Brief descriptions for each story: The CMC Cheer Up Diamond Tiara - SoL - As the title says. Attitude - SoL - DT and Silver Spoon have both moved to Canterlot, and who should they run into at their new school but Babs Seed. Spies Like Us - SoL - Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon are spies, on a way to a meeting with their superior. Bird-thing - SoL - Diamond Tiara is having some pet issues. Somewhere - SoL - Diamond Tiara sets off to find her mother (Pre-season 5). The Silo - SoL - With silos all the craze in Ponyville, Apple Bloom is off gathering wood from a spooky, abandoned mill. A Good Pony - SoL, Dark - Diamond Tiara is off to meet her fiance, Sombra, the conqueror of Equestria. Applesat - SoL - Applejack, recently returned from Manehattan, babysits a young Diamond Tiara. The Badass Crossover of Badassitude - Adventure, Crossover (Borderlands) - Diamond Tiara and Mr. Torgue save Equestria Daring Di and the Dastardly Duo - Comedy - DT, Silver Spoon, and Alula play. Just One Kiss - Comedy - Pinkie convinces Diamond Tiara that she has to be kissed by Rainbow Dash. Little Orphan Tiara - Comedy/Random - The Ponyville orphanage is closing down, and every orphan must go. Pool Party - Comedy - DT and Sil are bored, so decide to host a pool party. Popular - SoL - Spoiled Rich tells her daughter what is most important in life. 28 Cases of Cookies Later - SoL - Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon are assigned a very important mission.
Diamond Tiara sat alone in the classroom. Again, she contemplated going home, and again she dismissed the idea. Home had pictures, pictures that reminded her of Silver Spoon. Home had toys, toys she and Silver Spoon played with. Even the walk home would remind her of her friend. So many memories. This classroom had none, for it was not Miss Cheerilee's room, but the one across the hall.
The nerve of Sil's parents, to go to Southern Prance in the middle of the school year and to take their daughter with them. As if Sil could not have stayed at the Rich Mansion. But Sil's parents had thought of nopony but themselves and had taken her friend away. What did they expect her to do in the meantime, Diamond Tiara wondered. Did they expect her to play with Snips and Snails or to talk to those good for nothing Cutie Mark Crusaders?
And so she sat, in a classroom, in a schoolhouse devoid of other ponies. Lonely and with nopony to lift her spirits. Her head sank down, coming to rest on her forelegs, as she softly sobbed. So alone.
"So how's things been at school, girls?" Fluttershy asked the three fillies who had come to help her take care of the animals.
"It's been about as good as school can be," Scootaloo said.
"We've been learning all sorts of interesting stuff, like how the geocentric solar system works," Sweetie Belle added. "Maybe we'll borrow a telescope from Twilight and try to get astrology cutie marks this weekend."
"How about you, Apple Bloom?" Fluttershy asked. "Any problems? Applejack mentioned something about some fillies giving you girls trouble? I know all about that sort of thing. I know it might seem hard to believe, but the other foals used to pick on me sometimes when I was young. If you ever need somepony to talk about it, you can come to me. If you want to, that is."
"Nah, Diamond Tiara has been too busy feeling down to bother us. Her best friend is out of town. She hasn't been picking on us at all this week," Apple Bloom said.
"What do we care?" Scootaloo asked. "All that matters is that she's leaving us alone."
"Well, if she's lonely, maybe she could use a friend," Fluttershy said.
"Ah don't think Ah want her to have a friend if'n it means she'll be picking on us again," Apple Bloom stated.
"Yah, plus who'd be a stuck up enough jerk to want to be her friend?" Scootaloo asked.
"Actually, I was thinking that you three could befriend her," Fluttershy suggested. The three fillies stared at her as if she were crazy. "If she was your friend, she wouldn't pick on you on anymore." More stares. "It worked for Discord. Oh, nevermind. It was probably a terrible idea. I don't know what I was thinking."
"I suppose it might work," Sweetie Belle said, as she imagined the possibilities.
"Wait, Sweetie. You can't be considering this," Scootaloo protested.
"Just think, if it works, she'd never tease us again," Sweetie Belle said.
Apple Bloom slowly nodded her head. "And if it doesn't, we ain't any worse off, are we?"
"And all we have to do is cheer her up. We can do that easy!" Sweetie Belle squeaked.
"That's the spirit, girls. And just think about how wonderful it'll be to have a new friend," Fluttershy said encouragingly.
"But how would we even go about making her our friend?" Scootaloo asked.
"Oh. I'm not sure about that," Fluttershy said. She looked away shyly. "I'm afraid I'm not very good at making friends. Not as good as Pinkie is anyway."
"That's it!" Apple Bloom exclaimed. "We'll just do what Pinkie Pie would do."
"Sing a silly song?" Sweetie Belle asked.
"Build a welcome wagon?" asked Scootaloo.
"No, sillies. We'll throw her a party! That would cheer anyone up," Apple Bloom said. "We can probably get everything we need from Sugarcube Corner and Pinkie Pie."
"Let's go!" Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo shouted.
One hour later, three fillies made their way back to Fluttershy's cottage. Cake was smeared on their coats and, in Sweetie Belle's case, in her mane. Bits of streamers were draped upon them, trailing behind in a festive manner in stark contrast with the fillies.
"Um, I take it it didn't go well, girls?" Fluttershy asked the three fillies, as they slunk in through the door of her cottage.
"It was a disaster," Sweetie Belle said, wiping some frosting out of her mane.
"Oh dear," Fluttershy said. "What happened?"
"We got to Pinkie's," Scootaloo said, "and she was super excited to help us put together everything we needed for the party. But she didn't have any party hats, and so she's all panicking because you can't have a party without party hats. But luckily Apple Bloom had an idea: candy cane tiara hats."
"So Ah head over to Twist's, who made candy tiaras that looked almost real, while the others decorated the cake."
"I made it with a tiara on one side and our emblem on the other," Sweetie Belle said. "Pinkie let me decorate it."
Scootaloo nodded. "And then we all went to the classroom where she was and put on our tiaras."
"And that's when things went wrong," Apple Bloom said. "We said we'd go on the count of three..."
The door flew open as the three crusaders burst in. "Surprise!" they yelled.
Diamond Tiara flew up into the air and let out a piercing shriek, making it quite clear she was indeed surprised.
Apple Bloom looked at the pony they had come to befriend. "Have you been crying?"
"No. I... I just had something in my eye." Diamond Tiara wiped her eye with a hoof. "It's gone now." She glared at the three suspiciously. "What are you doing here? Come to point out that I'm all alone?"
"We're here--" Scootaloo started, only to be cut off by Diamond Tiara.
"What's that on your heads? Did you make tiaras to mock me? You did, didn't you?"
"No!" Apple Bloom said, denying the charge. "We made them because you like--"
"Smashing your tiaras? Why, yes, I do." With three quick moves, Diamond Tiara hurled the tiaras at the ground. For good measure, she stomped on them, until nothing but small fragments remained. The act done, she glared defiantly at the three fillies. "What else you got? Go on. Do your worst. I know you want to."
Apple Bloom looked down at the ruined remains of the candy cane tiaras. "This wasn't how it was supposed to go." But it took more than one or two setbacks to stop a crusader, and so Apple Bloom met Diamond Tiara's gaze, determined to try again. "That's not what Ah meant. See this? We brought cake for all of us--"
Diamond Tiara cut her off. "Cake to celebrate humiliating me? Here's what I think of that!" With a fast lunge, Diamond Tiara grabbed the cake and sent it hurtling toward the ground. Bits of cake flew in all the directions.
"But... but..." Sweetie Belle whimpered, nearly crying at the sight of the cake she had worked so hard at decorating laying destroyed upon the ground, "we just wanted to make you happy."
"...And that's when she rubbed cake in my mane," Sweetie Belle sobbed.
"And she started throwing bits of cake and streamers at us, so we ran away," Scootaloo said.
"We tried tah be nice, Fluttershy, we really did. But some ponies you jus' can't make happy."
In the school, Diamond Tiara looked around the room. Bits of cake covered the floor, the desks, and the walls. Streamers lay scattered about, some draped across desks, others stretching out into the hall. She smiled. Launching into those blank flanks had felt good. Better than good. Great. She could barely even remember why she had let herself get so down. Silver Spoon would be back soon enough. And in the meantime, she could keep the blank flanks in their place by herself.
She gathered up her things and prepared to leave. The mess she ignored. There was enough evidence to show who was responsible. The emblem had shown the same resilience at surviving a catastrophe as the fillies who created it. The crusaders would be blamed, as they deserved to be.
Humming a happy tune, she slammed the door shut behind her. Who would have thought that it would be those blank flanks that cheered her up?
"Hey, check it, Sil. Is that who I think it is?" Diamond Tiara asked, directing Silver Spoon's attention over to another earth filly with a flick of her head. Silver Spoon held her head up high and moved it from side to side, trying to see over and around the other foals in the hall. Not an easy task, given all the horns, as well as pegasi taking advantage of the space between the ground-bound ponies and the ceiling.
"I think so," Silver Spoon said. "What's she doing here? I thought she was still in Manehatten."
To see her slinking around at their new school was not something either filly had expected. Of course, little that had happened today had gone as they expected. It had all seemed so promising, when, by strange happenstance, both their families had decided to move to Canterlot at the same time, for completely unrelated reasons. Finally a place with classy ponies, who would welcome them.
But it had not happened. Instead of the Canterlot ponies welcoming the two new students, they had mostly kept their distance. Some had made snide remarks about how out of fashion the clothes worn by Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon were. One had even asked if their jewelry had come from a thrift shop. A thrift shop! As if either filly would be caught dead shopping there. That was for ponies that had to dress like grandparents or liked to wear something as embarrassing as flannel zebra jammies, not for those who could afford to pay fifty bits for a stylish new t-shirt.
Nor were the teachers any better than the students. It seemed every one of them had singled them out. When they asked a question they did not expect a correct answer to, they always seemed to single out the two of them. It did not help that Silver Spoon knew the answer to some of the questions, as that only seemed to make the teachers determined to put them down. Additionally, whenever some little demeaning task needed doing, it was them that was asked to do it. Their coats, manes, and dresses were covered in dust from all the erasers they had cleaned.
And so the two fillies had found themselves feeling something they had never expected to feel: they actually missed Ponyville. They missed being the cream of the crop. They missed being the pinnacle of fashion. They missed being idolized by their peers. They missed Miss Cheerilee and her cheerful disposition. They even missed a certain three fillies they had a short while been so happy to joke about never having to see again.
So, no, it had not been a pleasant day. And now to top it off, she was here. A pony they had welcomed into their social circle. A pony with whom they had thought to turn their duo into a trio. A new friend for life. Only to have that pony betray them, to rebuke their offer of friendship as if it had no value. And to do it all when they had shown up to see her off, to wish her a safe trip home.
"Come on. Let's go say hi to her," Diamond Tiara suggested, with a mischievous grin.
"I've been, like, waiting forever to talk to her about her bad attitude." Silver Spoon laughed, imagining finally getting to use all the things she had planned to say if she ever saw Babs Seed again.
Their feet clacked on the marble tiles as they picked up their pace, earning dirty looks and the occasional comment from the other foals crowding the hallway, each eager to leave the building now that the school day was done. Once, they almost lost sight of her, but Silver Spoon managed to catch sight of a waft of mane, as their quarry headed out a door.
Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon stepped outside into the crisp air of Canterlot. Around them, buildings of stone rose. Tall pillars, majestic domes, and balconies with intricate railings towered around them. Everywhere was the white stone architecture that was responsible for Canterlot being declared the most beautiful city in Equestria, year after year.
"Which way'd she go?" Diamond Tiara asked.
Silver Spoon looked around. Their target was not in sight. Quickly she ran some calculations, factoring in time, rate of travel, and likelihood of different destinations. "This way, I think. Toward the gym," Silver Spoon said, pointing to the left. "Quick, we don't want to lose her."
The two fillies ran, able to move faster thanks to the crowd being more dispersed outside. They skidded around the corner. There was the pony they sought, she who had thought that she could get away with threatening the two most important fillies in Ponyville. Only she wasn't alone. She was surrounded by four colts, her tail pressed up against her side, back against the wall, yet still trying to move backwards. Her eyes frantically moved around, looking for a way out, but finding none.
With smiles on their faces, the duo approached. Apparently, they were not the only ones with a score to settle with the duplicitous filly. They walked toward the gathering, taking a bit of care not to make noise, so as not to disturb what was happening, their ears eagerly moving to better hear what was being said.
"Thought you'd sneak out of here, Babsy?" the leader of the group, a grey unicorn colt with a bluish mane asked. "You don't belong here, you know, no matter what the princess might think. This school is for those with magic."
"And wings," one of his cronies, a pegasus, added, earning a bit of a scowl from the leader, though he nodded anyway.
Both Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon stopped in shock. For a pony to be singled out for race in a negative way was something unheard of in Ponyville. Everyone knew that all three races were equally valued, even if pegasi did not tend to be ponies of influence, wealth, or status unless flight was required for the position. Nopony held that against them. They just had their hooves full with the weather duties was all.
It was Diamond Tiara who recovered first, taking a step forward and loudly clearing her throat. "Watch what you're saying to her," she said. "There's nothing wrong with her race."
Silver Spoon moved up beside her friend. "Yeah. I mean, she's lame and all, but it isn't 'cause she's an earth pony. There's, like, so many other things, like how she's a blank flank, her lame manestyle, or how she's a bad friend. But all our races are special in their own way."
"Well, of course you'd think so," the leader said. "I mean, just look at the pair of you." He gestured at them as if it should be plainly evident what was wrong with them.
"All dressed up in their sunday best, I bet," one of the cronies said.
"But couldn't find any dirt to roll in, so they had to use chalk instead," another added. Silver Spoon looked at her dress, with the patches of chalk dust on it, and scowled.
"Just goes to show, you can take the earth pony out of the field, but can't take the field out of the earth pony," the leader joked.
Silver Spoon's mouth dropped open. Quickly, she shut it and took a determined step forward, moving her face within inches of the leaders. "You can't talk to me that way. You'd, like, totally better watch your tone."
"Or what, four-eyes?" the leader asked. "You'll run home to the homestead to get Ma, Pa, and the cousins?" He laughed and shoved Silver Spoon. "We're quaking in our horseshoes. Stupid mud-ponies."
Two seconds later, the leader lay on the ground, rubbing a sore jaw, while Silver Spoon and Babs Seed struggled to hold Diamond Tiara back, while the three cronies stood around with shocked expressions on their faces.
"What's going on here?" a gruff voice called out. A quick glance revealed two security guards, one running, the other flying, closing on the foals.
"They just attacked us, sir. No reason at all," the leader lied blatantly, while he struggled up to his feet. His cronies nodded in agreement.
"How typical." The security guard turned his attention to the earth ponies. "What's with you earth pony types anyway, always starting trouble?" he asked.
"But that's not what happened!" Silver Spoon protested.
"They started it! They called us names and then shoved us. Ask Babs, she'll back us up!" Diamond Tiara said, pointing to where Babs Seed stood.
Except she was not there. Diamond Tiara's jaw dropped from disbelief. They had tried to help her, to stand up for her, in spite of what she had done in the past, and she had betrayed them. Again.
The unicorn security guard looked at his partner and shook his head. "I swear they all have dirt for brains."
"Probably been eating mangoes. You know how they are," his partner replied. He glared at the two fillies. "Come on, you two. You're going with us to the principal's office." He gave a glance to the colts. "You boys have a good afternoon now. Try to stay out of trouble."
Even with Diamond Tiara majorly turning on the charm, the best she had been able to do was to get the principal down to an hour of detention. An hour for a crime they had not committed. Needless to say, the two fillies were not pleased. Once again the universe was out to get them for no good reason. Diamond Tiara was sparing no words in making it clear to Silver Spoon just how unfair it all was.
And so it is easily understandable that the two fillies might easily become lost, what with being in a strange city and distracted by their anger. It was Silver Spoon who figured it out first. She stopped and looked around. Her eyes grew wide, and she looked more frantically.
"Tiara, I think we've wandered into the wrong part of town," she said, her voice trembling.
Diamond Tiara cut off her rant mid-sentence and looked around. All around them buildings loomed. In front of each was a small garden. Trees lined the streets. The windows sported flower pots with brightly colored flowers. Even balconies were covered in plant life, a veritable palette of color: red, blue, yellow, white, and even purple flowers.
Silver Spoon was right, she realized. It could all only mean one thing: They were in the ghetto.
There was no doubt about it, Silver Spoon thought. They were definitely lost. And with the shadows lengthening, the two fillies were getting scared. This was not their world. Several times already, rough looking characters had approached them, offering to sell them mangoes, guavas, and, once, even a pineapple. They had never seen a single illegal fruit in their life before, other than in pictures at school, and now they had been offered all sorts within a short period.
"Is this what life is like in the ghetto? Does everyone here sample forbidden fruit?" Diamond Tiara asked, keeping her voice quiet for fear that somepony might overhear.
"I... I don't know. Maybe, I guess. If you were forced to live in these" --Silver Spoon gestured to the well maintained buildings teeming with plant life-- "you might too." She shook her head at the thought of any pony living in such conditions. "Come on. I see a store ahead. We can get something to drink and some directions to get out of here."
Silver Spoon shoved open the door, causing a bell attached to it to jingle. An older pegasus mare looked up, eyeing them carefully. Ignoring her for now, Silver Spoon walked down an aisle toward where the drinks were. She brushed her hoof down the shelves and, finding one of Diamond Tiara's favorites, pulled it out and tossed it to her friend. A bit more searching and she found an acceptable flavor for herself as well. Now to get a snack.
Silver Spoon looked around the store for something suitable. She glanced at a curved mirror that hung from the wall and noticed that the clerk seemed to be watching her and Tiara intently, going as far as to hover near the ceiling so as to have to a better line of sight. A quick nudge got Diamond Tiara's attention. "Check out the clerk in the mirror," she whispered to her friend.
Diamond Tiara gave the mirror a quick look. "Probably just never seen two fillies as classy as us," she said, drawing a giggle from Silver Spoon.
Silver Spoon looked at the mirror again, seeing that the clerk was still watching intently. She did not like it, she decided. It felt like the clerk watched them as if she was expecting them to suddenly reveal themselves changelings. It made her uncomfortable. "Come on. Let's grab some apples and go."
Up front, they placed the two bottles and two apples on the counter. The pegasus worked the register with practiced ease, rapidly ringing up the items.
"That'll be eight bits."
Silver Spoon nearly gagged at the cost. It was three times what the same items would have cost in Ponyville. She knew life in the big city was more expensive, but she had not figured it would be that much more expensive. She would definitely have to negotiate an increase in allowance when she got back home. With a sigh, she counted out four bits while Diamond Tiara did the same, then slid them over.
Silver Spoon grabbed her apple and drink. Taking the lid off, she took a big gulp. Then she tossed her apple up in the air, absentmindedly.
The clerk's eyes followed the apple, growing wider with every second. "We don't want no trouble," she said.
Silver Spoon looked at the clerk, confused. Then she caught on. "I just bought that apple, here, to eat. It's not a weapon."
"No trouble. You go now," the clerk said.
"Actually, we were hoping you could give us some directions on how to get to Central Plaza. We're sort of lost," Diamond Tiara said, using a tone that Silver Spoon recognized as her best manipulate grown up ponies voice..
The clerk seemed to be immune. Her eyes just continued to follow Silver Spoon's apple. The activity seemed to have winded her, for she was breathing heavily, Silver Spoon noticed. "No trouble. You go now," the clerk said.
"Now wait just a mule darned minute," Diamond Tiara said. "First you charge us prices that amount to robbery, and now--" Diamond Tiara cut off as the clerk fainted. She growled in frustration. "Let's get out of here. I swear every pony in this part of town is crazy."
Back on the street, the two friends munched on their apples and sipped their drinks while they contemplated who to ask for directions. Whenever one of them made a suggestion, the other quickly had several reasons not to approach that pony. At last they settled on a stallion wearing a suit, with a package wrapped in brown paper on his back.
Before they could approach him, a carriage pulled up in front of him. Out of the carriage poured a bunch of royal guards. They quickly boxed in the stallion, several guards holding their weapons at the ready. The stallion screamed in fright, and the package he had been carrying fell of his back, hitting the ground and exposing its contents.
"Look out! He's got a pie!" a guard cried out.
"What? Huh?" the frightened stallion said. "No, that's just for dinner--" But it was too late. At the warning cry that their suspect was armed, the other guards unleashed a volley of apples, several of which hit the stallion, flinging him back into the wall, from which he slid to the ground..
The entire area erupted into panic at the sound of apple splatter, with ponies running in every direction. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon joined the insanity, desperately seeking to get to the safety. They ran down streets, through allies, without a clue where they were going, until they found themselves face to face with a group of older foals in an alleyway.
"Well, well, lookie what we have here," said the biggest filly in the group. "Some fancypants types in our territory." She casually used a banana to scratch behind her ear. The other ponies grinned evilly and held up fruits of their own.
"Just leave us alone," said Silver Spoon, glancing behind her only to see that escape was cut off as a couple more ponies slide down off a fire escape behind them. She held her half-eaten apple in front of her. For good measure, she started tossing the apple up into the air and catching it, like she had at the store. It seemed to have scared the lady there; maybe it would have a similar effect here.
"I'm having a bad day," Diamond Tiara said flatly, as she pulled out her own half-eaten apple. "You sure you want to be part of it?" Silver Spoon knew from her friend's tone that she was tired, but to anyone who did not know her, it sounded like she was as tough as they come.
Silver Spoon focused her attention on the leader. Silver Spoon felt she could almost read his mind. He looked around, no doubt to make sure he had not miscounted. But no, there were definitely just two of them and seven ponies on his side, and so the two of them should be pleading with him not hurt them. His face flipped between bewildered, scared, and determined, and she knew he could not back down. No doubt the loss of face would likely result in him losing his position as leader. Unless he had a reason to let the them pass quickly, he would have to attack.
