Cheerilee battled back an exasperated sigh as she struggled to maintain focus on the ranting of the parent in front of her. It wasn’t that she wasn’t concerned about the topic; on the contrary, it was one with which most of her days had been preoccupied with for at least two full school years. It was just that she’d been served the same dish with every conceivable topping known to pony kind by this point.
‘Next, she’s gonna say something about how the school is a failure of an institution, or that I don’t have the right to call myself a teacher,’ Cheerilee thought.
“This entire school should be considered a failure!” the parent yelled, stomping her hoof on the teacher’s desk. “And you should feel ashamed of how you failed my son as his teacher!”
‘Oh, look at that. Double jackpot.’
“Ma’am,” Cheerilee said aloud, “I understand your frustrations, and believe me, if there were anything I could do to help, it would have been done. But the rules are the rules, and your son’s suspension is going to have to be upheld.”
The lavender pony flinched even before the response came. “But he was just defending himself! How is it fair that Cherry Wind gets punished for standing up for not being a victim?!”
This was the part that felt like wading through a pool of boiling oil for Cheerilee. She’d said the words far too often, and had long since abandoned even trying to sincerely believe them. But they had to be said, and so she took a deep breath, and dipped one leg into the scorching vat.
“If Cherry had simply come to a faculty member and told them he was having problems, then we could’ve done something about—” Cheerilee saw it coming, but still lamented the crash and clatter of her porcelain pencil holder smashing against the wall.
‘Third one this year. I liked that one, too.’
“Don’t give me that crap!” the enraged mare exclaimed. “Do you know how many times Cherry Wind went to one of your ‘faculty members’ about how Hot Trot?”
‘Six times.’
“Six times!” Cherry Wind’s mother answered herself. “And every single time, it’s a stern talking to, or a slap on the hoof, or he misses recess, and nothing gets fixed! And the one time it looks like you’re actually going to do something, my son gets caught up in the crossfire!”
“It’s just a two week suspension,” Cheerilee said. “By then, I’m sure that whatever issue Cherry and Hot Trot have will be smoothed over.”
Cherry Wind’s mother merely glared, saying more with the look than she had the entire ten minutes she’d been raging at Cheerilee. Silently, she rose from her chair, and made to leave the classroom. As she reached the door, she shot another look back at the teacher before spitting on the floor, then exiting with a slam, one strong enough to shake every framed picture hanging on the walls.
“Spit of disgust,” Cheerilee said, chuckling darkly. “Haven’t seen that one in a while.”
She almost couldn’t bring herself to do it, but after a moment, Cheerilee grab a roll of paper towels and made her way to the small, fluid monument of disrespect at the entrance to her classroom. As she wiped the floor, she reflected on the afternoon’s events that led her to this point, much soon found herself going much further back than earlier in the day.
It had been a novel idea, at the time. One she’d agreed to, along with nearly every other pony in town. With the existence of the School of Friendship, it only made sense that the rest of Ponyville did what it could to represent the ideals that the school was founded on.
Certain medical expenses were waived to encourage more frequent visits and improve life status. More than a few restaurants had adopted a “free buffet hour” so that everyone could enjoy a nice meal every once in a while, regardless of income. Hugs, smiles, and deals made on good faith and trust instead of contracts and bits had become the norm, and Ponyville as a whole had seen an unprecedented uptick in general living satisfaction.
And of course this would extend to the school, right? Foals still needed a proper education, and that institution of learning should obviously reflect what the School of Friendship stood for. Which meant that there was no place for physical altercations within the school walls. A single punch, kick, bite, headbutt, or slap would result in an immediate suspension, no questions asked. An edict from the mayor herself, one that would surely mitigate the amount of physical harassment and violence that permeated the school grounds.
“Except there hadn’t been any violence,” Cheerilee spat. Metaphorically, as to not increase her sanitorial workload. “A little scuffle between foals is hardly violence.”
But there were to be no exceptions. No playground scuffles, no rough housing, nothing. The school officially had taken a stance of no tolerance against all forms of fighting. And even before the first incident, Cheerilee had seen the obvious loophole. She wasn’t born yesterday, she’d seen how bullying can play out. And asking a foal, asking anypony, to refuse to fight back against being assaulted, even when it was such a one sided affair, was…
“The harebrained idea of an idealistic idiot who doesn’t know what’s best for foals.”
