//------------------------------// // Chapter 6 // Story: The Stronger Tiara // by computerneek //------------------------------// “Hey, Sweetie Belle?” The named unicorn looks up at her, wide-eyed, and quickly moves to hide her flank.  “What?” The other two Crusaders have already gone on to their assigned tasks elsewhere. She almost blinks.  That reaction was already milder than she expected- possibly because she didn’t have her tiara for the first couple periods of the day.  “You free?” Sweetie blinks, her expression fast becoming confused.  “What? Why- What happened to Silverspoon?” She shakes her head.  “She’s busy. Um…” Exactly as she’d expected, this piques the unicorn’s curiosity.  “Huh? Something wrong?” She glances conspiratorially to the sides before stepping closer and muttering just loud enough to be heard.  “You can’t tell anyone.” Her eyes widen.  “Wha- um… Okay. Um, how about the clubhouse?” She raises her eyebrows.  “Clubhouse? Like, Crusaders clubhouse?” Nod.  “The other two are…  busy today, so it should be empty.” “...  Right.  Um, I actually have another destination in mind, but it’s, well…” Nod.  “Clubhouse, then.  May reroute on the way.” Nod.  “That works.”  She starts walking with the Crusader. Five minutes.  It took five minutes, thirteen and a half seconds to achieve privacy on the way to the clubhouse, through which an awkward silence has prevailed. Technically, the time was exactly ten seconds shorter than that- but she decided to allow that buffer, in case…  She’s not sure what, but it felt like the right thing to do. “Um, Sweetie?” The unicorn stops to look at her.  “Are you trying to con me into something or something?” She blinks, delaying her answer long enough for the authenticity to be upheld.  “No,” she states. “I just figure we’re far enough away I can start… mentioning some of it.” A couple of blinks.  “Oh.” If she’s honest with herself, she’s amazed at how well it’s going.  The Crusader is clearly flustered- but hasn’t fled yet, and she’s broken straight through all the afraid-of-her-father barriers.  “Um… How good are you with, uh, magic?” She gestures at the unicorn’s horn. Sweetie’s eyes go wide.  “Wha- You’re not- huh?” She sighs.  She’d expected that.  “No, I’m not going to tease you about it, no matter the answer.  I mean, it’s not like I can use magic, is it?”  She eyeballs the air just off her forehead, waving a hoof through the empty space in front of her tiara. The result is a few blinks and a sigh.  “Oh. Um… I can’t really do very much… like, at all…” Shrug.  “Sounds pretty normal to me,” she states.  “How about sensing?” “Sensing?  What good would that do if I can’t cast?” “Easy.  By sensing, you could tell- in theory, at least- if it’s dangerous enough to warrant the Princess’ attention.”  She smiles. “On the flipside, you could also tell if it’s safe enough for us to handle ourselves.” “Uh…” “Can we keep it from the other two Crusaders, for now?” Blink.  “Uh… Sure, but no promises.” Nod.  “That works.  Um, first thing’s first, my tiara…  is there any magic in it?” The unicorn stares at her for a few seconds before focusing on the tiara for a few more.  “Um… I’m not seeing any, no.” She looks at her with a confused expression. She scowls back.  She hadn’t been able to figure out how to apply the light spell to her new tiara- but had simply…  known of another way she could do it.  Now, it’ll last longer, recharge itself off the sunlight, and be brighter, nevermind that she no longer has to touch it to activate it.  A mere thought is enough. She does that now, turning it up high enough to be visible in the afternoon sun.  “I thought it might be nonmagical…  What about me?” More blinking.  “... You.” Nod.  She turns the light off.  “Yes… anything in me, other than normal earth pony magic.” Shrug.  “No clue,” she states.  “Even a unicorn can’t see past intrinsic magics without a spell.  All I see is a haze of mana not unlike Applebloom… though a bit stronger.” She raises her eyebrow.  “Stronger? Isn’t earth pony magic all the same?” Nod.  “In general, yes…  starts out real weak when you’re a baby, then grows to full strength by about our age.  That full strength does seem to be uniform across all earth ponies, but… “But yours is somehow stronger than Applejack’s.” Blink.  “Uh…” “Like, double.” She blinks again.  “Okay. I… I’ll have to ask the Princess about that sometime.  