“I’m the new one.”
You’re a student looking for a new school to study. Enter Canterlot High School. This is one of the few institutions that can accept you with your current specialties. It’s a new school, after all.
However, the place looks like it was abandoned years ago.
You open the main doors and find the halls empty. You would expect lines upon lines of other students wanting the same purpose as you. Wondering if there’s somebody who can help with your paperwork, you go to the principal’s office. It’s empty as well, with piles of desks and chairs against the walls.
“Hello?” You ask nervously. “Is anybody here?”
Whilst questioning why such a place as this would be decrepit of people, something takes you by surprise. It falls from the roof.
To your shock, it’s a girl with red-and-yellow hair, similar to bacon. She’s wearing a military uniform and a sergeant hat. Perhaps the most distinguishable aspect of her appearance is a giant scar over her left eye. Before you ask yourself how she could hang herself from the roof if there are no rafts, she begrudgingly stands.
Dusting herself off, she gives you a glance, and a name. Sergeant Shimmer. She approaches firmly and coldly to you.
“What do you want?” She asks, while she keeps her eyes on you.
“D-D-D-Do you prepare students to get back to school in here?”
“Who told you?”
You take out of your backpack, shakily, a couple of flyers announcing the inscriptions for Canterlot High School. “I found these papers spread everywhere around the city. And I was wondering, if this was Canterlot High School?”
Sergeant Shimmer snatches the flyers from your hands and checks them.
“Yes, it is,” Once she’s sure they are from the school, she keeps them in her jacket. You don’t know how to react or how to behave with her.
“D-D-Do I pay you now or–?”
She interrupts you abruptly.
“This is not about money, this, is about surviving!” She approaches you in a way you could describe as stalking. “Do you want to survive to the end of your school year?!”
“...Yes,” you say nervously.
“Yes what?!”
“...Yes, I do?”
She slaps you in the face. “Yes, sir.”
And for every time you say it wrong, Sergeant Shimmer slaps you again and harder than the last time.
“Yes sir, sir.”
“Sir, yes sir!”
“Yes, sir yes.”
“Sir, yes sir!”
“Yes, yes sir.”
“SIR, YES SIR!”
“I don’t know sir!”
“SIR, YES SIR!”
“SIR, YES SIR!”
Congratulations, you finally said it correctly... but that doesn’t save you from getting punched in the face one last time.
Clutching the newfound bruise that would be sure to come, you groan in pain, “I said it right!”
“So you don’t forget it!” She breaths, probably to put herself together and, after a quiet moment, she proceeds.
“Follow me.”
Sergeant Shimmer guides you to what seems to be the playground, but it looked very deserted and lacked a certain quality… most likely life. It barely looked like a playground.
Moving further with Shimmer surprises your thought process, and halts everything to a snail’s pace.
Other students are there, forming lines and lines of disciplined cadets. All of them are wearing military uniforms. She salutes them and introduces you to the place.
“Welcome to the Advanced Student Survival Center!”
She immediately dismisses them and every student goes to their places. You follow her while she is describing this... ‘Survival Center’.
“In this place the most sophisticated techniques of survival are taught. But no student is similar to another, each and every one needs a specialized training.”
You get into the first section, near the eastern corner. It contains several urinals, a giant white wall covered in paint splats and remnants of foods. Oddly enough, the wall was painted like a target zone.
You can see the sergeant lining the students up so she could demonstrate her method and madness.
“Here, the bullied ones learn to carry with dignity, their miserable life. Here, training is hard because the bullied ones must learn that they will never cease to be.”
You blink and look to the toilets that lined the other side. Maybe not used for using the restroom, but most likely used to train for swirlies...
A shout snaps you from your daze, “Private Shy!”
Private Shy takes a step forward. She heads towards the white wall and while doing that, Shimmer orders to another student to bring her belongings. The stuff is nothing special, it’s just normal things like books, pencils, backpacks and... rotten food? Suddenly, when everything is ready, the sergeant begins to throw the stuff at her. Private Shy does whatever she can to dodge everything. Those were two long minutes. She checks her wrist watch.
“2.6 seconds less than the last time! All over again!”
And she repeats the process.
“Taaaaaaaaake this!”
Private Shy dodges everything this time... until an unexpected backpack hits her in the face and her smile vanishes. She looks like is ready to cry.
You look at the Sergeant in a harsh anger, but at the last moment Private Shy holds her tears. A newfound respect begins to unfold for the Private. She wouldn't look it, but you laugh, she is one tough cookie.
“How many sandwiches do we have to carry on in our backpack?!” Asks Sergeant Shimmer.
“Two, sir.”
“Bullshit, I can't hear you!”
“Two, sir!” answers Private Shy. “One in the lunch box and another one hidden somewhere else, sir!”
“Why?!”
“One can always be stolen, sir!”
“And what are we going to put into the stolen sandwich?!”
Private Shy grins a little while responding. “A little piece of crap, sir.”
Sergeant Shimmer smiles her back. “Excellent.”
Added note: The toilets could also be used for that too...
Shimmer dismisses Private Shy and allows the Cadets to carry on with training.
She guides you to the next area. Located in the sportive section, this spot is full of people doing workout. Punching bags and gym weights are All around.