...shortsighted, to say the least.
Conditioning the young minds of Equestria to withstand abuse in the hopes that their abuser would eventually be punished was already something that went against everything Cheerilee stood for as a teacher. But the fact that she had to punish the students brave enough to stand up for themselves had brought her to the precipice of quitting myriad times, over these past two years of the policy being in place. This, however, was something she could not allow herself to do.
Cheerilee did what she could to protect her students from the parasitic policy that stripped them of their agency to fight back against their peers, if need be. In the old days, she always kept an eye out on a certain group of fillies that seemed like they were always one bad day away from a full blown gang war, but even though it had thankfully never come to that, she believe she’d been privy enough of the nuances of the situation to deal with the fall out in the best possible way. She had to be. That kind of insight in understanding foals and helping them grow is what earned her the smiling flowers on her flank.
She did everything she could to circumvent the policy, working hard to diffuse as many altercations as she could before a single punch could be thrown. But she was, in the end, a single mare, and the school had gotten bigger ever since ponies began moving here to be closer to the School of Friendship. The other teachers hired to make up for the increased rate of enrollment had all but given up trying to fight against the policy at this point.
If she ever left, Cheerilee didn’t know if her replacement would put in the same effort and she did.
“And you know that’s something you just can’t tolerate,” the magenta school teacher said to herself, before she paused, then chuckled again. “Pfft, geez, that so wasn’t on purpose.”
The moment of mirth was gone as quickly as it had inadvertently come, and Cheerilee sighed as she finished cleaning up. She hadn’t just been giving lip service to Cherry Wind’s mother. She genuinely hoped that whatever was going on between her son and Hot Trot would be resolved when they came back to school. Something had to give, sooner or later, and the teacher begged whichever princess that bothered to listen that it wouldn’t be her.
“Alright class, when you’re finished with your exams, please place them on the table next to my desk, then you’re free to go.”
Cheerilee looked around her classroom, happy to see so many students diligently working on their tests. The sight was so magical, she poked herself with a pencil a few times just to make sure she hadn’t been dreaming. But no, there she was, with a front row seat to the almost perfect image of a class of students giving their all to make her, and more importantly, themselves proud.
Thump!
Almost being the operative word.
Two entire weeks away from each other, and Cherry Wind and Hot Trot’s friction seemed to have picked up exactly where they had left off, the latter apparently redoubling his efforts to harass the former. Knocking over his lunchbox, stealing supplies while Cherry was away from his desk, just a gambit of classic bullying behavior. Even now, during an exam of all times, Hot Trot couldn’t stop himself, pelting the back of Cherry Wind’s soft pink mane with large rubber erasers that he had to have bought for this singular purpose.
‘Does he think I can’t see him?’ Cheerilee thought. Even if she hadn’t been keeping an eye on Hot Trot, the frantic movement of his burnt orange coat would be almost impossible to ignore as it sent a barrage of the pink missiles at Cherry Wind’s head. It was only when he’d realized he caught Cheerilee’s attention did he finally stop, but he did so with a kind of self satisfied laugh before finally turning his attention to the exam that he’d yet to start. It was here that Cheerilee was made to understand a dark truth to the situation that she truly hadn’t realized before. A factor that she didn’t think, couldn’t have thought, was possible had she not seen it in Hot Trot’s eyes just now. It wasn’t that the foal didn’t think she could see him…
‘...he just doesn’t care.’ The notion sent Cheerilee down a mental spiral towards the implication of that fact. Hot Trot didn’t care that his teacher had seen him abusing another student. No sheepish deflection, or shame glance to the side. He knew she knew, and he didn’t care. Hot Trot had no intention of leaving Cherry Wind alone, and the harshest punishment they could give him had done nothing to curb his attitude.
Cheerilee stared blankly ahead for an amount of time she couldn’t recall if asked, but she eventually came out of it as foals began bringing up their exams. Soon, Cherry Wind did the same, placing his test on top of the pile, and it was only the yoke of professionalism that stopped her from pulling the student across the table and wrapping him in a hug, apologizing to him, and every other student that she’d allowed to suffer through this abuse.
But the yoke was sturdy, and so Cheerilee put as many emotions and words into just the smile she offered Cherry Wind, who returned his own feelings into his own as he turned and attempted to walk out of the classroom. Only attempted, however, as on the way out, he was sent sprawling to the ground, face first on the wooden floor.