Um…” She glances at the field they’re walking past- the one with her sinkhole in it.  “Do you want to see…?” Sweetie follows the glance, seeing nothing.  “See what?” “Where I think it came from.” “Uh, sure.  How far?” “Not far,” she states, turning.  “Follow me- and watch your step.” As it turns out, the warning was more useful than she thought.  A second sinkhole opened up while she was walking across it- and Sweetie Belle was far enough back she was able to avoid falling in.  As for herself… she used her oddly returning super-strength to her advantage and kicked off of the falling plug of dirt, scrambling to a landing on the side of the new hole and climbing out again.  She trots around the edge, glancing down at it briefly. “You okay?” Sweetie stares open-mouthed at the slowly widening hole for a few more seconds.  “What the…?” She glances down at it again.  “That’s actually how I discovered it originally…  I went down with the rocks. It did something… and now I can escape.”  She glances over at the original hole, just barely visible. “The other hole is bigger- and safer.  And possible to climb out of, even without… whatever it did.” “Wha- Huh?” Smile.  “This way.” “Wow.  What is this place?” She shrugs; they just climbed over the debris pile and entered the horizontal passage.  Which, she knows without a doubt, is supposed to be vertical. “I don’t know,” she states.  “Any more, it feels almost like it’s part of me.” “Huh?  How?” Sweetie squints at her; she’s been using her tiara to light their way. “Well, all the way from the school, I can feel which doors are open- and control them, like muscles.  I- I don’t even need light when I’m down here, because I know where every wall, floor, and door is, even the ones I’ve never seen before.  I can see what happens in here, whether or not I’m here, I…”  She shudders. “The list goes on.” She turns on the lights in the passage and extinguishes her tiara.  “That’s why I wanted a unicorn’s opinion. I’m not sure if I should be afraid of it, or thankful.” “Thankful?  Isn’t it a bother?” Shrug.  “A little, I suppose, but that’s to be expected.  It is in a bit of a destroyed state- but it’s also fixing itself.”  She smiles. “I can stop it from doing that, or make something with it…  That’s how I replaced my tiara today. Then…” She looks in the direction of the schoolhouse.  “It’s almost like it has a brain somewhere, that has also, um, become mine.  It’s… almost like I can think faster.”  Smirk. “Math has suddenly become easy.” The unicorn is suddenly excited.  “Really? Where can I sign up?” She blinks.  She had not expected that.  “Wait, what? You want it?” “Well yes.  Why would I not?  Math is hard!  It takes a lot of math to use magic!  I don’t sense any magic, either, so it must be nonmagical- meaning it won’t interfere with my magic!  Please?” “Oh…  Um, I don’t know.”  She looks up the passage to that room with the strange boxes in it.  The box that had healed her leg. “Maybe…” Then she looks up, to where that other sinkhole was.  “I wonder if that other hole goes to someplace similar…?” Sweetie’s ears droop.  “What? We can’t do it here?” She looks at the unicorn.  “Well of course. Just imagine, for a second, what could go wrong.” “Uh…  I don’t get it.” “Well, this one is basically an extension of my own body…  If we tried here, we could accidentally turn you into another one, me into an extension of you…  or, best case scenario, it simply becomes an extension of both…  and we’d always be fighting over door positions or something. If there’s another one, that’d be a far superior choice.” “...  Oh. Can we go look?” “Uh…  Sure. Um…” “Huh?  Something wrong?” “No, it’s just…  that pile of debris almost killed me when I arrived the first time, but I’m not sure how to keep another from picking me if I come with to make sure you survive.” “Uh…  me neither.  Can we at least look?” Shrug.  “Sure, we can do that.” “You know, I’m kinda curious what it is,” Sweetie states. She jumps smoothly out of the hole she just helped Sweetie climb out of.  “I don’t know,” she states, looking back in. Then she chuckles, looking back up at the unicorn.  “I’m the next best thing to being it, but I haven’t a clue what it is.  Anyways, that other one is over here.” She gestures towards the other hole, hidden by the grass. “Right!  