Diamond Tiara stepped past the gate onto the Summit grounds, seeing the massive building that held the soon to be coming celebration. She walked over to the double doors and opened them wide, smirking as she walked inside the room. Dozens of ponies didn't even notice her as she continued to a giant radiating crystal, one that would no doubt make enough dresses to last her a month. One of the ponies climbed up a ladder, chisel in hoof as he prepared to cut.
“Um, what are you doing?” Diamond asked as she pointed at the crystal. You better be prepared to chisel that into Princess Twilight if you want to do this again!"
The sculptor raised an eyebrow and slid down the ladder, facing Diamond Tiara. "What are you talking about, kid?"
Diamond's face contorted in rage until she erased her expression, deciding to smirk instead. "I am not a kid. I am Princess Twilight's assistant, and you will not talk to me like that!"
Diamond remembered her favorite phrase to say, and she decided to overblow her anger. "Do you know who I am?"
The sculptor shifted the chisel in his hoof in annoyance. "You just told me."
"I am Diamond Tiara, Princess Twilight's assistant! I came down here after I had to tell that griffin what to make. And all this!" Diamond pointed around the room at the beautiful chandeliers, made from magical glass that radiated light throughout the room like a disco ball.
Her hoof darted to the wooden tables that planned to hold the hors d'oeuvres. The workers tried to hide how boring the tables were by covering them with a sheet, but Diamond saw through their shenanigans. She walked over to one of the tables and lifted the sheet, throwing it over the table and onto the floor. "Regular oak wood? Do we live in a barn?"
"Hey! Where do you get off!" One of the workers said as he stepped forward, obviously annoyed. "No one has had problems with these tables before."
"Well excuse me, Princess!" Diamond replied as she walked back into the center of the room, with all the worker's attention. "Excuse me for having standards? No crystal tables that are magically enchanted to keep the food fresh? Nothing?" Diamond Tiara scanned the room again. "I don't see any marble in here either."
"Princess Twilight didn't want any of that," a worker replied. "And that's odd of her to suddenly change her mind. Can you prove that you are her assistant?"
Diamond scoffed and pulled a scroll out of her saddlebag, the list of things that Twilight had near her bedside table. Diamond filched it just in case she needed the evidence. The scroll bore Twilight's royal seal as she unraveled it. The workers all saw the seal, and the environment in the room changed almost instantly.
"Oh now you all want to listen to me?" Diamond asked. "How about we spend less time questioning me— I mean Princess Twilight and more time making this room right!?"
The workers all began to shuffle back to their projects. Nearly all the decorations were being pulled down or replaced, while the sculptor began work on a Princess Twilight statue.
"That's more like it," Diamond said right as Gustave Le Grand burst out of the kitchen, wielding a tray of hors d'oeuvres. Diamond pointed over to her and Gustave whimpered as he dashed over to her, holding out the tray.
Diamond grabbed one of the crackers and popped it in her mouth. After a few seconds of chewing, she spit the cracker out at Gustave’s talons. “Yuck! Why isn't the hay free range?" Diamond Tiara said as she knocked the tray out of Gustave's talons.
The hors d'oeuvres soared through the air and onto the floor as Diamond stepped on one, continuing towards the door. "Make them again, Gustave. I'll see you all in a little bit to make sure that you all aren't messing up again! I don't want to have to come back with Princess Twilight and replace all of you!"
Diamond heard mumbling and even the pathetic whimpers of Gustave as he tried to pick up the mess that she created. She smiled as she slammed the doors behind her. "Princess Diamond does it again," she says as she started down the road. "I think it's time to treat myself."
~~~
"Are you sure you can afford this, Miss..."
"Tiara. Diamond Tiara," she said as she twirled with her new accessory on her head. Her old tiara lay on an end table in the corner of her jewelry store, abandoned by the new and more expensive trinket she just found.
Diamond turned to see the shopkeeper looking at her with a raised eyebrow, and she pulled Princess Twilight's scroll out to show that she was legit. "I am Princess Twilight's assistant, so you know that I am good for it," Diamond said. She looked imploringly towards the shopkeeper, smiling as bright as she could. "How much is the Princess tab?"
