An Earthling Earth Pony at Celestia's School of Magic: Year One

“I’ve been learning a lot of information about the faculty lately,” Twilight Glow said as we waited on Coach Scootaloo to finish setting up volleyball nets. “Did you know that Professor Inkwell is the second Inkwell to teach at this school? Her mother taught at the school for nearly fifty years, never retiring. She supposedly fought a mechanical pig when she was young, and helped Princess Celestia hold off one of the many invasions of Canterlot. They say she could barely walk when she was in her final years and had a strange paranoia about gophers.”

“Fascinating,” I said, trying to feign interest.

“And Professor Glitter Drops was foalhood friends with Tempest Shadow, who went on to serve Earth’s Queen of Nightmares for years as head of her guard. The two still send the other letters,” Twilight continued.

Hmm…that was mildly interesting, at least more interesting than Inkwell’s gopher-fearing mother. Maybe Glitter Drops actually knew more of the truth behind the fiction when it came to the Queen of Nightmares and whether Baxter Stockman was really her brother.

“I heard one of Hail’s parents might be one of Headmaster’s siblings. Have you heard anything about that?” Summer asked innocently. I raised an eyebrow at her, as did Hannah. She was treading into forbidden territory.

Twilight blinked in shock. “No…I didn’t. I can’t imagine that being true. They're both ponies, and he’s a human. Both of them were born after the ETS pandemic ..or I think they both were. The last documented transformation of a human to pony or pony to human was almost thirty years ago. They’d both have been too young for that.”

“Well, they're both over thirty, so there is a chance, right?” Summer asked, still sounding shy and innocent.

“I suppose it is possible,” Twilight conceded. “I still don’t see how. It was primarily partial humans that were turned into ponies post-ETS. There were ponies that had been humans that were turned back into humans, but most of those were within a year or so of the pandemic. Tempest Shadow is the only known case of an Equestrian who chose to be human. If Headmaster has magic, he could have been a partial who turned back to full human, but he still seems too young. To make that kind of decision he'd have to have been at least our age back then, which would put him in his forties or fifties now, and he doesn't seem that old...although, he could have longevity due to power. We'd have heard about a human that strong, though. There are a few well-documented magically strong humans, but none of them march Headmaster's description. It's like he appeared out of nowhere. I considered him briefly as an Equestrian who turned human, but there's no possible match."

“How do you know all this?” Hannah asked.

Twilight smiled sheepishly. “I had originally formed a theory that Professor Newman was an Equestrian who chose to be human. It has just never made sense to me that an older human who was born before ETS knows so much about the inner workings of magic. So I researched every case I could. Unfortunately, the only case I found was Tempest Shadow’s, and Professor Newman definitely isn’t Tempest Shadow. I’ve seen pictures and read interviews. They don’t look remotely similar, and Tempest Shadow never demonstrated that kind of range of magical knowledge. Tempest was a warrior, through and through, not a magical scholar…she was also a cripple who couldn’t use her horn for much more than high powered blasts because it was shattered at a young age.”

Most of my classmates winced and looked ill at that news. Unicorns were very protective of their horns, and the idea of one being shattered must have had made them sick to their stomaches. I guess that might explain why Tempest decided to go human. What was a unicorn who couldn’t properly cast spells? Better to be a human...or anything else.

As if my thoughts were some summons, our pegasus coach who couldn’t properly fly walked over to us.

“Hey! No calling ponies crippled because of things like that!” Coach Scootaloo said hotly, spreading her undersized wings. “Just because some of us have to adapt to use our abilities differently doesn’t make anypony a cripple.”

Twilight lowered his head. “Sorry coach. I meant no disrespect.”

The coach lowered her wings and gave them a light shake to unfluff them. “Good. Try not to let it happen again. As for your earlier theory I heard you discussing, Tempest is definitely not Newman. I don’t know all the details about Professor Newman, but I’ve met Tempest, both before she was human and after. For your information, her broken horn was not her main motivating factor to decide to be human. Her main factor was something else, something I tried to help with and failed.”

