Twilight Sparkle was not having a good morning.
And she was also absolutely livid.
There was no sound at all within the principal’s office of the School of Friendship except for the clock on the wall, ticking and tocking from the background. Twilight Sparkle was sitting on her desk with a scowl on her face, glaring at the two ponies who were sitting on their chairs across from her as if they did something to offend her. Those two ponies in particular are Twilight’s friends, Applejack and Rainbow Dash. One had a look of nervousness on her face, looking anywhere in the room other than Twilight, while the other just sat there with a mixture of irritation and grogginess on her face.
A few minutes ago, Applejack was about to start her morning class session as always and was looking forward to teach her students about doing an honest work, whether out on the field or anything they do in life. But before she could set hoof to her classroom, she was prevented by Twilight who had an anger expression on her face and said three short words to her in a low growling tone before disappearing with her teleportation spell.
“My office. NOW!”
In Rainbow Dash’s case, she didn’t have classes to teach until later today. So she was taking her long much-needed nap on one of her clouds and drifted into dreamland. Unfortunately for her, she was abruptly woken up by a loud obnoxious sound from a blow horn, which was used by Twilight herself. Before Rainbow could retort, Twilight spoke three short words, leaving Rainbow no room to argue before she vanished with her magic.
“My office. NOW!”
So both mares arrived to Twilight’s office at the same time. The moment when their eyes met before entering the room, that’s when they both knew why Twilight summoned the two of them together.
And judging from the way Twilight called them in, it is not going to be pretty.
Ever since they both walked in and took their seats, no pony said a word, too nervous (too tired in Rainbow’s case) to speak up as Twilight continued to stare at them like a disapproving parent. The more time has passed, the more uncomfortable/annoyed the two ponies felt. After about five painful minutes of silence, Twilight finally spoke in her authoritative tone.
“SO.” She began loudly, nearly startling the other two ponies in the room. “I bet you two were wondering why I called both of you here early this morning.”
“I definitely wanted to know why,” Rainbow Dash spoke up. “You should’ve known that I usually preferred to sleep in until noon on this day of the week.”
“More like everyday!” Applejack muttered, causing the pegasus to turn and glare at her.
“Ex-CUSE-me!?” Rainbow retorted.
Applejack narrowed her eyes. “You heard me Rainbow Dash! You slept more hours than some grizzly bear during hibernating season! Ah don’t recall you ever up and about before noon in your life!”
Rainbow nearly pressed her muzzle against Applejack’s with an angry frown. “Okay one: not every pony wakes up at a crack of dawn like you! That’s like, beyond early! And two: I don’t always slept in! In some days I had to wake up early for the Wonderbolts you know!”
Applejack scoffed. “Yeah, on some days! What about the rest of ‘em? Did ya spend the rest of the week sittin’ on your flank all day on one of yer clouds or one of mah trees like a lazy pony?”
“LAZY!? Why you—”
“GIRLS!”
Rainbow Dash and Applejack ceased their argument and turned back to Twilight, who was now rubbing both sides of her head with an exasperating sigh.
“UGH! We didn’t even get to the main issue of our discussion yet and I’m already getting a headache!”
“Um… what is the main issue Twi?” Applejack asked, despite knowing what the topic is about.
Twilight let out a long heavily sigh before answering her friend with her serious expression. “The main issue… was about your yesterday’s poor field trip performance!”
Applejack grimaced. “W-what! What do you mean?”
Twilight huffed. “I mean the way you handled teaching our students about teamwork. Instead of teaching them about teamwork, you were busy competing against Rainbow Dash over a silly title of being the ‘Teacher of the Month’! That’s not how the ‘Teacher of the Month’ should act!”
“HA! In your face Applejack!” Rainbow crowed at she pointed her hoof towards Applejack’s face, much to the farmer pony’s annoyance. “That means the next ‘Teacher of the Month’ is gonna be—”
“You’re also getting the blame too Rainbow Dash!”
“WHAT!?” Rainbow screeched indignantly.
Twilight’s face remained impassive at first, but then her face slowly turned to anger as she continued to berate them. “Because both of your over-competitiveness and selfishness, you two nearly put our students in danger! The shed you built nearly collapsed on our students, you almost canoed to a river full of Bite-acuda fish, one student nearly drowned, got lost during your nature walk, and building two separate unstable bridges over the ravine… which was the same river... full of BITE-ACUDA FISH!”
She then slammed her desk hard on her desk, making her two friends jumped slightly from their seats and her knick-knacks bounced off of her desk somewhat.
“What. Were. You. Two. THINKING!?”
