Silver Spoon had not had a good night.

After she'd fled the Parlor, she'd spent the next half-hour crying into her forelegs, facedown on her bed at home. She'd even sent Carillon away when the unicorn had asked her what was wrong, lest she have to explain what had happened and have to sit through another lecture--a kind and well-meaning lecture, naturally--about how her friendship with Diamond Tiara was unhealthy and that she should never have gone with her that afternoon in the first place. Carillon didn't understand...she couldn't understand. She had only been with the Silver family for a couple years. She hadn't been around for the darkest years of her life, for the troubles and the pain that Silver Spoon had suffered through, that only Diamond Tiara had shown the slightest concern about. Only Diamond Tiara had been there for her when she'd really needed somepony, and if that friendship had been slightly turbulent in the past couple years, it was probably Silver Spoon's own fault. She couldn't tell how, exactly, and she would never dare ask Diamond Tiara, but she knew better than anyone that she owed Diamond Tiara more than a few stinging comments could negate. That didn't make them any less painful to weather, of course...

After she'd cried herself out, Silver Spoon had dozed off for some time, only to be awakened later by Intricacy's dulcet baritone announcing that her cello instructor had arrived. The silver filly had panicked slightly at this, bolting upright in bed and jumping to her vanity to brush her mane and face, trying to take out the tangles and make herself more presentable. The lesson itself had been little more than a disaster. She hadn't practiced much in the preceding week, and it showed. Her teacher, a strict moustached dirt-brown earth pony stallion who wasn't afraid to show his disdain for younger ponies in every word he spoke, had gotten fed up within the first fifteen minutes and had stormed out of the manor, leaving Silver Spoon standing sheepishly behind her instrument with yet more tears sliding down her cheeks.

Trying to do her homework afterwards was similarly futile. Angry at Diamond Tiara, upset at her cello teacher, and ashamed of how she'd treated both of them as well as Carillon, the young mare had only managed to write her name, the date, and a great deal of tentative numbers that had quickly been erased, leaving the paper wrinkled and stained with graphite. By the time the moon had risen she had made no meaningful progress towards completing the assignment, and eventually gave it up as a lost cause. Dejected and defeated, the filly had gone to bed and quietly cried herself to sleep.

Upon waking up, she had contemplated the blank paper for another fifteen minutes or so before giving up again and getting herself ready for school. Carillon had helped, naturally, with no mention of her unceremonious dismissal from the night before. The unicorn had been just as friendly and caring as ever. This did not improve Silver Spoon's mood. Nor did Intricacy's apologetic explanation that--as was typically the case--her father had already left for the day, and that she would have to walk to school again. As she plodded heavily down the road towards the town center and the schoolhouse beyond, she reflected bitterly that had she not left Diamond Tiara in such a foalish huff, she could have potentially secured a ride to school, and not have had to walk. She'd had to leave so early that she hadn't had time for breakfast, although this wasn't so terrible, considering she had one of the cook's excellent box lunches to look forward...

The silver filly stopped short, an icy unease sliding down through her chest. Her saddlebag seemed awfully light. With a horrible sense of foreboding, she opened her bags to discover that she had in fact left her lunch sitting on the small table in the atrium. Crushed, Silver Spoon suddenly fell to her haunches in the middle of the road, overwhelmed by the unfairness of it all. Fighting off yet another round of bitter tears, she contemplated giving up and going home, and just getting an absence for the day. Then, just as she was about to turn around and start back, her ears pricked to the sound of a set of carriage wheels crunching down the dirt road behind her. Curious, she turned to see one of the Rich family's fancy coaches coming up the path. The carriage ponies pulling it trotted with alacrity and aplomb, their heads held high and their movements so precise and measured that Silver Spoon didn't realize the carriage was slowing until it rolled to a stop next to her.

The door to the carriage opened to reveal Diamond Tiara standing inside with a small, sheepish smile. "Hey there, Spoon. Need a ride?"

