Of Love and Lies

I was still kind of shocked about Applebloom having a crush on me when I went inside to take my seat. I sat near them, but I honestly didn’t want to take much notice of them. I noticed Applebloom staring at me, but I didn’t want to look away too quickly or I might hurt her feelings. In a stroke of luck, I had an excuse to look away when Ms. Cheerilee walked up to the front of the class and said “Okay, class, settle down and get quiet.” Everypony got quiet and paid attention. “Good. Now, welcome back. I hope you all had a great summer vacation, but now it’s time to learn again! Hooray!” The class was silent. “Anyway, this year we have a new student. Everypony, please welcome Rei Sonkei! Come on up, Rei.”

I was kind of reluctant to go up. Standing in front of a crowd wasn’t exactly my comfort zone, but I had to anyway. I walked up to the front of the room next to Ms. Cheerilee and introduced myself. “H-hello. My name is Rei Sonkei. I moved here from Canterlot at the beginning of the summer. I run a little taco stand in the town market. That’s pretty much it.” I stood up there for a little longer, facing the soulless gaze of the rest of the class. Then, the hoof of a pink earth pony with a tiara on her head shot up into the air. “Do you have a question?”

“Yeah,” she replied with a miss-priss accent. (There’s such an accent, right?) “Don’t you have a cutie mark?”

“No, actually. I’ve been trying to find it for a long time, but I’ve never found what my true talent was.” She and another grey earth pony laughed quietly. “Am I missing some kind of joke?”

“No,” replied the grey pony. “It’s just that if you haven’t gotten your cutie mark by now, you’ll wind up a blank flank forever like those three ponies in the back.”

“Hay!” I snapped. “Nopony talks that way about my friends!”

“Oh, those are your friends? I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Really?” I naively asked.

“Just kidding!” As the two laughed, I noticed Sweetie Belle and the others in the back, obviously taking the shots these two fillies were firing hard. I was filling with anger when I finally thought of a solution.

“You think you’re the first bullies I’ve met? You think you’re something really special, don’t you? Well, let me be the first to tell you... I’ve taken worse than what you two can dish out. I’m sure that, deep down, you two aren’t even real bullies. You don’t really mean all the things you say. You two just want to stay ahead of the pack to avoid any real bullies.” I then leaned in a little closer to the grey one. “You’re afraid. Afraid of being bullied, yourselves. Afraid of losing your status as the top dogs. Afraid of disappointing your little daddies.” This actually caused the grey one to nearly fall backwards out of her seat. I then walked away back to my seat, followed by much applause by the rest of the class.

“That was amazing, Rei,” commented Sweetie Belle.

“Yeah,” added Scootaloo. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“How’d you do it?” asked Applebloom.

“Everypony knows how a unicorn’s magic works, but a magician, on the other hoof, never reveals his secrets.”

After an otherwise uneventful day, I trotted out of the school and into the courtyard with pride. Everypony instantly began crowding me, asking what it took to stand up to bullies and wondering if there was any special trick they needed. I simply replied, “All you need to do is believe in yourself and not let your bully get under your skin.”

After a while, I finally found the two fillies I was looking for. I found out that their names were Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon. “What do you want?” Silver Spoon asked asked as I trotted over.

“Well, I was planning on gloating a little in your faces, but then I decided it would be a better idea to try extending a hoof in friendship.”

Diamond Tiara just scoffed. “Friends? With a blank flank like you?”

“Come on. I’d be willing to bet that neither of you two have any other real friends.” The two looked at each other for a moment, and I knew I had them in checkmate.

“Okay,” Diamond Tiara replied. “Nopony ever wants to be friends with us, so this is kind of a first. How is this supposed to work?”

I sat down next to them to explain what I wanted them to hear. “First thing’s first. Tonight, you two come by my house. Sweetie Belle and her friends will be there, too. I want us all to get to know each other a little better if we’re all going to be friends. Sound good?”

Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon looked at each other for a moment, then turned back to me. “Okay,” Silver Spoon finally said. “We’ll come.”

“Great,” I said as I got up. “I’ll be waiting for you two.” Just before I flew back home, I turned around and said “Hey, Silver Spoon. You’re name reminds me of a pony I used to know. He wasn’t the nicest stallion I ever met, but he was a lot worse than you.” With that, I flew off. The first phase of my plan was complete. It was time for the second phase...

Later that evening, I had everything in place for my plan. Of course, I didn’t really invite Sweetie Belle and her friends. It wouldn’t have been a good thing if they were caught up in this particular prank. I got everything in place for the scary story I was going to tell Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon and the little ‘bonus’ that would come with it and waited. After a while, I heard a knock on the door and two voices on the other side. Time to see if this plan would work, because Celestia knew I wasn’t sure it would. I flew over to the front door and opened it. “Welcome,” I said to the two fillies. “Please, come in.” The two fillies walked into the room I had set up. There were a few chairs around a table, which had a small spread of a dozen tacos on it.

