//------------------------------// // Dove The One You're With—Part II // Story: Menace to Propriety // by PatchworkPoltergeist //------------------------------// Perhaps it had been guilt about their fight at the wedding. Perhaps it had been a show of compassion for an animal not long for this world. Or perhaps it had just been a force of habit for somepony who constructed elaborate custom arrangements for a living anyway. Whatever the motive, in a rare moment of insight, it had been Spoiled Rich of all ponies who'd first suggested the idea of arranging Menace's custom-built cage to be more accessible for a bird with flight issues. Flat ramps leading through the platforms and out into the cage meant that a bird who couldn’t fly well could still get around without much trouble. Unfortunately, that also meant that if somepony forgot to lock the cage, a pigeon could also sneak out while everypony else busied themselves fighting over family drama. Diamond squished the ramp’s plush cushioning—made of the same shock absorbing foam used for mattresses and fragile packaging and perfect for easing stress on the feet. Perfect for absorbing the sound of little bird nails, too. The same could be said for the plush carpeting. For all they knew, Menace walked out the second Diamond turned her back to the cage leaving a splendid mess in his wake. Soft blue fluff trailed out of the cage and halfway down the ramp, where it suddenly cut off. A splatter of black and white feathers marred the carpet below where the trail restarted. He must have either fallen off or jumped. Two feet away, safflower seeds and berries sprayed and scattered in random directions where he’d toppled his backup food dish. Diamond wished she could tell if Menace had actually eaten any of it. Spoiled groaned over the state of her carpet and squinted at the shelves and cabinets for more signs of pigeon mayhem. “It can’t fly, right? Couldn’t have gotten that far, it’s not that big of a room.” “He flew up to the short couch last night.” Menace missed the first jump and had fallen off a second later, but he’d still done it. It seemed to be a good sign at the time, before he’d gone listless this morning. Diamond’s cheek pressed against the carpet to check under the couches and tables. The feather trail wound around the legs of the coffee table and under the armoire with manticore paws. Why was he losing so many feathers, anyway? The sweater vest should have stopped the plucking. Diamond reexamined the fluff strewn over the carpet: the colors complimented each other, the same way Menace’s crocheted vest did. Looking closer, the bits of fluff more resembled tangled knots of yarn string; his vest must have been unraveling. Luckily, Fluttershy had predicted this. Diamond grabbed a backup vest from the box—orange and green weren’t his colors but whatever—and tucked it under her foreleg. In a farther corner of the room, Spoiled knelt to examine a string of white yarn that stretched from the upturned food bowl to the foot of the stairs. The string spooled around her hoof as she followed it to the stairwell and a triangle of sunlight pouring in from the ceiling. It could have only come from the skylight above the War Room. She sighed long and hard. “You left the door open.” Diamond rubbed the back of her neck. “Oh. Whoops.” She shot Spoiled’s glare back at her. “Hey, it’s not like I did it on purpose. You surprised me and I forgot.” “That’s no excuse, you don’t just forget to close the entrance to a panic room. Locking the door is the entire point! What if you came down to hide from a gang of vicious criminals and you left the door open?” Diamond’s head poked up from the stairwell. Menace had definitely been here. The first place ribbon for Lil’ Miss Equestria: Central Regionals ‘98 had been dragged out of its display, the ribbon tangled and the rosette scuffed. White splotches of poop marked the rolled up rug beside the panic room’s vault-like door. “Mother, it’s Ponyville. We have monsters, not robbers. The worst we’d get is a nosy neighbor or Pinkie Pie.” Not that locked doors meant anything to Pinkie Pie. “As if that’s any better,” Spoiled huffed. “We don’t need uninvited ponies stomping around in here, tracking in mud and mites and who knows what else.” Thankfully, the ribbon