Dash stopped them? She got lauded as a hero, but she let it go to her head. Soon, she had grown an ego the size of Canterlot Castle! Me and the rest of the girls got tired of putting up with it, so we decided to create a superhero called Mare Do Well in order to deflate her a bit. I, not being an alicorn at the time, provided my magic. Fluttershy provided her wings, Applejack her strength, Pinkie Pie her Pinkie Sense, and Rarity the costumes. Eventually Rainbow Dash found us out, but by then she had learned her lesson..." Rainbow Dash interrupted, "And got publicly humiliated in the process!" Twilight gave another nervous chuckle at that. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- END OF EXPOSITORY INFODUMP -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Twilight concluded, "After that, we let Rainbow Dash and Rarity play the character for giggles, and then we put our costumes away and haven't taken them out since." Biggs and Wedge looked at each other again, before giving the most articulate response to this revelation they could think of. "...What." Twilight said, "At any rate, Spike's probably right - if we're not Mare Do Well this time, then somepony else is - and it's not a big stretch to think they may have stolen the original costumes... How about this? We go around and find the three costumes and make sure they haven't been touched. If they haven't, we'll give them to Rainbow Dash for safekeeping. It'll be a show of good faith. Sound OK to you?" Wedge interrupted, "But I thought you said all six of you played the character. Shouldn't there be six costumes? ...Uh, your highness." Rarity shook her head. "I only created four. When Rainbow Dash and I became her, we simply borrowed Fluttershy and Twilight's costumes. And regarding Twilight's costume, it was immolated along with the rest of her library when Tirek returned." Twilight's face immediately darkened. Rainbow Dash said, "Prove it. I'm not taking any chances." Twilight vanished, and then reappeared with the tattered remains of a purple mask. Rainbow Dash was satisfied. The group began to depart, but Applejack pulled Rainbow Dash aside. "Like ah was sayin' before you showed up... Apple Bloom finally did it. She got her cutie mark!" Rainbow Dash smiled for the first time all day. "Send her my congratulations! What's her talent? She's been dying to know!" Applejack responded, "She and her friends were out at her clubhouse last night stayin' up late when one a' their Cutie Mark Crusader capes got caught on a loose nail or somethin' and got ripped up. Apple Bloom managed to fix it, and bang - fashion cutie mark!" Rainbow Dash mused, "Huh. Rarity must be thrilled... Well, we'd better hurry up. Don't want the others to get ahead of us." Applejack nodded, and the two left. The first stop was Fluttershy's cottage. Fluttershy's costume was hung on a coat rack inside her closet (why ponies had coat racks when they didn't usually wear clothes, nobody knows). Fluttershy grabbed her old costume and gave it to Rainbow Dash, who stuffed it in a saddlebag. They next headed to Sugarcube Corner and picked up Pinkie Pie's costume from its hiding place under her mattress. The big surprise came when they reached Sweet Apple Acres and Applejack's costume. Her costume was located in a trunk in her closet. When the ponies and dragon pulled it out, they all immediately noticed something very wrong with the trunk. Most of it was covered in a thin layer of dust. However, the latches that kept the trunk closed were conspicuously dust-free. The evidence was clear - the trunk had been opened recently. A panicking Applejack opened the trunk and found the costume neatly tucked away where it belonged. She turned to her steaming friend. "Now, ah know this looks bad, but ah honestly haven't been prancin' around in that costume! It musta been stolen or somethin'!" An unconvinced Rainbow Dash growled, "Yeah, right. Pinkie and Fluttershy don't need to steal your costume - they have their own. Twilight would do better with Fluttershy's costume since hers has wings. Rarity could sew up her own if she wanted to. Spike could never fit into the costume without getting caught, and Biggs and Wedge have only known about Mare Do Well for an hour. Tell me, Applejack - who else would have known where it is?" Applejack couldn't respond to this. Rainbow Dash took the costume, stuffed it into her saddlebag, and left without saying another word. The rest of her friends looked at her. Twilight said, "Applejack... you wouldn't lie to us about being Mare Do Well... right?" Applejack simply shook her head, and everyone left unsure what to think. It was late that night, and Rainbow Dash had finally retired to her cloud house above Ponyville. She wanted to be angry at Applejack, but the rational part of her mind had already realized something was wrong. As Rainbow Dash hid the costumes in her closet, something fell out of Applejack's. Rainbow Dash picked it up. "...A piece of shredded newspaper?" Frowning, Rainbow Dash went to her kitchen, grabbed the paper that had started this whole mess, and began to read the article in more detail. "Mare Do Well Returns! ... Last night, local musician Lyra Heartstrings was rescued from a mugger by none other than Ponyville's hometown superhero, who vanished into the night just as mysteriously as she appeared. Ms. Heartstrings said of the incident, 'I was about to get beaten senseless and robbed when, out of nowhere, WHOOSH! She beat him into a pulp, which let me finish him off with a magic blast! She moved so fast, it was like there were three of them!' A local child managed to snap a picture of the masked heroine as she left." Rainbow Dash took a good look at the photo. Although the blurriness and lack of proper lighting didn't help matters, she could still make out a pair of wings on Mare Do Well's back. Applejack doesn't have wings. What she does have is the worst poker face known to ponykind, and I didn't see it when I accused her. Lyra Heartstrings thought she was seeing things when she saw three Mare Do Wells, but I don't think she was - there were three Mare Do Wells. If that's true, then the thieves must have gotten to Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy... Any way I look at this, Applejack was telling the truth, and Spike was right - this is a copycat. Rainbow Dash went to bed, miserable because of her false accusation and determined to set things right with Applejack... and find out who the new Mare Do Well was.