> Diamond Cutter Anthology Entries
>  by Yukito
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Prompt #3 - Diamond Tiara Is A Spy!
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prompt: Diamond Tiara is a spy and/or spying on someone.





Diamond Tiara wiped the sweat from her brow, and tried to keep her breathing quiet, as she peered carefully around the corner. There was nothing standing in her way. It was a clear run to the Sentry sitting in the middle of the enemy’s base, preventing her teammates from entering. All that she had to do was use her Electro-Sapper to destroy it, and then her team would charge in and wipe out the enemy, showering her with praise for being the key aspect of their victory.

‘I need a disguise first,’ she thought to herself as she ducked back behind the corner, and opened up her disguise kit. She pulled out a mask of the yellow filly responsible for building the Sentry in the first place. “Blech. No way am I masquerading as that blank flank.” She tossed the mask aside, and pulled out a mask of an orange filly with a helmet that was obviously too big for her. “A little better, but I’d still rather not wear a mask of that chicken.”

A few more masks later, which were now piled up on the floor around her, like a little nest for the picky little Spy, Diamond Tiara finally found one that was to her liking. Unfortunately, it was a mask of herself. So, a few more masks later, and she found another one that agreed with her. “I guess I can live with being Princess Celestia for a while…”

Diamond Tiara put the mask on, and pulled out her Sapper. “Right, time to-” Diamond Tiara charged around the corner, but stopped as she noticed that the Sentry was no longer there. “What the huh?”

“Oh, DT, there ya are,” Rainbow Dash said as she ran into the base, carrying a Baseball Bat in her wing. “What took you so long? We had ta destroy that thing ourselves.”

Rainbow Dash was suddenly shot in the face, and fell down to the ground. Diamond Tiara turned to see the assailant, and found Twilight Sparkle staring at her. “Oh! Uh, hello there… uh, library… lady?”

Twilight smiled, and bowed quickly. “Your Majesty,” she said, before turning around and running through the base, presumably up to the sniper platform.

‘Well, guess I know who my next target is…’ Diamond Tiara quickly ran through the base after Twilight, putting her Sapper away and pulling out her Knife. However, as she rounded the next corner to the courtyard, she bumped into a large, dark-blue Alicorn, holding a Flamethrower in her magic… and leering down at the pink filly. “Oh, buck me…”

“… SPYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!” Luna shouted as she sprayed fire all over the room, turning Diamond Tiara to charcoal in a matter of seconds.





Diamond Tiara huffed as she looked down at the battlefield, her ghostly form allowing her to fly for a bit as she waited to respawn.

Suddenly, an item dropped into Diamond Tiara’s lap. “Oh?” She picked it up, and found that it was a rather nice looking welding mask, with a streak of flames decorating it, other known as a ‘Hotrod’. She heard cries of ‘OMG’ and ‘Lucky’ being shouted from the other ponies, both dead and alive, and smiled as she tried it on. She found, however, that she would have to remove her tiara to do so, and ultimately decided to just leave it be for now.





Diamond Tiara suddenly found herself in one of her team’s respawn room. With her, were Rainbow Dash, Silver Spoon, and Sweetie Belle.

“This isn’t going so well,” Rainbow Dash said. “I swear Twi’s using an aimbot or something…”

“I tried to set up a Sentry in our intel room, but that stupid Spy… who was it again?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Pinkie,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Right, her! She keeps sapping and backstabbing whenever it reaches level three! She’s not even after the intel, she’s just trolling me,” the annoyed filly said with a huff.

Silver Spoon shifted about on the spot, flailing her hooves about. Diamond Tiara walked up to one of the cabinets. “I’m going to try the Dead Ringer for a bit.”

“What’s Spike doing? Shouldn’t he be torching Pinkie by now?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“I think he’s AFK,” Sweetie Belle said. She noticed Silver Spoon dancing about in front of her. “You okay?”

Diamond Tiara and Rainbow Dash both turned to the strange-acting filly, giving her curious looks as she apparently tried to engage them in a game of charades.

“… Press ‘C’,” Diamond Tiara said.

“… Oh. Oh! OH!” Silver Spoon smiled and jumped for joy. “Finally! I was wondering how I could talk to everypony!”

Rainbow Dash facehooved hard. “Really? That why you’ve been silent this whole game?”

Sweetie Belle turned her head and chuckled under her breath. “Noob,” she said quietly, though loud enough for Silver Spoon to hear.

“Blank flank,” Silver Spoon retorted spitefully, earning a scowl from Sweetie Belle.

“You’re just lucky that friendly fire isn’t on!”

“Now, now, calm down you two!” Rainbow Dash said, before her attention was drawn to Fluttershy appearing in their respawn room. Suddenly, a light bulb appeared above Rainbow Dash’s head. “Hey, Fluttershy! Come over here!”

Fluttershy timidly walked over to the small group assembled in the room, carrying her Medigun on her back. “Yes, Rainbow Dash?”

“I’m gonna go Heavy for a bit. You charge up that ÜberCharge and follow me!”

“Oh, um… okay.”

“What about us?” Silver Spoon asked.

“I’m gonna try and get Pinkie Pie,” Sweetie Belle said, running out of the respawn room with a Wrench in her mouth before anypony could stop her.

“Silver, you go Sniper and distract that library lady.”

“You mean Twilight?” Fluttershy asked.

Diamond Tiara nodded, and then grinned wickedly. “I’m gonna sneak up on her and stab with my Knife.”

“That doesn’t sound very nice…”

Diamond Tiara scowled at the yellow mare. “Well, DUH! That’s the point! She’s the enemy!”

“Well, I guess, but…”

“Alright Fluttershy!” Rainbow Dash shouted, flying in the air and carrying a Minigun in her forehooves. “Let’s do this!”

As the two Pegasi initiated their own plan, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon left to carry out their own. “Remember,” Diamond Tiara began, “Don’t kill her. Save that for me. And keep an eye out for other ponies.” Silver Spoon nodded. “In particular, Apple Bloom and Scootaloo.” Silver Spoon chuckled.

“I’ll save some bullets just for them.”

The two fillies initiated their secret hoofshake. “Bump, bump, sugar-lump rump!”

“Good luck!” Silver Spoon shouted as Diamond Tiara jumped down from the balcony… only to be shot immediately by Twilight. “AH!”

“It’s okay!” Diamond Tiara shouted back over the team chat. “I used the Dead Ringer! I’m just invisible for a bit, that’s all!”

“O-Oh… Right…”

Diamond Tiara jumped into the water below her, cringing as she swam through the sewage, and entering the sewers of the enemy base. Even if it was only virtual reality, she was still thankful that nopony could see her swimming through such icky-

“AH!” both Diamond Tiara and Scootaloo shouted as they bumped into each other at a corner. Scootaloo looked around, thoroughly confused.

“What the huh? Am I laggin’ or something?”

“Uh, yeah,” Diamond Tiara said, quickly running past Scootaloo. Hr cloak ran out before she could get far, through, and she very noisily uncloaked behind the orange filly.

“Who’s there?!” Scootaloo asked, turning around to find a yellow filly standing behind her. “Oh, Apple Bloom. Don’t scare me like that.”

“… Uh, sorry. Y’all.” Diamond Tiara wanted to laugh, but that would give her away. So she turned off her microphone for a bit. “WHAT THE HAY?! SHE ACTUALLY FELL FOR IT?! WHAT A DODO!”

Once she was done, she turned her microphone back on, and turned around to continue her mission… being followed by Scootaloo as she did so. “What’re you doing? Didn’t you- I mean, didn’t y’all wanna go thata way?”

Scootaloo shook her head. “I was just running around randomly. I think I’ll stick with you for a bit.”

Diamond Tiara rolled her eyes. ‘Ugh, so clingy to her friends. Not at all like me and Silvy.’

“So, how many times have ya killed Diamond Tiara this game?”

“… None,” Diamond Tiara answered, climbing the stairs with Scootaloo behind her. “Why do y’all ask?”

“Oh, just wondering. I blasted her once or twice, I think. Felt so good, y’know?”

“… I’m sure it did.”

“Man, is she annoying! Always going on about how rich she is, how great she is, how smart she is, even though she totally copies off of her friend’s work all the time, who is just as annoying, by the way!”

Diamond Tiara grit her teeth together, trying to restrain herself so as to not blow her cover. Suddenly, an idea presented itself to her. “… Maybe it’s not that she’s annoying. Maybe you’re just… jealous.”

“Yeah… wait, wha?” Scootaloo tilted her head in confusion, and the two fillies stopped their walking to face each other. “Jealous? Of that arrogant snob?!”

Diamond Tiara grinned, and nodded. “Yeah. Of her charming good looks, her amazing talent, her incredibly quick wits, and her ability to look stylish in just about anything!”

Scootaloo took a step back, and gave her ‘friend’ a worried look. “W-What’s up with you? You got a crush on her or something?”

Diamond Tiara cringed at the thought. “Of course not!” she shouted. “Though, it would be perfectly reasonable if I did, considering how amazing that filly is.”

Scootaloo frowned, and took a threatening step closer. “You do have a crush on her! I can’t believe this!”

‘Oh, she doesn’t like that, huh? Better add more fuel to the fire.’ “Okay, yes, I have a crush on her. So, what’re ya gonna do about it?”

“BACK OFF! SHE’S MINE!” Scootaloo shouted, startling and shocking Diamond Tiara.

“I-I… W-What?!”

“You heard me! I can’t believe, this whole time, you’ve been after her too! You know what this means!” Diamond Tiara simply shook her head. “This makes us enemies! In fact…” Scootaloo suddenly toppled over, and died. An announcement declared that she had joined the other team.

Diamond Tiara simply stared at the lifeless body of the orange filly for a few seconds, trying to process what had just occurred. “… I think… I think I should stay away from Scootaloo from now on.”

With that, Diamond Tiara took off the mask that she was wearing, and replaced it with that of Fluttershy, who had been forced onto the opposite team a few moments ago for the purpose of balancing them. Rainbow Dash had quit shortly afterward.

She rounded the corners much more cautiously this time, keeping an eye open for any Pyros or Flamethrowers as she delved deeper into the enemy base. ‘Screw the intel for now. I’ll just mess with the Snipers for now!’

As Diamond Tiara strolled past the enemy team’s respawn room, she bumped into Fluttershy… The real Fluttershy. She gulped, and laughed nervously. Fluttershy looked down at her with a stern look on her face, looking ready to attack at a moment’s notice.

Suddenly, the mare’s expression softened, and she moved aside. “Oh, um, sorry. I was in your way, wasn’t I?”

Diamond Tiara blinked, and slowly walked past, keeping an eye on Fluttershy the entire time. The Pegasus walked in the opposite direction, towards the courtyard, and the pink filly simply shrugged, and walked onto the balcony. She smiled at what she saw.

There were two Snipers on the balcony, both of which were standing perfectly still, backs exposed, and being quite a nuisance to her teammates. She grinned like a foal in Bon Bon’s candy store, and silently approached the first Sniper: Twilight Sparkle.

Raising her Knife high, Diamond Tiara let out a silent chuckle as she brought it down hard into the mare’s back, killing her instantly. She turned her attention to the next Sniper in line: a blue Unicorn mare, with a silver mane and tail.

“Hah!” the Sniper exclaimed. “That’s sixty-two kills now for the Great, and Powerful Trixie! How about you, Sparkle?” No response came as Diamond Tiara approached the mare. “Sparkle?”

Diamond Tiara drove her Knife into the second mare’s back, and let out a loud, maniacal laugh as she watched her fall limp onto the floor. “YES! Oh, MAN, that feels good!”

So there she was, now standing on an empty balcony, with two corpses lying beside her. She had some time before they would respawn, time that she needed to kill. So, she did what any professional assassin would do in their moment of triumph: she propped one mare against a wall, and the other one top, making sure that their horns touched, and that their hooves were touching each other’s flanks. And then she took a screenshot.

“Nice!” Snips shouted, viewing the scene in ghost form above Diamond Tiara.

“Heh, now to-” Diamond Tiara’s words were cut off by a Shotgun blast to the back of the head.





Finding herself in ghost form once more, Diamond Tiara turned her angry gaze to where she had just been killed… and found Luna over her lifeless body, continually crouching down and standing up, over and over.

“Oh, come on,” Diamond Tiara said. “That’s just so immature.”

She saw the Princess turn around, and pull out a can of spraypaint. She sprayed it against the wall, painting an image of what is commonly referred to by ponies on the ponynet as ‘troll face’, with the words ‘u mad bro?’ written beneath it.

‘I hate Pyros.’
> Prompt #4 - Diamond Tiara And Her Awesome Pet
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prompt: Diamond Tiara spends some quality time with her pet.





Diamond Tiara let out a loud yawn and rubbed her eyes. She looked over at her clock, to find that it was still only 21:03. Plenty of time before she had to go to bed. However, there was something that she had to do right now. Something that she couldn’t ignore any longer. Otherwise, she’d let it all out over her bed, and that would just be embarrassing.

“Right, guess I’d better get to the bathroom before-”

Piyo!

She stopped in her tracks, and picked up her small, egg-shaped toy, where she saw the digital bird inside squawking. It was begging for food. “Alright, alright, I’ll feed you already! Just hold on!” She quickly searched through the options, and picked out the bag of food for her pet. It ate it happily, and sang a little song. “Okay, now to-”

Piyo!

“What? You want me to play with you? But, I need to-”

Piyo!

“O-Okay, okay! I’ll just… take you to the bathroom with me, I guess.” Diamond Tiara carried the toy outside of her room, and began to make her way down the hallway leading to the bathroom. She selected the option to play with her pet by going for a walk with it. The bird chirped merrily, and love hearts floated around it.

She opened the door to the bathroom, and took a step inside, only to stop when she saw her father walking out of the shower. Both ponies quickly screamed in shock, and Diamond Tiara bolted out of the bathroom, and slammed the door closed. She sat outside and waited, trying not to think about what she had just seen.

The door opened, and Filthy Rich walked outside, a towel wrapped around his lower body. “Um… Bathroom’s free now.”

Diamond Tiara simply nodded, and walked inside. Unlike her father, she locked the door behind her, to ensure she had her privacy.

Once she was finished, she made her way back to her bedroom, letting out another loud yawn on the way. “Guess I should really be going to bed now.”

Piyo!

“Oh, what now?” she asked in a whine. She looked at her toy, and found that her pet had left her a little ‘present’. And it looked very ashamed of what it did. “You little… Let’s see… Ah, here we go.” She selected the option to scold her pet, which brought its discipline up a level. It was now potty-trained. She smiled, and then selected the option to clean up the current mess that was made by her pet.

When she got back to her room, she made sure that her alarm clock was set, and that her bag was ready for tomorrow, her definition of ‘ready’ meaning that it was in the room, and that her books were at least in sight around it. Or at least, as many books as she cared to count.

Once she was satisfied, she selected the option for her pet to go to bed. The first few days were a nightmare trying to get it to sleep, and Diamond Tiara was even scolded one time for yelling too loud to her pet for not listening to her. But now, with its current discipline level, it obeyed and went to sleep quickly.

“Good boy. Sweet dreams, my little Piyo.” She lay her pet down into the bed she had her father specially order for her. It was essentially a bassinette, but it had straw in it, so that her pet ‘bird’ would feel more comfortable in it.

Once her pet was settled into bed, it was her turn. She switched on her nightlight, shut off her main light, and then headed to bed. Taking a moment to get comfortable, and cuddle up against her favourite teddy bear, Diamond Tiara let out one final yawn, before drifting off to the land of dreams.





School was so boring. The work, the teacher, the students (except for Silver Spoon), and especially the work. The work was two times boring, so it was definitely the worst part of school. Diamond Tiara didn’t understand why they couldn’t just invent a type of school that doesn’t have work. Then she wouldn’t mind it so much.

Piyo!

Diamond Tiara jumped, and the entire room fell silent. “What was that?” Cheerilee asked. “That better not have been one of those new cell phone things that are going around!”

Almost everypony in the class immediately got out their cell phones, to check that they were on silent. Cheerilee sighed, and mumbled something about kids these days. One-by-one, each of the students declared that it wasn’t their phone that went off.

“I think it was Sweetie Belle,” Diamond Tiara said. “I mean, who else makes such weird, high-pitched noises?”

“Hey!” Sweetie Belle shouted, her voice cracking a little, and causing the ponies around her to cover their ears. “… Well, it wasn’t me! Maybe it was Snips. His voice has been pretty weird lately.”

“What?!” Snips shouted, his voice doing the same thing that Sweetie Belle’s did moments earlier. “It wasn’t me! I’ve been staying silent because of this!”

Some of the fillies near the colt giggled at the way his voice cracked, before Cheerilee intervened. “Now, class. Colts’ voices change as they get older, and it’s nothing to laugh about. Now, perhaps we can all get back to the lesson?”

“Yes, Miss Cheerilee,” everypony in the class said. The teacher turned around, and continued to talk about whatever it was she talking about. Diamond Tiara wasn’t paying any attention t all. Instead, she opened up her bag, pulled out her toy, and checked to see what was wrong.

“You want a bath? Now?” she whispered, before sighing and shaking her head. “Fine. But you’ve gotta stay quiet, or Miss Cheerilee will take you away from me!” She selected the sound option, and muted her pet. She then selected the option to bathe her pet, which the bird enjoyed very much. “Now, be a good boy whilst momma finishes her lesson, okay?”

She gave the screen a quick kiss, before leaning down to put her toy back into its bag. As she did so, she noticed Apple Bloom staring at her. “… What?”

Apple Bloom quickly turned away, her eyes still wide and her mouth still open. “N-Nothin’,” she said.

Diamond Tiara gave the filly a strange look, before shrugging it off, and getting back to not paying attention to anything that the teacher was saying.

School was just so boring.





When Diamond Tiara arrived at her favourite spot outside of the schoolhouse, she placed her bag down, and pulled out her lunchbox and a folded-up blanket. The blanket was pink, with purple and white stripes running across it diagonally, and it had her Cutie Mark in the very centre.

Once the blanket was laid out on the floor, and sat down, and placed her lunchbox beside her. She wasn’t going to start yet. Not until Silver Spoon arrived from whatever ‘important business’ she was doing.

“… Oh. I should make sure Piyo’s okay.” She pulled out her toy from her bag, and took a quick glance at the screen. Her eyes widened in horror at what she saw. Apparently, Piyo had gotten hungry at some point during the lessons, and couldn’t hold on for a measly one and a half hours.

It was now on its side, with ‘X’s where its eyes should be, with stink lines coming off of its body, and flies flying around it.

A tear rolled down Diamond Tiara’s cheek, soon followed by another one. “P-Piyo… No…” She threw her head up into the air, and clenched her eyes shut as she yelled, at the top of her lungs: “PIYOOOOOOOOOOOO!”





Silver Spoon approached her friend calmly. “Diamond, listen. We’ve been talking, and we think you have a problem.” Behind her, the three members that made up the Cutie Mark Crusaders also approached, and nodded their heads in agreement.

“A-A problem? What do you mean? How could you say that?!” Diamond Tiara asked, her face red and wet from the tears she had shed moments earlier.

“Well,” Apple Bloom started, “Fer one thing, ye’re givin’ CPR to a toy…”

Diamond Tiara, in the middle of trying to breath air into her pet, stopped immediately, and considered her actions rationally for a moment. She then lifted her head up, stared at the toy beneath her, and then at the four fillies beside her. “… Oh Celestia. I need help.”

Silver Spoon smiled, and placed a reassuring hoof on her friend’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. We know just what to do.”





Sweetie Belle fell to her haunches, too tired to continue digging anymore. “I-It’s too h-hot for this…”

Scootaloo wiped the sweat off of her brow, and then realised something. She looked over at the two rich fillies, who were simply sitting off to the side, sipping at their milkshakes in the cool shade beneath a tree. “Hey! Aren’t you two gonna help?!” she shouted. “It’s her dumb pet that died!”

“D-Dumb pet?!” Diamond Tiara shouted back, but was stopped from responding aggressively by her friend’s hoof. Instead, she simply nuzzled her now-dead pet, and whispered words of reassurance that he wasn’t dumb.

“You want two cute fillies like us to get our coats dirty?” Silver Spoon asked. “Besides, you might get your Cutie Marks in digging.”

The three thought about that for a second, and suddenly, they seemed to recover all of their energy, each one now racing to ‘dig up’ their Cutie Mark first. Silver Spoon gave a victorious smile, before frowning when she saw Diamond Tiara charging up a defibrillator beside her.

“Diamond,” she said, stopping her friend from possibly electrocuting herself.

Diamond Tiara sighed, and kicked the defibrillator away. “Sorry. It’s just, he’s been such a big part of my life, and-”

Silver Spoon put her hoof over Diamond Tiara’s. “It’s okay. I’m here for you.”

“Silver Spoon…”

“Hey!” Scootaloo shouted, destroying the moment between the two friends. “We’re done over here!”

“Did ah get a Cutie Mark?!” Apple Bloom asked excitedly. She looked at her flank, and then frowned when she saw that it was still blank. “Darn it!”

“Maybe you’ll get your Cutie Marks in burying?” Silver Spoon suggested. Their faces all lit up, and she shook her head and slammed a hoof against her face. ‘Such simple minds…’

Diamond Tiara approached the hole that had been dug, and looked down at her dead pet, sniffing a few times as she prepared herself to say goodbye forever.

She threw the toy into the hole, and then quickly averted her eyes. Silver Spoon held her friend close, and nodded to the Crusaders, who immediately began to throw the dirt back into the hole it originally came from.

“I didn’t think it’d be so hard,” Diamond Tiara said.

“It’s for your own good,” Silver Spoon said. She watched as the Crusaders continued to bury the accursed toy that had robbed Diamond Tiara from her for the past week, and smiled as she released her friend, and held her hoof. “Hey, I heard Carousal Boutique has a new line of dresses in, designed by Fleur de Lis herself. Wanna go check it out?”

Diamond Tiara’s face suddenly lit up, and she nodded her head. “Totally!”

The two friends walked off in the direction of the shop, leaving the three Crusaders to finish off their dirty work for them. Silver Spoon spared one last glance at the buried toy, and a wicked grin crossed her face. ‘Just the way it should be. Diamond Tiara is my friend, and I’m not gonna let some stupid little toy replace me!’

Meanwhile, a bright flash of light appeared where the Crusaders were digging, blinding the three of them momentarily.

“W-What was that?” Apple Bloom asked. She heard a gasp, and turned to the source of it.

“Girls, girls, look!” Sweetie Belle shouted, turning around and presenting her flank to her friends. “I got my Cutie Mark! I did it!”

Scootaloo approached her friend, and offered a hoofbump. “Way to go!” she shouted, before leaning in to examine the new Cutie Mark. “It’s… a headstone?”

The three fillies remained silent for a minute, neither one of them sure quite what to say.

Suddenly, Sweetie Belle broke the silence. “Oh boy! Just wait’ll I show Rarity!”
> Prompt #5 - Diamond Tiara's Mother
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prompt: Diamond Tiara visits a relative.





Stupid Cheerilee! Stupid Apple Bloom! Stupid Sweetie Belle! Stupid Silver Spoon! For once, Scootaloo is actually alright. But the rest of you, you can all just go to heck! I hate you! I hate all of you! I wish I was never born!





… Okay, so I may have had a bit of a temper tantrum, and I may have been held after school for throwing a bunch of objects around the class and injuring one or two kids. But it wasn’t my fault! It was Miss Cheerilee’s fault! And Snips’! How dare they bring up my mother?! Or rather, my lack of mother…

And then that stupid blank flank Apple Bloom had the nerve to try and console me! You want me to feel better? Stop bringing up my mum who’s never around! Gah! I hate everything! I just wanna go home and lock myself in my room!

“Why don’t I have a mum?!” I shout as I walk through the streets of Ponyville with my father. It had been silent up to that point. Daddy made a point of letting me know how cross he was, but what right did he have to be cross?! It was me who didn’t have a mum! “Why?!”

