With her toothbrush swishing around her mouth pleasantly, and no current crises to occupy her mind, Twilight Sparkle strolled down the halls of her castle and prepared for yet another day of friendship. Back and forth, up and down, past her kitchen, her library, her throne roo—

A tiny bit of motion caught her eye. The cutie map! Right there, above the center, somepony’s cutie mark bobbed, beckoning to them to undertake a mission of glorious friendship. Maybe it was her. Oh please let it be her!

She teleported her toothbrush and a mouthful of foamy, minty spit to her bathroom sink upstairs, and she hoped she hadn’t accidentally sent any of her teeth along—no, a quick probe with her tongue verified perfect attendance. Then she rushed over to the map to take in the wonderful sight of magical stars summoning her to—

An hourglass. It was a freaking hourglass.

She let out a sigh loud enough to resonate a few of the crystal columns, then plopped into her throne. Time to wait, she supposed.

She drummed a hoof on the armrest. Nopony showed up. Ten minutes went by, twenty, thirty. Twilight picked up her copy of Organization Monthly Magazine and perused the article on proper ways to catalog and store back issues of Organization Monthly Magazine for the seventeenth time this week.

Finally, footsteps in the hall, and Twilight perked her ears, but Spike tottered in with a stack of the day’s paperwork. His eyes alit on the map. “Oh! Who gets to go this time?”

Twilight practically flung her hoof at the map. “No idea. You know how many ponies have that cutie mark?”

“Um… no?”

Her eyes rolling up, Twilight went down her mental checklist. She had the actual checklist over in the library, but she didn’t have the heart for exact numbers right now. “Over five in this town alone. But it’s been a while, and nopony’s here.”

“Well, what if they have to travel from Vanhoover or something?” Spike asked. “Might take them days to get here. And, um…” He fiddled with his fingers. “Not to be disrespectful or anything, but would the map know if somepony had died recently?”

Hm. That might present an avenue of interesting research. “Yes, the next time somepony’s cutie mark pops up here, I could find out.”

Spike covered his face with a claw. “No, Twilight. We talked about this, remember?”

“Huh? I’d cast a spell to mask their life signs. Why, what did you think I meant?”

But Spike just wiped some sweat off his brow and waved her on. He set his stack of pages on the side table, then went about dusting the room. Twilight’s scowl only deepened, and by the time he’d finished, she wore a very serious frown. From the feel of her cheek muscles, it would probably approximate an inverted catenary.

“We have to go looking,” she stated, her jaw set, and Spike snapped to her side. Nothing seemed to surprise him anymore.

So she marched out the foyer and through the front door to—

“Minuette!” she said. By some stroke of cosmic fortuitousness, her friend stood right there in the road. “Were you just on your way here?” Yes, reliable Minuette. Had Twilight waited only a moment longer, Minuette would have trotted into the throne room and reported for duty.

“For what?” she replied, her eyes flicking about as she formed a ridiculously enormous smile.

“Cutie map mission!”

“Cutie what now?”

Twilight leaned down to Spike and hissed, “Hey! Did we never make that nationwide public service announcement about what to do if your cutie mark starts acting up?”

Spike shook his head. Well, that made things about ten times harder.

“You haven’t noticed your cutie mark glowing and pulsing or anything?” Twilight said.

Minuette just held a hoof to her mouth. “No, not since that time years ago that a wasp stung me there.”

Spike jerked a thumb toward Minuette’s flank. “No flank fireworks. I don’t think she’s the one.”

“Yeah,” Twilight agreed. “Minuette, it would have been supremely coincidental if you’d been that close right when it happened, I guess.”

“Uh-huh,” Minuette answered with a sharp nod. “It’s just by chance I was here, and I was in Canterlot when you went to find Moon Dancer even though I live here, and I’m in the background a lot wherever you go. Heh. Heh heh.” Her eyes flicked around again, and that enormous grin only got worse. “I’m not following you or anything. Just a coincidence. Heh.”

Fair enough. At least one other pony immediately popped to mind, so Twilight cantered on to Dr. Hooves’s laboratory, though it did seem like she spotted Minuette behind her a couple of times.

Twilight knocked on the door, and after some banging noises inside subsided, the door flung open. “Come in, come in!” the Doctor said. “I’m always thrilled to have a visit from another pony of science! You can help me observe my latest experiment.” He proceeded to whisk her inside, and Spike barely made it through the door before the Doctor kicked it shut.

The lights inside had been dimmed, and in the center of the workshop, a bundle of coiled wires led to
a metal enclosure. Derpy’s head peeked over the edge, and upon seeing Twilight, she broke into a grin and waved madly. “Hi, Twilight.”

“Miss Derpy!” the Doctor admonished her. “Please, keep your concentration.” Her face fell, and she ducked down behind the wall again. He then turned to Twilight. “You see, I want to know if I can harness the energy of anticipation. I have Miss Derpy in a Fair-a-Day cage to isolate her from external energy sources, and incidentally, I believe such a structure would protect her from ghosts as well.”

