"So, if Jenny has three buckets of apples, and Roger has five buckets of apples, and each bucket holds between five and nine apples, how many apples, minimum to maximum, are there between Jenny and Roger?"  Cheerilee asked, glancing around the room.  As usual, only one pony ever raised her hoof; Apple Bloom.  Cheerilee sighed; ever since she figured out that "good students give apples to their teachers," Apple Bloom had become the worst kind of try-hard teacher's pet.  "Apple Bloom."

"Thirty Five and Fifty Six, ma'am!"  She said with a smile, incorrect as usual.

"No, Apple Bloom, I'm afraid that's incorrect.  Anypony else?"  She glanced around the room, hoping for one of the duller students in the back to offer a correct answer and spice up her day.  "Anypony?"

With yet another sigh, Cheerilee wrote the correct answer on the chalkboard, and tried to walk the students through how to solve it.  "You see, if each bucket has between five and nine apples, and there are a total of eight buckets, then the minimum situation would be if each bucket only held five apples.  If we multiply five by eight, we get forty, and then we just do the same thing for the maximum value; eight times nine is seventy two.  Now we have our minimum, forty, and our maximum of seventy two.  Make sense?"

As was the same for every single day, each one of the students either looked bewildered, bored, or belligerent, and not a single one really cared how many hypothetical apples were in the hypothetical buckets.  Luckily for Cheerilee, however, the bell rang for recess at just that moment.  The students, as per their daily ritual, ran screaming out to the playground and left Cheerilee all alone in the classroom.  The magenta earth pony slumped down in the chair behind her desk and groaned; still half the day left to suffer through.  In truth she hated those brats.  She hated their constant screaming and yelling, throwing things around her classroom, talking over her, passing notes, leaving rancid garbage everywhere they went...  The more she thought about them, the more she contemplated a bloody mass homicide, but she always stopped herself at "if it weren't for the guards..."

Cheerilee found herself reaching down below her desk, instinctively pulling open the single hidden drawer  where she placed confiscated contraband, and her own stash of 'herbal stress relief' materials.  Cheerilee removed a pencil and the apple that Apple Bloom had placed on the corner of her desk and removed the stem.  She stabbed a hole in the side, then in the top, and made sure they connected nicely.  With the newly perforated piece of fruit, Cheerilee glanced around to make sure nopony was around, and unrolled a little baggy of very strong cannabis.  She sprinkled a little bit into the top of the apple, where the stem once was, and packed it down tightly.  She produced a half-dead lighter from the same drawer, and lit the apple pipe at the brim, inhaled, and nearly melted into her chair as the fruit flavored, thick cloud of smoke shot through the channels and into her lungs.  Her woes disappeared in a cloud of skunky vapor as she exhaled, and looked down to her apple pipe.

"Mmhh, Apple Bloom, I guess you really are good for somethin'."  Cheerilee snickered and took another hit, enjoying the apple flavored weed, and instantly lost track of time.  The clock ticked by outside her scope of awareness, and she torched down the natural bowl quickly, taking large, rapid hits all along the way.  Just as she had to hold the fire over the last, blackened remnants of ash in her apple pipe, Cheerilee's ears were assaulted by the bell to end recess.  The sharp noise frightened her and she swallowed an entire esophagus full of the bitter, hot, burnt apple flavored smoke, and aspirated the rest in a gasp.  

Without warning, her eyes teared up, her throat and lungs felt like they'd spontaneously combusted, and the earth pony's stomach did somersaults; she responded by dipping her head under the table and coughing violently.  As students poured into the classroom, smoke and violent hacking sounds rose up from behind their teacher's desk.  Following the students came a slew of questions and statements.

"Are you okay, Miss Cheerilee?"

"What's going on?"

"It smells like a skunk in here..."

"Is that smoke?!"

"Everything's fine!"  Cheerilee slurred as she emerged from behind her desk; the final hit had been a lot larger than she was prepared for.  The students didn't quite know what was wrong, but the sight of smoke, bright pink eyes and a teacher in pain created the perfect environment for panic to set in.

"What's wrong, Miss Cheerilee?"  Sweetie Belle asked, innocently as always, "Is there anything we can do to help?"

Cheerilee stood up, fell back into her chair, then stood up again and made for the window.  She opened it up and hung her head out briefly, trying to stave off the nausea from swallowing so much smoke with a little fresh air; not to mention to air out the room.  She turned back to address the class (and hopefully calm them down) when a silent but involuntary belch snuck up on the teacher, and all the smoke she swallowed expelled itself from her mouth at once.

"Miss Cheerilee's gonna explode!"  Somepony from the room shouted, and they all immediately bolted for various exits, screaming.

The teacher stood dumbstruck at the absurd notion, but stepped over just in time to prevent a slack-jawed foal, whom she couldn't recall the name of, from diving out the window.  

"Children, please!  I'm not going to explode, I'm just doing... an experiment."  She was high, so her brain had lost the creative edge it usually had in situations that required an excuse.

"But you're not wearing your thafety goggleths"  Twist said as most of the foals calmed down.

