“Now, can anypony tell me why the Winter Solstice is a national holiday?” the teacher asked from the front of the room.
A large amount of hooves at Celestia’s School For Gifted Unicorns classroom 28 shot up. All of them in fact, except for a certain one belonging to a certain pink princess.

“Ms. Cadenza, if you please” Cadence was snapped out of her daze.

“I’m sorry Ms. Polish, could you restate the question please?” If there is one thing you learn in Canterlot, it’s how to put on the accent.

“I said” Began the exasperated teacher, “why is the Winter Solstice a bank holiday?”

“In order to prevent any structural damage to important buildings during the magical increases of the day” Cadance replied, the extra homework that came from being Princess Celestia’s personal student has it’s uses, apparently.

The only thing that Ms. Apple Polish hated more than being beaten by her students, was being beaten by Princess Cadence, the school misfit, again. She grabbed her chalk duster in her magical grip in preparation to throw it. Then she remembered another thing that Princess ‘I’m so good at everything’ Cadance was better than her at, catching.
“Very good Ms. Cadenza”

In her seat, Cadance smiled, happy with Polish’s reaction. Satisfied that she had pissed off the Magical Theory teacher enough, there was another thing to think about while Polish ranted.

Shining Armour.

Her nerdy crush with his nerdy glasses and cute accent.

She also didn’t mind his sister. She enjoyed the foalish ways that Twilight acted when playing patty-cake and their own game, Sunshine, Sunshine. However she could see her turning out to be more like her brother every Tuesday she looked after her. Her Smarty Pants doll goes everywhere with the unicorn. Her hunk of a brother is a mite overprotective but hey, that’s his cutie mark.

Twilight’s brother, ahh, yes, he never put down that one Star Trot novel, or any book by Epic Unsnarls, none of his nerd friends did. She once overheard him talking about a ‘Her’ in that dreamy way you hear of in romance novels, he was probably talking to Joe about Amethyst Star, again...

And in that moment she formulated a plan, she’d hoped that he would make the move if she swayed her flank a bit, but a semester of provocative dresses and suggestive language around him showed her that he didn’t know the first thing about sex or dating in general. So that means she gets to teach him, and she loved to teach.

Little did she know that not paying attention in this class would not only lower her test scores, but give her a more than a hoofful of trouble in a few years’ time as it covered something that related directly to her:

Magical influxes.

A phenomenon where the overall magic in the world skyrockets, the change is noticeable all over Equestria and beyond. Unicorns are affected the most, and earth ponies the least.

Less experienced unicorns can have some... troubles with their magic during these events and Princess Celestia had not told Cadance this yet but alicorns are much more receptive to magical influxes, so receptive that on the winter solstice each year , The princess puts a magical disruption ring around her horn and shut herself in her private chambers.

The sun princess would never remember to tell her.

But that’s another story.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*BRINGGGGG* the bell went off, interrupting Cadance’s thoughts
‘lunch’ she thought ‘excellent’ there were two great things about lunch times:
One was that she could get out of polish’s class.
And two (she had just added this one to the list) was that she could flirt with Shining Armour.

You see, the reason Cadance never made any romantic advances on him before this was simply because she had an image to maintain; the cool, hot girl image. She chose it way back 2 years ago when she started at the school, she didn’t like it at all, but she had friends to keep.

Trotting briskly into the cafeteria the pink alicorn spotted the table affectionately dubbed ‘The Smartass Table’ that always had Donut Joe, Amethyst Star, Written Script, Lyra and of course, Shining Armour sitting at it.

The reason she was trying to get there so fast was because ‘The Cool Ponies’ always went in to the cafeteria after the ‘Nerds’ had left.

The funny thing was that only the five aforementioned ponies were actually nerds by definition, all the rest of them were either from outside Canterlot and got into the school via the large amount of scholarships they give out each year, or they simply were of a lower class than the Cool Ponies.

Walking over to the table, Cadance thought of a way to approach Shining. ‘Hey dweebs’ no, that wouldn’t do, too standoffish, ‘Remember you don’t have a crowd of douche-bags to impress’ she thought. This was followed by a short lapse in thought, though she was grateful for this as she spotted a rather large glaring problem.

The cool ponies were coming into the cafeteria, which throws is a spanner in the works to say the least, do you ever get that feeling like your plans to flirt with your crush are crushed by some self-important douches, no?

It kinda feels like your plans to flirt with your crush are crushed by some self-important douches.

‘Hmmm’ Cadance thought ‘Well I have to look like I’m over here for a reason’ and then she did something rather befitting of the ‘school misfit’ title, she tipped over a chair, she didn’t really pay attention to which one, as long as it wasn’t Shining’s

“Ohhh, my head” a thick western Equestrian accent said from the heap on the floor. ‘Oh, it’s Shining Armour’ those last two words echoed in her mind ‘Wait, Shining Armour, the one colt I actually care for and DIDN’T want to flip over his chair.’

Oh, bummer.

The pink alicorn trotted off to the group, and then she realized something, these cool ponies were led by Fancy Pants.

And they aren’t part of the cool group anymore.

Which means she didn’t need to impress them.

Double bummer.

Author's Notes:

Please point out mistakes in the comments!