Adagio walked into history class filled with a fiery rage.
Aria could sense this from a mile away, and gulped as Adagio sat in the plastic chair next to her. She considered asking what was wrong, but figured she would find out anyway within a couple of seconds, and decided instead to cherish her last few seconds of calm before the storm.
Adagio opened her mouth. Aria braced for impact.
“Aria,” the elder sister growled, baring her teeth. “How were your classes?”
The younger sister had not been expecting this approach, and proceeded with caution. “Um, fine, I guess,” she responded with a shrug. “Turns out Baking class is more cleaning than actual baking. But then I had Music Theory with Sonata, which was so easy, I almost fell asle--”
“How come you and Sonata get to go to Music Theory while I’m stuck in Trigonometry?!” Adagio yelled, interrupting her fellow siren. “I demand to be put into Music Theory this instant! Where’s Principal Celestia?!”
A couple of students who were taking their seats near the Dazzlings immediately got up and moved to a different location. Aria furrowed her brow. “What is Trigonometry?”
Adagio was seething with rage. “The study of failure, apparently! Everybody else was taking a test, so I offered to join them, and wound up getting a ONE in front of the entire class!” Aria snickered, prompting a burning glare from Adagio. “And it gets worse! Miss Cheerilee said I was being ‘impulsive’ and then recommended that I take a less advanced math course, like Algebra or Geometry! The nerve of that lady!”
“It’s your fault for volunteering to take a test on your first day of school,” Aria snarked, twirling a pencil between her index and middle fingers. “What did you expect?”
Adagio ripped the pencil out of her hand and tossed it right out of an open window, much to her sister’s annoyance. “Our mission is to become the best students at CHS, but if I can’t pass this stupid course about triangles, that isn’t going to happen!”
Aria rolled her eyes. “Okay, first, I needed that pencil. And second, just do what your teacher said. Drop it for a lower math course.”
“Absolutely not! If I drop it for a worse math class, everyone will know, I’ll become a disgrace, and the student body will NEVER adore us! This is a matter of dignity, Aria. Not that you would understand, since you don’t have any to lose.”
The younger sister ignored Adagio’s diss and leaned back in her seat, bringing two out of the four chair legs off the ground. “So you’d rather keep failing at a class than switch to one you actually might succeed in?”
“I’d rather be taken out of math entirely. But if I have to stay, then I am not leaving Trigonometry.” The lead siren cracked her knuckles and sighed. “I just need a plan to get through the semester.”
For the rest of the school day, Adagio thought only about how to pass Trigonometry, passively taking notes while Mr. Turnip Truck taught about the founding of Canterlot. Unfortunately, when the last school bell rang, she still had nothing.
Crap.
Adagio and Aria waited for Sonata by the girl’s bathroom. She came skipping toward them, a colossal smile on her face and a hopeful glimmer in her eyes.
“Ugh,” Aria groaned, facepalming. “Sonata, what did we tell you about accepting mysterious substances from strangers?”
Sonata giggled. “I’m on a natural high, silly! In Creative Writing class, you get to write poems, which are just like songs without the backing track! It was a-MAZE-ing!”
“Fantastic,” Adagio mumbled under her breath. “Everyone had a good day except me.”
The Dazzlings wandered the hallways, watching as their peers put on their backpacks and slowly exited the building. Every time the sirens approached a student, they would do either run, scream and then run, or just awkwardly smile and wave at them. Adagio took it in stride, flipping her hair and loudly clicking her heels against the floor to make it sure their presence was known.
After around ten minutes, most people had gone home, leaving the Dazzlings alone in the main foyer.
“Huh,” Sonata said, looking around at the emptiness that surrounded her. “School was fun, but what happens now?”
“If we’re going to stay here overnight, we might as well do something to pass the time,” Adagio suggested, leaning against a locker. “Principal Celestia mentioned that participating in an extracurricular activity would help us become the best students at CHS, so we just have to find one that’s right for us.”
“Great, you can join the Mathletes,” Aria quipped, playfully nudging Adagio in the ribs. The elder sister retaliated with an obscene hand gesture. “Okay, fine. It’s too late to join the Fall Drama, and we can’t sing well enough to join a musical act. So what do we do?”
The Dazzlings scanned the halls for posters, hoping to find one listing an activity that would peak their interest. Football? No. Soccer? Definitely not. Yearbook club? Don’t care enough. Horseback riding? They had already experienced enough trauma from ponies in their lives. Animal Care Club? Not if those animals were rodents. The only club that seemed interesting was Dance Club, but it only met on Thursdays.
“This is hopeless,” Aria moaned, blowing her hair out of her face. “There’s nothing good at this school!”
Sonata solemnly nodded her head, then pulled the last poster off the way. Her face immediately lit back up, and she shoved the paper straight into her sisters’ faces. “Ooo! Study Buddies! Such a cute name!”
