//------------------------------//
// Chapter XXII 
// Story: Lessons in quirks 
// by Mike84 
//------------------------------//

	"So when your cutie marks were switched, it affected not only your talents but also your memories?" Frank asked. 
Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie had given him a very brief summary of the events of the day on which their cutie marks had been changed. 
"I am not really sure if it really did affect our talents at all", Fluttershy said. "I was sure that I had been making ponies laugh all along and that it was what I had always been doing. I even thought that I had been good at it, but I think that must have been memories of Pinkie Pie. But I really wasn't good at all at making ponies laugh and I noticed that while I was trying to. Getting Pinkie's cutie mark did not make me funny or a good entertainer. It only made me think that I had been and that it was my task, whether I liked it or not."
"I was not funny anymore after I got Applejack's cutie mark", Pinkie Pie said. "I thought I had been working on the farm as long as I could remember. But somehow I also didn't really remember anything. Only that I was to be there and to work at the farm and that I didn't like it but that I had to do it. It was like my epicfunny was telling me to do something that wasn't funny at all."
Frank nodded and took a few notes. 
"You thought that your house belonged to Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy? And you Pinkie that you had always been living at the apple farm?" 
Both of them nodded. 
"And being so unhappy with the tasks you were doing, didn't you think of doing something else?" Frank asked. 
"Not really", Fluttershy said. "When Twilight at one point told me that Rainbow Dash was doing my job, I thought that she was the one who was confused. I didn't remember anything at all about taking care of animals and I had no thought of trying it. Since I noticed I was no good at making anypony laugh I was going to go to Cloudsdale—"
"Why did you want to do that?" Pinkie Pie, who had never heard about that part of the day, asked.
"I don't really know", Fluttershy said. When both Pinkie Pie and Frank kept looking at her she continued: "Maybe I thought that I could make the pegasi laugh but... I think I really just wanted to hide. I didn't want to be seen by anypony. And if I didn't see anypony and if nopony saw me perhaps I would not have had to try to make them laugh."
Fluttershy was cowering a little. It was clear that she didn't like to talk about this. 
"I didn't remember...", she said, "...that I had always felt uneasy about crowds and drawing attention. But I still did! I still did!"
Pinkie Pie chimed in: "At the farm Big McIntosh, Apple Bloom and Granny Smith all told me that I had not been working on the farm, but I was so sure that I had, that I just ignored them and worked on. I couldn't do anything against it. I didn't want to do anything against it. I didn't like what I was doing, I didn't like it at all, but because I thought that this was what I had to do, I didn't want to do anything else either. I didn't even think about it." 
Frank was glad Pinkie Pie provided a break for Fluttershy and he took down some more notes. 
"You didn't remember having made ponies laugh Pinkie, did you?"
"Not at all", Pinkie Pie shook her head and even she seemed unusually down-spirited at the memory. "It was like I had never left the rock farm. Like I had never ever had that epicfunny that had made me want to make others laugh and smile."
"But your cutie marks returned to normal after you remembered your actual destiny in life? After, rather than before you started doing again what you had been doing before?" 
Pinkie Pie nodded: "Twilight then also put the Elements of Harmony on us and the memories came back. Memories of our real epicfunny and all."
"But if the cutie marks only turned back to normal after you did what you had been doing before the switching of the cutie marks... and if you didn't think about doing anything other than what the switched cutie mark told you to... how did you end up doing what you had been doing before the switching of the cutie marks? Did Twilight somehow force you to do what you had been doing before?"
Frank had asked Pinkie Pie, but since she looked a bit lost at the complex formulation it was Fluttershy who answered: "She did not force us." 
The pegasus seemed almost a little offended at the thought that Twilight might be forcing anypony to anything. "I do not think it would have worked at all if we hadn't wanted to. Twilight told me that Rainbow Dash was having trouble with her tasks. I didn't remember anything about taking care of animals, but I did remember Rainbow Dash and wanted to help her. And when then I started taking care of animals, not because I thought I could do it, but because I wanted to help Rainbow, all the memories came back. Twilight then put the Element of Kindness on me and then my cutie mark switched back too. I do not know if there was any other magic involved, I really don't know anything about magic, but I think it was really because we wanted to help our friends that we started doing the things we didn't remember we could do."
Frank was scribbling as he listened. 
"If I understood you right...", he asked, "...you were the last one to get your original cutie mark back, Pinkie? But Fluttershy was no longer trying to do what you had been doing. Which friend did you help?"
"Everypony!" Pinkie said proudly. "I am everypony's friend and everypony was looking sad and angry. I was helping them to feel better."
Frank was nodding with a smile, but at the same time he appeared to be somewhat distracted. 
