Silver Rose stepped down from the bus the next day, waving goodbye to her Home Run-looking bus driver before walking along with the others towards Canterlot High’s building, needing to sign in again before the Games.

“I can hardly wait for things to get started,” Silver said to Canvas as they waited in line to sign in. “I’ve never been to a Friendship Games before.”

“Me neither,” Canvas laughed. “It only happens every four years, so we may as well enjoy it while we can. I brought my camera, we can take lots of pictures. Here! Why don’t we take one now? Together?”

Canvas turned the camera around and leaned in close to Silver and smiled brightly. Silver realized she had never smiled for a camera before. The only cameras she’d ever have to deal with were the ones belonging to the paparazzi, but those were just random photos, mostly aimed for her mother when she was with her.

Seeing no harm in trying it out, Silver looked up at the camera and smiled, blinking twice as a bright flash engulfed her vision for a split second, ending with Canvas lowering the camera to have a look at its screen.

“Perfect!” She smiled and showed Silver the picture.

“That’s nice.” Silver nodded. Even if it did seem trivial, it seemed sort of fun for her and it did make Canvas give off this wonderful happy smell.

“This is my first picture with you, Silver. My first friend!”

“And it only took two months,” Silver said wryly.

“What’s that?” Canvas looked over at her.

“Nothing. Say, what kind of food do you think they serve at CHS? I mean, if the Friendship Games last all day, we’ll have to have lunch sometime, right?”

“Oh, you’re right about that, I think.” Canvas put a finger to her chin and hummed. “I’ll bet it’s nothing like what we have over at CPA.”

“I don’t know…” Silver shrugged. “The cupcakes they had yesterday were pretty tasty.”

“Hmm… you’re right about that. Maybe they’re catering from outside, just for this occasion?”

“Maybe… though I’m inclined to think that the one named Pinkie Pie had something to do with it. She did a rather good job fixing the party yesterday, if only that bi- I mean, Principal Cinch hadn’t interrupted.” Silver looked ahead. They were about seven students away from checking in now.

“Yeah, it kinda looked like everyone was having a good time until she showed up. But… that couldn’t be it, right?”

“How do you mean?” Silver said, craning her neck to see how the line was moving along. There were just five students to go now.

“I mean, I was hanging out with this one girl yesterday,” Canvas explained. “She’s from Canterlot High, and she brings around this skull with her and all. We were on the topic of art and she paints some really good pieces! But yeah, after Cinch went up, we just stopped talking.”

“If only we could do something about her…” Silver mused to herself. “I’ll have to ask mother.”

“What’s that, Silver? Oh, hey, I’m up!”

Canvas bent down and signed at her name, then skipped off excitedly, allowing Silver to check herself in.

After writing her name and student number on the form, Silver stepped aside to join Canvas in the group of students who would be spectating the games, which was a majority of the student body.

“Where are the participants?” Silver asked. “Don’t tell me they started without us.”

“I’m sure they’re all practicing somewhere,” Canvas said, pulling out her sketchbook and a pencil. “Getting that last minute studying done. I’ll be drawing it all, right, Sketchy? You like me drawing, hmm? He likes it when I doodle all over him.”

“Right,” Silver said, not really paying attention. “Oh, there’s Dean Cadance. I’ll be right back, Canvas.”

Pushing through the mob of students, Silver left Canvas near the edge of the pack and made her way over to the dean.

“Dean Cadance!” Silver called out. Hearing her name, Cadance turned to look for who had spoken, clipboard in hand.

“Silver Rose,” Cadance said, smiling. “What can I help you with?”

“I was just wondering when the Friendship Games start, and what we’re supposed to do until then.”

“Oh, they’ll be starting once everyone’s ready and good to go,” the dean answered and smiled. “Shouldn’t be too long now. You can just hang around here. We’ll begin here in the foyer. There will be events in the classrooms, but we have that covered with cameras. We’ll display them on the screen there.” She pointed at a set up foldable screen.

“Oh, alright,” Silver said with a little bow and retreated back to Canvas. “Thank you, Dean Cadance.”

By the time Silver found her way back to her friend, she had made significant progress in sketching the foyer, even adding in the Crystal Prep students who were milling around in it. Silver peered over her shoulder, and was mildly impressed by how fast Canvas had worked.

“Dean Cadance says we’re going to watch most of the first event on the screens,” Silver reported. “I wonder if they’re supplying snacks?”

