The house was nearly silent, save for the faint ticking of her bedroom clock and her own breathing. Diamond Tiara wrapped herself up in her blankets and savored the darkness and stillness of her room.
She had one, maybe two hours before her mother was due to return from the board meeting. That was how long she had to think of a way out.
Her best bet was to continue with her plan to remove Pip from office. She reminded herself that she could straighten everything else out after she solved the first problem.
Could she, though? Ever since the Twilight Time mess, every slip-up she made seemed worse and worse in the eyes of her mother. Also, the election didn’t just go poorly: she hadn’t seen the consequences of quite a few of her actions coming and, as a result, everything seemed to be unraveling. Further, just that her foresight had failed her at all was deeply disturbing.
Even if she fixed everything now, would that be enough? Her mother barely seemed to trust her to keep the situation in check. Maybe she was right. Supposing that she went through with her plan, what was to stop her from making worse mistakes in the future? Her best guess was that her parents wouldn’t approve of her like they used to until she regained the good graces of Princess Twilight Sparkle. Reaching that high was why she had fallen so far in the first place.
She turned, loosening her blanket wrap, and glared at her cutie mark. Wasn’t this what her special talent was for? Standing above them, steering their words and thoughts towards fulfilling her wishes? Wasn’t she supposed to be good at getting other ponies to do what she wanted?
Was she even sure that she knew who she really was?
She took the emptiness that followed that question as an answer.
At first, soon after Twilight Time, she figured it was Pip’s fault, or maybe the Cutie Mark Crusaders’. After her parents’ reactions when she lost the election, she had wondered if they were part of the problem. No, the problem wasn’t that she was fighting her classmates or her parents. It was a far more hopeless endeavor: she was fighting herself.
She sank deep into her blankets as she felt her mood darken. It wasn’t the same hopelessness that overcame her on the bridge. This time, the back of her mind simply suggested that she give up. What else could she do?
After skulking in her room for the better part of an hour, Diamond Tiara gave in to her thirst and set out for the kitchen to find a drink. As she made her way down the stairwell, she noted how lifeless everything was. She had been home alone plenty of times before, but it wasn’t an exciting experience anymore.
She thought back to Spoony’s remark moments after Twilight Time, when Rumble had darkened a couple of nearby clouds with his mood. If she were a pegasus, she was pretty sure that she wouldn’t even need clouds to start with to darken her own.
She paused. When she had seen other ponies in positions of disappointment or hopelessness, she and Spoony had simply written them off as ‘weak’. Now, in such a similar position herself, she had doubts. Maybe they weren’t “weak”. Going off of her own experience, ”stupid” might fit better. Surely she would do better?
Her mother was right: small changes could have significant effects if one made them early enough. She might have been able to avoid the whole situation if she had been paying attention before everything fell apart, but she hadn’t been. Now, despite her best efforts, her failure still plagued her. Was that really any better?
She started for the kitchen again, but movement outside a nearby window caught her eye. She peeked through it, and saw Randolph pushing freshly-applied mulch around the flowers behind the house with a garden rake. She wasn’t quite alone.
About a dozen more steps found her in the kitchen, where she selected a bottle of apple juice. The kitchen didn’t have good seating options, so she carried it with her to the parlor.
She sank into a soft cushion and popped the bottle open. A few large gulps quenched her thirst, though the sweet drink did little to improve her mood. Putting the half-empty bottle on the table beside her, she flopped onto the arm of her chair.
“Ugh.”
Since she had no idea what to do with herself, she let her mind wander. It didn’t take long for it to wander to the bottle of apple juice sitting right in front of her. Apple Family apple juice. Almost every apple in Ponyville came from one of their trees.
One of her classmates lived there. She wondered if Apple Bloom had a helping hoof in the bottle of juice in front of her. Wouldn’t that be fitting? One of the blank-flanks that her mother so openly despised being at least partially responsible for a significant portion of the Rich Family’s drinks, though her father had said that “hard cider” wasn’t for young ponies. She wondered if that applied to making it, too.
An image of the Cutie Mark Crusaders trying their hooves at juicing apples and making a sticky mess floated through her mind.
Was that really all they did? Float from one idea to the next without any idea which might yield a cutie mark? How could they keep their heads on straight if they were really that desperate to find out who they were? She was having a hard enough time herself—
No...
Could she really admit to herself that she wasn’t any better than one of the Cutie Mark Crusaders? She couldn’t be, though. Her family had a higher status than any of theirs, and her allowance was definitely bigger, assuming they even had allowances.
But even with her cutie mark, she was just as lost. ‘Getting other ponies to do what she wanted’ had been her understanding of it until recently. If that had been the case, though, the election would have gone her way.
In that light, it was pretty hard to deny. In fact, it probably qualified her as worse. They didn’t even have their cutie marks: a solid, if pathetic, justification to be lost if ever there was one. She’d had her mark for over a year now, and only recently had she realized how clueless she really was. The Cutie Mark Crusaders’ quest for their cutie marks was more of a purpose than she had at the moment.