Twilight nodded. “I know. She had no cutie mark, and you and the other CMC help ponies find and understand their cutie marks. You can’t even do a full permanent transformation spell on somepony who has a cutie mark, only short-term spells. It's part of why there haven’t been more Equestrians to do it. Adults without cutie marks are exceedingly rare, and nopony is going to let their foal do something like that.”

Scootaloo sighed and hung her head. “Yeah. It was a big disappointment for her and to us that we couldn’t help her find hers. Sometimes, no matter how hard you work at something, you still fail. She became a human so she could stop worrying about it, afraid her lack of a mark declared her to be without purpose. It saddens me that she felt that was her only path that gave her purpose. Cutie marks are great, something to be proud of, but they don’t have to define us, and we can define and redefine them as needed. However, she felt like she was defined by the lack of one, and it was a tragedy that somepony so talented felt that way.”

She shook her head. “That's ancient history now, and I hope she’s found happiness in her decision. I still do cutie mark counseling. I know all of you have your marks, but sometimes marks can get confusing. I’m always willing to help…outside of class ..if any of you ever want help understanding your mark and what you’re supposed to do with it. I can help if you also just want help with any personal identity issues you might be experiencing. Just because you understand your mark doesn’t mean you understand your place in the world.”

Prim snorted. “Well, I certainly understand my place in the world.”

“Debatable,” Red muttered.

The rest of us just rolled our eyes.

I looked at my mark of broken letters. I never really understood it, or what I was supposed to be doing with it. I wasn’t the only one. Summer was eying her recently minted blue flame mark with a look of unease. Coach said that marks didn’t have to define us, but they were a big part of our identity. Could we really understand who we were and who we were meant to be without understanding our marks?

“Enough of that for now,” Coach Scootaloo said. “Let’s play some volleyball!”

After class, I lagged behind to speak with the coach. I was not surprised when I saw Summer do the same, although she seemed shocked to see me also lagging behind.

“Coach, we need cutie mark counseling,” I said.

Coach Scootaloo blinked. “Two of you? I was kinda expecting you, Summer, but not you, Turnip. Are you hanging around to support your friend?”

I shook my head. “I want some help with my mark, too. I’ve never really understood it.”

“Oh, well, then I guess I can do some counseling with both then,” Scootaloo replied. “Can you help me get this volleyball net down? This session might take a while, and I can give you each a letter excusing you from Sweetie Belle’s class today. She won’t mind, not for this. After all the dishwashing she has to do, she will probably not be at her best in the next class anyway.”

Summer immediately lit up her antler and the net unhooked from the poles and began folding.

“Being able to levitate things sure makes tasks easier,” Scootaloo said as she watched the net fold. “We can leave the poles out here. Turnip, can you carry the net? We’re heading back to my office.”

Summer set the net carefully on my back and the pair of us followed the coach back into the building.

Coach Scootaloo’s office was on the ground floor next to the cafeteria. It had various trophies and ribbons on display, not all of which were first place awards, though there were some. There was also a lot of Wonderbolts memorabilia scattered about, along with a scooter, a pair of skates, a pair of filing cabinets, open lockers packed with various sports equipment. There seemed to be more stuff than there were proper places to store or display it, but things still looked fairly tidy.

“Set the net on the desk for now. I’ll put it away later. Let me get your cutie mark files,” Scootaloo said absently as she headed over to the filing cabinets.

Cutie Mark files? She kept files on student cutie marks? That seemed weird. It was also exciting. Had they already researched my mark? What did my file say?

The coach took a minute or two searching through the cabinets. I was able to see that the drawer she was looking through was packed with folders and papers. If every drawer of those cabinets was the same, there had to be an extensive file on every student at the school.

She removed two folders and carefully carried them back to her desk before sitting down.

“Let me see. We’ll start with you, Summer,” Scootaloo said as she opened one of the files and looked in. “Your blue flame mark, what do you think it means?”