Yes!” Sweetie starts moving in that direction, and she follows.  “I can’t wait to get my own… thing…” She pauses momentarily, before looking back.  “If we don’t know what it is, what’re we gonna call it?” She trots up next to the unicorn.  “I donno… ‘Thing’ has been working pretty well so far, but…” Snort.  “But that won’t last very long, will it?  Um… Basement? Underground mansion? Castle?  Um…” She tilts her head.  “Fortress,” she states.  “It fits better. Mobile fortress.” “Huh?  Mobile?” Shrug.  “I donno- it just…  well, feels right. Like maybe it knows what it is, but it doesn’t know how to translate?” The unicorn looks at her.  “Huh… That makes sense. So, fortress it is.”  Smile. “We can leave out the mobile part, for now at least.” Chuckle.  “Sure.” “Though, it makes me wonder.  What makes it mo-!” The cutoff was not intentional.  Rather, another cave-in is happening, right underneath their hooves. She moves.  Time almost seems to slow down as she does, but this collapse is faster than that other one.  She isn’t able to get nearly as much purchase on the falling rock. Had she been alone, she rather suspects she would not have been able to escape. But she’s not alone.  Sweetie Belle is falling with her- and even though the unicorn has often been the target of her bullying, she’s somehow more important than herself. So that’s which way she moves.  In moments, she’s run physically into Sweetie Belle- but those moments were too long, too fast, for her to have a realistic hope of throwing the unicorn back out to safety.  So she holds on. Depending on what they encounter further down, she may still be able to get one or both to safety. Sweetie screams.  Unsurprising- and, if she’s able to save both, the scream may well attract rescue, so helpful.  Probably. The collapse quickly turns out to be into a vertical, metal passage, about similar to some of the passages she’s seen in her, uh, fortress. Not that the hesitation seems to have taken her any time at all.  Her ears start flicking back and forth, picking out echoes she didn’t know she could hear- and, combined with her oddly granular sense of time, it lets her estimate how deep the chasm is…  To a point. As it turns out, she can’t hear anything below her normal perception threshold, so as the general noise of the collapse rises, she rapidly loses her ability to guess at the eventual depth.  She does know it goes down for at least thirty meters- or, two and a half seconds of fall time- with multiple horizontal side tunnels. She did manage to get a halfway decent echo-print of the first couple of these horizontal tunnels, and elects to throw Sweetie into the first one.  It’ll hurt, and she stands the risk of damaging the unicorn’s skeleton herself, but it’s better than falling to one of the lower ones and risking a deadly landing…  or falling to the unknown bottom and suffering a very fatal landing. She’ll have to see what she can do with the reaction force from the throw to slow herself down enough to make a landing on one of the side tunnels, or even on the bottom if she’s not able to find an acceptable side tunnel.  Getting back up… Well, she can probably just send in the odd, spider-like manipulator thingy after herself… And Sweetie, of course. If they both survive, she’s going to have to describe the device to the unicorn and discuss a name for it. If the tunnel has a depth of at least sixty meters, and if no major rocks fall down on top of her, she should be able to create that mutual-survival scenario independent of side tunnels.  In any case, Sweetie’s survival is virtually assured- and unless she passes out, she’ll be able to scream for help when somepony passes, and all it’ll take is an adult pegasus to pull the unicorn out.  As for herself… Well, she’ll be finding out soon; she’s performing the throw now.  Either she’ll be deceased and won’t care about it anymore, or she will have survived and her thing will have retrieved them both by the time any pegasi have time to get anywhere nearby.  She feels what she thinks is a bone giving way, and does her best to adjust the throw to minimize pressure on that rib. By the end of the throw, two more ribs and one leg bone were exhibiting the same behavior.  She really hopes that won’t be a problem, especially with the spin she imparted. The spin stands a chance of dropping Sweetie on her side, allowing her to sustain a mild concussion, with a small chance of unconsciousness.  