• Published 2nd Mar 2012
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A Dream - totallynotabrony



A not so standard human-in-Equestria story including but not limited to: democracy, tequila, and robots.

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School Daze, part 1

“I don't think that's correct, Valiant.”

“Well, you try writing a children's history book.”

Twilight stared at me. “I have. And I didn't start it with the beginning of the universe.”

“Where do you suggest I start it?”

“Something the kids can relate to, such as with our contemporary times and only then introducing what happened before.”

“Maybe, but I still like the comprehensive approach.”

“Well, at least fix the typo.” She pointed at the first line of the book. In the beginning, the universe was created with a big wang.

“I'll think about it.”

Twilight gave me a look, but shook her head and turned away to continue packing her suitcase.

I was writing a history book because that was a good excuse to ask about stuff. Doing a hard reset on the world led to some weird changes. After stripping a deranged Gabby griffon out of the universe and shutting her away in a little pocket globe holding facility thing, and then also doing some weird reversed time stuff, I noticed that apparently there was some lossy compression to reality. It had gotten to the point that I was actively looking for glitched pixels in the sky.

Worse, I was the only one who noticed those changes because I'd seen what happened in the future I'd prevented, so I had no idea what the new present was like.

However, only some of the changes were due to Gabby being gone. I was still trying to reconcile what the hell had happened to change the unrelated rest of the stuff.

Twilight grabbed her suitcase and placed it next to the door. “All right, I think that does it. I’ll be off soon to Silent Hill.”

“What made you decide to finally step up to the plate and properly administrate?” I asked.

“Well, I just decided it was time to ensure Silent Hill is turned from a barren wasteland into a nice place to live,” said Twilight.

“It has nothing to do with the Celestia-appointed governorship hanging over your head?” I said. “That up until now you’ve never done anything with.”

“Well, you just said Silent Hill is a barren wasteland,” said Twilight.

Not that Twilight. There was another one sitting there.

She looked nervous and not entirely comfortable in her skin. She wore glasses. She didn’t need them, but I had insisted she wear them so I could tell the two of them apart. I don’t think she liked the attached nose and mustache.

Twilight, the original, looked at her for a moment, and then said, “Valiant, can we have a word?”

The two of us walked into the back room. In a low voice, Twilight said, “Explain to me who she is again.”

“You know how there’s those whole alternate universes thing?”

Twilight had been there a time or two. To several of said universes. “So you pulled in a duplicate of me.” She tilted her head. “Are you...going to miss me when I go to Silent Hill?”

“That’s ridiculous. You remember how I’ve occasionally tried to kill you.”

Twilight did not appear convinced. “I’ll tell you what, Valiant. I’m going to be receiving a substantial income from the crown to make Silent Hill a functioning community. I can redirect some of that to be used for building an idea that I’ve been thinking about for a while, a friendship school.”

“That’s a terrible idea.”

“You think. But this is a great opportunity. Teach the alternate me about friendship. Solve friendship problems while I’m gone.”

“Why should I?”

“Because if you don’t, I’ll come back.” She smirked. “Prove you don’t really like me.”

“You want me to do your friendship-related work for you to prove that we aren’t friends?”

“If you don’t do my friendship-related work, then we are friends.”

“This doesn’t make any sense, but I get the feeling that no matter what I do, I’m not going to like the outcome.”

“It’s tragic, isn’t it?” said Twilight. “But turnabout is fair play. I don’t know how many situations you’ve engineered for yourself like this.”

Many. “So you’re just going to go off to a barren wasteland with nobody else around with your stipend and probably a trainload of books and wait for me to show that I’m not good at friendship?”

“That’s it.”

Jesus Christ, I knew Twilight was good at chess, but I didn’t think she had it in her to be a chessmaster. Worse, until I got my head around all the changes to the universe, I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to kill her and set off even more butterfly effects.

“Have a nice trip,” I said through my teeth.

Twilight smirked and went back to the front room. She picked up her suitcase and Spike. “I’ll leave you Owlowiscious. He doesn’t like cold weather.” She left for the train station.

