//------------------------------// // Community Disorganizer // Story: A Confederacy Of Dunce Caps // by Estee //------------------------------// 'Few businesses can hope to become part of the community without contributing to it. Each settled zone is created not just to make a place of safety, but one of family. Unless you actively work to become part of that extended relationship, there will be those who see you as standing aside from it, taking without giving -- and in time, there will be nothing to take. Sponsor field trips, rebuild playgrounds when the disaster relief funds don't cover the slides during the first week, learn an instrument and play it while marching in the parades. If you can be seen as one who provides more than they extract, your enterprise will find that much given to it.' Or in other words, make token efforts which tricked ponies into thinking they were getting something from you instead of the other way around, and you could keep doing the same thing forever. Diamond had figured that one out early on, but hadn't used it because giving on any level, even a false one, was just too much work, not to mention that receiving was so much more fun -- especially when certain ponies weren't exactly giving things up of their own free will. But in this case, there seemed to be cause for a certain level of minor exception, and she'd worked out the details during the last hours of school. She needed something from Snips and Snails, something only they could provide. They had every reason not to give it to her. So all she had to do was get around that rationale. She'd waited until the last bell had rung, quickly trotted over to Silver and told her that there were things Diamond had to do, just keep studying and everything would be fine -- then scrambled out the front door before the stares and giggles and highly offensive half-whispers which wondered about whether she was about to follow her new friends home could reach deeply enough into her ears for a response to become mandatory. Especially since... ...they weren't her friends. At best, they were mere employees, and she had to get them working. And they had already told her just how to pull it off. She was about to charge the problem at the source. She'd flipped a single bit shortly after leaving the schoolhouse, let the facing pick the initial target. And then she'd followed one of her employees home. The colt hadn't seemed to notice her tracking him: he was easily distracted by just about everything, up through (or down to) and including dirt, or at least whatever he'd just spotted crawling out of it. She'd had to pause and hide several times while he helpfully assisted in the extraction and nudged the new arrival on its way. It had taken more time than she'd wanted it to, but he'd reached his destination at last, and then she'd needed to add a few minutes for safety, much of which was used for silently rehearsing the prepared speech, along with checking the street to make sure nopony she knew was around to spot her. Not that such would have stopped her: there was too little time to even think about the idea of witnesses postponing her plans -- but that meant she didn't have much to spare for denials either. It was a surprisingly nice neighborhood. Nowhere near hers, of course: Diamond lived -- well, far too close to the Apples for her liking, but having a home outside of central Ponyville gave her daddy the space for a formal estate. But for what was to be found on the actual streets... not bad. If you liked not being wealthy, which Diamond didn't and nopony ever should. (Except for Apple Bloom and anypony else Diamond hated, because they deserved it.) Diamond trotted up to the front door, raised her left forehoof, and carefully knocked. After a minute, a crack opened, and one violet eye stared out at her. The subsequent blink came across as oddly unhappy. The rest of the door gradually opened. Very slowly, as if the adult on the other side was individually second-guessing every extra hoofwidth of aperture. "Hello, Mr. Gastrope," Diamond smiled, using her most polite this-pony-is-important-in-some-way-which-I-can't-get-around-until-I'm-older voice. "Is Snails in?" He stared at her. "What are you doing here?" It was not a happy inquiry. "I came to see Snails," Diamond said, doing her best not to turn it into insistence while also managing to withhold most of the nausea. "To pick him up, really. So is he in?" The violet eyes went narrow, and the deep voice was dangerously soft. "You think I'm stupid. Don't you?" Diamond tried to blink back the shock, but all that seemed to do was push it deeper in. "...Mr. Gastrope?" "He may not care what you say about him," the surprisingly large unicorn said, "but I do. I remember the things he can't be bothered with, which unfortunately includes most of his schoolwork. My son is upstairs tending to his farm, ignoring his homework, and generally living in the contentment which comes when somepony does not have to deal with a filly who drops by because insulting her classmates in school and street is no longer adequate to her needs. Please feel free to repeat that in front of the jury your lawyers will undoubtedly have assembled within the moon: I won't deny any of it. I know about you, Diamond Tiara. Everything he's ignored... I was nearby to overhear a little of it, and I can guess at the rest. I can't control what you do out there." He took a deep breath. She seemed to be breathing too quickly, and it made her words exit faster than she would have liked. "Mr. Gastrope, I really have to see Snails --" The big head leaned forward. Nostrils