After skipping a few more things that happened between the last chapter and now Twilight had made it to her last class of the day: English. Like the first time and unlike every other class so far, as she arrived, the door to the class was still locked. From the looks of it, or at least what she remembered of it, other students were hanging around in their assigned groups of four.
She went over to the two from her group she saw and stood silently beside them. “Heya Twilight.”
“<something that rhymes>” Zecora added.
“Hey you two.” she replied before a colourful blur rushed past her, in between the three of them and slammed into the wall. Rainbow leaned her back against the wall, arms crossed with that I’m-frowning-but-only-on-the-inside look on her face. She briefly acknowledged Applejack but didn’t even bother looking at either Twilight or Zecora. At least not until "Hey… Rainbow Dash…” Twilight reluctantly said.
All it got her though was a glare before she turned back to staring at nothing in particular. They stayed silent for a few moments longer after that. Zecora was the one to break the silence as she said to Applejack “I’m sorry to ask, but who shoved a stick up her a-” she began but was interrupted as the tail end of the sliding door clipped her shoulder as it opened.
“Sorry about that.” Maya said as she opened up the classroom for her students. She had a arm full of papers and seemed horribly unorganised. Just seeing it made Twilight cringe. According to one of Die’s rumors, she was planning on running for mayor… one could only imagine. Twilight just tried to push that aside and entered the room. Taking her seat, she prepared for a period of tension and chaos as AJ sat down first with a worried expression, followed by Zecora and Rainbow Dash both eyeing one another.
“Really? You can’t guess why I might be upset. Have you even heard?” Rainbow scowled. “You were there. You saw her. And I lost my whole team because of her!” Rainbow said in exasperation.
“You mean the soccer team from which I was cut? If you want sympathy from me then you can kiss my b-” she was cut off by Maya dropping a box of books onto their desks loudly. She looked dissolved and tired form the exertion. It was a pretty small box.
She finished doing the same to the two more desks after them and then headed back to the front. “Now students, You’ve all been handed a copy of the books your group has chosen to do your first assignment on.”
“But Maya, we only chose Hairy Plopper.” called someone from one of the other desks.
“Yes, well, I gave everyone four copies of every book because I can’t remember who chose what. Anyhow, your first assignment for homework over the weekend is a 500 word report on the book you’ve chosen based solely on the cover and the blurb on the back. I want to see both how you think of the book before reading it compared to after and to gauge your literary skill. And please… I cannot stress this enough. Have someone in your group proofread what you write. It makes so much of a difference, you have no idea! Now, discuss your books, talk, write, script, plan, device, and three other words from a thesaurus.”
“Listen RD. I know ya mad ‘bout them disbandin’ ya team an’ all, but bitin’ Zecora’s head off over it ain’t ganna change nothing. Besides, you can’t say it were entirely Gilda’s fault alone. Some’a that lays squarely on your shoulders too.” Applejack said, knowing anything she’d say wouldn’t calm Rainbow Dash down but at least she could pull some of the focus away from Zecora.
That plan didn’t work however. Not entirely anyway. “Gilda?” asked Twilight, thinking that she wasn’t the only one who had had a run in with that she-hulk. Though her opinion of her had gone up slightly, it was still pretty bad. She didn't feel great about looking at someone that way and was subconsciously trying to find some more justification for doing so. Unfortunately, it had taken Rainbow Dash's attention form AJ to her.
“Yeah, she’s one’a RD’s old friends from another school. Why, you met her?”
“Uh… you could say that.”
“She called you an egghead didn’t she?”
“Ye-y-how did you even know that?”
“Because Fluttershy told me about how she got under your skin too. She’s just… she’s just so full of herself.” which although Dash didn’t see it, got a blank ‘really?’ stare from all three of the others. “I mean, she broke his nose for Helix sake. How is she not expelled?!”
“She broke someone’s nose? Soccer? Lost a team? What… am I missing something? I really feel like I’m missing something.” Twilight said.
“Rainbow Dash coached one of the school’s soccer teams.” Zecora spoke up. “But she was not the best for the job so it seems. She claimed for her team she would take only the best, and so she must get rid of the rest. I was one of those that was cut at her say, and yet she kept two not fit for play. Gilda, her old friend, disagreed with her choice. To which I would have to second my voice. Her leadership was questioned for playing favourites, which she could’ve done for me since I tried out on her behest.
The choices she made did not go unnoticed, as those to soon became Gilda’s main focus. A challenge was issued to her for the leadership position, Dash is just sore she lost the competition. Though underhanded a tactic Gilda’s stratagem was cunning, she feinted a goal but still continued running. Caught off guard by this trick quite clever, Rainbow Dash was unable to recover. In anger she raged and drove many more away, and the team’s structure became disarray.