The shopkeeper blinked. "The what?"
Diamond still smiled, but her disappointment showed in her lack of pearly whites. "The tab that you have for royalty? So that we can pay for this tiara later?"
"I don't have a tab for royalty. Usually the princesses pay me up front." The shop keeper looked at the scroll, Twilight's sigil upon it.
"Never too late to start?" Diamond asked as she showed her teeth again. Since the salespony was still hesitant, Diamond Tiara decided to bring out the big guns. “So what you’re saying is that you don’t trust the Princesses?”
The shopkeeper gasped and looked away. “That’s… not what I said,” he replied. He fidgeted with his hooves while Diamond went on the attack. She looked at one of her hooves, no longer needing to talk to him since he was below her. She already won.
“Well if you don’t trust me, and I am an assistant of Princess Twilight’s, then I guess you don’t trust the Princesses. It only makes sense.” Diamond sighed as she put the tiara back down on one of the chairs. “Fine, I don’t have any problem with letting Princess Twilight know that you don’t trust—”
“Wait, stop.” The shopkeeper walked over to Diamond and placed the tiara on her head. The filly smirked in response. “You can have it. I don’t want to have any problems with the Princesses. They already gave me a nice location for my shop. I don’t want to get on their bad side.”
“Good choice,” Diamond said as she patted the shopkeeper’s flank and headed for the door. The shopkeeper dashed in front of Diamond as she moved to leave and laughed nervously.
“So um… heh. You aren’t going to tell Princess Twilight about the problems we had, right?” He shivered. “I’d rather not join Tirek in Tartarus.”
“I’ll think about it,” Diamond replied as she opened the door and walked outside. She looked up at the sky, noticing that the sun was dipping lower than when she left the Summit.
“They better have done everything except spit shine that room by the time I’m there,” Diamond Tiara growled as she set off towards the Summit.
~~~
“Twilight’s a jerk, ain’t going to work! Twilight’s a jerk, ain’t going to work!”
Diamond’s jaw hung agape as she watched the workers circling around the gate to the Summit, holding signs with slanderous quips such as, “Threatened to fire me”, “Sent a kid to bully us”, and “Never working for them again!”
“What is all this!?” Diamond yelled as she walked in front of the picket line, pointing at the Summit building. “Why aren’t you all working!?”
“Why do you think?” one of the ponies replied as he set his sign down on the ground. “The Princesses obviously don’t respect us enough to appreciate our work, so we aren’t going to work.”
“Instead of helping us or telling us how to decorate for the Summit, Princess Twilight sends a bullying filly to make fun of us and embarrass us in front of each other. That’s not going to fly,” the sculptor replied as he crossed his forelegs. “You tell Princess Twilight to come down here and tell us what the big idea is, and if she doesn’t apologize, we’re never working for her again. Your Summit can be in an empty room for all we care.”
Diamond’s face boiled red with rage as she glared at the sculptor, the stallion who was most likely the leader behind this operation. “You know what? Fine! I don’t need you! I don’t need any of you! My daddy knows nearly everyone in Equestria! I can replace all of you with the wave of my hoof!”
“Then do it,” the sculptor replied as he picked up his sign and continued to chant. Ponies passed Diamond Tiara and the picket line, cringing and sighing in disappointment. This only infuriated Diamond more. They were cringing and sighing at her. They were making her look bad.
“Out of my way you unpaid interns!” Diamond yelled as she pushed past the picket line and into the Summit room. The room was completely void of class, all the decorations having been replaced with the tools and supplies to make them. The giant glimmering crystal in the back of the room was half done, with a pair of devil ears having been chipped on Twilight’s head. Diamond grunted in frustration as she pushed open the double doors to the kitchen, seeing that Gustave le Grand had left a pot of stew cooking for way too long, and was nowhere to be seen.
“You have to do everything yourself,” Diamond muttered as she walked over to the stove and turned a dial. The flame underneath the pot shot up, covering the pot in a blazing inferno until both the contents and the metal of the pot were singed to ashes. Diamond’s eyes were the size of dinnerplates as her hoof shifted the other way, turning the stove off.
“Um… perhaps I need a little help?”