for the ’98 regionals had only minimal damage. Diamond smoothed it out and put it in its proper place, glancing over her other spoils of victory within the War Room. She didn’t remember who’d decided to name it that way; Mom, probably. The walls shimmered with trophies, ribbons, sashes, and crowns from pageants, contests, and tournaments. At least two for every year she’d been alive. Diamond touched a bare spot in the center of the medal display case. A medal for carrying Ponyville’s flag at the Equestria Games was supposed to go there, once. Oh well. Aside from the rosette ribbon, nothing else had apparently been touched. It made sense; the trophy cups were all too tall and awkward to fly into, and the rest sat on tall shelves or behind glass. Diamond frowned at the ribbons shelved just above a foal’s eye level. She didn’t remember leaving the ’98 regional ribbon out. How had Menace gotten hold of it? “Mother, did you move any of my ribbons?” Spoiled banged her head against the bottom of Diamond’s work desk. “I don’t see the bird under here, and it’s not hiding under the door.” She hadn’t heard the question or else ignored it. Rubbing the knot on her poll, Spoiled crawled out and gestured towards the entrance to the War Room. A white feather lay in the open doorway. “Great.” Diamond Tiara stepped into the hall, staring down a long line of open doors. “He could be anywhere by now.” None of the windows had been left open more than a crack. Gathering another clump of sweater yarn, Spoiled double-checked the front door to confirm it had been closed. “Not anywhere; he’s still in the house.” She pursed her lips at a splash of pigeon poop on the rug, but kept her complaints to herself. “The little menace can’t let anything be easy. I’ll bet he’s hiding.” Yarn fluff and feathers scattered through the hall in stark zig-zags and twirling corkscrews. Menace’s trail overlapped, looped, and doubled back into undecipherable havoc. If he was indeed hiding, he probably didn’t want to be found and had covered his tracks. That or he’d gotten dizzy and run into a wall. Menace had vanished at some point during her argument with Spoiled. He hadn’t liked it when they’d fought at the wedding, either. “Maybe he’s in the servants’ quarters,” Diamond suggested. “At the other end of the house? Why?” Diamond shrugged. “I dunno, that’s what I’d do when Mom and Dad got into a fight.” At least until Randolph found her under his bed an eighth time too many and finally told Dad about it. Which only gave them something else to fight about. “I see.” Spoiled cleared her throat and moved on. “Well, I doubt he made it all the way there in the condition he’s in. It’s a long way for a bird on foot. Frankly, I doubt that tiny brain of his understands his own name, much less cares that we’re fighting.” She pulled up a tablecloth, picked out a tangle of blue and white yarn, and dropped it into the frog of Diamond’s hoof. “But I do know that some animals know when their time is coming.” Diamond squeezed the little knot of yarn in her hoof. “They do?” Spoiled nodded. “Sometimes they go off somewhere private to die in peace. My sister’s Ragdoll did that.” “What’s a doll got to do with anything?” The feather trail had thinned out, but clumps of yarn trailed into the living room. Spoiled glanced under a table and checked behind the sofa. “It’s a type of cat. When you pick them up, they flop in your hooves like a doll.” Diamond peeked out from behind the stereo. “Wait, aren’t you allergic to cats?” “Yes, I am.” Spoiled lifted an armchair, checking in the cushions for any sign of the bird. “As I said, it was your Auntie Honeymilk’s cat.” “But… you still lived in the same house and stuff, right?” By that logic, Diamond could have gotten her first choice of a kitten after all. She shrugged. “My input on the matter wasn’t deemed necessary.” Spoiled jabbed her hoof at Dusty Trails, who paused in the middle of her dusting rounds. “You. The pigeon’s out. Confirm all the windows are closed, then search the other rooms.” Without missing a beat, she slipped back into the conversation without waiting for a response. “We found the cat in my closet, of all places. I had cat hair in my clothes and wheezed for two weeks.” The last thing Diamond wanted to think about was dead pets in