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

The great part of Coach Scootaloo’s class was that Scootaloo always had to spend time setting up something or other. This always provided the class time standing around to socialize. We could socialize in the dorms, or socialize in the cafeteria, but those all compartmentalized us to some extent. We were with our roommates in the dorm, in our own secluded rooms. We were in our usual seats in the cafeteria, with our usual neighbors that we could normally speak to. Here, in the fields outside the school there were no barriers. It allowed interactions that we typically didn’t have throughout the day. I could interact with Twilight, or Red, or Onyx, or—

“Farm pony, are you part of some extended plot by Professor Newman? What’s she plotting?”

Or Prim.

I smiled sweetly at her. “You’re being surprisingly direct today. Your pointy-nosed friend put you up to asking questions? Was she born that way or have an accident?”

“Her parents paid for a nose job, and that was the nose job, if you’d believe it, chum,” Red said.

“Ponies here pay to have that done?!” Hannah asked in disbelief.

Prim took a step back. “That’s her natural nose. Saying otherwise is just baseless slander.”

“Poor filly,” Bright said.

“It is a noble’s point! It’s considered a sign of noble breeding,” Prim insisted.

“Which is why she had to have it surgically done instead of being born that way,” Red said, smirking. ”I’m just glad that you, dear sister, seem to also demonstrate you aren’t much of a noble with your very common looking nose. I hate looking at you enough as it is.”

She glared at him. “You insult my breeding then you insult your own, dear brother.”

“Our family, luckily, has let in new blood within recent generations, so we don’t have as severe an inbreeding problem,” Red said.

“As severe?” Rocky asked.

Red shrugged. “It is the harsh realities of noble life. I plan on marrying outside the nobility when I’m of age; it fosters healthier offspring. Sadly, I doubt anypony outside the nobility would touch dear sister.”

“Well, I deserve a noble husband anyway,” Prim asserted with a snort.

“You certainly do,” Red replied. “Just keep the nephews and nieces away from me. I suspect they’ll be born with more than one toe on each hoof.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “We’re all part of Newman’s plots, Prim. She chose you, for whatever reason, to be here just as much as she chose me. She already said what her plots were, training us to be able to make the hard choices.

“Like not slapping you and your friends for being snots,” Hannah said.

“Well, we already knew about Newman’s ability,” Rocky said proudly.

“Yep, got the drop on all the rest of you,” Onyx added in.

Twilight blinked and looked at them. “How? You didn’t say anything about it yesterday when I was talking about my research on her.”

Rocky grinned. “We only found out yesterday. We figured after listening to you, we would just go up and ask her.”

“Yep,” Onyx agreed. “She told us all about her ability, but also told us not to talk about it with anypony until after lunch today—said she had a surprise planned. Gotta say, that whole duel thing was a surprise. She must have known Headmistress Cinch was going to mouth off about our school.”

Twilight gaped. “You just straight out asked her?”

Rocky shrugged. “Seemed the easiest way of finding out the truth. Not sure why you didn’t try that before doing all that research.”

Okay, so maybe it was as easy as just asking her. Although, I suspected that if they had asked at an earlier date she would have given a more cryptic answer. She likely only told them because she was about to reveal that information publicly anyway.

“Okay, students, let’s not talk about inbred marriage. None of you should be worrying about that kind of thing,” Scootaloo said as she came over, followed by Stockman. “Last minute change of plans for today’s lesson. I was inspired by Professor Newman’s performance, and decided we should try something similar.”

“We’re going to have to dodge stun spells?” Summer asked worriedly.

“Well…no,” Scootaloo answered. “We'll use water balloons instead. The exercise is simple, you’ll all pair off into teams of two each. I have the lines drawn for each group. One of you will be throwing water balloons, the other dodging. Instead if a time limit, you’ll be limited by ammo. Once your initial stick of water balloons is used up, you’ll switch places and Baxter here will bring a new stick if water balloons.”

Stockman lifted up his leg which had a phone attached. “I used my phone to randomize the groups. First group is Prim Tape and Onyx Swirl. Second group is Red Tape and Hannah Moonbow. Third group is Twilight Glow and Summer Blaze. Fourth group is Rocky Road and Bright Pear. Fifth group is Turnip Jones and Lunar Light….where’s Lunar Light?”.

We all pointed at a nearby tree Lunar was napping beneath.

Stockman used a wing to shield his eyes, despite wearing sunglasses already, and looked in the direction we indicated. He snorted, walked over to a large pile of water balloons, picked one up with a wing, and lobbed it towards Lunar. It didn’t hit him, but came close enough that the resulting splash did.

“I’m working on it!” Lunar shouted in fear as he jumped to his hooves. He then looked around in confusion. “What’s going on?”

“Turnip’s your teammate; he’ll explain it to you,” Stockman answered.

“Try to be a little nicer if you’re going to help out,” Scootaloo chided.

