//------------------------------//
// 90 - Study Buddies 
// Story: New Endings, Old Starts 
// by David Silver 
//------------------------------//

"Here we are?" Sunset looked at their target with some doubt on her face. "Wow... Are we at the right address?"

Comforting pointed towards the mailbox, which looked just as fancy. The number on it was impossible to miss. "Looks like it."

Sunset whistled with appreciation. "I did not realize that little kid was this well to do..." She raised a hand at what was a manor, not a nice house, before them, if one went past the gate that was erected to keep the riff raff out.

This did not stop Comforting. She skipped up to the intercom button and pressed it with a soft buzz.

"Hello?" issued an older male voice. "Can I help you?"

"Hi!" She didn't know where it was from, so she just waved forward in the direction of the button. "I'm here for the study group, with Diamond Tiara?"

"Very good." With a dull thunk, the gate broke apart and began to swing open.

Comforting twirled about. "I can get home when I'm done."

"If you're sure?" Sunset pulled out her phone. "If anything comes up, give me a call, alright?"

"Aw! You are like the best big sister." She hopped in and hugged Sunset's leg, easy to do in that world, with so much of a person's height being devoted to legs.

Sunset gently ruffled the head of her little ward. "Have fun in there."

"I will!" Comforting darted past the gate, waving  back at Sunset as she fled. The gates clicked shut, locking them from one another. She was in rich man's land. Rich... man's land? Comforting giggled as the pun struck her. Would she meet the whole family? Maybe?

She arrived at the door and reached to knock on it, but it was swinging open by the time she got to it.

"Right this way." Their butler waved inside, a proper tone in his voice. If he had questions, he aired none of them, simply directing Comforting along. "May I have your name?" Well, one question.

"Comforting." She looked around the house as she walked through it at an energetic pace to keep up with the butler. "What's your name?"

"Randolph," he surrendered without a fight. "Charmed." He was quiet until they got to a particular door. He knocked twice with the back of his hand, cracked it open, and called in, "A Miss Comforting arriving, madame."

"Yes!" The door swung open sharply, Diamond grabbing it from the other end. "There you are. Come on in!" She waved Comforting forward. "Most of us are here already."

Inside, a classroom, or what could have passed for one. There were a lot of freshmen, waving at the newest arrival.

One of them, a boy, looked quite doubting. "Really? She's not even half our age."

"Pretty sure she's at least that," argued Apple Bloom. "Don't be such a downer, Snips. She knows her stuff."

Scootaloo fired double finger guns. "Except history. I hate that class too."

"She's so small," cried the nasally girl that leaned in over Comforting. "I love it! Is she really that clever?"

Diamond smartly clapped. "Alright, people." All eyes were on her, the way she liked it. "We have to actually do some studying, or we'll get in trouble, and no more of this." She waggled a few fingers at the table set up with snacks and treats. "So let's get to it!"

It was there that Comforting got to learn the wonders of teaching. It wasn't her first time. First time as a human girl? Sure yes, but trying to go by that measure, a lot of things were new. "The big secret is if you do the same thing on both sides, it's still equal." She was going over some basics with some of the students. "Like this." She wrote '10 = 10' on the blackboard. "If you subtract two from either side, what do you get?"

Snips raised a hand. "Six." The others nodded in agreement. The answer was clearly six.

Comforting tensed. Wait... Were they... Was it? How did she not realize they weren't base ten?! She laughed a little deleriously. "Of course! But, the important part, 6 equals 6, which is still true. If you do the same thing to both sides, it's still equal. This is always true, and this is how we find x when it's hiding in there..."

Fortunately for her, math was math. A universal constant, even across universes! Comforting just had to catch herself from the base she was in. She felt actually kind of good that she was handling it without tripping too much. She got through the demonstration, finding x and its partner in crime, y, in various situations.

Diamond clapped in light applause. "Appreciate the refresher. You explain it differently than the teacher, and I mean that as a compliment. One thing though, and you're not a teacher, so I bet I'll get an honest answer."

Comforting tensed faintly. What curveball was approaching. "What's up?"

Diamond waved at the board full of math. "When will we use any of this in the real world?"

"You already do."

Diamond blinked at that retort. "We do?"

Comforting pointed at Diamond, Silver, and Sweetie Belle. "Let's say there are three of you, and each of you brought three cupcakes, and there were five there already." She turned around and wrote it out, '3x + 5'. "But you want to split it up into two cupcakes each, for a sale." She put a line under it and a big 2 underneath. Then an equal sign and a y. "How many groups of two can you make? In this case, you know x, easy, there are three of you. So you just have to solve for y, easy peasy."

Diamond raised a brow at the demonstration. "Huh... But we didn't have to bounce anything around on both sides."

"It's nice when that works out, but it doesn't always. Also... What if you knew, for sure, you wanted at least 10 packs." She tapped the y. "How many students bringing three each would you need?" She tapped the x. "Now we know the y but not the x, time to get solving."

The crowd murmured and chatted about the more practical example of algebra. Comforting was pleased, she was reaching them! "We use algebra all the time, we just don't think about it. Learning it in school is about bringing it up so you can get better at it."

