• Published 15th Apr 2018
  • 311 Views, 1 Comments

The Land of Expectations - Waxworks



Peach Berry has what it takes in Canterlot's new school system to be one of the best. It's expected of her, just like it's expected of everypony else, but she may have a special skill nopony else has. But does she want it?

  • ...
 1
 311

Chapter 1

Perfection is a dream of fools and an expectation of leaders. Fools believe they can reach perfection if they try hard enough, while leaders expect it from those they lead. The fool berates himself when his work isn’t ‘perfect’, while the leader berates those he leads for not performing up to snuff. The only real difference is the target, yet both cause undue misery.

Canterlot is the shining city of Equestria and the home to a lot of fools and leaders. It is also the home of the princess of the sun and the princess of the moon after her return. It’s a land of business, opportunity, and innovation, but most of all: It is the home of unicorns.

The population of Canterlot isn’t solely unicorns, but with Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns in it, it inevitably drew them from all across Equestria. Over time, it came to be the home of the wealthy, who came to be close to royalty, and the unicorns, who came to be near the school. With an overabundance of both, it should come as no small wonder that perfection should be so highly sought after. After all, with perfection came fame, with fame came bits, and with bits came more fame until you might just meet with the princesses themselves!

Schools became more exclusive as time went on. The desire to be one of the elite had led to the creation of schools that had perfectly curated their curriculum to prepared foals specifically to enter Celestia’s school. There were other schools for pegasi and earth ponies, but there was an abundance of the unicorn schools because to enter Celestia’s school alone set the unicorn for life. Everypony would want to hire or see the pony that could pass the rigorous testing required to enter the school.

It had been years since Celestia herself had appeared in the school, and even more since she had taken on a protégé, but ponies were still hopeful, and the school itself was enough to get a unicorn offers for work and other appearances at high society events.

It wasn’t all good, though. There was a dark side to the desire for perfection, as with all things. Canterlot had become increasingly insular against the outside. There were barely any earth ponies or pegasi in the upper levels of the city and seeing one was rare since the earth pony school was walled away from the rest of Upper Canterlot and the pegasi school had moved to Cloudsdale entirely. Unless you went out of your way, it would be a rare day for you if you saw an earth pony near the schools.

It was one such rare day that Peach Berry encountered her very first earth pony. She recognized it by the lack of a horn, though she had to do a double-take at first. The earth pony was hiding in an alley underneath a single discarded box. She must have brought it with her, because even the alleyways in Canterlot were kept spotless and clean. It was an expectation, you see. Perfection in all things, even from the streets.

Peach Berry knew she had school to attend, but she was early, as was expected of her, so she had plenty of time before the first class. There would be no bell, because it was expected that you knew when class would start, and if you had to be reminded, you weren’t perfect enough. Peach Berry pulled her pocket watch out of her vest, checked the time to remind herself, then walked over to speak to the filly inside the box.

“Hello there,” she said in perfectly clipped Equestrian, with just the right amount of enunciation and the accepted Canterlot accent. “May I inquire as to what you think you are doing underneath a box in the street?”

The filly held up a hoof to her mouth and shushed Peach Berry, then shuffled further back into the alley, pulling the box further over her head. Peach Berry rolled her eyes and followed her in, using her magic to pull at the box. The earth pony pulled back, but Peach Berry was practiced in telekinesis and her magic was much stronger than the filly. The box tore, and she threw it to the side.

“I wish to know what you are doing hiding under a box. That is not a difficult question to answer,” Peach Berry said.

The filly looked at her torn box in dismay and not a little bit of fear. “I was hiding, okay! Leave me alone!”

“What are you hiding from? There is nothing to fear up here.”

The filly gave Peach Berry a look she had not encountered before. It was a sneer, but she had never encountered that form of derision before. It was altogether new to her, and more than a little disturbing. She didn’t like the feeling that look gave her.

“You don’t have to worry about it, you’re a unicorn! But me, I had to reach a certain score, and I missed it! I missed it by two points! I’m a failure, and now they’re coming for me, so I have to run away!”

