The Sparity Family

by Zexoguy

Dragon Ponies: Part 4

Citrine admired herself in the changing room mirror. She wore a beautiful light blue sundress with a navy blue sun pattern and gold-colored trim at the base, along with a pair of turquoise rimmed sunglasses. She liked how the outfit complimented her curves very well and felt very comfortable. In short, she loved it.

She heard frustrated groans and then a loud thud come from the stall next to her. She hurried over and saw her sister on the floor rubbing her shoulder in pain.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah, I think so." Jade answered, standing back up. "It's just this damn jacket. I can't get it to fit over my wings."

"Here, let me help." Citrine gave her sister a hand getting up and tried to help her put on a cropped denim jacket. Jade was right. The holes in the back were almost too small for her stiff dragon wings to fit through, but they had to try. She was also wearing a tight purple top with a horizontal stripe pattern, a red wavy skirt and matching sandals.

"I can't believe Mom's making me do this." Jade groaned. "She knows I don't care about this stupid fashion stuff. I mean, does she really think I wanna go out there and have a bunch of fashion snobs judge me for my looks?"

"Jade, it's not about you. It's about showing off Mom's outfits."

"But that's the problem. It's never about what I want. It's always about her. She wants me to be more like her.... and like you."

"Me?"

"Yeah, because you're her perfect little princess. She and Dad just thinks you're so perfect in every way. You're so pretty and girly and sweet to them. It's nauseating and it makes the rest of us look bad."

"Hey!" Citrine grabbed her shoulders and looked her square in the eyes. "You know darn well I'm not perfect, but that still needs to stay between us."

"Okay, yeah! I know." Jade was slightly surprised. She had never seen such intensity in her sister's eyes before. It was a little unnerving.

When Citrine calmed herself down, she took a deep breath and let go of Jade's shoulders. "Look, I'm sorry if I've ever made you feel like you had to compete with me just to get Mom and Dad's approval, but I'm sure they're proud of you, too. I mean, you're awesome at playing guitar and singing and you're in a band. Plus, I'm sure Mom thinks you're very pretty."

Jade scoffed. "Yeah right." she said, looking at herself in the mirror. "She thinks I'm a lot of things, but there's no way she thinks I'm pretty."

"Why not?" Citrine asked.

"Well... I mean... look at me."

Citrine stepped up and put an arm around her younger sister's shoulders. "I am," she said softly. "And I think you look great."

The young dragon pony looked herself over in the mirror. "Really?" she asked.

"Yeah," The older one gave her a smile.

Jade just stared at herself for a second. She had never thought of herself as pretty before, but she had to admit, the outfit really didn't look half bad on her. She gave a small smile, too.

"You know," Jade began, "I don't really mind the top and the jacket, but the skirt and shoes I could do without." This made her sister giggle. Suddenly there was a knock on the door and a voice said "Showtime!" which they recognized as their mom's voice.

Citrine patted Jade's shoulder. "Let's do it."

"Yeah.... Great." Jade still wasn't fully onboard with the whole thing.
------

Bright lights flashed as cameras snapped all around, making it difficult for Jade to keep her eyes open. She and Citrine were in the middle of a photo shoot to see if they could really pass as ideal models and while Citrine seemed to be having a great time smiling and posing with ease, the less than enthusiastic Jade was far outside of her comfort zone. The bright houselights and the incessantly flashing cameras were almost enough to make her go blind. What's worse, she could hear the photographers and other ponies in the room whispering insulting comments about her. It was like being surrounded by a swarm of fireflies at a light show.

"Sheesh. Would it kill the green one to smile?"

"What is with those wings?"

"She can't even keep her eyes open."

"The glare from those scales is throwing off my white balance."

"I'm gonna throw off a lot more than that, you jerks," she thought to herself.

Jade still tried her hardest to do like her sister and strike a few decent poses for the cameras. She was able to keep her eyes open long enough to see her mom quietly signaling her to smile big and wide. She had never been good at smiling on cue (many of her school yearbook pictures could attest to that), but she did as she was told. She did her best to give a big toothy smile, but instead, it ended up looking more like she was passing a kidney stone. Her lips and cheeks were spread out so wide, you could see almost all of her sharp teeth as well her gums.

