Chapter #6It's Tough Being a Teacher by: wenirun   Ponies can eat ponies.
It’s just a simple fact of life. Of course, outside of warfare, being devoured really isn’t anything anypony usually needs to worry about. It’s typically only legally allowed if you are explicitly willing to be eaten by your predators. Unless you are under the age of 18, in which case, it’s actually up to your legal guardians to make that decision for you. At their discretion, they can freely eat you themselves, or even grant permission for someone else to devour you. As a point of fact, only one of your guardians is required to make that decision, and they don’t have to consult with your other guardians first. This was an important factor in a legal case that was popularly discussed a few years back, in which a stallion sued his wife for devouring their foals during a drunken blackout without consulting him first. The judge ended up ruling in the wife’s favor, and for the rest of the year after that trial, foals all across Equestria became just a little more well-behaved.
But parents aren’t the only legal guardians a foal can have. The definitions of a guardian vary from narrow to broad from region to region, and in many regions, it even includes the foal’s teachers! Such a policy is considered an antiquated holdover from times when Equestria was struggling with overpopulation; it’s been abolished in some places, but maintained in others, typically in the fancier cities that pride themselves on having a high caliber of citizenry, and thus have a vested interest in ‘thinning the herd’ of unpromising students. No town has ever gone and adopted new legislature of that sort in the past few centuries, and most ponies were convinced they never would. Even in the fancier cities, there was mounting political pressure to put an end to the practice of teachers eating their students.
Hence why Ponyville’s latest announcement came as such a shock; Princess Twilight Sparkle herself had intervened in the city council to get a law passed that adds teachers to the list of legal guardians to foals in Ponyville! Twilight’s speech had assured everypony this would merely support the functioning of the school board on a clerical, administrative level, but everypony knew the choice had much deeper implications than that. And since Cheerilee was the only teacher in town, all eyes were on her! All of a sudden, she was known as the mare who was allowed to swallow anybody’s foals whenever she wanted with legal impunity! But of course, poor Cheerilee was more baffled and bewildered by this than anyone else! If there was one thing she could be certain of, it was that this weekend’s parent-teacher conferences were going to be VERY interesting…
Usually nopony showed up to these conferences, but Cheerilee was stunned to see a whole line of ponies leading up to her office this time! Applejack was the first in line; some say she had camped outside the school just to make sure she’d be first. She stomped into the teacher’s office at the first opportunity. “Now, ah don’t mean ta be rude, Miss Cheerilee, but I gotta make one thing VERY clear. Ah don’t care what kinda confangled legal jargon Twilight’s got jostlin’ about in her noggin nowadays, Applebloom AIN’T on the menu!” The mare passionately insisted. “Ah know we call ourselves the ‘apple’ family, but that don’t mean we take kindly to gettin’ eaten! And us Apples helped fund your schoolhouse, don’t you forget!”
“Applejack, please, calm down,” Cheerilee replied. “I assure you, I have no interest in eating your sister…” Applejack seemed to become more apologetic and embarrassed as Cheerilee explained herself, before soon trotting out of the office, satisfied.
Next one in was Rarity. The posh mare was all business. “Alright, let’s just get down to brass tacks. How much will I have to pay you, week by week, to make sure my sister stays off your menu?” She said simply, unfolding a sack of shiny, golden bits. “She’s a straight-A student, or so she tells me. That usually means I get a sizeable discount, no?”
Looking down at those bits, Cheerilee actually felt a little tempted. She did need some more bits to afford school supplies and such… but no, she couldn’t possibly bring herself to extort the mare like that! “Miss Rarity, I appreciate the offer, but I really have no plans to be eating any foals, anyway,” Cheerilee said.
Rarity blinked. “Ooh. Well, that does make things easier, then,” she nodded. “My apologies! I had just assumed… well, in Baltimare, the teachers always asked for a bit of kickback to make it clear certain foals are off-limits.” Rarity soon trotted off as well, but not before giving Cheerilee a 20-bit tip, which she appreciated.
The next few visits proceeded much the same: parents and siblings of her students stopping by and trying to beg or bargain enough to make sure she doesn’t eat her kids. It was kind of demoralizing to have everybody treat her like some kind of glutton who was going to devour her students at the first possible opportunity. Eventually, seeing the writing on the wall, Cheerilee figured she could save time by grabbing a megaphone and walking out of her office to address the line directly. “Please, to everypony here worried that I might devour their child, do not fear. I have no plans to eat anybody’s foals. I just want the rest of this school year to proceed as usual.” That announcement seemed to satisfy the rest of the ponies, and the line dispersed.
Cheerilee hoped that that would be the end of that… but the following monday, she once again noticed ponies acting differently. “Good morning, Miss Cheerilee!” Button Mash said as he walked in, in the most uncharacteristically polite possible tone. He happily plopped down a sizeable chocolate bar on her desk. “I got you a chocolate bar! Mrs. Cocoa Skips, your favorite kind! Just cause you’re the best teacher in the whole world!”
“Uuuh… thank you, Button. That’s very kind of you,” Cheerilee nodded, as he rushed over to his desk, sitting down with perfect posture, his forehooves folded politely on his desk, paying her full attention as if excited to learn. Indeed, every other foal in her class came with a gift of their own today.
“Good morning, Miss Cheerilee. I just wanted to give you this poem I wrote about how I appreciate all the things you’ve done for us, and how much you’ve changed the lives of everyone around you. You really are an inspiration!”
“Good morning, Miss Cheerilee! Look, I wrote a comic book around you! ‘The Adventures of the Super-Teacher!’ People say the elements of harmony are heroes, but I think teachers like you are the REAL heroes!”
“Good morning, Miss Cheerilee! I brought you a hundred bits! Happy late birthday!”
By the time all the foals had taken their seats, Cheerilee’s desk had been covered with a veritable mountain of gifts and knick-knacks! Most of them involved food, notably, as if they were trying to fill her up to keep her from getting hungry during class. And that wasn’t all; the class was usually quite rambunctious and hard to control, but today, they were all like little angels! They were perfectly attentive, asked lots of good questions, and actually studied dutifully during the scheduled study breaks instead of pulling pranks on eachother. It was the best day of teaching that Cheerilee had ever had!
But of course… she felt kind of guilty. After all, she knew that they were only behaving this well because they were afraid she might eat them if they didn’t. She would never do such a thing! But on the other hoof… maybe if she told a few little white lies, and implied that she would, maybe she could keep them this well-behaved and make this the most productive school year of all time!  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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