Traffic was an absolute nightmare! Twilight had planned on arriving at school today with a good twenty minutes before the bell rang. Instead as she pulled up the first bell blared and she hadn’t even parked yet. As hastily as possible she found a spot, got out, almost forgot to lock her car, and then quickly ran to her locker to get the books for the day: Physics, English, History, Biology.
Unfortunately, by the time she'd done that the second bell rang… she’d missed her Form Class two days in a row now. It wasn’t really that important though. If it was anything like her old school then all it was was the daily messages. So first up: Physics. And though she’d only been to half of her classes so far, he was already her least favourite teacher ever: Doctor Whooves.
On the way to the class, she saw a vending machine off to the side of the hall. The last two days she hadn’t eaten at all during the day and had been absolutely starving by the time she got home. As she passed it, she noticed it had an Illegal Danish Super-Snack! She defiantly had to remember it at lunch!
The Doctor wasn’t there when she arrived at her class so she just walked in, took her seat and set up her books. Eventually he showed up with a laptop and another object. He was almost ten minutes late and didn’t even acknowledge anyone in the class. Instead he strode in yelling “I’ve graded your papers and it greatly disappoints me to say… you got A's. With every question correct. Except one of you who got one question wrong.”
“Oh god, please don’t let it be me…” Twilight muttered under her breath. She wouldn't be surprised if this guy was intentionally finding any little, tiny, miniscule flaw in her work. The Doctor placed down his laptop and plugged in both devices.
“However…” he said, slightly more hushed but still loudly. “After I graded your papers, I took into account penmanship, quality of working and time taken to finish the test. And I came up with this!” he declared as the object next to the laptop projected onto the whiteboard a list with Twilight up the top and ‘99.7%’ next to her name. “Your ranking!”
The list had thirteen names on it in total, each with a percentage next to the name ranging from Twilight’s 99.7 to 89.8 at the bottom. A male voice behind Twilight spoke up “So… we all got A’s?”
“Yes.” The Doctor answered smugly before adding “But some of you got higher A’s. Like Miss Sparkle.” he said, trying to get some rivalry brewing towards her.
“But… it’s still an A. Right?” the boy asked again. A southern accent clear in his voice.
“Yes.”
“Then what’s the pointa this?”
“That so that you know that Twilight. Is number one.” he said, pointing towards her before turning back towards the person asking. “And you, are not.” he then reached down and pressed a button in his laptop making another overlay come onto the list, linking together names with lines. “Now, each of you will be paired with a partner. The highest score with the lowest score. And as for the middle score, Mister Macintosh, you will be paired with both fifth and se7enth. Now! Lower scorers find your higher scoring partners and sit next to them.”
It was a clear attempt to make the ‘lesser’ of the pairings feel competitive towards the higher. And it worked… mostly. Twilight looked up at the board to see the name of her partner. ‘Trixie-Tang Lulamoon’ and not a second later a white-haired girl sat down beside her in huff. “Twilight Sparkle.?” it was equal parts question and statement.
“Trixie-Tang?” Twilight replied.
“Simply Trixie will do. Trixie planned on flunking the test to get the best partner. Perhaps that plan has backfired.” Trixie scoffed, barely regarding Twilight. “If we are going to be partners then Trixie is going to establish some ground rules. One: do not speak to Trixie unless completely necessary and what is necessary will be deemed as such at Trixie’s discretion. Two: Trixie will not tolerate anything less than flawless work on our assignments. Three: Trixie is ALWAYS right.”
“That doesn’t…”
‘Uh-bub-bub-bub-bub…” Trixie said as she placed a finger over Twilight’s mouth and pushed it closed rather hard. “Trixie deems it unnecessary to speak right now. The only thing Trixie wants to hear right now is ‘Twilight understands’.”
“Twilight understands…” Twilight sighed… and also realised that she’d gone full third person like Trixie did. This was without a doubt The. Worst. Possible. Class. Ever!… of all time. She simply resigned herself to the fact this was her Physics partner for the rest of the semester… or week, either one.
Despite the rough start… and the rough middle and horrible end of the class, they were issued their first assignment to plot the theoretical decaying orbit of a planet’s moon with the mass equal to 1-19th that of the planet's and all that over variables made of their choosing. ADVANCE MATHEMATICS!!! Right, well, despite the teacher and her partner, Twilight rather enjoy the class. It was challenging and damned if she didn’t enjoy a good intellectual challenge.
