"Apple Bloom! Apple Bloom! You've got to snap out of it!"
Scootaloo fluttered her wings to help her slip out from underneath Apple Bloom, who fell to the ground and started sobbing. "It's my destiny..." she cried. "It's mine..."
"Apple Bloom, what are you talking about?" Sweetie Belle asked. "You got your destiny, and Scootaloo got hers. There's nothing stolen!"
"But it's a Apple!" Apple Bloom flopped over onto her back and pointed to her head. "It's my name, don'tcha see?"
Scootaloo, who had now managed to get up and dust herself off, looked confused. "Uh, that's your mane, not your name."
"No, Ah mean my head, my brain, my--oh, ferget it!" She rolled over and huffed. "Y'all just don't understand."
Scootaloo looked to Sweetie Belle, who looked right back. "Don't look at me!" Sweetie said. "I don't have my cutie mark yet."
Scootaloo sighed. She was going to have to try and be sympathetic and caring--this was gonna be harder than she thought. "Look, Apple Bloom... sometimes, getting your cutie mark is, like, super awesome, because it's something you've been looking forward to for a long time. And sometimes, it's just a thing that happens, 'cuz you knew it was something that was gonna happen your whole life."
Apple Bloom glowered at her. "And what if it ain't somethin' you were expectin'? And what if somepony else steals the thing you thought you were gonna get?!"
"Scootaloo, that didn't help at all!"
"Well, I'm sorry! I don't exactly have a cutie mark in being nice and helpful to people!" Apple Bloom started wailing again, but Scootaloo continued, "Maybe you should get a cutie mark in that so you can help her, then!"
"That's not...!" Sweetie Belle stamped her hoof. "That's not how any of this works!"
"Girls!"
Sweetie and Scootaloo looked at Apple Bloom. She'd stood up, and the stony look on her face was unlike anything either of them had seen. "Yeah, 'Bloom?" Scootaloo asked.
"Ah know exactly what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go find an adult... and I'm gonna complain!"
"That's... what we usually do anyway," Sweetie Belle remarked.
"Ah know, but I ain't gonna rest 'til I find somepony who can actually fix this!"
"You... go for it, Apple Bloom???"
Satisfied with herself, she stalked out of her room, leaving Sweetie and Scootaloo behind. "All right, Scootaloo," Sweetie said. "How long until she gives up on this?"
"How long, or how many ponies does she talk to?" Scootaloo answered. "My bits're on a week, or 10 ponies."
"Remember when Twilight wouldn't give her the recipe for that transformation potion? It's gonna be at least a month until she gives up on it. Half of Ponyville, at least."
"You're on!"
***
In the end, they were both wrong. Not because Apple Bloom gave up, though. Or that she spent a whole month whining about her cutie mark to anypony who would listen. Instead, she complained to Twilight first, and rather than blow her off, Twilight actually listened. She invited all three of them to the castle to talk about it, and for a few minutes, all she did was observe. She hemmed and hawed, and Scootaloo objected to the scrutiny. "Twilight, please! What's going on?"
"It's just... very strange," Twilight murmurred to herself. "It can't be a coincidence that you got an apple-based cutie mark, right after Apple Bloom got a music-based one."
"Ah know, right?!"
"Still, though. That doesn't give you the right to hit your friends, Apple Bloom," Twilight chastised her.
Apple Bloom scowled and scuffed the ground with a hoof. "I wasn't really hittin' her. Just kinda... Ah dunno."
"In any case, I want to get Princess Celestia's opinion on this, so... we'll send her a letter, okay?" Twilight winked to Spike, who had already been writing down everything Twilight had said. He nodded in agreement, then set the letter alight and let the smoke drift off to Canterlot Castle. "Now," Twilight continued, "Celestia's turnaround is usually five to eight days, depending on--"
In a flash of yellow light, Celestia appeared right in the middle of the library. "...Oh! Princess! You're... that was quick."
"You said it was a problem with cutie marks, did you not?"
"I-I did, but--"
"Not cutie pox, not Almond's Sickness? Destiny's chosen cutie mark?"
"Y-yes?"
"Then this is very serious." Princess Celestia looked at Apple Bloom, and she smiled serenely. "Hello, little one. What's wrong?"
"I-I..." It was one thing to complain to your sister's friends, but to get the ear of the Princess... suddenly Apple Bloom's throat was very dry. "I got a cutie mark in music, a-and then Scootaloo got a cutie mark in apples, and I... I thought for sure--"
"That should be yours?" Celestia guessed.
Apple Bloom nodded. "And I guess... I was a little jealous, and I thought..." She sniffed. "Maybe I was just overreacting."
"Maybe, maybe not." Celestia offered a hoof. "I'm ready to check and see. Do you want to go ask?"
Sweetie thought that was odd, so she chimed in, "Ask? Ask who?"
Celestia looked at her; she didn't seem frustrated, but instead simply said, "Why, the ones in charge of destiny, of course. Would you like to meet them? You can come too, if you like."
"And me, too?" Scootaloo asked.
Celestia chuckled. "Of course. I've heard so much about you three, and I'd never expect to split you up on anything you might call an adventure."
They cheered, but Celestia continued, "Though I'm afraid you won't find this much of an adventure, unless you really like paperwork."
They paused, their hooves still mid-high-hoof. "Paperwork?" Apple Bloom asked.
Celestia waved a hoof, and a door appeared in the middle of the room, which opened quietly to a glowing white. "Come in and see."
