Confeatheracy of Dunces

by BlueBastard

Chapter 12 - "Elements of a Good Cheer(ilee)"

Confeatheracy of Dunces

Chapter 12 – “Elements of a Good Cheer(ilee)”

Freedom.

The freedom to move in any direction at the slightest thought.

Oh Celestia how Rainbow had missed the simple, unbound glory of just soaring through the air, without resistance beyond what little was put up by the air to hopelessly block her from speeding into the wide blue yonder! Sure, it wasn’t precisely like it used to be, there was that super tiny detail that was forever, irreversibly altered from the moment that lightning bolt had struck Dash. But the only time she ever cared about the small details was when she was subconsciously watching the ground while flying. She would get used to whatever tiny thing it was that had changed in time, at which point she’d forget what was different at all.

“Hey, keep up your altitude!” hollered out Soarin’, waking Dash from her moment of self-introspective in time to sharply gain height such that she avoided colliding with a tree. The cerulean stallion quickly caught up to his female counterpart once she leveled out. “You may be flying again, Dash, but you sure haven’t improved your ability to pay attention!”

“Hey, I got you paying attention to me, no?” She giggled, before zooming off. With a mischievous grin, Soarin’ bolted right after her.

---

From the ground, Rainbow’s former flight therapist gazed up in satisfaction.

“Feels weird to be back on the ground, watching her fly around after being up there with her for so long, doesn’t it?” said Silver, who along with his wife Dusty were once again with Cheerilee in case their own services were needed, but only as a precaution.

After the eventful teacher flight-off and its suspenseful final lap, Rainbow had proven that she was fully capable of being back on the active shortlist of the Wonderbolts Reservists. To be fully cleared, however, she needed to be put through a strenuous multi-day battery of flight tests to ensure she was truly back in action, as administered by an active-duty member of the Wonderbolts. To nopony’s surprise, Soarin’ literally volunteered before the question was even asked of him, as it was clear to everypony there was a spark between him and Rainbow.

Of course, with Soarin’ around to help Rainbow on the final steps to recovery, there was no need for her team of therapists to collectively make up for the lack of one real physical trainer. Indeed, in the aftermath of the flying race Cheerilee had won against Breakfast Club, Tough Love, and Failing Grade, the council suddenly had found themselves under pressure by Cheerilee, Mayor Mare, and Twilight Sparkle to not only pay Cheerilee for her services as Rainbow’s trainer but give her a significant pay raise for her position as the one-mare faculty of Ponyville Elementary. It wasn’t as much as the collective sums of an entire faculty, but it was still significantly more money being paid than before and ensured Cheerilee would not be leaving the Ponyville school system anytime soon.

The same, however, could not be said of the three unicorns who had gone to such insane lengths to bring her down, all on account of old school rivalries. Cheerilee sighed as the memory of Club’s “justification” of her behavior came forward:

---

When Cheerilee and friends finally got to Riverview Elementary to see what had happened to the other three teachers, it was not a pretty sight. The hole in the side of the main building was significant enough that the whole upper floor possibly would need to be closed off such that repairs could be made over the summer in time for the fall semester. It had been very fortunate that it was a day off of summer school or else there would be a much higher count of injured ponies, possibly even worse. As it was, there were only three ponies being escorted by guardsponies who had gotten to the scene first.

“What happened to their wings?” asked Dusty, confused.

“When Cheerilee spontaneously hit mach speed, she must have caused enough heat from the air friction to disintegrate their magic wings” explained Twilight. Dusty looked over at the princess with a skeptical look, to which the alicorn could only shrug. “Hey, that’s what happened to Rarity’s wings all those years ago when she flew too close to the sun, only difference in her case that it was direct heat from sunlight.”

“So the spell’s that unstable?” Dusty asked.

Twilight shook her head. “No, it’s fairly stable, if you don’t apply large amounts of heat to it. It’s not like it requires volcanic levels of heat to undo glimmer-type enchantments, after all.”