“Diamond sweetie, please. We can talk about this when we-”

“No! I want to know! I want to know why mum is never around to talk to me! Or to buy me toys! Or to praise me when I’m a good filly!”

“Diamond Tiara!” Oh great, here it comes. The voice daddy uses whenever he’s serious. I never win when he brings out this voice. It’s not fair! “We will talk about this later! When the time is right!”

“You always say that, but I’m not a little filly anymore! I’m a big kid, and I wanna know where my mommy is!”

“LATER!” Whoa! He’s never shouted quite that loud before. “… Later,” he repeats, more quietly this time.

It’s not fair, daddy. You’re always away at work, and the other kids are always talking about how their mothers bake treats for them, and take them out shopping, and treat their cuts whenever they get hurt, and send them to bed early when they get in trouble. Why can’t I have any of that? You have enough money to buy me anything I want… so why don’t I have a mum?





I hate sitting in my room with nothing to do. Because it means I have time to think about things clearly. And when I do that, I realise how stupid I was for taking it out on the other students. Yeah, ‘cause they’re the reason I have no mum. Sure.

And it’s not daddy’s fault, either. I know that money can’t buy a new mum… I know that, but… “Oh great, and now I need to use the little filly’s room.” Hopefully, I can sneak past daddy’s bedroom without him hearing. I don’t want to talk to him right now… I just want to go to sleep and wake up forgetting all about what happened today.

It won’t happen, but… what else can I do? Maybe if I had a mum, she would hold me, and tell me that everything’s alright, like the other kids said… And, she would wipe away my tears, so I didn’t have to do it myself.

Knock, Knock

Hm? Who’s visiting us so late at night? I’d better hide, so that daddy doesn’t see me when he leaves his bedroom. Wait, he’s already downstairs? So, I crept quietly for nothing?!

“Good evening, Mr. Rich.” … Oh my gosh. Is that… It is! It’s… It’s…

“P-Princess Sparkle! W-What a pleasant surprise!” Princess Twilight Sparkle is at our house?! W-Why?!

“You know that it isn’t. May I come in?”

“… So, it’s happened, has it?”

“Yes. And, I feel terrible about it. I want to tell you how sorry I am that-”

“Hold on. There’s somepony you should meet.” Uh-oh. Daddy’s coming up the stairs. Quick, to my room! No time! I know, I’ll pretend I was just coming out of the bathroom. “Diamond Tiara?”

“Y-Yes, daddy?”

“We need to talk. Can you come downstairs for a minute?”

I don’t want to talk, but… the look in his eyes says that he won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. “Y-Yes, daddy.”





Sooooo… here I am, sitting right in front of a Princess, drinking tea with her, and smiling nervously whilst trying not to accidentally do something that would get me banished. Suck on that, Crusaders.

“Your name is Diamond Tiara, right?” she asks me. I simply nod. “Well… this is… interesting.”

What’s so interesting about it?

“Perhaps we should explain,” daddy says. “You see, Diamond… you remember the story of how I met you mother, right?” How can I not? It’s the only thing of my mother’s I even have.

“You met her at you College graduation party. You were chasing some other mare, she rejected you, and then mum came along and you fell for her at first sight.”

“Well, something like that.” … Wait, why did the Princess just say that? “It must have been so long ago for you, but for me, it’s like it was just a few hours ago.”

“I imagine I look so old to you now, but you still the look the same as back then.”

“Wait, what do you mean?” I ask. This is all so confusing. Why are they talking like they’re old friends or something?

“Well, you see, Diamond,” Twilight says, “Earlier today, I decided to try my new-found Princesshood powers to try and improve upon a spell I had used in the past. A time-travel spell, developed by Starswirl the Bearded himself. And, whilst I was in the past… I met a certain stallion, and we…”

… Wait. I-Is she implying what I think she’s implying? “Y-You mean, you and my dad…”

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I-I never meant to hurt anypony. Had I know at the time who he was… that he would grow up to have a happy family… But, thankfully, it seems that the timeline has not been altered. I guess he still met your mother at that party, huh?”

Daddy clears his throat. He has that same dumb look he always has whenever he’s around a pretty mare. Only, this time, it looks even worse. “Actually, Twi- … Princess. It’s… not quite as simple as that. You see, ten months after the party, I saw you again.”

“You did?” she asks. “I… time-travel again?”

“… And you… present me with a beautiful baby filly… who we named Diamond Tiara…”

Forget time-travel. Daddy just made time stop. Is he saying what I think he’s saying? “Mr. Rich, does that mean…”

I can’t believe this! “You kidnap me and send back to the past?!” … Oops. I just yelled at a Princess.

Why is daddy laughing? Does he not care what happens to me anymore? Did I… Did I hurt him with all my yelling earlier? “No, Diamond. That’s not it. What I mean is, ten months from now, she’ll go back in time again to deliver the baby version of you.”

… Okay, now I’m confused. “Huh? But, I’m not a baby anymore.”

“No, she…” Daddy’s face is now red. What’s he trying to tell me. “She’s pregnant, Diamond. Pregnant with you.”

“… She’s doing what to me?” Seriously, so confused.

“You… don’t know what that means?” Daddy asks. I shake my head. “Uh, you… know about the difference between stallions and mares, right?”

“Colts have germs and fillies have manners?” They both laugh at my answer. Why? It’s right, isn’t it? … Stop laughing at me!

“I think…” Daddy finally manages to stop laughing. “I think I’m going to have pay a visit to Miss Cheerilee tomorrow.”

“… Mr. Rich… is it true what you just said?” the Princess asks. “That I’m… I’m Diamond Tiara’s mother?”

… What? WHAT? “WHAT?!” S-She’s my… “W-Why didn’t you tell me?!”

“I, uh, tried,” daddy says. What a lie. When? “Listen, I’m sorry for not saying anything to you, Diamond Tiara. But I had to keep it a secret. I couldn’t tell anyone anything, otherwise, it could disrupt the space-time cot… cotninum?”

“‘Continuum’,” the Princess says. Yet another word I don’t understand. Speak Equine, already!

“Right. Anyway, if I had told anypony, then you would run the risk of never being born…” Daddy puts his forehoof over the Princess’. “And I would have never had the most magical night of my entire life, with the most beautiful mare in the entire world.”

The Princess blushes, and looks my way. “I-I just… can’t believe it. To think, this whole time, I’ve had a daughter and never known about it…”

“I don’t believe you!” I shout. “If you’re my mommy, then… then do something to prove it! Something that only my mother could do!”

“Diamond, please-” daddy begins, but mu- the Princess, cuts him off by extending her wing.

“Alrighty then. Diamond, come here.” She holds out her foreleg, inviting me into her open chest. Is this some kind of trick. “It’s okay. Trust me.” … I slowly move forward, and climb up onto the couch, sitting beside the Princess. She asks me to move closer, so I do. I lean my head on her chest, and she wraps her forelegs around me. “Do you feel it?”

“Feel what?” … Wait, this is… “… M-Mommy?”

“… Yes… I feel it, too,” she says. I feel something drip onto my head. “There’s no doubt. You’re… You’re my daughter…”

I now feel something wet running down my face. “Mommy… i-it’s really… really you… Why haven’t you been around? Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Diamond Tiara.” She nuzzles the top of my mane, and I close my eyes as I snuggle up closer to her. “I promise… I promise that I’ll be there for you from now on. I’ll make up for all the years we’ve missed together. So please… please tell me you’ll forgive me…”

I can’t believe it. After all this time. After all these years, mommy is right here. I’m hugging my mother. I’m being held by her. She’s nuzzling me, just like the other kids said. “Mommy… c-can you… can you come to school with me next week, for Family Appreciation Day?”

“But Diamond, you’ve already had your turn,” daddy says.

“I don’t care! I-I want to show everypony…” I want them to know… that I have a mother now. “Please?”

“… Well, if Miss Cheerilee says that it’s okay…”

“I’ll be there,” mommy says.

“… And, can we go to the park tomorrow, and can you put a bandage over my cut leg?”

“… Yes. But, maybe we can miss the part where you actually get hurt?”

“… And, tonight, can you read the rest of this book I was reading to me? Some words are hard to read…”

I feel her holding me tighter. “Yes, Diamond. I’ll do it all. I’ll be here to raise you, to look after you… like a mother should.”

I’m so happy. I finally have a mother of my own. I think daddy’s happy too, because he’s also hugging us, and he’s crying while smiling. “I love you, mommy, daddy.”
> Prompt #6 - Ghost Tiara
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prompt: Diamond Tiara is a ghost. Who shall she haunt and why?





“Alright Crusaders, what are we gonna do ta earn our Cutie Marks today?” Apple Bloom asked as she sat with her friends in the clubhouse.

“How about we try being fireponies?” Sweetie Belle suggested. “Anypony else notice that fires usually tend to start whenever we go crusading?”

Apple Bloom nodded. “Scootaloo, you got that down?”

Scootaloo finished scribbling onto the paper at her hooves. “Got it!”

“Any other ideas?”

“Oh, I know!” Scootaloo shouted. “Let’s try joining the dodgeball club at school!”

“That’s a good idea!” Apple Bloom agreed, though Sweetie Belle was not quite as enthusiastic about the idea. Still, at a two-to-one vote, the notion was carried, and the idea was added to the list. “Ah think we should also try herb gatherin’ for Miss Zecora.”

“Alright! Looks like we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us,” Scootaloo said, looking over the long scroll that stretched over to the far side of the clubhouse.

“Let’s get to it then!” Apple Bloom said as she jumped to her hooves, her fellow Crusaders joining her. “Cutie Mark Crusaders, let’s go!”

“YEAH!”

“Oh, how fun.” Apple Bloom stopped and groaned as she turned around, seeing Diamond Tiara walking behind her. “Yet another day of seeing you three making total fools out of yourselves, and winding up with no Cutie Marks to show for it.”

“You don’t have to come, y’know?”

“But then who I would I talk to to pass the time?” the pink filly asked with a grin on her face. “You’re the only one who can see and hear me, so you’re really the only fun I have. As sad as that is.”

Apple Bloom sighed, and tried to ignore Diamond Tiara as she followed after her two friends. “Why me?”

“My thoughts exactly. Why couldn’t it be Silver Spoon? ‘Least then I could have some intelligent conversation.” Diamond Tiara cringed for a moment. “Seriously, I think yer accent is starting to rub off on me.”

“Then just stop talkin’.”

“Make me, blank flank.” Apple Bloom didn’t respond to the insult. She was used to it by now, and besides, it’s not like she could do anything anyway. “Also, you might wanna stop talking to yourself. Ponies’ll start to wonder about you. Though I guess they’ll be right to do so, anyway.”

Apple Bloom groaned again, and tried her best to ignore the other filly’s provocations. As she approached her friends, they could tell that something was wrong. “Hey Apple Bloom,” Scootaloo called out. “What’s up?”

“The sky, which you’ll never get to experience,” Diamond Tiara replied, giggling at the Pegasus’ inability to fly. Scootaloo didn’t react.

“Nothin’,” Apple Bloom said. “Just wonderin’ what we should try first, that’s all.”

Scootaloo immediately perked up and grabbed her friend’s hoof. “I’ve got the perfect idea! This way!”





“Wroooooong,” Diamond Tiara sang out as she looked down at Apple Bloom’s test paper. The red-maned filly grinded her teeth and look at the answer that she had just written. “Want me to tell you the answer?”

‘Like y’all would know the answer anyway,’ Apple Bloom thought, restraining herself from speaking out loud in the middle of a test.

“I’m not goin’ to,” Diamond Tiara said, sticking her tongue at the filly. “Too bad! But I will tell you this: you’re gonna fail at this rate.”

‘Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!’

“Hey blank flank.”

‘SHUT UP!’

Diamond Tiara waved her hooves just above Apple Bloom’s head. “I’m not touching ya!” She brought her hooves lower, then pulled them away and moved them back and forth in front of Apple Bloom’s face. “I’m not touching ya!”

‘Diamond, ah swear ta Celestia-’

“Oh!” Apple Bloom and Diamond Tiara both jumped at the sudden cry behind them. Everypony in the class turned to see who had made the noise, and found Dinky blushing in her seat and looking around the class with a sheepish look on her face. “I-I’m sorry about that. It’s just, there’s a cat…”

The filly pointed to the floor beside her desk, where a black cat was nuzzling against her leg. “Oh my,” Cheerilee said, climbing out of her seat to deal with the issue. Everypony else in the class also jumped out of their seats, and ran over to the cat to play with it. “Everypony, we are in the middle of a test! Please get back to your seats right now!”

The class let out a collection of ‘awww’s as everypony returned to their seats, and Cheerilee gently picked up the cat and walked over to the open classroom door to return the animal to the outside world.

Apple Bloom smiled as she sat back at her desk, all previous feelings of annoyance she felt just moments ago now gone.

Diamond Tiara noticed the smile on the farm filly’s face, and suddenly started to feel annoyed herself. “What’s the big deal? It’s just a stupid cat.”

Apple Bloom rolled her eyes and tried to continue with the test. Just a few seconds later though, she looked back up at Diamond Tiara with a confused look on her face. ‘That’s strange. Ah’m sure Diamond Tiara liked cats back when she was alive.’

Diamond Tiara glared over in the direction of the door, and waited until Cheerilee had passed by before making her way over to it. Since she couldn’t open the door herself, she instead passed through it, and looked down at the cat curled up on the ground outside.

Slowly, the filly reached a hoof forward, lowering it bit-by-bit towards the black furry creature… only for the hoof to pass right through it, like the cat wasn’t even there. In truth, it was the other way around. It was Diamond Tiara that wasn’t really there.

After letting out an angry growl, Diamond Tiara attempted to kick the door, only to fall right through it instead. “… What’s so great about petting a cat, anyway?” she asked nopony as she sat down on the floor, waiting for the test to end so that she could find something better to do.





Apple Bloom huffed with frustration for the seventeenth time as she lowered her fork back to her plate, unable to eat the morsel of food that was on it. There was nothing wrong with the food itself; it was delicious, and the farm filly’s favourite meal. The problem was that Diamond Tiara wouldn’t stop breathing on whatever she tried lifting towards her mouth.

She tried a few creative ways to get around it, but each time her efforts would be halted by Granny Smith telling the filly to eat properly at the table.

“What’s wrong, blank flank?” Diamond Tiara asked in feign innocence. “Not hungry? I can’t blame you; the food doesn’t look that appitising. In fact, I think I saw Granny Smith drop her false teeth into the gravy pot.”

“Boat,” Apple Bloom corrected.

“Come again?” Applejack asked, raising her head to look across the table at the filly.

“Huh? Oh, nothin’…”

“What’s the matter? Ain’t ya feelin’ right today, Apple Bloom?”

“Ah’m fine, ah just… Ah had a lot of sweets over at Sweetie Belle’s today.”

“Lying to your own sister?” Diamond Tiara asked with a gasp and a dramatic faint onto the dinner table. “Oh, Apple Bloom. How could you? You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Apple Bloom wanted so much to turn around and buck Diamond Tiara off of the table, but she knew it would have absolutely no effect on the filly, and would just end up getting herself into trouble. “Can ah be excused?”

Applejack gave the filly a worried look, and reached across the table to place a hoof on her forehead. “Well, ya don’ seem ta be comin’ down with anythin’.”

“Like ah said, ah’m just full.”

“Full of horseapples,” Diamond Tiara added. Apple Bloom grit her teeth and held back the urge to tell her to shut up.

“Hmmm… Well, alright then. But if’n ya start feelin’ hungry later, come on back down an’ ah’ll heat this up for ya real quick, okay?”

Apple Bloom nodded, though she doubted she would be able to eat tonight. Not from the giggles that were coming out of Diamond Tiara’s mouth. ‘Guess ah’ll have ta sneak some snacks from mah secret stash whilst Diamond isn’t lookin’.’

Excusing herself and leaving the table, Apple Bloom made her way upstairs towards the bathroom. Diamond Tiara followed up to the point that Apple Bloom entered the bathroom, at which point she decided to go and wait in Apple Bloom’s room.

‘Seriously, why me?’ Apple Bloom thought to herself as she sighed and turned the shower on.

Back out in the hallway, Diamond Tiara floated slowly towards Apple Bloom’s bedroom, crossing her forelegs and groaning now that she was alone. “Stupid blank flank. Don’t think I’m gonna let you hog all that great food to yourself.

“… Well, I’m sure the food was terrible anyway. She’s really not missing out on anything.”





Apple Bloom opened her eyes, and waited a few seconds for them to adjust to the dark. As she thought, the pink filly in the corner of her room was still there, staring at her with a look that Apple Bloom could only guess was annoyance. “Y’all gonna stare at me all night?”

“Maybe,” Diamond Tiara answered, refusing to grace the farm filly with a proper answer. “Oh, don’t mind me, though. You just go ahead and enjoy your precious sleep.”

Apple Bloom sighed and rolled around, only for Diamond Tiara to float over to the other side of the room. “Do ya honestly not have anythin’ better ta do?!”

“Oh, right. I forgot that Pinkie Pie was hosting that weekly get-together for me and all those other ghosts that don’t seem to exist,” Diamond Tiara responded in a sarcastic tone. “Idiot.”

“… Why don’t y’all just try an’ get some sleep.”

Diamond Tiara gave the other filly a disbelieving look. “I’m a ghost. I can’t sleep.”

Apple Bloom was silent for a moment after that, and simply stared at Diamond Tiara for a few seconds, before sitting up straight and giving her a curious look. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“… Y-Y’all never mentioned that before.”

“Well, y’all never asked.”

Apple Bloom wondered what that was like. Never sleeping. Never eating. Never feeling anything around her. The only connection that Diamond Tiara seemed to have with the world was Apple Bloom herself, and when she was asleep, Diamond Tiara had… nothing.

“… No matter how hard ya try?”

“Seems that way,” Diamond Tiara said with a sigh. “Well, I suppose I don’t get tired, either. Or sick. Or smelly, or dirty, or-”

“But ya can’t experience all the nice things in this world,” Apple Bloom said softly, looking down at her bed sheets with a sad look on her face. She ran a hoof over the soft, warm sheets, and it felt nice. It was only a small thing, but there was something about running her hoof across such soft material that gave her some peace and a little happiness whenever she slept.

It was something that Diamond Tiara could never experience.

“… Hey.”

“What?” Diamond Tiara asked, and then raised an eyebrow when she saw Apple Bloom move the cover over. “Uh…”

“C’mon. Y’all don’t have a bed of yer own, so you’ll have ta make do with sharin’ mine.”

Diamond Tiara gave Apple Bloom a confused look. “I told you, I can’t sleep.”

“No… But ya should still be in bed at this time. ‘Sides, it’s a cold night.”

Diamond Tiara shook her head. “I don’t feel the cold. Or the warmth. I just-”

“Diamond,” Apple Bloom said, looking up at the pink filly with a stern look in her eyes. “Fillies should be in their beds at this time.”

Diamond Tiara was still and silent for what seemed like such a long time, simply staring in complete shock and disbelief at the filly offering to share her bed with her. Diamond Tiara looked at the empty space beside Apple Bloom. It had been such a long time since she had lay down in a bed. Since she had rested her head on a pillow, and curled herself up into a fetal position underneath the warm, cosy bed sheets that her last bed had.

Floating over to the bed, Diamond Tiara slowly floated down so that it was like she was lying on the mattress, staring up at the ceiling above her. It wasn’t the same. She was having a hard time remembering exactly what it was like, but it was certainly not the same as this.

Apple Bloom started to pull the covers over Diamond Tiara, until she remembered that they would just fall through her. She stopped for a moment to think, and came up with an idea. Slowly, she wrapped the foreleg holding the covers up around the pink filly’s body, taking care not to accidentally pass through it.

Diamond Tiara didn’t say or do anything as Apple Bloom did this. She simply watched as the yellow filly gave her the closest thing to a hug that she had ever received in a long time. When she was done, Apple Bloom lay back down her own side of the bed, keeping her foreleg wrapped around Diamond Tiara and propping the covers over the pink filly.

Diamond Tiara was speechless. She couldn’t feel anything. She couldn’t smell anything, and she couldn’t feel tiredness sweep over her, causing her to yawn loudly as her eyes drifted shut. But, for the first time since she had died, she felt like a living filly again. She felt like she was actually lying in a bed, waiting for sleep to overtake her so that she would be ready for school the next day. She felt like she was getting ready to pay the land of dreams a visit… but only for a few moments, before the reality of the situation hit her.

“G’night, Diamond Tiara,” Apple Bloom said, catching the pink filly off guard. A full fifteen minutes later, Apple Bloom drifted off into sleep, leaving Diamond Tiara, still wide awake, laying in the bed next to her, staring up at the ceiling above her.

Rolling onto her side, Diamond Tiara reached a hoof out towards Apple Bloom, only for it to pass through. “… Good night, blank flank,” she said, curling up into a fetal position and smiling as she shut her eyes and began to let out fake snoring sounds. ‘Thanks, Apple Bloom.’
> Prompt #7 - I've Had It!
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prompt: Diamond Tiara is going to explode.





Why did I ever agree to this? I’m terrified of heights, especially when I’m standing on a poorly-constructed platform made in the course of a few minutes by somepony who admitted to never having used any tools before. The wind is so strong it might blow me off or mess up my mane, and not to mention how cold it is up here.

“You ready, Diamond?!”

But, if it’s for her, then I…

“R-Ready!”

“Then on three, ah’ll shake the tree to scare the birds! You catch one when it flies towards ya!”

“Okay!” We’ve been after our bird-studying Cutie Marks for the past week now, but every time we get close to the stupid animals they just fly away. And of course, my big mouth just had to point out that they always seem to go towards this cliff edge, so now I have to stand here on this unsteady platform, painted to look like the sky if looked at from below, so that I can catch a bird when it comes this way.

“Three!”

Wait, that’s not- You can’t just- You skipped one and two! I’m not ready yet! Ah! Birds incoming! Uh… Oh no, I missed one! And another! T-They’re flying too fast!

“C’mon, Diamond! Get one already!”

“It’s easier said than do-” Uh-oh. I lost my hoofing. “AAAAAAHHHHHH!” I’m falling! I’M FALLING! Somepony help me! I’m too young and rich to die!

“Are y’all alright?!” … Oh, right. She set up this air mattress we ‘borrowed’ from the fire station at the bottom. “Wow, that was so cool!” No, it was not! “Ah bet ya got some kinda daredevil Cutie Mark for that, huh?! Oh! Ah wonder if ah got ma rescue Cutie Mark?”

… Seriously? My life was just in danger for the sake of catching those stupid birds, and you’re worried about Cutie Marks, still?! “Uh, hey. I think we’ve done enough work today on earning our-”

“Aw shucks, nothin’s there!” Listen to me. “Ah know! Let’s try paraglidin’ next!”

Ugh, will you just stop it with the Cutie Marks for one second and- “… C-Can’t we take a break first?” Hold it in, Diamond. She’s your friend, you don’t want to lose her. “I’m pretty tired.”

“Really? But we have so much to do!” Don’t give me that annoyed look. I’m the one who’s annoyed right now!
“Just a five minute break, at Sugarcube Corner?” Don’t snap, Diamond. Keep it together.

“Oh, fine! Spoilsport!” Well forgive me for wanting to do something else once. Honestly, Cutie Mark this, Cutie Mark that, it’s like you can’t think of anything else! I wouldn’t be surprised if your Cutie Mark turned out to actually be a Cutie Mark!

“So how was dinner with your uncle yesterday? I bet he had some interesting stories to tell, huh?”

“Not really. Oh, but he gave me a new idea for a Cutie Mark we could try ta get!” Back to Cutie Marks, again?! I just- How do- Why are- I I I I I I I… I am totally calm. I am in control. I am playing it cool.

