"Warriors, keel on three!"
Here we go.
She stuck out her uniform-clad chest, her mane bouncing up with the motion and getting directly in her eyes. Unable to simply reach up and fix it out of an equally simple interest in not getting viciously berated and verbally obliterated, Duck lifted her chin a bare inch up and stood as straight as possible, the mares both on her left and on her right copying her movements before she could even consider hers finished. Steadying her breathing and trying her hardest not to collapse and spill over from the heat of the sun and its lights in her peripherals, the distinct, crisp sound of her dear mother shouted from the front of the rows.
"One!"
Breathe in.
"Two!"
Breathe out. There we go.
"Three!"
Duck opened her mouth and, blindly scrambling at the deepest, darkest, most well-hidden depths of her desert-dry throat, roared with the rest of the entire student body.
"Keeeeeel!"
Just as raucously and tens times more swiftly than they'd yelled, the whipping of the furious wind and the fluttering of the proudly hoisted Ponyville flag came to them all immediately afterward, drowning out any little thought Duck Bill could have been safely harboring inside her young head to keep herself even remotely sane. Her forelegs and hindlegs suddenly grew icy cold; the brown hairs running up both of them stuck up to face the warm air personally like some kind of long lost friend. Life as she knew it was more than a bit on the preferably dismissive side.
The sun, toting around the usual job it hellishly occupied around the same timeframe, hung overhead as the sole, dreaded school security guard with severity in its lips and spittle shooting from its teeth. Ever the observant seer of every single one of the school's outdoor practices—which pretty much concerned practically everything they actually did throughout the day's prolonged stretch—it astutely studied her first and tormented her afterward once she'd made even just a single wrong move in formation.
Her cap was beginning to itch the side of her head, and if there was anything that lived on—or, hay, barely inhabited—this great green Earth she'd idiotically chosen to inhabit, she'd find it and softly smother it just to scratch her increasingly twitchy scalp. The very thought that she'd legitimately harm somepony—or something—caused her to twitch around on the spot with the unrivaled grace of a Crumphill ballet dancer on ice, an action noted by the mare to Duck's right, who looked at her out of the corner of her eyes and quietly narrowed them before facing forward like they were all supposed to be.
She fidgeted like she bore an ant up her sleeve, which—honestly, considering the routine lengths of their daily standstills—wouldn't surprise her in the slightest of slightests. The sun kept its eighty-degree peace. It must have completely missed her that time.
Duck gritted her teeth.
"Warriorrrrrrs!" screamed her mother, her posture just as refined as theirs.
Duck focused.
"Atteeeeeeeeen... shun!"
A short blur of hooves and dirt clipped and clopped in her ears. Duck slid one of her forelegs around until it was properly positioned. Standing in the grass about three feet in front of the rows, Mrs. Pumpkin Bread—dressed in her earthly-brown, gray-accented long coat and her fittingly schemed garrison cap—stood as still a statue, her eyebrows furrowed beyond all possible comparison. Her ginger mane, tied with a ribbon in the style Duck had grown used to seeing every morning, plopped onto her shoulder as she whipped her swagger stick out of the loop on her chest belt and stuck it in her foreleg's pit.
"Your Driver is one of the most important ponies... in. Your. Tank!"
The wind whistled.
The flag swayed.
"As such," she continued, voice much, much more comfortably softer this time, "they operate as the largest cog in your war machine's massive chambers. The Gunner mans the cannon, and the Loader loads it. Your Radio Operator keeps you informed, and your Machine Gunner, if you have one, is the buffer for any and all mishaps that befall you and the rest of your crew! It is your Driver that gets you moving, and it is your Driver that keeps you alive and safe to return home! Trust them with your lives, because there is almost nothing more important than them and their position!"
Almost, Duck noted. Being the last daughter of the main teacher of the school made her the first set of unfortunate, disinterested ears for any and all speeches, lessons, and talks that would be debuted for the masses, and so she opened her mouth and very smally mouthed along in an attempt to calm the cacophony rising up in volume inside the swirling of her brain matter.