“Whoops,” Hot Trot said, bringing his leg back underneath his desk as he cackled at Cherry Wind’s painful groans. “Maybe watch where you’re going next time, Windy! I’m trying to take a test over here.”
Cheerilee, for her part, didn’t hear the mocking laughter. In fact, she didn’t hear much of anything. All that filled her ears was a ringing sound, pounding and echoing and blocking out the rest of the world’s noises. Slowly, she Rose from her desk, walking around it until she was upon Cherry Wind, whose nose was bleeding, and Hot Trot, who was still laughing, even as his teacher approached. Cheerilee looked down at the auburn foal, unmoving and unblinking in the face of his dark joy.
“Here, Cherry,” she said, offering a hoof to the fallen foal. “Let’s get you cleaned up, alright?” She pulled Cherry Wind up to his hooves, ushering him in front of her as she turned to take him to the nurse. And, for the briefest of moments, for the most split of split seconds it takes for any creature to make a decision...
...the yoke was shattered.
Cheerilee tensed her muscles, bracing her front hooves on the floor as she kicked back with her hind legs, connecting with Hot Trot’s body and launching the foal all the way to the far side of her classroom. He impacted with the way, and stayed there for several seconds before finally falling to the ground, leaving a Hot Trot shaped indent, along with several cracks.
Mouths agape, the remainder of Cheerilee’s class looked to the foal's unconscious body, then back to their teacher, heads on a constant swivel as they tried to process the event that had just taken place in front of them, and failing time and time again.
“Now, class,” Cheerilee called as she reached the door, “just because I’m not here, it doesn’t mean you can goof off, alright? Finish up those tests, quietly, alright?” Panicked nodding was her answer, which she smiled at in satisfaction before she left the room. The only sounds in the classroom where that of pencils hurriedly scraping against paper.
“Uuuooogh…”
And a bit of mild moaning.
“Gimme back my doll!” a crying filly screamed as two older students stood before her. One of the pair, a unicorn, levitated a scruffy looking doll just out of reach of the younger filly, constantly raising and lowering it so that it was always just barely out of the child’s grasp.
“Wow, you still play with dolls? Just how old are you, exactly?” the other of the pair said.
“And it looks so ratty,” the unicorn chimed in, taking the doll into her hooves and inspecting it. “Like, at least get something that doesn’t look like you found it in a dumpster.”
“But I did find her in a dumpster!” the crying filly said.
“What?! Eeewwww, I was touching it!” the unicorn student said. She threw the dumpster doll on the ground, then slapped the filly on the side of the head. “Why would you not tell us where you got it from before we took it?”
“Super bad manners,” the other said. “Didn’t your parents teach you proper etiquette?”
“I don’t know what that means!” the filly said, bending down to pick up her doll, only to fall face first onto the floor from a push by one of her tormentors. “Please, can I just go now?”
The unicorn student clicked her tongue. “Now, what kind of attitude is that? Here we are, trying to help you grow up and leave this kiddie crap behind, and you wanna brush us off?”
The other student shook her head. “Bad move, kid. You shouldn’t be so ungrateful.”
“I guess we’re gonna have to teach you to respect your elders, huh?” The unicorn and her friend advance on the filly, slowly backing her into a wall of lockers while smiling with predatory glints in their eyes. “How about we make you look as beat up as that raggedy ass doll you love so much!”
The filly shut her eyes tightly and held her hooves in front of her, hoping to mitigate as much damage from the assault as possible. She flinched as she heard a loud, metallic thud, and she could only cringe in on herself as she imaged the bruises she’d have to nurse from being slammed into the lockers behind her.
A moment later, the filly’s mind caught up with the rest of her senses, and she realized that she hadn’t been touched, and that the noise couldn’t have been anything done to her. Tentatively, she opened her eyes, and instead of the angry glare of two older students, she saw a look of shock on one, and the dazed expression of the other. Barely a second later, the stunned student collapsed, leaving the still standing unicorn to open and close her mouth repeatedly, desperately trying to understand why her friend was unconscious.
Unfortunately, the reason for that loss of consciousness wasn’t finished yet, and another vicious clang of steel sounded out in the hallway, crashing into the unicorn’s skull and crumpling her onto the ground.
