//------------------------------//
// Chapter 8 Memories of the refugees during class and the teacher's wicked laughs 
// Story: Soul ponies (MLP and Soul Eater crossover) 
// by Waz5up 
//------------------------------//

As an entrance I want to dedicate this chapter to my friend Brittany and my friend Moai, two really nice people and great friends, thanks guys and this chapter is dedicated to you.

Look description for info

“Zeph? Is that you?” Fluttershy couldn’t believe it, what was he doing here and now? He couldn’t be the demon that they had to hunt, she wasn’t ready, she couldn’t…

“Ha, ha, why do you have that face sis? Aren’t you happy to be here with me? Come on, this is like a familiar reunion, it’s been ages since we had one of those” Zephyr started talking with happiness and a calm tone, but the last thing was said with bitterness and cold in his voice.

He was fairly different from Fluttershy, they didn’t seem to be related at all, Zephyr was almost as tall as Applejack who was 1,90 m (6,23 feet), Zephyr was around 1,85 (6,06 feet) but he had a relaxed position that made him look shorter and Fluttershy always tried to have the straightest posture possible, he was blonde while Fluttershy was redhead, Zephyr looked as if nothing mattered to him, confident and cocky while Fluttershy always analysed her surroundings keeping an alert stance almost all the time. Just like two drops of water, the same but different.

“C’mon sis, can’t we even talk? You look scared as shit” Zephyr had a content and playful tone that didn’t help with the actual situation. Fluttershy needed time, where were her friends, where was she, what should she do, does she really have to kill her brother, all the questions at once came to her head.

“Hey” said Zephyr now angry because he felt ignored, “answer me”

Looking up and getting out of her trance Fluttershy tried to look for an escape or for any signal of her friends, while doing this she realised that she should play along with Zephyr, he wasn’t the most patient person in the world, “what are you doing here?”

“Sis, did you know that I hate when people ignore me?” now Zephyr had a grin of pure anger, “but since I’m so great, obviously, I’ll answer your question, I came just to visit you, big sis”

Afraid Fluttershy thought about what to say “You and I know that that’s not true”

“No, I didn’t lie, I came to visit and to take your soul, it’ll be really helpful”

“Helpful? How can that or killing innocents be helpful? Helpful to who? Does this seem okay to you brother? You have killed innocents! I don’t understand it”

“Of course not, you never understand anything, you go everywhere saving people and killing those creeps and you think that with that you are doing the right thing. You can’t save people, not from me and even if you can who is going to protect you? You are weak, you have always been and once that I get your soul, I’ll be truly unstoppable”

This was bad, really bad and the worse thing is that what Zephyr was saying was true, she was weak, she had always known it and she had always trained until she couldn’t stand to change that. “You may be right but even if I can only save a single life, I’ll still do it”

“Ha! Good one! You even made me laugh. You have always been the weakest sheep on the herd.” While talking his left arm transformed and now his forearm was a thin and sharp blade, completely black and dangerous just by looking at it, the katana. “I’m objectively better than you, my weapon form is better, faster, and more lethal, what does it matter having all of those forms when you can’t do what I cam? You couldn’t defeat me even if you had a thousand to chose from. You are slow, undecisive, you get scared by your own shadow, is for that that you won’t never be over, you never were when we were kids, if you remember right nobody cared about you back at home”

Yeah, definitely that had hurt, Fluttershy now didn’t really want to talk anymore, she knew that her brother knew what to say to make her cry and her eyes felt wetter now. Zephyr decided to continue taking this as an opportunity to take advantage. “I remember that when we were kids and we had to train you always trained since the sun came out until it set, I only had to show of a little and everyone was happy with me. You know why? Because the katana is the real winner, I’m the strongest weapon and you always had to bite the dust, and for what exactly? To come and try to act as if you are someone? You are ridiculous and so are those values that you defend”

It’s then when Fluttershy started to try and hold her tears but this time it was for a different reason than what Zephyr might have thought. “You may be right, I always trained hard, sometimes even five or ten times more than you and I never got half as much praises as you but I don’t need them, not anymore, I’m going to do what is right even if that means stopping you, I’ll still do it” Now she was sad because she knew what she had to do, she had to kill him, to stop him and because she knew that if someone different did it she would never forget herself.

