Twilight looked up, a bit surprised when her door creaked open. Will and Garrett walked inside again, hauled two suitcases – one pink, one yellow – in, and waved when they saw her.
“So, here you have it! Your new room, and this is your roommate, Twilight,” Will pointed towards her, though Twilight didn’t immediately see anybody standing beside him.
She stood up and walked to the door, finally noticing a girl peeking out from the door frame. Said girl widened her eyes and shrank back a bit under Twilight’s gaze.
A loud thud came from the hallway. The new girl flinched, and Will and Garrett looked over curiously. Rainbow’s voice echoed through the hallway, “HOW DO I GET THIS GODDAMN KEY IN THE SLOT?!” There were some more noises that Twilight assumed were Rainbow hitting her door in frustration, then a brass key flew past the doorway.
Will and Garrett quickly left the room. “Rainbow, cool it would ya?! Here, let me get your key…” Garrett trudged past Twilight’s door, heading towards the other end of the hallway.
Will nudged the new girl inside of her room before closing the door, and the poor thing looked downright terrified. Twilight could see that she was holding some sort of glass container close to herself, but couldn’t tell exactly what it was.
The two girls looked at each other awkwardly for a moment amidst the chaos going on outside. The new girl was a bit shorter than Twilight, but not as short as Rainbow. She had big, blue-green eyes, and wispy blonde hair that was parted so that it covered half of her face. She was wearing a long, pale-yellow v-neck with pink capris and flip-flops.
Twilight decided she had better break the silence. “I’m Twilight Sparkle.” She smiled warmly, and waited for the other girl to introduce herself. When she instead looked shyly at the ground, Twilight decided to prompt her. “What’s your name?”
After a moment of hesitation, the girl responded. “Um… I’m Flutt…s…” Her voice was incredibly quiet, and Twilight couldn’t hear the end.
“I’m sorry… what was that?”
The girl kept her gaze focused away from Twilight. “Um… m-my name’s Flut…r…y”
“Didn’t quite catch that,” Twilight prompted again, starting to feel sorry for the girl.
Instead of a response, she just squeaked something incoherent and looked at the ground.
Twilight stared at her for a few moments. “Oookayyy,” she said, glancing back at the papers she had for her room information. “Well, according to my room documents, your name is… Flutter? Is that right?”
The girl turned back to look at her. “U-um… yes… I-I mean… no…” Twilight gave her an odd look, and she cleared her throat. “I mean… it’s Flutter… Fluttershy.” She finally managed to convey, looking at Twilight with huge eyes.
“Oh,” Twilight said, glancing at her documents again. “That’s your last name, right? Flutter Shy?”
“Oh… no.” She said, looking away again. “One word… Fluttershy.” She looked up worriedly. “If that’s okay with you… I-I mean… I know it’s a weird name, you could call me something else–”
“Of course not…” Twilight said quickly, a bit overwhelmed at her level of shyness.
Fluttershy simply smiled, and placed what she was clutching in her arms on her desk. Twilight finally recognized the object as a fish bowl, but the fish in it looked half dead.
As Fluttershy started cooing over the creature and unpacking her things, Twilight stood up. “I’ll let you get set up… I need to go buy textbooks,” she grabbed her wallet and key before she left. Twilight took Fluttershy’s nod as an agreement, and departed.
Twilight sighed as she closed the door behind her. At least she didn’t get stuck with a partier.
As if on cue, Rainbow Dash stumbled out of her room and spotted Twilight. She waved drunkenly in greeting. “Hey… where are you goin’ off to?” she asked accusingly.
“Going to buy textbooks…” she hoped that Rainbow would be easier to throw off this time.
Rainbow looked confused. “Oh. I’ll come with you! You’ll probably get lost.” She unsteadily started to head towards the stairwell.
Twilight looked at the other girl skeptically. “You’ll get written up for underage drinking. Why don’t you just stay here?” Twilight tried her best to sound kind.
The tiny girl thought for a moment. “Yeah, that’s true.”
Twilight sighed in relief and turned to walk away.
“I’ll just introduce myself to your roommate, then!” Rainbow continued, turning towards room 308.
Twilight halted in her tracks. “Oh, no, she’s trying to get settled in. I think it’s best to leave her be,” she explained quickly, understanding full-well that Fluttershy would be more than overwhelmed by drunken Rainbow Dash.
Rainbow’s shoulders slumped. “Aw, man. There’s nothing cool to do around here.” She flopped onto the ground and stared in annoyance at the ceiling. “At least the ceiling here spins. That’s kind of… of cool.”
Twilight considered helping her for a moment, but thought better of it and instead made her escape.
Minutes later, Twilight was outside and heading towards the campus bookstore, map in hand. Kismet House was located far away from everything else. Granted, the campus was small enough to be crossed in less than ten minutes, so “far” was relative.
Twilight couldn’t help but notice the other residences, which were all better looking than her own. She wasn’t sure what they were called, but she was especially impressed by one made of beautiful white bricks. It looked fairly new. As she watched, a girl with poofy pink-streaked hair came out of the building backwards with a pout on her face. She had on an entirely pink ensemble consisting of a halter top, mini-skirt, and small heels.