Canvas looked around, then went back to her sketch. “Doesn’t look like it. That pink girl is participating, so unless she can be in two places at one time, I don’t think we’re getting snacks.”

“Oh. That’s a shame.”

Silver stood in silence for a short while, as Canvas continued to scribble in her sketchbook.

“Canvas,” Silver said eventually. “How do you know if someone likes you? The normal way, I mean.”

“Hmm?” Canvas said absently, still fixated on her sketchbook. “Why do you ask that?”

“Because in the two plus months I’ve been here, I haven’t detected, I mean, it doesn’t seem like anyone’s interested in me. Am I that bad looking?”

“No, Silver. I think you’re pretty, and I’m sure everyone else thinks so too.”

“Oh, they do?” Silver sniffed the air, but she found no traces of love anywhere on her Crystal Prep side. The Canterlot High students on the other side of the stands sure smelt much happier. “Oh and well, not like I’m looking for a relationship or anything, Canvas. My sister having a boyfriend is much enough for me.”

“I think most of the Crystal Prep people just think you’re out of their league,” Canvas said comfortingly. “I mean, you are the daughter of Ebony Wings. That’s not going to make you easy to approach.”

“Yeah, you’re right, I guess…” Silver didn’t know how to react to the news. On the upside, at least she didn’t have to worry about having two relationships. She could only guess how bad it would be if she had to manage two relationships. On the downside… Oh. I don’t really have a downside. Huh.

Just then, the participants arranged themselves on both sides, glaring at each other as Principal Cinch, Dean Cadance and CHS’ principals walked to stand in between them. Silver spotted Sunny giving an evil eye to the fashion girl, Rarity, and Lemon Zest and Pinkie Pie trading monkey faces. Out of the whole crowd, only Twilight Sparkle didn’t seem like she belonged there.

“Welcome to the first event,” Dean Cadance announced to the crowd. “The academic decathlon.”

Both teams stood a little straighter, and Lemon Zest stopped making faces.

“You’ll be scored on chemistry, home ec, and everything in between,” Cadance continued. “But remember, only the six students from each team with the most points will move on to event number two.”

By now, the tension between both teams was so thick that Silver supposed she could cut it with a knife. Then she briefly considered cutting Cinch with a knife. The thought amused the changeling for a moment, then she brushed it aside.

Dean Cadance made an excited gesture. “Good luck!”

Silver watched the competitors head off to one of the classrooms, with Trenderhoof giving Silver and the others both thumbs up before disappearing through the door with their principals.

They soon appeared on the projection screen, standing in two rows of lab tables with bottles and phials of all sorts in front of them.

“Chemistry, huh?” Canvas said, tapping her pencil on her chin. “You’re good at that, right, Silver?”

Silver shrugged modestly. “Moderately.”

Suddenly and without warning, the Canterlot High side began some kind of cheer, and by the sound of it, it wasn’t a very friendly one.

“We’re gonna take you down! Woooooaaaaaahhh.”

What, they’re singing now? Silver thought with an eyebrow raised. This wasn’t in the memo.

She spotted the sirens near the rear of the crowd, looking on at their singing classmates. Silver sighed. They actually looked sad, and she didn’t need to be an expert to know they missed singing.

Silver leaned back, looking at the screen. The participants were engaging in some basic chemistry, with Indigo Zap using her own sports goggles in place of lab glasses. Silver wondered about the protective value of those goggles, but none of the supervising teachers complained, so she figured it was all right.

“We’re gonna take you out! Woooooaaaaaahhhh!” Silver’s classmates began singing. Silver watched them with mild fascination. At least her school wasn’t going to stand there quietly.

Silver and the rest of the students continued to watch as a blonde girl with eyes that stared in different directions help up a vial to her face, only for it to explode in a puff of smoke and coat her entire front with ash.

Both their schools continued their cheers, with students on both sides now glaring at each other like they were going to spear each other with their eyes.

“Guess she’s out,” Silver said to herself. She vaguely wondered how she might do in this chemistry segment. Quite well, she reckoned, if her class performance was to be believed.

“And Canterlot High’s already one out!” Canvas snickered and began drawing the girl’s face.

Silver glanced at her friend and shook her head. It seemed not even Canvas Splash was immune to the spirit of competition that was sweeping through.

