//------------------------------// // I - Deans And Pencils // Story: Leather-Winged Oddity // by Deyeaz //------------------------------// Leather-Winged Oddity I - Deans And Pencils Would you take it? If you had been given a chance to visit Equestria, the most magnificent land in fictional history... would you take it? God and everyone else knows I would; why else was I constantly harrassed and bullied for being-- "GET BACK HERE, YA PONY-LOVIN' FREAK!!!" ...Well, sans the "freak" part, yeah, that. Let's face it: I had been hooked on the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic since my second year of college, when the show first aired. And because of that, rather than leaving me alone, the ignorant schmucks that roam the college grounds like they run it enjoy hunting me down and making me want to suffer, all because I'm an 'animated equine enthusiast'; even the nerds catch better breaks than me. The bully and his two-man crew of oppressing krauts are, as we speak, chasing me around the gym the same way a trio of ugly cats would chase a mouse. You'd think I'd be spared every single time I went to school. But no, God and the Universe just love to do this kind of shit to me. Although... there was that ONE time me and a few friends got drunk, and I got the Legend of Zelda insignia tattooed to my back. While it hurt like Hell, I guess the overall result counts as an upside. But alas, here I am, running for my life from three large gorillas wearing tacky "gangsta" clothes around a large room that was designed for the slaughtering of several weaklings via many a dodgeball. But I have to be careful. I didn't know shit about fighting, sans the occasional bar fight I would get in every now and then: I was always an indoor kid, who either tries to use fighting moves he's seen in Chinese martial arts movies, fighting games like the Street Fighter series, Mortal Kombat, and True Crime, or runs away like a pansy for fear of getting his ass handed to him. However, my one (and perhaps only) advantage is my stamina, which I apparently have a ton of: I timed myself once when these three humanoid bullies chased me around the school's football stadium; I managed to run around the whole place twice in about thirty-four seconds. Granted, I got the shit kicked out of me by the third lap, but still. This proves that I'm faster than I look, and that I have more stamina than the trio of steroid-induced mini-Hulks (So... does their great power come with great Roid rage or small testicles?). But after the first few minutes, I begin running out of steam: I know that because the lead bully, Josh, and his gang were getting slowly, yet eerily, closer, like fleshy, heat-seeking missiles. I realize that the source of my rapid decrease in stamina was my unreasonably large backpack. After taking it off in mid-run and throwing it to my best friends Marcus (African American, hazel eyes, black hair and small goatee, 198 centimetres, scrawny build, has glasses and dresses classy) and Natasha (Caucasian, blue eyes, short bleached hair, 165 centimetres, skinny body, several piercings, loves all things punk and hardcore), I feel the heavy weight of the shoulder straps leave me. "RUN, DAMIEN, RUN!!!" Natasha screams at me as Marcus caught my bag, almost stumbling from its weight. "Well, no shit, woman, what d'ya think I'm trying ta do?!" I shriek back at her, only for her to look at me in irritation. "Just shut up," Marcus roars, "AND RUN!" "JUST WAIT 'TIL I GET MY HANDS ON YOU, YOU FUCKING IRISH FAGGOT!!!" Josh bellows. "Awww, is it about that pincushion incident?!" I scream behind me. "Get over it, ya big baby!" I turn my head back forward, laughing like a devil released from Hell to torment the innocent. Josh growls and tries to keep up, as do his other two lackeys. I know that it won't end well... at all... ever, but c'mon: tricking him into sitting on a chair covered in cushion-concealed thumbtacks? I thought that was totally worth it. Plus, he deserved it for that football stadium incident I just told you about, as well as tormenting my little brother... again.... Several minutes pass, with many of the students either pointing and laughing at me, cheering on the three bullies, or simply doing nothing. Just when I thought I have run them dry of their stamina, though, I feel something yank the collar of my favorite Princess Luna shirt, and I'm pulled down to the floor. Laughter from almost everyone in the gym room rings in my ears. Josh stands over my face, knees buckled to prepare the dreaded teabag. "This's gonna suck for you, fag," he said in his gruff and nasty voice. No, seriously, he sounded obese and gross. And so it begins: one, two, three, four, up, down, up, and down again. I think, to them, this is some sort of sick entertainment for this trio of jackasses and the many peers around us. It's sickening, really, to watch some muscly meathead lower his family jewels above your head for your eyes to get a front row seat of. Seriously... we're in college, and he's behaving like an eighth-grader? Goodness gracious.... "Hey, laddy, yer