"So... you, Fluttershy, had Pinkie's cutie mark. When you remembered, it disappeared and you got your original cutie mark back, while Rainbow Dash still had yours. But at that time none of you had Pinkie Pie's original cutie mark anymore, right?"
Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy both nodded. 
Frank continued writing while his face became very pensive he mumbled something unintelligible to himself.
"What did you say, Frankie?" Pinkie Pie demanded to know. 
Frank didn't react. 
"Frankie?"
He twitched and looked up. "Excuse me, I was distracted there. What was the question?"
"I asked what you said." Pinkie repeated. 
"Did I start muttering to myself again? Well, all this does rise a number of questions..."
"Which questions?" Pinkie Pie asked. 
"For example, the switching of the cutie marks seems to have switched your memories and your perception of what your meaning in life was. It did not, however, affect your actual ability to do what your new cutie marks told you to. At first I thought this meant that the memories and wish to do what the cutie marks stood for was somehow part of the cutie mark itself. It seems I was mistaken there... luckily."
"Why is that lucky?" Pinkie asked. 
Frank hesitated for a moment. "Your cutie mark was the only one that was gone without anypony else still sporting it. If your memory and sense of enjoying what you were doing had all been linked to the cutie mark, stored in them if you will, they might have been lost when your cutie mark on Fluttershy's flank disappeared."
Pinkie Pie uttered a high pitched scream.
"Don't worry, don't worry!" Frank hurried to reassure her. "Nothing like that happened!"
"Oh right. I forgot. Silly me", Pinkie said switching from utter panic to casual cheerfulness at the blink of an eye. 
"I'm wondering if all those memories, in spite of them being transferred to the others along with the cutie marks, still remained in you all along. Except...", Frank started gnawing on his lower lip. 
"Except...?" Fluttershy asked after some moments. 
"Except if it was all because of the Elements of Harmony. Twilight put them on you right before your memories returned, right?"
"Yes", Fluttershy confirmed. 
"It may all come down to your cutie marks being different from the cutie marks of other ponies because of your link to the Elements of Harmony. I'll have to talk to Twilight about this. I know so very little about magic myself. Maybe she can explain some things to me. Maybe she can show me the Elements of Harmony too. They have taken on the shapes of your cutie marks, haven't they?"
Fluttershy nodded, but Pinkie Pie burst out: "She can't show you the Elements. She doesn't have them anymore."
"Pinkie!" 
By Fluttershy's standards her call had almost been a cry.
"We are not supposed to tell about that! I think..."
There were some moments of awkward silence and Fluttershy blushed. 
Frank was looking at his hooves finally he put down the quill and took a few steps away from the saddle-bag escritoire.
"I'm sorry", he said. "I should have remembered."
Both Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie gave him a confused look. 
"When Twilight and I were at your place, Fluttershy, Discord mentioned you no longer have the Elements. I don't think Twilight wanted to talk about it. I just didn't think of it just now. I don't want to try to learn anything from you that you don't think I should know. Maybe I'll ask Twilight later. I can't help knowing now that something... happened about the Elements. Seeing how your cutie marks and the Elements are related I most likely will have to ask questions about them. Maybe you all want to talk among each other to make sure everypony knows what I am not to be told at this time."
"Uhm... if you don't mind", Fluttershy said. Somehow Frank's words hadn't made the situation any less awkward. 
Frank thought for a moment about how he could get the talk going again to lessen the tension. 
"And after all of your cutie marks were restored Twilight became an alicorn?"
Frank had asked this question mostly in the hope to turn the talk towards a happy memory, but the result was quite the opposite from what he had expected. Fluttershy turned a bit pale and Pinkie Pie clenched her teeth as if she had stepped on something sharp and was trying to suppress a scream. 
"I... I am very sorry… I didn't mean to...?" Frank stuttered before either of the two said anything. He couldn't make any sense of their reactions and they confused him entirely. 
"It was terrible!" Fluttershy's voice was quivering a little.
Frank didn't know what to say still utterly confused by their reactions. Fluttershy however seemed to struggle with every word so Pinkie Pie took over.
"All was fine and funny when we had our cutie marks back, Frankie. Everypony was happy and joyful. Then suddenly Twilight had some idea, I think. Something she hadn't thought of before. An epicfunny! But the result was not funny... not funny at all!"
Pinkie Pie started gnawing her lower lip, possibly imitating Frank's habit of doing so when thinking. 
"I apologize if I asked something I shouldn't have", Frank said. 
"I was under the impression that Twilight's becoming an alicorn was a happy event for you and nothing Twilight mentioned suggested otherwise to me. If I—"
"It is okay", Fluttershy said quietly but calm. "You didn't know."
Some moments of silence passed before Frank said. 
"Uhm... actually, I still don't really know. Wasn't Twilight's becoming an alicorn a good thing? Did she... change from the way she was before?"
