TWO YEARS AGO: Kids in America
TWO YEARS AGO
San Palomino, California
Founded in 1893 in Canterlot – then still called Camelot, having shifted from its original name of Poverty Flats a year prior – the Zacherle School of Manners was designed to edify the minds of young girls of the growing town. Created as a sister facility to the Muenchinger Boys School, while the latter took its inspiration from the great schools of Munich, Germany, Zacherle was based on the namesake school founded at Zacherle Castle in Belgium, where the genteel young ladies of Europe were educated and encultured.
That was over a century ago.
Now located in the city of San Palomino (which became independent of Canterlot in 1947) the now-named Zacherle Academy for Girls (as well as the since-renamed Muenchinger Institute for Young Men) still served the same purpose – but as times changed, so did the school. With the current focus of educating the top young ladies in the Canterlot Metro Area, it was more than just about teaching them manners and etiquette. It was about making them highly-successful members of society, and this Zacherle did, so much so that it was perpetually listed in the top twenty-five “All-Girls High Schools in America” list, and often frequently within the top ten itself. A quick list of distinguished alumni of the school could easily be mistaken for a Who’s Who list of distinguished American women of the 20th century:
Speedburst, Olympic athlete whose world record for the 400-meter relay had yet to be broken;
Maui Gingerflower, world-famous folklore musician;
Sweet Orbit, vaunted mathematician who had worked on the NASA Apollo program;
Hearts Aflame, celebrated activist and philanthropist;
and finally, no list would be complete without Zacherle’s most famous alumnus: Princess Platinum, senator and stateswoman, the so-called “Unbreakable Diamond of California” whose name had become legend in the halls of Congress.
This was the Zacherle Academy of today. And though the past remained, it was frequently updated for the future. Even the school’s team name and mascot, the Princesses, had been updated from the original elegant and virginal Disneyfied beauty of the past to a modern animesque badass in knightly armor. It was a maxim that if you were a Zacherle girl, you were either going to be the textbook example of success…or the woman who eventually rewrote the rules.
And now a new generation of girls was to join the vaunted ranks of the Zacherle elite.
Row after row of freshmen, dressed in the telltale maroon blazers, black skirts, white shirts and striped red ties of the school, joined the other students there: the glad-to-not-be-freshmen-anymore relief of the sophomores, the breezily-experienced juniors and the ready-for-their-final-year seniors, all facing the front of the assembly, where the school’s headmistress, Mrs. Honey Lemonade (herself a Zacherle alumnus and a history maker in her own right) addressed the student body, with the faculty seated behind her, as well as three girls: the student class president and the school’s two “divas”. While the former was normal, the latter was a uniquely-Zacherle touch: the school had semi-formalized the naturally-occurring concept of a student “queen bee” and although the divas were not formal members of the student government they had just as much limited authority and responsibilities, one being a check and balance for the other and vice versa.
Approximately a hundred girls sat in the freshman seats, most having graduated from Crystal Prep earlier in the year, though many came from some of the other private schools and a few even from public institutions. All of them ready to make their mark on Zacherle and the world.
But few had already earned themselves nicknames before coming to the school. And in this case, for Twilight Sparkle, valedictorian of her graduating class at Crystal Prep, as well as her cousins, had earned the nickname of “the Five Sisters”, for their generally insular nature and small, self-contained circle. That wasn’t to say that they weren’t friendly or helpful to others, but rather that in the world that was high school, with cliques to be found and groups to be created, theirs was a naturally-existing one already.
“We’re finally here!” Sonata cheered softly. “High school girls!”
“I really don’t think much has changed, Soni,” Octavia whispered back. “I mean, I don’t feel any different than yesterday.”
Adagio snickered. “Because you only pay attention to your bass, Tavi. If you’d notice, there’s a whole world out there. Like that sophomore in the other row that keeps looking at you.”
“Only you would notice that, Ms. Social Butterfly,” came the response. “Besides, you know I don’t swing that way.”
“You know I’m only teasing you, cuz,” Adagio said with a smile.
“Yeah, besides, knowing how flirty sis can be, she’d probably try to hook up with her first,” Aria jibed and got punched in the calf for it.
“Be nice, Ari.”
“Hey, don’t blame me, okay? I guarantee every girl’s going to be looking at Tavi’s chest during the Lingerie Follies.”