Aria rubbed her temples. “Of course you would pick that, Sonata. That sounds like the lamest club on campus.”
“You’re the lamest club on campus!”
“That doesn't even make sense.”
“Girls, please!” Adagio interjected, planting herself in between her quarreling sisters. “If we can’t agree on anything else, then that’s our only option.” She grabbed the poster, which said the club took place everyday from 3pm to 6pm. “To the library, I suppose.”
Sonata clapped her hands and rushed off, while Aria and Adagio stayed back, the former carrying a look of dismay.
“Who knows?” Adagio said, shrugging her shoulders. “Maybe we’ll enjoy it.”
Adagio Dazzle was not enjoying Study Buddies.
As predicted, it was a rather dull scene, hosted in what felt like the quietest library on the planet. Every member of the “club” was either doing homework, reading a book for homework, or helping each other with homework! There was no room for conversation about anything other than English, Math, History, and Science. To Adagio, it felt like she was being punished for such a low grade.
Strangely enough, this was the first time all day where no student had shown the slightest tinge of fear around the Dazzlings, although they were likely too invested in their studies to even notice the sirens were there. Stranger, however, was the fact that Aria and Sonata seemed to be enjoying themselves. Aria had somehow found a comic on one of the hundreds of bookshelves and was quietly reading it, while Sonata used the opportunity to write more of the poetry she had been gushing about earlier.
Which left Adagio sitting by herself on the stairs, staring at the ceiling. It was an admittedly nice ceiling, with glass panels arranged in a beautiful diamond pattern. However, the more Adagio looked at it, the more upset she got. Diamonds were shapes, which reminded her of triangles, which in turn made her think about Trigonometry, thus recalling the image of the red “1” on her paper.
It wasn’t long before she wanted to throw a book at the ceiling and shatter it.
She was debating the maximum weight she could hurl that high when the new Twilight Sparkle with glasses walked over and sat down on the step next to her. “As the founder, president, and organizer of Study Buddies, I like to check in with everyone who shows up at our meetings. And, well, I couldn’t help but notice you sitting here, all by yourself. Is everything okay?”
“Never better,” Adagio replied, deciding that a dictionary could be a suitable projectile.
Twilight pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, a little uncomfortably. “Are you sure? Because it’s fine if you aren’t. Failing a test isn’t easy. At least, that’s what Rainbow Dash tells me.”
Adagio laughed directly in her peer’s face. “Clearly, you don’t know me as well as you think.”
“We just met today. I don’t know you at all.”
The siren groaned, having forgotten that there were now two Twilights she had to keep track of. Desperately wanting to escape the conversation, she began fake coughing. “Oh dear,” she wheezed, beating her chest. “I think I’m coming down with something. I better get out of here.” She got up and started making her way down the stairs, but Twilight followed her.
“Here, have a lozenge!” she said, tossing one to Adagio. “Come on. I’ve been running this club for months. I’ve seen every excuse in the book.” The Dazzling rolled her eyes and sat down at an empty table. “Listen, I know Study Buddies isn’t the most interesting place on campus, but I do believe it can be a real asset to your education. Having time specifically dedicated to doing homework or getting yourself a tutor can be a tremendous help come test time.”
“A tutor? What is that?”
Twilight’s entire body leapt up like a spring, and her smile seemed to brighten the entire room. Adagio knew she had made a terrible mistake. “Oh! A tutor is like having your own private teacher that helps with your specific needs!”
Adagio Dazzle wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I don’t exactly have the best experience with teachers.”
“Let me change that. Not to brag or anything, but I’ve never gotten below an A- on a Trig test. I could be your tutor!” She put her hand on Adagio’s shoulder, but it was quickly swatted away.
“The top student helping the bottom student?” the siren hissed. “No way. I’m not some sob story you can fix.”
Twilight shook her head and sat with Adagio. “There’s nothing to fix. You’re a perfectly capable and talented individual. I just want to help you down the path to success.”
Adagio looked around, searching for an out, but Sonata and Aria were still busy reading and writing. As much as she didn't want to actually learn the subject she hated the most, she felt like she didn't have a choice.
“Let’s do some math,” she eventually groaned.
Adagio was overwhelmed.
Twilight Sparkle had littered the table with charts, graphs, textbooks, and worksheets, all filled with triangles, circles, and symbols she had never seen before, like “π”.
“Don’t be intimidated,” Twilight reassured, sensing Adagio’s discomfort. “Most of these are references for me, not you.” She grabbed a blank sheet of paper, and drew a triangle on it. “Let’s start with a basic question.”
“Okay, I have one,” Adagio said, pointing a sharp finger at the shape. “Why should I care about this triangle? Is this triangle going to help me in my life? Advance my career? Bring me joy? Because it’s already failed at that last one.”