The nasally girl burst into giggles. "Wow, just wow... You are something else! How do you know all this? You just joined high school, and you're so eency tiny." She snorted softly, not seeming to mean anything by it. "How?"

"Twist." Sweetie nudged her. "Anyone that studies can learn stuff. That's what we're here for."

Noises of general agreement followed, and the learning continued. Which included for Comforting, who learned the America's origin was... different. "Huh..."

Diamond cocked a brow at Comforting. "You never heard of this?" But she hadn't. "Huh," she echoed. "Well, we did good. I say we take a break." She hopped to her feet. "It's time for a treat." She clapped twice.

The door swung open, pushed by a wagon being pushed along by Randolph. He wheeled it in to the center of the room and pulled off the lid. "Madame."

"Thank you." Diamond reached up and snatched a chicken leg off the platter, fried to perfection. "Randy's the best, let's enjoy a pit stop."

The room erupted into cheers as they rushed to get their share. Silver sat down next to Comforting. "Alright, you. You have, like, secrets."

"Who, me?"

Silver prodded her in the closer arm. "Yes, you." Silver rolled her eyes. "Kinda helpful, but also kinda suspicious. We're not dumb." She threw a hand out wide over the room. "Wierd stuff has happened around us before..." She hissclicked her tongue to her teeth. "You, like... Hey, you're with Sunset. You're like her!"

Comforting tensed. "Like her... how?"

"A demon?" suggested Silver.

Diamond suddenly crouched in front of Comforting. "Gonna try to take us over? Uncool."
'
Comforting raised her hands wardingly. "Sunset's not like that! Neither am I!"

Apple Bloom chomped her drumbstick, swallowing the meaty chunk a moment later. "Ya say that, but y'are a bit... out there. What's yer deal? Jus' tell us! We won't be mad or nothin'."

"We wanna know," pleased Twist.

"Tell us," joined Snips.

"Yeah, tell us." Snails nodded sagely. "What is she tellin' us?"

Scootaloo idly pushed the slow boy out of the way. "We're grown up! We can handle it." She leaned in. "C'mon! Are you from... wherever the freaky stuff comes from?"

Pipsqueak slipped away his phone. "I promise, it'll be off the air!"

Comforting placed a hand over her face. How could she get out of things? "I'm not some sign of strange things."

Silver nudged her borrowed mentor. "No, like, you are the strange thing." It didn't help that basically every other head in the room was nodding along with her. "And we, like, need a strange thing right now that's on our side."

Comforting perked up at that. "What?"

Diamond huffed. "Way to explain it, Silver. There's this freaky thing... We can't talk to our parents about it, they'd never believe us, and we're not going to the seniors about it, they don't want to talk to us." She rolled her eyes. "But you... You're a freshman, like us."

Snips suddenly looked interested. "You're talking about that?! Why didn't you warn me? Ooo, that's a good one." He rubbed his hands together meaningfully. "You won't be able to solve this x so easily!"

Comforting giggled at that math pun. "I'll... try. What's wrong?"

Silver brightened. "Great! I had a feeling we could count on you. Okay, so, there's this house." She pointed off. "Right at, like, the edge of town, right? Spooky place already, abandoned, creaky, the works."

Scootaloo shook her head quickly. "That's not the problem. If it was just a creepy old house, that'd be kinda cool."

Sweetie huffed, sinking. "We think it's for real haunted... We tried to have a little... thing there."

Apple Bloom threw up a hand. "No poin' dancin' 'round it. We had a sleepover there, tryin' to prove how tough we were."

Scootaloo buried her face in her hands. "It didn't quite work out..."

Diamond raised a hand. "Ugh... I heard about it and wanted to prove they were being silly dunderheads..."

Silver shrank. "And we both ended up running. That place is no joke!" Noises of approval came from the others, all in agreement that this particular house was, indeed, super haunted.

Comforting hopped to her feet. "I get the basic idea... but you're leaving out a lot of details. What scared you out?" She pointed to Silver Spoon first. "You, what scared you?"

Silver shuddered with remembered dread. "I saw this face... It had no hair, just a haunted, like, look in its eyes. Couldn't tell if was a guy or a girl, but it came flying at me, just the head, screaming!" She shrank back against her seat. "So I ran... You'd run too if you saw it..."

Twist waved both hands. "I was juth walking path one evening." She pantomimed a casual stroll. "And thuddenly eyeth opened! It was like a dothen angry glowing eyeth in the windowth, all tharing at me! I ran away from there ath fath ath I could!"

Comforting shook her head slowly. "Wow... That sounds haunted..." Super haunted? Possibly... "I'm not sure how much I can help..." She didn't have her chaos powers, right? "But I can try. Nobody's been hurt, right?" All the students there shook their head.

Except Snails, he had a hand up. "Who got hurt?" All heads turned towards Snails at Comforting's question.

Snails squirmed in place. "Well... I was... I heard..."

Snips punched him in the side. "Out with it!"

"Okay okay!" Snails pushed his friend back. "I heard that's why Featherweight's been out." Gasps of alarm rippled across the room. "Um, he wanted some pictures, for the school paper."