> A Crown of Rhinestones
>  by TheDarkStarCzar
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Vandalisimo
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The briars and brambles had left a map of scratches across Silver Spoon's grey pelt. The uneven path bruised her when she had stumbled haphazardly down it, culminating in the fall that left slick trails of blood and tears to flow down her muzzle, and for all that she'd been too slow. Far, far too slow. Reckless shortcut or not, when she'd finally surmounted the knoll and crossed the schoolyard three fillies squinted in the dark at the damage that had been done, one more met her eyes, coldly, and then she trotted away, whistling.

She'd left Silver Spoon to cover for her, again, and trotted off blithely. She'd warned her off, begged her not to come here tonight yet sorting out this disaster fell exclusively to her. As she approached, panting and battered the three blank flanks eyed her suspiciously. She had to plead her case, Diamond Tiara's case and their expressions spoke of incredulity, shame and undisguised disgust. A trio of skeptics.

She thanked Celestia that she didn't really need to convince Scootaloo, because it was her that had the monopoly on outright loathing and was unlikely to be swayed. Objectively she thought Apple Bloom was the smartest of the three 'crusaders' or at least the most level headed and since the attack was meant for her it seemed likely that the other two would defer to her. It wouldn't be easy to convince her but Silver Spoon had to cover Diamond Tiara's flank no matter what it took. She sighed and muttered a few half hearted greetings, flailing for some tact to convince them to hush this up when Sweetie Belle interrupted, largely disarming her.

"Silver Spoon! You're hurt!" Sweetie Belle piped, noticing the steady trickle trailing from her left nostril, over her lip and dripping regularly off of her chin into the tough, lush playground grass that surrounded the school. Silver Spoon snorted, mumbled about it not mattering, that she was okay, but Sweetie Belle rummaged around her saddlebag, eventually coming up with a cloth, "Now just press it with the handkerchief and tilt your head back and pinch that nostril until it stops."

Scootaloo grunted and rolled her eyes, "You're not supposed to do it that way. Just roll up some of one corner and stick it right up there. You don't need to tilt your head back and if you pinch your nostril it'll just start bleeding again as soon as you let up."

Sweetie Belle screwed up her face, "Blegh! You're not supposed to go sticking things up your nose. Rarity says that's unladylike."

Then they were off on their own argument. It was unladylike indeed, but Silver Spoon followed Scootaloo's advice. She figured that the pegasus' scooter and rough and tumble lifestyle probably necessitated a more practical view of first aid as well as more actual experience implementing it. They exhausted their personal attacks on each other and eventually came to the question of why they were helping one of their sworn enemies anyway, for which they had no particularly good answer, other than Sweetie Belle's opinion about it being the proper thing to do. Apple Bloom had been conspicuously silent, thinking on the real matter.

"I know what you mean to do," Apple Bloom resolutely stated, "But t'ain't fair. Diamond Tiara's been pickin' at us forever but she's gone way too dang far this time. You're gonna try an' keep us from tellin', but I mean to say right off that we ain't gonna lie for nopony, 'specially not that filly."

"I'm not asking you to lie, but you don't want to be a bunch of tattle tales, do you?" Silver Spoon responded in a clipped nasal voice, automatically invoking the rule of the schoolyard.

"Frankly I just don't care too awful much about that and I'm dang tired of Diamond getting away clean everytime she pulls some horseapples like this! She can say what she wants about me, but bringin' mah family into it? I can't stand for that!" She stomped up to Silver Spoon and got in her face so close as to force her to drop the handkerchief for fear that she'd bump her leg and set her muzzle to bleeding all over again. Then she growled, "If'n you had anything to do with this, well I hope you get some'a what's coming to y'all too."

Silver Spoon stammered for a moment, torn between defending herself that she hadn't and taking the fall along with Diamond Tiara. Scootaloo interrupted this useless train of thought, "I don't know how she expected to get away with it anyway. She's gouged up the whole front of the school. Even if we didn't say anything everypony's going to know she did it, she's the only one who hates us enough to bother."

Silver Spoon didn't respond right away. It wasn't true that everypony would know she'd done it, Miss Cheerilee somehow managed not to understand the depth of animosity Diamond Tiara felt for the little blank flanks and her stern father had only the barest inkling. If she hadn't been caught, nopony would have ever known for sure, save Diamond Tiara herself and Silver Spoon, who would have gladly carried the secret to her grave.

"I don't know why she hates us so much anyway!" Sweetie Belle whined, "What did we ever do to her?"

"Aside from befriending Apple Bloom, you mean? It's her that Diamond Tiara's got it in for, after all. You know they used to be the best of friends, right?" The two blank flanks looked to Apple Bloom and gave her a look of disappointment and betrayal. She shrunk under their gaze, "Until Archer got her cutie mark, first in our class who did, they were two peas in a pod. What happened there, Apple Bloom? Want to tell your friends about that?"

"She...she said she outgrew me." Apple Bloom admitted with a sniffle, "Before I was born our pa's did business together, it was only natural that we played together as little foals, but then, like ya' said, other foals started to get their cutie marks and she said I was foalish, that I'd always be foalish and she didn't want ta' be seen with a blank flank like me no more, even though she was one just as much as me. She started goin' 'round with the older foals and won't talk to me 'less it's ta' insult me. After this I just don't see that there's any way ta' bury the hatchet no more."

She sighed and looked to the schoolhouse in the descending darkness. Gouged with a chisel into the soft cedar siding on either side and on the door itself were crude slurs and a pictogram. The pictogram was a couple of stick ponies, one mounting the other. They were poorly drawn and their cutiemarks hard to make out, but from the caption; 'Sweet Incest Acres!' it was clearly meant to be  Apple Bloom's siblings. One slur declared 'Apple Bloom is a mud blooded ground pounding bumpkin!' while another few decried the whole earth pony race in general.

"It looks to me like Diamond Tiara's the one who needs to grow up." Scootaloo fumed, "I think she's just jealous that you're getting along fine without her and she's just showing her true colors, little psycho that she is."

"We've got to tell," Sweetie Belle entreated her friends, "A filly who could do this, there's got to be something wrong with her. How could she if there wasn't?" Her friends nodded in agreement, Scootaloo mumbling about that filly being crazy, but they didn't understand Diamond Tiara the way that Silver Spoon did.









Diamond's anger had been building for some time, but it was only the day before that she brought up the idea of a night raid.

Flat teeth rolled the pistachio shell over and over again, one half of the split shell hollow, the other's treasure still wedged tightly inside. Her tongue probed the slick inside of the shell, trying to extricate the nutmeat inside. She labored at the task, hardly aware of the low grade frustration as she attempted to vacate the husk that had been five full minutes in transit from her left cheek, where whole shells were squirreled, still armoring their kernels, to her right, where the interlocked detritus waited to be spit forth en masse.

Much like doodling, it was an occupation that kept her idle mind from wandering and it was in large measure responsible for keeping her annoyance at Silver Spoon's continued bleating from becoming hotly evident. Her friend, she decided, was too nice, too cowardly, for her own good, and she was no longer listening to her but rather waiting for her to stop talking so that she might reiterate her intentions and force her to capitulate to her participation in them.

A blankly imperious stare weathered the storm of verbiage that continued spewing her way, and she finally took brief notice of the pistachio's reluctance to give in just long enough to shatter the shell between her teeth with more force than was outright necessary. The tip of her tongue deftly separated the proverbial wheat, crumbled as it was, from the shattered chaff in a largely subconscious way. Her thoughts briefly touched on how nutmeat was a completely proper term and that she could and would use it without too much consideration of any double entendres that might be implied. She was Diamond Tiara. Such crude humor as sprung from those paths was far beneath her level of intellect and refinement. So was eating pistachios in such a vulgar manner as to require spitting out their hulls. In public anyway. Here she was comfortable and she let them skitter like junebugs over the smooth stones.

Her only true friend seemed not a bit perturbed by the uncouth manners, nor the spiderweb strand of spittle that hung unnoticed from the corner of her jaw or the tiny sliver of shell that hung there likewise, she just kept to her overearnest tirade.

The sun shone through the slatted wooden blinds, casting broad ribbons across her pale pink jaw as it orbited slowly as a cow working its cud might. Her head suddenly dropped back and she let out an exaggerated sigh. This whole afternoon was beginning to be a bore. From her friend's mewling foreswearing of her latest planned jab against Apple Bloom and the other two blank flanks by association, to the very locale. Indeed they sat on the veranda of a grand and enormous stuccoed mansion, bigger, even, than Diamond's own, but its very location spoke of its inferiority. Paradise View West, a subdivision added onto the Paradise View development which, in turn, was a pale thing next to the tract which they imitated, Paradise Estates. That, of course was where Diamond lived and she deserved no less. Likely there would soon be a series of tract homes and duplexes added to take advantage of the prestigious name. 'Paradise Adjacent Acres. It ain't Paradise, but you can just about see it from here!' or something. She'd have to work on her snide take on their motto.

It was surprisingly difficult being witty in a manner that truly befit her intellect on the spur of the moment and she reflected that the obsequious agreement of her companion had kept her from having to hone her barbs into sharper, more murderous things. Another failing that could be pinned upon her guileless friend. She spit another shell, in loosely paired halves, to join the growing drift of hollowed out carapaces on the floor and then finally turned her full attention to the conversation at hoof.

"Whatever. We're doing it at dusk tomorrow." Diamond ordered, interrupting without even waiting for an ebb in the conversation. Silver Spoon blinked, her mind reeling to catch up from arguing against the risk to picking apart the plan in more specific ways.

"If you're going through with this...wouldn't it be better to wait until it's totally dark? Somepony might see you, or us, I guess, and this is the sort of thing we could get in real trouble for." Silver Spoon plead in an attempt to mitigate their risk of exposure. The sort of vandalism that Diamond Tiara had in mind could come back to haunt them if it could ever be pinned upon them.

"That's stupid. Celestia damn, you really are dumb sometimes." She fixed her grey friend with a withering stare, then explained in slow condescending tones, "If it's too dark to work we'll have to have a torch and that'll show up like a flare saying 'vandalisimo aqui'. We have to do it when it's still light enough to see what we're doing but dark enough that nopony sees us. The magic hour, though I'd give us maybe twenty minutes when the light's just so. I just need you to be a lookout, I can do the work myself if I have to. If you're too much of a chicken to do it with me."

Silver Spoon didn't understand the bit of language she'd taken from the burro's tongue and chalked it up to Diamond Tiara being raised largely by the help that she knew such phrases, and to her haughtiness that she would often slip such phrases into casual conversation, even knowing nopony but her understood them, "It's too risky and it's just too much anyway." Silver Spoon hoped to talk her out of it, "You didn't answer my question. Why go after the Apple family when it's really just the lame little blank flank you want? I can see having it in for Apple Bloom, but your dad's in business with the Apple family. If they find out it's going to be bigger trouble than you need."

"Even Daddy didn't get to where he is without a few dirty tricks to keep the peons stepping and fetching, and this feud with Apple Bloom? I have to nip it in the bud. With her friends and that lame little bad seed of a turncoat, she thinks she's got one up on me and after they made those three dork wads flag carriers, I need to put her in her place." She pounded her forehooves together in emphasis.

It was Friday and a three day weekend lay ahead of them, but not one of the fun ones where they got off to celebrate some half flanked holiday that no one actually cared about. Monday was parent teacher conferences and they'd each have to come in with their parents for half an hour or so. It was only a holiday if a pony had no skeletons in their academic closet. Silver Spoon wasn't worried, though Miss Cheerilee always did find something she thought a student could improve on, no matter how good they'd done. Diamond Tiara wouldn't show that she was worried even if she had been.

A couple quarters back, Diamond Tiara had gotten in trouble for the Gabby Gums incident that had caused such a stink throughout the town. Her parent teacher meeting had reflected it. She hadn't been seen outside of school for several weeks afterward and she refused to talk about it. She was so petulant as to refuse to talk about refusing to talk about it, though it was presumed by all that she was grounded.

She'd been the editor of the school paper, even though her tenure was brief, and later she'd said that meant could honestly claim it in coming years when she would need to have such extracurriculars to string together an impressive university application. She implied that it was her only concern, but her little digs at the 'crusaders' had escalated in number and severity afterwords. Things only devolved after Babs Seed happened into town. Her betrayal was a slight Diamond never really lived down and her plans to deface the school house was the effluent of her seemingly impotent rage, boiled over. It wasn't until they won the coveted flag carrier spot for the Equestria Games that she actually chose to act upon.

"But the Apples..." Silver Spoon started halfheartedly, already knowing she was about to be shouted down with such assurance that she hadn't even bothered to have an ending lined up for her sentence. If she hadn't been interrupted she would have just trailed off, but she knew her friend well enough to not even doubt her interjecting.

"The Apples will be the first ones there on Monday, Applejack's always up early and she's always busy so she'll want to come in before she gets all sweaty. This weekend the school will be abandoned, what kind of loser wants anything to do with a school on the weekend? It's far enough off the beaten path that nopony will see it until Cheerilee comes in and she won't have enough time to do anything about it."
"Now, I don't care about the older Apples, they know their place well enough but that Apple Bloom's been real uppity since she started hanging around with those other blank flanks. It's not enough to make that little lame-o cry, she's gotten tougher lately with her cheering squad behind her. The way to hurt an Apple is to go after the Apple family. I want to embarrass her in front of her sister, show her she's not safe in her own school and the paranoia of not knowing for sure who did it should be enough to keep her in line for years."

Silver Spoon considered it, then finally reached a verdict, "No, I'm out. You can call me chicken or whatever, but you're sticking your neck out too far this time."

She scoffed, "Don't be such a namby pamby little baby, we won't get caught and who's going to think we did it? Would earth ponies really write slurs against their own race?" Diamond Tiara always considered them and her immediate family transcendent over common earth ponies, like they were stealth unicorns or something, with an innate dignity above and beyond their earth tending brethren. Such delusions of nobility were what drove her but there were few who doubted that they would, in large measure, be fulfilled in the long run.

"I don't care. It's a bad idea. I don't want any part of it and if you try it I'll tell on you." Silver Spoon bluffed, "You know I will."