She shrugged. “That I’m capable of burning with a blue flame. That doesn’t seem like something that should define me. I haven’t even managed to do it again.”

Scootaloo smiled. “That might be what it means on the most basic level, but cutie marks mean things on multiple levels. Let’s try to go deeper than that. What is a blue flame?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s just a flame that is blue instead of red and yellow.”

“Did you know blue is the hottest color of fire?” Scootaloo asked.

She shook her head again. “No, I didn’t. So I burn hotter?”

“Presumably,” Scootaloo answered. “We still haven’t gone deep enough. Now that we have identified what a blue flame is on a basic level, let’s try to think about what a blue flame can symbolize. Fire, other than being fire, can be symbolic of a lot of things.” She paused to look at some notes in the file before continuing. “Some of the things we brainstormed as possibilities include anger, passion, hope, commitment, a promise, destruction, danger, protection, rebirth, warmth, insight, or it can represent light in the darkness, breakfast….ignore that last one; Sweetie Belle shouldn’t have listed that. It can mean one of these things or many. Once we have established that, we can add in the connotation of it being blue.”

“So what does it symbolize with me?” Summer asked in confusion.

Scootaloo shook her head. “It’s not for me to define what your mark means to you. I’m just giving you a framework to consider deeper meanings and a few ideas to start you off. It can mean one of those things, multiple of those things, or something else entirely. Also, what it means to you can change over time, and that’s okay. As we get older it is common to redefine ourselves.”

Summer looked down, ears sagging. “I was hoping you could just tell me what it means.”

“I don’t tell you who you are,” Scootaloo gently replied. “I told you some details about what a blue flame is and gave some insight into what symbolic meanings it can have after the default basic meaning. My friends and I got our cutie marks around your age. We understood the basic meaning of our marks right away, that we were going to help ponies with their cutie mark problems and do it together, but it took time for us to learn to dig into the deeper individual meanings of our marks. My friends and I share a similar mark, but it isn’t the exact same mark, because, close as we are, we aren’t the same. Mine features one of my wings. What do you think that means?”

Summer looked at the coach’s wings. “You have little wings?”

Scootaloo chuckled. “That’s true, but they aren’t just something I have, they’re a symbol. For me, it’s about turning things perceived as a weakness into a strength. It’s also about adapting to what I have and being proud of who I am. It’s also about persistence and dedication, as well as freedom. I said cutie marks can have many meanings, and I think they should. If a cutie mark describes what makes you special it shouldn’t have just one simple answer about what it means. It is a complex piece of symbolism that incorporates many elements. I didn’t learn everything my mark means all at once, and I still learn new things from time to time, or reconsider elements. You aren’t going to know everything your mark means right away. It is a process that continues as you continue to learn about yourself. I would be shocked if a twelve-year-old could give me a detailed explanation of their mark because you are still learning about yourself. A few years ago you wouldn’t have even been capable of considering questions like this, and these are questions that take a lifetime.”

“I still wish I had a straight answer,” Summer grumbled. She then took a deep breath and smiled at the coach. “Still, thank you for giving me some leads on what to think about.”

“Anytime,” Scootaloo replied. “After you have had a few days to think about it, come back and you can discuss your ideas. I can help you refine them.”

Summer’s ears perked up and she gave a silent nod.

Scootaloo closed the first file and opened what I presumed to be mine. “Turnip, I know Applebloom got a chance to look at your mark a few months ago and didn’t know what to make of it at the time. The three of us have been brainstorming about it since then and I’m more prepared to discuss it with you than she was then.”

“You discussed me?” I asked in surprise.

The coach pointed at the filing cabinets. “We discuss every student. Every day we sit down and do a review of a few students’ marks and even some of the faculty’s—grown-ups sometimes need help with their marks too. We’ve covered everypony at school’s cutie marks at least three or four times by now in our discussions.”

Talk about dedicated to their work.