“ha, ha, Ha Ha HA HA HA! Stupid, you are stupid, your own mind tricks you and you can’t realise it” Suddenly the surroundings changed, instead of a labyrinth they were now on the back garden of a wood house, their childhood house, there weren’t any plants or even grass, just plain dirt with fences surrounding the space. As before it was night and in a flash the view transformed, now it was sometime in the morning and there were two kids in that space, it was Fluttershy and Zephyr when they were younger.

Their family had told them both to practise fighting, they were surrounding each other waiting for an opportunity, Fluttershy decided to attack seeing her brother unprotected, changing quickly from her blade arm to her scythe hand she got to domain the battle as she always did, she had her brother on the ground and the he for the first time transformed his arm on his katana and with a single slice got Fluttershy apart, that’s when their family decided that it was enough and as always her brother got all the praises, he had done it great, and he was awesome because he had the GOOD weapon in the family, she was a bunch of incomplete tries and as it always happened she had to go and train for the rest of the day while her brother flexed.

“You were never good enough, you weren’t even good”, now Zephyr had moved until being next to Fluttershy who was sobbing at the view and at remembering that it was true but now she couldn’t back down, drying out her tears she looked at her brother decided “And what?” 

“What do you mean?”

“What if you are stronger, or better, I’ll still do the right thing even if that means, even if that…even if I have to kill you”

“HA! We’ll see if you can say that to yourself even when being awake” and with that Zephyr started walking towards a dark space, darkness was surrounding everything until it got to Fluttershy.

“Wait! Wait, no, don’t leave, nooooooooo”

And with that Fluttershy got awake by Rainbow Dash who was calling her name, when she could focus, she realised two things, one, that everyone was looking at her with a worried expression, and two, that the sun had already come up which reminded her of their mission at night.

Looking puzzled she decided to ask her partner “what happened?”

“What happened?! What happened is that we have been trying to wake you up for a long while, you were mumbling and shouting”

Confused Fluttershy tried to recover her breath “and what about the mission?”

“We called principal Celestia and told her that we couldn’t leave you here like that so she told that she would look up for a substitute, and that we would get a new mission when we got to the Academy” Applejack was looking more like her normal self, straight back and relaxed posture but her eyes asked if everything was okay.

“I am really sorry, I just…”

Pinkie realised that that would be a good moment to try and raise the spirit in the room “Hey, it’s ok, and is also the first time that it’s not Rainbow the one who falls asleep. Let’s get to the Academy now before she decides to take a nap eh?”

That brought a laugh to the four girls and they decided to get ready but Fluttershy was sad and Pinkie concerned which none of the girls seemed to notice, maybe not even themselves. Once they arrived to the Academy after an almost completely silent walk, if it hadn’t been for Rainbow Dash and her rants, they encountered Twilight and Rarity on the entrance.

“Hey nerds!” Clearly if Rainbow Dash could think what she was going to say as fast as she said it, she could avoid a lot of misunderstandings and problems, but it could also be a problem trying to tell her that putting nicknames and shouting at early hours in the morning wasn’t a good idea.

Twilight was the first to notice the rest and answer the greeting in a more polite way “Hello girls, how are you today? Did your mission go as expected?”

And Rainbow once again showing how considered she was demonstrated what everyone already expected “Nah, we didn’t do our mission because Fluttershy fell asleep and we couldn’t wake her up so after that failure Celestia told us to come and pick up another mission” These kind of answers accompanied by a proud smile made it difficult to know if this happened because Rainbow was a bad person or because she was plain ignorant when it came to empathy, the most probable was the second, at least they hoped so.

“Um, Rainbow? Who did Celestia sent to do the mission in our place?”

That was a good question which made Rainbow and AJ chiller while Pinkie just looked at them both, Applejack was the one who decided to talk “Just Octavia and, well her” that last part was practically a whisper.

