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.
Peach Berry studied all into the night and slept the minimum 6 hours she had determined she needed to be at peak performance. With the extra time she saved, she studied and worked some more. Her clairvoyance spell was coming along nicely, but there were still a few kinks to work out. She could search for anything she wanted with her clairvoyance, but the instructions they wanted her to use, such as ‘expectations met or exceeded’ was hard to use in the spell, being so nebulous. They expected her to do it, however, so she was working on it. She would have it soon, she was sure.
When she arrived at class, Oracle Glass taught and asked her again, as he did every day, and she responded positively. Her other classes went fine and she forgot everything else, including Stick-Flick, until lunch came. Stick-Flick wasn’t there.
Peach Berry thought about asking other students if they had seen Stick-Flick at all, but if she were to bring it up then she would be labeled as wishing to spend time with another pony instead of focusing on school. The expectation was that students didn’t do that, and solely put their attention toward bettering their education and grades. She couldn’t overtly ask, and she couldn’t bring it up to the teachers because it was likely they already knew and just weren’t telling anypony. There were no bells in school, there was no marking anywhere, because again, the expectation was that you were to be where you were supposed to be at the expected time. If you couldn’t figure it out, you didn’t really deserve to be there.
Peach Berry finished her lunch and studied, waiting for Stick-Flick to appear, but she never did. She went to her next classes and didn’t see Stick-Flick anywhere. She kept an eye out in the locker room for Stick-Flick but saw nothing. There was no sign of her anywhere. She didn’t know her locker or where she lived, so she couldn’t check those. She didn’t know where she lived or anything else about her. So the day ended with Peach Berry unable to find her, but resolved to hunt her down the best way she knew: With Clairvoyance.
She returned home, ate supper, and went upstairs. She closed the door to her room as she usually did, her parents didn’t mind because they expected her to work hard on her schooling. Stick-Flick was the first pony besides the family that had graced their home for years, so seeing her without Stick-Flick wasn’t unusual, nor was it unusual for her to be locked up alone. She prepared herself, put on her earmuffs and blindfold to remove sensory information, then started her spell.
It was easy for her to begin, and since she wasn’t looking for anything as nebulous as an expectation, Stick-Flick was easy to find. The image in Peach Berry’s mind coalesced into Stick-Flick, curled up in a corner in a nearly-empty room, beaten and bruised.
Peach Berry was a little alarmed at the sight. She had expected to find Stick-Flick at home with her parents near her old school, perhaps crying to be taken back home to somewhere that wasn’t expecting so much of her, but this looked like it was not of her own volition. Peach Berry lowered her point of view a bit and turned in a slow circle, looking around at the location Stick-Flick was in.
It was a dingy room, with a single desk and chair in one corner, a door across from it, and a mat of straw on the floor. Stick-Flick was huddled in a corner, one small blanket covering her as she quivered in a ball. Another corner was soiled with what Peach Berry could not smell but assumed must be feces and urine. Wherever Stick-Flick was, she had not been provided with latrine or chamberpot.
Peach Berry waited, watching. She was hoping the pony that was keeping her there would come in, but despite waiting for twenty minutes they did not, so Peach Berry took matters into her own hooves. She had been waiting to try this with a pony that was not aware of the spell, because although it wasn’t what the teachers were expecting of her, it was still an effect she was very proud of. She spoke through her spell.
“Stick-Flick, can you hear me?” asked Peach Berry.
Stick-Flick’s head shot up and her mouth moved, but there was silence. Peach Berry hadn’t been able to implement a way to hear the other side, but she was also working on that. Still, it would appear Stick-Flick heard her.
“I cannot hear you, but if you have something to write on I can see it. Where are you?” asked Peach Berry.
Stick-Flick scrambled to her hooves and grabbed the paper on the desk. She opened the drawers, Peach Berry assumed she was hunting for a quill, but there was nothing. Instead, she went over to the corner and much to Peach Berry’s disgust, dipped her hoof in the feces and wrote on the paper. She held it up in front of herself and looked around, confused. It read, “Foalnapped.”
