Nozomu Itoshiki trotted along quietly in the light of the setting sun, small motes of dust gently swirling up as his hooves hit the ground. He was on his way to teach his weekly evening class, yet as he thought of this he sighed morosely; true, he was the one to suggest the idea of them to Miss Cheerilee, and he was the one who had intended to teach these weekly classes in the first place, but that didn’t change the fact that these weekly classes seemed to bring him more frustration and despair than he usually felt. Perhaps it was something to do with the way in which he was delivering his teaching materials to the class?
He paused and thought about this for a moment, before shaking his head dismissively and carrying on. Soon he reached the entrance to the classroom; late as usual, he knew that inside awaited nine mares who were expecting him to teach them a variety of interesting new material – yet whether he really wanted to was another matter entirely. Lifting up the lower half of his kimono, he glanced towards his cutie mark momentarily before letting the kimono fall back; he gave a shrug, sighed softly, and prepared himself for the lesson ahead before throwing open the classroom door.
“SURPRISE!”
Nozomu leapt back in shock, taken aback by Pinkie Pie ecstatically leaping out into the doorway from who-knows-where. His jaw hanging open, he glanced into the room and saw streamers, banners, confetti and balloons all scattered about; the tables had all been pushed together on one side of the room, a cloth strewn over them and covered in an assortment of party snacks. In the middle of the room stood the remainder of his students, all wearing eager grins and donning party hats.
“Hi, Pink Supervisor!”, Pinkie Pie began rambling, “I remember when I first saw you and you were hanging from a tree and I was all like ‘NO! You can’t do this!’ and then I almost killed you but then I didn’t and then I paid you to let me call you ‘Pink Supervisor’ and then you declined and ran off but then I realised that I hadn’t seen you before so I started planning a ‘Welcome to Ponyville’ party for you! But before I got a chance to throw you a welcome party you got your cutie mark which is when I realised that you would never have had a cute-ceañera so I thought that I could throw you one of those too which is when I thought it’d be a good idea to combine both into one so that that way we could welcome you to Ponyville and have your cute-ceañera at the same time, so the fun would be doubled! But ‘cause I don’t know where you live I wasn’t able to throw it at your house so I thought the next best place would be here ‘cause I know you’d show up here since you show up here every week to teach your lessons so this would be the best place to throw your party and-”
Pinkie Pie stopped her excited tirade when she noticed tears beginning to well up in Nozomu’s eyes. “H-hey, are you okay?” she asked worriedly.
After a short pause, Nozomu responded “Y-you did all of this…for me?”
“Of course, silly! Not only are you new to Ponyville, but you just got your cutie mark recently too! It’s only right that we celebrate both of those wonderful things, so this party’s just for you!”, Pinkie giggled, pausing before adding “That is, if you’d like to postpone today’s lesson for the party…”
There was another momentary pause; then, Nozomu responded, “W-well…seeing as you went to so much trouble, I’d hate to see it all go to waste, so…”
Pinkie Pie began bouncing up and down excitedly as she squealed “Yay! Then let’s PARTY!”, before she grabbed Nozomu by the foreleg and quickly pulled him inside, slamming the door shut behind him.
It wasn’t long before the festivities were in full swing, and everypony in the classroom was having a good time – even the normally-despondent Nozomu Itoshiki. Despite it being his party, he was quite content to sit in the corner and quietly sip at his beverage, watching his students as they eagerly chatted away with one another all the while. Occasionally one of them would strike up a short conversation with him before returning to the party; for the most part, however, they just left him be, realising that he was just simply that kind of pony.
When somepony began talking to him, Nozomu often found that the most common topic of interest seemed to be where he came from and his reasons for coming to Ponyville – a question that Nozomu didn’t really mind answering, though admittedly that was partly because answering it now would save having to explain it all later.
Nozomu had just finished talking to Colgate when he noticed Fluttershy approaching, seemingly intent on asking the same question as all the others.
“Ah, Fluttershy,” he remarked, “let me guess; you’re wondering where I came from and why I came to Ponyville, am I right?”
“Um, well, sort of…that, and why you haven’t really, um…’despaired’ that much today,” she agreed.