She spent the next few minutes emptying her bottle of juice and indulging in some self-pity.
As she got up to dispose of the bottle, she heard a door open. She made her way back to the kitchen. Randolph was there, washing up at the sink.
“Randolph?”
He dried his hooves on a towel and turned to her. “Yes, Ms. Tiara?”
She offered him the empty bottle. “Please take care of this for me.”
“Of course.”
She turned to leave, but Randolph’s voice held her back.
“Is there anything else you require?”
“No,” she replied, uneasy. “Why would there be?”
“You are upset.”
Her father liked Randolph. In part, it was because Randolph was a good friend of Stinkin’ Rich – her grandfather – but her father had always said that Randolph was more clever than he’d let on. She had always figured him to be a kooky old wisecracker, but he was right on the mark this time. She briefly considered testing how kooky he really was and telling him that she was fine, but it would get really awkward if he called her on it. If nothing else, she could tell him that she didn’t want his help or advice.
“Maybe.” She cursed herself for digging another hole. Now she had to think of something to say. “What makes you think that?”
“Your harsh tone suggests that there’s plenty you don’t want to talk about, Ms. Tiara. Given that I have barely said anything to you, and that which I have concerns your mood, I reason that you don’t want to talk about what you find to be an embarrassing and upsetting predicament.”
She huffed. “Then you shouldn’t be surprised that I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Of course.”
She stomped off, but before she left the room, Randolph spoke once again.
“I just thought that I could, perhaps, offer some perspective.”
Something about how... hopeful he sounded kept her from taking the last few steps. She turned back towards him. “What do you mean?”
“Your father dealt with a similar problem when he was your age. His father, Stinkin’, had pushed him to be a retail pony. Your father has a knack for the retail market now, but at the time, he hated it. The idea of moving objects around for money was pointless to him.
“It took him a few months to find his voice, but he spoke up about it. He told his father that he’d rather invest in ponies than lifeless objects. You can see how far he’s—”
“Are you saying that I should blow off what my mother says?”
“Not at all, Ms. Tiara!”
“Keep your stories. I have real problems to deal with.” She turned and made for the door.
“I only meant that you should tell them—”
She wasn’t quite upset enough to slam the door behind her, but she wasn’t gentle about it. She made her way back to her room and considered the day before her.
Pip would almost certainly be vulnerable as soon as the board meeting finished, but exploiting that fact later the same day seemed a good way to come off as petty and jealous. She’d have to wait until school the next day.
When her mother came home, she would lay out her plan, simple as it was.
She exhaled.
She would show her mother that she still could come out on top: that she was still worth something.
A faint sliver of the sun finally peeked over the horizon. Any other time, or any other pony, and the picture outside the window would probably have been greatly appreciated for its beauty alone. Diamond Tiara, however, had spent nearly an hour sitting in her bed, staring out the window. To her, the sun’s rise was nothing more than an indication that she could get ready for and go to school without raising any eyebrows.
She let the blankets fall down around her and slid down the side of her bed.
Her mother hadn’t said much after the board meeting, but reported that Pip performed exactly as expected. Her father had picked up the conversation at the table, but neither she nor her mother had much interest in talking.
Sleep had been scarce. Even though Pip’s doom would be sealed by just a few words from her, ‘confident’ miserably failed to describe how she felt. She’d given up on sleeping after she awoke for the third time, opting to simply wait for the sun to rise.
Numb. That’s how she felt while she prepared for school. She didn’t think about what she was doing, she didn’t pay any attention to her breakfast, and she hardly noticed the morning chill when she stepped outside.
The walk to school seemed exceptionally long, as though the path she normally walked had been stretched out, along with the air she breathed. Something in the back of her mind asked what she was doing.
Like so many times in the past few weeks, she didn’t have an answer.
She knew what she thought she wanted to do, what her mother wanted her to do, but part of her didn’t seem to believe that she was actually going to do it. If she did it, she knew that Pip would be a laughingstock, to be embarrassed for weeks to come. She knew that her classmates wouldn’t really accept her as class president, even if she won back the title. She knew that the confrontation with the Cutie Mark Crusaders that would surely follow would force her to publicly shame them for backing such a worthless candidate. Was that the source of her doubt?
Since she hadn’t spent much of the night sleeping, she had thought a little about what Randolph had said, but that had left her questioning even more so what was best for her.
She shook the thoughts out of her head. Even if she wasn’t sure of it, it still was for the best, regardless of any doubts that his words may have given her, right?
Frustrated, she put her thoughts on hold until she got to the schoolhouse. When she arrived, the first thing she noticed was that Pip wasn’t there.