"However!" Pumpkin Bread interrupted the quiet, stamping a hoof on the ground and disturbing the anthill Duck was sure she hadn't taken the slightest notice of. "The Driver may be in command of every lever, gear, shifter, and pedal in your tank, but it is the Tank Commander that holds control over the Driver, and is thusly responsible for each and every bare inch you and your crew make!"
It came to her far too late as she remembered it all. Like the oven you'd left on before heading off to work. The meet-up with your friends after school ended. The chores you'd promised to accomplish. That rising, sickening gut feeling that blasted heat across her face and made every motion she executed seem furiously wrong, mind-numbingly embarrassing, and ridiculously mental.
"Duck Bill!"
Her heart viciously leapt from inside her puffing chest and lodged in her aching throat, choking her out and causing her to blank on the spot. Her eyes felt like they were spinning around in a frosted daze, but they were firmly stuck staring directly ahead even as her own mother turned to face her without moving a muscle on the rest of her body.
"Step forward!"
All eyes were on her. Bearing down on her, joining forces with the rightly Celestial body burning over her long-maned scalp.
She knew what was going to happen and she knew the results and she knew the repercussions and silent glares and neglect and quiet afternoons and dismissive head shakes and abrupt refusal and heavyset frowns and hushed conversations and in-earshot insults and seceding belongings and borderline disowning but she knew she couldn't stop it all because it had all already happened. It had already happening, and yet here it was happening again right in front of her.
With nothing present on the Earth to stop her—not even her shivering self and the body she was both vaguely occupying and forcibly witnessing—Duck cleared her throat, straightened up, and took a step forward, separating from the rest of the rows and aisles of finely uniformed, more able-body young mares. Just outside of her peripherals, where they belonged and where she was more than glad to keep them, the gigantic wave of unblinking eyeballs faced her way, not faltering or even twitching for a second.
"Would you like to demonstrate to the school the definitions of a well-tact Tank Commander?"
The sentence was posed as a question, but was, underneath the horrid, wretched disguise, a statement she'd be able to no less than agree to.
She profoundly thunked the side of her head with a crisp salute and barked, "Yes, ma'am!"
Throwing her hoof back down into the ground, she turned at a perfect ninety-degree angle and marched toward the left side of the field toward the patient machines standing just like she and everypony else were in nice rows. Crumphill vehicles, light, to medium, to heavy, to destroyer, to wheeled, just itching for the barest amount of anything to occur and for their engines to turn over once more.
Proudly glimmering in the sunlight on the nearest right side was the Pumpkin family tank, the medium Valentine Mark III, sporting its olive green, factory-produced finish. Every step she took drew her closer toward it, pounding in her head and making her mind sprint five-mile-wide circles even as she casually continued on. From the left side of the still idly positioned crowd trotted her Driver and her Gunner, who reached the Valentine before she, formed a two-mare line, and gave her a simultaneous, well-trained, absolutely-perfect, refined salute.
She halted in her tracks, lifted her chin, and returned the gesture.
The Driver cantered around to the opposite end of the tank and opened up the left hatch; the Gunner hopped up and yanked the right hatch open, jumping inside shortly afterward.
Letting out a breath that made her tipsy, Duck lifted her legs and approached the Valentine like it were but a close relative. She paused for a brief few seconds and stared at the snow white stenciling plastered on the side skirts that read First In Griffonia!, and almost fell into a deep fixation before shaking her head and clearing her throat. Vaulting upward, narrowly avoiding the crate of repair tools attached atop the skirts, and pulling open the cupola her mother had had fixed on the top of the turret, Duck crawled into her position, propped her forelegs against the Commander's optics, and felt her chest rise and fall at different—noticeably hurried—paces.
She reached for the rotation lever by her breast and lightly pried it upward, her head lifting to stare at the massive blue mountain dwarfing the town.
The sounds of her mother continuing her finely detailed instructions faded away into practical nothingness, given the hard boot in favor of the rhythmic pounding inside, outside, and around her eardrums.
Her face stayed its appearance, calm, and composed, and determined... but she couldn't hide anywhere inside her own head. Because only they knew what was happening behind it all.
Beneath her, her Driver fiddled with the ignition.
A cool breeze washed over. She swallowed a lump easily twice the size of her throat.
DOOOOOOOO CH CH CH CH CH CH CH CH!
BUM- WHIRRRRRRRRRRR!
