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“And you’re absolutely sure that you’ll be able to handle her?” Rarity asked for what must have been the fifth time now, biting her lip as she tried to think of any other pony who could foalsit Sweetie Belle. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust June, of course, but June staying here meant that she couldn’t come with Rarity to the annual Fillydelphia high-fashion exhibition.

“Absolutely positive, Miss Rarity,” June assured her. “She’s a sweet filly and it’s not like I don’t know what I’m doing. I may be a pet, but I can take care of others. I took a foalsitting course when I was younger, remember?”

“Yes, yes, I’m aware, but that was a long time ago, and Sweetie Belle can be rather… destructive,” Rarity countered.

“Really, it’s fine. I got this.” June beamed confidently at her owner, smile widening as the fashionista visibly relaxed, letting out a breath she’d been holding and standing still for the first time in the last twenty minutes or so. She’d been pacing around the room, tidying up and fretting over every possible danger that Sweetie Belle could encounter.

Rarity walked over to her marefriend and gently kissed her forehead. “I won’t be gone for long. You’re in charge until then—I know, it’s a really sudden change of position for you, but you’ll do just fine.” She smiled as June nodded at her. Finally over her worries and ready to leave, Rarity trotted over to the bottom of the boutique’s staircase and called out to her sister. “Sweetie Belle! It’s time for me to leave. Come down here for a bit so that we can go over the rules again.”

“Do you want to… play cards?” June offered with a hopeful smile, holding out the deck to the unicorn filly. The smile slid off of her face as Sweetie Belle shook her head and went back to poking the floor with her hoof. “Oh come on, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to play stupid cards,” Sweetie grumbled.

“Well you haven’t wanted to do anything else either,” June tried to point out, but her statement was rejected immediately.

“You’ve offered to play cards, war, cards, laminated paper game, cards, cards, your favourite game aka cards, and cards. I can’t tell if you’re just stupid or if you have some sort of serious card obsession. I want to do something else.”

June sighed. “Okay, fine. What do you want to do?” Reluctantly, she placed her beloved deck of cards back onto the game shelf.

Sweetie Belle instantly perked up, swiveling herself around to face the pegasus and staring curiously at her for a few seconds. “I wanna talk about the thing you said the other day about Diamond Tiara being kinda like you. A kitty. What the heck did you mean by that?”

Junie raised an eyebrow. “You want to talk about that?” she asked. Sweetie Belle hadn’t seemed that interested when she’d first brought up the idea at dinner.

“Yeah. I mean, I sort of understand the whole kitty and owner thing, but you’re nice and Diamond Tiara is a whiny, stuck-up, snot-faced—” Sweetie started, but June cut her off.

“Okay, no name-calling. I get the point. You don’t like her and she doesn’t seem like me at all, therefore there’s no way that she’d ever be submissive, right?” Sweetie Belle nodded, so June continued on. “Well, that might not entirely be true. You’ve only seen me when with Rarity, so there’s a side of me that you’ve never had the chance to see before. I’m kinda like Diamond Tiara in a way, normally.”

Sweetie Belle shuddered. “I sure hope not. She’s horrible.”

“Mhmm,” June replied. There was an awkward pause, and then she reached back over to the game shelf. “Want to play cards now?”

“Ugh, no. I’ll just go find my friends and hang with them,” Sweetie decided.

“Fine. Be back before dark.” June sighed as the filly left her all alone. Sitting in silence, she shuffled and set up the cards to sit in solitude and play a simple game or solitaire.

Sweetie Belle peeked through the bushes at the two other fillies, swallowing nervously. Normally this wouldn’t wrack her nerves like this, but normally she was staring at her friends and not the two classmates she hated the most: Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon. She only really wanted to look at the one filly, though. She had no use for Silver Spoon.

Concentrating, Sweetie Belle furrowed her brow and cast a certain spell. A rock surrounded by a pale green aura slowly lifted off of the ground and floated above the gray pony’s head. She hesitated, thinking about what she was doing, but then shrugged and released her aura, remembering that she didn’t like Silver Spoon anyway.

Silver Spoon yelped and burst into tears. “Silver? Snap out of it! What happened?” Diamond Tiara demanded, rushing over to her friend. However, as soon as she saw the tiny spot of blood on Silver Spoon’s forehead, she wrinkled her nose and stepped back. “Ew… you should go see a doctor and get that cleaned up.”

Silver Spoon nodded and picked up her glasses from the ground, crying even harder as she put them on and noticed a crack in the lense.

“Wanna be my kitty?” Sweetie Belle asked, attempting a seductive smile.