Silver Spoon wasn't sure what to say. "Uh...sure, I guess." The pink filly held out a hoof and helped her into the carriage, swinging the door closed behind her. She pulled the thin black bellcord at the front of the carriage and it rolled smoothly away, bumping lightly across the dirt road into the town center. The two fillies sat opposite each other, alone in the carriage, neither looking directly at the other for several seconds. Eventually, they both looked up and started speaking at the same time.

"Di, I'm sor--"

"Look, Spoon, I--"

They stopped short and giggled at themselves. Diamond Tiara waved a nonchalant hoof at her friend. "Sorry, you go first."

Silver Spoon smiled. "Thanks." Given the floor, however, the silver filly lost her nerve, and cast about for small talk to fill the silence while she found it again. "Um...where's your dad?"

Diamond Tiara shrugged. "He left really early this morning." She gestured towards the front of the cart, indicating the two ponies pulling them. "Curricle and Dray told me he said I could take this carriage if I wanted to."

"Must be nice," Silver Spoon muttered, more to herself than to her friend.

Diamond Tiara smiled sympathetically. "Well, I had them go by your house first, to see if we could catch you before you left, but you were already gone. I've been having them double-time it since we missed you, to try and catch up."

Silver Spoon smiled. "Thanks. I--"

The pink earth pony waved a dismissive hoof. "Forget it. It's the least I could do after...well, you know."

The silver filly blushed and looked at her hooves. "Look, Di, I...I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get so angry with you. It's just that..."

Diamond Tiara tossed her mane and smiled at her friend. "Bygones, Spoon. Maybe we were both in the wrong, hm? Let's just let it go. Talk about something less...unpleasant. How was your cello lesson?"

Silver Spoon groaned and rolled her eyes. "If you're looking for something less unpleasant, you missed. Badly."

"That bad, huh?"

Silver Spoon shook her head. "No, no, no, the return of Nightmare Moon was 'bad'. The thousand-year absence of the Crystal Empire was 'bad'. This was an absolute nightmare." She got up and started pacing the narrow floor of the carriage while Diamond Tiara watched, lounging on the cushion opposite. "And even worse than having Mister Spavaldo yell at me for ten minutes before leaving was that afterwards I had to stare at my homework for two hours without getting any of it done!" She threw herself dramatically onto the cushion across from Diamond Tiara and sighed. "And just because one of the Princesses seems to think my day wasn't going badly enough, I forgot my lunch at home, too."

Diamond Tiara nodded solemnly at Silver Spoon's lament before turning to her pink saddlebag and pulling out a sheaf of neatly written pages. "Here," she said, "there's still like ten minutes. You can just copy my homework."

Silver Spoon rolled back onto her belly, frowning. "I don't know, Di, I think Miss Cheerilee's kind of suspicious about that already."

Diamond Tiara shrugged. "So we can just tell her we worked together on it."

"But what if she asks me to do a problem? I don't know how!"

The other filly sighed heavily and rolled her eyes. "I don't know, just say you don't remember or something. Look, do you want a zero or not?"

Silver Spoon fretted for a moment before getting up and taking the papers. She spread them on the carriage floor and started copying the contents over on fresh parchment. "Thanks, Di. I appreciate it."

"Don't mention it. And as far as your lunch in concerned..." The pink filly dove back into her bag and pulled out an ivory-colored box with Silver Spoon's name embossed across the front.

"My lunch!" the silver pony exclaimed. "How...?"

"Your butler gave it to me when we stopped to see if you were still home. He noticed you'd left it and was pretty glad we showed up." She grinned. "I'm guessing you're pretty pleased yourself."

Silver Spoon leaped off the floor and threw her forelegs around Diamond Tiara's neck, hugging her tightly. "Thank you, thank you, thank you! You have no idea how much this means to me."