"Aaaaaaah!"
She snapped up in her bed, forehead as wet as the sloshing in her brain.
The green grass of the school's field became the gray carpet below her bed; the large, daunting mass of sky blue rock was replaced by the window still blocking out the outside world she was, at the moment, refusing to even acknowledge.
She was deathly thirsty, she was breathing at an incredibly unhealthy pace, and she could barely see with her bedraggled mane covering her eyes.
But she was home.
Duck Bill clutched her sheets and drew them closer to her chest, sat there for a little more than a minute, and finally flung them off her body.
Get up. Don't stay in bed, genius.
Turn off alarm clock. You'll freak out if it goes off later.
Trudge into bathroom. You look like a mess.
Brush mane. Why was it so long?
Scrub teeth. Make them shiny.
Face mirror. You can do it.
Cringe. You couldn't do it.
Put on uniform. This jacket's buttons were a pain.
Eat breakfast. Was there time for breakfast? Yes. No excuses.
Grab bag. Didn't even finish breakfast. Do you have your homework done? Slips?
Open door. That knob is slippery.
Find floor. You klutz. Get up.
Again. Stop. Get up.
School. Go.
She descended the steps of her building and plopped down onto ground level, beginning a light trot.
Her morning-induced frown, weighted like she was on the brink of halibut fishing in Saddle Lake, faltered as she remembered the form nestled inside her new—not really new, just in the definition that she'd unearthed it from her moving-in boxes "new"—binder. That was right! Today was the day she'd enroll in something she loved! Well, she couldn't say that she loved it, seeing as how she hadn't actually stepped hoof into its educational border yet, but if it wasn't Tankery, it was a brilliant point of dedication to her! Art! Yes! She may have been able to barely muster a stick figure—and even then turn the paper round and round and stick her tongue out, regretting that she had ever held basic motor functions—but all in due time! She'd be painting photorealistic landscapes and perfect self-portraits eventually! A class focused on Art surely had some kind of reprieve, and there she'd be able to work on other things in a crudely fashioned, terribly calculated study hall! Seeing as how it would take up her sixth-period class, she could finish all that she'd gotten from each of her classes every day and have it ready to turn in as she was ready to depart!
It was a bit of an odd thing, smiling on her way to school—or just smiling in the morning at all—but it was... nice.
Art.
Painting, and drawing, and music, and peace and relaxation.
A possible crossover with Pottery, perhaps? Where she and Flurry could gossip and talk and make dumb jokes like young mares were supposed to?
A hum escaped her lips, and she closed them as she continued, a wonderful rendition of Crumphill Grenadiers buzzing about the rowdy courtyard of Ponyville High as its new composer casually strode about with the carefree contentness that came with a well-thought-out plan.
She didn't even fully realize she'd actually entered school until she'd crossed the threshold past the front doorway, adjusted her bags, and clenched her ears as the intercom blared.
CRRRKT!
"Whipgrass, please come to the front office! Whipgrass to the front office!"
BA-BUMP!
CRRRKT!
Did the office staff place cameras at the door and make sure to announce something just as she walked in everyday? It may have only been the second real occurrence, but the very idea and now steadily self-discussed notion made all too much sense to her. Just a bit more payback for the years of the Pumpkins, wasn't it? It was like the entire school hated her guts just by simple blood relations. No, it wasn't like that. They definitely did.
As she turned a swift left and began her morning trip down the Vertigo Hallway, she spied a pair of Seniors talking about something she'd apparently interrupted. They turned at the heel and stared at her with knitted brows, as if she were imposing on their turf and would be in for a bad time if she didn't scurry off. She didn't scurry by any means, but she tucked her head and faced away from them as she continued onward.
The frown rose up once more after a very novice battle.
Definitely.
"Gooooood morning Duck Bill!"
Duck barely caught the teacher's face before they trotted right past her, stacks of paper hovering next to them and bobbing up and down like a lure with their clearly hurried movements. She craned her neck around for a second to see if she could somehow recognize them—it could've been her math teacher or somepony else who'd barely met her yesterday, which would have helped the greeting make sense—but she turned about, interested in not falling and glumly deciding that today was the day she'd just lay there until the janitor poked her awake.
