The Truth About Cutie Marks

by Magic Step

Chapter 2

At that moment, on the other side of the social world from Apple Bloom, Blueblood was just going to his office.

As usual, he grimaced as he passed the statue of Discord on the lawn in front of the Cutie Mark Bureau. He wished they would put that somewhere else. He didn’t like living with the knowledge that the ancient demon of chaos could break out at any moment, and naturally the first pony he’d see would be Blueblood, who worked here every day. But Celestia had insisted it was too symbolic to pass up: the chaotic creature who had tried to destroy everypony’s cutie mark would now be forced to watch the place where cutie marks were made.

Well, not exactly. Each town had their own branch of the CMB to issue cutie marks to their inhabitants, but this particular building was special. Not only did it issue cutie marks for the capital city of Canterlot, but it also dealt with cutie mark reassignment.

Ponies who wanted to change their cutie mark were very rare, and ponies who actually got their petition through and received a new cutie mark were rarer still. But to Blueblood they seemed incredibly common, because he had to deal with them all day long. That was his job. Part of it. The part he didn’t like.

But his secretary informed Blueblood that she had some forms for him to work on first. Blueblood took the thick folder from her hooves and trotted into his office, setting the folder down with a satisfying thump that made him sigh with joy. Paperwork.

He spent nearly one whole hour, one blissful hour, filling out forms and authorizing transactions before his first interruption.

“Ma’am,” he heard the secretary say, “You really don’t need to talk to the prince-”

The door was thrust open by a dark green pegasus with her brown mane in a huge tower atop her head. She was dragging a little lime green colt in a very fancy suit behind her.

Blueblood tried to smile, but inwardly he cringed. “How can I help you?”

“How dare you tell my little Peabody here that he cannot ever be accepted in a position of influence in society? How dare you?”

Blueblood winced. An angry mother. He was terribly afraid of angry mothers.

“Ma’am,” he said, reciting the speech Celestia had made him memorize with the promise that it would fix situations like this, “I have no control over the content of the test for a leadership cutie mark, and would like to remind you that a leadership cutie mark is not a requirement for running for public office-”

The angry mother called Blueblood a series of names that made her little Peabody shrink away with embarrassment. “You know as well as I do that nopony without a leadership cutie mark has been elected to any office of any consequence during Celestia’s entire reign! How dare you suggest otherwise?” She advanced towards Blueblood, her hoof raised angrily.

“Guards!” Blueblood shrieked.

After the eye-rolling guards had born the hysterical mare out of the building, Blueblood picked up a Z-67 form and tried to calm his nerves.

“By the way,” a guard said, poking his head into the room, “We’ve started a new policy. We call it ‘The Prince Who Cried Guards Policy’. It means we’re only going to remove three ponies from your office today. That was one. You can only ask us to remove two more.”

“What?” Blueblood said, looking up sharply. “You- you can’t do that! I’m telling my mom!”

“Go run crying to the Princess Celestia if you must,” the guard said, rolling his eyes, “but I don’t think you’ll get much result from that quarter. At least not now. Your precious mother is visiting Trottingham and won’t be back for a week.”

“I know,” Blueblood said, “but I can still write her a letter…”

But he knew as well as the guard did that a letter would take time, and meanwhile the guards had him at their mercy. He sighed and prayed he would be left alone for the most part.

He returned to his paperwork, but this time only got a few forms done before he was interrupted again, this time by a green unicorn with a blue and yellow mane and a lab coat. His face was grim.

“Oh, er, Doctor, uh… Puppet?” Blueblood said.

“Marionette,” the unicorn said. “Doctor Marionette.”

“Oh, yes, you wanted to see my records for ponies with screw cutie marks, I remember you,” Blueblood said, calming down. Maybe this encounter wouldn’t go so badly. “Is there anything else I can show you?”

“There is some information I would like, yes,” said Doctor Marionette. “I want to know why the hay your insanity cutie marks are being thrown around like rice at a wedding. My psychology clinic is being flooded with a sudden outbreak of insanity. Do you want to know what else is odd about this?”

Blueblood froze. He debated the next words he would say very carefully. The last thing he wanted was an angry doctor. He was terribly afraid of angry doctors.

After a long, intense decision making process, the word he chose was: “No.”

“For some, very strange reason, almost every officeholder in Hoofington suddenly had their cutie mark warped into a screw. Do you find that at all odd, Prince Blueblood?”