Her spoiled pink friend sneered frighteningly and her eye twitched, "I know you won't, you're not going to fool me with that. I'm doing this and if you want to stay my friend you'll be there at eight oh five sharp, Saturday night."

"I'm not going to be there."

"You bucking will," she snarled, "You Celestia damned well better be there!" Then she was up and gone, leaving the crunch and rattle of discarded shells in her wake. Silver Spoon sighed heavily in protracted contemplation and eventually went inside for supper. Worry killed her appetite however, and she headed to the Rich estate after an untouched dinner and apprehensive glances and mutterings from her parents. She had always been such a moody and sullen foal at home, though, that they were almost afraid to speak to her when her mood turned dark and they simply nodded and wished her a good time when she announced she was headed down to her friend's house, hoping that her funk would be abated when she returned so that they didn't have to deal with it themselves.









Diamond Tiara was 'unavailable' to her friend that night and on Saturday morning as well, and it really drove the point home. This is what Silver Spoon could expect if she defied her. Having a butler to tell your best friend to go away seemed like about the cruelest thing possible.

She had done this same sort of thing before from time to time and the two had always reconciled pretty quickly, but it filled Silver Spoon with boundless dread. What if she meant it this time? What if this was really the end? It may seem like Diamond Tiara is a pretty lousy friend, but she's the only pony she'd ever met that she felt really understood her, and that goes a longer way than one might imagine, so it's unsurprising that Saturday night, just after sunset, found Silver Spoon at a crossroads both literally and metaphorically.

The literal one lead to the schoolhouse on the one hoof and back home on the other and she was pacing between the two, cursing to herself, telling herself to mare up and be strong without knowing which path that actually indicated. She was at the cusp of a decision when it was made for her in the form of disembodied laughter and conversation floating up the path from town.

"Sweetie Belle, I'm tellin' you, it's got to be sand, good clean sand, not half dirt like the stuff you pulled from your dad's potted cactus. Then it ought to run out of the bottom of the can less sputtery like and more like an hourglass." A voice, unmistakably Apple Bloom's was saying.

"Look, guys, I know it's getting late, but let's just get some sand from the playground and give it one more try." Sweetie Belle pled.

"Couldn't we just wait 'til tomorrow?" Scootaloo huffed," I don't want to go clear to the school and back just for a bucket of sand this time of night, even if we do get a chance to sleep in tomorrow."

"Awww, but we already have it all setup. If we don't do it now we'll have to take it down and start all over!" Sweetie Belle whined as Silver Spoon started to panic.

Applebloom was sighing as she passed by the bush Silver Spoon had leapt into to hide, "It's fine. We'll take one more stab at it, but if it don't work we're just going to have to call it quits on building a better mousetrap cutiemarks."

"Fine. Race ya there!" Scootaloo cheered, then they took off and so did Silver Spoon's heart. Without a second thought she bounded after them as fast as she could run. It was fortunate that they were on hoof rather than riding that scooter and wagon or she would have had no chance whatever of catching up much less beating them there.

As they ascended the hill they had to slow to let Sweetie Belle catch up and Silver Spoon made her own shortcut out of a rabbit trail clipping a corner and pushing through the brambles of blackberry bushes and cockleburrs. Their thorns tore at her chest and flanks, leaving broken off thorn tips peppering her hide as she desperately pressed on. Her string of pearls snagged, and she choked for the barest moment before they broke, spraying the pearl beads, a gift from her departed grandmother and valuable in their own right, all over the ground. It didn't slow her a bit. She had to get there first and warn Diamond Tiara regardless of everything.

She had warned her, Silver Spoon thought. She'd told her it was too dangerous and now she was going to pay the price and she'd see who was right, but maybe, just maybe she could get there first and save her, or maybe she took the warnings to heart and stayed home. Soon she knew that to be wishful thinking. As she slogged through the muddy banks of the ditch and surmounted the small hill beyond, there was her best friend, that mule in pony's clothing, gouging away at the schoolhouse walls with a chisel. She hadn't been lax in her efforts either. As planned, the walls were lousy with slurs and vulgarity.

Silver Spoon looked to her right, the three fillies were just visible around the bend. If they weren't paying much attention, and they likely weren't, she should be able to get Diamond to cover before the horseapples hit the fan. It was dark enough they probably wouldn't even notice the scratchings on the walls unless they came fairly close. She was going to make it, she thought joyously, just in time for her to trip on a root and crash to the ground with a thud, her muzzle crashing hard into the dirt, eliciting a startled yelp.

She stood up, dirt clogging her bloodied nostrils and saw Diamond frozen in place having heard her intended savior crash loudly to the ground. She was going to tell her to run, but the moment had slipped away when Diamond Tiara saw the Cutiemark Crusaders at the very instant they saw her, chisel in hoof. Scootaloo squinted into the night, trying to make out who it was and what she was doing, then scoffed in incredulous disgust once she'd gotten the gist of it.

Diamond got over her shock quickly, going so far as to finish the sentence she was working on, 'Granny Smith has saggy tits!' It opined. Finished with that she threw the chisel, letting it stick in the ground amidst the curly wood shavings it had generated, she shrugged and shoved between the stock still Crusaders towards home, whistling a Sapphire Shores tune as she went.












"Look, she's not crazy or anything, she's just...I dunno." Silver Spoon shrank under the Crusader's combined glare. Flailing for options and finding them nil, she realized that she was going to have to do something that Diamond Tiara would find obscene. Something she might never forgive her for. She was going to have to tell the real and unvarnished truth.


> Symphony for the Worlds Smallest Violin
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Silver Spoon was nearly reduced to snatching at their hooves and begging to keep them from simply trotting away, but eventually they acquiesced. Again it was a matter of winning over Apple Bloom who'd remained stoic as a judge, the merest flutter of her upper lip the only outward sign that the dam was in dire and constant jeopardy.

"Well?" Scootaloo demanded at length, "What is it you have to say that you think's going to change our minds?"

"Yeah, some of us have a bed time and if we're late we won't get our bedtime story and warm milk!" Sweetie Belle demanded with a distressed sniffle.

"Uh huh, some of us sure don't want to miss our on a bedtime stories." Scootaloo rolled her eyes sarcastically only to be kicked by a glaring Apple Bloom. 

"I don't expect any of us are gonna get much sleep on account of this nonsense going around in our heads. I'm like to spend half the night goin' from sad to angry and back before I could settle down. I imagine it's got to be the same for you two." She addressed her friends, her face making it clear it was not the time for Scootaloo's sarcasm and that any delay granted for Silver Spoon to explain herself was a short lived boon.

"Okay, I know how this is going to sound, but Diamond Tiara and I aren't like you..." It was a bad start, Silver Spoon realized that immediately when Apple Bloom let out a disgusted grunt, "Well, I mean it's true. Take me for example." 












Silver Spoon cringed as she looked at the patched up bit of sidewalk that wandered in a picturesque manner from their back door into the dense thicket of a garden which encircled, nearly strangled, their sprawling house and the grounds that surrounded it. It was poured when she was still a little foal and her parents had delighted in having her press her little hooves into the fresh cement and write her name. Both the S's were backwards. She was informed that it was adorable, but she just couldn't see it. To her it was an embarrassing reminder of how ignorant and pathetic she'd been. The incompetence of foals wasn't something she took joy in and she couldn't understand why stupidity and cuteness were meant to go hoof in hoof. From her earliest days she'd tried to distance herself from foalish things.

It was a drive first initiated by her parent's desires that she be able to read before the other foals, and through dedication and constant drills with tutors she achieved that desire, surpassed it in fact. Before she'd waded into her education properly she'd already graduated to chapter books. It only got more extreme from there. When the other fillies her age were still struggling with Diary of a Wimpy Foal and Ponie B Jones, she'd graduated to Crime and Lunar Banishment. She thought it no less than what was expected of her, for her achievements to outstrip and ascend above her peers as proof that she deserved her ill-understood station in life among the privileged class as her mother asserted that she did. It more or less reinforced in her that these were the things expected of her when they garnered her no more than faint praise from her parents.

Paradise, (who found the name of their subdivision hilarious with an inane beating-a-dead-horse repetition that made her daughter cringe) was a hooves off type of mother and a demanding mare, a pegasus who insists on being chauffeured and waited on as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Maybe it is, she thought, but hindsight told Silver Spoon that she's both physically and intellectually lazy. Despite that she loved her mother and actively tried to remain blind to her flaws and largely detached parenting. It was her mother's intent that her beloved filly likewise be lavished with such a placid lifestyle when she grew to become a mare, so she unironically named her Silver Spoon and vowed that she would only have the best in life, though her work towards that end was exceedingly inconsistent, progressing in fits and starts.

It was a stark revelation to Silver Spoon when it became obvious that the books, the etiquette lessons, the gymnastics class that was meant to teach her to move gracefully, were not things her parents had endured themselves. Not as foals, not at any age. They were foisted upon her simply because she'd taken them as a duty and not rebelled. It was brought back to mind as she eyed that petrified scrawl, an emblem of innocence long past, just how this became obvious. For Hearths Warming one year they'd gotten her a selection of classics which included age inappropriate reading materials. She digested Andalusian Rand, several novels by Steinbuck, some anarchistic tract by Abbie Horseman and a good portion of the Marquis DeSaddle's vile prattlings that snowy winter break. Doubt seeped into her mind that they would have heaped those works upon her if they'd had any idea of their content, conflicting themes and the outright vulgarity of the latter. They were under the impression it was a vampony story, she came to learn later and they shrugged off the mistake as largely irrelevant.

It occurred to her that she had not, in fact, ever seen either of them read anything headier than the Sunday paper and the books on their shelves were kept free of dust by the maids rather than use. As for social mores, they aspired to them, faked them convincingly, but it became clear it was an affectation and as winter had finally given way to the first strands of spring, an acquaintance of less than a day, Diamond Tiara, had explained the pejorative concept of the nouveau riche on the walk behind a house that embodied that very folly.

"I don't understand, our house is almost twice the size of yours and it's way fancier, are you sure you're not just jealous?" Silver Spoon asked, having finally looked up from her inscribed name.

"Jealous of this?" Diamond Tiara gestured grandly towards the house, "Please, spare me. It's not fancier, just gaudier, and space for it's own sake is a waste. It's just what I'd expect from a couple of peasants who hit it rich, but look, that's their deal and I won't hold it against you..."

"What about the garden?"

"Our house has a garden. Everypony seems to have a garden these days, it's just expected."

"Yeah, but just look at ours." Silver Spoon pranced up to the nearest bed of crested irises like a game show hostess and smiled broadly, raising her head both to take in and indicate the emerging greenery all around them.

"Yeah, just do look at yours. It's overgrown and untended. It's run wild around the whole house. It's quantity over quality, whereas father's garden is expertly tended by a team of gardeners who selected plants that bloom at different times so that there's always something beautiful coming up any time you look out there. It's laid out in the Canterlotian tradition instead of being some big, sprawling, tasteless mess, but I guess it suits the house..."

"Mother just likes it more natural. There's nothing wrong with the garden and there's nothing wrong with the house, you're just a bad mannered little brat and I think you should leave." Silver Spoon glared. The mansion had been built when Silver Spoon's mother and father married on a prime piece of land in a new development that the family had held for just such an auspicious occasion. It was actually fairly new, both the house and the gardens surrounding it, for there was no lawn, only convoluted mazes of the lushest exotic plants once the summer was in full swing. It may actually have been a bit extravagant, Silver Spoon would have admitted in less contentious circumstances.

"Ugh, and here I thought you were different than all those other lame little foals. 	Look, the nouveau riche spend enough on their cracker boxes to get a real house put up, but they just don't recognize quality, or a lack thereof and they end up..." She fluttered a hoof dismissively, "With this sort of thing. It's not that old, but, the cobblestones on the drive are all heaved up, the sidewalk's all cracked, the stucco's falling off the lath, which by the way you're supposed to stucco over stone or something, not just stick it up on whatever ticky tacky you want like they're building a set piece. Even that ivy's been left to climb up the front and tear the trim off and the roof's gone all swaybacked so I'm sure it leaks and that's not even mentioning those giant, gaudy, brass plated pot metal lanterns out front. So twenty years ago." She said nonchalantly and it was actually true. Silver Spoon didn't realize that she'd gleaned all this by overhearing her father talk, complaining in a gossipy way about the pretensions of the broad class of ponies he'd labeled as 'The Climbers.'

It was a defining characteristic of Diamond Tiara that she gleaned information and opinions from those she deemed worthy and took them unashamedly as her own, in bold contrast to Silver Spoon who sought to inform herself, to construct and buttress her views until she could hide behind their stalwart ramparts. It was simply beyond her to react with unequivocal confidence since none of these metaphorical structures were ever complete and she was always wary that somepony would find a weak bit of foundation to tumble the whole were she to expose her ideas to scrutiny. In point of fact, this was what she later came to love about Diamond, her boldly judgmental nature.

That day, however, she'd yet to see her charms. Diamond had introduced herself to Silver Spoon at a small gallery opening in Canterlot that their families had attended, but Diamond rode back alone, her father having stayed on some business in the city. They'd lived within a few blocks of each other for some time, but never actually talked until they had a whole train ride home to get acquainted and by way of first impressions Diamond Tiara gave a staunch refutation of the value of home schooling, which Silver Spoon had been up until that point.

Her argument had some merit, that they were both destined to be the elite of Ponyville and in such a close knit community, common ties to those she planned to someday reign over trumped the questionable merit of the curriculum itself. Indeed it seemed to be of utmost importance to her that they were familiar and fearful of her grit and iron hoof. The night was capped by Diamond Tiara walking Silver Spoon home. Being opinionated was all well and good, and Silver Spoon had yet to form any strong opinions about the self assured little filly until she began to belittle her home and family.

Silver Spoon's muzzle scrunched in disgust and rather than argue points unworthy of her time, she'd turned away and dismissively spat, "Whatever, princess."

Unperturbed and seemingly amused by the intended insult, Diamond Tiara called after the retreating filly before leaving herself, "I think you know I'm right, but if you want to play it that way, fine. But sometime, when you want a safe, civilized place to hang out, come on over and I'll show you what a proper house is meant to look like."

Silver Spoon vowed to never set hoof in that proper house, but for days she thought about the things that bratty filly had said and she finally approached her mother about some of them as she sat by the fire one evening, she was not overly pleased with the answers she received.

