Ch 4: Silver Spoons
Our Girl Scootaloo
by Cozy Mark IV
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit fan-made work of prose. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is the property of Hasbro. Please support the official release
Chapter Four: Silver Spoons
Scootaloo put many a pro athlete to shame over the next few months. Instead of being terrified of flying by her close shave with death, she talked it over with her flying instructor. His first comment on seeing her limping in three days later, wing in a cast, was “You flew in the fog didn’t you young lady?”
She hung her head “Yes”
“Did you learn why I told you not to?”
She looked like she wanted to sink into the floor “Yes”
“And are you going to listen to what I tell you from now on?”
She look up at this. “Yes, I am.”
“Good, then lets go make today’s flight plan and file it. You’re almost ready to take your pilots test, and if you’re good enough to pass, then after that I can start teaching you how to fly in clouds safely.”
She studied her piloting books, guides and maps after homework each night, and that weekend she passed the test with flying colors. I had helped her in some of the calculations of her studies, and while she made her second landing I asked her instructor if I could start coming for lessons too. “A father has to keep up you know”
Her examiner signed off and handed over her pilot’s license as she hugged us all and did bro hooves with her instructor. Then before we were even done with congratulations she pulled out an IFR vision blocker hat and asked to go back up. “I bought this with my allowance money, and I really need to learn how to do this right. Will you teach me?”
And so off they flew again, this time with her unable to see anything outside the plane. To pass her ‘Instrument Flight Rules’ license she had to be able to fly in total darkness and fog, just like what she got stuck in, and navigate using only the plane’s flight instruments. She persevered though, and with her healing wing an ever-present reminder, the same November afternoon I earned my pilot’s license, she earned her IFR license.
I took what I was learning along with a lot of self taught aircraft engineering design knowledge to the prosthetics professionals who built Scootaloo’s arms, and working with her we designed a proper flight system/suit.
“The new arms have to be light enough for me to carry up. Flying on my own wings is awesome, but when I land its like having my hands tied up” She blushed “I can’t do anything without them!”
The new arms were designed to use lightweight motors, and I purchased the materials to mold the carbon fiber framework. Scootaloo and I learned to work with the carbon fiber, Kevlar, epoxy, foam and fiberglass, to make molds and do vacuum bagging, and each week we built a new batch of parts from the CAD drawings the engineers sent us.
A pilot app by MGL Avionics designed to run on a phone using Google glass gave her a display she could see, with synthetic vision so that even in fog, the GPS would give her a picture of the ground and any obstacles around her. We fit the display into the vintage aviator goggles she loved and Kevin helped us form the saddle back that was to become the back plate of her new arms.
Finally fitting day came, only a week after her cast came off – we drove out to the lab and they updated the new computer to match the inputs she had built up with her old arms.
“O M F G this is so light!”
“Language, young lady!” I admonished. “But you did excellent work on this; look at how the carbon fiber gleams in the light!”
One of the engineers who was looking on with a smile added “Now you can change the trigger on this, but we couldn’t resist. Click your heels together three times.”
She raised a purple eyebrow “And say there’s no place like home?”
“If you like, but put the goggles on first.”
She did, then hesitantly clicked her back hooves; both arms flipped up and tucked themselves away on top of her back, and the goggle over her right eye lit up as the pilot computer interface powered up.
“Sweeeet! I have got to try this!” She clicked her hooves to unfold her arms and went bounding out of the lab. The whole team followed Kevin and I out where Scootaloo was nowhere in sight.
“Woo HOOO!!” She launched off the roof overhead in an explosion of startled pigeons and did a series of loops and rolls before landing at our feet and hugging us both. Then to the engineers; “Thank you all so much, these are the best arms yet!”
Back at the house she was all set to go when Kevin brought out his surprise. “I know you don’t get to fly as much as you might like when it’s cold, so I made you this.” He presented her with a wrapped garment box; “Merry early Christmas.”
She opened the box and slowly drew out the coat, admiring it in the light. “Oh wow! I know you’ve been giving me sewing lessons, but this is impressive work, it looks just like an aviators coat and pants… How long have you…?”
“Ever since we went searching for you on that cold foggy night. I just kept thinking of you lost, alone and freezing somewhere. And now that my little girl is about to fly again…” He sniffed “Just be careful and stay warm.” By now Scootaloo was tearing up too “And be home in time for dinner okay?”
“Okay Daddy, I’ll be careful. I love you.”
Between her flight training and the new flight equipment Scootaloo managed to stay out of trouble in the air, though life on the ground proved more challenging.
One day after school she came home grumpy and unhappy for no obvious reason. When we asked her what was wrong she snapped “I don’t want to talk about it!” and holed up in her room for the rest of the afternoon. Her temper swung between angry and weepy for three days before we put it together.