fly's undone," I say. Josh looks down to check his pants zippers, and, falling for my trap, he receives a violent punch in the groin from me. I hear a nasty cracking sound the second my fist made contact, and he almost squeaks from the pain. I quickly get up from off of the floor. Before I know it, several of the students start making a ring around me and the three bullies, chanting "FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!" A note to you all before the battle begins: for normal people, when it's a one-on-one fight, each person isn't bothered by any distraction or any other obstructions in the middle of the fight. That way, they can give their undivided attention to the person in front of them. However, when it's a three-on-one fight, the lone fighter has to pay attention to all three attackers at once, otherwise, when he's fighting someone, he'll leave himself open for someone else. And yet. that is completely me. I could be able to handle at least one guy, maybe two if I'm really lucky. But three is asking for too much. Still, though... I should be on my toes... or at least convince someone to shout "FIRE!" and disband the circle of college students. Josh is the first to sail in, ready to give me a right hook, only for me to duck to dodge it and send a few quick, yet strong jabs into his stomach. He rockets his knee into my gut, sending me reeling back slightly. He rushes me and rockets his fist into my nose, and the sound of something breaking registers in my ears. A nauseating shock of pain rocks my face, and I feel blood dribbling down my chin from my bloodied nose. In retaliation, I give him two vicious hook shots and an uppercut to the face before I sail in to send him a haymaker to the throat, striking him right in his Adam's Apple. I give him a strong kick in the chest and send him back. He clutches his throat and coughing viciously, out for the count. The second troll-like crony, Mike, is up next, preparing to send a punch to the face. I duck again and send a flurry of rapid jabs to his chest and stomach. He catches my arm, however, and punches me in the armpit, the unexpected and really weird attack leaving me stunned. He did it again, hitting me in the armpit until my arm almost dislocated from my shoulder. Playing dirty, I bite down hard on his forearm and shake my head, like a rabid dog, until blood is drawn. Mike screams in agony and removes my face from his forearm. With that, I quickly go back to attacking him with jabs and straights, while doing my best to dodge his brutish swings, which are now slowed down by my dirty trick. He gets frustrated that I'm evading his strikes and hitting back to only disorient and tire him. Before long, he is panting heavily from the quick straight punches I had been sending his way. Seeing that as the opportune moment to bring the final blow, I lift my foot and bring the heel into his cheek. He stumbles into the crowd, screaming something about a broken jaw. The third and final kraut remaining, Brandon, reaches into his pocket and whips out an ebony-handled Balisong with a four-inch blade, the steel blade glinting in the light. Wait, back up. What the hell is doing with a Balisong?! This may be a college, but it's still illegal to bring a knife here! Is this guy fucking nuts?! ...On second thought, don't answer that. Brandon came at me with the knife, my senses and motor skills working overtime to avoid getting stabbed or slashed for the umpteenth time. While I occasionally throw in a punch here and there, I mainly focus on evading the edge and sharpened swedge of the blade. When Brandon comes in to stab me, however, I trip over my shoelaces and stumble slightly. With a wicked grin, Brandon charges and socks me in the right eye, my window to the soul closed shut with pain and a severe bruising. He swipes at me with the butterfly knife, and I feel more blood seep out from a newly formed gash on my left cheek. "Ah! Shit!" The cut burns like acid, and it takes a lot of my willpower to remain focused rather than tend to my wounds immediately. "You're mine, now!" When Brandon swipes again, I sidestep, grab his wrist, and twist it on my way to get behind him. Grabbing his Balisong from him with my free hand, I launch my elbow onto his twisted arm, and a sick, satisfying sound comes out. I kick his back and send him into the crowd as he clutches his broken arm with his working one, crying out in pain. As I flip and fan the Balisong - which I now declare mine - like the Spy from Team Fortress 2, I realise what I had done. I had severely injured three people. Hell, I could have killed them. While I should've felt guilty... It felt... good. Especially because these pricks deserve it. Sure, the brony creed says to love and tolerate, but in their cases, they deserve none of that. In other words, their annihilation was unavoidable. Natasha and Marcus are the only two cheering for me. Everyone else is too flabbergasted to react. "Daaamn, Damien!" Marcus says, putting down my gargantuan backpack. "You bleedin' everywhere, dawg!" "No kiddin'," I comment, reaching