“Oh? That’s nice. Maybe you can tell me later, like, during a board game?”

“Ah’ll tell ya at Sugarcube Corner!” I was afraid of that. “Mah sis said it’s too dangerous an’ she doesn’t want me tryin’ it, but was does she know, right? After all, she’s already got a Cutie Mark, so she doesn’t get how desperate we are ta get ours.” More like how desperate you are. I’d rather just go bowling, or to the cinema, or to the park for a nice, safe picnic. Is that too much to ask, for once?





“Welcome to Sugarcube Corner! May I take your order?”

I guess just the usual will be fine. “One strawberry and one vanilla please.” It’s too bad that Pinkie Pie isn’t here today. She usually gets our orders in literally a second. “So, Bloom, about how homework assign… ment…” Where’s Apple Bloom? Why am I sitting at this table talking to myself?

“Please, be careful!”

“Hey, watch it!”

“Ah’m sorry!” Bloom? What is she- Why is she carrying a tray holding two milkshakes this way? “W-WHOA!”

“AH!” … Great. Just great. Now I’m covered in strawberry and vanilla milkshakes, and the entire store is laughing at us. Ah, but more importantly! “Are you okay?!”

“Ow…” Apple Bloom, you… Good, she looks fine. But why was she- “Did ah get it? Mah waitressin’ Cutie Mark?!”

…

…

…

I… You… C-Cutie Mark… This was for… You were trying to get a Cutie Mark… whilst I was trying to just have a nice, casual conversation with you. Oh, and I’m fine by the way, thank you for asking!

“Well that blows! Diamond, why didn’t ya help me?” AM I A MIND READER NOW?! Okay, just calm down, Diamond. Blowing you top in front of all these ponies would simply not be dignified of you. Apple Bloom is still your friend, just talk to her calmly about it – if she’ll let you – later at her house. “Oh! Brain blast! Diamond, forget the break, let’s get out Cutie Marks in jugglin’ fire!”

Snap.

“Cutie Mark… Cutie Mark Cutie Mark Cutie Mark… Is that all you can think about, you half-wit?!” Well, no going back now. “All week- No, all month, I’ve been dying to know how you visit to the dentist went, or what happened to give you that gash on your foreleg, or why Applejack seemed to be angry with you two weeks ago, and I’ve been dying to show you my new doll collection, the new chocolate at Bon Bon’s store, and this great spot by the lakeside, but I can’t! Because all you can think about is earning a stupid Cutie Mark!”

“D-Diamond? A-Ah was only tryin’ ta-”

“I get it, you want to know what your special talent is! So do I! So does everypony in our class! But oh my gosh, Apple Bloom, give it a rest already! I just want to hang out with you, talk to you, and do normal filly stuff for once! Is that too much to ask?!”

“Why’re ya yellin’ at me?! You said we’d help each other out! If ya didn’t like goin’ after our Cutie Marks so much, y’all shoulda said somethin’!”

“I tried to, but you wouldn’t listen! You never listen! You’re always flapping your gums and never give anypony else a chance to talk! That’s why you have no friends!”

Am I going too far? But, she really has been driving me crazy these last few weeks… “Oh, ah have no friends?! Says the pony who was cryin’ ta herself on our farm because nopony wanted ta play with her!”

H-How dare she bring that up?! She promised she wouldn’t! “I guess I must’ve been really desperate to have hung out with you this far! All we ever do is what you want to do, we never seem to have time for anything I like!”

“You said you liked hangin’ out at the farm an’ helpin’ us out!”

“Well guess what, bonehead! I lied! That farm is so filthy, so dull, and it’s so much hard work that I have to shower as soon as I get home!” But it was worth it, because you were there… Should I say that?

“Yeah, well… maybe if ya weren’t so uptight, it wouldn’t bother ya!” Uptight? “What’s with ya, all of a sudden? Why’re ya actin’ like a spoiled lil’ child?”

… Oh, that is it. “You… You are simply, the worst, most annoying, most uncouth pony, that I’ve ever met! I act like a child?! Who was it that had to sit through detention with you because you couldn’t resist making silly jokes in class?! Who is it that goes along with you stupid quests to find some magic pool from a children’s storybook?!”

“Who was it that had ta defend ya from those older colts when y’all ran yer mouth off to their younger brothers?! Who was it that had ta sit through what felt like hours of you complainin’ ‘bout how yer daddy cut off yer allowance?!”

“Who’s the idiot who’s going to get a Cutie Mark in having no friends?! You, because I’ve had it with you!” Don’t cry, Diamond. Don’t let her see any weakness.

“W-What-”

“You heard me! I’m tired of going along with every crazy idea you have, of you always talking and never listening, and never even apologising when you mess up! I’m never speaking to you again!”

I turn around and storm away. Some filly walks past me on my way out… Twist, I think her name was. She gave me an angry look. Hmph, like I care. That stupid filly had this coming to her.

“Oh yeah?! Well that’s fine by me! In fact, I-I’d be happy if we never even saw each other EVER AGAIN!”

…

“FINE!”

“FINE!”

“FINE!” I storm off, heading towards home as fast as my legs will let me. Stupid Apple Bloom. Stupid, stupid, STUPID!

Just for once, couldn’t you pay less attention to that blank flank of yours, and more attention to me? Stupid… inconsiderate… rude and obnoxious…

I-I don’t need her. I can make better friends than her, friends who can think of more things than finding their special talent. Friends who actually care about me, who stop to ask if I’m okay whenever I’m hurt.

“Are you okay?”

Ah! What? I only stopped for a moment to catch my breath. Who was that? “Hey, aren’t you…” Darn it, what was her name?

“Silver Spoon. I just moved here last week.” That was it. I’ve seen her around a few times, but never really learned her name. “You look upset. Did something happen?”

“… I don’t wanna talk about it.” I just spilled everything to the one pony I actually cared about talking to… and then she turned around and tried to make me the bad friend. Stupid Apple Bloom…

“Well, how about tea? I just got this new tea set, but I don’t really have anypony to share it with.”

“… Sure, that sounds fine.” Whatever. I could use some tea to calm myself down. If I went home now, daddy would notice that something’s up. “My name’s Diamond Tiara, by the way.”

“Silver Spoo- Oh, wait. I already told you.” … Heh. This one’s pretty spacey, huh? “I think we’ll make good friends, you and I.”

“… I hope so.” Compared to Apple Bloom, anypony’s better. “Uh, you don’t care about finding your special talent at all, do you?”

She shakes her head. “Not really. I mean, sure it’d be nice, but I’m in no rush. Why?”

Yeah, I think I’m gonna like this filly. “Nothing. So… how’s your time in Ponyville been so far?”

She turns and leads the way to her house, and I follow by her side. I turn back to look in the direction of Sugarcube Corner for a moment… and then back to Silver Spoon. Apple Bloom, I hope I didn’t hurt her too bad…

Wait, yes I do! That filly never cared for our friendship one bit, she just wanted somepony to help her get her Cutie Mark, then she would just forget all about me, I’m sure! Well I could care less what happens to her. You hear me, Apple Bloom? We’re through!

We’re through!

We’re through!

We’re… through…
> Prompt #8 - Rainbow Dash is Best Sitter
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prompt: Diamond Tiara gets babysat by one of the Mane Six.





Filthy Rich had his face buried into his hooves, his eyes closed tight and his ears pinned against the sides of his heads. This was all a dream. This was all a bad dream.

“Mr. Rich,” the albino stallion opposite said, “We have no choice at this point but to give up on the park, and the breeding facility has been completely wiped out. I’m sorry.”

“I invested so much into this crazy idea of yours,” Filthy Rich said, removing his hooves and opening his eyes to reveal his annoyance. “Mr. Hammond, this ‘Jurassic Park’ of yours was supposed to be a sure-fire thing. You guaranteed its success, and I trusted you.”

“I assure you, I will do what I can to return as much of your investment as I can. But first, we must cover the legal aspects, regarding the deaths of three ponies on the island. I have no doubt that InGen lawyers will soon be here to buy your silence regarding the park’s existence, but I was hoping you might-”

“How much we talking?” Filthy Rich asked, his ears perking up at the possibility that he might be able to make even more money than what he wasted on this foolish venture.

“Mr. Rich, I-”

“DADDYYYYYYYY!”

Filthy Rich sighed. “Uh, please excuse me… That would be my daughter…” The stallion excused himself, leaving his guest to his tea as he journeyed upstairs to see what was wrong.





“DADYYYYYYYY!” Diamond Tiara shouted, her back against the bathroom wall as she kept her eyes on the horror in front of her.

“Diamond? What’s wrong?” Filthy Rich asked from the other side, some concern in his voice.

“Daddy, help!” Diamond Tiara shouted, and mere seconds later the door was pushed open, her father rushing into the bathroom to see what was wrong. “There! Get it! GET IT!”

Filthy Rich followed his daughter’s hoof to the tiny spider that she was pointing at sitting on the side of the bathtub. “… That’s all that this is about?” he asked with a sigh, a smile forcing its way onto his face as he was reminded of his daughter’s softer side. “Diamond, it’s barely the size of a pea.”

“Germs are small, but they’re still dangerous!” Diamond argued as she quickly ran and took cover behind her father’s leg. “And what if it’s poisonous?”

“So you’d have your dear father risk his life against it instead?” he asked jokingly.

“Yes!” Diamond answered. “That’s your job!”

Filthy Rich couldn’t help but chuckle as he walked over towards the toilet, grabbing some of the paper beside it and then turning towards the bathtub. “Anyway, there are no poisonous spiders in Equestria. No living ones, at least. Up in Canterlot, their corpses and venom sacs sell for a pretty penny to studious Unicorns.”

Diamond Tiara retreated outside of the door and watched as her father grabbed the spider in the toilet paper and proceeded to flush it down into the sewers. “Okay, now out already!” the filly shouted as she ran back into the room, ushering her father out. She could feel her bladder about to burst. “Out out out!”

“You’re welcome, sweetie,” he responded sarcastically as he was pushed out of the bathroom, the door slamming shut behind him. With a sigh, he returned downstairs to his guest.





“Now, Mr. Rich, I understand that you have suffered a great financial loss from all of this. But, if I could just ask you, to think of the moral aspects regarding this incident-”

“DADDYYYYY!”

Filthy Rich sighed and climbed out of his seat. “One moment.”





“Yes, Diamond Tiara?” Filthy Rich asked as he entered the kitchen.

“We’re out of milk!” Diamond Tiara said with an angry frown and half a cup of milk in front of her.

“… Well, it will have to wait. You father’s in the middle of a very important talk right now.”

“Ugh!” Diamond Tiara picked up her glass and stormed off out of the room, grumbling under her breath about how unfair this was.





“I’m sorry,” Filthy Rich said as he sat back down. “Now, you were sayi-”

“DADDYYYYYYYY!”

“Oh for-” Filthy Rich was only a mere mortal. His patience was very limited, and whilst he loved his daughter more than anything in the world, he could feel his blood starting to boil.

“Mr. Rich, I’m afraid I cannot stay for long,” Mr. Hammond told him, “But perhaps we can meet for lunch or dinner tomorrow and discuss this then?”

Filthy Rich put a hoof to his chin. “Yes, I think that would be for the best. I’ll have to find a sitter for Diamond Tiara, but I’m sure that won’t be too difficult.”





“What do you mean you can’t sit for her?!” Filthy Rich shouted in disbelief at the white mare sipping tea from her cup. “You’re always available to sit for her!”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Rich,” Rarity said as she placed her cup down, “But Sweetie Belle and her friends are going to be visiting tomorrow, and I can’t afford to have my workshop become the site of a battleground between those four.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me… Miss Fluttershy, could you-”

“Oh, no. I couldn’t,” Fluttershy said with a solemn look on her face. “Discord is coming over for tea, and I don’t think he and your daughter get along very well.”

Filthy Rich sighed. “… Applejack?”

“Sorry Mr. Rich,” Applejack said. “Big Mac an’ ah are gonna be mighty busy workin’ the orchard all day tomorrow, and Granny Smith’s got yoga classes.”

“I would offer to sit for you,” Twilight began, “But my brother is coming to visit tomorrow, and we haven’t seen each other for so long. You understand, right?”

“Ooh! I can watch her for you!” Pinkie Pie shouted, hopping up-and-down on the spot. “I’m already watching the twins anyway, and this would be a good way for them to get to know each other!”

Filthy Rich shot the pink mare a smile.

“No, wait, that’s next week’s tomorrow. This week, I’m Dungeons and Dragonsing with Trixie and Lyra!”

And the smile collapsed in just a few short seconds. Desperate, Filthy Rich turned to the only remaining mare in the bakery.

“Ohhhh, no no no no no,” Rainbow Dash said as she saw the stallion’s gaze on her. “Sorry, but I don’t do foalsitting. It cuts in the way of flying and napping. Not to mention how that’s a job for teenage fillies, and I’m-”

“I’ll pay your fifty bits per hour,” Filthy Rich said, “To sit her for at least six hours. That’s three hundred bits at the very least.”

Rainbow Dash’s eyes widened and she quickly ran up to the stallion, shaking his hoof so fast that their two hooves became a blur. “Sir, you’ve got yourself a deal!”





“But Daddy!”

“Now Diamond, I’ve already told you that this meeting is very important, and Silver Spoon is still too ill for you to visit her house.”

Diamond Tiara pouted as she followed her father to the house’s front door. “But why somepony I don’t even know? What if they try to hurt me or don’t know about my allergies or something?”

“Rainbow Dash is a local hero in Ponyville, and friends with Applejack, whose word I trust. You have allergies to dogs and cats, and I doubt she has any intention of bringing pets over. And if ‘something’ comes up, you know that Mr. Turner is just down the road.”

A knock came at the door just as the two ponies had reached it. “This is so unfair! I’m a big filly, I can take care of myself.”

“Stove’s on fire, what do you do?” Filthy Rich asked.

“Whuh? Uh, I, uh…”

“Aaaaand the house has burned down,” Filthy Rich said, turn around and kneeling down to his daughter’s eyelevel, “And Equestria is down one Princess,” he added, booping his daughter’s nose, which caused her to back up and knock his hoof away.

“I’ll just order takeout!”

“I have no doubt. That you’ll order only from their desert menu and eat nothing but cake and ice-cream.” Another knock at the door came from behind Filthy Rich. “Yes, yes, I’m coming already.” Turning around, he opened the door to find Rainbow Dash on the other side. “Glad you could make it.”

“You kiddin’? Three hundred bits to watch some kid play around for a few hours?”

Filthy Rich frowned. He was starting to have second thoughts, but it was too late now. “Daddy, why can’t I just go with you?”

“Because the last time I let you come along to a business dinner you complained the whole night about how bored you were.”

“… I’ll be more quiet this time?”

“Too late, Rainbow Dash has already taken the time out of her day to come and sit for you,” Filthy Rich said before turning back to the mare standing in the doorway. “Here’s a list of things you’ll need to know. I’ll be a whole town away so if any problems arise, see the back for a list of emergency contacts. I can’t guarantee when I’ll be back but it will be sometime past ten at the least. Diamond’s bedtime is at nine, and you’re welcome to anything in the fridge until I return.”

“Man, this’s a lot of stuff,” Rainbow said as she read over the list. “Heh, but don’t worry. I’ve got it all covered!”

“Well then.” Filthy Rich turned to his daughter and leaned down. “Could daddy get a goodbye kiss from his favourite filly before he leaves?”

Diamond Tiara was still pouting, but she leaned up and gave her father a quick peck on the cheek regardless. After that, Filthy Rich left the house, leaving the two alone to stand and stare at each other in awkward silence.

“… Soooo… what d’you do for fun around here?”

“Hmph! Nice try,” Diamond said. “I know that daddy put on that list that I should be studying until dinner! You’re just trying to trip me up.”

“Oh, come on,” Rainbow said. “What’s one day of not punching numbers into a calculator gonna do?”

“I’m supposed to be studying History today.”

“Well, are you gonna be a historian when you grow up?” Rainbow Dash asked. Diamond Tiara shook her head. “Then what’s the problem with missing one day? ‘Sides, I know jack squat about History, so I wouldn’t be able to help ya out anyway.”

Diamond Tiara looked up at Rainbow Dash with a sceptical look on her face, wondering if this was really some kind of ingenious trick or not. She decided that this pony didn’t seem smart enough to trip her up and just went along with it. “Well, after dinner I usually go into my room to play video games.”

“Oh, cool,” Rainbow Dash said. “What, like the Mario Brothers, or Duck Hunt?”

“Well, lately I’ve been playing Equidor Wars.” Rainbow Dash blinked. “An MMORPG.” She blinked again. “Massively multiplayer online role playing game?”

“Oh! You mean like one of those dungeon exploring things, right?”

“Uh, yeah…”

“Cool! Can I take a look?”





“Okay, so right now our world is battling another world,” Diamond Tiara explained as she focussed on the screen. “The ponies we’re battling are actual ponies.”

“Wow. That’s a lot of ponies,” Rainbow said as she watched Diamond’s character sneaking around behind a rock. “Why are you hiding? Why not just go out there and do that fire thing that that guy’s doing?”

“Because I’m not a mage,” Diamond said.

“Oh. What are you?”

“I’m a thief. I sneak around behind the enemy and steal their sh- stuff.” Diamond Tiara gulped as she realised she had almost slipped up. “And then I attack them from behind.”

“Ah. Well, I’m more of a heads-on kinda pony myself,” Rainbow Dash said. “And by the way, you don’t have to watch you language around me.”

Diamond stopped paying attention to her game and turned to Rainbow Dash with wide-eyed surprise. “W-What?”

“I dunno how your dad feels about it, but I could really care less what you say around me. As long as you’re not saying it about me.”

“… So, I can say buck?” Diamond asked, receiving a nod from Rainbow Dash. “And damn?”

“Yep. I’m not quite as uptight as some of the other ponies in this town.”

“… Fuck,” Diamond whispered, before feeling her face heat up and turning away to hide her blush. She heard Rainbow Dash giggling beside her.

“Okay, try not to overdo it. Remember, this is just a special privilege while I’m sitting for ya.” Diamond Tiara nodded before going back to focussing on her game. “So, any chance I can play, too?”

“Uh… yeah, there’s a spare laptop under my bed,” Diamond said, having her character hide in some nearby shadows as she turned around and searched around for the device. “Here it is. It’s a little slower, but it should manage.”

“Sweet! I’m gonna hop in there and kick your butt!”

“Oh please,” Diamond scoffed. “I’m level eighty-nine and have dragons-bane daggers and legend-tier armour. It’ll be a cold day in Tartarus before some newb is able to kill me.”

“That sounds like a challenge,” Rainbow Dash said, rubbing her hooves together as she switched the laptop on, “And I love challenges.”





“Hey! You stole all our cannonballs!” Rainbow Dash shouted.

“Oh boo hoo! Go cry about it to your dead Warlord!”

“Oh, it is on!” Rainbow began mashing buttons furiously on her laptop.

“Hey, you’re just spamming attacks!” Diamond Tiara protested. “Eat poison-spikes!”

“Son of a- I died again!” Rainbow threw her forelegs up into the air in a fit of rage, only to then let out a loud yawn as she stretched her limbs. She looked over to the nearby clock and her eyes widened as she saw the time. “Oh no! I was supposed to make you dinner half an hour ago!”

“What?!” Diamond also looked over at the clock, and then felt her stomach rumbling as she noticed the time. “You idiot! You were supposed to be paying attention!”

“Chill! I got this.” Rainbow picked up the list left for her by Filthy Rich and looked for the part that mentioned dinner arrangements. “… Man, this guy sure gives you sucky dinners.”

“I know,” Diamond said, rolling her eyes. “Daddy says it’s healthy and will help me grow up big and strong, but I think he just doesn’t know how to cook anything else.”

“Well, I think I can fix up somethin’ better,” Rainbow Dash said as she opened up her saddlebag, pulling out a bag of ready-made pancakes and a tub of chocolate spread. “I brought this along for your desert, but I guess there’s enough for it to be your dinner, too.”

Diamond Tiara’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped as she stared at her sitter. “Wow, really?!” she asked in an excited voice, receiving a nod from Rainbow Dash. “Well, perhaps this night won’t be so bad after all.”





“When does this game start being fun?” Diamond asked with a frown as she scooped up some of the candy from the bowl beside her and shoved it into her mouth.

“When you start winning,” Rainbow said as she placed two cards down and picked two up. “Maybe I should ease off, before I take all your allowance or somethin’.”

Diamond Tiara placed three cards down and picked three up. “Shut up…”

“Okay, I raise!”

Diamond Tiara groaned. “Fine, bet!”

“Hah! Too bad! A full house!” Rainbow Dash reached her hooves towards the pile of bits in the centre of the table, only for a pink hoof to block her path.

“Four of a kind,” Diamond said with a grin.

“What?!” Rainbow watched in disbelief as suddenly Diamond Tiara’s meagre pile of bits had grown considerably in size, and a huge chunk was taken out of her own.

“Heh, you’re right. This is fun,” Diamond said as she scooped another pile of candies into her mouth. “I think I’m going to like making you poorer than when you started.”

Rainbow Dash grinned as she cracked her hooves together. “Oh, it’s so on!”





“I don’t get it,” Diamond said as she watched the screen with a bored look on her face, reaching over for her bowl of candy by her side.

“Just keep watching,” Rainbow said as she reached for her bottle of cider. “Good part’s coming up.”

“Why doesn’t daddy let me watch this stuff? And what are they all talking abou-“ Suddenly, something appeared on the screen that made Diamond Tiara jumped. A grotesque pony-like creature jumped in front of the characters that she had previously been watching and began to claw one of them repeatedly in the face. “AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!”

Rainbow Dash laughed so much that her stomach hurt as she watched the frightened filly throw her candy at the screen before jumping over the back of the couch and running up the stairs of her house. “Oh man, that was great! You never forget your first scare,” Rainbow said as she wiped a tear from her eye.

She suddenly heard crashing and banging behind her and jumped to her hooves at the noise. She turned towards the direction of the stairs and heard a filly’s scream, before seeing a filly-sized silhouette come tumbling down the stairs and landing on the floor.

“Oh crap!” Rainbow Dash got up and raced towards the pink lump on the floor, sweat dripping down her head and her heart beating madly as she stopped to check if Diamond Tiara was alright. Before she could reach a hoof forward to check her pulse though, she felt something touch her flank.

Turning around quickly, Rainbow Dash was greeted to the sight of a small pony standing behind her, wearing a black veil to obscure their face and wielding a large knife in their hoof. The pony lunged forward without warning, causing Rainbow Dash to scream as she tumbled backwards onto the floor, covering her face with her hooves and shaking as she waited for her end to come.

Instead, she heard laughter. Opening her eyes, Rainbow Dash found Diamond Tiara standing over her, laughing to herself as she dropped the rubber knife onto the floor and tossed the black veil to the side. Turning her head, Rainbow Dash found that what she originally believed to be Diamond Tiara was in fact just a golf bag covered by a pink sheet. Simple enough to fool somepony in the dark, and it certainly impressed the now-calm Pegasus pony.

“You little brat,” Rainbow said with a grin as she reached up to grab Diamond Tiara in a headlock, before rubbing her hoof into the filly’s mane. “You’re not half-bad, kid! Might make a good prankster someday!”

“L-Let me go!” Diamond Tiara said as she struggled, eventually breaking free of the headlock and straightening out her mane. “And of course. I get lots of practice.” ‘On those stupid blank flanks.’

“So, back to the movie?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Diamond Tiara froze up and slowly started to back up towards the stairs. “Uh, I-I think I should probably be going to bed now…”

“Tch, spoilsport. Alright, whatever. You want me to read you a bedtime story?”

“What? No! I’m not some helpless little kid!” Diamond Tiara protested. Recalling everything else she had been able to get away with today, Diamond Tiara decided to take a chance. “Hey, do I have to brush my teeth?”