"Back off, Riff Jets. They're all right," a familiar accented voice called out.
With relief evident on his face, the gang leader turned to the newcomer. "You know these pointy-posers, Babs?"
"I do. Ol' friends o' mine from my Ponyville days. They may dress like boneheads, but they're okay. Some of the time."
"Well, any friend of yours..." the gang leader said.
Babs sat on her bed, looking at the other two ponies in her bedroom. Of all the ponies she would not have expected to see in the hood, these two were near the top of her list. And had she written a list this morning of ponies she would rather not have seen, these two would have been near the top, just below the bullies from Manehatten and the Olden Pony. She felt her hairs rise at the thought. She knew the Olden Pony was not real, but ever since Scootaloo had told her that story... she shuddered. But she was letting herself get sidetracked.
On the way to her home, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon had explained why they had moved to Canterlot and how they had gotten lost in the ghetto. Babs in return had told how her parents had moved from Manehatten to Canterlot, and how she had gotten a scholarship to the exclusive private school, part of Princess Celestia's program to racially integrate the schools.
She watched as Diamond Tiara walked up the window and looked out at the street. Babs blew her mane out of the way, then hopped off the bed to stand beside Diamond Tiara. "See the remains of the chalk outline there? A drive-pie just last weekend."
"How can anyone stand to live in such conditions?" Diamond Tiara asked. "I mean, not just the drive-pies, but, well, just look. You've got greenery everywhere instead of cold, bare stone. There's somepony selling illegal tropical fruit at every corner. Probably not a single decent spa nearby."
"Where else can we live?" Babs said. "My parents would like to live in a nice neighborhood, but they can't afford it. And that's assuming the unicorns and pegasi are even willing to rent the place to you, that the apartment isn't suddenly unavailable."
"So why doesn't somepony stand up for themselves? Get a lawyer or something?" Silver Spoon asked. "The princesses would back you, for sure."
"What can one pony do against all the unicorns and pegasi? Even if that one pony is princess?" Babs replied. "They just humor the princesses with a token gestures, like Fancypants or my scholarship, and then continue on like they always have."
"Pathetic," Diamond Tiara said, frowning at Babs. "Where's the filly we used to know and like? The one with big city attitude? The one who was strong and despised weakness?"
"I... I was never like that," Babs protested. "I was just pretending to because I didn't want to be bullied myself."
"Oh please. Quit lying to yourself. That was the real you. And you loved every minute of it. You even tried to do it to us, when we showed up to see you off," Silver Spoon said. "And now look at you. You're, like, a sniveling coward, covering your flank at the slightest chance of conflict."
As Babs opened her mouth to deny it, she became aware of her tail. It was indeed covering her flank. It was true, she realized. After becoming a crusader, she had lost the habit, but since moving to Canterlot, it had returned, worse than ever. She shut her mouth, and Silver Spoon just smiled smugly at her.
"I'd best show you girls the way home, before it gets dark" Babs said instead.
"Sweet Celestia," Diamond Tiara cursed. "Every earth pony in this place has no sense of self worth. You all, like, let them push around you. It sickens me. It's like an entire neighborhood of them crusaders."
For a second, Babs felt something flare within her. A desire to put the pink filly in her place. But as quickly as it appeared, it was gone again, and she became painfully aware of her tail pressing up against her flank.
"Hey, look! An earth pony guard. That's the first one of those I've seen," Silver Spoon said.
"I knew they couldn't all be unicorns and pegasi. Earth ponies represent!" Diamond Tiara called out.
Babs looked at where the other two were looking and her eyes went wide, before she quickly looked down at the ground, overcome with dread. "Don't look at him. That's Oaken Shield," she whispered. She felt her tail moving to cover her flank, while she instinctively tried to act meeker than Fluttershy in a spotlight. "Oh no, he's coming over here. Let me do the talking."
Indeed, both Oaken Shield and his partner, a unicorn, were heading their way. Quickly, she pleaded with the universe that the two fillies she was guiding out of the ghetto would do as she asked and let her take care of it. The universe, however, rarely listened to such pleadings, preferring things to go in more interesting ways.
"Hello, officers," the two fillies in question said together as the guards strolled up.
"What are you three up to?" Oaken Shield asked.
"Nothing. Just walking," Diamond Tiara replied.
"Not going somewhere to peddle tropical fruit?"
"What? No, we'd never--" Silver Spoon protested.
"Yeah, sure. Where'd you get the gaudy jewelry then, huh?" the unicorn guard asked.
"We'll have you know our parents bought those for us," Silver Spoon said, haughtily.
"Oh, so they traffic in fruit?"
"No. Well, yes. But only the legal types. My dad is a successful businessman. He donates lots to the guard. You should be nice to us," Diamond TIara said.
"And my mommy knows the commissioner. She's a good friend of hers. Made a lovely piece of jewelry for her last Hearth's Warming," Silver Spoon said.
The two guards laughed. It was not a nice laugh though, but rather a harsh laugh that sent a shiver down Babs's spine.
"You expect us to believe that Guard Commissioner Gordhorn is on the take?" Oaken Shield asked. "Everypony knows she's trying to clean up this city. No way she'd take bribes. I oughta arrest you just for suggesting it."
"No, that's not what she meant," Babs protested. "Their parents, see, they're rich. Like very rich, and--"
"I think I've heard enough. We're taking you in. Whatcha think, Jackboot? Loitering? Suspicion of thievery? Attempted bribery?" He reached a hoof out to grab Babs, only to have Diamond Tiara push it out of the way.
"And resisting arrest. I love it when they try to resist arrest," Jackboot said, grinning evilly, as his horn started to glow.
Diamond Tiara could not believe it. They had gotten arrested for lacking a horn or wings on a Friday night. She had not even believed such a thing was possible. It certainly had not been in Ponyville. And by an earth pony no less.
That she even thought that shocked her. She never really considered race as a factor before. Well, race of pony. Obviously, there were other species, like mules, donkeys, griffons, and that pet dragon of the librarian. And, yes, earth ponies were better at growing things, pegasi flew, and unicorns had glowy foreheads, but ponies were ponies. There were plenty of reasons one pony might consider himself superior to another, but race did not factor into it. Or so she had believed.
"Why didn't you let me handle it?" Babs asked.
"Because I shouldn't have to. I did nothing wrong and I'm not going to cower like I have."
"Indeed. I'd rather be dead than like you, barely alive inside," Silver Spoon said. "What happened to our friend? The filly with the big city attitude? The one who was too cool for mule? She even stood up for those lame blank flanks. But I bet she would, like, totally be ashamed of you right now."
"Well, I'm sure that'll be a great comfort when we're all in prison," Babs replied. The three lapsed into silence, waiting in the cell.
The bailiff rang a bell, causing the entire courtroom to go quiet. A big unicorn stallion sat down in the judge's chair. His face made it clear he had little desire to be here, and that he was likely more interested in getting out of here than doing a good job. "Night court is now in session, the honorable Prince Blueblood presiding," the bailiff called out.
From there, the case proceeded rapidly. Witnesses were called, gave their testimony, and left. And though Diamond Tiara asked pointed questions that made it clear to anypony with a brain what had actually happened, and Silver Spoon somehow had knowledge of the law that frequently flustered the prosecution, it was clear what the outcome would be. For with almost everything he said, it was obvious that Blueblood was as biased as they come.
With every racist comment he made, Babs felt herself hammered down more, sliding down in her chair. But like a hammer striking metal on the anvil, every blow also unleashed a shower of sparks within her.
The witnesses gone, all that was left was the closing arguments before the judge pronounced them guilty. Babs watched as Diamond Tiara gave a performance that was far from her best. Her anger was raging, and it was interfering with her usual ability to bend adults around her hoof with a sweet smile and innocent look. When the prosecutor made a snide remark and Blueblood laughed, she snapped.
"This whole trial stinks like mule droppings!" She didn't even bother to offer a quick apology to the stenographer, a mule, something a pony would normally do without even thinking about it. "Everypony here knows we're innocent. I demand you let us go or..." Diamond Tiara yelled at the judge.
"Or what?" Blueblood asked, sitting forward and peering down from his lofty position at the three fillies.
For a change, Diamond Tiara said nothing. Her mouth just opened and closed like a fish out of water. Nor could Silver Spoon think of anything to say. But Babs, Babs felt the sparks from this latest hammer blow catch, and a fire she had thought lost roared back to life. She rose out of her chair and hammered her forehooves on the table. Looking up, she met Blueblood's eyes and sternly declared, "Or I'll tell your auntie about your bad attitude towards earth ponies."
The entire courtroom gasped, Blueblood sat back in shock, and Diamond Tiara's mouth closed, forming into a smile.
"You... you wouldn't dare..." Blueblood stammered.
"Try me. My cousin's a friend of hers," Babs said.
He could not bring his gavel down fast enough, hammering it several times before even calling out, "Case dismissed!"
"Now, with that out of the way..." Diamond Tiara said, as the three fillies walked down the courthouse steps.
"You owe us an apology," Silver Spoon finished.
"What?" Babs asked, confused.
"An apology. For being mean to us when we showed up at the train station to say goodbye," Diamond Tiara said.
"We walked all the way to the train station, even though the streets were, like, totally muddy. And when we get there, you get all up in our faces," Silver Spoon said.
"But... but you were mean first. Sayin' those things about my cousin and her friends," Babs protested.
"So? All you had to say was 'they're my friends, take it or leave it'," Silver Spoon said. "You didn't have to threaten us."
"Yeah. We'd have been cool with that. It isn't like Silver Spoon and I agree on everything. Like how Sil liked a stupid story Granny Smith told one time while I hated it," Diamond Tiara said.
"Well, you gotta admit it was funny and a good tale," Silver Spoon said.
Diamond Tiara rolled her eyes at Silver Spoon's remark. "See? Different opinions. Still best friends."
"But you hate blank flanks..."
Diamond Tiara scowled. "We liked you just fine, before you got all lame. And Silver Spoon certainly didn't have a problem with me even though I was one of the last ones in our class to get a cutie mark."
"But we didn't have anything else in common but bullying my cousin..."
"Do you seriously think we spend all our time obsessed with her? We've usually got, like, far better things to do. But it was what you wanted to do... and it was fun, so..." Diamond Tiara said, smiled, remembering the good times, before the smile disappeared as she poked Babs accusingly with a hoof. "But you didn't even try to see what other things we might all have enjoyed." She shook her head in disappointment.
"And we've got plenty in common now, don't we?" Silver Spoon added.
Babs thought about it. It would be nice to have some ponies at school who did not pick on her. In Manehatten, her life had gotten easier not just because she talked to her sister more, but also because she had recruited a few more crusaders. Strength in numbers. And she had had fun with these two fillies, even when they had not been picking on her fellow crusaders. Perhaps there was some common ground for friendship. It certainly would not hurt to try. "Fine. I'm sorry. I should have handled that better." She paused to blow her mane out of her face. "But if I find you picking on my cousin or her friends, I'm gonna have words."
"Apology accepted, and wouldn't, like, expect it any other way," Silver Spoon said. "Just don't expect us to hang around with those babies."
"Friends again?" Diamond Tiara asked. "Okay, then, on the count of three... one, two, three."
"Bump, bump, sugar lump, rump!" the three fillies chanted together.
Diamond Tiara nodded, satisfied. "Now, we got some planning to do if we're gonna show these stuck up ponies at school the true power of the earth ponies. But first, after the day we've had, I'm thinking..." She paused a bit waiting for Silver Spoon.
"No givebacks!" declared Diamond Tiara with a laugh. "Besides, you know I'll get it next time."
Silver Spoon nodded and looked around at the buildings of white stone. It was good to be back in the nice part of town, and yet... "This place could use some more greenery." With that, she bounded off in the direction of the spa she and Diamond Tiara had noticed on the way to school.
The other two fillies looked around, nodded, and set off after their friend.
"I can't believe you applauded her story, Sil," Diamond Tiara said, as she trotted alongside her friend, down the empty street.
"Oh, come on. It was a good story, even if it did have multiple historical inaccuracies," Silver Spoon replied. "Ponyville was actually founded three hundred years earlier by the Mares, a family that moved west out of Manehatten. Our mayor is a direct descendent of them, you know? The town did not really start to grow until sixty years ago, of course, when the lumber mill opened. That led to a need to provide for the workers, and hence the founding of the Apple farmstead and your great-grandfather's store."
"There you go again, showing off all of your book learning," Diamond Tiara said, faking a yawn. She liked to tease her friend about being a bookworm, though truly she relished moments like these. The moments when there was nopony around, and they could risk being their true selves.
"You now I can't help it. It is my special talent after all," Silver Spoon said. Diamond Tiara nodded.
She was one of the few ponies that knew that Silver Spoon's talent lay in knowledge. Most ponies assumed it was due to her skill at working with precious metals. A few joked that it was due to the wealth of her parents. But neither of those things were the truth. Give Silver Spoon a book and she could recite it back to you word for word even days later. That was pretty amazing, but not nearly as amazing as watching Silver Spoon pick up an item and know things about it that she should not have known.
That was how they had gotten recruited, actually. All Silver Spoon had done was pick up her grandmother's favorite teaspoon while helping her with some household chores. She had not meant to wind up with a head full of secrets and a cutie mark, but that is what she had gotten. The secrets she had shared with her best friend, and when her grandmother had found out what she knew, they had found themselves part of something they would never had suspected existed.
"Besides, I know the main reason you're so anti-Apple is because you're secretly harboring a crush on Apple Bloom," Silver Spoon said.
"I am not!" Diamond Tiara said.
"So we just tease her and her friends as part of our cover?"
"Right. You know that."
"And tag along with your father whenever he has business at their farm because you see so little of him?"
"Ah-huh. With our jobs, any day could be our last. So I want to spend all the time I can with dad. Is that so wrong?"
The two fillies pushed open the doors and entered The Fancy Store, the most upscale clothing store in Ponyville, part of a chain owned by one of the most influential unicorns in Canterlot. The owner greeted them by name and mentioned that she had some new stuff on the back rack, just in from Manehatten. The fillies returned her greeting and drifted toward the back of the store.
"And you cut out pictures of her from the school paper because she's totally cute?" Silver Spoon asked, continuing the conversation from outside.
"Of course," Diamond Tiara said, as she flipped through rack, haphazardly throwing a couple of items aside to try on. Her eyes shot open as she realized what she had just said. "Wait. No! No fair. You tricked me!"
"You can fool everyone else, Di. You can even fool yourself. But you can't fool me," Silver Spoon said with a wink. She selected a few items of her own. "Let's go try these on."
Silver Spoon led the way, and Diamond Tiara followed silently behind. They went to the third changing room, ignoring the sign that said it was in use. The sign always said that, and it did its job: it kept the ordinary ponies out. But Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon were not ordinary ponies.
"It's just that it can never be, you know?" Diamond Tiara said, breaking her silence, while Silver Spoon tapped the rear wall in several places.
In a bright flash, the two ponies disappeared, only to reappear within a slightly larger room, deep below the surface. The room was devoid of features, other than a heavy sealed door along one wall. They stood still, as a green beam of light shone over them, verifying their identities further. The light disappeared, a loud beep sounded, and the door opened, revealing a long, poorly light corridor, doors along its sides and one barely visible at its far end.
"It still amazes me you got that pass phrase," Silver Spoon said, as she and Diamond Tiara walked.
"Hey, you got your talent, Miss Encyclopedia, and I got mine," Diamond Tiara said with a winning smile and a swagger of her rump, drawing attention to her cutie mark.. "Being able to charm the feathers off a griffon has its advantages."
"No doubt. It makes me jealous sometimes seeing how easily you bend ponies around your hoof."
Diamond Tiara shrugged. "It's just not fair, you know," Diamond Tiara said, changing the topic back to the previous one. "Her grandmother has a complete mental breakdown because of her mother's death, and because of that, I'm not allowed to form any sort of relationship with her. I can't even just be her friend."
"A real shame too. Granny Smith used to be one of the top agents. Nopony could throw a pie as far or as accurately as her. Annie Oakley Smith was a legend," Silver Spoon replied. "And her daughter and son-in-law were quite impressive as well."
"And now all we have left is a kooky, old lady." Diamond Tiara sighed. "And because she's retreated completely into her cover identity, we can't recruit Apple Bloom, even though she'd be perfect. With your brains, my charm, her knack for demolition and construction, why, all we'd need is a hoof-to-hoof specialist to be the best team ever."
"Nobody ever said an agent's life was fair or easy," Silver Spoon said. "But we do what we do for love of country."
"For princesses and ponies," Diamond Tiara said, repeating the agency's mantra out of habit.
"And they'll never even know all that we give up for them," Silver Spoon said, opening the door at the end of the corridor..
The two fillies entered the briefing room. A large table sat in the center of it, with chairs around it. A chalkboard covered the wall to the left, while its opposite side was a large corkboard. On the far wall, two paintings hung, one of each princess. They were the type of paintings found in most government offices in Equestria, with the exception that the one Celestia was currently sporting a drawn on mustache. The chair at the far end, by far the nicest one in the room, spun around, revealing the assistant director of the agency, a white coated, blue maned unicorn mare known by the codename 'V'. She looked quite fearsome, with an eye patch covering her right eye.
"And? How did it go? Was she faking it? Any chance we can bring her back in the fold?" V rattled the questions off, one after another.
"As far as we could tell, she totally believes she is her cover identity," Diamond Tiara said.
"I see. Well, that's too bad," V said. "She'd have been a valuable asset in training others. She used to be quite the drill sergeant. Any problems with the mission?"
"Some interference from the youngest granddaughter. Had to convince one Apple Strudel to visit Ponyville is all. Diamond handled that with ease, ma'am," Silver Spoon reported.
"It would have been much easier if we could just recruit Apple Bloom," Diamond Tiara suggested.
V shook her head. "No, we've been through this before, Diamond. Annie Smith is unstable and knows far too much about too many things. Ordinarily, we might take other measures, but she's an unsung hero of Equestria, and she's sacrificed so much already. We'll let her live out her years as she wishes. We don't want to do anything to jeopardize what little stability she has. Now, unless there's anything else?"
There was nothing else. With a nod, V floated a folder toward her two agents and began the briefing for their next mission.
"We've been charged by the head cheese, L herself, to complete this mission, which she deems of critical importance. Operation Control the Press, ladies, has two goals. The primary goal is the publication of this picture" —V held up the picture in question— "in the newspapers, including those in Canterlot, but in a way that cannot be traced back to us. A secondary, optional goal is to place one of our own within the press, so that we can squash any potentially comprising news that might otherwise be printed. Any questions so far?"
Neither Diamond Tiara or Silver Spoon had any. For now, they were content to let V explain while they flipped through the papers within the folder. There was a knock on the door, and at V's acknowledgement, a colt entered and took a seat. With a nod toward the newcomer, V continued on.
"Okay, for this mission, Spoon, you'll be working in the background, support only. Diamond, you'll be working closely with Agent Featherweight from our technical division. Here's how it is going to play out..."
The briefing complete, the two fillies and one colt walked down the corridor, toward the teleport room. Featherweight was quite excited about being allowed out of the lab, practically bouncing off the walls. It would be his first field mission. Diamond Tiara hoped he would not screw anything up. Had she been that excited for her first mission? She was not sure. It seemed like she had always been running missions. And she always would be, until the day she died. For princesses and ponies. One thing was curious about this mission though.
She turned to Silver Spoon and asked, "Why do you suppose Princess Lu—, I mean L, wants us to publish these pictures of Celestia eating cake anyway?"
Silver Spoon shrugged. "Ours is not to question why."
"Daddy, I'm home!" Diamond Tiara called out, kicking the door shut behind her.
"Hi, princess," her father called back.
Carefully, she put down the box she was carrying and slipped out of her school pack, tossing it into the corner without a second thought. School work could wait. Right now, it was time to play with Vel. After spending all day cooped up, he would be very excited the moment she entered the basement, chirping loudly. He would probably be hungry as well, so she would need to take care of that first thing.
"Dad, I'm going to play in the basement, okay?"
"Sure thing, sweetie."
She picked up the box and headed toward the entrance to the basement, hoping the contents of the box would stay silent. No such luck as a loud cluck emanated from within right as she passed the door to her dad's office. She froze.
"Um, is that a chicken?" her father asked.
Diamond Tiara looked left, then right, then left again, trying to think of a good lie. Nothing came to mind though, and so she opted for the truth. "Yes?" she said, bracing herself for the storm sure to come.
"I thought so," her dad said, turning back to his work. With a sigh of relief, she took another step toward the basement door.
"Oh, that reminds me," her father called out.
Diamond Tiara froze again, sure he was about to bring up the chickens that had recently gone missing all around town. This was it; the gig was up; she would have to come clean. And by clean she meant lie her face off so that he understood it was not really her fault, that she had not had a choice.
"There's been reports of strange things in the Everfree Forest. Nopony is sure just what they are, but they all agree on one thing: they are big. The mayor was even talking about asking Canterlot for a detachment of guards to investigate the problem," her father said.
"Uh-huh," Diamond Tiara replied.
"Well, until it is dealt with, please stay away from the forest, okay?" her father asked.
"Okay, daddy," she said.
Without any more conversation to impede her progress, she made it to the basement door, turning a key to unlock the door, and slipped inside, locking the door behind her. She walked down the stairs, taking care to skip the third one, as its creaking annoyed her.
At the bottom, she set the box down and looked around. Vel should have greeted her by now. He should have been bouncing around, making his high pitched chirps and whistles, nuzzling her a bit, and waiting anxiously to be fed. But he wasn't.
She felt along the wall and found the light switch. With a flick, the basement became illuminated, and she could see why her pet was absent. The place was a mess. Items were scattered all over the place. The old couch had several new gashes through its fabric, and one pillow was utterly destroyed, stuffing scattered around the room. The only place left untouched was the separate room where she kept the science kit she had gotten for her birthday.
"Vel!" she half-growled, half-yelled.