“Scootaloo, we need to have a family talk. Have you been feeling any… different these past few days?”
She sulked in her chair “Maybe a little. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Scootaloo, we think you've reached puberty. The strange feelings you’re having, the wild mood swings; I think your having your first period.”
She was no fool, we had covered what we knew about human and pony biology years ago, but it still took a moment for it to sink in. “This is a period?” We nodded, and her face took on a look of horror “I’m going to feel like this every month from now on?!”
“It should only be for a few days out of the month, but yes, this is what female humans and ponies have to deal with once a month. Have you had any bleeding?”
“No... Oh crap, am I going to bleed too?!?”
“I don’t know, but I think we should make our monthly trip to see Mary early don’t you?”
Mary and Stephanie worked together on this, and soon had an answer; our daughter was now biologically a woman or mare, take your pick. They had a long private talk with her about her period, the changes she was going through, and what it meant to be a woman. They prescribed a variation on a common contraceptive to try to rein in her symptoms, and that plus the new information they provided helped to reduce, if not quite eliminate her time of the month.
Seventh grade and middle school brought new challenges and opportunities. She was accepted onto the track team within the first week, though with the title ‘honorary member’ to avoid legal disputes. Scootaloo could hit 30 mph on the ground, and a track member who could be pulled over for speeding in residential areas was great for moral, but not even remotely fair to the competition.
Kevin’s sewing lessons had begun to pay off as well, and as she gained confidence in her abilities she started wearing her outfits to school, often mimicking or improving upon whatever was the fashion. This earned her admiration from some girls, but soon made her a target for others. By October it had gotten bad enough that she came home in tears, crying that she was losing all her friends.
“Okay dear, slow down, what is going on?”
She told a tale of back-stabbing, intrigue and deception that would have made a medieval lord feel right at home; apparently a clique of girls had been attacking her dresses, her appearance, and teasing her relentlessly since August. Now things had gotten worse as they told lies to her friends and tried to drive them away, and after one of them had stolen her phone and sent horrible texts in her name it was starting to work. We held her while she sobbed; the world she had spent so long building was being pulled apart in front of her for fun and she didn’t know how to stop it.
Kevin wiped her tears away and looked at her very seriously “Scootaloo, most girls go through a time like this in school. I can teach you how to fix this, but you have to promise that you will only use what I teach you to stop this sort of thing, never to start it.”
She sniffed. “Why would I ever do something like this to anyone? It hurts!”
“It is, but all these bullies got their start somewhere. Some of them suffered through what you’re dealing with, then did the same thing to each other. I need you to promise you will never use what I’m going to teach you to hurt those who don’t deserve it.”
“Okay, I promise.”
Kevin talked the whole thing through with Scootaloo until he understood. Most of the clique turned out to be little princesses who loved to be the center of attention, and that seemed to fit the plan he worked out.
“Okay, first we need to buy spoons.”
We both gave him a confused look.
Working from scratch, Kevin drew up a letter of commendation from the ‘Silver Spoon’ organization and really loaded it with generic praise and ego stroking, while at the same time never using any specifics, even keeping the name to two elaborate cursive capital 'S' initials twined together with Photoshop. He added fancy font, a logo, and even put in a watermark. We printed off one letter for each girl in the clique and he even printed the “official” logo of the fictional organization on the envelopes.
The letter told each recipient how great they were, and how the fancy silver spoon we enclosed symbolized the wealth and fame they would no doubt go on achieve. With Scootaloo’s help we mailed them out gradually over a week so they became a symbol of pride ‘I’ve got mine because I’m special and you’re not’. That alone seemed to help, as the in-fighting it caused proved a temporary distraction, but we weren’t done yet. Each letter directed the recipient to a web site and encouraged them to enter a picture and the phone numbers of friends and people they admired so everyone could learn about their acceptance into the SS club.
Just as the silver spoon club hit its peak of popularity the text messages went out to everyone the recipients had entered. Each one featured a gif of a girl stirring a bubbling cauldron of brown ooze with a big silver spoon and their picture crudely pasted over the face. The title heading read “Because of her dedication to lies and backstabbing, NAME has been accepted into the Shit Stirrers Club! Congratulations!”
Throughout it all Scootaloo kept her head down, feigning ignorance. Most of her friends soon returned as she explained the theft of her phone and patched things up, but two days after the text blast she brought home news that had her feeling very conflicted.
“Its Brittany,” she explained. “She was one of the worst ones, she would never leave me alone, she teased me constantly, said really hurtful things, and she’s the one who stole my phone and sent all those horrible things to my friends.”
We waited while she tried to find the words.