Diamond Tiara laughed and hugged her back gingerly. "Yeah, I figured you'd be pretty happy to see that. Hey, what are friends for?"

Silver Spoon smiled and shook her head. "You're the best friend a filly could have, Di."

The pink pony tossed her mane and grinned. "And don't you forget it."

"Now remember what we talked about, alright? You don't have to like her, you just have to find some sort of compromise. Tolerate her." Scootaloo nodded absently at her mother's reminder as they approached the schoolyard. They had spent the first half of the walk talking about how best to tackle this unique challenge, and she was fairly certain they'd covered all the various angles there were to it. Frankly, she thought wryly, it was the sort of thing that just needed to be done. Discussion only made it seem more unpleasant and daunting.

Octavia seemed to sense her daughter's thinning patience and let the matter drop. She smiled and stepped in front of Scootaloo just outside the gate to the school grounds. "Alright...lunch, homework, books?" Scootaloo nodded at each item. "Good. Work hard, have fun, behave, and do your best, just like always, right?"

The pegasus couldn't resist a short eye roll at the saccharine sentiment, but she smiled nonetheless. "Yeah, yeah."

"Wonderful. Are you coming home after school or will you be staying out for a while?"

Scootaloo shrugged. "I'm not real sure yet. I'll probably just hang out with the girls for a while, but if....ugh, Silver Spoon wants to get started on the project, I might stay here at school a few hours first."

Octavia resisted the urge to smirk at her daughter's dramatics. "Very well. If you do decide to stay out, be safe and be home by midnight, alright?"

Scootaloo blinked at her mother. "Midnight?"

Octavia nodded. "Your mother and I talked last night, and you're right: we haven't increased your curfew in some time. You've been very patient, and normally stick to it very well, so we think it's time you had more freedom to decide when is a good time to be home."

"You mean it?" Scootaloo smiled broadly.

"Certainly. We just want you home by midnight so we know you're safe before we go to bed. If you want to be out later than that, just ask and we'll see if we can make an exception."

"Wow..." Scootaloo breathed, moderately surprised. "Thanks, mom!"

Octavia chuckled softly. "You're welcome, but really, we just had a long talk about you last night, and we came to the realization that you've grown up a lot...more than we'd like, to be honest, but we knew you were going to someday." She smiled sadly. "We were just trying to keep you our little Scooter for a few more years, and that wasn't fair. We...well, I am going to try to let you be more independent. Your mother is, of course, well ahead of me on that front already, I think."

Scootaloo smiled and blushed faintly. "Thanks, mom...but you know I'll always be your Scooter." She stepped forward and nuzzled her mother affectionately.

The earth pony returned the gesture, sighing heavily. "Perhaps, but you're not that little filly who used to make blanket forts and tell scary stories with us in the living room on stormy nights anymore. You're a young mare, and I doubt you're very interested in blanket forts and s'mores these days." A melancholy shadow passed over Octavia's face, taking the smile with it.

Scootaloo shrugged and smiled. "Maybe we can do something else together sometime. Go to a concert somewhere or something."

Octavia smiled wryly. "You hate classical music."

"Yeah, I meant a different kind of concert."

The earth pony laughed softly. "I believe I've made my views on the artistic merits of most of your favorite groups quite obvious. Still, I appreciate the effort. We'll figure something out. Anyway, have a good day, sweetie." The silver mare nuzzled the younger pegasus again before turning back to head home.

Scootaloo scanned the schoolyard for any sight of her friends. Despite the genetic anomaly that rendered her flightless, she still possessed all the other physical hallmarks of a pegasus, from lightning-quick reflexes to intensely sharp senses. Right now, she was using both, her eyes darting from one face to the next, instantly identifying each pony she saw.