Blueblood managed to stammer, “T-the CMB holds no responsibility for cutie marks that suddenly transform away from the influence of a CMB certified machine, as such things are merely a physiological-”

“Understood,” Doctor Marionette said. “I just wanted to give you something to think about. That’s all.” He turned and left the room.

Blueblood sighed with relief, instantly blanking the conversation from his mind. Doctor Marionette turned up every once and a while questioning various screw cutie marks given to indicate the mental instability of the pony who bore them. Blueblood had long since stopped paying attention to him.

Nopony else came in until after lunchtime. Then two yellow unicorns with red manes barged into his office. One had a mustache and one did not, and their cutie marks showed different colored gears, but other than that they were identical.

“What is the meaning of this?” One of them demanded, slapping a piece of paper on Blueblood’s desk, sending other important forms flying.

Blueblood scanned the form hastily. “I-I take it your request for a loan was denied. That really isn’t my department- that’s the department of business-”

“They said we couldn’t get a loan without a patent,” the other twin said.

“Th-th-that’s not my department either. P-patent office-”

“And they said we couldn’t get a ‘p-patent’ because you told them we couldn’t!” said the one twin.

“Again!” said the other.

“You’ve blocked every patent we’ve ever applied for, and we’re sick and tired of it. You are holding up our entrepeneurship!”

“Er, uh, let me check the reason,” Blueblood said, skittering to a door in the back of his office and entering a room lined with filing cabinets. Just the sight of these wonderful devices filled with wonderful documents calmed him down, and he took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the paper.

But first things were first, and he had to placate these ponies somehow. He was terribly afraid of angry businessponies, after all. He yanked a form out of the F filing cabinet- F for FlimFlam Manufacturers.

He trotted back over to them, the paper held aloft in his telekinetic grip. “Ah, I see… I’m afraid you were rejected simply as a matter of maintaining the balance in society. It’s nothing personal.”

“Maintaining balance?” One twin demanded. “What the hay is that supposed to mean?”

“There are over 10,000 ponies with cutie marks related to the cider industry,” Blueblood said. “Your machine would potentially put each and every one of them out of business while providing no benefit to the world at large except to line your own pockets.”

“No benefit to the world at large?” Another twin demanded. “We’d be providing top-quality cider at a mere fraction of the cost to everypony in Equestria- and maybe even beyond! Everypony would then have more money to spend on other things!”

“But you’d put all the ponies with cider cutie marks out of business,” Blueblood repeated.

“We’ve already detailed that in our plan,” one of the twins said. “We need thousands of ponies to maintain the machines, run our stores, transport our goods-”

“Those ponies do not have machinist, storekeeping, or transporation cutie marks, Flim and Flam. They have cider making cutie marks. They cannot simply drop the job their cutie mark indicates and take up a new trade. That would be damaging to them physiologically and psychologically and therefore hurt society as a whole. You simply were not thinking, and simply must forgo these silly notions of revolutionizing this industry or that industry and stick with what your cutie mark is actually in- fixing watches.”

“We hate watches,” one twin grumbled.

“You see?” Blueblood said. “This is what comes from going against your cutie mark. Now you have Cutie Mark Failure Insanity Syndrome and now hate that which is the very essence of your being, and so you are seeking to spread this hateful, Discord-created disease, destroying yourself and everypony else, through these tyrannical machines of yours. I highly recommend you get professional help.”

“Pr-professional help?” one twin sputtered, seizing Blueblood’s neck with telekinesis and lifting him up into the air. “I’ll show you who’s tyrannical, you- you- tyrant!”

Blueblood gasped, finding his airflow magically blocked. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, couldn’t call for help, he was dying…

Oh, right. He had a horn.

He summoned the guards with a teleportation spell.

One fight that he didn’t pay much attention to later, Blueblood was sitting at his desk again, trying to reorganize the papers Flim and Flam had shoved around. The guards had been quick to tell him that this counted as dealing with two ponies, and that they would no longer provide him with any assistance in dealing with angry customers.

Blueblood was terribly afraid of angry customers.

Fortunately, the remaining few ponies who interrupted his work after this had fairly mild requests, easily met. Nothing too worrisome there.

Until the red pegasus with a bloody knife for a cutie mark walked through the door.

Blueblood tried to contain his terror.

“Um, hello,” the pegasus said softly, staring at the floor, at the walls, the ceiling, anywhere except directly at Blueblood. It was as though he had a fear of making eye contact.

Blueblood didn’t answer. He was trying not to scream.