The photographers had momentarily stopped taking pictures and judging by their faces, you'd think they thought they were about to be eaten. They all seemed either frightened or disgusted by Jade's "smile." Rarity looked a little embarrassed for her and Citrine looked as though she had just witnessed a horrible prophecy come true. The truth was Citrine had been afraid that this would be a problem for Jade, but had tried to remain optimistic.

"Wow." one of the photographers commented. "That's quite a set of teeth she's got."

That was the last straw. Jade let out a loud and frightening growl. "THAT IS IT!" she shouted as she ripped off the denim jacket and stormed out of the room.

"Oh no," Citrine said worriedly. "Jade! Wait up!" she called out as she walked after her disgruntled sister.

"Girls, wait!" Rarity called after them. "Oh dear." She picked up the torn jacket and then turned and gave a scolding look to her staff. "Well I hope you're all proud of yourselves. You may have just damaged my daughter's self-esteem."

The ponies all quickly tried to apologize, desperate not to get on their boss's bad side. "I swear, Ms. Rarity, we had no idea she was your daughter."

"Even so." Rarity glared over them, watching them beg for forgiveness, then she took a deep breath. "Now if you'll all excuse me, I have to go and comfort my little girl. Meanwhile, I suggest you all wrap this place up while you still have your jobs." As everypony scrambled to wrap up the set as quickly as possible, the worried mother left to try and find her daughters.
------

The three mares arrived home having barely spoken at all in the car. Citrine decided to head straight upstairs and give her mom and sister some space to talk. Jade refused to look her mom in the eye, keeping her back turned to her. Rarity tried to think of what would be the best way to go about this, until she took a deep breath and finally spoke up.

"Now, Jade, dear," she said, trying to speak as delicately as possible. "The things those ponies said were completely out of line and I don't want you taking any of it to heart, but..."

"Oh, come on!" Jade suddenly burst out as she turned to face her mother. "You think THAT's what I really care about?! This is exactly why I never wanted to do that stupid modeling crap in the first place! You keep trying to force me to be like you, but I'm not, Mom! I'm just NOT!"

The white mare was at a loss for words. "Jade, I... I didn't..."

Jade continued. "I'm never gonna be like you, Mom. You should've known that the minute you saw what my cutie mark was."

"Jade! I've always known you were different than me, even before your cutie mark appeared."

"But you still haven't accepted it, have you? You never let me do anything I wanna do."

"What are you talking about? I let you take guitar lessons. I let you join your garage band. I let you keep that nasty little bat as a pet. I let you dress like... THIS!" Rarity gestured to her daughter's grungy, ripped clothing.

"Nothing I do is ever good enough for you, is it? It's always about what you want. The Blood Dragons have a concert coming up in just a couple of days and I missed a day of practice for your damn fashion photo shoot!"

"Don't you dare use that language with me, young lady!" Rarity raised her voice and then calmed down a little bit. "Look, I am very sorry for the way things went today, but you had no right to behave the way you did, especially when you ruined my hard work." She presented the torn up remains of Jade's jacket. Jade remained silent for a moment, her head lowered as she glared back at her mother.

"Well I'm sorry, too, Mom," she finally said. "Sorry I'm not the daughter you wanted." With that, she turned and headed upstairs to her bedroom. Once she was out of sight and her door slammed shut, Rarity's heart filled with regret. She held her forehead in her hand as Spike at last entered the room.

"Hey, I heard all the yelling," he said. "What's going on?"

"RRRAAAAAAAAAUUUUUGGGGHHHH!!!!!" They both jumped as they suddenly heard Jade screaming, growling and stomping around in her room. Crashing sounds could be heard all over the house as she demolished the entire bedroom, letting her full anger run wild. She climbed up onto her bed and with one final outburst, let loose the loudest, most furious dragon roar her parents had ever heard. Then, once it was all out of her system, she collapsed face first into her pillow and began to sob lightly.

Just the sound of that roar was enough to break Rarity's heart. She wished so badly that she could alleviate her daughter's pain, but she didn't know how. She wanted the chance to take back the things she had said and help make things right again, but for now, she knew that Jade needed her space and all she could do was listen to her suffer. She sought comfort in Spike's arms as tears began to roll down her cheeks.

"Hey, hey. It's okay, Rare," Spike said in a comforting tone. "You want me to go talk to her?"

Rarity rubbed the tears from her eyes and responded. "No, no. She just needs some time alone to breathe. I think we both do."

"Okay." Spike let her go. "What's wrong?"

