I shall continue my little tale on the proceeding morning. That being, sometime after I entered school, I found out that I had been assigned the worst seat in class—front row, spitting distance from the teacher’s desk, and that the person behind me was an air-headed ingrate of a filly that liked to kick at the back of people’s chairs, notably, mine.
Now, it’s not all bad. The desks that we are provided are not actually desks, but interfaces to the school’s server computer that fold out of the floor along with our seats; they even make a gnarly Star Trot-ish sound as they do so.
Of course, having one’s own computer in class would usually mean that some idle moments would be wasted playing video games. But, as aforementioned, I’m in the front row. And some of the other level one drop-outs in my class are flank-kissing dweebs.
I won’t go in depth about how dreadfully lame school is, how boring Miss Bearskin our teacher is, or how the first few hours in the new classroom dragged on in a big display of foreshadowing the rest of my school year, but I will touch on one thing, one strange event that happened during one of the few intermissions.
Some of the not-so-fine-looking girls behind me were whispering to one another. You know that particular kind of whisper a girl can do that manages to cross the entire room and reach the ear of every pony in a kilometre radius, while still somehow conveying that you shouldn’t be listening?
Yeah, that kind.
“I know! I got one of the letters last night too, it was awesome!” said airhead Numero One.
Numero Two leaned in closer. “Me too! And, I got to see the Great Protagonist, in pony.”
They k’awwed.
I almost puked.
“Well, are you going to go to the gathering tonight? I heard that it’s going to be, like, super risky to go there,” said Numero One.
Airhead Three nodded. “I know, but it’s going to be so awesome. I heard, and this is the truth, I heard it from my cousin’s brother’s boyfriend’s aunt’s best friend from childhood. Anywho, they’re saying that they can increase your level there. Tell you how to become way stronger, too, and they’re talking about bringing down the entire level system in the school.”
My ears perked and swerved around; suddenly these boring archetypal and highly stereotypical mares were interesting. So, I did the stupidest thing ever: I turned around. “Hey, is that true?” I tried to whisper like they did, but ended up sounding like a suffocating frog with rabies.
“Like, duh, of course it’s true,” Airhead One said, her eyes spinning like an off-balance gyroscope. “Here, take this and leave us alone,” she said with all the politeness that I was expecting from somepony whose IQ was in the lower (single) digits. She then grabbed a ratty piece of paper with her wingtips and brought it just close enough that I could strain my neck out and bite the tip.
Unfortunately, class restarted soon after and the time I had to actually check out the pamphlet ended. (Which looked like it had been printed by an elderly mare who did not know the flank-end of a printer from that of a donkey.)
When the bell finally rang, I bolted. The nifty thing about not having to bring anything to class is that you don’t need to bring things out of class.
Lunch gave us a whole hour to cram food into our gullets, finish off homework we should have done last night and wander around talking to our friends. Fortunately for me, there was no homework, I was too cheap to wait in the long lines to eat a hot lunch, (and so had packed myself a stallionwich) and I had no friends. (As of yet.) That left me with an entirely too big quantity of time to do nothing but wander around the school.
The large, dominating and slightly intimidating school.
It was, as I told you already, divided into twelve sections, one for each level in the hierarchy. Of course, since there's hardly any level twelves or elevens in the entirety of Equestria, that leaves some bits rather empty, so, they’re used for all the other faculties you’d expect in a school. Clubs, swimming pools, high-end medical facilities. You know, the usual.
In between some of the sections are little courts, just spots with some grass and trees and flowers and all that crappy landscaping junk that tries to make it not seem like we’re surrounded by kilometre-high skyscrapers.
I found myself, mostly alone, in the open air between the level one zone and that of the level twelves, sitting on a park bench as I gazed at the pamphlet. Look, I’m not one for getting hooked into scams or thinking that telemarketers are anything but annoying gits, but I have to tip my figurative hat to the sod who wrote this thing.
