The Truth About Girls (Vol. 1)

by TheMareWhoSaysNi

The Strange Secrets of a Reputation (part 1)

When he had seen Pinkie Pie appearing with his little sister Fluttershy, Zephyr Breeze had been more than delighted. He knew it was rare when the girls from the bunch didn’t meet each other in town during weekends. If they both were here, it meant the others weren’t far, which meant Rainbow Dash also was likely to appear within his view.

Though he’d seen her with his own eyes with this guy his sister said she was dating, he hadn’t lost his hope to be able to win her heart eventually. The fact this was her childhood best friend, he thought was a detail in his favor. Indeed, he hoped their bond to be so platonic that his “sweetheart” would grow weary and would finally turn to him.

With this in mind, he was determined to use all the methods he could. According to what he knew about this subject, jealousy was a good way to achieve one’s end. Maybe Rainbow Dash was even doing the same, trying to make him go jealous by strutting with this giant of a basketball player. She’d accepted his chocolate box, after all, even though she couldn’t eat them, it was a sign.

If she saw him flirting with these girls they called the Flower Trio, Lily, Daisy and Rose, who were following him everywhere, she would realize how crazy she was about him… Of this he was more than sure. For this reason, he let the three teenagers following him like they were puppies, bringing him coffees, pastries, approaching people on the streets on his behalf, and doing many other things for him.

Big Macintosh disapproved, of course, but never stopped him from doing what he wanted. He said he would see the consequences of it all.
Well, Zephyr knew his coworker thought he didn’t stand a chance towards Rainbow Dash. He probably was jealous as well… Too bad for him.
For the double taken, he wouldn’t say to him he’d guessed a while ago that his little sister Fluttershy had a crush on the tall blond guy with freckles.

His joy seeing the two young women was cut short. If, indeed, Rainbow Dash joined them less than one minute after, she wasn’t alone. No, she had to be with her “childhood best friend” whom she held by the hand.

And Big Macintosh didn’t find something else to ask than what they wanted to do on this Saturday afternoon…

“We’re going to try dirt bike”, she stated with the upmost of pride. “They’d built a field for this at the motocross facility.”

Dirt bike… The horror! How could she accept to be dragged at a place full of mud, with ugly helmets and bodysuits? It was the antithesis of romanticism.

Zephyr thought this was because of Soarin. He probably had forced her to try what, according to himself, was the opposite definition of a date. He imagined flowers, walks near a pretty lake, ice creams in a tea saloon.

Obviously, the young man ignored it was Rainbow Dash herself who had proposed this to her boyfriend, who had answered enthusiastically, as he’d always loved trying new things out and the thrills when it came to sports.

However, he wasn’t the only one to think this kind of activity wasn’t a thing to do, especially as a brand new couple.

“Dirt bike, uh? So lame!”, Daisy stated.

“Opposite of romanticism. As moronic as the moron who wants to do that”, Rose followed up.

“Romanticism is for halfwits, anyway!”

What upset Zephyr the most about all this was that Rainbow Dash wasn’t arguing with the Flower Trio out of jealousy from seeing them with him. It even seemed that, one more time, he was as invisible for her as could be. It probably was because the other boy was here as well. She was actually really shy and didn’t dare to confess the real reason behind their quarrel.

While he was sinking under wrong conclusions about what was happening in front of him, the others had a lot of fun.

Soarin didn’t have the chance yet to meet with the other persons gravitating around her little gang of friends. Zephyr never talked to him and looked at him with spite, but Big Macintosh seemed to be someone nice, who it was easy to get along with. To be quite honest, they had already exchanged a word or two on the Canterlot University campus, but this wasn’t enough to be called friends.

Quickly, Rainbow Dash grew weary of her quarrel with the Flower Trio, and turned to her best friend’s brother. No need to explain how the way she grabbed Soarin’s arm with a radiant smile wasn’t in everyone’s tastes.

“Hey, Big Mac, don’t you take pictures of couple for your site, sometimes?”

“Eeyup.”

“Can’t you take a picture of us? So that everyone would see how awesome a couple we are!”

Zephyr wanted to reply. There was no way Rainbow Dash would appear on the Canterlot Street Style pages with anyone else but him in her arms! Problem, although he had his say, technically speaking, Big Macintosh was his superordinate, and if he wanted to take a picture of someone, he was more than free to do it without his consent.

