"Good morning, class!" Miss Cheerilee said, resting her hoof on a strange colt's withers.
"Good morning," grumbled the still-sleepy students.
"This is Chip Cutter," she said. "He's just moved to Ponyville from Cloudanooga. Please make him feel at home!"
The colt hung his head, his wings drooping.
"He ain't got a cutie mark yet," Apple Bloom whispered to Scootaloo and Sweetie Bot.
"We'll invite him to sit with us at lunch," Scootaloo said.
Sweetie's pupils turned into targeting crosshairs and she pinged him with her pulse-Doppler radar.
At lunchtime, the students all moved to the picnic tables out by the playground.
"Come crash our squad," Sweetie Bot said to Chip Cutter.
"What?" he replied, cocking his head.
"She means you can sit with us," Scootaloo said. "I'm Scootaloo, this is Apple Bloom, and this is Sweetie Bot. We're the Cutie Mark Crusaders!"
They sat down and opened their lunch boxes. Scootaloo had a peanut butter, banana, honey, and marshmallow sandwich, since she was carbo-loading for a session of scooter practice after school. Chip Cutter had a hayburger, Apple Bloom had something she insisted was most certainly not a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich—none of the pigs on the farm had fomented rebellion yesterday, how dare y'all suggest such a thing?—and Sweetie Bot had a lithium battery smoothie.
Chip Cutter asked, "What do you three do for fun around Ponyville?"
"Fun? I live on a farm," Apple Bloom said. "I'm up before dawn feeding the chickens and doing chores until bedtime."
"I'm a scooter daredevil," Scootaloo said. "You should see my tricks."
"She scooters full send," Sweetie Bot agreed.
Chip Cutter said, "I like practicing flying tricks and making art. Sculptures, especially." He tilted his head at Sweetie. "What about you?
"I sing, sew capes, and make graph theory computations."
Chip Cutter blinked again.
"We dunno what that means, either," Apple Bloom said, "but Twilight called her an edgelord."
"What's this school like?" Chip Cutter asked.
"Full of douche biscuits," Sweetie informed him.
Chip Cutter's ears twitched.
"She means Diamond Tiara," Scootaloo said, glaring at the next table, "and Silver Spoon."
"Fuck 'em with a chainsaw," Sweetie muttered.
"Don't forget Rumble," Apple Bloom said.
"What about Rumble?" Chip Cutter asked, looking at where the other pegasus colt sat with Snips and Snails at one of the other lunch tables.
"When his brother became a Wonderbolt," Sweetie Bot said, "Rumble got possessed by a douchergeist. Acts like he's better than us."
"You, uh, don't like Rumble?" Chip Cutter said. "I met him in my new neighborhood yesterday. He seemed pretty okay."
"We're antistalking him," Sweetie said.
Chip Cutter looked at Scootaloo and pointed at Sweetie. "I can't understand a word she says."
"Y'all get used to the voice synthesizer eventually."
"Not her voice." Chip Cutter shook his head. "I hear the words. They just make no sense."
"Oh, yeah, that's new," Apple Bloom replied. "She got tired of ponies calling her a dictionary, so she installed the Urban Dictionary over her regular one."
"It was a mistake," Scootaloo said gravely.
"I made a little fucky-wucky," Sweetie agreed, holding her forehooves a half-inch apart.
"Miss Cheerilee won't call on Sweetie in class no more," Apple Bloom said.
"Cockwomble." Sweetie frowned and saline solution leaked from her eyes. "Fucknuckle."
Diamond Tiara sauntered up to the table, nose held high, with Silver Spoon just behind her. "You're new," Diamond purred to Chip Cutter, "so you don't know any better than to hang out with these... weirdos. Want to join us at the good table?"
"Find your silence!" Sweetie shouted. "Annoydiot."
Diamond rolled her eyes. "Has she been rebooted lately?"
"No, not since last week," Scootaloo said.
"Well, I ain't rebooting her no more," Apple Bloom said. "They call it the reset butt-on for a reason."
"Leave this to meeee." With an evil grin, Diamond Tiara looked at Sweetie Bot. "Should the past tense of yeet be 'yeeted' or 'yote'?"
Sweetie's eyes widened, her spine stiffened, and then she collapsed forward onto the lunch table.
"You killed her!" Chip Cutter shouted.
"She'll be fine," Scootaloo said and booped Sweetie on the nose.
Sweetie made an electronic screech and sat up. She reached into her bag and pulled out a fedora and settled it on her head, just behind her horn. In a gravelly voice: "Jumpin' Jehosaphat!"
"Oh, horse apples," Apple Bloom said. "This mode again?!"
"What's up now?" Chip Cutter asked.
"You're going to the big house, see?" Sweetie grated, glaring at Diamond Tiara. "You're a bad egg."
"I think I understand her even less now," Chip Cutter said.
"I think I need to get Miss Cheerilee," Silver Spoon said.
"Listen here, doll," Sweetie said, pointing a hoof at her. "Nopony likes a snitch, capisce? Don't be a fink."
Diamond Tiara gestured come here to Snips and Snails.
"Leave your goons out of this," Sweetie growled. "You're the one who's behind the eight ball here."
Snips and Snails sat back down.
"Everypony in this town is crazy!" Chip Cutter cried.
"I'm not certifiable," Sweetie said. "I'm on the level."
"I think we should reboot her again," Scootaloo said.
"I don't know any gangster paradoxes," Diamond Tiara said. "The yeet one was all I had."
Apple Bloom rolled her eyes. "I guess we have to get a pencil for the reset butt-on."
Chip Cutter smiled, raised a hoof, and started to speak.
"No," all the fillies told him simultaneously.
He frowned and lowered his hoof.
"What's pi divided by zero?" Silver Spoon asked with a smirk.
"You're a real gas," Sweetie said, pulling her fedora lower. "I should kick you in the keister."
"They patched that exploit," Scootaloo said.
"Dang," Silver Spoon said. "Last time I asked her to divide by zero, she left a puddle of oil on the floor."
"You're not worth doodly-squat," Sweetie said, standing up. "I'm gonna go find some hep cats."
She ran off, away from the school house.
"We—we have to go get her!" Chip Cutter said, standing on his bench and planting his hooves on the table.
Apple Bloom waved a hoof. "Don't worry. She's headed to my house."
"Your house?" Diamond Tiara sniffed. "Why would anypony go to that dump?"
"To talk to my Granny Smith. Why do y'all think I installed gangster mode on Sweetie in the first place?"
"I was wondering about that," Scootaloo said.
"...why?" said Silver Spoon, Diamond Tiara, and Chip Cutter simultaneously.
"We want Sweetie to talk to my Granny and jog her memory."
"Jog her memory... of what?" Silver Spoon asked cautiously.
"During Ponehibition," Apple Bloom said, "Granny was a bank robber and ciderlegger, but she forgot where she buried all her stashes of bits."
Author's Note
Wrote this a year ago, finally decided to publish it.