Shimmer approaches a person whose name is clearly delved into her uniform, Private Dash. She is punching one of the bags, rather fiercely, and doesn’t stop when both of you approach.
Perhaps the strangest fact about it is that the punching bag has a picture of Private Shy glued to it. You can guess what it was trying to say. Sergeant Shimmer speaks.
“Here, we train the bullies so they can keep the delicate balance of the educative system,” She then directs to Private Dash. “Now, insult her!”
Private Dash stops almost entirely. Her muscles buckle in place, and her eyes glance at you in a short stop.
She looks like she’s ready to add a little water works but, unlike Private Shy, Private Dash doesn’t do anything to hide her tears.
“I can’t,” she speaks. “I can’t do it, it’s... it’s so cruel.”
“Cruel?” Sergeant Shimmer asks abruptly, her look is menacing. “Does it seem cruel to you?!”
Sergeant Shimmer uses her whistler to call one of the privates from the first section and she appears.
“Thanks for coming, Private Pie!”
“Sir, it’s nothing sir!”
The new cadet seems to take everything like a game and yet she takes it very seriously.
“I need you for teaching a lesson to Private Dash! Would you offer?!”
“Sir, yes si–!”
Rapidly, Sergeant Shimmer pinches one of Private Pie’s nipples.
The pain feels everywhere: from Private Pie’s face to Private Dash’s expression and you make faces because you have no idea of how to react to this. Immediately, both you and Dash put both hands up to your chest region. Sergeant Shimmer takes her time while she responds to Private Dash.
“This! Is! Cruel! School life is cruel!”
Sergeant Shimmer releases Private Pie from her hands and she remains there, on the floor, immobile. Sergeant Shimmer looks to Private Pie and smiles her.
“The death technique, I like that Private Pie.”
“Thanks, sir,” says Private Pie while raising her thumb up.
‘This School is Cruel...’ You think to yourself, ‘Should be the motto if anything...’
She moves on to the next section. This time it’s inside the building. The first classroom in the entire school is surrounded by desks with phones. In front of them, several students are reading a manual on how to practice voice imitation and have an agenda filled with house numbers.
“This will be one of the most important departments of your educational life, the Excuses Department,” she then points to one student. “Private Rarity, can you give us a sample of your progress?”
Private Rarity nods and picks up the phone, dials a number she has in her agenda and proceeds.
“Hello, I’m Rarity’s father. I’m calling you because she’s sick and the doctor gave her two rest days, so she can’t come to school.”
Private Rarity hangs up the phone and continues reading her manual. Sergeant Shimmer points to another student who is calling her home.
“Now, take a look at this.”
Sergeant Shimmer never says her name, but you can remember her appearance: gray skin, blonde hair, yellow walled eyes and a bubbly personality, even though she’s behaving more like a yandere imitating the voice of a terrorist.
“There’s a bomb in your school. You have fifteen minutes to give the evacuation order and bring a thousand muffins to 123 Fake Street or else...”
She hangs up the phone and laughs like a maniac. The next classroom is the lab. Inside, some students are doing experiment-like things. All of them wear lab coats and protective glasses, using microscopes and with all lights on. Sergeant Shimmer proceeds.
“And this is the Creative Department. Here people who work day after day, every day to graduate help the others to pass their exams without studying,” Sergeant Shimmer then taps the shoulder of one of the privates, although she doesn’t called her ‘Private’, like the other ones. The cadet stands up from her seat. “Twilight, what have you and your team developed today?”
Private Twilight pulls out from a desk some of the finished tools they have and show them to you one by one.
“Elastic bra support, two extra payrolls under the skirt, and Applejack is compressing the Encyclopedia Britannica in an eraser.”
“Ah don’t know what ah am doin’ here,” Private Applejack complains and turns her head around to Private Twilight.
“We didn’t have a place for you,” answers Sergeant Shimmer. “Now go back to your duties, Private Applejack.”
“Just because Ah can’t complain or negotiate very well,” murmurs Private Applejack. Private Twilight continues.
“And we have an extra book hidden on the back of the toilet, if the student has to go.”
The last section is the biggest classroom in the entire school. Here, other students are copying, detail by detail, a signature drawn on a blackboard.
“And finally, this is where we’re recovering the art of signatures forgery.”
You can’t hold up your emotions anymore. Dodging food fights, getting out of school early, FORGERY??
“This... this place is amazing,” you jump in excitement. “It’s awesome!”
“No, it’s not awesome!” Sergeant Shimmer corrects you, grabs your shoulders and look at you directly in the eyes. “It’s a necessary place, the destructive potential of schools and its colleges is underestimated.”
She looks to the roof, like she’s having a flashback. You realize it might take a while, and thus Shimmer describes everything that happened in her own experience. “I was there... missing all my recesses, having impossible expositions, watching all my friends fall.”
She points to the scar in her left eye. “I still feel the pain like it was yesterday.”
Then she looks back at you. “Each and every group you have seen has been carefully planned so nobody, and I do mean nobody, goes by the same like me.”
She takes your hands and, with a promising look and tone, perhaps the most kind of all, and she asks you a question.
“So now, of all the groups you’ve seen today, which one you’ll choose?”
“You see...” You babble for a moment, then you finally talk. “I’m the new one.”
“Now you’re fucked up.”