“Who?” Asked Rarity with a face of “excuse what the fuck”

This time Rainbow repeated in a similar quite voice “her” which was really weird for her.

“Can you just say it out loud?”

“Hey wonder girl, fantastic R, what’s up?” It’s then when a girl appeared behind Rainbow which made her jump from the impression. Now Rainbow, being next to Twilight said once again “there she is, it’s her”

What, or better said, who was there was a girl, maybe shorter than Fluttershy, with purple and baggy jeans, a white hodie and an electric hair with different shades of blue which made Rainbow’s hair look brushed in comparison, the last noticeable thing was the shades that she wore, purple and thick lenses that almost completely covered the blue shade surrounding her eyes and a pair of white headphones over her ears which could make someone think that talking in a normal volume would be harder. “Sup guys, how you doin’ today?”

Twilight took this as an opportunity to meet more people since they weren’t really accepted by the rest of students and the girl seemed really nice “hello, I’m Twilight, what is your name?”

The girl looked at her for a moment and then seemed to remember what she was supposed to do in those situations “hey new rad buddy, name’s Vynil Scratch but you can call me P3 if you want, or by my name if you prefer, whatever’s fine with me”

“P3 is an unusual name if you allow me to say so”

“Oh yeah, actually it’s for DJ Pon-3, you know Punk Over Night even if I am a punk 24/7 and well, numbers always make you look super rad”

“Wait, do you mean that you are a DJ?” asked this time Rarity, “oh, I’m Rarity by the way”

“Yes I am, I’m the most rad in the whole city, well, there aren’t any others DJs but you get it, I act a lot with Cotton Candy there”

This brought the looks to Pinkie Pie but with what they had heard that didn’t sound all that crazy, then a girl appeared from the interior of the Academy, same stature as Vinyl, dark hair, light brown skin, a white shirt with a purple bow and a pair of black pants with also black shoes. The new girl went and stayed next to Vynil to then salute the rest. “Good morning, excuse us if Vynil has been disturbing you, we were on our way to give a report from last night, and oh, excuse my rudeness as well, I am Octavia, Vynil’s weapon and partner, it’s a pleasure to meet you”

“Uh, same” said Twilight, man, she was formal but this was another level.

“Hello Octavia, so were you the ones who took our mission?” Fluttershy now spoke in her more usual tone.

“Yes we were, principal Celestia explained that you were “indisposed” and that it had become impossible to assist so we were called, it was a success in case you are interested, by the way, I already finish listening to the CD you lend me, I can give it to you later if you want” definitely this girl knew about formality but she also had smiled a little and she seemed to get on well with everyone which was appreciated, it was also noticeable that once Octavia started talking Vynil just started nodding to her music without talking once again, after a little more conversation and according an arrangement Octavia proceeded to part. “See you later, we have to finish our report”

With that the rest of girls said their byes and Vinyl and Octavia went in, “so, is Vynil the “her” that you were talking about?” started Twilight mocking about Rainbow’s and AJ’s behaviour 

“Ya don’t understand it, haven’t ya see it in her eyes?”

“See what? She was wearing sunglasses”

“It’s just that she has something, she is always quite and looking at everything from behind, with that face, and Octavia? Have you seen her, completely terrific” this was weird to say the least but at least Twilight was getting to know some new people.

“Stop that Rainbow Dash, I have told you, Octavia is very responsible and a serious girl and Vynil is really nice, on her own way.” You knew that when Fluttershy made an intervention like that you had to stop.

“Well, I think that they were, pleasant for saying it in a way even though their stylistic elections aren’t as satisfying as their attitude” finally with Rarity’s phrasing of what she considered important they decided that it was time to enter already. 

When they entered Twilight and Rarity decided to accompany the girls to pick up their mission and then go all together to class, they went to Mayor’s desk, explained the situation and surprisingly she told them that not only had Rainbow, Fluttershy, AJ and Pinkie attend the mission but Celestia had also specified that Twilight and Rarity were needed, the Mayor gave the girls the paper with the mission’s details and excused them since, nobody knew how, she always had a huge amount of paperwork to do.