"Don't be so ungrateful for the opportunities your mother and I have striven to provide you with." Her father said, an invisible presence in an oversized wing backed chair, veiled by a curtain of newsprint which may have been the stocks page, but was just as likely a racing form with it's arcane stats and figures, "How many families would go to such an effort to see that their daughter has the best education available, even without any suitable private institutions in town. I mean would you rather go to that dreadful public school?"

Silver Spoon's knee jerk reaction was to say no, but upon consideration she wasn't sure, "M...maybe? I was talking with Diamond Tiara and she thinks it's really important to mix with the other foals in town." Her parents took her successes as praise of their good parenting, even though the heavy lifting of her education was outsourced to coaches and tutors. Homeschooled in name and isolation, only.

Paradise snorted, "She would think that. Her whole family has such pretensions of grandeur, but in the end, their business is just retail. Right honey?"

"Quite. It's not really a very dignified occupation is it?" He harrumphed with a rustle of broadsheet.

Where did their money come from? Silver Spoon wondered. All they'd ever said was that it was from investments, but they had always been cryptic about it. Her father had an office in the house with a steady stream of well dressed stallions trickling in and out, but though it was during business hours, the jovial discussions, drinks and backslapping smacked more of a club than any sort of serious enterprise. Having heard hours of the stuff, she'd never heard anything talked about beyond golf, families and a slew of mule jokes, usually told in quick succession. Diamond, however, had implied more humble beginnings to their fortunes, but there seemed little enough point in trying to force the subject.

"Still, I think maybe I could...should give the public school a try. Do you think that would be alright?"

"If it's good enough for Filthy Rich's daughter, I suppose we'll let you try it out until you get bored with it." Her mother had condescendingly agreed, but her father was not similarly inclined.

"I rather think not," He grumbled, "If it's scholastic camaraderie you're craving, why couldn't we send you to the Canterlot school for exceptional fillies this summer? It's a place I should think more suited to your intellect and tastes than Cheerilee's school for paste eaters and delinquents." He laughed at his own little joke, "I'll send for the forms tomorrow, I'm sure it's just the thing for a clever little filly like you."

"Oh...Okay, I guess." Silver Spoon said with little enthusiasm, feigned or otherwise. Nopony seemed to notice but she knew that without any action on her part they'd forget about it entirely in a few days.









It wouldn't be fair or accurate to say that Silver Spoon had few friends. The entire gymnastic class attended her birthday party and she could often be found enjoying tea and light conversation with little fillies roughly her age and social class. There were actually very few of them in Ponyville proper and even the simplest outings seemed to require a day trip, which meant that most of her recreational time was scheduled, the venue, activities and attendees already settled upon. It seemed that the conversations were likewise staid, never really scratching the surface and Silver Spoon considered her friendships of a most wholly superficial sort.

She was convinced that sheer proximity and her enigmatic standoffishness was what kept bringing her mind back to thoughts of that spoiled pink filly, and if anypony were to demand an answer as to why she went to see her a few days later, despite their tumultuous first meeting, she wouldn't have had a concrete answer. It was likely the niggling seeds of rebellion seeking out a compatriot to whom she might voice her doubts about her parents in a gossipy, conspiratorial manner as fillies are often wont to do.

Just one dreary, waterlogged day when the leak in Silver Spoon's bedroom ceiling had just about driven her crazy with it's erratic rhythm, she opened her umbrella, walked down her lumpy drive, crossed the street and the few blocks that separated them from that most affluent neighborhood and found herself inexplicably knocking on Diamond Tiara's door.

The grey filly was nervous when the old cream coated butler answered, but he escorted her to Diamond's room chatting lightly the whole way and it did a great deal to settle her nerves. He knocked, Diamond invited her to come in and suddenly she was in Diamond Tiara's room.

Her host smiled, graciously waiting as the the silver maned head swiveled around in an effort to take in all the wonders. The comparison to Silver Spoon's own room was much like a comparison of the two houses. Silver Spoon had more and possibly better things, but Diamond Tiara's were more artfully laid out and organized. There were foal's paintings and drawings, presumably her own, a shelf full of pageant trophies and a smattering of toys, all arranged as for an open house though she didn't know anypony was coming.

Her stuffed animals were the prime example of her esthetic. There were a full dozen various creatures, all of the highest quality, impeccably dressed and seated around the head of her frilly bed. They were arrayed as a photographer would have done for a group portrait and that's easy enough, but to sleep in the bed they'd all have to be moved which meant they had to be reset daily. It begged the question of whether this was all done by her or her servants. Regardless, every inch of the room was carefully and impressively kept in it's lavender and white livery.

She'd stood when her guest entered and had remained silently smiling as she took in the room. Finally, the circuit completed, her gaze returned to the pale pink pony. She'd previously been seated at a round table in the center of the room practicing calligraphy on a sheet of rice paper. The brush had been set aside on a plate and a halo of ink had formed around it's bristles.

Diamond nodded her head to dismiss the butler who exited quietly, "You done?" She asked with a smirk. Silver Spoon was about to say yes when her eyes lit on the previously overlooked book case behind her. She could see from where she stood that it was filled not with foal's books, but real literature. Her jaw fell open in delight and her hooves carried the helpless filly closer without a care for polite propriety. Diamond Tiara giggled behind her as she lovingly stroked the spines of some of her favorite books. Quickly it came to rest on a very special volume.

"This is a Mane Austen first edition!" Silver Spoon declared, ears perked and teeth set in a mad grin.

"Of course." She replied simply, "I think that one's signed, too. Go ahead and pull it out and look."

She did and it was. She was thrilled that such a thing existed at all, much less that she held it in her own two hooves.  A squeal and smile of delight was turned on Diamond. Her polite, condescending smile reminded Silver Spoon of the inappropriateness of her actions, "I just, um, can't believe you really have something like this. It's lovely, really."

"I guess. If you like it that much why don't you just keep it?" She said with a disinterested shrug.

"Keep it? Like, keep for keeps? I...couldn't do that...I..." Silver Spoon stammered. Diamond's eyes hardened and her smile faded.

"You're going to keep it, it's a gift. Geez, you really are going to have to learn to accept gifts more graciously if you're going to run with the the more urbane classes, much less be my friend." She sighed, "Look, it's not your fault, your mother should have taught you this sort of thing. First thing, never show that you're impressed by anything unless it's something so ostentatious that that's it's only purpose, like a carriage all covered in filigree and done up like a wedding cake. Then you have to act impressed or you'll insult your host, but you have to say something snarky, like...ask if it turns back into a radish at midnight. Then they'll say, no, a pumpkin, or something. Then you both laugh as if it was actually funny. That's the way it works."
"If you act impressed by some trinket, like that book, a host of good breeding is likely to offer it to you. It puts them above you, though. It's like they're saying 'Here's a thing you couldn't own but for my generosity and see how wealthy I am that I can give it away so casually.' So it's best not to put yourself in a situation like that, it degrades your own standing. Since you're a little filly you can get away with it a bit with older ponies, they love to give you things, but don't overdo it."

Now Silver Spoon had been to many many functions in my time, but she'd always been shyly reticent, feeling that there was some covert set of rules of which she had not been apprised. Here Diamond Tiara had enumerated part of this hidden code clearly and concisely and she wondered what else she knew.

"Now say 'Thank you.' and smile." Diamond ordered sternly.

"Thank you." Silver Spoon replied with a restrained smile. She wanted to bounce in excitement at her new possession, but that would be undignified before somepony who clearly valued propriety.

"You're welcome." Diamond smiled genuinely, "So do you want to play a game?"

They played board games and talked like normal little fillies for several hours, never once bringing up the bratty pink filly's judgmental take on the other's home and upbringing, before she had to go. That triggered another frank discussion about hospitality and how Silver Spoon should have been prepared to stay for lunch and tea, minimally, so as to not insult her host, but she understood that she didn't know that so it was okay this time.

She visited her once more several days later, not too soon so as to let on how charmed she was with the previously objectionable filly, and it was much the same. Diamond Tiara would say something that the less socially ept filly would react to in an unsatisfactory manner and then she would calmly explain to her how she was meant to act in that situation, as if Silver Spoon were a little foal and she was her governess. It was a strange dynamic, but Silver Spoon guessed she really did have her best interests in mind. She even insulted her several times in what might pass for a jovial manner had the home schooled filly been more worldly, but then Diamond explained how she should counter her barbs and waited patiently as she stumbled for something witty with which to retort. It was clear to Silver Spoon that she was being groomed. She found that she was not opposed to it.

On the next occasion Silver Spoon was turned away by the bald old gentlestallion butler, but not without the barest explanation. Diamond Tiara had been sent away until school resumed in the fall.

"Mister Rich has it in mind that his daughter should be versed to run in the highest circles of Canterlot or Manehattan, a task he feels the local school incapable of equipping the young lady for." The butler informed her, "To that end she's been sent away for a time to a highly regarded finishing school in Canterlot to finish out the school year and attend the summer semester."

"She can't be happy about that." Silver Spoon guessed, from what little she knew of Diamond Tiara, she claimed Ponyville as her proper domain and being forced away from it, even to mingle with other well bred fillies of her ilk, wouldn't sit well with her. The fact that she hadn't even mentioned her impending departure irked Silver Spoon and it must have shown because the butler gave a further bit of explanation.

"The young lady wasn't intending to go," He revealed, "But the Canterlot School for Exceptional Fillies has been regarded by her father as a punitive measure since the young lady's mother departed us, and she has been sent there in just such a circumstance."

"You mean she got sent away because she got in trouble?"

"The young lady wouldn't approve of me divulging a great deal more, but that is just about the size of it. Good day." The butler shut the door gently to leave the filly reeling before it's carved panels. A budding friendship, nipped. Come fall, would Diamond Tiara even remember their short association or would she have moved on by then? The name of the school, though, was familiar and while Silver Spoon debated hotly with herself, claiming Diamond's departure as good riddance and wondering what she'd ever seen in the rude prima donna, she knew deep inside that she would talk to her parents and take the necessary step to chase after her to Canterlot. It only took her a few hours before she acted upon the impulse. Slightly quicker than she'd suspected.









Silver Spoon had been losing her audience, though her story thus far had been condensed into a few minutes of generalities and oversimplification rather than the full narrative. Diamond Tiara getting in trouble, though, brought her audience's attention right back.

"What did she do?" Scootaloo asked, as was her nature she came straight to the point.

"I remember her not finishing out the school year, that was the summer right afore she got her cutiemark, right after me and her had that last fight." Apple Bloom said, looking downcast, "But I never did hear what happened 'xactly. Rumor had something to do with Archer, if I 'member right."









She'd gotten in trouble for making Archer cry in front of both of their families at a garden party as it turned out. Silver Spoon heard it as third hoof gossip, but from a reliable source, the Rich's zebra cook who she'd befriended in a bid to discover the nature of Diamond Tiara's crimes. 

Archer had been bragging about her cutie mark and Diamond was still a blank flank at the time. Even though it was just innocent pride on Archer's part, not intended as an attack against her, she retaliated in typical Diamond Tiara fashion.

"Are you kidding? I'm glad I'm not tied down by a cutie mark yet." She'd reportedly said with a scoff, "All a cutie mark does is limit what you can do because no matter what you do or care about in the future you're always going to be known for this one dumb thing that you loved when you were a foal. Good luck being a CEO or the mayor with a toy bow and arrow on your rump. Phht...The guards don't even use longbows anymore."
"You're pretty much stuck training forever just to compete for one day at the Equestria games. That's a lot of pressure, your whole destiny hinging on one shot made on one day and if you miss...If you miss your whole life up to that point will have been for nothing, a joke. I'd choke, I think. You probably will too, don't you suppose? Maybe you can get a job as a security guard or a telemarketer or something in between times. I'm sure glad I haven't gotten one of those marks to steal away my potential and ruin my life yet. If I have anything to say about it I'll be the very last one to get one."









Scootaloo's laughter interrupted the story and Sweetie Belle asked, wide eyed, "Did Diamond Tiara really say that? I thought she wanted a cutie mark worse than all the rest of us."

"Aw, that filly will say anything that comes into her head that she thinks will hurt somepony's feelings. She's such a hippogriff." Scootaloo said.

"Hypocrite." Sweetie Belle corrected only to be scowled at.

"I think she really believed it, at the time. Mr. Rich told Archer's family that she was just jealous, maybe that's the case, but on the other hoof, there's some truth in what she said, don't you think?" Silver Spoon pondered, aloud.

"No ah don't think there's much truth in anything that filly says. She jest wants to hurt ponies to make herself feel big and in charge." Apple Bloom growled.

"I think I remember hearing about this." Scootaloo asked, "Both of you got your cutie marks over that summer, right? You told the class about it in the fall after it happened, when you gave up on homeschooling and joined our class for good, right? I've been wondering about those marks anyway. How do you manage to get a cutie mark in being a stuck up, spoiled brat?" Purple eyes glared from behind thick rimmed glasses, but Scootaloo didn't back down much, "That's what you two told us it meant, that you were meant to be pampered and served. Diamond said hers meant that she was supposed to be a princess and rule an empire of her own someday, which sounds pretty stupid to me. I mean what, was she playing at being a princess when she got it? That could just mean her special talent is pretending to be royalty."

"Ooh!" Sweetie Belle howled, "Maybe that means she'll grow up to be a changeling! That's what they do, right? Pretend to be princesses?"

"You're a changeling or you ain't. It ain't a thing you can work your way into." Apple Bloom said.

"Oh. So you think she's already a changeling?" Scootaloo asked. Silver Spoon wasn't sure if she was asking ironically or not. From the look on Apple Bloom's face she couldn't tell either.

"No, she ain't a changeling and so far as I figure she ain't a princess either. I doubt she ever will be 'less she grows up to marry Prince Blueblood or somepony of that sort." She looked to Silver Spoon, "You think that's what it means?"

"Do I think that marrying into royalty is her special talent?" The three blank flanks nodded, "No, I don't, but that's because I know what it really is. It's kind of what I'd been building up to if you hadn't interrupted."