“Well, I’ve been given a party celebrating my newly-acquired cutie mark and my recent arrival in Ponyville. There isn’t really much to despair about there,” he admitted, before pausing and glancing off thoughtfully, “Although now that I think about it…”
Sensing where this was going, Fluttershy interrupted “Um, you were going to tell me a bit more about yourself?”
Nozomu shook his head and turned his attention back to Fluttershy. “Ah, yes. That’s right. Well, pull up a seat and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
Sitting down, Fluttershy asked “So, um…where did you come from, anyway?”
“Well, I originally came from Japony. I’m born and raised Japonese, along with my siblings, and was originally a high school teacher when I lived over there. After a while, I became interested in what I could both learn from and teach to ponies in other areas of the world; so, after learning some basic Equestrian, I decided to travel to Equestria and begin teaching evening classes over here. I thought Ponyville would be as good a place to start as any, so…here I am,” he explained, making a sweeping gesture with his hoof as he finished.
“Oh, wow. Well, that certainly is interesting. Tell me, what’s it like over in Japony?”
“That depends on the region. For example, where I’m from is an area not too different from Ponyville, with one or two cities nearby.”
“Ah, I see. Well thank you for your time, Mr. Itoshiki. I hope you enjoy the party.”
Nozomu smiled and raised his glass in appreciation. “No problem. Thanks for asking.”
As she turned to walk away, she paused for a moment and added, “Mr. Itoshiki?”
He looked back up from his drink in confusion. “Yes?”
Turning back to him, she sheepishly asked, “Well…when Pinkie Pie met you, she said that you were ‘trying to make yourself taller’…although I know what she meant by that now…and I was just wondering...why?”
“You mean, why was I trying to hang myself that day?”
There was a moment of awkward silence from Fluttershy. “Um…yes.”
Sighing, Nozomu shook his head and replied, “Well…it was mainly because-”
Before he could finish, however, he was interrupted by a loud clatter on the other side of the room.
“Berry Punch! What do you think you’re doing?” Twilight yelled.
Nozomu and Fluttershy turned their heads to see Berry Punch with her head shoved in the punch bowl, greedily slurping away at the liquids within, while Twilight stood nearby with an expression of both rage and horror plastered on her face. Berry lifted her head out and hiccupped, giving Twilight a drunken grin as she did so. “C’mon, Twilight, take it eeeaaasy…” she drunkenly chuckled.
“No, no, no! What you’re doing is disorderly and unhygienic; you’ll contaminate the punch for everypony! I mean, you should at least be using a cup!” Twilight argued.
“Uh, Twi? I don’t think it’d make much difference at this point anyway,” Lyra pointed out.
“What I’d like to know is how Berry got drunk in the first place. Nopony even brought any alcohol to the party…” Colgate murmured in the background.
“So? Proper etiquette should still be maintained at all times, even at a party like this!” Twilight objected. Suddenly, she levitated a book out from her nearby saddlebags titled ‘The Dos and Don’ts of Good Party Etiquette’ and began to read aloud, “Chapter 14, Section 9, Subsection H; ‘when one is consuming punch or a similar beverage garnered from a bowl containing said liquid, one must always use a cup or similar beverage container in order to prevent the possibility of backwash in the liquid and so in turn decreasing the risk of contamination within the beverage’”. She levitated the book up to Berry Punch’s face and shook it back and forth vehemently, “See? Proper party etiquette indicates that you should be drinking from a cup, not shoving your whole face in there!”
Suddenly, she froze and levitated the book back in front of her face, wildly flicking through the pages as she skimmed them over. “Actually, now that I think about it, there are a pretty big number of Don’ts at this party, anyway…”
After a few moments of silence, Twilight slammed the book shut and began running around the room, levitating objects back and forth as she re-organised the multitude of supposed “don’ts” within the room.
“Oh, great…she’s having one of those ‘by-the-book’ moments again!” Colgate lamented.
Nozomu and Fluttershy had now joined the others in watching Twilight’s frantic flurry of organisation as she continued to whirl around the room.
“Wait…do you mean to say that she’s always like this?” Nozomu asked.