"Oh no, she didn't", Fluttershy hurried to assure. "She is just as kind as she has always been and there is nothing bad about her being an alicorn now. We were all very happy for her when she returned."
Frank was looking increasingly confused, insecure, almost desperate. It was clear that he wanted to understand what all this was about but at the same time he didn't want to cause Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie any distress and therefore didn't dare to ask anything else. 
"Pinkie Pie", Fluttershy said after a moment. "I think we can tell Mr. Blanket about this. One of the others will anyway and it is not really a secret."
"Not really a secret?" asked Pinkie Pie. "But it really is a secret! We never ever told Twilight!"
"No we didn't", sighed Fluttershy. "But sometimes I wish we would."
"If we tell him he must swear a Pinkie promise not to tell Twilight!" Pinkie insisted. "Will you swear a Pinkie promise Frankie?"
Frank was clearly at a loss, trying to figure everything out. 
"A Pinkie promise must never be broken under any circumstances?" he asked uncertain.
"NEVER EVER, ANYWHERE, ANYWHEN, ANYHOW!" Pinkie said menacingly.
Frank shrunk back from her and swallowed. 
"Do you swear?" Pinkie asked a creepy look on her face.
"I can't", Frank said, sounding intimidated.
"What?" the answer had snapped Pinkie out of her creepy mode instantly and she gave Frank a confused look. 
"I... err... I really don't mean any harm", Frank hastily assured. "I don't want to spy on any secrets. But I cannot give that Pinkie promise."
"Why not?" Pinkie asked confused and a little offended that anypony would refuse a Pinkie promise. 
"Because I don't know what you would tell me. All I know is that there is something Twilight doesn't know. I am very flattered that you would even consider telling me anything that you didn't tell her. But I like Twilight and I cannot promise not to tell her something not knowing what it is at all. I mean I am sure that you would never not tell her anything that she needed to know, but whatever it is that you are not telling her, you both seem to be so upset about it. I... I just don't know. I'm sorry, but I cannot make that promise. This is all so confusing..."
The colt who appeared so composed most of the time now seemed to be really distressed. Fluttershy had only seen him like that for a few moments the previous evening, when she had flown over a roof and seen Twilight and him in the alley after Frank had lectured Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon. Finally Frank took a deep breath, looked up and said with his most factual tone:
"I'm curious. I always am. But don't tell me anything that you don't want Twilight to know about. I am not a gossiper who would give away a secret entrusted to him. But seeing how important this seems to be for you, I cannot know if I would be acting against Twilight's interests if I kept it a secret. I cannot even know if I would be acting against your very own interests, seeing that you yourself, Fluttershy, said that sometimes you wished you would tell her. If I had to decide between the interests of Twilight or you on the one hoof and the promise on the other, I probably couldn't keep the promise. And because I don't know if I can keep the promise, I cannot promise it!"
He sighed. "I'm sorry about that."
Pinkie Pie's mouth stood a little open in surprise after this declaration of Frank. Fluttershy approached her and nudged her gently. "You know, Pinkie Pie, if that is alright with you, I think that perhaps we can tell him without a Pinkie promise."
Pinkie Pie nodded without saying anything. 

"Like Pinkie Pie said, Twilight suddenly thought of something while we were all celebrating that we had our cutie marks back to normal", Fluttershy told. "She rushed to the library and we all followed her. There she said something about fixing a spell and wrote something into an old book. And then...", Fluttershy swallowed and again her voice began to quiver, "...then all the Elements of Harmony flared up all of a sudden. And they were sending... rays of light at Twilight."
"But it wasn't just light", Pinkie Pie said. "It was like some of the magic stuff Twilight is doing. It looked like all that light and shinning was attacking Twilight! I wanted to turn away to stop it, but I couldn't turn."
"I tried to run away from there too, but it was like that light kept us there while it was hitting Twilight. And then she was just... gone. And nothing but burned ashes where she had stood!" 
At this point Fluttershy cowered down, covering her face with one leg. 
"We all thought she was dead!" Fluttershy sobbed. "We thought we had... killed her!"
Frank looked at Fluttershy distraught, when suddenly he felt choked by Pinkie Pie who cast her forelegs around his neck and was crying rivers. 
"She was gone!" she cried. "And we had no idea why, or where, or what. Only that our Elements had done it!"
Frank was gasping for breath when Fluttershy joined the hug embracing both Pinkie Pie and him, but not nearly as fiercely as Pinkie Pie. Pinkie Pie loosened her embrace a little to include Fluttershy in it. Both of them were sobbing. 
Frank was utterly lost, as if he had somehow invaded a very personal moment that he was not entitled to share, knowing neither of the two ponies for more than a day.
He patted both of them in a helpless attempt to give some comfort. 
