The rolling mob that Cheerilee called 'her students' soon reconvened at lakeside.

There had been quite a few changes in Ponyville since Princess Twilight and Princess Luna had moved in. The large lake in the southeast of the town was... well, it was still a large lake. It took a look below the surface to see the rather palatial castle that now dominated the lakebed. This was the embassy of the Sea Pony diplomats, and it was where Doubloon called home. And, thanks to the heat wave and to the sea pony's almost ridiculous hospitality, it--- or at least the lakeshore around it-- was the most popular hangout in Ponyville. Sea Ponies had their own version of magic; one that naturally revolved around the manipulation of water. With their tridents they could amplify these natural gifts a hundredfold. Since moving into the Ponyville lake, the staff of the embassy had taken to amusing themselves by using that power to turn the lake into an impromptu water park. At the direction of the seaponies' tridents, animated water curled up over the shoreline, across the grass and even up into the air, forming sparkling fountains, slip-an'-slides,  and even "water slides" that ran uphill and spiraled out over the lake in crazy corkscrew patterns.

Willow had to take a detour back home to fetch a hat, sunscreen and his smoked goggles, then ran the entire way to the lake. When he got there he'd had an attack of shyness-- there were so many colts and fillies, and so much going on! But with a lot of urging from the others he finally dove in, metaphorically and literally.

He'd worried a bit that the others would think he was weird for wearing his straw hat and goggles, but one look at Nyx and he'd gotten over it... with a fit of the giggles. The redoubtable Youngest Princess was wearing an enormous pair of rhinestone studded sunglasses with lenses the size of saucers, an enormous floppy sunhat big enough to be a changing tent with a silk flower on the side the size of a cabbage, and a folded towel draped over her back with the legend "hoopy frood" monogrammed on the fringe.

Soon he was splashing about in the water with the others, riding the waterspouts, diving into the lake from on high, and splashing everyone with his webbed wings in a titanic water fight.  It escalated quickly, with earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns divvying up into teams--- and Nyx, the stinker, switching sides between all three constantly. Nopony was a match in the water for Doubloon, though; she could dart underwater in and out among the others and use her water-magic to douse her foes with surprise geysers.

Up on shore tables were set up with popsicles, sliced watermelon and mustardy tofu-dogs(1) waited to be devoured, and jugs of Doubloon's mother's famous Island punch waited to be guzzled. Shady trees helped keep the worst of the heat down, and mounds of ice in tubs kept the drinks and snacks nice and cool.

They also served as a hiding spot for a certain half-windigo colt. When Nyx, Willow, and Flitter came up to get a popsicle, they found Frosty sitting in the tub, half buried in ice shavings. Nyx burst into giggles. "Frosty?... what on earth...?"

Frosty looked at her with a sulky expression on his face. "Well what else am I s'posed to do?" he grumped.

"Truffle and whats-her-name, the one with the lisp,  talked my Mom into making me go. She thinks I need to get out more so she jumped at it." He rolled his eyes in the universal opinion of foals about their elders' wisdom.

Flitter figured it out instantly. "Oh jeez, those dumdums forgot you're a 'keep refrigerated' pony, didn't they," she said. "Are you okay? " The foals glanced at each other sympathetically. They knew this song and dance; Somepony's parents wanted somepony to socialize.(2)

He looked down. "Yeah, I'm okay-- I got my icepack suit and all." He didn't look okay; his face was a frozen thundercloud.

"You don't look like you're having much fun," Willow said cautiously.

Frosty glared at him from his nest of ice cubes and popsicles. "Of course I don't," he snapped. He looked over his shoulder to make sure Doubloon and her parents were out of earshot and continued in a strained, muted snarl. "I hate the beach! It's always broiling, the sun is blinding, the sand gets in everything and it BURNS my hooves, and try running around with fifty pounds of ice packs strapped to you and see how many laughs YOU have!"

"Can't you get by without it? I mean, you said you could, for a while..." Willow trailed off.

"Yeah, but... my powers..." He looked on the verge of telling them something important, but cut himself off. "I'll just stay here."