“Ok, what do we have Flutters’?”

“Um, according to this we have to go to a small village near a forest, apparently the houses and businesses have been attacked with magic and the impossibility of the villagers to capture the attacker is making their lives exhausting and pretty miserable. It looks as a classic capture and hunt mission but we are six and here it says that this is a four out of five stars in difficulty so maybe this will be harder than it looks like”

“Pff, as if we had to worry, when do we have to go?”

“Ah, let me check, tomorrow morning we have to take a train and by noon we should be on the place”

“I’m super excited, I mean, it’s a mission but it’s our first team mission and it’s Celestia herself the one who put us with you” Twilight looked like a kid on Christmas but without loosing more time they decided to go to their class, the E.A.T class or “Especially Advantaged Talent Class” because nobody could forget that their principal was a very funny person, only the students who were strong enough to go out on missions were able to enter this class and since Twilight and Rarity had been rockin’ it now they could also assist, this would be one of their first days here though.

In the Academy they learned for example about Souls, combat, first aid and so on but they also had some more “mundane” subjects like right now, they had “Classical languages and civilizations”, as Rainbow phrased, you can punch your enemy or you can make them fall asleep but as everyone could agree the bad part of the subject wasn’t the contents or the exams, it was the teacher.

Once they were all sited in their class with elevated rows of chairs, classic university situation, Twilight asked “and what did you say that it was this teacher’s name?”

“Mary Jane Iak but everyone calls her Maniac” said Pinkie as if of course that was a very normal thing to do.

“What? Guys, that’s rude!”

AJ decided to clarify the misunderstanding “No sugarcube, literally everyone calls her that, even the Principal, in fact, I think that it was her who chose that name”

When Twilight decided to reprise once more the door opened in a sudden slamming against the wall, then a voice was heard “ok runts, are you READY?!” after this a woman sited on an office chair entered in a burst, the problem was that all doors have a small sill, this small sill made the chair fell which at the same time made the woman fell face first against the floor.

The woman now was face down and what Twilight could appreciate first was her weird outfit, it was a boiler suit, similar to the ones that firefighters wore, it had a purple color with yellow stripes, she also wore some black boots, again similar to the ones that firefighters or builders had to wear. The most noticeable was that on top she had a white laboratory coat and the green color of her hair, Twilight had seen trees that were less green. Then, as quick as she had fallen, she got up, cleaned her clothes and took the chair out, after another few seconds she repeated the same tactic, having obviously the same result, after this she sat on the floor and started taking notes on things like “trajectory”, “speed” and so on.

Twilight was not going to tolerate this, was this her teacher, “Excuse me, aren’t we supposed to have a class by now ma’am”

This brought the “teacher’s” attention up, “oh right, what’s your name?”

Finally, someone who focused on what they had to do “my name’s Twilight…” and as she was saying this a pair of scissors went flying and got stuck in the wood that formed behind’s table, the scissors had passed barely touching Twilight’s cheek but it was more than enough to make her regret interrupting the teacher.

“I have told you a thousand times, here I am the law so don’t you interrupt, do you understand that? This time she was talking to the whole class, nobody said anything because this was the kind of situation in when saying something could make everything worse. Then, unexpectedly Octavia raised her hand, “ma’am I don’t want to be unrespectful but last class Angel Wings had to be sent to the infirmary because of the scissors you threw to her, and Principal Celestia has also told us to inform her if you start taking the class however you want, I believe that the most practical solution here would be to start the class ma’am”

This seemed to make the teacher think, “well, I’m supposed to teach you so let’s end this façade, DID YOU HEAR ME RUNTS?”, again silent but that didn’t seem to stop the teacher. “Today we will learn really fun stuff, barbarian colonizations through the world and how they lived, and the best part is that we will be watching a really fun documental who recreated their customs and in which I participated, let’s go HAHAHA”

The “documentary” was a hard experience, it definitely showed how they lived, more like how they fought and the worst part was seeing their own teacher taking part in that documentary destroying enemies (we all know that what appeared in the movie wasn’t ketchup, let’s be honest), what also was really irritating was having to hear miss Maniac laughing and commenting every single second of the movie throwing some teachings here and there but what was clear is that that was a traumatic experience. After two hours of torture, I mean, educative class, the students felt that they could breath again since the movie had already finish and so the class, “very well, for the next day I want a synthesis of at least six pages about the movie and another work that must be at least twelve pages long talking about barbarians and their heritage, bye!” and with that the teacher got on her chair and flew out of the room falling once again and having to walk pulling her chair with her after that.