“That’s right. Twilight Sparkle is the most methodical, organised and precise pony I know, and always manages to complete every task she undertakes to an excellent degree of detail,” Rarity confirmed, shortly before adding, “…although there are a few times where she goes a bit over-the-top in doing things ‘by-the-book’, as you can see now…”
Nozomu’s face began to contort into a scowl, as he glanced towards Twilight with distant eyes. “Is that so? It seems that even here in Ponyville, one cannot escape the presence of those with an overly-analytical nature. You see, many will analyse a situation or an object in order to either determine the best possible outcome to the situation or to learn more about the object in question; but if one proceeds to over-analyse said object or situation, then they may discover something about the thing they’re analysing that deep down they never truly wanted to learn! And while being precise is by no means a bad thing, over-precision may eventually lead to such a degree of accuracy that one can see no other course of action save for the one that they have pinpointed with their own precision!”
Growling in desperation, Nozomu threw his head back and screamed, “I’M IN DESPAIR! This world full of overly-precise and excessively-analytical ponies has left me in despair!”
After a momentary pause, Bon Bon pointed out “But…the reason why you’re in despair so much is because you’re always over-analysing everything in a negative light. So…isn’t that kind of hypocritical?”
There were a few murmurs of general agreement from the other students (sans Twilight), causing Nozomu to freeze awkwardly for a few moments before suddenly remarking “W-well…in any case, we need to find a way to calm Twilight down before-“
“There! All done!” Twilight chirped happily.
The others turned to face her and admired her handiwork. Surprisingly enough, spontaneously re-organising the majority of the decorations had actually caused the room to garner a more festive appearance.
“Um…nice work?” Nozomu commented uneasily.
“Thanks! Now the party is entirely accurate and by-the-book!” Twilight remarked proudly, levitating the book back towards her saddlebags.
“Well, I guess that this particular party does look more orderly…” Rarity suggested offhandedly.
The book froze in mid-air, as Twilight turned to Rarity with a perplexed look on her face. “Wait…what do you mean by ‘this particular party’”?
Rarity quickly shot Twilight a nervous grin and stammered, “Oh, um…n-nothing, darling! I was simply commenting on how…n-nicely…you’ve spruced up our little get-together…”
After a few moments silence, Twilight turned back to her book with a thoughtful look and replied “You know, you’re right, Rarity…I’ve helped to ‘spruce up’ this party, but there are probably a couple of other parties out there that are still disorganised!”; she turned towards the door with a look of determination etched onto her face, proclaiming “And as the unofficial party organiser of Ponyville, it’s my job to make sure that those parties are orderly and by-the-book!” as she began to gallop towards the door, book hovering in tow behind her.
“Hey! I thought I was the official party organiser of Ponyville!” Pinkie objected.
Twilight paused for a moment in the doorway and added, “That’s why I said I was the unofficial party organiser of Ponyville,” before galloping out through the doorway.
Everypony stood there awkwardly with confused looks on their faces, a moment of silence passing before Fluttershy asked “Um…shouldn’t we go after her?”
“Yeah, that’d probably be a good idea,” Colgate remarked, “I mean, we don’t want to risk this turning into something on the scale of the Smartypants Incident...”
“Ugh, don’t remind me about that. I’ve still got bruises from where Lyra thumped me”, Bon Bon added, grimacing.
“Hey, I said I was sorry! We were both under a mind-control spell, remember? And anyway, you bit me!” Lyra retorted.
Nozomu cocked his head to one side, staring at the others with a bemused look on his face. “Uh…what are we talking about now?”
Pinkie glanced over at Nozomu and dismissively commented, “Oh, just some incident where Twilight went crazy and almost caused the complete destruction of Ponyville.”
“And I ended up wrestling with the mayor!” Ditzy joyfully supplemented.
“So, it looks like we’ll have to cut your party a little short…sorry, Pink Supervisor,” Pinkie apologised dejectedly.
“Um…well, if it’s to prevent the complete destruction of Ponyville, then…I suppose it can’t be helped?” he replied confusedly.
“Don’t worry! We’ll have another party to make up for it some other time!” Pinkie reassured him, before turning to the others and adding “Alright, everypony! Let’s split up and find Twilight!”
The mares emptied from the classroom quickly, and it wasn’t long before Nozomu was left standing there by himself. Initially he simply stood glancing around the room filled wall-to-wall with party decorations, but eventually he sighed and began to clear up the organised chaos left behind by his students. As he proceeded around the room and removed the various decorations, he shook his head and mumbled a sordid truth he’d just realised moments ago.
“All the ponies in this town are crazy…”