"Aww, c'mon," Nyx wheedled. "You definitely aren't gonna have any fun with your butt in an ice tub." The others giggled.

He scowled, his ego needled. "Forget it. I'm going home." He got out of the ice bucket, shaking the wet ice off his hooves, and got ready to walk home.

"I know it's really hot, but the water's nice and cool..." she pointed to the beach. The water jets from the lake were spraying into the air and falling on the sand in a cooling mist. "You can stand under the water spray and stay cool--"

"Yeah, that's really not a good--" Frosty started to say.

"Heads up!"

Flitter and Nyx spun around. There was more than one ice tub set out, and it looked like Snips and Snails had found one that was about half full of slushy ice water. They all had just enough time to screech before a wave of freezing cold slushy ice water washed over them all. Snips and Snails hooted as Nyx, Flitter and Willow yowled and sputtered, utterly drenched and frantically doing the ice-water shower rain dance. "Gotcha," Snails chortled.

"Hah, yeah, we got you good," Snips said.

"NOT FUNNY!" Willow yelled angrily, shaking the slush off his wings. Jeeps, ice water on bat wing skin was COLD!

"Ss-s-snips, you JERK!" Nyx yelled, shivering. "Why'd you go and do that?"

"Aw, it's just a little water," Snips said dismissively. "Besides, Frosty here looked like he really needed to loosen up-- Frosty?" There was no response. It took them all a moment to realize that instead of a half-windigo colt, there was what looked like an impressionistic ice sculpture of a foal standing in their midst. Muffled mumbling came from it and it rocked back and forth slightly in the grass.

"Frosty!" The group of foals grabbed him with their hooves. Nyx snapped at the two colts who'd doused him. "You idiots! you froze him in a block of ice!"

"No wonder he didn't want to go swimming," Flitter said.

"How does he take a bath?" Snips wondered.

The mumbling grew more agitated. "Omigosh, he can't breathe!" Willow said. The foals began pummeling frantically at the ice with their hooves. "Help, somepony help!" Several ponies had come running up at the commotion; they flew into a flurry of activity to get the colt out of the ice before he suffocated.

"Stand back, I'll get him out," Spike said. He stepped back and drew in a breath, only to have Nyx cork his mouth with her hoof.

"No, wait! You'll just burn him if you do that!" Nyx said.

"If you don't mail him to Canterlot by mistake instead," Bright Eyes said.

Spike scowled. "Hey..."

"I got it!" Snips said. He ran over to a picnic table and grabbed an armful of shakers. "Salt!" He came running back. "My dad uses it to melt the ice on the steps in winter. Put some salt on his back!" Snails grabbed one of the shakers and began sprinkling it on Frosty's back like he was an ear of buttered corn. "Not like that, dummy," Snips said. "Here!" He took a couple of salt shakers, twisted off their tops and poured the contents in a streak down Frosty's back.

There was a creak and a groan, followed by a loud crack. The pony ice sculpture formed a crack down the back from nose to tail. "Good work, that did it, Snips!" Flitter cheered. "Everypony grab a half and pull!" The foals dug their hooftips into the widening ice crack and tugged from either side. With a loud crackling the ice split and fell away... along with a distressing tearing sound... and there stood Frosty, staggering and gasping for air--- naked as the day he was born.

Willow looked down at the ice. The tattered remains of Frosty's ice-pack suit were still embedded in it. "Ooops," somepony said.

Frosty stood there for a moment, staring down at his ruined suit. His face turned beet red under his snowy fur. "You-- just-- I---" he sputtered.

Willow looked down to see frost spreading out across the grass from Frosty's hooves. He pointed. "Uh Frosty, is that supposed to happen?"

Frosty looked down and his expression went from furious to alarmed. "Oh nuts oh nuts oh nuts, not now--" he said under his breath, looking around frantically and doing a little hoofy dance. The grimace on his face looked like he desperately needed to pee.

"Uh oh, magic surge!" Sweetiebelle squeaked.