With a soft peep, his head appeared from behind a box. Sternly, she pointed a forehoof at the ground in front of her. Head held low, knowing he had done wrong, he slinked in front of her, looking up at her with pleading eyes.
"Bad! Bad bird-thing!" she scolded. "Look at this mess. Just look at it!"
She was not sure what exactly he was, which was why she referred to him as a bird-thing. He was supposed to be some kind of raptor, according to the so-called scientist she had paid, but he did not look like any kind of a mighty bird of prey she knew of. Nothing like an eagle or a hawk at all. But he did have feathers, so she supposed he must be some kind of bird, even if very strange looking one. Not strange looking in a bad way. He actually looked wicked awesome. Just strange compared to other birds was all.
Vel looked around, all the while making soft apologetic chirps, before gently rubbing his head against her foreleg. He was so cute when he did that, and it melted away her anger. He knew it would, the sly bird-thing that he was.
"Fine," Diamond Tiara said. "You're forgiven." Looking around, she shook her head. "I suppose it isn't, like, all your fault anyway. I mean, I totally leave you all alone in here all day, without any friends to play with. And you're really getting too big for this basement. You need more room than this."
Knowing he was forgiven, Vel bopped his head, then nudged the box, as the chicken within anxiously squawked.
"Okay, okay. You're hungry. I get it." Diamond Tiara reached down for the latch on the box. Before opening it, she held up a forehoof and commanded, "Sit." Obediently, Vel sat, eying the door on the box and the chicken within.
With a satisfied nod, Diamond Tiara lifted the latch and the chicken shot out, running for its life. Diamond Tiara waited to give it a slight head start, then lowered her hoof. At the signal, Vel leaped into the air, coming down just behind the chicken. It squawked and tried to zig, but Vel anticipated the maneuver and, with a second pounce, pinned it beneath his claws. His head came down, and it was over.
While her pet ate, Diamond Tiara looked around the room again. She could not keep him any longer, she realized. Her father was sure to notice a noise coming from the basement sooner or later. If not that, then he might connect the town's missing chickens to her, since his growing size meant she had to feed him more and more often. Added to that, Vel was showing himself to be quite the smart bird-thing. She had noticed him playing with the doorknob several times a week ago, and since then, she had made sure to keep the door locked. But even with that, he would probably find a way to escape sooner or later, and then somepony might panic and hurt him.
Tonight, she would have to take him to the Everfree Forest and set him free.
Vel chirped and fidgeted as Diamond Tiara slipped his collar into place around his neck. It was not something he was used to, but if she was going to take him outside, it was necessary. Besides, she had gotten it monogrammed with his name and everything, so he ought to wear it at least once. The collar secure, she attached the leash.
"Okay, now you need to be quiet and stay close, okay?" she asked her pet.
Vel whistled and squawked, then tried to hop onto her back. She pushed him back down.
"No! You're too big to ride now, Vel. You know that. And quiet means no squawking!" she hissed at him. Head down, the bird thing nuzzled her, but he did so silently, so Diamond Tiara was pleased.
"Good boy. Okay, let's go."
Quietly, she led him up the stairs and into the hall. She had made sure her dad was not in his office before entering the basement, and so had no problems making it to the door unobserved. She opened the door to the outside, and felt Vel shiver with excitement at all the new smells and sounds.
"Dad, I'm going to Sil's for a bit, okay?" she called, and was out the door without waiting for an answer.
Silver Spoon's house was not the destination she had in mind though. Instead, she walked through the night in the direction of the Everfree Forest, taking a back route to avoid encountering anypony else. Vel raced back and forth, hopping and pouncing on things. Whenever his chirping got too loud, she scolded him until he was quiet again.
At last, she reached the edge of the forest. Pulling Vel close, she gave him a hug, and he crooned in response. With a tear in her eye, she undid his collar and patted him on the head.
"Go," she commanded, pointing toward the forest.
With a happy chirp, he bounded into the plants, only to stop. He looked back over his shoulder and called to her, wondering why she was not following along. She would have explained it to him, but he would not have understood. It was time for him to be on his own. She pointed to the forest and commanded him to go again. Instead, he took a step toward her.
"No!" she scolded, and he paused, looking at her, confused as to what he had done wrong. Again, she pointed toward the forest. "Go! Be free!"
He looked in the direction she pointed, then back at her. Suddenly, he froze, then sniffed the air. He took a single hop toward the forest, then smelled the air again. His tail whipped back and forth, and then he leapt forward and was lost amongst the plants.
"I'll miss you, Vel!" she called out after him. There was no response. There never was, once they went far enough into the forest.
Diamond Tiara kicked the door shut behind her as she entered the house. As the sound reverberated throughout the house, she yelled out, "Dad, I'm going to go play with my science kit in the basement!"
Without waiting for a reply, she entered the basement, hanging the collar and leash on their peg, next to other pegs containing collars in all sorts of colors. She looked around at the mess of a room and shook her head. She would have to clean it up later. Well, partially clean it up. Just enough so that a maid could do the rest of it without asking any awkward questions. But that could wait. Right now, she had business inside the clean room.
She opened the outer door, the pressurized air rushing past her, and stepped inside. As the door closed behind her, she turned on the special light that was supposed to kill off any bacteria and such. Only once it finished its cycle did she open the inner door and enter the cleanroom proper, for, yes, the clean room was indeed a cleanroom.
She pulled open a drawer. Within lay her collection of amber. Not just any old amber, but amber that each contained an insect within. Every piece had a placard, listing the estimated date, the type of insect, and several other names, names she had paid that hack unicorn 'scientist' to provide. A bunch of those names were marked with a red 'X' in front of them. Those she ignored, instead looking at the others, scanning their names, moving from one to the next, trying to decide which to choose this time.
She stopped and read the name she had just skimmed again. She slapped her forehead with a hoof. "Duh," she exclaimed to nopony in particular. How could she have missed this for so long? Part of the name was a stereotypical pet name. This one should have been her first choice, not her fourteenth. It was so obvious now that she had noticed it. This one would surely be perfect, not like the others. When her father saw it, he would agree to let her keep it. It would be small enough that she could keep it in her room, and it would sleep on her bed. Maybe she could even teach it to play fetch. And all the other foals would be totally jealous of her awesome pet.
With renewed enthusiasm, she picked up the piece of amber and laid it down in her working area, next to a syringe and her drill. She maneuvered a magnifying glass into place, above the amber. For what she was about to do, she would need to be precise.
"You're going to be the best pet ever, Rex. I'm sure of it," she said.
With a practiced hoof, she picked up her implement and began to drill into the amber, to the insect and its precious DNA cargo that had been trapped within so long ago.
"Stupid bee!" Diamond Tiara said with a snarl, kicking the stuffed animal across the room.
It was not the stuffed animal's fault that she was annoyed. It was merely an easy target upon which to express her rage. No, the source of her anger was Miss Cheerilee. Why did she have to make everyone do a report on their mothers? It was not fair. Surely those in the class whose mothers were dead should have been excused? But no, Miss Cheerilee had insisted that they could ask other family members.
"Yeah, that works really well when your father is out of town on business. Makes it rather hard to ask him, doesn't it, Miss Cheerilee?" she grumbled in the bee's direction.
"Well, you could have started the project before your father went away on business, rather than waiting until the last day," Diamond Tiara imagined the bee replying in Miss Cheerilee's voice.
"Shut up, you... you... worthless blank-flank bee!" she yelled.
She contemplated walking over to the bee and punting it back to the other side of the room, just to show it who was boss, but abandoned the thought with a loud sigh. Doing so would change nothing. Besides, the stupid bee had a point. She should have finished her homework sooner, just like Silver Spoon had done.
Still, she was not going to admit to anyone that the reason she could not do her homework was because she had screwed up. She could make this work. Truth be told, she did not know much about her mother. She had always only had her father, and that was all the family she needed. She had barely even asked any questions about her. But now she would need every scrap of information she could recall. Just what had her dad all told her? She sat down at her desk and picked up a pencil, jotting down what she could recall.
It had all happened during her father's final year at school in Canterlot. He had gone to see a traveling magic show. One of the performers had taken a fancy to him and sent him a poem, asking him to meet her that night. That one night had been all they had had, as when he went to look for her the next day, the show had already packed up and moved on, with no clue left as to where they were going next. He had never seen her again, and he never would, for a baby had been left on the doorstep, with a note. The note explained that the baby was his, and not to bother looking for the mother, for she was dead.
She frowned. She needed more. What else could she remember? Her mother had not been an earth pony. She knew that, for her father had mentioned that his parents would not have approved of her. They had hoped he would meet the daughter of a well-off earth pony family in Canterlot. Her brow furrowed as she struggled to recall, then grinned widely as it came to her. A unicorn! One additional piece of information, but still not enough. If only her dad had kept pictures or something...
The pencil dropped from her mouth. Amongst the old photo albums was her father's scrapbook from his college days. He had kept the poem in there, she recalled. Perhaps there were other things she could use as well. Maybe even a picture. She got up, determined to go up into the attic, with its cobwebs and dust. Probably some rats and spiders. By herself. To dig through who knows how many boxes to find the right one. On second thought, she would send one of the servants.
"Almost a year later, I was left on my father's doorstep, with a note explaining that my mother had died. And so I have never known my mother. I don't even know how she died. But it is enough that I know that in the few hours they had together they loved a lifetime's worth. Thank you." Diamond Tiara stepped away from the chalkboard as she finished her presentation and awaited the applause that would no doubt be forthcoming.
"Um, you do know Trixie is still alive, right?" Apple Bloom asked. Diamond Tiara's jaw dropped.
"And she's so awesome!" Snips exclaimed, with enthusiastic agreement from Snails.
"No, she isn't," Scootaloo countered. "She was a jerk both times she was here."
The class erupted into a loud argument, with some claiming Trixie was the worst pony to visit Ponyville ever, while others, led by Snips and Snails, extolling her virtues. Diamond Tiara paid no attention though. She felt light headed as she tried to take in what she had just been told. Her mother was alive? And she had come to town and not even visited her? Not just once, but twice!
All her life, she had barely thought of her mother. Mothers were just things other fillies had. But her mother being alive changed everything. Now, having a mother was the important thing in the world. If her mother would not come to her, then she would go to her mother. She would find her, wherever she was, and then they would be together, for who could refuse her? No doubt Trixie had just panicked, worried about how her daughter would react. Or maybe the rest of the town had driven her off. Probably Apple Bloom's sister and her friends. That would be just the type of thing they would do.
She slammed the door to her house shut behind her. She screeched to a halt, wide-eyed. A quick glance around confirmed that she was indeed home. Based on how her heart was racing and how she was gasping for breath, she had run the entire way home. Well, no time like the present to start her search then. Ignoring the queries of the servants, she set to work packing.
Once again, things were not going quite as Diamond Tiara had expected. Oh, she had tracked down Trixie easily enough. That part had been simple. But rather than a tearful reunion, her mother was being obstinate. She did not look quite how Diamond Tiara had expected either. She had expected some mix of white and pink for coat and mane, like her own. Instead, her mother was blue. And she spoke a bit funny as well. That did not deter Diamond Tiara though. White or blue, even if she spoke like an Apple, she would love her mother. Just as soon as her mother quit being as stubborn as a mule and accepted the reality that her daughter had just found her.
"While Trixie was in Canterlot at that time, she does not seem to recall having a daughter," Trixie said, her eyebrows scrunched together, eyes shifting, while she tried to recall such an event. "No, Trixie is quite sure. No foals. She is pretty sure she would remember if she had. From what she has heard, the experience is supposed to be rather memorable."
"Oh, no you don't, mom," Diamond Tiara said. "You're not getting rid of me that easily this time. I've tracked you down and now I'm going to live with you and help you and stuff."
"What?" Trixie said. "And just how are you going to help Trixie?" She rapped Diamond Tiara on the forehead with a hoof. "Can you do magic? Or perhaps you will pull the wagon so Trixie does not have to?"
Diamond Tiara looked at Trixie's wagon, taking in its size and rather ramshackle condition. For the first time since setting her mind to this course of action, she experienced second thoughts. She had been sure her mother would be successful, the cream of the crop, with sold out shows wherever she went. Not living in a beat-up, worn-down gypsy wagon, with faded paint, mismatched wheels, one quite a bit newer than the others, and parts that looked ready to fall off at the slightest bump. It was almost enough to make her throw up.
"You live in that? And you pull it? Don't you have magic or servants for that?" she asked. "I thought you were supposed to be great and powerful?"
Trixie rose on her rear hooves and extended her forelegs dramatically into the air. "Trixie is great and powerful!" She dropped to all fours and looked at the ground sheepishly. "But she has been having a run of bad luck." Her bluster returned, and again she reared up. "Never fear though, Trixie will not be kept down. Like a phoenix, she will rise from the ashes. Except better than a phoenix, because Trixie will have fireworks!"
"And I'll be there with you, mother and daughter together," Diamond Tiara said, quite determinedly. "But I'm not pulling that thing," she added just to be clear.
"No. Trixie travels alone. She learned her lesson about relying on others long ago. They'll just run off with your bits."
"But—" Diamond Tiara started to protest.
"No. Now, if you'll excuse me, Trixie is in a hurry. I need to, um, get to the next town while there is still enough daylight left to do a show."
Before Diamond Tiara could bring up how she had traveled and searched wide and far, about how she was owed this, or any of a variety of other reasons why her opinion of how things should play out was the right one, a stallion cleared his throat rather loudly.
"What?" Trixie said as she spun around, coming face to face with a brawny, brown-coated, grey-maned stallion and several of his equally muscled friends.
"You weren't planning on leaving without paying, were you?" the stallion asked, his narrow eyes staring at Trixie, as if trying to see her thoughts. "We got a nice jail for them that tries that."
Trixie laughed weakly, glancing around for some avenue of escape. Seeing none, she stalled for time. "No, of course not. Trixie was totally going to pay for the wheel before leaving. Just let me..." She pulled out her coin purse and looked inside. "Oh."
"Oh?" the stallion asked, as his minions took a step toward Trixie.
Trixie grinned a grin Diamond Tiara knew well, having seen it many times from her classmates, especially the colts. It usually came when they were about to tell Miss Cheerilee the most blatant and obvious type of lie, like the time Rumble had sworn that parasprites had ate his homework. "Well, Trixie seems—"
"To have forgotten she gave the coins to her daughter and assistant, " Diamond Tiara said, pulling out her own purse, which, unlike Trixie's, jingled with the sound of coins. She looked over at Trixie. "Right, mom?"
Trixie's head swiveled back and forth between the stallions and the filly.
"Well?" asked one of the stallions.
"Trixie is thinking!" Trixie exclaimed. "Any chance the jail has all the modern amenities? No, well, I didn't think so. Okay, fine." Trixie nodded, mind made up. "Well, go on, daughter dearest. Pay the nice stallion."
Diamond Tiara gave a bow, in sync with her mother. The crowd's volume rose yet again, to new highs, as flowers rained down upon the stage. She gave one last wave before the curtains fell. Things were going well.
At first, it had been rough. Their equipment — she could not quite recall when it had gone from being Trixie's to theirs, but it had — had seen better days. The trailer had needed all sorts of repairs. And she had needed to learn the tricks of the trade. Her first appearance on stage had almost ended in disaster, but luckily, the crowd had thought her screwing up was intentional, and the tip jar had been filled to the brim. They had worked some of that into the routine, and it never failed to please the audience.
The resulting higher income had let them fix up and replace some of the gear, as well as add new elements to the act. Trixie, who had at first complained, now had even printed up new flyers with both their names. By now, Diamond Tiara and Trixie were a well-oiled machine, smoothly running through each performance. Even when things happened that were not planned, one would compensate in some way, and the other would intuitively play along. It was like how it was between her and Silver Spoon, but better, because this was her mother.
She walked down the stairs backstage at Trixie's side, to see a familiar stallion standing there. She bounded forward, throwing her forelegs around his neck.
"Daddy! Look! I found her! I found mom! She's alive!" She pointed a hoof toward Trixie. "See?"
When she had imagined this moment, she had envisioned shock, disbelief, and joy. Not what she got though. Instead, her father seemed confused. And Trixie, well, Trixie glared at Filthy Rich, before raising a hoof and jabbing him in the chest. "You! How could you leave Trixie pregnant and then never tell Trixie that she has a daughter?"
"Wait? What? It was your assistant I loved, not you!"
"Is that why you took Trixie's daughter? Because of Flash Style, the lanky unicorn with the fleurs-de-lis cutie mark? That whorse! Trixie hates her even more now. Bad enough she stole all Trixie's bits, so that Trixie had to sneak out of Canterlot like a common criminal to avoid the creditors."
Filthy Rich reared up, nostrils flaring in anger. "I don't believe you! She was so pure and—" He stopped yelling and dropped back to the ground. "Actually, I guess that would explain why my coin purse went missing that same night. And why the note left with Diamond Tiara which said she was dead was signed with her name." He stamped his hoof down. "I was conned! All this time I have treasured her memory, and it turns out I was nothing more than an easy mark."
"And now Trixie finds out she stole Trixie's daughter too! Unforgivable! Trixie will scour the ends of the Equestria until she is found."
"Wait, what?" asked a puzzled Filthy Rich. "Diamond's not your daughter."
"But of course she is. Look at her: She's a natural showpony, just like Trixie," Trixie stated. Diamond Tiara puffed out her chest and beamed with pride, nodding at her father.
"But I didn't sleep with you," Filthy Rich explained.
"Trixie did not say you did," came the reply.
"Then how could my Diamond possibly be your daughter?"
"Magic? Discord? The meddling of four stars? How should Trixie know?" She paused and her look grew more contemplative. "Although... if she wasn't my daughter, that would explain why Trixie does not remember being pregnant." Trixie sat down and began to think.
"I don't care," Diamond Tiara said. "I'm keeping Trixie. She's everything I've ever wanted in a mother. And this Flash Style, well, forget about her. She sounds like she's no good." She reached into her saddle bags and pulled out the poem her father had treasured for all those years.
"Wait!" Trixie said. "What is this?" Her magic reached out and grabbed hold of the paper, and Diamond Tiara let it go.
"The poem your assistant used all those years ago to seduce me," Filthy Rich stated. "The beauty of those words was such that it overwhelmed all sense and made me easy prey to that harlot." He spat. "And yet knowing that, I would do it yet again, even if the cost were greater, for such is the power of those words upon my soul."
"But this is Trixie's writing. I wrote this. But that means..." Trixie peered at him, examining him closely. "You are older now, but it is you. You are the one to whom Trixie lay bare her fragile heart that day. When you did not respond, not even with a note saying you found Trixie unworthy, it broke her— It broke my heart." She turned away, wiping her eye carefully with a hoof. "Trixie is not crying."
"But I did— And she— And that means —" Filthy Rich fell silent, a look of loss on his face. Of all the things Flash Style stole from us, this is the worst," Filthy Rich said, spitting on the ground as he said the name. "All these years we could have had..." He reached out and took Trixie's hooves into his own, and the two ponies gazed into each other's eyes. So quietly that even an owl would have had trouble hearing it, Diamond Tiara clapped, while her face bore a huge grin that would have done Pinkie proud.
"Then it is settled," Diamond Tiara decreed. "Trixie is my mother, and as soon as we get back to Ponyville, we're making that official. You're getting married, daddy!"
Apple Bloom's eyes shot open, the filly wide awake though she had been sleeping soundly but a moment ago. Had she heard something? Her gaze swept the darkness, but no light managed to trickle in past the curtains. It must be an overcast night, she figured. No moonlight to provide even the—
There. The sound again. A creak on the roof? It never creaked like that. Was something up there? Could it be a manticore? A changeling? Some sort of strange bipedal creature with hardly any hair? She stared at the spot from which she thought the sound had come, as if by doing so, she could somehow see through the solid wood of her ceiling to whatever lay beyond.
For a minute she lay so, barely daring to breath, her ears panning from side to side trying to pick up any additional sound. When it came, it came not from above, but a soft screech along the window pane. Apple Bloom turned toward the new sound, her breath coming in short gasps, the covers tightly clenched.
"Please don't be a monster," she chanted softly to herself over and over. It was on the thirtieth iteration, or possibly the fortieth, as she had quite lost count by that point, that the door to her room was flung open, sending the filly scrambling to the far side of the bed.
"Rise an' shine, sis!" Applejack yelled as she burst into the room. "Y'all need to be gettin' an early start if yer tah finish the silo today!" She noticed her sister was already awake and clapped her on the shoulder. "Ah, good, you're already awake."
"Wait, what? A silo? Why in Celestia's cerulean caelum would we need a silo fer?"
"Cae-what? What does that even mean? That isn't some sort of highfalutin swear word now, is it?" Applejack cocked her head.
"Miss Cheerilee has been teachin' us all about how Celestia controls the sun at school." Apple Bloom prepared herself to recite the lesson, all the facts she'd carefully memorized the night before for the quiz on Monday. "It means—"
Applejack cut her off. "As long as it isn't swearing, it don't matter no how anyway." She rubbed her sister's head affectionately. "Now, up and at them. Daylight's a burning." She looked at the curtains, from behind which there was still not even a glimmer of light. "Well, it will be soon enough anyway."
"But, Applejack, Ah thought we weren't going to build a silo. You said yerself that apples need a cellar, not a silo, and so there's no reason for us to get one."
"That was before. You know how all the farms are getting silos?" Applejack asked. Apple Bloom nodded. "Well, now Ah hear even the townsfolk have them." At her sister's look of disbelief, Applejack shrugged. "It's true. Ah was at the Rich's yesterday, talking some business with Mr. Rich and they had a silo. Strangest silo I've ever seen, all lit up with blinking lights and such. But if town folk are building then, how will it look if we're the only farm that doesn't have one?"
"We'd look like ponies who—" Apple Bloom started, only to have Applejack cut her off before she could finish explaining that they'd look like ponies who didn't need a silo.
"That's right." Applejack nodded her head. "It'll look like Sweet Apple Acres can't afford no silo like a proper farm. And who'd want to buy apples from a farm that's doing that poorly? So, you see, we need a silo. And since you did such a good job on fixing up yer clubhouse, Ah figured you'd be able to build us a silo while Ah prune the south orchard."