Well. At the very least, she could count on the various teachers and staff to fill up the neglectful, short-lived gaps that were passing time.
Conversations, hooves, abrupt laughter, and snippets of music registered to her as she kept her pace and minded her gait. Freshmen talking about the cool commercial they'd seen the other night, and oh hey Willow did you hear what Bonnet did the other day it was so funny yes you did Bonnet don't lie! What looked to be a mingling of the cross-country team inappropriately practicing their lunges in the hallway, stretching their light blue shorts and constantly tossing their braided, cropped, or tied-back manes out of their faces as they went. A student and a teacher pointing at a looseleaf paper marked with a single red F at the top, jabbing at the poor ex-tree and covering their blazing red faces with their hooves. A slightly ajar set of doors bringing Duck an unexpected tour of the world, with Prench accordion in one, twangy Equestrian in another, bombastic Griffonian in the next, and upbeat Yakyakistani in the last. Despite their musical origins, a single pony was sat behind the respective desk, typing away at a keyboard and otherwise acting like they weren't listening to a northern Yak pine for her love in a war that never ended up happening.
Her legs sharply took a right, and Duck realized in a snap that she'd just gone through Vertigo Hallway without experiencing the former part.
She pouted out her lower lip and bounced her head around. She'd take it.
As opposed to what she'd accidentally stumbled into the previous day, the area in front of the Student Services kiosk was relatively spacious, with only four or so ponies clutching white forms in their hooves as the line today. As she trotted up and took her place behind the last student in line—a light yellow Unicorn who gave her a sideways glance and a small smirk—her mind suddenly darted to a topic, then to two, and shot her head up and around.
Where were Arco and Flurry?
Surely, they weren't exempt from having to turn their elective forms in as well. Were they late? Was she early? No, it was close to first period. She couldn't have been early. Maybe they'd already done so beforehand? Knowing them—which she very loosely did—they were most likely on top of everything that had to be done in their day's line of work, probably having been the first two in line that morning and securing their position in their classes way ahead of everypony else. Flurry in Pottery, Arco in Music. Flurry had probably gone first, citing the lady rule. Arco had probably abided by it after calling her a name and overdramatizing the whole thing. Would he do that? He seemed the type.
"Next?"
"Oh!" She gritted her teeth and walked forward, dipping her head into her bag and clutching her elective form in her teeth. She handed it to the old lady before her, who meekly snatched it from Duck's grasp, flattened out its many crinkles, and simply placed it out of sight and to Duck's left. Duck cocked her head.
"So..."
The old mare raised an eyebrow.
Duck felt the beginnings of a beet coloring her face. Was anypony around her? Anypony else watching? They'd probably be snickering and pointing hooves at her right about now if they were.
"...do I have the class, or...?"
"The office will review all forms throughout the day. You should have your electives on your schedule by tomorrow."
Duck oh'd.
"Oh."
She fidgeted on the spot, raising a foreleg to about-face and accidentally dropping it not a second later.
"Okay."
The mare rolled her eyes. Duck tucked tail and, shifting her bag's strap across her shoulder, fast-walked-but-not-quite-trotted toward Room A13 before the first morning bell could scare her a litte more than half to death.
Could she be any less of a catastrophic trainwreck?
Lunchtime came quicker than she really had the mental capacity to fully register, and the answer to her daunting morning question was given very astutely to her as she reached into her bag and found not a bit to her little wallet's name. Despite staring doubt straight in its ugly, dumb face, she bit down on the zipper and unzipped the accessory, thoroughly peeked inside its bare nothingness, and could now safely flatten her ears against her head and pout out her lip without the most basic, albeit understandably withdrawn, assumption. She gave a small whimper, glaring at the ground stretching past her hooves, and dropped her wallet back into her bag before trotting off with the whole thing toward the commons. She guessed that she might've been able to find a bright side to it all—seeing as how she was apparently sparing herself from what appeared to be clam chowder if the chalkboard sign next to the cafeteria entrance had been proofread before its debut—but still felt the slight twangs and lurches of pain that came with not actually finishing her breakfast before heading to school.