“Probably because the wings are more for show and not true high flying,” theorized Silver. “After all, natural pegasi use most of their innate magic to fly as conventional physics proves ponies would need wings over twice their body size just to fly. Those magic butterfly wings put more into getting the pony off the ground than in the density of the wings themselves.”

“Cheerilee, how on earth did you manage staying sane with your brother in the house?” asked Dusty, facehoofing.

“I’d tell you, but since you’re married to him, it would ruin the fun of you figuring that out,” winked Cheerilee. Any more small talk was cut off when Club finally noticed Cheerilee was present and within shouting distance.

“This isn’t over, you good-for-nothing excuse of a pony!” she screeched, held back from simply attacking Cheerilee outright by the guardponies flanking her.

“Ok, enough of this,” nickered Twilight, who then walked over toward the raging unicorn. “Breakfast Club, as you have aimed to do nothing but continuously interfere with Ms. Cheerilee’s ability to help rehabilitate Rainbow Dash, I want to know why your actions to hurt at least two ponies who I am very good friends.”

“You want to know why I’ve gone to all this trouble, princess?" CIub snarled, having passed the threshold where she had she been slightly more sane it would have been obvious being snappy to the local alicorn ruler was only going to make things worse. Ignoring the horrified looks on Grade’s and Love’s faces, Club fully intended to give a piece of her mind on the matter: “It’s because I hate her with every breath of my being! I can't catalog the number of reasons I hate that Faustdamn mudpony, but if for nothing else she has no right to thinking she’s as smart as the unicorn she is not! She has been a fucking thorn in my side since the first day I saw her, and if that mudpony knew her place, maybe - just maybe - she would be tolerable!"

“What?!” Now it was Cheerilee’s turn to be outraged, boldly charging forward to get up and personal with her eternal nemesis. “You mean to tell me you’ve been trying to ruin my life for decades because of nothing more than simple tribalism? Because of the simple fact you want to prove you’re somehow better than me?”

Club snorted, as if tiny cartoon puffs of air came out of her nostrils. “I wouldn’t expect somepony like you to understand that there are three separate pony races for a reason. Especially not one who doesn’t respect the social class she’s bor-“

“You actually think anypony gives a damn about that anymore?” interrupted the purple schoolmarm. “I don’t know what’s worse: the fact you are the only pony who does or the fact I used to think almost the same thing! But if nothing else, having been turned into a pegasus twice has only served to remind me that ultimately it doesn’t matter what kind of pony you are born as, only who you are as an individual.

“So yeah, I may not be able to move things around with my mind or other things I normally need my hooves for, and I may not be anything more than the lone teacher at Ponyville Elementary, but you know what?”

Club never broke her glare into Cheerilee’s green eyes. “What?”

“At least I don’t need to be somepony who has never grown up from being a school bully.” Suddenly, Cheerilee grinned. “Though at the same time, if it hadn’t been for you trying to get my date wrecked, things wouldn’t have turned out they way they have. So, if anything, I have that much to thank you for.”

Club moved her head back a bit in shock. “E-excuse me? What on earth are you thanking me for doing?”

“This.” With nothing further to say, Cheerilee turned and trotted away in confidence. To Club’s further shock, she saw her life’s greatest enemy stride right up to the suddenly present Big Mac, kissing him on the lips chastely before turning back around to face Club, only now with Big Mac’s foreleg draped around the back of her neck.

Club looked on in shock, but that didn’t last long as a shadow suddenly covered her face. That shadow belonged to one literally royally-irate princess. She fanned her wings open, both for effect and to increase the surprisingly menacing look.

“While we’re at it,” Princess Twilight Sparkle said to her humiliated subject, “let’s discuss a little thing you just committed called lese majeste.”

---

“Helloooo, you there Cheeri?” asked Big Mac, waving a hoof in front of her face.

“Huh, wha?” quipped the educator, blinking as her mind snapped back to reality. “Sorry, uh, I zoned out there.”