into my backpack and pulling out a napkin I carry in a plastic bag of its own. I rip the napkin in twain and use both halves to plug my nostrils and staunch the blood flow. A second napkin is used by Natasha to mop up the remaining blood on my face. "You really must be more careful, Damien," she says. "Yeah, I know... thank ya." "Hold on, I'ma get'chu some ice." Marcus runs off to get to the kitchens of the cafeteria and retrieve some ice from the soda dispenser. The crowd lets him through, and disperses once more, leaving just the three blubbering bullies, me, and Natasha by ourselves. Members of the audience mumble amongst themselves: little snippets here and there reach my ears. Things like "so unfair", "waste of my time", and "I call shenanigans" are registered and comprehended by my brain. "Here ya go, homie." Marcus returns with a handful of frozen cubes and puts them in several more of my napkins to prevent leaking. He hands the makeshift icepack to Natasha, who applies it to my right black eye. "Ow, ow, ow, ow, sweet fuck, that hurts, ow." The searing cold the ice emanates when it makes contact with my eye almost makes me knock it out of Natasha's hands from both discomfort and slight pain. She presses the icepack onto my eye even harder, causing me to wince. "Ow! Easy, would ya?" "Oh, quit complaining. It could have been a lot worse, no?" She gives me the icepack to hold over my blackened eye, and I keep it there to lower the swelling. The discomfort soon evaporates, and I sigh a breath of relieve. "WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?!" "Oh, shit," we say simultaneously. Every single student in the vicinity stops what they were doing and turns around to face who had spoken as the entire room becomes freakishly silent. When I say every student, I mean every student, even those goth kids that sit in the bleachers all day, flipping off teachers and smoking cigarettes while they talk about how everyone must die, black metal, or some other dark, depressing subject like that. I, being the last one to look around, quickly flip the butterfly knife closed and pocket it before following in everyone's stead. The very reason why everyone had turned around is made apparent when I look at the speaker. At the gates of the gym is a small army of teachers and staff members, but leading the crew of teachers is a woman. Dressed in a navy blue button-up blouse, skirt, and heels, she ranges at about 170 centimetres (or 67 inches), several centimetres below my 191 cm. Her blue eyes, decorated with Egyptian-styled kohl, seem to pierce my soul like daggers would a body. Crescent moon earrings accent her ears and a star necklace rests on her large chest, her navy hair laying flat across her back. Her lips, which are decorated with blue lipstick, are turned in a small scowl. Looking at her was all I needed to know that this woman held my education's fate in her hands. I think this is supposed to be the temporary dean for the one who had gotten too sick to come today. But the strange thing, though, is that no one's seen her before... yet she seems slightly familiar to me... maybe I saw her in a book or a Oh, and did I mention she's hotter than hell? And I mean pornstar hot. The skintight clothes that outline her hourglass body, thin face, voluptuous chest, narrow waist, thick thighs.... I'd put herin detention. No! Down, boy! Siiiit.... stay. "Damien started it, ma'am!" Josh points an accusing finger at me. That snaps me out of my raunchy reverie. Again, we're acting like little kids tattling on one another? Really? "Ya little bitch!" I shout at him. "Enough!" the substitute teacher shoots at us both. "You." She points at me, then jabs a thumb at the doors behind her. "Come with me." She pushes through the teachers and walks outside of the gym, waiting for me to follow. "And someone take those three boys to the nurse!" "Well, you're boned," Marcus comments... before getting elbowed in the ribs by Natasha. "Hey! Don't be rude!" She looks at the tall black man with an expression of agitation. Marcus flinches. "No, he's right." I pick up my backpack, sling it over my back, and follow the teacher to the office... and to my educational doom. I dunno, maybe I can work at a McDonald's or something. I could poke fun at fat people all day with subtle, under-the-radar things like "Sorry about your weight." ...Ahem... sorry 'bout that. Moving on. As we walk through the hallways to her office, half of me is full of fear. What is she gonna do to me? While the other half... is a little hopeful. What is she gonna do to me? Damn it, Brain, stop being stuck in the gutter so much. What? She's hot-to-trot, I can't help it. When we reach the dean's office, a typical office with a desk, an expensive-looking computer, a chair, file cabinets, and a few motivational pictures on the walls, she sits in her chair behind the desk, turns around, and looks up at me. Her scowl soon melts away into a small, yet warm smile. She motions for me to take a seat, which I oblige to. "I saw what you did. Why did you do it?" Oh crap... "I did what