“The what?”
“Girls, let’s talk about this later, okay? I really want to hear what the class president has to say.”
“Figures that you’d want to focus only on scholastics, Twily. You really need to pay more attention to the world around you!”
“I have you all. I don’t need anyone else,” Twilight insisted, and her four cousins just sighed.
Phoenix Temple brushed her blonde hair out of her eyes. Despite her Chinese name, she was American; she explained that her name came about from her parents having lived in Beijing for a number of years. She was the student council president and the presumed valedictorian. “I’ve heard a lot of good things about you, Twilight Sparkle. I have no doubt that you’ll probably be standing up there when the time comes.”
Twilight blushed. “Thanks.”
“Oh, c’mon, Pheo, don’t make her turn red!” With her bright red hair and eyes, Gleaming Light was one of the two divas. “That’s Umi’s job, anyway.”
The other diva, Umi, was a Japanese girl whose father worked at the local Japanese tourism bureau. They’d lived in the US so long, the blue-haired girl had pretty much Americanized herself. “Well, I know which girl I want to see up on stage.”
“You would, you lesbo,” Light countered.
“Damn straight,” Umi laughed.
“Um…about that….” Octavia began. The three seniors looked at each other and then all laughed.
“Don’t worry about it,” Light insisted.
“I won’t ogle too much, I promise,” Umi replied.
“Okay, you two,” Phoenix told them. “Look, it’s true: as part of the freshman class Initiation Week, yes, you have to wear lingerie for a whole week. But only on campus and within school buildings – so you wear your uniforms to and from school and PE uniforms during PE, obviously.”
“Don’t forget about the Follies!” Umi said.
“Down, girl,” Light sighed. “Yes, and on the last day of Initiation Week, there’s a talent show that you have to do. While wearing the lingerie and yes, expect some of the hornier girls around here to probably try to soak you with water.”
“Is that even legal?” Adagio asked.
“It’s tradition, so chalk it up to borderline,” Phoenix admitted. “Be thankful that you didn’t attend when we were freshmen. They still had the Minerva Show then.”
“Do I even want to know?” Aria asked.
“Like the Follies, but completely in the nude,” Light replied, blushing slightly.
“Hey, I got to meet my first girlfriend out of it, so it wasn’t that bad,” Umi drawled.
“Ignore her – she’s a slut,” Phoenix said about her friend.
“And proud of it!”
“I…am never doing this again.” Twilight was in a full-body blush, so much so that it almost blended well with the racy, lacy purple number she was sporting.
“I didn’t think it was that bad.” Probably wearing the raciest of all of them, Adagio looked perfectly calm.
“Figures. The Social Butterfly amongst us is perfectly fine with being in her intimates in public!” Octavia said, trying desperately to cover up.
“Look, girls, it’s a mindset. We’re all girls here, and I think that’s the whole purpose of this past week,” Aria pointed out. “Besides, it was kinda fun and we participated in something that’ll probably be gone by the time we’re seniors.”
“You think?” Sonata asked.
“Tavi, how many girls asked you out?” Aria asked, and the response to that was Octavia immediately trying to hide behind the nearest plant. “See, my point is made. I’m sure when these stupid traditions were made, they didn’t think much of it. But now that we know lesbianism is a thing, they don’t have to worry about just the guys from Muenchinger’s that have been trying to spend the whole week sending drones over.”
“Sending drones over? With cameras?” Twilight squeaked.
“Oh, yeah, Twily,” Aria responded. “The archery club’s sophomores were specifically tasked with sticking around after school with instructions to shoot down any drone they see. Apparently, Fletcher Feather managed to even nail a two-in-one that caught footage of…well, a two in one, if you catch my drift.”
Octavia fainted.
“Fuck you, Dazzle. Stick your brownnose elsewhere, got it?” the junior said.
“You hit my cousin,” Adagio said, standing as the lone bulwark between the older student and a bleeding Twilight who was being administered to by both Octavia and Sonata.
“She fucking deserved it, the plagiarizing cunt!” another junior replied.
“You both are idiots, okay? She was up all night working on that science project – don’t blame her for the fact that she’s smart enough to figure out what you, two years older than her, can’t.” Adagio gestured to the bruise on Twilight’s face. “Plus, you hit her – that makes it my business.”