“If you want to,” Rainbow said, “But hey, what’s one or two nights skipping your brushing? I did it, and my teeth are great!”

Diamond’s smile widened as she turned towards the stairs and started to run up them. “Wow, you’re the best sitter ever!”

Rainbow Dash grinned at that. “Heh. Yeah, I’m pretty great…”





“Hey Rainbow Dash, I heard you did a good job foalsitting last night,” Spike said as he sat down with Rainbow Dash and Rarity at a table in Sugarcube Corner. “Guess I owe Twilight five bits…”

“See? I told you she’d be just fine,” Twilight said as she joined her friends. “You have to trust your friends, Spike.”

“I did trust her. Just, not in a good way.”

“Heh. Well, I don’t mean to brag, but I think I may have made another admirer with my awesome sitting last night,” Rainbow Dash said with a cocksure grin.

“Sure sounds like bragging to me,” Spike said. “Hey, isn’t that Filthy Rich coming in now?”

The group turned around to see the stallion approaching, his daughter walking by his side, a not-very-amused look on her face.

“Good morning Mr. Rich,” Rarity said as he stopped in front of the group. “How are you today?”

“Not too well,” Filthy Rich said, his brow furrowed and his eyes focussing on Rainbow Dash. “Diamond Tiara woke up with stomach pains today. And tooth pains, too.”

“Oh?” Twilight asked, an uneasy feeling creeping into her mind.

“I had to rush her to the dentist first because her tooth was in so much pain, and Miss Minuette found a cavity that needed to be filled right away.”

The group’s attention turned to Diamond Tiara as she walked up to Rainbow Dash, an angry look on her face, and then she turned around and bucked Rainbow Dash’s hind leg, causing the Pegasus to yelp and shoot into the air.

“Now now, Diamond Tiara,” Filthy Rich said as he pulled his daughter away, “Violence never solved anything. I’m sure that Miss Rainbow Dash will be more than happy to cover the cost of the dental bill.”

The stallion took out a sheet of paper and handed it to Rainbow Dash, who gasped at the number she saw written on there. “B-But that’s-” A glare from Filthy Rich stopped her, and she turned to her friends for support. When none of them seemed willing to step in for her, she sighed and nodded her head sadly. “Fine, I’ll pay you…” She took out the bag of bits she had received the previous night and returned it to Filthy Rich.

“Thank you. Diamond Tiara?” The filly nodded as she followed her father out of the store, her face turning green as her stomach began to rumble again. Filthy Rich leaned down to carry his daughter on his back as she left the store.

Meanwhile, Rainbow Dash grabbed her milkshake and began sipping on it as she pouted at her loss, whilst Spike gathered Twilight’s attention by nudging her side and shooting her a smug grin. “So, guess you owe me five bits.”
> Prompt #9 - Diamond Tiara Meets Sergeant Cortez
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prompt: Diamond Tiara meets a fictional character.





“I told you, it’s not like that,” Diamond Tiara told Silver Spoon through her cell phone as she paced back-and-forth. “I’m not trying to avoid you! My dad’s sick and he needs me at home all weekend!” A crashing sound above Diamond’s head startled her and caused her to look up. “… T-That was, uh… me. Crashing into the wall. Ouch… I guess I shouldn’t be walking while talking on this thing, huh?

“Look, I’ve really gotta go. I’ll see you on Monday, ‘kay? Yeah. Yeah. Bye.” Diamond hung up the cell phone and sighed. “Honestly, why does she have to make a big deal about everything?” Putting the huge brick of a device into her bag and hiding said bag behind some nearby bushes, Diamond Tiara looked up the wall of the building before her and hummed in thought. “… No open windows… I guess the front door’s out of the question, too. That only leaves the roof.”

Reaching into her gown, Diamond Tiara pulled out a couple of horseshoes and placed them on her hind hooves. She then pressed the buttons on the sides of both shoes and stood up straight, allowing the magic stored within the shoes to spray out and propel her upwards. As she reached the rooftop, she reached down to disable the shoes and landed gracefully on the roof… face-to-face with a suspicious looking bald, pale-coated stallion wearing a combat vest and a pair of goggles over his eyes.

Diamond reached into her gown and pulled out her knife, swinging it forward with the intention of holding it to the stallion’s throat. Instead, the muscular stallion managed to stop her foreleg mid-swing, and simply stared at the mare carefully. “Who are you?” Diamond Tiara asked.

“Name’s Cortez,” the stallion replied. “Mind telling me yours?”

Diamond Tiara gritted her teeth together. “Jade Starling.” Diamond tilted her head to the side, scanning the rooftop and finding a stallion dressed in black armour on the floor. “That’s one of the guards that works here. I’m guessing that means you’re not working for Kingpin?”

“Uh… who?” Cortez asked, releasing the mare’s arm and taking a step back. Diamond Tiara held her position, eyeing the stallion cautiously.

“Kingpin, the boss of this place. You must know him if you’re up here.”

“Not really,” Cortez said, scratching the back of his head. “I just sorta got a little lost.”

“You got lost,” Diamond deadpanned, receiving a nod from the stallion.

“So, about this ‘Kingpin’ guy-”

Diamond sighed and put her knife back into her gown. She walked past Cortez across the building’s rooftop. “Look, I don’t care why you’re here. But I’ve got work to do, so don’t get in my way, okay?”

“Work that requires you to sneak in through the roof?” Cortez asked, watching as Diamond Tiara reached a door and proceeded to pick at the lock with a manepin.

“I’m a spy,” Diamond told him. “Working for the Royal Guard. Kingpin has been suspected of running a slavering for some time now, and I’m here to collect the evidence to lock his fat flank in jail.”

“Sounds like you got a bit of a grudge against him, too,” Cortez said, noting the aggressive tone in Diamond’s voice.

“… When I was a teenager,” Diamond started, “Kingpin scammed my father into a business deal that eventually got him into trouble with the law. My dad was innocent, but because of Kingpin’s slick business approach and intimidating attitude, he had unwittingly participated as an accomplice to embezzlement. However, if I can find the evidence I need here, then dad’s reputation will be saved, and he’ll get back all the money that her lost.”

“I see. Well, I’d like to help you, but I got my own business to attend to,” Cortez said as Diamond finally managed to open the door. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to know a guy named Crow, would you?”

“Crow… The name sounds familiar. I think that might have been one of Kingpin’s recent visitors,” Diamond told Cortez.

“Crow visited here?” Cortez put a hoof to his chin and mumbled something for a moment.

Meanwhile, Diamond Tiara pulled out the gun strapped to her left hind leg and proceeded cautiously inside. She spotted a security camera and ducked back out. “Anyway, you should g-”

“Alright, let’s do this!” Cortez shouted as he rushed into the building.

“W-Wait! What’re you-”

“It’s time to split!” Cortez took one step inside, and the sounds of the building’s alarm filled the area.

“YOU IDIOT!” Diamond Tiara shouted. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

“Uh… Oops?” was all that Cortez could say as he laughed nervously, though his laughter died as he laid eyes on Diamond’s bemused face.

“Intruders!” a stallion’s voice cried, followed by hoofsteps climbing up the stairs inside. “Get ‘em!”

Cortez pulled out his own gun strapped to his left foreleg and fired two rounds. The stallion cried out and tumbled down the stairs. “We going?” Cortez asked Diamond Tiara before charging further inside.

“Wha- Hey!” Diamond ran into the building and watched as Cortez raced down the stairs. “W-Wait up!”





Diamond Tiara and her new companion, ‘Sergeant Cortez’, battled their way through an entire floor of armed security guards – none of which seemed to be particularly skilful at aiming – high-tech defence systems, medieval-styled traps, and due to a few navigational difficulties, a penthouse suite where a group of frat colts were having a party. Finally, they reached the elevator that would take them down to where they wanted to go.

“You look familiar,” Diamond told Cortez as they waited for their lift to arrive. “Have we met before.”

“Can’t say we have,” Cortez said with a shrug. “Maybe I just have one of those faces everypony recognises.”

“Sure,” Diamond scoffed. “‘Cause the skinhead look is so in fashion right now. Or the dorky sci-fi goggle look. Or the independent mercenary look.”

“Together, I think they work pretty well,” Cortez remarked.

“When this is over, do yourself a favour: get a makeover.”

“There they are!” a stallion’s voice shouted behind the two. Diamond Tiara sighed.

“They can’t let up for even a moment, can they?” she asked as she ducked for cover behind a corner.

Cortez hid behind the corner opposite to her and readied his gun. “At least they give us some warning, instead of just shooting us in the back.”

“I only brought along two spare magazines,” Diamond said as she checked her current magazine, finding that it was down to its last bullet and replacing it with her first spare.

“Really? To a place this big?” Cortez asked as he threw an extra magazine towards the mare.

She caught the gift and stowed it away for the time being. “It was my intention to enter stealthily,” she told him with a stern glare. She ducked out from behind her cover for just a moment to fire two rounds at the approaching stallions, causing two of them to fall as bullets penetrated their hooves. She quickly took cover again to avoid the incoming shots fired her way.

“Stealth was never really my thing,” Cortez said, jumping out and firing his machine gun at the remaining stallions, which forced them to retreat. “I like to make a big entrance.”

“So I noticed.” The elevator’s ‘ding’ alerted the two to their lift’s arrival. “Let’s go!” Diamond shouted as she motioned for Cortez to get in, holding her gun up to offer him covering fire.

Cortez got the message and entered the lift, soon joined by Diamond Tiara. He hit the button for the doors to close as the incoming stallions fired towards them. Once the doors were closed, Diamond Tiara hit the button for the floor five floors below them. The two took the moment to relax until the elevator arrived at their destination.

And the moment was over as the elevator’s doors opened, revealing a small group of security guards waiting for them outside, guns all pointed towards the two of them. “… Well, buck,” Diamond Tiara said as she raised her forelegs into the air.

“Ah, Miss Tiara,” the stallion standing behind the guards said as he grinned at the cornered mare. “… I’m sorry, but I don’t believe I know your new friend.”

“He’s my new butler,” Diamond said as she glared at the stallion grinning at her. “How did you know it was me, Kingpin?”

“Do not underestimate my intelligence, Miss Tiara,” Kingpin said. “I have eyes everywhere. Even in your Royal Guard.”

Diamond Tiara gritted her teeth together. “So you knew I was coming anyway.”

“Indeed. I was quite surprised to find that my right-hoof was unable to subdue you on the rooftop.”

“I, uh, might have had something to do with that,” Cortez said, raising his hoof to attract the stallion’s attention.

“… And you are?”

“Sergeant Cortez. I’m not here for you, though. I’m looking for one of your clients. Jacob Crow?”

Kingpin turned his attention from Cortez and back to Diamond Tiara. “I must admit, compared to the noisy little brat you were five years ago, you’ve certainly come a long way.”

“Hey!” Cortez cried.

“I worked hard to work my way up the ranks specifically so I could take you down,” Diamond told Kingpin.

“And yet, all this time I’ve been monitoring your progress, making it completely impossible for you to defeat me.” Kingpin reached into his suit’s pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “However, I’ve also taken a keen interest in you over the years. Not just your potential, but the way you’ve matured into such a beautiful young mare.”

“I think I’m gonna barf,” Diamond said in a groggy tone.

Kingpin placed a cigarette into his mouth and lit it. “Now, now, don’t be too hasty, my dear. Think about the situation that you’re in right now.” Diamond Tiara looked around at the five stallions aiming their guns at her. “You can either suffer an ‘unfortunate accident’, or you can drop your weapons and continue living as my beautiful wife.”

Diamond Tiara answered by taking a page from Scootaloo’s book many years ago, gathering saliva inside of her mouth and spitting it at Kingpin. The stallion stumbled back and quickly brought a hoofkerchief up to his face.

“So be it! Shoot them both, right now!”

“Cover your eyes!” Cortez shouted as he dropped something onto the floor. Diamond Tiara had barely a second to react as a blinding light filled the area. She heard gunshots from beside her and opened her eyes again to find Cortez running past five downed stallions and chasing a fleeing Kingpin down the hallway.

Diamond Tiara gave chase, only for two more stallions to approach her from the side. “Freeze!” one of them shouted as they both pointed their guns towards her.

Diamond fired a shot at one of them, bring him down as the other one open fired. Using her agility training from the past five years, Diamond Tiara was able to swiftly and nimbly move about from cover to cover until she reached the remaining stallion and knocked him out with the butt of her gun.

With the lackeys now out of the way, Diamond resumed her chase after Kingpin. She found Cortez waiting for her at the end of the long hallway, just outside of Kingpin’s office. “Damn thing’s locked,” Cortez told her as he turned to see her approach. “Can’t blast our way through this. We need some kinda password.”

“A password…” Diamond pushed Cortez aside and accessed the control panel to the side of the door, skimming through the information that was on it. “One of our sources told us that his name was the password, but there are too many spaces here for that.”

“He got another name?” Cortez asked.

Diamond simply shrugged. “… Actually,” she said, putting a hoof to her chin, “Now that I think about it, when he visited my dad when I was just a filly, I think he told me his full name… Gah! Why can’t I remember it?!”

“Speaking of names, why did he call you ‘Miss Tiara’?”

Diamond waved her hoof dismissively. “My real name is Diamond Tiara. Jade Starling is the alias I use when I don’t trust somepony.”

“What date?”

“Huh?”

“I asked what the date was that you met him,” Cortez explained.

“That’s… It was two days after Hearth’s Warming, when I was nine years old, so twelve years ago.”

“Anya, you catch that?” Cortez asked, confusing Diamond Tiara.

“I got it. I’m setting the co-ordinates now,” a voice said from the strange device on Cortez’s left foreleg.

“Alright, don’t go anywhere!” Cortez told Diamond Tiara as he pushed something on the device. “I’ll be right back with the password!”

A blue light enveloped Cortez and he vanished, leaving a confused Diamond Tiara alone at the scene.





Diamond Tiara sipped her hot chocolate and sighed as she rested in her comfortable beanbag seat, enjoying the sweet life of being a child out of school for the holidays. “Too bad there’s a storm outside. Guess I’ll have to just find something to do without Silver Spoon.

A flash of light shined through the cracks of Diamond’s bedroom door, and she paused for a second to stare at her door with a confused look on her face.

Suddenly, the door opened, and in ran a bald stallion, panting as he stared at the filly in the room. “You Diamond Tiara?”

Diamond Tiara threw her hot chocolate at the stallion, who merely deflected it with his hoof, and backed up as far as she could into a corner. “W-Who are you?! Daddyyyyy!”

“N-Now hold on!” the stallion pleaded, approaching the filly cautiously as she continued to back away as far as she could. “Just relax! There’s no need to fear me!”

“You’re a stranger in my house, and you look like somepony who’d kill me without a second thought!” Diamond told him. “Why shouldn’t I fear you?!”

‘Do I really look that scary?’ Cortez thought to himself before shaking it off. “Because I’m… I’m not real.”

Diamond raised an eyebrow at that. “W-What?”

“Right. I’m just a figment of your imagination.” There was a moment’s pause. “A dream! That’s right, this is all just a… hot chocolate-induced dream!”

“… It is?” Diamond asked.

“Of course. I mean, why else would a strange looking stallion just suddenly be in your house?” Cortez held up his left foreleg and showed off the device attached to it. “And just look at this,” he said as he brought up a map of Ponyville for her to see. “Do things like this exist in the real world?”

“… I guess not,” Diamond said, calming down and sighing with relief as she realised she wasn’t in any danger. “So you’re just a dream…”

“That’s right, and I was wondering if you could-”

“Hold on.” Diamond closed her eyes and concentrated. Cortez gave her a puzzled look.

“Uh, what are you doing?”

“I’m trying to dream up Apple Bloom losing her farm and having to become my servant in order to make any money,” Diamond said with a grin. “You can go away. I don’t like dreaming about scary-looking stallions.”

Cortez turned around to look into the mirror beside him. ‘Maybe I need to grow some hair. Or maybe it’s the goggles.’ Turning back to the filly, Cortez nodded. “Alright, I’ll go. But before I do, you have to answer a question: what was the full name of that stallion who came to visit your father yesterday?”

Diamond Tiara opened her eyes and glared at the stallion still standing in her room. “You mean King Tenpin?”

‘‘King Tenpin’?’ Cortez nodded. “Uh, I guess so.”

“Well that’s his name, and I’ve told it to you, but I don’t see you going.”

“Alright, I’ve got what I needed. Thanks, kid. Tiiiime to split.”

Cortez pushed the button on his device and was enveloped by a blue light, before disappearing in front of Diamond Tiara’s very eyes.

“… Oh, I know! I’ll also make Scootaloo carry all my luggage to my new Canterlot suite!” With a maniacal giggle, Diamond Tiara closed her eyes again and resumed trying to manipulate her dream.





Diamond Tiara filed her hooves as she waited outside of Kingpin’s office for Cortez to return from… wherever he went. She had waited for five minutes… “I’ll wait another minute, and then I’m looking for another way in.”

As she said that, a flash of light appeared before her. Cortez jumped out of the flash of light and gave the startled mare a grin. “I’m back.”

“W-What the hay?! Where did you go?”

“Just a quick trip. I got the password,” Cortez told Diamond, turning to the console and pushing some buttons. “Turns out the guy’s name is really ‘King Tenpin’.”

Diamond slammed a forehoof into her face. “Of course! How could I forget a name that dumb?”

The door opened and the two ran inside. They found Kingpin sitting at his desk, looking up at them and jumping out of his seat. “H-How’d you get in here?!”

“Hooves in the air!” Diamond ordered as she pointed her gun at the stallion, who quickly obeyed her, panic spreading on his face as the two slowly approached him. She reached into her gown and pulled out a pair of hoofcuffs.

“How much stuff do you have under there?” Kingpin asked, raising an eyebrow as Diamond Tiara bound his forehooves.

“I borrowed this from Pinkie Pie,” she explained, turning to Kingpin’s computer and clicking the mouse a few times. A smile graced her face. “Well well. With all this, we can have you locked away for the rest of your life.”

“Anything on there about Crow?” Cortez asked.

Diamond nodded. “He bought some kind of machine from this building’s lab department, but it’s still here. He’s picking it up… today!”

“Alright! Time to spl-”

“Just go,” Diamond said flatly, pushing some buttons on Kingpin’s computer. “I’m gonna call my boss from here and let him know I’ve captured this guy.”

“… Uh, sure. Thanks for your help.” Diamond Tiara watched as Cortez ran towards the door, smiling as she was just about to call out to thank him… before a second Cortez ran into the room from around the corner and stopped the first Cortez in his tracks. “Whoa!”

“Hey! Going after Crow?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Well you’ll need this.” The second Cortez gave the first an ID card. “Lab’s up on the floor above this one. Remember, it’s the red wire.”

“Red? Got it, thanks!”

The two Cortezs ran out of the room and went their separate ways, leaving the stunned Diamond Tiara and Kingpin gaping at the open door, not quite sure as to what they had just seen.

“Who is this?” a gruff voice asked from Kingpin’s computer, snapping Diamond Tiara out of her daze.

“S-Sir! This is Diamond Tiara, reporting from Kingpin’s computer!”

“Agent Tiara? I take it you’ve captured Kingpin, then?”

“Yes, sir! And I’ve got all the evidence we need to bring him down.” Diamond considered telling her boss about the strange stallion she had run into on the building’s rooftop, who had helped her reach Kingpin’s room and somehow found out the password to his office… when she suddenly realised why her looked so familiar. ‘T-That guy who suddenly came into my room and made me think I was dreaming!’

“Good work, Tiara! I’ll send an armoured chariot to pick you up. Remain where you are until then.”

‘But, he looks the same as he did back then. Does that mean he hasn’t aged? Why were there two of them? How did he-’

“Agent Tiara?”

Diamond closed her hanging jaw and fell back into the chair standing behind her. “… Sir? I think I’d like to file that vacation request now…”
> Prompt #10 - Diamond Tiara: Vampony Hunter
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prompt: *Challenge Prompt* Any Diamond Tiara story that includes the following: Diamond Tiara takes off her glasses, then picks up the object on her right. Someone screams.





Vamponies. They are the dreaded creatures of the night. The feared monsters that hunt in the dark for the blood of ponies. If you are lucky, they will settle for only a light meal, but for the most part these foul creatures whisk their victims away to their layer deep within the Everfree Castle, where they would never be seen again… At least not as they once were.

Every day, ponies would count heads in the town square to make sure nopony was missing, and then they would live their lives as best they could, never staying out too late. When the sun began to set, ponies would cover their houses with cloves of garlic and symbols in the shape of Princess Celestia’s cutie mark. And then, they would sleep in their beds with one eye open, praying that they and their loved ones would survive the night.

The common citizens lived as such. In the town of Ponyville, there also existed two groups: the Guardians and the Vanguards.

The Guardians would patrol the walls that surrounded the town and keep an eye out for suspicious shadows that shifted in the night. They would strike at anything that moved, often killing wandering stray cats or, on some occasions, injuring a member of their own team by mistake. It was a small price to pay for the safety of the townsponies, though.

The Vanguard had a much more important task: to vanquish the vamponies once and for all. Their job was to venture into the Everfree Forest and take the Everfree Castle by storm, though after their first raid, the most that they could ever do was set up base camps and alert the town to approaching vamponies. Even that brought about many causalities, and every day more and more ponies were out of Vanguard, either due to fear, or from being taken away.

One such member that was recently taken away was Alula, a brave young filly who, even through the worst of time, would smile and encourage her friends to laugh. Of all the ponies to be taken away by such fiends, she was the last pony who could deserve such a fate. At least that’s what her friends thought.

Diamond Tiara, a filly who despised vamponies ever since they took away her mother and left her father an emotional wreck, was furious that the Vanguard would give up on her so easily. “It’s too late,” they said. “There’s nothing we can do. Just accept it.”

“NO!”

With just that single word, Diamond Tiara removed her official Vanguard badge and stormed out of her boss’ office. With her, she took a couple of waterskins, a bag of garlic, a celestial broach, and a crossbow with five bolts in her quiver.

On her way to the Everfree Forest, Diamond Tiara ran into her friend Silver Spoon. Diamond Tiara was not smart, so the only way she felt that she could battle the vamponies was directly. Silver Spoon, however, was a genius. She provided support for Diamond Tiara and her group with strategically intelligence from the background.

Tonight, however, she was equipped with a suit of garlic and a dagger. “I’m going with you,” Silver Spoon said. “I’ve studied the schematics for the castle. You’ll get lost in there on your own.”

“It will be dangerous,” Diamond Tiara said. With a smile, she added, “And I wouldn’t want anypony else to have my back.”

Grabbing their black cloaks and putting them on, the two fillies proceed into the forest, running in order to reach the castle before sunset. Attack in the midst of the day was their best bet, as the vamponies would be asleep at this time.

However, if their presence was detected by the vamponies’ familiars, they would awaken, and in the safety of their castle, the vamponies need not fear the sun. For that reason, the two fillies had to slow down as they neared the castle, and approach quietly from the shadows.

Diamond Tiara put on her glasses as she approached the castle’s entrance. The special glasses for hunting vamponies would allow her to see a vampony’s weak spot – that is, the one spot that will kill a vampony if struck. Anywhere else would not work, and the weak spot varies from vampony to vampony. Silver Spoon’s glasses were customised to also have this function.

Nodding to each other, the two fillies entered the castle. Diamond Tiara crept passed the many coffins laying about the main hallway, most of which likely contained traps for foolish Vanguard raiders seeking to wipe out the vamponies on their own. The corpses of many ponies by some of these coffins confirmed possibly confirmed Diamond’s suspicions, but that’s not why she was here in the first place.

She was here for Alula.

“Her badge signal is that way,” Diamond said as she pointed down the corridor to her left. The badges of the Vanguard were fitted with a magic signal that could be traced with simple gemstones that can be found almost everywhere in Equestria. The purpose of this function was to make sure that the members of each Vanguard squad could always find each other in emergency situations, such as right now.