Suddenly she paused, her gaze coming to rest on the distinctive countenance of her new project partner, Silver Spoon. For a fraction of an instant, she saw an expression on the other filly's face that surprised her. Silver Spoon was looking back at her, and as their eyes met, Scootaloo was sure she saw something dark and brooding there, a shallow frown and tightness of brow that Scootaloo would have called jealousy if she had to call it anything. It was unusual; she was used to seeing loathing, disdain, spite, and even open malice in the grey filly's features, but never jealousy. Then, as soon as she was sure she'd seen it, the expression was gone, replaced with the cool indifference that thoroughly characterized Silver Spoon's typical demeanor. Scootaloo stared at the grey filly for a few more moments, wondering if she was imagining things, even though she knew her own senses well enough to know that was impossible.

"Hey, Scoot!" Apple Bloom's unmistakable twang pulled Scootaloo out of her musing and she turned to see her friends trotting lightly towards her. She smiled and waved at them.

"Hey, Bloom. How's it going?"

Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle came up and sat with Scootaloo near the roadside. "Pretty good. Hey, you didn't get in trouble last night, didya? I know you were kinda late gettin' home."

Scootaloo shrugged. "A little, I guess. I'm not grounded or anything, but there was some shouting."

"Man, you're so lucky," Sweetie Belle groused. "If I was out past my curfew, my parents would ground me for a week. They might even make me stay at Rarity's place." She pulled an expression of mock horror, and her friends giggled.

"So have you talked to Silver Spoon about this whole project thing yet?" Apple Bloom asked.

Scootaloo shook her head. "Nah, I mean, it's only been one day. And I'm not exactly itching to get into it just yet, you know?"

Her friends nodded solemnly. "I wonder who we're gonna end up with," the yellow earth pony mused.

"Knowing Miss Cheerilee," Scootaloo said, "you'll both end up with Diamond Tiara."

Sweetie Belle shuddered. "Celestia forbid."

Any further discussion on the topic was cut short by Cheerilee's sudden bell-shaking appearance at the front of the schoolhouse. The collected students meandered over to the front door with somewhat less enthusiasm than they had when they'd been younger ponies, but Cheerilee's sheer authoritative aura was enough to get them inside without much fuss.

Once Cheerilee had managed to get the class inside and settled down, she went to the front of the room and held up a sheaf of paper. "Today we're going to spend a couple hours getting ready for our final projects. These are your assignment sheets; they have the name of your partner and your project topic on them. I'm going to pass them out, I'll give you a few moments to read them and then I'll have you all meet up with your partner to discuss how you might want to get started. Please note that I am always available for help or guidance, but I will not tell you how to plan or complete your project. That is for you to decide together." She left her desk and began to distribute the papers. Most of the ponies in the room simply read the name of their partner with moderate interest before moving on to the topic. A few expressed mild shock and looked around at their apparently unexpected cohort. Scootaloo noticed that Apple Bloom was in the former group as she spared her partner, the shy but friendly Pipsqueak, a cursory glance across the room.

When the magenta pony dropped Scootaloo's page on her desk, the pegasus was naturally unsurprised to see Silver Spoon's name next to hers at the top of the paper. What did surprise her, however, was the single sentence written under 'topic' at the bottom.

"The topic of this project is open to selection by the assigned students."

Puzzled, Scootaloo looked up from the page to ask Cheerilee to clarify, but found herself cut off by an unearthly shriek from the other side of the room.

"Miss Cheerilee! You can't be serious!" Diamond Tiara was standing up next to her desk, looking down at her paper with a horrified expression and holding a hoof defensively in front of her chest as if it might attack. She gawked at the earth pony teacher. "I can't work with her!"

Miss Cheerilee sighed and put a hoof to her forehead. "Yes, you can."

A mortified gasp from her other side caught Scootaloo's attention and explained Diamond Tiara's outrage as she turned to see Sweetie Belle staring at her paper with wide-eyed, open-mouthed disbelief. Scootaloo stifled an amused chuckle at her friend's expense. As hard as it would be for her to work with Silver Spoon, Scootaloo knew Diamond Tiara and Sweetie Belle would probably have an even more difficult time getting along.