It seemed that the first day swarm of the school remained just that, the crowd she'd seen then now less than half the size as the majority seemed to realize just how much time they'd all borne to head off campus for their afternoon meal. Nopony in their right mind would actually sit and wait in line for the cafeteria food. Cool ponies ate at McDuckle's, or put a bit into the vending machines and munched on some... chips, or something. Right?
Duck stopped and craned her neck around to find said machines, and, sure enough, spotted whole groups of ponies plugging two bits each into their respective slots and staring into the glass frame. Closer to her, larger groups of ponies giggled amongst themselves as they adjusted their bags, lightly punched each other, and coolly kicked the front doors of the school open to join the rest of the land-based current heading toward the boulevard of fast-food chains a hoofful of blocks down.
Her observations helped shift her thoughts around from her stomach to the noticeably small amount of good areas in her head. Where were Arco and Flurry at, by chance? She didn't have any other classes with them, and she'd been hoping that their friendliness toward her hadn't been a first-day fluke and that they'd opted on leaving her by her lonesome in a school she wasn't familiar with with ponies unfamiliar with her but very knowledgeable of her family and properly continuing the seal of social activity that had been stamped on her head the moment she was old enough to be educated in favor of doing something... else. Flurry might already have been making a museum-quality pot with decorations and emblazons and curvy handles, and Arco was probably hard at work scribbling down the third page for a series of movements he'd showcase to the Royal Canterlot Symphony the following day and oh Gods of course it was a fluke why would anypony like them talk to her oh there they were.
She found the strength to flash them a grin—which they didn't notice—and raise a hoof to wave—which she herself slowly dropped back to the floor—but stopped and straightened her lips.. They looked to be in the middle of a particularly disbelieving conversation, one with a focus on two sheets of paper in both their respective grasps that they each stole quick glances and vehemently shook their heads at. They halted in their tracks near the two staircases, creating an unintended delta in the sea of now mildly-annoyed students as they raised their voices and began smacking their papers with the backs of their hooves like it owed them money. Flurry grabbed hold of her head with both of her legs, shaking like it was twenty-below and not sun-temperature inside. Arco placed a hoof on her shoulder, but was visibly quaking as well.
Duck, her gut tying itself into fifteen different knots she hadn't even held knowledge of, sucked in a breath and trotted toward the two, who caught sight of her as she did so and looked her way, clearly out of oxygen. With her snail's pace now fully realized, they looked back toward each other and returned to their regarding of the sheets of white paper crinkling in their grips.
Duck quickened her pace, and reached to within earshot.
"What am I gonna do?! I can't just... what am I gonna do?!"
"Flurry, we can figure this out. We'll head over as soon as we can. Just get a bit to eat first, clear your head."
Flurry's eyes were wide as she swiveled about and faced Duck. Her wings, previously fretting by her sides, folded.
"They didn't get to yours, did they, Duck?"
Duck raised an eyebrow.
"Get to mine? My what?"
Flurry gritted her teeth and, with what sounded like the borderline of tearing it to shreds, thrust her paper in Duck's line of sight.
Duck cocked her head. It was Flurry's schedule, but what...
She went down the list and finally landed on Period 6.
She paused.
And her eyes grew wide.
She had anticipated the word Pottery to be in the blank space next to the period number.
But, instead, what she found caused her spine to twitch with chills.
Tankery.
Without even linking the two together, Duck began shaking her head and sputtering, "No no no no no no no..."
Flurry snatched Arco's sheet of paper from his hooves and showed it to her as well.
The same story.
Sixth-period Tankery. No Music to be seen.
"They can't do this, can they?" Arco asked, directing his attention and his golden eyes toward Duck.
"Electives are the student's choice!" Flurry claimed, raising her forelegs up in a pair of parallel lines. She dropped them limply and suddenly grabbed hold of Arco's shoulders. "Let's go find the principal! It has to all go through him, doesn't it? He wouldn't have given us that class even if he was forced to, Arco."
What was... what was happening? What... why? No. No no no. They couldn't do this. Not to them.
"We need to go to the front office."
She hadn't realized that she'd been the one who'd just spoken until both Arco and Flurry looked her way, eyes as wide as the sun.
"What about the principal?" Arco finally asked, licking his lips.
Duck didn't have a legitimate answer in her mind, or at least one that she could find at the moment. She shook her head.