Twilight giggled. “You like music, right? Well, sound travels in waves, which are sort of similar to the sine and cosine functions used in trigonometry. It’s very useful when producing a song on a computer.”
“That’s wonderful, but I heard nothing about this triangle.”
After a heavy sigh, Twilight pointed to the longest side of the shape. “Do you know what this is called?”
Adagio looked around at the millions of worksheets spilled around the table, hoping to find the answer in the mess. Her eyes landed on a cheat sheet directly across from her. “The high-pot-to-nose,” she answered, squinting.
“Hypotenuse, but that’s right!” Twilight clapped her hands together, then began scribbling down numbers on each side of the triangle.
Hmm… Maybe cheaters do prosper, Adagio thought to herself. Let’s keep this up. With the answer paper directly in her line of sight, the Dazzling began getting every question almost right. She called exponents “little numbers,” mispronounced just about every term there was, and thought decimals and periods were the same thing, but other than that, Adagio felt as if she was thriving without learning a single thing.
Until Twilight caught her.
Adagio had been asked if she knew what the Pythagorean theorem was, but since the paper was so far away and the equation was so long, her eyes were off of her own paper for just a second too long. Twilight gasped when she caught the siren’s wandering gaze.
“Wait. Have you been cheating this whole time?!”
Adagio rolled his eyes. “You were the one who put the answers right in front of me, so I’d say this is more your fault than mine.”
Twilight facepalmed, then rubbed her forehead in frustration. Turning over the cheat sheet, she looked Adagio Dazzle straight into the eyes. “Tell me one thing you learned this entire study session.”
“Cheaters always prosper,” Adagio immediately replied, nonchalantly checking her nails.
“One thing about trigonometry.”
The lump in Adagio’s throat began to grow bigger as Twilight’s eyes bore into her own. She searched her brain for an answer, but kept drawing blanks. What were the little numbers called? What was the longest side of a triangle? How many degrees was a right angle? Why was Twilight Sparkle talking so much about pie?
“I learned,” Adagio stammed, hesitantly choosing each word, “that pie is very important.”
Twilight nodded her head in agreement, but still wasn’t convinced. “Tell me,” she said, giving Adagio a side eye, “what is pi?”
A bead of sweat dropped down Adagio’s forehead. She knew what the food pie was, but she somehow got the sense that it wasn’t what Twilight was looking for. Her brain began racing, scrambling to procure even the slightest drop of math knowledge. Still, nothing. She would have to improvise. “Pie is… a number?”
Twilight gasped. Adagio was saying everything right, but she wasn’t sure if it was on purpose. She needed one more question to definitively decide if the siren had actually learned anything. “How long is pi?”
“One digit, like every other number.” Adagio flipped her hair confidently, as if she was suddenly a master of math. “Next time you challenge me, at least try to make it difficult.”
Twilight shook her head and sighed. “Pi is an infinite decimal, Adagio.” The siren’s face went pale. “Look, I can’t help you if you don’t really want to learn. Math is hard. You have to be willing to put in the work and effort if you want to do well.”
Adagio pounded her fist on the table. “I am putting in the effort! That’s how I got a one instead of a zero!”
The tutor began packing up her books and papers into her backpack. “I want to help you, but I can’t if you’re just going to resort to cheating.” She handed Adagio a children’s book titled All About Triangles. “This was my favorite story to read as a kid. Maybe it’ll inspire you and foster a love for learning, like it did for me!”
Adagio began laughing, staring at the cover. “Why do you have a children’s book in your backpack?”
Twilight blushed, and put on her now heavy backpack. “Just give it a try. And to kick off your journey of knowledge, let me leave you with a piece of knowledge. Pi is 3.1415.”
“I thought you said it was infinite.”
“It is, but-- You know what? Just enjoy the book. Knowledge is power, if you know how to harness it.”
She walked away, leaving Adagio glaring at the cover of All About Triangles, which showed a yellow triangle and a pink triangle with faces smiling at each other. It made her feel sick to her stomach.
It was 5:55pm, meaning Study Buddies was almost over and the Dazzlings would finally have the school all to themselves. While Adagio considered using that time to study for Trigonometry or at least read the triangle book, Twilight’s words had inspired her. Math was hard, and it took way too much effort for its reward, or lack thereof. Adagio didn't want to fail again, but she also didn't want to learn about a subject she hated or drop the class. She was an expert at everything else she had ever tried, so she was not about to let some silly polygons destroy her chances at becoming the best student.
Math was not going to keep her from being adored.
Of course, to enact her plan, she was going to need help. She patted Aria Blaze and Sonata Dusk on their backs, and whispered five simple words to them as the other students vacated the library. Five words that shocked the pair of sisters.
“Girls, let’s go destroy Trigonometry.”