//------------------------------//
// Back to the Basics 
// Story: All Smoke, No Mirrors 
// by Jinzou 
//------------------------------//

"Homeschool?" I repeated. I guess that made the most sense, given my lack of proper pony knowledge. But how would that work?

"Who would be teaching me? Especially since I can't read Ponish, that'd be a difficult curriculum to build." I asked, raising a brow and flicking my ears off to an angle.

Please say you and not Golden. She makes me feel weird.

"Most likely me." Script responded. "I work at home anyway. Golden does not."

"What do y'all do anyway?"

"Well, Golden is sort of like a crop health inspector. In any other town but Ponyville and Fillydelphia she would not need to be working like that as often, but as both those towns border on the Everfree Forest, there are countless pests or magical conditions that can affect the food and negatively impact ponies. I, on the other hoof, am an author."

"Huh." I replied slowly. "What do you write?"

Script shrugged. "Got a couple Canterlot Best Sellers really recently with the horror genre."

I nodded. "Must help living next to the Everfree then, not only as inspiration, but probably helps sell the horror factor given how close you live to it."

"Smart girl." Script chuckled, ruffling my mane. With a quick laugh, I pulled away.

"Careful, I bite." I warned playfully. The smile disappeared from Script's face.

"Sorry." He apologized. "Should have asked before I touched you. Was that okay?"

"Completely fine." I waved a hoof dismissively. "You're just being a dad. Besides, if I'm laughing, it probably means it was fine, for future reference."

The smile returned to his face. "Ah, noted. Lovely."

"Girls!" Golden shouted from the kitchen. "Come in here, please!"

I suppressed a sigh. I really didn't want to dignify that with a response, but figured it had to do with the education element, so I'd have to cope.

Noi pranced over to the door with a grin and held it open for Script and me, and I, being the usual boss bitch that I am, led the three of us into the kitchen.

Golden was still standing there with Cheerilee, who was busy scribbling some notes on a paper. Noi burst in, making a loud entrance, and enthusiastically greeted Cheerilee.

"Good afternoon Miss Cheerilee!"

Cheerilee dropped her pencil and looked up, smiling when she saw Noi. "Well hello there Noi. Enjoying summer break?"

"Yup!" Noi bounced.

"Ready to come back to school?"

"Absolutely not." Noi straightened up, her enthusiasm instantly gone. Golden and Cheerilee both laughed.

Cheerilee turned to me. "So I've thought about it, and punishing you by sending you back several school years, just because you didn't grow up around ponies is just silly. I'd like to propose a homeschooling alternative, and I can help adapt the curriculum to your unique circumstances. I don't want you to think you're stupid, just-"

"In a unique position." I interjected. "Yeah, no, I agree. That's the most sensible solution."

Cheerilee nodded. "The first big thing should be to read and write Ponish, but before that… Noi, could you please educate Jenny here on our counting system while I go fetch some papers that may help with learning to read?"

Noi gasped and nodded eagerly, grabbing a paper and pencil and running over the living room couch.

I followed her slowly, trying to deal with the sudden realization I was going to have to relearn everything I knew.

"So you never learned math?" Noi asked innocently, watching me make my way onto the couch with all the speed and enthusiasm of a brain dead sloth with four broken legs.

“No, like, it’s not that I never learned math, just... we Kirin use… different characters.” I chose the little white lie.

God, I was about to be taught basic math by somebody half my age. Just kill me now, save me from more embarrassment.

“Oh, okay.” Noi nodded slowly. “In that case, we can go over some numbers and I’ll show you what they mean and the way we write them.”

Noi started off by drawing what looked like the pi symbol without a flattened end on the left side.

“This is zero.”

Next she drew a symbol that just looked like two right triangles squished together.

“This is one.”

Two came in the form of a cartoonish drawing of an inchworm. Three was a circle with a vertical line through it, and four looked just like the infinity symbol.

“So then after that we have this.” Noi smiled as she drew the triangle and then the pi-like symbol.

“That’s five? You re-use symbols that early?” I asked, eyebrows stitching together.

“Five?” Noi arched an eyebrow. “No, I’ve never heard of that, this is ten.”

I felt a shiver go up my spine at that and my ears flattened themselves to my head. That wasn’t good if she didn’t recognize five. That would mean…

I hurriedly grabbed the pencil off the couch, pausing as I tasted blueberries. Huh, flavored erasers. I did my best to write out what fourteen should look like, with my mouth, then drew the symbol for two next to the symbol of zero.

“Is this right?” I asked slowly, already dreading the answer.

“Uh, yeah. It is,” Noi replied equally as slowly, fixing me with a puzzled expression. “Why do you look so confused?”