Peach Berry tapped a hoof to her chin. If Stick-Flick didn’t know where she was, Peach Berry would need to find out herself. The trouble with her clairvoyance spell was that she couldn’t move away from the pony or location her spell was attached to. The rules of the spell meant that it was locked to that location or pony, and although she could see around the lock, she couldn’t move. She would have to refine the rules of the spell, just like her teachers had asked her to do.
“I will help, please wait,” said Peach Berry, and dropped her spell.
She sat, thinking about how to refine it. The rules needed to be clear, but they had to be rules that could be followed by something that followed them to the letter. It was a conundrum, and one that had plagued her ever since she had been asked to make the spell work. The spell was too stupid to follow complex commands.
Peach Berry pondered, wondering if there was some way to track where Stick-Flick had been taken and at what time, when she hit an epiphany: If somepony were going to foalnap a filly, you would have to take her somewhere, thus the rule: Where in Upper Canterlot would you expect a foalnapper to take a filly?
With that in mind, Peach Berry began casting her clairvoyance spell again. “What building would you expect somepony to take a kidnapped filly within Upper Canterlot?” she mumbled as she cast the spell. It strained, and she felt a twinge in her head as the spell drained her energy as it tried to cast. She felt it make a wide sweep around her, searching through Canterlot for the boundaries Peach Berry knew made up the city. It swept out wider and she almost fell over from the strain. She wobbled in place and blinked rapidly under her blindfold. If she had been able to see, she was certain the world would be swimming. She almost dropped the spell before a building came into focus in her head. She blinked, but it being a mental projection it didn’t disappear. She swayed but forced the spell the descend to street level and looked at the crossroads. She smiled to herself as she recognized the street, then blacked out.
When she came to she was downstairs on the couch. The police were there, anxiously standing above her. She felt something cold on her chest and a pony leaned over her, shining a light into her eyes. She blinked and lifted a hoof to block it.
“Oh, Peachy, sweetie, you’re okay!” her mother’s voice said.
The pony, who she saw had on a nurse’s cap, got up off the couch and nodded to her parents. “She’s fine. Whatever was affecting her before has stopped. I believe it was the spell you mentioned she must have used, the clairvoyance spell?”
“Yes, she’s been studying it for months. Everypony is very excited about it,” Peach’s mother said.
“Our daughter is one of the rising stars of Canterlot, you know. When she gets the spell to work it will revolutionize the schooling industry!”
“Excellent to hear it. Her eyes are fine, and I don’t believe there has been any lasting damage. She might have a headache, but she is the picture of health.
“Mother, father, what has happened? Why am I downstairs on the couch? And why are the police here?” asked Peach Berry.
Her father beamed. “Well, Peach Berry, you just rescued a pony from a foalnapper! With your clairvoyance!”
“I… did?”
Her mother nodded. “You came downstairs with your blindfold and earmuffs on, mumbling about a pony being foalnapped and a building they were in. You insisted somepony, I think it was your acquaintance from the other day, was being kept in a building somewhere.”
“Yes, you insisted we call the police, and they were skeptical at first, but all we had to do was tell them your name and they went to check it ou! You are very well-known, Peach Berry,” her father said.
Peach Berry sat up straight. “You mean the spell worked? You found her?” Peach Berry jumped down from the couch and danced in a circle. “I did it, I did it, I did it! I got the spell working!”
Peach Berry went into a long explanation to her parents and the police who were there about how she had succeeded in her spell. It worked with expectations. At least, it should, now that she knew how to give it instructions. It would require some refining, but it had worked the once, so it should work again! Oracle Glass was called and came to visit her immediately and the two of them worked on it throughout the night. The police were dismissed after they got a brief statement from her, but in all the excitement she forgot all about Stick-Flick. She didn’t even ask if the filly was okay, she was so wrapped up in her success.