"How? He's not a unicorn!" Scootaloo said.

Ignoring them, fuming at their ignorance, Frosty pushed his way roughly through the gathering crowd of foals. He ran down to the shoreline and slammed his forehooves into the wet sand just as his eyes turned white.

There was.... Willow wasn't sure how to describe it. It was a burst of white-- but not a a bright blazing white, more like a cool, icy white that expanded outward from the windigo halfling like a shock wave till it seemed to encompass everything. When Willow's vision cleared, he gaped at what he saw.

"Whoah," he breathed.

For a hundred yards in every direction, the sweltering hot day had turned into a winter wonderland. Frost glistened on everything. The water slides and fountains crafted by the sea ponies had frozen into gleaming ice sculptures. Even the cooling spray that the mer-ponies had been misting over the beach had turned, in midair, into snow, coating the beach and grass in an inches-thick layer of white. The sea pony guards were all floating there in the lake, shaking and tapping their tridents and trying to figure out what happened. (Fortunately for them the ice only went out a few feet from shore.)

"Oh wow," Snips said. "This.. is... Awesome!" He scooped up a hoof full of snow, mashed it into a ball and chucked it at Snails.

Snails yelped as the snow splatted across the back of his head. "Oh, wow," he drawled, grinning even as he shimmied in place, shaking the shockingly cold slush off himself. "Snowball fight!" In seconds snowballs were flying in every direction. A snowball fight-- in the middle of summer!(3) Best party ever.

It wasn't long before the more adventurous foals found out that the former water slides were still usable-- only now they were even colder and slipperier. Once the adults present had made sure the ice chutes and flumes and belly-flop slides were structurally sound, colts and fillies were zipping around on them like demented otters.

Doubloon came sliding down the ice-coated beach on her belly, giggling like a lunatic. She managed to spin to a stop at Willow and Frosty's hooves in a spray of ice-melt. "Good one, Frosty," she said. "You one-upped my beach party easy. This is even better!"

Frosty didn't look happy at the compliment. "I... I gotta go home," he said. He turned and galloped off.

An impulse seized Willow. "Hey, wait up!" He galloped off after the half-windigo colt.

He caught up with Frosty down on Mane Street. The snowy colt was plodding along, head down, his mane waving listlessly. Willow galloped up next to him. "Frosty! Gee, slow down," he said, falling in beside him. "What... what happened back there?" He lowered his voice a little. "Are you okay?"

"Snowburst," Frosty said lamely, trying not to meet his eyes. "If the heat pushes me too far, my power tries to... push back. Make everything cool and comfortable again." He glanced upward; a small snowcloud was now hovering over him, white flakes drifting down. "It... it happens when I get startled or upset, too. I wasn't expecting that bucket of ice water, and... well..."

Willow pondered that. "Why don't you just let your power push back? Then you could go without your snow suit," Willow pointed out. He certainly wouldn't mind it if his "thestralness" made it dark around him or something when the sun hurt his eyes.

"Cause it makes a mess!" Frosty said. " Stuff gets frozen, then it thaws and puddles get everywhere. Not fun when you're indoors. Besides, it wears me out." He looked uncomfortable and sat down wearily. "That little snowburst already wore me out. I'm gonna be too pooped to move soon..."

"Why'd you run off?" Willow said, sitting next to him. "Nopony was mad..."

"They never are at first," Frosty said dolefully. He sighed and slumped, wobbling a little.

Willow stood up and gave him a shoulder to lean on, propping him up. "Come on," he said. "I'll help you get home."

Surprised, Frosty got to his feet, leaning against the smaller pony. "...Thanks," he said. "Why'd you come after me? Why are you helping me?"

Willow shrugged. "You looked like you needed a friend," he said simply. The two plodded off down the street, headed to Frosty's place.

"Oh come on, Diamond Tiara," Silver Spoon whined. "Come back outside, I can't keep your guests entertained all by myself!"

"Will you shush?" Tiara snapped over her shoulder. "This is important!" She turned back to her binoculars.

