Poor Reflections

TWILIGHT

Twilight stood at the front of the class. The homeroom teacher, Mrs. O'Brien, stood next to her as they watched students trickle into the room.

Discord said I'd be able to recognize my friends when I saw them, but I don't see anybody yet... He had warned her that humans here had a limited palette of hues when it came to skin and hair color, which worried her – none of her friends' coat colors really fell in that band, so she'd need to–

Wait. At that moment, a radiant young woman with heavily curled rich indigo hair walked through the door wearing a low-cut white blouse and an indigo skirt. Around her neck was a silver chain, from which hung a trio of sapphires.

Twilight smiled to herself. That's one down, I think.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Mrs. O'Brien. "So, Miss Singh, would you like me to introduce you to the class, or would you rather introduce yourself?"

How Twilight would introduce herself to her classmates – and by extension, her friends' duplicates – had been weighing on her mind. She wasn't certain she'd be able to maintain her cover, regardless of Discord's insistence to the contrary. "Well, it might be best if you introduce me first, and I can take it from there."

"Okay, that sounds good. Those are lovely contacts, by the way."

Twilight blinked. "I'm sorry?"

Mrs. O'Brien blinked back at her. "Your eyes. That's a lovely shade of lavender."

"Oh, right." She'd heard about contacts the last time she'd visited Canterlot High – an impressive, if high maintenance, alternative to glasses. "They aren't contacts, that's actually my real eye color."

"You're kidding." Mrs. O'brien leaned closer to take a better look.

"It's true, see?" Twilight looked left, right, up and down. As she did so, a thought struck her – a story she'd been told by her mother about how she'd gotten her name. She grinned and said, "That's actually why everyone calls me 'Twilight' back home, because of my eyes."

"Oh. Well, if that's how you want to introduce yourself, that’s fine by me.” She straightened. “Once we've taken care of introductions, I'll take roll so you can start to learn everyone’s names before I throw you to the wolves." She chuckled to herself, but stopped when she saw the horrified look on Twilight's face. "That's just an expression, dear."

"Oh, haha, of course." Note to self – this place has a weird sense of humor.

The bell rang, and Mrs. O'brien checked her watch. "That's the five-minute bell. The rest of class should be arriving soon."

Twilight kept her eyes locked on the door, examining each student as they came in. She was reasonably certain that she saw analogues for Pinkie Pie (while oddly dressed, her wild pink hair and wide blue eyes were dead giveaways), Fluttershy (who looked exhausted, though tall and graceful) and Applejack (who wore a red plaid button-down shirt and jeans, though surprisingly was without her trademark hat). Rainbow Dash, however, was conspicuously absent.

The bell rang again, and Mrs. O'Brien walked over to shut the door to the classroom. As she tried to shut it, though, a yellow canvas bag slid against the door frame with a thud, propping the door open. The teacher looked down at the bag with a frown and reached down to grab it when a very familiar raspy voice shouted from the hallway, "I'm here!"

And that makes five, Twilight thought with a smile as a sweaty, rainbow-haired teenager appeared in the doorway with a laugh. "Hah, I'm here." She appeared to be gasping for breath. "I made it."

"You're late, Miss Dilis."

"Yeah," she gasped, "but only if the door's closed, right?"

Mr's O'Brien glared at her, then waved her inside. "Don't let it happen again."

"Ha, I won't." She collapsed into a chair at one of the tables in the back of the room.

"Now then, class, before I take attendance, I'd like to introduce you to our new foreign exchange student, Talia Singh." She gestured at Twilight as all attention became focused on her.

She smiled and waved, an old hand at addressing a crowd of strangers. "Hello, everyone. Please, call me Twilight..."

Mrs. O'Brien finished taking attendance, then said, "Alright, Tal– Twilight, if you'd like to take a seat somewhere, I'll start distributing locks for your lockers." The class began to chatter among themselves as Twilight waded into their midst.

The list of names Discord had given her had confirmed her suspicions about her friends’ identities, so she headed to the largest cluster of them. She took her seat next to Rachel at her table in the back, behind Allison and Rebecca.

Rachel gave her an appraising look as she sat down. "Are your eyes really that color?"

"Ha, I have a feeling I'll be answering that question a lot today, but yes! Same color I was born with."

"Nice. I got stuck with these baby blues." Her eyes were indeed sky blue, the same color as Rainbow Dash’s coat back home, which Twilight thought was passing strange; all the rest of her friends still had the same eye color. Magenta eyes must not exist here, either.

"They're still very pretty."

"Oh, uh, thanks. Say, you're not, uh..." Rachel gave her another appraising look as she trailed off. "Nah, never mind."