Dainty Daisy's School for Exceptional Fillies tended to have the headmaster's name replaced with 'Canterlot' by those who bragged of attending it or sending their foals there. Largely it was a concerted attempt to equate it in status with Celestia's own school. With some heavyweight alumni whose supply of bits were nigh unlimited the school had acquired the famous lunar cultist hall just blocks from the castle itself. Once the massive and florid monstrosity had housed dormitories full of overgrown colts, who well into middle age dabbled with the pomp and ceremony of supposedly dark rituals. In point of fact it tended towards an overhyped game of grabflank with strong homo-erotic undertones. Regardless, the building had been acquired, fitted out in dark, luxurious trappings in a distinctly Stirropean style and given over to the cream of Canterlotian fillies.

Down the formerly dimly lit marble corridors, once lined with masks, robes and archaic torture devices, now with beige metal lockers stacked two high, shrill voices tinged with malice rang.

"Lift your hooves stumblebum!" Silver Spoon heard yelled from a gaggle of fillies loitering in a clump along one side of the hallway. A telltale thump and grunt was followed by them calling out, "Have a nice trip!" and a chorused, "See you next fall!" before the laughing herd moved off, their humiliating entertainment having been enacted upon their victim. This sort of schoolyard teasing was unknown to the home schooled filly and she moved to investigate the ostracized student before she even knew it was the object of her short lived search of the campus.

There, sprawled before her, gathering up her books and pencils that had been cruelly slapped from her hooves, was a pale pink pony with a white striped lavender mane. Without thought or hesitation Silver Spoon reached down to help her gather her errant supplies and give her a hoof up.

"They got you too?" Diamond asked, only to have a blank look returned, "Your parents? You acted up and they sent you here as punishment, too?"

"Um...yeah." The grey filly resettled her glasses on her nose and looked askance.

"Figures. My father's been using this place as a threat so often lately, I think I would have ended up here this summer no matter what." Diamond sighed, opening a nearby locker and storing her books within. It was hard to miss the mismatched blotches of fresh paint on the door that were indicative of covered over graffiti, "At least it's the summer semester now, when the classes are a lot more lax and some of the fillies who are here year round take some time off. I really could do without being trapped here with them too."

"Are they always like that?" Silver Spoon asked and Diamond nodded once, her ears folded back, "I don't think I could put up with that for a whole summer."

The pink filly's eyes roamed, appraisingly watching another small group of fillies flit by, jabbering and happy, then she huffed, "You get used to it, I guess. Welcome to my own personal Tartarus."

"But...why? You're just as good as any of these fillies, right? What have they got against you anyway?"

Diamond looked incredulous, "You don't get out much do you? The name Filthy Rich means something in Ponyville, someday my name will too, but these fillies all belong to old families, unicorn familes. I might be a barracuda among goldfish back home, but these are fillies are sharks no matter where they are. They know it and they won't let you forget it, and you? You're chum, a babe in the woods. You're going to get it twice as bad and I feel for you. I really do."

"Well...maybe together, we could stand up to them?" Silver Spoon suggested, it being a golden opportunity to prove herself.

"No. Look, Silver Spoon, I like you, I really do. You're a good filly, but you shouldn't have come here. There's only one strategy you can use here and that's to be inconspicuous and non-threatening. If you're not part of a clique you have to keep your head down, don't talk to anypony, and I mean anypony, including me. If they find out we're friends they'll just find some way to use it against us. The one thing you definitely don't do is try to stand up to them."

Silver Spoon snorted, "They're just a bunch of spoiled little rich fillies, how bad could they be?"

"You'll see." Her friend cryptically replied as she slipped off down the hall into a knot of students and disappeared.









The School for Exceptional Fillies was meant to be a getaway for Silver Spoon. A place she could relax and dabble with various hobbies and crafts that substituted for proper classes during the summer. It was meant to be a school to round out an upper class filly's education with a basic knowledge of many things, to make proper little dilettantes of them all. The classes weren't taken too seriously by the students as they were all wealthy enough that any actual skill they managed to posses was a gilding of the lily rather than a means of earning an income.

Diamond Tiara spent Silver Spoon's whole first week sulking, only being drawn out of her shell long enough to verbally spar with the other students when they started to torment her and if she got the upper hoof in it usually ended with a physical confrontation in which the well trained unicorn magic of her adversaries always won out.

In front of Silver Spoon, her friend was stuffed in a locker twice, once in a students desk and once in a filing cabinet. She'd been forced to eat a locust, had globs of tar pressed into her coat and she'd been dragged kicking and screaming into the bathroom daily, only to emerge with a wet mane and a look of burning fury. Silver Spoon was aware that violent things happened to her friend at night as well, but she wasn't sure just what precisely.

She knew it had been a mistake to pursue a whim and chase her friend there, but for a while they'd left the school's only other Ponyvillian earth pony alone as an unknown and largely immaterial creature. It was only after she was forced to intervene that she'd inextricably linked their fates and torments together.

They'd tied Diamond Tiara's mane to the monkey bars and left her hanging by her elbows, without the strength to pull herself back up and tethered by her long, formerly luxurious mane. Sooner or later her strength would give out and she'd be left hanging by her hair and nopony was moving to help her. To the contrary, they all formed up ten yards off the rusted playground equipment in a loose circle, waiting with bated breath to see what would happen when she finally fell. Would her mane pull loose? Would it hold her? How loud and how long would she scream before one of the oblivious staff found her and would they cut her mane to free her? Even those who felt sorry for her longed to see that beautiful mane ruined, such was the jealousy and ill will engendered in that school.

None of these things happened in the end. Rather a grey filly with thick rimmed blue glasses ran out from the crowd and positioned herself below her embattled friend long enough that she could stand on her back and untie her own mane with no damage done and jump down with a grunt of thanks.

All eyes were still upon them and a trio of unicorn fillies emerged from the crowd, headed towards them.

"Primrose." Diamond Tiara growled and widened her hooves into a fighting stance. A magenta aura flared long enough to pull a hoof from beneath her and the three giggled at her stumbling to the ground. Silver Spoon stepped up to her friend's side, nostrils flared and eyes narrowed. She'd had no occasion to fight, but liked her odds simply because she was a lithe and athletic earth pony, whereas Primrose was a fairly twiggy unicorn. Magic aside, she had a massive advantage in a fight, but magic is a killer she realized belatedly as a pale yellow aura whipped her glasses from her face and dashed them against the ground. Her nearsightedness was severe enough to handicap her severely, but she stood her ground and feigned disinterest in her lost glasses.

"Diamond Tiara. Who said it was okay to have your marefriend here interfere?" Primrose demanded.

"Well you had both of your skanky little hussies with you, aren't I allowed one too?" Diamond shot back and was instantly overtaken by the canary yellow bully and her two lackeys. Silver Spoon's hooves were rooted to the ground and she was roughly hoofed across the face.

"I keep putting out warnings, but you filthy ground pounders keep showing up at my school." Primrose shook her head, goldenrod mane whipping majestically, "Where were you from? Ponyville? Blankflanks from Ponyville, they really should know to keep their foals at home."

"We're not some helpless little foals you can treat like this!" Silver Spoon snarled and manage to rip one hoof free of the aura holding it. She swung wildly at her captor, but was stopped well short by another bit of magic holding her hoof aloft.

"Aw, look, the little foals want to play patty cake!" Her accomplices snickered, "Let's help them out." The two earth ponies' hooves were wrenched up and clapped together in a pattern, "Bump, Bump..." Then their elbows were twisted and clunked together with a jarring jolt of pain, "...sugar lump, rump!" The pattern was ended by their flanks being banged together seemingly as easily as clapping erasers, but hard enough that they were both bruised the next day, "That's the shuck and jive the little mule babies used to do and it looks just right for a couple of blank flanked backwater bumpkins like yourselves, so everytime I see you, you best show me that you're good little foals and dance for me, or else. You got it?"

She didn't wait for an answer, Miss Dainty Daisy, the headmaster was breaking through the crowd and shooing off the gawkers. Primrose tried to slip off with everypony else, "Not you, young lady." The headmaster sternly said, "Something tells me you're at the center of this."

"She sure is!" Silver Spoon started, only to be elbowed by Diamond Tiara.

"Hey," she whispered, "You can't tell on them, they never get in trouble and they'll only make it worse for you."

"I don't care." Silver Spoon whispered back harshly.

"I do! They'll make it worse for me! Even worse than today, just let it go."

"How did this happen?" Miss Dainty Daisy asked, her magic holding up the mangled plastic frames with their one scratched up lens.

"It was an accident." Primrose said.

"Yeah, sure." Silver Spoon mumbled.

"What was that?" The headmaster leaned in.

"Yeah, it was, I'm sure it was." Silver Spoon said flatly.

"Yes, well why don't you fix it then, Primrose?" Miss Dainty Daisy hoofed the glasses over and though the yellow filly rolled her eyes, she also magically reassembled the glasses as if they'd never been broken. The two Ponyvillians came to realize in this way that their adversary was a truly prodigious user of magic and having fixed the glasses and given them back, the teacher had thought everything settled and left them be.








They tried to stay apart, because when they were discovered together by Primrose or her henchmares, Snowbell and Jasmine, they were violently forced to dance the humiliating little dance. Soon they discovered that if they did it voluntarily there was no reason for the bullies to abuse them with their magic.

"Bump, bump, sugarlump, rump." They repeated unenthusiastically for the fifth time that day. Snowbell nodded in smug satisfaction and moved on.

"I'm about sick of this." Diamond Tiara said, "Look, we're just going to have to take different classes so we're not seen together so much."

"I...I kind of agree." Silver Spoon admitted sadly.

"Yeah, well, I'm going to try to get in with the club that's planning the summer wrap up pageant, maybe the theater nerds need help. You should try to stay on this side of the school. Maybe take that literature class? Anyway, keep your head down and ciao for now!" Then she galloped off to hide amongst the drama freaks.

Diamond had no respite in the night either, her dorm likewise being occupied by her enemies, where Silver Spoon lucked into a fairly tame arrangement with a trio of fillies so elevated in their self estimation that they ignored her entirely. The cafeteria and the classrooms were still a battlefield and without her friend, Silver Spoon didn't see much point in the school and simply chose one of the most sparsely occupied classrooms. The first one was, in fact, the literature class, but it already had an established clique who'd taken it over and they quickly laid into her.

"Silver Spoon, huh?" One unicorn filly had idly taunted, "Does that mean you're going to be a great cook? Maybe I'll hire you to work in my kitchen if you turn out to be any good, not that I really like having earth ponies around, but maybe I'll make an exception for you."

"No, no." Another filly corrected, "I bet she's going to be a maid, and that's fine. It's hard to find somepony who can do a proper job polishing the silver."

"You've both got it wrong. Silver spoons are what you feed babies with, she's probably going to be a nanny her whole life. Those glasses, that hair, she already looks like some old spinster, right?" One more chimed in and they all laughed. Before Diamond's influence she would have just shrugged it off, told them that she didn't know what it meant yet and weathered the storm until they got bored. Somehow she couldn't now, but neither did her her few retorts come out as anything more than tepid, so she sought out a more secluded refuge.

There was every sort of class in the place. Flower arranging, basket weaving, cooking and baking in every variety, sewing and every sport deemed sufficiently mild for little ladies to participate in, which eliminates the bulk of them immediately. She chose the only class that currently had no other students. It was a jewelry making and fine metalworking class and on the first day she was shown how to solder silver stock together and polish out the joints. On the second day she learned chasing and engraving.

They were meant to rotate through the classes, spending a half day in each. In practice everypony just went to whatever class their friends were attending and stayed there. Since Silver Spoon was the sole occupant of the class nopony seemed too interested. In a week She'd mastered the basic metalworking skills and made an ornate, footed bowl with a hinged lid. She engraved her initials on it and decided that it was a sugar bowl, so she made a duplicate but with no lid and a little spout to be a creamer.

About halfway through forming and soldering the plates that would be a teapot together, Diamond Tiara showed up in class so taciturn and gloomy that Silver Spoon hadn't noticed her come in and she hadn't said anything by way of greeting. Her eyes were puffy and she was frustratedly trying to fit the pin back on an overly ornate broach and not managing very well. The teacher was distracted, possibly asleep and when her friend finally took notice of her with a start she immediately walked over to help her.

"Like this." Silver Spoon said simply and showed her how to clean the surfaces, flux, solder, file and finally polish. By the time they were done you couldn't tell it had ever been broken. Diamond thanked her friend, then left with only the minimum number of words exchanged between the two, such was her apparent depression. It was finally found out from overheard gossip that it hadn't been her broach at all. She'd been arguing against a herd of the other fillies on the stagecraft crew and knocked it off of one of their dresses and the whole group of them had demanded that she fix it, or else. Or else what, besides expulsion back into the wilds of the school at large, was not too awfully well defined .

She didn't come back in the afternoon, nor the next morning, but the following afternoon she was there. Things had gotten rough for both of them. Diamond Tiara more so as Silver Spoon had taken to simply hiding with her growing tea service. Diamond Tiara, however, seemed bound to expose herself to the harsh taunting of the other fillies rather than face a relatively comfortable seclusion. Their only choice had been to flit around like ghosts, pretending to be transparent. It met with limited success. At various times both of them had been tripped, had their lunch trays snatched away only to be spit in and returned and on two occasions, even in her relatively safe dorm, Silver Spoon awoke with her hoof in a bowl of warm water and for the record, yes, that prank seemed to work. Having repaired one piece of jewelry, Diamond had been drafted by the drama fillies to make the same sort of repair to another one.

"Do you need help?" Silver Spoon asked her, looking over at the pendant that had lost it's loop. It was a frilly bit of gold set with a single moderately sized stone, "Oh, is that a real diamond?"

"You can't tell?"

"No, not really. It looks the same as the glass ones to me." She admitted and pulled a drawer loose from the cubby holed wooden supply chest. It was filled with loose rhinestones and she tipped it out on the table, picked one out and rolled it next to the diamond, "See? Looks the same to me."

"No, they don't look the same at all. The real diamond sparkles more and the facets have sharper edges. I can tell right away which one's fake." She scowled at the mock stone for a moment, "Huh, let's find out if she can tell the difference." Then she carefully worked the real diamond loose and fitted the fake one in it's place. Then she scooped up all the rhinestones with the diamond and dumped them back in the drawer with a giggle.