"But Miss Cheerilee--!" Sweetie Belle squeaked, only to be immediately cut off by the teacher's icy glare.

"Some of you may be disappointed or even frustrated by your partner or topic selection. I assure you, as I mentioned yesterday, if for some reason you simply cannot get along with your partner despite your best, honest effort, then you will not be penalized. However, you will have to convince me that you have done your very best to try and work together. Based on what I know of all of you," she cast her piercing gaze across the room, pausing for an instant on each pony's face, "I am certain that despite your differences, despite your misgivings, and despite your reluctance, every pairing I have assigned is absolutely serviceable. Some may even be ultimately beneficial, if only you give your partner--and yourself--a chance to make it work." Diamond Tiara and Sweetie Belle scowled at each other across the room, but made no further argument.

After a moment or two, Cheerilee smiled and sat back behind her desk. "Excellent. Now, for the next hour or so, I'm going to give you time to meet with your partner, to discuss your topic and to start making plans. If you have any questions or concerns about the project or your topic, now will be the time to ask. Now, I'd rather we only spent a few hours on this today, but don't worry about running out of time to get your questions answered; we can spend all day on it if we need to. I want to make sure you all have a good idea of how to get started before you leave this afternoon. Now go ahead and find your partner, and let's get started."

There was a general scuffle of sliding chairs and desks as ponies got up and started to rearrange the room, finding their partners and pushing desks together so they could work side-by-side. A few ponies--Diamond Tiara and Sweetie Belle first of all--went immediately to Miss Cheerilee's desk. The fuchsia mare sighed heavily, but kept her face pleasant as she began the thankless task of patiently listening to half a dozen foals whining at her about her selections. Scootaloo smirked inwardly at the sight, knowing full well that despite whatever arguments the students could come up with, Miss Cheerilee was not known for her malleability. The groups would be no different at the end of the day then they were now.

With this in mind, Scootaloo instead simply sat back in her chair and glanced across the room at Silver Spoon, who seemed loath to leave her desk. The two locked eyes for a moment, a silent test of wills, before Silver Spoon broke off and rolled her eyes away from Scootaloo, heaving herself away from her desk and trudging over to where the orange pegasus was sitting. Scootaloo smiled smugly as Silver Spoon fell into Apple Bloom's recently vacated seat. "So I guess we're working together after all."

"Looks that way."

"Think you can keep up and manage not to get me failed on it?" Somewhere in the back of Scootaloo's head, she could hear her mother's scolding voice already, but a large, spiteful part of her couldn't resist trying for a few jabs before giving in to her better judgment.

"Depends," Silver Spoon replied, supremely disdainful. "Have you finished your little temper tantrum from yesterday yet?"

"Cute," Scootaloo scowled. "Did Diamond Tiara write that one down for you, or did you actually memorize it before you came over?"

"Some of us don't let our friends do all the work for us."

Scootaloo almost laughed out loud, but managed to simply snort derisively. "Some of us are actually smart enough to do it ourselves."

This retort seemed to hit home in a way none of the others had, and Silver Spoon actually opened and closed her mouth a few times, fishing for a response and coming up empty. Eventually, she just closed her mouth and looked down at her hooves, which were crossed in her lap. Scootaloo immediately regretted her words, although she privately congratulated herself on finding a spot sensitive enough to render her opponent speechless. Sighing heavily, the pegasus sidestepped the verbal sparring. "Okay, look. I don't like you. I think I've made that pretty obvious. You don't like me. I'm not exactly surprised. But, one way or another, we're stuck together with this, so I guess we need to at least tolerate each other until we can get it done, right?" Silver Spoon didn't immediately respond, and Scootaloo was sure she heard the other filly sniffing quietly, although she attempted to dismiss the sound as a trick of the din surrounding them. Even so, her voice softened a little as she said, "Truce? For now, at least."