“What are those?” Diamond Tiara asked. “Are those supposed to be food?”

“I know it looks weird,” I said, “but trust me, they taste good. Take a seat and help yourself to them.” I trotted off into the room behind where they were sitting and quietly made one final check to make sure my trap was in place. The rope was attached correctly, concealed so that Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon would never see it, and ready to work the second I released it from under the table. After I finished up, I trotted back into the living room where I found that neither of the two had even touched the tacos I laid out. “You’re supposed to eat them, not stare at them.”

“Uh, we had a big lunch,” Silver Spoon said.

“Yeah,” Diamond Tiara added. “We just aren’t hungry, that’s all.”

“Oh, well I can totally believe that.” I honestly didn’t believe them, but it was okay. They’ll come around. “So, while we’re waiting for Sweetie Belle and the others, what do you say we tell some scary stories?”

The two looked at me like I was a Timber Wolf for a little while, but eventually they looked back and each other and shrugged. “I’ll go first,” Diamond Tiara said. She went on to tell the story of the Headless Horse. This got Silver Spoon shaking a little, but I had heard the story about a hundred times. After Diamond Tiara was finished, Silver Spoon told a tale of how Pinkie Pie used to make cupcakes. I admit, a bit graphic, but I had still heard it and watched the cartoon somepony made based off of it. [Author’s interjection: Seriously, I just recently watched Cupcakes and it was very disappointing compared to the fic.] “So, Rei,” Diamond Tiara said after she was done whimpering in fear from Silver Spoon’s story, “do you have a story you’d like to share? I doubt it will be nearly as scary as that last one.”

At long last, it was time for the third and final phase of my plan. “Oh, I have quite the story for you two,” I said, purposefully letting an evil smile form on my face. “Have you two ever heard about the creature known as... Slendermane?” When the two shook their heads, I went ahead and let a small evil chuckle come out. “Well then... you girls are in for a treat. It all started one night in front of the Everfree Forest...”

One scary story later...

The two fillies were really shaking at this point and their expressions showed pure terror. “...then, just as she took the eighth page in her hoof, the static stopped. She was safe... or so she thought. She walked quietly out of the building and back out into the woods, hoping she’d be able to find her way back to Ponyville. However, she didn’t get far before she heard the all-too-familiar boom from behind her.” As I was about to say this last line, I stealthily undid the rope from under the table. “She turned around quickly to find, standing right there behind her... SLENDERMANE!” Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon yelped a little when I shouted the last word, but they played it off like nothing happened.

“Pfft, that wasn’t scary at all,” Diamond Tiara said.

“Yeah,” Silver Spoon added. “I mean, a faceless pony who guards eight pieces of paper in the Everfree Forest. Heh, somepony needs to get a life.”

“Oh, he does more than guard his pages,” I said, watching the trap work behind the fillies. “Sometimes, he leaves the Forest and comes to Ponyville to prey on innocent little foals like us on dark nights like this one. In fact- WHAA!” I did my best to make my scream as realistically as possible. (My cutie mark should have been in acting.) I pointed behind the two fillies, still screaming. “IT’S SLENDERMANE!” The two fillies quickly turned around to find Slendermane standing right behind them. They screamed at the top of their lungs and galloped as fast as they could out of the house and into the night. Just for dramatic effect, as the fillies were galloping, I shouted “WAIT! DON’T LEAVE ME- GAAAAAAAH!” Hopefully, that would give them the impression that Slendermane got me and was close behind them now. It would have been true if Slendermane were actually here. I got out of my chair and trotted over to what easily passed as the real Slendermane. If the fillies had actually paid attention, they would have noticed that it was suspended by ropes hanging from the ceiling and that it was just an oversized stuffed doll that I had made, myself. “Acting, arts and crafts, generally impractical and sometimes rather cruel jokes... and yet my cutie mark is just a taco.” With a sigh of self-satisfaction, I took the Slendermane doll down from the ceiling, gathered up all the rope and put it away, and took the doll up to my room where I stored it in my closet for possible use in the future. I was just about to go to bed when I remembered that the two fillies hadn’t eaten a single one of the tacos I made. I quickly trotted back down to the living room where the entire plate of a dozen tacos remained untouched. I sighed with disappointment and put the entire plate in the fridge. I pulled one of the tacos out and ate it before I closed the fridge, then trotted back upstairs to bed. “Well that wasn’t a bad day after all,” I said to myself. “New school, new friends, new ‘friends’, and a life-size Slendermane doll I made with my own two hooves over the course of an afternoon. I should give that to somepony for Hearth’s Warming.” With all that in mind, I got into my bed and fell asleep.