//------------------------------// // Diminished Confidence // Story: Fluttershy's Lunchroom Drama // by gmen15 //------------------------------// Chapter 2: Diminished Confidence Over the next couple of days, Fluttershy and her friends started spending more time hanging out with Hail Blitz. They would walk down the hall with the popular pony, eyes wide with interest as they listened to their new leader rant on about un-fashionable ponies in the school, or "losers" to put it bluntly. She would also talk about different colts she had her eyes set on, even occasionally suggesting some names to the others as to who met her "coltfriend criteria", which included how handsome they were and whether or not they were athletes. If they weren't one of those two things, they immediately fell off Hail's romance radar and into the batch of colts she called "the lovable losers". Hail Blitz seemed to be chummy with everypony in this group of fillies, talking with each of them like they were her old friends. Except for Fluttershy, that is, who she seemed to completely ignore. But at the moment, Fluttershy didn't care. She still felt like she was part of the group, and was fine with not being included in conversations. They probably just didn't think about her, eventually she'll be addressed. This is what she told herself to make being ignored less painful to endure. Fluttershy's desire to stay "popular" blinded her from the truth. That Hail Blitz was deliberately snubbing her, pretending she wasn't part of the group. Fluttershy didn't know it, nor would she want to, but the deliberate ignoring was only the beginning. Hail Blitz was already planning to make things worse for her in the near future. Soon the group started to eat lunch together. Early on, when they first started hanging out, Hail Blitz told them how she wanted the fillies to prove to her that they were worthy to be her friends before she did something so "public as sit with you in front of the entire school at lunch". When Fluttershy first sat down to have lunch with Hail with her friends, she couldn’t help but feel a sense of honor and pride. They had all successfully gotten the attention of the most popular filly in school, and impressed her so much that she was now going to eat lunch with them. It was the typical “dream come true” for anypony in grade-school. Of course Fluttershy, unlike some of her friends, didn’t act arrogant around others. She was still Fluttershy after all. Still, she felt beyond lucky to be considered one of the amazing Hail Blitz's friends. Or so she thought, before reality reared its ugly head during their first school lunch together as a group. If Fluttershy had paid attention to the way Hail Blitz treated ponies during her first few days in Cloudsdale, she wouldn’t have been as surprised to find out how malicious she could be towards other ponies, especially fillies. She would have realized that Hail Blitz was the kind of pony that got a sick, twisted thrill out of stomping on a "weaker" pony’s self-esteem until there was nothing left. This was mostly driven by Hail Blitz's desire for power, and how she felt that she needed to make another pony look weak in order to make herself seem more powerful. She usually accomplished this by figuring out the weakest link in a group, and then pouncing on said “weak link” like a lion on a helpless gazelle. It only took a few minutes after meeting Fluttershy and her friends for Hail to identify Fluttershy as the "weak" one of the group, and she instantly put a mental target on her for later. Of course, even in her more social youth, Fluttershy was the most reserved filly out of her friends. She didn’t shield herself from talking altogether, but she still had brief moments of silence, where she minded her own business and let her friends do the talking. Plus, she was way too nice, a problem she still has to this day Especially when it comes to a very stubborn, white rabbit. She would often let others speak over her, and was still hesitant to defend herself, even when others joked about her flaws. In fact, she often agreed with the criticisms they gave her. That's how much Fluttershy hated conflict. Hail took note of this and mentally put a target onto Fluttershy to direct her wrath so she could improve her already high standing image. Over the next couple of days, Hail made Fluttershy the sole recipient of her most brutal wrath. Anytime the young pegasus began to say something to try to join in the conversation, Hail would interrupt her and say, “Oh my gosh, nopony cares what you have to say Foalshy.” Yes, Fluttershy had a nickname. “Foalshy”. A truly shining example of the “creative” and "mature" sense of humor found in elementary schools. Fluttershy was initially confused by Hail’s behavior, but initially passed it off as Hail's style of huor. However, as it continued, she began to feel progressively worse. She never expected somepony to be so cruel, especially not the filly she looked up to. Lunch after lunch, this