//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 // Story: The Stronger Tiara // by computerneek //------------------------------// She watches the Crusaders filing in for class.  The Cutie Mark Crusaders. The most recent target for her release. To be honest with herself, she feels bad for bullying them the way that she does.  They don’t deserve it. Unfortunately, she needs a release- and, she tells herself, at least she found something temporary- the lack of a cutie mark, to be specific- to bully them on.  Unfortunately, the non-permanence of such state also defeats some of the effectiveness of the release. But it’s enough of a release. She dreads hunting up another release whenever they finally do get their marks. Then, of course, there’s Silverspoon.  Her only friend. She’s pretty sure Silverspoon is participating in her bullying simply because she’s doing it first.  She really doesn’t want to teach her friend that it’s a good thing to do, but she also can’t talk about why she does it.  It’s not like it’s the right thing to do- or even a good thing to do!  For that matter, it doesn’t even solve the problem at hoof! She keeps her expression carefully untouched.  Nopony must find out. She contemplates using a blank message to get Applebloom in trouble again- and relating it to the other earth pony’s flank.  She knows she won’t get in trouble for it; everypony knows her father would find out and Ms. Cheerilee would suffer for it. Oh, yes.  Her father is a bit of a conundrum.  He does everything in his power to ruin everypony that hurts her- possibly why Silverspoon’s parents encouraged their friendship- yet he doesn’t show even an ounce of care for her around the house. Her mother, however, is easier to understand.  She simply doesn’t care, so long as she looks her part.  So long as she looks like the high-and-mighty, holier-than-thou noble-ish prick she’s supposed to be. She doesn’t like it. She decides not to play the message trick.  She isn’t that desperate, yet- and besides, she doesn’t think she could keep a straight face through it right now anyways. The problem is building.  Slowly. At some point, the Crusaders won’t be enough- and her mother will find out about her weakness. And disown her.  Dump her on the streets. Her parents have the money to do that- and get away with it. She almost wonders if she’d be better off doing that. Probably not. But it’s worth a little preparation.  Silverspoon has a doctor’s appointment today; the Crusaders have something planned on the farm, she heard.  She’ll spend her day on the other side of town, out of sight of other ponies, planning out her post-disowning life.  Trying to figure out how to live. If her mom catches her coming in messy, she’ll blame it on somepony tripping her or shoving her into a mud puddle, if she ends up that bad. She focuses her attention on Ms. Cheerilee’s lesson.  Thanks to her father, the only way she will learn is if she teaches herself.  He’s so bad she can’t even give her a bad grade! “Hey, Diamond?” She looks up.  It’s Silverspoon.  “Yes?” “You okay?” She stops, turning to stare at her friend.  “Uh, what?” She’s sure she didn’t do anything to suggest anything of the sort!  At least she waited until everypony else ran off, though- so nopony is around to overhear. “Well, it’s been more than half the day and you haven’t said anything.” She blinks.  “Is that… Unusual?” Nod.  “Something like that…  There’s usually at least three pokes at the Crusaders or something by now.” “Oh.  Um…” “How about this:  Are you going to be okay today?  I can skip the checkup.” She shakes her head.  “Don’t worry about me,” she states.  “I’ll be alright. See you at, what, seven?” Nod.  “Right about, yes.  Schoolhouse, or…?” Nod.  “Schoolhouse is good.”  She smiles to her friend.  “Now go. You know your mom doesn’t like you skipping doctor’s visits.” Silverspoon offers her a glare for that.  “Oh please. You’d think she’s worried about an epidemic.” Snort.  “Possibly.  Every two weeks does seem a little bit overkill, doesn’t it?” Nod.  “Of course it is.  But you know her- that’s what she’s like.”  She lets out a sigh. “Doctor Horse has grown quite bored of my visits, but she pays him handsomely.” “Oh?  How much?” “It changes,” she smirks.  “He once told me he raises the price a little each time.  As a result, she’s indirectly paid for several of the upgrades at the hospital…  I think today’s visit is something to the tune of thirty thousand bits.” Blink.  “Wow. She must really care about your well-being.” “Uh…  Physical well-being, specifically, but yes.” She raises an eyebrow, but chooses not to inquire. Close to an hour has passed.  She’s out in the grass outside of town, where nopony can see her.  On the side opposite the Everfree; she doesn’t need something to crop up and attack her. Though, she does wonder how her father would financially ruin a timberwolf. But that’s an experiment for another day.  She sniffs daintily at the grass… Bleh. She- She’ll be sneaking in, all covered in dirt, tonight.  Bonus, she’ll be able to blame it on what it really is- a sinkhole.  She’d had absolutely no warning before the ground simply gave way underneath her hooves. She falls, on top of this plug of dirt.  She braces herself for a landing as best she can; if she doesn’t, she could easily get hurt. She falls only a dozen feet or so, before she- and the preceding landslide- hit something steeply sloped.  She gets showered by falling dirt and rock- only small ones, thankfully- as she slides along a steep, smooth surface.  She catches a glimpse of something- metal, she thinks- as she scrambles for a hold in the waning light. She doesn’t get it.  Instead, she gets a moments’ warning of an abrupt change in the slope before she enters freefall again…  and hits another slope, about equivalent, but going in the opposite direction. She gets showered by more dirt and gravel as she continues sliding, and resumes her scrambling for a hold, now in total darkness. This happens again. And again. And again. Somewhere around the tenth direction change, she hears the rumble of something significant following her down.  Like a good-sized rock. Finally, after a total of thirteen changes- she’d counted- she crashes to a stop.  