“Someone was injured and the group was in a shambles, and in the end the team was disassembled. There is much more I’m sure that is part of this story, but I was not privy to the intricacies of their rivalry. I’m sure these two here could tell the event far more broader, and frankly I don’t think I told them in order. For the others who had made the team I’m saddened, it’s true. But because of all this, the school’s down from three soccer teams to two.”
As the live studio audience finished applauding Zecora’s monologue Twilight came to a complete understanding from that totally accurate and not at all forced way of describing what happened in that mistake of a side story. “So she became the team’s coach…”
“Captain.” Dash passive-aggressively corrected both Zecora and Twilight.
“So she became the team’s captain.”
“No. She challenged me for captain and lost. But you know what? I thought I’d be nice and throw the bitch a bone. I offered her the spot even though she lost, like a good sport, but she just lost it. She punched me, started yelling at me about not choosing the best, even though that’s exactly what I was doing. But nooo… she can’t take not being number one!”
“Sounds familiar…” AJ muttered. And was luckily either ignored or unheard.
“So she beat someone up and broke their nose?!” Twilight asked in shock and fear of how much worse her encounter could’ve been.
“No, she kicked the ball into someone’s face.”
“Oh. Well of course she wasn’t expelled. That just sounds like a sports accident. Not something intentional.”
“Oh it was intentional alright. It was all part of her underhanded tricks. Everything she did was underhanded. The way she scored her first goal by a distracted goalie, the way she kicked the ball from point blank into the goal and then the way she used that guy’s face to bounce the ball back and get her goal. Then after all that she has the nerve to be mad at me. After she practically destroyed… no, she DID destroy my team! She hasn’t changed. Not at all. To think we were once friends…”
Twilight had gotten all she wanted to know. Her opinion on Gilda hadn’t changed at all but what had happened to her yesterday at least made a bit more sense to her now. She’d been angry, which wasn’t a good excuse for what Gilda had done, she’d at least apologised which from the sounds of things was unexpected. “I think she’s sorry.”
“What?”
“I think she regrets what she did. I ran into her yesterday and, well, it wasn’t pretty. But she came up to me again this morning and tried to make amends.”
“Oh shut up with all your ‘magic of friendship’ stuff. This is half your fault anyway!”
“Me?! What did I do?” Twilight was taken aback as Dash’s accusation came out of seemingly nowhere. “And what magic of friendship stuff?”
“You or other you, it’s all the same. You don’t change. You’re just like her. If you hadn’t come here and messed everything up and gotten the whole school to be ‘one big happy family’.” Dash said those last words in a mock joy, akin to Rarity’s expression when fantasizing about her dream guys or a large jewel as she clasped her hands together beside her face. “Then the only people trying out would’ve been people who could actually play the game instead of all those yogo, morons, newbies and… and eggheads.” the last words aimed pointedly at Twilight more than anything else. “They would’ve just stayed to their own little groups and none of this would’ve ever happened.”
“Calm down there partner.” Applejack said stepping in to try and pull Dash’s focus off of Twilight. It partially worked.
“And you.” she began anew, this time facing towards Zecora. “Why on Equestria did you try out for soccer instead of basketball like the rest of you people usually do?”
“Because you asked me to try out for a team. And what by ‘you people’ do you mean?” she asked back pointedly.
“Giants. Tall and lanky. And I told you to try out for A team. You said you weren't going to try out for anything. You’re the one who read into that me asking you to join my team. We had so many who just didn’t belong… and... darn it if Fluttershy wasn’t one of them! She’d never tried out before. Why start now?! She doesn’t belong on a field. Hell, she barely belongs around other people.”
“Hold on there Dash… don’t go saying nothin’ you’re gon’ regret later.” AJ tried to prevent any further bad mouthing. Dash was right on some levels but was still way out of line on all the others. She may not’ve seen Gilda in a while but to just so casually disregard their friendship… speaking of other Twilight and that magic of friendship stuff, it was certainly something Applejack didn’t like hearing. Especially after having already lost the four of them once before. She’d hate to see it happen again and all because of, from Dash’s perspective at least, this new Twilight.
“And that muscle head who’s straight outta steroid infomercials. Why isn’t he just in a jime for this. Bon-bon was only there because her girlfriend was. Flitter and Cloudkicker/Cloudchaser [IDK which one]. And Derpy… Uh… I don’t blame her. I blame me for letting her try out to begin with let alone giving her a spot on the team. I mean what was I thinking? She can’t even see the ball let alone figure out what to do with it. Why the hell do they even let retards like her come to school? It’s not like they’re going to even learn anything from it!” Dash finished in a huff.
She hadn’t done so intentionally but by the end of her rant, most of the class not only could hear every word but where now looking right at her. Others were looking elsewhere though. But mostly just trying to politely look away, some out of fear. Nervously, Twilight had one question to ask. “Does Derpy have blonde hair and a uh… ‘crooked’ eye by any chance?” ask sheepishly asked.
