A Change of Pace

by M Specter

Chapter 1

A change of pace Ch 1

Filthy Rich watched as the repo ponies took all that he had strived for over the years; his bed, the lamps, the bookshelves - everything all gone within a blink of an eye. Mr. Rich had been working on a risky but very beneficial business deal that, had he have pulled off correctly, would of doubled his profits. Filthy sighed as the ponies piled his belongings on what used to be his lawn.

This was no longer his home; he had been forced to sell it and relocate. Unfortunately for him, his daughter would not be pleased when she returned home today. He had managed to get the joy of his life, Diamond Tiara, to school before the repo ponies had arrived at his front steps. The only things that he had been able to keep were the business papers of his former agreements and about 1000 bits.

When Diamond Tiara arrived, she was covered in mud. She paid no attention to her father. All she was focused on was her need to take a shower.

"Diamond, come here," he told her daughter.

As much as she didn't want to talk to him without first taking a much needed shower, she turned around and, feigning happiness, said, "Yes, Daddy?"

Mr. Rich needed a few seconds to contemplate on how he was going to break the news about their predicament to her, and after much stuttering he started, "There’s been a slight problem and because of it, we no longer live here" he said as he motioned his hooves over to his once prestigious manor.

Diamond was stumped, stupefied even. "What do you mean we no longer live here? I've spent my entire life living in here, and now, out of the blue, you tell me that our house is no longer ours." The once rich stallion tried to calm his little princess down but to no avail. “And to top it all off I have mud all over me and my tiara broke." Tears began to form in Diamond Tiara's eyes. She tried to hold them back and keep her voice from cracking but eventually she had enough and resorted to crying.

Not wanting to see his little filly cry, he gave her a hug. "There, there, little princess. Everything will be ok. "Filthy reached into his saddlebag, pulling out a hair clip. Gently he placed it to his daughter’s head. "This was your mother’s; she left me this to give to you. I know it’s no replacement for your tiara, but I hope this will suffice until I have enough money to buy you a new one.”

Diamond stopped crying momentarily to stare at her dad's face. "Really?” she asked.

"Yes. Hold on to it. As long as you have it everything will be alright.”

Diamond knew her father was making a foal attempt to cheer her up, but yet it still worked. She rubbed her hooves on her eyes to get rid of the excess tears and, between sniffles, said, "where do we live now?"

Filthy chuckled nervously. "Yeah, about that..."

"WHAT?" Diamond said as she and her father, arrived at their new home. "You expect me to live in a barn like Apple Bloom and her kooky family?”

Filthy nodded. "Yes at least until I can strike another business deal or we make enough money to move out on our own."

Diamond stared at the decaying barn with anger. She would not stand for this; the place practically looked like a death trap. The wood that encompassed the outer side of the barn had holes in it, the ground was lumpy instead of straight, and thanks to the holes, she could see the inside was just as bad.

As she entered the decrepit barn the first thing she noticed was the state of the furniture. It looked dusty and old. As she ran her hoof across the sofa, it seemed to coincide with that. The sofa creaked under her hoof and layers of dust were scraped onto her as a result.

Fed up with the furniture she began to climb the steps. The first couple of stairs groaned from years of disuse and the noise only proceeded to grow louder as she climbed further. Before she could reach the final steps however the second last board broke under her weight.

“Dad, one of the steps are broken,” she yelled down to her father.

“Ignore it for now, sweetie. Well get it fixed eventually,” he replied back.

With a small groan, she stepped over it and took a look at the top floor’s rooms. Small murmurs of disgust escaped her mouth as she noticed each of the rooms to looked just like the rest of the house. She made a mental note of which one of the three rooms she preferred the most.

“Dad, I’m going to take the first room to the right of the stairs, okay?”

“Sure. Whatever you like, Princess.”

Still dirty from the day’s events, she decided that a shower might wash some of her troubles away. Since there were no bathrooms upstairs, Diamond headed back downstairs to find one there.

