//------------------------------//
// Chapter 2: magic school days 
// Story: Pepper heart 
// by Hestrir 
//------------------------------//

The solar rays has pierced Starlight's eyelids, waking her up from an... interesting dream, In which Cosmos has been carefully putting endless replicas of Starlight's cutie mark on the cutie cave's walls, accompanied by Twilight applause. Starlight has shook her head and sat up. The bed was quite comfortable after all. Twilight was nowhere to be seen. The bookcases in the room looked different. They have got new books in them, and their old books were re-organized neatly. Starlight has rose up and went to search for the bathroom, wondering to herself why didn't she asked about it earlier.

She found Twilight descending from upstairs, with a blanket on her back and a toothbrush levitating in front of her.

'Morning, Starlight. Ready to greet the day?' Twilight has beamed on her and went back in the room.

'The lessons will start in an hour' she said, putting the brush away and grabbing her saddlebags. Starlight has nodded and went upstairs.

After brushing her teeth and mane, Starlight went back. Her tummy has grumbled. Seemingly lost pretzel has reminded her of itself. There were some stale-looking apples in the vase in the guest quarters. Reluctantly, Starlight has grabbed one and started eating, gloomily thinking of Spike's cookies and Applejack's apple pies. Twilight was standing in front of a huge mirror.

'So, what is the plan for today?' she asked, taking another bite from the apple.

'I'll have the first period, that's about an hour and a half. Then there will be a big recess, during which I'll give you a quick tour on the school.' 

Twilight sounded excited. She has levitated a dark-red sweater onto herself, struggling to put her wings into it. She gave up after realizing futility of that task. That sweater was not made with wings in mind, so Twilight has settled on a simple blue-and-white scarf and a pair of pointy-ended glasses without lenses. Starlight has risen her eyebrow.

'So what am I suppose to do during first period?' she asked, sending apple core to the trash bin and grabbing a fresh stale apple from the vase.

'Just sit in the class, I guess' Twilight shrugged, her glass-free glasses falling off as a result. 'Or you can take a walk yourself.'

'Nah, I'm good' Starlight didn't feel too keen on wandering on some spacious school grounds alone without any directions.


***


Starlight has looked around herself with strange, vexing  feeling of excitement. The school grounds were spacious indeed. The building complex turned out to be much bigger than Starlight imagined looking at it from afar. The school consisted of five major buildings and multiple minor ones, with a huge three-towered building in the middle. The architecture style was different from that of usual Canterlot. Its walls were white with occasional purple decorative areas, while its roofs were dark blue, covered with colorful patterns of stars and celestial bodies. Starlight's memories about this place were hazy. She's been there a few times during her fillyhood, but back then she weren't noticing the grandure of the place.

Strings of foals and fillies were passing through the gates, entering school grounds and proceeding into the various buildings.
'This place was smaller when I was a filly. I don't remember those two buildings over there.' mumbled Twilight. She was still dressed in the scarf and glass-less glasses, looking ridiculous all the way through. 

They have entered the central building and proceeded on the second floor. The insides of the school were not to Starlight's taste: boring mosaic floors, rugs and endless portraits of famous pony wizards. Finally the two mares has entered a lecture hall. The hall was empty and sightless, aside from a number of purple tapestries depicting some mares Starlight didn't recognize. 

Twilight has proceeded to the teacher's desk, while Starlight has awkwardly sat on a faraway seat. The seat was a bit too small for her, making the stay extra uncomfortable.

After a few minutes of Starlight trying to take a comfortable position, the school bell has rang an unknown melody, and the class has started to slowly fill with fillies and foals. Two foals who has arrived first has stumbled on a sight of an unfamiliar teacher and tried to retire, but Twilight has levitated them inside with a welcoming smile. Soon, the lecture hall was filled almost to a brim. Starlight became trapped between two little fillies, who were giving her weird looks. Starlight has gritted her teeth hard, thinking back on her decision to go along with Twilight's plan.

The last one to enter was somepony unexpected. Starlight's eyes has widened with surprise when a certain small vanilla-coated smoked paprika-maned filly has meekly entered the hall and sat on the furthest seat, avoiding eye contact with any pony in the room. When she unpacked her saddlebag and looked closely at the teacher, her eyebrow has flung up.