Peach Berry was excused from her other classes as Oracle Glass and she worked to refine the spell, and refine it they did. They tested the limits of instruction it could be given and how far it would go. They learned to recognize when it wasn’t going to succeed and when it was, and before she knew it, in just a single month she was prepared. The day she presented it to the school was the day she was approached by a pony in a large black cloak with a curious job offer written out on paper, and no spoken words.
“Whom do you expect to succeed? Join us and find out.”
Signed: The Expectors
The writing was very nearly invisible. If you turned it just right, the light made the card appear blank. She looked up from it to find the pony gone, but the card still in her grip. She didn’t know what to make of it.
Where did she get this card? Why did she have it? Who were the Expectors? What was an Expector? She knew what an expectoration was, were they similar? That would be disgusting. Peach Berry put the card in her bag and went home. She had business to attend to. Oracle Glass wanted her to help with some work that had to do with the rolls tomorrow. She needed to rest and try the spell some more.
It was during her practice with the spell that she was reminded of the card. She took it out and looked at it. The writing was fancy, in an older script, it looked like, and it raised a good question: Who did she expect to succeed? That was similar to the question she was asked by the school, and she figured there was no better time to test the question than with her new spell. She decided to test it.
When the hubbub in the school surrounding her had died down and she was free to return home, she sequestered herself in her room with her earmuffs and blindfold again. She prepared the spell, gathering power in her horn. She was ready for the drain it was going to be on her this time and was far more confident in the effects. She took a deep breath, focused her magic, and cast.
“At school, my school, which ponies are expected to succeed?” she said as she cast the spell.
The pull on her horn was heavy and her mind’s eye was filled with a list of names. They started out as random letters, but as the spell got used to her expectations it coalesced into a list written on a sheet of parchment, hanging from above and dangling to down below. As she watched, the names began scrolling up and down, settling themselves into position only to be shunted out of it by another name that was still finding its spot. The magic to power the spell was tugging at her, draining out of her in a carefully-controlled flood as the names whizzed by, filling the parchment.
When the spell finished, Peach Berry was presented with a long, dangling strip of parchment with every student’s name on it scrolling up to infinity in her mind’s eye and down to nowhere. She was sure it only looked that way for effect, as there was no way there were enough students to fill that much parchment. It was an exclusive school, so there had to be an end to the roster.
She looked up and down at the list of names and realized she didn’t know how this was organized, she tried to reach out and hold it with her magic, then realized her spell was holding the whole thing together. Her hoof would do no good, and neither would her magic, so she focused on a name; her name.
The parchment made no sound as it scrolled, but Peach Berry’s name rolled down from above to show her position, sitting comfortably at the top. It made sense, because she had just completed her thesis in magic, which had even been requested by the faculty themselves. She had been the most recent filly to graduate, even if she hadn’t finished, so the expectation at the moment was that she was going to complete it all with flying colors. No teacher dared to stop her for fear of getting on the bad side of the others.
She knew they valued her spell. Knowing what to expect at any given time would be useful beyond measure. The expected number of students that would graduate would help them manage their curriculum, focus on troubled students, and make better lesson plans. Knowing which students they could expect to pass a test would help them cater to those students and encourage others. At least, that was what Peach Berry could envision with it. Making sure students reached their expected potential; that was what she was after.
Speaking of Potential, Peach Berry remembered her acquaintance, Stick-Flick, for the first time since her kidnapping. She felt kind of bad, but she had heard Stick-Flick had been rescued and she was interested in now seeing what her acquaintance was up to. So, Peach Berry focused on her friend’s name and watched the parchment fly by, moving down, down, down until it found her. She was at the very bottom.
“Wait, what? Why?” she exclaimed. At her query, the parchment scratched in more information next to Stick-Flick’s name. Information on her performance, her grades, her interactions, her efforts, and every black mark against her name by circumstance. Her previous school, her request for help, and her foalnapping all counted against her.