So Twilight flapped her wings for a better view. Derpy stood inside the box, staring intently at a muffin while her mouth watered. The bulbs on the contraption she wore over her head flickered a little.

“Anyway,” Twilight said, “You haven’t noticed your butt vibrating this morning, have you?”

“What around here doesn’t do that?” he said, pointing at all the devices on every table and shelf. Yes, the constant mechanical hum, and the floor thrummed under her hooves. In any case, his cutie mark just sat there doing nothing.

“Thanks anyway,” Twilight said on her way back to the door. “Interesting experiment, but I have urgent business today. Maybe I’ll stop by later and see how it’s going.”

Who else? Nopony immediately came to mind, but she’d definitely seen more hourglass cutie marks around town before. Then a devilishly lovely plan beat down the door of her mind, and she galloped back to the castle.

“Starlight Glimmer!” she shouted as she rushed into the entrance hall. “Starlight! You here?” Down the hall, and she peeked into the throne room, the pantry, the formal dining hall. “Starli—”

“Yes?” Starlight peeked around a bend in the corridor. She had a length of twine tangled about a rear hoof, and the edge of a box kite protruded past the corner. Blushing, she nudged it out of sight.

No reason Starlight should be self-conscious about that, but Twilight didn’t always understand her. “You know a lot about cutie marks. Maybe you could help me with a problem.”

“Oh, um, yeah.” Starlight shuffled backward a step.

“Good! Come with me to the throne room.”

The tension drained from Starlight’s face as she teleported away, the loose twine end dropping to the floor. “In here!” Starlight called from down the hall.

So Twilight trotted in and jabbed a hoof toward the map. “See!?” she barked. “See what I have to deal with?” Only then did Spike catch up and dash in, panting.

Starlight glanced at it and squinted. “Not really. What’s it doing wrong?”

“That!” If Twilight could, she would have dashed that accursed hourglass across the room to shatter on the wall. “Do you know how many ponies have that cutie mark? At least a dozen, maybe a lot more. And not one has shown up here to do anything about it. If nopony comes, what then? Will it simply keep blinking at me for eternity?” She leaned in and bared her teeth at it. “Taunting me, year after year and reminding me of the one mission I could never complete? And it’s not even over a town! Look at it! Hovering in the middle of nowhere…”

“Twilight, you need to calm down,” Starlight said, and Spike hurriedly nodded alongside her. “We’ll deal with this. Now, it sounded like you had a plan. What was it?”

Twilight loomed over the hourglass and gave it a wicked grin. “Somepony either doesn’t know what the cutie mark alert means, or they’re deliberately ignoring it. Normally, that’s enough to make them want to report in. But we have to raise the stakes.” She looked up, and a convenient shadow cast her eyes in darkness. “Can you make everypony with this cutie mark want to come here?”

A hoof tapping at her chin, Starlight pursed her lips and remained silent for a short while. “I think so. I mean, I’m good at working with cutie marks, and I’m good at employing mind control in situations that don’t really call for it. I don’t see why I couldn’t combine the two.”

“Perfect!” Twilight rubbed her hooves together.

“Twilight…” Spike said, but he didn’t raise any objections.

“Oh, and if you can except a couple, we already know it isn’t Minuette or Dr. Hooves.” Was that Minuette’s face she just saw peering through the window?

Immediately, Starlight got the same gleam in her eye that Twilight had, and she also leaned over the offending symbol. She closed her eyes, and a beam shot from her horn toward the center of the room, then a sphere of light erupted from it, growing until it engulfed the whole town. “Now we wait,” she said.

And not five minutes later, six ponies shuffled through the door, stiff-legged and with dull expressions on their faces. The last one, a wavy-haired pegasus stallion Twilight didn’t even know, mumbled, “Brains!”

Quickly, she formed them into a line and clapped her hooves loudly, each of them shaking their head as if emerging from a deep sleep. “Alright!” she said. “Sandstorm, Perfect Timing, Red Rose, Spring Forward, The Inquisitor, and… ‘brains’ guy. Which one of you is it?”

“Which one… what, Twilight?” Sandstorm said.

With a sigh, Twilight pointed at the map. “See that floating hourglass? That means one of you needs to go on a friendship mission. Which one of you has a cutie mark going haywire?”

They all turned to show identical hourglasses on their flanks, but not one glowed.

Twilight’s ears drooped, and she nearly let a sob out of her chest. “Really? Nopony has a dodgy derriere? A quaky keister? Chattering cheeks? Fluctuating flanks? A refashioned rump? A transfiguring tush?”

“Twilight, we talked about that, too,” Spike said, pulling a copy of Improving Your Life Through Alliteration out of the trash can. “If they can’t even follow their own advice in the title, chances are it’s not worth listening to.”

Fine, but nopony should ever throw away a perfectly good book, and she’d reshelve it right after his bedtime.

