The walk towards home in the street felt particularly long to Sunset that evening. As she walked on the cracked sidewalk dimly illuminated by the lamp posts, she was keeping the pack of diapers under her armpit, and her posture was arched down.
"I mustn't let this thing to be seen," she murmured to herself, as she passed in front of a dilapidated wall of a nearby park "or else I will be the laughingstock of everybody."
Sunset then looked inside the park. Near to a now-deserted playground, a small pond shone in the combined union of artificial light and moonlight, thus creating a sight that made Sunset stop and sigh. "But why would they do that? I'm sure they would be better than that. Then again, I don't need them, so they would have reasons... or not?"
A loud chant composed by only two words and throat-sung, followed by a small trumpet composition, came from westwards from Sunset's position, and it repeated itself for seven times, thusly causing Sunset to move up again as she muttered under her breath "Shit! It's seven o' clock already, my mother will kill me!"
She kept running and running, dodging the occasional beggar waiting to the last before give up for the day, and the various lamp posts and road signs that were in her way. After a while, Sunset saw the familiar shape of a pony-shaped cypress in the distance, thusly causing her to do the final rush to it, and, once she did it, she started to pant, while walking on the concrete path to the mahogany door with a brass handle and a rope flystopper in front of the door proper. Sunset moved away the ropes of said flystopper, then took the door's keys from one of her skirt's pockets and put the right key, a rounded-out one, in the keyhole, then turns it left until the door clicked, at which point she pushed the door inwards, and finally saw the familiar sight of the blue carpet in the entrance of her own and the white wooden stairs right in front of her leading to the second floor containing the bedrooms of each member of Sunset's family.
Sunset panted as she walked forward to the stairs, her legs slightly aching as she moved. "Ufff... that was... a pretty long.... rush.." she murmured to herself, as she checked if the pack was still in her grip, only to find it right in her left armpit. Susnet took in in her hands and walked upstairs to her room, and there she dropped her black jacket on the lilac flower-patterned covers of her bed with bronze curvy ends, dropping the pack of diapers on the ground with a soft thud.
"Alright, let's see if I do have enough room for this," she said, opening the lime-colored doors of her wardrobe, and revealing, aside from a small internal drawer containing the underwear, three bronze shelves: the lowest one had all the trousers and skirts neatly folded up and divided by color and shade of it. The second shelf had the same think but for shirts, t-shirts, tank tops, sweatshirts et cetera clothing. As for the third shelf, it contained mostly hats and a handful of bags.
"Uuummm..." she looked at the pack of diaper, then to the third shelf, then back at the diapers, until she shrugged before taking them and putting it behind a large orange beach bag. "There," she mumbled, while she put herself on her toes, and delicately moved around bag and package "that way, only me knows the place where I store the diapers."
As soon as Sunset Shimmer felt that her shameful take-away was hidden well enough, she heard a feminime voice call from downstairs "Sunny, dinner's ready!"
Susnet sighed of relief, as she exited from her room and went downstairs into the kitchen, a small room with a black-and-white checkered ceramic floor and the once-white walls now greyed out due to smoke, and sat on one of the purple plastic chairs near the table made of steel, where her father, a fat light red man with balding head and an unkempt beard, was sitting while smoking a cigar. "Hello Sunset, how did your day go?" He asked, before inhaling a good deal of smoke, causing Sunset to put herself upwind in prevention to the huge cloud of toxic smoke her father was going to expel soon, before actually answering with "It went very well, had fun during my Credit Course and did a good stroll through the park at sunset."
Sunset's father expelled a cloud of dark gray smoke that briefly took the shape of skull and crossbones, before dissolving again and joining the smoke coming form the ongoing on the ceiling.
"Oh, really?" Sunset's mother, a lime-colored short and thin woman with long dark gray hair and strokes of black, said while averting her eyes from the casserole where she was cooking beans and pig meat for look at her daughter "Who was with you at the course? And who held it?"
Sunset Shimmer blushed a little, at the thought of mentioning who was with her and what she did there. However, keeping her head up, she said "Fluttershy was with me. I also met two guys, one is called Flameboy Shy, the other called himself Blueblood Felipeoglu and said I should know him since he's part of the School Council or something."
Sunset's mother let out a suppressed laugh as she said "You like one of them, don't you?" and Sunset deadpanned, as she adjusted her chair and started to fiddle around with the metallic spoon in her hand "No, I don't."
"I just know you do, but you don't want to tell me, as always," Sunset's mother said as she turned off the gas and took a orange rubber hotpad that then she slapped on the table "but I will find out who is he." "Good luck, then, because you won't find anything," Sunset said, as she awaited for her mother to serve her the bean and meat soup in her white bowl.
