//------------------------------//
// Heart of Glass 
// Story: Light of a Diamond 
// by SirNotAppearingInThisFic 
//------------------------------//

The water trickled softly below Diamond Tiara as she set her forehooves on the edge of the bridge, and the day’s waning light gave her surroundings a warm glow.  Sweet Apple Acres lay only a little farther down the road, and some of the apple trees lined it.

Before, she would have thought it was a pretty sight, and Spoony would have agreed.  They would have spent a few minutes enjoying it, discussing anything that came to mind.  That’s what they used to do.

Now it was little more than a spot on the other side of town where she probably wouldn’t have to worry about anypony – especially her parents – interrupting her thoughts.  She still hadn’t figured out just what went wrong.

After Pip’s massive blunder at Twilight Time, how could anypony vote for him?  The idea that he would almost certainly say something equally stupid in front of the school board should have been uplifting at least slightly, but even if he got himself kicked out of office, that wouldn’t change that she had already lost to him.  

Spoony’s vote could be chalked up to spite, and the Cutie Mark Crusaders had no idea what they were doing pretty much ever, but for every other classmate to vote for Pip over her suggested that they actually thought he was a better choice.  But he couldn’t be ‘better’; he had no skills or talents to speak of.  He was completely useless.  Unless they had simply figured that he wasn’t the worst choice.

It was definitely time to put that line of thinking away.

She looked down at the stream again, and her reflection looked back.  It wasn’t the face of a winner.  It wasn’t an expression of anger, either.  What she saw in the water looked gloomy.  It spoke of her loneliness and depression.  What it didn’t say was why.

What was the source of her recent failures?  She was the same Diamond Tiara that she always was.  Her parents asked the same of her, and she was pretty sure that she hadn’t been cursed or anything.  She had run into trouble with her parents before, but never for this long, and it had been with her parents, not with anypony else.  Now she didn’t even have Spoony to count on.  About the only pony who didn’t despise her was Randolph, and he didn’t really count, because he was amicable towards everypony anyway.

At that thought, her vision blurred, and she watched as her reflection sank lower on the bridge.  A wave of her despair came down, crushing her chest as tears began to pour.  She had created so many problems for herself, and now all she could do was cry.

Her tears of hopelessness continued to flow.  With every sob, she felt her control on the world she knew slip.  She didn’t have anypony to turn to, no matter how lost she felt, not even her lifelong friend.

The sun had nearly set when she finally lifted her head.  She wiped the remaining tears away as best she could, and took a shaky breath.

She didn’t know what to expect the following day, let alone when she got home for dinner, and it wasn’t likely that the answers would be presented to her by one of the princesses.

Why didn’t the Cutie Mark Crusaders have this problem?  For all of their embarrassments and failures, she had been suffering the consequences.  Even if Pip was removed from office, and assuming that she were reinstated, the Crusaders wouldn’t have lost a thing, but she would still have lost a significant portion of her mother’s approval.

As much as she despised even the thought of it, she had to admit that there was a possibility that something that the Cutie Mark Crusaders were doing that she wasn’t might be responsible for it. If she could identify it, maybe she could figure out something to turn her life around.

First, though, she had to go home for dinner, where she would find out just how upset her parents were about the election.  It wasn’t impossible that punishments would be postponed until it had been completely resolved, and if she had straightened everything out by then, they would probably be tolerable.  Throughout the following day, at school, she would observe both the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and Pip Squeak.  If the Crusaders didn’t yield anything, she should at least be able to build an arsenal of things to use against Pip, which she could use against him when his wild promises started to fall through.

Now that she had at least a modicum of a course of action, she wasn’t feeling quite as crushed.

The early autumn chill had set in, so she decided it was time to make her way home.  Before she started, she carefully wiped away any remaining evidence that she had cried from her cheeks.