Twilight waited for a moment, one because she needed to process that audio-visual massacre, and two because she wanted to thank Octavia for her help before, when she saw her approaching she tried to say it in a decent way, like a normal person “hey Octavia, thank you for cutting the teacher before, if not she sure would have cut me”

“Oh, you are welcome, the truth is that it was Vynil the one who told me to interrupt miss Maniac, I thought that you were handling it well enough but she asks if you would like to have a duel now that the classes have finished for today”

That clearly surprised her, their first battle hadn’t ended very well so she searched Rarity for her opinion, with a trust look Twilight made her mind, this was here and now, “sure, see you out” with that they shook hands to make it clear that it was going to be a fair combat, which in other way it was weird because Octavia was the weapon but anyhow, with that the four people implicated stayed two in front of two with the other four girls watching from a safe distance.

“I think that the most fair thing to do would be for you to see what kind of weapon I am, I saw your fight so we already have an idea on what to do” it seemed fair and if you could have some advantage over your enemy you just take it, this is war. In a dark brown glow Octavia disappeared and in Vynil’s hand appeared a dark brown bow with, a ball? attached to the lower part of the string, the bow was also incredibly long and the difference respect other bows is that this was wasn’t that curved, it was more like a pretty piece of wood with a string and a ball attached, this one was also purple.

From the bow Octavia’s voice spoke “well, I am a bow and I work in a similar way as Pinkie Pie, I don’t have any arrows because these are the projection of Vynil’s soul’s waves, the stronger the soul the more dangerous the arrows are, I think that with this you can already understand that we won’t run out of ammo soon.

While Octavia was finishing her talk Vynil took the string, pulled and a yellow light with an arrow resemblance shoot at an incredible speed, luckily Twilight could see this and avoided the direct hit, still the arrow perforated her left shoulder and she started bleeding, “Rarity, let’s go!” Rarity jumped transforming and taking the momentum they had Twilight shot both parts each one in a direction which Vynil avoided really easily while she bowed her head to her music. After this Twilight decided that since Octavia was more of a long range weapon the best solution would be to get close and incapacitate Vynil, the only problem was that if the projectile had to travel a shorter distance it also was pore powerful, with this both girls set a pattern, in which it was clear that Twilight loose.

“This is bad” once again Fluttershy was worrying

“Which thing because there is a lot going on” Rainbow had a relaxed posture that still allowed her to jump to action if it was necessary

“Twilight and Rarity are going to lose, I don’t want them to lose the motivation but Vynil and Octavia have the control of the battle” And with this everyone agreed, this didn’t look well.

From Twilight’s point of view she had noticed a few things, Vynil’s preference hand was the right as so it was her foot even though she could still use both, when defending she made quick moves to her back having both hands on guard and the last thing is that the ball that was attached to Octavia’s bow made sound, like rice inside of a bowl.

Twilight had to think fast, what could she do, nothing of what she discovered was useful now, think, think, THINK. “Well, I think that we’re going to finish this already, ok bud?” Finish this, what did she though? That Twilight was going to stay still waiting for the arrows to come? Now she had to dodge, she could think later. 

“Tavi, soul resonance!” a bluish-purplish light surrounded both and nothing seemed to happen, then as if nothing Vynil started pinching and pulling the string accompanying it also with small hits, this made a very rustic sound but it was pretty nice, Twilight was really concentrated in trying to focus but the music was really, dreamy, and without seeing it coming in a blink Vynil appeared behind Twilight putting the string around her neck and she could already feel that that could cut her severely. “Ga-me O-ver bud” chanted Vynil in a mocking voice. With that both weapons transformed again staying next to their partners.