From that day on the two were together for most of the day, with Diamond still spending some time with the stagecraft crew, preparing for the pageant. Silver Spoon worked on her tea service, which was coming along quicker than she had any right to expect, and Diamond was fixing her classmate's jewelry, swapping rhinestones for real stones as the opportunity presented itself. Once she had five of them of a suitable size she quit working on the other student's things and started bending and soldering a delicate frame of pure silver barstock.

Once her rudimentary metalworking skills were widely known, she'd been volunteered to make the trophy for beauty pageant, a rhinestone studded halo of a crown. It was traditionally done by the jewelry making class, but Silver Spoon had been it's only regular attendee and she had shrugged it off when the teacher mentioned it and he didn't bother to press the issue, he didn't really care.

Halfway through the summer she'd finished her tea service and had embellished the tray with piercings, engravings and all manner of filigree. She didn't want it to be done because she couldn't think of anything else she wanted to make but didn't want to leave Diamond Tiara's side, even though she'd been quite reserved the whole time. Her spirits had been improved by getting one over on the snobby little rich fillies who couldn't tell glass from a diamond and her own little project progressed quickly. They'd taken to sticking together and when the bullies hassled them they verbally tag teamed them and usually came out on top, so long as Primrose and her crew weren't around, then it was right back to Bump, bump, sugarlump, rump, the humiliating ritual they'd been forced into to prove their subservience.

It was odd in that, even having been bullied rather badly, Silver Spoon didn't really know how to be a bully herself and Diamond, having had longer to study the subject would have to prompt her, often out loud in front of their target, "Okay Silver Spoon, now call her a worthless blank flank and show her your new cutie mark." Because once she'd notched the sugar bowl's lid she made a fancy spoon to fit it and had really gone all out and when she was finished and dropped it in place, the set complete, Diamond gasped. Silver Spoon's cutie mark had appeared. It's not something that marked her to be a part of the idle rich. Not a bit of it. Much to her shame it's a metalworking cutie mark.











Though it was nearly finished, needing only to be cleaned up and polished out, Diamond's project had taken a backseat. Another group of fillies had slowly filled the class with their own clique and even though they were mostly harmless given their own rising statuses, Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara let themselves be displaced. They cycled through some of the other classes and settled into the now deserted literature appreciation course for a few days.

Diamond Tiara surprised her friend when she not only knew the same works she'd read, but was intimately familiar with them to the point that she could argue their merits with the instructor. When  praised for it she just snorted derisively and said, "Nopony can read all that drivel and actually remember it. I've never read a novel in my life and I never will when it's so much easier to read the literary analysis in a few pages and have all the opinion I need."

"Somepony else's opinion." Silver Spoon rebutted, appalled at her casual dismissal of the literature she loved so much.

"Somepony whose whole life's work is to tell me what I should think about a book to look smart? I think I can deal with that." She took down a thick tome from the shelf and thumped it down on the table, "Okay, here's Dr. Jackal and Mr. Hide, go."

"Go?"

"Yeah, go." She sneered, "What's it about, what's your opinion of it?"

"Well..." The grey filly furrowed her brow for a moment and rubbed her hoof across the worn brown cover as if she could pull her opinions forth by osmosis, "There's this mule who comes up with a potion that turns him into a diamond dog..."

"No, not a plot summary." Diamond pounded a hoof on the book, "Everypony knows that already, what's the point in it?"

"Oh, right, it's um...about the underlying bestial nature inherent in all of us and how we're ultimately slaves to it, no matter how civilized we think we are." She said at length, having had to rerun the story in her head and assemble it's moral from that.

"But what did you think of it, the pacing, the style, all that?"

"I...I don't remember. I only read it last year, but I can't really say much about it." She admitted.

"It's pacing was so slow, like it was a short story that somepony stretched out to be something more than it was, and it was clunky. Even by the standards of the day it was clunky and it wandered around so much I could hardly get through it. If the underlying narrative wasn't such a stroke of genius it would have been banished to the dustbins of history." Diamond said eruditely, "Now, of course I've never read it, but I remember the critic's opinion about it well enough that nopony would doubt that I had, and I can remember it faster than you having to write a book report in your head. That makes me  the victor if this were a normal conversation."

"Maybe, but you miss out on the joy of actually reading the book." her friend argued, as, in truth it's quite a compelling book.

"Nopony reads the classics to enjoy them. They read them so that they can pull out little references and quips to one up their peers at dinner parties." She scooped up and reshelved the book, thunking it neatly into it's slot, "Since that's all they're good for it's better to only have to remember a thousand words of condensed opinion than three hundred pages of unprocessed fiction. I mean, to you, maybe you can take the same joy in it that you'd get from solving a jigsaw puzzle, but I've got better things to do with my time than to solve riddles some other pony set out for me. If I want to read for pleasure I've got a whole stack of comics in a box under my bed."

That's when it hit Silver Spoon and she really understood, Diamond Tiara was simply and unabashedly all about appearances. She saw no true value in anything she could not immediately use, but saw the importance of maintaining the image of an accomplished little prodigy. That's not saying she's stupid, it takes somepony very clever to be as lazy as all that and to have thought out it's justifications so thoroughly.









"Get to the part where I give a buck," Scootaloo interrupted, "Because so far you're just giving us more reason to hate your little tyrant. Even if you were both bullied for three moons out of your whole life, is no reason to put us through it over and over again for the rest of ours."

"When we were younger Diamond went away somewhere every summer and wouldn't say much about it. I 'spect that wasn't the first time she'd been to that horrible school. Ah know where this is a'headin, though.'" Apple Bloom conjectured, "Diamond Tiara finished that crown in the metalworking shop and got her cutiemark for being a jeweler and she's all angsty that it's such a low station in life for somepony so dang glorious as her. Well I tell you that it's at least an honest trade, not that I cotton to puttin' so much value in sparkly rocks as some ponies, but it's about as akin to respectable as that filly's likely to get."

"No. It's true enough that the tiara on her flank's the same one she made and the same one she wears..."

"Full o' stolen diamonds." Apple Bloom interjected.

Silver Spoon shrugged,  ears back because she had stolen them, but because it was symbolic and ironic, not because she actually lusted after diamonds in some felonious manner, "My point is that she got her cutiemark at the pageant they hold on the next to last day of camp, right on stage in front of everypony, and it didn't go as well as you might have thought."









By the end of the summer Diamond and Silver Spoon had gone from utter pariahs and outcasts to two of the more dominant fillies that ran the halls. As a team they had power and they had a chance. The two had strategized and Silver Spoon had gone so far as to read books on the subject, using them to be a more effective bully, which was the opposite of their intent. By bullying those who'd bullied them they gained status amongst their peers and Diamond slowly worked herself up to being the dark horse to win the beauty pageant. It was a popularity contest, sure, but despite her supposed popularity, everypony seemed to want to see Primrose, the main opposition, taken down a peg. Even after a bout of unfortunate illness that left her magic much weakened she gained very little in the way of sympathy because Diamond Tiara heavily implied and let it be spread around that she'd been the one who had slipped the ground up mithril into her drink. Silver Spoon had a good account that it hadn't happened that way at all, but anything which sidelined Primrose and her ilk and let them run the halls unmolested was fine by her.

It should have been a moment of triumph. A tiara she'd won sat upon her head, a tiara she'd made from scratch freshly emblazoned on her flank, a bouquet of roses pressed against her chest as she smiled that cheesy holding-back-tears-of-joy smile that beauty queens were the unique masters of. Silver Spoon surmounted the stage as the lights dimmed and ironically performed their formerly hated greeting as a  rebellious victory dance.

"Bump, bump, sugarlump, rump!" They recited and went through the motions, laughing aloud as they finished. All things being equal, the reaction should have had those other bullies stalking off defeated, but it didn't play out that way.

The other competitors along with Primrose, Snowbell and Jasmine, in lieu of congratulating her with gracious falseness as is traditional, whispered and tittered amongst themselves until the half dozen of them were screaming with hilarious laughter. Diamond Tiara's face fell. Loathing blossomed on it as she turned on them.

"What's so Celestia damned funny?" She growled as the curtain fell. It took several moments before they could control themselves enough to respond. Primrose, stripped of her magic but not her attitude, stepped forward to speak for the group.

"You are, strutting around looking prissy and oh so pleased with yourself for winning that cheap bit of costume jewelry and finding out it's your special talent."

"It's a beauty contest, strutting around looking prissy is what you're supposed to do, and being prettier than you, well that's just not that hard. Nearly anypony could do it, with the exception of these trolls you're dragging along." Diamond Tiara retorted deftly.

"Whatever. All we were saying is that it's just as well you're good at this sort of thing, you'll probably be doing a lot of it." The filly said, though Diamond couldn't make head nor tail of what she was getting at. Her confusion must have shown, "Seriously, think about it. You're Filthy Rich's daughter, right? So you'll be in every beauty contest, ribbon cutting and dog show in that no horse town of yours, and the whole time you'll be smiling that plastic smile, shilling for Bargain Barn. It's just sad, is all. If you'd gotten a cutiemark in pretty much anything else, maybe you could have gotten out, but you didn't and now you're stuck singing the praises of the blue light special and double discount Tuesday forever."

When Diamond left the stage her smile had wilted and her tears were no longer ones of joy, somehow they'd parsed out the little filly's greatest fear and turned it's agonizing knife edge back on her.

The next day the camp ended on a sour note. That little filly that had temporarily lost her magic and spoken against Diamond had fallen down a flight of stairs and, among other things, lost a number of teeth. She swears she clumsily slipped and fell, and Diamond never said otherwise, but coincidences are a largely fictional occurrence.

> Of Threats and Promises
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunset faded to a luminously bruised swath of clouds on the distant horizon as Silver Spoon's tale of summer school woes drew to an end. Her final revelation about Primrose, mithril poisoning depriving her of her magic, being so savagely battered in her own former seat of power hung heavy in the air through a protracted silence. Finally reacting, Scootaloo wrinkled her muzzle and glared before exploding into action.

"Is that supposed to be a threat?" The little orange pegasus' buzzing wings, coupled with a small hop closed the gap between her and Silver Spoon with frightening rapidity. She grabbed the spoiled filly up by the collarbones and shoved her back, flat against the defaced cedar siding of the quaint schoolhouse hard enough that a few boards groaned in protest. As an earth pony, Silver Spoon might have been stronger than her and a simple buck in the chest could have spared her the indignity, but that wouldn't do much to further her cause so she endured it with little more than a frightened squeak.

"It wasn't meant to be a threat," She turned her face away and looked contritely to the ground, "I should have left that last part out, I was just trying to explain how bad that filly's taunting had effected her."

"Really?" She raged, "Because from where I'm standing it sure sounded like you were warning us that we'd get socked in the jaw if we told, well you can bring it on, sister! The Cutie Mark Crusaders aren't ones to back down from a fight!"

"Mostly." Sweetie Belle's head drooped, when she raised her eyes back up, Scootaloo's were angrily boring into her, she rebutted the silent critique of her pacifism,"What? I don't want to get socked in the jaw, or anywhere else!"

"She went after that filly because she was right and Diamond Tiara dang well knew it. The important bit is that whatever threat she made, it was stout enough to keep a stuck up unicorn from speakin' up agin' her, and bad enough she couldn't tell her best friend 'bout it. That's kinda spooky to think about right there." Apple Bloom nodded her head as if to reassure herself of the conclusion she was slowly coming to.

Much as she would have liked to, Silver Spoon couldn't give them the lesson she wanted them to arrive at as if this were an entry in one of Diamond Tiara's book notes and they likely wouldn't believe her unless they worked it out for themselves, so the grey filly had to leave their story at that and just hope Apple Bloom could puzzle it out in time. Maybe she could even find a solution, for which Silver Spoon herself was well and truly stumped.

When Silver Spoon had a complex problem to solve, she often found it useful to define the two extreme ends and winnow them down to the more moderate ones. In this case, her one extreme is to tell on Diamond herself, which would give Silver Spoon the chance to spin her actions as temporary insanity, maybe even blame Apple Bloom somehow. In the right circumstances there was traction to be had there, but it was too risky to be truly viable.

Had the Crusaders not witnessed the perpetrator red hoofed, the opposite extreme would be to burn down the school house. It wouldn't have been a bad solution, per se, she could very well get away with it, but with the other fillies involved it was a nonstarter from the get go. Silver Spoon might be a bully, though she might vehemently deny that as well. She is not, however, a psychopath and that left her other extreme as adamant denial that Diamond Tiara had anything to do with it and claim that the Crusaders were lying to get Diamond in trouble. Alibis could be fabricated, 'witnesses' recruited, money spread around to muddy up the issue until it blew over. The wealthy always had options, but Diamond's father was more of a straight shooter and when he caught wind of this there was no telling which way he would come down.

Odds are he would throw Diamond under the bus so as to save his business dealings with the Apples, or at least that's what Silver Spoon thought. She really didn't know him as well as all that, he was hardly ever around, letting his daughter run roughshod over the town just as she pleased most of the time.

Most ponies, when presented with a unique problem solving predicament don't even acknowledge it for what it is or weigh the facts against the consequences. They simply react emotionally,  instinctively, haphazardly, failing and flailing with false starts and opportunities lost. Though Silver Spoon was loathe to admit it, Apple Bloom's a smart filly, probably smarter than herself in any way that actually matters, and she had the look of sizing up her pros and cons quite carefully, for which the grey filly was grateful if a little frightened. A favorable outcome for her did not necessarily bode well for Diamond.

While Apple Bloom pondered, Scootaloo abruptly dropped the bully, her offensive capabilities now directed towards petty bickering with her unicorn friend which went on unabated for some time. It ended with Scootaloo exclaiming, "It doesn't even matter! Once we tell, they'll ship her off to some reform school, maybe a military one, we'll probably never have to deal with her again."

"We ain't gonna tell." Apple Bloom said quietly.

"Yeah they'll make her get up at the crack of dawn and run laps and do pushups and...wait, we aren't?" Sweetie Belle cocked her head, "Why aren't we?"

"We have to tell. It's our best chance ever to get her out of our manes, and she really deserves it this time! Even more than usual." Scootaloo half whined, half yelled.