“So…what did you come up with for me?” I asked, feeling hopeful. Even if it was just a lead like Summer got, I would be happy with that.

Scootaloo chuckled. “Alright, English phrase. Read between the lines. Look at your mark.”

I looked at my mark. Read between the lines? What did she mean by—

After looking at the letters it hit me, and I facehoofed. How had I missed that?!

Scootaloo laughed out loud. “Don’t worry. Everypony misses things that seem obvious sometimes.”

I frowned. “But why am I missing letters?”

“Well, that gets deeper into the meaning,” Scootaloo answered. “You can now see what the big picture is now that you are mentally filling in those missing pieces. There could also be the idea that you are what’s between the lines.”

“Come again?” I asked in confusion.

“Without those missing pieces you just have a bunch of random letters. Those missing pieces are important. Likewise, you can be a missing piece between a bunch of random ponies or things, giving them greater meaning,” Scootaloo explained. “We’ve observed you among your friends. You are kind of the piece that pulls the group together. That doesn’t necessarily mean leading or anything like that, but without you, your friend group would be more fractured. Also, on a different meaning, we’ve also seen you gathering knowledge from every source you can. Every foal at this school does research…you’d all make Twilight Sparkle proud…but you tend to spend more time filtering through what you hear from others, trying to build a bigger picture instead of just learn about a single subject. You can thank Professor Newman for pointing that out to us when she overheard us discussing your mark. We would have missed it.”

That made me think back to Twilight Sparkle. “Is there something bigger going on with this school? Are you all preparing us for something big that is coming?”

The coach blinked and then bit her lip, as if considering something.

“Why do you ask that?” she finally replied.

“Because something is off,” I answered. “The school removed most of the student body and left us with only the students that have an unusual interest in everything happening around them. I’m only going by my experience, but there’s an unusual amount of combat magic focused students compared to other fields, and those students are doing live combat sessions in their classes, which hardly seems normal. You’ve got a former spymaster for an admissions officer-”

“Former spymaster?” Summer asked in confusion.

“Newman,” I clarified.

“She was a spymaster!?” Summer asked in shock.

“Yes, and she used all those skills to learn everything about us before we were admitted. She basically knows your life story,” I informed her.

Summer crouched down. “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

I sighed and continued. “Anyway, you have Newman assembling the new incoming classes and being way more selective than I’m guessing even Ivy League colleges back home are. You had ponies like Psychic Calm teaching here who had way more influence both here and on Earth than they ever let on. Luna is willing to substitute teach here even though she is extremely busy. To top it all off, we have Headmaster, who is so secretive you have to believe he is hiding something big. You say I read between the lines? That’s a lot of lines.”

Of course, I didn’t mention Princess Twilight had told me directly that something was coming. I would keep that secret.

The coach’s wings were quivering.

“How do I get caught in these situations? These students are too smart for my own good,” she whimpered to herself. She then took a deep breath. “Okay, I guess that is a good display of your cutie mark in action. Can you two please keep all of that to yourselves and not spread it among the students?”

“If you tell us what’s up you have my promise,” I answered. I looked at Summer who just nodded in a daze. “Are we being prepared for something?”

“Yes, but I don’t know what. So I’m not withholding information from you on purpose,” Scootaloo answered, holding up a hoof as if making a pledge.

“You must know something,” I insisted.

“I can honestly say that all of the faculty is aware we are preparing students for something big, but most of us don’t actually know what we are preparing you for,” Scootaloo answered, still holding up her hoof for a moment longer before lowering it. “My best guess is that is more general preparedness for the future than any one thing. I know that since Earth and Equestria have made contact, threats have gotten bigger, and they can’t always be solved by the Element Bearers going off and blasting something. Sometimes we need teams of heroes in different places at the same time, sometimes we need better diplomats, sometimes we need better researchers. We do have a bunch of really good ponies at these jobs, but despite that, they can only do so much and be at so many places, or they could find themselves captured by some villain or something. We need more ponies who can assist or step in when we are facing a crisis. We can’t rely on the same old heroes to always save us. We have to up our game when it comes to training the next generation to confront these challenges, and that generation is you.”