Peach Berry had expected all this. Most of it made sense. It was expected that you would come from a prestigious school to another prestigious school. Stick-Flick was the token acceptance to encourage others. It was part of what she knew was the search for the ‘diamond in the rough’ among poorer classes. The second mark against her, her request for help, also made sense. It was expected that you would learn how things worked on your own and make your way to a better place from there. You had to. It was expected! But the final mark, that of her getting foalnapped? Why was that a bad mark? She didn’t have any control over that at all. If somepony wanted to grab her, how could she stop it?
Peach Berry realized the answer the moment she thought it: She was taught defense in school. There is no excuse for missing class, when the classes you’re missing are teaching you to defend yourself. It is expected that you be self-sufficient in every way, and that included protecting yourself. Anypony that couldn’t would not be a good fit in this high-class world.
Peach Berry ended her spell and pulled off her blindfold. She lay herself down in bed and stared up at the ceiling, thinking about what she had learned. Expectors, expectations, foalnappings, and her recent success with her spell. Was that the kind of information they would be expecting? Was that what she had to look forward to in the future? Would she just cast that spell every day and pick out the bottom student?
“Is that what the Expectors do?” she wondered aloud.
There was a chill in the air and a pony wandered out of the shadows in a corner of her room. They were clad all in black, carrying a parchment in their magic. Peach Berry pressed against the wall in fear, but the pony stopped halfway to her.
Inherently knowing the expectation of a pony in trouble, Peach Berry cast her shield spell. She wasn’t powerful in shields and it was her worst class, but she was clever, and it made her confident. Once it was up and prepared to block whatever the pony might do she addressed them. “Who-who are you? How did you get in here?”
The pony said nothing, but held up the parchment toward Peach Berry. The top of it said: “Expectations Unmet”. The rest of it was a list of names, and at the bottom sat the name she had just been looking at: Stick-Flick.
Peach Berry furrowed her brow at the parchment. “Why are you showing me this? What do you want?”
The pony beckoned her over with a hoof. She was wary, but if they could get inside her home so easily they were probably equipped to hurt her if they so chose. She approached, but stopped short. They beckoned to her again and held out a black-clad hoof. She got closer and looked at the hoof. Whatever the pony was wearing, the black it was made of seemed to shift, making the pony hard to see. It was probably how they had entered her house. Idly she wondered if they could use magic to make the clothes change but stopped wondering when the pony grabbed her hoof in theirs and the world around them shifted.
Everything became darker. The black clothes the pony was wearing smeared onto her own hoof and crawled up her limb. She tried to pull away, but the pony held tight, unmoved by Peach Berry’s panic. She tried to shield herself from the blackness but whatever the stuff was made of burned through her magic, tearing into her spell and passing with relative ease. As it reached her face it covered her in black, then quickly spread down her back, blanketing her entirely.
Much to her surprise and relief, Peach Berry was not suffocated or harmed. It was just a sort of magical clothing. She took her free hoof and patted herself all over. The stuff felt like silk or felt if she had to make a comparison, but it wasn’t killing her. She could see, breathe, and move unhindered, and she still felt like herself and there was no pain. It didn’t even really feel like she was wearing anything.
Peach Berry felt a tug on her hoof and the pony pulled her toward the corner she had first seen them in. As the two of them approached the shadows in the corner, the rest of Peach Berry’s room grew darker. The closer they got, the darker it all became and the brighter the shadows grew until the light in the corner was all Peach Berry could see. It grew, looming large in her vision until the light overtook them both and passed overhead.
Just as quickly as it came, the light disappeared and Peach Berry found herself on a series of dark streets. There were no buildings beside them, just streets of mossy cobblestone traveling from place to place, lit by nothing but whatever ambient illumination filled the strange space. Peach Berry could see ponies similarly clad in the same black magic moving up and down them. Some turned their heads to look at her as her companion pulled her down the street, their horn lit by magic as they walked.