The young filly stood shaking against the locker, clutching her doll close to her chest as the assailant advanced towards her. She couldn’t force her legs to move, and unlike before, she couldn’t bring herself to close her eyes in the face of danger. Even her screams died in her throat as this new pony slowly reached a hoof out towards her.
“Oh dear, those two held you up for so long!” the maroon colored mare said in a bright, cheery voice. “You should get along to class before you get in trouble, young missy!” And with that, Cheerilee turned and walked down the hall, leaving the young filly to stare after the teacher. And the steel folding chair she dragged behind herself.
“I’m telling you dude, he went flying all the way across the room!”
“Will you just shut up? There’s no way that happened. Come up with a better story next time.”
“It’s not a story! It’s the truth! You see how nopony’s seen Hot Trot since yesterday? I bet it’s because he’s still in the hospital!”
“Or he just got suspended again. You’re such a liar, dude.”
“I’m not lying, you just missed it because you finished the test early!”
“Oh, I missed it because I’m smarter than you, huh?”
“You aren’t smarter than me! You just put in whatever answer and turn in your papers.”
“Well, I’m smart enough not to believe a stupid story like that!”
“You’re stupid!”
“No, you!”
“No, you!”
“Is everything alright, boys?”
The two foals’ squabbling stopped as they looked to the source of the new voice. On the sensory level, they recognized who it was. Same coat, same mane, same voice, everything pointed to there being a clear familiarity with this pony, and therefore nothing to fear.
And yet.
The air seemed to distort around her, and light seemed to darken the closer one got to her eyes. Her voice, full of concern and somewhat melodic, filled the soul with a sense of staring into a void. Evolutionary instincts honed over countless generations of pony lives screamed at the two young foals to flee, but rational was able to win out over fear in the end.
“S-sure, Ms. Cheerilee!”
“Yep, we were j-just having an argument about… uh…”
“Comic books!”
“Comics, right! Just a little thing about that, nothing to worry about over here, we’re still friends!”
Within the span of a blink, the distorted nature of the pony in front of the two foals was erased, and all that was left was the smiling visage they’d come to expect from the mare. “That’s wonderful to hear, boys!” Cheerilee said. “Your next class should be starting soon, so don’t dilly dally now!” With that, the teacher trotted off, leaving two students full of trepidation and primal terror. Though for one, a small bit of vindication was mixed in as well, which would result in an incredibly potent “I told you so” dance.
“I tell you what, we got ourselves a real slobberknocker today, King!”
“You said it, G.R.! One way or another, one of these ponies isn’t walking out of here by themselves!”
Outside of Ponyville’s school, amongst a large crowd of cheering students, two colts sat at a wooden desk they’d dragged outside. One was named Fairy “The King” Drawer, known throughout the school for his unparalleled artistry skills and delicate touch with a pencil, which earned him his nickname. The other was Gem Roust, whose family made a business out of cutting and shaping precious stones.
Both colts wore large, cardboard headphones, and despite being only two voices in a crowd of dozens, their words could be heard clearly to anyone that made the effort.
“Gimme a rundown of what’s going on, G.R.!” Drawer said. “I just don’t understand how anyone could be so stupid as to challenge the one mare maelstrom herself!”
“You know how these things go, King,” Gem Roust said, in a southern drawl that his family would attest to not having existed before that day. “Same story as it’s been for the past few weeks. Some knucklehead trying to start trouble with another student. This time it was Top Flash stealing lunch money from Butterly. Well, brother, you wanted trouble, now you’re gonna have to deal with the undefeated champ herself! That’s right folks, you’re tuned in to a Ponyville classic, a ‘Tardy for Tartarus’ match!”
“...Gemmy, what the heck is that?”
“Cheerilee’s beating up Top on the roof,” Gem Roust clarified.
“Boy, is she!” Drawer said. “I’ll tell you what, I saw Ms. Cheerilee dragging Top Flash up there along with a trash bin full of the most heinous, most deadly foreign objects I’ve ever seen!”
“Good lord, King! What’d she have?!”
“Mostly just rulers and textbooks. But from where I’m sitting, I think I’ve seen her use every single one of them. Even the trash bin!”
“What did I tell you folks?” Gem Roust said to no one. “Someone call the Apples, because this is shaping out to be a real barn burner—”
“Oh no, look!”