“From whom are you running, and why has it brought you here? This is a school for unicorns, if you were not aware.” Peach Berry pointed at her horn, then checked her pocket watch again. She had fifteen minutes to enter the school and be seated. She needed to finish this conversation soon.

“You know… them! The… Expectors.” The filly’s voice got quiet when she mentioned the name, and Peach Berry thought they must be terrible indeed if the filly looked this frightened of them. Still, she had no idea what an Expector was.

“What is an Expector?” Peach Berry asked.

Peach Berry was interrupted by two large figures, clad all in black, who hove out of the shadows of the buildings around the two of them. They closed in on the filly and held out objects toward her. Peach Berry could see a carving, a slip of paper with writing on it, a musical instrument, and a quill.

“No, please! It was two points! It was only two points!” the filly yelled as she cowered, hooves over her head.

The ponies closed in around the filly, but her view of what was happening was blocked by one of them moving in front of her. The pony had no horn, but it held out a black-clothed forehoof with a watch held tight. She noticed the time, and that she only twelve minutes to go. She looked up at the figure’s face, but the mask, a frowning, black-covered mask, gave her nothing except a disapproving look.

“I—” she swallowed, a strange lump in her throat upon seeing these ponies. “—was planning on studying before class, yes.” She turned and ran, not bothering to look back. She was later than she usually was, and they knew it. Somehow, they knew what to expect from her. Somehow, and that was a little scary.

Peach Berry trotted into class to find a crowd already present. Other students who had arrived early with time to spare and were already studying. A couple of them, friends, she supposed she would call them, shook their heads silently at her coming in so late. She tried to put their disapproving looks out of her mind and pulled out her books, getting to work.

The teacher arrived soon after she did, five minutes early, on the dot. He was an older stallion, wrinkled, but strong, and with a horn longer than the norm. His name was Oracle Glass, and he was her favorite teacher. The subject was clairvoyance, and it was one Peach Berry excelled at. You could use it for all sorts of things, she had discovered, and Peach Berry had found out that she could apply clairvoyance to see what would be on future tests. She had told her parents and Oracle Glass, of course. Cheating was frowned on, and the expectation was that you earned your grades the normal way.

Such creativity was not without merit, however, and she was now the focus of many eyes in the school, to have done such a thing at her young age. With such attention came higher expectations, however. Peach Berry had no time for any friends or other frivolous things, and so she knew nopony except her teachers and her parents. Classmates were acquaintances at best.

So it was that at the end of class, Oracle Glass took Peach Berry aside and asked her (quickly, because she couldn’t be late to other classes) how her application of the clairvoyance spell was coming along.

“Oh, it is coming, Professor Glass. I have not yet pinpointed exactly how to observe a pony based on something as nebulous as an expectation, but I am working on it,” she answered.

“Excellent, excellent. I shall expect a full report of what you have attempted by the end of the week, and remember, your grades will be affected positively by the results you manage,” he said, then pushed her out the door to her next class. She trotted off, pleased by the attention, and happy that she had such a good prospect going for her.

The other classes weren’t nearly as fun, as they all focused on things that required much more brute force. Telekinesis, energy beams, shields, and other such things all bored her to tears. Anypony could fire a beam that could destroy a building these days. There was no glory in that. The expectation was that you could manage such things. Being able to do it with finesse was harder, but beams and shields were boring to her. She still performed up to par, but her mind wandered during it all.

At first it wandered to her research into the clairvoyance spells and how she might apply such strange instructions to it, but eventually the expectations of the spell led her to thinking about the filly she had encountered this morning, and to the strange and dark… what?

She wracked her brain, but she couldn’t quite remember what had happened to the filly. She remembered meeting them in the alley. They were under a box. She had pulled it away, and then… something had happened. She couldn’t remember what, but she remembered she had to leave because she was running late. Late for class. She remembered that. She wasn’t late, but that was beside the point. There had been a reason she had left, and she couldn’t remember it.

Peach Berry took a moment when somepony else was demonstrating their skills at shields and sat over by herself in a corner. She focused her mind, cleared her thoughts of distraction, and focused on the filly she had seen that morning. She cast her clairvoyance spell, trying to get information. A picture began to form in her mind of the filly, hiding under the box, the box moving, and then shadows. Shadows she couldn’t identify moved out from around the buildings and converged on the filly. They consumed her and dissipated, leaving an empty box where the filly had been.