The bathroom was just as dirty as the rest of the house but with a suspicious green slime covering most of the walls. Luckily for her the inside of the tub wasn't dirty. As she got in the tub she moved her hoof to the knob of the shower. She tried to turn it with all her might but it appeared that the knobs were rusted shut.

“I can’t believe I‘m about to do this.”

As a last resort, she used her mouth to turn the knob. As she tried turning it her mouth began to ache with the strain and pressure she was applying. With a screech it gave way but she was caught off guard. It turned unexpectedly fast resulting in her head slamming on the bottom of the bathtub. To her the room was spinning really quickly and to alleviate this she rubbed her head with one of her hooves. Before she could completely regain her senses the water began to pour out of the shower head.

The water was extremely cold. She immediately began to fiddle with the knobs in an attempt to get some hot water coming out. After much fiddling, she decided that it was no use. She took her cold shower as quickly as she could, making sure to get the mud and dust off of herself.

After her shower she went immediately to her father to talk about their current living conditions. She found him in the kitchen making a small dinner that consisted of a salad and a bottle of water.

"Dad, there’s no hot water in the shower," she complained.

Filthy’s face turned into one of embarrassment. “I'm sorry, Diamond. I forgot to tell you that we won't have hot water for a while.

“Also I forgot to mention that we will have to produce crops as a way of sustaining ourselves from now on.”

“What do you mean?”

“As you know I don't have much money left, and because of that I need you to grow crops while I work on trying to regain my business.”

Tears began to form in her eyes and her face turned into one of anger.

“Isn’t it already bad enough that I have to live here?”

“I’m sorry that this is the way it has to be, Diamond, but I need to spend all my time on regaining the money I lost.”

Diamond knew that this was for the best but the more she imagined herself doing farm work the more she imagined herself becoming like Apple Bloom.

“But farm work is disgusting.”

“Diamond, I know that I’m taking you a bit out of your comfort zone, but if you bare with it I promise to buy you whatever you want later.”

Diamond thought about it for a moment. Although she would have to subject to farm work now the benefits of buying whatever she wanted later seemed promising.

“Fine, I’ll plant crops for us.”

Filthy smiled and said. "Great. Now to help you with the field, I’ve enlisted the help of Applejack she said that she would teach you how to take care of the crops."

While Diamond didn’t much care for the younger Apple sibling, she respected the older two. If it’ll help get the manor back faster, she supposed she could tolerate Applejack’s lessons.

Dinner was eaten in mild silence as only the sound of mouth’s crunching was heard. Once finished Diamond Tiara excused herself from the table but not before her father said one last thing.

“Applejack will be arriving bright and early tomorrow so you should go to bed early.”

“Okay, Dad I’ll see you in the morning.”

Filthy hugged his daughter and kissed her on the forehead.

“Everything will be just fine,” he whispered into her ears.

Diamond was in no mood to reply to that so she just left her dad in the kitchen and made her way to her room. She slipped into her bed and the first thing she noticed was how bumpy it felt. It was as if she was sleeping on rocks, and her sheets were very thin, making her cold as well.

After a while she felt something crawling along her body, and when the crawling feeling got to her face, she opened her eyes to find that a spider was staring back at her. She hesitated for a moment as her brain computed what was on her face. With a loud shriek, she fainted onto her bed, knocked out by the entirety of the day’s events.

Comments

[Shadow_Wolf]

Interesting premise, let's see where this goes

[Coli Chibi]

I think it looks good so far. Keep it up!

[Telaros]

Now that I have more time, I can finally drop a comment.

That was a really great start! I'm really looking forward to this one updating. I don't think I've read a story where Diamond and AJ interact together, much less Diamond taken out of her element to be taught farming by Ponyville's most dependable of ponies.

That cutoff for the chapter by the way was perfect. I really like where this is going!

[Phenoix12]

For some reason I started thinking about the Harvest Moon games while reading this

[HB_DS2013]

3910882 I thought of Stardew Valley for Diamond in this fic. If you dunno, Stardew Valley's basically Harvest Moon's successor.