“I’ll say,” chuckled Silver. “Soarin’ and Rainbow left for her place five minutes ago. Dusty says she can already hear the wedding bells in their wake.”

“Ah ya sure she was hearin’ weddin’ bells and not…” Big Mac didn’t finish his sentence, instead smiling and waving his forehoof in circles.

“I should smack you for that,” laughed Cheerilee, who chose to kiss her stallionfriend on the cheek instead. In turn, Big Mac simply ran his foreleg down his marefriend’s wingless back.

“Sure was nice of Discord to take yer wings off,” idly commented Big Mac, “though Ah’m guessin’ he was in a really good mood fer some reason?”

“Well…” replied Cheerilee with a wink, “let’s just say the go-to chaos spirit in all the world needs assistance sometimes.”

---

“C’mon!” hollered out an exhausted Failing Grade. “Salvation is only five hundred feet away!”

“I…I think we can make it!” added Tough Love.

“Oh Celestia my back!” cried Breakfast Club, dragging herself by her forehooves to the maze exit. Of all the cruel punishments that could have been leveled on her and her co-conspirators, it would have been enough to not only suspend them from teaching for a full year, but revoke their tenure and force them to go through whatever retraining they would need to be allowed to teach again.

But naturally, that hadn’t been the end of it: On top of all that, it was determined that they also should have to learn to appreciate pony special diversity like Cheerilee had done by temporarily becoming a pegasus. Thus, for the same amount of time that Cheerilee was a pegasus, the three unicorns were to spend their lives as earth ponies, without horns and all their natural magical abilities for a few weeks.

And then to add insult to injury, they were not only joined by none other than Perfect Demeanor who had simply just been fired from his job for effectively causing incalculable amounts of damage in his part played in wrecking Cheerilee’s life, but the quartet collectively were put at the mercy of Discord as his proverbial lab rats, their sentence period to be spent testing out his Nightmare Night maze prototypes.

The ultimate punishment, however, was the fact Perfect Demeanor ability to perfectly hide his emotions was only surface-deep. They hadn’t even passed the first real jump scare before he passed out in pure fear and thus forced Club to carry the deadweight pony on her back through the entire maze...or else they’d be teleported back to the maze beginning, twenty miles back, and forced to start over

As the three pseudo-ex unicorns and the dead-to-the-world stallion dragged their bodies over the threshold of the maze’s exit, they found a draconequus clad in a spotless white lab coat, comically taped –together-bridged spectacles, and a clipboard he was jotting notes on.

“Honestly, you can’t even handle hauling him around?” chided Discord. “Back when I subjected the then-regular Twilight and friends to one of my mazes, I made Rarity think some random boulder that happened to be in the gardens at the time was a diamond as large as Princess Celestia. Both she and Twilight – the latter knowing it was a rock the whole time, I might add – hauled “Tom” around and combined those two whined less than you! And Tom weighs four times as much as that prissy prissy pony!”

“Do…you have…any…idea…how heavy…this jerk is?” grunted Club, unceremoniously dumping Demeanor off her back as she struggled to her hooves.

“About a quarter of a ton, not all that different from the average weight of a pony,” nonchalantly answered Discord, who finished writing on his clipboard and flipped it around so that his notes were visible to the ponies in all their mockery-of-fine-art doodled glory. “Anyway, other than your disappointing weight bearing capacity, you all did fairly well so I think a break for the rest of the day is called for.”

“OH THANK CELESTIA!” cried out Grade, Tough Love merely nodding as she was too tired to answer.

“I wouldn’t be so hasty about that giving of thanks,” cryptically commented Discord. He then snapped his fingers, a flash of light changing everything around both him and the ponies. When their blindness faded away, the ponies saw they were now seated in Canterlot University’s lecture auditorium. Specifically the front row.

“Unh…somepony get the license on that mailpony?” asked the now-stirring Perfect Demeanor.

“You mean that weird, apple-shaped cart thing with wolf-ponies in it?” sarcastically answered Club. “Oh, you also owe me that thousand bits back for having to haul your sorry plot through that maze.”