Before the sun had ample opportunity to warm the ground, Diamond Tiara started for school.  It may have been earlier than she usually departed, but she didn’t want to linger and provide her parents with any more chance to scorn her than they already had.  Her father seemed a little upset about her loss to Pip when he heard about it over dinner, though his audible reaction consisted of little more than a sigh.  Her mother’s effortless expression of disappointment left her feeling… empty.  And, really, that was one reason why she was already on her way to school.

At least they had forgone most punishments until after a moderate grace period.  They hadn’t decided on an exact length, but it would be numbered in days.  Her allowance for the week was to be withheld, and half would be returned to her if she was reinstated in time.  After that, her parents had left to have a private conversation, presumably to determine exactly what the list of her punishments would include if she was not reinstated.

She let out a long breath and put the thought out of her mind.  With the chill, the walk to school was enough to distract her, mostly.  Force of habit almost had her wait for Spoony at their intersection, before she realized that there wouldn’t be any point.  Spoony wouldn’t wait.

That thought did a better job of slowing her than her habit, as a lapse in her attention found an odd bump in the road for her to lose her balance on.

Spoony wouldn’t wait.  In her mind, she had placed Spoony alongside the rest of the ponies that she resented.  Ponies like the Cutie Mark Crusaders and, as of late, Pip Squeak.  Ponies that they had resented together.  Had everything really changed that much?

She picked up her pace.  The sooner she made it to the schoolhouse, the better.  She could find an out-of-the-way seat where she could observe without attracting unnecessary attention.  If the class figured that she sabotaged Pip’s efforts, they would blindly defend him, and she would have an even harder time of replacing him if, at that point, it were even still possible.

When she arrived at the schoolhouse, she saw that Pip was already there, outside, talking to a couple of their classmates, and from what she could make out, he was hammering away at a single issue: their playground.

As Diamond Tiara climbed the steps, she couldn’t help but find it amusing.  He practically sang his intentions to request new equipment from the board, and on that note alone, he was elected over her, which was one of the more baffling aspects of the previous day’s event.  

He didn’t even realize he was singing his own resignation. She knew the school’s budget.  He’d be hard-pressed to convince them to purchase anything, let alone the grandiose toys that he rambled on about.  His best bet would be to set up fundraisers or secure donations, but then, it was Pip.  As soon as the most obvious route had been denied to him, he wouldn’t have any other ideas.  Once that happened, it appeared that he didn’t have any plans beyond those for the playground, so his presidency could be short.

There were unoccupied seats, sure, but several of them were left empty for a reason.  Snips and Snails held seats near the rear corner that she would have preferred.  Sitting next to them, though, would be a swift and permanent end to any social standing that she had left.  One of the seats to the side of Pip’s usual spot was often vacant, though there were quite a number of reasons that sitting there would be a bad idea.

She glanced at her usual choice, at the front of the class.  She had moved around a few times before, though she had always been sitting next to Spoony.  Giving up on that one, she settled for the leftmost seat a couple of rows from the back, just far enough away from Snips and Snails.  Unless the potential mass shift in placement affected even the ponies who cared little for seating arrangements, Sunny Daze would be to her right.  That was acceptable.

She heard a few of her classmates chattering away as they approached the door.  Before long, there would be enough activity that she shouldn’t have to worry about anypony paying her too much attention, though as per the usual for Pip, she already had enough information to convince her classmates that he would inevitably fail.  Now she just had to wait for an opportunity to use it against him, and that would come just as soon as he met with the board for the first time, later that day.







Throughout the day, Pip had been stirring the excitement of his peers with his promise of new playground equipment.  At every word, Diamond Tiara tried hard not to visibly cringe where anypony else could see.  His single-issue focus, while almost a blessing for her situation, was nothing short of short-sighted.  She almost felt sorry for him, but nopony was forcing him to run for class president; he ran voluntarily.

While she had expected Pip to spend the day making a fool of himself, she hadn’t planned for the new heights that he had reached with his new title and position.  Recess was only a little short of true mental torture, as he had even dredged up a soapbox from somewhere to stand on, hoping to more easily address a larger portion of the class.  Even on the box, his head barely peeped out above anypony else’s.  Worse, his entire plan was to ask the school board to replace it.  She couldn’t imagine how naÏve he had to be to believe that it would work.  The idea of telling him, potentially loudly, that there wasn’t any chance of them taking him seriously, let alone conjuring the money for the new equipment at his request, was sorely tempting.

