//------------------------------// // 4.Cutiespiracies // Story: How Hard Could it Be? // by Richardson //------------------------------// 4.Cutiespiracies “It’s more of an art than a science, really!” Applebloom answered for Scootaloo to Berry as said pegasi skidded up an embankment sideways with the cart to hop onto the upper street and take off, metaphorically, towards Sweet Apple Acres. The motion jostled every-pony in the wagon and bounced Applebloom’s and Sweetie Belle’s heads off of Berry’s sides, but Berry was busily figuring out how to turn whiter than Pinkie’s finest sugar to notice the thumps of helmeted heads down there. He would have started his usual screaming and hugging tight to the nearest pegasus for safety measures and routine, but with Scootaloo well away from his grasp the screaming would detract from his focus on holding the two foals beside him down in the wagon whilst clinging to it like a manic starfish. Applebloom shook her head again as the wagon rattled on an unsettled patch of cobblestone. “Yer worrying too much, she does this all the time!” Berry didn’t peel his eyes from the road as he stuck his tongue between his teeth to keep from chipping them under the redoubled assault from the road vibrations. “That just makes it worse!” He hissed, hissing through his bruising tongue and aching teeth. Much as the vibrating assault came upon them, so too did it quickly leave; cobblestone fading to dirt tracks with a final clunk of wagon wheels dropping from hard to semi-soft surfaces. “She’s used to your weight not an adult’s!” Why was he protecting his teeth again, anyway? They grew back—but then again, Pinkie’s cupcakes didn’t magically regenerate despite what his waist-line would say. “I’d call this unsafe, but given that I kicked a hydra in the teeth; I’d be pretty hypocritical! Will you please slow down?” “Whoooa.” Applebloom and Scootaloo intoned over the road noise; Sweetie instead sulking under her breath and mumbling about mean ponies. Any further discussion was cut off for a few moments as Scootaloo swerved through the over-hung S-curves alongside the Ponyvile River, scooting and scuffing up dust clouds in the process along the secluded section of Acres Avenue. As they came out of the hard turns on the other side, they bounced from the tough branches of the riverside bushed and into the straightaway leading into the hills beneath the farm. Sweetie Belle relaxed under Berry’s leg, her soothed nerves prompting him to warily rise up off of them and sit upright. He glanced down and passed his gaze to each of the crusaders one at a time in contemplation warily. “I have to ask, uh, what exactly are you planning on doing to me?” “Inductin’!” Applebloom cheered for the three of them. Her forelegs were thrown up as part of her cheer, prompting their sea pony—volunteer foalnappee—to duck with near split-second reflexed back over atop Sweetie Belle until the apple filly stopped gesticulating. He stared with wide eyes at her over his shoulder and barrel until his uncomfortable gaze prompted a little more. “Ya know; as a crusader and stuff. Got a little ceremony where we—uh, ah hay Ah forgot what all we did. It’s a work in progress. With drums. We might need a better one actually, we only used it once. Ah think we lost the notes.” Berry calmed his heart with thoughts of cupcakes, revenge on Celestia, the relative tameness of his current ordeal compared to the times he had been forced to ride his pegasi squad mates and subordinates, his wife’s pancakes, and the occasion he had to help a strange grey-scale maned pegasus retrieve some artifact from an underwater temple. He had been through better and worse, and three foals who were most likely the incarnate avatars of Discord were not going to get the better of him. Forcing a sigh of frustration out helped a bit as he moved on and sat up. “You didn’t keep notes? I know Pinkie has told me about your crusades, but how are you supposed to figure out your cutie marks if you don’t keep track of the things you do?” “We keep track!” Sweetie squeaked indignantly. “Sort of.” Her defiance faded as she let her head hang down. “Some. We know what we’ve done! We’ll get you your cutie mark!” Resisting the urge to face-hoof was a tall order. He’d been born with two hooves for a reason, one for holding himself up, and the other to print that horseshoe into his face until it left a brand it seemed. He made a bet with himself that their ‘tracking’ involved an old drawer of crayon notes and crazy ideas like catapults to the moon. “No you won’t. I can’t get a cutie