“Did you hear that?” Silver Spoon asked as she walked faster to catch up to her friend’s side.

“It was just the wind,” Diamond told her as the two turned down into the dark corridor. Silver Spoon ignited a small lighter to help the two see where they were going. A castle like this was sure to contain many traps, and the last thing that either of them wanted to accidentally trigger any-

Click!

The door opened suddenly beneath Silver Spoon. The scream alerted Diamond Tiara and she was barely able to turn around and grab Silver Spoon’s hoof in time.

“I can’t pull you up!” Diamond Tiara shouted. “You’re too heavy!”

“Let go!” Silver Spoon shouted. “They were sure to hear that! You have to let me go before they come to investigate!”

“I’m not leaving you!” Diamond told her.

“You have to! If we both get caught here, then-”

“I don’t care! You’re the one pony I can’t afford to lose!” Diamond felt herself slipping and closed her eyes and she put more force into her pulling. “Damnit… I’m not going to let go… no matter what!”

“Diamond…” Silver Spoon frowned as she saw the extent that her friend was going to to keep her safe. It was even at the cost of her own safety. She didn’t like it… yet at the same time, she knew that she would be doing the same had their positions been reversed.

Reaching down to her side, Silver Spoon grabbed the dagger strapped to her waist and brought it up to her hoof. “DON’T YOU DARE!” Diamond Tiara shouted, her eyes open again and seeing what the other filly was doing. “IF YOU DO WHAT YOU’RE THINKING, I’LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU!”

“Be quiet,” Silver Spoon said. “I just had an idea.” Silver Spoon brought the dagger down a bit, towards the buttons of her garlic-covered suit. With one hoof, unfastening the suit would be difficult, but with a dagger…

“Wait! If you lose the garlic, you’ll be defenceless!”

“I’ll have you, right?” Silver Spoon asked with a smile. Diamond Tiara hesitated for a moment before giving a nod. “Then I’ll be okay. And with this heavy suit gone, I might just be light enough for you to pull me up.”

“… W-Well hurry up, then! I don’t know how much longer I can hold on!”

With a quick breath, Silver Spoon brought the dagger to her chest and used it to cut open her suit, wincing as the tip of the blade lightly grazed her skin. When it reached the bottom, the suit fell off and down the pit.

As hypothesised, Silver Spoon suddenly became light enough for Diamond tiara to pull her up. As soon as the grey filly was out of the hole and back on solid ground, the two quickly embraced each other, glad that they were able to make it out with both of them alive.

“They’ll be here soon,” Silver Spoon reminded Diamond Tiara. “We should get a move-on.”

Diamond nodded. “Alula’s down this way,” she said, motioning her head further down the corridor. “Let’s go.”

The two proceeded with a lot more caution this time, taking extra care not to set off any more traps, and also looking out for any vamponies that may have been stirred from their slumber as a result of the noise they had produced earlier.

When the gem flashed in Diamond’s hooves, the two knew that they had reached their destination. Alula was trapped within a dusty chamber, perhaps an old storage closet or a pantry back in the day. Now, it was just a dark, foreboding room with candles circling around a single coffin.

The two fillies approached the coffin and gulped. The gem’s trail ended there. The two stared at the filthy coffin for a few long moments before Diamond Tiara reached a hoof towards it. She felt Silver Spoon’s hoof grabbing her other one and she pushed the lid aside.

Inside the coffin, Alula lay in a deep, peaceful slumber, two thin blood trails down her neck and a pair of fangs coming out of her mouth.

Silver Spoon put a hoof to her mouth and held back a sob, whilst Diamond Tiara grabbed a firm hold of Silver Spoon’s hoof and shook as she held back a series of curses.

“We were too late,” Silver Spoon whispered. Diamond Tiara nodded. “… What do we do now?”

Diamond Tiara was silent for a few seconds after that. Releasing Silver Spoon’s hoof, Diamond reached for her quiver and pulled out a bolt. “I won’t leave her like this.”

Silver Spoon had to remove her glasses to wipe the tears from her eyes. “I… I can’t watch…”

“That’s fine. In fact, I’d prefer you not see… Go wait outside. This will only take a second.”

With a reluctant nod, Silver Spoon rose to her hooves and slowly walked outside of the room, leaving Diamond Tiara and Alula alone.

Bringing a shaking hoof towards her glasses, Diamond Tiara studied Alula’s body and found her weak spot. It was a small spot just under her bellybutton. Diamond removed her glasses and reached for the crossbow set down to her right, picking it up and loading her bolt into it. She was stopped by a scream in the hallway.

“SILVER SPOON!”

Diamond Tiara rushed towards the hallway as fast as she could, slamming the door open and freezing as she found Silver Spoon hanging limp in the hold of a cloaked vampony feasting on her neck.

“N-NO!” Diamond Tiara immediately replaced her glasses and brought her loaded crossbow up. She found the weak spot of this vampony at its forehead. It was a clean shot, and Diamond Tiara took it. The vampony fell backwards onto the floor, releasing Silver Spoon, who fell forward into Diamond Tiara’s forelegs.

“Silver Spoon, no!” Diamond cried as she examined the bite marks on the side of the filly’s neck. “T-This can’t be happening… How could I have let this happened? I was supposed to protect you. Silver Spoon, I-”

“Diamond Tiara?” Silver Spoon stared up at the pink filly, her eyes fluttering and her breathing slow. “P-Please don’t cry, Diamond…”

“But Silver Spoon, I failed you. I let you…”

A silence hung between the two for a few seconds. “Diamond?” Silver Spoon asked as she slowly brought a hoof towards her friend’s face, wiping the tears that were streaming down her cheeks. “I feel cold… and it hurts so much… Will we… Will we make it out of here?”

“Silver…”

“Will we… hang out again… like before?” Tears welled from Silver Spoon’s eyes as her hoof fell limp, suddenly dropping to her side.

“… Of course we will,” Diamond Tiara said. With a sniff, she wiped her tears away and then reached down to Silver Spoon’s hoof, removing her glasses and placing her crossbow down in the process. “We’ll be together forever. You, me…” Diamond Tiara turned back to look into the room to her left, where an open coffin lay in the midst of some candles. “… And Alula…”

Diamond Tiara reached down and lifted Silver Spoon up, giving her a hug that seemed to last forever. “Diamond… I feel sleepy…”

“It’s okay, Silver Spoon,” Diamond Tiara said, pulling away and removing her cloak. “We’ll always be friends, and we’ll always be together.” Diamond Tiara threw her bag of garlic cloves to the side and placed her hooves onto her friend’s shoulders, keeping her still as she tilted her head to the side, exposing her neck to the drowsy filly. “No matter what…”
> Prompt #11 - Diamond Tiara Gets An A
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prompt: Diamond Tiara does something that Diamond Tiara would never do.





Thursday was Silver Spoon’s favourite day of the week, if for no other reason than it was always the day that Cheerilee would return the results of the test they would always take on Tuesdays. The reason why this was so fun for Silver Spoon resided in the fact that she always scored an A, pleasing her parents and earning her the maximum allowance for the week, and also for one other reason: it was the one thing that Diamond Tiara could never beat her in.

To Silver Spoon, Diamond Tiara was the superior pony in almost every aspect. She was cuter, she was richer, she was younger – which meant she would be the last of the two to worry about wrinkles – she was braver, she was more determined… even her cutie mark, if given physical form, would be worth more than her own.

But there was one thing that Silver Spoon would always hold over Diamond Tiara’s head: her smarts. No matter how cunning Diamond Tiara may have been, when it came to schoolwork, she was on the same intellectual level as Scootaloo.

The highest grade Diamond Tiara had ever achieved was a C, and even though Silver Spoon tried her best not to rub her superior smarts into her friend’s face, just the knowledge that she would always be the smart one of the duo was enough to satisfy her.

“Silver Spoon, excellent work as always,” Cheerilee said as she reached Silver Spoon’s test paper, leaving it on the side of her desk with the other papers for students to collect if they wished. “You got an A. Keep doing what you’re doing.”

Silver Spoon smiled and cast a quick glance to Diamond Tiara sitting beside her. The pink filly was checking her hoof with a bored expression on her face as Cheerilee continued to read out the results to the class.

“Diamond Tiara,” she said as she got to said pupil’s paper, “I don’t know what you’ve done lately, but I’m very impressed. You got an A!”

“Uh-huh,” Diamond Tiara said with a nod. A few seconds passed before she realised what the teacher had said to her. “Excuse me?”

“What did you say?” Silver Spoon asked with a look of utter disbelief.

“I told you that you had it in you,” Cheerilee said with an encouraging smile. “You should never doubt yourself, and that goes for the rest of you, too.”

“I got an A?” Diamond asked.

“Diamond got an A?” Silver Spoon reiterated.

“Wow! That’s so cool!” Alula cried, clapping her hooves together. The two fillies to either side of Alula joined her, which spread to a few more foals, before soon the entire class was applauding Diamond Tiara’s accomplishment.

Diamond Tiara’s confusion didn’t last long before it was replaced with smugness. “Yeah, well, what exactly did you expect?” she asked with a proud look on her face. “That test was like, a cinch.”

“Diamond got an A?” Silver Spoon repeated, eyes still wide as she simply stared at her friend.

“Okay, class, let’s settle down,” Cheerilee called out, bringing her class steadily to silence. “We still have some more tests to get through and then we have to start of lessons.”

‘No way did Diamond Tiara get an A!’ Silver Spoon thought to herself, eyeing her confused-looking friend suspiciously. ‘I smell foul play! This looks like a job for… Detective Spoon!’





When recess came, all of the students rushed out of the classroom to race towards the swing set, knowing that whoever got there first would have first dibs. In their rush to beat the other foals, nopony had noticed that a certain silver sleuth had slunk off stealthily to start her secret investigation.

“There’s no way that Diamond Tiara of all ponies could have gotten an A on that test,” Silver Spoon said to herself as arose from behind her desk. “A C maybe, a B if it were a blue moon, but an A? This was no miracle. There are dark forces at work here, and I intend to prove it.”

Silver Spoon approached Cheerilee’s desk, where the majority of the marked test papers still lay. Only a few students ever actually took their papers back: Silver Spoon, Twist, Apple Bloom and Featherweight were those few students.

Silver Spoon shuffled through the papers until she found the one with Diamond Tiara’s name on it. She checked the answers herself, ensuring that the teacher hadn’t made a mistake when doing so. “It can’t be… Seventy-eight percent! That’s almost my score!”

Silver Spoon looked over towards Diamond Tiara’s seat and wondered if she could have copied anypony. “I was the only one sitting near enough for her to reach this high a score, but she even got a few questions that I missed.”

‘Perhaps she had somepony else submit the test under her name?’ Silver Spoon thought to herself. ‘I’ll just use my trusty detective magnifying glasses to check her hoofwriting.’ Silver Spoon reached up to the frame of her glasses and moved her face closer to the paper. “Beep beep beeeeeep.”

After studying the hoofwriting closely enough, and even comparing it to a sample of Diamond Tiara’s hoofwriting from a note she had passed to her in the previous lesson, she was shocked to find that it was a complete match. “How can this be?! There must be some explanation. Maybe she had somepony slip her the answers during the test? Maybe she saw the test beforehoof?”

“Maybe she’s a ninja!” Silver Spoon turned to her side to find Pipsqueak standing beside her. “You know, like in that show where the ninjas had t’ take a test, and they used their abilities to cheat wi’out being caught!”

“What are you doing here?!” Silver Spoon demanded as she placed Diamond Tiara’s paper back.

“I saw you playing detective and thought maybe I could play, too! I could be your Watson I could!”

“I’m not playing! Get out of here, dweeb!” Silver Spoon shouted, flames rising up behind her and her hair becoming snakes in young Pip’s eyes. The young colt turned around and ran out of the classroom at top speed. “What a loser.”

Silver Spoon turned back to the test paper and put a hoof to her chin. “Well, I doubt that Diamond Tiara’s a ninja, and I don’t see how she could have had somepony slip her the answers during the test. This case is too tough for me to solve in secret. I guess I have no choice. I’m going to have to ask the culprit directly what happened.”





“What d’you mean you don’t know?!” Silver Spoon shouted, surprised by the answer she had received. She had waited until school had ended and she was in Diamond Tiara’s room before interrogating her subject, thinking that Diamond Tiara would only cooperate if they were in a safe haven. “C’mon, Di, you can tell me. I won’t, like, grass on you or anything.”

“First of all, ‘grass’ on me?”

“Pip’s stupid Trottingham language is getting to me,” Silver Spoon grumbled.

“Second, I really don’t know how it happened,” Diamond Tiara said, falling back onto her bed and staring up at the ceiling, as though it would provide the answer that both fillies were looking for. “I just put whatever down and I got an A.”

“But that’s not possible. It’s not like it’s multiple choice or anything.”

“Maybe I just got really lucky,” Diamond Tiara suggested with a shrug. “Anyway, what does it matter how I got an A? Daddy’s giving me a higher allowance, everypony’s paying attention to me, and I have one thing to hold over Apple Bloom’s head.”

“I guess… It just kinda sucks to think that, one day, you might be smarter than me.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Diamond Tiara sat up to face her friend.

“Well, being smarter than you is the only thing I have going for me,” Silver Spoon said as she stared at the floor and twirled her hoof into the carpet.

“That’s not true. You’re older than me-”

“So I’ll age before you do,” Silver Spoon scoffed.

“But you’ll also be able to see an ‘adult movie’ before I do,” Diamond Tiara returned. “And you can cook better than me.”

“But we can just pay ponies to cook for us.”

“Well, you can read better than me.”

“We can also pay ponies to read for us.”

Diamond Tiara put a hoof to her chin and hummed in thought. “You… can argue better than me.”

“… Is that a good thing?”

“Er… maybe? Oh! I know what you can do better than me, that you can’t pay anypony else to do!”

“What’s that?” Silver Spoon asked, looking up at Diamond Tiara with genuine curiosity.

A pair of pink forelegs wrapped themselves around Silver Spoon. “You can make me happy, and you can make me feel better when I have a stupid day!”

Silver Spoon smiled and returned the embrace. “I guess I can do that.”

“And nopony’s a finer detective than you.”

Silver Spoon blushed. “Y-You know about that?”

“You don’t exactly hide it very well,” Diamond Tiara teased as she pulled away from the hug with a giggle.

Silver Spoon giggled too, though was still a little red from embarrassment. “I feel really stupid, getting all jealous over a stupid grade.”

“Well, I’ll try not to outshine you too much with my brilliant new mind,” Diamond Tiara said with a grin. “Besides, just look at it this way: I’m taking over Daddy’s business as soon as I’m finished with school, but you’re going to get a degree at Canterlot University.”

“Well, hopefully,” Silver Spoon said.

“No ‘hopefully’ about it! If they were as smart as they say there are, they’d enrol you right now!”

“Okay, let’s not get carried away here.” Silver Spoon turned her attention to the clock on Diamond Tiara’s wall. “It’s getting late. I think I should head home before Mum starts to worry.”

“I suppose,” Diamond Tiara said as the two fillies rose to their hooves and walked together towards the door. ‘Still, I do wonder how I managed to get that A…’





It was quiet in the Rich manor, and indeed all of Ponyville, as the darkness of the night washed over the small town and everypony in it fell into a peaceful slumber.

The door to Diamond Tiara’s bedroom creaked open quietly, and a dark hoof stepped into the room. Slowly, gently, they creeped over towards the bedside of the pink, sleeping filly, and the owner of those hooves smiled.

“I knew this wasn’t a waste of money,” Filthy Rich whispered as he placed a cassette tape into the player on Diamond Tiara’s bedside and hit play. He then turned around crept back out of the room, closing the door behind him. “I knew she had it in her. Now let’s see if we can’t get those English grades up, too.”

Back inside Diamond Tiara’s room, the pink filly rolled onto her side and groaned as a new voice entered her head. “Hello, and welcome to Twilight Sparkle’s English for Beginners. Chapter one: Grammar and Punctuation!”
> Prompt #12 - Diamond, Please
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prompt: Diamond Tiara goes on vacation.





Diamond Tiara squinted as she gently moved her club back-and-forth, lightly tapping it against her golf ball each time. She was just one shot from par, but quite a distance from the hole. She had to take this carefully…

“You can’t just inch it to the hole like that,” Silver Spoon said.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Diamond said nonchalantly as she tapped the ball again.

“I can see what you’re doing. Either swing already or I’m marking you down as ten strokes.”

Diamond Tiara growled. “Fine.” She hit the ball, watching as it moved swiftly towards the hole on a straight line, hitting the hole and… going over it ever-so-slightly. “OH COME ON!” she shouted as she threw her club to the ground. “Every time! I swear this game is RIGGED!”

“At least you’re not knocking into onto other holes,” Silver Spoon pointed out, backing away from the angry filly who picked up her ball and slammed it into the hole. “… So that’s one over par for this hole…”

“How many more are left?” Diamond Tiara asked as she recovered her ball.

“Two more, plus the free shot one.”

“And then what? Daddy said he’ll be done by about four.”

Silver Spoon shrugged. “Well there are plenty of things to do around here. We’ll just look around to see what there is.” Diamond opened her bag and pulled out a glass bottle from inside. “Is that the drink your dad packed you? Why is it in a glass bottle?”

“I don’t know. Cultural differences?” Diamond twisted the cap off of the bottle and drank the liquid inside, her eyes shooting wide open as she quickly pulled the bottle away and swallowed. “Yuck! Is this what juice in Californeigh taste like?”





Filthy Rich was in heaven. Warm sun, warm sand, beautiful mares in revealing swimsuits, and not a single peep from his demanding little princess or his high-strung lawyers causing even more of his hairs to turn grey.

The stallion sighed pleasantly and reached for his bottle of fine cider. He was confused when he felt a plastic bottle in his bag and pulled out what he found to be a bottle of grape juice. “This is Diamond’s… But if I have this, then Diamond has my…





Diamond hiccupped again as she tapped the ball, watching as it steered off to the left and hit the rock wall. “STUPID BALL! I SAID GO RIGHT. RIIIIIIIIGHT!”

“Diamond, you know that you’re yelling to a ball, right?” Silver Spoon asked.

“Well it’s doing all the things wrong!” Diamond retorted. “The hole’s that way but the ball keeps going this way! Why would I tell the ball to go this way?! Clearly the ball is doing it on its own!”

“The ball is… moving on its own…”

Diamond Tiara nodded. “Yes!”

“… Maybe we should stop. I don’t think you’re enjoying this game very much.”

“No!” Diamond yelled. “I’m not gonna let a ball beat me! It’s fine, I got this.”

“But you’re already at eight strokes for this hole. Even if I get ten next hole and you get a hole-in-one, you won’t-”

“Ssssssssssh!” Silence fell between the two fillies for a few uncomfortable seconds. “I must… concentrate…” Diamond Tiara aimed for the hole, pulled back her club, and swung… and hit the ball into the water hazard past the hole. “AaaaaaAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHH!”

Silver Spoon removed her hooves from her ears and looked around nervously. She was so thankful that there was nopony else around. “Diamond, please-”

“One more putt!” Diamond declared as she ran over to the water where her ball was. “Siiiiiil! Get my ball for me!”

“Yeah yeah,” Silver Spoon sighed as she placed her own ball, club and the record sheet down and once again reached into the water for the ball.

Behind Silver Spoon, Diamond Tiara chugged the last of her juice that had actually started to taste better the more she had drank it. She then hiccupped again.





Filthy Rich rushed into the reception area of the minigolf course where he had left the two fillies earlier that day. The same mare that was minding the counter before was still there, blowing bubbles with her bubblegum and reading a magazine with a rock band on the cover with a bored expression on her face.

“Excuse me, ma’am. I was here earlier with my daughter and her friend and I was wondering if they-”

“Little pink kid with the crown and grey kid with the glasses?” the mare asked before blowing another bubble.

“Yes! Are they still here?”

“They left,” the mare responded after her bubble popped. She then resumed her chewing in silence for a few seconds.

“Well… do you know where they went to, at least?”

“Dunno. The tipsy one said somethin’ about carts though.”

“‘Tipsy one’?” Filthy Rich asked in a concerned tone.

“Yeah, the pink one. She looked like she was walkin’ on two legs.”

Filthy Rich gulped. “Y-You said something about carts? Where might a place like that be around here?”

“Uhhh… Oh. There’s a go-kart track down that way,” the mare said, pointing a hoof behind her. “It’s next to the big climbing wall thingy.”

“Climbing wall thingy. Got it,” Filthy Rich said with a nod before heading out. He then came back in a second later and examined the mare behind the counter. She looked to be… about in her thirties, late-twenties at least, and she wasn’t hard on the eyes. “Say, I don’t suppose you-”

“Already got a coltfriend,” the mare said.

“Then thank you again for your help,” Filthy Rich said before running back outside.





Silver Spoon stared in confusion as her friend continued to giggle seemingly at nothing for what must have been five minutes now. Every time it seemed that Diamond Tiara was starting to calm down, suddenly the laughter rekindled and it was starting to test the limits of Silver Spoon’s patience.

Finally Diamond’s giggles quieted down enough for Silver Spoon to ask, “What are you laughing at?”

“Your name,” Diamond Tiara said through her laughter, “And your cutie mark… are the SAME! PFFT BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!” And just like that, Diamond Tiara was down on her back again kicking her legs in an explosive fit of laughter.

“Uh, so is yours?” Silver Spoon pointed out, which seemed to silence Diamond immediately.

Diamond stood up at stared at her friend in shock for a few seconds. “… Oh my gosh, IT ISH!” Diamond’s laughter returned in full force. “DIAMOND TIARA! SHILVER SPOON! AHAHAHAHAHAHAH!”

Silver Spoon looked around and shied away from the strange looks pointed towards them from the nearby ponies. “Di, please stop. You’re really freaking me ou-”

“Hey, go-karts!” Diamond suddenly shouted, racing past Silver Spoon and jumping over the small fence surrounding the go-kart track.

“Diamond, you can’t-”

“It’s okay! I’ll get ush shome wheels!” Diamond assured her friend as she ran out onto the course, intercepting the path of an incoming filly in her go-kart, who screamed before steering quickly to the left, crashing into the wall of tires and coming to a complete stop. Diamond approached the filly and said, “You should be more careful! Driving ish dangerous, y’know?”

The filly unbuckled her seatbelt and stepped out of the go-kart, crying as she ran towards the fence when an older mare with a concerned look on her face was waiting.

“Thanksh!” Diamond waved to the filly before getting into the go-kart. “Now lesshee…”

“Hey, you!”

Diamond looked up to see two stallions running towards her, one blowing a whistle and both looking very angry. “You’ll never take me alive!” Diamond Tiara proclaimed as she stomped on the left pedal. The go-kart responded by shooting backwards at full speed, riding up the hill behind it and flying into the air, over the fence, and landing on the ground outside. Diamond blinked a few times before a smile consumed her face. “That wash AWESOME!”

“Diamond, are you okay?!” Silver Spoon asked as she raced to her friend. “Oh my gosh, your hoof!”

Diamond looked at her right forehoof to find that it was fine. She then checked her left, then her left hind hoof, and finally found what her friend must have been concerned about. She was bleeding. “Eh, it’ll wash right out…”

“You two, stop right there!” a stallion shouted as he hopped the fence and ran towards the two.

“You can’t catch me! I’m Diamond Tiara Dashles! Er, I mean, the other way ‘round!” Diamond jumped out of her go-kart and ran away, tripping over falling onto her face in the process. She felt a hoof grab her left foreleg and found herself being pulled up by a very angry-looking stallion. At the same time, she felt something slip off of her head and heard a ‘clang’ on the ground.

“You’re coming with us!” the stallion said.

