Twilight, while she was slumbering, felt something strongly shaking her body, and her mother's voice profaning her ears with its shrillness, shrillness amplified by her ears' early morning sensibility.
"Twily, wake up, or else you will be late for Kindergarten!"
Twilight, groaning from both the sudden awakening and the annoying noise, rolled out of her comically undersized bed, then slowly rose on her four hooves, and tried to walk to the bathroom to free herself from the bodily functions, and get off the diaper, but, while doing so, Twilight stepped on the used pull-up of Pinkie, and slipped, causing her to fall flat on her stomach. Velvet, ignoning the struggling of her daughter, who was trying to get ride of the pull-up, lit her horn up. With a swift use of Velvet's magic, the pull-up was slid off Twilight's waist and threw it in the hallway. Done that, while her daughter struggled to regain balance, the older mare took a diaper from a box and, as if nothing was happening taped it on her daughter, who was now flailing her hooves around the floor as if she was on the ice.
Then Twilight's mother, with a giggle, hovered Twilight slightly above the floor. Twilight immediately stopped her flailing and asked with annoyance "Put me down, please."
Velvet did just that, then ran to pick up the smock.
"Time to get the smock on!" said Velvet with glee. Twilight did not show the same level of enthusiasm, when she got her front hooves forcefully pocketed in the sleeves of the smock, the wrinkled rear part stretched out over her bottom, and the front buttons adjusted, however, she didn't put up a fight either.
When Twilight's distressing dressing finally ended, she quickly walked out of her room along with her mother, to have some breakfast and get out of the liminary state where Twilight's mind resided at the time.
Downstairs, in the dining room, Pinkie Pie, already in a gray dress, was eating her breakfast, her pace matched only by a water pump, and Sedula Serva just stood there, not even trying to stop Pinkie Pie from finishing every plate and drink up every cup on the table. In fact, she just brought away the emptied cups and the light blue plates.
"Pinkie! It's not polite to eat before the others even arrive!"
Velvet, apparently, cared only about Pinkie's rudeness, instead of the loads and loads of food she was eating. Twilight, fearing to be left without anything to eat, dragged the plates and the mugs towards her, and shoved the few cookies and brioches left down her throat, and, ignoring the scorching that steaming hot coffee left if drunk like that, she gulped the contents of the coffee jug, or at least what was left.
Surprisingly, Twilight's mother didn't bat an eye, about the food race, but she glanced at Twilight when she saw her drinking coffee.
Twilight saw in her peripheral field of vision her mother scolding her silently, and decided to go around the rule by simply throwing a swig of milk down her throat before doing the same with coffee.
Because of the power of the almost insatiable hunger of Pinkie Pie and the quick eating of the remains by Twilight Sparkle, only the morsels and the bottoms of the jugs were left to Velvet to eat. Naturally, she did just that, inhaling the crumbs with her nose like she was a vacuüm cleaner, and diluted the mugs and jugs with sink water to drink the last drops of the liquids.
When all the three ponies were done with their breakfast, Velvet sighed.
"Well, I wasn't aware you two had such a big appetites. Well, I guess I should buy more food next time." Velvet suddenly raised her head, and pointed at Twilight "Now let's go!"
Pinkie Pie perked up her ears at Velvet's phrase, and started to skip in place.
"Where are you going? Can I go with you too? Please, please, please!"
Velvet smiled at Pinkie's desire to follow her and Twilight in whatever they were going to do, and as she silently asked her daughter to wait for her at the garden's gate, the old mare looked at Pinkie with a look between the manic and the condescending.
"I am going to bring Twily to the Kindy, so you can come, if you want to.”
Pinkie Pie jumped high in the air and glided towards the stairs with glee, all while shrieking gibberish, Velvet following her.
Once Twilight was reached by her mother and her pink friend, sighing, she started to walk at a very fast pace alongside them in the scarcely trafficked street that led to the Kindergarten's building.
Few minutes later, Pinkie Pie, Velvet and Twilight were already there, near the front gate of the building, where the first little fillies and colts were heading through the gate, and, on the opposite side of the sidewalk, the parents were waving their foals.