Out of sheer politeness, the young man turned to his coworker in order to seek for aforementioned consent, and he shrugged and looked away as an answer. He didn’t do it for this Soarin guy… He did it for Rainbow Dash, so that she finally had a picture of her on this site, since it had been months she wanted to.

Still hanging at Soarin’s arm, who wasn’t quite at ease in front of a camera, but didn’t say a word against it, the teenage girl started to try a few poses she thought were “cool”.

It was important for her because everyone would see her as someone worth knowing since she would have her picture next to other icons of the city, and also, so that everyone would see she had a boyfriend, and not just any boyfriend – the famous fullback from the Wondercolts. This would make the greatest good to her dear reputation.

Of course she would’ve been proud to be with Soarin even if he would’ve been a student among others, yet he wasn’t, so it wouldn’t hurt to give her image a little help thanks to his situation in sports. She knew, after she’d seen it on the Web, that some of the Canterlot University’s basketball team most fervent female supporters were particularly enthusiastic because he was a part of the aforementioned team, and they thought he was quite a man. And she was the one he’d chosen…

Better than that, he’d confessed he’d modeled his type of girl around her personality. For her, it meant no girl would ever hold the competition… Not that she doubted it, but her sometimes suffering ego needed this type of pick-me-up.

She de facto regarded herself as the luckiest girl in all of Canterlot. Soarin and her got along perfectly, he was always considerate and opened to try any new kind of sports she wanted to try, sincerely. He understood how important her friends were for her, never attempted to fill up her entire space by demanding she’d spent all her time with him. In his presence, she never felt like as if choking, or obliged to behave this way, or this way. She could be Rainbow Dash, not fearing any reproaches or judgements.

It was different from her former boyfriends who used to see her as a trophy to prove their masculinity. They all had tried to show the others they were so strong and self-confident they had been able to tame the girl nicknamed “Killer Dash” by some of her opponents in lacrosse.

There was nothing like this with Soarin. He tried not to slow her down, not to push her bragging around neither. They’ve been together for a week only, but she hoped their relationship would stay this way. After all, that was how he’d always been with her and just because they now were more than friends didn’t mean the way their relationship worked had to change.

She probably didn’t realize what their couple looked like from the outside… Not according to Zephyr, blinded by his jealousy, of course, nor according to the Flower Trio, way too happy to be rid of a bothering adversary, but according to the rest of their friends, like Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy, for example, who had attended to the whole thing without a word.

It felt as if they’d been together since months already. Their fondness toward one another stood out a mile, though they did nothing for it. In fact, they didn’t even need to do anything, all it took was them behaving naturally. The way Soarin looked at his girlfriend said a lot about how he felt for her, and Rainbow Dash wasn’t embarrassed to hold his hand in public, nor to snuggle up to his arms, which was rare when her disgust about sappiness was known.

This was the evidence she was feeling good in the relationship, since she didn’t hide herself behind excuses to make sure no one would see her acting soft.

It gave ideas to a certain young girl with pink and curly hair…

While Soarin and Rainbow Dash waved them goodbye before going to the motocross facility, promising they would join them later at the Sugarcube Corner with the rest of the band, she grabbed Fluttershy by the wrist, with a suddenness such that she jumped from scare.

“Fluttershy! Let’s go hunting for a boyfriend too!”

“What? Why me?”

“Don’t you want to have a sweetheart and to look as radiant as our dear Rainbow Dash?”, she asked her, grabbing her other wrist with the upmost seriousness of the world. “She hides it well, but I know at times she’s very sad…”

The teenage girl wanted to talk about this surprising statement, which in fact wasn’t that surprising, yet she knew that with Pinkie Pie, it often was difficult to go on such a topic while hoping to stay a one hundred percent focused. That was why she chose to pick up on the other subject… The hunt for a boyfriend.

In reality, she didn’t need to go ‘hunting’. She hadn’t found yet the courage to tell her friends, because it seemed there never was a right moment for this, and once again, she knew today wasn’t going to be her lucky day. Big Macintosh still was beside them, and she didn’t want him to hear, especially since she wasn’t even sure of having the least of chances with him.

“Well… Yes, I guess I do…”

“Say no more! I got the solution.”

And, without further delay, Pinkie Pie forcefully dragged her a little farther in the Grand Rue, not before she had waved Big Macintosh and Zephyr first. Fluttershy couldn’t do anything else than following her friend at the end of a small queue in front of what, at first blush, looked like a sculpture of stone.