Which brought up a somewhat unusual question. Why wasn’t she getting caught up in all the hype? Could it be her internal changeling geas? Or was it that she hadn’t been at Crystal Prep for that long and was therefore oblivious to the rivalry? Silver made it a point to ask her family once the day was done.

The rest of the students made it onto the next round, which sent them over to CHS’ home ec room. They were now supposed to bake cakes, by the looks of it, and Silver knew of Upper Crust and Suri Polomare’s ability back in home ec class. They were pretty good at what they did.

Canterlot High continued singing against them, and Silver didn’t understand why this needed to be done. Couldn’t they all just stand there and watch the competition in peace? She looked over to the sirens again, noticing they weren’t joining in with the singing, their most favorite past time. She hoped her aunt would do something about their voices soon.

As the first round of cakes were introduced, Silver spotted a loaf of bread, baked by a pair from Canterlot High’s team. She had to control herself from bursting out in laughter. She might’ve been bad at home economic class herself, but that was just straight up worse than what she could do. Obviously, the two of them were disqualified before they even got to the tasting.

Nothing else was really spectacular, even the one that Sunny had made, and Neon Light’s and Jet Set’s cake was just a mess, but then Silver saw Suri’s and Upper Crust’s cake and she knew who the clear winner was. The two of them had made a magnificent purple cake and it looked absolutely delicious.

“Look at that!” Canvas turned the page on her sketchbook. “I think we’ve got this one.”

And then they saw the one Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy had made. At first, it just looked like a really fancy cake, but when Pinkie Pie cut it in half, Silver’s jaw dropped.

There was a painting drawn on the inside of a woman, Silver forgot her name, but it was quite the well known painting.

“How did she even- is that even possible?” she found herself asking Canvas.

Her friend was equally as awed, now wiping the shock from her face. “That is just… amazing! How did she manage that?”

They were the clear winners of this round, with such an astounding cake.

“You’ve got nothing on us, na na na na na na, Let’s go, Wondercolts!” Canterlot High sang at Silver and the others. “You’ve got nothing on us, na na na na na na, let’s go, Wondercolts!”

Would you just stop?

Silver slapped a hand to her face. This singing was just making it worse between their schools. She could only smell pride in the air now, eliminating all the better tasting emotions, even from Canvas Splash, who was now sketching Principal Cinch’s angry face as she glared at Upper Crust and Suri.

At least she’s upset too. Silver found that woman much too smug and self-centered.

The next round was some woodworks, with the objective being a birdhouse. Silver had yet to have a go at woodworking, but it looked easy enough. She watched the participants map out their plans before they produced their saws, cutting out pieces of wood for their projects. The Shadowbolts seemed to be managing well, looking like they knew what they were doing. Silver couldn’t say the same thing about Canterlot High’s Wondercolts. Half of them looked like they had never handled wood before and the boy with glasses almost sawed off one of his hands when he tried to get it to work.

“Talk a little too much for a school that never wins!” Silver’s classmates began singing. She frowned and looked over to the other side, spotting Home Run. He turned and saw her looking and shrugged. She did the only thing she could do and shrugged back. “Maybe you should just stop ‘fore you even begin, we are Crystal Prep High and we have a reputation, every little moment is about our education!”

“Since when?” Silver folded her arms crossly and let them carry on as she returned her attention to the viewing screen.

“Put your ear to the ground, listen to that sound, you’re a house of cards,” The Crystal Prep students sang as the teachers walked down the tables, inspecting each birdhouse that the contenders had made. Upon reaching the end, where a rickety looking birdhouse stood before the boy with the glasses and a taller boy with green hair. Vice Principal Luna gave the birdhouse a tap with her pen and the whole thing fell apart.

“Pfffft…” Canvas held back a laugh as she finished Cinch’s face. It looked stunningly similar.

“Well, they’re not advancing…” Silver watched as they began leaving, disappointed.

Then Sugarcoat and Indigo pulled the cloth off their creation, revealing a two-tiered birdhouse with railings, painted with a flame pattern. The teachers gasped in awe and dropped their clipboards.

“Wow, that’s pretty decent.” Silver nodded her approval at their wooden masterpiece. “Can you do something like that, Canvas?”

“Hmm, I’m not all that good with crafting, but I definitely can make a decent one,” the artist said as she flipped the page of her sketchbook.

“You’ve got nothing on us, na na na na na na, let’s go, Shadowbolts!” Silver’s classmates taunted as Sugarcoat and Indigo bashed past them, with the former flicking a piece of their birdhouse out of their hands. “You’ve got nothing on us, na na na na na na, let’s go, Shadowbolts!”