"What?"

"Nah, silly question. Don't worry about it."

Twilight considered pressing her further, but was distracted by Rebecca's audible sniff. "Allison, dear?"

"Hmm?" Allison was leaning back in her chair, hands folded behind her head, resting her eyes.

"Did you, by chance, forget to take a shower today?"

Allison cracked open an eye. "Why?"

"You're just a bit... ripe, this morning."

Allison eye shut again. "And a very merry 'fuck you' to you too, Rebecca."

Rebecca sniffed again, eyes never leaving her phone. "Ah, yes, silly me – I forgot that basic civility is frowned upon around here."

Oh dear. Twilight opened her mouth to interject, but Rachel held out a hand to stop her. "Don't, it's not worth it. They'll snipe at each other all morning if you try to stop them."

Rebecca raised an eyebrow. "Allison isn't the only one who could use a bath, dear."

"Hey, at least I showered this morning. It's just a long way here on a skateboard, is all."

"You could ride the bus," Allison said as she shifted into a more comfortable slouch in her chair.

"Pff, lame–"

"So, Rachel," Twilight interrupted, desperate to try to shift the conversation in a more positive direction, "you're clearly an athlete; what sports teams do you play for here?"

Allison and Rebecca snorted in unison. Rachel ignored them. "I can see why you'd think that," she replied, a wry grin on her face as she flexed her well-toned arms, "but I'm not really a 'team player' kind of girl."

Twilight was stunned. "Wait, really? Why not?"

“I’ve just always done best on my own. Other people hold me back, and I don't like getting yelled at for pointing it out. Besides, I save all my energy for the ring.”

“What–” That’s as far as Twilight got before Allison groaned and got to her feet.

Rachel frowned at her. “Where are you going?”

“Someplace quieter.” Allison moved to a table at the far end of the room and propped her boots on the table, looking irritated. Twilight couldn’t help but notice Rachel’s gaze following her across the room.

Shortly, Rachel returned her attention to Twilight. “Anyways, I save all of my energy for MMA fighting. That’s the only sport I care about.”

‘Fighting’? Before Twilight could ask, there was another scoff from Rebecca. “I would hardly call two brutes trying their very best to beat the stuffing out of each other a ‘sport’, Miss Dilis.”

Rachel shot her a glare. “Who the fuck asked you?”

“Rachel Dilis!” Rachel whirled around in surprise to see Mrs. O’Brien looming over her, a handful of locks in her hands. “Utter that language in my classroom again and you will spend a week in detention! Is that clear?”

Twilight quietly shied away from teacher and student as they glared at each other. “Crystal,” Rachel said through gritted teeth. “Can I have my lock? I was just leaving.” Rachel stood, accepted her lock, and left the room without another word.

Mrs. O’Brien sighed and handed a lock to Rebecca and Twilight, then moved on down the row. Once she had passed, Twilight moved forward and sat next to Rebecca, who had continued tapping away at her phone through the entire exchange. “That wasn’t very nice, baiting her like that.”

“I didn’t do it to be nice, dear,” Rebecca droned, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. She did nothing else to acknowledge Twilight's presence.

“Hey,” Twilight objected, “if that’s how you treat people, you’re going to end up without any friends.”

“I don’t need any friends in my line of work, Twilight, just happy customers. I manage that easily enough.”

Twilight was taken aback – even at their worst back at Canterlot High, Twilight’s friends had managed to form or find a place in smaller cliques. This was a whole other level of… wrong. “Surely you must have some friends?”

This finally provoked a response, and Rebecca set down her phone as she turned to regard her, her face hovering somewhere between patronizing and pity. “Look around you, Twilight. This is our senior year of high school. At the end of the year, they will hand us a scrap of paper that says we meet the barest minimum standard for being a decent human being. Aside from that, absolutely nothing that happens within these halls has any meaning whatsoever to our future lives, least of all interpersonal relationships.”

She must have misread the look of confusion on Twilight’s face, as she took a deep breath before she continued. “I’m sorry, you’re a foreign exchange student, so let me break this down into simpler language: I am not a very good friend. I never have been. I’m just very good at acting as though I am. And after a while, I started to wonder why I bothered to maintain the pretense.” She returned her attention to her phone. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a business to manage.”

Clearly dismissed, Twilight numbly stood and walked away. She debated trying again with Allison, who clearly didn’t want to be bothered as she listed back in her chair, the perfect image of lackadaisical apathy.

