//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1 
// Story: The New Filly in Town 
// by Delta Wing 
//------------------------------//

	“Fillies and colts,” Miss Cheerilee sang from the front of her classroom in the Ponyville schoolhouse, “there’s somepony you all need to meet.” She nodded at the small, light green filly that stood just inside the door. The filly kept shifting her weight from one leg to another and fitfully glanced around the room. “Come on in. Don’t be shy,” Miss Cheerilee said to her. The filly blushed and took several slow steps toward the front center of the classroom until she stood right beside Miss Cheerilee.
Around the room, several of the students still had their heads down and continued to write in their workbooks. “Pencils down everypony,” Miss Cheerilee said. “I want your attention at the front of the classroom.” She paused. “That means you too, Pipsqueak. Close your book. This will only take a few minutes.”
“Sorry, Miss Cheerilee,” Pipsqueak said and did as he was told.
“Thank you.” Miss Cheerilee quickly glanced around the classroom. “Now that everypony is paying attention, I’d like to introduce Hex Decimal. She’s new to Ponyville from Manehattan and will be in our class from now on.”
Hex Decimal gave Miss Cheerilee a small smile and then faced the class. “Hello. You can just call me Hex,” she said. Her voice sounded pinched and quiet. Almost immediately, she dropped her gaze down and started gently scraping her right hoof against the floor.
“What’s your cutie mark for?” Applebloom asked from her desk in the second row.
Hex’s head shot up in Applebloom’s direction. “M-my cutie mark?” she said and then glanced back at the grid of ones and zeros on her flank. “I’m… It means that I’m… I’m good at math.” She laughed, but it sounded forced. “I like counting and I guess I’m just… good with numbers.”
“Why aren’t there any other numbers?” Pipsqueak asked.
“Because… um… I don’t know?” Hex stared down at her hooves again.
“Each cutie mark is different and when you first get one, you might not know exactly what it means until later,” Miss Cheerilee reminded the class. “I’m sure you’ll be able to figure out the entire meaning behind yours very soon.”
“You’ve seen shows on Bridleway, right? Have you seen Hinny of the Hills?” Diamond Tiara asked.
Before Hex had a chance to answer, Miss Cheerilee said, “No more questions. I know that you all want to get to know our new student, but we must get back to our lesson. Diamond Tiara, you’ll have plenty of time to ask Hex about herself during recess.” Miss Cheerilee looked down at Hex. “Why don’t you take a seat? There’s an empty desk in the back between Peppermint Twist and Silver Spoon. That can be yours.”
“Thank you,” Hex said and made her way between the desks to the back of the classroom.
As soon as she sat down in her desk, Diamond Tiara leaned across her desk so that she could see down the row of desks to Hex. “I’m Diamond Tiara,” she said and pointed to her left. “This is Silver Spoon.”
Hex smiled at the two ponies sitting next to her. “Hi, it’s nice to meet you.”
“That’s Peppermint Twist,” Diamond Tiara said, pointing to the filly on the other side of Hex.
“Hi, Hex. I’m Peppermint Twist,” she said with a heavy lisp.
“You don’t have to talk to her if you don’t want to,” Diamond Tiara said before Hex could respond to Peppermint Twist. “Don’t worry; if you stick with me and Silver Spoon, we’ll show you the right ponies to be friends with.”
“Oh… okay. Um… thanks?” Hex mumbled.
“Diamond Tiara!” Miss Cheerilee said. “Stop talking and open up your workbook.”
Diamond Tiara sat back in her seat and flipped through the pages in her book. “Yes, Miss Cheerilee.”