"But…" Apple Bloom started to protest, even as her mind started contemplating what she would need to build a halfway decent silo. "But, Applejack, we don't have enough lumber tah build a big building with. We used up the last of ours when we had our monthly barn rebuilding."
"Your brother had a thought about that. When we got to talking last night, he suggested usin' the wood from the ol' mill."
The mention of the mill was enough to send shivers down Apple Bloom's spine. She hated going near place. It always reminded her of the setting of that one movie she and her friends had snuck in to see that one time. They hadn't gotten to see much of it, before their screams of terror had given them away and they'd been tossed out with a stern word from the usher, but she'd seen enough to know that places like the mill were where bad things happened. And not just in movies, because it was right near there that… She left the thought uncompleted, pulling the covers tighter around herself.
"Now, Ah know you don't like going there," Applejack said, "what with that classmate of yours drowning near there and all, but trust me when I tell you that you've got nothing to fear. It's just an old, empty, partially collapsed building in the middle of a bunch of spooky trees where nopony hardly ever goes. Nothing to be scared of at all."
Apple Bloom trudged forward, straining against the harness that attached her to the wagon. The road to the old mill was not in good shape. Years of disuse had seen to that. The heavy amount of rain the previous week hadn't helped matters either. Her feet were wet, and she was miserable. Still, she trudged on. She had a task to complete, and Apples did not shy away from a bit of hard work.
Around her, the landscape changed. Whereas before the grass had been green, the trees reaching toward the sky with broad canopies, now everything was devoid of cheerful color. Brown was the order of the day, and that which was not brown was grey. Not a nice light grey, such as the coat of Ponyville's mail mare, but a dark grey, a grey that promised ickiness, slime, and other unpleasant things.
She really hated this place.
Catching sight of the river, she stopped. "Don't think of it, Apple Bloom. Just don't think about her."
But it was too late. At the mere site of the river, the memories returned. That day that had seemed pleasant enough. She, her friends, and others of her class swimming in this very river, just half a mile downstream. And then the sight of that filly. It hadn't been like the movies at all. No screaming, no thrashing. Just silence. And those eyes. So much fear. And then the filly was gone, sunk beneath the waves.
The guilt she had felt afterwards. Like she should have done something. That she should have know the filly was in trouble. That she should have made a greater effort to be the filly's friend, as if that would have changed everything. Even though she hadn't really liked the filly that much, she thought.
Yes, she really hated this place.
She tore her eyes away from the river, focusing instead on the path ahead. She just had to get this over with. The past couldn't hurt her. She'd just go to the mill, get the necessary lumber, and rush back. She could do this.
Her ears perked up at the sound of a snap, and she swung her head around toward the sound.
"Is somepony there?" she called out. "Applejack?" Maybe her sister had finished the pruning early and was coming to lend a hoof? Or her brother… "Big Mac?"
Nopony responded, though a flock of birds burst into flight at the sudden noise, nearly causing Apple Bloom to leap into the air as well.
"Just birds. Just stupid birds," she muttered to herself. "Nothing to be afraid of, Apple Bloom. Nopony here but you. Just you and your memories."
Ahead, she could see the mill and the zap apple orchard beyond. She'd much rather be there, even if Timber Wolves were sometimes around and lightning might crackle and pop. At least it felt alive. It had color. The mill, well, it was drab, dark, dismal. If there was an opposite of life, the mill encompassed that opposite. It was death and decay.
She sighed, gathering up her courage. "The sooner I get this started, the sooner I'll be done," she said.
She took a step forward, then another, and after the third, it had shifted from individual steps to walking. Reaching the front of the old mill, she stopped. Quickly, she slipped out of the harness. Looking up, she appraised the quality of the wood.
It wasn't good, but it could be worse, she decided. A lot of it was too far gone, but there were enough parts for her to work with. She wouldn't want to live in what she built from it, or work within it, for that matter, but for a purely decorative piece, it would suffice. She turned to the wagon and flipped open her toolbox, taking out the crowbar.
A cold gust of wind made her shiver, and she sniffed the air. Her nose scrunched and she snorted, trying to get the hair out of her nostrils. The smell was wrong somehow. The decay of rotting wood. The fetid stench from the still water. The slight hint of jasmine.
"Jasmine?" she asked, taking another sniff. This time, only the smell of decay was there, the hint of flower gone. She looked over at the mill again. "I've got to get out here as quickly as possible, before this place drives me insane."
She picked up the crowbar and got to work.
"There. That should be enough to at least finish the framin'," she muttered to herself. She glanced around. She tried to convince herself it was just to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything, but deep within, she knew that wasn't the case. She just knew something was here, something that didn't want her here.
All while she had worked she had sensed the presence. And once, when the floor had broken beneath her, leaving her legs dangling as she struggled to pull herself up, she could have sworn her hooves came in contact with something, but when she'd looked afterwards, there'd been nothing there, just a pile of boxes five feet below. It was just her imagination. That's what she'd told herself over and over. But the feeling that something was there, watching, waiting, just wouldn't go away.
"I'm going now!" she called out.
She froze, her ears straining. She could have sworn she heard something. A laughter that was almost familiar. She struggled to place it, then it came to her.
"D-Diamond?" she asked. She heard nothing, yet she sensed that somewhere, the laughing continued. "This isn't funny. Just stop it, okay?" she called out. "Just leave me alone!"
She rapidly hooked herself up to the wagon and started back toward the barn, as fast as she could pull the wagon without spilling its contents. It was only once she was back amongst the apple trees that her pace slowed, and not until she arrived at the spot she planned to build the silo that she began to truly feel at ease once more.
Pulling the lumber off the wagon, she began her work. In no time, she had the lowest parts of the framework in place. The rhythmic hammer, the quick calculations of how much support would be needed, what beam went where did much to calm her mind. She liked this, she realized. Why, she could almost imagine herself doing this her entire life. A strange feeling of calm, of purpose, gathered around her, just out of reach, coming closer. This was it, she knew. The moment when her life would change. Her heart started to race, and she would have moved to greet the feeling, to leap into its metaphorical arms, had she but known which way to leap.
*NUCLEAR LAUNCH DETECTED*
And just like that, with those strange words, it was gone.
"Huh? What in tarnation does that mean?" Apple Bloom asked. She looked around curiously, saw nothing of interest, and shrugged. Guess it was just another one of those weird things that tended to happen in Ponyville. She made a note to bring it up to her sister later, after she finished with the framing. Taking her hammer in mouth, she drove a nail into place with several rapid blows, the sensation beginning to gather again.
The sky lit up in a brilliant flash of light, and Apple Bloom threw her forelegs in front of her face, trying to shield her eyes. The movement shifted the ladder, and she tried desperately to regain her balance. Legs windmilling, she plummeted to the ground.
She dropped the hammer from her mouth, the handle now sporting a deep set of imprints of her teeth. "Ouch," she said. Rubbing her head, she slowly sat up and looked toward where the light had come from. A giant rainbow-colored, mushroom-shaped cloud rose over what had been the zap apple orchard. The cheerful colors were strangely at odds with the cloud's menacing appearance.
Apple Bloom's mouth dropped open in shock at the magnitude of the explosion. What could have caused such a thing? And what did this mean for the zap apples? Could even a single tree have survived? No, she realized, as she sat there still in shock, a single tear trickling down one cheek. They were gone. All of them. There would be no making jam with Granny Smith this year.
Off in the distance, the air shimmered as a pink filly faded into view.
"Booya! How you like them apples?" Diamond Tiara yelled with glee as she lowered the targeting device.
Sure, it had taken her an entire year of saving her allowance to have enough money to build the silo and buy the stealth suit. She'd even had to resort to using a cheap knock-off perfume. And then yesterday, the building had finally been completed. Of course, nopony had thought to mention to her that she'd need to wait still longer for the stupid thing to build a missile. Probably assumed she'd read the instruction manual or something, but seriously, who reads those? So it hadn't been ready until this morning, and then she'd had to wait until nopony was near the orchard before she could finally launch.
But it had all been worth it. She giggled happily. So very worth it. Those accursed zap apple trees were gone.
Make her dress up as a bunny and prance around like a fool Apple, did they? Well, not this year. Not ever again.
"Could you open the curtains?" Diamond Tiara asked her maid.
"Of course, ma'am," the maid replied, temporarily ceasing her brushing of Diamond's mane to do as requested.
Diamond looked out upon the town. It would be nice when it returned to normal, she decided. For six years, the fighting had been going on across Equestria. At first, there had been some large actions, but those had quickly enough died off. Instead, the war had evolved into a series of guerrilla actions, quick raids and terror strikes. But that was over now. The last rebel stronghold had fallen just last week. Soon, there would be peace again. The thick smoke from the forge could cease, and the conscripted laborers and soldiers allowed to return home.
"I'll never understand why they kept fighting so long. They had to have known they couldn't win. Why couldn't they just have accepted the new order?"
She felt a sudden tug on her mane as her maid failed to take proper care to be gentle. Before she could chastise the maid though, she apologized and resumed brushing more carefully, the strokes light and tentative, as if the maid expected her to lash out. Ordinarily, she might have, but not today.
"No, it was my fault. I forgot that your sister was one of those that went north to try and stop him when he first returned. A shame." She let her mind wander to this weekend and her upcoming nuptials. "I bet she could have made me a truly stunning wedding dress. I miss her designs." She sighed. "So much lost for no reason."
The brushing ceased, and a mirror was held up for her to use. She shifted her head a bit, checking out her mane from different angles, and nodded, satisfied. It was important that she looked good. Her fellow ponies needed her to, to remind them of what was possible, of the better days ahead now that the last vestiges of resistance were dealt with.
She felt her tiara's familiar form settle on her head. It wasn't the one she had worn when she was a filly. This one was larger, more extravagant. It had been a gift from her fiance when he had asked her father for her hoof in marriage. She'd only be wearing it a few more days, she thought, and then... then she'd be wearing the golden crown, with its ebony inlay and rubies, as she took her place beside her husband.
Her eyes drifted over to the center of town. Rows of chairs and benches sat there, ready to be used by guests from all over the country. Banners hung, stirring slightly in the soft spring breeze. A few vases were in place, but they sat empty. The flower arrangements would be brought in at the last minute, to ensure they were as fresh as possible. And there, behind where she and her fiance would be standing, a large wooden crate covering the latest permanent addition to the town square. It was the town's gift to her for her wedding: A large statue of herself and her fiance.
Her wedding would be more perfect than she had ever imagined. Her lips tightened in a small frown. Well, except for one thing. Silver Spoon would not be there as her mare of honor. She had tried to find her best friend, but even her fiance's best servants had been unable to track her down in the war torn land. She hoped Sil was alright, that nothing had happened to her. And that somehow, she could still be found in time. If not, her maid would be her mare of honor. It was the least Diamond could give her in return for her service these last few years, even if she had originally only taken her on out of pity.
Turning to her maid, Diamond Tiara spoke again. "I imagine Captain Dread is eagerly awaiting our arrival, Sweetie. Shall we?"
Her maid rushed to open the door for Diamond Tiara, and the two mares headed downstairs and out the door, where Captain Dread was indeed ready to depart, his squad in perfect formation, the metal polished and leather shined.
Diamond didn't really see the need for such a sizable escort. This was her hometown. Nopony would let her come to harm here. Her fiance had pointed out that he worried an enemy of his might try to get to him through her, and so she allowed it, to ease his mind. He had enough things to occupy it already, with an empire to run, and she didn't want to add more to it.
The coachpony held the door open for her. She settled herself inside, her maid at her side and the captain opposite at her. At her signal, the captain gave the order and they proceeded at a walking pace. She'd have preferred to go faster, but she knew the captain wouldn't budge. This way, he insisted, his guards had plenty of time to spy out approaching threats, weren't tired if it came to a fight, and the ponies pulling the carriage stayed fresh, in case they needed to make a run for it. It all seemed rather silly. Truth be told, she figured he just wanted to make sure his soldiers didn't get too much dust on their gear.
Out of the window of the carriage, she watched the town go by. The buildings were dirty, the bright and cheerful colors of yesteryear covered by the soot of the forge, or faded due to neglect. Too many ponies called away by the war. Nor were there plants to liven things up. The gardens and flower boxes lacked the usual life they should have shown in spring. Too much neglect, she supposed. A sad state of affairs when earth ponies neglected their plants. Of the trees that had once lined the streets, only stumps remained. They had been cut down to fuel the forges two years ago. She'd have to talk to her fiance about having new trees planted when the forge shut down, she decided.
A few ponies stood off the side of the road, their gaunt forms reminding her of scarecrows. None looked happy, though a few offered up a feeble cheer. The poor things, she thought. They'd suffered so much due to the pointless resistance. Her eyes latched onto one particularly poor specimen. None more so than the foals.
"Stop the carriage please, and have your guards let him through, captain," Diamond said, pointing to the colt.
"Ma'am?" he asked.
"I should hardly think such a little one is the sort of threat my fiance is worried about. But if he proves too much for you to handle, my maid can no doubt help you secure him."
Grudgingly, the captain nodded and gave the order. The little colt cautiously approached. She smiled at him.
"What's your name, little one?"
"My name?"
"Yes. What do your parents—" She paused at his flinch. "What did your parents call you?" she asked.
"Bright Skies," he said.
"An auspicious name. Soon we will have bright skies, Bright Skies, now that this pointless war is over. And until then, here's a little something to brighten your day." She gestured for her maid to offer the colt some coins, and Sweetie did as Diamond asked. "Now, begone, Bright Skies. Go and buy some food. Maybe even some candy," she said with a wink.
The colt looked at the bits, scarcely able to believe his luck. He turned to leave, looking behind him several times as he did so, as if he was expecting this all to be a joke at his expense, that at any second Diamond might order her guards to seize him and return her bits. Like she would do such a heartless thing however. No, she wanted nothing more than to ease the lives of such orphans, of all of the ponies forced to deal with the pointless suffering the resistance had brought to Equestria.
Her good deed done, Diamond asked the captain to have the carriage resume its progress and turned her head to look out the window on the other side. She did not notice the captain's head gesture or two of the guards detaching themselves from the column, heading in the direction the colt had gone.
Ahead, she could see more guards. Her fiance was here at the soup kitchen, so security was tighter than usual. From the flashes of the cameras, a few members of the National Press Corp were there as well, no doubt there to report on the good deeds of Equestria's ruler. There weren't as many as there would have been at such an event before the war, but perhaps now that the war was over, that too could change. Without the worry of the enemy using the press to undermine civilian moral and pass information, there would be no reason not to allow some private news agencies, right?
The carriage stopped, and the coach pony opened the door. More cameras flashed as she stepped out, and the ponies waiting in line gave her a ragged cheer, to which she responded with a wave. Her guards escorted her inside, and she smiled as she saw her fiance, increasing her pace.
He looked so handsome, with his grey coat, black mane, curved horn, and the silver armor, complete with a red cape with a white trim. She approached him and gave him a quick nuzzle. "Husband to be," she said, giving him a wink.
"My bride," Sombra responded.
Her fiance greeted, Diamond Tiara gave a brief nod to the mayor and her aides, here for this important visit, before turning her attention to the pony who ran the soup kitchen for her ever since the schools had been shut down for the duration of the national emergency. She gave Cheerilee a quick hug.
"Lots of ponies needing a good meal tonight, Miss Cheerilee," she said. "I hope we've got enough for all of them."
"We'll make it work. We always do," the former teacher responded.
"Shall we start, dearest?" Diamond asked Sombra, and at his nod, the guards opened the door and ponies began to trickle in. Each pony got their bowl of soup and slice of bread, then bowed deeply to their ruler, before finding an empty place within the hall.
Soon, there was barely an empty place left, and Diamond looked toward the serving station, expecting to see the end of the line. Instead, it continued unimpeded out the door. She looked back toward the eating ponies, then over the line again. So many ponies. It saddened her. So many she knew. That was Roseluck, and behind her Peachy Pie. There, almost to Sombra was… a pony in a cloak, clenched tight around her to keep warm in the nippy spring air. But there was something familiar about her. Something about the color of her coat, what little showed from beneath the cloak.
Diamond pushed her way through the ponies toward the cloaked one. With a swift move, she flipped back the pony's hood and gasped with surprise. Her wish had come true! It was Silver Spoon. She squealed with glee and readied herself for a bump-bump-sugar-lump-rump. In her friend's face she saw a flash of horror at being revealed, and then Silver Spoon made a desperate move toward Sombra.
The spears of his guards found her before she could make it to him, and she collapsed to the ground as guards cleared the area around Sombra and the downed pony, flipping tables over and shoving ponies away. More guards poured in, and soon Diamond's party was protected by a hedge of spears.
She noticed none of this though, as she slid over to where Silver Spoon lay mortally wounded. She wrapped her forelegs around her dying friend, anguish wrought on her face. Blood trickled from Silver Spoon's mouth, and Diamond used a corner of the cloak to try and wipe it away.
"Clever. And desperate," Captain Dread said from over her shoulder. "A localized explosive device. Bit activated. Clamp to activate, release to trigger, most likely. Probably take out everything in a four foot radius and not so much as singe a hair beyond that. How did you know she was a threat, ma'am?"
"I… I didn't," Diamond replied. She felt the touch of Silver's hoof upon her own.
"How could you protect him, Diamond?" Silver Spoon gasped, splattering blood on Diamond Tiara's face. "Are you a willing part of his evil?" She coughed once more, then shuddered, breathing her last breath.
Diamond pulled her friend's body close. "I wasn't… I was trying to greet a… I'm not evil. I'm a good pony."
In front of her, Sombra laughed. Strange how harsh and cruel it sounded. Strange how she'd never noticed that in his laughter before. "Good. Evil. These things are irrelevant. They are not real. Do you know what is real? Power. The strong rule, and the weak serve. That is how it has always been and always will be." He rested a hoof on her shoulder. "You have done well, my bride. You may ask of me one boon."
Her grief addled mind barely comprehended the request. She mumbled something, while softly rocking back and forth, still holding Sil's body close. The hoof lifted off her shoulder and Sombra moved away. She heard him decree to the mayor that the trees would be replanted within the day. Or else. He didn't actually say the last bit, but she heard it there nonetheless.
Had Sil been right? Was she evil? Was she supporting a tyrant? No, it couldn't be. She was good. She helped ponies. She gave to charity. Once they were married they'd make Equestria a happy place again. The trees were going to be replanted because of her. And the ponies knew she cared. They cheered when she went past, even if they were tired. They'd made her a statue. They wouldn't have made her a statue if they didn't know she cared, right?
She lowered Silver Spoon's body to the ground and turned to her father. She looked at him, really looked at him. When had he gotten so old, she wondered? "I'm a good pony, right?" she asked softly.
"Of course, my princess. You're the best pony in the world." That waver in his voice. The slight twitch of his ear. Her eyes widened and she felt like she'd been kicked in gut by a team of mules. He… He didn't believe what he was saying. Her own father... didn't believe... she was good.
Turning her head, she looked pleading at her maid. Sweetie had been with her these last few years. Surely she'd know the truth. The maid though refused to make eye contact, suddenly very interested in a knot in the wainscoting. She turned her head toward the ponies of the town. They stared back at her blankly from behind the line of guards. The validation she was looking for was not there, though in several there was… hatred. They hated her?
She looked away, unable to meet their gaze, and found herself looking towards another familiar face. Reaching out her forelegs toward her former teacher, she asked again, "Am I a good pony?"
Her former teacher gave her the slightest of smiles, tears trickling down her cheeks. "Yes, Diamond," she said, "you are a good pony."
There was no deception there that Diamond could make out. Only a wealth of sadness and regret. Diamond Tiara looked down, ignoring the tears that trickled down her own face before falling upon her friend and mingling with the blood.
Her hoof gently traced the side of Silver Spoon's head. "I'm sorry, Sil," she muttered, barely audible. She lifted her gaze to meet Cheerilee's. "Thank you," she said.
With a swift move of her hoof, she slid the device free of Silver Spoon and tossed it upwards, catching the bit between her teeth and clamping down upon it, before hurling herself at her fiance.
"I got it!" the little, blank-flanked, pink filly squealed as she raced to the front door.
Her hooves dug into the imported rug covering the hardwood floor as she turned the corner into the entranceway, the speed of the turn causing a small plastic tiara to fly off her perfectly coiffed mane. Throwing open the door, the filly prepared to launch herself onto her favorite pony in the whole world — other than her father, of course. Her look of sheer joy turned to one of perplexion at the sight of the tan-coated, saddlebag-carrying pony that stood there, blond mane partially hidden underneath an oversized Stetson.
"Howdy!" the young mare, barely more than a filly herself despite the three apple cutie mark adorning her flanks, said. "You must be Diamond. We're gonna have so much fun tonight, I jus' know it. I'm—"
"You're not Miss Swirl," Diamond Tiara .
"Nope. As Ah'd been about to say, Ah'm Applejack, and your pa asked me to be your sitter tonight."
"You are not Miss Swirl," Diamond Tiara repeated more forcefully. "Miss Swirl always babysits me. She's the best babysitter in the whole world." The little pony glared at the mare before her with such ferocity that it caused Applejack to step back.
"Dad!" Diamond yelled. "Daaaad!"
The sound of hooves, heavier ones than earlier, racing upon the hardwood echoed in the entryway, shoving the still yelling filly safely behind him. A loose tie dangled around his neck, somehow clinging on despite its unfastened state and his madcap dash from his dressing room. He scanned the room, but failed to find any sort of threat to his daughter's well being. After a second look just to make sure he wasn't missing something, he breathed a sigh of relief and gave Applejack a smile.
"You found the place okay then?" He shook his head and chuckled. "Well, of course you did. Otherwise you wouldn't be here, would you? Thank you again so much for agreeing to do this. Our usual sitter had to cancel, and, well, she's the only sitter who doesn't seem to always be busy when we ask them to babysit."