“What? He needs to be alert. He isn’t the only one who wants to take a nap. Especially since I’ve been helping everyone out all morning,” Stockman replied. “Baxter, can you substitute teach my class? Baxter, can you film this? Baxter, can you help set up this activity I just dreamt up two minutes ago? Mister Stockman, I’m facing existential dread because I’m fifteen and haven’t figured out the meaning of life; can you explain it to me?”

Scootaloo’s ears sagged. “You were nice to whatever student was having the existential crisis, right?”

“I told them they are fifteen so they should go play some video games,” Stockman answered.

“....Most Equestrians don’t have access to video games,” Scootaloo replied in a troubled tone.

“Now that's a crisis. I feel very sorry for Equestrians,” Stockman said.

Stockman behaved this way around most of the professors, but he tended to hang around Coach Scootaloo more than the others, so there was always some back and forth going on with them. I think he hung around Scootaloo, despite it putting him in sunlight, because he felt like he could be more useful. From what I could tell, Stockman knew next to nothing about magic. He wasn’t a teacher; he was just the tech guy on staff…and there wasn’t much tech to use. He must have been bored most of the time, and despite his protests, I believed he was more than happy that anyone wanted his help.

Twilight raised a hoof. “Um, coach? Aren’t we at an inherent disadvantage in doing an activity like this? Not even counting Professor Newman’s ability to see magic and anticipate where blasts are going, she’s human, and more agile than we can hope to match. Ponies don’t typically so much dodge things as try to outrun things. We can’t physically match what she did.”

“She also implied she’d been practicing that kind of thing. Kind of crazy that someone practices being shot at,” Rocky said.

“Yeah, she wrote Tempest Shadow for a training recommendation. She ended up using a top of the line automatic baseball pitcher on a turret that would fire high-speed baseballs. It had a sensor to make sure the balls were always aimed directly at her. I actually helped set the thing up,” Stockman said. “She was hardly perfect at it when she first started. She got nailed by baseballs constantly—got some nasty bruises and worse since those things were firing at over ninety miles an hour. This water balloon thing is extremely tame and easy compared to what she trains with.”

“Um…how fast is ninety miles an hour? I don’t know Earth measurements,” Onyx asked.

“More of a USA measurement than Earth one,” Stockman clarified. He scratched his chin with his wing thumb. “Not sure how to do a good example. Let me try this, I've seen Equestrians play baseball. You guys treat it as a sort of way of showing off agility since just pitching a ball, swinging a bat while standing on two legs, and fielding all require a ton of practice and training to even do on a basic level. Baseball on Earth is a whole different beast. Humans are expected to be able to do all those things inherently, so they tend to focus on raw power and precision a lot more. When an Equestrian pitches a ball in baseball. it goes at about fifty miles an hour on average, oftentimes slower. So those balls are going almost twice the speed an Equestrian can pitch. Humans, at least the professional baseball players, can actually hit over a hundred miles an hour pitching. Getting hit by a ball thrown that hard can fracture bones.”

The Equestrian foals gaped. To them that must seem insane, but I’d seen humans play baseball before. Ponies typically didn’t get to be play beside them because it was considered exceptionally unfair to the pony. At best, you might have a pony pinch runner, if a team could afford a spot for just that. In areas that had a high pony population the MLB teams found ways to make a spot on the roster for that pony pinch runner.

Prim put her nose up high. “So what? Humans might have a few minor situational physical advantages, but can they really compare to what a unicorn can do? Professor Newman certainly went out of her way to set up a contrived situation where she had the advantage, but when is anything like that ever going to really happen?”

“Are you familiar with crystal ponies from Earth?” Hannah asked. “They aren’t like the ones here in Equestria. The ones on Earth can drain your power right out of you and completely neutralize your spells. When some baddie knows they are going to be fighting unicorns, they always bring one or two crystal ponies along with them. I wouldn’t be shocked if there’s some Earth-type crystal ponies over in New Eden—that’s practically in our backyard.”

“What if ya are pinned down, like when any of us are dueling Lunar Light?” Bright asked. “Ya can hold that shield up as much as ya can, but ya aren’t able ta do much else—least not with magic.”

Prim snorted. “I'm a noble. Why should I even be fighting?”

“I would also like to add in simply being magically exhausted,” Coach Scootaloo said. “Even without ever being in a combat scenario, you are still capable of magically exhausting yourself. I’m not talking about being just tired; I’m talking about completely depleting your thaumic reserves. When this happens, which can happen during normal day to day activities—if you aren’t careful, you are magically helpless for anywhere from a few minutes to a few days. What you can do physically matters a whole lot more when your horn needs a rest.”

“Well…I’d just have servants do what needs to be done while I recover if that happens,” Prim asserted, seeming less sure of herself.