She did her best to put him out of her thoughts after the first hour, though while he had many of the students riled up, at least a few others had been rolling their eyes at his enthusiasm.

The idea of observing the Cutie Mark Crusaders seemed stupider than ever, now that she wasn’t in whatever altered state of mind she had been in at the bridge the evening before.  Still, she had run out of luck, or so it seemed, and she didn’t want to risk having no further ideas if things continued to get worse.  At first, it was nothing short of pointless.  As self-contained as they were, she realized that one thing she especially wanted to understand – how they interacted with others – was one thing they were less likely to do than any of her other classmates.  None of them had the Crusaders’ knack for avoiding the severe consequences of failure, though.  As such, they spent the entire day talking amongst themselves, and yielded nothing helpful whatsoever.  It was as if they knew.

Aside from her marginally successful attempts to gather information, one other thing weighed on her mind.  Nopony had noticed – or remarked on, at least – her change in seating.  Not even Spoony.  It made sense that the rest of her class had presumed that they had split apart after Spoony confronted her during the election, and subsequently voted against her.  But Spoony had made no acknowledgement of her existence.  She doubted that Spoony would hold out for long, though.  There was no way Spoony didn’t hurt as much as she did about the divide, and once Spoony’s indignation wore off, she would show it.

Altogether, on top of the things that she had ostensibly been taught by Cheerilee that day, school had been reasonably productive, if somewhat painful.  Even by her low expectations, she had a chance to figuratively catch her breath.  Being ignored by every one of her classmates was an unsettling change, but at least she didn’t have an opportunity to dig herself any deeper.

At least, not until after the bell rang.  She didn’t waste any time on her way out, as it had become evident that she wasn’t going to benefit any more if she stayed any longer.  Going home wasn’t appealing, but sticking around while Pip found more ways to waste his breath on the same dumb thing wasn’t any better.

“Diamond Tiara?”

She had only made it a dozen paces out the front, and somepony had finally taken notice of her.  A mix of relief and dread swirled around inside her as she turned to see who had spoken.  Her relief was promptly crushed, chewed, and then swallowed by her dread when she realized that it had been Apple Bloom, with the two other Cutie Mark Crusaders skidding to a stop behind her.  There were a number of ways that this could go, and she was pretty sure that none of them were good.

“What do you want?”  She didn’t spare any resentment from her voice, but refrained from giving them any ideas about her defeat.

“Nothin’ much.  We just want to talk to you,” Apple Bloom replied.

This was already weird.  “Talk?”  She raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” Scootaloo confirmed.

“Not right here,” Sweetie Belle added, nodding to the nearby cluster of ponies that had gathered around Pip already.  “We could hang out at the clubhouse?”

“What, so you can gloat without ruining your reputation?” she shot back.

“No!” Apple Bloom said, and rubbed the back of her neck nervously.  “We don’t wanna gloat at all.  We kinda wanted to… um...”

“Apologise,” Sweetie Belle finished.

What anger that was present within her dissolved into bewilderment.  What could they possibly be sorry for?  Electing Pip Squeak?  They definitely would be sorry about that later, but it was a little too soon for that just now.  Their playing ‘nice’ so soon after directly and successfully opposing her smelled of treachery, but she couldn’t yet put a hoof on what it might be.

“Fine.  You can talk, but I’m not going to your stupid clubhouse.”  It wasn’t even an option.  Short of getting in the good graces of a princess, little would satisfy her mother as a reason to “hang out” with blank flanks of the degree that the Cutie Mark Crusaders were.

She started walking back to her house, though she planned to take a less direct route that would afford them more privacy, both for the purpose of avoiding any chance that she’d have to explain their conversation to her mother, and to potentially satisfy the Crusaders’ desires to apologise in a less-than-overtly-public setting, not that they had earned it.

