She reaches the schoolhouse. One glance up at the clock shows it’s three minutes past seven; however, she doesn’t see anypony outside.
She pauses at the end of the walk, glancing both ways, before turning to trot to the door. Silver Spoon may have headed inside to wait.
She pauses outside, her ear pricked forwards. It sounds almost like class is in session! But she’s certain Celestia’s sun is in an evening position in the sky, and that that clock says seven. There’s no way class is in session!
… Wait. Ms. Cheerilee isn’t giving a lecture and taking questions. Judging by the voices- she can’t tell what anypony is saying- it sounds more like Ms. Cheerilee is simply moderating a big group discussion.
She reaches a hoof up and opens the door, letting herself in. Then blinks at the assembly.
About half of her class is there, including the Crusaders- and Silver Spoon. So is Ms. Cheerilee.
So are all six Element Bearers of Harmony.
She quickly picks up on the gist of the conversation. They’re looking for something- something important, it would seem.
She tilts her head slightly. She’d like to help- but her mother probably wouldn’t approve of it. Though… She probably could get away with helping. It’ll take a little effort to engineer her way into being asked to help in such a way she can say yes while remaining all… stuck up. But there’s only one way to start that- with a question.
“What’s going on?” she asks, while Twilight is talking.
Princess Twilight Sparkle glances over in her speech. “... tried that. Glad you could join us, Diamond- we’re brainstorming loc- Wait a minute.” She, along with every other pony in the room, turns to look at her. “Diamond Tiara?”
She looks back at them for a couple seconds. “What?” she asks.
Silver Spoon gallops out from the crowd to capture her in a hug. “I knew I should have skipped that checkup!”
She steps backwards from the force of the rush, accepting the hug. “I don’t get it.”
A strange sneezing noise comes from somewhere- and the entire room is redecorated in the blink of an eye. Streamers hang from the rafters and some locations they ought not to be able to hang from. Confetti showers down everywhere, except around the brand-new cake wobbling to a halt on the large table suddenly filling the center of the room, conveniently ringed by the present ponies.
The banner hanging across the rafters just above and in front of the cake reads “Welcome Back, Diamond Tiara!”
She spends another second or two thinking.
“Was I gone for a long time or something?” she finally asks.
“Three days!” Silverspoon states immediately, pulling out of the hug to hold her at forelegs’ reach. “You’ve been missing for three days! What happened?”
“I… I don’t know.” She contemplates mentioning the sinkhole, but then somepony else would find it- and the strange structure underneath. For now, at least, she wants to keep it to herself. She wants to have someplace to hide when things get too bad.
She also wants to investigate why she’d been gone for three days. She only remembers being awake for a total of about two hours, not even the four it would take to get from school’s out to seven. She doesn’t generally sleep for three days at a time, though.
… Though, she supposes, sleeping in a box full of numbing liquid with something strange attached to her face isn’t exactly like normal sleeping. She may well have slept longer than she normally might have.
She wants to… Not experiment, no- that’s for when Princess Twilight inevitably discovers it. Rather, she wants to find out about that. Examine it, perhaps discover exactly why she had slept for so long- even, exactly why her leg had seemed to heal itself while she slept.
Maybe she could talk to it. It hadn’t answered her, or spoken to her, but it had seemed to respond to her voice. Maybe it’s got some of those fancy new voice-activation spells on it? Given how old and worn it looked, she rather doubts it, but who knows?
She’ll just have to get back to it.
… After this party. And Silver Spoon probably won’t leave her alone for months, so she might have to sneak out at night or something.
Or get kicked out of her house- but she’d rather not do that unless she absolutely has to.
Her night went smoothly. Homecoming was interesting, to say the least; her father practically fawned over her for a few minutes, while her mother demanded the answer to one question and one question only: Did she wear her nobility properly throughout her absence?
Of course, she said yes. Except for the time when she’d been feeling out her injuries immediately after the landslide finished, she had ‘worn her nobility’ plenty good enough. Calling out for anypony… didn’t count.
