DAWN OF THE FINAL WEEK
-48 Hours Remain-
Diamond Tiara woke up first thing Friday morning as the alarm gave out its usual late warning, and as soon as she glanced at it she knew she’d never make it to school on time. But that was alright, since she didn’t care all that much about school in the first place. It was just a place filled with books and learning, which was just the lamest stuff ever. She took her sweet time going downstairs, grabbing an apple for breakfast. She sat down at the breakfast table, the apple clamped firmly in her hoof. The fruit had only just made it to her mouth when she noticed what was in front of her, and she stared.
Abner was already sitting at the table in the chair across from her. There was no fruit or cereal in front of him, he was just sitting cheerfully in the chair, keeping tabs on the comings and goings of the members of the household. All with that stupid piggy look of his. Diamond tried feverishly to get him off the good furniture and back down onto the ground, but Abner seemed to be refusing. He was wedged firmly in the seat.
“Shoo! Get out of here, porker!” Diamond hissed. “If Daddy sees you…” Well, he’d be spending the day outside in the yard, that much was for sure.
As if on cue, Filthy Rich entered from one of the side hallways. He was already dressed in a fancy suit, prepared for the business encounters he would have to engage in that day, and a copy of the Ponyville Times was firmly tucked under one foreleg. He came into the kitchen and glanced first at Diamond Tiara, an apple still clamped in her mouth, then at the pig, who was still wearing her tiara from the day before.
“How many times have I told you not to let the pig sit at the table?” His tone was firm, since it was far too early for nonsensical shenanigans.
“Hah!” Diamond exclaimed, triumphantly. “I told you not to let him see you up there! Now you’re gonna get it!”
Filthy Rich swept right towards Diamond Tiara, and pushed her off the chair with a single swipe of his hoof.
“What-” she began.
“Down.” Filthy Rich commanded. He swiped Diamond upside the head with the end of his newspaper. “Bad.” Then turned to Abner. “Aren’t you going to be late for school?”
Abner gave a resounding, throaty grunt.
“Yes, I had your mother pack you pudding in your lunch. Now you better hurry before your class begins,” Filthy Rich said, and Abner jumped down and scuttled off, oinking noisily.
“And you, outside,” he said to Diamond, who was still quite in shock and speechless over this sudden turn of events.
She gave him a reproachful glare and stormed out of the house. She fully intended to catch up with the pig and give it a scolding. Diamond ran around the side of the mansion, making quick work of the apple as she did, weak breakfast as it was. She cut past the topiary garden, and caught up with Abner, who was standing stupidly on the manicured front walkway, without any clue what he was supposed to be doing there.
“You!” Diamond seethed. She slung a drawstring pouch around the swines neck, willing to take any opportunity to get rid of it. “I’m supposed to go to school now. I don’t WANT to, but there’s this whole stupid thing with the school board, and if I miss class again I have to make it up over the summer, and Daddy will, like, totally kill me. And then I can kiss my weekly shopping sprees goodbye!” She sighed. “Look, take these five bits, go to the market, and pick up a fruit basket. I’m supposed to do it after school, but I don’t wanna,” she said. “You can get yourself some… mud, or something while you’re there. I dunno. Whatever you enjoy rolling around and then eating.”
Abner oinked loudly. Whether he understood or not was anypony’s guess. But Diamond didn’t have time to worry about it. She gestured with a hoof towards the market.
“Fruit basket, now,” she said. “I gotta go.” And with that, she raced off towards the schoolhouse, not wanting to be too late. As much as she hated the idea of school, she hated the idea of summer school even more. She looked back only once, to see the pig wandering towards the market, being reminded ironically of some old foalhood nursery rhyme. So at least she had that much going for her.
---
“Scootaloo?” Cheerilee said.
“Here!” Scootaloo called.
“Snails?” No response.
“Snails?” she asked again, looking right at him, the colt sitting in the back. Snips, who was sitting right next to him, punched him in the shoulder.
“That’s you, dude,” Snips whispered.
“Ow! Oh, here!” Snails called, a bit doofishly. “I am present accordingly!”
Cheerilee sighed. Second time this week… again. “Snips?”
“Here!”
“Tiara, Diamond?” No response.
Cheerilee peered up from her checklist, frowning, but not entirely surprised that Diamond had elected not to show up. Again. Oh well. The filly knew the consequences. Cheerilee was just lowering that dreaded red quill, the source of nightmares and the bane of existence of all schoolchildren throughout Equestria.
“Tiara, Diamond?” she asked again. If Diamond didn’t arrive in the next five-
“HERE!” Diamond called from the doorway, panting heavily as if she’d just run a marathon. Her hair was a mess, and her tiara was nowhere in sight. It was a very rare occurrence indeed when she didn’t show up looking absolutely perfect. In fact, nearly the entire classroom was staring at her now, the exception being Snips and Snails, who were arguing over whether ladybugs were male or female. Truly a riveting engagement of vast intellect.
“Sorry… got held up… in traffic…” Diamond panted, taking her seat.
“There is no traffic,” Cheerilee said.
“Whatever,” Diamond huffed, and took her seat. She was never all that good at coming up with comebacks. At least not spur of the moment, the ones she did think of occurred to her two or three hours after she needed them. She had taken to writing down really good ones in a journal and then lamenting why she couldn’t have used them at the perfect moment. A sad fate it is.
