//------------------------------//
// Sharky's arrival 
// Story: The Battle of Wits 
// by Michael_Ing 
//------------------------------//

Twilight decided not to wake up Spike, due to yesterdays outrage. Instead she went down to get some tea and toast, or any kind of food that will warm her up, the weather was freezing last night for some reason. She checked the time.
7:35 am
'Sharky's probably on the train right now.'
Twilight's mind spoke, all night last night she thought of Sharky. She didn't see her yet, but she had a feeling she was going to look all dressed-up for the occasion. Why wouldn't she be? She's meeting Celestia's best student.

Twilight checked the date on the bread.
21/11
Shit, one day. It doesn't matter, nothing will matter if Sharky really is the dream student Celestia was talking about.
The toaster worked its magic, alongside the kettle. A tired Twilight opened the cupboard and pulled out a delicate china teacup Fluttershy got her from Manehatten. A quarter of a smile broke out and it rose up to her left cheek. Her friends would still believe in her. So what? A little competition isn't gonna bring her down. She's notoriously known around Ponytown for studying all day, all night.

What if Sharky was smarter. All that studying, all the times spent telling Spike that it was for the good. Just the be thrown down the sewer cause of some lucky 12 year old who got lucky with her DNA.

A tear found it's way to the outside world via Twilight's dead eyes.
A few footsteps were to be heard upstairs, and judging by the back crack and the soft whine, Spike has woken up.
Twilight grabbed the kitchen town and rubbed her face clean of her thoughts.

"Yo thanks for not waking me, still feel like shit though."
Spike walked past Twilight, looking a bit better than yesterday.
Twilight was still facing the cupboard, and acknowledged the dragon by releasing a "mmm."
"Why did you put on the toast? It was out of date yesterday."

"I don't fuckin' know man..." 
Twilight released that the toast was already done, even though she didn't hear the ding of the toaster probably cause she was drowning in her own conscience.
It felt soft, only a tiny bit of heat remained. Not only would she have to face one of her fears, she'll have to eat stale, cold toast that felt like a wet cloth.

"Heh, what's up your ass?" Spike said confidently, standing his ground after yesterdays conversation.
Twilight ignored him, and sat down on her chair and chewed on the cold bread.

Spike didn't want to bother her, he could but he didn't want to piss her off. He walked into the same room as Twilight and turned on the TV and surfed through the channels.





After watching around 3 and a half episodes of 'Keeping up with the Pie's', somepony knocked at the door.
Spike opened his mouth to say something but Twilight beat him to it.
"You get it."

Unlocking the barrel locked door, a pink pony was the first sight to see, behind her were 4 other ponies, all in different stances and shit.
"Oh,"
Spike ended his sentence on a cliffhanger, forgetting what word to use to greet the ponies.

Rainbow Dash looked confused.
"Tff, you not gonna finish that shit?"
Spike looked over his shoulder to view the pegasus.
"No, I just, like I forgot what I was gonna say, like, you know?"
Rarity giggled, "That's so stupid, how did you forget to do that shit?"
She started laughing to herself, which caused a chain reaction amongst them.
"Yeah that was a bit stupid to be honest with you there Spike", Said the orange earth pony.
Pinkie Pie laughed with the rest of the group, but she wasn't listening when Spike was talking because she noticed that Twilight didn't move a muscle since they entered.

Pinkie bounced towards the depressed pony, and began her speech.
"Hey Twilight!! I see you watching my show!! Ooh I remember that episode! Applejack was all like, 'oooh pinkie what are you doing a great apple acres?' and I was all like-"

Twilight stopped the energetic earth pony from talking with a simple, "I'm not in the mood, pinkie."

Pinkie stopped bouncing, and smiled.
"No problem, Twilight."
The other 4 friends finished up their conversation.

"I dunno Spike, that was pretty fuckin' stupid." Said a hovering Rainbow Dash.
Twilight's posture alerted the ponies, and they approached her.

"Hey Twilight, we was just wondering if you'd like to come down to Fluttershy's for lunch today, since there's nothing going on."
A honest Applejack requested.

"I'm doing something."

The ponies awaited for Twilight to elaborate on her statement, but judging by her staring at the TV, that was all she had to say.

Spike told the mares all about Celestia's letter, and how she's not feeling too good, despite Spikes lack of understanding of why Twilight isn't her usual self.

The 4 understood, and all of them said their goodbyes to a dead Twilight.

Spike closed the door behind the last pony, and turned to Twilight.

"Hey, Twi, sorry if I'm acting like an ass, but, what's up?"

She lowered the TV volume.

"You wouldn't hate me if somepony else was smarter than me, would you?"

Spike felt a few butterfly's in his stomach, which is a fucking problem. How do they get in there?

"Of course not, Twilight. You don't have to be the best the earn my gratitude."

Twilight tapped her hoof twice against the floor.

Opened her mouth.

Closed it.

And turned up the TV volume again.





"Last stop for Ponyville!"

The cream-coloured earth pony called out amongst the ponies on and off the train.
The weather was fucking freezing. Sorry for my language but, Jesus Christ I was there dude and it couldn't bear that shit man.

Frost grew along the top of the platform and the roof of the station.

Twilight stood outside the train. Her confidence was back, after turning the TV channel to some show about the evolution of parasprites, Twilight pointed out the typos in the subtitles and constantly fact-checked the narrator, while Spike made fun of the narrator's tone. Which was usually the norm in the Golden Oak Library. 

