Bright lights scattered along the horizon like a rainbow as the cab approached the amusement park. Sure enough, the weather had been kind to the three ponies, providing a sunny day and a warm climate for the event they’d been awaiting. Yet, even as the attractions came ever closer into sight, Diamond Tiara was far from focused on any of them.
Her hoof seemed almost permanently glued onto her chin as she puzzled through the same situation that’d been on her mind all morning. For once, though, these doubts didn’t center around the family that had picked her up off the streets on a whim, but on somepony she’d barely considered over these past few days, and on a thought she never suspected she’d have.
To think, she’d spent so long trying to gather clues about Babs and Bambi, and in that one tiny moment she’d spent thinking about her mother, the facts were dropped straight into her lap.
The cab glided through the streets, the sound of the wheels beginning to drown out all else. With each turn, the gears of Diamond’s brain moved in tandem.
She lied to me about being with another stallion, she thought. Mother thought it’d be easier to explain it like that than to just tell me she was off on another business deal. But why go to so much trouble when she knew what she was going to do with me?
As she was taking in all the facts of her case, and pondering what else her mother might have hidden from her, she felt a poking feeling on her back. Suddenly jolted out of her thoughts, she saw the mare next to her and did a double take.
“I was just about to tell you we were almost there,” Bambi spoke, cocking her head to the side slightly. “I would’ve thought you’d be more excited about this, actually.”
“Yeah,” Babs replied. “You wouldn’t stop talkin’ about it yesterday, and you’re just quiet all of a sudden. If ya don’t feel up to it right now, we can turn back.”
Diamond honestly couldn’t remember the last time anypony had called her “quiet,” and hearing the word seemed comical, almost insulting, to her. That, at least, was enough of a jolt to take her back into reality and the break that was supposed to be a vacation to begin with. She awoke for the second time that day to see her two hosts staring at her intently as if doing so would solve a mystery in and of itself.
“It’s nothing,” she muttered, still somewhat out of sorts. “I just ran into a stallion who knows my parents last night, that’s all.”
As soon as she blurted that last part out, her hooves darted straight towards her mouth. If she had any sense in her, she wouldn’t have admitted anything like that so bluntly. The whole affair was a rather dumb one to ponies outside her family, anyway, and in all likelihood, even she was probably overthinking it.
“Somepony you knew?” questioned Babs.
Diamond shook her head about as slowly as she could, as if even that detail was something she wasn’t entirely sure about.
“It was really weird. He just went up to me, even though I had never seen him in my life. Mother told me she’d come here to see a stallion, but he started telling me she was here to seal a deal with him.”
The cab skidded across the pavement and came to a sudden stop, yet even as the three ponies descended from the vehicle, the uncertainty about the strange incident seemed to have spread to all of them.
“If she was so focused on everything else, then don’t you think she was right to leave me?”
The words hurt like acid on Diamond’s tongue now that she’d finally got around to speaking them, the ones that had slept in her mind without consequence earlier. Once again, she turned to the other two, only to see an absolutely blank look on Babs’ face as Bambi shook her head from side to side.
“It really is a sad thing when a filly trusts a stranger’s words more than her parent’s,” the older mare whispered, glancing at the ground. “But it really shouldn’t matter what she’s up to in Manehattan. Anypony who’d abandon a foal deserves to rot in the lowest depths of Tartarus, with no friends by their side but the all-consuming flame of punishment.”
At that point, Bambi’s gaze had become far more intense than either filly had likely seen in their lives, and one of her front hooves was fixed straight underneath Diamond’s neck. Suddenly, silence permeated the entire area, and Bambi came to the sudden realization that yelling this sort of colorful language was not typical behavior to be done in a theme park entryway.
“Sis,” Babs said, prodding her with her hoof, “ponies are staring.”
Apparently, Bambi’s voice had elevated in tone to the point where the subject of abandoning ponies was quickly forgotten, and all ponies could decipher was that she wanted to pull somepony into Equestria’s hellish prison. All she could do was let out a few nervous chuckles, scratch at her neck, and quietly wait until ponies would stop noticing and go about their business.
“Sorry, but I’ve just come across some bad experiences of that in my line of work. But my point still stands. If you leave a foal to the streets on this newsmare’s watch, I won’t go easy on you. That’s one crime I can’t excuse.”
Something about her words came across as infinitely more personal than anything she could’ve experienced on a reporting spree, but Diamond let it slide for once. She’d thought through enough things at this point without another thing throwing a wrench into it.
Just before the three of them agreed to set everything from last night to the side, though, one of them asked Diamond if she recalled the name of the pony she’d met. It didn’t quite register which of them had posed the question, since the reaction she got seemed to blur out everything else.
The two sisters’ reactions mirrored one another like tragedy and comedy masks, with the younger’s eyes glowing and the elder’s glowering. For once, Diamond thought to herself, there was actually something that divided the two of them.