“Let me guess, you somehow know HER too…” she said with exasperation.
“No but… I think she just heard everything you said about her.” she clarified as she pointed to the girl down in the lot of tables marked as 2 in the diagram back in Wednesday. She sat there, tears welling up in her eyes as one of her eyes was focused directly on Dash and the other one… well… not focused on Dash. She stood up from her chair, walked around her lot of desks and quickly out the door.
Attention that had been on Dash quickly went towards Derpy instead and once she left, all of it came right back to Dash. “Well?” Applejack demanded. “You goin’ to go apologise or what?”
“What.” Dash replied smugly.
“What?! You know darn well what!”
“Yeah. You said ‘or what’. I chose what.”
“That ain’t funny RD!”
“Whose laughing? Cause I’m sure as heck not! She’s gotta hear it sometime! She should just drop out and take care of the dinky daughter of hers, whatever her name is, and maybe not screw her up too like she has everything el-”
Dash was cut off, as was everyone else who’d been chattering amongst their groups, as the loud clap echoed through the class drawing everyone’s attention towards Applejack who had stood up, leant over the desk and slapped Dash across the face as hard as she could. “Shut your dosh danged mouth this instant!”
“What the hell A-” Dash asked as she rubbed her face, only to be slapped again just as hard.
“Ah will not sit here and listen ta ya saying such downright AWFUL words about people who call you a friend!”
“Applejack!” Maya said from the front of the class but was completely ignored. Much like she had been for the last few minutes during this little spat.
“Now ah don’t give one darn what you think you’re goin’ through but it cannot be worth the cheque your mouth’s tryin’ ta cash! Sayin’ that kinda stuff ‘bout her, why she must be absolutely heartbroken! Ta think that someone she’d call a great friend, one who she’s fine with you poking fun at her with that nickname ‘Derpy’ ‘cause she knows you don’ mean nothin’ bad by it and that you’d never say nothing ta actually try and hurt her, sayin’ the things you been sayin’... if I believed fer one moment that you meant any of that spout yur dripplin’ then I’d be the first one in line to kick your skinny little arse for her! And mind you, I’m half way there as it is! Sure, maybe Gilda’s done some stuff ta ya and yur team but ah bet'cha dollars ta donuts she’s thinkin’ the ‘xact same about you! That you’re the one whose at fault here and I’m absolutely with her on that one ah tell ya! Soon as we’re outta here, you’re going to march right up to her, and EVERYONE else who was on your team, including Gilda, and you’re going to say sorry to each and every last one of them for EVERYTHING you said or even thought about them and hope they’re even half as kind about it as you ah’m bein’ right now! Capeesh!?”
“E-everything except ‘capeesh’.” Dash said, eyes wide and slightly watery like a child who’d just gotten scolded. Which for all intensive porpoises, she was.
Applejack was about to speak up once more before sitting down when a rather loud and rather angry “Applejack!” came from Maya at the head of the class. “Go to the Vice Principal's office immediately!” she practically shouted as she pointed towards the door.
“Oh… uh… right.” Applejack said abashed, only now realizing and remembering she was in the middle of a class. “Sorry about that. I’ll just uh… I’ll just… yeah. Ah’m goin’.” as she started towards the door. If her face wasn’t already red with rage, her cheeks would’ve been the colour they were now otherwise…
A moment passed in stunned silence as Applejack left the room. It eventually began to be replaced with quiet chatter and insta-gossip about what they’d all just seen. Amongst that was Maya trying to regain control of her class. And ultimately failing at it.
“Hey, Zecora. AJ’s right. I’m sorry about alla that stuff. Yesterday and today. I really hope you can forgive me.”
“It is alright. You are forgiven. After all, I am your friend.”
“Thanks… hey, would you do me a favour. Pretend like this hurt.”
“I’d rather no-” and Rainbow Dash loudly clapped her hands together in front of Zecora’s face but in a way that one of her hands went past the other and she continued it in a direction that made it look like she’d slapped Zecora.
“Rainbow Dash. What is the meaning of… oh forget it.” Maya said with more of a sigh than a complaint.
“Oh, you’re absolutely right. I better go to the principal's office too for slapping Zecora.” she said as she had already stood up and started towards the door. Maya tried to say something in protest but Dash overshadowed her with “I’m terribly sorry, won’t happen again but have to face my punishment now, k thx bye.” as she walked out the door and closed it behind her. Which apparently she was unaware did not make it soundproof “AJ wait up! Which way did Derpy go?”
“Sooo…” Twilight said as she looked away from the door back to Zecora. She didn’t really have anything else to follow that up with.
“Arse." Zecora blurted out.
"..."
"Sorry but I’ve been interrupted trying to say that three times, I had to get it out.”
“That didn’t rhyme.”
