//------------------------------//
// Ch 13: Live long Or Prosper 
// Story: Our girl Scootaloo 1 of 3 
// by Cozy Mark IV 
//------------------------------//


Our Girl Scootaloo


by Cozy Mark IV


Disclaimer: This is a non-profit fan-made work of prose. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is the property of Hasbro. Please support the official release



Chapter Thirteen: Live Long or Prosper

When the time came for her August medical check-up, Scootaloo waited for her opportunity then pulled Mary aside for a talk. They took a side corridor and found an empty room to which Scootaloo closed the door.

"I'm sorry to pull you away like this, but I really need to talk to someone about this, and..." She grimaced. "And I just can't talk to my Dads about it."

Mary looked concerned and gestured for Scootaloo to take a seat as she grabbed a chair of her own. "Of course! You know you can always come to me for help. What's the matter? Are you okay?"

Scootaloo blushed. "I'm fine, it's... it's about my boyfriend. Can we...?"

Mary smiled warmly and took her hand. "Scootaloo, I'm a married woman. I've been with Stephanie for more than a decade, and on top of that, I was your gynecologist for quite a while. If you can't talk to me comfortably about sex then I have failed as a physician as well as a friend."

Scootaloo seemed to calm down; she took a deep breath and dove in. "I think there's something wrong with me, but I don't know how to fix it."

Mary gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and nodded for her to continue.

"It's... My boyfriend says he loves me... He does everything right in public, but... But in the bedroom..." She had been staring at her hands and now she looked up with tears in her eyes. "He has to work to be interested in me. The few time's we managed to make it work he had to have a blindfold and a football game going in the background."

Mary looked nearly as concerned as she felt confused, and she tried hard to remember who Scootaloo was dating.

Scootaloo felt tears running down her cheek as she continued. "I can't talk about it with my Dads because they didn't want me dating Conner in the first place..."

She sniffed. "Mary... Am I ugly?"

Mary finally remembered the boy Scootaloo was dating and felt relieved but a bit sad as she broke the news to her. "You're not ugly, Scoot. And there is nothing wrong with you being a pony."

Scootaloo took the offered tissue and wiped her eyes. "But how do you know?"

"Sweetie, Conner is gay."

Scootaloo stopped mid wipe and stared at her.

"Your Dads aren't stupid, they probably figured it out at the beginning."

Her eyes were quite large and still a bit red as she asked. "But why didn't they stop me? Why didn't they say something?"

Mary fixed her with a level gaze. "Scootaloo, how did you react the first time they told you it wasn't a good match?"

There was a silence that ended as she replied simply. "Oh. Yeah..."

"They probably tried to warn you, and knowing teenage girls, you probably weren't having any of it. Am I right?"

Scootaloo looked uncomfortable as she weakly nodded, but tears were already forming again as she asked. "But... Does that mean he never really loved me?"

"Oh sweetie!" Mary took Scootaloo in her arms and held her while she sniffled and tried to fight down her sobs.

"It's okay. You're a strong young woman Scootaloo, I've known you for a long time. We all make mistakes from time to time, but it will get better."

Scootaloo sniffled. "But how could he do that?" Her chest heaved as she tried not to cry. "Why... Why would he lead me on like that if he didn't love me?"

Mary pulled back enough she could look Scootaloo in the eye. "Did your Papa ever tell you how he knew me? How he knew Stephanie and I would be the first safe people who could come and see you?"

Scootaloo looked confused at the change of subject and shook her head.

"Scoot, your Papa and I were lovers once."

There was silence for a moment as her eyes widened. "But he's... You're..." Scootaloo shook her head, her own troubles temporarily forgotten. "How?!"

"We were both in eighth grade, and we didn't really know who we were yet. We both had an idea, but there was tremendous pressure to ignore what we felt and be 'normal'."

She sighed as she remembered. "We dated for more than a year, into the middle of ninth grade, in fact before we couldn't keep up the fiction anymore. Just because two people aren't sexually compatible doesn't mean they can't share a strong bond. I still have feelings for your Papa, they just don't involve sex."

"But ninth grade... that would have made Papa fifteen..." Scootaloo looked horrified as she worked it out. "And when you broke up, that's when...?"

Mary nodded sadly. "That was when his parents beat the hell out of him and threw him out of the house. He spent the next few years in foster care, but it took a long time for the injuries to heal. I wasn't kidding when I said we were under a lot of pressure. We wound up going to the same college, and we have always kept in touch, but yes, at one time during the worst part of high school your Papa and I... did what we had to do."

