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// Chaos and Pie 
// Story: Dear Cuz' 
// by theNDinspector 
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Dear Babs,

I see you got a taste of the randomness that is Pinkie Pie.  She always does that whenever somepony is about to make a Pinkie Pie Promise just so they know how serious it is.  I’m sorry about pulling the rug from under you on that, but thanks for keeping Scootaloo’s secret safe.

Speaking about Pinkie Pie, I actually learned that she might me a cousin of mine.  I guess that means that she’s probably yours too, now that I think about it.  I say she might be because the geneable genie family tree record was kind of smudged at the part where she was connected.  So we all travelled to cousin Goldie Delicious’ place, since she had all the records on the family, along with a ton of other stuff.  And cats, lots and lots of cats.  

But even she couldn’t confirm that Pinkie Pie was our cousin.  Applejack, however, decided that it didn’t matter what the paper might have said.  We had all gone through so much on that trip that she was just like family to us anyways.

That was really weird what you said about that pony in the park, but I think I understand what’s going on.  Not too long after we started the club, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo and I kept hearing ponies say something about the “curse of the crusaders.”  There were also a few that would run and hide whenever the three of us were around.  It really confused us.

I asked Applejack what was going on, but she wouldn’t tell me.  I kept asking and I finally got it out of her.  She said that it had to do with our crusades in trying to earn our cutie marks and how they would often go terribly wrong.  In fact, they would go so wrong that some ponies thought it was some kind of curse, even when we somehow manage to do incredible things, and yet we still didn’t get our cutie marks in them.

I kind of understood what she said.  It started out with the school talent show, where we put on a musical performance.  Everything fell apart on stage, despite the work we did, and yet we got an award for “Best Comedic Act.”  We still didn’t our cutie marks, even after trying out various bits of comedy afterwards.  Then there was chicken herding.  I’m not sure how to explain what happened there with Fluttershy, the animal caretaker in Ponyville, but we quickly found out that it wasn’t our special talent either.  Zip-lining didn’t end very well either, along with taffy-making.  We were covered in sticky goo for days, no matter how much we washed up.

I’m not sure what the big deal is though, since I saw a lot of things fall apart for many other ponies in town.  There was this incident with Twilight long before she became a princess.  It involved her old doll and she was trying to get us to want it, which we didn’t.  But then she did something and soon everypony wanted it and half the town was fighting for that doll.  It took Princess Celestia herself to solve the problem.  Recently Twilight turned Fluttershy into a bat-pony while trying to ride the orchard of vampire fruit bats.  We ended up isolating a part of the orchard for those bats after they got Fluttershy back to normal.  And Sweetie Belle’s sister, Rarity, seems to have a panic attack nearly every other week.  

Even our trip to visit Goldie Delicious didn’t go as planned at all.   The cart broke on the way.  The other things we built to get there also broke.  Pretty soon all of us were arguing, but Pinkie Pie still brought us together in the end.  So this whole curse thing doesn’t affect only the Cutie Mark Crusaders.  I’m not sure how else to explain it.

Anyways, I’m glad to hear that you’re doing well and trying to earn your cutie marks.  Be sure to tell us when any of you do.

Your cousin,

Apple Bloom