Still, friends are friends and what is life without friends? The next day Rainbow Dash wrote to them after she finished lunch, letting them know that she had been assigned the task to know what there was to know about Schmidt, the biggest pain in her flank ever.
Instead of being upset on her behalf, the ponies on the other side of the paper wanted to know all about this… person – particularly Rarity.
On Dash's side of the paper, she and Schmidt, no, MIKE stared at each other across the Mess table, waiting for one or the other to give in and say something. Rainbow looked down at the book, fidgeting.
Mike took a calm bite, chewed slowly (Rainbow Dash resisted the urge to look up and stare at his mouth. Human teeth were… weird, all pointy and jaggy in places and flat in others - and those FANGS. Was this normal?) and then swallowed. He cocked an eyebrow at her (another weird thing about human faces: eyebrows, like little caterpillars growing out of their faces. She still found hers… fascinating… every morning as she brushed her teeth, staring at them in the mirror over the sink in her quarters…).
They exchanged silences until Rainbow snapped, "Ok, I'm DONE!" and marched stiffly out of the Officer's Mess, the book a tattle-tale bulge on her hip.
Inside her pocket elaborately written words appeared inside the book: "You really should have tried a little harder, dah-ling."
Feeling the vibrations of the book against her leg while walking across the heat-shimmering parking lot in front of the building, Rainbow Dash pulled it out, and furiously scribbled, "Rarity, you're acting like that was a stupid DATE back there!"
A car honked, she looked up. Lt. Dash had been so distracted by the book and her anger that she now just realized that she was blocking traffic. She shook her head, snapped the book shut abruptly, shoved it deep, deep into a random pocket, and walked stiff-legged back to the classroom, not once looking left or right as she went.
It was useless – they didn't get it. They just DIDN'T!