closets. “Hey, what’d you mean before, when you said there’s only one wedding if you did your job right?” She picked out a yarn string out of her tail. No telling if she’d picked it up in here or somewhere else. “Like, if they break up, it’s not your fault. You’re just the wedding planner.” No pigeon in the living room. On their way out, Spoiled closed and locked the door. “Wedding planning is my job, not my Talent.” Her cropped tail swung to indicate the diamond ring on her flank. “I was a matchmaker.” Was? “What do you mean? Talents don’t change, do they?” Diamond Tiara glanced at her own cutie mark. “Did you make a mistake about what your mark means?” “No.” The word held weight to it. When she noticed Diamond still watching her, Spoiled twitched a dismissive ear and added, “Talents don’t change, but job markets do.” She shrugged and attempted a little smile. “It happens.” “Oh.” Diamond couldn’t imagine what it’d be like to not be able to use her special Talent. It’d be like living half a life. “Maybe you could still do something to fix it? I mean, I know Apple Bloom and her friends are good at figuring out—” Spoiled Rich pivoted with a glower to curdle cream. “The only thing those… three can do for me is keep a five-foot distance. I’d suggest you do the same, but you’ve already made it clear that you’re determined to toss your future aside in the name of slumming it with a pack of ragamuffins.” Four doors down, Dusty Trails stepped out of the dining room. She glanced between Diamond and Spoiled, tugged her collar, and slipped back inside. Spoiled wrinkled her nose at the pigeon feathers sprayed across a fallen bowl of wax fruit. Menace must have tried to perch and fallen off. “With your choice of companions, it’s no wonder you chose the gutterbird. The Silver child’s a viper, but at least she’s a classy one.” “Don’t you talk about my friends that way!” Diamond shoved herself in Spoiled’s path before she could sidestep her. “You might not have any friends, but that doesn’t mean you get to trash-talk mine.” “Oh, now you want me to lie to you? Running around in the muck, climbing trees and jumping in moldy hay might be cute for Ponyville, but what’s it going to do for you in five years? The real world’s coming fast and it won’t wait for you to catch up.” And straight into another lecture. Diamond Tiara rolled her eyes. Well, peace was nice while it lasted. “You need to think ahead, not gallop off with whatever fancy strikes you that week. These things need proper judgement.” “More like your judgement…” Spoiled narrowed her eyes. “Diamond—” “I’m sorry,” Diamond quickly said. “Listen, I want to just find my bird, so can we just… like… I don’t know, skip it? I already know what you’re gonna say: my friends are scruffy peasants, my best friend’s a weasel, I’m too dumb to know who to hang out with, and I’m about to fall into a snake pit.” “Oh, not this again. I already told you, I don’t think you’re dumb.” “Then stop acting like it. I know my own friends, Mother. I trust them and they’re good ponies, even if Apple Bloom’s not my ticket into the country club. They’re good ponies.” For a moment, she studied her stepmother. “That’s not good enough for you, is it? It never will be.” “Of course not.” It came out offhandedly, as if commenting on a new hooficure. “We’re rich.” Diamond stared. She hadn’t actually expected her to come out and say it outright. Silently counting off the closed rooms already covered by the help, Spoiled moved the search into the game room. “Our world isn’t kind to rule-breakers, and while we may be rich, we aren’t thoroughbreds. We can’t shake off a scandal with a subpoena the way your little friend can.” One hoof clutched her robe tightly around her shoulders like an urchin keeping out the chill. “Canterlot talks; it never forgets and rarely forgives.” “What’s that got to do with me? Or Dad, for that matter?” Business needed to know business, and most Canterlot types inherited their wealth. The Riches should have been worrying about what Baltimare or Manehattan thought of them, not stuffy snobs who never set hoof in an office, much less a Barnyard Bargains. “A lot more than you think it does.” The game room came alive with a flick of Spoiled’s hoof. Overhead lamps stuttered into a steady glow while the arcade