"Are you so sure?" Sunset's mother asked, to which Sunset's father let out a groan as he commented "Stop bothering our daughter, please, and sit down." And she obeyed with an eye roll, then she also served herself and her husband.
The rest of the dinner went on silently and, when Sunset was done, she got up, left the kitchen, and went back to her room, where she undressed from her clothes, and took her purple pajama she kept folded under the pillow of her bed. With that done, she went on and made the rucksack for the next day at school and, as she did so, she let her thoughts run free.
"Thankfully tomorrow the Vice Principal does not teach to our classroom, or else I wouldn't have the spine to look at her in the face!" She thought, closing her diary and putting it in the rucksack "Then again... why would I? I mean, I don't think it's something she wants others to know either. But, let's be honest here, there is nothing wrong with it... right?" Sunset reflected, as she put the exercise books inside, and prepared the textbooks "I mean, if those type of diapers exist, there must be people doing it, no?"
Sunset closed her rucksack with a shrug "Right." She turned off the main light in her room for then turn on the lamp's one on and pick a red book, a novel to be more precise, up. "I do wonder if they are the same people that design those night-time pull-ups for pre-teen girls, because, seriously, ballerians and butterflies as design for an eleven years old? If they weren't interested in pushing... whatever they wanted to push, what the heck they were smoking?" As she murmured that to herself, she cracker the novel open at the page where she had left the dog-ear as tracker "But whatever."
And then she started to immerse herself in that piece of literature about lizardmen from outer space invading Earth in the midst World War Two.
The next day, after her usual morning routine and after reaching her classroom, Sunset sat down at her usual position, the third desk from the window of the first row in the middle column, put the rucksack hanging on the seatback of her chair. Looking around her, she noticed that she had been the first inside the classroom, at which she shrugged and said to herself "No teacher around here and the lessons have yet to start in all school, guess I could chat with the others in the meanwhile," and she went on the door's threshold on lookout for new arrivals.
The first one to come was Fluttershy, who was wearing her usual attire under a yellow raincoat and her usual black-and-light green bag sitting across her left shoulder and chest, and was keeping her head up, wearing a neutral frown on her face as she walked to the door.
"'Morning, Fluttershy," Susnet said while waving "How are you today?" "Oh, hello Sunset," Fluttershy said as she cancelled her previous expression for back down a bit and look at Sunset with slightly larger pupils in her eyes "I didn't see you. I'm good, you?"
As Fluttershy took her place in the first desk of the last row in the column near the window, Sunset followed. "I'm good too, my breakfast was not oatmeal for the tenth day in a row, and my clothes were still there this morning."
"Why, do they tend to disappear? And why?" Fluttershy asked, opening the rucksack for take out the coverless Mongolian textbook and the exercise book with a photo of red roses as cover, and Sunset took the seat near Fluttershy's usual one, turning the chair around and using the seatback, saying "Yeah, my clothes fit my mother too, so they are kind of borrowed by her sometimes."
"Oh, I see." Fluttershy said, before dropping her head on the desk for look in front of her aimlessly. Seeing that, as per usual, Fluttershy was not in a chatty mood, usnet decided to go back to the door and wait for more people to come in. From the threshold, she noticed Rainbow Dash carrying a stereo on her back along with her book sack, Applejack carrying two large loudspeaker at her sides like if they were pistols and her red rucksack loosely on her shoulders, with Appiano behind her keeping a leather-cover booklet in his right hand while gesturing with his left towards the ceiling and singing in a low voice.
"Hey there, what'ca doing?" Sunset asked to the little group, to which Applejack answered "Me and Dash are carrying the loudspeakers and the stereo for Appiano, Flitter and Billy Cobra's plan." Applejack said that as she stepped inside, adjusted the cables around her waist, lowered her rucksack on her arms and patted her skirt's left pocket causing a small clang, causing her to mutter "Good, my keys are still there."
"And what's their plan, if you don't mind me asking?" Sunset asked, as she waved and smiled at Rainbow Dash and Appiano, to which Appiano made bowed while still chanting and Dash grunted and dropped the stereo on the teacher's desk. Applejack went to the desk in the left corner of the room, "They say that, since only a divine intervention could save Appiano and Flitter from flunking in English, and since Dash, in her words, 'in a phase of mutual screwing' with studying, and since Father sky didn't grant their wishes, they are gonna try to pray to a god of one of those middle eastern religions."
"Oh," Sunset said, as she saw Flitter and Billy Cobra entering the classroom, the latter dressed in a white robe with a purple loose scarf with golden rims laying on his shoulders, while the former was dressed normally.