mark.” Scootaloo stomped her hooves into the ground, nearly vaulting her passengers out of the wagon as she plowed furrows into the half-packed dirt of the track with two hooves. “What’d you say!?! Only quitters never get cutie marks!” “And sea ponies, bat ponies, and those weird creepy night unicorn race with the curved horns and fangs that I don’t know the name of.” Berry quipped back amid the choking dust, counting off with his hoof. As the dust cleared, he made a note of the organized rows of apple trees stretching off to his left to the horizon behind a repeatedly repaired fence that lead up to a tall arched gate in the distance. His two wagon guards prodded him repeatedly in the sides as he examined the fence and noted the state of repairs in it. Three older repair styles, mostly amateur. One more recent, and far more skilled crafts-pony handling the repairs, but short. Possibly also at the hooves of the little yellow annoyance using her hammering skills to poke him in the sides until he coughed up a pearl or something. “Ow, Ow, OW! Okay, okay! Sunbeam covered it earlier, remember?” Applebloom’s head-tilt flopped her ponytail braid in a way that was adorable enough to make him miss a heartbeat as Scootaloo got underway again and buzzed them up to the gate. “You know, the whole reason I’m touched with chaotic magic and cause strange, crazy disasters involving unlikely solvents and sticky situations? We were all originally created by Discord.” “WHAT!?” The trio cried in shock. Berry rolled his eyes and tilted his head back so he could look at the carefully alternated branches of the trees and the half-cloudy skies beyond. “Yes. Too much chaos magic in my blood, it futzes with the harmony magic that would give some pony their cutie mark. Feh, it’s just a butt tattoo, anyway. A big ole declaration to the world of your quest in life.” Berry wriggled his floppy tail through his spiel; a slap to his midsection just ahead of where a normal pony would have their flanks adding emphasis to ‘butt tattoo’. Clearing his throat didn’t help his still snooty-sounding involuntary Blueblood impression—Twilight had some pretty spectacular range. Wait, what was he saying? She was an alicorn, he could build a giant rocket and fly to the moon and he still wouldn’t escape her range. “Hey now, cutie marks are important!” Applebloom shouted back; right into his freaking ear. Squeaking out his ear as they zipped past the farmhouse and barn complex with barely a wave to the elderly green pony rocking on the front porch, he fired back another point. “They can be if you let them. Different strokes for different ponies.” He gradually sank down to lay flat in the wagon bed again, letting his head rest on his propped up fore-hooves. “That lousy orange feather-duster is gonna get it.” Hearing three sharp tics of breath from the trio inspired intriguing thoughts. Did they know? Gulping nervously, Sweetie Belle feebly elbowed him. “Hey, uh, don’t call her feather-duster!” Who knew if she had spells to let her know if ponies were bad mouthing her? “It’s, uh, mean!" Applebloom wasn’t as experienced in the tolerance of crazy-talk-fu, and face-hooved at Sweetie’s entirely insincere-sounding warning. Scruntching his lips, Berry wondered what exactly they really knew, or what he would find in their club— house… Holy Hay Fries with a side of Tartar Sauce. He had once had the clubhouse described to him as a modest structure nestled in the branches of an old oak that the crusaders were always playing around with and experimenting with a second story. With the advent of the crusade to unmask Sunbeam for who she really was, that modest structure had been swallowed up by an immense work of engineering in progress, stretching out enough to swallow up possibly any airship the Royal Air Navy could develop. A massive new deck assembly had begun to take shape around the remaining trees of the old grove, further supported by pilings rescued from the annual cut-back of the Everfree Forest and properly anchored into the vaulted base of the platform, which in turn had the skeleton of an assembly hall in which they would one day build their mad spy ships. Not that Berry understood what he was looking at; the sea-pony was busily gawking at the mad skeleton and wondering where the crusaders had gotten the skills to build it all. He probably wouldn’t have been more pole-axed if some-pony had slapped him with an irate sea bass. “Do your parents know you’re building a skyscraper?” “Mah parents are dead.” “Up for adoption.” “Yes.” Sweetie glibly stated, smirking a little