cabinets bleeped and blooped to themselves, welcoming new players. Diamond lingered in the doorway, remembering what Spoiled had said about the wedding. She only put up with Carat Cut and the rest of Canterlot’s horseapples because she’d been on the clock. The trouble was, that clock never really stopped. It reminded her of something she’d told Silver Spoon the day they’d met. The same thing Mom told her before a pageant. Ponies didn’t win unless they wowed the judges. “You still think it’s better to be friends with more ponies like Silver Spoon?” “In the long run, yes.” Spoiled waved her in with a flick of the tail. “Well? I certainly hope you don’t expect me to do all the work searching for your bird.” At least they wouldn’t need to squint for clues in here. Threads of Menace’s blue sweater popped against the game room’s cherrywood floors. Diamond closed the door with her back hoof as she started searching under the pinball machines. “But you don’t like Silvy. You called her family a ball of snakes in a hole.” “Naturally—that whole clan’s abysmal. Most ponies are. If they’re not out for themselves, then they’re too stupid, foolish, or naïve to do so, dragging ponies down with them into some wretched little hovel to graze on hayfries.” She said it with a casual exhaustion, the way one might complain about lousy air traffic. “At least with the Canterlot set you get something for the trouble.” The tiara scraped the bottom of a pinball cabinet as Diamond canvased the game room’s borders, checking nooks and crannies where a pigeon could have accidentally wedged himself. She glanced at Spoiled’s dark pink legs ambling under a billiards table. Dad admired Spoiled Rich’s knack for frugal economics; “prudent investments,” he’d called it. However, one pony’s sunk cost was another’s interest growth. If she’d been so quick to dismiss Menace as a sunk cost, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say she’d done the same with ponies. Maybe Spoiled had never been a quitter after all; quitters still tried. Never trying meant never failing, but disqualification still counted as a loss in Diamond’s book. “You still get friendship for your trouble. That’s still something, right?” Coming out of her mouth, it sounded like a cheap Princess Twilight knockoff. Spoiled gave a mirthless little chuff. “For the one percent, perhaps.” Fine. Whatever. Nopony could say Diamond didn’t try. She crawled out from under the zombie pinball machine, holding one of Menace’s feathers. No telling if he’d left it in the game room today or not. “Yeah, ‘cause it’s only about status when it comes to friends, right?” Their eyes locked across the billiards table. A thin crease of a frown skirted Spoiled’s muzzle. “Let me tell you a story about status and the one percent.” A long story, from the sound of it. Diamond declined the silent invitation to join her stepmother on the other side of the table, but kept her ears cocked. “Some years ago, a couple visited my office. I smelled trouble from the start; brides or grooms make arrangements, but rarely both, and almost never in person. Nice couple. The sort constantly holding hooves and making goo-goo eyes well into their eighties.” Diamond flicked her tail, waiting for the catch. “The shame of it was they were a mismatch at every other level. The unicorn earned a measly fifty thousand in a good year, and the earth pony… well, he could afford a non-disclosure agreement. His parents disapproved, obviously—backwards enough to still think crossing tribes ruins bloodlines.” Spoiled bared her teeth in a fearsome sneer. “Troglodytes. Any wedding planner the mare’s salary could afford were too frightened to take the job, and anypony in the stallion’s price range knew that he’d be cut off before they cut the cake. In either case, taking them on could cripple a career. ‘You’re our last chance,’ they told me.” Diamond twirled Menace’s feather between her hooves. “And what did you say?” “That I didn’t run a charity, then took the train home to Ponyville. That should have been the end of it, but this thing—” She jabbed a hoof at her cutie mark. “—wouldn’t let me get a decent night’s sleep. Career killer or not, I know a good match when I see one; thoroughbreds don’t risk their inheritance for a summer fling. I took Valentide