“In any case, now that we’re all here, I’m going to finish taking attendance, and then we’re going to be reading our Founder’s Day essays. As you all know, since Founder’s Day is about beginnings, you’ve all written reports about your childhoods and how you started out. Diamond, since you were so eager to join us, you can go first.”
Apple Bloom raised her hoof. “But Ah thought y’said Ah could go first,” she drawled. “Ah worked real hard on it. Granny helped an’ everythin’.”
“Alright, you can go first,” Cheerilee said. “I’m glad somepony around here is showing some enthusiasm. Maybe some of you could can learn from it.” She didn’t want to call out Diamond again, but gave her a knowing look. The stink eye, as Diamond thought of it and was fully used to.
Diamond sighed. Today was going to drag on forever.
---
Over at the market, the pig was standing by the fruit vendors, his small brain trying to process and remember what the pony had told him. He wasn’t as stupid as everyone thought he was, but he was by no means a genius either. He was around high school dropout levels of intelligence, which surprisingly enough was above average in pony society, and on more than one occasion (though not consistantly) still surpassed Diamond Tiara.
“Howdy, Diamond!” someone called, though the pig ignored it. That wasn’t his name, after all, and he had no idea he was even being talked to. It was probably a weirdo.
“Nice to see you, Diamond!” someone else called. “Shouldn’t you be in school, though?” The pig looked around, but couldn’t tell who had spoken, or who it was being directed at. It didn’t matter, though, he had a job to do.
Mud, mud, where to find mud… wait, no, that wasn’t it.
Fruit basket, that was it, fruit basket… Abner had to really look around for a few minutes, since the marketplace was crowded and everything was so much bigger than he was. When he did find the kiosk selling fruit baskets, he approached it cautiously, and looked both ways to see if he was being watched. When he was confident that he was not, the pig snatched a basket from the top of the table and balanced it on his back, completely forgetting he had bits in a pouch around his neck.
The kiosk owner turned out to be Big Macintosh, who blinked in dopey surprise as he suddenly found his kiosk being bamboozled!
“What-HEY!” he exclaimed, and took off after the culprit. Abner oinked and squealed as he ran from the charging stallion, who was a lot bigger, but a lot less agile.
Big Mac was gaining on him, and Abner stopped in his tracks before doing a 180 and zooming underneath Mac’s body, using the moment of confusion and the time it took for the stallion to turn around to duck into an alley. He was off after that, making twists and turns to arrive further back up the street, and ran towards the house with his successful plunder.
Back the schoolhouse, Diamond Tiara was bored out of her mind, going through her lessons completely distracted. She picked up about half of what Cheerilee was teaching, and absorbed even less than that. It ran down to around one-third, which was better than the one-fourth she bothered to remember. After what seemed like an eternity, the final bell rang, and Diamond Tiara was first out the door. She’d been stuck in that classroom for hours, and so distracted that she hadn’t even bothered making fun of the Cutie Mark Crusaders today.
Silver Spoon came up to her, smiling faintly. Silver was not an outright bully, and in fact only teased the Crusaders because she looked up to Diamond, and Diamond made it look cool. But she honestly felt sort of bad whenever they sent the trio away crying, as her heart just wasn’t entirely in it.
“Hey, Diamond,” she said. “Thank Celestia that’s over. Aren’t Fridays just the worst?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Diamond said.
“You wanna hang out for a while? My parents are at cricket.”
“No. Thanks though.” Diamond shook her head. “I gotta get home.” In fact, she was already turning in that direction, but waved to her friend just the same. “Some other time, okay?”
“Okay!” Silver agreed, and split off to head towards her own house.
Diamond was in a decent enough mood, but unfortunately her good mood lasted only as long as it took to get back home, where she found her father waiting for her, stony faced and eye twitching. He was home early, which was always a sign of something bad happening.
“Good afternoon, Daddy,” she began, hoping that the ‘something’ that had inevitably happened didn’t involve her.
“Don’t you 'good afternoon, daddy’ me!” he scowled. “Do you have any idea of the trouble you’ve caused with that prank you pulled today?”
Whelp, her hopes were shot down.
Diamond scrunched her muzzle. “Prank? I didn’t pull any prank. I even got to school on time,” she said.
“Oh, so it WASN’T you who raided the apple fruit stand? It was some other troublemaking little pink filly with a tiara?”
“What?” she asked. That kiosk must have had a bad day by the sound of things. Abner must have just missed the theft by minutes. She’d seen him wandering around the house when he came up the path.
“I owe them thirty bits!” her father roared. “And you’re going to pay it back, every… well, bit of it!”
“Thirty bits?!” Diamond gasped. “But that’s, like, a whole weeks allowance! Am I supposed to survive without all that dough to spend on overpriced sweets? Or to foil the attempts of blank flanked losers? How?!”
“Apparently, while Big Macintosh was out searching for the culprit, someone came by and swiped the rest of his fruit baskets,” her father said. “The family is livid.”
Fruit baskets…
“Right, whatever, but it wasn’t me!” she insisted, and stormed past him into the house. “Everyone knows crime is totally lame, anyways.”
“Don’t think this is over, young lady!” her father yelled.
Diamond ignored him, and went up to her room. Abner was now sitting on her bed, looking triumphant… surrounded by at least 15 fruit baskets.
“Oh, hell,” Diamond swore.