"But... that was a long time ago! Gay marriage is legal almost everywhere now! Things have gotten so much better than..." She trailed off as she saw Mary sadly shaking her head.

"Some people will always live in the dark ages. Women like us are supposed to be on equal footing with men, but we both know discrimination still exists. We still need to be mindful not to go to certain places, and know which bars to only buy sealed drinks from. Even if his parents are the most liberal and forward-thinking people, he would probably still have reason to hide who he is because you two are stuck in high school. Do you know why sexual harassment has been cracked down on so hard in the business world? It's because any business that allows this kind of abuse, the taunting, the threats, the violence, is liable for millions of dollars of damages. No business owner will tolerate this kind of medieval behavior anymore because it could destroy them."

She sighed and hung her head. "Unfortunately, children aren't important in our culture. The sort of abuses that would bring down a huge corporation are tolerated at schools because no one is held accountable. Even if a child hangs himself and leaves behind a note with names, dates and times, the school can just brush it off with. 'Oh, he was always a troubled child. So sad.' The only other place where the same rules still apply today is prison. A gay inmate gets stabbed or gang raped, and the warden just brushes it of as 'boys will be boys'."

Scootaloo actually felt Mary shudder at some long-forgotten memory. "I'm sorry this happened to you Scootaloo, but if you have any affection for him at all, you have to stop thinking of yourself as the victim. I know you would never associate with anyone who would do this maliciously, and that means Conner must be under a great deal of strain. He has to deal with this sooner or later, and maybe coming out to you would be a good first step, but you must be careful."

She sniffed, and with a start Scootaloo saw a single tear on her cheek. "Your Papa and I know only too well how badly this can go."

...

On the first day of her eleventh year, and Conner's twelfth they sat together with Josie, Melisa and Christina on an upper level of the high school bleachers as the students gradually arrived and filtered in for the start of the year introductions.

As the last busload of students arrived, a kindly looking older man with graying hair made his way out to the center of the gym to start the introductions.

"Let me be the first to welcome you all back. I'm Mr. Gray, and I will be taking over as your new principal this year after the departure of Ms. Baker. Some of you will know me as your Pastor, and others know me as your old junior high principal, while for some of you, this will be our first introduction."

He paused and looked over the assembled students. "Regardless, those who know me know that I am a principal of principles, and first and foremost of those is personal responsibility. You are all here for one purpose and one purpose only: To learn and ready yourselves for life outside of these walls. Be it work right out of school, a vocation, or a college track, everyone of you is here to learn, and as this schools recent test scores show, that has not been going as well as it should."

"Those of you who know me already know what comes next, so why don't we say it together. What time is it?"

There was a mumbled answer from some of the younger students as the rest of them wondered what he was talking about.

"Okay, lets try this again. The answer is 'it's time to take responsibility for learning'. That means that when you don't do well in school, it's not because your teacher doesn't like you, or your parents didn't help you with your homework, it's because you didn't take responsibility. Over the next year when any of you ask me what time it is, I'm going to answer 'it's time to take responsibility for learning. If anyone asks me what time it is and I forget, I'll give them a gift card to one of our local restaurants. Now let's try this again. What time is it?"

This time about half the assembled students responded. "It's time to take responsibility for learning."

"Oh come on, you can do better than that. What time is it?"

"It's time to take responsibility for learning!"

Gina leaned back to whisper to Scootaloo. "Way to target the bottom percentile. Some of us figured this out a while ago."

After a few repetitions of the chant, Mr. Gray continued. "Much better. That is going to be our focus this year. Academics and better test scores. And to help us get there, over the course of the year we will be trimming away some activities and programs that are not appropriate for a school environment, especially those that distract from better academic performance."

Christina asked in a worried whisper. "Does he mean cheerleading?"

Scootaloo frowned. "Well it would be pretty hard to see how cheerleading helps with test scores, but if everyone on the team is doing okay, I don't see that it's any of his business..."

Below on the gym floor Mr. Gray continued. "And now let me introduce our new part time policeman and our DARE representative, Officer Hogan."

