Second Post Gets A Story - Anthology

by Duplex Fields


Diamond Tiara's First Day As A Princess

Price war. Price war never changes.

Every Hearth's Warming Eve, Daddy gives me the newest and best presents from the Manehattan store on Tame Square. He says that one day, I'll own his retail empire. He knows that I'll run it as profitably as he does, and another generation of Riches and Diamonds will live in wealth and splendor.

But tonight, I'm looking at the numbers, and they just aren't right. The suppliers are down in Phillydelphia; they say shortages exist where they shouldn't be. I see how the logistics are inefficient.

I think about calling Daddy over, but then I realize something. The competition is doing something wrong. They aren't looking out for their own interests. Some of their money is going to something else.

I have Hornsworth flip through the pages until I find it: charity. Part of their profit is being diverted, their prices are changing because of it, and our prices are changing too, not in the right direction.

It's like an itch inside my head.

---

That itch is back.

I went for a drink of milk. (Clarabelle doesn't like being woken in the middle of the night, but she should have read the contract more carefully.) When I got back to the desk, I had Hornsworth pull the ledger from last year.

I'm good at seeing what makes ponies do things. I push and pull on parts of their realities, like a puppetmistress with a marionette. It's my mark, and it's my true self.

But as I look at the numbers of the corporate charity of our competitor, and the numbers of my father's spending around town, it hits me: my father is increasing the general wealth of Ponyville by spending his personal profits at local businesses, while our competitor is driving both her own prices and our competing prices against the market with her corporation's profits.

And that drives ponies out of business.

And that makes them need charity.

And that drives down real wealth.

And that makes the masses angry.

It's like a fever takes hold of me. Without waiting for Hornsworth, I grab the pencil in my mouth and write furiously. This part of the incentive structure fits there, that part of the logistics makes sense over here...

---

Before I know it, it's sunrise. No, wait, it's Princess Celestia.

Princess Celestia?!?

"Who do we have here?" she says, looking at me with one eyebrow up. The world around us is made of distant floating points, like the night sky but inside an aurora of nebulous sweeping colors, shifting and flowing around us.

I give my best curtsey. "Diamond Dazzle Tiara, Your Highness," I say in that pleasant voice adults like so much. "Where are we?"

"Where isn't as important as how," says the Princess. "Tell me, my little pony, what have you just discovered?"

"Nopony... nobody ever has to go hungry again," I say, a hush in my voice. "Nobody has to starve, and nobody has to be poor. Farmers can live like queens, and dishwashers can live in mansions."

It hurts a bit, the thought that peasants could live in the luxury I thought was my birthright, but it's only a small hurt, and it's quickly gone. The greater joy is seeing the future spread before us in unlimited potential, like Equestria in the eyes of the ancient settlers, or like the lines for the first shopping day after Harvest Fest.

"What happens now, Princess Celestia?" I asked her, bowing again.

"You tell me... Princess Diamond," she says, as a light from inside me lifts me into the air, and my shoulders and forehead grow warm...