“Now class, this is a really interesting statue.” Cheerilee pointed at the sculpture in question. “He has the head of a pony and a body made up of all sorts of things. What do you suppose that represents?”
“A late-night rendezvous between a snake, a goat, and Apple Bloom’s mom?”
Apple Bloom turned to Scootaloo with the scrunch-faced fury of a thousand irate kittens. “Oh, it’s on now, cloud-sucker!” She sprang at Scootaloo, tackling her to the ground.
Nearby, Sweetie Belle checked her non-existent watch. “Three minutes into the field trip. That’s a new—”
“Sweetie!” yelled Apple Bloom. “Stop referencing future memes and hold her wings down for me!”
Scootaloo batted the other filly’s flailing limbs away. “Geez, Bloom! Can’t you take a joke?”
“My parents are deeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!!!”
“That’s a ‘no’, then.”
The two continued grappling like a pair of intoxicated octopi. As a tumbleweed breaks and shatters against the inevitable cliff face, so too did they smack into the statue. Instead of breaking into little pieces, however, they simply rebounded with a sound like a baseball bat hitting a watermelon.
Scootaloo sat back up, shaking her head. She had just enough time to notice the statue swaying ponderously, and then it tipped and fell over, sending another font of dust into the sky.
“Scootaloo?” Apple Bloom called, picking herself off the ground. “We just cut this thing short, didn’t we?” she said to Sweetie Belle.
“More like squashed it flat, I think,” she said, cocking her head at the fallen statue. The smooth white stone had splintered all along its surface, but was otherwise intact. “Oh, nope, she’s still alive.”
Scootaloo looked up at them with a blasé expression, despite the fact that the statue’s open maw was all but clamped around her neck. With an audible “pop”, she extricated herself from the mouth. “So yeah,” she said, “what’s up with that statue, anyway?”
“Well,” said Cheerilee, frowning. “I was going to explain exactly what it was, but now that you’ve gone and ruined it, I think it’s best that I dole out punishment instead. You started the fight, Scootaloo, so you’ll have to make up for it.”
“Oh, okay. So, what, am I going to have to write an essay on how fighting is bad?”
“Oh no, I think this calls for the most powerful weapon in the teacher’s arsenal.”
“Bad grades?”
“No.”
“Suspension?”
“No.”
“Late-afternoon meetings in the darkened basement of the schoolhouse that must never, ever be mentioned to your parents, fellow students, or future offspring?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of… tedious manual labor.” She smiled wide. “It’ll build character!”
Scootaloo’s anguished cry would’ve split the heavens, if they had cared enough to part ways for her.
“Great, so now I’m stuck in this big maze while Ms. Cheerilee and the rest are probably laughing it up in some ice cream parlor somewhere. It’s not right. Sure, she’s the teacher and all, but she can’t just leave me here unsupervised! Heck, this isn’t even her garden! She doesn’t have any authority here! Ah, but she still somehow gets to order a little filly into the maze to start picking up trash, which I’m pretty sure is against, like, all child labor laws.” She suddenly cut short her expository rambling, looking around. “And now I am so freaking lost.”
“Oh no, I’d say you’ve been found.”
“Really, Talking Hedge?” she said to one of the nearby hedges, which, unbeknownst to her sense of irony, was only capable of whispering. “Well, good to know at least one of us is an optimist.” She blinked. “Wait.”
Casting her gaze upward, Scootaloo beheld not the faraway clouds, but something much closer and hovering just overhead. It looked down at her the way a chameleon eyes its dinner while on acid.
“Well, hello there, my little chickadee!” it said.
Despite her mouth’s protestations, Scootaloo managed to make it cooperate. “...What?”
The thing grinned, spreading its arms wide. “Now you… You can call me… ‘Toola-Roola.’” His grin suddenly turned stone-faced. “But only if you’re partial to getting your ears replaced with hedgehogs and having an angry god of anarchy use you as a butt-scratcher!” His grin returned. “If not, then call me ‘Discord! Lord. Of. Chaos!’” He held out his paw. “Charmed.”
Scootaloo searched for some grand inquiry, one that would perfectly encapsulate the myriad questions cart-wheeling through her psyche. “…What?”
“Y’know, you remind me of myself at a young age, back when all I cared about was juggling unicorns. Word of advice”—he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, one claw pointed skyward—“if you juggle a unicorn, mind the pointy end.”
She wormed her way out of his chummy embrace. “No, seriously. What?”
“Really? I wasn’t clear enough?” He sighed. “Oh, and here I thought a kindred spirit of mine would be more… bright.”
Scootaloo looked at him with a level stare. “Yeah, okay, crazy statue-guy. I’m just going to keep trying to find my way out of here. See ya.”
“Aw… You just want to leave it at that? Without me telling you about how important you are?”
Scootaloo’s better judgment told her to keep walking, but then her ego jumped it with a knife and dragged it into a dark alley. “Okay, I’ll bite. What are you talking about?”
“Like I said, we’re kindred spirits, you and I. You take death like a champ, I laugh in the face of it.”
Her eyes widened. “Wait, you know about that? You know what’s going on with me?”
“Hmm…” He grinned. “Maybe I do.”
“Well, tell me!”
“I think it would be best if I showed you instead. Here, watch.”
He snapped his talons with a bright snap, and suddenly, a rubber chicken hit Scootaloo’s face at mach six.