Cheerilee crept through the trees, scouting the villa from every angle, determining the best point of entry. Book Acer didn't seem to be home, so there was a good chance he was out of town. That snarky college professor wouldn't know what hit him.
Although the villa was a bit outside of Ponyville, Cheerilee made sure to sneak her way there, a healthy dose of paranoia being a good friend to anypony doing anything outside the realms of civilized society. Stealthily she ran, crawled and tip-toed her way to the building, jumping at any stray sound from the countryside.
He thought he was sooo smart with his fancy Canterlot diploma and his ``alternative teaching methods'' and his ``concentration on the individual students''. What did he know? The guy took some tests, read a pop-psychology article, learnt some big words and all of sudden he was qualified to be a teacher. Really?
``Oh, every student needs special, personalized attention. We live in modern times. You can't expect students to just blindly follow orders nowadays. We have to teach them how to study and to engage their curiosity.'' Yeah? We'll see how he manages to engage the curiosity of twenty underaged ponies in the middle of a spitball warzone. Maybe she should just leave him. See how he fairs for a couple of days and welcome him kindly in her home for him to beg for her to come back and set those little devils straight. A few days off work would do her wonders. But she can't really leave that poor sap in the hooves of those monsters. It wouldn't be humane.
Cheerilee got to the villa, jumped over the fence and slithered to the window. She examined the frame. It didn't seem to have a lock. Pff. Amateur hour, ladies and gentlemen. She bit the frame, trying to lift the window with her mouth and her jaw went numb. The numbness spread to her face, went down her neck to her body and legs. And then she started to violently jitter and after that came the pain.
It only took a second for the electricity to travel her entire body and make all her muscles spasm violently and painfully, before her legs gave in and she hurled herself backwards.
Rubbing her head, she slowly got up, her entire body numb from the shock. She walked over to the window once again, trying to keep her balance, and inspected the window a bit more closely.
Nothing out of the ordinary. But now, under the moonlight, she found something odd - a small black box with a number pad on it. A passcode system? For a window? An electric window. Now that seemed too much. What was that stallion hiding to get such an esoteric defense system? An electric window frame with a pass code.
She thought for a minute how to get through this hurdle. The code could be his date of birth. Or it could be the birthdate of someone Book Acer might know. Or it could be his weight. Or the page of a book with a particular quote he enjoyed. Or four zeroes.
This wasn't getting her anywhere. She picked up a rock with her mouth and, without much effort, smashed the pad off.
She cautiously touched the frame, this time without any negative effects. And here she thought that a high-class professor might invest a bit more in his home security.
And with that, she got inside her foe's home.
Even in the dim light, she could make out the interior of the villa. Now, Cheerilee considered herself a down to earth pony, with traditional tastes that were both comfortable, aesthetic and practical. But in comparison to this place, she might as well had been living in a cave.
The decor was exquisite, colorful, yet not over-stimulating. As she walked through the living room, she could not help herself from admiring the design of the furniture - modernist sensibilities with tradcore stylings. Red leather sofas, glass tables with ash legs and frames, housing photobooks underneath. Works of futuristic and postmodern art hanging from the walls, positioned far enough to not look too overbearing.
This guy. Oh, this guy. He was practically asking to get vandalized with his big city house arrangements and his swanking villa, and his job thievery. Really, now. What did he have, that Cheerilee didn't? But it wasn't his fault. Not entirely anyway.
The school principal had a pretty big part in all of this too.
``We need an alternative approach to teaching, Cheerilee. I hope you understand, we are doing this for the children. As a teacher, the children should be your first priority.''
Now that was a load of bull. Her first priority should be paying the bills, not some brats. More and more spoiled families were coming to Ponyville. And with them, came their wretched spawn. The resident kids were alright. Hardworking, raised to follow rules. But the new kids? They had it easy from where they came. Their parents never asked anything hard of them, neither their previous schools. And now, all of a sudden, Cheerilee was a bad teacher because she gave out homework, made kids take tests and had them sit still and not talk during class.
The damn principal just buckled under delusional parents with their snowflake kids. And one day, in a decade or so, when life would just happen, those kids wouldn't have any idea how to deal with any situation beyond whining and shouting.
In any case, Cheerilee was about to have her revenge. No matter how pitiful it might seem, in her mind she was slaying dragons and bringing justice.
Going from room to room to room, and getting more and more ticked off by the vastness of this house compared to her crummy two-bedroom cottage, she finally found something of interest - the professor's personal study.
Now here was a look she could really get behind - large wooden bookshelves, with ancient tomes, a map of Equestria hanging on the wall, a massive desk, covered with neatly stacked parchments and half-empty inkwells, two paintings in a romanticist style, one depicting Celstia and the other Luna, and finally, a nice, green, potted plant. And naturally, there was a fireplace. Because of course there would be a fireplace. Modern, by the looks of it. With a metal door. Who even has a metal door on their fireplace? Still, it was brass and didn't clash too much with the vibe.
At least this bozo had something to her liking. She didn't waste too much time admiring the office. She quickly went through some of the parchments and open letters on the desk and she finally found what she had been looking for in a folder labeled ``stuff'' right next to an open tome by the title of ``Pony archetypes; a deep dive by Young Oak''. How pretentious could he get?
In any case, she had found it. The lesson plan. A piece of paper, apparently powerful enough to distinguish between good, proper teachers and medieval hasbeens.
