Unmarked Once More

by gamernerd717

Payback

The sorcerer fended off the 9 ponies as best as he could, but the combination of a larger number than their last bout and the mild confusion caused by the distraction earlier allowed the 9 to emerge victorious.

“How much longer are you going to keep stalling until you give these girls what they came for?”, Rainbow Dash asked their foe.

“Get over yourselves. Why are you getting so angry about what I’m planning?”, the sorcerer asked Dash.

“YOU TOOK AWAY THEIR CUTIE MARKS!”, Rainbow shouted, pointing out the obvious.

“Yeah, so what? Why do you girls care so much? They’re just cutie marks, are they not?”, the sorcerer asked the Crusaders.

Utterly flabbergasted by their enemy’s dismissal of what their identical cutie marks mean to them, the three fillies laid it all out for him in the hopes that he would understand.

“Why do we care? WHY DO WE CARE?! We worked so hard to earn those cutie marks! Why do you think we came here to get them in the first place?”, Scootaloo answered.

“Do you know what it’s like to be the only ones in your class without cutie marks? It’s one of the worst feelings in the world. Not to mention getting bullied and picked on for it.”, Sweetie Belle chimed in with her own answer.

“I thought I explained this well enough, but you just didn’t get the message. With our cutie marks, we help other ponies earn theirs and discover their purpose.”, Apple Bloom answered last, echoing some of what she told him earlier.

“Your personal experiences mean nothing to me, just as mine shouldn’t mean anything to you. Now, if you’ll leave my lair at once, we shouldn’t have any problems ever again.”, the sorcerer demanded.

Suddenly, Rainbow Dash butted in.

“Not happening! There was no chance of us leaving after you took away these girls’ cutie marks. Now, give them back!”.

Rainbow grabbed the sorcerer by his cloak and held him high in the air, hoping to somehow intimidate him into giving them up. The pegasus’s efforts were in vain, however, as their adversary got free of her grasp by way of knocking her teeth in with his cane and safely descended onto ground.

Twilight attempted to help with her magic, but the sorcerer countered with magic of his own. Though his was not as strong as the princess’s, it was enough to keep her and her friends at bay.

Applejack and Pinkie Pie aided by using their strength as earth ponies to damage the lair in hopes that the debris would trap their enemy inside.

And lastly, Rarity and Fluttershy attempted two different methods of attack: Rarity used what she could of her unicorn magic, and Fluttershy attempted to fly above their adversary and attempt to keep him occupied while airborne.

Meanwhile, it was up to the Crusaders to retrieve their stolen cutie marks, and some of their pride as well.

The chaos that resulted from the Mane 6 attacking the sorcerer sent everyone involved flying. The force at which every blow had been dealt sent the sorcerer flying towards the trio of unmarked fillies.

Mere inches away from reclaiming what was rightfully theirs, the Crusaders stood face to face with the one villain who had taken away their beloved cutie marks.

As the sorcerer attempted to repeat what he had done to Apple Bloom to the other two, Scootaloo grabbed his cane and pulled it from his grip. Apple Bloom then did the honors of snapping it in two.

“I don’t need a cane to take care of you three.”, the sorcerer told the trio unfazed.

Sweetie Belle realized he was preparing to use magic, and attempted to use magic of her own, but the much more experienced sorcerer easily overpowered her.

Stuck in a rut, the three devised a plan; Apple Bloom and Scootaloo would keep the pressure on him, while Sweetie Belle would levitate the glass cases that hold their cutie marks right towards them.

The young earth pony and pegasus began their distraction.

“Bring it on, sorcerer. See if I even lose.”, Scootaloo goaded.

“Yeah, come and get us!”, Apple Bloom followed suit.

The sorcerer came rushing at the two, and they attacked him as best as their tiny selves could.

Sweetie Belle levitated the casings to her friends, and everything stopped as the sorcerer, Sweetie’s fellow Crusaders, and even the Mane 6 who had recently regained consciousness from their own battle looked at the floating cutie marks that were inside.

The sorcerer attempted to wrest them back, but the Mane 6 restrained him and rendered him unconscious, so as to not start anymore trouble.