“I, uh, requested a cutie mark change,” the pegasus whispered. “I, well, I didn’t really hear anything about that yet, so, uh… I thought I’d come and ask in pony.” His voice was oddly high pitched. His gaze flickered back and forth from Blueblood to the floor as he waited for a response.

Blueblood just shook his head.

“I-I was denied?” he asked, pain showing on his face.

Blueblood nodded. Please, please don’t make any sudden movements, he thought.

The pegasus advanced and put his hooves on top of the papers Blueblood had been working on. Blueblood shoved his swivel chair backwards into the wall, then pressed himself against it. The pegasus didn’t seem to notice, possibly because he wasn’t really looking at Blueblood; he was staring at Blueblood’s desk.

“Please,” he whispered, clasping his hooves in front of him. “Please. I- I need a new cutie mark. I just… can’t take it anymore. You… you have no idea what it’s like. Ponies I’ve never even met before, they j-just take one look at me and then… then…” his eyes flitted up to meet Blueblood’s for a moment before he stared at the desk again. “They do what you’re doing, pretty much.”

Blueblood was shaking. This was an emergency. The guards would understand.

“Guards?” He called out. “Guards?”

“And they do that, too,” the pegasus sighed softly.

“Guards? Please. This is important. This is a genuine emergency. Please, please don’t leave me here with a murderer!” Blueblood half-shrieked.

“See?” The pegasus said, his voice rising. “See? Everypony just looks at my bloody knife, and they all assume that I’m a sociopathic killer. I never killed anypony, honest! Just look at my record! I just broke into a few… buildings… and took some stuff, but I never even hurt anypony! I mean, except that one guard, but that was an accident and I made it right! I don’t deserve this!”

“GUARDS!” Blueblood screamed.

The red pegasus was sobbing now. “Everypony is afraid of me! Everypony shuns me! They hide from me, hide their foals, point to me as a pony to avoid… I can’t get a job, I can’t get a house, I can’t live, and nopony will ever love me again… not even my own family. I can’t take it. I can’t take it. Please. Please. I d-don’t even mind being a blank flank. Please.” He reached out and grabbed Blueblood’s suit collar.

Blueblood was unable to contain his fear any longer and screamed like a little filly. He was horribly afraid of insane murderers.

The guards showed up and managed to drag the still-sobbing pegasus off the prince.

“You owe me ten bits,” one said to the other.

“Should’ve known better than to assume Blueblood could handle this on his own…” the guard grumbled.

It wasn’t until half an hour later that it finally clicked with Blueblood that the guards had let the murderer in on purpose so they could bet on the outcome. He realized that was pathetically slow of him. But his mind had been on other things. That poor, crazy pony. He shook his head.

Only a crazy pony would have said he didn’t mind being a blank flank. What happened to blank flanks was something far too horrible for him to contemplate…

***

Apple Bloom had no idea how long she’d been walking. Twilight had told her to “see what she could see,” but it was so dark that Apple Bloom figured she’d failed. She still had no idea what this had to do with cutie marks. Far as she could tell, her silent gray pony guide had a magnifying glass, but Apple Bloom wasn’t sure what that meant. Apple Bloom had tried shouting greetings and questions to the gray earth pony, but she didn’t seem to hear her.

Abruptly, the path ended, and Apple Bloom stumbled into a bright sunny clearing. Once Apple Bloom was out of the thick tree cover, she thought the sun seemed to be shining twice as brightly to make up for the rest of the gloomy forest. She stumbled forward for a moment, her hoof over her eyes, as the brightness blinded her.

When she got used to the light, the gray mare was gone. Apple Bloom was standing in a town that seemed even smaller than Ponyville- the buildings were all simple huts and seemed to be built recently, and garden plots were everywhere. Colorful unlit lanterns hung from strings all over the town.

She trotted through the streets, admiring the decorations.

“Hey, there!” a loud voice called.

Apple Bloom whirled around to see a huge gray earth pony hanging a banner on a building. He drove a nail in place with his hoof, leapt off his ladder, and trotted towards her. “I don’t recognize you. You must be new. I’m Grayhoof, founder of Sunny Town. Have you come to stay, or are you just visiting?”

“Stay?” said Apple Bloom.

“Well, you just seemed of the right age where you’d normally be picking your cutie mark,” Grayhoof said. “Am I wrong?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. Twilight sent me here because Ah was thinking of staying a blank flank for a while.”