However, the same spin makes it possible for her to come up against the opposing wall hooves first, rather than back first, making her wall-jumping method of self-salvation possible.  She considers it an acceptable tradeoff for her own continued survival- especially when she considers the hours, or even days, that might pass before the next pony passes close enough to hear a scream, even assuming one is uttered at the perfect time. She kicks off of the wall, propelling herself rapidly at the opposing wall with her eyes fixed downwards.  Her ears are pointed upwards instead; rather than listening to the obscuring thunder beneath her, they’re listening for any major debris above her.  Which, thankfully, she isn’t hearing- only little stuff, Sweetie’s cry upon landing, and the echoes of the thunder below. She performs her next wall rebound.  Her plan is working- and, as a matter of fact, she should be able to land safely on a solid bottom to this shaft at really any point.  She’ll be able to land safely in a side tunnel after approximately forty meters of this activity- a scant three seconds, for a total drop of approximately fifty-five meters. “Good evening, Ms. Cheerilee.  How do you do?” “Good evening, Mr. Rich,” the schoolteacher answers, bowing the elite banker into her office at the school.  “What brings you here today?” “That’s…  a bit of a complicated answer, I’m afraid.” She nods.  “I’m listening.” He mirrors the nod.  “It’s… my daughter, Diamond Tiara.  She’s… well, changed her demeanor, recently- and I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or not.  I still can’t shake the feeling that she’s hiding something from us- and now, it seems like she’s hiding something specific from my wife- something she’s not worried about me discovering.” After a short pause, she takes her queue.  “Well, have you tried asking her?” He shakes his head.  “I wish I could say I thought that would work, but I don’t.  We’ve never developed the father-daughter bonds everypony keeps touting as ‘natural’.” Scowl.  “How about your wife?” He snorts.  “I’d say the mother-daughter bonds kinda went backwards with her.  Spoiled does ask, and regularly- but she always answers with ‘nothing’ or a variant thereof.  Especially lately- with her answers and deliveries these last couple days, I might have been easily fooled, had it not so closely matched the…  less convincing answers she gave in the past.”  He sighs. “Have you seen anything?” She shakes her head, scowling.  “I haven’t noticed anything… I’ll keep my eyes open.  Though… I do have to ask, did she forget her tiara this morning or something?” “Huh?  Uh, no, actually, there was a…  different turn of events. Why ask?” Sigh.  “It’s kinda hard to miss half the class staring at her for three periods.” “Huh?  She did tell them it was out for service or something, right?” She tilts her head.  “I… I don’t believe anypony asked.  Probably assumed she’d just forgotten it when she came back from break with it.” His eyes go wide.  “When she-!? She didn’t act out, did she?” Shake.  “No. What happened?” “Well…  The official story is that we sent it in for regular maintenance…  Or at least, was. What really happened… “She couldn’t find it this morning, so we looked for it and finally sent her to school without.  I filed a missing item report with the Guard, and went to work- where I discovered that it had already been found…  stolen, with an attempted use in a fraudulent transaction at my bank. Of course, the Guard investigated- and before I arrived, they found it to have been cursed, and took it in for processing. “They later reported, directly to me, that it carries a dark magic curse and they’re sending it to Celestia herself for annulment…  but there’s a chance that could fail, and it could be permanently locked up as a dangerous artefact.” She blinks.  “... Oh. Well, I did notice it looked a little…  Well, not strange, but perhaps too perfect, today?  Almost like it was made just for her, at this exact age.”  She scowls. “I couldn’t actually find any differences, but when I looked at it, I could swear it was shaped differently.” He scowls.  “I suppose it’s possible she acquired another one, but… “But it was a custom job from the Pie Farm, worth almost eighty million bits- and it took weeks to complete.”