"They'll have the answers we need."
Clearly startled for some reason or another, Flurry and Arco both grabbed at the straps of their bags and rose from their positions on the floor. Duck, feeling an out-of-the-blue urge to swing up a hoof and jab it office-ways, murmured something at the idea and started up a light canter to follow behind.
What in the hay was that? The commanding voice and the pointing hoof? Where had that come from?
"How did this happen?"
Flurry turned her head, the black tie under her jacket whipping about with the motion. "They just gave me the form with it on it." Looking to her right, "What about you, Arco?"
"Same," he replied.
They took a right and headed toward the single dark purple door sitting beneath a sign that read Front Office.
Duck scoffed. "No matter, we'll set this straight." She continued on with her pace, seamlessly overtaking Flurry and Arco as they stopped and watched her go, hushed words on their lips that Duck couldn't quite make out as she reached up to the door's handle with a foreleg, coiled her hoof around it, and wrestled it wide open.
It was like she was being possessed, and her body was now on an unstoppable autopilot.
What was happening to her?!
The doors hit the interior walls on either side of it, halting the small group of older-looking ponies seated at the round table nearby. They stared at the new guests hovering over the threshold, looking like they'd been three feet down into the cookie jar with their bounties stuffed in their mouths, and held slips of paper in their hooves that looked to belong to the massive stacks lying in the center of their session. Noodle cups—forks sticking out of the top and filling the air around them with a spiral of steam—sat just next to them, accompanied by a bottle of water or two.
Wait.
Duck knew these ponies.
Seniors. They were the Seniors that had shown the school the Tankery video the other day! On the stage!
As if realizing her realization, the purple-maned, braided-bun donning Unicorn shut her eyes and brandished a smile as wide as the Western sky. She waved.
"Hello there!" She blinked. "Duck Bill, right?"
A moment of silence went by as the Unicorn rose from her seat and approached Duck. Arco, attempting to seize the moment, began his speech with a guttural vowel, but was interrupted by Duck herself as she shook hooves with the Senior.
"Y-yes."
"Pumpkin Seed's sister." She confirmed to herself... or something, like she apparently didn't know of the fact prior to all this. "I was in the class her last year here–"
Duck took up Arco's idea and seized as well, just for a second that the Unicorn apparently didn't catch.
"–part of Loyalty Team."
Duck cleared her throat. This wasn't exactly what she'd come here for...
"The Stuart, right?"
She nodded. "That's right. I'm Sherbet, by the way."
From the table Sherbet had just been squatting at came one of the other Senior's voices.
"You guys need something, or...?"
Sherbet pivoted with a glare, "Shut up, Fudge. Be nice to the Juniors."
Fudge, the Pegasus with the "understanding" part of the announcement yesterday, rolled her eyes and returned to whatever she was doing, which seemed to concern small, quiet conversation with the other ponies seated next to her. They continued to mingle as the room became surprisingly warmer to Duck.
Beaming, Sherbet sucked in a long breath through her nose and shot out less than a quarter of it, working her shoulders around as she asked, "So! What brings you guys to the front office?"
Duck raised a hoof.
"I was gonna ask you the same thing!" Flurry shot.
Sherbet fell to her haunches and placed a hoof at her hip, leaning over with its aid and puffing out her cheeks. "Flurry Heart. Get another tardy and hit that last straw? Is that why you're all here?"
Flurry grumbled. Then, "Course not."
Sherbet straightened up. "We double as office aides–"
"Class speakers and office aides?" Arco quipped with a very noticeable tint of sarcasm Duck was hoping he had intended, "Gods, you guys must be stacked!"
"I guess we're just good at what we do," Sherbet replied, fluffing her mane. Well there was some kind of edge, if Duck had ever witnessed it. Had Arco and Flurry encountered these two beforehand at some point?
One of the ponies with their backs facing Duck and her friends piped up, voice in a dispassionate drone, "There are more than three-hundred-and-fifty elective forms stacked in front of us." She picked up one of them with her left hoof and faced it, showing the glasses propped atop her nose and about half of her face to them before turning back. "The office has more pressing matters, so we're giving them a hoof."
Duck nodded, flexing her chin. "That would be why we're actually here..."