“Bye.” Spike waved.

“Hoo,” said Owlowiscious. I wasn’t sure that he was thrilled to be left here with me. He flew upstairs.

That left me alone with Twilight, who was taking off the Groucho Marx glasses. Apparently she was perceptive enough to see the doppelganger go and conclude the distinguishing glasses could come off.

“I didn’t say you could take those off, Sparkles the Wonder Horse.”

“You can just call me Twilight.”

“Eh, it’ll be weird. Twilight’s still fresh in my memory, and that memory is hate.”

“What did she do to you?” not-Twilight asked.

“That’s a story for another time.” I checked my watch. “I have to be somewhere soon. You know what? The other Twilight’s gone, so we’ll just call you Twilight.”

“But I am Twilight.”

“Shut up, Twilight.”

I left the library and headed for my place. Twilight hurried after me, legs not quite coordinated. “Where are we going?”

“I’m going to the bar.”

“I thought you had an appointment.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m not going to the bar.”

I checked my watch and stepped through the door, raising a hoof. A mug of beer landed in my grip as the door opened.

Guinness, who’d thrown it, didn’t look up from the bar.

I finished it by the time I sat down and Guinness had another for me. Apparently noticing purple out of the corner of his eye, Guinness raised his head. “I thought you left, Twilight.”

“She did,” I said. “This is Twilight.”

There was a moment of silence. I put down the empty glass and Guinness automatically got me another. “Yeah,” I said, “I probably should have kept calling you the other name, Twilight. Now everything is confusing. This is all your fault.”

“S-sorry.”

“So who is she?” Guinness asked.

“I told Twilight that I brought the version of her from another universe here.”

I’m sure he caught the undertone, but decided not to ask. Instead, he changed the subject, “So you’re about to be a grandfather.”

Gutpunch. Okay, yes, my adopted daughter who was almost as old as me and her girlfriend were about to be parents. I drank while considering it. “I guess so.”

“Which one of them is having it?”

A couple of people had asked that.

I changed the subject as Guinness changed my glass. “Also, before she left, Twilight wanted me to run a friendship school that she was setting up with misappropriated government funds.”

“Oh boy.”

Yeah, that about summed it up, me running a school.

Cheerilee was going to be pissed.

To celebrate, I had another beer. I saw Twilight looking at me and said, “You want one?”

“Is she old enough?” Guiness asked.

“Our Twilight is like the equivalent of a grad student or something,” I said. I didn’t actually know how old she was. That would imply that I remembered her birthday.

Guinness nodded and got her a beer. I’d already finished mine and he got me one, too. Twilight took a sip. I offered my glass and she clinked hers against it.

Then sixteen reams of paper teleported in with a burst of dragon fire, thudding to the floor, and Twilight choked on the rest of her beer. I finished mine before looking around to see what the commotion was.

I glanced at the sticky note on top the stack. Twilight had really been getting a lot of use out of those since I’d been the first one in Equestria to invent them. I read it while drinking the next beer.

Valiant,
This is all the paperwork you need to set up a school. See the instruction manual I wrote for you on top the pile to get started.
-Twilight
(Spike note: this is going to suck mailing all this.)

I sighed and picked up the bound pages on top the pile and flipped through it. Apparently I had to go in front of the Equestrian Education Association and convince them to let me set up a school. All the forms had already been filled out and sample copies of the curriculum produced.

“This is going to be boring,” I said. I looked at Guinness. “Can I hire your hired help to do it for me?”

“What are you talking about?” he said.

“Coloratura.”

“Countess Coloratura doesn’t work here.”

“I meant her sister, a waitress who used to work here, that looks a lot like her and whose name I’ve never bothered to learn.”

Guinness looked confused. “As far as I know, Coloratura doesn’t have a sister, particularly not one that looks a lot like her and whose name you’ve never bothered to learn.”

Huh. So the universe reset had eliminated Coloratura’s sister that looked a lot like her and whose name I’d never bothered to learn. I was mildly disappointed, but then I guess I didn’t really care about her if I didn’t even know her name.