in glee at having pulled a nice one on her dad. As Applebloom joined Scootaloo in pointedly glaring at her after getting out of the cart, she clarified. “What? You know my mom and dad! After all the—stuff—Rarity gets up to, they were all ‘Have fun with that, kiddo.’” Sweetie pretended to hold a newspaper in front of her face to lovingly mock her dad. “C’mon, don’t you remember all those sayings from that Neighponese pony that Rainbow Dash gets on quoting every once in a while; you know, the best refuge was the bold or something?” “Sun Tzu.” Berry filled in for Sweetie as he pulled off his helmet and let his mane explode back into its normal fluffy state. “And there are a couple. ‘Fortune Favors the Bold’; ‘The Refuge of the Desperate is Audacity’; a couple of others. Uh, have the plans for all of this been looked at by a proper engineer?” “Yer one, aren’t ya?” Applebloom asked quickly to perform damage control. As he nodded while slowly stepping out of the cart the little Apple filly harshly whispered into Scootaloo’s ear, making the pegasus first go wide eyed before nodding furiously. “GREAT! Wait ‘ere. We’ll go get the plans fer yer first cutie mark opportunity! The floor is, uh, not quite stable yet, so wait down here so ya don’t fall through.” Applebloom slid Sweetie over to Berry, shaking her a bit, then pointed to the adult and to the ground right beside her in a flurry of gestures. Without checking any further, she head-butted Scootaloo in the rump and drove the pegasus before her up the new stairwell replacing the old ramp as quickly as she could to hide their Celestia Conspiracy Contingency planning they had left out that morning. Left in the cool shadows of the Cutie Headquarters, Sweetie Belle only had Berry to delay. “So, uh, staying in Ponyvile long?” She nervously chattered, trying to find common ground. She took off her helmet, shaking out her curls. Wearing her helmet seemed to be permanently shaping her mane; the curls seemed to form just outside of it, formed by the speed of their treks. She swallowed, trying again. “Just trying to know how long we have to get you your cutie mark.” Berry wryly looked down at Sweetie sitting beside him, then ruffled her mane until her curls sprung back to full life. “That’s cute, Sweetie Belle. The three of you are really bad at the Secret Conspiracy practices, though. Stick to crusading.” He got up as Sweetie’s jaw hung like a swing-set; taking his time during his stroll over to the stairway to examine the construction of the pilings and vaulted under-deck. “I don’t know how long I’ll stay. I had some idea, but something tells me that I’ll be spending a while longer than originally planned.” Sweetie’s mind finally returned from flying to Los Pegas, gambling away it’s life savings, and came back to her broken and confused from having been told she had been seen straight through. “Hang on, Mr. Bubbles! Didn’t you hear them, the floor isn’t ready for adults yet!” Her excuses sounded silly, even to her as she dashed around him and tried to first block him by sitting down in his path, then feebly pushing him back with both forelegs on his chest. “Trust me, they’ll be right down with the—whoahey!” She landed with a limp flop across Berry’s back, tossed there by the cheekily grinning stallion. As she rubbed down the wet spot on the nape of her neck where he had grabbed her and flipped her over his head, he booped her on the nose for good measure to leave her spluttering long enough for him to point to the framing of the deck. “Innovative design work taking from certain cathedrals while still remaining within code, to include the proper grade of hurricane straps and braces, and excessively secure nailing and screws. All of it is supported by thick old trees every twenty yards and further supplemented with flood-plain grade pilings at regular intervals. All of the alicorns could tap dance in the same spot with an orchestra backup and they wouldn’t fall through.” His upraised hoof smoothed out Sweetie’s mane again, separating out her colors so that they fell to either side of her face and framed it nicely. “Nice try, though.” With that, he hopped up the stairs in a few bounds over her continuing protests. Two smiles almost turned to rictus mockeries of themselves as Gravity pointedly did not even make an attempt on the stability of the floor as the stallion demonstrated his point by performing a folk dance his adopted family had taught him at the new landing atop the stairs. The traitor was never there for the crusaders when they needed her, and always they when they