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// Act 1 chapter 1 
// Story: Diamonds are a girl's worst enemy 
// by Rarity Belle 
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	“But mom!” Rarity shouted over to the pink coated, purple haired mare. The one who had just left the table in a mood that was angry to say the least. “It is not as dangerous as you think! It is just to manage an exploration that goes down into the crystalline caverns that are below Canterlot. Nothing more and nothing less!” Ever since that one letter had actually arrived upon the unicorn her doorstep, she had been obsessed with it. Rarity was physically taken by the letter and wouldn't have it any other way than to manage the proposed expedition. All for the ponies that she had in mind would actually appreciate her arts of planning.

“No Rarity!” had her mother said over and over again. She was actually getting more and more sick of it as her daughter continued to speak about it. Yet she never gave her a clear answer of just why she wasn't allowed. Being the mare of the house, it was Pearl’s duty to clean up the table after the dinner and do the dishes. The horn of the mare was charged a little bit and she levitated all the plates over to the sink which was already running hot. “I’m not trusting you in the clutching hooves of her majesties just because they fancy something from you. You got bombed as an element of harmony basically by their doing remember? You never even asked if you could become one, it just happened.”

There just didn't seem to be any other way around the whole thing and from the looks of it, her mother would be keeping her legs firm to the ground. But the cause wasn't just all lost though. For right against her was her father who was still eating his own desert. “Dad, you’re supposed to back me up in this and you know that,” Rarity almost hissed towards him. She leaned a bit further over on the table.

Her sapphire blue eyes almost begging the stallion for something to come out of his mouth. That little twinkle inside of them as she wanted something was something he was used to, but trying to beat it was something perhaps a little bit too much. So as the spoon left his mouth once again, it was pointed towards his daughter and a deep sigh was being actually released by him.

“You know I can’t bring in anything against your mother right? I mean, just how do you think we got married? Wasn't me who voted for it.” Magnum spoke up in one of his traditional chuckles as he was both joking and being serious at the same time. A rather unique trait of the stallion that was both loved and hated by those who resided in the house.

“I heard that, Maggy!” Pearl then spoke from the kitchen. Though that was before her hooves could be heard coming their way. Both Magnum and Rarity looked over to her with a gulp and she simply started to lean into the doorway. If the unicorn had any chance of managing the expedition, the time to shatter the ice with her mother would have been there and perhaps even then. It was the least she could do in her own mind. A no was all that she had by then, a yes she could be getting.
  
“Mom, listen to me and listen a little bit more careful would you? You said that I was being bombed an element without me even wanting it, that much is true indeed. But now that the royals have written me a personal letter to work under them for some time, don’t you think it is worth it? I mean, it’s a chance that may as well never come for me again. Those caverns down there are packed with the most beautiful looking gems that can be used for pretty much everything. I’m certain that there would be one or two just lying around.”

“And your point now is?” Pearl said while she gave her oldest daughter a true look of suspicion. Magnum on the other end looked over to the two mares without actually wanting to pick a side outside of his own. A side which meant leaning back and just watch the events happen as they would. Yet whether or not that would be something good was a question still to be asked in one form or another.

“My point is that you are just as me, quite the gem collector. I can go in there as well and maybe pick a few precious stones for you that would make your collection even more unique than that it already happened to be. Come on, think about it mom, it’s the perfect opportunity,” offered Rarity to her own mother. Of course she continued to hope that her mother would be taking the bait one way or the other. She literally had gone all or nothing in her decisions and prayed that the fruits of her labor would be throwing off quickly.

But Pearl was a difficult mare to negotiate and bargain with and after her daughter's words, she fell actually silent for a bit of time. “Here comes the golden part,” whispered Magnum. Afterwards he gained a small grin across his face. He knew perhaps better than anypony just which heartstrings were being tugged inside of his wife. Something that caused Rarity to even look at him with a glare of confusion. For she, she had not a true clue of what he was actually talking about. 

There it then came, the deep sigh that was being released by Pearl. Rarity had managed to do it. She let her mother remember her days as a gem-huntress. She even seemed to have remembered a tale of her own. There wasn't much that she could be doing then to give her daughter right in the words. For the caverns below Canterlot were filled with the rarest gems of them all and it was the only place of the so many where she could have been, she had never gone to.

“Alright then missy, I give you my allowance to go but remember this, we share the gems equally in a fifty/fifty rate,” Pearl then spoke to her daughter. She walked up to her oldest filly and smiles towards her. “Oh and, one last thing really. Be safe down there would you?”

Rarity couldn't believe the words that she had heard coming straight out of the mouth of her mother. Everything that she could have expected to happen and it was just that. Finally, after days and days of almost constant nagging she finally had gotten her mother so far to actually let her go and do something else for once other than just sitting in the boutique and making fancy clothing.

Yet little did the unicorn knew that the trip she was about to make was one that would be changing her life. With the letter that would be returned to the princesses had Rarity basically signed a deal with the devils from Tartarus.