“Well, I guess we should get started on this school thing,” I said. “I want it done as soon as possible.” Though maybe I could use the school as a front to conduct more research on the changes to the universe. “I think we need to go to Canterlot. I’ll fly us there.”

“Can you fly like this?” Twilight said hurriedly. “You’re drunk.”

Guinness and I burst out laughing.

“Please,” said Guinness, “he’s only had seven drinks.”

I paid the tab and led Twilight out the door. I mean, technically I was going to leave the flying to Tin Mare, but that was only because it was easier than doing it myself.

She’d overheard the conversation from my earpiece and was already warming up when we arrived. I dropped the stacks of paper in the back.

“Hi Valiant, going somewhere?” asked a chipper female voice.

“Who’s that?” Twilight asked. She already knew Tin Mare. Of course she did, a seventeen ton death machine tended to make a memorable first impression. But a younger, upbeat voice was not something she had heard before.

“This is Libby,” I said, indicating the smaller aircraft folded up in Tin Mare’s cargo area.

“Hi, I’m the Lightweight Interceptor for Baddass Bombing!” Unable to do anything else while folded up, she blinked her lights.

“H-hi,” said Twilight.

“Who’s this, Valiant?” said Libby. “She looks like Twilight but she doesn’t fit the biometric profile.”

“She’s like Twilight,” I said.

“Uh…” Twilight looked at me, apparently uncomfortable at being so closely scanned.

“Don’t mind Libby,” I said, “she’s got a few figurative screws loose. I could fix literal loose screws, but I’m having issues dialing in her personality.”

“Will you be needing weapons support today?” Libby asked.

“It depends on how this meeting with the school board goes.”

“Oh, nice,” she said. “I have my .88 Magnum ready to go, depending.”

It took me a second. “Jesus, that’s dark. Tin Mare, how do you let her get away with this?”

“It’s your programming job,” she reminded me. “The original personality was strong, and rather than modifying it, I suspect you overcompensated.”

“Maybe,” I acknowledged.

“Wait, what’s this about an original personality?” Twilight asked.

“Don’t worry about it.”

Tin Mare flew us to Canterlot. We went to the Equestrian Education Association. For some reason, the EEA’s headquarters was a dungeon.

I walked into the room, kind of a sunken pit in front of the magistrate, with Twilight and the huge load of papers. Around the room, a bunch of old people looked down on us from their desks.

“I am Chancellor Neighsay,” said the guy in the center. I took an immediate dislike to him. He just had one of those faces, voices, and attitudes, you know? Not to mention, never trust anyone with the title of chancellor.

“We expect you to do things by the book,” he went on.

“Okay,” I said.

“You don’t speak with conviction,” he said, staring down his nose at me.

I remembered my campaign to be a nice guy. I remembered my desire to shove my success in Twilight’s face.

Instead of replying to him directly, I just handed out copies of documents Twilight had made. “This is apparently the curriculum.”

The board members reviewed the work silently for a few minutes. Neighsay eventually looked up. “This is extraordinarily well written for someone of which we’ve never heard.”

“It was written by Twilight Sparkle,” I said, nodding to Twilight.

Under my breath, I muttered, “Quick, act like Twilight.”

“But I-”

“Oh really?” said Neighsay. He shuffled a few papers. “I have on good authority that she has recently taken up a governance position.”

“Right, senior leadership,” I said.

“Fortunately, the EEA does not answer to anypony, not even the Princesses.”

Wait, really? A school board with the power to overrule heads of state? Though, presumably given that power by said immortal heads of state? I was going to need to look into this further.

“However, in recognition of several letters from said Princesses, we hereby grant provisional EEA approval to open this school of friendship.”

Did Twilight really lean on the royalty, desperate to make it more likely that the school would be opened despite me being involved? Playing dirty.

Neighsay went on. “We will need to observe your school up and running before it can be fully accredited.” I barely heard him. Apparently I was running a school now.

No one was more surprised than the girls when I told them back in Ponyville. We had gathered in the back room at the Half Pint, which despite the universe restart was thankfully still there.