She immediately scrambles to her hooves, turning to move in the direction she’d been moving before.  She’s afraid of the dark- and whatever this rumble is, she’s fairly sure it’s not friendly. It hits her anyways.  Her hind leg seems to snap like a twig as it rolls overtop.  Thankfully, it is then deflected to the side, preserving the rest of her body- but without her left hind leg, she doesn’t think she’s even physically capable of returning to the surface. Nevermind that, even with it, she’ll never be able to see her way up. She bites her tongue and pulls herself further away from wherever the rocks are coming from before she runs into a flat wall, carrying the same slope as the one she’d most recently slid down- and forming a ceiling.  Here, she waits for everything to stop moving, to become silent. Thankfully, nothing touches her.  She turns herself around, leaning against that flat wall as she reaches her forehooves down to find out what’s left of her hind leg. One.  Two. She lets out a scream as her search reveals the third break in a particularly painful way. She forces her head back down, breathing deeply.  She can see what looks like another break, and her hoof looks to be broken as well.  She’s bleeding, but it doesn’t look like it’s that bad. She pauses, looking to her right, at the boulder that had ended up next to her.  She can see the flat, vertical wall it settled against. She tilts her head.  She had been in total darkness not five seconds ago, hadn’t she? She looks the other way.  An open passage, though much of it has been blocked by the landslide.  The gap is small enough for a filly like herself to get in, though. And inside this strange, metal passage, with something odd attached to the angled walls, there are spots of light, shining out to her. She tilts her head again.  It looks almost like somepony took a house and tilted it about forty-five degrees. She looks up the passage she’d slid down.  It fades into the darkness. She forces herself to her hooves, carefully holding the injured hind leg aloft.  She limps herself forwards, down into the passage with the light. She limps all the way to one of the lights before stopping, looking around as she leans against the odd rail-like construction on the one wall. She spends several seconds looking around, still breathing deeply, before she allows herself to speak.  “Hello?” she calls. No answer. “Anypony there?” A light flickers on in a passage- angled upwards, of course- not far from where she is now. She looks around.  She wishes she had something convenient to stuff her hurt leg into- like a sling.  Though those are normally used for forelegs, she’s pretty sure. She wonders what the doctors use when somepony breaks a hind leg- aside from a cast, of course. She rises slowly to her three working hooves, lifting her broken leg as best she can as she limps her way to the new passage. It seems innocent enough- so she pushes herself up it.  She… Huh.  The doors are on the ceiling and the floor, but not the walls. So, did somepony take a house and tip it up onto one of its corners?  And bury that in the ground? She stops suddenly, hoof suspended over empty air.  An open door. She looks down. It’s a small room.  She sees what looks like a bunch of stretchers piled on the ground, filling probably close to half the room.  She sees the three great big boxlike things attached to the vertical wall the door connects to… Presumably what was supposed to be the floor.  The stretchers have piled up to one of them- which has light spilling out of it. She tilts her head.  “Somepony in here?” She looks up and down the passage. No response. She shudders, looking once again at the stretchers.  If nothing else, those look softer than the hard metal she’s on right now; she should be able to ease her passing…  Or her time, if somepony finds her down here. Which she doesn’t expect. She sticks her head in through the door, looking around.  Nothing more of interest; no other doors out. She looks up and down the passage once again.  Nothing. She looks at the stretchers. With their metal frames, she could possibly build a ladder out of them to get back out, if need be. She glances back at her injured leg, and offers a little grin.  Of course, that would only work if she managed to fix her leg somehow. She takes a deep breath, looks down, and jumps. She falls quickly- and lands right where she’d aimed, on one of the stretcher-things. It hurts. She lets out a yelp of pain; as it turns out, this stretcher isn’t just soft fabric suspended over nothing- no, it’s scratchy fabric suspended over the corners and edges of other stretchers.  Add that to her broken limb, and she figures even her mother would cry out. That hallway had been vastly preferable. A quick glance reveals an easy escape from this torturous surface- into the box.  Smooth, solid metal sides. She limps her way into it, settles herself into the corner, and leans back against the long side.  She pulls her tail in, using it as a cushion for her injured leg, before letting out a breath and relaxing. A low hum catches her attention almost as soon as she closed her eyes.  She opens them again, looking for the source. Oh.  The lid of the box is sliding shut again.  It looks mighty heavy; she probably doesn’t have the strength to stop it.  Especially since it’s sliding down. She also doesn’t have the time to scramble back out. “What in Equestria…?” It lands completely closed.  She blinks at it once. “Great.  Trapped. Yeeich!” She lands from her slight jump as the strange…  fluid that just started falling out of the ceiling pours off of her mane, sliding down towards the bottom.  She slides herself out of its path, attempting to brush it out of her mane with one hoof. A doomed effort.  It pools quickly, soaking into her tail, pooling over it.  The pain in her leg seems to fade quickly as it pools up over it, and she finally lets herself relax.  If she’s going to drown, at least it won’t hurt. Something plastic, hanging from the same ceiling, attaches itself very suddenly to her muzzle. She lets out a muffled yelp, forelegs flying up to rip it off.  To rip it off… err… Her forelegs fall limply to her sides as she falls unconscious.