Diamond ignored his words though as her focus turned to the shiny tiara sitting on the ground. Diamond tried to reach for it but her reach was impaired by the hold of the stallion behind her. With her choices limited and her brainpower not up to its usual scratch, Diamond Tiara settled for the only plan she could conjure up at that time. “WaaaaAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!”

“H-Hey! Calm down!” the stallion pleaded, loosening his grip and allowing the filly to fall to her haunches as she bawled her eyes out in the centre of the gathering crowd. “Can somepony bring this kid a lollipop or… something?!”

Silver Spoon watched the respect she held for her friend dwindle to nothingness before her very eyes. With a solemn sigh and a shake of her head she decided to simply resign herself silently to the park’s security.





By the time Filthy Rich arrived at the go-kart track news of the loud pink filly causing a ruckus had already spread throughout the park and reached his ears. When he silently reported to the staff that he was said filly’s father, the security detail escorted him to the day care that was holding her and Silver Spoon.

He prayed that she hadn’t caused even more trouble in the meantime. When he finally got there, what he saw was worse than anything he could have ever imagine. His daughter was wearing a lampshade on her head, a loose tie around her neck, and she was dancing on top of a table whilst singing a song that most certainly did not match the barnyard jingle that the cassette tape behind her was playing.

“I like blank flanks and I cannot lie! You other fillies can’t deny!”

“She’s been like this for fifteen minutes now,” the day care teacher reported to the distraught father. “Her friend is in the next room receiving therapy.”

“Where did she even get those things?”

“She asked for them. She said ‘I don’t know why, but I feel I need them’.” The day care teacher simply shrugged. “She also asked for a kebab but I don’t know anywhere around here that sells them. I just gave her a piece of candy. I don’t think she even knows what a kebab is.”

“Diamond, honey-”

“DADDY!” Diamond Tiara hopped off of the table and ran into her father’s hooves. “Daddy, I had the beeeeeeeeeeest day ever! I got to play golf, and ride a c-car! And uh… I played golf! Oh, wait, I said that.” Diamond giggled and at her own foolishness. “Daddy! I got my licence today! I’ll drive ush home!”

“T-That’s fine, Diamond. We’ll walk.” Filthy Rich raised his head as he saw Silver Spoon walking towards them from the other room. “Are you okay? I’m terribly sorry about this.”

“It’s fine,” Silver Spoon said. “I’ll just repress this memory for the rest of my life and so long as we never speak of this again, we’ll be fine.”

“SILVY!” Diamond Tiara hugged her friend and gave her a big kiss on the lips. “You’re my beshtest friend, but don’t tell anyone I shaid that!”

Filthy Rich looked uncomfortable as he watched Silver Spoon wipe her lips. “Repressing the memory… Repressing the memory…”

Whilst Silver Spoon did her little chant, Diamond Tiara tugged at her father’s leg, gathering his attention. “Daddy, can you carry me?”

Filthy Rich fully intended to do so and quite frankly was happy that he wouldn’t have to deal with any protests from his daughter. Smiling, he knelt down and allowed her to climb onto his back. As he stood up, he turned to the day care teacher and the security pony and said, “I’m truly sorry about all this, she-”

“It’s fine,” the day care teacher said. “We’re used to foals having too much sugar and getting out of hoof.”

“At least the damage to the go-kart wasn’t too sever, and the parent of the filly driving it isn’t pressing any charges.”

Filthy Rich shifted his eyes about nervously. “Yes, a sugar rush. That’s exactly what this is.” Clearing his throat, Filthy Rich motioned for Silver Spoon to follow him. “Well then, let’s get this energetic little filly to bed before she crashes.”

A loud snoring sound from the father’s back told him that it was already too late for that. Diamond Tiara was already out cold. He left with Silver Spoon and explained to her that Diamond’s ‘juice’ was simply high in sugar, and that Diamond Tiara had what was called a ‘sugar rush’. Thankfully she seemed to buy it, and it turned out that this particular little secret would be one that Filthy Rich would take to his grave.

As the two walked, Filthy Rich learned that Diamond had only drunk one-and-a-half of the three bottles he had mistakenly put into her bag. This news brought about a shocking realisation for the stallion. ‘My daughter’s a lightweight…’





Diamond Tiara awoke with a groan. Her head was pounding, her body was hot and sweaty, the room was shaking, the birds were louder than usual, and she could smell something that she knew was herself, but was doing her best to deny.

“Diamond? Are you awake, sweetie?”

“Daddy?” Diamond asked, clearing her throat after hearing her own groggy voice. “W-What happened? Where am I? What about the golf and-”

“It’s okay. Just relax,” Filthy Rich said, offering his daughter a glass of water that she drank steadily. “Diamond, there’s something that we need to talk about.”

Diamond gulped as she swallowed her mouthful of water and looked up towards her dad. “There is?”

Filthy Rich nodded. “It’s a little early, but I need to teach you something about ‘hangovers’.”

“‘Hangovers’? What’s-” Diamond stopped suddenly as she felt something rushing up her body, from her stomach and approaching her mouth very quickly.

“Bathroom is down the hall and to the right,” he said. His daughter was off just as soon as she placed her glass down and slammed the door behind herself. “… Right. No more drinking on vacation,” the stallion told himself as he walked over towards his suitcase and opened it up, revealing the treasure trove of alcoholic beverages inside. One-by-one, Filthy Rich collected the bottles and poured them down the sink. “… She’s been in there a while. Probably passed out on the seat.”

Filthy Rich’s suspicions were proven false as he heard the bathroom door open behind him. Turning around, the stallion found his daughter approaching him with a horrified look on her face. “I… kissed Silver Spoon…” Filthy Rich nodded, and then she passed out.
> Prompt #13 - How The Diamond Tiara Got Her Cutie Mark
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prompt: Diamond Tiara is victorious.





The city of Ponyville! … Is not under attack, making it a perfect day for fathers and daughters to enjoy a lovely picnic in the park, go to the water park, invite their neighbours over for a barbecue, or perhaps even take a pleasant hike through the Whitetail Woods. Unfortunately for Diamond Tiara, her father is a workaholic. To him, ‘nice, sunny day’ equals ‘routine business inspection around the town’. And because Diamond Tiara was grounded for an accident that wasn’t her fault – her father should have looked before stepping onto a roller skate at the bottom of that stairs – she had no choice but to accompany him around the town.

His store was the first shop. Barnyard Bargains was an everything-you-need store, with the lowest prices you’d ever find around town. Of course, this was just one chain store out of many branches all over Equestria, but with Filthy Rich living in Ponyville, this was the main branch. He always spoke fondly of it, as if it was the straight-A achieving child he never had. To Diamond, it was a dusty old relic of a forgotten age. Would it kill to add a little colour or maybe some flowers?

Of course, waiting for one hour in a store of boring old junk whilst her father did an inventory check and other business-type things with his employee in the back wasn’t all the suffering Diamond Tiara had to put up with that day. Not by a long shot. After his inspection of his store was done, Filthy Rich wanted to check in on all of his partners around the town.

Sofas and Quills, Priceless Antiques, Do It Yourself Supplies, Home Gardening, The Pottery Shop… These were just a few of the partnerships Diamond Tiara’s father had forged over the years, and not a single one of these stores had anything fun to offer. No toys, no games, no flashy jewellery or pretty dresses, and the owners were all boring old stallions, too.

“Daddyyyyyy, can we go yeeeeeet?” Diamond Tiara whined, finally at the edge of her patience. “My hooves are tired!”

“Just one more stop, Diamond,” Filthy Rich said as he turned down a familiar narrow pathway, bringing a groan from Diamond’s throat.

“But Sweet Apple Acres is boring! They only have trees and dirt and pigs there!”

“Sweet Apple Acres was our company’s very first partner in trading, and Granny Smith is an old friend of mine whom I haven’t visited for a while. I just want to drop in to say ‘hi’ and then we can go.”

Diamond groaned. “Which means you’ll be there talking for hours,” she grumbled.

“Besides, they have a filly around your age.”

“Apple Bloom’s a dork. I can’t be seen playing with somepony like that!”

“Well then I guess you’ll just have to wait patiently,” Filthy Rich said simply. The two continued to walk until they arrived at the farmhouse, where Granny Smith and some old stallion Diamond didn’t recognise were rocking back-and-forth on the porch together and laughing over something.

“Oh, good evenin’, Filthy!” Granny Smith shouted as she waved to her guests.

“It’s ‘Rich’, Granny,” Filthy Rich replied.

“And that’s ‘Smith’ to you! Ah’m nopony’s grandma yet! … Oh, wait, ah guess ah am. But ah’ve still got as much life in me as any o’ you youngins!”

“It’s also afternoon,” Diamond Tiara muttered.

Granny Smith turned to the filly, who flinched and took a cautious step back. “Why, if it isn’t lil’ Vanessa!”

“Diamond,” Diamond Tiara corrected.

“How old are ye now-a-days?”

“Eight. Nine in three weeks.”

“How time flies… Oh! Where’re my manners? This here’s my old friend Apple Strudel!”

The stallion beside Granny Smith raised a shaky forehoof and waved to the two guests. “Hello there! Jolly nice to meet ya!”

“Likewise,” Filthy Rich said. “Gra- Smith, would you mind if we stepped inside to talk for a while?”

“Is it that time again? Ah suppose ah can spare a few minutes, if ya don’t mind waiting,” Granny Smith replied, turning to Apple Strudel.

“Not at all! Take all the time you need,” Apple Strudel said.

Granny Smith climbed out of her chair and escorted Filthy Rich inside. “Always ‘business, business, business’ with you. Y’all need ta learn t’ take things easy once in a while. Also, don’t call me ‘Smith’! Ah ain’t a stallion now, y’hear?”

And so Diamond Tiara was left alone outside, with the creepy old stallion before her rocking back-and-forth, staring down at the little filly with a wrinkly smile.

“Granny Smith! Guess what ah-” Diamond Tiara turned around to find the youngest Apple, Apple Bloom, running towards the porch. She came to a skidding halt just before Diamond Tiara, causing a cloud of dust to attack the pink filly’s coat. “Huh? Where’s Granny Smith?”

Diamond Tiara backed up whilst coughing heavily, dusting herself off before casting a glare at the other filly. “She’s inside with my daddy,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Oh… Well, ah can show her later. Hey, y’all wanna play hide-an’-seek while we wait?”

“No thanks,” Diamond Tiara replied in a dismissive tone. “I just got my mane and my coat groomed and they’ll get dirty if I play with the likes of you.”

Apple Bloom narrowed her eyes. “Ya don’t have ta be so mean about it,” she mumbled as she turned to leave.

Diamond Tiara huffed and also turned around, only to find the old stallion now standing directly behind her. With a yelp, Diamond Tiara took a few steps backwards, breathing heavily from the shock she just suffered.

“No need t’be shy! Go on an’ have fun with yer friend. Ah’ll let yer father know where y’are,” Apple Strudel said with a smile.

“She’s not my friend! We’re just in the same class, that’s all.”

“Well knowin’ Granny Smith, those two’ll be in there yammerin’ for a while. Y’should go an’ play, if’n y’don’t plan on bein’ bored for an hour or two.”

Diamond Tiara huffed. “No thank you. I’d rather be bored out of my skull than let myself be seen with the likes of her, or let my precious coat get all dirty from playing around in the mud.”

“Aah. One o’ those, eh? ‘Fraid of a lil’ dirt?” Diamond Tiara furrowed her brow and turn a light shade of red as the stallion guffawed loudly. “Well, how ‘bout y’come play with yer Uncle Strudel, then? Ah promise there’ll be no dirt.”

“You’re not my uncle,” Diamond Tiara said. “And old ponies are boring. All they do is tell dumb stories and sleep.”

Apple Strudel laughed even harder in response. “Not afraid ta speak yer mind, huh? Well, don’t you worry! This ol’ stallion still has some fun left in ‘im from his youth!”

Diamond Tiara sighed. “Well, I guess it’s better than just standing around doing nothing.”

“There ya go! Well then, let’s go find a nice spot to sit an’ play.”

Diamond Tiara raised an eyebrow. “‘Sit’? What are playing?”





“Chess,” Diamond Tiara deadpanned, looking through her pieces to the stallion on the other side of the board. “Really?”

“Ever played before?” the stallion asked. “Ah’m somethin’ of an expert myself.”

“Of course I haven’t played before. I’m not a hundred years old!”

“Now now. Chess is a game that’s fun for all ages!” Apple Strudel said, though from Diamond Tiara’s pouting expression it didn’t seem to be convincing her. “Why not jus’ give it a chance, eh?”

“Ugh. Fine. But I can’t even see the board like this.”

Apple Strudel put a hoof to his chin and hummed in thought. The filly’s head was just about poking over the edge of the table. “Maybe ah should go an’ see if Granny Smith has any cushions y’can sit on.”





“That’s better!”

Diamond Tiara groaned from embarrassment at having to sit on a makeshift booster seat. “So how do we play?”

“It’s simple as apple punch!” Apple Strudel said. “The main goal is t’ take yer opponent’s king! The king is the piece with the large crown on its head!”

Diamond Tiara looked over her white pieces and picked up the largest one. “You mean this one?”

“Eeyup! The king can only move one space at a time, but can move in any direction! If it’s taken, y’lose, so protect it!”

“What are the small ones in the front?” Diamond Tiara asked.

“Those’re yer pawns! They move one space forward, or two on the first move, and can only take diagonally!”

“‘Diagonally’?” Apple Strudel took two of his pieces and demonstrated a diagonal motion for the filly. “Ooooh.” Diamond looked at the two pieces in the corners of her side of the board. “These?”

“Rooks, more commonly known as castles! They can move any number of spaces up, down, left or right.”

“If they’re castles, why are they in the corners? Shouldn’t they be in front of my pieces?”

“Don’t worry ‘bout that. The pieces next t’em are yer knights.”

Diamond Tiara raised an eyebrow and lifted the two ‘knight’ pieces. “These? They look like lances. I thought the knight was the pony holding the lance, not the lance itself.”

“The knight can move only in an L-shape, an’ can jump over pieces! Like so…” Apple Strudel demonstrated the various movement patterns available to the knight piece with his own. “Follow?”

Diamond nodded and moved onto the next piece. “And this?”

“That’s yer bishop.”

“Okay, now you’re just making up words!”

“The bishop can move any number o’ spaces, but only diagonally.”

“So like the opposite of a rook?” Diamond asked, receiving a nod. There was just one more piece left… Almost as big as the king, and the top was decorated with a tiara that vaguely resembled her own. “Hey, this one has good tastes.”

“Ah, that’d be yer queen. Most powerful piece in the game that one. Can move any number o’ spaces, in any direction. Don’t let yer opponent nab that too quickly now!”

“Huh. This is pretty easy to understand,” Diamond Tiara said. “Okay, so who goes first?”

“That’d be white.” Apple Strudel watched as Diamond moved the pawn in front of her queen out one space. ‘It’s her fist time, so maybe ah should go easy on ‘er. Then again, mah teacher always said goin’ easy never helps anypony t’learn. Y’gotta let ‘em make a few mistakes here-an’-there.’ Apple Strudel moved out his left knight to begin. ‘Ah’ll see how she reacts to a piece or two taken first. Don’t wanna get her all riled up over a simple game.’

The game continued for several more moves. Apple Strudel noticed that Diamond copied many of his own movements at first, but slowly started to make her own moves, some of which were pretty good. “This isn’t so hard,” Diamond Tiara said as she made another move.

‘Hey now, she’s got the hang o’ this already. Is it really her first time?’ Apple Strudel made another move and waited to see how Diamond Tiara would react. He was once again pleasantly surprised by the move that she made. It was better than her had expected from a beginner.

“Ah suppose now’s a good time t’ teach ya about ‘castlin’’,” Apple Strudel said.

“What? You mean there’s more to learn?”

“Castlin’ ain’t too difficult t’understand. Look at the way my king and castle are spaced apart, with nothin’ between ‘em. In this kind of situation, ah can take mah castle an’ mah king…” Apple Strudel picked up the two pieces and move them, positioning the king behind two unmoved pawns and the castle to his right of the king. “Y’see? This’s ‘castlin’’.”

“Huh. Guess that explains why it’s a ‘castle’.” Diamond Tiara picked up her knight and moved it to the edge of the board, confusing her opponent.

‘That wasn’t a smart move. Guess her ‘beginner’s luck’ is wearin’ off.’ Apple Strudel prepared to punish her mistake by grabbing his bishop, but gasped as he realised something. He looked over the rest of the board, the position of Diamond’s pieces and his own. ‘No, wait! It’s a trap! If ah react t’this with my bishop, ah’ll be leavin’ myself open to an attack from the right! But if ah leave it, it’ll only become a problem later.’

“This is easy. There are only so many different good moves you can make.”

Apple Strudel’s jaw dropped. ‘T-That’s true, but that doesn’t jus’ apply t’ this turn. T’ truly outplay yer opponent, ya gotta think about all possible ways the game could play out many moves ahead, through branchin’ pathways! A beginner shouldn’t be able to think any further than two or three moves ahead, let alone a little filly.’

“Hey, hurry up.”

Apple Strudel hesitated for a moment before releasing his piece. “Alright, ah’ll concede this game,” he said, picking his pieces up and placing them back into their starting positions. Truth-be-told, ah was holdin’ back ta make sure y’understood how ta play. Now that we’ve warmed up, how ‘bout a real game?”

Diamond sighed. “Fine. But just one more. This is so boring.”

‘This time, ah won’t hold back,’ Apple Strudel thought to himself as the Diamond made her first move. ‘Ah wanna see if that really was just luck, or if she’s got some kinda gift at this game.’

A few moves were exchanged between them. Diamond Tiara seemed to know what she was doing, even if her moves were now taking a little longer than earlier to make. Diamond Tiara moved her queen out earlier than Apple Strudel was expecting and he responded quickly by going on the offence.

“Are you still going?” Diamond asked. “You can’t win now. I’ve beat you.”

“Game ain’t over yet,” Apple Strudel responded as the two exchanged one more move, then another, and then a third… and that was it. Apple Strudel was only in ‘check’, but no matter how he moved, Diamond’s next move would easily finish him off. ‘Impossible! What’s even more amazing is that she’s right! This game ended three moves back, but ah never even saw it! This filly did, though…’ “… OHOHOHOHOH! Ah guess you got me again! Very good game, er…”

“Diamond Tiara,” Diamond said.

“N-No, not that… There appears t’ be somethin’ on yer flank.”

Diamond Tiara raised an eyebrow and looked behind herself, and then gasped. Decorating her pink flank was a glorious image of a diamond-coloured tiara, much like the one adorned on her head. “M-My cutie mark! I got my cutie mark!”

Apple Strudel applauded the filly’s accomplishment. “Congratulations! Ah bet yer real happy right now, huh?” Diamond Tiara answered his question by squealing like a fangirl visiting the backstage of her favourite idol’s concert and running circles around the table, cheering ‘YES!’ over and over again. ‘An’ what a talent it is, too. Her first time playin’, an’ she not only understood this game easier than any beginner, but she beat me, even though I’ve won several tournaments back in the day! This filly… she could become the next ‘Queen of Chess’!’

“DADDY!” Diamond Tiara charged towards her approaching father, running circles around him much like she did the table before. “Daddy, look! I got my cutie mark! I got my cutie mark!”

Filthy Rich smiled brighter than he had all day. Stopping Diamond with a hoof so that he could get a good look, Filthy Rich leaned and said, “That’s incredible! Oh, I bet you must be so happy right now! Daddy’s big girl is growing up so fast!” Diamond Tiara took a step back after her father began to pet her head. “But what is your talent, Sweetie?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Diamond asked, with Apple Strudel smiling proudly behind her. “Clearly it shows I’m gonna be a star!” Apple Strudel’s face fell quickly. “I mean, I’ve always thought about becoming a model like Fleur Dis Lee, but now I know that that’s what I’m gonna become!”

‘N-No. That’s not right,’ Apple Strudel thought. ‘You got it while playin’ chess, so obviously-’

“Oh, I’m so proud of you!” Filthy Rich said as she hugged his daughter closely. “You know what? I’m going to overlook the roller skate incident and let you go show off your new cutie mark to your friend Silver Spoon!”

“Really?! Oh, thank you, Daddy! You’re the best!” Diamond Tiara cheered as she hugged her father.

“By the way, what were you doing out here with Mr. Strudel.”

“Oh, just playing some boring game.”

Filthy Rich rose to his hooves and looked over the chess board. “Ah, that takes me back. So, you’re into chess now, huh?”

Diamond gagged and shook her head. “Puh-lease! That game’s so lame! I’m never playing it again!”

Apple Strudel’s jaw hung open as he watched the happy father and daughter leave, wanting to call out to them but failing to find the words to do so. Finally, when the two were out of sight, the old stallion hung his head in defeat. “P-Please don’t let such wonderful talent go to waste …”
> Prompt #14 - Diamond Tiara's Ice Bucket Challenge
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prompt: Diamond is the victim of a misunderstanding.





“So who’s on first?”

“That’s right,” Silver Spoon said.

“… Who’s on first?!”

“That’s right!” Silver Spoon repeated.

Diamond Tiara put her fingers between her eyes and pressed down for a few seconds. “… Okay, okay, forget first. Who’s on second?”

“No Who’s on first, What’s on second.”

“I don’t know, that’s why I’m-”

“He’s on third.”

Diamond Tiara raised her hands ready to strangle the troll that was once her friend when suddenly, a distraction saved the glasses-wearing girl who never knew of the danger she was in.

“Guys guys!” Zippoorwhill shouted as she rushed onto the baseball field, her puppy companion in one arm and her iPad in her free hand. “Big new guys! Big news!”

“What is it? We’re trying to practice out here!” Diamond Tiara said.

“… You two are trying out for baseball?” Zippoorwhill inquired, head tilted to the side as the sheer thought of the two richest, most refined girls in school actively participating in sports caused her brain to smoke.

“Of course not!” Diamond Tiara replied. “We’re trying out for cheerleading! It’s just somepony won’t tell me the team members’ names!” she added, glaring to Silver Spoon.

“I told you! Who’s on first, What’s on second, I Don’t Know’s on third-”

“If you don’t know then just tell me to begin with!” Diamond Tiara sighed and turned to Zippoorwhill. “Anyway, what’s this ‘big news’? It had better not be another video of a cat playing a keyboard.”

Zippoorwhill blinked and then turned to her iPad before quickly hiding it behind her back with a sheepish grin on her face. “O-Okay, but there’s other news, too! Not quite as big but also not very small so I guess somewhere middle-y kinda.”

“Which is?”

“The Canterlot Mercenary Club-”

“Ugh.”

“-just nominated you two for the ice bucket challenge!”

“… That stupid thing I’ve been hearing about where people dump buckets of icey water on their heads?” Diamond Tiara asked.

“Yupyup!”

“No thanks. I prefer to keep my hair dry, thank you very much.”

“You gotta do it, though!” Zippoorwhill shouted. “If you don’t then everyone’ll know about it and they’ll call you cowards!”

Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon exchanged nervous glances. “T-They will?” Silver Spoon asked Zippoorwhill.

“Uh-huh! And they’ll call you lazy, too! And they’ll say you don’t care about charity! And they’ll say that you lost to Apple Bloom and her friends!”

Diamond Tiara’s eye twitched. “Oh they will, will they?” Furrowing her brow, Diamond turned to Silver Spoon and said, “Get two buckets of icy water on the double! I’ll get Daddy’s camera! We’ll show those loser ‘Mercenaries’ who the real cowards are around here.”

“… Who?” Zippoorwhill asked.

“Them!” Diamond Tiara shouted.

Zippoorwhill scratched her head. “But how does that make them cowards?”

“… Hey look, a shiny thing in the distance.”

“DISTRACTIOOOOOON!” Zippoorwhill cried as she turned around and charged down the baseball field, back towards the school building.