The Crusaders glanced at each other, and followed.

“So, um, how have things been since yesterday?” Scootaloo said after a moment, rather nervously for such a stupid question.

“How do you think they’ve been?  You all cost me the election and—”  She caught herself before she could mention Pip.  “And why do you even care?”

“We’re just tryin’ to be nice to you for once, Tiara,” Apple Bloom replied.

She stopped, turned towards the three Crusaders behind her, and stomped a hoof down.  They flinched.  “Well this doesn’t sound like an apology, so why don’t you just get to what you really want to say.”

“We were worried for you,” Scootaloo said.

“Yeah,” Sweetie Belle added.  “After what Silver Spoon said, and you stormed off, we figured you could use a friend... or three, to talk to.”

“But that was before we saw you on the bridge,” Apple Bloom continued, nervous fidgets and all.  “You looked pretty upset.”

Diamond Tiara stopped breathing for a moment.  They… saw her cry.  The topic at hoof was already precarious.  She needed to push it back towards them.

“So, what, you followed me after you back Pip Squeak into presidency?  Were you trying to earn your cutie marks in spying?”  She made sure that her tone of voice was sharp enough to carry a healthy amount of accusation.

“No—” Scootaloo started.

“Blackmailing?” She cut back.

“No!” Apple Bloom insisted.  “We didn’t mean to, but you were kinda on the bridge closest to my family’s farm.  You know, where the clubhouse is.  When we saw you sittin’ in the back of class today, we put two and two together and figured that things might not’ve gone so well for you back at home...”

Diamond Tiara fought hard to keep her blush under control.  The Cutie Mark Crusaders displaying any form of insight directed at her was the most embarrassing thing that she could imagine at the moment.

“We know you aren’t all bad, Tiara,” Apple Bloom continued, “and judgin’ by the fact that you weren’t shoutin’ at Pip all day today, I’d say you’re tryin’ to be a different pony.”

“And we got worried about you,” Sweetie Belle said, “and we want to help.”

Diamond Tiara stood for a moment, dumbfounded.  This couldn’t happen; not in a thousand years.  Her mother would blow up if she even heard of what they just said to her, let alone if she took up their offer of assistance.  Even if they earned their cutie marks the next day, they’d spent so long flaunting their blank-flank status around, they had probably permanently stained their social status in her mother’s eyes.

And how could they even presume to help her?  They had no idea what the problem really was, and there they were, offering their help as if they knew best.

She hadn’t realized how angry she was until she opened her mouth to yell at them.

“You don’t know anything!  You can’t help me to—  You just can’t help me!  Why would I even want your help anyway?  The help of the same little ponies that were responsible for making me lose the election.  It must be nice.  Ponies are so used to your mistakes that you can mess up any way you like and nopony bats an eye, and when you do, I get to suffer for it!

“You even get to spend all of your free time playing around with any idea that comes to mind.  Nopony cares who you’re supposed to be!  If I step a single hoof out of line, I could lose everything!  Just imagine what follows when I lose the election to Pip Squeak!”

Apple Bloom and Scootaloo were cringing, quite taken aback.  Sweetie Belle looked like she just wanted to curl up on the ground and cry.  It didn’t matter, though, and she didn’t wait for their response before she turned and briskly stomped away.







Diamond Tiara slipped through the iron gate and the front door of her home.  It appeared that her mother had recently departed for the board meeting, and her father had yet to come home from his work.  As such, there was little to disturb the silence in the house aside from her hoofsteps as she made her way to her room.  When she got there, she flopped onto her bed and considered her confrontation with the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

What bothered her the most was that Apple Bloom wasn’t wrong: she had been trying to be a different pony; trying the same thing that got her into the mess would never work to get her out.  She just hadn’t realized it.

Just because she wanted things to change didn’t mean that they would.  Unlike the lucky Cutie Mark Crusaders, with all their freedom to explore who they really were, she had very few options that her mother would approve of.