The officer wearing a county sheriff uniform and dark sunglasses stepped forward. "Thank you all. Thanks to your new principal's efforts to expand our funding, the DARE program has been extended out of the middle schools and into this high school. Many of you remember me from your last school and when Mr. Gray asked me to follow him on, I was only too happy to accept. Many of you have known us for several years now, and working together, we're going to see to it that everyone graduates from this school healthy and drug free."

"Oh, not this crap again." Curt groaned. "Back in junior high they told us that LSD and pot were addictive gateway drugs – one dose and you're hooked for life." He grabbed his own throat and made a ridiculous face.

"Yeah," Gina answered. "And then we got to try them. Turns out this crap is all lies. And now we have to sit through it all again." She slouched back in her seat grumbling to herself.

Christina and Melisa gave Scootaloo a look with raised eyebrows and Josie whispered in her ear. "Uh, where did you say you met your new friends?"

...

The start of the school year also saw the beginning of Scootaloo's biochemistry class. She had really put in a lot of work on her essay answer to Dr. Moselle, and was elated to find she, an eleventh grader, had made the cut to get into the prestigious college course.

She logged in early, not quite sure what to expect, and was surprised to see she wasn't the only one. It was nearly fifteen minutes until the class was due to start, yet the classroom camera showed nearly every seat already occupied. The graduate student assistants passed out the syllabus for the semester, and as Scootaloo pulled up the document she whistled softly at the amount of 'recommended reading' listed on the document. Some of the books made sense, biology and chemistry texts Dr. Moselle must like, but a few looked strangely out of place, and she couldn't help wonder what 'Guns, Germs and Steel' was about, and what it had to do with a class about biology.

At length Dr. Moselle arrived and introduced herself.

"Good morning, everyone. If you are here today, then it means you made the cut, and indeed most of you should be proud of that. While a few of you struggled on my essay, everyone in this class has promise, and I am looking forward to an interesting semester."

"This is no one's first college class, so I will skim over the obvious. No one is going to force you to pay attention or come to class. If you can ace the tests and projects without showing up for lectures, that's your business, but in all my years, I have only met a handful of people who could do so."

"For everyone here who is not a genius with a hundred-and-fifty IQ, lectures will be the bare minimum needed to get by. Study groups are posted online and around the corner at the student lounge, and you should all plan on joining one. The recommended reading list is long, and I would try to put away one book each week in addition to your normal coursework."

"This is not high school, and I will not be assigning busy work to force anyone to keep up. You all got into this class because you are bright and interested in biology or medicine. Most of my students judge their progress by taking tests I have given in years past, all of which are available on the web site. I don't repeat test questions, but if you can get a good score on an old test, you stand a fair chance of doing the same on a current one."

The lights dimmed and the projector lit up showing someone's essay answer with the name deleted. "Now that the basics are out of the way, let's start the year with a laugh. Only about one person in three did well enough on the essay to be here today, and before we wade into the first lesson, I'd like to talk about some of the answers I received, good and bad. The question was 'why do we grow old and die'"

The screen changed to show a sheet of paper labeled in huge font 'Because god say's so'. There were a few chuckles as she commented; "The other 45 pages were blank"

The next page was an executive summary with highlighted text in the middle of the first paragraph that read 'As all machines wear out, so do all biological machines. Nothing lasts forever, and people are no exception.' Dr. Moselle smiled and changed to the next slide which contained a video clip of a beautifully restored Model T from the 1920's struggling to keep up with traffic on a modern road.

"A good attempt, but short-sighted. Our bodies repair themselves, and any system that can be repaired can last indefinitely, as this photo shows. This poor car may be in like-new condition, but what do you notice about how it's doing in the modern world?"

There was a moments silence before an Indian student spoke up from the front row. "You're saying that the car is poorly adapted to its environment?"

"Very nicely done." She complemented him. "And that's getting closer to the real reason. But let's see a few more attempts."

The screen changed to show a paper densely packed with prose. "This young man was incredibly long winded, and had excellent grammar and spelling, but after reading ten pages in I despaired of finding the point. I'm told he is interested in law."

The screen changed again to a more normal looking paper with the words 'I don't know' highlighted in red. "This was done by someone who was very interested, and really tried to find out, but didn't quite get there. I won't call him out, but he is in this class with us today because he added those three words. He didn't try to make something up, or force an answer to fit, he did the best he could and admitted he didn't have the answer."