'Oh, right. She did tell me that this is the school... Make sense that she's also learning here' Starlight mumbled, raising suspicious gazes from her next-seat neighbors.

With another bell ring the lesson has begun. Twilight has introduced herself, relaying information about Cosmos' absence and herself being his replacement. Student body has leered at her with suspicion, but calmed down in time, listening and taking notes of Twilight's lesson. 

Twilight was reading a teaching program from flash cards in front of her, occasionally asking questions and getting answers. Starlight, uncomfortably lying on the table, has rose her head from the comfort of her fore hooves and looked at her friend. Twilight seemed very happy. But the topics Twilight has been teaching were boring for Starlight, who knew everything she's been talking about. Bored out of her wits, Starlight has started taking close looks at the students.

"I wonder who's Cosmos were talking about. Being troublesome and all this stuff..." she thought, leering at a nearby focused foal. Surprisingly, but most of the students seemed really interested in Twilight's lecture. Some were whispering, pointing at Twilight's wings. Two foals and a number of little fillies were looking at Twilight with aspiration and adoration, no doubt recognizing her as a princess. Starlight wished that she could be as happy as Twilight at the moment. 

But something felt out of context. The vanilla-coated filly that were sitting all alone on the farthest seat. She seemed disinterested in Twilight, looking solely on her sketchbook in front of her. With boredom as her main fuel, Starlight has casted a peculiar spell she has learned long ago in the desert. Her horn glowed faintly, looking for a suitable target. After a minute, a target was found: a small black fly on the lecture hall's window. Starlight has smiled faintly and casted a silent spell.

Now she was looking through fly's eyes, with her body sleeping back at her seat while being eyed by two clearly annoying fillies next to it. Twilight didn't seemed to notice, being too caught up in the excitement of lecturing little ponies about mess-fixing spells. Starlight has imbued fly's little mind with an image of breadcrumbs on the back of vanilla filly's seat, sending the fly towards it. 

Fly's vision was weird. It felt much wider, than pony's, and the picture was subtly divided on hundreds of cells. It was a bid finicky on the details, but Starlight has clearly captured the overall shape of little filly's sketch. It seemed very familiar. It took Starlight a second to realize, that the shape was Twilight's head. It seemed masterfully drawn, even without much detail visible trough the fly's weird little eyes. The filly has drawn the last line and threw her sketch a critical look, comparing it to Twilight. With a huff of satisfaction, the filly has closed her sketchbook, put it out and started to look at Twilight. 

Suddenly, Starlight has felt a bit of pain in her side. Bribing the fly with a phantom aroma of fresh-baked apple pie to make it look at her own body's direction, Starlight has noticed a filly to the right poking her in the side. Starlight has quickly released her grasp on the fly's vision and woke up, giving the filly a stern look. The filly has stuck her tongue out.


***


The school bell has rung, signaling the conclusion of the current lesson. The foals and fillies has begun to civilly pack their bags. Starlight has teleported herself out of the restricting seat and stretched her limbs joyfully. She remembered Starburst telling her that it was hard to know so much at the school and be able to do so little. At the moment, she clearly understood what he meant. Thought of being confined to a seat for several years without anything interesting to learn made her cringe.

'So, how was I?' asked Twilight, approaching Starlight.

Starlight has opened her mouth to answer, but suddenly a small flock of students have surrounded Twilight and started to ask her questions about her wings. Starlight has rolled her eyes and proceeded out of the lecture hall. The corridors were filled with children. However, they were not running amok or making trouble. They were walking around all civilized-like, calmly discussing magical matters. After a minute of looking at some portraits, Twilight has trotted out of the hall, sent the students away and approached Starlight.

'So, let me show you around' she said, beaming. 'We have some time before my second class.'

Two mares have walked through the corridors a bit, Starlight listening to Twilight's happy thoughts about the students. Starlight's mind, however, was far away. She was thinking about Sunburst and what his time in the school looked like when he was a foal. A colorful image of the yellow-red foal, lying on the table, was too lucid for her.