Sherbet snapped to attention, a blank expression on her face. She cocked her head creepily. "Oh?"
Duck cleared her throat and, looking back over to Flurry and Arco to grab their elective forms, stood in silence and looked back at Sherbet while they simply moved forward to join her side.
Flurry stomped further along than where Arco and Duck now stood adjacent to one another. Her horn burnt with light and levitated her schedule out from her bag. She pushed it forward with the speed of a train. "You put my sixth period down as Tankery, dammit! And if I'm fairly certain I wasn't hyped up on methamphetamines and bearing the IQ of an arthritic dementia patient, I didn't put my pencil an inch near that class! I filled in Pottery!"
Arco followed Flurry's suit. Duck waved a hoof at him to stop, to no avail.
"Music! I put Music down! I don't need your incentives, I don't need your excuses, and I don't need this class! Why'd you put us both into it?!"
The room was quiet, save for the ceiling fan that kept on spinning, creaking, and humming over the interior lights lining the ceiling next to it. Even the other Seniors turned in their seats, noodles hanging from their mouths and frowns set on their faces. Arco and Flurry, tumbling down from their anger-high, fumbled in their respective places and dared a step behind them. Sherbet, meanwhile, shifted in the blink of an eye.
A single millisecond of time, and the cheery, over-excited, crowd-pumping Unicorn's smile from yesterday—and just seconds prior, as well—was replaced by a terrifying sneer and barely noticeable eyes beneath a hard, permanent glare.
Duck's heart began an impressive drumline.
"You didn't want Tankery, huh?"
Flurry made a noise.
Arco looked her way and shook his head.
Flurry clamped her mouth shut.
Sherbet looked at the former. "You wanted to play a nice tune, huh?" The latter. "Make a nice pot?"
Duck's ears slapped against her head.
At once, Sherbet rose from her haunches and slammed her front hooves onto the ground, creating a thunderous thump that Duck was sure could be heard from outside the closed doors behind her.
"Tough luck!"
She jumped over to Flurry's side and pointed at her as she continued, "You see these wings by her side? The horn on her head?" She stepped back, making a wide V that enveloped Flurry's height. "Them both being there at the same time?! Case you didn't know, Duck, Flurry here is royalty!" She giggled. "Yuh huh! Princess Celestia? Princess Luna? Princess Cadance? Princess Twilight, even?! Relatives! Aunts and mother! The... most powerful beings living on this planet, right now! They raise the sun, they raise the moon, they create love, and they cut mountains in half!"
Sherbet shoved Arco out of the way and pressed her nose against Duck's. Duck quaked like a leaf.
"Now don't you dare tell me we'd pass up an opportunity like that! We. Are. Winning this year."
Sherbet, breathing like she'd just run a triathlon, took notice of Arco's presence and bellowed with laughter. She backpedaled, brought up a foreleg, and threw it around Arco's shoulder like a life buoy.
"Arco here?! Ha! Annoyed me and my friends since middle school! Wouldn't luck have it that I'd be in charge of his electives! Pfft! A stallion in Tankery?! Unheard of! Tankery's a women's sport! Putting a guy in there is the most embarrassing thing you can do, ahahahaha!"
The Seniors in the back chuckled along with their apparent leader. Arco looked at the floor.
Sherbet let go of Arco and hummed. "We may just be office aides by definition, but thanks to the whole 'friendship' policy this school enforces, everything we say..." She pointed at the compatriots.
"...goes," the finished as one with a simultaneous head nod.
Duck swallowed hard. Her throat was desert dry, but she opened her mouth and quaked.
"Ch-change their classes."
Sherbet looked at Duck.
And then she snorted and clenched her gut, struggling for air.
"What did youuuu put down, then, huh?"
Arco and Flurry slowly moved back beside Duck, their features unchanging.
"Hey, Dew, pull out Miss Duck Bill here's elective form." The search was swift, and Sherbet magicked Duck's paper toward her head and in front of her eyes, a childish chortle winding down with a dab at her eyes. "Ahhh, all right, let's see here..." It was but a few seconds until Sherbet narrowed her eyes to an impossibly slim level, lowered the paper, and gave Duck a pair of scimitars in place of short daggers. "Art? ART? What kind of sick joke...?!"
