//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1 : From Scratch 
// Story: Shout At The Devil 
// by Bucket of Skies 
//------------------------------//

Let's start this from the very beginning before I just throw you right into the deep end with what is going on. This story starts on a Thursday morning in a lonely apartment in Manhattan. Well, my lonely apartment. This was a regular day like any other, wake up, grab my glasses, put on some clothes, go to brush my teeth, and then put on regular clothes instead of something to wear to not walk around completely naked in my apartment. This morning in particular was important because today was the day I get my exam back that I would hopefully have enough to get a recommendation for an internship at the office as a human resource agent in training. This meant that I could finally quit my low paying job and move up there and try to make a better living. It all was up to what I did on that test.
I took a morning sigh as I looked in the mirror with my preferred outfit of a red shirt under a black hoodie with khaki pants. Everything was looking great.
"This is it Rocky. Today is gonna be the day you change for the good.", I said to myself as I turned to leave my bathroom. 
 When I went back to my room to grab my bag for college, my phone lit up with a text from my professor, Professor Wings. Professor Wings is probably the only college professor to actually care about you as a student. He actually hopes that all of his students pass his class and go on to do great things in life. So much so that he personally texts people about news on exams and whether you need to meet him after class to discuss recommendations. 
As I picked up my phone, I was welcomed with the text,"Rocky, I have your exam graded. I would like you to meet me before class to discuss some things. See you at eight forty-five ~Professor Wings". 
I looked over to my clock that read 7:49 AM. On paper it seems like plenty of time from someone outside of Manehatten, but from someone who lives there,  I can tell you I could possibly be late. Without haste, I grabbed my phone and bag and headed out the door to my apartment. When I made it down to the second floor, one of my neighbors came out the door. It was some guy with aviators, I think his name was Dee or something. Since I'm not really a social person, I would always just call him that. He came out to try and catch me for a conversation. 
"Ey my man Rocky! On the move as usual. How are you this morning?", he asked me.
"Good good, listen I would love to talk but I really gotta go. Can we put a pin in this conversation later?", I told him frantically. 
I would always tell him that as my excuse for not talking to him. I know. I'm probably sounding like an asshole for pushing him off a bunch of times, but it's out of a place of shyness in me. Never really had close friends growing up so it became a regular thing to be shy. But regardless,  today I was seriously running late.
"And as usual, you put another pin in our morning convos. I swear you are so uptight. Like someone just made you like that for some predestined story.", Dee said to me.
"I know, but this time I'm serious. Maybe later tonight I can visit for a bit.", I told him.
"Ah doesn't matter. I'll be too busy writing comics. See you later 'lone runner'" He said as I walked downstairs to the main lobby.
That sounds like an insult, but really it isn't.  From what I was able to get from this guy in our small guerrilla talks was that he was a comic book artist who constantly references older comics. The term "lone runner" was given to me by him because he said that it reminded him of a super cowboy in this comic called "Twelve in the chamber". Maybe that was his way of trying to compliment me with how fast I move in a rush to not socialize with him.  Or maybe it is an insult I don't know about. Again, not very social.
I finally made it out of my apartment without any further interruptions into the crowded sidewalk of Manehatten. A thing to note if you ever decide to move here, not a good idea to get a car to travel around to places. Because the city is so packed, traffic is packed to the brim. The only people you're gonna find with cars are poor taxi drivers simply trying to make a living and literal idiots. Why are they idiots? Because good luck driving when you're stuck in a huge traffic jam.
That's why it is better to walk to places in Manehatten. It is somehow faster than driving and keeps me from looking like a complete skeleton with the amount of exercise I get from trying to not be late. Thankfully,  just like most mornings the subways were open so it wouldn't be a complete walk for my life. As I passed the corner, I walked upstairs to the morning train that had just pulled up.
"Thank god. Can't afford to be late on this day. Won't be a repeat of last month.", I told myself as I made it to the top to make it to the first train car.
To another outsider of Manehatten,  they would think that taking the subway would be an "interesting" experience. Meaning that you would always be met with some random hobo who was aggressive to get change for food and occasional street rats. Though most of them were true, it never once bothered me. You see, living in Manehatten has taught me two rules. The first being to keep moving forward. This was demonstrated when I entered the car when some hobo had approached me.
 "Spare change son?", he said to me.
Thankfully it worked as he just stood there with the cup as he approached the next person. Nine times out of ten this rule works out in my favor, but on the off chance it doesn't it demonstrates my second rule; never look back. A lot of people know of the "Manehatten Look". For those who don't know,  essentially it is a look that says that you don't want to talk. You just want to get to point A to point B with no distractions. How to do this look is simple. For me, I demonstrated it riding to my stop when the hobo came back to ask for more change. The secret is to not make eye contact whatsoever. If you end up looking, it shows that you are in no rush. Then all of a sudden it becomes a conversation, or to a busy Manehatten walker, a distraction. 
