It took her long enough.

When I first decided to follow them, I was really just trying to find out which Platinum City girls were going to decide to join Trixie’s team, but never in a million years did I think they were all going to say no! There was still that girl that they brought with them to Platinum City that I would need to look out for, though, even if she looked like she wouldn’t be too much of a problem. Besides Palette, it looked like all of Trixie’s choices were going to be newbies, leaving me to pick up exactly where they left off.

Crystal Prep Academy had some of the best students in the country, which meant that there had to be girls here who would be able to pick up magic with no problems. It probably would be a good idea to stay away from those scary girls from Platinum City, though. I was holding out hope when I got there that maybe I would be able to bring over some of Trixie’s friends over to my side, but after seeing how mean they were, I didn’t want anything to do with them. Where else could I look, though? Where would I even start?

“Seriously? Watch where you’re going.”

“I’m sorry. I just--”

“Just what?”

I quickly pressed my back to the corner of the wall, slowly leaning my face past the threshold to see what was going on without the kids on the other side being able to see me. It was two girls, one down on her knees, picking up a textbook from the ground while the other girl stood over her with her hands on her hips, glaring down at her with malice on her face. The girl standing up had light turquoise skin with short mulberry hair, carrying herself with total confidence. The girl on the floor, however, was the exact opposite, wearing large glasses held together by tape with her reddish purple hair pulled back on top of her head.

“I don’t know what else you want me to say,” the girl on the floor said bluntly. “I didn’t see you. I’ll watch where I’m going next time.”

“Next time? What about right now? Do you think you can just mess up all you want and expect everyone to just pretend like it never happened? How selfish can you get?”

Wow. Were all the girls at Crystal Prep this mean? I pulled my head back just in case the girls looked over in my direction, waiting for them to start their conversation back up before I decided to spy on them some more.

“Listen, Sunny Flare. Can I go now? We’re obviously going around in circles.”

“What did you say?!”

Wait, was Sunny Flare about to hit that girl? I felt myself leaning my face further and further past the corner, but I couldn’t hold back my curiosity from getting the better of me. Finally, the girl on the floor picked up her book and stood up, looking Sunny Flare in the eye as she scowled back at her. There was actually going to be a fight! I couldn’t wait!

“We both know you’re not going to hit me,” the girl said, tipping her glasses back.

“Oh, yeah?! How do you know that?!”

“Because you would be expelled from Crystal Prep, and we both know you wouldn’t do something that stupid.”

“I’ll only get caught if you snitch me out, and we both know you don’t want to do that.”

The two girls continued to glare at each other, one of them getting angrier by the second while the other looked ready to be done with the whole conversation. Sunny Flare had a good point, though! This girl was getting way too cocky for her own good, and it looked like she was going to get what she had coming to her. I was practically salivating from how excited I was to see an actual school fight, but suddenly, the other girl turned away and bluntly said, “Good bye, Sunny Flare.”

“OH, COME ON!”

Both students then turned in my direction, but hopefully I had pulled my head away before either of them saw me. Fortunately for me, however, after a couple seconds of silence, I heard Sunny Flare scoffing, apparently returning to the conversation they were just having.

“Whatever. Just don’t forget your place here, Moon Dancer. Then maybe you could make some friends for once.”

“I don’t need friends. Now get out of my way. I have to go return this book, if you don’t mind.”

I could hear footsteps approaching and quickly hid behind another row of lockers, barely missing Sunny Flare as she walked by. Then, once she was gone, I looked back at that girl Moon Dancer, who was already walking in the other direction. I couldn’t believe how much she was able to fend for herself, even though she was powerless, even though she had nobody on her side. If what Sunny Flare said was right, that she had no friends, then I had a feeling that this Moon Dancer girl may have been just the kind of girl I was looking for.

I then followed her all the way to the school library, which was probably the most humongous library I’ve ever seen, and Moon Dancer was navigating through their dewey decimal system like it was her house. After returning her book to the librarian, she then pulled out another armful of books off from various shelves and pulled out a seat at a nearby table. Now all I had to do was find a way to make friends with her, but judging by how well she functioned without them, I was probably going to need to think differently than I would with anyone else.

After taking a look at what she was reading, I then pulled out a book on the history of economics, pranced over to her table and sat down directly across from her. I was pretending to be looking up a specific section, but I could see out of the corner of my eye that she was looking up from her book to glare at me. Then, I went back to reading, giving her about three minutes of total silence until I finally reached over and tapped her on the shoulder.

“Excuse me,” I said, seeing her flinch as soon as she felt my touch.

“What?” she whispered in annoyance.

“This book about economics is sooo interesting, but I’m having such a hard time figuring out what this little graph thingy means. You look really smart. Could you help explain it to me?”

The girl looked over at the graph on the page, then looked me in the eye with a dull stare. “Are you telling me you don’t understand basic supply and demand equilibriums? I think that book might be a little too complicated for you.”

“Oh, goodness! You think so? All this stuff is so interesting to me, but I just can’t seem to wrap my head around it sometimes.”