Diamond Tiara, it turned out, had a Crusade of her own.

Diamond Tiara's life over the past couple of years had taken a rather difficult turn. For as long as she could remember she had been the Queen Bee of Ponyville's filly population. She'd barely even had to try. Her family had always been the richest, which consequently meant that she was the best dressed, ate the finest foods, lived in the nicest house, had all the shiniest toys, and her family moved in the best circles of swanky, high society big-money ponies. But things had taken a sharp downturn for her of late.

The dirty little secret of Ponyville was that Diamond Tiara's family was only technically the richest family... As it so happened, the Apple clan owned far more land and property-- which made Applebloom, on paper at least, the richest filly in Ponyville. Applejack may have fretted constantly about the bills, but poor ponies didn't rebuild their barn four times a year without blinking. There was a reason Big Macintosh did all the accounting and other "fancy mathematicals." If you asked them how they were doing money wise, Applejack would go into a dither, but Macintosh? He would simply smile, fill out the balance books, and quietly tuck all the surplus profits away in Applebloom's trust fund.

The hitch in all this was that while Applebloom was oblivious to this, Diamond Tiara wasn't. Filthy Rich had let the Apple's net worth slip in Diamond Tiara's hearing, and ever since she had lived in mortal terror that she was about to be knocked off her throne by that hayseed upstart. It wasn't long after finding it out that Diamond Tiara had started on her campaign of carefully crushing Applebloom's spirit. Silver Spoon, Diamond Tiara's best friend and equally precariously placed atop the peer pressure pyramid, had gladly joined in the effort to keep the pecking order in their favor.

That had worked for a while... even surrounding herself with fellow blank flanks hadn't protected her from Diamond Tiara's methodical social sabotage. for a good short while she and Silver Spoon had kept the Cutie Mark Crusaders a local laughingstock and on the outskirts of the colt and filly community.

Then she had joined their ranks. A little black crybaby unicorn... who had promptly turned Diamond Tiara's entire world upside down and inside out.  From then on it seemed like every time she turned around, Nyx and the other Crusaders were one-upping her without even trying.  Luna and Celestia fawned over them; they hung out with celebrities; they had blown the roof of the Castle of the Moon on Nightmare Night when the Mane Three had gotten their cutie marks all on the same night; they had practically a third of Cheerilee's class in their ranks... it had nearly made Diamond Tiara lose her mind when Nyx and her book-nerd mother became princesses and moved into Canterlot Palace. She had comforted herself with the knowledge that Nyx, at least, would be out of her hair. Then Nyx had returned, bigger and famouser than ever, and apparently best friends with famous ponies--- people, she corrected herself, remembering the gryphon and the selkie in the newspaper-- from all the way around the world.

Diamond Tiara had spent a week sulking and eating her way through her allowance in chocolate-chip ice cream. But she was no fool. Once she'd gotten over her sulk (and her stomachache) she had promptly upped her game. Princess Luna's move to the Castle of the Moon on the outskirts of Ponyville had brought the rich, powerful and ambitious flocking to the little town. Princess Twilight's ascendance and claim on her own library-castle had brought still more. (4)

DT had known that if she wanted to stay Queen Bee, her own little personal hive had to grow. She had moved like lightning, sorting out the inrush of new foals and cutting a few from the herd for herself... the richest, the prettiest, the ones with the most famous parents-- and a few pushovers, even worse than Silver Spoon, who had just been ever so grateful for the popular girl taking them under her wing. She had a half dozen preppy, preening fillies in her little herd now, and even two or three colts. And under her lead, if not her lash, they all worked together round the clock to secure her... their... position at the top of the social ladder, and to upstage the Cutie Mark Crusaders at every opportunity.

Her current effort wasn't panning out so great. The pool party had all the right colts and fillies (naturally, they were all in her inner circle), tons of food, music, the works. But the pool had turned tepid in the unseasonal heat, as had the beverages, and fancy hors d'oeuvres didn't hold up well in the weather either. There certainly wasn't any dancing, in spite of the thousand-bit soundsystem blaring away at poolside. The few guests that had showed up were all lolling about listlessly, unenthused by anything their hostess had to offer.

