"Fluttershy, could you please come up to the board and solve this problem?"
Fluttershy perked up, half asleep and half awake at the sound of her teacher. She scanned the class in her state of slumber. Everypony was looking at her, expecting her to do something. Some were smiling at her with a mischievous look. Fluttershy looked at the teacher, who looked at her sternly. She sighed and got out of her seat, not even going to bother to tell the teacher that she was terrible at math and she couldn't figure out any of the problems. During the short but agonizing trip, she heard snickers behind her back as she made her way up to the chalkboard. She took the piece of chalk from the teacher and studied the math problem.
After a brief second of analyzing the chalkboard and looking at the various numbers, she came to the conclusion that she had absolutely no idea how she was going to do the problem. She knew she should have done the homework last night, that vital piece of homework that would probably tell her how to do problems like these, but of course like a fool she decided she would do in the morning. That problem backfired on her clearly, because know she was at the chalkboard and she couldn't figure out the problem to the equation with everypony watching her. Bits of sweat appeared and streaked down Fluttershy's forehead.
"Fluttershy, is there a problem?" the teacher asked.
Fluttershy opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Instead her little squeak, much to the calm laughter of the classroom. Fluttershy started to feel her temperature rising. Her face went red and thoughts raced in her mind, trying to decipher a code that was seemingly unbreakable.
The Celestia Code doesn't seem so bad looking, all of a sudden, Fluttershy thought.
"Fluttershy, if you don't know the answer, you could have just said so," the teacher said. Fluttershy stared at the teacher.
"I could?" she asked timidly.
The rest of the class laughed like they were in a comedy club. Fluttershy looked across the room, only to see the smiling and almost evil faces pointing and snickering at her like they were watching her getting executed. Fluttershy all of a sudden started to feel much smaller than she was before. She hung her head down, embarrassed yet another time. It's another mental clip for her compilation that she can watch and enjoy in her bedroom as she cries herself to sleep in the dark and cold night.
"Just go back to your seat, and I'll call somepony else up," the teacher said, brushing her to the aisle of chairs. Fluttershy picked up the slack and returned to her seat, not before climbing through the endless sea of legs that poked out from underneath the snickering foals seats. She climbed up to her seat and looked down at her textbook. Scanning through the infinite amount of numbers and word problems, Fluttershy still couldn't see the point in learning all of this math. She didn't plan to be a physicist or an atomic scientist. So why did she have to learn all this stuff?
She threw the thought away and decided it would be better not to get lost in thoughts and pay attention. Maybe she would learn something important. The teacher's voice droned on explaining the importance of the volume of a square or something like that. As the teacher went on, something sticky latched on to Fluttershy's pink hair. She dug the piece out of her hair and studied it, revealing itself to be a wet spitball. She immediately looked beside her seat and looked down two rows.
Of course, it was Dazzle Ruby. Her shiny red hair flowed down marvelously down her shoulders, her yellowish coat blending well with the two colours. She looked down at her paper scratching down some notes with her pencil. Fluttershy stared at her for a few seconds before turning her attention to the chalkboard.
Must not get distracted.
The next object latched into her ear, filling her eardrums with cold and soggy paper. Fluttershy took the paper and threw it to the ground like a small filly throwing her toys across the room. She focused her attention to the chalkboard again, trying to get the most out of her education.
Must, not, get, distracted.
Fluttershy felt a nudge to her shoulder. A filly beside her seat past a note below her seat. Fluttershy picked it out of her hoofs quickly so the teacher wouldn't notice the transaction taking place. She opened up the crumbled piece of paper, intrigue filling Fluttershy. She knew it wasn't going to be good as Ruby usually gives her notes in class almost every day. She swears that she must run out of creativity at some point.
But it seemed like her creativity didn't fail her this time. This time, it was her in a bubble high in the sky, with a needle just about to pop. In truth, Fluttershy had to admire the creative aspect to that, but she couldn't accept something as mean and vile as this. It was just another jab at her just like it was every other day. Fluttershy decided that enough was enough. She raised her hoof into the air. The teacher moved away from her teachings from the chalkboard and noticed the waving hoof in the air.
"Yes, Fluttershy?"
"Ruby is giving me mean notes!" Fluttershy yelled out. Ruby gave the teacher a look of betrayal.
"What? Are you joking? I would never do something like that!"
"Yes, you do! You do this all the time!" Fluttershy said. She was surprised that she was actually getting mad. She almost never gets mad in front of ponies, especially in front of a classroom.
"Ruby, may I please see this note?" the teacher asked with a stern look. Ruby sighed in defeat.
"Yes."
The teacher went over to Fluttershy's desk and looked over the note. She gave it a few moments and slapped it down on Fluttershy's desk.
"Ruby, I am reporting you to the office. This is offensive material, and I certainly do not want it in my classroom." Ruby sputtered and gasped but gave up. She slipped down from her desk and opened the door to the hallway. She gave one final glare at Fluttershy and exited the room.