Just as they were about to pass through the park gates, Bambi stopped Diamond suddenly with a new strictness in her eyes. Almost, it seemed, one that carried a hint of sadness to it as well.
“I want to make sure you get as much time as you can here, so I’ll make this short,” Bambi started, her voice carrying more determination than anger. “If Mosely wants anything to do with you or your family, it isn’t good. He may have a lot of fame going for him, but I know more about him than anypony else, and I’ve seen what he’s capable of. Be lucky he let you off with what you did last night.”
This was a mare who was a rising star in her field, who probably had to have faced criminal masterminds and possibly even supervillains themselves to get to where she was. Yet here she was, cautioning Diamond about the same sort of interchangeable rich stallion she’d spent her entire life around. Like his ability to blend in was what made him so sinister in the first place.
Diamond was willing to let her off at that, and actually did for the rest of the day. Bambi’s last few warnings didn’t really come back to haunt her until the adventure had caught up to her, when she was left alone at night with nothing else to think about.
“If only our family had been handed the same fate.”
****
Up close, the sheer size of the park was overwhelming, as it appeared large enough to be a city in and of itself. A cluster of shops were crowded by the park’s front, and a particularly large one served as its entrance.
“Get used to this,” Bambi said with a chuckle, having already regained her mood from before. “Every one of the big rides does this same little trick. You can barely do anything here without being bombarded by souvenir stands.”
Before the rides came into view, Diamond almost wondered if she had the right place, as it looked more like a shopping center than the miraculous vision of machinery she’d seen before. But they came into her view, she couldn’t stop her eyes from flashing back and forth between them.
Everything, even the coasters, sparkled with crystals—likely fake, but still stunning nonetheless. A few of the makeshift gems even had lights within them like candles. But most importantly of all, all the structures shimmered like ice—or rather, the illustrations she’d seen of Crystal Empire structures.
“They made all this after the Empire was found?” Diamond asked. “Surely they couldn’t have. I’ve seen how long it takes to build stuff like this, and there’s no way.”
“But that’s just what they did,” Bambi answered. “It’s amazing what city ponies can do when their tourism is at stake. The Crystal Empire was bringing in tons of ponies, so we just figured we’d plop a little one here in Manehattan so you wouldn’t have to travel as far.”
The whole idea of what the place was meant to represent—a replica city with a bunch of fun-inducing machines—was still a bit odd when Diamond really got to thinking about it, but it was certainly every bit as inviting as Ponyville. For a moment, you could forget you were in a big city as you watched the parents, grandparents, foals trot by. A relationship that previously incited only jealousy in her became one that she actually felt comfortable in now.
Forgetting she was in a city, it turned out, meant forgetting Babs and Bambi weren’t her family either.
Just as Diamond was about to zone out again, Babs picked the first ride, one that looked like a giant swing set for pegasi. As the three placed themselves at the end of the line, she was tempted to sneak past everything and clear a way to the front, only for the other filly to stop her.
“Sorry!” she replied, jumping a little at Babs’ touch. “Force of habit, I guess.”
The line moved slightly, and yet there was still nothing but silence from the other filly’s part. Cursing herself for having taken another step back from a potential friendship with Babs, Diamond apologized once more. It was something that a proper Rich mare would never do, and yet it was the thing that seemed right in the situation.
“It’s fine,” Babs finally said. “It just kinda made me remember how hard it was for me to change. ‘Course you’re still gonna try to act up like that.”
If it’d been in any other context, the brown filly dismissing Diamond’s previous behavior as natural to her would’ve been the most insulting thing in the world. And yet somehow, it’d never really occurred to her that Babs ever had to change—from the last time they met, she’d gone completely from befriending her to defending the Crusaders almost at the drop of a hat. That, more than anything, had been what had made the whole incident so painful to everypony involved.
What had made Diamond, all too deep down, both resent and admire her once former, now possibly current, friend.
“The other lines aren’t as long, though,” Babs continued. “Guess it was more of my fault for picking the longest one, huh?”
“How did you change?”
The question came out abruptly and surprised both young fillies just about equally. It was certainly nothing that Diamond had even considered asking this early on, after only a few days of really getting to know Babs. Yet just like how nothing about her apartment or her status seemed to add up, neither did this.
“It’s taken me so long,” Diamond whispered, a hint of some strange emotion in her voice. Desperation? Certainly nothing anypony of her standing was used to, but even in these Manehattan days, trying to be good felt like having a rope pulled against her.
Before she could stay down for long, the ride finally opened itself up. Diamond soared straight through the air multiple times on multiple different contraptions, one after another, trying everything to distract herself from the way she’d opened herself up to the public. Humiliated herself in front of somepony she barely even knew. At a certain point, just as she’d planned, she got so caught up in the festivities that she barely remembered what she’d said in the first place.
Even then, though, it was still at the back of her mind. Just like everything else she’d had to push there.