It was a single page of A4 paper folded into three panels of glorious anti-institutional inspiration, meant to hit at the heart and make one wonder if this city really was telling us the truth. And the images of this guy, ‘Trick Star’ as Crosshatch had called him, were both oddly intimidating yet eerily able to inspire confidence in this weirdo. On the bottom of the last page, in small and humble print, was the location and time of the next event and gathering.
It was tempting, as I sat there between greatness and failure, to maybe go and check the place out. Maybe.
I slid off the wooden bench and began trotting to the nearest exit when, much to my eternal woe, Black Ruby stepped out of the buildings. Her long locks of blonde mane shivered around her perfect face like a crown of whips while her eyes, the narrow blue slits that they were, zeroed in on poor little me and fired.
“You,” she said, and nopony doubted that the subject of that “you” was in trouble.
“Well, looks like you caught me, haha,” I replied, my forehoof scratching at the nape of my neck while I tried to think of an excuse to be elsewhere. Any where.
“Yes, and there will be no more evading me, Tight Wedge.” Ruby strode towards me, her gentle hoof falls like thunder to my ears. “We are going to talk, and I want some honest answers.” Her horn glowed a deep indigo blue and out of the ground around me came tearing a collection of thick, ethereal tentacles that wrapped themselves around my limbs.
Okay, so I was, in a single word, about to be tucked into a grave.
The spell she had used was a level five or maybe six binding spell, tough to pull off so quickly. (The only reason I know this is because I spent days reading on spells and magic and stuff, like a kid looking at his daddy’s special magazines because he knows he’s never going to get what he sees in it.) Now, this sort of spell can be undone with just about any level three defence spell or, with a little time, a level two bind-breaker.
But you should know by now that I suck at magic.
“Okay, so, you wanted to talk? I can do that, talking’s good. Conversation solves problems. Building bonds is good. Stops ponies from doing irrational things, like murder,” I began to say as calmly as I could, as if this wasn’t set up like some freak BDSM daydream. “What’cha wanna talk about?”
“Us, I want to talk about us. You, you ungrateful fool, asked me, a young lady, out to dinner. Every night for the past three weeks I’ve come and waited at the appointed place but you have never shown up.”
Two responses came to mind. The first went something like this: No I didn’t. And the second: You cray-cray lady. Thankfully something about adrenalin rushes can sometimes help you in the matters of thinking.
“I’m, I’m very sorry, Miss Ruby, but I truly don’t recall ever asking you out.” I began, thinking even faster as a glare began to cross her pretty little forehead. “Think about it, how could I ever forget asking such a beautiful mare out to dinner? I would be the worst of stallions to forget such a momentous occasion!”
She let go of me.
Flattery: one.
Crazy mare: zero.
The tentacles loosened their deathly grip from around my legs and dissipated into thin air while Black Ruby sat on the ground, her skirt welling around her flank. “I-I guess it’s a possibility, however faint, that I might have misused my abilities to an extent. If that is truly the case, then I apologize.” Her eyes climbed up from the ground and looked into mine, both holding such a passion and power that they made my blood run cold. “But if you are lying to me, beware.”
She spun around and left. My lungs emptied a breath that I wasn’t aware I had been holding back. Well, that was stressful, but life had to move on, preferably in a direction opposite that in which Black Ruby was moving.
Now, where, exactly, would a hot, popular, and capable mare never be found during her spare time? Why, the library, of course!
And damn did Academy City have one helluva library.
I mean, sure, the current mayor of the city and principal of the school which was built under her direction is Twilight Sparkle, and everypony knows that she likes books, but still, I think they went a little overboard.
Think of the biggest collection of books possible. Now double it. That’s what you’ll find in the tiniest shadowy corner of Academy City’s library. It’s the wet dream of bibliophiles everywhere. So I found myself trotting to one of the many access-points into the building and past the X-Ray scanners that dotted the doorways.
Personally, I’m not the biggest fan of reading. Really, only idiots read all the time. (Hint hint.) But I could still appreciate the towering stacks of books and the twenty-four floors of literary achievement.