The plan went smoother than expected. Maybe she had picked up a few things from her students. If she couldn't find another teaching job, being an outlaw seemed like a good second choice. It was only natural for crime to go up with the expansion of a small community. Usually, it was the outsiders that were to be bandits, but exceptions could be made. But it really didn't matter. With the influx of ponies, new schools were bound to open up, and Book Acer couldn't be in two places at once, even with his fancy degrees. He was probably a friend of that Twilight Sparkle. Made sense. Both were from Canterlot, probably went to the same school. Nepotism at its finest. Even a princess was bound to play favorites. Ever since she got here, Ponyville went to the dogs. Ignoring the disasters that seemed to happen on a weekly basis, now she had blown up the town library and replaced it with a gaudy crystal castle. Worse yet, her princesshood was most likely drawing in the immigrants. There is a high chance she was planning a coup against the Equestrian rulers. Or getting ready for a civil war at the very least. It might be a good idea for Cheerilee to sooner split town than hang around here, if any of the rumors were true.
As she was about to snag the lesson plan and head to the hills, she heard a door close. That damn professor was back. He sure did pick the best time to return. But it wouldn't have been much of an adventure if it was all smooth sailing.
In a moment of panic, Cheerilee opened the fireplace and swooced inside, closing it behind her. Cramped inside, she felt a tad foolish for not picking a better hiding spot, but at least she was confident that she was fully hidden. There she could observer everything outside through the slits in the door, so she wasn't too worried that she had to hide for too long.
Luckily for her, Book Acer came into his office rather quickly. He took his time rearranging his parchments, writing some notes going down checklists.
Unluckily for her, she started getting hotter. More precisely, her rump started getting hotter. Even teachers had things to learn and, on that night, Cheerilee learned that modern fireplaces had a small, blue, perpetual flame going for a quick start. Since there was no room to move about, and even if there was, she would probably make too much noise, she clenched her teeth, trying to suppress the pain of burning.
Every second the professor did some inane task was a second Cheerilee would have rather spent bashing her head against a wall. At least that would have been less painful.
She had put hoof over her mouth, trying to suppress the urge to scream, praying to Luna that Book Acer would leave sooner, so she could just dart out, grab the lesson plan and put this entire night behind her.
As the professor opened his book, he raised his head and made a seemingly innocuous comment.
``It's getting rather cold in here.''
A moment of pure bliss overwhelms Cheerilee as she saw Book Acer stand up, believing he was about to leave, and the bliss was quickly followed up by a horrible realization as he walked up to the fireplace and turned a dial by the side.
Time slowed down. Her mind raced with ideas, options and consequences. She couldn't climb up the chimney, since it was far too small for her. She couldn't really leave through the way she came. At the very least she would face charges for breaking and entering, if not worse, considering Book Acer probably knew the princess and most likely held some sort of grudge against Cheerilee.
She looked down, her butt still slowly cooking on the blue flame. And of course, there was the matter of her nether region, until now protected by some clever positioning and tricky maneuvers. This was now going to end well, no matter how she looked at it.
Seconds passed like decades for the poor mare, each click of the dial sending her in a deeper state of panic. Choices were limited, time was running ever shorter. There was nothing she could really do now. She closed her eyes and prayed.
The final tick came, accompanied by a quiet beep and a faint whistling sound. A blazing inferno wrapped the mare like a devilcoat. There were no thoughts, no plans, only primal drive and pure action.
She let out a barbaric scream and slammed through the metal door like a bat out of hell. An apt comparison as she ran with what seemed like flaming wings.
With a burning butt and a passion like she had never felt, she galloped through the villa, prison be damned. She no longer cared what that prick might do. She had bigger problems on her mind.
She ran for what felt like miles, jumping out of the window she came in from and headed straight to the villa's pool.
Of course, being close to Fall, the pool was empty except for a small puddle of greenish water. And yet, that small puddle looked like an entire ocean to the eyes of the mare. She threw herself inside, landing butt first in the puddle. A sense of cool relief overtook her and while her soul melted into calming chill and a wave of steam evaporated behind her with an almost musical sizzle, Cheerilee smiled and passed out then and there.
She didn't know how much time had passed when she woke up, but she was still in the pool. Book Acer hadn't seemed to call the cops on her, so she figured it would be best to sneak off, through the woods from whence she came.
When she got home, she slammed face first into her pillow and immediately fell asleep.
Then next morning she was rudely awoken by a knocking on the door. She pulled herself out of bed, barely able to walk, constantly making sounds of pain with each step.
With dread she opened the door, expecting the local authorities to arrest her, but instead she found her old schoolmate, Derpy Hooves, awkwardly flying around, smiling, one eye looking at her, the other Celestia know where.
``You've got mail, Cheerilee.'' The mail pony said, her intonation as off as ever. ``You don't look so good. Did you get enough sleep?''
Ignoring the mare's question, Cheerilee grabbed the brief and shut the door.
It was from Book Acer. So that bastard was going to pull something. Didn't have the guts to tell her face to face. Figures. He seemed like the spineless type.
She opened the letter, expecting anything else than what she read.
Apparently, the professor felt bad for her, taking her job like that, so he had offered the board to keep Cheerilee in mind as a substitute teacher, whenever her was off giving lectures.
And here she thought he had only the best interest for the children in mind. Instead, he's already planning on skipping work.
Figures.