With a sigh, Silver Spoon said, “My parents aren’t going to like this…”

“Too bad! We can’t let those losers defeat us!” Diamond Tiara declared with a determined glare directed towards the three girls sitting on a bench in the distance with their phones out.





As Sweetie Belle was texting Apple Bloom, a shiver ran down her spine. “… I think Diamond Tiara got our challenge.”

Apple Bloom nodded as she sent her text to Scootaloo. “Yeah, ah felt it too.”

Scootaloo waved a hand dismissively as she retweeted Sweetie Belle’s last tweet. “Bah. It’s probably just the cold water kicking in. Maybe we should go somewhere warmer. Or ask the nurse to write us a note to get out of class.”

“Oh hey, look at this. Diamond Tiara just tweeted that she’s going to one-up us in the ice bucket challenge,” Sweetie Belle said, replying with a picture of a moustached man holding up his hands and a caption reading: ‘Watch out guys, we got a badass over here!’.





“Ladies and Gentlemen!” Diamond Tiara shouted before turning to the three girls who had nominated her for the stupid challenge. “And losers.”

“Yo,” Scootaloo replied.

“Gather around and bear witness as on this day, Silver Spoon and I will perform the ultimate feat of charity the world has ever seen!”

“You gonna sell all those expensive dresses and donate all the money at once?” Apple Bloom asked.

“Of course not!” Diamond Tiara shouted. “Even better! By partaking in the ice bucket challenge, people everywhere will finally be aware of this terrible… whatever it is we’re raising awareness of and will donate all their money in our stead!”

“Don’t you only have three followers on YouTube?” Sweetie Belle asked. “And I’m one of them.”

“I’m another,” Pipsqueak said.

Silver Spoon timidly rose her hand behind a disgruntled Diamond Tiara. “Silence! I’m getting my hair wet for you peons, no be grateful and watch!”

“To be fair, that is generous for her,” Apple Bloom whispered to her friends.

“Zippoorwhill, are you recording?” Diamond Tiara asked. She looked over to find the airheaded girl giggling to herself as she used her camera to record her puppy chasing a squirrel in circles. “… Alula, you’re up!”

“Yes, ma’am!” Alula cheered as she accessed the camera function on her phone and pointed it to Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon. “Okay, ready!”

“I nominate Featherweight, Cheerilee and… Sunset Shimmer!” Diamond Tiara snapped her fingers and Silver Spoon picked up the huge tub that was set before her.

“Wow, that’s big,” Apple Bloom admired. “How’d we not see that ‘til now anyway?”

“Uh, are you sure about this?” Silver Spoon asked in a worried, unsure tone as she looked into the tub.

“Yes, now just get it over with already,” Diamond Tiara said as she positioned herself in front of a small stepladder.

“But-”

“I said dump that icy water on me already!”

“Oaky! Okay!” Silver Spoon climbed up the stepladder and held the tub over Diamond Tiara’s head. Her friend closed her eyes as Silver Spoon tipped the tub upside-down, allowing the block of solid ice to fall on Diamond Tiara’s head, knocking the girl to the ground.

All was silent for several seconds.

“W-Was that supposed to happen?” Silver Spoon asked.

“W-What the… What did you do?!” Apple Bloom screamed frantically.

“I-I did what she said! I dumped a tub of icy water on her!”

“ICY AS IN COLD, NOT FROZEN SOLID!”

“… Oh.” Silver Spoon flustered and stepped backwards off of the ladder. “Y-Yeah, that makes more sense…”

“Someone call an ambulance!” Sweetie Belle shouted.

“Ah don’t have a phone!” Apple Bloom cried.

“You’re holding one right now!” Sweetie Belle retorted, pointing to the iPhone in Apple Bloom’s hand.

“… THIS THING’S A PHONE, TOO?!” Apple Bloom punched three buttons on her phone and called the emergency services. “Hey, we need an ambulance over at Canterlot High School, fast! … Y-Yeah, it is an ice bucket challenge accident… Okay, we’ll wait. Bye.”





Diamond Tiara groaned as she stirred. Everything hurt. The harsh sunlight greeted her as she opened her eyes and it took a while before she could properly make out where she was. It looked like the school nurse’s office, only much bigger.

“Where am I?” she asked as she sat up, wincing at the pain running through her head. “Owwww… What happened?”

“You were knocked out,” a voice said, startling the young girl. Diamond Tiara turned to find a woman in a white lab coat approaching her. “Remember? You were doing the ice bucket challenge and there was an accident.”

“Ohhhh… My head is killing me.”

“It’ll do that. For now, just take it easy.” The woman cleared her throat and sat down beside Diamond Tiara on the bed. “My name is Aay Anee. I’m a doctor. There’s something that I need to tell you that might make you pass out from the shock, so I need you to brace yourself.”

“Where’s Silver Spoon?” Diamond Tiara asked, looking around the room that she was in. “And Daddy?”

The doctor bit her lip and said, “That’s just it. They’re… not here.” After taking a deep breath, Aay added, “You were frozen in time, Diamond Tiara. You’re in the future now.”

“… Whaaaaaaaaat?!”

“Deep breath, Diamond. Deep breaths!”

Diamond Tiara took deep, heavy breaths until she had calmed down. “H-How can I be in the future?!”

“Remember, you were hit by solid ice,” Aay said.

“That’s not how it works!”

“Now now. Working yourself up over it won’t help any. I’m terribly sorry, but you are presently one hundred years in the future from when you attempted the ice bucket challenge.”

“T-This can’t be… I think I need a drink.”

“Here, have some future water,” the doctor said, offering a glass of water to the girl.

Diamond Tiara cocked an eyebrow before taking the glass and sipping the water, and then chugging the entire thing.

“Do you need to eat? I’ve brought some future bread with me.”

“Do you just put ‘future’ before everything now?”

“Of course not! That would just be silly,” Aay said. “Now try to eat and I’ll give take you down to City Hall to meet the mayor in my future car.”

Aay offered Diamond Tiara some bread which the young girl accepted and nibbled at slowly. ‘Daddy… Silver Spoon…’ A small teardrop rolled down Diamond Tiara’s face.





“How do you like future Canterlot?” the doctor asked. “Here we have the future bakery, and there is the future post office.”

“And over there is the future DMV?” Diamond Tiara asked.

“Nah, that’s just the DMV still. They never advanced.”

“… So what exactly is different about this world compared to where I came from?” Diamond Tiara asked. “I mean, the cars float, but that’s about it.”

“There’s plenty different. First of all, the sky gets darker much earlier. It’s only noon right now you know?”

Diamond Tiara looked up to the night sky with her eyes wide open in shock. “R-Really?”

“And of course there’s the problem we’re having with the raptorsharks.”

“Raptorsarks,” Diamond Tiara deadpanned.

“But it’s okay so long as you avoid the long seaweed. Oh, that’s another thing: over seventy percent of future Earth is underwater.”

Diamond Tiara was about to argue how dumb that was before the car that she was in was plunged underwater. All around her there were people swimming and driving and fish swimming about.

“We’re almost there,” Aay said. The mayor’s office is just after we resurface.”

Not too long after that the car surfaced again and stopped outside of a large, onion-shaped white building. “Is this it?” Diamond Tiara asked.

“Yup. Let’s go in. The mayor has been expecting you.”

The two walked in and were greeted by a woman in a green suit. She led the two down a long hallway where they eventually came across a room guarded by double doors. They entered and walked inside, where they found a large, green creature sitting behind a desk.

“I-Is that-”

“Oh, right. Our leader in this time is Shrek,” Aay said. “He’s also supreme overlord of our world and essentially God.”

“Aye, what’s this we got here then?” Shrek asked in what may or may not have been a Scottish dialect. “Is this the wee child I’ve been hearin’ about?”

“Yes Lord Shrek. She comes from another time and is lost and confused.”

“Put her to work doan in the mines,” Shrek said. “We’ve got enough problems with overcrowding as it is.”

“What?!” Diamond Tiara shouted. “You can’t make me work down in some filthy mines! I’m Diamond Dazzle Tiara, daughter of Filthy Rich and idol of Canterlot High School!”

“Oh ye think ye’re big do ye?” Shrek asked, his Scottish dialect probably getting further and further off the mark as this story went on. “Well lemme tell yoo something: ye’re nothin’ in this world! Ya father is dead, ya family’s no more, and ya aven’t got a dime to yer name.”

“I have one hundred thousand dollars in my wallet as we speak.”

“Dollars are worthless in this time, Missy! We use credits here!”

“Dollars will do fine,” Diamond insisted.

“No, they won’t! And if ya even think of makin’ another Star Wars reference I’ll squeeze the jelly from yer eyes! Now get out of my swamp!”

“Let’s go, Diamond Tiara,” Aay said as she grabbed Diamond’s shoulder and dragged the girl away.

No amount of screaming or kicking helped, but that certainly didn’t stop Diamond from trying. “NO! GET OFF OF ME! LET ME GO, LET ME GO! DADDY, HELP! DADDYYYYYYY!” Tears fell down Diamond Tiara’s eyes as she grabbed onto the door handle as she was leaving the room, fighting with all her strength to not be dragged away. “NO, I DON’T WANT TO GO! DADDY, SILVER SPOON, HELP ME!” Diamond Tiara lost her grip and the last thing she saw as the doors close on her was Shrek waving goodbye with a sadistic smile on his face. “NOOOOOO!”





“NO, STOP!” Diamond Tiara screamed as she bolted upright, panting and sweating. “W-What?” she asked as she looked around. Once again, she was in a much larger version of the school nurse’s office, only this time it was a lot brighter and… was that a Nintendo in the corner?

“Diamond!” Filthy Rich shouted as she ran into the room. He ran to Diamond Tiara’s side immediately and held his daughter. “Are you okay?! I heard you screaming and came as soon as I could!”

“D-Daddy?” Diamond Tiara asked, her voice filled with shock and confusion. “Y-You’re alive?”

“Of course I am,” Filthy Rich said. He moved his head back, showing that tears had been running down his face. “It’s you I’ve been worried about all this time. You’ve been out for two whole days!”

“Two days… What happened?”

“It was… an accident at school,” Filthy Rich said, his eyes shifting to his left for a moment.

Diamond Tiara looked to her right to find a number of cards on her bedside. She looked through them one-by-one. They were all from her classmates and her family. Silver Spoon, Zippoorwhill, Alula, her mother and father, her grandparents, her teacher… even the Mercenaries had wrote out a collective card between them. Silver Spoon’s card in particular stood out.

“It says she’s sorry,” Diamond Tiara muttered. “That it’s… her fault?”

“I-It was an accident,” Filthy Rich stuttered. “Please, don’t be mad at her. She stayed by your side for the entire day yesterday and only went home after she fell asleep and her parents collected her.”

“… I don’t get what’s going on, but I’d never be mad at Silver Spoon,” Diamond Tiara said. “I’m just glad I’m not stuck in some dystopian, underwater future where everything is prefixed with ‘future’ and I’m forced to work down in the mines.”

Filthy Rich laughed, though he wasn’t sure why. “Me too, honey. Me too,” he said holding his daughter again and she hugged him back. “Don’t worry. It’s all ogre now.”

Diamond Tiara nodded… and then her eyes widened.





Meanwhile!

“C’mon, Sunny! Look happier!” Pinkie Pie pleaded as she pointed her camera to Sunset Shimmer, who simply frowned back with her right middle finger pointed towards the lens.

“Anyone you wanna nominate before you get soaked?” Rainbow Dash asked with a grin as she held the bucket of water over Sunset Shimmer’s head.

“… Celestia,” she said. “Three times.”

“… Ah don’t think y’can-” Applejack began.

“Three. Times.” Sunset repeated, flames burning in her eyes. And then she was soaked.
> Prompt #15 - Diamond Tiara's First Kiss
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prompt: Diamond Tiara gets weirded out.





It was a nice, sunny afternoon in Ponyville. Diamond Tiara was travelling happily through the town with her best friend Silver Spoon… or she would have been, that is, had Silver Spoon not been so foolish as to catch the ponypox and be confined to her room for the entire weekend. Instead, Diamond Tiara was invited to a picnic by Alula, and having nothing else to do that day, she decided to accept.

She was used to having picnics with her father or with Silver Spoon, not with Alula. The blanket was almost too small for the two of them to sit on together, and it clearly wasn’t luxury cashmare. The cups were made of paper, not of porcelain, which Alula told her was because they were ‘recyclable’, whatever that meant. Instead of tea they had juice, instead of potato chips they had some knock-off ‘health-conscience’ variant, and the sandwiches had none of their crusts removed.

If it wasn’t such a pleasant day outside, Diamond Tiara would have just left long ago. Also the juice was kind of okay, she guessed. Thankfully, Diamond had the good sense to carry her Game Colt Advanced with her, the latest in hoofheld gaming and the ultimate in time-passing technology.

“And I heard that Berry Pinch got grounded for life when her mother found out!” Alula finished with a hearty laugh.

“Oh yeah, totally,” Diamond Tiara responded, only half-listening as she focussed more on capturing the little creature on her screen.

“Y’know, I really like hanging out with you,” Alula said, blushing lightly.

“Yeah, ditto,” Diamond replied in a bored tone.

Alula shuffled uncomfortably in her spot before scooting just a smidge closer to Diamond Tiara. “N-Not to sound rude to Silver Spoon or anything, but I really prefer it when it’s just the two of us…”

Diamond Tiara nodded and continued to focus on her game. ‘… Wait, what did she say?’

“I mean, you’re just so smart and so… pretty…”

Diamond Tiara slowly turned her attention towards Alula with a raised eyebrow. “Uhh… thanks?”

Alula’s eyes met Diamond, and she leaned a little closer. “A-Actually, I have something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

“W-What?” Diamond asked, backing away cautiously.

Alula’s face turned even more red as she swallowed a lump in her throat. “I…” Alula closed her eyes, took a deep breath and moved forwards, her lips honing in on Diamond’s. At the last moment she faltered, and redirected her attack on Diamond’s cheek.

After pulling back, Alula found Diamond staring wide-eyed, stuttering, “Wha-wha-wha-wha-wha…”

Alula fidgeted about as she averted her eyes. “um, I-I love you!” she shouted quickly.

“Wha-wha-wha-wha-wha…”

“E-Ever since I first saw you, I-I always thought you were so beautiful, so great…”

“…”

“Um, I know this is really sudden, but uh, w-would you like to… b-be my fillyfriend?”

“…”

“D-Diamond?” Alula looked back up to find that the space that was once occupied by Diamond Tiara was now vacant. Tears began to well as Alula screamed and slammed her head repeatedly into the ground. “Stupid Alula! Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

“… I don’t know what she’s doing, but it looks fun!” Snails shouted as he watched from afar, before proceeding to slam his head into the ground repeatedly with laughter.





“DAAAAAAAAAAAADDYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!”

“… Yes, Dear?” Filthy Rich asked, turning the page in his newspaper as he felt his leg suddenly becoming heavier and shaking seemingly on its own.

“Daddy, you know when you told me not to let a colt kiss me until I’m older?”

Filthy Rich lowered his newspaper and looked down at his daughter. “Yeeeeeees?”

“Well, what if it’s a filly?”

“… I’m sorry?”

“Alula kissed me on the cheek and told me she loves me and asked if I wanted to be her fillyfriend!” Diamond Tiara shouted, slapping the newspaper out of her father’s hooves and jumping onto his lap. “Is that normal?! Do we need to sue her?!”

“C-Calm down, Diamond,” Filthy Rich said, lifting his daughter and lowering her gently to the ground. “Ooooookay, so your friend Alula told you that she loves you…” Diamond Tiara nodded her head frantically.

“I thought fillies aren’t supposed to like other fillies! Isn’t it… weird?”

Filthy Rich sighed. He knew he should have just exposed Diamond Tiara to Silver Spoon’s ponypox, but nooooo, he wanted a ‘doctor’s opinion’ first. “Look, Diamond Tiara, I’m sure that you must be confused right now-”

“My life is a lie!”

“-But there’s no need to panic!” Filthy Rich quickly added. “I’m sure that Alula didn’t mean to put such pressure on you. As for fillies liking other fillies, there’s nothing wrong with that at all.”

Diamond Tiara seemed to calm down as she asked, “There isn’t?”

“So long as two ponies love each other, that’s all that matters.”

Diamond Tiara looked down for a second, and then looked back up and said, “Huh. But, I don’t think I like Alula that way.”

“And that’s fine,” Filthy Rich said with a smile. “Just be sure to let her down easily, okay?”

“I mean, she’s so poor, y’know?”

“… You know that there’s more to love than money, right?”

Diamond Tiara tilted her head. “Like what?”

Filthy Rich sighed again. “You’ll find out when you’re older,” he said, reclining back into his chair and reaching for his newspaper.

Diamond Tiara huffed with a pout and turned to leave. “You always say that,” she muttered as she stormed out of the room.





“‘When you’re older’. What does that even mean?!” Diamond Tiara slammed a hoof onto her table and took a sip of her milkshake. “Stupid Daddy…”

“I know, right?” Diamond Tiara turned her head to find a small brown colt sitting at her table. She recognised him as Button Mash, a colt just one year younger than her, but she didn’t know much about him other than he was the town’s biggest cry-baby. “My mum’s always like, ‘Put that down, Button, you’ll break it!’, ‘Don’t play with your father’s moustache, Button, it’s expensive!’! She treats me like a little kid!”

“Um, why are you sitting here?” Diamond asked.

“Oh, I saw you playing on your Game Colt and was wondering what game you were playing,” Button said, revealing his own Game Colt Advanced. A blue cartridge was poking out of the cartridge slot, in contrast to the yellow one in Diamond’s.

“You’re playing Luna version?” Diamond Tiara asked. “Huh. I thought I was the only one who had this game.”

“Me too!” Button exclaimed excitedly. “I’m glad I didn’t get Celestia version now!”

“Doesn’t really matter. Twilight version is coming out soon anyway.”

“Yeeeeah, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to get it. I mean, I spent all my allowance on other games this month and I’ve got sooooo many piled up at home!”

“Oh really?” Diamond Tiara asked, now intrigued. “I bet my collection is bigger.”

“My collection goes up to the ceiling!” Button Mash said, waving his forelegs for emphasis.

“My collection fills up my entire closet, and I can play it all on a screen as big as the sun!”

“Well, you’re rich, so it’s not fair!” Button retorted. “Besides, how many of them have you completed?”

Diamond Tiara bit her lip. Between hanging out with Silver Spoon and going to fancy parties with her dad, she had neglected a good portion of her collection. “A-A lot,” was all that she could answer with.

“My Gamerscore is fifty thousand,” Button said with a proud grin.

Diamond Tiara’s eyes widened and her heart skipped a beat. “F-Fifty…” Diamond Tiara felt herself getting warmer and took a quick drink of her milkshake to cool down. ‘Holy Celestia! I think I get what Dad was saying now about there being more to love than money!’

“Uh, you okay?”

Diamond Tiara grabbed Button Mash by the collar and said, “You! You’re my coltfriend from this point on!”

“W-What? But I-”

“Well don’t just sit there looking stupid! Invite me over to your house so I can meet your Gamersco- I mean, meet your parents!”

Button Mash looked around nervously. “I, uh, um… Alright,” he said with a nod, before climbing out of his seat with Diamond Tiara, who proceeded to lock hooves with him as the two walked out of the store together, earning ‘dawww’s from the patrons around them. ‘… Wait. Rich fillyfriend equals more videogames plus more pizza money which equals happy times!’ Button grinned upon reaching the startling conclusion, holding Diamond Tiara’s hoof tighter with resolve. “Sweeeet.”
> Prompt #16 - Escape From Hellview
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prompt: Song. Diamond sings, a song inspires you, etc.





A/N: This story is set in the changeling alternate universe shown in the S5 finale.





Diamond Tiara and Apple Bloom had been marching for several days though the desolate wilderness that used to be Equestria's lush, beautiful plains. After escaping the changeling ambush on their camp and fleeing the Everfree Forest, the two fillies were left on their own to wander aimlessly through the harsh, open territory.

The changelings were known to patrol every three hours, and so the two fillies would stop to take a break in some ditch or some cave. They would have to stay quiet and not light any fires to keep warm. There would be times that the changelings would catch sight of them, forcing them to turn and run the other way until their little legs had carried them far enough away.

Their food supply was running low, their coats and their manes were filthy, and their tolerance for each other had reached its limit. All it would take was one more nudge. Just one little push in the wrong direction would make one filly snap at the other.

That nudge came from Apple Bloom accidentally bumping her hoof against Diamond Tiara. The other filly snapped her gaze at her and shouted, "Stop touching me!"

Apple Bloom narrowed her eyes and retorted, "Ah only tapped you once, and it was an accident!"

"Well then stand further away! Your bright coat is gonna give me away, anyway."

Apple Bloom scoffed. "Like you're one ta talk! I bet it's your coat that gave us away all those times ta begin with!"

"You trying to start something, blank flank?!"

The two stopped and butted heads, growling at each other. Eventually, Apple Bloom backed up and sighed. She knew that she had to be the voice of reason. She knew that she had to act as her older sister would in this situation.

"Look, we can't afford ta be at each other's throats," Apple Bloom said. "We have ta get somewhere where there's lots of cover an' lie low."

"Why?" Diamond Tiara snapped. "It's not like there's anypony who'll come to save us."

"Don't say that. Princess Celestia'll-"

"She's dead," Diamond Tiara said. "I heard the grown-ups talking about it. Princess Luna is, too."

"You're wrong," Apple Bloom insisted. "The princesses are invincible! Nopony can defeat 'em, let alone a changeling!"

Suddenly, the two fillies heard the sounds of leaves rattling nearby. They turned towards the hilltop before them and slowly scaled it, peering over the edge to find a group of five changelings loitering about. The two fillies gulped, and then the changelings turned in their direction.

The two immediately took off, running as fast as they could back the way they had come. Diamond Tiara's blood ran cold, and her legs felt like lead, but she kept running. Apple Bloom was ahead of her, and she feared that the other filly would leave her behind. "W-Wait!" she shouted, tears in her eyes. She looked over her shoulder and then tripped over a rock on the ground, cutting her leg as she tumbled to a stop.

Looking back up, she found that the changelings had not pursued her… yet. She climbed slowly to her hooves, her left foreleg stinging. She looked down. Blood was trickling from the wound and dripping onto the ground. She sniffed, and looked around for any signs of Apple Bloom.

"Apple Bloom?!" Diamond Tiara's voice echoed throughout the air, and she clasped a hoof over her mouth. Dejected, Diamond Tiara turned around and started to walk. Although, it was more of a limp. She didn't know where to go, or even where she was, but something stubborn inside of her told her that she simply had to move. That she simply had to escape.

She walked for what seemed to be miles, panting, aching. She stopped as she saw a building up ahead. She recognised the building, and the ones around it. Ponyville, or what remained of it.

She entered the village, walking past the decaying houses and stepping onto long blades of grass. The Everfree Forest was growing wild, stretching towards the ruins of the old town.

The wind blew through, and something creaked above Diamond Tiara's head. She looked up, and wished that she hadn't. Hanging from the decaying trees above her, swaying in the cold wind… the dried-up husks of ponies that used to live there served as reminders to all about who now ruled these lands.

Adults and foals – none were spared. Once they were drained of all they had, they were tied by the necks and left to dry up in this merciless wasteland. She recognised some of the adults as shopkeepers or her daddy's clients. She recognised Miss Cheerilee and Miss Twilight Sparkle, the quiet librarian who often assisted her teacher in the classroom.

Of course, she recognised every single foal as they had been, at one point, her classmates. Dinky Hooves, Snips and Snails, Rumble, Ruby Pinch… Silver Spoon. Her best friend in the entire world, who wasn't fortunate enough to have escaped Ponyville when the changelings attacked.

This was the reason that she ran away from the Everfree Forest. This was the reason that she had been fighting to survive for several days. It was so she wouldn't end up like this, too. So she would have to suffer such a gruesome fate.