“So,” Babs finally asked, “are you having fun?”
The group had mainly been left to their own devices for most of the day, staying together but not conversing much. Now that they were sitting at a patio table eating second-rate hayburgers, they were back to some semblance of what Diamond pictured a normal family to be like—just a gathering of ponies sitting back, telling their stories, and enjoying life.
“Yeah,” she answered, nibbling on the huge stick of cotton candy Babs had insisted on buying her. “More than I’ve had in a while, actually. And I can’t believe I actually got you to go on the coaster with me.”
“Just this once,” Babs warned. “That thing’s scary as Tartarus. I swore I was gonna fall off, even! If you ever try to make me go on it again—“
Bambi stared at the fillies with a wide smile, chuckling as she saw them interact.
“Still, I wouldn’t have thought you’d have the courage to try it,” she teased her younger sister. “Especially with the way you looked at it all the way up here.”
Babs crossed her front legs and made a tiny pout for a few seconds before jumping back into the conversation. If the two ever had another game day together, Diamond noted, she could definitely beat the other filly when it came to holding that pose for extended periods of time.
“Anyway,” Bambi continued, “I heard they have events at night, too. They don’t cost a whole lot more, so if you two want, we can stay here longer and do those. If it’s your first time here, we might as well go for the full experience, right?”
While it was a bit early to be discussing this, as the sun had barely reached its highest point in the sky, both fillies’ heads nodded in agreement without even asking anything else. Diamond had noticed some ads for the night attractions, with things like a “boardwalk” and an “escape room,” but both had been foreign concepts to her like everything else. However, if the rides had been such a diversion from her thoughts today, she figured an extra dose of it later would do her even more good.
Yet she still wondered, and even that simple action of trying to cut through line made her question what she’d been working for. Perhaps even more perplexingly, she realized during this lull in the day’s events, neither of her hosts seemed willing to talk about it, or about how she could work to change herself. Instead, they flipped back and forth between different sorts of chatter, almost as if the mistake itself had never occurred.
“So,” Diamond finally spoke as Bambi left the table for a few slight moments to relieve herself. “You never did answer my question.”
“’Course I didn’t,” Babs replied. “If I would’ve, we’d have held up the whole line. How I changed, it ain’t somethin’ I can say in a few neat sentences. And if you’re thinkin’ it happened right when I turned on ya that one time, it wasn’t like that, either.”
The brown filly shrugged and casually took another sip of her drink, as if all that had just poured out of her effortlessly. Her face was utterly unreadable, her mouth at once smiling and straight. The one thing Diamond could tell, though, was that Babs’ expression lacked anger in just about every way.
“It sure seemed that way, though,” Diamond barely whispered, too full of wistfulness to really register what her companion was saying.
“Then that means I got you good. Thing is, once everythin’ caught up to me back there and I realized what’d happened, I hated you so much. I’d never bullied anypony before that, took pride in it, even. But then there was somethin’ in you that made me go wild and hurt ponies, and I wanted to do the same to you. For changin’ me like that, I mean.”
As Babs admitted all this with the calmest of looks on her face, Diamond suddenly felt a fear rise through her that was greater than any of the thrills the rides had given her. The other filly had sure acted civil enough, but she still hadn’t forgotten. All Diamond could do at this point was glance around herself, hoping against hope that her companion wouldn’t beat her into the ground then and there.
“But then, I realized somethin’,” spoke Babs. “It had never been you, or anypony else. What kept me from getting better for so long was thinkin’ you were the one who did it to me, and not me doin’ it to myself. So by the time I thought it all out, Apple Bloom told me about what’d happened to you, and the anger was out of me. It was still there a little, but for once, I understood. If we both messed up to protect ourselves from messed up stuff in the world, maybe we could help each other out.”
Taking another sip of her drink, she muttered, “’Course, I was a bit suspicious when ya showed up out of the blue like that a couple days ago. Seein’ anypony do that would’ve been weird. But I can’t say I hated you.”
Now it was Diamond’s face that was frozen in place, her mouth open wider than anypony likely thought it could go.
“You’re a lot more forgiving than I thought,” she finally whispered after the shock wore off.
“Well, I figure Coco was willing to forgive me for everythin’, and I didn’t mess that up. With the types of friends I have, I figure I should return the favor. And I think that’s the key to it all. You want to change, you gotta have a chance to. It may not seem like your mama’s willin’ to give you that chance, but I am. That’s what matters as long as you’re here.”
Bambi had already returned from the restroom, but she stayed in the distance, watching these fillies mend things up all on their own after only three days together. She would’ve liked to have thought that all this was simply out of kindness or understanding, but deep down, she knew. The things Babs had wanted were the ones Diamond took for granted, and it would only be so long before she would have to know. With the way Mosely was already interfering, it might only be a few more days like this, before Diamond would have to learn about how the family had suffered from the shadows.
Still, Bambi thought to herself, Coco would be proud.