Queen of Hearts

For many years, it had been the same way for Thunderzolt and her close friends. There were many days, sometimes multiple days in a week, in which school wasn't even school - there were no educational purposes some days. The close-knit group of friends that surrounded Thunderzolt lived in a small town in Equestria known as Ponyville - the town never got any attention in terms of Queen Celestia and Luna or well-known ponies that traveled the country. It had been a quiet town for the first few years of Thunderzolt's life, but once she had become a teenager things started to change, significantly. The small town of Ponyville started gaining the attention of not ponies, but monsters. There were many horrific creatures all around Equestria, but some of the most horrific of all lived in the Everfree forest - a huge forest that reached a very long way from Ponyville, but Ponyville sat right on the edge of it. As you can imagine, it wasn't too rare for monsters to escape the forest and to attack Ponyville. You would think Queen Celestia or Luna would possibly have guards in Ponyville to make sure no ponies perished, but this was not the case. Perhaps Queen Celestia and Luna were incompetent, or perhaps there were even worse situations at their hooves. Regardless, Ponyville had rarely ever heard from Celestia or Luna and therefore, they were left to fend for themselves in most cases. By the time a letter could even reach Celestia without the help of a dragon or some other mythical creature, which did not reside in Ponyville, the ponies could all very well be dead anyway. Celestia should have known what was going on in Ponyville, and it was extremely likely she did. Many ponies would spend their days wondering why she never did send help, or come to help, herself. Wondering never helped the ponies of Ponyville, anyway.
For such a small, quiet town as Ponyville, it was surprising how big the main school of the small town was. Many years prior, the founders of Ponyville knew that there should be some sort of education system, and in that time, Ponyville was much poorer than it was at present. The founders had decided that they could only afford one school building. For that reason, the entire Ponyville School District was simply one school building. All 13 grades in one. There was a preschool established fairly recently - before then, preschoolers were either forced to go to Kindergarten too early or they would be forced to travel to another city to do so.
That was not this time, however. There was a preschool now, although that is the least of our worries here. The fact is that the ponies of Ponyville had each other, and only each other, to get rid of whatever monster may come.
This, of course, made it a bit difficult on school days. The teachers were constantly forced to make a difficult decision - should they continue teaching their students cursive or should they try and make sure the giant succubus that had just broken in didn't consume the young ponies?
That was a joke, of course.

Succubi don't eat their victims.

Thunderzolt was a student who was in the eighth grade. On days where there weren't demons coming to attack her and her friends, she enjoyed her days at school. When a monster attacked the school, everypony, no matter how young or how old, mattered and nopony was discredited when they had to come up with ideas in their blind panic. Because of this, a bond was almost forced to form between everypony in the school. Despite a significant number of students and teachers, many of them coming from nearby cities instead of just Ponyville, they all knew each other by name. At times like this, teachers and students weren't teachers and students. They were a sort of alliance.
That sort of forced bond was hard to get rid of, even when there was nothing eccentric about a day at school. It was hard to put aside the fact that every teacher had saved every student at least once. Everypony owed their life to everypony - it was understandable why nopony ruled over anypony in the school. Everypony had become, all of a sudden, equal.
Thunderzolt had a small group of friends other than her teachers. There was Froize, an eccentric pegasus that looked strikingly similar to her although neither were related; then Kynder, who had a pale maroon coat with long and curly purple hair with white streaks through the middle. She was quiet when you weren't well acquainted with her; and Duske Opaque Rose (Dusk Rose or Dusky for short) who had strikingly pink hair and a black coat. This particular pony wasn't often around Thunderzolt or the rest of the group, as she wasn't on the same 'team' of the grade.
Thunderzolt was a unique pony to anyone who knew her. She carried stuffed animals with her in her bag, for a variety of reasons, and she was confident in herself only publicly. When the door closed, when she was just out of eyesight to anypony else, she wasn't nearly as strong as she appeared to be. She could face demons and horrific abominations with more confidence than she could ever look in the mirror. She enjoyed making other ponies laugh and telling eccentric stories. It wasn't just Froize and Kynder and Duske that were her friends - there were also Fruit Snacks and Milkshake, and many others that she liked to laugh with. But not many of them knew her completely.
For hours at a time, after school ended, Thunderzolt sat in her room, staring at the ceiling or out the window, sometimes listening to music, but always thinking. Sometimes her thoughts were happy, but it was often that she thought about trivial things, like the universe, and her place in it. She lost control of her thoughts at this time, and even just one wrong thought could bring her to tears. She was sensitive at times like this.
Only one situation at school could bring her to such sensitivity - and that was when she was alone at school. Completely alone in the classroom or the hallway or wherever else she may be. She already had a mild fear of being alone in a room, sometimes to the point of her having panic attacks at extremely sensitive times. When she was alone, she thought, and these thoughts had a mind of their own, and it was easy when Zolt was anxious for them to take a dark turn, and for her to be upset by it. It seemed that the only obstacle in her way was herself.

On this particular occasion, Zolt was left alone in a classroom to eat lunch. She wasn't left there out of malicious intent - how was anypony else supposed to know she was afraid of being alone in a room when they didn't even know how she felt about herself? - but that didn't stop the fact that she felt extremely on edge in this situation. For that entire day, she had told her friends that she had felt a constant weight on her shoulders, a constant cold feeling like she was being watched, observed closely, even when there was nopony there. Especially when there was nopony there, such as this exact moment. The absence of even just one pony resulted in the sensation of thousands of eyes on her, and the most chilling sensation she had felt yet. Her entire core felt as if it was freezing over, and it was so painful that she lurched backward in her seat. She couldn't bring herself to eat, she could only panic. She didn't want to leave the room in search for somepony because the teacher could come back at any moment, and if they saw that she was missing it could cause chaos. So Thunderzolt sat and waited, wishing for the teacher to come back. Pleading in her own mind, wishing to whatever deity might exist with the capability, to just make the teacher come back. Now, it wasn't just her core that was freezing cold. It was spreading throughout her entire body. It had reached her hooves. She rubbed them together, trying to create some sort of friction, but it didn't work. It was useless.
She could feel the back of her eyes freezing; no tears could escape. Just before she could scream, her mouth went numb - the only sensation that existed now was freezing cold and pure, raw terror. This wasn't normal. This wasn't simply her fear. This was something else, something she didn't know, something she was unfamiliar with. Something she couldn't defeat. In one last, wasted outburst of energy, she threw her head back, and an earsplitting shriek escaped her lips. Tears managed to escape the freezing cold behind her eyes, and freely ran down her cheeks in that one last moment of tangible existence.