I let out a groan as the realization hit me, slamming my face into my cushion.

Dammit! Ponies used fucking base five. Because of course this couldn’t just be easy. 

This meant it was gonna take forever to learn this math. And when they got to multiplication and division… This was going to be a pain in the ass.

Even in the cartoonish world of ponies, I was bound to be the stupid one.

"I don't understand." Sunny spoke slowly. "They're missing five through eight. Why is that?"

"What about nine?" I asked Sunny. Noi furrowed her brows and cocked her head at me.

"I have never heard of that before you said it earlier." Sunny responded slowly and unsurely.

Great, so ponies used base five and kirin used base nine. Let's just make this as inconvenient as possible for everyone involved, huh? Fuck you, Equestrian math.

"You see, Noi." I began through gritted teeth. "I'm used to having fiv- uh, ten more numbers in my system before reaching ten."

Noi snorted. "That's dumb. How would it make any sense?"

I could do nothing but shake my head. This was a bad start. How hard was learning the language gonna be if I had to learn everything I thought I knew about math in a different base?

Fuck it, time to face the music. I looked over the couch to see Script's horn lit up, a quill tracing quickly over another paper. After a moment he seemed to notice me watching him and looked up.

"Hey Jen, just working on examples of our scripts that we can use to teach you." He smiled.

Oh hell no. Nobody but Maria calls me "Jen".

"Please do not call me Jen." I replied quickly. "And can you tell me about the different scripts?"

Script paused and rubbed his chin. "What about Gem? It's different, but sounds a little similar."

I shrugged. "If you want."

Script smiled and nodded, then made his way over to the couch with three papers held in his magical grasp. He took a seat on the side opposite Noi, who clambered over to see what he had worked on with me.

The first paper he showed me had a six by six square of rather straight, simple characters. Most of them looked like rectangles with different gaps. It reminded me of Hiragana.

"This is earth pony script." He began. "It's always been rather straight since the earth pony tribes initially carved in stone, forever ago. The script has evolved since, but looks very similar."

He pulled out another six by six paper, this one with much more fluid characters. Not too showy, but definitely more graceful than earth pony script.

"This is pegasus script. Theirs has changed the most out of the three. It st-

"Wait…" I interrupted.  "Three scripts, right? Are they based on syllables rather than letters?"

"That's right!" Script nodded. "All but these eleven vowels at the top here." He pointed at the first row of six. 

Wait, eleven? There's only… oh yeah, base five. Fuck.

"And then there's the unicorn script." He continued, pulling out an unfinished sheet. As I expected, they were the most complex and ornate characters. "There are actually more than a hundred twenty one characters in this script, unlike the other two, as there are many characters that were designed with one specific meaning. Like-"

"Kanji." I whispered out loud, my heart hammering away in my chest and a manic smile forcing itself on my face. Three scripts, one language, even the baseline rules were the same. This was great! I was fluent in Japanese by the time I was eight, and these apparently had the same rules! I could actually do this!

"I can do this." I barked out a short laugh, then still riding that joy, another, longer one. I loved studying languages. The entire process was full of small rewards for every word learned, and seeing somebody from another country and breaking out in their language always got great reactions. I wasn't as good at learning languages as I was at math, but having traveled all around a bunch of different countries I was passable in at least four languages. About to be five, with Ponish. Or maybe four and a half. I was already speaking it and just the writing part was different.

"Uh, Sunny? Or uh, Jenny?"

"Sorry." I shook my head, chasing off the thoughts. "I'm paying attention. What's next?"

I went to draw the unicorn script paper close to me, to start trying to come up with mnemonics for remembering the characters, when Script stopped me with a hoof.

"Easy there slugger, this isn't a whole lesson. This is just an example. Cheerilee is bringing better materials we can use to teach you, remember?"

There was something so paternal, so familiar in the way he called me "slugger" that made me think of my dad. I hadn't seen him in over a year and a half, minus video calls. And now I'd never see him again. I looked up at Script, who was busy filling out the unicorn script sheet more, and couldn't help but feel that same sort of reverence. Sure, he was still kind of a stranger, but there's no doubt he cared and actually wanted to fill the role of a father figure in Sunny's life. 

And maybe mine too.

I hid scooting closer to him under the guise of stretching out and looking closer at what he was writing. I figured that the last thing I needed to worry about was his reaction. It definitely seems he was a little socially deficient. And ultimately, if Cheerilee took the rest of the night to return… well, I was perfectly happy where I was. I let his long-winded explanation on the history of Ponish drift by me as I pressed my head against his side, letting out a long sigh and being the most relaxed I'd felt thus far. At least while sober. I may not be able to read or do complex math yet, but those were still only yet.

Ultimately, my position could be a lot worse.