character assassination continued. Fluttershy soon realized that Hail Blitz was deliberately trying to hurt her feelings. Even when Fluttershy asked Hail Blitz to stop, she just laughed and called her Foalshy before pushing past and trotting off with her nose held up high, leaving a very dis-heartened Fluttershy in her wake. Even when Fluttershy started to cry, Hail simply laughed at her and kept saying "Awww, little Foalshy gonna cry"? Needless to say that she did. Fluttershy’s friends never helped her out. In fact, not only were they clearly ignoring Hail Blitz’s bullying, they even began to mock Fluttershy as well. They would even join Hail Blitz in chanting "Foalshy, Foalshy, Foalshy is gonna cry". Fluttershy couldn't believe that her once strong group of friends turned on her, leaving the poor pony outnumbered at a ratio of six ponies to one at every lunch. Actually, it was more like one ring leader and five brown-nosers to one very sad, vulnerable, and miserable filly. On the rare occasions that Fluttershy would meekly attempt to make a joke or make a come-back against one of Hail Blitz’s insults that were directed at her, Hail would simply retort by saying how “stupid” she was and how her jokes “were not funny” or were “immature”. Hail Blitz would then add that she should just “be like a foal; seen and not heard”. Eventually Fluttershy began to take this to heart. After all, her friends, the fillies that she grew up with and had such a close relationship with were siding with the abusive Hail Blitz over her. Not only that, they even began to join Hail in taunting her, calling her a "stupid foal" and even "Foalshy". It didn't take long for her to begin buying into the idea that she really wasn’t funny. That she should do what Hail says; be like a foal and shut up. Soon she began to overthink everything she wanted to say. She worried about the consequences of what she’d say so much that soon she hardly said anything at all. She just sat at the cafeteria table, her large, teal eyes focused down at the tray that held questionable cafeteria food that the disgruntled lunch mares dished out for the hungry students to eat. In her mind, Fluttershy tried to imagine being teleported someplace else. At the same time, she had to fight the constant desire to burst into tears in front of everypony, which would only hurt her reputation even more. Nopony cared enough about her to defend her. And if they did, they were too infatuated with Blitz and all her glamor to go against what she was saying. It didn’t take long for her parents to start wondering where their little, sweet, relatively carefree filly had gone. How in a matter of days she went from being her cheery self, whistling one of the recently popular songs in Cloudsdale as she trotted with a hop in her step, to being withdrawn and not uttering a single word unless she was coaxed to do so. She would spend her nights locked in her room, her eyes staring out the window as Luna's moon shone its light across her tear-streaked face. Even her parents calling for her to come out barely received a response unless it was a call for dinner. She felt alone, completely stranded on an island with no friends and no support. In essence, whether she was at home or in the sea of chaos known as school, she was isolated. She never truly understood what ponies meant when they said how they felt like prisoners in their own body, but now she did. Maybe she wasn’t sick like most ponies who used that analogy, but she still thought that if, maybe, she was somepony else, all of this pain and suffering would go away. Maybe she could be funnier, maybe she could have some good comebacks that wouldn’t result in even worse insults being hurled her way. She didn’t just hate the situation she was in, she hated herself. She hated how she let herself get to this point. She hated how she drove her friends away, leaving her without anypony outside of her family to care about her. In reality, none of this was her fault. But in her mind it was. In her mind, she blamed herself, and as long as nopony showed her that they cared about her, she would keep slipping into the abyss of sorrow she had created since the first lunch she had with Hail Blitz and her friends. Every night, before she cried herself to sleep, she'd make the same wish. "I wish I wasn't so alone. I wish I had somepony to help me through this, though I'm not sure if I deserve anypony. Please, I want this pain to stop." Little did the yellow pegasus know that one pony, one not sitting at her table and not falling for the "Hail Blitz illusion", had watched Fluttershy's change in personality. Slowly, both her hatred of the promiscuous filly and her sympathy for the defenseless Fluttershy elevated. She knew that she needed somepony to stand up for her; somepony to protect her from ponies insulting her. She needed a friend, and not like her superficial “friends” who now joined their queen in making fun of her just so that could seem popular. She needed a true friend.