> A New Idea
>  by Featherpen Lullaby
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Lightbulb Moment
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	“Hey girls! I think I have an idea!”
Apple Bloom and Scootaloo exchanged looks, Sweetie’s ideas were never good news, they usually ended in explosions or tree sap, sometimes both.
“What is it?” Apple Bloom asked cautiously, knowing she was probing dangerous waters.
“Wait!” Scootaloo said before Sweetie could respond. 
Grabbing Apple Bloom she offered their unicorn friend a smile before dragging her into a corner.
“Ow Scoots! What was that for?” The beribboned earth pony asked, irritated by her friend’s rough handling.
“It’s just, AB, are you sure you want to ask what the idea is?” Scootaloo whispered, fully aware that the clubhouse wasn’t very big and Sweetie was only on the other side of the room.
“What if it’s something normal, like ‘let’s go to Sugarcube Corner?’ or something?” Apple Bloom said.
“Fine but it’s your funeral.” Scootaloo huffed.
“So, Sweetie what was your idea?” Apple Bloom asked.
“What if we’re going about getting our cutie marks the wrong way?”
“What?” Her friends’ faces displayed their lack of understanding in her great insight.
“But if we try everything then something has to work, right?” Scootaloo asked, not sure what flaw her friend could be finding in their watertight plan.
“What I mean is, maybe we should be trying stuff we’re good at? Like I could try singing or AB could try building.” Sweetie Belle explained.
“There’s just one tiny problem, if we already know we’re good at those things, why don’t we have our cutie marks yet?” Apple Bloom pointed out.
“Maybe we need to realize that those are our special talents? Like have an epiphany?” Sweetie suggested in defense of her idea.
“Dictionary.” Scootaloo muttered.
“So what you’re saying is that, our special talents might be something we’re good at and really enjoy already and we just need to realize it?” Apple Bloom summarized, looking thoughtful. 
“That’s exactly what I’m saying!” Sweetie said, happy that she’d gotten her point across.
Scootaloo and Apple Bloom took a moment to seriously contemplate their friend’s idea.
“Nah.” Scootaloo said. “I say we just go back to trying random stuff.”
Apple Bloom nodded in agreement with the orange pegasus. “Yeah, she’s right 
“Sometimes I wonder if our lives are governed by a higher power that makes us kind of dumb.” Sweetie said, half to herself.
“You shouldn’t say things like that, it might not end well for you. Just smile and act like the oblivious foal you are, no need to question why your life must be spent in a mindless struggle for a cutie mark.” Scootaloo said, smiling an oddly benevolent yet terrifying smile at her white friend.
Sweetie Belle looked over at Apple Bloom to see if the farm pony was as unsettled by Scootaloo as she was. Apple Bloom had an oblivious smile on her face, she also wasn’t moving, one hoof raised mid-step.
“Uh, Scoots, are you okay?” Sweetie asked, nervously edging away from her orange friend.
“Yeah, why?” Scootaloo said, a more normal smile adorning her face.
“Nothing.” Sweetie sighed.
“Hey guys!” Apple Bloom said.
“What?” The other two responded.
“Lets see if our special talents are rock climbing!”
“Yeah! We can go to Ghastly Gorge! Rainbow Dash says only the most awesome ponies dare to go there!” Scootaloo cheered, her tiny wings buzzing with excitement.
“Cutie Mark Crusaders Rock Climbers! YAY!”


	(About an Hour Later)


Apple Bloom was a sensible pony, she really was, but sometimes she made stupid decisions. Like this for example.
“You know I don’t think this was such a good idea!” She yelled to Scootaloo over the howling of the wind funneling through the narrow gorge.
“It was your idea in the first place!” Scootaloo said defensively.
“Yeah, the activity was, it’s the location that I have a problem with and I seem to recall that being your idea!” Apple Bloom reasoned, like the sensible pony she most definitely was.
“Could you guys talk about this later? Preferably after we’re not in danger of dying?” Sweetie Belle called from where she was hanging above a drop that would kill her if the rope around her waist broke.
“Oh, right! Sorry!” Apple Bloom called.
“Hey, maybe we should get back up?” Scootaloo ventured.
Crickets chirped.
“HELP!” Sweetie Belle shouted at the top of her lungs.
“Don’t worry, somepony will come and save us. I hope.” Apple Bloom, being the smart, sensible one said.


(Several Long and Terrifying Hours Later)


“I don’t know what got into you three! Ghastly Gorge is no place to go rock climbing; it’s very dangerous! You could have been killed!” Twilight lectured the fillies; it seemed that one of her duties as Princess of Friendship was to yell at the CMC when they got into trouble.
They spent a lot of time in the castle.
“Yeah but we weren’t.” Scootaloo said, knowing full well that she was far too awesome to die like that.
“You should count yourselves lucky that Rainbow Dash was in the area at the time!” Twilight said, her lecture still at full steam despite the fillies having been saves hours earlier. “The rope could have broken and you would have fallen to your deaths, imagine if you’d been there hours instead of a few minutes!”
The lavender alicorn took a deep breath in preparation for a new wave of irate lecturing but was interrupted by a white blur shooting through the doors and launching itself at Sweetie Belle.
“Sweetie Belle! Darling are you all right? I came as soon as I could, I was so worried about you!” Rarity said, her shrill voice waking Sweetie from her nap.
“What? Oh, I’m fine Rarity, honestly!” Sweetie said, trying to loosen her sister’s crushing embrace.
“Now Apple Bloom, you and Sweetie Belle are to come with me, your sister asked me to bring over to the farm.” Rarity said, the two fillies trailing her as she walked out.
“Hey Squirt!” A very familiar and oh-so-awesome voice sounded from above Scootaloo’s head, saving her from the horrors of another few hours of lecturing.
“Hey Rainbow!” Scootaloo called to her idol.
“Your folks asked me to take you home, I thought we could grab a treat at Sugar Cube Corner on the way.” The blue pegasus said, landing by the doors.
“Sure!” Scootaloo said, smiling. She probably would have jumped off a cliff if Rainbow Dash thought it was a good idea, which was pretty much what she had done earlier.
Twilight turned around to see that the room was now empty; giving a sigh laced with irritation she walked back to the library to continue her studies.