Both Rainbow and Applejack winced from Twilight’s wrath. Neither pony uttered a word despite Twilight giving them her impatient eyes as if to say, “I’m waiting”. Finally, after for what it seemed like minutes, only Applejack responded.
“Okay look Twi.” Applejack said smoothly, trying to diffuse the situation. “Ah know this may sound bad and we admit that we had… gotten carried away with our competitiveness a little—”
“A little!?” Twilight growled.
“Okay, okay. A LOT.” Applejack corrected quickly. “But after the river incident, we did not compete anymore and we tried to agree with each other’s ideas during our nature hike. Isn’t that right Rainbow Dash?”
Rainbow Dash quickly got the message from Applejack’s pointed look and answered with her huge nervous grin on her face.
“Oh… um… yeah! Totally! Instead of arguing which of our ideas is the best, we… uh… listened to each other and I… considered using Applejack’s ideas instead of my own… even though my idea was the best!”
As Applejack mentally facehoofed for Dash’s last minute self-inflating ego, Twilight rolled her eyes.
“Well apparently, that didn’t do well with you both either. From what I was told, you two still argued and competed against each other… but by agreeing with each other of which idea is the best. ...I’m still trying to wrap my head around that!”
Having enough of Twilight’s berating, Rainbow slammed on Twilight’s Desk and leaned over to her with narrowed eyes.
“Okay, you seemed to know exactly what we were doing despite not being there! Who did you send to spy on us?”
Just then, the office door opened and Spike, Twilight’s number one assisting dragon and younger brother figure, walked in with piles of papers on his arms.
“Here are some more reports about Rainbow’s and Applejack’s field trip perform—” He immediately stopped in his tracks when he spotted the two mares in question. “Oh… hi girls,” he said awkwardly.
“Spike!?” Applejack exclaimed while Rainbow snorted at the dragon in annoyance.
“Should’ve known,” she muttered.
“I figured that something was up when you both volunteered to take our students to a field trip immediately after Fluttershy’s won the ‘Teacher of the Month’ award, so I had Spike here to follow you two and report everything back to me about what you two were doing during the trip… even after I gave you two another chance. And from what he reported to me… concerns me.”
“You… you don’t trust us?” asked Applejack, hurt that her friend would send someone to spy of them without their knowing.
Twilight sighed. “It’s not that I don’t trust you girls. It was only a precaution in case if there was any trouble during your field trip. Think of him as your ‘supervisor’.”
Spike raised his chest up with pride, happy that he can be useful for this school other than carrying books around for a change.
“Anyway, it was a good thing that Yona was saved by her friends and your students saved you two from the ravine before we could take action.”
Twilight turned to Spike with her sweet smile. “Spike, if you don’t mind, please leave the reports here and you can enjoy the rest of the day. You earned it!”
Spike saluted after pulling down the papers. “Thanks Twilight!” Spike then turned to the two ponies with his deadpanned look. “Next time, I suggest one of you to bring a map whenever you go on another nature walk. In fact, try not to rush a shed job or canoeing to the area where the pony eating fish took place without endangering the kids.”
As Spike made his way to the door, Rainbow growled under her breath.
“Nark.”
Spike turned towards Rainbow, somehow heard Rainbow’s insult, with narrowed eyes as he held the doorknob.
“Well at least I’m not a selfish idiot who cared more about winning some stupid title and award instead of teaching the young students and cared for their safety!”
And with that, Spike stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him.
Before Rainbow could curse him out and Applejack could process Spike’s harsh words, Twilight loudly cleared her throat to get their attention again.
“Anyway, it has come to my attention that you two cared so much about ‘Teacher of the Month’ award, you forgot about the most important thing.” She paused for an effect for a minute, before answering, “Your students!”
Applejack sighed as she took of her Stetson hat and placed it over her chest. “Listen Sugarcube, we’re really sorry. We both wanted to be the next ‘Teacher of the Month’ instead of Fluttershy for once.”
Rainbow Dash nodded. “Yeah. I mean, was it wrong of us of wanting that title so bad and getting our hooves on that awesome trophy?”
“Oh no, it’s not wrong at all… if you didn’t care about the reward to begin with!” Twilight retorted. “Being the ‘Teacher of the Month’ is not about the trophy, getting a picture on the wall, or being the best teacher over the other. It’s about how you teach the students, how much you cared for the students to learn and succeed, how you related to them, how you made learning fun, how much you impacted their lives based on your teachings and your actions, of how much they really admired you and look up to you, liking and appreciate you for being their teacher! The reason Fluttershy won so many times is because she does those things and cared for her students. Most importantly, she doesn’t care about winning ‘Teacher of the Month’ award! Quite frankly, she wanted somepony else to win because she felt one of you girls are better teachers than her. But from what I heard and seen yesterday… I felt that Fluttershy is more ‘Teacher of the Month’—heck, ‘Teacher of the Year’ material than any of you two could ever be!”
