Appiano sighed, as he walked down the stairs of his home, wearing a blue fine cloth pajama trousers and an old orange shirt, as his steps on the staircase echoed in the darkness.
"So, what did I plan for today?" Appiano muttered to himself "I have two hours of Mongolian, then an hour of Maths, History and then, allegedly, Religious Education, but I skip it, so it's off to home for me. Then, if he's actually free and not, as I call it, 'Zulu free', I'll practice with Intestinal Beetle after lunch 'till half past three."
Appiano leap forward off the last step, before making a sharp turn towards the kitchen as he kept muttering to himself.
"After that, I'll go do my homework, which should take me less than two hours. The rest? I think I'll pass it between organizing people for the Friendship Games and my own pleasure."
Appiano entered inside the kitchen, where the smell of cooked meat lingered on, but the pans that cooked it were already hanging by the hooks next to the rather large selection of stoves; and where a white linen cloth atop the crudely-cut wooden table showed stains of curry and wine but no dishes or glasses from where they could come from.
"Eh, could clean it up a bit," he said to himself passing past the table and going to the oak door that lead to the larder room "but, honestly, who cares right now?"
Appiano turned the key already in the door's socket, then he slid it away on the right, revealing dimly lit shelves full of food. Appiano groaned, as he clicked onto the light switch just next to him, making the four neon lamps inside to light up to reveal the larder's supplies in all their colours, shapes and overall variety.
"Let's see what do we have here," Appiano said, knelt towards the their shelf to the ground, one that contained mostly breakfast foods "chocolate snack bars, dietetic fruit cereals, apple jam, strawberry jam, pepper jam, zwiebacks, some ham, a handful of Bologna ham, and ten buns."
Appiano grabbed four buns, the Bologna and a snack bar from the shelves, turning around and setting them on the table. Appiano, after a quick look around, found a clean knife next to the stoves and took it, while with the other hand he grabbed one of the nearby poplar chairs covered in a yellow baize-like cloth and moved it closer to the table, so that he could sit down close enough.
As he cut a bun open and set the Bologna into the bun, his mind had a little errant thought that struck him like a lightning during a clear day.
"What about the Appiani's Amulet?"
"Now that I think about it," he said, nibbling the bun "what about it? I've seen what it can do, how and for how long. But did I think of any useful applications, except as party trick or something? Doesn't seem like so."
He then actually bit the bun and, as the chewing allowed him to enjoy the salty and somewhat spicy taste of the ham, he kept thinking.
"I should use it for the upcoming games! Sure, there's anti-doping, but try to catch me cheating with this!" He thought "The judges would need to figure out how this works first, and, in the meantime, I can wipe the opposition off the floor."
As he finished the first bun and proceeded to pass to the next, he kept thinking about it.
"The most obvious application would the Flower Wars, as it requires me only to enhance my and my fellow fighters' strength, and maybe their agility." Appiano took a bite of the bun he had in his hand "Maybe the guys I've assigned to Archery could use some help with their aim, but I'm not sure if they would like their eyes touched by my hands covered in water. Horseback shooting would require something that improves both my aim and my reload speed, but I cannot put my finger on what would I need to improve to do that. Maybe I could try to use the amulet's powers on the mind to give Bon Bon and the rest of the translation squad an edge over the adversaries..."
Appiano felt his fingernails begin bitten by his own teeth. He stopped his train of thought, then he sighed, as he opened the snack bar.
"Anyways, let's get moving faster, for tide and time wait for no one." He muttered, as he started to munch on it while getting up and walking to grab his rucksack.
Sunset was sitting down down in the schoolyard, holding a block notes on her knees, a pencil in her right hand and an hand held vocabulary in her other free hand, while her phone sat nearby her, playing some remixed traditional music.
Once Sunset was done with translating an entire paragraph, she rose her head, away from her efforts in translating Mongol. she looked at the neatly-cut lawn of the yard, and the four roads paved in stone that lead to the statue where Appiano found the jewel and where Sunset recalled to have had her first clear life memory.
"She didn't show up yet..." Sunset muttered, as she looked at her wristwatch "It's half pas three. I'll wait five more minutes, then, if she doesn't arrive, I'll get up and go home."
After saying that, Sunset went back to her text, flip-flopping the pen around in her fingers, as the music changed and a light breeze grew, refreshing Sunset and making the grass rustle lightly.
"This is the verb..." Sunset muttered, as she underscored the word "This is the subject, and these are the relative pronouns."
She kept underscoring words and write their function ontop of them, until most of the two-line paragraph was done for, at which point Sunset moved the hand held vocabulary closer, before browsing it, looking up the principal verb.
"Tulaldakh: to fight. To Struggle. To engage battle. To wage war. To clash."
Sunset then went on to read the complements and the adverbials, until she figured out the tense and the mood, at which point, recognizing the other words, she started to write down.
"We fought in the vast plain before Samarkand, hundreds upon hundreds of men and horses creating a tumultuous circular movement around the hopeless and confused enemy..." She whispered, writing these words down on the notepad, until she stopped to look onto the text again. however, as she did so, she noticed a shape passing by in front of her.
"Wait, could be it Twilight?" Sunset whispered to herself, as she immediately rose her head up, and saw a girl wearing a turquoise fleece with a big horizontal pouch on the front and black long trousers. Her skin was lavender-purple, and a lock of magenta hair peeked out from the hood.
"Well, she looks like her..." sunset muttered to herself, as she cautiously put the pen back in her skirt's pocket, closed the vocabulary and put it aside, along with the notepad.