“Yeah. I can see that.”

The girl in the glasses then looked back down at her book, moving her head around the page until she found where she had left off. It was so cute how she thought I was going to leave her alone after that.

“I saw your fight with Sunny Flare this morning.”

The girl groaned just quietly enough to not draw a throng of shushes from the people around us trying to study. “You don’t even go here! Why are you bothering me?!”

“Golly! I didn’t know I was making you upset! That’s too bad. I was hoping I’d be able to help you with your equations over there.”

I then closed my book and stood up, subtly smiling down at her as she suddenly scrambled to look over her math homework, switching glances between her equations and the textbook. “My equations aren’t wrong!”

“Did you remember to square x?”

Again, Moon Dancer looked down at her paper, then looked back up at me with her eyes squinting. “...How did you find that?”

Because I erased it when she dropped her protractor earlier.

“Oh, there’s lots of things I could help you with, Moon Dancer.”

“...How do you know my name?”

“Because you and me are a lot more similar than you might realize. We’ve both been picked on our whole life, and even though we might try to pretend like it never bothered us, it’s made us hate people who we think are inferior to us. What’s the point of friendship if it doesn’t get you what you want? I think you know that better than anyone.”

Moon Dancer was still glaring at me, but she was doing so with an eyebrow raised in curiosity. I had her right where I wanted her.

“That’s nice and all, but I seriously doubt you could give me anything that books couldn’t give me, so I’d appreciate it if you left me alone now. After all, don’t you have your own school to go to?”

“Actually, I think I have something that you want more than anything else in the whole world.” Moon Dancer had already brought her face down to her book by this point, but I could see her looking at me through the corners of her eyes. “Have you ever studied the science of magic?”

I was really hoping that one would work, but Moon Dancer just sighed defeatedly, returning her gaze to the page in front of her. “That’s illogical. There is no ‘science of magic.’ Magic is just what we use to describe the phenomena of science that we can’t explain yet, and if we can’t explain it, there’s been no research done on it. Now will you please leave me alone?”

What the hell? Didn’t these girls know that magic was real after what happened last year?

“Don’t you remember the friendship games?”

“No, I didn’t attend. While everyone else was busy cheering on their school in some pointless competition, I was broadening my understanding of the anatomy of plant cells.”

“Well... why do you think Principal Cinch was fired?!”

“Probably because she used corporal punishment! It’s not like we didn’t all see it coming. It was only a matter of time before the rest of the faculty caught on.”

“Dude, is that what you think happened at the friendship games?”

Suddenly, the whole library was shushing in our direction, not because of me or Moon Dancer, but because some other girl had unwelcomingly joined in on our conversation. Her hair was three different shades of green, the sleeves on her school uniform were rolled up past her elbows, she was wearing an entire assortment of eye shadow, and she somehow managed to hear our conversation through her large, wireless headphones. She then took a seat beside me, making Moon Dancer roll her eyes with another groan.

“What do you want, Lemon Zest?”

“Seriously, bro! Principal Cinch was fired after she went berserk over at CHS. She got Twilight to do some kind of magic thing that made her go crazy and nearly destroy the world. How did you know Prin Cin got fired, though, shrimpy? You have a sister who goes here or something?”

Because I was there. I was only doing my part as a magical girl, waiting in the shadows, ready to take over the situation until Sunset Shimmer stepped in and calmed things down, but that’s not exactly the easiest thing to talk about with two complete strangers.

“Uhhh, yes! I had a sister who went here. She didn’t have any friends, though. You probably never met her.”

“Is all this really necessary?” Moon Dancer asked, pulling our attention back towards her. “Look, I don’t really care why Principal Cinch was fired. She was a terrible woman, and she got what she had coming for her. I don’t care what you two say about magic. It doesn’t exist, and even if it did, I doubt you would be able to teach me much about it.”

“If you don’t believe it’s real, then why do you think Twilight transferred schools?”

Both Lemon Zest and Moon Dancer looked back at me, and honestly, I was pulling at straws at this point. I just figured that since she and Twilight were both bookworms, maybe they knew each other somehow. For all I knew, though, the two of them had never even met, but Lemon Zest did just bring up her name like it was common knowledge.

“Oh, yeah, man! It was so crazy! Twilight turned into this monster with wings and a horn and started blowing stuff up! I was all like, ‘The quiet girl’s attacking the school! I heard about this stuff in the news, but I never thought it would happen to me!’ But she ended up transferring because she liked the kids there or something.”

“...Did all that stuff really happen to Twilight?” Moon Dancer’s question caught me off guard, but not as much as the reaction that came after it. With her hand balling up into a fist, she smacked down on the table, making both Lemon Zest and me flinch. “Dammit! She’s always one step ahead of me! Whenever I think I’m catching up with her, she pulls ahead with some new genius discovery! Oh, I think I’m catching up when I discover how string theory relates to quantum fields, but then she learns how to harness freaking magic?! How am I supposed to compete with that?!”