“Figures the Five Sisters stick up for one another,” the first one said. “Which one of you gets to fist her?”
“Good one, Straw!” the second girl said with a malicious grin.
Adagio sighed. “I’m going to let that one slide because I’m actually amazed you used enough of your brain to come up with an insult that intelligent, Strawberry,” the younger teen said. “But that’s all you get. You’re sliding on thin ice already. So, let’s make this clear: you ever touch my sisters or my cousins and I will straight-up fuck your day over, got that? You’ll be bleeding out of places you can’t pronounce.”
The second girl, Coral, got right in Adagio’s face. “You’d better be ready to back those words up, Dazzle. I’ve been doing kung-fu since I was a kid, and I guarantee I will wipe the floor with your shit-eating gri—”
Coral went down instantly, gasping for breath, much to the shock of her friend…who had never seen Adagio move. As Strawberry looked at the younger girl in shock, Adagio smiled. “Yeah. Knows kung-fu my ass,” Adagio said simply. Looking down at the fallen teen, she said, “You know I didn’t put much force behind that one-inch punch, stupid drama queen. But you also know that if I can do that, I will break you before you even lay a hand on me.”
“You bitch!” Strawberry seethed.
“Whatever. That’s the last warning you get. Stay away from us or I will tear you a new asshole, got it? In fact, spread the word: don’t fuck with me. I have very little patience for that sort of thing.” She turned away from the junior and walked back to where the others were, as Aria showed up with Light in tow.
“I didn’t…I didn’t mean….” Twilight was sobbing.
Sonata hugged her. “Don’t ever apologize for being smarter than them, Twily,” the youngest triplet said. “We love you and that’s all that should matter.” The Five Sisters embraced their fallen one and Light walked over to where Strawberry was helping up Coral.
“You kicked the viper’s nest, didn’t you?” Light asked the two.
“Fuck you, moonlight twat,” came the response.
“Yeah, still being a pointless thug, I see, Coral. And I had such high hopes that you’d grow up someday. Guess that’s not happening. Well, word of advice for the remaining time you’ll be a student here: you picked the wrong girls to try to bully. There’s something about those five that…well, walking naked onto the boys’ campus would probably be safer. Not that you don’t do that already, I suspect.” She frowned. “Just be smart and stay away from them or you’re going to pay.”
“I’m not afraid of that cunt Adagio.”
“She’s not the one you should be afraid of,” Light warned. “They all follow Twilight, and Twilight is leagues smarter than you. She’s the one you should be afraid of.”
Light’s words turned out to be prophetic two weeks later.
Twilight stormed into the AV room, rage in her eyes, approaching a bunch of her fellow freshmen who were laughing their asses off. “Which one of you is Remix?” the teen seethed.
“I’m Remix,” a girl with short green and orange hair replied.
Twilight looked at the screen the girls were watching, then back at Remix. “This your work?”
“Yeah! You want a copy? I can burn you one from my USB.” She reached over and plucked a flash drive from the computer. “Just be careful, okay? Only copy I have is on here.”
“Good,” Twilight said, taking the flash drive…and snapping it in two in front of the shocked girls.
“Hey, what the fuck?” Remix asked, while the other girls looked on in shock.
“You think this shit is funny?” Twilight seethed, pointing at the screen. “You think that’s a fucking joke?”
“Fuck yes, it is! That’s comedy gold! Do you know how long it took me to edit that shit, you bitch? And now you’ve fucked it up!” Remix snarled.
“You’re lucky that’s all I can do, because right now, I would do so much more if I could.”
“Okay, look, Sparkle, just chill the fuck out, okay? We were all babies when it happened, okay? Nobody remembers or cares about that shit anymore,” a second girl, Videobloom, spoke. “And everyone we showed our video to thought it was hilarious, okay?”
Twilight’s response to that was to slap Videobloom hard. When Videobloom looked at the normally quiet girl with shock, Twilight snarked, “Oh, I’m sorry, I guess you didn’t find that funny, did you?”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve coming over here and telling us what to do, Sparkle, especially since you ruined our class project, you cunt,” Remix said. “Besides, it’s not like we hurt anyone, okay?”