"I don't know what we should do yet, but we ain't gonna tell 'cuz there ain't any point in it. When everypony sees this they're gonna know who did it. Ain't no need for us gettin' involved 'til then, and maybe not even then." Apple Bloom told her dumbfounded friends.

"But what if they can't figure out who it was?" Scootaloo speculated.

"'Member when you scratched that dirty poem Rainbow taught you in the little fillies room stall? Even wrote with a nail, Miss Cheerilee recognized the hoofwriting. Ain't no way she wouldn't pick up on Diamond's left hooved scrawl. It's a teacher thing."

"Meh. If that's the way you really feel about it. I didn't want to be a snitch anyway." Scootaloo acquiesced, somewhat embarrassed about the incident mentioned, "But I make no promises if they don't catch on to her pretty bucking quick."

"But, Miss Cheerilee's seen the way Diamond treats us and she ignores it all the time because of how she kisses up to her. What makes you think she won't ignore it this time too?" Sweetie Belle pled, "Plus, how are you going to feel having to pass that everyday before school? I know I wouldn't like it."

"You'd cry." Scootaloo teased the little unicorn.

"I'd cry!" Sweetie Belle agreed, oblivious to the taunt implied.

"Look...I..." Apple Bloom started, changing direction in mid thought, "I need to think on this some, sleep on it. Y'all come on over to the clubhouse just as soon as y'all get up and we'll talk s'more 'bout it. In private." She glanced sidelong towards Silver Spoon, a look of greater understanding than she was letting on glinting behind her eyes, "For now, we all need to get home 'fore somepony comes lookin' for us and finds this mess."

Scootaloo huffed, "You act like this is our secret to keep, but I don't see how it's meant to be our problem at all."

"I dunno. Maybe it ain't, but sob story aside, there's other things to consider, so let's keep this under our hats for right now."

On that they all agreed and set out down the dusky path back towards Ponyville proper. Despairing of her impotence, Silver Spoon stayed until the night deepened and finally washed away the vandal's work with inky black.










"Girls, this ain't no small thing. There's still a picture hung on my wall from when me and Diamond Tiara used to play as little foals." Apple Bloom meanderingly paced the clubhouse floor, dark circles betrayed her lack of sleep, and though she'd played the stoic the night before, matted patches on her cheeks spoke of her desolate condition. Sweetie Belle, the only one of the three whose role model was prone to shameless, histrionic bouts herself, shed tears freely in her stead. Bright daylight filtered in through the shaded windows drawing irregular polygons on the floor and western wall.

"What's wrong with that filly, anyway? What did we ever to her?" Sweetie Belle sniffle-snorted. Neither of her friends made any attempt to answer. The little unicorn had asked the question a half dozen times already in the hours their fruitless discussion had occupied and a concise answer was neither expected nor wanted.

"That, right there, is something you're going to have to get over, Apple Bloom." Scootaloo reclined in the corner, idly folding and unfolding some yellowed bit of paper that had been inscribed with their revised sacred Cutie Mark Crusader vows, a condensed version in case a Babs Seed type event happened again. Always prepared, one of their many mottoes, which headed up another, currently misplaced list. Scootaloo had worried the paper until it was a velvet soft thing, the subtle sign of her own sentiments, "She blew you off, and good riddance to her. I can't see why you'd be lonesome for that brat's friendship anyway. Let her take what's coming to her."

"You make it sound like I want revenge."

"I want revenge. I want it for all those times she humiliated us and made us look like foals. I want revenge for her lording over us what she has and doesn't even care for, like a spoiled little princess. I want to see her pay for what she said about your family and you should want it too." Scootaloo snarled.

"It wasn't so long ago that she was family too, Scoots. Same as you and Sweetie Belle are to me now, even if y'all ain't strictly blood. It still ain't a thing that's so easy to give up on, and...well I don't want to besides." Even after all that had passed between them, Apple Bloom still held a tiny place in her heart reserved for her wayward foalhood companion, and she finally understood the events that had dissolved their friendship from Diamond Tiara's perspective, "What that Primrose said to Diamond Tiara, I understand why it cut her so deep. I'm afraid I might'a gone and said just about the same thing just before she split with me."

"What?" Scootaloo asked flatly, "If you were friends, which I still have a hard time believing, why would you even say something like that?"

"Well it's not like I said it to hurt her." Apple Bloom rebutted, "Truth is that I was excited 'bout it 'cuz we were best friends and I was gonna grow up and run the farm and she was gonna go and take over her dad's business some day and sell my apples and apple products. Seemed 'bout perfect to me 'cuz that's what I wanted to do anyhow, but look at it from her perspective. Rich filly or not, she's trapped into running her father's business, and working for him."

"...And being rich." Scootaloo rolled her eyes, "Sounds good to me, sign me up."

"Bein' a rich slave's still bein' a slave."

"But...you don't feel the same way about Sweet Apple Acres?" Sweetie Belle earnestly asked, somewhat scared for the answer.

"Heck no. I can do any ole thing I decide to, my sister's made that plenty clear. If'n I decide against staying on there I can go to college or start my own farm or whatever, 'cuz no matter what there's Apples that'll take the place on, even if Mac and Applejack skipped out. Not that that's gonna happen. Diamond, though, she's a single foal and her dad's made it plain that he expects an awful lot from her. Must feel 'bout like a prison. It might not excuse what she's gone and done, but I can kinda understand why she acts like such a high highfalutin' brat."

"You don't want to tell, that's your lookout, but all this cutesie wootsie nostalgia doesn't mean that she's not going to get hers come Monday morning, is it?" Scootaloo's wings buzzed briefly in nervous anticipation of the firestorm seemingly inexorably coming Diamond Tiara's way.

"Yeah, I 'spose you're right."

"Bucking well right. That filly's headed straight for Celestia's reform school for villainous fillies, if it existed."

"What do you really think will happen to her?" Sweetie Belle shrunk back.

"Really? I expect Scoots is right about reform school of some sort if her pa don't buy her way out of trouble, which he's libel to. She ain't gonna be back in our class, though. Not after this." Apple Bloom considered it, "Probably she'll get sent off to some school in Canterlot, and if what Silver Spoon was telling us is true, I have to imagine she's going to be on the receiving end of the same kind of thing she was dishing out to us."

"Serves her right." Scootaloo snorted, "I hope those stuck up unicorns throw her a blanket party every night."

"Is that like a slumber party? It'd be such fun to have a slumber party every night!" Sweetibelle chirped.

"Nah, it's where you're sleeping and a bunch of ponies throw a blanket over your head and beat you..." Scootaloo snickered until Sweetie Belle's pained look abruptly stopped her, "I mean, yeah, it's a slumber party."

Sweetie Belle grimaced, "That's mean Scootaloo, even if she is a big bully you shouldn't wish things like that on anypony. If they treat her like that she'll probably come back all messed up and angry and she won't be able to get along with anypony or get a regular job. Just like when they let your dad out of prison."

"You promised not to bring that up anymore." She grumbled, "Besides, I'm hoping she won't ever be coming back."

"That's silly. Her dad's not going to just up and move, his whole business is based out of Ponyville and there's no private school in town." Sweetie Belle reasoned, "She'll be back and worse than ever."

"Maybe they'll hire her a tutor." Apple Bloom speculated with a small shrug.

"So she gets to skip school and still stay in town? Lame-o." Proclaimed the pegasus.

"But everypony will know what she did and nopony will want to be her friend. She'll be a pariah." Scootaloo blinked in confusion until Sweetie Belle clarified, "An outcast? Sompony who's looked down on and you'd cross the street to keep from passing them by?"

"I knew what you meant." Scootaloo lied and her two friends rolled their eyes at the supposedly face saving deception.

"What worries me even more," Apple Bloom sighed, "Is what everypony in town's goin' to think of my family after this."

"Why? You're the victims in all this." Scootaloo stated.

"Exactly. We're the victims and they'll all be gossipin' behind our backs, whisperin' about how sad it is and how we're bein' so brave goin' on like nothin' ever happened. It'll be humiliatin' for everypony to think of the strong, honest and loyal Apple family, first and foremost, as victims." Apple Bloom paced as she continued her tirade, "More than that, they'll be jokes about it and ponies wondering if those things she said about us aren't at least a bit true. 'Til Mac took up with Miss Cheerilee there were a lot of rumors about why he didn't have a special somepony that went along that particular path, and I got dang sick of it then, too."

"I hadn't thought of that." Scootaloo said simply.

"But...but...that's really what's going to happen and there's nothing we can do about it?" Sweetie Belle stammered.

"Seems that way." Apple Bloom snorted, "I mean, how could we possibly fix all that, even if we wanted to?"

"I don't know, couldn't somepony just putty over the carving and touch up the paint?" Scootaloo thought aloud, "Isn't that how you'd fix it?"

"Nah, it'd show through no matter what you did. Wood putty don't work as well as all that. I think the school house'll have to be resided on  that end." Apple Bloom dismissed her idea, but it only sparked one from Sweetie Belle.

"Couldn't we sand it out and not have to replace the boards?"

"Maybe, but it'd take forever and there'd be dips where the letters were." As an abstract, to be dealt with philosophically and with mental issues in mind, the problem was unsolvable and uncomfortable. As a practical matter, Apple Bloom came into her own, "Maybe if you had to do it in place, you could do it with a plane and keep it even, if you had one that was shaped right, but you'd have to take down the trim boards and repaint the whole wall, includin' those hearts and little swirly-cues over the windows. Ain't no minor undertakin'."

"So, out of curiosity, have you got the thing to do it?" Scootaloo asked, but Apple Bloom wasn't sure she did.

"I'll have to ask my brother." If she did that, then this all went from a rhetorical discussion to something of a commitment and she eyed her two friends meaningfully. Sweetibelle nodded her implicit solidarity. Scootaloo pursed her lips and released a slow breath.

"Buck it. I think you're wrong, saving that brat's flank like this, but it's your call and you know I'd follow you right into Tartarus if that's what it'd take to make you happy."










Big Macintosh didn't have the right plane, but it's such a simple device that he managed to fabricate a pair of them in half an hour. It was simply a block of wood with a notch on one side to ride along the school's clapboards and a plane iron hung on the front by a bolt. They didn't even have a handle, but in testing their fit on the barn's siding, Apple Bloom was certain it would work. Likewise they acquired a gallon of paint, labeled by it's manufacturer as barn/schoolhouse red, which is a lucky break. Add a few variously colored quarts for the flourishes and they were set. They scrounged some brushes, a step ladder and a tall ladder. So equipped and with a short and a tall ladder, they felt well prepared for the task at hoof.

Looking back on the pile of supplies heaped against the barn, Apple Bloom couldn't help but realize, "We're gonna need some help."

Though the Crusaders were not unaccustomed to being sneaky, Apple Bloom had simply explained their need for the tools to her brother by telling him that someone had carved bad words onto a wall, and they wanted to repair it before anypony saw it and got their feelings hurt. He'd protested, being the stalwart of responsibility that he was, that they shouldn't cover up for the vandal or the only lesson they'd learn was that other ponies would clean up their messes for them. Despite this, he saw that his sister's heart was in the right place and helped her prepare for the task. That being said, there was nopony she wanted along less than Big Mac.

Adults think nothing of breaking promises of secrecy to a foal and are, in fact, worse tattle tales than any filly could ever be if they feel their course of action to be the proper one. Adults couldn't be trusted this time, which meant that their resources were limited.

"How about Twist?" Sweetie Belle suggested as they stared at the pile of paint and tools laying before the barn.

"I wouldn't turn down her help," Apple Bloom said charitably, "But I was thinkin' more like Archer."

"Considering last year, I don't think Archer wouldn't help to save Diamond Tiara if she were on fire and Archer were holding the last bucket in Equestria." Scootaloo observed, "I was thinking Rumble and Shady Daze might help."

"You know, even if nopony's seen the schoolhouse up close yet, a herd of foals is going to draw a lot of attention to it and I think we're going to be found out pretty quick." Sweetie Belle gestured to the tools, "Carrying all this isn't going to help that too much."

"We'll have to do it at night." Scootaloo replied.

"Nah, we can't do it in the dark and lanterns would give us away." Apple Bloom pointed out, coming to the same conclusion her erstwhile nemesis had, "We'll have to do it right at dusk. We'll have maybe an hour when it's still bright enough to see, but dark enough not to get caught too easy. I expect us three and about five others ought to be able to just pull it off in time. We'll have to swear them all to secrecy and tell 'em the truth, or a fair bit of it, but make it clear it's a favor to me, not somethin' we're doin' to help out Diamond Tiara. But on no account can we let anypony who can't keep a secret in on it."










Convincing their classmates was hard, but Scootaloo surprised everypony and managed to make some very convincing and heartfelt arguments that repeatedly turned the tide. Under Apple Bloom's leadership, the plan itself went off with nary a hitch. A few things didn't turn out so well as they might, and if anypony looked for it they'd be certain to spot certain oddities in the topography of the schoolhouse's siding, but given the time crunch and the labor pool they'd drawn from it was nothing short of miraculous. Twist had proven to be the hero of the evening. While she'd started out feeling awkward and out of place amongst ponies more accustomed to the work at hoof, she'd been the only one able to accurately paint the complicated designs above the windows. With a delicate hoof she even managed to paint them before the underlying layers of paint were dry, which expedited the work considerably.

"Thanks y'all. You have no idea what it means to me that you'd come out here tonight just to help me. If y'all ever need anythin' just ask, I'm in your debt." Apple Bloom said and the hoof full of other foals solemnly nodded, "Now, let's never, ever speak of this again. Cross your heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in your eye."

The assembled classmates mumbled and went through the motions, then dispersed into the night, several carrying the tools, paint cans and tarp full of wood shavings and paint drips, to either hide away or return to Sweet Apple Acres.

"So what now?" Scootaloo asked.

"So...nothin'. Problem solved. We go home and get some sleep afore we get yelled at after parent teacher conferences tomorrow." Apple Bloom said. She'd done poorly in math and her spelling was mediocre at best, so she'd been expecting a good solid dressing down to come with tomorrow's meeting. After the crisis she'd just averted, she couldn't find it in her heart to worry about it.

"Problem not solved." Scootaloo insisted, "What makes you think she won't just up and do it again some other time?"