The pamphlet was still tucked in my trousers and I intended to look it over once more before the bell rang and we all had to rush back to class. And so, I began making my way to a rather quiet section of the library dedicated to the “art” of reading. A place where the only sound was the occasional sniffle, cough or the rustle of a page as it turned.
Well, most of days that would have been the sound coming from there.
Today, we had entertainment.
A large, overly-built pegasus was huffing as he gestured and whispered at a librarian whose patience seemed to be reaching its end. “I’m telling you, Miss Worm,” Omni Disciplinarian said with his head shaking from side to side. “Dewey Duodecimal Classification is fine, but for a small-town library. The range of sub-classes is far too narrow to accommodate this many books! I’m just suggesting that we could all save a lot of time if you switched to a Universal Duodecimal Classification system which is both much more accurate and will organize the books in a fashionable fashion.”
“Fashion does not matter, young sir, and I do not wish to entertain you with an in-depth discussion over the classifications of books in this library!” the mare began to wail at him in a high-pitched tone.
I turned tail, deciding that there must be other places where Black Ruby wouldn’t hide, places where I might not be recognized by strange pegasi and roped into their woes.
Of course, there’s one issue with turning around suddenly when you have a body built on the horizontal. You might run into something, or somepony.
“Hi!” Happy End said as she smiled at me in my frozen Oh-God-I’m-going-to-run-into-this-obstacle form. “How’re you doing today? Not that this day in particular matters in the greater scheme of things. In fact, I think that most days are rather wasted in terms of advancement and ingenuity.”
I’d almost forgotten about crazy number three. At least this one was mostly sane and enjoyable to both look at and talk to. “Hi, Happy End,” I said before trotting around her and heading for a pair of seats by the entrance. She followed. (This Casanova has the smooth moves.) “What brings you here?” I ventured.
In answer, she reached over to her back to where a few books were balanced and grabbed them, presenting the titles to me while simultaneously managing, not only to smile, but also to not drool over the covers. “Booksh!”
The one read: The End is Neigh. Why Bother? and the other: Leading an Optimistic Life, How to be Happy Before Your Eventual and Inevitable Demise. Could have seen that coming. And: Advanced Plant Care and Placements. Okay, that one I was not expecting.
She placed them on one of the seats and picked the one beside it, effectively using the tiny bundles of paper as a shield between the two of us. “That pamphlet you have,” she finally said, her crimson eyes hovering over my flank. (Where the pamphlet was held, perv.)
“Oh, um, that...”
“I got one too,” she admitted, turning her gaze away from me. “Not sure how I feel about it, you know? Sure, on the one hoof I’d love for life to be fair in every way and for me to be a level or two higher. But on the other hoof, life isn’t fair, and it never will be. Why go against the city so much if all you gain in the long run is a tiny change in reform that really means nothing?”
That sorta made sense. Sure, I was stuck in the pits—shiny, high-tech pits—but even if I was a level two, my magic would still suck and the city would still think of me as little more than educated manual labour. Also, why was it that every time I met this filly she had me thinking philosophy? “So, does that mean you’re not going to the gathering thing?” I asked.
“Why, you’re asking me to go with you?” she replied, grinning at me as a few locks of her neon pink mane fell and shaded her eyes.
What. The. Tartarus. What’s a stallion supposed to say to that? Is there so much as a single logical response to that sort of question other than senseless blubbering? “Um, ah, if you want to come with me?” Suddenly, random get together in the middle of some warehouse filled with fanatics sounded like a really good idea, if she was at my side the entire time grinning like that, that is.
“No, not really.”
Count of times I’ve made an idiot of myself in front of a pretty girl: Five, I think.
Thanks to the laws of drama the bell rang at that precise moment, drawing her attention away from the glowing ember that had become my face. “Huh, got to go, Tight. Maybe I’ll see you on the way there though?” she asked, winking at me before hopping off the bench, grabbing her books and trotting away.
Well, shit.