Stockman looked around. “Hey! Can the servants for this snot-nosed filly please come out? I didn’t know you were hanging around just in case she got herself in trouble.” He looked around. “Anyone? Hello! You guys playing hard to get?”

“I think she gets the idea, Baxter,” Scootaloo quickly said. “There’s no need to embarrass her.”

“Some people can’t understand things unless they realize how stupid they sound,” Stockman replied.

Scootaloo covered her face with a wing. “To think you are related to so many influential ponies and you act like this.”

“They’re the influential ones, not me,” Stockman said dismissively. “I also got to see those same influential ponies lose their cool as soon as they were out of public eye. They throw hissy fits about how moronic other people are. They may have to be polite when dealing with fools because they’re public figures, but they still think the fool is a fool. I don’t have a public image to protect. I’m free to say it like it is. This filly wants to say ridiculous things? Fine, but I’ll make sure she understands how preposterous she sounds. Oh, the servants will do it for me….give me a break.”

Prim turned red in the face. “I refuse to be spoken to by some lowborn-”

“Lowborn?” Stockman laughed. “Filly, you really don’t know who you are talking to. Those that I’m related to make your humble little batch of cloth merchants look like nothing. I don’t particularly care. I think a person should be able to stand on their own merits, not the merits of who they are related to. I don’t know your family, but I know how you act, and you don’t seem to have much going for you when you strip your family connections from you, not that those connections make half as much difference as you think.”

“That’s not true,” I objected, getting everyone to look at me in shock, especially Prim. “She is an extremely hard worker, who pours a ton of energy into doing well in classes. She refuses to give up, and she refuses to fail. She’s got her issues, serious ones, but she does have her strengths.”

“Why are you defending me, earth pony?” Prim asked. “I don’t need it.”

I looked at her. “Because insulting the capability of my rival insults my capabilities.”

Prim frowned slightly, but didn’t reply.

“That’s an interesting view of things,” Scootaloo said. “But you are right, Prim Tape is a very hard worker. Let’s get started on the activity.”

We separated into our assigned pairings. Lunar Light yawned and scratches at his chin.

“So…what are we doing?” Lunar asked as he yawned again.

“We are replicating Newman’s duel with Cinch using water balloons,” I explained.

He blinked. “Oh ..well…can you explain it a bit more specifically to me?”

It was only then I realized he wasn’t at lunch.

“You chose today of all days to miss lunch?!” I asked in complete disbelief.

“I fell asleep,” he explained sheepishly.

Of course he fell asleep. I only knew two primary things about Lunar Light—he fell asleep frequently and he was apparently very strong in combat magic class.

“One of us is going to stand in the bigger area and try to dodge the water balloons, the other is throwing from the smaller square until there are no more water balloons. You can’t do anything else but throw balloons. No other magic,” I explained.

“She and Cinch had a water balloon fight?” Lunar asked in confusion. “That’s not something I would expect either to do.”

“Cinch was using stun spells instead of water balloons,” I said flatly.

He yawned again. “That makes more sense. I assume Newman won?”

“Yes,” I answered, and raised an eyebrow at him. “Why’d you assume she win?”

“I’ve seen her dodge baseballs. It’s something she does consistently every Saturday. She almost never gets hit. Sounds like it hurts a lot whenever she does get hit, and that’s usually what brings a stopping point to her exercise. I’m surprised she hasn’t been seriously injured, but she comes into class every Monday with no sign of injury. Headmaster must heal her up,” Lunar explained.

I tilted my head. “And you take time to watch her every Saturday?”

He blushed. “You probably guessed, given the duel you described, but she’s a master strategist who is always ten steps ahead of everyone else. She’s got ties to one of the most important mages of the age, and she might possibly know forbidden magic, even if she can’t cast it herself. She’s worth watching—and she’s easier to keep track of than Headmaster, that guy just vanishes without a trace and doesn’t have any records about him; can’t learn anything at all about him. It’s like he just appeared out of nowhere one day and nobody knows anything about him other than he’s a powerful mage and he knows medicine; it’s frustrating. Aren’t you curious why we have humans from Earth here?”

Well, I knew Hail Storm is his nephew, and he wasn’t the first choice to run the school, someone recommended him. I’d keep that private between me and my close friends.

I smirked. “Well, you might have learned it is to prepare us to face bigger challenges than Equestria is used to facing if you hadn’t fallen asleep and missed lunch. What do you do all night that makes you so sleepy during the day?”

He hung his head and shook it. “Sleep, but It doesn’t help much.”

“Getting pelted with a water balloon should wake you up. I’ll throw first and you can dodge,” I said.

He yawned again. “Sure thing.” He then went to get into position.

“Oh, and we do know one other thing about Headmaster,” I said as I took my spot.

His ears perked up. “What’s that?”

“He prefers to wash the dishes,” I said with a chuckle.

Lunar seemed to consider, as if this made him realize something deeper. “That he does.”