The next day, I woke up earlier. I made myself breakfast and ate it. Then I took a shower to wash the dizziness away. Afterward I dressed up and got ready to head out. I took my motorcycle with me since it was quite a distance from my house to the Cars Graveyard. The weather was great and I had a blast riding there.

I reached there at just about the time Flaming Star and Steely Armor got there. Steely Armor was pushing his whiteboard forward, and Flaming Star was making sure the board doesn’t hit any obstacle in the way. It was then that he saw me.

“Oh, hi!”

“Hi. What are you two doing?” I was curious to know.

“Hello Sunset, we are preparing the situation for your presentation.” Steely Armor said as he was pushing the board forward. I followed them and once they reached the middle of the graveyard they stopped. I reckoned they were going to set up.

“OK, so what now?” I asked.

“It’s simple,” Steely Armor said, “we just adjust this projector and it will display your Slideshow with no problem.”

“But don’t you think right now it’s a little too bright for anyone to see it?”

“No,” he shook his head, “ I mean, yes but we’ll be in the shadow of that pile of cars and that will make it dark enough for anyone to see it properly.”

He was actually right. I hadn’t noticed the giant pile of cars that was near us while I was coming in. After that, he went to search around for something and left me and Flaming Star alone.

“So what do you have in mind?” he asked.

“About the project? Well, I went pretty straight-forward with it, but I prepared some notes in case you weren’t sure what to say.” I handed over the notes I wrote to him. He read them quite fast.

“Don’t you think you’re being a little bittle too peaky with this?”

“What do you mean peaky?”

“What do I mean?” He showed me my notes. “You even said where I should stop, where the tune should change, and the way I should speak! You’ve read this before?”

“We don’t have much time and I don’t want to mess up this project, so just stick with it and we’ll be fine.”

“I think if we stick with this we’ll mess up the project!”

“Do you have a better idea? We are running out of time!” It was then that he put his hands on my shoulders.

“Look, I know you’re panicking about getting this whole project thingy done and giving a decent presentation, but that ain’t me. If I wanna do something I make sure it’s done super mega great!” He then released my shoulders. “Now, forget about all this jazz!” He then set my notes on fire with the tip of his finger. “We’re gonna tell a bunch of students what we just learned and discovered two days ago and it will be fine, OK?”

Even all of that couldn’t change my mind. “Sorry, but I think I’ll stick with my own style.”

Steely Armor came back momentarily, he was pushing a wrecked car, it didn’t have any doors and I don’t think it even had sits. Surprisingly though, the wheels were still attached.

“Can you give me a hand here?” he said.

“I got you buddy,” Flaming Star said, and helped him to push the car to where he wanted, which was a couple of meters away from the board. He set up the projector on the front of the car, then took out his phone and connected it to the projector.

“This should do it! I guess you know the rest.”

“Thanks man, you helped us a lot today.” Flaming Star Said.

“Don’t mention it. Now when you’re done, bring that board to my garage, OK?”

“I got it, don’t worry.”

Steely Armor left afterwards. We still had time before the girls show up so I thought to myself, “Let’s confront Flaming Star that we simply don’t have enough time to make this perfect; we just need to be done with this.”

I walked up to Flaming Star just after Steely Armor disappeared, “OK, look, I don’t want there to be a disagreement between us on how we want to present this project, so let’s just sort this out. I say we better stick with this and do a decent presentation and be done with this, since we simply don’t have enough time to make sure everyone is listening to us.”

“That is, if there is someone listening to us!”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve heard enough speeches about this kind of project to know which will put me to sleep and which won’t.”

“So you’re saying my way will make students fall sleep?”

“Absolikely!”

“And what do you suggest?”

“To forget about those dialogues you prepared and actually try to teach others what we just found out!”

“Oh, and you think that is how we should go with it?”

“At least it’s way better than memorizing a boring script and reciting it like a robot in front of everyone!”

It was then that we both realized that the girls were there. They noticed us and I reckoned they had heard Flaming Star shout.

“Is everything alright, darling?” Rarity said. The girls were coming towards us. We both calmed down and once they reached us I answered.

“Yes, yes, it’s fine…we were just, uh, discussing about the parts that we wanted to narrate.”

Rainbow Dash gave me a serious look. “Riiiiiight!”

They looked puzzled. I told them to gather around the car that Steely Armor placed the projector on. Flaming Star turned the projector on. He came to the board afterwards. After a few seconds, we got the display on the board and I started talking. I tried to focus and not forget my lines.

“Music had passed through many stages to become what know today, but its first stage was discovered by archeologist. When they found what that looked like a flute among their researches.” It was Flame’s turn to start talking but he obviously didn’t know it. I wanted to inform him somehow but then he started to talk.