The colts were taken out of their commentary by the cry of another student, and the pair looked up to where the action was taking place. From their vantage point, they could see that Cheerilee was currently standing on her hind legs, holding Top Flash on her shoulders at the edge of the school’s roof.
“Bah Celestia!” Gem Roust yelled, rising from his seat. “King, you don’t think she’s gonna—!”
“I think we both know the answer to that!” Drawer said, joining Gem in standing. “Cheerilee’s a classic kind of brawler, and mercy’s never been one of the vocabulary words she taught us!”
As the commentators spoke, Cheerilee edged forward until only half of her hooves were still touching the roof. All the while, the excitement of the crowd had reached a fever pitch in anticipation for the inevitable.
Cheerilee bent down, tensing her legs with all the power she could muster, then, with a guttural cry, she leapt forward, soaring over the crowd with the grace of an earth pony carrying a child. Gravity soon reasserted its hold on the pair of ponies, and while Cheerilee lacked the biological features to defy its pull any longer, she still had control of where she and Top Flash were going to touch down.
The deafening sound of a body crashing to the ground overtook even the mad yells of the crowd as Cheerilee power bombed Top Flash through the commentator’s desk, obliterating the furniture and sending splintered wood flying around the immediate area. The foals closest to the impact zone had to shield their eyes from the debris, but when they were able to look back at the carnage, they were met with two unmoving ponies laying the remains of the table.
“Holy crap!” Drawer screamed, leading to a cacophonous chant of the same phrase to sweep throughout the crowd of students. “Did you see that G.R.?! She dang near took herself out with that one!”
Gem Roust merely shook his head back and forth, clutching it with wide eyes. “As Celestia is my witness, she broke him in half! Somebody stop the darn match! Call a referee! Call an ambulance! Call—!”
“The cops!” a student yelled.
“I think it might be a little too late for them,” Gem Roust said.
“No, it’s the cops!” Drawer yelled, finally spotting the approaching police ponies galloping up to the commotion. “Everyone, cheese it!”
The officers in question weren’t able to stop the throng of children from scurrying away in all directions, not that they tried after being bitten and kicked by the first few foals they attempted to apprehend. As the crowd dispersed, the only ponies left were on the ground, groaning and twitching in a pile of wood.
And it didn’t escape the officers’ notice that the larger of the two indisposed individuals had a large smile on her face.
“She’s in here?”
“Yep. Barely said a word since we brought her in.”
On the way to the singular cell of the Ponyville jail, Mayor Mare walked slowly but deliberately next to the guard escorting her. Many things were on her mind, one admittedly inconsequential topic being the physical state of the jail.
The building was one of the few left untouched in the wake of Ponyville’s modernization, though not for lack of care. The jailhouse was just hardly needed for anything more than allowing a pony to sleep off a relatively heavy night of drinking should they need it, or time to cool off after a particularly heated argument. The cell itself reflected this gentle mindset, being outfitted with basic amenities such as a cot to sleep in, a relatively comfortable bench, and even a paddle ball to pass the time.
The mayor had shot down several attempts to just bulldoze the building, as she felt its existence gave some ponies reassurance that the worst their sanitized society could produce would face a kind of penance for breaking the law.
She just never thought it would be used for its intended purpose, let alone who it would hold.
“She’s right in there, mayor,” the jailer said whistling a tune as he left Mayor Mare to stare at the maroon colored pony lying in her cot, looking up towards the ceiling.
“You know,” Mayor Mare began. “I don’t get a lot to do these days. With a princess so eager to serve, and so available to do it, who would even bother to go through the bureaucratic nonsense necessary to meet with the mayor? Sometimes it feels like I’m not in charge of my own town.” She began pacing back and forth in front of the cell, no longer looking at its occupant. “But there are certain things I’m the de facto head of. You didn’t want to be principal of the school, so I ended up being the one to handle those duties so you could teach. Which means if parents have a problem with one of the teachers, they have to come to me.”
Cheerilee sighed, rising from her cot and trotting up to the bars of the cell. “Mayor, look—”
“When a parent made an appointment with me about a teacher laying hooves on his foal, I wrote him off. He was the sort of pony that complained about every little thing, you know? Seats were too hard, lunches didn’t meet his standards, one of those parents. I figured he was just spouting nonsense. I mean, a teacher assaulting a student? Where does that even come from?”