However, what really threw me for a loop was how much some of them had changed.

Rainbow Dash was a mom. I mean, she was technically a mom before, but she’d accepted her role and gotten a mom haircut. And related to the haircut, she was apparently a hairdresser now. I vaguely remembered her doing something with stylish cloud manes, but I was flabbergasted that this was apparently her new career. Also, she smelled like smoke for some reason.

Fluttershy seemed to have a little bit more willing control over her slaves, Daisy, Lily, and Rose. She’d either accepted their care and feeding or just gotten used to the idea.

Rarity was sporting some kind of punk look with torn vest, spiked collar, and a short, three-toned mane. It kind of resembled the dyes that someone had dumped in her ocean self.

Applejack, as far as I could see, was still herself and herself and herself. The meat puppets hadn’t gone away.

Pinkie wasn’t gay.

As I was trying to wrap my head around it all, Applejack prompted, “So you wanted to talk to us about something?”

I explained about Twilight, Twilight, the school Twilight wanted built, and how she wanted the six of us to be teachers. Reactions were mixed, to say the least.

I read off a list of notes from Twilight. “We have a huge responsibility, and we all need to do this by the book. Specifically, that means no cannons in class, Pinkie.”

“Aww, not even a teeny cannon?” She pulled out a teeny cannon. It was smaller than her hoof. Kind of cute, but I didn’t let myself be distracted.

“No. Also, all you had to do was ask me for a handgun if you wanted a teeny cannon. But I digress. Now we need to get the school built.”

I played the montage music. The six of us, with our various skills and abilities, and with skycrane support from Tin Mare, got the place put together pretty quickly. Twilight had already filled out the building permit for a location at the base of the nearby waterfalls and also drew up the building plans.

We deviated from plans slightly.

At any rate, opening day came before we knew it. The girls had all taken teaching positions. The new Twilight, supposed to be a student but a little too old, I’d slotted into a miscellaneous administrative position. I’d wanted to be the superintendent, so I didn’t have to actually deal with kids, but Twilight-in-absentee had been very clear that I was supposed to be the principal.

I was really starting to hate her, which unfortunately meant her plan was working.

At least she’d already done all the recruiting for us and a ton of kids from around the world showed up.

I’m not good with names, but I caught half a dozen. It was weird seeing kids already forming cliques.

My attention was distracted when a young female yak walked in. Or rather tripped and headbutted a wall. “Hey,” I said to the teachers as the group of us stood across the room from the front door, “I thought all the yaks were all dead.”

“You don’t think they took those remaining two male yaks and-” Fluttershy began.

“I specifically told Twilight not to do anything weird with those guys and just let their species die out with dignity,” I said.

“This student also looks much too old to be newly born from two dads,” said Rarity.

“That’s not exactly a limitation,” said Rainbow. They all looked at me.

“So you’re saying some other person out there has the technology to create artificial offspring and decided to make a clumsy yak?” I said. “Not likely, on either count.”

At least Yona the yak seemed to be making friends. Thorax the changeling king brought a little changeling for the school called Ocellus. I wasn’t sure if she was his kid and that indicated he wasn’t ambiguously gay with Sunburst anymore or if it was just another changeling kid. Gallus, who was apparently Gilda the griffon’s brother, had come. Ember the dragon, who was looking much slimmer these days without the huge dragon symbiote on her lower body, had brought a dragon almost as big as she was named Smolder. Based on coloring, she could have been Scootaloo’s sister. I sure hope the universe hadn’t twisted that far. There was an earth pony colt named Sandbar. And also apparently a hippogriff princess named Silverstream.

“What the hell’s a hippogriff?” I said, staring at the kid from across the room. “Some kind of pony/griffon hybrid?”

“Hippo/griffon hybrid?” Pinkie suggested.

“Eagle/pony hybrid,” said Rainbow.

We all looked at her.

“What? It was in a Daring Do book.”

I left them to the teaching. None of them really seemed enthusiastic, but with Twilight’s lesson plan at least they didn’t have to think for themselves.