Silver Spoon looked up at her from beneath her bangs, her eyes shining and partially hidden by the curtain of hair. They were narrowed and angry, but eventually she said, "Fine. Truce." After another moment, she added, "I still hate you."

Scootaloo sighed theatrically. "Whatever. Look, do you know anything about what she wrote in the 'topic' section? She didn't give us a lot to go on."

"Yeah, I do," she other filly said, her voice heavy with spite. "And if you'd stayed put when Miss Cheerilee told you to yesterday afternoon, so would you."

Scootaloo gritted her teeth, but managed to keep her cool. "And could you possibly share that knowledge with your partner?"

"It means pretty much what it says, actually. We're supposed to come up with our own topic, you and me. Together. I don't know why; she didn't say," she answered the unspoken question on Scootaloo's face. "Anyway, she said you might have some ideas. I doubt it, but I figured I'd ask."

"What, ideas for a project?" Scootaloo balked. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"If I knew, you think I'd be wasting time listening to you be mulish about it?"

Scootaloo threw her forelegs in the air in exasperation. "I don't just dream up project topics all day for kicks! This is stupid," she added, not altogether helpfully.

"Well, fine," Silver Spoon huffed. "If you don't have any ideas, then I guess that's where we'd better start, huh?"

"Yeah, great. Let's get right on that." The pegasus sat back in her chair with her forelegs crossed, fuming lightly. Silver Spoon shook her head and looked down at the mostly blank parchment on the desk in front of her as if willing it to reveal additional information. After a moment of unproductive silence, Scootaloo suddenly sat up and said, "You know what, I'm going to ask her what she's talking about."

"You do that," her partner said, still mostly disengaged.

"Stay here."

"Like I want to follow you," Silver Spoon scoffed as the orange pegasus got up and made her way to Cheerilee's desk.

The teacher shook her head with a small smile of amusement as she watched the last two colts, Featherweight and Snips, leave her desk, glaring daggers at one another. When she turned to Scootaloo, her smile brightened pleasantly. "Hello, Scootaloo. You have a question, I presume?"

"Yeah, just one," Scootaloo said. "What the buck did you mean, 'I might have some ideas'?"

"Language, Miss Scratch-Philharmonica," Cheerilee scolded her gently. "I meant more or less what I said. For most of the students in this class, it was fairly easy to come up with a topic I believed they could work well together on, that would benefit and interest them both, and that would force them to work together. You and Silver Spoon were something of a challenge. While I know you quite well, as you tend to wear your interests quite openly and write about them freely in your essays and projects, Silver Spoon is much more introverted. I didn't want to force her to work on a topic she wasn't interested in, so I wanted you to work together to come up with one."

"But where do I come in, then?"

"Well, I have been collecting your various essays and other, smaller projects for the better part of your life now, and I've seen a trend or two, trends that have interesting implications that I imagined that you might actually want to try and expand on."

"Expand? Expand on what? I write about lots of stuff."

"Perhaps, but you do your best work when you write about two topics in particular."

"Which are?"

Cheerilee waved a demonstrative hoof at Scootaloo's shoulders. "Well, you've been a rather expressive writer about your flightlessness since before you were adopted, and I've watched your attitude about it change for the better. That change has led to your more recent interest in various solutions other pegasi in your situation have come up with. I thought you might want to take advantage of this opportunity to do what you've been wanting to do for years now, and actually getting a grade for it, and I'm convinced that Silver Spoon can help you with that."

"I don't follow." As she said it, suddenly Scootaloo knew it wasn't true, and her eyes widened in disbelief. "No, you're kidding. You're joking. I can't do that, it's just a filly-dream."

"No," Miss Cheerilee stood up and grinned, a distinctly excited glint in her eyes. She leaned forward and muttered under her breath, just loud enough for Scootaloo to hear. "Together, you can do it. I know you can. You can make The Dash."