“I know how it looks, but just let me—”
“And then the next parent came in,” Mayor Mare continued, still not looking at Cheerilee. “Same complaint. And then the next. But something weird was going on. For every one pony that came to me to talk about their foal getting thrown out of a window, punted into a dumpster, or beaten with whatever a ‘Singapone cane’ is, there would be five more who wanted sing the praises of some ‘new school policy’ I’d enacted. Apparently, their foals were feeling a lot happier at school, to the point where they were coming home with big ole smiles on their faces.
“Now, those complaints had me worried for a few days, but with so many more ponies heaping praise on me for some change I’d assumed you’d put in place, I let them slide. I mean, so many people were happy, I figured, ‘Cheerilee knows what she’s doing! Everything'll be just fine.’ And you know what?” Mayor Mare finally looked back at the imprisoned teacher, doing so with such a quick snap of her head that the maroon pony flinched and took a step back. “That was my bad. I shouldn’t have made assumptions. I should have followed up. Those are my mistakes. My bad. All of that to say…”
Mayor Mare stepped up to the bars of the cell, close enough to where if she reached through them, she’d be able to wrap her arms around the teacher’s neck. For her part, Cheerilee didn’t take a step back, though she could feel the temperature of the room increasing by the second and broke into a mild sweat.
“...What the fuck, Cheerilee? Like, what the actual fuck?”
“Okay, okay,” Cheerilee pleaded. “I know this looks really bad, but I promise I can explain!”
“No, you can’t,” Mayor Mare replied. “There is nothing anypony on the planet could say to explain themselves out of this. Short of the changelings relapsing and infiltrating the school, there is literally no combination of words that can be crafted to turn this into a good metric.”
“I didn’t say I could justify anything, I said I could explain. And really, you should listen, because this is pretty much your fault.”
Nostrils flared and pupils shrank. “You want to try that one again?”
“I-it’s my fault, too!” Cheerilee hastily said, holding her hooves in front of her. “We were supposed to be responsible for these foals, to help them grow in a safe environment. But instead of that, we stood to the side and let them abuse each other! And we punish the few that find the strength to stand up for themselves!”
The teacher stood up straighter now, gaining a steely look in her eyes. “We were teaching these kids that getting picked on and harassed was normal, and that no one was going to look out for them. They were breaking, and we stood by and watched! You put that policy into place, and as much as I wanted to resent you for it, I let it happen. I thought it would be a good idea, too. And even when I started to realize it wasn’t going to work the way we hoped, I didn’t want to be left behind by the times. I wanted to believe things would work out, eventually. I was wrong. And I decided that if these foals can’t fight back for themselves, then I’d fight for them. And I’m not sorry. So if you have to fire me, then I’ll go out with my head held high, knowing I did what was right.”
Mayor Mare stared at Cheerilee with half-lidded eyes for several seconds before dragging a hoof down her own face and sighing. “And this is all for the foals, right?”
“Of course!”
“Not the least bit for any other reason. Any other self serving reason?”
“Mayor Mare, and you implying that I like what I’m doing? Everything I do, it’s in the name of keeping foals safe from bullies—”
“So this has absolutely nothing to do with Canterlot Academy?”
Cheerilee made to speak, but she tripped over her words and the only sound produced was a choked gawrk. “W-what does that have to do with anything?” She slapped a wide, twitching smile on her face as she finished.
Again, the mayor sighed, only now with a fair bit of sympathy in her eyes. “Cheerilee, please. You’re talking to one of the few ponies in this town who knows what you went through back in school, mainly because I was right there with you. If it hadn’t been for your sister looking out for us, I don’t know how we would’ve survived those early days. So I get not wanting anypony, foals especially, to go through that nonsense.” Her gaze turned hard once again. “But that doesn’t mean you get to go around pile driving ponies smaller than you just because you can! Hell, some of them come from homes where all they know is anger and abuse, and now instead of dealing with that, you’re just giving it to them at school, too. You know what that makes you, right?”
“Don’t,” Cheerilee said, darkly. “Don’t you even try to pull that card on me. I am not a bully. I punish the bullies. I make sure they know what happens if they try to hurt anypony else!”
“So that’s what you are now? A punisher, instead of a teacher? Because the last time I checked, a teacher is supposed to care about all of her students, not just the ones she relates to.”