The pony seemed to know where they were going, as peach Berry was dragged unerringly up and down street after street until they came to a spot that, to Peach Berry, appeared to be the same as the rest of the streets. Her companion, however, pulled her off the street and into the darkness, that same light washing over them, revealing a dark room.
“Where—” Peach Berry was cut off by magic sealing her mouth shut. It was then she noticed movement off in another corner, and a dry, choked, heaving sound.
Peach Berry couldn’t see well, but her companion had no such problem, and was staring into the darkness of the room. Her hoof was released, and Peach Berry watched as her companion moved out into the room, pulling a sheaf of paper from the blackness that was their clothes. The pony kicked something on the floor that looked like a cricket bat, on purpose, Peach Berry assumed, and the pony that was in the bed at the far side of the room shot up to their hooves. It was a colt, Peach Berry saw, and he turned around, holding a kitchen knife in his magic.
“I knew you’d come for me! I knew! Why do I have to excel at fucking everything!” He was sobbing, his face streaked with tears. “Everypony who doesn’t do as good as ‘they’ want disappears! I didn’t know where Kickball disappeared to, but he’s gone! Same with Spearmint! But I see you now, motherfucker! This is for them!” He slashed out at Peach Berry’s companion with his knife and fired a beam at the same time.
The pony in black deflected both attacks at the same time. Peach Berry couldn’t see what he did, but the beam went wide and the knife embedded itself into the floor. After the attacks were stopped, the pony surged forward without a sound. There was a cloudy movement and the next thing any of them knew the colt was enveloped in blackness. This time the dark cloak the pony wore was malevolent. It boiled and churned as it covered the colt. He gave a choking sob and began crying before his face disappeared into the darkness and was gone.
Peach Berry just stood in silence at the spectacle. She was too stunned to say anything as the dark pony turned around and walked back over to her. She just stared. The pony wasted no further time, however. A piece of parchment was withdrawn from the dark clothing and shoved into her face. It was the list of names, and the first one was now crossed off. The pony pointed at the next one, then at the shadows. Peach Berry opened her mouth but had no chance to speak as her hoof was grabbed and she was dragged off. As they returned to the twilit streets, Peach Berry finally managed to get a few words out.
“Wait, what was that? What did you do and why?” demanded Peach Berry.
The pony turned their head and stared down at her. A hoof was raised to the face she couldn’t see, and the pony remained silent.
“I don’t understa—” Peach Berry was silenced by magic again, her lips sealed. She understood now. She was expected to remain silent. And so she remained. Silence reigned between the two of them as they wandered down the dark streets. No sound came from anypony, not even hoofsteps clopped along the cobbles, their thick, black, and likely magical clothes muffling any tapping as they went.
They traveled to the next patch of darkness where Peach Berry was pulled through into another pony’s room. There was no violence this time. Her dark companion merely walked up to the sobbing figure carrying a book Peach Berry could not make out. The stallion they had come to visit nodded and bent over, crying into his hooves as he was enveloped in darkness. Once he was gone they returned to the streets through the shadows, moving to the next location where they found yet another pony who was taken into the dark.
Peach Berry followed along in silence and growing confusion. Some of these ponies were classmates from school, and she had thought they were doing rather well. Had so many of them truly failed to live up to expectations? Were they all doing so badly that none of them could be spared? Is this what happened to everypony who failed to meet expectations? For that matter, where did they go? She hadn’t heard news of where anypony who disappeared went, she just knew many disappeared, and if this was why they disappeared, where were they taken?
Her companion took her to many different places to see many different ponies, but eventually the names on the list disappeared until only Stick-Flick was left. Peach Berry was a little upset that Stick-Flick had been left to last, but she was only a little perturbed. Stick-Flick had exhibited every sign of being unable to keep up with the expectations of the school, and if you couldn’t keep up, you might as well leave. This was just the ejection of those ponies who were going to hold others back. It was a necessary purge. She sighed as they entered Stick-Flick’s room through the darkness and saw her lying on her bed, asleep. Her companion didn’t approach, however. Peach Berry felt a hoof on her flank and she was pushed forward, the dark figure nodding at her.