A small whimper to her left caught her attention. She turned to see the quiet girl, Felicity, head rested on her folded arms – she appeared to be asleep. A deep grimace twitched across her face as she whimpered again. Twilight had seen similar expressions on Spike’s face when he was having a bad dream, so she sat down quietly next to her and tried to shake her gently awake. “Hey–”

“Eep!” Felicity jerked up with a start, eyes wild. She recoiled from Twilight when she saw her, and pointedly shut her eyes as she turned away, apologies bubbling out of her. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, I– I guess I must have drifted off, sorry.”

“Hey now, it’s okay,” Twilight kept her voice low as she tried to reach out to reassure her, but Felicity scooted even further out of reach. She turned her shoulder away from her as her black hair covered what little of her face Twilight may have otherwise been able to see.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, “I– I haven’t been sleeping all that well. I’m a little twitchy, I guess.”

I'd hate to see how bad it can get if this is ‘a little twitchy’. “No worries. I just thought you might have appreciated waking up – it didn’t look like you were having a very good dream.”

Felicity shuddered. “No, it wasn’t a good dream.” A long pause. “Um, th-thank you.”

“My pleasure.” Twilight sat for a moment, unsure of how to proceed. She decided to be proactive. “Hey, do you know of any good places for coffee around here? I’m pretty new in town.”

“Coffee?” Felicity turned back towards Twilight – she didn’t actually face her, but it was progress. “Not really, no, I’m sorry.”

Twilight slumped in her chair, half disappointed at being stymied again, half terrified at the thought that this might be a world without coffee. Could such a hellish place truly exist?

“Not nearby, anyways. There’s a lovely little coffee house downtown that I go to from time to time – The Crescent Moon. I go there for their tea, but I’ve heard good things about their coffee as well.”

Thank Celestia. “That sounds good to me!” Twilight decided to press her advantage. “Would you like to join me there sometime? I’d love to have someone show me around the city a bit.”

“Oh, um, well, I’ve got to work this afternoon – and every afternoon this week.” There was another long pause, but then she surprised Twilight by actually turning and shifting her hair back behind her ear as she looked at her for the first time. “I don’t have anything going on Saturday night, though. Would you like a ride there?”

“Yes, please, thank you so much!” Outwardly, Twilight tried to maintain a chipper smile, but inwardly she was panicking. I can’t wait almost an entire week!

Mrs O’Brien appeared and handed Felicity a lock, and Felicity stood to stow her things. “Great! We can make plans later this week. It’s good to meet you, Twilight.”

“Likewise, Felicity.” She watched her leave the room, then scanned the room for Penny. She didn’t see her, so she headed out into the hall with the rest of the class. The hallway echoed with a dull roar of chattering voices, squeaking hinges, and slamming metal doors. It reminded her a bit of Canterlot High, though the hallways here were more crowded.

She spotted Penny as she walked in a wide loop around Allison to get to her locker. That’s odd, she thought as she walked up to introduce herself.

Penny beat her to the punch as she whirled on her with a surprised smile. “Oh, hey! You’re the new girl – Talia, right? I’m Penny!” She reached out a hand for a handshake, which Twilight gratefully accepted. Finally, one of them acts the way they should.

“Hello, Penny. Please, call me Twilight. It’s nice to meet you.” She offered her a warm smile.

Penny smiled back. “I love meeting new people! They haven’t had a chance to, um…” Penny’s smile faltered, and they continued shaking hands as an uncomfortable silence stretched between them. Twilight’s knuckles had started to ache by the time Penny shook her head, as though trying to clear it. “Never mind all that now, hahaha!” Her nervous laugh set Twilight on her back foot, and she removed her hand from Penny’s grip. Penny, as if on instinct, reached out to grab it again, and Twilight took another step back out of her reach.

Penny’s eyes widened as Twilight recoiled, and she gathered her arms back in front of herself, almost in a defensive pose. “Ohmigosh, I’m sorry! I tend to come on a little strong to new people, since I…” She stopped mid-sentence again, and seemed horrified by what she had been about to say. A rapid series of expressions flashed across Penny’s face, too fast for Twilight to read them all.

Suddenly Penny’s eyes began to dart all over Twilight, scrutinizing her in detail. Twilight took a third step away from her, uncomfortable with the penetrating nature of Penny’s stare. “Uh, Penny? Are you okay?”

Penny’s eyes locked onto Twilight’s for the briefest of moments before she slapped her hands over them. “I’m really, really sorry, Twilight. Can we try this again in like, an hour from now? I have to, um,” she shook her head a final time, “go.” Her hands flashed open as her face twisted into a horrible facsimile of a cheerful grin. “Bye!” In a blink, she merged into the crowd of students surrounding them and was gone.

That was… unpleasant. The encounter with Penny left Twilight shaken. She slowly shook her head as she sighed. I’ve certainly got my work cut out for me.