“Mouths shut, eyes forward!” interrupted Discord’s voice, now coming from a slightly older looking brown unicorn. “Now, as you need to be retaught how to be good teachers, during your, ahem, ‘sabbatical’, I figured it would be a good time to brush up on your lecture skills. Fortunately, a good friend of mine directed me to a very bright university student who is working on her masters in geology. So, I’ve invited her here to give a lecture as she would love the practice and the glowing feedback from experienced teachers such as yourselves.”

“Sure…” cautiously commented Tough Love, “and just who is this pony, exactly?”

Discord grinned widely – which immediately put everypony on edge as it had just the tiniest bit of chaotic insanity to it that couldn’t mean anything good was in store. “Ladies and gentlepony, it is my greatest pleasure to introduce…Ms. Maud Pie!”

On cue, a slate-gray earth pony dressed in a eggplant-hued dress walked in from one of the stage doors, her violet mane and tail done up in straight, no-nonsense lengths. “Hello, everypony, I am Maud Pie, and I appreciate you being here to help me practice my thesis for my rocktorate.”

Perfect Demeanor knew exactly what was in store and wished he was still out like a light. “What kind of a monster are you?!” he wailed, pointing an accusatory hoof at Discord.

“Oh, I wish I could take credit for this one, but…” He then snapped his hoof – the fact snapping a hoof was physically impossible – and in a flash Fluttershy was now beside him. “You know what they say about the quiet ones.”

The four entrapped ponies looked among each other in disbelief. “You…you can’t be serious!” laughed Club, her guffaws hollow as she hoped this was all a bluff.

“Oh, I’m as serious as you were trying to hurt Cheerilee,” flatly said the chiffon-haired pegasus. “Because apparently you didn’t even care how that was going to impact Rainbow, who was the only reason Cheerilee had to become a pegasus simply to teach her to fly again. So you were hurting my friend as if she didn’t exist, and if there’s one thing I don’t tolerate, it’s those who hurt my friends.”

A loud ringing then sounded out, prompting Discord to check his watch. As he rolled his sleeves back, a tiny clock tower emerged, strapped to his foreleg and sounding off an entire orchestra’s worth of bells. “Ah, we’re running late for afternoon tea, my dear Fluttershy!” He then looked over to the speechless audience. “I’m sure you’ll all be ready to resume maze testing when tea time is done, won’t you? Ciao!”

Before anypony could respond, Discord and Fluttershy vanished in one last flash of light, leaving the four troublemakers at Maud Pie’s tender mercies.

“Well then, shall we begin?” Asked Maud, before apparently recalling something important. “Actually, before we start, there is something else I need to do first.” She then pulled out a small notepad from her dress. “Perfect Demeanor, is it? My sister Pinkie said you were a huge fan of my poetry, so I wrote one to lead into my thesis presentation. Hope you don’t mind.”

As the most monotone-narrated poetry ever heard by ponykind was read off, Club finally re-evaluated that she had been wrong about earth ponies being inferior. What they lacked in magical feats, they more than made up for with their ability to be completely evil when it came to getting their revenge.

---

Meanwhile, back in Ponyville that evening, it was anything but torture by poetry at the house owned by Cheerilee’s parents.

“A sponsorship deal?” asked Stronghold, “Really?”

“Yeah, apparently they want me and the girls to appear in some short commercial in front of movie features for an award for Owlolicious - I think they called him a ‘Superb Owl’ or something - or something,” explained Rainbow. “Twilight, in particular, loved the idea.”

“They want the princess in that?” scoffed the older unicorn. “Who exactly is making this request of royalty again?”

Rainbow shrugged. “Some toy company named ‘Hansen Bronies’ though what they have to do with hoofball events is beyond me.”

“I’ve never even heard of those ‘brony’ things their name is based off of,” interjected Swiftsprinter, who had brought over more tofu burgers for her husband to grill up on the backyard cooker. “And ‘Hansen Bronies’ is a bit of a mouthful, why don’t they call themselves ‘Hansbro’ or something easier to say?”