“That’s not—”
“Yes it is. Did you ever even try to talk to these bullies? Maybe see if there was a way you could use your words instead of your hooves to get through to them?
“It wouldn’t have mattered!” Cheerilee said, stomping a hoof. “I know how ponies like this think! They don’t care who they hurt, or how it affects their victims. They’re just… bad. Selfish and horrible and they’ll never change.”
“And they’re foals, Cheerilee!” Mayor Mare said. “It’s your job to try! They all need guidance. They all need to be shown better!”
Cheerilee turned her back to the mayor, flicking her tail in annoyance. “You aren’t there. You didn’t see what I saw, and you don’t see what I see. How can you know how it is or what any of them need? When I walk into that school, I see students smiling. Because they feel safe, because they’re protected.” She rounded back on Mayor Mare, looking her in the eyes, unblinking. “I won’t stand for anything less. I won’t go back to how things used to be.”
The two mares stared at each other for what could have been an eternity for any outside observer. Though silent, their eyes exchanged thoughts far deeper than any words they could have shared. Eventually, verbal communication began again, and after a lengthy talk, Mayor Mare left Ponyville’s jail, exhausted of anything else she could say to her old friend.
In the faculty lounge of Ponyville’s schoolhouse, the building’s teachers all gathered at the behest of one of their own. At the front of the room stood Cheerilee, her hair tied back into a ponytail and noticeable bags underneath her eyes.
“Thank you all for coming,” Cheerilee said, offering her colleagues a small smile. “I know these early morning meetings are killer on all of us, but I felt that this was important. As some of you may know, I was recently… confronted about my actions as of late in the school regarding certain students. To skip to the end of it, I’ve come to realize that I may have taken it a step too far.”
“You owe me a new desk!”
“It’s already coming out of my paycheck, Señora Raza.” Cheerilee cleared her through before continuing. “In any case, I’ve come to an agreement with the mayor. Effective immediately, I will no longer be employed as a teacher at this school. Instead, I’ll be taking over as the official principal. As the new principal any and all decisions, and consequences, having to do with the school and it’s policies will now fall to me.”
A quiet murmuring fell over the assembled staff as their new boss gave them time to absorb the information.
“For my first order of business,” Cheerilee said, regaining the teacher’s attention, “as of today, the Zero Tolerance Policy is completely and irrevocably abolished. From now on, all altercations between students will be investigated thoroughly before any decision is made on long term punishment, with a full report of the incident from both sides written and delivered to me. I’ve worked with many of you for a while now, and I don’t intend to overrule your judgement, but I’m encouraging you now to do your best to make it sound.
“Next, we’re going to establish a sort of process for any foals we recognize as… disruptive to the student body as a whole. First and foremost, a talk with their parents about their behaviour. Then, a few meetings with a properly trained guidance counsellor I’ll be hiring before the end of the month. Failing the success of that, a mandatory week of classes at the School of Friendship, just to give them a chance to brush up on the core values of being a good pony. And if that fails to correct certain foals’ attitudes, well…”
The teachers leaned in, engrossed in the principal’s new policy and waiting with bated breath for the ultimate step of her strategy for dealing with the truly unruly.
“...everypony gets one.”
“What?” one of the teachers asked, though each of them had the same level of confusion on their faces.
“Well, it’ll have to vary on a case by case basis, and again, I’m really trusting you all to use your best judgement here, but it’s just like I said. Everypony,” Cheerilee pointed out to each teacher directly, “gets one.” She slammed her forehooves together with the expression of a mare crushing something horrible with sadistic, unmatched glee. “Specifically, one per semester, so about two per year. Still, you’re only getting one for multiple month intervals, so if you want my advice, I’d have to say make it a good one.”
“Um, I think I understand what you’re getting at, Cheerilee,” another of the teachers said, “and I can’t say I explicitly disapprove, but what happens if—when—a parent comes in to complain about their foal’s, uh, one?”
Cheerilee giggled into her hoof, waving off the teacher’s concern. “Oh, don’t be silly. You heard what I said, right? The consequences of this school’s policies fall on me. So if a parent takes umbrage with your actions, feel free to send them my way! As an old friend of mine recently made me keenly aware of,” Cheerilee cracked her neck as a savage glint appeared in her eyes, “sometimes, the problems start at home.”
Author's Note
Hope you enjoyed it a little.