In reality, this was the city’s latest amusement feature, where all the younger ones and the less young ones piled up in order to ask questions for fun, from the most serious ones to the stupidest ones.

It wasn’t even made of stone, but of a coarse plastic imitation. In the middle of arabesques supposedly representing a beard, eyes had been created with two black and round polished rocks, and an opened mouth was lit in red when a palm was pressed against the bottom of it. A dial with numbers and letters was fixed above, on the right side.

Called “The Mouth of Truth”, the machine printed some kind of ticket supposed to answer to the question asked when a coin was inserted in a crack. Most of the answers were generic, and there was nothing occult behind this, which didn’t stop Pinkie Pie from taking this seriously.

“I want to know whether I’ll have a boyfriend by the end of the year”, she said while moving wild, so much it bothered the other persons of the queue. “Maybe thanks to Rarity’s matrimonial blind dates, who knows?”

“Rarity’s matrimonial blind dates?”, Fluttershy questioned.

“Yes, that’s something I’ve asked her to do for me. You know, she knows a lot of boys and men. She’d be an amazing matchmaker if she ever decided to give up on fashion, but of course, Rarity would never give up on fashion, because Rarity breathes for fashion, or fashion breathes for Rarity, I’m not that sure about which one goes first or what.”

“Are you Pinkamena? Pinkamena Diane Pie?”

Hearing her complete name, the latter turned around to see who could be calling her out in such a way. The least one could say was that the teenage girl in front of her didn’t remind her anything or anyone precise. Her hair of two different kind of blond, pushed back from her face, and dressed with jeans and a shirt tied above her belly button, her arms crossed, she looked at them scornfully, from head to toe.

“No one calls me like that now.”

“I see. How about that, uh?”

After these words, the girl left the queue, followed by a group of two other girls with hostile gazes and leather clothes a little too warm for the April sun.

Pinkie Pie searched through her memories, yet wasn’t able to remember where she could have met this girl. They were very few still using her complete name, even Principal Celestia and Vice-Principal Luna called her by her nickname, easier to recall and easier to match with her funny bouncing personality.

She begged Fluttershy not to say anything to the others, and although she didn’t seem to, kept on thinking about this girl’s identity, all day and all night long. Maybe she was someone from her small native village, where her parents had created a farm in order to study various types of sediments… but then, why so many hostile and scornful gazes?

It could mean she had hurt this person, although she couldn’t remember. After all, her arrival in Canterlot started to be a while ago, and had become a little blurred by spending time with her real actual friends.

---------------------------------------------------

Rainbow Dash sighed deeply before looking into the mirror. She looked paler than usually and her legs seemed to be made of cotton. She had to get together before the service would begin. It would be nothing but a bad moment, and after this, she would have fought one of her personal demons… or at least, she hoped so. The most difficult thing would probably be not to feel nauseous.

Amongst the many things that gave her a hard time, burials and premature deaths were the cream of the crop. Even after many years, a therapy and a few anxiolytic courses of treatment, it was unpleasant to realize how some of her wounds didn’t seem ready to heal.

Once again, she exhaled deeply and decided to push the washroom’s door. The path on her own separating her from the main room was longer than a torture. At each second, a small voice whispered that she’d better go back home, and hide herself under her blankets, but she held strong. It was an ordeal, and she would be stronger once she would have been through it with her head high.

Her gang of friends was in the middle ranks of the service room of Canterlot’s royal crematorium, and they’d kept a seat for her. Sunset Shimmer only had been obliged to attend this ceremony separated from the others, since she wasn’t in their class. Rainbow Dash joined them as discreetly as she could, while Principal Celestia started to speak.

This weekend, a girl named Night Shine whom had familial connection with the royal family, had killed herself by jumping from the roof of a building. The event was on the front page of every newspaper on the next day, and students from the eleventh grade, the grade of the girl in question, had been called out to attend her funerals via email. Classes had been suspended, and a psychological help had opened for those who needed it.

This ordeal was even more difficult because of this, along with the fact it forced Rainbow Dash to think about her mother’s own funerals, which had happened at the exact same place. Pervert effect: the more she tried to remember; the more everything seemed to be cloudy and confused. It only remained the reality which said that nothing had been the same ever since.

The girls had kept on telling her everyone would understand if she decided not to come to the service, especially as none of them really knew Night Shine. Even Soarin had told her there was no need to force herself if she wasn’t feeling ready yet to face with such an obstacle. Until the very last moment, she had hesitated yet she thought if she really did kill herself, she would’ve wished others to come and say farewell to her.

