//------------------------------//
// The playground of shattered dreams 
// Story: School of Hard Knocks 
// by Hoopy McGee 
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  The lunch bell signaled my freedom from the time-out chair. I hopped down to retrieve my lunchbox from my desk, dropping it to the floor like I always did. I gave it a kick, sending the box skittering and skipping across the floor towards the door.

Miss Persimmon always made us eat outside when the weather permitted, which it usually did. The pegasi here in Hoofington weren't always as professional as I'd gotten used to in my too short of a stay in Ponyville, but they got the job done right. The sun was bright and shiny in the clear blue sky, just like it was supposed to be. I scowled at it as I kicked my lunch box out the door, down the gravel pathway and towards the twisted old oak in the southwest corner of the schoolyard. 

"Why do you always do that?"

I looked up and saw the purple filly who sat behind me in class. "You mean this?" I said, and kicked the lunchbox again. She nodded and walked beside me as I walked towards my lunchbox. "Because I hate pink," I said, giving it another kick. 

"Wow. And you're pink!" the filly said. I snorted in response and gave the lunchbox another kick, sending it tumbling towards the oak tree. "So, you hate your lunchbox?" 

"My mom got it for me," I said. "She knew I hated pink. She got it for me anyway." I didn't bother telling her my theory that my mom probably thought that surrounding me with girly things would make me girly. My bedroom at home was a pink and pastel nightmare. So far, it hadn't worked. If I had my way, it never would. 

I kicked the lunchbox harder this time, and it finally tumbled to a halt against the tree. The purple filly trotted up to it and picked it up in her forehooves. "It's kind of pretty, even though it's a little messed up," she said. I didn't say anything. Instead, I slumped down with my back against the tree and held my hooves out to the filly. She hesitated, probably thinking that passing my "pretty" little lunchbox over would result in even more damage. She was right. 

"I could trade you," she said, sitting down next to me and putting my lunchbox down next to me. She then took her own out of her saddle bag. It was a huge dented metal thing, at one time painted green, most of which had been scuffed off over what looked like decades. 

"This belonged to my dad," she said, smiling. "He's an explorer and a member of the Archeological Society of Equestria. It never occurred to him that I'd want something... well, more girly than his old lunchbox. But I don't mind pink. If you wanted to trade, I mean?" 

She looked at me with hopeful eyes, and I looked at the metal box in her hooves. It was built out of what looked like solid steel and I could tell that it had seen some action. It was scarred and ugly, the green paint that had once adorned it no more than a passing memory. It was perfect. 

"Sure," I said, and the deal was done right then and there. 

I started taking my lunch out of my box in order to transfer it to my new box when the filly said, "Plum Pudding." 

"I don't have any," I said. She laughed at me, ignoring my annoyed frown when she did so. 

"That's my name, in case you didn't know," she said with a smile. 

"Oh. Cinnamon Swirl." 

"I know," she said with a giggle. "Everypony in class knows you. Were you really a stallion before you came to school?" 

I snorted and bit into my carrot and lettuce sandwich. Only my mom could make a sandwich that bland. "Nopony believes me. Why would you be any different?" 

She shrugged and bit into her own sandwich. It looked like peanut butter and jelly, a favorite of mine that my mother never made for me because it was "unhealthy" somehow.

"Hoh'd eh happah?" she asked with a mouthful of peanut butter. She held up her hoof and took a swig from her thermos, which had just as much mileage on it as the lunchbox she was giving me. She tried again. "How'd it happen?" 

"You ever hear of poison joke?" I asked. She shook her head. "It's a plant with a really bad sense of humor. Turned me from a stallion to a filly, just to be funny." 

"Can't you turn back?" Plum Pudding asked me while munching on an apple slice. 

"Can. There's a cure." At least, that's what that crazy pink pony had told me. "I don't know what it is, though. I'd have to go all the way back to Ponyville to get it." 

"That's too bad," she said. I had no idea if she believed me or not, but at least she wasn't just laughing at me. "Why're you going to school, though, if you graduated?" 

"My mom is... She's got her issues," I said. "I have five brothers and no sisters. She didn't stop trying to have a filly until Dad died. So, when this happened to me, she thought it was her chance to finally have a daughter." 

"Wooow," the filly said, wide-eyed. I had a feeling that she actually did believe me. I was surprised at how good that felt. "So, she's making you go to school again?" 

"Yeah." 

"Wow." Plum Pudding stared at her apple slices for a while then said, "That really sucks." 

She jumped with surprise when I let out a bark of laughter. I'd lost so much because of this. My job, my identity as a stallion, my independence... but what was the worst, according to this filly, was having to go to school again. 

"Yeah, it kind of does," I said. We finished off our lunch in silence and then traded our boxes and thermoses. My mom would hit the roof when she saw this. I'd have to figure out a way to stop her from getting rid of it. 

Plum Pudding sat there, fiddling with her hooves. I had no idea what she wanted, but she wasn't making a fuss so I just ignored her. Instead, I pulled out a toothpick and used it to get the bits of lunch out of my teeth. Once I was done, I left it in my mouth. 

Big secret time. When I'm agitated, I chew on things. Pencils, if they're around. Thing is, they get soggy, and nopony wants to loan you a pencil if you're going to chew on it. Toothpicks helped with that. I bit down on it between two teeth and let it stick out of my mouth. 