Suddenly, the screen shut off, shrinking down to a small white dot before vanishing, leaving them staring at a black screen.

“Oh, is it over?” Canvas looked up from her current sketch of a birdhouse. “Who won?”

“You know… I’m not sure.” Silver rubbed at her chin. It was a rather abrupt ending.

“Alright,” a bizarrely dressed male teacher called, his stained lab coat billowing around his body. “For the next event, we’ll go to the gym, so you can watch it live! I believe it’s the spelling bee next, so get out there and show your support!”

There was a general muttering and clamour as the students of both schools got up and trekked to the gymnasium, where rows of plastic chairs that were set up in two sections had been erected, one for the students of CHS, the other for the students of CPA.

Silver Rose just did as she was told and made her way to her seat, with Canvas following behind her.

The gym was mostly dark, with the lights only being centered on the stage, where a microphone had been set up.

Silver had read about spelling bees before. A word would be read out and your goal was to spell it out letter by letter. The only thing that didn’t seem right was that spelling bees were usually for middle school. At least, that’s what her book had said.

“You know, what kind of high school has a spelling bee?” Silver asked her friend, curious at the next event. “I did hear some murmur of there being one, but why would they put it in? I’m sure highschoolers can spell well enough.”

“You’d be surprised…” Canvas said ominously.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Silver demanded as the one called Rainbow Dash took the stage, with the other remaining competitors sitting down in small booths by the stage.

“Alright,” Principal Celestia said. “Please spell ‘hippopotamus’.”

The rainbow haired girl paused for a moment. “Uh, hippopotamus. Umm, H, I, P, P, O, P, O, uh… T, A, M… um… A, S?”

There was a loud buzz as Vice Principal Luna pressed a red button on the table. She had gotten it wrong. Obviously.

“Really?” Silver whispered as the girl made her way back to the Wondercolt booth. “That was an easy word. I could spell it. A kid could spell it. Right…?”

“Like I said,” Canvas whispered back. She wasn’t sketching, likely because it was dark around them. “You’d be surprised.”

Lemon Zest was up next, with Canterlot High singing against her and the other Shadowbolts now.

“Ugh, enough with the singing…” Silver groaned into her hands.

Dean Cadance reached into a hat and pulled out a slip of paper. “Please spell ‘munchausenism’.”

Silver blinked a few times surprisingly. She hadn’t heard of this word before. Maybe the spelling bee wasn’t going to be as easy as she thought.

Lemon Zest cleared her throat and grinned. “Munchausenism. M, U, N, C, H, O, U, S, E, N, I, S, M,” she finished happily.

There was a buzz from the judge’s table and Principal Cinch removed her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

Miserable old bat, Silver thought with glee. While she wasn’t too keen on Crystal Prep doing poorly, anything that aggravated Cinch was alright in her book.

“Aw…” Lemon Zest left the stage, much to Canterlot High’s amusement, who continued singing.

The next to stand at the mic was Applejack, who was tasked with spelling ‘onomatopoeia’.

“Onomatopoeia. O, N, O, M, uh… A, T, O, P, uh… E, I, A.”

Another buzzer.

“That one was rather easy too…” Silver raised an eyebrow and shifted herself in the seat. It wasn’t very comfortable. “Lemon Zest only lost because she had a hard word, but these Canterlot students are just messing up on easy words!”

“Shows you Crystal Prep is the best!” One of the students said beside her. Silver didn’t know her name. “We’re so going to win this.”

Sugarcoat was up next, with her word being another hard one, ‘cymotrichous’. Silver didn’t know why the Shadowbolts kept getting such strange and difficult words. The spelling bee must be biased towards Canterlot High, seeing as they couldn’t spell simple words. The buzzer sounded again, although Sugarcoat didn’t look too upset about misspelling the word, keeping her stoic face on as per usual.

To Silver’s increasing annoyance, both schools continued to sing through the entire spelling bee.

“Isn’t a spelling bee supposed to be, you know, quiet?” Silver whispered to Canvas. But Canvas didn’t hear her, singing along with her classmates. “Umm… okay.”

“Pressure’s on, we know we’re going to take you, just give up before we have to break you! Canter-not-a-lot you’re about to go down, down, down, down!”