I did because they started it first. They were bullyin' me once more fer having an unpopular opinion an' liking o' something that several people dislike. Thus, sensing that I was th' odd one out, they tried ta get me first." I want to take back my words the moment I say them, for she looks at me through narrow eyes, and I felt her eyes pierce me once again, but with more power now, since my armour of will dissipated the second she and I crossed paths. I gulp and steel myself for the worst. "Alright... well, I have to admit... what you did back there? Not bad. Not bad at all." "Um... thanks?" Her wordstaken by surprise by the compliment. Isn't she gonna punish me? And by punish, you mean- SHADDAP, BRAIN! OKAY, OKAY! "You're welcome." The mysterious, yet eerily familiar dean opens up a cabinet filled with the files of the students here. "What is your name?" "Damien O'Connor," I answer. She begins thumbing through the files until she finds what appears to be one with my name on it. She pulls it out and opens it. She reaches a hand to her breast pocket and pulls out a pair of reading glasses. After she put them on, she examins my files. "Damien O'Connor. Born in 1990. In his fourth and final year of Colorado State University. A's and B's in Advanced Calculus, Psychology, Biology, and English." I smile sheepishly. "It appears you've got a rather clean slate. So I want you to be aware that I will not tolerate this ever again, so count this as your first and final warning, got it?" "Yes, ma'am," I say nervously. She puts away the file after writing down something indiscernible in it. She looks at me, then her eyes travel downward until they came to rest on my shirt. She silently reads the writing on it before looking back at me with a small smile. "I take it you're one of them?" She asks. This question also catches me off guard. "Er... what're ya talkin' about?" I say nervously. "Oh, come on, that shirt's a dead giveaway," the dean reasons. I facepalm at my foolishness. "Besides, if it helps, I guess I should tell you that I am one myself." Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold the phone. She's a brony?! Well, pegasister, really, but that's beside the point! "Have you ever wanted to go there?" She then asks. This, once again, takes me by surprise. She must be talking about Equestria. What're you saying, Damien? Of course she's talking about Equestria! She's a pegasister, for fuck's sake! I guess that's why she looks a hell of a lot like Princess Luna (who, in my book, is best pony), now that I think about it. "O' course, ma'am," I answer honestly. Seriously, any brony worth his salt would want to go to Equestria, home of the ever-famous Mane Six and many more. But alas, I hang my head in sadness: everyone knows that travelling across the cosmic ocean to another universe - one that doesn't even exist, no less - is impossible. Even I know this. "Have you thought about what you want to go there as?" The dean inquires. What was she getting at? She's asking me these bloody questions as if she has a one-way ticket to Equestria! And while that would be nice, that's still not possible. But still, I might as well humor her. "In all honesty, ma'am, I'm not exactly sure. But now that ya mentioned it, I wanna be able to go as a bipedal, not a quadruped, because walking on four legs would be a hindrance. I also want to be able to fly as well, maybe even have a weapon for self-defense while I was at it." I smirk. "But everybody knows that travelling from one real universe to another nonexistent universe can't be done." The dean only smiles cunningly, like she knows something about that theory that I don't know. "I beg to differ, my boy." ...wait, what? "For you see, Damien," she continues as she picks up a pencil from off the desk. "In order for it to happen..." the pencil suddenly glows in a bright blue aura, making me freak out. But I'm too petrified from shock and a smattering of fear to even leave my spot. What is she doing?!"...all you need..." she cocks the pencil back, her right index finger on the tip, the right thumb underneath it in the middle, and the left index finger on the eraser end. ...UH-OH."...is just a little bit of magic." She fires the pencil directly at my face. Time seems to slow down while the pencil made its destination to my face, and one thought runs in my head the whole while. SHE'S NOT YOUR AVERAGE COSPLAYER. The pencil hits me, right in between the eyes. ... Note to self: temporary deans that make pencils glow apparently have the ability to make said pencil have the strength of a wrecking ball. ... at least, that's what I try to note to myself before the power of the abnormal writing utensil sends me flying into the wall behind me like a bull had just rammed me, causing me to crash into it and almost break through the drywall. I slump down on the ground and feel so unequivocally lightheaded and exhausted. My chin hits my chest, and I begin losing consciousness. But before I succumb to the darkness that clouds my vision, I hear seven final words. "Welcome to the Game, my little pawn."