"Then again, he must've been good at pop quizzes and tests and the likes" she thought.

The two walked up the flight of stairs into the biggest of building's towers. 

'Here's where astronomy classes are. But sometimes, when the night was bright and cloudless, we were called to study the stars at the observatory atop that mountain!' Twilight's eyes has lit with nostalgia. 'The telescopes there are so huge! You can even see the castles on the moon with it! I wonder if moon people have telescopes as well...'

Starlight has been looking around. The hall they were in was filled with everything astronomy related, from star maps to telescopes. Nothing has caught Starlight's interest  besides a huge picture of Starswirl the Bearded on the wall. And it has only caught her attention because of unusual coat color. Starswirl has lived so long ago that most artists just couldn't decide the color of his coat. Most of the depictions Starlight have seen has showed him with either blue or white coat, but there were always some strange colors  like golden or purple. Thinking on the subject of incorrect depiction of an ancient wizard, Starlight has missed most of Twilight's nostalgic tails about her time in the mountaintop observatory. She only snapped out when the two has left the tower entirely and went out of the building.

'So, where next?' Starlight asked.

'Library!' said Twilight excitedly. Starlight has silently groaned. The prospect of looking at the books she knew through and through and listening to more of Twilight's nostalgic stories about awesome books she has read did not amused her. But suddenly, the school bell has rung.

'Oh my gosh! We forgot about the lesson! We've been talking so much that I have forgot about time! Quickly!' she then teleported in an unknown direction, leaving dumbfounded Starlight alone.
'Oooookay...'

Starlight has attempted to imagine the lecture hall hard to teleport into it, but the memory of that place was so surprisingly vague, considering that she was there twenty minutes ago, that she has failed.  

Teleporting to a place unknown was too dangerous. She could've appeared in the desk, breaking it or even in the air, falling down and injuring herself and the unfortunate colt or filly under her. 

Starlight has groaned and made her way to the main building. She was mostly alone on the square, colts and fillies being in the classes. But suddenly a motion in her peripheral vision has caught her attention. Curious, Starlight has glanced in the direction of motion - one of the lesser school building. But nothing was there. Wondering if something was going on  behind the building, Starlight has approached building's corner, peeking around it. 

Under the building's shadow has stood a small group of children, curiously not in the classes like the rest of the student body. To Starlight's surprise, a familiar vanilla-coated filly was standing up to larger colts, confronting at the apparent leader of the colt group: a lean, jade-coated one with a bob of white mane. The colt was looking down on the filly with clear amusement on his face. The filly was gritting her teeth and looking up with a face full of fury.

'It was your stupid trap, wasn't it?'

'What are you talking about? Those amazing traps aren't mine!' said the colt with a huge grin on his face.
'This. Ain't. Funny!' the filly was furious. Starlight looked aghast. She has realised what situation she has found herself in pretty quickly.
'Oh, it isn't? What do you think guys?' said the colt, looking at his entourage. The other colts have busted with laughter.
'I dunno, Pepper. The guys think it's plenty funny.' shrugged the colt.

Starlight has barely doused her burning desire to turn the colt into a ferret and catapult it away.

"Calm down, Starlight. What would Twilight do?" she thought, clenching her teeth and deciding to watch where this was going.

'Merrylight! If you won't stop your stupid pranks I... I...' said Pepper angrily.

'You what? Use your Evil Magics to turn me into a crystal or something? Yeah, right.' Merrylight has spat on the ground.

'Use your stupid magic and you'll be booted off for sure. Actually, go on. Blast me. I can take it.' he laughed. 'This school has no place for freaks like you.'

The filly has gritted her teeth, visibly holding down her tears. 

"Okay. That's enough."

Starlight has flashed right in front of Merrylight and his gang, making them flinch.

'What is your deal?' she said, glaring right in Merrylight's eyes. 'Do you have nothing better to do than to pick on a filly?'

'And who are you?' asked Merrylight in a smug tone, recovering from Starlight's sudden appearance.

'I am me' said Starlight sternly.