I retired to my office where Twilight was waiting. “So...friendship,” she said.

“Yeah. It’s a thing.” I sat down at my desk, which was clean. Clearly I hadn’t worked there very long.

“How do I…’friendship?’”

“Good question,” I said. “I guess that means making friends.”

“How do I find friends?”

“Well, sometimes they come to you. Sometimes you share a common interest or something.”

“How do I find ponies with common interests?”

This was getting annoying, but Twilight had told me to be a teacher.

“I guess find your hobby and look for others with the same one. What do you like to do? I know you’re not the real Twilight, so I can’t say if your cutie mark means the same thing as hers does.”

“Er…”

Sensing that going on a cutie mark quest would quickly pull in three filles who would not make the situation better, I quickly jumped in. “You know, just try stuff. Art, medieval history, phlebotomy, poetry.”

“How does one do poetry?”

“It’s easy, just jam a bunch of rhyming words together. ‘On Dasher, on Dancer, on Prancer and Vixen; On Comet, On Cupid, and Richard M. Nixon.’”

That shut her up for a while. Thanks, Tricky Dick.

I made a few notes and to-do lists. Running a school was hard. Twilight broke the silence after a few minutes. “What’s this about superheroes?”

I looked up. She’d found a comic book, presumably one of Spike’s that had somehow found its way into the office.

“Yes, that’s a perfect hobby,” I said, seizing the opportunity. It would keep her out of my hair and give her something to do. “You should be a superhero.”

“Er, how?”

I folded my hooves on the desk and smiled. “This may take a while.”

That afternoon, I had a walk around the school to see how things were going. Everyone seemed to be getting along. Of course, the girls each had their own unique teaching styles. I was still glad it wasn’t me actually doing the teaching.

Suddenly, a blue portal opened and Chancellor Neighsay stepped out.

“Oh,” I said.

He stared at me while writing on his clipboard. “You seem unprepared.”

“What should I be prepared for?”

“The EEA inspection to determine whether this school is able to function on an approved level.”

“Oh. Well, I think we’re doing okay.” I led him around. He didn’t say a word, just constantly wrote on his clipboard.

We came to the first classroom. The desks were piled up and the young yak was doing a trust fall from the top down to the other students. I heard Neighsay’s pencil break.

“Irresponsible teachers and endangering ponies!” he shouted. “Where did you even get dangerous creatures like this?”

“Like what?” I asked.

He pointed, indicating some of the students with mute rage on his face.

“Okay, I’ll give you that I didn’t expect to see a yak either,” I said.

“Not just that!” he shouted. “Dragons, griffons, is that a changeling?”

“Hang on, I had something for this.” I dug out some notes Twilight had given me, a quick reference guide for questions that might come up. “Twilight says if there are inquiries about non-pony students, Princess Celestia helped pick the student body and reached out to heads of foreign nations.”

“For what purpose?” Neighsay demanded. “They should stay with their kind.”

“The note says friendship isn’t just for ponies.”

“How do you know these creatures won't take what they have learned here and use it against us?”

I stared at him. “...because friendship is no match for air superiority?”

“When I said by the book I meant an actual book, not notes from somepony who isn’t even here!”

I glanced at Twilight’s quick reference guide, which being written by Twilight, actually was a small book. “I’m just repeating what it says.”

Neighsay harumph’d in that way only pretentious old guys can. “Do you even know what you’re doing here, what kind of trouble you’re in? Does your little pamphlet cover what to do when faced with such a serious inquiry from the EEA? What does it say about that?

My patience was at an end and I couldn’t help myself. “It says you’re a little bitch.”

I was kind of beginning to understand Twilight’s fear of magical kindergarten if this was how schools were run in Equestria.

Neighsay’s eyes bulged. “By order of the EEA, I am shutting this school down!”

Shit.

Neighsay stomped off. I turned back to the classroom. All the students were staring at me.

“Uh, school’s out.”

Goddamnit, Twilight. You might just live to rue the day you made Plymouth Valiant a schoolteacher.

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