Twilight glared at Remix with an intensity that made the girl stumble back. “You made a YouTube video making fun of the planes that crashed on 9/11,” Twilight said. “That’s tasteless enough. But then you go so far as to ‘critique’ in your video how the terrorists could have done more damage – and you showed that by repeatedly crashing a plane into the Pentagon via computer model.”
“So what? It’s a free country, and we’re allowed to do things like that! It’s called satire, sweetie,” Videobloom said, reaching over to attempt to slug Twilight.
To her surprise, Twilight blocked the blow. “Except you showed that video to my cousins,” Twilight said with a sudden calm that was even more dangerous in its tone. “Their mother – my aunt – was one of the victims on that plane. And you essentially made them relive their nightmares over and over again, right in front of everyone.”
“I didn’t know….” Remix said. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, I’m not buying that shit,” Videobloom countered. “Chances of that are infinitesimal. Besides, Mixie, I have a copy of the video right here on my iPad—”
An iPad that, a second later, Twilight ripped from the girl’s hands and threw right out the window. “Whoops,” Twilight responded.
“You bitch!” Videobloom said. “You’re going to pay for that!”
“Sure. For my family, it’s worth it,” Twilight said, glaring at Videobloom. “Stay the fuck away from us, you bitch.”
As Twilight left the audiovisual room, she noted Phoenix standing there. “I’ll do detention, pay her back for the iPad, whatever you recommend,” the younger girl said to the older one.
Phoenix adjusted her glasses. “I’m sure they didn’t know, Twily. I’m not saying Vid’s in the right, but….”
“I don’t care. They hurt my family, Pheo. I’m not good at standing up for much, but I will for my sisters.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m going to tell the school that you’re going to serve detention for the rest of the month to make up for the broken iPad. And that Mixie and Vid are going to have to make a video on sensitivity training and will have to apologize to the triplets as well.”
“Works for me,” Twilight responded.
“You know where study hall is. You start tonight, understood?”
Twilight coldly nodded and walked off, not seeing the proud smile on the face of the senior.
Twilight walked over to where three sobbing, heartbroken girls were being comforted by Octavia. “Did you do it?” Octavia asked, and Twilight nodded.
“Twily, you didn’t have to go that far,” Adagio said, wiping her smeared mascara from her eyes.
“We could have dealt with it,” Aria agreed. Sonata said nothing and just sat there with her head on Octavia’s lap.
“No. You protected me, Dagi, and now it’s my turn to protect you. That’s what sisters do.”
By the time the holidays rolled around, word had gotten out to the student body: messing with any one of the Five Sisters immediately brought the wrath of the others.
As the school year wound down, officially they were known still as the Five Sisters.
But behind their backs, everyone referred to them as the Furies.
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Well this Twilight has some bite. I am now concerned that Sunset may have some trouble fitting in with the girls when she shows up.
New York to East California. If the girls are in West California, the title is inaccurate.
I'm both now worried for Sunset getting her family back and thinking all these kids have been insanely lucky that Sunset hasn't been added in as the Sixth Ranger quite yet!
8919479
Which Sunset Shimmer are you talking about?
8919525
Pony Sunset of course. Human Sunset will not be a concern until the end of this story which only covers what Faust changed.
8919498 There’s a East and West California?
I like this Twilight already.
8919479
She's always had that bite when it comes to her family (see: distrust of Sunset in the old timeline). She's just less cautious about displaying it now thanks to the triplets.
8919760
You want the Black SIRENs and Cantata to have a happy ending?
8919812
I take it you mean the soeurs?
Whelp, looks like this Twilight is learning to be strong even before Sunset's arrived. That should help further curb Octavia's abandonment issues, but on the flipside... how will this butterfly when Sunset arrives?
Busted out laughing when Twily snapped that USB xD
Now that was priceless.
And furies... how accurate ^-^
8919911
I don’t see anything major happening unless it turns out to be an important innocuous chapter.
Agreed
The fierce creatures of anger and venegance from Greek Myth http://www.theoi.com/Khthonios/Erinyes.html
The only kind of hazing that actually works is some of what they put the military through. However, a lot of that is actual training; if they can't take it there, then they sure as hell won't be able to take it in battle.
Outside of that, some districts- and even states -are treating hazing as felonies; they're even going so far as murder and torture charges. Which they should, as a lot of it is torture.