She rather hopes she’d done well enough in her sleep- but inside that box, she rather doubts that anypony could see her during that time anyways.
She’d slammed her door rather harder than she’d intended, but nopony had come upstairs to badger her for it, so she could only assume she’d gotten away with it.
Now, though, it’s ten minutes after her night. In other words, it’s ten minutes after her parents went to bed- and they’re almost certainly asleep by now.
This is the time she would, five times out of every ten, go on a midnight stroll through… someplace. While wearing a disguise, so nopony recognizes her while she’s acting out of character.
She grins to herself. She knows exactly where she’ll stroll tonight.
Her disguise takes less than a minute to don. It takes her only two minutes to hit the streets.
It takes ten minutes to find the dark hole. She quickly checks her surroundings, scanning for anypony that might see, before dropping into the hole.
She lands solidly on the angled floor, squinting around in the darkness. Good thing she has her light crystal with her this time- or, more accurately, is thinking of it. She slips her tiara out from under her cape, flips back her hood, and installs it on her head. Next, she taps it twice- and the center gemstone lights up, glowing gently to illuminate the passage.
She looks up the passage, and back down it, before walking down the slope. About halfway down to the first corner, she checks back up the slope- still nothing- and removes her mask, stuffing it into her hidden saddlebags.
At each corner, and many times in between, she checks both ways before continuing along her chosen path.
It’s not until she reaches the bottom and enters the horizontal path that she starts talking.
“Ya know,” she begins. “I’d probably tell somepony if it wouldn’t do more harm than good.” She pauses, gazing up the passage she’d followed up to the room with the boxes in it. None of the strange lights have come on this time, but she gets the idea that they will if she needs them to. “Only problem is… Anypony that tries to help…” She shakes her head, lets out a sigh. “I just can’t do that. If I try telling them… If I’m lucky, I’ll be grounded for weeks. If I’m not…
“I’ve been wondering, a little. How hard could it be to live on my own? Presumably, food would be difficult to come by, and I’d have to spend a lot more effort in studying. Ms. Cheerilee could probably give me an honest grade, as well.
“But… Why? And for what?
“If anypony hurts me, even something as minor as a bad grade or a sub-stellar medical report, he’ll ruin them. If she kicks me out, he’ll probably turn that on me. I could kiss my tiara goodbye… live like a farmpony. No- at least Applebloom actually has something. I’d probably have to go find a rock farm to work off thousands of bits of sabotage.
“After all, it’s not like he actually cares about me. All he cares about is that nobody hurts my high-and-mighty image.”
She shuffles her forelegs, lying down on the hard metal. “Then, it’s not like she’s any better. At the end of the day, I’m about as valuable to her as a stack of bits on a counter.” She snorts. “I suppose it fits, kinda- her name is Spoiled Rich.
“She doesn’t care how I feel. She doesn’t care if somepony badmouths me.
“She only cares that I maintain a holier-than-thou attitude- that I am perfect.”
She sighs, rolling onto her side. “So, what’s the point? If I tell somepony, he’ll ruin them. If I tell them, she’ll throw me out and he’ll ruin me. If I don’t tell either…
“That’s what I’ve been doing: Not telling anypony. Only, I can’t keep it up for long. I can only contain the pain for so long. I can only mitigate it for so long.
“If I can’t tell anypony and I can’t tell them, I’ll have to contain it. I’ll have to mitigate it, no matter how long it takes.
“But the Crusaders are going to get their cutie marks sometime. How else can I release the stresses? Tell somepony…”
Her eyes widen, and she grins up at the ceiling. “Or something. You’re here. You listen, and respond. You don’t tell other ponies, you don’t have finances to get ruined. I can tell you, right? Without worrying about anypony getting hurt, or finding out?”
She lets out a sigh, turning to examine her forehoof. “I hope so. If I do tell you about it, perhaps I can drive Silver Spoon crazy again and again by not bothering the Crusaders. I wonder what they’ll do if we simply stop bullying them?
“I hope I can do that. I feel bad for taking it out on them; it’s not like it’s their fault.”