One by one, they filed in, and gaped at what they saw. All about them, ponies were milling about, each carrying folders full of paper, or sorting paper into different stacks, or folding paper into envelopes and pushing them into express tubes that wove through the ceiling high above them. Sweetie was the first to ask what all three of them were thinking. "Princess Celestia? Where... are we?"
Celestia sighed. "This is the Sidereal Bureaucracy. They're in charge of everything that goes in the world. Everything, be it past, present, or future, they keep track of it all. If anybody were to know anything about your destinies, it'd be them." She stomped a hoof, then called out, "Regulus! Your servant has need of your aid!"
"Yes, yes, Celestia. I saw your arrival." A pony came down a nearby staircase, though he certainly looked very odd. He was dark brown in color, but he wore a green cape and a green crown-like circlet on his head. "And who are these children with you?"
"They seem to have some sort of... issue with their cutie marks. So we'd like to see their files, please. If it isn't too much trouble."
"Of course, Celestia." He gave a wide wave. "Right this way."
They followed Regulus out to a far corner of the room, where a sign saying "PONYVILLE DIVISION" hung over a group of desks. Regulus hailed the pony working at the closest desk. "Virgo!" he said. "I need the files on Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle. It's a favor for the princess."
Virgo shrugged. "Sorry, sir," she said. "But my directory says they're not in Ponyville right now. That's not my jurisdiction."
Regulus' eye twitched. "Well, no, they're right here, but--"
"Then their files were moved to the Sidereal Bureaucracy Division." Virgo shrugged again. "Like I said. Not my problem."
He sighed deeply. "Very well. Come, my dears."
They hurried across the hall, running for what seemed an infinitely long time until they arrived at the next sign, which, just like the previous one, said its respective division on it. "Polaris!" The pony at the desk, who was wearing an explorer's hat Scootaloo recognized as being exactly like Daring Do's, looked up. "I need the files on--"
"Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo, right?"
Regulus beamed. "Yes, of course!"
Polaris looked at him, perplexed. "I knew you were going to need them, so as soon as they moved to my division, I had a courier run them out to you."
Princess Celestia facehoofed. "You must be joking. So where is the courier, then?"
Polaris fidgeted with her hooves. "Well... I expect he's waiting for you by the entrance door."
Celestia sighed. "Then... lead the way, Regulus."
"Very well. I have a feeling _someone_ is gonna need some retraining." Polaris' eyebrows shot up, but he quickly added, "Not you, though, Polaris, you're doing just fine."
They hurried back to the door Celestia had created, but to Regulus' growing consternation, no courier was in sight anywhere. He pulled the nearest worker aside and asked, "You! Where is the courier who came to deliver a file to me?"
"Well, I saw you were going to the Ponyville Division, so I told the courier--"
"No!" Regulus stomped his hoof, and the whole bureaucracy ground to a halt. "We are ending this farce right here! We'll jolly well wait right here until the courier comes and finds us, and not the other way around!"
It was perfect silence for about five minutes, the quietest any of the Cutie Mark Crusaders had ever heard. (To their credit, they didn't so much as move a muscle.) When the courier arrived (from the way they'd come, of course), Regulus snatched the folder from his hooves and said icily, "Thank you so much."
"You're welcome!" the courier said cheerfully.
Regulus sighed. "Now, let's see if we can get this matter settled." He opened the file, but the surprises were still coming. "Uh, my good man?"
"Yes?"
"There should be three papers in here, should there not? One for each of them?"
The courier thought on this for a moment, then recalled something. "Oh yeah! I asked miss Virgo that, and she said, 'They're the Cutie Mark Crusaders. They're a team.' So I guess they're all on the same page!"
Regulus' eye twitched. "They're..." He laughed. "They're on the same page." He opened up the file and pored over the paper in front of him. "And I suppose all their information is on here."
"Yep!"
"Their names, their birthdays, their cutie marks."
"Mm-hmm!"
"In alphabetical order, as per instruction S7G.01-X?!"
The courier nodded, unaware of what he'd just walked into.
Regulus stabbed a hoof into the paper. "Then that means their names and their cutie marks don't line up properly, is that what you're saying?!?!?"
The courier looked where Regulus was pointing, thought a moment, then laughed to himself. "Huh! Yeah. Oops. Guess that could be wrong. Thankfully it hasn't caused any problems, right?"
There was only one thing you could hear at that point, and it was Regulus' heavy breathing. "Breathe, Regulus," Celestia said slowly. "It's not worth it."
He sighed. "Yes, Celestia. I don't actually have to breathe, but I appreciate the nod just the same."
The courier looked uncertainly between the two of them. "So... what do you want me to do?"
Regulus closed the file and shoved it into the courier's hooves. "I want you to take this back to the star in charge, have them separate this file into three separate pages, and then assign the correct cutie marks to each filly. Do you understand?"
"You got it!" The courier threw a snappy salute. "Take this paper, write out the three cutie marks, and make a new one for all three of them. Understood!"
"No, wait--!" Regulus chased after the courier as he made his departure, and Celestia and the Cutie Mark Crusaders watched him go.
"Uh... are they gonna be okay?" Apple Bloom asked.
Celestia waved a hoof. "This is Regulus we're talking about. It'll be fine!"
"And our cutie marks?" Scootaloo looked at her flank, where the apple mark sat quietly where it'd been all day.
"I imagine it'll be gone when you wake up in the morning, once Regulus fixes your file." Celestia crouched down, looking at each filly in turn. "In fact, I think you're starting to feel really sleepy, like you could sleep for a very long time..."
Sweetie yawned. "Huh. You're right, princess. Why do I... feel..."
And all three of them quietly slumped to the ground, snoring and dreaming little filly dreams.