to see if we could negotiate with the parents, but…” Spoiled clicked her tongue. “We tried, anyhow. The couple went through with the wedding—cheaper than my standard, and drab if you ask me, but they seemed happy with it. Happiest newlyweds I’d seen in a while. And do you know what happened?” She didn’t, but Diamond had a good guess. “Disowned and lost his money?” Spoiled nodded. “Out of the will, family gatherings, and Hearth’s Warming cards. I hear his mother burned his photographs, but ponies say a lot of things.” She rubbed her chin, letting her gaze travel over Diamond’s head and past the game room’s walls. “I believe the stallion’s some manner of traveling salespony these days.” Diamond leaned on the billiards table, poking at the corralled balls with the feather. The 8-ball had little claw marks scored across it. “I guess this is the part where you tell me this is what happens when you go outside your class, and why I shouldn’t do it?” “No.” Spoiled rounded the table to join Diamond on the other side. “This is the part where I tell you that if you do, they damn well better be worth it. Ninety-nine percent of the ponies you’ll meet are absolute garbage, rich or poor. The Silvers are a pack of snakes, Berry Punch is a lush, the mailmare’s a complete mess, Blueblood’s so coddled I’m astounded that he can breathe on his own, and I’m such a bitter old nag my step-foal would rather spend time with an inbred pigeon.” “Mother, I…” Diamond tried to keep the frustration out of her sigh. “That’s not..." Spoiled stopped her with a hoof. “The only ponies worth your time are the exceptions. Ponies like your father.” Smiling didn’t come naturally to her face. It always looked like it hurt to do, even when she meant it. “Or ponies like you. You’re the one percent, Diamond Tiara.” Somewhere in the hallway, Diamond registered the sound of hooves treading the carpets and shutting doors. An arcade machine whistled and bleeped a merry little theme song to itself. Diamond felt her mouth open, though she didn’t know what to do with it. “…oh.” A slurry of feelings too gnarly and huge to grasp sloshed in the pit of her stomach. In one smooth sweep of her hoof, Diamond tossed her mane over her withers. “Well, I already knew that. I mean, I-I’m Diamond Tiara, for pony’s sake.” She half-smiled and blinked away the wet in her eye. “I’m the best.” “Clearly.” Spoiled took a moment to organize her thoughts. When she spoke again, she spoke soft and slow, the way one might approach a skittish animal. “You… frustrate me sometimes, but I never meant for you to feel like anything less. I’m sorry if I did.” Diamond Tiara shifted her hooves. “Okay.” Spoiled raised her eyebrows. “Is it?” “I still don’t know why you didn’t say anything at the wedding,” Diamond mumbled. Sensing a retort, she lifted her head and added, “I already know Canterlot society stinks. I don’t care about Canterlot. You still could’ve… I dunno, said something to me instead of complaining about bridesmaid dresses?” She wrinkled her nose. “Like, salmon and apricot’s practically the same color; nopony’d even notice.” “Wha—are you colorblind? They’re ENTIRELY different! In a photo lineup, she would have stuck out like—” Spoiled Rich shook her head and got back on topic. “Alright. Maybe I made a mistake with that, but I’m not a mind reader. I can’t know what you’re feeling if you never tell me. I’m still new at this.” Diamond flicked her tail. “I guess…” I’m new at a lot of new stuff too, but when I mess up I still tell ponies I’m sorry. Usually. After the school election, she’d gotten better about it. Or at least, she’d tried to be. Becoming the pony she wanted to be didn’t happen overnight, and most days, Diamond couldn’t tell the difference between getting better and sliding back into bad habits. To be totally fair, Spoiled had said she was sorry. It didn’t fix anything, and it didn’t even make Diamond feel much better, but it was still something. More than she’d hoped for, in fact. A lot more. “I guess I get that,” said Diamond. Something poked her scalp. Diamond reached into her mane and pulled a feather out from behind her ear. Menace must have put it there yesterday when he’d ridden on her head. “I really didn’t get Menace to spite you, you know. It didn’t have anything to do with