Diamond Tiara wasn’t the only pony who wanted to ask Hex about Manehattan. Even though it was only second largest to Canterlot, when compared to Ponyville, Manehattan seemed like a city that could only come out of storybooks. Naturally, each one of the school ponies had his or her own questions about it. As soon as the schoolhouse door opened for recess, Hex found herself in the middle of a large circle.
“Is it true that in Manehattan ponies ride in carriages pulled by other ponies?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you met any famous ponies?”
“No.”
“Do the buildings really touch the sky?”
“Almost.”
Hex spun around and around, trying to face each pony as they spoke.
“Manehattan’s so awesome. Why’d you move here to boring Ponyville?”
Hex whirled toward Snails. “I… uh… because…” she took several steps backwards, almost breaking out of the circle. Her ears flattened back and her head drooped as if she needed to examine the divot she had absentmindedly dug underneath one hoof.
“Hex!” Diamond Tiara broke through the circle and stood at Hex’s right flank while Silver Spoon stood at her left. “Forget these losers. You’re coming with us.”
“Out of our way,” Silver Spoon said to her classmates on the other side of the circle. With their heads held high, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon escorted her out of the crowd.
“Thanks so much for getting me out of there. You two came at just the right time,” Hex said.
“Oh please. There’s no need to thank me. I look out for my honorary sisters.” Diamond Tiara wrinkled her nose. “If I had waited one more minute, you could’ve turned into one of those ponies.”
“Trust us - you don’t want that,” Silver Spoon said.
“So what does your Daddy do?” Diamond Tiara asked. She sat down and held up a hoof in front of her. She rotated it as if to examine it for any imperfections.
“What do you mean?” Hex said.
“Like, you’re from Manehattan so you must have a lot of money. What does your Daddy do?”
“His job? He’s a chef.”
“Wow, he must be really good to get paid so much.”
“Oh, um… yeah.” Hex sat down beside Diamond Tiara and played with several blades of the playground grass. “He’s really good - the best in the entire city.”
“Hey, Hex! Do you want to come play with us?” Sweetie Belle said. The three Cutie Mark Crusaders ran up to Hex.
“We’re gonna play some loopty-hoop,” Applebloom said. She stood up on her hind legs and took a hoop that she wore around her neck and swung it around her middle. She twisted around to keep the hoop from falling down as it spun.
“It’s okay if you don’t know how to do it. I’m terrible at it, so we can be terrible together,” Scootaloo said. “I’m more of a scooter-riding pony than a loopty-hooper.”
“Applebloom’s really good at loopty-hooping,” Sweetie Belle said. “Let’s just say that she had quite a lot of practice one time.”
Applebloom shimmied the hoop up to her neck and then threw it upwards off her. It flipped a few times in the air. She caught it on top her head and kept it spinning on its side for a while before she let it clatter to the ground. “You’ll have to show me any tricks you’ve got.”
“So what do you say?” Sweetie Belle said.
“Sure, that sounds-”
Diamond Tiara cut Hex off mid-sentence and said, “Get lost, Cutie Mark Crusaders. Hex is with us. She doesn’t want anything to do with your blank flanks.”
“No, I’d actually like-”
Diamond Tiara narrowed her eyes. “You don’t want anything to do with these losers. Right, Hex?”
“Y-yeah. Right.”
“See you later, blank flanks,” Diamond Tiara said as the Cutie Mark Crusaders walked away.
“Blank flanks, blank flanks,” Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara sang in unison with a nasally lilt to their voices. They stood on their hind legs and put their front hooves together. “Bump, bump, sugar lump, rump!” They touched their back legs together and then bumped their flanks, sandwiching Hex between them. Her jaw hung open as they went through with their ritual.
“You’ll catch on,” Silver Spoon said.



“Why do I have the feeling that Hex is going to turn out to be another Babs Seed?” Sweetie Belle groaned as she gazed out of the window in the Cutie Mark Crusader clubhouse.
“Because she is,” Scootaloo said.
During recess earlier that day, they had called an emergency meeting set for after school. Even though Hex had only been a student at the Ponyville Schoolhouse for one day, they suspected that she was going to turn into yet another Diamond Tiara wannabe.
“Did you two see how rude she was to us today?” Sweetie Belle said.
“How could you not see?” Scootaloo joined her at the window. “She’s just another Babs.”
“Hey, don’t you dare talk about my favorite cousin like that,” Applebloom said. “Look, I know that we had a bad start with Babs, but we got her to turn around and now we’re all best of friends. We can do the same with Hex.”
“Not if Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon get to her first.” Sweetie Belle rested her head down on the ledge. “I really don’t need to have to deal with another bully. Two is more than enough.”
“All we have to do is show Hex a little kindness and we’ll be able to make her our friend,  lickity split,” Applebloom said.
“We already tried that, but she refused to play loopty-hoop with us.” Scootaloo stepped away from the ledge and flopped down on the floor of the clubhouse. “It’s no use. She’s too far gone already.”
“So we try again. We show her the most kindest-ness we can,” Applebloom said.
“It’s not going to work…”
Applebloom stepped up to the podium at the front of the clubhouse. She cleared her throat. “I thought we were Cutie Mark Crusaders?”
“What are you doing, Applebloom?” Sweetie Belle said, but she turned away from the window to watch Applebloom anyway.
“We are Cutie Mark Crusaders. What does that mean? It means that we don’t back down. That we keep fighting for what we know is right. We may just be little fillies with blank flanks, but that doesn’t mean that we have to back down. Hex seems like a sweet pony and we are going to do everything that we can to stop her from turning into another Diamond Tiara copy. We did it with Babs and we can do it again with Hex. We’ll just show her as much kindness as we can and just like Babs, she’ll become our friend too.”
“I guess so…” Sweetie Belle said.
“No, you know so,” Applebloom corrected. “As Cutie Mark Crusaders, it is our duty to befriend Hex.”
Scootaloo stood up. “Okay. We’ll try again. I declare that we will make Hex our friend.”
“All in favor?” Applebloom said.
“Yea!” all three shouted.
Applebloom slammed her hoof down on the podium. “Then it is decided. We’ll just need to become her friend before Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon turn her against us.”