FLIP!
STOMP STOMP!
Duck jumped back, Sherbet's face mere centimeters from her own.
"You listen here you little teabag," she began, her voice tinted with Arctic ice, "this is our last year here. We have seen this team lose and lose and lose by your family's hooves as long as we've lived, and we'll be damned if we let that streak keep up. Ponyville used to be legendary. Home of the Elements of Harmony, and the saviors of Equestria, and now we're nothing but a laughing stock to the rest of the world, and especially to those griffons!"
Duck's stomach lurched.
"You know, the same griffons who hurt your own sister and caused us to pull out of Tankery for three years because of the loss?"
She lifted her chin. Sherbet was still bearing down on her with all of her might.
"You know your way around a Panzer. You have more experience than all of these noponies. Don't think I don't know what school you came from. We alllll looked at your records when we heard you'd be coming over here." She prodded Duck's chest with a hoof and stabbed hard here and there. "We need you this year. If anything, do it for your sister, even if she gave us nothing but trouble."
The hoof went back to the ground where it belonged.
Duck clenched her jaw, adjusted her bag's strap, and hissed, "Then it's a good thing that I couldn't care less about my sister."
Sherbet didn't like the answer. She poofed a pencil into her vicinity, turned it over, erased the checkmark next to Art, and scratched one in next to Tankery. Duck felt like she'd just been shot in the gut.
Flurry arose, "What'll Principal Cheese think about all of this?"
Sherbet simply smiled. "He may be friendly, but he knows the stakes."
Arco coughed. "We'll go right now."
Sherbet only nodded. "You will. Flurry knows what'll happen. And the same with you, Arco Piano."
The three kept their peace, but looked over at one another to see if any one of them would break it. As if a wave had passed over him, Arco suddenly blanched and turned white, his mouth plopping open and rambling silently to himself. His eyes grew and his head began fanning the room. Duck gasped and turned back to look at Sherbet.
"You can't do this."
Duck's elective form lifted from the floor and shook in front of her face. The new checkmark remained where it was, and as did Sherbet's smirk.
Which slowly became nothing but a blur, mixing and mingling with the rest of the front office. Duck repeated herself.
"You can't do this!"
She about-faced and spilled out of the doorway, finding the floor and struggling to see her hooves. The sounds of the door crashing closed followed as she faintly heard two separate voices babble and devolve into gibberish.
"I don't know a thing about tanks what am I gonna do oh Gods no I can't do–"
"This isn't happening this isn't happening they'll rip us apart out there–"
"They can't do this they can't I needed Music I can't do that to my parents–"
"My mom my aunties they need my help but–"
"What will they think–"
"What will everypony think if an Alicorn wants nothing to do with–"
"They wouldn't do that they know how much I need–"
"They'll kick me out they can't no–"
"Oh Gods please no no no–"
"No no no no no no no no–"
"No no no no Gods no–"
"No!"
The world came back to her like a rush. The colors and the figures and the shapes burst back into her eyes. The voices that had torn apart her head ceased at once, even silencing a few others nearby.
Arco and Flurry stared at her, their manes in shambles and their rears to the floor.
Duck noticed that she was more gagging than she was breathing.
"I can't let you do this," she said, her brain fogging up.
"What do you–"
"They'll rip you apart out there. Not just the griffons, or the caribou. Our own team."
Flurry sucked in an ounce of air. "They'll single us out," she stated matter-of-factly, coming to the conclusion.
"Valentine, forward!"
"Commander, it looks steep on that ridge!"
"Take it slow."
"Pumpkinhead."
Duck clenched and drooped her head.
"I'll join Tankery."
"You can't!"
"Don't let them push you around!"
Duck was upon them both in an instant, rearing up on her hindlegs and placing her fores onto their shoulders.
"There's not a Gods-given chance on this world that I would let you two suffer alone. I wouldn't be able to live with myself."
"The cliff!"
"Brace!"
Flurry sniffled.
Arco hiccuped.
"You two are the first ponies in my life who have ever given me a chance," Duck resumed, bringing them closer, "and I've only known you for less than two days."
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
CRASH!
"We're in this together, guys. And we'll show them what we're made of."