(The Next Day)


“So, was your sister mad?” Sweetie Belle asked her friends.
“Nope!” Scootaloo said, grinning. “Rainbow said that she was the same way when she was my age and told me that it was a pretty awesome thing to do.”
“My sister was really mad.” Apple Bloom said gloomily. “She told me that it was a stupid thing to do, then she grounded me. I have to stay near her at all times, that’s why we can’t meet at the club house today.”
“So, uh, Sweetie how did your sister react?” Scootaloo said in an effort to change the subject.
“After I convinced her that I could have died she was really nice to me, she let me have dinner in bed and read to me, it was great!” Sweetie said, a smile playing across her muzzle at the memory.
“Lucky.” Apple Bloom muttered.
“Maybe Applejack will let us help fix the barn?” Sweetie said, trying to distract her gloomy friend.
“Sure!” Scootaloo agreed, her words sagging under the enthusiasm piled on them.

“You wanna help?” Applejack clarified. 
The CMC nodded, grinning.
“Uh, sure, y’all can, um.” The orange earth pony cast around for something small and insignificant for the girls to do, her eyes finally lighting on a stack of boards left over from earlier. “Y’all can hammer those boards together into a cube. I’ll go get some tools, stay right here and don’t touch anything.”
“Okay!” The words were accompanied by nods from the fillies.
Applejack silently congratulated herself on her masterful handling of her sister and her two friends as she fetched a toolbox containing the necessary supplies.
“Here you go!” She said placing three hammers and a stack of nails before the fillies. “Just be careful not to hurt yourselves.”
“Sure thing, sis!” Apple Bloom said, picking a hammer.
The trio soon found that the best way to nail the boards together was to have Scootaloo hold the wood still, Sweetie holding the nail in her magic to avoid injury and Apple Bloom to hit it with a hammer and generally be in charge. With the use of their new method and Apple Bloom’s expert leadership, the boards were now a very respectable looking cube.
“Hey Apple Bloom, what’s happening to your flank?” Scootaloo asked, pointing to the glow developing on her friend’s hindquarters.
“I think it’s her cutie mark!” Sweetie Belle said, giving a little bounce of joy.
“I got my cutie mark! I got my cutie mark!” Apple Bloom squealed, turning in circles to get a good look at her rump.
Her once bare flanks now displayed an apple made of wooden planks with a small pink blossom near the stem.
“See! I told you that we’d get our cutie marks in something we’re good at!” Sweetie Belle said, glowing with joy at the irrefutable proof that had been provided in support of her argument from the day before.
“Maybe you are right.” Scootaloo mused, her small face scrunched up in thought.
“How about you put on a concert sometime? You could sing and Scoots could do some fancy stunts on her scooter.” Apple Bloom said.
“Yeah, that sounds like a great idea!” Sweetie said, her smile growing to impossible proportions.
“It does sound kind of cool, I could show off my awesome tricks for the whole town! I bet Rainbow would be really impressed!” Scootaloo enthused.
“So it’s settled, we’ll put on a show for Ponyville!” Apple Bloom grinned.
“Yeah!” The other two shouted their agreement.


	(The Next Week)


Dear Princess Celestia, This week we learned an important lesson about growing up and about friendship.
We used to try random stuff, hoping that something would turn out to be our special talents. That wasn’t working, as I’m sure you can imagine but then one day one of us had an idea, the other two dismissed it.
Later that week it turned out that she’d had the right idea all along, if we had listened to her in the first place we could have saved several hours of our lives that we’d rather not talk about. 
So instead of trying everything we could think of we focused on stuff we were good at and enjoyed, now we all have our cutie marks. I guess we can’t really call ourselves the Cutie Mark Crusaders anymore but we decided that we should expand our group so we can help other blank flanks find their special talents.
Sincerely, Apple Bloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle

“I’m very proud of you girls, and I think that expanding the CMC is a wonderful idea, there are so many fillies and colts who could benefit from your knowledge.” Twilight said, smiling down at the three fillies.
“We didn’t want to disband the CMC so we figured, ‘why not help others?’ I mean being a blank flank can be pretty bad.” Sweetie Belle said, smiling as she looked at her cutie mark, a pink heart with black music notes on it.
“Yeah!” Scootaloo agreed, looking over her own mark, a winged scooter.
“Absolutely!” Apple Bloom said.
Twilight smiled as she watched the three young ponies race out into the sunshine, presumably to go and find someone in need of their help.