Then, with all the force she could muster, Sweetie Belle slammed the glass casings down and watched them shatter on the ground. The Crusaders’ cutie marks emerged from the pieces and floated back to the three young fillies that they belonged to. With a flash of light, and with a brief black silhouette encasing each of the three girls, the Crusaders had finally reclaimed their cutie marks.

With the reclaiming of their cutie marks, the Crusaders felt an emotion that could only be matched by when they first earned their cutie marks. After working so hard to earn their cutie marks, only to have them be taken away, and then reclaim them after a hard-fought and long journey, the emotions running through them were indescribable.

“WE FINALLY GOT OUR CUTIE MARKS BACK!”, the Crusaders shouted in unison as they hugged each other tightly.

The trio’s sisters, along with the rest of the Mane 6, looked on with pride at what the three had managed to accomplish, even with the extra help.

“I’m so proud of you girls!”, Twilight told them.

“We all are!”, Rainbow Dash told Scootaloo.

“How could we not be?”, Rarity asked Sweetie Belle rhetorically.

“Especially me!”, Applejack told her younger sister. “I know I told you that you might need help, and you did, but you were able to handle yourself. I couldn’t be more proud of you if I tried”.

The three fillies thanked their older sisters for their help, and embraced them. They couldn’t have done it without them, and they knew it.

Later that day, the Crusaders talked with each other about the events that had transpired over the course of the day.

“Hey girls, do you remember when I said we had our cutie marks and nothing would ever change that?”, Scootaloo asked her friends.

“Yeah?”, the others responded confusedly.

“I really wish I hadn’t said that now. It feels like I brought a curse on us or something.”, Scootaloo told the two with visible worry and regret.

“It’s okay, Scootaloo. You couldn’t have known.”, Apple Bloom reassured her pegasus friend.

“Yeah, nopony can predict when things like that will happen. It was just a case of bad luck is all. Besides, we got our cutie marks back and that’s all that matters.”, Sweetie Belle reassured her friend as well.

“Yeah, you two are right. You really are the best friends a pony could ever ask for.”, Scootaloo told her two companions.

The Crusaders then reopened their services, ready to put their regained cutie marks to use as they helped out the pony they had scheduled to help out earlier in the day. Watching their newest client earn their cutie mark felt like the greatest thing in the world, and allowed the girls to finally rest easy knowing that everything was as it should be, and the Cutie Mark Crusaders would continue helping ponies as long as they could. With everything at peace, the Crusaders made one last familiar declaration.

“Cutie Mark Crusaders forever!”

Author's Note:

This one was a long time coming.

I had to think of the most fitting way to end it, and actually had a few different endings in mind, but what you see here is what I’m most happy with.

I tried not to have the Mane 6 usurp the spotlight from the CMC, so apologies if the ending to their story may seem a little abrupt.

I’m truly satisfied, having finally completed this story. The CMC’s are my favorite characters in the show, and I wanted to do right by them with this story. Credit also goes to the Ponyville Mysteries chapter books for inspiring some of the dialogue in this fic. It was a pleasure to finally get all my ideas out there, and I appreciate any critique that may come my way.

Comments

[Magic135]

Happy end for the CMC.

[gamernerd717]

11354202
Yup, just as it should be.

[Starswirl the Beardless]

After reading this to the end, my opinions of it are not that different from those I expressed in my previous comment. Your pacing is still very fast, with important details and scenes being glossed over when they should have gotten much more detail. This ends up making certain things feel comical, such as describing in one sentence how your antagonist was able to defeat the Mane Six in battle because he's just that smart and powerful. Rather than show what's going on, you often choose to just summarize things, which makes the story feel hollow. I still know hardly anything about your antagonist, and your inclusion of unfittingly brutal violence makes this story at least T-tag worthy, if not Violence-tag worthy. There were also quite a lot of mechanical errors throughout.

[gamernerd717]

11527197
I have always felt like I should’ve done more with the Mane Six. It never sat right with me on how they were kinda just glossed over. Probably my biggest mistake while writing this story.

I never thought the violence was brutal. I try to avoid writing stuff like that. I guess I can see where you’re coming from, though. I just didn’t want to mention any blood or anything of the like. The rating and tags have been updated.