"There ain't much I can do about that. If she does something like this again, who knows if we'll be able to do anything about it, but I have to imagine she didn't figure on getting caught, right? So she's probably sittin' home right now, agonizin' on what's going to happen tomorrow when everypony finds out what she's done. That ought to be more'n enough to teach her a lesson."

"You're probably right." Sweetie Belle yawned, "Maybe she'll even stop being such a big meanie after this. If nothing else, it was kind of fun getting everypony working together on a project."

Scootaloo had to admit, "It kind of was. I'll see you two after my conference is over, okay?"

"G'night Scoots, Sweetie Belle."

"'Night." Sweetie Belle waved as she headed towards home, trailing just behind Scootaloo so she wouldn't feel so alone in the dark, but not so close she'd have to admit that she'd like to be walked home. Her thoughts roamed to what Diamond Tiara must be feeling this very moment. If it had been her, she'd probably have lost her appetite and been curled up in the corner of her room, sobbing, or more likely she'd have sought out a friend for comfort and consolation. Jerk or not, (and in truth, there were few she found consistently jerkier) Sweetie Belle couldn't help but feel pangs of anxiety on her behalf, despite knowing that the crisis had been averted.










Silver Spoon stood below Diamond Tiara's window and flung pebble after pebble at it until the light winked off and she apparently retreated to some other portion of the mansion. She'd already been repelled at the front door by the butler. It was time to play her last card. She knocked on the kitchen door and was thrilled to have it opened by the jolly Miss Xenia, the rotund zebra cook. They had always been friendly, but didn't know each other intimately enough that she felt comfortable letting her risk her job unawares.

"Hello Miss Xenia, lovely night, isn't it?" The embarrassed foal started awkwardly and the zebra gave her a puzzled look, clearly wondering how she came to be at her door rather than entering through the front like a proper young lady. Silver Spoon hem hawed around, looking for an explanation, but settled for the truth, it seemed to be a night for it, "See, Diamond's mad at me, and I've got to talk to her, but she won't let me in. I don't want you to get in trouble, though, but I need to see her."

A sly look crossed the zebra mare's face and she walked to a window in an unlit portion of the dining room and flung it open, then looked Silver Spoon in the eyes, "Little filly, that was terribly naughty of you to sneak in through the window while I was occupied with my baking. For shame, for shame." She said as she turned her back and resumed her work.

"Thank you." The filly said genuinely as she trotted away.

"Who was that that just spoke, I wonder? Must be hearing things again." 

One might think stealth well advised, but the mansion was fairly large and there were, at most, half a dozen ponies within. The only one she actually needed to avoid was the butler, and this time of night he'd be chatting up the old maid as she knit and pretended to rebuff his advances. It was a simple enough feat to avoid her room and advance to the only sliver of light winking out across the lower story, from Filthy Rich's study.

Stealth was attempted and blown completely by the squawk of dry hinges holding the heavy door. Diamond Tiara looked up from the rug where she lay on her belly, reading a thick tome by the light of a roaring fire in the darkened room. She glared daggers, at least, maybe swords and poisonous death, but she blinked and it was gone. She returned her gaze to the book and spoke without looking up again.

"So old Xenia finally let you in, huh?"

"No, I snuck in the back..."

"You can't lie to me Silver Spoon, you're an open book. Speaking of which, one of your favorites." She slipped loose the comic that was nestled between the novel's pages, closed the book and slid it so that it stopped before her friend's hooves. It was The Princess, by Marechiavelli, not a first edition, such a thing would be astronomically valuable and in a language neither could read, but a good translation in a faux leather binding. Silver Spoon stared at it in silence for a good minute trying to think of what to say, but Diamond Tiara beat her to it.

"You're here to plead for me to apologize, preemptively, or are you going to suggest that we claim that Apple Bloom and her friends did it themselves to frame us? I could get a couple witnesses to back that up, if I needed to."

"No, I wasn't going to suggest either of those things."

"Good, because I wasn't going to do either one. If this was as big a problem as you seem to think it is, the quickest solution would be to burn the school down." She still wouldn't look up from her comic,  glancing over, it turned out to be the Watchstallions. Silver Spoon always hated that one, it was so irredeemably hopeless, but Diamond Tiara read it over and over again, monthly, it seemed, only ceasing during the period when the play based on it was at the height of it's popularity and everypony else glommed onto it.

"I thought of that, but the blank flanks saw you."

"Collateral damage and scapegoats all rolled into three." She coldly stated, though her friend knew she didn't mean it, she just said it for shock value, but it did work, a bit. Diamond often came up with some truly ghastly thoughts and expressed them freely to Silver Spoon, generally she knew her friend had the same ones but had simply suppressed them as too untoward to reveal, even to her.

The grey filly scuffed her hooves and let her ears drop back, "Well, if I might ask, what is it you do intend to do?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing? You can't not do anything, it's just a matter of time before you're caught and then who knows what'll happen!"

"I really wanted to keep you from coming in here tonight and demanding silly answers to stupid questions I'm not in the mood to bother with. Why don't you just see yourself out?" Diamond reached for the silver bell that would summon the butler but never made it.

"So that's it? You really mean to throw your best friend out instead of talking about this? If you can treat me this way, are we even friends at all?"

She shrugged, "I made a threat, as you recall. I told you that if you wanted to be my friend you'd better show up and be a lookout, and because you didn't...Well I'm not sure I can really blame you as much as all that, it's just bad luck, I guess, but still, a threat is like a promise. I intend to keep it or no threat I ever make in the future will be worth the syllables it takes to make it. "

"So...you're saying you don't want to be my friend anymore?"

Her eyes flicked up for the barest moment, full of hurt and confusion, but they just as quickly returned to the pages before her, "We'll just have to see. The question may be moot."

"Because your dad's going to ship you off to boarding school in Canterlot for good like he's threatened ever since what happened with your mom? You think he'll hold his threats as dear as promises too?" A quick glance was all it took to verify that hypothesis, "We can still be friends, I'll write you every day, and you can write me too, whenever you have time."

"That sounds dreadful. Just really, really awful." She finally shut the comic and looked up coldly, "Look, long distance relationships never work, there's no point in pretending they will."

Silver Spoon was too incensed to even speak. She scooped up the proffered book, flung it at her and was out the door before seeing if it hit it's mark. Before she even made it home she was second guessing herself, giving Diamond the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she was being that way to make it easier when they inevitably had to part ways. Was she that manipulative, that kind? It was always so hard to tell with her what emotions were false and which were genuine, or maybe she ascribed to her friend a ruthless cunning she didn't truly possess and she'd simply been enthralled by her self assured personality. What if the depth she'd inferred all this time was nothing but an illusion and Diamond Tiara really was the monster she appeared to be?

Among all the fillies in Ponyville there was only the one who ever even understood Silver Spoon, or seemed to, and she'd hitched her star to that rather abusive wagon. It was too late and too hard to disentangle her heart, no matter what happened. Through a veil of tears dripping on uneven cobbles and foalish mementos etched in concrete, she slipped in the back door of her home, ill prepared for the morning and the brief moment around which, she imagined an entire future pivoted.
> Tough Love and Some of the Other Kind, too
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

A bloody sunrise still hung low behind the schoolhouse, darkening the face in contrast, but as Silver Spoon squinted at it, it seemed to her...

"Surprise." Apple Bloom said in a low growling monotone as she slipped past, a hoof's breath from her shoulder as the grey filly stood slack jawed on the path, looking at the schoolhouse's unblemished face.

"What's the surprise?" Her sister asked in confusion as they trod back towards their farm.

"Nothin'."

"Well it's somethin' or you wouldn't have said nothin' at all." Applejack sternly said.

"Oh, it's just, um...she said I was libel to get a whooping right on the schoolhouse lawn for my math scores, and here you ain't even as mad as all that." Apple Bloom replied quickly.

"Well, I'm none too pleased, don't get me wrong, but I know you been workin' hard at it and I ain't got no right to complain myself, my math scores weren't nothin' to write home about neither. Still..." Their conversation continued, but had drifted beyond easy hearing and besides, Silver Spoon's mother was impatiently calling for her.

She stood by Cheerilee in the doorway, tapping her hoof and giving her best 'quit dawdling' look, hindered somewhat by the sunglasses affected to disguise her puffy eyes. Normally she wouldn't have been up this early, but her and father were going to Canterlot for the week and in order to supervise the packing properly she'd had to sacrifice a portion of her beauty rest to show up for the conference as early as possible.

"Sorry." she blushed, "I got distracted by what the Apples were saying."

"That's one of the things we need to talk about." Cheerilee was saying as she walked up, "Silver Spoon's often inattentive in class, daydreaming with her head in the clouds..."

It went on from there, but true to her complaints, the filly's attention had drifted and she didn't hear a bit of it. She was too busy looking at the schoolhouse and the miracle that seemed to have spilt all over it. Up close there were signs of hurried work, and the paint was patchy in numerous places, but it was unnoticeable unless somepony was looking for it. Cheerilee's demeanor seemed relaxed and undistracted, which seemed to indicate that she either didn't know or had handled the situation and not thought much of it.

"Silver Spoon! Get your flank in here!" Her mother hollered out the door and she drew herself away from pondering to join them inside, "Honestly, I don't know what's going on in that head of yours half the time."

"That's true." the filly nodded her head and obliquely agreed, to which her mother gave a puzzled look, swatting her on the rear as she ushered her inside.









The rest of that morning passed in anxious silence. Silver Spoon sat in her room reading the same few paragraphs of some novel, over and over again, while never comprehending them. Her thoughts were elsewhere and she desperately wished to know what had transpired and by whom it had come to pass. Given the choice she would have run to Diamond Tiara's, and when she was rebuffed, as she most certainly would be if her spite had survived the day, she would have scoured the town for a lead, starting with those three blank flanks who were the catalyst, though not the cause, for so many of her ills.

The choice was made easy, though, she was grounded for certain academic deficiencies which she would rather not admit to and would contend that it's Cheerilee's fault for being so boring as she is, and one would have to take a firmly defensive stance should they choose to debate in her favor.

It was the next day before she learned anything further, namely that she'd have to wait until after class to find out, as Diamond Tiara was alarmingly absent.

Long ago Cheerilee had separated Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon in class, using Apple Bloom as an unwilling buffer, but now she was grateful for her proximity for she couldn't take the suspense and risked interrogating her in class. "What happened? Do you know?"

She gave a mock incredulous look and stage whispered, "I ain't got the faintest idea what you're on about, did something happen?" Then she looked back to where her fellow Crusaders were seated winked, which raised titters. Regardless of Silver Spoon's numerous and desperate entreaties, she wouldn't say a further word about it and she was shortly rebuked by Cheerilee for whispering in class.

Looking back to Apple Bloom's two friends, so as to see if anything of value could be discerned from them, she noticed that the eyes of all the other students fled from her gaze like roaches from the light. They all knew something.

At recess she pressed the two most likely weak links in the conspiracy of silence, as well as the Equestrian gene pool, Snips and Snails, but either they'd been coached on playing dumb by an expert, or they really knew nothing. She tried to get at Sweetiebelle as she blithely swung on the playset, regular as a pendulum, but her friends saw Silver Spoon coming and held her at bay by their presence.

"Please, just tell me what's going on. She won't talk to me and nopony will tell me what's happened or who fixed the wall or if we're in trouble." She begged, looking up from her knees and haunches ears back and sniveling. Certain humiliations had to be borne in  service to Diamond. They whispered amongst themselves and turned, Scootaloo with a scowl and Apple Bloom with hard resolution flashing.

"Sorry, Silver Spoon, seems like we still don't know what you're talkin' 'bout, and I don't think we'll know anytime soon neither."

"You told! You told and they sent her away already and I'll never see her again and it's all your fault!" She cried. Scootaloo, quick to anger, advanced and hoofed her hard in the chest, pushing the sniveling filly back.

"You shut up. We didn't squeal, but it'd serve you right if we had."

"They did send her away, didn't they? What did they do to her? Tell me!" She pushed Scootaloo back, briefly, but the pegasus surged forward and knocked her to her plot.

"That's not what happened," Sweetiebelle chimed in kindly, "She's probably just sick..."

"Faking sick." Scootaloo interjected.

Apple Bloom hushed the trio and turned back to Silver Spoon. She held her hooves together, then knifed her arms straight out, a gesture they all took to mean that they were finished, then she turned her back even as Silver Spoon moaned and screamed alternating pleas and curses upon them.

She felt a warm hoof upon her shoulder and looked back. It seemed her over dramatic state had drawn Miss Cheerilee's attention. She asked what was the matter, if the other fillies had been mean to her and the bratty filly was so close to bursting into deep, abyssal, give-up-and-curl-into-a-ball-for-all-eternity tears that she could think of no other thing to do than take off running and that's just what she did.

Cheerilee gave chase, but the filly's headstart and the path she'd taken through the brambles, the one she'd taken the other night in the opposite direction that had claimed her pearls, left their teacher far behind, calling after. Let the blank flanks explain it if they could, it was tomorrow's problem and, for her, there were no more tomorrows.

Before she could comprehend her own mind she was crashing through the dense boxwood the screened the Rich estate on three sides. It was like trying to swim through a sponge, but she eventually tumbled out on the other side, breathing heavily and shuddering with exertion. A window was flung conspicuously wide, somepony, somezebra, was worried and she was being bid come in. She didn't waste a second as she hurdled the window, landed on her knees and slid across the floor. By the time Xenia had a chance to look away from her work the grey filly had already left the door flapping back and forth in her wake.

In the main hall she came face to face with the butler, who registered shock for but a moment before he strode forward. She gave him her best sneering death glare and charged him. In his frightened confusion she scuttled between his legs and bound up the stairs. He was far too slow to keep her from her goal.

She opened Diamond's bedroom door the barest sliver and darted into a world of near complete darkness, but she knew the room well enough to have the door latched and a chair wedged beneath the knob before it rattled and shook in it's frame.

"I'm sorry, mistress, the little dickens slipped past me." The butler called from behind the door.

"It's fine," Diamond's voice, hoarse and wavering, called, "Leave me be."

"Diamond!" Silver Spoon searched around for the lights, but in the end settled for opening the curtains. What greeted her was not the graceful and imperious mare she'd come to know and love, but a regular little filly, frizzy headed, with squinting, bloodshot eyes and snot dripping from one nostril, "You're sick! You're not even faking it."