"Hopefully it'll work... those things were very expensive." Flitter muttered and almost slumped against the desk, which causing Billy Cobra to remark
"The Lord shall reward your generosity," as he then chuckled, taking his position in the first desk in the last column in the first row. Dash had put the stereo under a random desk of the middle column and then she had thrown the rucksack on hers before sitting down with an huff, and Applejack sat down, the loudspeakers still on her body. While this happened, the rest of the class had already came in without Sunset noticing it.
"Tired?" Sunset asked to Dash and she turned around with spirited eyes. However, before she could say anything, the second bell rang, causing Sunset to rush to her desk with a "Talk to you later." A minute later, Ma'am Cloudkicker entered inside the classroom in her usual formal attire.
"Who will come for oral test?" Cloudkicker said in a monotonous tone of voice as she put down the register and her pencil case. Her question was followed by Rarity raising her hand and then getting up and walk to the blackboard.
Sunset and a handful of others followed, the rest of the class dozed off or formed book walls where, behind them, they could either play mobile phones games or Battleship with the nearby classmate without getting caught.
When the Mongolian lesson ended and Cloudkicker had left the class' morale in tatters, due to the heaviness of her explanation of the most advanced past tenses of Mongolian. Also, she had bombarded Rarity with questions thought impossible to answer to, and, to much of Cloudkicker's apparent dismay and the class' disbelief, Rarity answered all of them correctly.
"How'd you do that, Rares?!" Dash asked, her mouth agape and her arms hanging from her shoulders "How any human begin was supposed to know them?"
"Ignorant and inconstant human begins don't know;" Rarity said haughtily as she went back to her desk "Studious ones, however, do."
"Do you have to show off?" Applejack said, while Dash sighed and rolled her eyes, crossing her arms and glaring at Rarity, and Rarity wrinkled her nose before sitting down again. A brief minute of silence ensued, broken by Billy Cobra's shrill voice saying "Quick! the audio system!"
And with that said, Rainbow Dash jumped away from her desk and jump-slided under the desks for take the stereo (not without getting an handful of bonks), Flitter brought the cross to the teacher's desk and put that atop of it, Applejack ran to the electrical sockets and plugged them in and then hooked those loudspeakers to Dash's stereo, and, finally, Appiano put himself at Billy's side as he skimmed through a leathered booklet and murmured something.
All of this in one minute and half, chronometered by a surprised and dazzled Sunset. And, before she could understand anything, Billy spread his arms out, breathed deeply, then he solemnly said.
"May the Peace of the Lord always be with you, oh ye faithful, for I've been called to call a blessing upon you for the trials you are going to face soon!" As he said that, he extracted a small cross from under his tunic, then started to wave it around and mutter something. As he did so Rainbow Dash, Flitter, Derpy, Fluttershy and whoever else felt the need to get some reassurance for the upcoming test, united their hands and lowered their heads, as Appiani pressed the "Play" button of the stereo, then pointed at the ceiling with the index of his left hand and sang along.
He was interrupted by the door slamming, and the teacher, Mr. Jet Set, entering inside, shouting "What is all this noise? Why are you singing? And who authorized you to do so?"
Appiano stopped singing for looking with a smirk at the teacher, as Dash, Derpy and the others prayers stopped and looked at the teacher, and Flitter ran back at her desk, just like Billy.
"Dè, we were praying." Appiano said with his usual Piombinian accent, closing the booklet and turning off the stereo "Do you take issue with that, sir?"
Jet Set walked swiftly near Appiano "I do not usually have issues with my students praying," he said making his nose clash with Appiano's "however, loudness and general disruption is not permitted!"
"Say that to Rainbow Dash, Billy and Flitter," Appiano said, pushing the teacher away "They were the one providing the audio and that orchestrated all of this. Oh, and, by the way, professor, you should take a clue, because, as they say from my parts, dove vai son cipolle if you make everything too difficult."
There was a collective gasp, as Dash gritted her teeth, glaring at Appiano and shaking her first at him, Billy Cobra let his head almost fall behind his shoulders and his arms point down for throat-sing "Tengri brutalized by a syphilitic goat!" and Flitter cried very loudly "Betrayal! Betrayal!" causing glasses and windows to shatter outwards.
Jet Set grumbled, as he cracked the register open "Billy, since this is your very first time in doing mischief, you will only get a warning." He said, before pointing at the door "As for Dash, Flitter and Appiano, you are off to presidency!"
And the three got up and walked away, with Appiano making the horns to Jet Set before running away.
Sunset, whom had been assisting to all of that in silence, sighed and murmured to herself "This is going to be a looonnnggg and bizarre day..."