“Because somepony would get their tail tied into knots over it,” suggested Rainbow. “Seriously, these are the kind of ponies who think they can make anypony into an alicorn princess.” The two pegasi mares and unicorn stallion had a good laugh at that.

Cheerilee saw her parents and Rainbow laughing – what they were laughing about she didn’t know, but she didn’t really care, either. She was just happy, closing her eyes and breathing deep.

“Feels like forever since we all had a tofu cookout as a family, doesn’t it?” asked Silver, walking up and nuzzling his little sister.

“Well, we haven’t had much occasion to do so since somepony decided they were better than the rest of the family and went off to Manehattan to go save lives or something boring like that.”

“It’s nice to know what you really think about me, sister-in-law,” mock-growled Dusty who strode up alongside her husband. She then dropped her faux-anger as she smiled. “But really, you should turn into a pegasus and have mid-life crises more often.”

“And you want me to repeatedly damage my psyche because…?”

“Then every time Silver and I leave, your parents will have awesome tofu cookouts!” squeed Dusty. “Truly, your dad is a fantastic griller on these tofu burgers and if this is all because we gotta go back to our crappy jobs back in the Big Apple, then we need a reason to come back to Ponyville just to leave and have more parties thrown!”

“Well, sorry ‘ta disappoint,” said Big Mac from behind the trio, “but Ah think Ah’d prefer if mah girl didn’t keep goin’ insane simply so Stronghold has to make more tofu patties.” He then copied Dusty by walking up alongside Cheerilee, feeling her lean into his side almost immediately. Reaching back, he produced four bottles of Sweet Apple Acres cider and passed them out to the others.

“Because it’s been such a good idea for my sister to get wasted,” semi-joked Silver as he popped off the bottle cap. “Because somehow, Sweet Apple Acres has the magical ability to produce alcohol that gives ponies wings.”

“Well, then we might as well get high together!” laughed Cheerilee, as the two couples clinked their bottles together before throwing their heads back and downing their bottles in one go, drinking for a happier, cheerful future for them all.

Author's Note:

The End...?

Comments

[Fresnor]

Wolf-ponies in a what? Did you really think you could slip that reference through?

[Flynt Coal]

This was a fun story. I'll admit, a lot of it is kinda contrived, and there's still a few instances of "run-on dialogue" like in your other works. Still, it was a unique idea and accomplishes what it sets out to do!

[Bugsydor]

Thanks for sharing this story with us!

[BlueBastard]

5961380
What, you think ponies can't write with their hooves?

[Vva70]

5961449

Have you ever seen a pony write with hooves in the show? Because we've seen multiple ponies write with their mouths. Including Rainbow Dash, multiple times.

[BlueBastard]

5962544
iambrony.dget.cc/mlp/gif/458450__safe_animated_scootaloo_apple%2Bbloom_sweetie%2Bbelle_ponyville%2Bconfidential_loop.gif

[Vva70]

5962705

Huh. I'd forgotten about that. Well considered. But for further consideration, I present:

img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20131209105601/mlp/images/7/77/Rainbow_Dash_writing_in_journal_S4E04.png

img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121102114442/mlp/images/d/df/Rainbow_Dash_writing_on_clipboard_S2E07.png

img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120919145539/mlp/images/1/18/Rainbow_Dash_Winking_S2E8.png

img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140407094630/mlp/images/7/79/Rainbow_highlighting_the_book_S4E21.png

[Rhawkas]

Those Top Gun soundtrack chapter titles. XD

[avidreader07]

I just noticed something, on my third read-through...or is it my fourth? My fifth? Eh, who cares. Last chapter, the three crashed into Forest's Edge school, but they were pulled out of Riverview school. Or was their crash really that bad?

[BlueBastard]

9960640

Heh, nice catch. I'll get around to fixing that over this upcoming weekend.

[Zubric]

Overall an enjoyable little story