Plum Pudding was still there, still looking anxious. I frowned at her, and she smiled back at me. 

"Um. Do you want to go play?" she asked. I let out another surprised bark of laughter before I realized she was serious. 

"Kid, I'm a full-grown stallion. I don't play," I told her. 

"So, you're just going to sit here?" 

"Yeah." 

"Sounds boring," she said.

"That's another word for 'relaxing'," I informed her. 

"All right," she said, sounding disappointed for some reason. She got up and stuck her new pink lunchbox in her saddlebag. For a minute it looked like she was going to say something, but then she just shrugged and left me alone in the shade of the tree. 

While I could, I caught some z's. When you're one of only two police officers in a good-sized town, you learn to take your sleep when and where you can. I got a full half-hour of slumber in before the bell woke me up. My dream of running through a dark forest shattered like crystal and melted like snow in the summer sun. 

I picked up my new lunchbox, more pleased than I'd ever admit at the heft of the thing, and carried it back to the doorway. As I got close to the school, though, something caught my eye. It was the little purple filly. Her hunched shoulders and folded ears displayed her discomfort as she was confronted by another earth pony filly, the same age but considerably larger. The glint in the other filly's eye told me everything I needed to know. 

I sighed and went to move past them. It was none of my business. There are ponies like this at every school. Plum Pudding would have to learn how to deal with bullies by herself. I ignored the pleading look in her eye as I passed. 

"So, so sad," the filly was saying with fake sympathy and a sneer. "First you had that ugly old thing your father gave you, and now you're stuck with a second-hoof, beat up wreck like that? Why don't you just ask your parents to buy you a new one? Oh, that's right. You can't. You're parents are too poor." 

The bully snickered. In spite of my intentions, I'd stopped in the doorway, unnoticed by the bully. Plum Pudding's eyes were pulling at my heartstrings. I tried to ignore it. It was harder than I'd expected. 

"I can't imagine what it's like, being so poor." The bully moved faster than I'd expected, snatching the lunchbox out of the purple filly's saddlebags and holding it up for inspection. 

"Hey!" Plum protested. "You give that back, Vanilla Sweet!" 

Another ironically named pony. Nothing sweet about this girl at all, that I could see. She had a light caramel coat and a mane the color and consistency of whipped cream. Her brown eyes contained nothing but the cruelty of the spoiled and unknowingly ignorant. Exactly the type of pony I couldn't stand. But I was a stallion. I don't get in fights with little fillies, no matter how much they might deserve a hoof across the face. 

Or so I tried to convince myself. Plum Pudding had tried to snatch her lunchbox back, earning a swat across her muzzle from the other filly, knocking her back on her rump. Plum started crying. Vanilla Sweet looked startled at first, and I guessed this was the first time her bullying had spilled over into violence. The look in her eyes told me she liked it. She took a step towards the filly on the ground only to find me standing in her way. I didn't even remember moving. 

"Oh, what now, crazy filly? You going to fight me for it?" 

The gleam in those brown eyes told me she was up for a fight. Dammit, though, I wasn't. I could take her, if I had to, but I was a police officer and she was just a kid. Spoiled, dangerous, and needing a hoof across her rump, but still a kid. 

"What? Aren't you going to do anything?" she asked, and gave me a shove. 

I felt my eyes narrow. The anger boiled in me like coffee left on the burner too long. I wanted to tell this kid that she couldn't scare me. I'd seen things that she couldn't even imagine. Drunk and disorderly ponies, domestic situations, the occasional disagreement that ventured into outright violence, though those were thankfully rare. And that didn't even count all I'd seen just a couple weeks ago, back when I first ran through the patch of poison joke. 

I'd been through the Everfree forest, in search of an escaped mental patient. I'd seen dark castles of ancient mysteries. I'd seen a possessed pony summon a swarm of needles and send them my way like angry hornets. I'd seen a demented sorceress. I'd seen some otherworldly thing burst through a mirror from another world. 

And I'd seen Pinkie Pie. Nothing could top that. 

There was nothing that this filly could possibly do could intimidate me. Nothing she could do to me would make me anything other than angry. I didn't tell her that. I didn't have to. It was plain on my face, my expression chiseled out of burning hot ice. I chewed my toothpick and stared straight into her eyes. 

She blinked. Her will broke. She was just a filly, after all. 

She tried to play it off as if she hadn't just been faced down. She tossed the pink lunchbox aside and said, "You two make great friends. The poor filly and the crazy filly who thinks she's a stallion." 

Vanilla Sweet's 'nonchalant' walk back into the classroom was a little iffy, given the way she kept shooting glances back over her shoulder at me, as if she expected me to jump her from behind. 

I heard Plum Pudding get up and, still sniffling a little, pick up her pink lunchbox. 

"That was pretty cool," she said. I shrugged in response and started walking back into the classroom. Plum followed me, a little more closely than I was comfortable with. "Um. I was wondering. You don't seem to have any friends. Did... Could we be friends?" 

The idea shook me more than I'd like to admit. I looked back at her hopeful, almost pleading face, and I once again cursed the poison joke that did this to me for what I had to do. 

"Sorry, kid," I told her. I turned away as the hopeful look started to crumble. "I'm too old. I'm not interested in making friends with kids." 

I sat down in my seat and faced forward. I tried to convince myself that Plum Pudding's sniffles were just the after-effects of being bullied. I almost managed to believe it.