In a way, Fluttershy felt glad. But if she knew Ruby, she would probably do something worse to her than just little notes.
The bell rang, indicating that it was finally time for recess. The doors swung open and a barrage of little foals burst out of the school, some flying high to the sky and some grabbing balls that were in baskets. The rest just stayed on the cloud ground and went to the playground where an assortment of swings and slides were built to cater to the young ones. The joyful sounds of children's laughter and talking filled the eardrums of those who walked by.
Fluttershy wasn't one of them, however.
Instead, she usually filed out into the playground after everypony else had, nopony else wanting to be her friend anyway, and tried to find an open bench for her to sit on. Then she would sit on the bench and pull out a book from her knapsack. It was all she would ever do and it was the only thing that actually entertained her. Today was no different as she settled into her bench and pulled out her book from her knapsack. She removed her bookmark and returned to the page that she was reading before.
Fluttershy always wondered if she would be a writer herself one day. Even though her work in math class was abysmal, she was very profound in the art of English. She could write anything she wanted to if she was that bored. All she had to do was take a stack of paper and a sharpened pencil and she would be on her way to writing one of the next best stories of all time.
To her, that didn't seem like a very bad idea and she wasn't very keen on reading a book that she had a read several times beforehand. She put the book back in her knapsack and took out a couple sheets of blank papers. She took out a pencil and sharpened it a little. She was ready to write her story.
Only, she didn't know how to start.
It should be a pretty easy process to do. All she had to do was put down words down on a blank piece of paper, and within minutes her entire page would be filled with scribbled letters and she would send it off to a publisher where they would distribute it and she would make millions. That seemed to be the perfect plan. But it wasn't coming to her. She put her pencil under her chin and thought long and hard for an idea that she could possibly do for her story.
Fluttershy decided it would be a good idea to just write what came to her. So she did just that, and wrote the very first that came to her head.
Pickles.
She stared at the word for the longest time and at the same time worried about her own well-being.
Pickles.
She tried scribbling down other random words that she hoped would spark something in her mind, none of which worked.
Chocolate.
Circles.
Lizards.
She scratched out the words furiously, growing frustrated at her lack of creativity. She pouted and covered her face into her arms, mentally kicking herself in the butt because she couldn't think of anything. She looked up from her arms and looked around the bustling environment that was the playground. Her eyes locked on to somepony and immediately turned red.
Fluttershy looked at a colt who was playing kickball at the baseball diamond. His coat was blue and his mane was messy and blonde. Not just the kind of blonde that many colts had. It was the kind of blonde that glowed and gave off a shine from the suns rays. He was a pegasus, just like Fluttershy. He kicked the ball and ran to the first base, showing off his athleticism as the rest scrambled for the ball.
Suddenly, Fluttershy had an idea. She flipped to a fresh page in her notebook and started to scribble down the first paragraph. She kept on writing for most of the recess period and didn't stop for a break. She kept writing until her wrist started to hurt and yet she still continued to write. Finally, she put down her pencil, which it's led has since been decimated to a round circle rather than a point.
Fluttershy didn't realize that she had finished about five pages worth of a story that she had wrote about that colt. It told of the story about him coming to Fluttershy's side and cheering her up, while sharing a little moment of romance. Before she even knew it, she must have wrote an entire chapter worth of a novel. Fluttershy liked the way it had turned out and maybe with a little bit of fixing, it would be a great bestseller in the Manehatten's Best Seller list.
She blew on the loose pieces of led off of the notebook and looked over her work, feeling a sense of pride. But then a feeling of dread washed over her. Fluttershy knew that if that colt was to find about the work that she had made, it would be completely embarrassing. Fluttershy quickly tucked the notebook into her knapsack as the recess bell sounded off, giving the signal that the period was over.
The foals filed back into the classrooms and returned to their seats. Fluttershy leaped into her seat and sat her knapsack on to the seat top and pulled out her notebook. She flipped back to the pages and tried to squeeze in some more words into her story. She never caught that she was slightly becoming obsessed with her own story. She caught a glimpse of the colt, who was focusing on his own work. She stared at him and gazed into his eyes almost romantically. At least, until the colt tried to take a glimpse of Fluttershy.
She gasped and turned down to her notebook and kept writing in her notebook. Fluttershy didn't think for a second that what she was doing was weird. She just kept on writing like she was a mad scientist that locked herself in the basement. She finished another page when the inexplicable happened.
She accidentally dropped her notebook to the ground.
Fluttershy quietly gasped and went down to retrieve the fallen notebook. Except she couldn't because the filly beside her slid the book right next to Ruby's desk.
Fluttershy turned extremely red as she saw Ruby pick up the book, right to the pages that she was writing in. Ruby looked through the pages and smiled wickedly. She stared over at Fluttershy and grinned like a maniac. She put the book in her own knapsack and continued her own work.
Immediately, Fluttershy could feel a thousand deaths before she even died.