"Ain't no problem, Mr. Rich. Always glad to help out a friend of the family. An' besides, Ah could use the money. There's this apple tree at the market Ah've got my eye on. Ah already know what Ah'm gonna name him, and he's going to be the best tree in the whole orchard."
"Even so, we'd probably have had to cancel our trip to the opera if you hadn't agreed," Filthy Rich said. A tug on his leg distracted him, and he turned his attention to his daughter. "Diamond, can't you see I'm talking to Miss Applejack here?"
"That is not Miss Swirl."
Filthy Rich rubbed his daughter's head affectionately. "No, it isn't, pumpkin. I'm afraid Miss Swirl had to cancel at the last second." Holding up his hoof to forestall his daughter's protest, he continued. "Luckily, Miss Applejack here agreed to babysit you tonight, and maybe tomorrow night as well. Good thing, otherwise I don't know what your mother and I would have done. I know I should have told you earlier, but it just slipped my mind. I'm sorry about that."
"But I like Miss Swirl."
"Well, how do you know you won't like Applejack?"
Diamond Tiara peered suspiciously at the interloper standing silently in the doorway.
"She's got a funny looking hat," the filly finally said. "It's too big and doesn't fit right."
Filthy Rich snorted, before fixing a stern glare on his daughter. "Diamond, that is not how we treat our visitors. Say you're sorry."
Diamond frowned and chewed on her lip, looking down. "I'm sorry your hat is funny looking," Diamond offered.
"Diamond Dazzle Tiara!" Filthy Rich scolded at his daughter, who stared back defiantly. "Go to your room. Now!"
Diamond scowled, then turned and headed inside, taking just a second to turn back and give Applejack one last harsh look, before disappearing from sight. Shortly thereafter, her hooves could be heard stomping up the stairs.
"I'm sorry about that, Applejack. I swear she's normally much better behaved."
"It's all right, Mr. Rich. Ah'm sure she don't mean nothing with it. She's just upset that Miss — Swirl, was it? — couldn't make it." She brushed a hoof along the edge of her hat, before taking it off and placing it carefully on the coat rack, before slipping out of her saddlebags.. "Besides, this here hat used to be mah brothers, an' Ah haven't quite grown into it just yet."
Filthy Rich laughed. "With how much you've grown these last few years, it wouldn't surprise me if it's a perfect fit by the end of next year." Glanced at his watch, he frowned slightly at the time. "Just don't let her push you around tonight, okay?"
Applejack chuckled. "Don't you worry, Mr. Rich. Ah know just how much of a hoofful they can be from sitting for my little sis."
Filthy Rich turned to head back to his dressing room, but stopped with a laugh. "Well, I don't think she'll be half the trouble you and your brother could be."
"Ah don't recall us giving you any trouble."
"That's because I was darn good at babysitting," Filthy Rich said with a laugh. "It is, after all, remarkably similar to employee management. Make sure to keep 'em busy, reward well, and punish if needed."
"And with an example like that, Ah sure I'll have no trouble with little Diamond."
"Just, uh, just give her until we leave to calm down. By then, I'm sure she'll be her usual sweet self." Filthy Rich gave a quick nod. "Yes, I'm sure that'll be the case," he said, as much to himself as to Applejack.
"Ah'll do that, Mr. Rich. Now you'd best finish getting dressed, else Mrs. Rich is going to give you a right serious tongue lashin'."
Filthy Rich guffawed. "Isn't that the truth?" he said. Then, taking another glance at his watch, he swallowed and quickly went upstairs.
Applejack waved to the departing carriage, before returning inside and shutting the door. With the elder Riches departed, she was all alone with Diamond Tiara. The filly was still pouting upstairs, refusing to leave her room.
The stubbornness of youth, Applejack thought with a chuckle.
She knew it well enough, for her little sister could be equally determined to be miserable at times. She had no idea where her sister got it from. Probably from her brother or from Granny Smith. Certainly not her though. The stars knew she herself had never been that stubborn when she was that young. If someone brought up an example or two to the contrary, well, she certainly wasn't that stubborn these days. And there was nothing anypony could do to convince her otherwise, she thought with the a chuckle.
Truth be told, she figured a bit of stubbornness was a good thing in a farm pony. Nature wasn't always the most cooperative of things, and sometimes it just came down to keeping one's nose to the grindstone until nature finally wised up and saw things your way. With a little filly though, other methods tended to produce far better results.
Luckily, she had just the right means at her disposal. She reached for the saddlebags she had set down by the door earlier and flipped them onto her back. Whistled a jaunty tune, she made her way to the kitchen. Once there, she set the bags down upon the counter and pulled out the contents, lining them up carefully.
Everything she needed to make apple goulash. The recipe was a family secret, passed down from mother to daughter. It wasn't often that she got a chance to make it. Her brother fiercely guarded the privilege of making the family meals, so if she did get a chance to cook, it was usually a pastry of some sort. Not that there was anything wrong with pastries.
Tonight though, she wasn't at home, he wasn't anywhere near this kitchen, and she intended to take full advantage of the opportunity. She searched through the kitchen until she found the knives, and set to work dicing the apples Once the apples were prepared, she quickly moved on to the next step. It wasn't long before she was salivating at the aroma wafting from the pan.
A soft clop told her she wasn't the only one enjoying the smell. A pink head was peeking around the corner and sniffing the air.
"Smells good, doesn't it?" Applejack asked.
"No."
The words didn't match Diamond Tiara's actions though, for even as she spoke them, she took a step forward though. And as if that wasn't enough, the way she stretched her neck to sniff the air told Applejack all she needed to know..
"Pull up a chair. It's about ready. 'Tis a family recipe, from back when mah family traveled Equestria gatherin' seeds." Applejack lifted the wooden stirring spoon up to her mouth, blew on it to cool it off, and took a taste. "Mmm. Just like Ma used to make."
She lifted the pot off the stove and set it on the table. Then she searched a few cabinets and drawers until she found some bowls, dining-ware, and a serving spoon. While she had been looking, Diamond Tiara had clambered onto a chair, and she set a bowl in front of the filly.
Dipping the serving spoon into the pot, she looked toward Diamond Tiara. "How many scoops you want?"
Diamond Tiara started to respond, but pulled herself back. "What's in it?" she asked.
"Well, that's a bit of a secret. I can tell you there's apples in it, though."
"I don't like apples."
"You'll like these, judgin' on how you were practically droolin' a river at just the smell."
Diamond Tiara wiped her mouth with her leg, looking at it afterward to see just how much she'd slimed it. Frowning, she hid the leg under the table. "Well, I'm not hungry," she declared..
Applejack shrugged and filled her own bowl to the brim. She took another scoop, and offered it to Diamond Tiara. "You sure?"
The filly pushed her empty bowl away and crossed her forelegs, making sure the leg she'd used to wipe her mouth was hidden beneath the other. "Not hungry."
"Okay," Applejack said. "But if you change your mind, there's more goulash in the pot. Wouldn't wait too long, if Ah were you. It's really best when it's warm. Although, even cold, it is hoof lickin' good."
Diamond continued to sit with her forelegs crossed. The table shuddered slightly as she kicked it. Applejack just smiled and settled down to enjoy her own meal, savoring every bite with exaggerated gusto.
"Can I have ice cream?" Diamond Tiara asked as Applejack started to serve herself a second bowl.
Applejack halted mid-scoop, thinking it over. "Maybe for dessert. But first you need to eat some goulash."
"But Miss Swirl—"
"Ain't here. And if she were, I reckon she wouldn't let you have just ice cream for dinner neither."
Diamond Tiara harrumphed and gave the table leg another kick.
The rest of dinner consisted of Diamond silently pouting and Applejack enjoying her meal. When Applejack finished her second bowl, she pushed her chair back and rubbed her stomach contently.
"That sure hit the spot. Are you sure you aren't hungry?"
"No," the little filly replied, determined to stay the course.
"Alright. Suit yourself then. Ah'm just going to clean up, and then we can do something else."
Getting out of her chair, Applejack proceeded to take her tableware to the sink. As she started to wash her bowl, she glanced back just in time to catch Diamond Tiara sneaking a bite out of the pot. With an inaudible chuckle, Applejack returned her attention to the dishes, working at a slower pace than she usually did. When she was about finished, she heard the fridge door open and turned toward it.
Diamond froze in the midst of putting the pot inside. "I'm saving it for later." At Applejack's "uh-huh", Diamond quickly continued. "Not for me! For Randolf."
"Randolf? That an imaginary friend?"
"He's not 'maginary. He's our butler. My mommy says nopony else in town has a bulter because they're too poor."
"Mah aunt and uncle have one, in Manehattan. Ah don't see the point of havin' somepony to do things you can do for yourself, though." Applejack dried off the last of the dishes and turned her full attention to Diamond Tiara. "All done. Now, how about we play a game?"
"Tivial Pursuit?" Diamond Tiara asked as she clambered back up into her chair.
"Tivial, huh? Are you sure you're old enough for that?" Applejack asked. "How about a nice game of Chutes and Ladders instead?"
"That's for little kids," Diamond said, crossing her hooves across her chest. "Mom says it isn't any good because the player makes no difference."
"Okay, we won't play that then. You got any other suggestions?"
Diamond Tiara sat in thought. "Hide and Seek?" Diamond Tiara suggested.
"Isn't that also a— Actually, never mind.. That sounds like a rootin', tootin' idea. You go hide, and Ah'll go find you."
Looking at her sitter with big eyes, Diamond Tiara pleaded, "But what if you can't find me? That'd be scary. Can't you go hide instead?"
"Ah can just call out if Ah cannot—" Remembering the temper tantrum from earlier, Applejack cut herself off. It would probably be easier if she just played along, she decided. "Alright. Ah'll go hide, and you count to forty. You can count to forty, right?"
"I can count all the way to one-hundred," Diamond Tiara declared.
"Really?"
"Uh-huh," Diamond Tiara replied, and then she started counting. "One bits… two bits…"
Quickly, Applejack raced off, moving from room to room, looking for a good spot. Closets she rejected as too obvious. Bedrooms were out, as using them would be an invasion of privacy. The suit of armor in the main hall wasn't big enough to hide behind. Not enough room behind the cupboard . And the she spotted it, a perfect spot, a big pile of what she assumed were dress-up clothes. Diving in, she quickly wormed her way underneath, taking care to fully cover herself.
Settling in for the wait, she let her mind drift to the apple tree that would soon be hers. It was the promise of perfection, its branches going off at just the right angles that would lead to an optimal yield in the hands of a skilled caretaker. And she would be that one. Mr. Harvest had no clue of the potential of that tree, but she did. And soon, it would be hers. She couldn't wait to plant the tree and tell it the name she had chose for it, how she would whisper to it as she carefully pruned it, and of the marvelous prize winning apples it would produce.
The apples in her mind crashed to the ground as she realized that, by now, she should have heard her charge searching. Carefully, she worked an ear free so that could hear better, and swiveled it around, searching for the slightest sound that might come from her charge. There were none, however. She decided to give it another five minutes, just in case Diamond Tiara was currently searching in another part of the house. But as the time passed, it slowly dawned on Applejack what had happened.
The little brat had tricked her!
Shedding her cover, Applejack made the switch from hunted to hunter. Walking as quietly as she could, she sneaked around the house, always with her ears perked for the slightest trace of her prey. It was in the kitchen she found her quarry, sitting on a chair, one leg was wrapped around a tub of ice cream. A second tub, now empty, lay on its side next to the first. Not all the ice cream had found its way into the filly's stomach, however. A good portion adorned the table and the pony. Diamond Tiara ignored that though, her other foreleg dragging through the mess as it used a spoon to dig deeper into the non-empty container.
Carefully, Applejack sneaked into the room, placing her hooves with the utmost of care, lest they make enough noise to provide warning of her approach. Step by step, she closed the distance, revealing more of the mess on the table. Her anger faded as she saw that ice cream wasn't the only thing the brown, white, and pink blob had been pigging out on. Plus it was at least partially her own fault. Letting a pony her sister's age trick her like that...
"Ah knew you couldn't resist," Applejack said, grabbing hold of the Diamond Tiara..
The filly might well have reached the ceiling as she shot upwards in surprise had Applejack's hoof not been on her shoulder. As it was, she still cleared a good ten inches, before slamming back down into the chair with an audible thump.
"Was good, wasn't it?" Applejack pointed to the empty pot, which looked to have been licked clean. She was pleased to note that, unlike the ice cream, there didn't seem to be any of the goulash smeared on the table, though some had managed to find its way into Diamond Tiara's mane.
Diamond Tiara shrugged, digging her spoon back into the ice cream, only to be stopped by Applejack. With large, questioning eyes, Diamond Tiara looked back at her sitter.
"Ah think you've had enough to eat for for one night." Applejack picked up the ice cream container, wiped it clean with a dishrag, and put it away in the freezer. With large sweeps, she began to wipe clean the table. "You sure made a right big mess. And not just the table either." Looking at her charge, Applejack pursed her lips in thought. "Ah'm thinking bath time."
"I like baths," Diamond Tiara said, grabbing hold of Applejack's leg. "Come on! I'll show you my collection. It's the biggest in town."
Hobbling on three legs, Applejack let herself be guided up the stairs to the bathroom. She stopped and gawked at the sight of it, her hoof slipping free of Diamond Tiara's grasp as the filly clambered into the bath. A shower occupied one corner, and it didn't have a shower curtain. Instead, it had a glass door, which was slightly ajar. Along another wall ran a counter with not one but two sinks, a mirror spanning the entire length. But it wasn't those things that brought Applejack up short. No, that was the bath.
It was the largest bath she had ever seen. It wasn't a cast iron tub like she was used to, but built into the room, covered with tiles of what appeared to be marble. The fixtures, which glimmered yellow, were no doubt gold-plated. What impressed her most though was its sheer size.
She let out a slow whistle. "Ah bet that could even hold Big Mac."
Diamond Tiara wasn't interested in that though, instead directing Applejack's attention to what covered most of where the bath met three of the room's four walls, other than a small portion that held various grooming products.
"This is my rubber ducky collection. They've all got a name and story." She paused to glare at Applejack. "Don't try to steal any, 'cause they're mine."
"Ah won't," Applejack swore, twisting the two handles that controlled the flow of hot and cold water.
"Good," Diamond Tiara said, picking up one rubber duck and holding it out for Applejack to see. "This one's my favorite. Her name's Bob, and she runs a huge store, the biggest in all Equestria."
"Is that why she wears a suit and tie?"
"Uh-huh. My dad named her. I named all the others though. They all work for her, and they have to do whatever she says." Diamond held the duck in front of one of another ducky, this one adorned with a sombrero. "Clean up in aisle three, Miamigo" Turning back to Applejack, she said, "And now he has to go clean, 'cause Bob said so."
"I reckon I'd better help Miamigo with that cleanup," Applejack said, as she reached for the soap. She lathered Diamond Tiara up while the filly continued to play with her rubber ducks, mentioning each one's name and history in turn, before having Bob give them some task to do..
"When I grow up, I'm going to be like Bob."
"You want to run a store?" Applejack asked, turning on the faucet.
"I'm going to tell people what to do," Diamond Tiara said with a nod, "and then they'll do it."
Applejack laughed and started to rinse off the soap. "Up until last month, Ah thought Ah knew what Ah wanted to be, too. Ah was going to live in Manehattan and be an important pony. But you know, sometimes life'll surprise you. Ah had to go all the way to Manehattan to learn that what Ah really wanted was here, working the farm with mah family. Maybe you'll find out you want to do something completely different than you ever expected as well."
Diamond Tiara frowned. "Not gonna happen."
"I'm just saying, life could surprise you. Now, for the conditioner," Applejack said. "And then we'll get you ready for bed."
"But I'm not tired," Diamond protested. "And Miss Swirl always tells me stories until Mommy and Daddy come home." After glancing around the room to see if anyone else was listening, which of course no pony was, as they were the only two ponies in the house, Diamond Tiara leaned close. "And then I pretend to be asleep so mommy and daddy don't know, 'cause Miss Swirl said she probably shouldn't let me stay up that late."
"You really like her, huh?"
"She's the best. Did you know she studies dolphins, otters, and stuff?"
"Ah did not," Applejack admitted.
"She does. That's so cool. So can I stay up, pleeeeease?"
"Your dad said Ah was to make sure you were in bed on time."
"But…"
"If you don't get enough sleep, you'll be grumpy all day tomorrow," Applejack replied, reaching for a bottle of conditioner.
"Not that one!" Pointing to a purple bottle with pink hearts on the shelf, Diamond Tiara said, "Use the special one."
Applejack turned and reached up for the bottle, only to hear a splash behind her. Spinning back, she was just too late to catch Diamond Tiara as she jerked the bathroom door open and fled into the hallway.
"Get back here!" Applejack shouted, as she followed into the hall.
"Not going to bed! You can't make me!" Diamond Tiara yelled back, as she continued to race down the hallway, ducking into a doorway at the end.
Applejack followed, to be rewarded by the sight of Diamond Tiara sending water flying as she shook herself. Applejack dove, stretching out in an attempt to grab the filly, but her hooves slipped off the wet coat as Diamond Tiara raced toward another door.
"Come back here, you little varmint!" Applejack yelled, as the pink rump disappeared around the corner.
"Never!" came the reply.
Grinding her teeth, Applejack got to her feet, rubbing her shoulder where it had collided with the ground.
"Fine. If that's how you want to play it," she said to herself as she headed toward the entryway. "You might know the house, but I got just the thing to even the odds."
Reaching her destination, she opened her saddlebags and pulled out her lasso. Careful to not hit anything, she gave it a few practice twirls. This would work, she decided, glad that she had brought the rope along. Admittedly, not for this purpose. She'd planned to potentially entertain Diamond Tiara with some simple rope tricks she'd been practicing for the rodeo. Fancy twirls and such. But roping would do.
'Oh yes, it will do,' she thought, as she set off to find Diamond Tiara.
That part turned out to be surprisingly easy, for Diamond Tiara was in the living room, the first room Applejack checked. She began to twirl the rope, and let a slight smile cross her face as Diamond Tiara's eyes and mouth both shot open. After one last twirl, Applejack sent the rope flying toward her target. Judging the distance, Applejack tugged back on the rope. Diamond Tiara could only stand unmoving, still frozen in shock, and watch as the rope sailed toward her, over her, wrapped itself around one of her mom's favorite vases, and then pulled said vase off the top of the rather tall cabinet it normally sat on.
The shattering of the vase freed Diamond Tiara from her statue-like state, and she sprung into action, launching a pillow from a nearby seat at Applejack. Diamond's aim was no better than Applejack's though, and the pillow crashed through the glass door of another cabinet.
"Now look at what you did!" Diamond Tiara accused, pointing at the smashed chinaware inside the cabinet.
Applejack growled, narrowed her eyes in determination, and began to ready her rope for another attempt. Again, the rope flew toward the filly.
Diamond ducked to the side. With a laugh, she cried, "Missed me!"
Applejack smiled, and gave the rope a firm tug.
"Oomph!" Diamond Tiara exclaimed as a chair fell on her.
"Got you!" Applejack exclaimed, taking a step forward.
"Nu-uh!" Diamond Tiara twisted around, snagged a hold of the lace covering of a corner table, and pulled hard. The covering slid toward her, and so did what sat upon it. Catching the potted plant as it fell, Diamond threw it in Applejack's general direction. "Get this!"
Applejack released the rope, determined to catch the pot before it hit something and broke. In a lunge that would have a hoofball keeper proud, she dove into the air, reaching out with the hoof and coming in contact with the pot, sending it upwards. She shot out her other hoof, and again managed to stop momentum from leading the pot to its end. Flailing wildly, Applejack continued to juggle the pot. For an instant, she almost thought she had it, but alas, it slipped from her grasp. With a crash, it hit the ground, scattering dirt all around.
Applejack looked at the scattered fragments of dirt and pot before grabbing her lasso. She began to twirl it even before she was fully on her feet, let alone knew where Diamond Tiara was or what she was up to. A mistake, it turned out, for what Diamond Tiara, who had used the time to free herself of the chair, was up to was flinging a barrage of pillows at Applejack. The first of those pillows caught Applejack on the side of her head, and down she went again.
Applejack attempted to leap to her feet, but failed as something impeded her ability to move her neck. She jerked her head hard in attempt to break free, but only succeeded in making it even harder to move. In panic, she thrashed, kicked, and rolled. None of it helped, and she only found herself ever more confined. It was only once she stopped moving that she realized what had happened. She'd finally caught something with her lasso. Unfortunately, it was herself she'd caught, and now she was trussed up like a really trussed-up thing.
Worse still, she could hear the laughter, no, the snickering, for that was a far more accurate word to describe the sound, of the pony she had been trying to capture. Applejack tried to move her head so she could see the filly, but found she couldn't. Instead, she had to resort to flopping around like a fish out of water to be able to see Diamond Tiara.
Diamond Tiara was sitting on her haunches, apparently waiting patiently while Applejack did her flopping turn. She lifted a hoof, gave a little wave, and said, "I'm gonna go play now. Bye!"
"Ah've got to get better with a lasso," Applejack swore, watching as the filly nonchalantly disappeared around the corner. She struggled futilely against the rope. "Great! Just great. The Riches are going to return home and find me like this, and Ah won't get a single bit. Ah guess Ah won't be able to buy that apple tree after all." She sighed loudly. "How'd Filthy Rich make it all look so easy when he babysat Mac and me?"
"Daddy used to babysit you?"
The voice caught her by surprise. Not just that Diamond had returned, but the longing in it.
"Ayup, he was our parents go-to sitter," the dejected Applejack said. Diamond Tiara's ears twitched in interest, and an idea occurred to Applejack. "Ah'll could tell you all about it if you untie me."
The filly took a step forward, paused, and then stepped back. "You're trying to trick me."
"No trick. We'll curl up on that couch there and Ah'll tell you all about it. Filly scout's honor." Applejack tried to raise her hoof, but the ropes interfered, and she wound smacking her head on the floor. "You know no scout can break that."