“The guidance counselor took her phone after the nurse found her cutting herself. They said...” she paused as her voice choked up “They said she was trying to kill herself! The picture on her phone was just the start of it. There were horrible messages telling her not to tell anyone, and pictures... then social services came to her house and found her mom's boyfriend had been doing… awful things… to her and her little brother! He’s in jail now and Brittany’s younger brother is in therapy! They had to take Brittany to a hospital, and she's going to stay there for awhile, is what the guidance counselor said.”
She looked at us in confusion as tears welled up in her eyes “What did I do? Was this right?”
“It's okay dear,’ I said “lets think this through. Did she try to kill herself because of your text message or because her mom's boyfriend was abusing her and her little brother?”
She had to think about that, so I continued “Can you imagine what that was like for her? Imagine what you would feel if someone were abusing one of your friends, really hurting them, and they told you they would do even more horrible things if you ever told someone. Yes, the picture you sent to her probably made her feel bad, but that wasn't the only awful thing going on in her life, not by a long shot. And because she felt bad, she did something stupid about those feelings, an adult caught her, saw what else was on her phone and going on in her life, and now a lot of really worse things are going to stop. It's even very possible that a big part of why she was bullying you is because of what was happening to her at home.”
Her face flashed anger and terror, then gradually, understanding. “Oh my God, I’m a horrible person!”
“Now hold on a moment there; what would have happened if you hadn’t done anything? Your life would still be miserable, and what would her life be like?”
She shuddered. “You think I did the right thing?”
I looked at her seriously “I think you did what had to be done to protect yourself and your friends. In this case you also saved a teenage girl from a horrible situation she couldn’t deal with on her own. I don't think anyone can really be absolutely certain whether it was the awful things happening at home, or the picture you sent, or maybe it was both that made her cut herself. In the end, your actions set in motion a chain of events that saved her and her little brother, but had things gone a little differently, you might have only saved her brother.”
As she worked out what I meant, her face went ashen.
“This is why you need to use what Kevin taught you responsibly. Some people harass and bully because they don’t think or know any better, but for some of them, they're hurting others because they've been hurt so much that hurting is almost all they know how to do. They've been beaten down and victimized for so long, that the only way for them to feel better at all is to hurt someone else. And now you know exactly what you can do with this. You are smarter than a lot of kids your age, and you have to strike a balance; it would be so easy to bully others with what you know now. Alternately you could be a doormat and lose your friends to others who bully...or, you could learn to look at people very closely, try and guess why they're being the way they are, and instead of getting even or just dealing with their nonsense, you can confront them with empathy and show them they aren't alone, and when you need to, get an adult involved.”
“But that's the problem! I told my teachers about the bullying, and they just said that since they never saw any of it...”
“They couldn't do anything about the bullying, specifically. What might your guidance counselor have done, if you had come to her and told her how worried you were about the girls who were bullying you, how you suspected something must be going terribly wrong for them to feel the need to be so vicious and hateful to others?”
“...She would've talked to them, and called all their parents in for conferences.”
“And the problem with Brittany would have been caught right then,” Kevin chimed in. “When the system won't work with you, sometimes you have to work the system.”
I knelt down and put my hands on her shoulders “When I finally figured this out I was a lot older than you, and I tried to avoid conflict where I could, and stand up for those who couldn’t defend themselves. It wasn’t easy, but if you stand up for those who can’t, even when they're trying to hurt you because they're too broken to know better, you will earn more friends and become a better person.”
“I… I think I can do that.” She managed with the beginnings of a smile.
Stats
Page generated in 0.082 seconds
Total duration
1,024 users online
435,924 hits today, 2,156,967 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
One note about bullying. It's not always peers that bully kids. Adults can be bullies to kids too. I had teachers that were very abusive to me at times, calling me names, hitting me, threatening to cut my hand off, etc. People tend to think of bullying as being child versus child, but it can also be adult versus child, which is even worse. Especially bad is when child vs. child bullying is going on, and the child tries to get help from an adult, and the adult treats the bullied child as if they are a troublemaker/problem/the weird one, rather than helping to stop the mean/dangerous behavior.
3368168 WTF did you go to school at an insane asylum what kind of fucked up teacher threatens to cut off a kids hand.
The worst thing about bullying is how easy it is to not classify it as such, or think it isn't serious.
The difference between hazing, pranks, and bullying is poorly defined, and all three don't really "Feel" serious.
The whole "Sticks and Stones" saying just makes things worse, because of just how harmful mere words can really be.
They got lucky here. This could have had a way worse ending.
I remember being an asshole as a child, and verbally bullying some people when I was bored. But I can't go back and change that, as much as I wish I could. No idea what happened to people I knew back then....