"False alarm: I could have had a slower and better breakfast, if my fixation on arriving on time didn't get the best of me, thanks to my mother's words," thought Twilight, while she slowed down.
Another part of her mind, one that spoke with a deeper and raspy voice, tried to start another mental argument in Twilight's mind, by saying. "But what if you were tardy?"
Twilight's other part was not having any of that, especially at that time of the day and after what she had been through in the past days.
"What would have the supposed punishment been? Spanking? Yelling? Begin treated like a months old? The first two would be useless, the last would be too insane even for my mother's actual standards."
Then the other part of Twilight's mind returned to the shadows that spawned it. When Twilight returned to reality, she noticed that Pinkie Pie was whining behind her. Curious, she looked behind her, and saw her pink friend down to her knees, and Velvet looking down into Pinkie's eyes.
"But I want to go with Twiliiiight..." said, once again, Pinkie Pie in a whiny voice.
"I've already told you can not. Don't make me say it again," said Velvet sternly.
"I want to follow Twilight! I want to! I want to!" whined once again Pinkie Pie.
"You can't Pinkie. Twilight’s a unicorn, so she has to..."
Velvet's words were drowned by a loud chorus of shrieks. Realizing that she had to get in the class, Twilight left her mother dealing alone with Pinkie's tantrum.
Twilight entered in the entrance hall, and after a quick glance to the metal pole with white arrows she followed the route to her class in the flash card-covered hallways.
There, she found the class's door already open and with Lux Foal and some foals already inside. Twilight entered, and sat in a corner, waiting to see the day start.
As she waited, she decided to immerse in her thoughts once more. This time, she thought about what to do now.
"Well, it seems that all my plans to stop my mother from humiliating me failed. Not only she didn't stop, but she also managed to get my friend Pinkie Pie involved in this. And, apparently, Velvet's madness is contagious, because Pinkie Pie has started to behave like a little filly... not that it surprises me much, but still.."
Twilight sighed.
"If only I could make the best of this situation as Pinkie is doing. At least I wouldn’t be that much bothered by my mother's madness, and, maybe, avoid getting too much bored while I am here in the Kindergarten. But it's not really something I can find in books or is in my nature: I would need some lessons about this from Pinkie Pie..."
Suddenly, a realization formed in Twilight's mind.
"Wait a minute. Yesterday, while I was with my companions, I actually enjoyed playing with foal's toys. I was not really enjoying playing with the toys, but still I felt content, and if I saw one of my friends happy, I had the same reaction. I've learned times and times again that something unpleasurable gets better if you do it with ponies you like, so I should befriend the foals, and maybe I will be capable of bearing this ordeal not only for this week, while my father is away, but also for the rest of the four months!"
The other part of Twilight's brain disagreed.
"You stupid mare! By doing so, you are just doing what you mother wants you to do!"
Twilight answered to herself with vigor.
"My mother wants to see me act like a little filly in front of her eyes, not knowing that I am pretending . And what I am going to do is, likely, what Princess Celestia was asking me to do from the start, aside from stand down: adapt my recently acquired socialization abilities to weird situation."
"Princess Celestia doesn't want that! She just wants your compliance now, she does not care for what you do here."
"How do you know that? You were the first to suggest that I should have stalked three innocent fillies, force them to fight, and eventually get something to write about, and look what happened!"
The other part of Twilight's mind was silenced by the statement. And it could not reply anymore, now that Lux had started to name call loudly every foal in the class, cloaking the thoughts.
"Time to test everything I've learned so far," whispered Twilight to herself.
And when she raised her head, Lux Foal was saying the last names on the list.
“Sha Mat, Sitòn Ligostos… Twilight Sparkle.”
The mare raised her hoof to signal her presence, and Lux checked the box.
“Alright, everypony’s here. Get loose.”
The foals broke formation, and formed little groups of three to four members among themselves; Twilight decided to try to join in one of them. Preferably Lex Populi’s group, since she was the first filly of the class she had contacted in the past days.