“Then you’ve come to the right place,” Grayhoof said, showing his blank flank to her. “This town is full of ponies who were fed up with the cutie mark system and decided to prove they could get on without them. As you can see, we’ve done quite well for ourselves.” He waved a hoof at the thriving vegetables and the nice huts.

“Well, uh, Ah didn’t really want to move just yet,” said Apple Bloom, wishing Applejack was there to help her.

“Understood. But you can look around, see how we live, try things out, see if you might like it, right?” said Grayhoof. “Come on, I’ll see if I can get Starlet to show you around. I mean, I would do it myself, but I have decorations to take care of.”

He cantered across town and knocked on a nearby door. “Starlet? Starlet?”

After waiting a moment, he sighed. “I guess she’s out… I’m sorry about this…”

“No worries,” Apple Bloom said. “What if Ah jist poke around by myself? Ah’m real responsible.

“All right, but don’t leave the village,” said Grayhoof. “No telling what sorts of monsters roam the Everfree Forest.”

“Understood,” Apple Bloom said.

She wandered the village, gaping at everything. She’d hardly ever been outside Ponyville before, so just the newness of the situation impressed her, but she also liked how simple it all seemed.

Everypony seemed to be an earth pony, and of course, none of them had cutie marks. They all seemed really friendly. A tan stallion waved at her as she walked past.

“Hey there,” he said. “The name’s Gladstone. You a prospective newcomer?”

“Something like that,” Apple Bloom said, shrugging.

“What brought us to your attention? Somepony from the village come find you?”

Apple Bloom shook her head, then paused. She’d forgotten all about the creepy gray mare that had lead her to Sunny Town in the first place.

“Uh, you don’t happen to know a gray mare, golden mane like sunshine, magnifying glass cutie mark?”

First all the colors in the world inverted, then went grayscale, then went dark. Wind rushed past with tornado like strength. Apple Bloom heard the words ‘magnifying glass cutie mark’ repeated backwards, felt like she was saying them backwards against her will.

The next instant the world was bright and visible again. Gladstone looked confused, then smiled at Apple Bloom.

“Gray mare with a glowing golden mane? That’d be Ruby. She lives with her sister in that hut over there-” he pointed to a nearby hut- “but last I saw, she went to see Three Leaf, our local healer and Ruby’s boss. She lives on the outskirts of town, closer to the wild plants… down that path there.” He pointed.

“Thanks a bunch! Er… she isn’t a mute or anything, is she?” Apple Bloom asked.

Gladstone blinked in surprise. “Uh, nope.”

“Ah, well, she just… didn’t say anything on the way here,” Apple Bloom said.

“What? And you just followed a random, silent mare into the forest?”

“Ah, er… Ah’d better be going.” Apple Bloom skittered off down the path to Three Leaf’s house and banged into a blue stallion.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, pushing Apple Bloom away.

“Ah just keep running into ponies today,” Apple Bloom sighed. Then she gave the pony a closer look.

“Hey, Ah know you,” she said. “You’re Diamond Tiara’s older brother, Jeweled Crown. Figures you’d be here, huh, since you were reluctant to get a cutie mark too, but why haven’t you visited home?”

The blue stallion blinked. “I… have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t have a younger sister.”

Apple Bloom shrugged. “Oh, sorry… you just look awful similar, is all.” She continued trotting down the path, but occasionally looked over her shoulder at the blue stallion. She had been so sure…

Three Leaf’s hut was truly quite a ways into the forest, and it was much darker over here. Apple Bloom could barely see. First she knocked, but after waiting a while, she pushed the door open and went inside.

It was completely dark except for the light of a few glowing embers in the fireplace. Dust was all over the floor.

“Uh, hello?” Apple Bloom called out. “Ah’m looking for a pony named Ruby? Is this the wrong house?”

After a moment, a whispery voice answered her: “No. You found me, Apple Bloom.”

“Ruby?” Apple Bloom said. “Where are you?” She headed in the direction of the voice; it seemed to be coming from… the fireplace.

The whispery voice continued, “This town is a strange place, full of strange thoughts. They have forsaken cutie marks, and did not take kindly to me the day I received mine…”

Apple Bloom peeked into the fireplace, then reeled back in shock.

It was filled with white pony bones.

“Noooo!” She shrieked, fleeing the hut.

Author's Note:

Don't know if there's anypony who doesn't know this already, but Sunnytown and the affiliated story come from The Story of the Blanks by Donitz.