Trixie left the class second, only behind The Doctor who’d started to leave before the bell even rang and had just put his foot out of it as it did. So it was over… the torment that was maths… maths math is the worst. Now on to English, the polar opposite of maths. Maths is binary, it’s either right or it’s wrong. English is subjective, hell even different english speaking countries spell things differently. There were even some weird places that spelt her brother’s name without a U in it. It’s a name, 'Shining Armour' shouldn’t change regardless of nationality. And yet some people still choose to change it and spell it 'Shining Armor'… [too meta?]
Making her way to her next class, Twilight had started to just ignore everyone staring at her. That in combination with less people doing so made it possible for her to avoid another nervous breakdown. For now at least. And surely it would get easier for her from here out. She wasn’t sure if they were being polite or if they were just scared of Rainbow Dash’s threat to ‘deal with her’ if they messed with her. But either way, today was easier, and felt more at ease, calmer, than yesterday did.
Speaking of Rainbow Dash, she was apparently in this class Twilight noticed as she found the room. Everyone was just standing out front of the class still. It hadn’t been used yet this morning so the door was still locked and everyone had to wait for the teacher to arrive to unlock it. Along with Rainbow Dash, Twilight noticed her speaking with Applejack. So it wasn't just one but two of them in this class with her.
Applejack turned at some point and saw Twilight looking back at them. Naturally, Twilight turned away to avoid staring, and hoped she would do the same. Instead when she looked back at them for a second they were both looking back at her now. This almost seemed worse than the strangers staring at her. But despite this, they had the decency to abide by their own rules and not bother her. Also, apparently Twilight hadn’t noticed but the teacher had shown up and started letting everyone into the classroom.
The seats where arranged differently than her last three classes, whereas before they’d been rows and columns, these were set up in groups of four with two desks facing the front of the class side by side and another two desks in front of them facing each other, with three lots up the back, two in the middle and another three in front.
Twilight instantly decided which desk she wanted to sit at but made sure that those other two girls took a seat before she did. Luckily neither took the spot she'd wanted and so she went and took it herself. Middle row, second set, furthest to the side of the room, facing the front.
On her desk was an envelope. Sealed. Every student had one on their desks too. The other three in Twilight’s group picked theirs up and looked at them. One of them even opened it up, much to Twilight’s silent protests. It contained a piece of paper with the number 4 on it which really only raised more questions than it answered. Twilight and the other two kept their’s unopened however.
“Good morning class!” the elderly teacher announced in what had to have once been a stage voice. She wore a pair of semi-circle glasses and had mid-to-long grey hair. “I’m Maya and I bet you’re all wondering what those letters on your desk are for? Well, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8.” she said as she pointed to each of the lots of desks. “Open them up and take a seat at those tables. This will be your seating and your reading team for the semester.”
Assigned partners, well... there was a 1/10.333 repeating of course, x2 chance that she would be paired with either Applejack and/or Rainbow Dash. Thirty-two students minus herself equals thirty-one. Three chances to be paired with one of the two, now there are two though so each have an equal chance which actually doesn’t make it 2/10.333r like some people would think, it just has a double chance and that is a completely different equation… wait, I thought this was English not maths?
Twilight opened her envelope to find the number 6. She stood and walked towards the back left desk and took her seat in the far back corner facing forward. But despite knowing the chances of the possibilities of one of those two being paired with her “Well howdy.” Applejack said as she took a seat beside Twilight. “Looks like you and me are goin’ be partners fer a while.”
“Not the only one.” Rainbow Dash said as she dumped herself down sideways in the seat infront of Twilight. “Saw you and Pinkie yesterday. She thrown you a party yet?” Dash smirked. “Ya know, we WERE going to keep our distance, give you some room and all but you know Pinkie… or I bet you do now at least. Suppose she had a good reason to break that one though if you were partnered together.”
“You were saying that were a poor excuse this morning.” AJ rebuked.
“Yeah, but now I got the same excuse… so it sounds alright ta me.” Dash smirked once more, leaning on only two of her seat’s legs before AJ put her foot under Dash’s chair and kicked it, nearly making her fall out of it.
“We weren't exactly paired together so much as she sat next to me and then we were paired with the person next to us.” Twilight mumbled to this elsewhere-minded bickering couple. She could already feel the tension between them. Luckily it was broken by the fourth for their group taking the last seat.
It instantly stopped AJ and Dash’s footsies play and even made Twilight do a small double take. Twilight was purple, Dash was blue and AJ was orange. This girl was black. Pitch black. And she had giant bright red lips… still want Disney to buy Hasbro?
With a gleeful tone and big smile the girl said “So you are my partners until the semester ends? My name is Zecora, my new friends.”