Diamond Tiara stood frozen, and Applejack could almost see the gears spinning in her mind. At last, the filly reached a decision. "Okay."
Together, the two ponies were able to untangle Applejack in under a minute, though that particular partial minute occurred after thirteen other full ones. Free at last, Applejack rose, stretched, and looked around the room.
"Maybe we should clean up a little first?"
"Story!" Diamond Tiara demanded.
"Story," Applejack agreed. She moved to the couch, motioning for Diamond Tiara to sit next to her. As the filly settling against Applejack's side, Applejack began her first story. "This happened before Ah went to Manehattan. My parents were going to a farming convention, and your pa was..."
Applejack heard the door unlock and open, but she resisted the urge to get up and greet the returning Rich's by the door, lest she wake up the filly whose head lay upon one of her forelegs. A slight trickle of drool coming out of one corner of her mouth, and Applejack carefully wiped it away with her free hoof.
When the Rich's entered the room, she waved with her hoof. Noticing their eyes turn toward their daughter, Applejack softly said, "She wanted to stay up until when you returned, and well, once she fell asleep, Ah reckoned it was best to let her sleep."
"That's fine, dear," Spoiled Rich said. "Probably the smart thing to do. She might not look it, but she can be a bit of a hoofful to get to bed."
"I trust she didn't give you too much trouble?" Filthy Rich added.
"No, sir. A perfect little angel, this one," Applejack said, with only the lightest slathering of sarcasm applied to her voice. "No trouble at all."
The Riches looked around at a room that would have looked almost at home during the age of chaos, then returned their gaze to Applejack, who gave a one-shouldered shrug.
"Once we found some common ground, we got along like peas in a pod. Ah'd have cleaned it up, but well, Ah didn't want to wake her."
Applejack carefully extracted her leg. As Applejack rose to her feet, Diamond Tiara opened her eyes. In an instant, she was on her feet bounding toward her father.
"Daddy!"
"Diamond Dazzle Tiara, did you make this mess?"
His daughter screeched to a halt, looking around the room. With a slight tilt to her head, she said, "It was an accident?"
"Was it?" Filthy Rich asked, taking in the busted vase, glass, dinnerware, pot, and the toppled chair.
"Uh-huh," Diamond Tiara said, nodding her head rapidly.
"Oh, well, in that case, give me a hug," Filthy Rich said, rearing up and spreading his forelegs in the air.
Diamond Tiara bounced once, twice, and then leaped toward her father. Catching her in mid-air, Filthy Rich embraced his daughter, twirling her in a circle.
"So, did you have fun with Applejack, Diamond? Would you be fine with her babysitting again tomorrow night?"
"Sure, Daddy. AJ, she tol' me to call her that, she tol' me all sorts of stories about when you were not so old. Like that time when you were babysitting her and brought along Rose, Lily, and mmhmmhmm—"
Under the weight of his wife's stare, Filthy Rich withdrew his hoof from his daughter's mouth and grinned sheepishly. "I'll, um, just go put Diamond to bed while you pay young Applejack here. You should probably give her a bit of a bonus."
With that, he tossed his wallet to his wife, lifted his daughter onto his back, and headed toward her room.
The last thing he heard, just before he was out of earshot, was "Make it twenty."
Warning: This story will contain EXCESSIVE USE of CAPITAL LETTERS as well as SWEARING. Because REASONS!
Diamond Tiara massaged her hind leg. She let out a breath full of contentment, but the moment she ceased her minstritration, the aching feeling returned. She resumed her rubdown, but it was not long before the hoof she was using bothered her more than her leg. She glared at it, upset at its betrayal.
She wasn't meant for this. Living out in the woods like a common thing that lives in the woods. She should be sleeping in her warm room on a fine, goose-down mattress, not curled up shivering inside a hollow, rotten stump. Her coat was covered with muck, dirt, mud, grime, slime, and groil. She wasn't sure if groil was an actual word, but if it wasn't, it should be. It seemed the perfect word to describe some of what covered her. And her mane, her precious mane she always took such care of, had suffered most of all, reduced to a tangled mess.
Even if there hadn't been patrols that passed nearby at seemingly random intervals, searching for any ponies that might have happened to escape, she would probably have hidden herself away regardless with how she currently looked. No way did she want anypony to see her like this. Though, in that situation, she might have risked sneaking into town to get cleaned up, provided it was a particularly dark night. She doubted she had ever looked worse in her entire life.
Of all the worst possible things, this was by—
Her stomach rumbled loudly as it rudely interrupted to remind her that she hadn't eaten anything other than a couple of mouthfuls of moss in the past week.
"Well, if you wanted something to eat, maybe you shouldn't have thrown up that moss up, huh?" she said, casting a glance over at the patch on the floor, her nose crinkled. She'd done her best to clean up the mess, but some of it was still there. Her stomach rumbled again, louder this time, more threateningly.
"Okay. Okay!" Diamond said, backing down. "I suppose I should be glad you threw up instead of…"
Her stomach rumbled again. Diamond Tiara sighed in defeat. She'd need to risk eating something from the woods or else try sneaking into the town again. The last and only time she'd tried to do that, she'd come away empty-hoofed and been lucky to get away at all.
She eyed the mushrooms growing inside her hideout, trying to remember for the upteenth time what exactly Miss Roseluck had said about them during Filly Scouts. They weren't poisonous, she was pretty sure of that, but she was equally sure that Miss Roseluck had insisted that they should not be eaten. Something about loose hall gin, whatever that meant. Those vaguely recalled warnings were the only reason she hadn't eaten any yet.
She decided it didn't matter. Whatever the effect was, even if it was death, it couldn't be worse than the fate that would befall her if she were captured. She'd seen it, that night she had tried to find some food. They were making ponies pull carts and mine and stuff, without the slightest consideration of who the pony was. The Mayor was pulling a cart right alongside Golden Harvest, for Celestia's sake. What the hoof up was up with that? It was like the invaders had no respect for status, no understanding that certain ponies were above such menial labor.
She lifted her head and cautiously sniffed a mushroom, like she had done so many times before. Her mouth watered at the smell, and she could feel a line of drool trickle down her chin, falling upon her leg and mixing with the groil already there. She frowned. She'd better take a bite soon, before she had to come up with a word even more disgusting than groil.
She moved her mouth closer, letting her lips wrap around the mushroom. She halted, just feeling the texture, seeing if there was any immediate reaction. There wasn't, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Next, she was supposed to take a small nibble, but her stomach rumbled again. Throwing caution to to the wind, she tore off a large chunk, swallowing it whole.
She settled down to wait, restraining herself from eating the rest of the mushrooms. She'd at least sort of follow what she had been taught. Out of boredom, she examined one of her forehooves. The last week had been hard on it, she could tell. She'd definitely need the extra deluxe spa treatment for it when things got back to normal.
"Wow. Look at all the pretty colors," she said, her eyes wide in amazement at the dance of shimmering patterns before her. She swayed from side to side, watching, ooh and ah'ing in amazement, before collapsing to the ground.
Diamond Tiara snuggled tighter against the source of the warmth. "Oh Twist, cuddling you feels so good on a chilly morning," she mumbled softly, still mostly asleep. Her brain was instantly fully awake. She did not like-like Twist. She didn't even single like Twist. No way. No how. She was Diamond Tiara, the epitome of what it meant to be somepony, and Twist, well, she wasn't as bad as Apple Bloom, but hardly worthy of hanging with the likes of Diamond and Silver Spoon.
It was these conditions, she decided, or maybe the mushrooms were making her crazy. Besides, there was no way what she was pressing against was Twist. It was way too big. But if it wasn't Twist…
She moved her hoof slowly, feeling the strange creature. It seemed to be pretty solid, well muscled, and devoid of hair. Definitely not pony nor one of those animals that yellow one kept. Slowly she opened her eyes.
She scrambled backwards, letting out a scream in fear. The thing shot up, looked at her, roared, and moved to the opposite wall. The two sat there, eyeing each other. Now, Diamond Tiara could make out more about the strange creature. It was grotesque! A mass of muscles to rival Snowflake, with the only hair visible on its entire body being its mane. And it wasn't even a pretty color of mane. Just a rather plain brown. No wonder it covered a bunch of it under a red bandanna. A questionable fashion choice, but better than that mane. But on the bright side, as ugly as it was, it wasn't attacking her. Or trying to eat her. Not yet anyway.
"You're… you're not going to eat me, are you?" Diamond Tiara asked.
That got a reaction from the beast. It raised one its appendages and pointed a claw toward her. "HOLY F*BEEP*BALLS! A talking pony! I must be f*beep*ing dreaming!"
"Keep it down!" Diamond hissed. "They'll hear you!"
The warning didn't seem to phase the creature. "But it's missing something. It needs EXPLOSIONS and a guitar solo!" The thing stretched out its forelegs and began moving its claws rapidly, while making horrid sounds. "Weedly-weedly-WEEE-WEEE-Thum-THUM-thum-Weeeee-SCREEECH!!! KICKASS GUITAR SOLO!"
Diamond Tiara launched herself forward and shoved her hoof into the creature's mouth. "Be quiet!" She pulled her hoof out of the creature's mouth and sat back. It spat several times, and she took advantage of the silence to say more. "If you keep making that much noise, they'll find us."
The creature stopped its spitting and look at her. "Who?"
"The creatures. They came out of the ground about a week ago. All made up of stone and crystals. Nopony expected it. We couldn't stop them, not even the princess, and she once stopped an Ursa with her magic and keeps a dragon for a pet."
"Magic, dragons, and unicorns? FANTAAAAASY!" It did another one of its guitar solos, though this time thankfully it was short and without the annoying sounds. "This dream keeps getting more BADASS!"
Diamond Tiara leaned forward, but stopped her hoof before it got more than an inch off the ground. The creature obviously didn't know the meaning of the word quiet. Besides, if there were any rock creatures anywhere nearby, they'd already be well on their way here by now. That was assuming they actually could hear, of course. Something to consider for later. For now, she continued her story.
"They took over the town and enslaved all the ponies. Not even the pegasi could get away. The rock things had these large birds made of stone that chased them down. And now they've got all the ponies working in the mines, digging up more rocks. I think they might be making more of themselves. They're probably planning on taking over all of Equestria!"
""MOTHERF*BEEP*ING EXPOSITION! All you had to say was there's things that need blowing up!" He seemed prepared to go into another "guitar solo". Diamond gave it her strongest glare. Seeing its claws drop back down to the normal position, Diamond gave it a nod of approval. Perhaps it could be trained enough to be useful.
"I'm Diamond Tiara." When it said nothing, Diamond sighed. Maybe it couldn't trained after all. "And you are?"
The question got a response from the beast, and of course, it wasn't a quiet one. "I'm MISTER TORGUE FLEXINGTOOOOOOOON!, the founder and CEO of Torgue Munitions. When you need something blown the hell up, GO TORGUE!"
"Volume!" Diamond hissed, lowering her hooves away from her ears. Even if the Torgue creature wasn't good at being quiet, there was no reason for it to be that loud.
"Oh, sorry."
He —she had decided, based on its behavior and obsession with blowing things up, as well as the use of mister, that it was most probably a he— sat in contemplation and she decided to just enjoy the moment of silence, before his next bout of screaming. At last, he leaned forward and picked up a stone with his claws. Using the sharp edge, he began to scratch something into the ground.
She watched curiously. It looked like a bunch of lines and circles. None of it made any sense. "What are you doing?"
The Torgue tapped one of his diagrams. "Making plans for some b*beep*ching weapons. We're gonna show these c*beep*ksucking invaders who the true badasses are!" He glanced over at her, then wiped away part of his drawing. "Hooves, not hands. I'm making guns for a f*beep*ing talking pony. Awesome!" Quickly, he drew the parts again, different than before.
Diamond exhaled as Torgue pulled a strap tight. "Not so rough!"
"You should eat bacon and drink gasoline so you could have pecs of steel and spit fire like me." Torgue flexed his muscles, though she could barely make them out in the dim morning light. "You sure you're strong enough to carry all this?"
"Of course." No way was she going to let this human, as she'd learned they were called, out-carry her. It was upon her to defend the honor of ponies everywhere. She braced herself as he began attaching the rest of various holsters and holders to her.
The last one in place, he took a step back and looked her over. Finally, he nodded in approval. "You look tough enough to take on a pack of pack of bullymongs on bikes armed with exploding death rays. Are the death rays on the bullymongs or the bikes, you may ask? Do death rays make you explode or do they themselves explode? The answer to both questions: YES! Because death rays are TOO AWESOME to be limited to one thing and you can never have too many EXPLOOOOSIONS!
"Now, if you could do me just one teeeeny little favor… It'd be SWEET if you wear this bandanna."
Diamond extended a hoof toward the bandanna, allowing Torgue to drape it across her leg. It was the one he'd be wearing earlier, looking like something an aging has-been rockstar would wear. And for some reason, it had a pinecone right in the middle of it. If she put this on, then it would stick out like… like a unicorn horn.
She glared at him. "What? An earth pony isn't good enough for you?"
The response was instant and Diamond Tiara threw herself back, cowering, as the human drew himself up to his full height, pointed one of his huge claws — No, wait, that wasn't right. Despite her fear she remembered he'd told her they were called fingers — As he pointed one of his huge fingers at her.
"IT'S NOT LIKE THAT! Mister Torgue don't BROOK no f*beep*ing DISCRIMINATION!" he shouted. "It's just…" He looked down at the ground, seemingly on the verge of crying. "I just really like unicorns, okay?"
Diamond Tiara sat down in shock. This creature was most strange. Not only did it seem to have no ability to talk quietly, not only did it make strange beeping sounds when talking, but its emotions were all over the place. It was almost as kooky as Apple Bloom's granny. Still, it had managed to make a bunch of weapons from stuff in the forest and was willing to help her try and rescue her town. She supposed she could do this small favor. Not like anyone would notice it anyway. They'd be far too busy staring at the rat's nest of a mane.
"Fine," she said with a sigh. "I'll wear it." He brightened at her words, and she brought her hoof down forcefully. "Just this once. I'm an earth pony and proud of it. No way in hoof would I want to be anything else. Got it?"
He nodded, and she fastened the bandanna-horn in place. Truth be told, it wasn't the first time she had worn a horn, though she wasn't going to admit that. Both her and Silver owned Pretty Princess Playset costumes, complete with horn and wings. But that was different. Dressing up as a princess was cool. Everypony knew that. Princesses were special. Unicorns were mundane, and the horns totally got in the way of wearing hats and stuff. Well, she grudgingly admitted to herself, there were a few who could make it work. And if she were a unicorn, she'd totally be one of those. But that wasn't the point, or rather, maybe that was the point, that she didn't need or want a point on forehead.
The weight of Torgue's stare pulled her attention back to the situation at hand. Raising an eyebrow, she asked, "Well?"
"You look totally BADASS!"
Somehow, she doubted it. Red, while her favorite color, had never looked as good on her as she would have liked, bandannas had never been cool, and she was wearing a pinecone. She rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Let's just get going."
She stepped outside and looked around. She started off, but halted. That tree looked sort of familiar she decided, though she couldn't be entirely sure in this light, and took a step in its direction.
"You look more lost than a vegetarian in a steakhouse."
Diamond glared at him. She had no idea what a vegetarian or a steakhouse was, but she got the general gist. "I know exactly where I'm going," Diamond said. "It's this way!"
She set off in an entirely new direction. If asked, she'd have said it was due to where the moss grew, but the truth was that she picked the direction that looked easiest. Luckily, it turned out to be the right choice. Through the bushes, she could see a road.
"I told you I knew," Diamond said, giving her companion a smug smile. Without waiting for a response, she turned her attention back to the road, and the smile left her face. Coming down the road was a group of three rock monsters. They moved quickly, despite how awkward their five legged gait looked. Not that their gaits looked any weirder than the rest of the creatures, with their pyramid-shaped body and the single claw-tipped arm that rose from the top. Ducking behind a bush, she pointed toward them. "Rock monsters."
"BORING!" Mister Torgue said, as he crouched beside her.
Diamond gave him a confused look. The creatures were anything but boring. Horrifying, disgusting, or repugnant maybe, but not boring.
"They need a better name, like rock lobsters."
It was Diamond Tiara's turn to frown. She'd seen drawings of lobsters when Sea Swirl had been invited to bore the class with a lesson about why one should never go anywhere near the ocean. Well, technically, about all the stuff that lived in the ocean, but as far as Diamond was concerned, it was the same thing. "They barely look anything like lobsters."
"ROCK LOBSTERS!"
"Fine, fine!" she hissed. "Just be quiet so they don't—" She stopped mid-sentence as the rock lobsters started to head in her direction. "Great. Just great. They're coming this way."
"YOU"RE WELCOME!"
"That wasn't… oh, never mind." She leaped out of the bush and readied a weapon. Time to find out if these weapons would do the trick where everything pony had failed. She braced herself as best she could on three legs and fired. A stream of bullets flew to the right of the monsters, chewing up the ground. Quickly, she corrected her aim, and the first rock lobster exploded into shards.
She dropped the gun and tossed her forelegs around Mister Torgue. "They work!"
"F*beep*k paper! Nothing beats rock like EXPLOSIONS! And while I love talking about ROCK'N"ROOOOOLLLL and explosions, there's two more we need to KILL until they die from it."
"Oh yeah." She dropped back down to the ground and scooped up her rifle. "You get the one on the right; I'll get the left!" Raising the weapon to her shoulder, she fired, proud that her initial shots were much closer to the lobster this time. Her target down, she looked over to see that Mister Torgue had similarly dealt with his.
She grinned at him. "Three down!"
"More incoming from the left!"
Diamond Tiara looked in that direction and froze. That was a lot of rock lobsters, no doubt drawn by the noise of the Torgue weapons. And if the quantity wasn't bad enough, in the middle of the pack was the biggest one she had seen. It was the size of a house! Not her house, of course. If it was that big, then they'd be really, really screwed instead of just screwed. She looked down at her gun and back at the monstrosity. She was going to need a bigger gun. Luckily, she had just the thing.
Rearing up on her hind legs, she reached over her shoulder, and grabbed the one Torgue had called a rocket launcher. Bracing herself, she stared down the sight. Her hoof depressed the firing stud. Flame erupted out the back of the pipe as the rocket shot forth.
Diamond Tiara watched in amazement as the missile spiraled toward the huge rock lobster, slammed into its target, and exploded, obscuring everything in a large ball of flame. When the flame cleared, only chunks of rock remained. The entire enemy unit had been obliterated. It was definitely impressive. But also loud. She wiggled her ears, trying to silence the high pitched whine.
"EXPLOSION!" she could hear Torgue shout.
Diamond Tiara could not help but smile, despite the annoying ringing. No wonder he was always shouting if his world was filled with such weapons. A flash of movement caught her eye and she turned her attention toward it. More rock lobsters, but just regular sized one.
"Three more," she said, switching back to the rifle. "Let's get them!"
Their combined fire quickly reduced the invaders to so much rubble.
"This is just like Assault on Saturn Five!" Torgue shouted.
"Assault on what?" Diamond asked.
"Saturn Five. Only the best shooter ever!" Torgue said with a grin. "It had everything. Weapons, wicked cool explosions, vehicles, exploding vehicles, tunnels, EXPLOSIONS, and exploding tunnels!"
"You said explosions a bunch."
"I like explosions."
She looked around at all the damage in the surrounding terrain. "I noticed."
"HEY! To the right—" Torgue called out.
Diamond spun to the right and fired several rockets.
"—there's a barn," he finished. "I thought maybe we could find some grub and you just BLEW IT THE F*BEEP*K UP!"
Diamond Tiara looked at her handiwork. The barn was almost entirely obliterated. Chunks of wood rained down from the sky. Only a single wall remained standing and as she watched, it slowly teetered and fell over, sending a fresh cloud of dust into the air. She didn't even know why she had done that. She'd just turned around to see the building and fired. She hadn't really meant to shoot a rocket —or six— at it. It had just happened. She braced herself for the tongue lashing that was sure to come. Given how loud he normally was, she hoped her ears could withstand what was to come.
"That was AWESOME!" he declared.
Diamond Tiara looked at him in wonder, raising an eyebrow. Slowly, a wicked grin spread across her face. "It was, wasn't it?" she asked, before sending several more rockets sailing into the wreckage. "EXPLOSIONS!" she shouted.
"EXPLOOOSIONS!" he yelled back.
She slid the rocket launcher onto her back and walked toward the wreckage. Maybe there was something edible in the wreckage. At this point, she'd even be willing to eat an apple without complaining five minutes beforehoof. She swallowed to keep herself from drooling at the thought. Had she sunk so low that the thought of apples could do that? Her stomach rumbled loudly. Yes, yes she had. She added that as number forty-two on her mental list of reasons to blow up every rock lobster she saw.
Her ear twitched and she halted. She'd heard something. Swiveling her ears, she narrowed down the source. There. The door leading to the apple cellar. Something was down there. She signaled to Torgue, letting him know what was up.
Cautiously, the two approached the sealed door. Diamond glanced at her grenades and settled on the one Torgue had called a MIRV. It exploded into multiple bombs, he'd said. It'd be perfect for whatever was in the cellar. She showed it to Torgue. He nodded, then reached to the bar locking the door. Diamond bit down on the pin of the grenade. With a mighty roar, he lifted the bar free with one arm, raising it above his head, using the other to fling open the hatch.
A blur of purple rose out of the hole and Diamond dove forward, slamming into Torgue before he could bring down his improved club on Princess Twilight's head.
"They're friends, Mister Torgue!"
"Diamond?" Diamond recognized the drawl from when her father was doing business here. Sure enough, when she turned around, she found herself facing Applejack. "What are you doing here?"
"Torgue and I are saving Ponyville," she said rather matter of factly.
"But how?" Twilight asked. "They're immune to spears, catapults, and magic. Even pies didn't slow them down."
Diamond tossed one of her pistols to Twilight. "With these. Mister Torgue made them. They're called guns." She gestured to the pile of rubble that had once been a bunch of rock lobsters. "And as you can see, they work quite well."