you.” “I know.” It didn’t seem to bring Spoiled much comfort. She shrugged. “Silly me, thinking that getting a pet might be something we did together.” Diamond Tiara frowned. She’d never thought about it that way. “If it makes you feel better, I think he picked me more than I picked him.” Spoiled reached under a bench and pulled out a fat clump of blue and white knitting. The remains of Menace’s sweater vest had been torn down the middle, its ragged threads jabbing out in fuzzy blue prickles. “Honestly, I wish you had done it out of spite.” She sighed, scanning the game room for something they’d missed. “It would make all of this so much easier.” That, Diamond could understand. Spoiled’s lying out of malice would have been better than being honest out of love. “Do you really think he’s going to die, Mother?” “Yes.” Diamond hung her head. “…but I’ve been wrong before.” She reached down, brought up Diamond’s chin, and adjusted the tiara. “I don’t know for certain. Nopony does. Okay?” The tiny sweater vest passed from Spoiled’s hooves into Diamond’s. It still smelled like Fluttershy’s house, mixed with pigeon musk and the scent of her own strawberries-and-cream shampoo. “There’s never been another dove like Menace. He’s brave and he’s handsome and he’s smart, and even though he’s got that ‘tortliosis’ thing with his neck, it never stopped him.” She hugged the tattered crochet against her chest. “Maybe he’s the ninety-nine percent to everypony else, but not to me.” “I can understand that.” Spoiled’s tail slowly swayed behind her as she approached a column of pinball machines at the back of the room. Behind it, the wall’s wood paneling pushed outward, slightly ajar: the door to the second liquor cabinet that Dad and Spoiled thought Diamond didn’t know about. She squinted at the flash of white in the corner. “Hm.” Without being asked, Diamond dragged the pinball machine out of the way. The liquor cabinet had been installed into the wall itself, so high that a grown pony had to go on their hind legs to reach it. Spoiled rolled up the sleeves of her robe and opened the door wider. Her ears went limp. “Oh, dear. Diamond? I found him.” Several of the wine bottles and decanters had fallen on their sides, though none appeared to be broken. A thin trail of down feathers and yarn bits drifted down from the liquor cabinet to settle on the ponies below. On the edge of the top shelf, so high that Diamond had to stand on her hind legs to see, a black and white shape rested atop of a blue salt lick. Ragged wingtips draped over the sides to cast a pronged shadow over Diamond’s face. Menace’s legs poked straight up, his toes curled and bright pink against the mahogany. “I’m so sorry, Diamond Tiara. You did everything you could.” Spoiled wrapped a foreleg around Diamond’s withers and squeezed. “Sometimes you can try your best, but it still doesn’t turn out the way you want it to.” Something went clink. When Diamond looked again, she couldn’t see the little pink toes anymore. No wing hanging off the salt lick, either. Squinting, she took a couple of steps backward. Her gaze flashed between the shelves and the remains of the sweater vest in her hoof. It didn’t have any buttons. Looking closer, the crochet knit hadn’t snagged and unraveled, and it hadn’t been torn, either. It had been ripped. Twitching her ears, she caught the sound of something scratching at the salt. “He’s not dead.” Spoiled scooped her off her hooves and hugged harder. Diamond’s hooves dangled limply over the hardwood. “Oh, I know it’s hard. At least he got to spend his final days with somepony who loved him. A lot of animals don’t get that much.” Grains of salt tumbled onto the hardwood floor. Maybe it was Diamond’s imagination, but that salt lick looked closer to the edge than it had been a second ago. It edged forward a few centimeters. Somepony must have seen the open liquor cabinet and closed it, trapping him inside. But how did he get up so high in the first place? Remembering the claw marks on the billiards balls, Diamond squirmed out of Spoiled’s grasp enough to see a clear path from the table to an arcade machine to the cabinet. All of those would have been too high to jump. “I think…” Diamond slipped out of the hug and readjusted her tiara. “I think Menace flew up there