Peach Berry heard somepony call her name and her spell broke. She shuddered, and the voice called her name again. She shook her head and looked around, only to see the coach pointing at her and frowning.

“Your turn, Miss Berry. Before class ends, if you please,” Coach Bottleneck commanded.

Peach Berry felt her cheeks get hot with embarrassment as everypony in class looked at her. She stood up and marched out to the marker and waited for instruction. None came.

“Since you thought you could rest, I assumed you knew what we were doing, Miss Berry, and didn’t think any of it would be hard. Do you need me to tell you what we were practicing?”

Miss Bottleneck had always been jealous of the attention Peach Berry received from the other teachers for her skills in clairvoyance. She was one of the more brutish unicorns on the faculty and was the best in the school at shields and beams, but she had it out for Peach Berry. She always tried to make her squirm and admit any failings and was one of the harshest grades she had to work on.

Fortunately, Peach Berry was a clever filly and was praised for her clairvoyance for good reason. She remained silent, lit her horn, and used her clairvoyance spell to see what Miss Bottleneck wanted. She saw the image in her mind and heard Miss Bottleneck telling the previous students to create a deflection shield.

Peach Berry smiled as sweetly as she could at Miss Bottleneck. “No, thank you. I know what spell we are practicing.” She cast the spell, created the shield and waited for the foal on the other marker to fire the beam. It struck her angular shield and was deflected upward, fizzling on the magic resistant walls of the gymnasium.

Miss Bottleneck frowned, then nodded. She was harsh, but usually fair in the grades she doled out. It helped that Peach Berry was the favored foal, but Miss Bottleneck had authority and could have used it for ill. Thankfully, she was too simple. Skilled, but simple.

Gym class ended and lunch began, at which time most of the foals took only fifteen minutes to eat, then turned immediately to the extra forty-five minutes to pursue answers to whatever class they were struggling in. The expectation was that they should be using their free time to better themselves and their grades, and not for play. Play was useless and afforded a pony neither fame nor fortune, so it should be cut out of the curriculum. There was no fun to be had except in the pursuit of class. There were expectations to uphold, after all.

Peach Berry found herself her usual table and sat to eat. She set her pocketwatch next to her food and carefully timed herself. She didn’t want to eat too quickly or too slowly. She had made just enough food to ensure it would take her about fifteen minutes to eat it all, and she didn’t want to be too slow. Too fast would cause indigestion or unattractive gaseousness, so she wanted to avoid that, but too slow would cut into her study time, and that was worse.

She finished eating and pulled out some of her books on advanced magical theory, but she was interrupted by an acquaintance from the divinations class.

“Peach Berry, right?” the filly asked.

“Yes, that is correct. You will forgive me if I do not know your name,” Peach Berry answered. She could have used her clairvoyance spell, but showing off required the proper time and place, and this would garner her no accolades in its use, so she let the question lie.

“My name’s Stick-Flick, but I wanted to ask you for help in divination,” she said.

A cold silence fell around the two of them for a moment. Ponies nearby who had heard glanced over, then redoubled their chatter, inevitably discussing Stick-Flick’s request. Stick-Flick looked uncomfortable and Peach Berry couldn’t blame her. Asking for help was tantamount to admitting you weren’t reaching the expectations. It was always a risky venture and harmed a pony’s social standing. The expectation was that you would be able to handle it yourself to prove you were worth the attention everypony should be giving to you.

Peach Berry blinked slowly before she responded. “What compensation would I be receiving for such assistance?”

Stick-Flick gaped and goggled like a fish for a moment, clearly not having expected such a positive answer. “I can… pay you for your time.”

Peach Berry inwardly cringed at the response. Bits were the poor pony’s compensation. Nopony at the school needed bits. Where had this filly even come from that she considered bits an acceptable form of payment? The expectation was that you would be extended an invitation to a social gathering or a favor of some kind. Nopony here needed bits, of all things. Peach Berry stared at her and didn’t respond, making Stick-Flick increasingly uncomfortable.