She watched as Twilight and Applejack studied her weapon. Their examination was interrupted as Apple Bloom shoved her way between the two. Diamond Tiara quickly stepped forward and reclaimed her gun, before the world's most annoying filly could do something stupid like break it or blow somepony's leg off.
"But that's just a stick," Apple Bloom said.
Diamond rolled her eyes. Of course the little baby wouldn't understand anything about guns. Well, truth be told, she didn't either, other than that the hollow end was the part you pointed toward what you wanted to blow up, but she quickly buried that thought. This wasn't about what she didn't know. It was about how she was better than Apple Bloom, the stupid filly who didn't even know that much.
"I don't sense any magic on it. I don't see how we could use this to stop the invaders," Twilight said.
"Well, like, duh," Diamond Tiara said. "These are meant for filly hooves and yours are much too big. And the rest are meant for Mister Torgue and he's got those hand-things, so his wouldn't be any good for you either."
Twilight looked at her strangely, a slight tilt to her head, before she nodded. "Yes, that must be it."
Diamond leaned to the left, trying to see the other ponies that were finally climbing out of the cellar. She saw familiar faces, but not the ones she was hoping to see. "Is my dad or Sil here?" Diamond asked.
Applejack shook her head. "'Fraid not. Sorry, Diamond. Ah'm sure they're alright though, don't you worry."
"They must be in town, working in the mine," Twilight said.
Diamond frowned. With a shrug, she holstered her pistol and started to turn toward the road.
"So what's your plan?" Twilight asked, halting Diamond's progress.
"Well, we're going to go to town, sit their leaders down around a table, and then reasonably discuss a peaceful resolution," Diamond said, with only the slightest hint of sarcasm. "We're going to BLOW the MOTHER F*BEEP*ING S*BEEP* out of them and rescue my father and friends, of course! What did you think we were going to do?"
Diamond Tiara froze in horror at what she had just said, to a princess of all ponies. That wasn't how she talked at all! The human was rubbing off on her. First she started to enjoy blowing things up, like she was slime-covered colt. Now she was making strange beeping sounds while talking. If she wasn't careful, she'd probably wind up walking on her hind legs and doing those screeching noises that didn't sound anything like a guitar at all, no matter what Mister Torgue said.
"We?" Apple Bloom asked.
Diamond Tiara looked over the herd of ponies before her. They looked to be in even worse condition than her. Certainly in no shape to fight. "Me and Mister Torgue, of course. There's no way I'd trust a blank flank like you to save our town."
"You know, you really should be nice to her," Mister Torgue said. "Nothing is more BADASS than treating a blank flank with RESPECT!"
"But she makes it so easy!" Diamond protested, earning a glower from her companion. "Fine," she grumbled. "I'm sorry, Apple Bloom. I didn't really mean it. It's been a rough time for all of us."
The most curious expression settled on Apple Bloom's face. Just like her, thought Diamond. Utterly confused by the apology. Although, come to think of it, this was the first time she had done so.
"There's a lot of mineralites in town."
"Mineralites? That word has too many syllables, not to mention that it's LAAAAAAAAME!" uttered Torgue.
Diamond quickly stepped forward before Torgue could do something to offend the princess. "We've been calling them rock lobsters," Diamond said.
We?" Apple Bloom asked again, shoving her way between her sister and the princess.
"Me and Mister Torgue," Diamond said, gesturing toward her strange companion. Was that farm filly as blind as she was blank? She almost said that outloud, but managed to stop herself just in time. Being respectful to Apple Bloom was going to be hard. Still, as long as she only thought it and didn't actually say it, that counted, right?
"You reckon you got enough of them sticks to finish off the rest of them rock lobsters?" Applejack asked, shoving her little sister protectively behind her.
Diamond looked at the gear she was carrying. She still had all her grenades and plenty of bullets for her guns. Plus there was always the rocket launcher. She whipped it out and padded it proudly. "Worst comes to worst, I'll hit them with some rockets," Diamond said.
Apple Bloom's head popped up between the two adult ponies again. "Why's there a zero carved on that there stick?"
Sweet Sun, she was so annoying! Still, Diamond looked at her rocket launcher. With a growl, she chucked it to the ground in disgust. "Empty. Guess I used up all the ammo when I blew up the—" she stopped herself in time —"the group of rock lobsters. That's what I used all the ammo on. To kill the rock lobsters who destroyed your barn. And now we're leaving. To destroy the rest."
"But, Twilight, you can't send her off all alone against all them monsters!" Apple Bloom said.
Diamond harrumphed. "I'm not alone. I've got Mister Torgue, and he's the most badass badass on the planet."
Mister Torgue flexed proudly. "You're a MAJOR BADASS yourself, Diamond. No way some P*BEEP* C*BEEP*K LOBSTERS are going to f*beep*ing stop us."
"For shizzle!" Diamond declared, using some of the new slang she'd picked up from her strange companion. Then, head held high, they set off the down the road. Behind her, she could hear the princess talking to Apple Bloom.
"I don't like it any more than you do, Apple Bloom. I'd rather stop her from going, but everything else we've tried against them has failed. She's all we've got."
"But she's not well. And she could die!"
Diamond rolled her eyes. Sure, she was hungry, but it wasn't like she was sick. And she was certainly in better shape than the ponies the rock lobsters had enslaved. Plus there was no way she was going to die. The universe wouldn't let it happen. She was much too pretty for that.
"Yes, she isn't. And yes, she could. But she could also save Equestria," Diamond heard Twilight reply. No could about it. She and Mister Torgue would save Equestria or her name wasn't Diamond motherf*beep*ing Dazzle Tiara.
Yup, the human was most definitely rubbing off on her.
The conversation lapsed into silence, and just when Diamond was sure it was over, Apple Bloom spoke again, just barely audible. "Sometimes being a princess isn't much fun, huh?"
Diamond Tiara laughed out loud at that. How could being a princess possibly not be fun?
Diamond pressed her back against the stone wall, part of a now mostly demolished house, feeling it vibrate as chunks of rock smashed against it. She risked a quick glance through what had been a window, and her heart sinking at the sight. "There's so many!"
"It's like the zombie hordes in Left 4 Dead Space 51," Torgue replied, his enthusiasm as high as ever.
"How do you stop those?"
"You shoot and then you f*beep*ing shoot more!"
How could they do that? She'd used up her shotgun ammo already. If only she hadn't wasted all her rockets on that barn. But she had, and so they were screwed.
It had all been going so well. They'd freed the enslaved ponies, including the rest of her classmates and her father, and only blown up about half the town in doing so. The enemy had fallen before them and had even begun to retreat. But then the enemy had regrouped, in larger numbers. And so now they found themselves pinned, with lobsters closing in and no way out.
Unless… No. Surely there had to be another way. But she knew there wasn't. With a sigh, she resigned herself to her fate. She reared up, balancing herself on her hind legs. In her right hoof, she held her assault rifle. With her left hoof, she grabbed her pistol. She walked as best she could over to the window and opened fire. It wasn't accurate, but then there were so many rock lobsters that it didn't need to be.
"Die, you c*beep*ksucking MOTHERF*BEEP*ERS!" she yelled, feeling great satisfaction as she watched enemy after enemy blow up.
She let out an insane laugh. She was talking like him again, while walking on her hind legs and enjoying blowing stuff up. Three for four now. But that is where it would stop, she promised herself. No way, no how would she do one of those "guitar solos".
The doctor, looking resplendent in her crisp, white coat, flipped through the pages of the clipboard that floated before her. She shook her head and said, "I'm sorry, Mr Rich. There's been no sign of improvement these last few weeks. I'm afraid she may be this way for months or even years."
The sight of Filthy Rich's head lowered to the ground, the hope he had been carefully building over the past weeks demolished.
The doctor winced in sympathy. It was a part of her job she didn't like, but she prefered to tell ponies the truth rather than give them false hope. Still, she wasn't made of stone. Gently, she rested a hoof on a shoulder. "Rest assured we will continue to give her the best possible care."
"I'll make sure of it," the other occupant in the room, Princess Twilight Sparkle, said. "And if there's anything that can be done, it will be. No expense spared. You have the assurances of both Princess Celestia and Princess Luna on that, as well as my own."
Filthy Rich nodded, and left the room, each footstep coming slowly, his head still hung low. Once he was gone, the doctor turned to the princess, flipping through the papers on the clipboard again.
"Such a sad case, for one so young to go so completely bonkers."
Twilight reared up, her eyes flashing sparks as her wings flared out. "Show some respect!"
The doctor screamed and took a step back in fright.
"I'm sorry," Twilight said, as she settled back on the ground, folding her wings away. "You wouldn't understand. You weren't there." She looked through the window, at the filly within. "Somehow, she managed to stop an invasion with nothing more than sticks, pinecones, and a few rocks. Ponies who were there swore she ran around pointing sticks at the invaders and yelling 'ratatatat' and they just exploded into pieces. She'd lob a pinecone and yell 'boom' and they'd shatter, sometimes half-a-dozen at a time.
"She freed the town. And when the enemy regrouped, too numerous for her to take out with a single stick, she reared up and used two at once, one in each hoof. She ran around like that, on two legs, screaming and roaring, until she broke them, sending them scurrying to the mine shaft from whence they came. And she didn't stop there. She went after them. Somehow, she blew up their tunnels."
She could see the doctor's mind working, but shook her head. "No, I don't think they're all insane or having some form of mass delusion. I saw the results of her work. She near leveled three-quarters of the town. I probably wouldn't be here today if it weren't for her." She turned to make her own exit, but stopped to say one more thing to the doctor. "If there's one thing I've learned from my time in Ponyville, it is that earth ponies are capable of some truly amazing things that seem to defy all logic. Never underestimate them, Doctor."
The doctor said nothing, giving one last glance at her patient. She had heard the reports of the attack on Ponyville of course, but had assumed it was just the usual over-hyping by the press to sell more papers. Perhaps there was more to this than meets the eye. Hearing the sounds coming out of the padded room, she shrugged. Or perhaps not. She used her magic to hang the clipboard on the hook next to the door, before turning it on the metal plate, sliding it shut and cutting off the sound of Diamond Tiara's sick guitar solo.
"Spoon picked the last thing we did, and you got to pick before her," Alula said. "It's my turn now. And I wanna play Daring Do."
Diamond Tiara growled in frustration. Whenever they played dress-up and it was Alula's turn, the pegasus always chose Daring Do. Well, that or something swashbuckley like Marel Flynn. And that meant Diamond and Silver always had to play the bad guys. Normally, she was fine with that. After all, the bad guys were usually pretty cool. It meant they could invent wild backstories and give them silly accents. Today though, she wasn't in the mood to play the bad guy.
Alas, there was nothing Diamond could do about it. The three of them had agreed long ago that they would alternate who picked what they did after the Pretty Pony Princess Playset incident that had seen all of them grounded for a month. Okay, it had actually only been for a week and she'd managed to talk her dad into cutting it short by two days, but it had felt like a month. She didn't want to go through that again.
"Fine," she sighed, turning to look toward the agreement. There it hung on the wall, in its frame. The simple contract with its three hoofprints on the bottom, binding the three fillies. It was ironclad, Diamond's mom had said when she'd finished formatting the rough agreement the fillies had come up with into perfect legalese. Since her mother was the most feared lawyer in all of Equestria, Diamond saw no reason to doubt that.
Diamond continued to stare at the contract as Alula and Silver Spoon started to dig through the costume closet, looking for suitable things to wear.
"I vill be da evil Russian treasure hunter Ivana Pillagekov," Silver Spoon declared. "Rich, noble heiress who works for others searching the globe to find priceless treasures, also so she can afford a huge mansion." She stopped, her hoof shooting into the air as she had an idea. "No, vait. Mansions. One on each continent, and two in Mother Russia," she blurted out, losing her accent in her excitement. She nodded, satisfied, as she pulled the faux-fur hat tightly down upon her head. "Da! Dat vill be me. How about you, Diamond? Decided who you vill be?"
Diamond shifted her gaze to her hooves. She really didn't feel like being a bad guy right now. If only she could be the hero. Her eyes popped wide open, and she looked back at the framed contract. Slowly, a smile spread across her face, and she declared, "Daring Do."
Alula froze, halfway through slipping into the shirt, the pith helmet already on her head. "But," she said, "I'm Daring Do."
"I'm invoking Section Four," Diamond said.
Both Silver Spoon and Alula gasped. Nopony invoked Section Four. It just wasn't done. In all the time since the agreement had been signed, Section Four had only been invoked once, with near disastrous results. After that, nopony had dared to use it again. But it also hadn't been struck from the agreement, and so Diamond decided to take full advantage of it. She was going to be the hero.
"But you can't even fly!"
"Well, duh. My wings got hurt, obviously. It only happens in every book."
"Sil! Tell her she can't be Daring Do!" Alula pleaded.
"Can too," Diamond declared.
Silver Spoon walked over to the agreement and read it carefully. She shook her head at Alula. "She's, like, totally right, Alula. Section Four so says that the pony who last got to pick the game gets to make first choice of character." She turned her head towards Diamond Tiara. "Unless you change your mind, Diamond?"
"No." Diamond brought her hoof down hard for added emphasis. "I get to be Daring this time."
Alula glared at Diamond, her face scrunched up in anger. "Fine! Then I'm going to be Crystal Headpiece, the brattiest brat in the whole world who always has to have her way." She flung the Daring Do costume onto the ground in front of Diamond and selected a large, clear crown from the closet, settling it upon her head at an angle. "Tis I, Crystal Headpiece, and I am the most beautificus pony ever. I, Crystal Headpiece, only eat the finest imported hay. And when I'm in the place that the hay I, Crystal Headpiece, eat is grown, it will have to be exported just so it can be imported."
Diamond growled menacingly, but Alula took no notice. She had caught sight of something else. Reaching into the closet, she pulled out the gaudy gold-painted sceptre. Alula brandished it mightily, as if it were worthy of a princess and not something Diamond had found lying abandoned in an alley. "And I, Crystal Headpiece, always carry this!"
Diamond did her best to keep her scowl in place, but alas, the battle was lost the moment Alula brought forth the mighty power of the sceptre. Still, she tried to fight, and the result was a snort, followed by another, and then she gave in and broke into laughter, quickly joined by her two friends.
"Awesome villain, Alula," Silver Spoon declared, once she caught her breath.
"Yeah," Alula said, bouncing around happily. "This villain thing is kinda fun! I, Crystal Headpiece, will totally beat you to… um… What are we going for?"
Diamond looked up from fitting on a pair of pink wings. She might not be able to fly, but Daring Do had wings, and therefore so would she. Anything worth doing was worth doing well, after all. And Daring Do would also need a worthwhile artefact to retrieve.
"Hmm…" She sat down and pondered. "Oooh, I know!"
She ran over to her toy chest and started tossing toys onto the ground. At last, she found what she was looking for and held it up. The glass gem was the size of her hoof, and where light struck it, reflected rays of blues. "Behold, the Sacred Sapphire of…"
"Of Sea Serpentia!" Silver Spoon finished. "The fabled gem of the ancient Sea Ponies, believed to be a divine gift from their cruel sea serpent god Stavumagned. The temple was lost when a mighty volcano lifted the entire city out of the water."
"You're the best at making up those histories, Silver," Alula said, stopping her own search through the costume closet long enough to clap her hooves together.
"It's 'cause of all those history books she reads," Diamond said.
"You should wear these, Diamond," Alula said, holding out a pair of sunglasses. "They're the same type Spitfire wears! They'll no doubt go awesomely with the Daring Do costume."
Diamond wasn't so sure, but she tried them on anyway. She walked over to the mirror and checked herself out. Surprisingly, Alula was right. They did look rather good. A "Styling!" from Silver Spoon indicated she thought so as well.
Unfortunately, being sunglasses, they also made everything darker, and since daylight was already fading, that was a big drawback. Slipping them off, she handed them back to Alula with a shrug. "Too dark."
"But they looked so splendorific," Alula protested.
Diamond nodded. "Next time, if it isn't so dark, we'll so have to use them." She picked up the gem. "I'm gonna put this in the living room. That's big enough to be the temple."
Diamond left her bedroom, tuning out Silver Spoon's questioning of Alula about Crystal Headpiece. Diamond Tiara swore that half the fun Silver Spoon had with these games was with coming up with complete backgrounds for everything. She didn't mind though. It made it all the more fun.
Down the stairs she went and toward the main living room, taking note of the closed door to the study. Her father almost always left the door open, if only on a crack. If it was closed, that meant her mom was in there as well, no doubt working on her latest case. That fit with how quickly her mother had left the table after dinner was finished.
Arriving in the living room, she looked around for a suitable place to hide the prize. The cabinet looked like a good choice, she decided. It could be an altar, with the two vases upon it serving the role of stone idols. She looked at both 'idols', reaching her hoof toward the vase on the left, but stopped before lifting it. She knew that Silver knew that she usually preferred the option on the left, but she also suspected that Silver knew that she knew that. She lifted the right vase up, but then she wondered if Silver might suspect that she suspected.
"Gah! Screw this!" she said, opening up a drawer, the one on the left side, of course, and dumping the gem inside it instead. "There, hidden."
Job done, she turned around and returned to her room. Silver Spoon was now answering questions about her own character, as Alula had turned the tables on her. Both looked her way as she entered.
"I'm back," she said, though they both knew that, obviously. "Study is off-limits. I think my mom's there working on stuff."
Both of her friends nodded. They knew better than to disturb Diamond's mom when she was working. The Pretty Pony Princess Playset incident might have been a while ago, but not so long that they had forgotten it. They'd probably never forget it, actually, though in time, they might laugh about it, but only if they were sure Diamond's mother was nowhere in the immediate vicinity.
"Are we all, like, ready?" Silver Spoon asked.
"3-2-1, go!" Diamond counted down very quickly, and that along with her proximity to the door gave her a head start.
"She is getting away! Follow her!" she heard Alula yell behind her. She looked over her shoulder to see her friends pour out of her room, limbs flying as they cornered, but they managed to recover and head her way. She squealed with delight, ducking down the stairs.
"She vent datta way!" Silver Spoon said, her atrocious accent applied even more thickly than ever.
Diamond rushed toward the living room, sliding to a stop. Looking at the two fillies heading toward her, Diamond waved a hoof at the living room floor. "The tiles are lava from the volcano," she declared. "The rug's a stone platform. And I'm swinging over on the only vine long enough."
Diamond Tiara raced across to the safety of the rug. She pretended to tie her vine up so it couldn't be used by her pursuers. Vine secured, she turned toward the cabinet. "Behold, the altar containing the legendary Sacred Sapphire of Sea Serpantera."
"Serpentia," Silver Spoon corrected.
"Whatever. I got it, and you can't catch me, because of the lava," Diamond taunted, sticking her tongue out.
"Drat!," Alula said. "That gem must be mine! It would look so perfect on the end of my sceptre instead of this red one! I, Crystal Headpiece, must have it!" She turned to Silver Spoon. "What do I pay you for? Do something, Ivana!"
"I fly over," Silver Spoon said, taking a step forward.
"You can't fly!" Diamond protested.
"Can too. Because… Ivana is griffon."
"Yeah, she totally decided she was a griffon while you were hiding the gem."
"Nuh-uh! You don't even have wings!"
Silver Spoon craned her neck around and frowned. Quick as a wink, she did a one-eighty and raced down the hall and up the stairs.
"I have wings!" Alula declared. "I mean, I, Crystal Headpiece, the bestest, most wonderful pony in all of ponydom, have wings!" She reared up dramatically, extending her wings out fully. "All should worship my spendorific feathery goodness and despair! Muhahaaa— Oof!"
Her forehooves hit the ground as Silver Spoon pushed her aside.
"Come, Crystal Headpiece, let's fly!" Silver Spoon declared, turning sideways to show off the dark blue Pretty Pony Princess wings she now wore. "For I am griffon, da? Squawk, I say, squawk!"
Silver Spoon winked at Alula, who grinned back. Silver swished her tail back and forth, doing her best to emulate a cat, while Alula pawed the floor.
"Prepare to meet your doom, Daring Do!" Alula said.
Both she and Silver Spoon dropped down low, like a cat ready to pounce, and then flung themselves forward into the room, bounding across the floor. Diamond backpedaled, looking around frantically for a way out. Quickly, her friends tackled Diamond Tiara and dragged her to the ground.
"Ve have you now!" Silver Spoon declared, as she released Diamond. "Pretend you're tied up, okay?"
Alula sat up, rubbing her hooves together in front of her face in true villain fashion. "Now you will tell me, Crystal Headpiece, where the gem is located within the altar so that I, Crystal Headpiece, might add it to the many treasures that are mine. For it is beautiful, and all beautiful things should belong to me, Crystal Headpiece, the most beautiful mare in the history of, um, ever?"
"Never!" Diamond said, struggling against the imaginary ropes. "I will never tell you! It belongs in a museum."
"Den ve vill have to use…" —Silver Spoon let the pause hang ominously, before finishing— "da tickle torture!"
"Not the tickle torture," Diamond Tiara squeaked.
"Oh yes," Alula said as she advanced while walking upon her hind legs, cane stashed underneath one of her wings, her forelegs waving menacingly, "the tickle torture!"
Duces Tecum carefully blotted what she had just written, before dipping her quill into the inkwell and starting on the next line. Just a couple more of those and she'd be done with this page. And after that, only twenty-three more to go. She really should have made the associate write all these papers, and ordinarily she would have, if the case hadn't been so important. Oh, and if it hadn't been the associate's birthday today. She supposed that mattered as well, to some ponies at least. Just one more—
Her head swung in panic as the scream sliced through the air.
She let out an exasperated sigh. The quill had left a line all the way across the page. She pursed her lips as she crumpled up the paper and tossed it into the garbage can. Reaching for a fresh piece, she prepared to start anew. A second scream, almost as loud as the first, stopped her from reaching for the quill.