She rolled her eyes, as if to say, no, really? Silver Spoon moved in to hug her and not only did she not rebuff her, but she squeezed her right back.

"You'll get my cold if you do that."

"I don't care, I...Diamond, are you alright?"

"Sheesh, it's just a cold. Why'd you get so sappy all of a sudden? It doesn't suit you."

"You know what I mean." She grumbled, releasing her, and she twisted her lip in a wry smirk that said she did, "So what happened?"

She shook her head, "Your guess is as good as mine, better, probably since I've been cooped up in here all day."

Silver Spoon grimaced with a shudder, "I thought, I thought they'd tattled and already sent you away."

"There's no need to get so worked up, but who cleaned all that up, and why?" Her eyes screwed down to slits, "Was anypony acting funny? Did the blank flanks say anything?"

"It doesn't matter, does it? Somepony gave you a second chance. There's no point looking a gift horse in the mouth." She'd never really understood that idiom, but it slipped out. Diamond looked nonplussed.

"It matters quite a bit, to me. I need to know who has the goods to come back and bite me in the flank so I can take care of them some way or another." She coughed into a tissue miserably, wiped her mouth and groaned, "I went to the conference yesterday with Daddy and it didn't seem like Cheerilee knew anything about it, and the maintenance department takes three days notice to change a lightbulb. There's no way the blank flanks could do it by themselves, they'd wreck everything up worse than I did."

"Seriously? After everything that happened, that's what you're worried about? Damage control?" She just couldn't understand Diamond's misplaced priorities, "You should just be happy someone cleaned up after you and let it die down."

"That's fine for now, but I'll have to deal with eventually."

"Why? Who cares? Not everypony does things just to have leverage down the road."

"Not everypony, but a lot more than you'd suspect, so who do you think it was?"

Silver Spoon thought back, "The blank flanks know what's going on, I'm sure of it, but they won't tell me, but honestly, most of the class was acting funny, I think they might have all known."

"What?" She scoffed, which caused her to break into another coughing fit, "They wouldn't all get together just to save my flank. There's no way."

"Well...maybe they did. I...I may have told them about the summer we got our cutiemarks."

"You what!?" She snarled, "You didn't tell them how we got them, did you?"

"Of course, that's the whole story, isn't it? I was just throwing anything out there I could to make you seem more sympathetic. Somepony worth a second chance." She sheepishly admitted.

Diamond Tiara facehoofed, "I can't believe you! How could you do something so stupid! All this time, this air of aloof superiority I'd been establishing, it's gone forever now. For the rest of my life those ponies are going to see me on the streets and whisper about me as a tragic figure they'd so altruistically saved instead of cowering at my presence as is right and proper. It's even worse that I don't know for sure who knows, or if they even kept it a secret. You've ruined me Silver Spoon! Absolutely ruined me. Now instead of the elegant beauty queen who deigns to bestow her presence on the masses, I'm just a townie buck up, heiress or not."

"I...I don't see how you figure all that."

"Sympathy! When they have a reason to show somepony sympathy it puts them on a higher footing than the recipient, capiche? Why am I even explaining this to you? If you don't understand it now, you never will."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do anything like that. I was just trying to keep you out of trouble." She mewled in the face of Diamond's unaccountable anger.

"Trouble? What trouble? Sure it's easier that they didn't find out, but what would have happened? I would have been punished, maybe sent away, though I doubt it. Even if it was as bad as last time I'd make it through, persevere and come out on top. Then I'd at least have a Canterlot school to brag about instead of everypony thinking I'm just some pretty faced, empty headed beauty queen for a cut rate discount store." She quelled her rage enough to blow her nose, "You're lucky I'm nice, or I'd do something very unpleasant to you. Now get out, and don't come back here again!"

Silver Spoon made no attempt to move, piecing together some justification as she was, but took too long. Diamond sprung up from her bed grabbed her former friend around the throat in a headlock, unbarricaded the door and flung her out in a heap, then slammed the door behind her.

With a groan and a slow unraveling, the grey filly sorted herself out and walked downstairs, intent on exiting through the kitchen to avoid further troubles with the butler. Xenia was there and she gasped at the filly's ruffled state.

"It's fine, I'm fine." But by the time she'd said it, it was clear she wasn't and the plump zebra moved in to nuzzle her as a torrent broke loose from amethyst eyes.

"Oh, I'm so sorry."

"I'll be okay, it's just...Diamond's kind of a mule isn't she?"

Xenia started, but then hugged the filly all the tighter, "My kitchen, you should know, is not a place for casual racism, but confidentially, she really is. I take it things didn't go well? I was hoping that seeing a friend would snap her out of it."

"Yeah," she sniffled, "It looks like she's going to need some other friend to snap her out of it, because it sure isn't going to be me."

Xenia drew back, and smiled gently, "Oh, so you think it's so bad as all that, do you? Haven't you noticed that Diamond doesn't really have any other friends besides you?" Now that she mentioned it, that was fairly obvious. For being the most popular filly in school, she never hung around with the other foals, "Do you really believe she'll discard you so casually as all that? I think not. You shouldn't let her know I told you, but she speaks very highly of you, though the way she treats you doesn't seem to show it."

"But, she's so angry all the time, and so worried about what she's going to become and it seems like all I ever do is mess up her plans and make things harder for her."

"She makes things hard on herself, and the plans and ideals of a half grown filly might not amount to so much as she thinks." Xenia wiped her smudged face with a dish towel as if she were the little foal she now truly felt like. She couldn't say she disapproved so much as she should have, "Her father spoils her. Without a proper mother she's been wanting for a grounded filly that she can talk to. Somepony to reign her in, a bit, and make her see that her future is of her own choosing."

"I get that, I guess, but I don't know how to do that."

"There are two ways to show someone you care. The obvious is to be nurturing and to coddle them." She said, and smilingly spoon fed Silver Spoon a slice of peach in half melted whip cream meant for a fruit pie she'd been working on. Then her face went stern. She set a bowl of soup, some wheat crackers and orange juice on a tray and set them on the filly's back, "The other is, how do you call it, tough love? Yes. I believe that's it. You show them what must be done and unrelentingly drive them to do it. It feels much riskier than it is, and sometimes it can be painful, but sometimes it's the only way."

With her newly found hardened expression, she pointed a hoof towards the front of the house, and Silver Spoon realized what she intended. She gulped, but the zebra pointed again, more insistently and swatted her backside with an agile tail to drive her on.

Diamond's door was still unlatched, and when Silver Spoon came in, she squinted at her in the dim light, then rolled her eyes.

"Did you bring me lunch as some sort of namby pamby apology?" She asked as her friend set down the tray, she looked about to say more, but she seemed genuinely curious. Silver Spoon herself quite wondered what she was going to say and found herself rewarded by a stream of consciousness refutation of many of the things she had come to believe.

"Hardly." She sat at the foot of her bed and took a long breath, "Have you ever considered, Diamond, that we're not so special as we tell ourselves? I mean really, we had to have cover stories about how we got our cutie marks so nopony would know what they really meant. That's a bit pretentious, no? We keep telling each other how unique and how clever we are, you with your machinations to keep Ponyville under your hoof when you grow up, and me with my angsty little suffering filly routine."

Silver Spoon thought of her library of deep and dense tomes, suddenly props every one for a drama she meant to abandon, "Well, I for one am done with it. I'm just a normal little filly, like everypony else. All the chasing after you, pretending to be popular, all the while whining that nopony understands me, it's not me, at least it's not who I want to be. I don't want to be a bully, or a snob. I want to be happy, and work hard and have friends who let me be myself and don't force a set of rules on me about who I should be and how to be proper, and you. You're trying to be popular by keeping ponies in your iron grip, but that can't work in the long term, can it?"

Diamond looked confused and a bit stunned, but Silver Spoon plowed on, "It only works because the school gives you a captive audience, and a small town like Ponyville does too, but you want to be more than that, I know you do, and the first thing that you're going to have to do is give up the idea that you can control everything and everypony. You know who hates change and wants to control everything? Little baby foals and doddering old stallions. You can't plan the next sixty some years of your life because life is what happens while you're busy making those plans." Admittedly, she'd read that on an inspirational mug, "So look, if you don't want to work for your dad, don't, and if you don't like your special talent, work towards something else, make it mean something else, because if you don't, you're just going to be stuck with something that makes you miserable. You don't just have to accept it, but if you want to change we're both going to have to work on growing up a bit, and I hope you do because I want to stay your friend, if I can, and you're just never going to be happy trying to be the biggest fish in this small pond."

Silver Spoon nuzzled her surprised friend, than moved to leave, but with a grin she said,"Now smile, say thank you and eat your bucking soup."

"Thank you." Diamond Tiara said, and found that she meant it.











When Silver Spoon got home, her mother had taken a break from her protracted travel preparations and was sitting on the chaise, sipping mint tea. Without thinking she began to speak, "Mom, I have something to tell you. That tea service I brought home wasn't custom made by Zebracan craftsmares, I made it in class last summer. I've been thinking about it a lot and I don't want to be some snobby socialite, it just isn't me. I think I want to be a silversmith."

She gestured languidly to the sugar bowl with the spoon handle stuck out, "I figured that's what happened when I saw the spoon matched your cutiemark. Did I ever tell you how I got mine?" She asked, though they both knew she hadn't, "See, I was born into a pretty poor family on a pineapple plantation, and until I was eight, that's all I did was plant and pick pineapples, but one day I discovered coconuts and I was obsessed. Don't ask me why, I never understood how foals can latch onto things so adamantly, but I surely did love palm trees and coconuts. Still do, but the land there wouldn't grow them, for some reason their roots would rot, but I was determined, and within a couple years I had transplanted a grove of ones that would survive and had come to be a young prodigy in the coconut palm field. That's when I got an offer from a casino in Las Pegasus."
She gruntingly got up and retrieved a photo album from a high shelf and flipped it open to a sphinx and pyramid carved from cloud, floating high above the San Palamino desert. Surrounding it were thousands of palm trees, dashes of green in the monochromatic sky, "They wanted palm trees that would grow in the clouds and as stupid as it sounded at first, I eventually managed it and was paid a pretty bit for it, too. It was hard but it was my talent, more than that though, I met your father there playing at the casino. He was a smooth talker, I mean to tell you, and he convinced me to put up the bits for him to enter one of the big poker tournaments. Danged if he didn't win it and win me too while he was at it. That's where our initial stake came from, you know, and we could have lost it just as easily as not, even if he is the best poker player in Equestria. That's his special talent. We were careful from then on out, kept our risks minimal and played the market instead of the casinos, but when you have money, it makes money and here we are."

"So we really are the nouveau riche?" Silver Spoon giggled.

"That's us. A gardner, a gambler and now maybe a silversmith. I never brought it up because I wanted you to have the chance to be a high society mare like your father wanted if that's what you wanted, too. Really though, ponies put way too much emphasis on definitions. Rich, poor, ponies are the same inside and we're all just doing as best as we can to get by, some just get lucky where others don't." Paradise shrugged, "That's the way of things, I guess. There's not much point in getting all existentialist about it. Now, I kind of saw this coming so I was looking into it and it looks like there's a pony right here in town you can apprentice with if that's what you want to do. We can go talk to him tomorrow, if you like."

Silver Spoon remembered how she'd skipped out of class and made Cheerilee chase her down, "Well...Maybe we should wait 'til next week. I think I'll probably have detention for the rest of this one."









Indeed she did have detention, but she had to risk another. It took Wednesday and Thursday, but Diamond Tiara showed up on her doorstep. Even though she lived just a bit down the street she'd never entered her friend's home, they'd always hung out at Diamond's, so this was a step in and of itself. She even came with an offering, a string of pearls.

"I found these by the schoolhouse and restrung them for you." She smiled sheepishly, "It took a while, but I think I got all of them."

She downplayed it, but her friend realized it would have taken an inordinate effort to scour through the dirt and grass to gather them all, so Silver Spoon invited her in. The house was cluttered and worn compared to hers, but she was fascinated by all the little trinkets and wasn't scared to show it. She'd apparently cast her snobby social rules aside. When they finally reached Silver Spoon's room her eyes lit up at the pile of stuffed animals, ones that were actually played with, heaped between the end of the bed and the wall and she fell back into them and snuggled into the pile like a rabbit in a burrow. Silver Spoon couldn't help but chuckle as her head popped up from between Hermione hedgehog and Superdog. Ironically she'd come to tell her friend how she'd intended to make things right in a bid towards acting more grown up, and why she needed a decoy.









Towards the end of class, when all was silent save for pencils scratching on paper, Silver Spoon rose to her hooves, scooting the desk with a cringe inducing screech, "Miss Cheerilee! Look at that!" She exclaimed and bolted out the door.

"Celestia help me..." She mumbled as she rose to attempt pursuit, "All of you stay here! Silver Spoon! This is just the sort of thing that got you detention all this week!"

Diamond Tiara went to the front of the now unsupervised class and cleared her throat. Silver Spoon made one large loop and swooped by the door, just long enough to hear her begin before she led Cheerilee off again.

"Everypony," She said with a nervous half smile, "and especially Apple Bloom, last week I did something unforgivable, and you saved my plot anyway, and...I just wanted to say thank you, and I'm sorry. I know in the past I've given some of you a hard time, well, all of you really, but I want to change, and I don't know if we can make a fresh start, but I'd like to give it a try if you'll let me....."

She went on from there. Silver Spoon was told that it was a very moving speech, so far as school foals can be moved by a speech, which is less than you might really wish, but she didn't get to hear it. She was too busy dodging, weaving, and hoping she didn't get caught too soon.

"Darn it Silver Spoon! What's gotten into you?" Miss Cheerilee huffed as her quarry stood on the other side of a tree to let her catch her breath while still keeping her at hoof's length. Silver Spoon just kept laughing as they circled the tree until the little grey filly finally let her catch up. It appears that in order to grow up, as it were, one must be willing to make a foal of one's self on a fairly regular basis. Silver Spoon okay with that, and when she attempted to explain it to Miss Cheerilee, her teacher was too baffled to even add on to her sentence, so, all in all, it was a good day.