The doors of the train slammed open, like full on went around and hit the train. It makes this big rattling noise after it, which kinda ruins the quiet atmosphere of Ponyville. It only started doing that yesterday, when Twilight and Rainbow Dash were watching Daring Do's train pull up, the loudest bang just shattered the eardrums of everypony in a 100m radius. Like imagine waiting to see your loved one get off this train, you haven't seen this person in years and you used to talk so much, and then you see her silhouette in the train, and then WAHBANG!! The fucker makes you jump and the officers are just like, oh Jesus fuck this town has gone to shit.
Sorry for going off-track, just needed to make sure you knew how bad the economy was in Ponyville.

The rattle of the train doors stunned the station, everypony jumped by the sound of it. Some engineers were trying to fix it, but no one knew the source of how it was happening. Twilight peaked over the crowd to see if she could recognize the filly. She saw a small one, but it was probably too small to be considered 12. She saw this buff pony that reminded Twilight of Bulk Biceps, but it was here first time in Ponyville so the sound of the train doors absolutely smashing the trains exterior rattled her and she started hyperventilating. 

Then, she heard a voice nearby, a really squeaky one, ugh, the sound was like a fork scraping a plate. To make it easier for you to understand, just imagine someone you know that has a reallyyy squeaky voice. Alright? Now you can't proceed unless you have someone in mind here. Got it? Ok, because I have no way of checking whether you do or not. Alright, so take that person's voice... And high up the pitch by 100%. Looking back, I'm just gonna use this as a metaphor. But still. Damn that voice annoying dude.

Twilight could make out some of the words. For some reason, that pony was talking as if she was trying to gather a crowd.

"That door bang is incredibly loud, may I say. Is it possible that I can check it out?"
The voice squealed.
Spike signaled Twilight to follow him.
"I dunno, ma'am. Our engineers don't know what the problem is. You can try if you want, but you probably won't be able to see it."
Spike looked up at Twilight.
"That's a bit stupid that they're letting an unqualified filly look at a problem with an extremely powerful vehicle. Goes to show that Ponyville really is going down the shitter."
"Shh" Twilight wanted to see this, it had to be Sharky. The voice, the will to fix things. It reminded Twilight of her when she found out the basics of magic. She wanted to help people with everything.

Twilight couldn't get a proper look at her, probably due to the mass amount of people making their way into town, but she was small anyways. Maybe not the size of an average 12 year old, but still reasonable.

A dark blue hue lit atop of her horn, which was fixed onto the hinges of the metal door. The filly didn't look like she was experiencing any difficulty at all, if anything this shit is normal for her.
The sliding metal clicked into place.

*CLICK!*

"Try it."

The officer commanded the driver to close and open the doors again.
The doors closed slowly, which was normal.
Twilight studied the hinges carefully.
The doors opened.

Just like that, the doors were back to normal. No bang, it just slid open.
Twilight's heart sank.
Deep down she didn't want them to close as perfectly as that, they were like brand new. She didn't even know there was a spell for that, and even if there was, it would probably take a while to get it right.
A voice came into her head.

'Don't lose your fucking cool. Beginner's luck is all that is.'

She wanted to believe that sentence. So badly.





Spike noticed Twilight's mood drop again, and wanted to make her happy again. All 3 of them were in the shelter now, she was in line to give up her ticket.

Twilight tried to distract herself before confronting the young mare.
Her eyes locked on the gift shop.
'Daft tourist trap.'
She observed the mugs and shirts.
"Ponyville! This is how low you've gone!"
And
"Ponyville! Really?"
Were some of the statements typed up onto the overpriced merch.

"You want me to go up to her, Twi?"
Said Spike, hoping Twilight wouldn't be angry at him.
"I'll get her."
Twilight slowly approached this filly that she never spoken to before, yet already developed a strong hatred towards.

The filly looked behind to see Twilight.

"Twilight Sparkle?"
The filly's eyes lit up, Twilight observed her features.

Light blue eye colour. Her mane was short, it mostly went down to the base of her neck. The colour was light-ginger, which went along well with her cream-coloured coat, similar to the officer's. Her tail, in comparison to her mane, extended out to her hooves, it look liked it was cut because it would have gotten tangled if she tried to walk. Her cutie mark was everything Celestia described in the letter, at the left bottom corner was an open book, the pages were flickering around as if there was a gust of wind. There were some symbols that were flying out of the book; a baseball, the Pi symbol and a Filliam Shakespeare skull.

The filly noticed she was smiling, and quickly returned to her natural state. You couldn't tell if she was smiling or frowning. Just like that one painting... aww I forgot which one, shit... oh! The *PONY* Lisa! (Couldn't think of a pony pun)

"Hi, are you Sharky?"
Twilight kept her cool.
"Yep."
Sharky turned back to face the back of another pony.
'Aw shit, that's... shit.."
Twilight just kinda stood there, wondering whether to try small talk or to wait beside her, but Sharky didn't move to let her in beside her, so Twilight just kinda stood beside her, looking like a pony who was trying to cut the line.

'Fuckin'..'
Twilight went past the ticket booth and sat on the wooden benches that were infected by the winter cold.

After about 10 minutes, Sharky walked up to Twilight.

"I can't carry some of these books. Here."
Sharky plopped down around 6 books beside Twilight, all based on different topics, like an in-depth analysis on Mare-beth, 3 books on calculus, and 2 books on algebra.

Twilight thought to herself,
':-| I've never seen these 2 other calculus books before, also, who's Filliam Shakespeare?'

She fixed her magic on the book pile, which reminded her of yesterday with Daring Do. The trio made their way out of the station, with Sharky walking ahead of the others.

"Alright to be honest Twilight, shit, like hearing about this pony on the letter made me think she was an all-rounder and I'm like.... What an ass..."
A troubled Spike admitted his past thoughts about Sharky.
"It's ok, Spike. I already knew."
Twilight placed a hood on the young dragons shoulder.
"It's just a week, let's just pretend she's any other guest."