“That was amazing, I felt like I couldn’t move, you are really great” you didn’t have to be a genius to know that Twilight was sad, even Rainbow noticed.

Vynil was once again nodding to her music so it was once again Octavia’s work to be the team’s voice “You also did good, if you had had more time you could have get close to us, we were just better and sadly you can not always have a lot of time. I am confident that if you two train you will improve without even noticing it” Those words were harsh but it also was what Twilight needed to hear, “I am also confident Octavia, I hope that once we improve we will able to fight again, but next time it won’t be this easy” After this Octavia and Vynil gave their byes once again and left in direction to their apartment.

After some first aid and assuring that Twilight would be okay everyone picked their things and were outside once more, Rarity proposed to go out all together but Twilight decided to go for a walk and when she looked she realised that Fluttershy had had to leave before since she wasn’t with the rest, but she sure would be okay, everyone was more capable than her, that’s for sure. From walking through the city Twilight decided to go to the forest that was near the Academy, maybe nature could help her set her mind, while she was walking through a path she saw a light that came from the top of a little mountain, she saw the same light a few more times and decided to go and see what it was.

When she got there after a long while she founded Fluttershy, sited and with her legs hanging over the cliff, “hello Fluttershy, I didn’t know you would be here”

That startled her but when she realised who it was, she gave a shy smile “hello Twilight, I just sometimes like to come here, from here you can see the sunset, it’s quite relaxing”

“And why did you leave without the others? Why didn’t you stay until the end? I mean, I know that we weren’t doing spectacular but still…”

“No, it’s not that I didn’t want to support you, it’s just that, I already knew how it was going to end, sometimes there it’s just someone who is better than you and you just have to accept, sometimes you can’t get better even if you try”

“Yeah, I know what you mean”

It’s then when an uncomfortable silence appeared but none of them seemed to know what to do or say so Twilight tried to talk about the first thing that came to her mind.

“You had a brother, right? I just expect that he isn’t older because older siblings are all the time on top of you, and they ask you all the time what you are doing and

“And they always want you to improve, and sometimes they don’t know how to say stuff and it’s super weird, and other times they can’t give you an advice when you thought they could”

“Exactly, you see? You understand this, pfft, older brothers, ha! Older siblings are really annoying”

“He, I’m the oldest but I think I understand you”

“Oh, sorry, hey but you are different, I mean I am sure that your brother is super great, he can’t be bad because he has you as his sister, I would like to meet him”

“No you wouldn’t, my brother is not nice and if you met him you would also realise that I am a failure” now the sad memories from the dream of last night came back

“Really? Do you mean that your brother is…?”

“Yes, he was going on the wrong way and I should have realised, what kind of big sister can’t realise that her brother needs help, why couldn’t I help you?”

Twilight was speechless, more because she didn’t want her friend to start crying without stop but clearly her mind was too slow “And what are you going to do?”

“I’ll go for him; I’ll stop him by any means” this time it was said with a decisive voice

“I don’t know if I could do that but I know that you must be really brave to decide to do that; ah, that must be the thing that I saw shining from down there” What Twilight was referring to was a silver necklace that Fluttershy had between her hands, it had a silver color and it had the form of a tree.

“You mean this. Yeah, I was just thinking and I must have not realised it, this is just half of the necklace, the other half is a circle that surrounds it, my brother has it although I don’t know if he still has it”

“Fluttershy, listen to me, I want you to know that I’ll support you if I can ok?” That was a kind gesture and really appreciated, when looking in front of them they saw how the sun was descending slowly, the view was truly beautiful and the company made it better, in a while they should go back home to talk to the rest and get ready but that could wait for the moment. Both girls kept talking about likes and dislikes, what they expected, and Fluttershy also mentioned how she expected Twilight to become stronger.

“Ah, Twilight, before I forget, in the information about the mission there was another detail, apparently the one who causes all that destruction always signs what they do with paint, they always write “Discord”, weird right?”

“Indeed, but sure that it’s just someone trying to flex, tomorrow everything will go fine, I know”