Shaking her head at Canvas, Silver Rose slumped in her uncomfortable plastic chair and stewed, wishing for something other than pride to eat. Even a bowl of corn would be better now, and she didn’t even like corn.

The spelling bee continued, this time with Fluttershy taking the mic for ‘immigration’.

Fluttershy glanced nervously at her teammates, then at the Crystal Prep girls, who were both glaring at each other.

She spelt the word out, but missed one ‘M’. Another buzz rang around the gym, as loud as the singing.

“Is anyone going to get anything right?” Silver restrained herself from pulling at her hair.

Sunny Flare was up next, walking smugly to the mic, confidence beaming with every step she took. Silver would’ve said she trusted Sunny to win this for the Shadowbolts, but she knew Sunny and her ability in English class. She wasn’t exactly the best in the only language she spoke.

“Spell ‘rhombus’,” Principal Cinch asked, pulling a slip of paper out of the hat, giving the girl a look of expectation.

“Rhombus. Rhombus!” Silver Rose started laughing a little. The students on the left and right, with the exception of Canvas, began giving her weird looks, which made her stop, embarrassed at all the eyes on her. Then she leaned over to Canvas to whisper to her. “Rhombus. There’s no way she’s going to get this wrong, right? Lemon Zest and Sugarcoat had such difficult words earlier, but this… there’s no way Sunny can mess up, right?”

Silver sat there in suspense as Sunny stopped before the mic, smirking at the audience. “Rhombus. R, H, O, M, B, O, S.”

“No!” Silver grabbed her pink and grey hair, pulling at it in frustration, bending down to look between her legs, burying her face from everyone. “What the fu- umm… what? Just what?”

“Incorrect…” Principal Cinch slapped a hand to her face and sighed.

“You’re darn right that’s incorrect,” Silver hissed under her breath. “How- Just how do you misspell ‘rhombus’?”

As Silver seethed, she barely took notice of Indigo Zap, Rarity, and Twilight Sparkle, who miraculously spelled her word right.

“Hey, Silver, they got one.” Canvas tapped her on the back. “Twilight and the other girl, uh… Sun-Sunset something?”

“Shimmer,” Silver mumbled from her bent over position. She slowly uncurled as Dean Cadance stood up and announced the end of the spelling bee.

“With two contestants left, we will now move on to our final event… math!”

“Way to highlight the failures of our educational system,” Silver said glumly. She didn’t know how almost all the participants got their words wrong. “Just what have they all been learning in school?”

At least Twilight Sparkle had managed to get something done. If anything, Cinch had been wise to get her on the team. She was a smart girl. A really smart girl, if she could built strange devices that… did things.

Win this, Twilight. Just end it, please. I don’t know how much more I can take of this.

And the students kept on singing as Sunset Shimmer and Twilight Sparkle ascended the steps to the final challenge, adding more fuel to Silver’s already burning fire of distaste.

“Take it up to the top, cause we know we can win!” the Canterlot High students sang.

“Maybe you should just stop, cause we’ve seen you give in!” the Crystal Prep students chanted back.

“We believe in ourselves and we’ve got what it takes, and we’re not gonna stooooooop!” everyone chorused.

I wish you would…

Silver watched as Twilight and Sunset Shimmer reached the top of the stairs, where there were two large blackboards set up with some kind of diagram on them in chalk. Cinch joined them at the top, giving them a set of instructions. When the two girls were ready, they picked up a piece of chalk each and began scrawling equations on their blackboards.

Silver had felt smart during the spelling bee, but not anymore. What they were writing down on the boards were math equations, which the young changeling wasn’t very good at. She began to feel less intelligent as they wrote away, filling up just about every inch of the board they could use.

“Can she do it.” The students began singing again as they scribbled their formulas down. “Will she make it?”

“Probably,” Silver grumbled half to herself, gritting her teeth slowly.

That didn’t stop the rest of the students from continuing their musical onslaught.

“Who will win it? Who will take it? Can she do it? Who will take it? Did she win it? Did she make it? Who’s the winner? Who’s the reject?”

Silver couldn’t take it anymore. Clenching her teeth to stop her fangs from shooting out, she sat up and hissed, “Will you just. Be. Quiet!”

The students around her stopped and looked at her with various looks of disapproval. Silver’s cheeks grew red, but her irritation far outweighed her embarrassment this time.

However, the rest of the students sang on.

“How did she answer?”

Cinch looked at their boards, then pointed a gnarled finger at Sunset’s board. “Incorrect.”