“I’ll… owe you a favor,” she finally said. The murmuring around them increased in volume. Owing somepony a favor almost always resulted in bad things for the pony who would be asked to fulfill it, especially if the favor wasn’t described. Stick-Flick had just given Peach Berry carte blanche to deal with her however she wanted.

Peach Berry smiled magnanimously at the offer and nodded. “I accept. Sit down and we shall discuss your troubles during lunch. I was going to study magical theory, so I hope you understand what I am giving up to help you.”

“I do! I do! Thank you!”

Peach Berry attempted to explain the concepts and rules of divination to Stick-Flick, but the poor filly just didn’t understand it in the inherent way that Peach Berry did. Her spells were clumsy and her concentration weak. It was clear the girl had made it to the school on either money alone, or just with the bare minimum of grades. Her behavior suggested the latter. She was probably picked up as a gesture to tell the poor that they still had a chance. She might even pass because of it, but Peach Berry doubted it. Still, she had promised to help, and she would. She even offered to help her outside of school sometime, because having a free favor wasn’t something a pony took lightly.

Lunch reached its end and classes continued, with Peach Berry breezing through most of them one by one, proving her skills sufficient enough to meet expectations, and a little bit more. Still, the only class she excelled in was divination. The rest of her grades were above the average but were still only meeting expectations by “enough”.

When the day came to an end and she walked home, Peach Berry waited for Stick-Flick at the gates and the two of them walked down the street toward Peach Berry’s house. As they passed by the alley where Peach Berry had seen the earth pony filly. She stopped, interrupting their conversation to look harder at the now-empty space the filly had occupied. There wasn’t even the cardboard box left over to indicate anypony had even been there. Something had taken her from there, Peach Berry was sure, but she couldn’t rightly remember what it had been.

“What are you looking at?” Stick-Flick asked.

“It is surely nothing. I met a filly in the alley this morning and she left. That is all,” Peach Berry said.

“Oh? Somepony who goes to our school?”

“Certainly not. This was an earth pony.” Peach Berry stuck her nose up in the air and continued walking.

“An earth pony? You’re making it up! Earth ponies don’t come up here!”

“I am not the type to lie. Lies can be too easily broken using divination, and so it would avail me naught to say something that could be proven incorrect.”

Stick-Flick persisted. “Well then why would she come up here?”

“She said she had not achieved high enough grades in school.”

Stick-Flick’s face darkened and she looked down at the street. “Oh,” was all she said.

Peach Berry was fine with the silence. She was used to being able to walk home alone with her thoughts, preparing herself mentally for the next day’s classes and working on her clairvoyance spell. Her magnum opus was going to be the guiding light for the rest of her life, after all. The expectations of her were extremely high, and she could not afford to fail. If she did, she would end up like that filly. Trapped in an alley, waiting for… something… to come get her? Something that was bad. What were they?

Peach Berry thought about other ponies she knew that had failed grades and was disturbed to discover that she didn’t know what happened to any of them. She knew they had failed, and she knew failing was bad, but she couldn’t recall where any of them had gone. They had just disappeared from high society entirely, leaving behind family and acquaintances that similarly knew nothing about them. They didn’t speak of them often, but when they did it was in hushed tones that implied something bad had happened. What that bad thing was, none of them could say, and that was ominous to Peach Berry.

“Do—” Peach Berry began awkwardly. “Do you know anypony that has failed to meet expectations?”

“Everyone does,” Stick-Flick responded curtly.

“But do you know what happened to them? Like where they all went?”

“No.”

Peach Berry made a face but said nothing more on the subject. It was a touchy topic for everypony, and Stick-Flick seemed to have a personal investment in something of it. With her abilities, Peach Berry had to assume she felt the ever-present threat of failing to meet expectations looming over her head.

The two of them made it to Peach Berry’s house and went straight upstairs to study. Peach Berry got a strange look from her father, and her mother gave her a stern comment.

“Don’t let that other filly drag you down, dear. I hope you got a good deal on helping her out,” her mother said.

“Do not worry, mother. She owes me a favor,” Peach Berry said.

“Oh, excellent, excellent! You have your agreements all figured out, daughter. Do not use the favor frivolously,” her father said.

“I will not.” She took Stick-Flick upstairs and the two worked.