“Okay, you all may leave,” Twilight said, not even watching them go—she turned right back to Starlight. “How about further away? Can you make ponies all across Equestria come here? Better yet, teleport them! Then I don’t have to wait.”

Starlight winced. “Yeah, probably. But it’ll hurt.”

“You or them?”

“Me.”

“Hmm. Okay, let’s do it.”

“You could help, you know. Then it’d hurt less.”

“Would it hurt both of us?”

“Yes.”

Twilight stuck her tongue out the side of her mouth. “Hmmmmmmmmm.”

“Really?” Starlight raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, okay. But let’s send them outside. No telling how many there will be.” Twilight took a deep breath as they both channeled their magic into a growing sphere. Hourglass firmly fixed in mind, she unleashed the magic to spread across the land in the blink of an eye. And the spell’s backlash walloped her to the floor. If felt like something in her brain had popped! Good thing brain guy had already left.

She tried to stand on shaky knees, but the pain in her head came back for a second round. “Celestia dammit!”

“Twilight!” Spike hissed, his eyes darting to Starlight. “We talked about that, too!”

How much would that have hurt Starlight if she’d done it alone? Either way, they should have a crowd in the street outside. “Come on,” Twilight said. “We should have a fresh batch to interrogate.”

Only six more, though. A few she recognized: Raggedy Doctor, Infinity, Perfect Pace, and Steam Roller. Plus a brown earth pony stallion with a blond mane and a pale green unicorn mare with a two-tone dark green mane. “I don’t suppose any of you have cutie marks that are glowing and moving, do you?”

They all turned to look, but of course they didn’t. Somehow, somewhere, Twilight had missed at least one. “Fine, you can all go.”

“How… how are we going to get home?” Perfect Pace said.

“I’ll buy you a train ticket!” Twilight barked, louder than she meant to. “Sorry. Spike, go to the petty cash box with them and reimburse them.” Of course, she could just teleport them home again, but the prospect of feeling that pain even once more had her shuddering.

“Come with me, Starlight. We may have to find a way to cast the spell over an even bigger area than Equestria, but preferably without doing permanent damage to ourselves.” Then she led Starlight back to the map, and…

The hourglass! Gone!

“Did somepony solve a friendship problem out there on their own?” Starlight said. “Maybe by accident, but hay, if it means you don’t have to worry about it now, I wouldn’t complain.”

And a stallion rolled out from under the table. “There. That shouldn’t give you no more trouble with the map, that shouldn’t.” Kind of a pale red, and… a crystal pony? His tool belt had slipped over his tail and hung rather low on his butt.

“But… but the hourglass,” Twilight said, pointing at the vacant space that had so recently tormented her.

“Yeah, that’s just it gettin’ locked up and tellin’ you to wait, that is.” He sniffed and tugged up his tool belt, but not nearly enough.

“Who even contacted you to come fix it?” If somepony around here knew how that thing worked and hadn’t told her, the lingering headache would soon find a new target.

“That’s one of them smart appliances, that is,” he said, poking an elbow toward it. “It knew something wasn’t right, and it sent out its own call, it did.”

But he’d nearly beaten the ponies they teleported here! “You sure got here fast.”

He only chuckled. “That’s kind of you to say, ma’am, very kind, but I started out walkin’ here a few years back. Just now made it. I says to my boss, I says, ‘You want I should take this call? I’m the only one who knows how to fix ol’ Brimstone’s water heater, I am, and you just know she’s gonna call in again in six months, like she always does,’ but he says to me, he says, ‘Go, go, it’s fine, I can deal with it.’ So here I am.”

“Years ago?” Twilight said, her mouth gaping open. “I didn’t even have the map then!”

“Oh, I know, I know,” he replied, nodding. “These new appliances, that’s how good they are. They can not only predict when stuff’ll break before it actually does, they can, but before they’re even built! Map like this, it’s worth maintainin’. Last you a lifetime, it will.” He gave it a pat. “Matter of fact, the signal from this baby is what brought the Crystal Empire back.”

No. No way. “But that was Sombra’s curse ending.”

“Naw, naw, that was supposed to last a thousand nine years. Dude had a thing about prime numbers, he did. Now, I’m not sayin’ it’s the Celestia-help-me truth.” He let out a chortle and shrugged his shoulders. “But the empire comes back at the exact time the call comes in? I’d say that’s a bit more than a coincidence, I would.”

Twilight only stared at him.

“Yeah, that crystal magic is somethin’,” he said under his breath as he surveyed the room. “Nice crystal castle you got here. Long as I already came out, you got any crystal terlits you need unstopped? They’re finicky things.”

Spike waved good-bye to the last of the displaced ponies, and his arm shot up in the air. “Ooh! Ooh, yeah! I do!”

“Yes!” Minuette’s muffled voice called through the window.

Starlight blushed, dropped her gaze to the floor, and halfheartedly raised a hoof.

All the bluster of that stupid hourglass faded from Twilight’s chest, and she rubbed one foreleg over the other. “Um… the one in my suite, too, please.”