The whole library was looking at us now, but they seemed to be too intimidated to try and silence Moon Dancer’s loud voice.

“Whoa,” Lemon Zest said, holding out her hands calmly. “Chill, bro.”

“You don’t know what it’s like, Lemon Zest. Sure, you pay attention in class most of the time. Sure, you do your homework and get by with decent grades, but you’ve never put in the hours that I’ve put in, always to be second best to someone who was just born with talent! While you’re busy listening to music and hanging out with your friends, I’m here studying, trying to compete with the top students in my class, but it’s JUST! NEVER! ENOUGH!”

Lemon Zest looked completely freaked out, like she was about to witness an attack similar to what Twilight had done the year before, but for me, this couldn’t have been a more perfect moment. I had to hide how wide my smile was growing, just because she had walked to perfectly into my hands.

I looked around to make sure everyone had gone back to their studying while Moon Dancer buried her face into her hands. “Sounds to me like you were actually on pace to surpass Twilight before the whole magic thing happened,” I said. “Wouldn’t it be great if you could surpass her in that too?”

She then opened her fingers just enough to see through her hands. “And what can you teach me about magic?”

“Everything!”

Suddenly, Moon Dancer and Lemon Zest were both looking at me in shock.

“Whoa!” the girl in the headphones exclaimed. “You know how magic works?”

I giggled with my chest puffed out. “I may not look like it, but I actually know more about magic than even Twilight Sparkle.”

“Seriously?”

“And how do you know that?” Moon Dancer asked with a skeptic stare.

I was more than ready to tell Moon Dancer, but I was a little nervous about revealing my plan in front of Lemon Zest. Moon Dancer was an easy choice to make part of my team. She was intelligent, analytical, independent, and she wanted to push herself to the next level. Lemon Zest, on the other hand, was a wild card. First of all, I had no idea who she was other than what Moon Dancer said about her being a decent student, nothing out of the ordinary. In a normal situation, I would have dismissed her completely, instead choosing a different girl to make part of my team, but maybe she could still end up being useful. She already had experience dealing with magic (even if she had never used it herself), and she had a sort of optimism unlike any of the other girls I had met at Crystal Prep so far. She was positive, but she wasn’t an idiot.

...at least that’s what I was hoping for.

Leaning my head down so that only they would be able to hear me, I quietly said, “How would you two like to learn how to use magic?”

“Wait, you’re teaching Lemon Zest too?”

“Wait, you’re teaching me too?”

They both spoke in unison, surprised by the exact same idea that I was beginning to regret more and more, but my gut was telling me that I couldn’t pass up on either of them.

“Yes, I want both of you. All I ask is that you come with me to Canterlot, and then I’ll give you both powers that not even Twilight Sparkle has.”

Moon Dancer looked back at Lemon Zest, who shrugged in confusion. I had thrown out my base offer, and if Moon Dancer still didn’t like the terms, I could probably throw Lemon Zest out of the equation and still be fine. She couldn’t resist an offer like this, though. I knew that I was offering her the one thing that she couldn’t get on her own: a positive self-image.

“What do you think?” Moon Dancer asked, turning towards her classmate.

“I dunnooo…” the other girl said, her eyes trailing off to the side. “The whole thing at the friendship games kinda freaked me out. I don’t know if I want to turn into something like that.”

Great. Now they were a joint package and Lemon Zest was the one backing out.

“Did you know that Upper Crust is also learning about magic?” Finally, both of them turned towards me in disbelief. “She started today, and if you don’t believe me, go ahead and try to find her in any of her normal class periods.”

“Upper Crust?” Lemon Zest asked incredulously. “Why her?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” I asked, shaking my head. “Pretty soon, everyone will be able to use magic. You two don’t want to be left in their dust, do you?”

“No way! If Upper Crust is doing it, then I’m doing it!”

It was just that easy. I then turned towards Moon Dancer, and she seemed to share the same sentiment.

“I guess it’s the most logical choice. When do we leave?”

“Right now!”

The two of them looked at each other with the same hesitant fear in their faces, but turning back towards me, they both nodded their heads and stood up from their seats. I could tell that even though they didn’t know exactly what they were getting themselves into, they knew that taking a day off from school to learn magic would be better than playing it safe.

I, on the other hand, was now confident in the choices I had made. On the one hand, Moon Dancer would be the brains of the team, and Lemon Zest would be the easiest to give orders to, which would come in handy in case I ever needed to sacrifice someone in order to survive or give commands that seemed counterintuitive. The more I thought about it, the more confidence I gained in the team I was building.

It was only Friday, and I had almost my entire group set in stone. Now I had even more time to train up my magical girls while Trixie and Palette were stuck looking for more members. I only needed one more, and then my team would be complete. Then, Autumn Blaze would be free, and I would finally have my revenge on the girl who killed my only friend.

Author's Notes:

Sixth day of Trixmas

G&PT: 2 magical girls (Photo Finish and Upper Crust)
Last Gambit: 4 magical girls (Vignette Valencia, Adagio Dazzle, Moon Dancer and Lemon Zest)