Thankfully the second rule worked, as I made it to my stop without having to talk to anyone. Looking at my phone, the time was now 8:20. 
 "Great, looks like I'll make it even earlier than I expected. ", I told myself heading downstairs to the street to Manehatten Business College. MBC has always been one of the top business schools in the state, followed by Kings Community College and Time Circle Business.  I made it with a partial scholarship with my final exams being a damn near perfect score. This covered my books, but sadly not my tuition and rent for my apartment. Turns out not having  a lot of friends helped me a little bit.  It gave me more time to study and made me a pretty smart fellow. But at the cost of losing more confidence in myself because I felt worried about whether I would do fine and constant bullying. I never thought I would hate the term teachers pet after four years of being shoved inside lockers.
I made it to the short staircase to MBC with a lot of time to spare, but I was always someone who would always try to show up early to not have to explain why I was late for something. If that would happen, my shyness would come in and I would stutter like crazy. I tried to get that fixed with a therapist,  but I didn't feel that I was getting any better. Especially when I realized that it required me to have to talk to some stranger for an hour about my problems while enduring the problem at the same time.
As I began to walk up the stairs, I heard a familiar voice peer up from behind me.
"Rocky!", a happy sounding voice spoke from behind me.
I turned around to see one of the only couple of people that I actually converse "Sunset! You're getting here early today.", I inferred about her.
Sunset Shimmer and I have a history together. When I got this scholarship, I was invited to a party that had a lot of other scholarship awardees in the state. Most of them were local students and colleagues, but there were a few out of state students who managed to get the scholarship as well. One of which was Sunset Shimmer. When I was there at the ceremony,  I sat alone like I preferred to sipping on juice they had served before the ceremony. Then from out of nowhere Sunset had walked over to me and introduced herself to me. Normally if this was someone else, I would have stuck with my rules. But it was when I saw her face that made me make an exception to those rules. Granted,  when I spoke with her, my stuttering was going off like a machine gun, but the funny thing was that I didn't mind. When we spoke that night, she had told me that she had come from Canterlot high school with a scholarship in accounting. For the first time that night or even ever, I was actually talking to someone and not feeling like I  was blowing it. Ever since that night she has been my only real friend. We would always talk to each other about something before we headed to class. I know what I said earlier about trying to arrive early to a class to not have to explain,  but I thought that I had enough time to spare to talk with her.
"Well, I decided to go eat breakfast at Loo's before coming here and sadly they were closed. Some weird thing with the owner and some homeless person.", Sunset explained. 
"Ah, w-well you know that the hobos over at Zonker's street are always looking to get some free meal no matter what.", I said snarkingly.
"Say, you should come join me some time for breakfast. I can even pay for us both if you like. You don't seem to be a breakfast person. ", she offered me.
She was right about that. I don't normally eat breakfast, but that is because breakfast is usually the time when most Manehatten citizens would be more sociable and well… yeah you know me by now.
"Oh S-Sunset. I c-couldn't do that to you. You don't have to worry about me not eating. I'll be fine.", I nervously said to her.
"Well, maybe you could at least come by and maybe have a cup of coffee to chat. I do wish it was more than once a day we would talk.", she said looking down at her books in her hand.
If you hadn't picked up on it now, I had a slight crush on her. Well, actually a huge crush on her. I always tried my best to try and hide it because I always thought that I would never be her type. Maybe as a close friend, yes, but as far as a couple, not really. Many of our conversations would end like this; one really awkward silence before one of us spoke.
"Well, I have to go now. I-I hopefully can get that recommendation with the exam I did.", I said nervously scratching my head. 
"Oh well good luck with that. I have to go do some boring presentation about how to file someone else's taxes. I'll see you later Rocky.", she said with a smile waving goodbye. 
"Yeah, you too. G-Good luck with your presentation!", I said as she walked off.
"Good Grief! The awkwardness always gets more and more awkward.  Whatever,  let's not worry about that now. Let's go meet with Professor Wings.", I said to myself as I walked up the stairs to the building.  
I continued talking to myself about the day ahead of me when I walked through the door.
"Today is the day you move up Rocky! You go in, get that recommendation,  you go to your job, tell your boss that you quit and kiss that crummy job goodbye. You want to know why? Because you did it, you were able to do great on that test. You got most of the answers right and you did it. What did you do? You-"







"-Failed?! I-I don't understand! Why did I fail?", I exclaimed to Professor Wings in his office with my exam on his desk.