A voice came out of the house, presumably directed at the girl. “You aren’t allowed in here! Upper years only, and besides, shouldn’t you be socializing with your own house on the first day?” A male voice shouted angrily at her.
“But, but, but…” the girl said, wide eyed, before speaking insanely fast. “I need to know everybody! If I don’t know everybody, then not everybody will know me, and then they won’t be invited to any of my parties, and they’ll feel left out, and–”
“I’m sure they’ll live.” The voice said unsympathetically, then shut the door.
The girl looked devastated for a moment, then Twilight watched as she sneakily crawled up to a different residence and zipped in when another student opened the door.
Something about the girl made Twilight smile. As she continued walking, she could overhear a similar lecture coming from the residence the girl with the poofy hair had entered. Twilight couldn’t help but chuckle as she finally entered the bookstore.
Twilight approached the clerk working at the store. “Excuse me?” Twilight asked, and the clerk turned around. “Could you help me find some textbooks? I’m taking astrophysics. And psychology as an elective.”
The clerk nodded and directed her towards the appropriate sections. Twilight thanked her, and was able to gather most of her books from the same location. Psychology was listed under a different major, so Twilight had to cross the store to retrieve her last book.
There was another girl also looking in the psychology section with one finger placed thoughtfully on her lip. She was a bit oddly dressed in Twilight’s opinion, wearing an orange plaid crop-top with a white tank-top underneath, blue jeans, brown shoes, and to top it all off, a cowboy hat overtop her braided dirty-blonde hair.
Twilight started looking for her psychology book, but it was nowhere to be found. She turned to the other girl. “Excuse me, are you looking for the intro to psychology textbook as well?”
The girl with the cowboy hat nodded. “Sure am! Don’t seem tah be here, though. Might be outta stock; ah heard it’s a popular course.”
Twilight was slightly taken aback by her strong southern accent, but smiled nonetheless and nodded. “Let’s check with the clerk… it might have been put into overstock or something,” she suggested.
The other girl nodded, and they walked together. “My name’s Twilight, by the way. Twilight Sparkle.”
The girl smiled as her green eyes met Twilight’s hazel ones. “Nice tah meet ya, Twilight! You can call me Applejack.”
After the two girls explained the situation to the clerk, she rushed out to grab some more books for them. Twilight turned to Applejack, deciding to fill in time. “So, Applejack, are you majoring in psychology?”
Applejack shook her head. “Nah, Ah’m takin’ agricultural studies. Ah think mah parents were farmers, but Ah don’t remember ‘em… Ah was adopted, see, and Ah lived in the city mah whole life. Psyc’s just ahn elective.”
Twilight nodded. “That’s really interesting… I’ve never met my real parents either.” The two girls smiled at this similarity. “I’m taking astrophysics.”
Applejack gave a low whistle. “Well jeez, that sure does sound mighty fancy, Twilight. Are ya livin’ on campus?”
Twilight nodded. “In Kismet House.”
Applejack grinned. “Me too! Third floor.”
“Wow!” Twilight exclaimed, “That’s the floor I’m on!”
The girls continued chatting for a few minutes until the clerk came back with their books. “I’m sorry for the wait, they were under a huge stack…” The woman sighed, a little out of breath.
“That’s okay,” Applejack replied. She gave Twilight a wink, who smiled in return.
They both purchased their books and left together. Applejack halted as they left the store. “Ah need tah take care of a couple things down in the student services,” she explained, pointing in the other direction. Twilight nodded. Applejack smiled. “Ah sure do like makin’ new friends… it was a pleasure meetin’ you, Twilight!”
“You too, Applejack!” Twilight returned back to Kismet House, encouraged that she was able to meet somebody who seemed both nice and sane.
…
Later that night, Twilight and Fluttershy were in their room, hiding from the blaring music and loud, obnoxious, drunken voices outside. Twilight was reading a book, while Fluttershy was buried under her covers, uncertainly watching the walls shake with beat of the blaring music.
Twilight was at least glad that she wasn’t the only one who wanted no part in the illegal drinking games going on in the hallway. She did her best to ignore the noise. Rainbow was still going strong, and every so often knocked on Twilight’s door and called for her to come out. Twilight ignored the attempts, and was pleased that Fluttershy did the same.
Twilight could swear that one of the voices in the hallway belonged to the girl with the poofy pink-streaked hair she had seen earlier, but couldn’t be sure; there were so many people outside. She rolled onto her side, deciding to give up on the book. Fortunately, Xanterlot had specified hours where residents had to be quiet, so she wouldn’t have to wait too much longer until they took effect.
A tiny voice came floating from across the room. “U-um… Twilight?”
“Yes, Fluttershy?” Twilight replied, a bit surprised since it was the first thing she had said to her this evening.
The shy girl hesitated before continuing. “I-I just wanted to let you know… I have, um, really bad nightmares sometimes… just in case you hear me crying in my sleep, that’s why. I didn’t want to make you worry if it happened tonight, so…”
“Oh.” Twilight felt sympathetic. She herself had bad nightmares sometimes, though she wasn’t sure if she should bring that up. “Okay, thanks for letting me know. Goodnight, Fluttershy.”
“Goodnight…”
As the voices outside started to die down, both girls fell into an uneasy sleep.