"I don't understand this, why does placing the EMF measurer directly on this surface causes it to signal the presence of a strong non-ionizing radiations, but it does not pick up anything at all in the surroundings, or even at few millimeters away?" The girl said, leaving no room for doubt in Sunset.
"Hello there Twilight!" Sunset said, waving at the fleece-wearing girl, who immediately froze up at the mention of her name.
"Who are you?" Twilight said, turning around with a snap, revealing a boxy-looking device she previously kept in her right hand and that now she was holding with both hands like a broomstick used against a burglar. "And what do you wish from me?"
Sunset recoiled and held her chest with her right hand, as her eyes widened a bit.
"Don't you remember me?" she said, moving closer to Twilight as she gestured towards herself "It's me, Sunset Shimmer. Don't you remember me? I've pushed the Dazzlings away with your help."
Twilight took a deep breath and pulled down the hoodie, revealing an unkempt mess of dark purple and magenta hair coupled with black teardrop-shaped glasses, before adjusting her glasses on her nose. "I can't say I do," she said "I was aware about the presence of singing runaways in this town who called themselves 'Sirens' or 'Dazzlings,' but never paid too much attention to it."
Sunset nodded, frowning a little, as she processed Twilight's words properly.
"But... how? You used to go to school here, in my same class and all.."
"I never did," she said, before letting out a bitter-sounding chuckle "but sometimes I wish I did chose this school." Twilight then retook her serious stance "In any case, what do you wish from me? Please be quick, I'm in a hurry."
Sunset titled her head, her frown growing at the same time as her confusion about the situation.
"But... I remember you pretty well, name and look and all." Sunset held her right temple with her right hand "I mean, I know that homophones do exist, and so do homodoxes, but both events happening? What are the odds?"
"Three in a billion." Twilight said, adjusting her glasses yet again and quickly dusting her trousers "the likehood of both meeting are two on three billion. As you can guess, it's very unlikely statistically, but seems that this has happened in this particular case."
Sunset Shimmer sighed, as she put her head back in the proper position, frownign still.
"I don't know, it still sounds too unlikely to me." Sunset said, as Twilight let out a sigh.
"Let us cut this short, what do you want?" Twilight said brusquely, as she put the measurer in her fleece’s pouch, causing Sunset to recoil a little, taken aback by Twilight's behavior.
"Well..." Sunset said, fiddling with her fingers around and weakly whistling, as she quickly mentally scanned the list of questions to make to Twilight and how to lead the conversation to her goal "II think you know that the Friendship Games are upcoming..."
"Yes," Twilight said with a heavy sigh "I know. And the Principal has told me to get over there and make the Academy win, even if I don't want to. After all, what do I have to gain from it?"
Sunset Shimmer scratched her chin, then she nodded.
"Yeah, I can understand that. But, did you tell him you didn't want to do that?"
"No, I didn't, not that it would be of any use." She said, scoffing and crossing her arms "I'm begin told to do this for my schoolmates, but, honestly, why should I care? I'm perfectly fine begin alone in my studies."
Sunset lowered her head and nodded, before glancing at Twilight's face. It was trying her best to keep her phlegm and stiff upper lip, but Sunset could tell- or at least feel- that Twilight wasn't quite sure about her statement.
"I can understand that," Sunset said, grinning a little "do you wish to go against them in some way."
Twilight chuckled bitterly yet again.
"I'd like to, but I have no idea how, as they pay attention to me only when Math tests come up and, as punctual as clocks, they didn't study anything at all, or when they do the equivalent of not discern their index from a maggot during Physics' class." Twilight Sparkle said "i guess you want me to do something against them for petty revenge against somebody there, correct?"
"Yes and no," She moved her left hand forward, flip-flopping it. "On one hand, there's a beef ongoing, on the other hand, it's a beef between this school and yours, not a personal one."
"What do you, and they, need from me, then?" Twilight said, pushign her glasses all the way up her nose, before crossing her arms. Sunset went back to her previous stance.
"It's simple, really," Sunset said, shrugging. "Just help us in improving our skills in Math, maybe try to apply what you know about it to other things, and, quite obviously, do your worst when the competition comes."
Twilight humphed, before undoing the arm cross.
"I can do that, yes," she said, moving her head forward and squinting her eyes at Sunset, making her back down a little "but what do I get in exchange?"
Sunset moved her hands closer to her chest, as her mind looked for a quick answer to Twilight's question.
"I wasn't expecting that! What do I do tell her? What?" She thought, fiddling with her fingers and biting her lip. "She doesn't seem to care all that much about new friends... not now at least. Maybe he'd like money? Or sexual performances? or maybe..."
She slapped her forehead and groaned lightly.
"Silly me, why didn't I think of it it before?" She thought, before chuckling lightly, while Twilight looked a her with a tilted head.
"I'd find a way to allow you in this yard even during school hours," Sunset said, making a rapid bowing gesture towards Twilight "and keep researching whatever you want to research here. Maybe give oyu materials too, if needed."
Twilight Sparkle nodded, before putting her left hand under her chin and looking up lightly, mumbling lightly. Sunset clenched her right fist in waiting, gritting her teeth a little and closing up her eyes.
"I can do that. Now leave me alone." Twilight said bluntly. Ignoring Twilight's response, Sunset grinned widely and walked away, taking up all of her stuff she left behind.
"Bye-bye Twilight!" Sunset said, taking an hopping stride down the schoolyard's stone path to the exit gate.