'Then you are not important' Merrylight has shrugged. 'I haven't seen you once in the school. That means that you're an outsider. Lady, let me give you an advice: don't stick your nose where it doesn't belong' he grinned.

Starlight was reaching a boiling point.

"Calm down, calm down... What would Twilight do?.."

'I may be an outsider, but it doesn't mean I shouldn't care. Bullying is...'

'Bad?' the colt interrupted. 'Oh, grow up. I'm doing what I want, and that twat deserves it. Out of my way.' he attempted to shove Starlight away with his magic, but failed to overpower Starlight's might. A slight surprise has blinked on his face.

'Just get out of my way, lady. Or we'll get you out ourselves.'

His entourage has huffed aggressively.

"What would Twilight do..." thought Starlight . Twilight would probably attempt to talk the bullies down, teaching them a friendship lesson and making them good. "But wait, I am forgetting something." Starlight has suddenly raised her eyes and looked down on Merrylight triumphantly. "I am not Twilight."

Her horn lit with a teal soft glow and suddenly has bursted with a magical beam, aimed at Merrylight's smug face. The colt's expression has changed in the last moment before the beam hit him. After the dust have settled, there was no Merrylight anymore, but a small white ferret, sitting aghast on the ground. The expression of terror has slowly crept on the other colt's faces. 

'So, who's next?' asked Starlight with a friendly, inviting voice. 'The ferret spell was a success, good thing I have finally found a volunteer to try it on. Next up is the frog transfiguration. Who will be the lucky colt to hop around , green and free for a few hours?' she asked with a devious smile. Indeed, Starlight Glimmer is not Twilight Sparkle. After all, she don't have enough understanding of friendship to deal with this conflict the Twilight's way. But she had plenty experience in other ways of interaction.

'We-we're gonna tell on you!' cried one of the colts, and they all have zoomed away, not forgetting to grab their fuzzy leader. Starlight's catharsis had no end for about a minute before she has realized that what she has done would be the exact thing Twilight will tell her not to do under any circumstances in this kind of situation. Mentally waving away the unhappy thoughts, Starlight has turned around to the filly to see her sitting on the ground, jaw dropped.

'Are you allright?' Starlight asked in a concerned, sitting in front of the filly. 'Who were those bullies?'

The filly has looked her right in the eyes with a mixed expression.

'Who are you?' she asked.

'My name's Starlight Glimmer. I'm not from around here.'

'O-obviously. You have asked me for directions earlier.' Pepper's voice was dry and sardonic, which has surprised Starlight, who was waiting for some kind of appreciation.

'So, what's your name?' Starlight asked carefully.

'Pepper Heart.' the filly answered, looking away.

'So, who are those bullies? What did they want from you?' Starlight asked, looking at filly's torn ear and shambled tail.
'Did they... do that to you?' she pointed at Pepper's tail.

'What's y-your deal?' the filly asked, looking down and gritting her teeth. 'Who asked you to interfere anyway? I can take care of myself.'

'But...' Starlight has stumbled. The filly acted outside of Starlight's understanding of basic conventions. Starlight has tried to come up with words, anything, really, but discovered herself at loss. "How would... Twilight... react..." she thought, understanding the irony of that way of thinking.

While Starlight stood there, dazed, not knowing how to react, the filly has stood up, picked her saddlebag and quietly went away.

'Hey! A simple 'thank you' woulda've been enough!' Starlight shouted. The filly has ignored her and went away in the direction of the gates to the school ground. 

'What is your deal...' Starlight mumbled, following the filly with her eyes.


***


The bell has rung ironically at the exact moment when Starlight has finally found Twilight's lecture hall. The colts and fillies have calmly proceeded out of the hall, greeting Starlight as if they always knew her. Twilight has walked out last.

'Oh, that was so much fun!' she said, beaming. 'We've talked about friendship and friendship based magic! Those little colts and fillies are so enthusiastic about everything! Just like I was!.. Where have you been exactly?'

'Yeah.' Starlight said absent-mindedly. 'Say, Twilight, is the pony named Pepper Heart in this class?'

'Pepper Heart? I believe so. I think I've seen that name in the papers. Why?' Twilight has finally took notice of Starlight's grim expression. 'Did something happen?'