and got stuck.” At the sound of his name, Menace’s black head poked over the salt lick and blinked out of synch. He fluttered his wings in excitement and rushed forward. Diamond stepped back. “Uh, Mother?” Spoiled’s head jerked up at the distinctive clap of wings. “…oh.” The nine-hundred-bit salt lick imported from the Griffonstone Mountains tumbled down. Two decanters and a bottle of cognac went with it. Diamond ducked under a pinball machine. Glass exploded and Spoiled screamed and over it all, pigeon wings flapped in a panic. When the dust settled, Diamond Tiara opened her eyes to discover a soggy Spoiled Rich shivering in a robe soaked in alcohol. Menace swung upside-down next to her, tangled in the robe ties and kicking his little feet in the air as he tried to right himself. Both smelled like they’d spent the last two years in Berry Punch’s bar. “I tried to tell you,” Diamond said. “Menace isn’t dead.” She decided to take her bird back before Spoiled decided to correct that. “How are you feeling, buddy?” Cognac splattered across Diamond’s face as Menace shook himself. He tilted his head to the side and pooped on the remains of his sweater vest. If Diamond didn’t know better, she’d say that he’d done it on purpose. “I’ll take that as ‘feeling better’.” In fact, he hadn’t been this active and alert since the day she’s met him. Menace hopped down the length of Diamond’s foreleg, happily snapping up the salt grains in her coat. He fluttered his wings, blinking bright white eyes at the havoc that he’d wrought. Spoiled wrung amber streams of cognac out of her mane. Slowly, she peeled off the soaked house robe, unclenched her teeth, and waited for her hooves to stop shaking. “I. Hate. This. Pigeon.” “I don’t get it; how’d he recover so fast? We only left him alone for, like, a half-hour.” Since Diamond arrived, he’d done nothing but lie still, scratch his sweater, and… generally act like a bird on his deathbed. Did that part count as rest? He certainly hadn’t slept. “What was he doing before I got back home?” “Sleeping, mostly. He got himself out of the crochet at one point, so I stuffed him back in and...” Spoiled looked up from patting her coat dry with a decorative towel. A slow realization darkened her face. She looked five seconds from stomping somepony to death with her bare hooves. “Mother? Are you okay?” “Perfectly fine.” She clasped her hooves to regain composure. “Sweetheart, do me a small kindness and put the spare sweater on him.” Diamond took a protective step in front of her bird. “Why?” “Watch. Trust me.” Menace jumped into the air the second Diamond’s hoof moved. Spoiled was faster. She grasped him in both hooves, ignoring the vicious pecks and outraged coos while she held him long enough for Diamond to slip him into the new sweater. As soon as the last button fastened over his back, Menace’s body went limp, his noodly neck swinging like a pendulum. Spoiled dropped him. He cooed in surprise, fluttering to slow his ascent. Diamond stared at her pigeon in disbelief. “You were faking it?!” “No. Worse.” Staring both ponies dead in the eye, Menace flipped on his back, legs in the air and wings splayed out like a fresh corpse. His toes gave a little rigor-mortis twitch for flavor. “It’s a tantrum.” The moment Spoiled removed the sweater, Menace flipped right side up, scratched his sides, and walked away. “Drama queen.” “Fluttershy did say he’s worried about his street cred.” Diamond Tiara turned to the pigeon cooing at her hooves. “You’re kind of a butt trumpet, you know that?” Menace preened in the little puddle of broken glass and alcohol, hopping about and shaking his feathers with pleased little coos. Apparently, he knew how to bathe after all. “Wretched, putrid creature.” Spoiled sneered as the Menace splattered cognac across the cherrywood floors. He grasped the old tattered sweater vest, shook it in his beak like a dog with a rabbit, and tossed it against the wall. When Spoiled shoved him aside, he only nipped at her fetlocks. “I pour my heart and soul out for your sake, write a speech, and you don’t even have the courtesy to die. Disgusting gutterbird. I hate him.” Diamond smoothed Menace’s head feathers. He leaned into her hoof with happy little burbles, flicking his tail feathers. “Heh. He likes you, too.”