"The screen changed again, this time showing something that looked like a shrub in a farmer's field. "Now let's look at some of the high points you found as a class. This is an example one of you found of an exception to the rule; it's not a bush, it's a tree that has been coppiced, or cut back every few years, for nearly a thousand years. This was an old practice of sustainable timber harvesting, but it has been noted that tree species that would normally die of old age after a few hundred years will live much longer if they are cut back over and over again. We see the same thing in bonsai trees, and this inconsistency raises questions about why changing the way the tree lives would change how long it lives."

The slide changed to a picture of a lizard basking on a rock in the barren desert. "Several of you included this example - this lizard is unusual because the species has no males, the species reproduces by cloning itself, and each daughter is an exact genetic copy of its mother. It lives in the barren desert where things change very slowly, and has a very long lifespan.

The screen changed again, this time to someone's essay answer. "One of you said it well when you wrote this: 'all animals and plants can be considered self-repairing machines, and if we can repair ourselves for decades, why does the process end? The answer is in the definition; all machines exist for a purpose, so what purpose do living things serve? We exist to carry on the species. Above and beyond all other reasons, life exists to keep making more of itself to perpetuate the species. Given that, we must then ask how causing an individual to self-destruct after a fixed time helps the species to live on.'."

The view changed again to show a beetle and the desert lizard from earlier. "This student put their finger right on the issue. How does the death of an individual after a fixed time help the species to survive? Our answer can be found in these two examples.

The lizard lives in an environment where resources are scarce and change is very slow, and it has adapted to this by having a very long life, modest litters, and even taken the drastic step of dispensing with males. While this means twice as many lizards are available to perpetuate the species, it also means that they have lost that 50/50 randomized mixing of genes that comes with sex, and so, they have drastically slowed their ability to evolve and adapt to change.

The beetle lives in an a rapidly changing environment where the farmers are using new pesticides each year to kill them off, and that is above and beyond all the larger animals that eat them and all the diseases and parasites that prey on them. They need to adapt rapidly or the species will perish. They adapted to this by having very short life spans and huge numbers of offspring. In short, they have become more evolvable. If you imposed a large change on the lizards, you could easily kill off the species before they could adapt to the new conditions. The beetle species is almost impossible to kill off because they can adapt at lightning speed."

She paused to look over the class. "That is the short answer. The more things trying to kill your species, be it predators, parasites, diseases or environmental changes, the more evolvable you have to be, and that means life spans get shorter. A species with long life spans is well adapted to a static environment, but when adults live too long, that means that there are fewer young ones born, and less genetic diversity to draw on when change comes."

A picture of two killer whales appeared on the screen. "Now some of you actually figured this out and cited exceptions to this rule, and here is one of them. Among killer whales, the females can live on well past the age where they are reproductively active. In most species, the end of reproductive years is synonymous with death, but not here. The reason the females can live on turned out to be tied to the survival of their male offspring. For whatever reason, the male children survive much better if their mothers hang around, and as a consequence of this, the species has adapted to allow mother killer whales to live longer."

The projector switched again to show a big family with kids, teenagers, parents, grandparents and great grandparents, all smiling at the camera. "Based on that information, what does this tell us about humans?"

She looked around the room, and soon a girl in the second row raised her hand. "Yes?"

"It means that humans live past reproductive age because our older generations help the younger generation survive."

"You got it."

The projector began cycling through pictures of people in their eighties and nineties; some were healthy and smiling, but many were in bad shape, reclining in hospital beds or worse.

"Now the problem is that while we understand why we grow old and die, it doesn't follow that we know how. The process is complicated, with many different systems working independently towards the same goal of self-destruction."

She surveyed the class before her. "Most of you are here because you want to go into medicine as doctors, nurses, or researchers. Understand that many, if not out-rightly most of the illnesses you will fight and the breakdowns you will try to repair will stem back to this core drive."

Her voice took on a hard edge. "I asked you this essay question for a reason. Too many people regard old age, illness and death as facts of life, to be accepted." She practically spat the word. "It is not okay to watch our parents slowly die as their bodies fall apart around them. It is not okay to stand at a mother's bedside and watch her die as her daughter cries. Never forget what you are really dealing with. Aging and death are evolved systems to keep animal species alive, but we are no longer mindless animals."

She paused to collect her thoughts before finishing. "Our understanding of biology is finally reaching the point where we can tackle this problem; genetic manipulation can revitalize cells in a test tube, and double the lifespan of worms in a laboratory. The telomerace gene has been clearly tied to progeria, the disease of premature aging in children, and all this was discovered before Ms. Scootaloo brought us her own wealth of genetic information." She added with a knowing glance at the camera.