"Oh Spike," Rarity started to cry again. "Have I failed as a mother?"

"What? No, no. You're a great mother." Spike held her by the shoulders. "Look, no one ever said parenting would be easy, especially when it came to teenagers. Whatever happened, I'm sure you two will work it out."

Rarity wiped her eyes again and cracked a grateful smile. The two embraced each other again while Jade's sobbing started to settle as she lay in her bed.

Author's Note:

Thanks a lot for your patience. Hopefully, I can start getting chapters done more quickly in between my school work and the social life that I'm hoping to have this coming semester. I hate putting my writing off for so long, but I'm hoping to do more for this story soon enough.

Comments

[DanvilleBengal]

Tsk, tsk, tsk. ***shakes his head***

To be blunt, I don't think I've ever seen someone completely struck out so much quicker like Jade's "foray" into modeling more than her designer mother. Geez, Rarity, inconsiderate much?? As her mother, you should had seen from jump that Jade wasn't gonna really warm up to what is basicially you do for a living, especially if that makes it so objective because you had to understand that not everypony likes everything. And again, Jade was quite blunt and a little unforgiving with what she really thought about the modeling but she's got a couple of points: 1/ Just because Citrine is a lot like you as far as personality is concerned--primarily because she's your daughter--it's completely naïve to think that just because Jade's also your daughter she can also be put in for soneone that can't be available. and 2/ you ignored what your daughter truly thought about the entire thing--from point she was completely opposed to it, ultimately her opposition was well-founded.

Now it's time for Daddy to come in to save the day, because I think to Jade, only her father probably knows how she's feeling right now. And I do think that Spike has to make some stern talks to Rarity as well.

Interesting to me is that I could see a bit of a parallel between the twins and Topaz, but that is a different chapter, let's try to mend Jade's still tender heart first. Just because she's more hardcore than the others doesn't mean she doesn't have a heart. And she's still a girl even after all the shredding and headbanging...

[Zexoguy]

6814198 I see what you're saying, but remember that Coco gave Rarity the news about the cancelled models at completely the last minute, so she needed to find a new model fast. She only made Jade do it because she was desperate, but just because she was, doesn't mean she doesn't think Jade is beautiful. When people are angry, they say things they don't really mean and I think that's what happened here.

Also, until the kids were born, Spike was the only dragon left alive, so there probably is a little bit of anti-dragon bigotry, but in this case, only from a few stuck-up snobs. Rarity does see beauty in everypony and every dragon. If she didn't, she wouldn't have married one and had children with him.

[Grizzlybear119]

Spike has a really shitty role in this fanfic tbh, hes coming off as a really bad father with the way ur portraying him.

[Zexoguy]

6828768 In what way?

[Grizzlybear119]

6828890 well, for one hes barely in it and when he does he just has little to no lines. But that doesnt bother me that much, it is a fic about the family so sure, maybe he has a major role later. What bothers me is how distant he is from his kids really, his daughter comes home clearly upset enough to scream and trash her room, now idk about you but spike comes off as a guy thatd run up that room and ignore rarities suggestion and comfort his kid and show her love and tell her exactly what to expect as a hybrid, he is a dragon so i doubt he wasnt made fun of by other ponies, and hes just as awkward as she is so he couldve afford advice on how to move past it, but just straight off blowing it like it held no importance well yeah that counts as a shitty dad

[Zexoguy]

6828981 I think he's giving her space to cool down before reaching out to her. Besides, her issues in this case aren't really about being a hybrid (I'll get to that in the next arc). She more upset with her mom than about the photographers insulting her.

[DanvilleBengal]

It seems a little late, and it probably makes me a bit of a tyrant and an asshole, but I sincerely believe that with some of those degrading comments they were saying about Jade would be enough to get the ponies that said them get a suspension at least, particularly if a pink slip (termination of employment) is going out of line. I still believe a couple heads should roll though, or that Rarity decides to sever the business relationship with them.

After all, you have to be either got huge cojones to flat out talk shit about the daughter of the boss out loud or be a huge tool to do that. Also in a business like Rarity's, I assume that you have to be a bit of an asskisser at times to get favor with somepony like Rarity, the CEO (I think) of Carousel Boutique Corp. Yes, I'm pretty sure that Rarity is one that is welcome to great ideas, but even someone like her need a couple of 'yes ponies'. Seems like that is how it is in corporate culture, at least at the very top.

I could be completely wrong though...