flared, hot air blasted against her coat. The horn came close to touching her forehead, and the first flickers of dark red corona were beginning to spark around it. All words stopped. Along with breathing. "-- but you will not do it in my house. Good day, Diamond Tiara. It will be a much better one for your absence." He pulled back, and the door slammed in her face. She stood there for a time, for there was only one other place she could go -- and even that would require eventually returning to this. She had to start arranging things here and now, because then-and-later might be so much worse... Why had the adult acted like that? Why had he said those things? Sure, she'd made a few well-chosen comments about Snails over the years, mostly on those days when water itself became offensive, but the colt didn't seem to care at all -- which meant his dumb father surely had no cause for being so angry with her. If it wasn't for her very urgent needs of the moment, he would be accounting for the emotional damage of fear in front of a jury. He'd almost touched her: the best lawyers could turn that into a threat, and her daddy had no other kind -- -- but at least for now, she didn't... Diamond found herself distantly wondering if the Gastropes were still shopping at her daddy's store. Took three slow breaths, managed to dismiss all tremble from her tail along with the memory of same, and knocked again. Then again. It took ten minutes of repeats before the door flew open, and the stallion's legs were already in a pre-charge set. "What. Do. You. Want?" Afterwards, she managed not to mind that her voice had been shaking just as much as everything else, because while lying in front of the ponies on a jury was easy enough, recounting the truth minimized future effort. "...I need to see Snails..." "And why, other than trying to find out if there's anything you could say which would ever make him care about your poison, would you ever need to see my son?" Which brought her to the practiced portion, and it made the words emerge more naturally, even if the sudden glare up into those angry violet eyes was pure improvisation. "To study!" He pulled back, just a hoofwidth or two, and his legs slipped closer together. Shock, although Diamond later decided it was more fun to perceive it as fear stemming from her skillful defiance. "...what?" "Well, sir --" and that word had every bit of her daddy in it which she could muster "-- you've probably heard that I'm at the top of our class. And, no offense to him, I'm sure it's not his fault in any way, but your son is at the bottom. Everypony knows he's failed finals every year since his second, he's had to keep going to summer school... Miss Cheerilee thinks he needs a little extra help. So she asked me to tutor him." It was a brilliant lie. Diamond felt it was one of the best she'd ever come up with, especially on the relatively short notice granted by the second half of the school day. And she only had to get away with it twice. "Tutor." Pure disbelief. "...yes." A lie that good should have been working already. "You." Distilled. More carefully, "Yes." She tried to look extra-polite. It normally would have involved a tiara shift, but she couldn't seem to move. "Why?" Supersaturated. "Because I'm at the top of the class and --" "-- why would you ever agree to help my son? Why would you help anypony?" She hadn't anticipated the question, knew the truth was the last thing which should be released into furious ears. Diamond scrambled. "We... sit next to each other now... we've been talking a little more during recess... he's been in extra classes every summer, Miss Cheerilee thought it was a bad pattern which had to be broken, kind of like how it took ponies about a century to not start any diplomatic meetings with new griffon ambassadors until their eighth day in Equestria, after they'd adjusted, and I... I just thought I could..." She had to have more lie than that. Somewhere within her was the falsehood which would make everything work out, force the angry adult to believe her. It was just that it was taking more time to locate the thing than usual, he was still staring at her, that corona was getting brighter, more jagged, and you could only sue somepony after the fact... "...help?" "You have never helped a single pony in your life," Mr. Gastrope softly said. "You will not help my son. I would say you won't sabotage him either, but I honestly don't know what you could have done to make his grades worse anyway --" And there it was. Her head dipped in shame as she fumed about having to admit to a fault, even a partial lie of one, but this was for her daddy... ""-- I'm being punished." Nearly a whisper. "Say that again." "I -- did something... in class and... if I help Snails pass his finals..." Slowly, lumen by lumen, the spiking corona dimmed. "And you only get out of trouble if he passes," Mr. Gastrope said. "Is that it?" She nodded. "And he fails despite your efforts -- you're still in trouble." Again. It was becoming her go-to move. "We've tried tutors," he told her. "More than a few times. And he just keeps failing his finals anyway. We've even tried to get Mr. Guffey to give him private lessons during the year, but we can't get him away from Saddle Arabia: apparently their school year is almost the exact opposite of ours and they pay rather handsomely for language classes. You'll fail where everypony else did, only faster." Which didn't seem to be something she could nod to. He took a deep breath. "Which would mean... you would still be in trouble," Mr. Gastrope concluded. The last six words emerged through a