"Well, Mr. Pebbles,  you managed to get the best overall score on the math part, which I congratulate you on, but on the social part of the exam you seemed to have dropped the ball.", he explained.
"But the directions said that I could answer them in my opinion! D-Did I not do that?!", I asked him.
"Of course you did, but what you forgot to read in the directions was the second half of the line stated and I quote, 'Though it is your own opinion, please also give the correct thing to do in said situation as well'. You only put your own opinion in those lines 
The grade of the exam made it even more insulting.  I was literally off by three points and I could've had that letter in my grasp. I had my goals and Hope's crushed by three simple points. 
"Well, I-I-is there something you can do? It's only three more points. You could easily void them and say I passed it.", I tried bargaining with him.
"I'm sorry Rocky. I'm legally not allowed to do that. It goes against so many regulations, and I'm already in deep with the ones I already break to help my students. ", Professor Wings said scratching his moustache. 
I gave a disappointed sigh as I sat down in the chair across from his desk.
"Look, how about this.", he said standing up from his desk to look around," Class is not going to be in session tomorrow for me going to board meetings,  but Saturday is the day where I can come back to finish paperwork and stuff. What if you took tomorrow to look over the notes on said situations and you come on Saturday to redo that part of the exam? I can't legally give you those points,  but I can give you one other shot at making a better score on that part of the exam".
My head perked up.
"You mean it? You'd take a Saturday to see that I do better?", I asked with excitement. 
"Of course I would. You're one of my best students and it would be a shame if I let you go without a chance to be fully experienced with the job because of three points. ", he said.
"O-Oh Professor Wings! I can't thank you enough. I'll be better, I promise. ", I declared to him. 
"You better. I don't want to see to it that I was wrong about you. Now go get ready for class. Its gonna start in a few minutes. ", he said standing up from his desk.
"Y-Yes sir.", I said grabbing my bag to head over to my desk.
The day then proceeded as normal, as fellow colleagues came into class not long after I sat down. My desk was not as far back as you would think. Believe it or not,  being far back is honestly the worst. Back there is where a lot of the bozos would go sit to avoid learning. It is the part of the class that was the most distracting for me because a lot of the bullies I dealt with in high school sat. But at the same time I didn't like sitting up front and center. The trick for me is to find that happy medium spot. Meaning that the placement was close enough to hear the lecture and far enough to sit behind and not feel directly watched.
Today's lecture was about dealing with the business associate in need of help with certain stock and all that sort of stuff. If you look into it,  it's pretty interesting to find out how to deal with people like that. First, you would have to address them with their surname and credentials.  Then of course you would-
The reader doesn't care about how to talk to some business blowhard about how they can't run an operating system.  Get on with the story so we can get to the fun stuff!
Right, too much detail about the day. Anyways, it was the end of class when everyone was walking out of the classroom. I fashionably liked to leave last to avoid the crowd. As I was walking out, I saw Sunset walking down the hall. A rare thing happened to me when I saw her. I actually spoke first.
 "Oh hey Sunset! Wait up!", I called out to her.
"Oh Rocky.  I didn't expect to see you again today.", Sunset said turning around. 
"Yeah, I-I didn't expect it either. I thought you h-had that presentation.", I said tilting my head. 
 "I did, I was one of the first people to finish so I was able to leave class a bit early. Oh, how was the exam?", She asked. 
"Well, I have to be honest with you.  It was close, but not enough for a recommendation.", I explained to her.
"Oh Rocky,  I'm sure you'll get it next time."  She said with sympathy. 
"But wait, Professor Wings was nice enough to let me take the part of the exam I failed again to get a better grade.", I explained more.
"Oh well that's good. Are you going to study right now?", she asked me.
"No, sadly I have to go to work now. Thought today would be the day I would leave the place.", I said looking down at the floor. 
"Well maybe Saturday you can do it.", she said putting her hand on my shoulder.
I don't know why, but that turned my calm mood into the stuttering shyness I'm used to.
"Hehehe, y-yeah for sure.", I said nervously. 
She cocked an eyebrow at me.
"You know, I never told you but you remind me a lot of an old friend I had back in  high school. She was kind of like you.", Sunset said with a small grin.
"O-oh?", I stuttered nervously. 
She chuckled at me.
"Please never change as a friend Rocky. I'll talk to you tomorrow. ", she said walking into a classroom. 
I was left looking dumbfounded. Was that her way of messing with me as a friend? Did she pick up on me? Regardless, it didn't change the fact that I still had to get to work. Oh my how much I love going to work.