“It can’t be that bad, can it?” Summer asked with a whimper.

“I don’t mean to scare you, but it is,” Scootaloo replied, looking down. “You might not have heard, but Turnip, since he’s from Earth, would have heard of the Cataclysm of Riverview. It was a big disaster that happened almost thirty years ago now. It was the first time in a long while that we lost, even with Twilight Sparkle on the scene. It could have been worse, but a whole city still basically got leveled, and all because we were facing new types of threats and challenges that we weren’t prepared for and didn’t have enough ponies who were capable of facing. Earth is filled with technology we don’t understand and the mages there dream up things we have never even considered. Thirty years have passed, and I don’t know if things have gotten any better. It seems like they’ve gotten worse since the Earthlings constantly push the boundaries of what is possible and we haven’t advanced much at all.”

“Um, if you’re concerned about not understanding technology, why aren’t you teaching us about it?” I asked.

“Why do you think we started the AV club?” Scootaloo answered pointing a the camera phone on one of the shelves. “We aren’t prepared to open study into technology here yet. We don't have the experts and we don’t have the materials. I know I can barely figure out how to do simple things on a computer, and that phone thing might as well be the most complex artifact in Equestria to me, but you probably know a hundred times more than most of our faculty when it comes to that. The AV club is kind of a test ground to show the princesses that we can teach students about technology and to see who among the students has an aptitude for it. Part of why Headmaster is on his current mission away is the pony…person… he’s helping might agree to come help us develop a science program at our school if we help them. That’s part of why he’s seeing to the matter personally. Having such an influential science person on the faculty would go a long way toward convincing Celestia to let us open a program. Even if she doesn’t agree, they can still at least teach students the concepts. That’s preparing them much more than we are now. Even if Equestria doesn’t technologically advance as a whole, we need our future leaders and heroes to understand what they’re dealing with.”

“And the magic?” I asked.

“Luster Dawn and Glitter Drops are considered Equestrian mavericks when it comes to magic, and Professor Newman is extremely familiar with the ways one of Earth's most notorious and influential mages worked and developed new spells. We had a top of the line guy for dream magic with Psychic Calm, and replacing him is going to be tough,” Scootaloo explained. “We’re trying to hire more mages from Earth, but all the best ones are getting scooped up by or already running schools on Earth. For right now, Headmaster has filled the faculty with ponies who are willing to push the boundaries and be open to new ways of doing things.”

I frowned. “Including Neighsay? He seems a bit more traditional to me.”

Scootaloo sighed. “We needed an artifact teacher and we needed somepony in that field with experience teaching. He isn’t opposed to developing new stuff, but…yeah…you are right that he grumbles about it. However, the guy is very protective of Equestria’s interests, and if we are doing something to advance Equestria to meet growing threats, then he’s with us.”

Summer and I looked at each other, each considering what we were hearing.

“You foals are impressively smart,” Scootaloo complimented. “I’ve been teaching for years, and I have never had to deal with classes like the ones I deal with here. Yes, I’ve had a lot of smart, even brilliant, students over the years, and there have been very few I would use the word dumb to describe, but never such a concentrated group of highly intelligent and observant foals class after class. It’s a little overwhelming and intimidating—I’m pretty bright, but I know I’m nowhere near as smart as Sweetie Belle, Applebloom, or all the other faculty members. It will be a challenge, getting our school back on top, but I’ve never shied away from a challenge, and I have nothing but confidence in the foals of this school. Now, head off to class, and take time to think about your cutie marks with the information I gave you—and keep the rest of this conversation private. We don’t want a bunch of wild rumors flying everywhere.”

Keep secrets, that seemed to be the primary goal of every adult I encountered. Would it really be that bad if the students found out the truth? I guess I would never know.