least expected the Physics Inquisition. As the sea pony danced and bobbed his head for a minute or so to some hummed old song, the duo who had come up first hastily stuffed the rolled up plans they had been carrying into the shelf behind themselves. “Might bit dangerous up here yet, mister.” Applebloom tried to warn as she bumped the plans deeper into the morass of hastily stuffed papers back with her rump. “Yeah!” Scootaloo chimed in, bumping back alongside her. “Give us just a second and we’ll be down with an adult size crusader cape!” She hopefully added, plastering a completely fake grin on her face while elbowing Applebloom in the ribs. She stage-whispered to her friend. “Do we have adult crusader capes?” “Ah don’t think we have normal ones…” Applebloom harshly whispered back. Berry finally fell to his irresistible urge to face-hoof over the ineptitude, wondering whether or not to laugh or cry. Cel—er, Sunbeam hadn’t wanted him blabbing her secret to Twilight, but had sicced these three on him? Did she not realize they were onto her--judging by the documents, drawings, and photos pointedly sticking out from behind every piece of furniture in the old room of the new headquarters? After reluctantly pulling back his hoof from his snout and shaking his head once, he stomped over to a likely-looking suspiciously paneled section of wall and thumped it hard enough to shake the entire structure. Lo and behold, for like an overstuffed piñata being attacked by Pinkie Pie so too did the building explosively--relatively, as paper made for a lousy spring under pressure—revealed its secrets. Spring-loaded wall panels flipped around to reveal black and white distance photos of both Sunbeam and Celestia, spraying added evidence out as pressure was released; crayon and pencil reports bounced up in bundled scrolls of paper from hidden compartments in the floor; all the bookshelves rolled back to reveal basic plans for fantastical flying machines studded with telescopes; and from above the blackboard unrolled a grand banner with the status update on the process of revealing Sunbeam to be Celestia, still marked ‘not yet.’ What was it with foals and overly elaborate secret plans? Super-villain lairs were out of style since he abandoned the crazy mine/lair he had played with under the castle! Sweetie hopped off of Berry’s back, blocking the doorway with her body. “Okay, please don’t take this at face value. It’s not what it looks like!” His wry smile to them slowly turned sly as he circled sharkily around Applebloom and Scootaloo, taking the scroll-plans off the shelf from behind them. Silly names like Operation C.U.P.C.A.K.E., and Plan BOOGER, and the strange blueprints for some form of heavier than air cruiser that could out-fly any Royal Air Navy ship could be found amongst the mess. He winked to them as they looked up worriedly, and baited his trap. “So, there aren’t any plans to prove to Twilight that Sunbeam is In fact Princess Celestia, who is undercover in a half-cocked crazy plan to shirk her duties and get fat on Sugar Cube Corner baked goods?” He snapped a rubber band back around the plans for the airship to punctuate his point. Scootaloo looked lost, vaguely making faint noises of confusion until Applebloom grabbed her head in both hooves and forcefully shook ‘no’ while making the same gesture with her own head. “Huh. Well, I guess this must all be for kicks then.” Berry waved his hoof in a wide circle to encompass the whole structure. “A real shame, too. I can’t tell Twilight that her mentor is lying to her and undercover in a half-cocked crazy plan to shirk her duties and get fat on baked goods because she made me promise to and made Pinkie think I Pinkie-Promised. Too bad, since she’s hurting herself by living this crazy double life and needs a real vacation.” Berry continued, sing-songing vaguely to the trio while stepping over to the window and looking out of it with his back to them. A silence of sorts ensued as he paused to listen, savoring the fact that Revenge would be as Sweet as his sister-in-law’s cooking. Finally, hopping over Scootaloo who had been trying to block her and keep her silence, Sweetie Belle screamed for the trio. “YES! This is exactly what it looks like!” “Oh good. I suppose I can make available my skills as a commander and engineer of the Equestrian Royal Army Engineers.” Berry bowed after turning back to them, letting his mane bounce at the bottom. Leaning back up with a wink, he held up plan C.U.P.C.A.K.E. “I might also know her favorite recipes for your cake traps.” Sweet, sweet revenge.