smile, one Diamond knew well, the same expression she wore every time she saw that the Blank Flank Maintainers were about to fail at life once again. "And you certainly can't make things any worse..." She would have one of her father's assistants draft a letter of complaint and send it to the Weather Bureau for her. It was almost summer. There was no way she should have been resisting the urge to shiver. "Wait here," Mr. Gastrope said. The door closed again, and much more slowly. She waited, briefly wondered what he'd meant by 'farm' -- but only for a moment, and then the other smile which sprang to life around the BFM, the one which manifested once the failure was complete, came to her lips. Smug satisfaction, knowing the universe was running properly, which was to say in a manner which benefited Diamond. Halfway there. Snails had been confused, but Diamond had hardly expected any other reaction. He'd thankfully possessed enough common sense to remain silent through his trip down the ramp, packed his schoolbooks into saddlebags, and even kept quiet while Diamond explained that they'd be studying at her house plus she'd even make sure he got dinner -- but then the door shut for the final time, and the impact broke the dam which had held the words back. "What are you --?" "Shh!" An urgent hiss. "I don't --" "Shh! Just follow me! And when I tell you to, hide!" The second performance benefited from what had turned out to be a rather intense opening curtain: this time, Diamond knew which words to go with first, and Mrs. Bradel was eventually confused into releasing her own son. Snails, who was turning out to be pleasantly good at following orders, didn't emerge from concealment until the door had been shut and Snips' dazed mother was no longer peeking out between curtains while trying to figure out if any of it was actually happening. "What are you doin' here?" Snips curiously challenged his friend. "The same thing you are!" a surprised Snails responded. "...I think. Whatever that is... what are we doing?" BFM Smile #1 put on another appearance. "I got you together!" Diamond declared, and waited for the adulation to pour in. It didn't happen. "Huh?" Snips asked. "What?" Snails echoed. "Together," Diamond clarified through repetition, with no more than eighty percent of the exasperation blocked. "You're not in school -- but you're together! Because as far as your parents know, you're not with each other! You're with me! And if anypony finds out, I can just say I was told to tutor both of you -- but by then, it'll be too late..." Snips' dull eyes were the first to clear: Snails' quickly followed. "We're not with each other," Snails breathed. "We're with you... and they just think we're studying... that's brilliant!" "That's amazing!" Snips was virtually prancing in place. "That gets us the whole afternoon! And part of the night!" Diamond nodded. "Yeah! But -- they think you're studying. With me. So it's important that you actually do some of it, because they might quiz you on stuff when you get home every night. I told them you'd be at my house, and you've got your books... you just study for an hour, maybe two or three or -- anyway, you just study, we'll have dinner, you'll study a little more, and you can have fun with each other the whole time!" "Fun," Snips repeated. He seemed to have some understanding of the word.. "Sure!" Diamond beamed. It was working! If the colts could learn an entire school year of material over the course of summer classes, they had to be capable of memorizing enough in a week to let her pass! And if she managed to crack down on their work schedule, get them at her place for the weekend while she supervised... ...well, her grades might be pulled down a bit: there was a good chance she wasn't going to finish at the top of the class. But she was certainly more than capable of forging Cheerilee's mouthwriting, and she doubted the teacher would send out a backup copy of a report card. As long as she didn't fail and wind up in summer school (because she didn't think she could come up with excuses for being gone that many hours per week), she would be okay... "Fun," Snails double-echoed. They were now both ahead of Princess Luna. "I've got all sorts of stuff!" Diamond proudly declared. "One pony can't possibly play with it all!" Two had barely made a dent, and -- well, excepting parties, there had never really been more than two, she hadn't wanted any of those ponies touching her stuff and these colts weren't exactly an exception, but she needed to lure them the rest of the way in. She could pick out a few pieces she hadn't used in a while... ...which was just about all of them, actually, but it was far more important for her daddy to make sure she was current with the latest toy trends than to use any of the results... ...and nose them over to the colts. For a five-minute play break at the end of each hour. Under supervision. The boys grinned at each other -- then stopped. Their faces fell at the same moment, and both turned to face her. "But it just gets us through the end of the semester," Snails said. There was worry creasing Snips' low forehead. "And when our folks find out we've been together... 