"You're right, and I should have been, that's why my eyes are red and watering right now.  Which reminds me, I have an assignment for you all."  She paused for the obligatory classroom groan any time a synonym of "work" was said.  "We're going to be doing research on snacks!"  The children were confused at this, but Cheerilee's big smile assured them that it might actually be fun.  "Don't tell anypony I let you do this, but you're all allowed to go out of the classroom and fetch me something to munch on.  Those of you who bring me back something delicious will receive extra credit on the next exam, but those of you who don't return to class will get a failing grade."

The students hesitated for just a moment, but then all at once scrambled for the door.  Any excuse to get out of class on the Teacher's blessing may just as well have been the holy grail.  Once the dust settled, only Diamond Tiara remained.

"I know what you were doing while we were at recess, you may have them all fooled but not me."  The bitchy little earth pony sneered.

Cheerilee had spent enough time in her life being intimidated, but not nearly enough of it alone with the filly; so she pounced on this chance with all the grace of a tiger.  She smiled wide, much wider than she had first intended, and slowly sauntered over to Diamond Tiara's desk, never once letting her facade crack.  "Oh?  Is that so?"

"Yes, and unless you give me an A I'm going to tell the principal that you're smoking drugs in here."

"Hmmm, well that is quite a threat."  Cheerilee said as condescendingly as she could.  She rested her hooves on the filly's desk, and gradually placed herself between the filly and the light on the ceiling.  "But, I have a counter offer for you.  If you've been keeping up with current events research, like I assigned, you would know the Princess's new policy on bullying, am I correct?"  The filly stuttered; her teacher's imposing presence hung over her like a dark, magenta cloud.  "Well let me refresh your memory, then.  It's zero tolerance, and anypony caught bullying any other pony is sent to a newly built correctional facility just at the bottom of the mountains that Canterlot sits upon.  I've only ever had to send one pony there; I saw him a week later and I wasn't even sure his coat was the same color, do you understand me?"

A bead of sweat ran down Diamond Tiara's temple, but she didn't say a word.

"Well let me make this a little more clear.  I know where you live, I know your father's business, I know all of your little friends, and I've seen what you do to those three fillies...  You know the ones.  Now, you can go to the principal and tell him I've been doing whatever it is you think I've been doing, but I'm a much better planner than you, and I'd have all the evidence cleaned out of this room before lunch was up.  You on the other hoof... I could have you sent away to that place with a single signature on a piece of paper.  And we wouldn't want that, now would we?"

Cheerilee had gotten much closer to the little pink pony, and Diamond Tiara could feel the breaths from her teacher's nostrils tussling her mane like a wolf sniffing dinner.  The earth filly gulped, and Cheerilee knew that she had successfully intimidated a ten year old; quite the accomplishment.  The awkward stares lasted until Twist returned, followed by a train of other ponies all carrying snacks and the occasional juice box or milk carton.  With practice and grace, Cheerilee's smile quickly reappeared on her face, and her posture returned to a neutral but still empowered gait.  "Welcome back, children!  What did you scrounge up?"

Diamond Tiara sat at her desk trembling, all the while Cheerilee counted up her munchies: Two boxes of homemade peppermint twists, several plates worth of cookies, a few brownies, the odd bag of pretzels and chips, eight cartons of milk (equal parts chocolate and plain), and twelve differently flavored juice boxes.  No soda, unfortunately, but the milk was about to go really great with those cookies.  She didn't even hesitate, but tore open packages by the hoof-ful with her teeth, and devoured their contents.  She chased every enormous and dry mouthful of snack food with an entire juice box or milk carton; frightening some of the children with her savagery.

Halfway through the entire pile of food, Cheerilee groaned in delight, "Ohhh my gawd, thank you all so much.  You all get A's"  The entire class cheered while their teacher struggled to swallow a lump of food nearly the size of a billiards ball.  "Except you, Diamond Tiara, you need to stay after class."  The class's collective "Ooohhhhhh" nearly drowned out the filly's shouts of protest.

Cheerilee finished her lesson high as fuck, and had some trouble figuring out math problems (such as 3x5) when she couldn't read her own writing on the board, but nonetheless the children all learned a great deal about their teacher that day.  Before Cheerilee knew it, the bell rang and everypony stood up and ran out, screaming into the wide wide world.  Diamond Tiara, like the obedient peon that she was, stayed behind as ordered, and the teacher needed to think of what to do with her.  The terrified filly had seen a night and day transformation between Cheerilee's perky teacher self, and the stoned psychopath from recess.  Cheerilee, on the other hand, had pulled most of that out of her ass on the spot and did a great performance to make it sound scary.  Diamond Tiara was convinced Cheerilee was about to eat her alive.

Cheerilee didn't eat her alive, but she did perform a small trick that she had seen in the movies once, and wrote out a note to Diamond Tiara's father explaining the situation.  Cheerilee stapled the note to the filly's chest, just like in the movie, only she had forgotten that the foal in the movie was wearing a shirt.  Diamond Tiara bled, but didn't scream: she was afraid that if she did she would never be seen again.  Cheerilee rolled with it and let her go; she ran home so quickly that she nearly barreled through half the ponies in the square.

Filthy Rich pressed no charges against the Cheerilee or the school because his daughter refused to comment on the event, and he was pretty sure she deserved it. Next Chapter: Big Mac's Big Red Bong Estimated time remaining: 9 Minutes