“Wait, wha—” Peach Berry felt her mouth forced closed again. Stick-Flick stirred on her bed but didn’t wake up, thankfully. The dark pony shook their head at Peach Berry, then pointed at Stick-Flick with a hoof and fluttered their clothes.
Peach Berry’s heart sank as she realized what it was the pony expected of her. This pony must be one of the Expectors, and this was what she was expected to do as one of them. The business card, the fact that she didn’t remember being given it. She was meant to forget.
Peach Berry was expected to do it, so she moved forward. She looked down at Stick-Flick, who was breathing heavy in her bed. In the darkness of the room she could see that Stick-Flick was not looking well. Her trial with her foalnapping had left its mark, and Peach Berry could only imagine what the poor filly had gone through. She had fading bruises on her face and a black eye, her mane was missing patches, and her lips had been split in multiple spots. Her snout was slightly crooked, meaning it had probably been broken, and that was just on her face. Peach Berry had no idea how the rest of her looked.
There was movement to Peach Berry’s side and she jumped a bit as she saw her dark companion loom into view. The parchment from before was shoved into her face, with a list of all Stick-Flick’s transgressions on it. She had failed to meet expectations in her grades, she had asked for help when she was expected to learn on her own, and she had missed multiple classes and club meetings she was expected to be at because of her foalnapping. The foalnapping was not an excuse, Peach Berry knew, because she was expected to be able to defend herself like everypony else. The defense classes were for a reason, and if you were not as good as they expected, then you did not deserve to attend.
Peach Berry stared down at the sleeping form for a moment longer, then closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She looked around at the room Stick-Flick was staying in and felt a twinge of sympathy for the poor filly. From the look of it she was far away from home, living a sparse lifestyle with nothing but a desk, her homework, and the bed she was on. There was no indication she had any contact with her home below Upper Canterlot.
Peach Berry turned to look at her dark companion and the parchment was once again shoved in her face.The pony pointed at Stick-Flick’s name, then motioned to the dark cloak Peach Berry was wearing. She sighed and turned back to Stick-Flick, then reached out and touched the filly with a black-clad hoof.
Nothing happened.
Peach Berry looked at her dark companion and the pony nodded. She looked back and wondered what she had to do to make it do the boiling and covering thing. As soon as she thought it, however, her clothes surged outward and began covering Stick-Flick. The sensation must have woken her up, because Stick-Flick turned to look. She opened her mouth to try to scream, but the darkness covered her face before she could get anything out and silence reigned. It covered her completely, then disappeared. As the shadows flowed back into her clothes, Peach Berry wondered again where ponies went, but she was not expected to worry about that. She was expected to hunt ponies down.
Her dark companion looked down at her and clapped her on a shoulder. She was dragged back to the shadows in the room and went back into the dark streets. She was not returned to her home, but was instead taken somewhere that seemed like a barracks. Her companion pointed at a bed that was freshly made with clean sheets and blankets, with a locker at the foot of the bed. She was pushed toward it and her companion turned to leave.
“Wait!” Peach Berry yelled.
Her companion turned back to her sharply, then stomped over and smacked her, hard. She fell to the ground in pain and confusion, then started sobbing. It only lasted a moment as her mouth was sealed shut with magic. Her nose was plugged as well, and she couldn’t breathe. Her sobs turned into panicked flailing as she struck at the spell covering her nose. She was released abruptly and fell to the floor, gasping. Once again, her companion pointed at the bed.
Peach Berry kept her noises to herself and moved to the bed that she had been pointed toward. She crawled on top of it and curled up under the blankets, then closed her eyes, trying to get to sleep and wake up from this nightmare.