She heard the sounds of crying nearby, and found Apple Bloom at the entrance to the old school building. Besides missing a roof, it hadn’t been hit too bad in the attack. Outside of the building, however, was the reason for Apple Bloom's tears. Her own best friends, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle… never made it out of Ponyville that day, either.

She approached Apple Bloom and placed a hoof onto the shoulder. Apple Bloom turned around and clutched onto Diamond Tiara, sobbing into her foreleg. The two remained there in silence for what seemed like minutes.

A cold wind passed over Diamond Tiara's spine as Apple Bloom's tears seemed to ease up. "We should get inside," Diamond Tiara said. "They'll be hunting for us soon, and I'm bleeding. Miss Zecora said they can smell blood from far away."

"Are Applejack and Big Mac, and the others… like this, too?"

"I don't know. No?" Diamond Tiara looked around uneasily. She found a couple of ponies dressed in armour lying on the ground, with weapons at their hooves. She picked up a crossbow and stared at it. She had seen ponies use these before. "We have to go. Come on."

Apple Bloom nodded, and rose to her hooves. The two made their ways into the schoolhouse, huddling into a corner together for warmth. Apple Bloom rested her head on Diamond Tiara's shoulder and tried not to sleep, but her eyes were fluttering. Diamond Tiara placed one hoof on Apple Bloom's. It seemed to offer some comfort, but only until she heard the screeching and the hoofsteps outside.

She clutched her crossbow with both hooves and pointed it towards the door. The sounds drew closer. She wasn't going to wind up like her friends. She was going to escape from this place. She was going to escape from Equestria and live. It was the only thing that she could do.

The floorboards creaked.
> Prompt #17 - E
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prompt: Silver Spoon gets a mysterious letter (provided by Shannon Chan-Kent, the voice of Silver Spoon)





It started with a simple letter. As Silver Spoon woke up that morning, she found a strange envelope sitting on her desk, no words, no stamps, no wax seals… It was just there, waiting to be opened until she had finished her cereal, taken out the garbage, completed her homework, cleaned her bedroom and made five hundred bits on the stock exchange.

"Oh, maybe I should open this," she said as she grabbed the strange envelope and opened it- "OW! Paper cut…"

… As she opened it, and pulled out the contents. A single piece of paper. Blank, A4, and folded twice. She unfolded it, and was confused by what was written on it. For on the paper, was a single letter: 'E'.

"Huh. Weird." Tossing the paper into the bin, Silver Spoon decided to forget the strange letter and headed outside.





Walking through Ponyville, Silver Spoon couldn't help but smile at the beautiful day that it was. The sun was shining bright and there were barely any clouds in the sky. Just a few here-and-there, and… one shaped like the letter 'E'.

"… Surely a coincidence," she said as she adjusted her glasses and continued onwards. She passed through the market area, where she found a stall of apples headed by Applejack. There were red apples mixed with green ones, and the green ones were arranged in an 'E' shape.

"… Okay, that's creepy," she muttered, walking faster until she found a mirror being carried by two ponies across the street. She stopped to let them pass, and gasped as she noticed how some dust was on the mirror in an 'E' shape.

She started to trot after the mirror was gone, panic setting in as she looked at the ponies around her. They were returning strange looks of their own, and she gasped as she saw one pony with an 'E'-shaped bald spot on his flank.

"Excuse me." Silver Spoon stopped and turned to find Ginger Snap, dressed in her filly scout's outfit, standing before her. There was a wagon full of papers behind the filly. "Could you fill out this short survey please? It's about the environment and how we, as a community, could help to improve it!"

"S-Sure…" Silver Spoon took one of the papers and a pen from the filly, and filled out the multiple-choice questions. It was only after she had ticked the last box that she realised… each of her answers was 'E'. "What is going on?!"

Silver Spoon sprinted through the town, sweat running down her brow, until she had to stop to catch her breath, a mere ten feet from where she had started. She really needed to work out more, but more importantly than that, she raised her head to find Pinkie Pie carrying several balloons, all of which had the letter 'E' on them.

She bolted away from the pink pony, running until she accidentally bumped into a purple mare and fell onto her back. "S-Sorr-" Silver Spoon shivered as she looked up. Twilight Sparkle smiled down gently at the filly, closing her book so that she could help her up. The book's title, though… was 'E'.

"NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!" Silver Spoon kicked the book away and turned around, running faster than she ever thought possible. She found Rainbow Dash flying alongside her.

"Wow, you're fast! Wanna race? Race ya to the water tower!"

And without another word, Rainbow Dash was off. Silver Spoon looked over to the tower, where she found a giant 'E' painted along the side. She bit her lip and skidded to a halt, before turning and running so fast that she could kill a werewolf.

"MUST… ESCAPE… E…"

As she ran, she found that her original destination, Diamond Tiara's manor, was in sight. However, guarding the entrance, was a giant wooden 'E'. Fire burning in her eyes, Silver Spoon picked up the pace and screamed as she jumped, piercing through the offending letter and setting it on fire with the sheer force of her headbutt, and then continued through the gates of the Rich manor, where salvation was surely waiting for her.





"And so that was my day," Silver Spoon said, sighing as she slumped into Diamond Tiara's table. The other filly was pouring herself some tea. "It all started with that letter. Ever since then I've seen 'E' everywhere!"

"Gee-whiz, Silver Spoon," Diamond Tiara said. "This sure sounds like a myster-E." Diamond Tiara took a sip of her tea as Silver Spoon raised her head.

"… Diamond Tiara?"

"Yes, Silver Spoon?"

"Did you set this whole thing up just so that you could make that pun?"

"I might have."

"… Diamond Tiara?"

"Yes, Silver Spoon?"

"Can I go home now, and not speak to you for an entire week?"

"You may."

And so, Silver Spoon rose from her seat and left the room. Diamond Tiara raised her tea to her lips and took another sip, sighing as the sweet taste flooded into her mouth.
> Prompt #18 - Diamond Tiara Foalsits
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prompt: Diamond Tiara volunteers/does charity work! (provided by Chantal Strand, the voice of Diamond Tiara)





"So then I said, 'Yeah, well you have to budget your food!'!" Diamond Tiara laughed and, though they didn't know why, Pumpkin and Pound Cake laughed along. "Anyway, point is, money is happiness. So if you guys wanna be happy, stay in my good graces, okay?"

Mrs. Cake walked into the room just as Diamond Tiara finished her story, and smiled as her two babies both reached out for their sitter's attention. "And how are my two little angels doing today?" she asked.

Diamond Tiara picked up Pumpkin Cake, not trusting Pound after his little accident the previous week, and turned to Mrs. Cake. "I was just discussing business with my future partners," Diamond Tiara, picking up a toy to give to the pouting Pound Cake. It seemed to cheer him up. "When your mommy and daddy go to the old ponies' farm, you guys'll have the chance to join me in taking over this town!"

Mrs. Cake giggled uncomfortably as Diamond Tiara shared a scheming look with her children. "Well, the uh, 'farm', is still many years away from us yet."

"Wow, they've gotten so big." Diamond Tiara gasped as Twilight Sparkle walked into the room, following Mrs. Cake as towards a chest at the other side of the room. "I can still remember when they were just newborns. They were so small then… Hello Diamond Tiara."

"H-H-Hello, Princess Twilight!" Diamond Tiara straightened her tiara and put on her biggest smile. "Are you here to save the town from a big monster with your magic?!"

"Uhhh, not today." Mrs. Cake handed Twilight a book from the chest. It was covered in drool and bite marks and the princess sighed. "I loaned Pinkie Pie this picture book, thinking it was for her, but it turns out she wanted it for the children…"

Mrs. Cake regarded Twilight with an odd look. "You thought that this book was for Pinkie Pie? But it's for clearly for kindergartners…"

"… Uh-huh." Twilight took the book carefully in her magic, grimacing at the drool dripping from the crinkled pages within. "Well, guess I could order a new copy from Canterlot and have this one recycled…"

"I'm terribly sorry."

Twilight shook her head and smiled. "It's fine. I know Pinkie's heart was in the right place." Twilight turned to the children sitting nearby, watching as Diamond Tiara quieted them down and prepared an afternoon tea party. Of course, the 'tea' was juice for the two babies. "And I could never stay mad at those two little angels. It's amazing how well-behaved they are now, compared to when Pinkie Pie first sat for them."

"It's thanks to Diamond Tiara," Mrs. Cake said. "She's got a way ponies, or so her father keeps telling me."

Twilight hummed in thought. "Say, Diamond Tiara?"

"Yes?" Diamond asked, her head shooting up to meet the princess' gaze.

"You really like to foalsit, don't you?"

Diamond Tiara nodded her head slowly. "It's… alright. Pound and Pumpkin listen to every word I say so it's not as bad as I thought it would be. Why?"

"Well, how would you like to sit for a princess?"

Diamond Tiara dropped her cup and stared wide-eyed at Twilight. "Eh?"

"You see, the Crystal Empire's been pretty quiet lately, and Shining Armor and Cadance are thinking of taking the chance to have a weekend off, just the two of them, but that would mean their usual foalsitter, Sunburst, would have to fill in for them, and they'd have to find somepony else to watch Flurry Heart.

"Soooo… what d'you think? Wanna sit for the future princess of the Crystal-"

"YES!" Diamond Tiara jumped up and danced around the table, drawing odd looks from her two charges. "YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES-"

"I'll take that as a yes," Twilight giggled as she watched the silly continue her dance. "Well then, I'll write Shining Armor a letter letting him know you're interested and I'll stop over at your house later with the details…" She wasn't sure if Diamond Tiara had heard her or not, so she simply shrugged and bade farewell to Mrs. Cake. 'Kids. Getting excited over the simplest- Oh my gosh, I almost forgot that today's the day of the new Daring Do book! BEST. DAY. EVER!'

As Diamond Tiara finally calmed down, her mind raced with thoughts of herself, in the palace of the Crystal Empire, sitting for a princess… whilst surrounded by guards, judging her every move and writing down her every action to later report to her soldier father and alicorn mother and-

Suddenly, Diamond Tiara's legs felt like jelly.





"You must be Diamond Tiara."

"Y-Yeah…" Diamond regarded the strange, unkempt stallion with a look of confusion and unease. He was supposedly a famous wizard, and the royally-appointed foalsitter of Flurry Heart, but he looked more like a hobo wearing a bathrobe. "Uhhh, are you Sunburst?"

The stallion laughed, and then coughed rather indignantly. Diamond was taken aback and he muttered a quick apology. "I know I probably don't look like what you were expecting. My work hasn't afforded me much time to care for my own self." Sunburst's horn lit up, and a baby filly floated up from behind his head, giggling as she waved her arms about. "Flurry Heart, this is Diamond Tiara. She'll be playing with you today. Say hello."

Diamond Tiara watched as Flurry Heart was levitated towards her, and the filly simply laughed and waved. Diamond Tiara smiled and bowed in respect. "It is an honour, Princess."

Sunburst placed the filly gently on Diamond's back, and offered her a sheet of paper. "She can be a little fussy when she eats, so you might need to try being a little forceful. Princess Cadance has been reading to her before her naps every night, to prepare her for preschool."

"At her age?" Diamond asked incredulously. "Wow. Princesses are amazing."

"If there are any problems, you can ask one of her guards." Sunburst motioned towards two Royal Guards, who stood at attention behind the filly. Diamond Tiara swallowed hard. "And if you really need something, you can summon me by asking one of the servants. But only if it's an emergency."

"I will," Diamond said, wincing as she felt Flurry Heart tugging on her mane. She wanted to turn around and tell the filly to stop, but… yelling at a princess probably wasn't the best course of action. Grinning through it all, Diamond Tiara simply waved as Sunburst left.





Flurry Heart proved to be every bit as fussy as Sunburst had warned, and feeding her proved to be no easy chore. Diamond Tiara had tried everything she knew, from pretending the spoon was a train to pleading and to attempting to slip the filly a bribe. Unfortunately, Flurry Heart did not understand the concept of money yet.

The only option left was to trick her to open her mouth and force her to eat, but… she couldn't exactly do that with those two guards standing behind her. Still, if she didn't do something, the princess would starve, and it would be all her fault!

"C'mon, Princess. Pleeeease?" she asked quietly. Flurry Heart simply crossed her forelegs and turned her head away, her mouth sealed tight. Diamond groaned. "You have to eat something! You won't be able to sleep if you're hungry."

Flurry Heart turned her head to the side and reached out for something with her hooves. Following her gaze, Diamond's eyes turned to the freezer nearby. The walk-in freezer was as big as the kitchen itself, and through the crystal door she could see tubs of ice-cream in the direction of Flurry's hooves.

"You want ice-cream?" Diamond asked, frowning. Flurry Heart smiled and nodded. "But… last time I gave the twins ice-cream, I got in trouble…"

"Is something the matter, Miss Tiara?" one of the guards asked, making Diamond Tiara jump.

She turned around and found the guard staring at her, his eyebrow raised. Gulping, she shook her head and laughed it off. "N-Not at all! Uh, the princess wants ice-cream! Go and get some for her!" The guards exchanged a questioning look. "Didn't you hear? Go and get some ice-cream for Princess Flurry Heart, at once!"

The guard turned back to look at the filly, and asked, "Are you… sure?"

"Of course I am!" Diamond Tiara replied. There was no question that ice-cream was what the princess craved.

The guard hesitated, before nodding. "Should we?" his partner whispered.

"I'll only get a little," the first guard replied, keeping his voice low. "A little should be fine. Unless you think you can get the princess to eat?" The second guard frowned and shook her head. "I'll take responsibility. Don't worry."



The guards watched as the kitchen quickly became a fine example of modern art. The kind with colours splattered all over the canvas with little-to-no regard for actual artistic vision, and the happy baby filly indulged herself in the frozen goodness of her ice-cream.

Eventually, she had had her fill, and Diamond Tiara ordered the guards to clean up the mess whilst she took the now-sticky filly to the bathroom for an early bath. "How can a princess make such a mess?" she asked, but her only response was the tug of magical energy on her mane as she carried the princess on her back. She winced, attempting to hold in the urge to yell as she would have done to anypony else.

Getting the princess to bathe proved to be as much of a chore as getting her to eat; Flurry Heart behaved like a cat the moment her eyes met the water, and her wings propelled her into the air, Diamond Tiara holding on tightly as she was taken on a short journey around the bathroom.

Eventually, though, the princess tired, and landed gently onto the floor. Diamond swept her up and finally managed to place her into the bathtub, all resistance gone. "Here, Princess," she said, offering the filly a plastic ship to play with.

Flurry Heart took the ship greedily and proceeded to splash it about in the water. The water hit Diamond's coat and her mane, and some also got into her eyes. "Ah! Watch it!"

Flurry Heart gave a momentary questioning look to her sitter, who quickly gasped and covered her mouth with her hooves. Slowly, Diamond lowered her hooves, and said, "I-I mean, watch it, please?"

Flurry Heart simply laughed and continued splashing water, her other hoof joining the fun as her wings acted as propellers. Though they did little to propel the sitting filly, they did a wonderful job of flooding the once-elegant bathroom.

Groaning, Diamond Tiara finished washing the filly's mane and coat and then gently lifted her out of the tub. After drying her quickly with a towel, she turned to the two guards standing just outside. "You two clean all this up," she ordered, and as they obeyed, she grabbed a second towel to dry her own body. Turning to Flurry Heart, she said, "Please wait here, Princess. Please?"

She interpreted the filly's clapping as a 'yes' and then reached over to drain the bath, before bringing the towel to her mane. She watched as the guards mopped the bathroom's floor, and shut her eyes as the towel reached her face.

Hearing a giggle, Diamond pulled the towel away and opened her eyes, giving them a second to adjust before turning to where she had left Flurry Heart. She could see the filly crawling through the door leading out of the bathroom and she gasped. "Wait!" She started to give chase, but tripped over one of the buckets that the guards had brought with them. "Owww! Hey, what are you doing?! You should be watching the princess, not mopping floors!"

The two guards exchanged quick glances. "But you said-"

"C'mon! She's getting away!" The three ponies left the room and looked down both ends of the hallway outside. "There!" Diamond Tiara gave chase after Flurry Heart, catching up quickly… but then slowing to a walk as she followed at Flurry Heart's side. "Um, Princess? Could you please not crawl around on your own like that?"

The guards gave confused stares as they watched Diamond attempting to pick the filly up, only to give in to Flurry Heart's kicks and protests. "D'you think we should say something?" the guard on the right asked.

The other guard nodded. "Excuse me, Miss Tiara? I think that-"

"Wait! Princess!" Diamond Tiara gritted her teeth as she watched Flurry Heart crawl into the nursery. After dinner, Diamond was supposed to read to Flurry Heart before allowing her to play. It was what Princess Cadance had been doing to inspire growth in the filly, and it was what she had asked Diamond Tiara to do, and yet, her charge didn't want to adhere to the schedule at all.

'If I don't do what Princess Cadance asked, she'll be mad at me! But if I don't let Flurry Heart do what she wants, the guards will arrest me!' She looked nervously to the two guards and swallowed the lump in her throat. 'I-I've just gotta persuade her to want to read. Come on, Diamond. Manipulating ponies is what you do best.'

Flurry Heart wandered through the nursery, searching through the scattered toys for one that she desired. Meanwhile, Diamond Tiara followed, hoping to persuade the princess to see things her way.

"Princess, your mommy wants you to read. Doesn't that sound fun?" Flurry Heart seemed to not carte, as she continued her pilgrimage through the vast jungle of toys, stopping to inspect some blocks. "You want to grow up as smart and powerful as Princess Cadance, don't you?"

Again, Flurry Heart did not seem to care. Diamond sighed and fell to her haunches, attracting Flurry Heart's attention. The filly's eyes reflected the sparkling light that came from Diamond's tiara, and a quick spell levitated the piece of jewellery into the baby's hooves.

Diamond Tiara almost yelled and snatched her tiara back, but she managed to hold it in, instead gently reaching for it. Flurry Heart shielded it with her hooves. "P-Please give that back, Princess. It's not f-for playing with," she said, her eye twitching. Flurry Heart shook her head, turning around so that her back was to her sitter.

Diamond circled around the filly, taking deep breaths. "Please?" she asked, her shaking hooves frozen as they reached towards the filly. Flurry Heart lifted the tiara to her mouth and clamped down onto it, her laughter muffled as she slobbered over the expensive-looking headwear.

Gasping, Diamond's hooves shot out and yanked the tiara from the filly's mouth, startling her. "W-What are you doing?!" Fuming, Diamond Tiara shot to her hooves and glared down at the filly. "Don't go slobbering all over my tiara! And stop ignoring me, too!"

Huffing, the world seemed to be spinning to Diamond Tiara for several seconds. As her rage started to subside, she saw the tears on Flurry Heart's face and the sobs trying to break out. Panic began to set in, and then, Flurry Heart cried.

Turning to the guards, Diamond's heart pounding in her chest and her face as pale as a ghost, she did the only thing that she could think to do. She fell to her knees, bowed as low as possible, and shouted, "I'm sorry!" Tears of her own began to well up. "I'm so, so so sorry! P-Please banish me, or throw me in jail, o-or, or-"

One of the guards raised an eyebrow, motioning for his companion to tend to Flurry Heart as he approached Diamond Tiara. "Uh, Miss Tiara?"

"I'm sorry!"

The guard scratched the back of his neck. "Miss Tiara, why are you apologizing so much?"

"I-I yelled at the princess, and I made her c-cry, and, and… but it was an accident, I swear! I just- Princess Cadance wanted- and then my tiara- and-" Gasping for air, Diamond slammed her face onto the floor. "I'M SORRY!"

The guard sighed, and took a few cautious steps closer to the filly, careful not to spook her. "Miss Tiara, um… I'm not sure if I understand correctly, but… it seems as though the princes was misbehaving, and you were afraid to correct said behaviour, until it all finally exploded…"

"I'M SORRY!"

"Miss Tiara, scolding a filly who misbehaves is perfectly acceptable."

Diamond's tears stopped, and she slowly lifted her head to face the stallion speaking to her. "W-What? But, she's a princess, a-and I'm just-"

"Her sitter," the guard said. "And regardless of her rank, or your own, she is still only a baby filly, who does not know the difference what's right and what's wrong. She will step out of line, and it's up to grown-ups like you and Sunburst to make sure she stays of the righteous path." The guard smiled reassuringly. "After all, we don't want another Sombra on our hooves, now do we?"

Diamond Tiara sniffed, and rose to her hooves. "S-So it's okay to… to tell her 'no', a-and to deny her sweets, a-and-"

"Of course it is, and the princess will thank you for all of it when she is older. I assure you." He laughed, and added, "And no, we won't execute you for it."

"'Execute'?" Diamond asked, tilting her head.

His laughter died slowly, replaced by unease at the filly innocent, confused stare. He quickly looked over to where his partner was failing to quiet the princess' tears, and said, "A-Anyway, for now, I think that you should let the princess know you're no longer mad at her."

Diamond Tiara suddenly realised that the princess was still crying, and she rushed over to take charge, much to the relief of the bumbling guard who was too afraid to even touch the filly. Gently, and with only a moment of hesitation on her own part, Diamond took the filly into her forelegs and nestled her head against her chest.

The sobs began to slow, and Diamond patted Flurry Heart's head. "It's okay, Princess. I just got a little upset. That tiara's important to me, and I didn't like it when you took it without asking. You can understand that, right?" She thought she felt a nod, but couldn't be sure if the princess had actually understood her or not. "Anyway, I'm not mad at you. How could I be? You're a princess, which means you're loved by all."

Flurry Heart seemed to like that, giggling slightly, before belching and groaning. Diamond Tiara looked down to see the princess looking groggy, her face turning a slight shade of green.

"It was probably all that ice-cream she ate," one of the guards suggested, before saluting. "As I said before, I will take responsibility!"

Diamond Tiara sighed. "And that's what happens when you fuss over your food," Diamond said to the filly, who simply pouted and turned her head away. Diamond stood and lifted the filly onto her back. "Come on. Let's get your some warm milk. That's what Daddy does when I'm sick.

"And I trust you'll drink it without any fuss?" Flurry Heart nodded her head, and Diamond Tiara smiled. It felt weird to be treating a princess like such a baby, but then… as it turned out, she was just that. A baby. Suddenly, Diamond's legs seemed less heavy than they had been all day.





Sunburst entered the nursery quietly, a stack of scrolls levitating behind him in his magic as he searched the room. In the small crib at one side lay Princess Flurry Heart, sleeping soundly as her sitter, Diamond Tiara, slept on the stool beside her, an open book on the floor at her hooves.

Gently, he nudged Diamond Tiara to wake her up. He gestured for her to be silent and the two quietly left the room, careful not to wake the sleeping princess. "So, how did it go?" he asked once they were outside.

"It was great," Diamond replied, her energy suddenly coming back to her as she recalled her day. "I read to her like Princess Cadance asked, and she wanted me to keep going."

"Any problems?"

Diamond looked to the guards behind her, and then back to Sunburst. "Uh… A few, but…"

"But?"

"Well, I figured it out," Diamond said, waving her hoof dismissively. "I learned that I didn't have to treat her extra-special just because she's a princess. She didn't wanna eat or take a bath, but then I realised that she's just a baby, like I was, so sometimes I have to be firm and let her know she can't always have things her way!"

"Didn't I teach her that?" one of the guards whispered to his partner.

"This is why I'm never having kids," the other whispered back.

Sunburst smiled. "Well, it seems as though Flurry Heart has taken a liking to you, and you yourself have learned something today. I'll be sure to mention that to Twilight the next time I see her." He saw Diamond's face light up, and held in a laugh. "So, what would you say to foalsitting again? You know, in case I ever need some time off for my studies or anything."

"Foalsitting for the princess again?!" Diamond shouted, a grin spread across her face. "D'you even have to ask?"