“They found out that they found was truly an instrument of some sort. And it sure belonged to our ancestors. Though they couldn’t find the pieces which they used to play with it, due to the fact that it was destroyed after years.” He was saying things out of track. So I tried to fix everything.

“BUT!” I caught the attention, “It is stated that this type of flute was used for centuries and this was the first stage of music.” Just when I thought things were back on track, he started speaking again. He made me regret wishing that he would start talking.

“Later on, choral singing became an interesting habit of many beliefs which made its way to different ceremonies. It was popular with almost everyone.” He was trying to gather the attention. “And this popularity led to more people joining the choir groups and therefore they were a lot of different sounds. It was then that the idea of high and low pitch sound came and gave music more things to praise.” He stole everything I wanted to say and stepped out of the role at the same time; this was no longer a cooperative task, it was about who gets to say everything so they could forcefully appeal their way to the other one.

“Still!” I jumped in, “even with all of that, it was not the biggest stage for music,” Flaming Star wanted to start rambling again but it looked like that he didn’t know what to say. So I took my chance and brought everything back on track.

“Centuries later, other instruments started to appear: the harp, oud, and Harpsichord. Each had their own pieces to play, and their own masters that they came to be known. The harp, with its soft and relaxing sound, was usually used for playing a lullaby. The oud was a common instrument for street performers. The harpsic-“

“Speaking of the oud, let’s talk a little about Ouden wood. There once was a lumberjack who left his home and started busking and travelling around the world, seeing the globe multiple times and spreading happiness wherever he went.”

“Ok, that’s it, I’ve had enough! Stop the slideshow!”

“Wait, what’s going on?” Twilight asked.

It was then that Rainbow Dash woke up. “Wait, uh…uh I WAS NOT SLEEPING!”

Applejack pushed the brim of her hat u with one thumb. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, I know, and I think Sunshine got the point.” Flaming Star said, he stood like he was pretty sure of himself.

“DON’T ... CALL ... ME … THAT!”

An awkward silence filled the place. I looked at him and steadied my breathing. I just lost my temper for a second.

“Um, Sunset, are you alright?” Fluttershy said as she came closer.

“I’m … yeah, I’m fine, just give us a couple of minutes, we need to sort out a few things real quick.”

“You sure do.” Rainbow Dash said.

“OK,” Twilight said, “we’ll leave you two for a while, but remember we’re just around the corner if you need us.”

They all left, which gave Flaming Star and me some space to continue our argument.

“I don’t know why you think ruining our practice run is going to help, but for the last time, we don’t have enough time to figure a way out to present this whole thing in a way that other students can learn something. We just need to hit the highlights and get this done, and we need this to be just good enough to get a decent mark out of it.” I was just shouting at that point.

He looked at me like he was disappointed. “Ok, fine. Do what you want, and let’s forget about this practice run that we wanted to do, if all you want out of this is to get a decent mark. But for a super mega high mark, we need to do more than just the bare minimum. I thought that this mark is important for you, so I decided to do my best. But as it turns out, you don’t want the do your best, you don’t want to earn a high mark. You just want to be DONE. Fine! So give me those notes tomorrow, I’ll make sure I read my parts good enough so you can get that decent mark you want, if that’s all you care about!” He started pushing the board that Steely brought out of there.

I wasn’t thinking straight at that point so I stayed silent, I tried to put my thoughts together. It was then that I realized that Twilight and the rest of the girls had come back. “Sunset, what just happened?”

“I … I … to be perfectly honest, I don’t know.”

“Well, it sure wasn’t a good think cuz Flaming Star just told us to go home and that you don’t need a practice run anymore,” Rainbow Dash said.

“He looked really angry, too!” Fluttershy added.

“Madder’n a hog in a dry mudhole,” Applejack joined in.

I tried to think of something to say but nothing came to my mind. I didn’t know if it was a problem or not. Did I create one? Or did I just solve one? I didn’t know. All I know was that I had a headache from all that arguing with Flaming Star, and that there was no point for the girls to be there.

“I think you should do what he said!”

“What?” Pinkie shouted.

“Come on, Sunset, what the hey is going on here?” Applejack asked.

“I don’t know, all I know is that there is no rehearsal of the presentation thing, so there’s no reason for you to be here.” I walked over to a cast-off fender from an old car, sat down on it, and covered my face with my hands.

“Oh, darling,” Rarity started to talk, “there might be no presentation for us to see, but there’s definitely an issue with you and Flaming Star that we must help you to work through.”

“I know you all want to help, but I’m not exactly sure what the issue is. I think I just need some alone time.”

I walked away and rode back home on my motorcycle.

Author's Note

Special thanks to my editor Daniel Drazen.

Make sure you check out other chapters too.