Unfortunately, her dreams were filled with nightmares, and when she awoke, she was still in the same place. A stack of books had been placed next to her, written in a careful cursive. Next to them was a small folding table covered in simple food, and a piece of parchment.
Peach Berry ate and looked at the parchment. It was empty, but at the top were the words; “Who do you expect to fail?”. The parchment was long, and if Peach Berry had to hazard a guess, she would say that they were expecting her to fill it out using her divination spell. If these were the expectors, this was their job. They were to eject ponies who could not make the cut back home.
She looked at the books and her suspicions were confirmed. The books were all on advanced uses of divination, and much to her surprise, there were several books on using clairvoyance to find ponies based on expectations! She had never seen one before or even heard of any of these authors. It made sense, however, that they would keep the clairvoyance to themselves. She nodded to herself and ate while she read.
Her day passed somehow, though she wasn’t sure what time it was. It didn’t really matter in this place, wherever this place was, and she occupied herself using her spell and reading the books. By the time her companion came to get her, she had a list of seven ponies. She was pleased with herself, but the pony crossed two of them out and shook their head. Still, she was taken with them on the trip to ‘collect’ the five remaining, and she did it without fuss. She was sent to bed with a bit of food, then left alone.
Days passed, and Peach Berry was left alone to work. She was used to being alone in her room to study, which fit this new lifestyle very much. She idly wondered how her parents were getting along without her, but they probably thought she got a job. That had been the expectation in the first place, so all she needed now was to find a stallion and she would be living her parents’ dream life for her. She was not bothered by the isolation, as it was the same as school, just without the ambient noise. She was used to it all, and ponies expected it of her.
One day, however, she was learning how the darkness was used for travel, and she came upon a passage in it that she did not recognize. It was hidden in a far corner of the streets of The Undercant, as she called it (It didn’t have an official name). She passed through the passage, as nopony stopped anypony else from doing anything. You were expected to know where you were allowed to go, and you were expected to do your work in time.
The room within, as she discovered, was dark, without even a floor to break the monotony. She heard nothing, but she could feel something, somewhere within it. It felt like magic, and so she followed it to its source, interested to discover what it was.
The feeling led her blindly through unseen, maze-like passages, through the darkness that blocked every attempt at lighting it, until she found a room of sorts. It wasn’t so much a room as it was a hall, but up and down it, as far into the distance as she could see, were ponies. They were attached to the walls, fastened into strange, black devices with their horns stuck into the shadows around them.
Peach Berry didn’t quite know what to make of it. She went up to the closest one and looked them over. The mare in the device was alive, but she was staring gormlessly straight upward. There was a faint glow of magic around her and her own horn was active, but she didn’t seem to be focused on anything, or even away of Peach Berry’s presence. Peach Berry waved her hoof in front of the pony’s face, but there was no reaction.
Peach Berry went to the next figure and found that it was similarly comatose. No reaction, even when she poked them. Use of her magic didn’t tell her anything about the spells, either. Everything was completely unfamiliar to her about their predicament, and she wasn’t sure what to make of it. It looked dangerous, but what was happening? She trotted down the lines of ponies, looking for something that would tell her what this was all about.
Something caught her eye and she stopped a moment to look at one of the ponies. She approached and was disturbed to see Stick-Flick, trapped in the devices and her horn stuck in the darkness. She was almost alarmed to see her here, but Peach Berry hadn’t felt much of anything in some time. She didn’t even exclaim. She just stared, nonplussed by the situation.
It was then her dark companion from the first time she came here found her. He (she had figured out how to tell them apart) had snuck up behind her. He put a hoof on her withers and looked down at Stick-Flick. He nodded, and Peach Berry nodded back.
This was how it had to be. Those who failed had no place and creating a group of unhappy ponies who had failed out of everything couldn’t be abided, so they put them here to keep them out of everypony else’s way. They were useful here, they were dealt with, and they would no longer be a problem.
This was, Peach Berry thought, to be expected.
The End.