"It is alright", he mumbled. "Twilight is fine. Nothing happened to her. You didn't do anything wrong."
He felt stupid as he said it, as Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie both knew of course. But this was not a matter of knowing and Frank felt that he had torn open some wounds that had been healing. After what seemed like an eternity, Fluttershy finally let go and a moment later Pinkie Pie's grip slackened too. Frank opened his mouth to offer yet another apology, but before he could say anything Fluttershy silenced him with a shake of her head. 
"We were terrified", Pinkie Pie sniffed. "I grabbed every book I could get my hoof on. I hoped that one book would say how we could get Twilight back. Twilight once told me I have a hoof for picking the one book I need even if I don't know why I need it. But none of the books told anything about what had happened. I didn't understand the book Twilight had written in either."
"I couldn't think of anything", Fluttershy said. "I was just devastated. I don't know how long it was like that. We were all just... but then Spike thought of writing to Celestia and ask her for help. She wrote back immediately and her letter said that Twilight was alive and fine and that we shouldn't worry. She wrote that Twilight would return to Ponyville soon and that we should get outside."
"I was so happy to see that letter!" Pinkie Pie said. "With Twilight gone and thinking that she was dead and that we had somehow done it, it was... it was worse than having the wrong cutie mark!"
Fluttershy looked at her surprised, but nodded in agreement. 
"We then went out", Fluttershy continued. It was night already, but suddenly there was a light and it was in the shape of Twilight's cutie mark. And she came out of that light, with her new wings and everything."
"It was so great to have her back! And as an alicorn too." Pinkie Pie said in a tone that left no doubt that she was reliving the happiness of that moment just as much as she had relived the shock of Twilight's disappearing. 
Frank waited for a couple of moments, but when it was clear that neither Pinkie Pie nor Fluttershy meant to add anything to the story, he asked carefully:
"But you never told Twilight about the hard time you had when she was gone? I don't think she has any idea what it was like for you."
"She was so happy and also so overwhelmed with everything; and so were we. None of us wanted to spoil anything for her. I think we just wanted to forget about the time before we got Princess Celestia's letter."
Frank nodded. "Thank you for telling me all this. I will—"
"Oh look, there are Pen and Paper!" Pinkie interrupted him pointing across the green towards Ponyville. 
A dark blue unicorn and a white pegasus were approaching and they were clearly heading for them. 
"Pen and Paper?" Frank asked. He had seen the two ponies during the party yesterday, but he hadn't been introduced to either of them.
"Actually their names are Inkhorn and Featherscribe", Fluttershy corrected. 
"Hello", Pinkie Pie called waving to them.
"Good morning Pen and Paper", she greeted them once they were in talking distance. 
It was difficult to tell if the nickname pen and paper or the 'good morning' confused the two ponies more, seeing that the sun had long passed its zenith. They returned the greeting however and gave Pinkie a friendly nod. 
"Your party yesterday was awesome!" Inkhorn said.
"Thank you very much for that one, Pinkie", Featherscribe agreed. 
"You are very welcome!" Pinkie said cheerfully bouncing up and down on the spot, unmistakably happy about the appreciation for her party. "Thank you for coming here to thank me!"
"Uhm... actually...", Featherscribe said rubbing his neck. "...we're also here to look for Mr. Blanket. That is you, isn't it?"
Frank nodded: "Nice to meet you Mr. Featherscribe and Mrs. Inkhorn, is it?"
The unicorn nodded, but there was something slightly forced about her smile. 
"Mr. Blanket, Mayor Mare would like to see you. She sent us to ask you to come to the town hall."
"She sent both of you?" Fluttershy asked surprised.
"No problem", Frank said. "I'm just interviewing Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy for my studies on cutie marks. By the way, if you are interested I would very much like to interview you too. Your cutie marks seem to be of the kind very much befitting the name and probably the profession of their wearers."
Inkhorn's flank indeed showed a large inkhorn while Featherscribe's was a quill. 
"Actually, Mayor Mare impressed upon us the urgency to see you as soon as possible. You could continue the interview later, I think?" Inkhorn said. 
Frank looked a bit disappointed at Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy. "If you don't mind...? I guess I have been taking up enough of your time already. Thank you very, very much for everything you told me."
"You are welcome Frank", Fluttershy said. "I found it interesting too."
"Me too" Pinkie Pie agreed. "You also taught me a new word. I didn't know the word 'epicfunny' yet."
"Uhm, actually that's epiphany, Pinkie."
Frank walked to his saddle-bags, put in his quill, and notes and folded the desktop lit together.
"Are you coming, Mr. Blanket?" Featherscribe asked.
"Yes, of course!" Frank said mildly annoyed by the impatience. "I'm just packing my stuff together." He put on the saddle-bags, bid farewell to Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy and followed Inkhorn while Featherscribe was following close behind.