'cause they're gonna find out, they always do... even if we're just with you... they'll ask for separate tutors." "We just have to get through a week," Diamond told them. "That's all. After that, who cares what happens?" "We do," Snails solidly said. The colt's head went down and for once, he didn't seem to be looking for a bug. "Because when they find out, and Snips is right, they always do -- they'll ask for those separate tutors." "So?" Diamond really wasn't seeing the point. She would have passed. Nothing which happened after that was any of her concern. "They'll ask the school," Snips told her. "Which means Miss Cheerilee. Who knows you weren't assigned to tutor us, who'll tell them, and then..." Diamond blinked. They were right. They were exactly right. There was a good chance that nopony would ever find out -- but the colts' parents struck her as exactly the kind of ponies who would march to the school board and demand their children be separated again. Which would lead into questions as to just who had put them together, even through a third party, and that would lead directly back to her. She could claim a lot of things about Cheerilee, and had -- but it would take more than a little verbal and legal dressage before anypony would truly believe the teacher had assigned a tutor and forgotten about it. There was a chance -- not a strong one, but a chance -- that Diamond could wind up in trouble. Which normally wasn't a concern because her daddy would get her out of it just as fast, but... ...was. She wasn't being careful enough. She'd spent so much time sheltered under the protective stable roof of wealth and privilege and legal doubletalk, she'd forgotten that ponies who didn't have that shield needed to be cautious, something she generally taught them about every time they slipped up. Until unless until her daddy once again saw how good she was, she needed to project her plans further along, be on the watch for ankle-breaking gopher holes in any road. Something she already did -- but in the confidence that somepony else would seal the gaps. For the first time, Diamond briefly considered that such protection had made her prone to larger risks, and she couldn't afford to take too many of those just yet... The boys had seen the danger where she had not. Had saved her. "We shouldn't be here," Snips miserably declared. "We should just go home right now..." "We're supposed to be at her house," Snails sighed. "They'll check to see if we showed up. You know they will. If they find out we weren't there, that's it. When they find out we were both there, it's worse..." The gloom intensified, dulled coats while seeming to darken clouds in a way not even the pegasi could manage. "We're dead," Snips glumly stated. "We're worse than dead," Snails corrected. Diamond looked at one. Then the other. And for one of the very few times in her life, at least that she cared to remember for more than a minute, found she had nothing to say. "Take it off," Snips told her. "...what?" "The necklace. Take it off. We're gonna be in trouble, big trouble, and it's your fault... just take it off!" The surge of anger did not reach his horn: no corona ignited -- and somehow, that made things all the worse. "You shouldn't have it!" "Snips, it's not her fault," Snails dully interjected. "She was just trying to help. She doesn't know our folks... how they think, the ways they check up... We didn't tell her: she couldn't have known." She hadn't taken the necklace off. She'd gone to Snails' house first. Mr. Gastrope hadn't spotted it and things might have turned towards still worse if he had, but she should have taken it off the instant she left school, at the end of lunch, anytime, but she'd sat in the dumb schoolhouse with everypony seeing the stupid thing was around her neck, she could have claimed to be trying on a product sample, summer business venture, sure, that definitely would have worked, but she was just thinking of that now and... ...she should have taken it off... "We're still going to be in trouble! She -- she..." The smaller body seemed to shrink. "...I dunno, Snails, maybe you're right, but you know what's coming, we can't --" "-- come with me," Diamond broke in. "We can't," Snips groaned, which was the only thing keeping it from being a sob. "We come with you, we're in trouble, we sneak away, we're in trouble, we go home -- nothing works..." "You're supposed to be with me right now," Diamond said. "They'll only go to the school after they find out. There's at least tonight to think of something." "Like what?" Still miserable -- but there was a note of hope in his voice now, much like the Maintainers after they scavenged an idea for a future failure from the ashes of the most recent one. "I don't know yet." Which felt like it had been a mistake: you were never supposed to admit when you didn't know something. But there were things Diamond knew about potential trouble which the boys didn't, and one of them was "But as long as you haven't been caught yet, there's still time -- and if you do get caught, that's when you get to explain things. We just need to come up with the right explanation." We. Well, they were her employees. Therefore, they could make a contribution to the overall effort and Diamond, as their boss, would instantly recognize any miraculously helpful suggestion, then take all the credit. "Come on," she told them. "My house. We'll think of something there." This particular silent communication between the boys was a long one and for a moment, she almost found herself wondering what they were saying. "She's right," Snails finally admitted. "We're worse than dead... but not yet. Let's go." And they all trotted off towards Diamond's home together, the colts following her. Which felt only appropriate and right, but... ...her daddy's words were echoing in her head again. 'Every employee can be said to be responsible for themselves -- but the pony in charge is still responsible for all of them.' She'd never worked out what that one truly meant. Not until it was too late.