'That is exactly what I want to hear.' 

Both mares has jumped at the sudden voice and turned around. There stood an olden pony, gray in coat and black in mane. He was dressed in the black robe which had a  teacher insignia on it.

'P-professor Ash Cauldron?' asked Twilight, stumbling. Her eyes wide with surprise. 'It's been a l-long time, wasn't it? It's nice to see you!'
Twilight's expression has betrayed her words though, being that of fear and a badly-masked resentment.
'It is nice to see you well, Twilight Sparkle' said the stallion with a cold voice. 'Good to see that you have actually made something of yourself and was not a waste of teaching.' 

Cauldron have nodded on Twilight's wings. His gaze has moved to Starlight, on whom he looked with consent.

'Y-yeah! I am the princess of fri-uh, magic now! I am here to-'

'You are replacing professor Cosmos.' interrupted Cauldron. 'But I'm not here to talk about you.'

He raised his hoof and pointed it at Starlight.

'You. Who do you think you are?' Starlight has winced under Cauldron's cold eyes. She begun to understand his gripes pretty well.
'What do you mean?' asked Twilight, looking at Starlight nervously.

'Your, uh, student here,' said Cauldron accusingly 'has used an unsanctioned spell on one of our students.'

'You did WHAT?' said Twilight, aghast.

"That's right. They did tell on me." thought Starlight calmly.

'He deserved it' she said sternly, trying to look Cauldron in the eyes, but flinching back from their coldness. 'He and his gang were bullying a little filly.'

'Deserve it or not it is not for you to decide.' said Cauldron, staring Starlight down. 'The students will be punished for disturbing the peace and being absent on the lessons. But from what they have told me, that 'little filly' you were so rigorously  protecting have insinuated that off-class meeting herself. She will also be punished for leaving the school's grounds in the middle of the day. But we are not talking about her right now.'

Cauldron have made a few steps toward Starlight and stared her right in the eyes, making her to crouch down and move away.
'You are an outsider. An aberration of the school system. Due to Twilight Sparkle's request we have agreed to tolerate you until the moment you'll disturb the school's order. But it seems that Twilight Sparkle was mistaken about you.' 

He glanced at Twilight accusingly. She has lowered her head.

'You are now thereby banned from the school grounds for using an animal transfiguration spell on a student.' Cauldron said coldly. 'Your presence is no longer required, nor desired. See yourself out.'

'Fine. I've had enough of this stupid place anyway.' Starlight has snapped. 'See you back in Ponyville, Twilight.'
She has turned around and went down the hall, boiling inside. 

'Starlight! Wait!' Twilight called, but Starlight ignored her.

Twilight has reached her on the stairs, huffing.

'Starlight, what was your thinking?' she asked in a concerned voice.

'I couldn't stay and watch the filly being bullied' said Starlight angrily.

'But transfiguration! It's so hard to reverse!'

'It will wear off after a few hours' said Starlight sheepishly. 'That scamp deserve some exercise. Twilight, he and his gang has ganged on that filly. And they may be responsible for some really bad pranks or whatnot.'

'But Starlight... Couldn't you talk it trough?' Twilight has moved in front of Starlight, blocking her progression.

'Talking is your expertise, Twilight' Starlight has smiled sadly. 'When have I resolved any conflict by talking things through?'
'But what about that time you've talked down those bullies when you... uh... the past...' Twilight has stumbled, looking for words. Starlight has smirked.

'It was different. They were different. That colt was a thousand times more awful that those bullies.' Merrylight's words have re-surfaced in Starlight's memory. "No place for a freak like you..."

Starlight has suddenly come to a realization. She looked straight at Twilight's concerned face.

'Twilight, I think that filly, Pepper Heart, needs your help. She has a real friendship problem it seems. Exactly your caliber.'

'I'll see what I can do' Twilight smiled. 'But please don't return to Ponyville yet! I'm sure I can talk this through with the school board and they will un-ban you! There is so much more things I wanted to show you!'

After a brief pause, Starlight has shrugged and nodded. Her wish to go back to Ponyville has melted on its own anyway. She wanted to see this through.