Meanwhile, down at the lake (Diamond Tiara ground her teeth together as she glared through her binoculars) it seemed like half the foalhood population of Ponyville was having a blast. She could even see several of the ponies she had invited down by the lake shore. "Like this is fair," she growled. "They have an entire lake full of seaponies to do tricks for them--"

"Di-i-iamonnd," Silver Spoon whined. "Will you stop spying on those stupid Crusaders and come back down to the party? The ponies we invited are starting to leave and I can't persuade them to stay without--"

Diamond Tiara looked back over her shoulder again. "Will you shut up? I'm trying to figure out what they've got down there that we don't so we can--"

There was a white flash from outside. Diamond Tiara spun back around... and stared, jaw hanging open. She jerked the binoculars to her eyes and stared some more. "I....I don't believe it!"

"What was that?" Silver Spoon said, trotting up to look out the window in the direction of the flash.

"They... they turned the beach into an ice park!" DT almost shrieked.

"What?"

"LOOK!" DT grabbed Silver Spoon by the back of her head, dragged her forward and jammed the binoculars against her face.

"OWwww!"

"sorry-"

"Why do they make those eyepieces so small anyways?" Silver Spoon groused, rubbing her smarting eyes.

"Oh, just look will you--"

Silver Spoon took the binoculars and carefully looked through them. Diamond Tiara was right. The fountains and water flumes had frozen into gleaming ice, and the beach was now coated with a thick layer of white. She could see ponies in their swimming suits running around chucking snowballs at each other. "Oh wow," she said. "How did they do that??"

Diamond Tiara snorted, taking the binoculars back. "Magic, duh," she said. "That's how everypony does things around here." Even with the advent of new fields in Earth Pony magic, DT still cultivated an Earth Pony's disdain for the flashy tricks that her pointy-headed classmates and neighbors used to "cheat" their way through life.(5) "I wonder if it was Princess Twilight or that little twerp Nyx... she could've had a magic surge or..." Her binoculars moved down. "No, wait. It's not." She gasped. "It's the new colt."

"Who? How can you tell?"

Diamond Tiara smirked and held up the binoculars. Silver Spoon looked; she saw a white colt with a weirdly flowing mane running off down the beach-- away from the party. What had happened, exactly? She wondered. "Well this sucks," Silver Spoon said. "How can we compete with the Cutie Dork Crusaders when they have somepony who can do that in their little club?"

Diamond Tiara dropped the binoculars so Silver Spoon would look at her. She was smirking even wider than before. "Who says he's with them?" She said. At Silver Spoon's puzzled expression she went on. "Look, he's brand new in town. He's the biggest weirdo yet. He's got no friends for sure. And he's running away from the party." She stuck out her lower lip and let it tremble in fake pity. "I guess somepony didn't like the poor widdle windigo's trick." Her smirk returned. "Don't worry though, I'm sure our little group of Honeybees can make him feel all warm and welcome." She tracked the snowy foal with her binoculars. "Yeah, we can sweep a lonely little twerp into our club, no problem at all.

"Then we'll be the coolest ponies in Ponyville. In every sense of the word." Her snicker at her own joke would have given Dracula's malevolent chuckle a run for its money.

1)Carrot dogs? No, dang it, just no.

2)A parentally invented procedure where they took you someplace you didn't want to go for an event you didn't care about and made to do things you didn't like with colts and fillies you didn't even know, and then spent the rest of the evening complaining that YOU had spoiled the outing with your bad attitude.

3)It was just a week or so before summer, but as hot as it was, who was counting?

4)The little red schoolhouse had been consequently expanded as new students had flooded in, and it wouldn't be long before they hired a few more teachers to take the load off Miss Cheerilee's back.

5) Not that she objected to cheating-- there wasn't a rule she'd heard yet that she wouldn't break if she thought it would work to her advantage. She just resented it when other ponies did it when she couldn't.