They discussed where Stick-Flick was experiencing trouble in her spells and what she could improve. They determined where her strengths lay and where her weaknesses were, and how she could overcome them. It wasn’t much talk of academics, but more the concepts behind it and how she was going to need to play the system that was in place. It was expected of a student to have weaknesses, but your strengths were what the system cared about. How would you be of use to society when you were grown? If there was nothing you were good at, you were going to disappear like the rest. To where, Peach Berry didn’t know, but losing one’s place in society was tantamount to death, so avoiding it was paramount in school.

“I’m not good at anything!” Stick-Flick finally said, flopping backward onto the floor in defeat.

“You have no special skills that I can determine, which is very unfortunate, I am afraid you may not succeed,” Peach Berry said. She closed the book she had and turned to look at Stick-Flick. “But I am of a mind that nopony that has entered the school is without merit. If I may ask, how were you admitted?”

“You mean, how did I get in?”

“Yes.”

Stick-Flick was silent for a minute, then sighed. “I had the highest scores at my school.”

“Which was?”

“Errant Elementary.”

“Ah,” Peach Berry raised her chin and looked away, jaw set tight. She knew of it. It was one of the satellite schools from which hers pulled promising unicorn students. It was more for show than anything. Just a tantalizing promise that hey; ‘Even you can get into a good school!’ Complete nonsense, really. Yes, you can get in, but what good will it do you? Peach Berry decided there was no point in letting the poor girl live in delusions for the short time she had at the school. She would be shipped off back home, more than likely, so it was best to let her down easy. “I am sorry, but I do not believe I can help you pass your classes. You were not prepared for life up here, and there is not way I can teach you what you need to know before classes end.”

Stick-Flick flinched as if she had been struck. “What? But I need the help! I don’t know what’s going on up here! I’m completing all my assignments but I’m still failing! Why?”

Peach Berry sighed. The girl was utterly clueless. Assignments were only half of it. “How many extracurricular activities are you pursuing?”

“What? One.”

“Which one?”

“I’m part of a writing club.”

“What do you do as part of the club?”

“I attend the meetings where we talk about books we’ve read and any poetry or stories we’ve written.”

“But you are not the club leader?”

“No.”

“Are you trying to be?”

“What? No! I’m already swamped with work, I don’t need more!”

Peach Berry sighed and rubbed a hoof on her face. “Go home, Stick-Flick. I have work to catch up on that you are distracting me from doing.”

“What, just like that?” Stick-Flick stood up, indignant.

“Yes, just like that.”

“I thought you were going to help me!”

“I promised I would talk to you about divination, nothing more. I have gone above and beyond the call of duty, but I have a clairvoyance spell to work on as my thesis, I am part of the music club and wish to create a solo piece, I am captain of the shuffleboard club and assistant to the leader of the lottery club. He likes my skill in divination, you see. But you do not understand how things work here, and I cannot help you without risking my own work.” She motioned to the table upon which she had books and papers piled high. “I am truly swamped. We can discuss divination tomorrow during our lunch break. I will work extra hard to ensure I have the time to properly discuss things with you.”

Peach Berry thought Stick-Flick might start crying from the expression on her face, but she set her jaw, kept her upper lip stiff, and silently gathered her things and left. She didn’t even give a curt ‘goodbye’ as she exited, and Peach Berry’s parents didn’t say anything to her. They had expected this to begin with. Friends were a detriment. Other ponies only mattered as far as what they could do for you.

Peach Berry went back to work. She had club activities to plan, papers to write, research to perform, and all of it was meant to be solely done by herself. It didn’t have to be, but she refused to owe anypony anything. That was weakness, and they could use it against you. If you didn’t return the owed favor when it was asked of you, that was a permanent black mark. Honesty in your dealings was important, no matter what kind of dealings they may be. The expectation was that you were forthright, not kind.

That was what Stick-Flick didn’t understand. You only had to be part of one club, but the expectation was that you were either a leader of that one club, or you were in multiple clubs. The expectation was that you showed initiative to go above and beyond in your work, not just did the bare minimum. The expectation was that you were excelling, not just barely passing. Stick-Flick didn’t understand.