Both Applejack and Rainbow Dash look down in shame after realizing that they really had lost sight of the main idea of ‘Teacher of the Month,’ let alone the whole point of teaching in general. Even though it hurts to hear from Twilight that Fluttershy being more ‘Teacher of the Month material then themselves, they knew that she was right.
After most of her anger had vanished, Twilight closed her eyes and sighed through her nose. “But… I supposed I’m at fault too for coming up with the award in the first place, which encouraged you guys in the wrong way. I may have to revise the ‘Teacher of the Month’ ceremony so nothing like this happens again… but I digress.” She put on her serious face again. “In light of your actions from… yesterday’s performance, I’m afraid I had no choice… but to take action.”
Both Applejack and Rainbow Dash eyes widened as big as dinner plates.
“Are ya… gonna fire us?” Applejack asked with fear and devastation in her eyes.
Twilight sighed again. “No… I will not come to that. You two are my very best friends. Even if we weren’t, you two are still great teachers of our school. And despite that wasn’t even any of you two’s intention, you still taught your students about teamwork by… doing the opposite of teamwork. So there’s that.”
Both Applejack and Rainbow Dash sighed in relief, glad that they won’t lose their jobs as teachers.
“However,” Twilight stated, causing the two ponies to tense up again. “I can’t ignore something as serious as this, especially for our student’s safety. I’m afraid I’ll have to suspend you two from teaching for three weeks.”
Applejack dropped her jaw in shock while Rainbow Dash slammed her hooves on Twilight’s desk in anger.
“THREE WEEKS!” Rainbow exploded. “You’ve gotta be kidding me! There’s no way you’re making us not teach for three whole weeks!”
“Do you want to make it four weeks Rainbow Dash?” Twilight challenged.
Rainbow grumbled, keeping herself from screaming and looked away. When she was sure there would be no other outbursts, Twilight continued.
“And during those three weeks, you both will come to school early in the morning at seven…” Rainbow let out a loud annoyed groan but Twilight ignored her. “To watch all the film programs on how to behave and act towards our students and every safety precautions, study and taking tests about being a proper teacher and you will both each write ‘I will not make a pointless competition against another teacher at the expense of my students’ on a chalkboard a thousand times a day!”
Rainbow grinned smugly and opened her mouth to speak.
“Without using your speed ability!” Twilight added.
Rainbow grumbled again and crossed her hooves.
Twilight sighed again after seeing upset and displeased faces of her friends. “Look girls… I hate to do this to you two, I really do. But teaching and the well-being of our students are very important to us and shouldn’t take lightly. You two really need to learn not to let pride get in the way and put them first over your desires to be the best. And you should both be lucky that this is a lighter punishment. If something like this ever happens again and Celestria forbid if anything worse happens to any of our students, I would be force to… permanently relieved you two from your duties as teachers from our school. Do you understand?”
Despite not happy with the arrangement, both Applejack and Rainbow Dash let out a long sigh and nodded solemnly.
“Yes Twi… we understand,” Applejack said quietly while Rainbow reluctantly mumbled in agreement.
Twilight nodded. “Good. Now… you two are excused from school for the rest of the day. I already hired substitutes to take over your classes for the time being. Until then, report to school in this office early Monday morning next week to begin to take your suspension classes of how to be better professors. Dismissed.”
As the both got up from their seats, Applejack exited the office with her head low while Rainbow Dash followed behind her, muttered to herself in frustration the whole way.
Twilight sighed heavily once they both left the office. She hated that she had to lay her hoof down to her friends like that, but it needed to be done. While Twilight figured that these two will never stop competing against with each other, they both need to learn that taking students out on a field trips is no place to compete against each other when students lives are at stake. Twilight could only hope that the classes she has for them will finally set them straight, even if she’ll end up getting an even worse headache than the one she got today.
Suddenly, her office door opened and Rainbow Dash stuck her head into the room.
“So… does this mean that neither of us gets the ‘Teacher of the Month’ award next month?”
Seconds later, Rainbow yelped and then quickly shut the door behind her right before the ‘Teacher of the Month’ trophy could hit her, which was thrown by an irritated Princess of Friendship.
Author's Note
I really don't like this episode to the point that I was pretty much facepalming the whole way due to how Applejack and Rainbow Dashing were acting even at the end of the episode.
So I created this fanfic as a result.
All feedback is welcome, but please be polite! 