"We are getting closer, but we're not there yet. The work and research you will perform during your careers will bring us closer to understanding this problem, and I pray that some of you will live long enough to see the breakthrough."

-----------inspired by the song 'Act Naturally' by SemiSonic – Google to listen -----------------

Since the arrival of the new principal the climate at school begun to change. While Scootaloo was used to answering other girls' basic sex questions, she found herself fielding progressively dumber questions from the new underclassmen who had already had Pastor Gray for several years at their middle school. One girl she had only met briefly during the first week of classes tracked her down in the hallway between classes.

"Scootaloo? Do you have a minute? I really need your help."

Scootaloo couldn't remember the girl's name, but did her best to be sympathetic. "Of course, what's wrong?"

The ninth grader gestured for her to follow into an empty classroom and shut the door behind them. She was obviously on edge, wringing her hands and blushing as well.

"I've heard that you know... that you can tell me about..."

Scootaloo smiled and finished her sentence. "Sex, right? What do you need to know?"

The girl looked down at her in obvious distress. "I... I think I might be pregnant!"

'So it is serious.' She frowned to herself as she gestured for the girl to take a seat. "Okay, let's start with the basics; how many methods of protection are you using, and have you taken a pregnancy test yet?"

She looked even more unsettled. "I... I don't know how... We never used condoms, he said they were too hard to get."

Scootaloo made a mental note to find and kick this boy when she was done. "Okay, how many times have you had sex?"

"It... It was only my first time..." Scootaloo reached out and held her hand, nodding for her to continue. "He said... He said he was going to pull out before he was done, but then..."

Scootaloo forcibly resisted the urge to face-palm. "Okay, it's okay. How long ago was this?"

"It was about a month ago... We broke up the day after and..." She trailed off as tears formed in her eyes.

Scootaloo squeezed her hand and tried to calm her. "Okay, it's going to be okay. There are ways to deal with this, even if you are pregnan-"

"But I'm only fourteen! I don't want to be a mother yet!" The girl cried looking down at her belly. "He said he knew what he was doing! I trusted him!"

Scootaloo took the frightened girl in a hug and held her as she cried into her shoulder. Outside the door, the bustle of the crowded hallway was dying down as third period began and the hall monitors herded the stragglers along.

"I'm sorry, but we need to know for sure." She reached into a pocket on her prosthetic and produced a pregnancy test. "I can show you how to use this, and it will tell us if you have anything to worry about." She finished, trying to keep her smile in place.

"Thank you... I... I should never have trusted him! I should never have swallowed! What am I going to do if-"

Scootaloo had done a double take and put up a hand to stop her. "Wait a second. Swallowed?"

"Well yes. I know its gross, but he said he would pull out in time, and then I panicked and..."

Scootaloo shook her head to clear it. "You can't get pregnant from oral sex. You're saying that you never actually had sex?" She finished indicating the correct anatomical region.

The girl followed her pointed finger and looked confused. "Well no, I have to save myself for marriage. You mean I'm not pregnant?"

Scootaloo was still having trouble wrapping her mind around this. "No. If that's all you got up to, then no, you're not pregnant. What fucking moron taught your sex-ed class?"

"Oh, we didn't have sex ed. Pastor Gray said we should practice abstinence, but we didn't really talk about it."

"Well didn't your parents talk to you at all? Didn't anyone teach you anything?"

The girl just looked relived and seemed to really relax for the first time. "Well, my boyfriend did show me some porn he liked... I did my best to learn, but..."

This time she actually did face-palm. "So your only education in sex came from pornography intended for men? Do you have any idea how contrived that stuff is?"

"But that's what he said he wanted..."

"I don't doubt it." Scootaloo deadpanned. "But the Castle Anthrax isn't real, and we are not objects." She sighed. "Here, pass me your phone." She took the offered device and transferred the sum total of organized sex-ed information she had amassed over the years. "Start with Dan Savage's column and read a few pages of that, then follow the directory and don't stop until Christmas. You came alarmingly close to ruining three lives, and you need to learn what you're doing."

The girl regarded her phone thoughtfully, and gave Scootaloo a big hug. "Thank you Scootaloo. Thank you so much. I won't forget this."

She passed the pregnancy test back and headed for the door as Scootaloo thought to herself 'Neither will I...'