That wasn’t something that she had planned for, though it would make things easier. She could call him out for the useless dolt that he was and then rhetorically ask why he didn’t show up the day after the board meeting. He wouldn’t be there to defend himself, and the Cutie Mark Crusaders couldn’t save him if they tried.
So what if it would be compounding Pip’s shame? He had earned it, right? She silently cursed herself for asking more stupid questions. For all the effort she put into knowing how best to convince her classmates that she should be president, she had spent an awful lot of it convincing herself.
Behind the schoolhouse, in the yard, a few other ponies had already gathered. Now all she had to do was start a rumor or two about what had happened at the board meeting – based on fact, of course – and everything would be set for her to crush Pip out of office when school let out. Perhaps even as early as recess, if her classmates were as interested in their playground equipment as they had let on.
Her plan hadn’t worked quite as well as she had hoped, but that wasn’t to say that it wasn’t working well. A short conversation with a less-than terrified Dinky was uncomfortable, but whispers of the results found their way back to her ears after a few minutes. Pip had showed up mere seconds before the bell rang, but he looked rather subdued when he flopped onto his desk.
While Cheerilee's presentation on Mustangia’s trade embargo against Equestria during an early period of Celestia’s monarchy contained interesting bits of politics, it failed to fully capture Diamond Tiara’s attention. She couldn’t help but glance around every so often as inconspicuously as she could, to see what her classmates might be thinking.
Pip didn’t change much. So far as she could tell, he was trying not to show it, but something was on his mind. One time, when she glanced at the Cutie Mark Crusaders, Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom had been looking right back at her. They both turned away promptly, but it had been an unsettling reminder of the last conversation that she had with them.
All the while, at the front of the class, sat Silver Spoon. Spoony never turned away from Miss Cheerilee throughout class.
It hurt. More than she wanted to admit.
She could apologize. At the same time, showing “such weakness”, even towards a pony of near equal social standing, almost certainly would make its way back to her mother and ruin everything anyway. At least then it wouldn’t be her fault that they weren’t friends.
She sighed softly to herself and brushed her guilt to the side, along with the plethora of other things she didn’t want to think about. She knew that at some point she’d have to sort them all out, but it wasn’t that time yet.
Cheerilee announced recess. It took her a moment to realize that Cheerilee had wrapped up her lecture a few moments ago.
Now it was time to see if the rumors had circulated enough to instigate Pip’s fall on their own. If all went well, during recess or after school, she would need to do little more than make an appearance while the class was upset with him. Make a suggestion that they remove him from office, maybe even make a promise she was better than him. She did tell them that before they elected him.
As she stepped out into the schoolyard, she quickly noted that while most of her classmates were minding their own business, Pip was in conversation with a couple of them, and nopony in that cluster looked cheerful. For the time being, she didn’t wander into the middle of things. If he gathered enough of a crowd, then she’d move in.
There wasn’t a lot to do without functioning playground equipment, though. She didn’t expect it to take long.
Picking up a nearby discarded issue of the Foal Free Press, she sat down and buried herself behind it. It was from last week, but she didn’t need everypony watching her stand around, waiting for an opportunity. That would be awkward.
A couple of minutes passed, during which she took a few peeks at Pip’s situation. Dinky and Rumble were in the cluster now, but Pip didn’t look any worse for it. A few more were nearby, watching.
Soon. Their classmates continued to gather. Recess would be the beginning of Pip’s end of office, and by the end of the day, they would be begging for her to take back the position. Then…
Then…
She’d go home and tell her mother that she had won. But then what? Her life didn’t go anywhere after that. Even if her mother forgave everything – which wouldn’t happen – she couldn’t resume the life that she had before. Not now that she had already lost everything. If she were handed it all back again, she would still remember. She couldn’t live in blissful nescience like she had before.
Diamond Tiara lowered her paper slightly and looked out towards Pip, now surrounded by their classmates.
This could be a turning point in her life. She could make things better for herself.
He might hold his own now, but a few words would be all it would take to crush him, beyond hope that even the Cutie Mark Crusaders could save his position.
And it would mean nothing.
Her heart was pounding. It would be easy. Was that what scared her?
For once, nopony here expected anything of her. Was that obscurity – the worst thing that could happen to a socialite – or was it freedom? A new chance?
Things could go back to the way they were, where she had already figured she wouldn’t fit back in, or she could try something new, and risk upsetting her mother and releasing a monster that Tartarus held no comparison for if she didn’t find another way to work things out.
The minutes slipped by one after another as she watched the crowd around Pip Squeak. The Cutie Mark Crusaders had joined him, and nopony seemed overly upset. She just watched as he conversed with them, though, still locked in her own fight.
Could she ever hope to win Spoony back if she held to her old ways? It didn’t seem likely.
At this point, she had one choice: to please her parents and endure the scorn of everypony else in her life, or to start anew with everypony else and endure the scorn of her parents.
She held her breath.
The bell rang.
Her chance had passed.