Like foreseen, it was a struggle of every minute. She had not to let emotions overwhelming her, and this wasn’t easy when every single word sent her back to her own wounds.

In order to get it easier to put up with, and to have something to hang to, without further thinking, she grabbed a hand beside hers and squeezed it as much as she could. As if trying to make her realize she had received the message, Pinkie Pie answered by squeezing her hand as well. No need to say a word, actions were enough.

Because she was the students’ representative, Twilight had been asked to speak during the ceremony. She walked to the dais with the required solemnity, and started to read her flashcards, as if it was something she had spent all her life doing. If some were still unsure about her potential as a researcher and a lecturer, these sceptic ones were now convinced.

Despite this, the group of friends and even Twilight herself quickly noticed the students’ attention had decreased. Not because her speech had them bored – though she could sometimes sound a little bombastic – but rather because something else entertained them, something which happened to be in everyone’s phones… except the other four’s.

They looked at each other shrugging, unsure of what was going on. What was sure was that, quickly, whispers and glances in their direction gushed out so much that Principal Celestia had to clamp down by asking everyone to behave in a more respectful way toward the deceased.

However, it didn’t stop completely. More discreet and scattered, whisperings continued even after Twilight’s speech and ceased only once the casket was brought at its last stay.

Whatever that had happened, as sensational as it seemed to be, for the bunch of friends it was discourteous and inexcusable. Each, when gathering in front of the crematorium, agreed to say the students should have waited to be outside before exchanging their little secrets.

“Don’t you think it’s strange we’re the only ones unaware of what this is all about?”, Fluttershy dared asking.

“True Ah had the impression we were da ones concerned, but maybe Ah became a lil’ paranoid since this stalker of mine.”

“No, AJ, I’ve felt it too, especially since it all began right after Twilight started to speak.”

“Do you believe I could have said something inappropriate?”, she asked with horror.

“No, Twilight. It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

They all turned around and saw Sunset Shimmer joining them. Each of the classes had to go out one after the other, and hers was after the group’s. The others had all rushed to leave this place, too glad they had one more day off, not before they had whispered inaudible things.

“Do you know what’s the hell going on?”, Rainbow Dash asked.

“I do…”

She opened her bag and got her smartphone out. On the tactile screen quickly appeared a short text message coming from another girl of her class, which was in fact part of a chain which origins were unknown.

“I don’t know who’d brought this in, but… Well, roughly, that’s about you, Pinkie Pie.”

“Me?” she asked blinking.

“Yes. I’m a bit scared to tell you guys what the message says… I don’t want to hurt Pinkie.”

“You’re scaring me”, Fluttershy replied.

“Stop with this suspense, I’m not in the mood.”

Rainbow Dash grabbed Sunset Shimmer’s phone and read the message out loud:

“Beware of the girl nicknamed Pinkie Pie, real name Pinkamena Diane Pie. She’s a disgusting person, a liar who’s been part of a gang for many years, fighting, drinking, taking drugs and attacking people with a knife so she could rob them. Today, she acts like she’s someone kind and funny, planning innocent parties, although she’s still as dangerous and crook. If you trust her, she’ll stab you in the back. She’s a bitch, a first-class swine and CHS should send her back to her country with rocks.”

As the read went on, Pinkie Pie’s face had decayed and seemed on the verge of crumbling. Her hair, from this strange phenomenon no one could explain, had started to lose its puffiness.

The one who had begun this little lynching by the book probably thought Sunset Shimmer wasn’t really a part of the bunch, since she’d received the calumnious message rather quickly, or thought maybe she didn’t know about Pinkie Pie’s past and tried to divide her from the group.

What was sure was that most of what the message contained was wrong and insulting. The person at its origins wanted to harm Pinkie Pie’s reputation, but also to harm her pride. Most importantly, this person knew about her past as well, which limited the possibilities to the students who had been to Middle Canterlot in the same class.

Their problem was that now doubts had started to intrude on the other students’ mind, it would be difficult to make them forget about it.
The fact there were no properly speaking clans in Canterlot High was an advantage, but in this case, it also was a scourge since it meant the rumors would leak like a bad flu in the middle of winter. And in order to make it stop, a lot of dexterity and diplomacy was going to be necessary.

Comments

[Dusk_Writer]

Wow….O.o
School rumors are harsh…but this? Well, that's another type of ouch.

I think I can guess who those three girls are but…still not sure ;P