"Dear?" she said, looking over at her husband. His nose was still buried within his book, as he sat near the fireplace, a glass of sherry at his side, seeming oblivious to his daughter's screams or her own attempt to get his attention. She fished the paper she had just discarded out of the garbage can and flung it at his head.
"Hmm?" Filthy Rich asked, looking up from his book, puzzled at the interruption. Another loud screech clued him in. "Oh, that. No problem, dear. I'll take care of it." Preparing himself, he took a deep breath, and Duces covered her ears. "Diamond!" he yelled, stretching his daughter's name in the way that has been used to grab the attention of misbehaving children since the dawn of time.
It only took a little bit before the door cracked open and her daughter's head peeked in. "Yes, daddy?" she asked.
"I know you and your friends are having fun, but your mom's trying to get some important work done. Could you please keep it down a little, princess?"
"Okay, daddy." And just like that, she was gone, leaving the door open a crack in her wake.
"Door!" Rich called out, and the door dutifully closed.
Duces Tecum shook her head affectionately at the closed door, gave her husband a little nod, and returned to her work.
"Okay, where were we?" Diamond asked.
"You vere tied and we waz tickling you."
"Okay, well, let's pretend that I distracted you and got free," Diamond suggested.
"And then what?" Alula asked.
"I took this!" Diamond said, holding up the sceptre she had swiped.
"My family sceptre!" Alula screeched, but not too loudly, the warning still fresh. She took a step toward Diamond Tiara.
Diamond dangled the sceptre out past the edge of the rug. "Not one step closer, or I'll drop it!"
Alula's body froze, other than a single foreleg which she used to stop Silver Spoon's forward movement. "If she drops it, tickle her to death, Ivana."
"It vill be my pleasure," Silver Spoon said, crouching low, ready to pounce.
"I'm untying the vine and swinging back," Diamond said, running out of the living room.
"My sceptre!" Alula yelled, quickly sticking a hoof in her mouth. "Sorry," she said softly.
Diamond froze, but when no parental yelling happened, turned back toward Alula. "Pretend I threw it high and you have to catch it," she said, sliding the sceptre across the floor.
Her two friends rushed toward the sceptre and went down in a flailing pile of limbs, giggling insanely. Diamond took a second to laugh, almost tempted to join in, but she remembered her mission. Turning tail, she raced away, back to her room. Once there, she set the gem on top of her nightstand.
"Like, best story ever!" Silver Spoon decreed.
"Totally awesomelicious," Alula agreed.
"They should totally use our ideas for the next book," Diamond decreed. "And pay us for them, of course." No way she'd give up her ideas for free.
"So, now what?" Silver Spoon asked Diamond Tiara, as the three of them stripped out of the costumes, tossing them in a pile on the floor.
Diamond Tiara pondered, then looked at Alula's mane. As usual, it was a bit on the messy side. Time for another traditional activity for their sleepovers, she decided. "Makeover!"
"I'm the mane-stylist," Alula said. "I've always wanted to try that."
"Okay, then I'm the beautician," Silver Spoon said. She pointed a hoof at Diamond. "And that means you're the customer."
Diamond took a step back. That wasn't how they played the game. Silver Spoon always did Alula's mane, while Diamond got to apply the make-up. After all, Alula needed it. She always looked so much prettier after it was done. "But…" Diamond started to protest, only for her friends to cut her off.
"Section Four!" the two chimed in together, giggling.
Diamond Tiara was on her way to school, when she was suddenly pounced upon by Ponyville's premier pink party planning pony.
"Tiara, you've got to come quick," Pinkie Pie shouted. "You've got to come with me. Oh, this is terrible, most terrible, even worse than that time I invited a pony over to make cupcakes and then the whole town got sick." A stunned Diamond Tiara offered little resistance as Pinkie Pie half dragged, half carried her towards Sugercube Corner and into the basement.
Diamond Tiara looked around the basement and noticed there was equipment stacked all over the place, equipment with all sorts of red and green lights. Some blinking, some staying on, others off. Nothing here really seemed relevant to her. She looked questioningly at Pinkie.
"See, I was over at Twilight's and she gave me some old scienterrific equipment and I did things that you wouldn't understand because I don't understand them but I did them anyway way and they" —she waved a hoof towards one of the walls— "don't care about it and now this screen gives me all sorts of information and I typed in the names of some of my friends and learned all sorts of stuff including that one of my friends isn't liked by them very much."
"Them?" Diamond Tiara asked.
"Oh yes, you know, them." Pinkie Pie held her mouth up against Diamond Tiara's ear and whispered, "They don't like you very much." She jerked her head back and continued, "I can't stand the thought of anypony hating one of my friends and so we've got to make them like you and I'm going to help you do just that."
Diamond Tiara sat down, trying to understand what Pinkie was babbling about. How could she possibly be unpopular? She had it all. Looks, money, smarts, great friends. Everyone should want to be her. But Pinkie Pie gestured her over to the print-out and flipped some switches, causing another machine to spit out a stream of paper with lines scribbled all over them. Pinkie ripped the sheet off the machine and held it up for Diamond Tiara to see.
"See? Do you see? We've got to fix this!" exclaimed Pinkie. "But you're lucky, because Pinkie has a plan to help her super duper friend Diamond Tiara. We'll make you popular in no time. Meet me here tomorrow before school and I'll explain the plan!"
Now, if there was one thing everypony in Ponyville knew, it was that it was generally a good idea to go along with what Pinkie wanted, as that usually led to parties. But when a pony didn't, the results weren't so pleasant. Strange things tended to happen, like random bee attacks, destruction of property, or parasprites eating the town. And, of course, Pinkie Pie would mercilessly stalk the pony everywhere she went. It did no good to try and hide, or to run, for that matter. Somehow, just when you thought you were safe, she'd just pop up right next to you. Even going to the authorities wasn't an option. The Pink Terror had royal connections. No, the only solution was to play along and be rewarded with a nice party.
Hopefully, Tiara thought, Pinkie will get bored quickly and move on to harass someone else quickly. But until then, she'd have to play along. And maybe have an awesome party with scrumptious cake.
"Okay, Plan One Hundred and Twenty C. Let's do this! Now, where did I leave it?" Pinkie spun around, looking around the basement, tossing some piles of paper trying to find the elusive plan. "Ah-hah, now I remember!" She opened the icebox and pulled out a piece of paper. "Plan One-Twenty C! This one will be sure to work."
Diamond Tiara was almost afraid to ask, but she had to know. "Why did you keep that in an ice box?"
"So it'll be cooler, silly."
The answer made no sense to Diamond Tiara, but that wasn't an unusual thing when Pinkie explained things to somepony. Best to let it go, unless one wanted to end up in a mental hospital barking like a dog. "Okay, so what exactly is this plan?"
"Well, my research has shown that they'll like you if Rainbow Dash kisses you. I know, it sounds strange and mysterious, but that's what they like. Just be glad they don't want to ship you."
"Ship me? Does that mean go for a ride in an airship or something?"
"Sure, that could be part of it, but I don’t think it’ll fit in this plan." And with that, Pinkie Pie started to go over the latest plan. "Okay, I'm thinking the best method to handle this is to take care of Rainbow Dash after she's injured her wings. So that's step one!"
Diamond Tiara glanced around the room, looking for a clue as to how Pinkie Pie intended to accomplish that goal, because surely she couldn't be intending to just wait for Rainbow Dash to injure herself. Nothing seemed really suitable, until her eyes fixed on a sledge hammer. Was the crazy pony really expecting her to whack Dash's wings? How could anything good possibly come from that? She'd go to jail for sure. Perhaps it would be better for her to tell Pinkie Pie she didn't want to be her friend and get away before things go worse.
Pinkie Pie followed Diamond Tiara's gaze and giggled. "Oh, no, silly, that's just in case I need to smash a watermelon for comedic reasons. We're not actually going to hurt Rainbow Dash. She's my friend and I'd never hurt my friends. No, we'll float up to her in my balloon— Hey, that's practically an airship! —while she's taking her after pre-afternoon-nap nap, douse her with knockout gas, move her to a safe place, slap some bandages on her, and tell her she got hurt. No actual harm done. And we'll do it on Friday, so we'll have the entire weekend before she's missed."
Diamond Tiara looked at Rainbow Dash. The cyan pegasus lay on her back in a bed at her family's lakeside vacation house. Both wings were in casts. One of Dash's forelegs was also encased and suspended by wires hanging from a frame. Her other legs were strapped down, to keep her restrained.
Tiara shuddered. She was going to wind up in jail, like some common criminal. She should never have agreed to this. But then she thought back to what Pinkie had said, that she would never hurt her friends. Had she just been imagining Pinkie stressing the word friends? Did that mean that Pinkie would hurt those who she didn't consider friends? Could she afford to take the risk? No, best not to, at least not yet. Surely between daddy's connections and pleading Pinkie Pie she'd get off with nothing more than a slap on the hoof if it all went wrong. Besides, if those stories were right, this would be a snap, after all, how could anyone possibly resist her charm?
She noticed her patient starting to stir. A leg twitched, tried to move, but found itself unable to do so due to the restraints. It tried again, harder, but still found itself unable to move. Dash's eyes shot open in a panic and she lifted her head to see why her leg couldn't move.
Tiara placed a hoof on her captive's chest. "Relax, it will all be okay. You, um, got hurt. I had to, like, bandage you up."
Rainbow Dash rubbed the bandage on her head and winced in pain. "Ugh. What happened? The last thing I remember was taking a nap on a cloud."
If there was one thing Diamond Tiara hated, it'd be Apple Bloom. However, Diamond Tiara would never limit herself to just one thing when she could get multiples and that included what she hated. And on the rather long list, just below bunny suits but quite a bit above pumpkin pie was air shows. They bored her. By her way of thinking, if you've seen one set of pegasi fail to crash into each other repeatedly, you've seen them all. But Pinkie had said that to get Dash interested, they'd need some common ground. Or air, in this case. She decided it was time to feign interest just like if it was one of Miss Cheerilee's lectures on being nice to everypony, and the best way to do that would be to talk like Scootaloser. That filly just wouldn't shut up about her idol.
"Well, I was watching you do some awesome rolls and loops and stuff, with, uhm... some dives and then a reverse Immelmare and it was so cool. Then you flew up really high, causing clouds to spin all around and then dove toward the ground, punching through the clouds, the last one quite low making me all scared that you were going to crash into the ground."
"And I did?" asked Dash, fearing that she'd somehow messed up something that basic.
"Nope. But you couldn't see a deer and her fawn that were below where your move ended and so you had to swerve with super pony speed to try to avoid hitting them and that caused you to lose control..."
"And then I crashed?"
"Oh, no, you recovered, and looked back to see if they were okay."
"And were they?"
"Totally. You, like, completely avoided them."
"Hah, I knew I did! I'm just that awesome." Dash had a smug and satisfied look on her face.
"And then you ran into a tree."
As soon as she said it, Diamond Tiara knew she should not have. It had been instinct: see a self-satisfied look upon a face, and wipe it out of existence with a well placed barb. And it had worked perfectly, but alas, it was not the effect she wanted at this moment. Her mind raced. She could salvage this. She knew she could. Words poured out of her.
"But it was the most awesome crash ever! You flew headfirst right through the tree and left an awesome hole in it and chunks flew out in every direction, trailing rainbows. And then the tree exploded in, like, every direction. Kerplow! Boom!"
Success. Rainbow's look of idiocy was back. How anyone could be proud of how they ran into a tree, Tiara did not know, but maybe simple minds had to draw satisfaction from simple things.
"Headfirst, huh? I guess that explains why my head aches so badly."
"Yep, that certainly would explain it," she said. No, not really, you stupid clown mane; the headache was just a side effect of the knockout gas.
"But don't worry, I'll take good care of you." She winked coyly at the pegasus.
"Well, thanks. And, um, speaking of that... "
"Yes?"
"Well, I sort of need to go."
Diamond Tiara felt a surge of panic. She couldn't let Dash go yet. She had to keep her here for the plan to work so Pinkie would leave her alone. "Go? You can't go anywhere in your current state."
"No, not leave. Go, you know... go." The pegasus blushed.
A look of realization and horror dawned on Diamond Tiara's face. "Maybe I should kill her," Diamond Tiara mumbled under her breath, thinking of Pinkie Pie and the mallet. She thought better of it though. It would take forever to get the blood and brain matter out of her mane. Still, as Tiara looked around for a bedpan, she swore to herself she was so going to find some way to make Pinkie Pie pay, sooner or later. Just do all this so you'll get a kiss; easy as pie. Yeah, right. As if anyone in Ponyville didn't know how hard Pie could be to deal with.
Diamond Tiara screamed in frustration as another pot boiled over. She hated cooking. Slicing veggies, baking breads, and watching pots was something ordinary ponies did. Special ponies had a far better way to prepare food: They had it done for them by ordinary ponies. Preferably ordinary ponies whose purpose in life was to make food for their betters. But, alas, it was the rare kidnapping that came with catering.
On the bright side, the weekend was almost over. It hadn't been a fun weekend for Tiara. Nothing to do all day, every day, but fake interest in mostly boring topics. Daring Do, Wonderbolts, Rainbow Dash, the weather. Yes, the weather. Not as conversation opener, but as an actual topic. And the sad part was that was actually one of the more interesting topics. Not the most interesting topic. No, that was pranking, a topic from which she'd gotten some good ideas to try on the blank flanks. But despite of all that time spent and her subtle hinting that Pinkie had sworn would work, there had been no spark of interest from Rainbow Dash that Tiara had noticed.
Now, it was Sunday evening, and she was running out of time. Later tonight, she'd have to go back home Her dad was expecting her, and she had school tomorrow. Tonight she needed to step it up a notch, she decided. She had to be less subtle. Romantic dinner and candles. Get that kiss and be done with this crazy Pinkie plan. And so she was attempting to cook up something fancy.
All things considered, it wasn’t going too badly though. The results looked at least somewhat like the pictures in the cookbook, and she’d only thrown away two pans so far. She looked inside the pot that had just boiled over. Okay, one pot, two pans, she thought as she dumped it in the garbage. She sighed. What she had would just have to do. She arranged it as best she could on a pair of plates, added some garnish, and carried the tray to the bedroom.
“About time, I’ve been waiting forever. I’m starving,” Rainbow Dash said as Tiara entered. Her stomach supported the statement with a rumble.
“Sorry, it took longer than expected; I wanted to make something extra special. Enjoy.” She set down the tray on the bed.
While Dash poked around at the food on her plate, Tiara busied herself lighting candles around the room, trying to create the right ambiance. When she finished, she watched as the pegasus tried unsuccessfully to cut off a portion of what was supposed to be quiche with a knife. The pseudo-quiche slid away from the knife repeatedly, as Dash lacked the use of a second hoof to hold it in place. The filly suppressed a giggle at the cyan pony’s increasing frustration, before extending a hoof to take the knife away from Rainbow.
“Here, let me do that.” Diamond Tiara sliced off a piece off and fed her patient a bite. Diamond took a deep breath, doing her best to convince herself that she could do this. She just need to say the right thing and she would be free. Looking Rainbow Dash straight in the eyes, she took the plunge. "I love the way your eyes shine in the candle light."
Dash’s eyes narrowed as something that Diamond Tiara assumed was probably a novel occurrence happened. She could watch the gears churn slowly, and then it happened. Rainbow Dash had a thought. "Tiara, you are trying to seduce me?"
"Huh?" Tiara asked, doing her best to look innocent. She was about as convincing as a puppy caught curled up in the shredded remains of what used to be a pillow.
"Maybe..." Tiara looked away and down to the ground, slightly shrugging her shoulders, before turning to look back at Dash and asking hopefully, "Is it working?"
Rainbow Dash's eyes returned to their normal size as she laughed. "Look, kiddo, I'm flattered. I really am. I can totally see why someone would have a crush on someone as awesome as me. If I were you, I'd probably have a crush on me too. But this isn't my thing. I mean, for starters, I'm totally focused on getting into the Wonderbolts right now, I don't have time for a relationship."
Diamond Tiara breathed a sigh of relief. "That's okay, Rainbow Dash. I don't want a relationship either. Just a kiss. That way Pi—"
Rainbow Dash held a leg up, cutting Diamond Tiara off. "That's just... eeeew. I mean, you're way too young. And it wouldn't happen even if..." Dash's eyes slowly narrowed.
Diamond Tiara watched shifting facial expressions as pieces fell into place. One of the advantages of dealing with a pony who was both blunt and not the fastest train on the tracks was that it was rather easy to figure out what was going through their mind. And so Diamond Tiara watched as Rainbow Dash's brain started to put together all the things she'd previously just accepted. An accident she couldn't remember. Injured, but this filly just happened to know how to fix her up, all while stuck in a remote location. And now a romantic overture. And though not a word was said, Diamond could follow every thought.
"Oh-oh,” she uttered, pulling back in preparation for what was to come..
Rainbow Dash sat up as much as the restraints let her, poking Diamond Tiara with a foreleg. "You, you planned all this, didn't you? Am I even hurt? I'm not, am I? You kidnapped me just as part of some sicko plot to seduce me?"
Diamond Tiara reared up, throwing down the fork. "Hey, this, like, so wasn't my idea. Do you think I want my first kiss to be with someone like you? A moronic cloud pusher whose idea of good literature is a series of kid's books and whose dream job involves flying around in little circles?" The little filly grew increasingly irate as she spoke, her manner becoming more aggressive, and soon she shifted from defense to attack, batting Dash’s leg away. Her face inches away from the pegasus, she continued, "Well, let me tell you, the answer to that is no. No, no, NO! But I've got to get you to kiss me so that's what you're going to do. You don't like it, I don't like it, but it is going to happen. So just kiss me already!"
"You're insane." Dash shoved the filly away with her foreleg, sending her crashing into the wall. Quickly, she gathered her strength and tore free of the restraints. Clambering out of the bed, she latched her teeth onto the cast on her foreleg, attempting to rip it apart. The cast resisted her best efforts though and, seeing Tiara shake off her tumble, Rainbow Dash decided now would be a good time to vacate the area, and she blitzed out the door.
"Come back! I was going to let you go tonight anyway. For real!" Diamond Tiara yelled after the rapidly retreating Dash. Tiara gave a deep sigh. As she had expected, this was ending badly. But she wasn't prepared to give up just yet. With a determined grimace, she quickly extinguished the candles, then set out after her prey.
Dash leaned against the building, trying to catch her breath. Ordinarily, getting away from a filly would have been no problem, but with her wings tied up and her leg hindered by the bandages, it was all she could do to stay ahead. She peaked around the corner, looking for her pursuer and a place to hide. Just ahead she saw Sugercube Corner and, more importantly, a light on upstairs. Pinkie; Pinkie will help! she thought, and set off, determined to reach the safety of Pinkie Pie's room before that crazy filly caught up to her again.
Behind her, she heard a shout as her pursuer caught sight of her. She increased her speed, shouldered open the door and raced up the stairs. Rainbow Dash burst into Pinkie Pie's room, grabbed hold of Pinkie and shouted, "You've got to help me! She's crazy, crazy! She's convinced I'm supposed to be her girlfriend or something!"
The sound of hooves striking the wooden stairs echoed up into the room, getting nearer, until finally the filly stood in the doorway, breathing heavily from her exertions, her tiara askew upon her head. Diamond Tiara raised one forehoof and pointed it towards Rainbow Dash, exclaiming, "You. Will. Kiss. Me!"
Rainbow Dash's eyes frantically scanned the room, looking for a way out. She tried to take a step backwards, away from the crazed filly, only to find her way blocked by Pinkie Pie. "Wait, you... you are in on it too?"
"I got her, Diamond!" Pinkie Pie called out as she grabbed hold of Rainbow Dash. "Go for the kiss!"
Rainbow Dash struggled futilely against Pinkie Pie's grip as Diamond Tiara slowly closed the distance. The young filly was panting heavily, and her face was scrunched with revulsion as she got ever closer. Rainbow Dash tried to turn her head away, but Pinkie held it in place. Giving in to the inevitable, Rainbow Dash closed her eyes, but she could feel the filly getting closer and closer. It would just be a few more seconds. Three. Two. One. And then she felt something contacting her lips. Something… hard?
Carefully, she opened one eye to see Pinkie Pie's hoof interposed between Diamond Tiara and her heads. The filly had had her eyes closed as well, and Rainbow Dash watched as the filly jerked her head back at the unexpected solidity of the contact.
The iron grip restraining Rainbow Dash released, and Rainbow Dash stumbled backwards, to see Pinkie Pie rolling on the ground.
"Best. Prank. Ever!" Pinkie Pie uttered between bouts of laughter. "You should have seen the look on your face, Dashie! Thanks for the help, Diamond."
Diamond Tiara's jaw nearly hit the floor, while her tiara nearly hit the ceiling, propelled by a wave of anger. "A prank? This was all a prank? You had me kidnap somepony as a prank?"
"Yup," Pinkie Pie said, nodding her head rapidly.
"But all that stuff you said… What about THEM?" Diamond Tiara asked.
"Oh, I just made that up, silly. Did you really believe anypony could dislike you? I just needed you to believe if you were you going to fool a master prankster like Dashie. But don't worry, I'll throw you a killer party to make up for it. Matter of fact, I'll start planning it right this second!" Pinkie Pie said. With that, she wished the two ponies good night and shut the door behind them. Shaking her head, she chuckled to herself. "Geez, believing somepony would want to watch our boring ol' lives."
The pink-coated mare pursed her lips as she looked into the mirror. Reaching up, she made one last adjustment to her mane, making sure that the white stripes lay perfectly among the rest of her purple mane. Satisfied at last, she smoothed her dress. It was a peculiarity about her, that she always wore a dress. Nopony in Ponyville could recall ever having seen her without one. And always they were long dresses, coming close to sweeping the ground as she walked.
She turned and exited her room. At the top of the stairs, she stopped and looked around. She was going to miss the old place. It wasn't the fanciest place in town. Many would call it rundown, really. The stairs, for example, had several roughly hewn boards, replacements for the originals. But it had been her home for over a decade. It was part of her. But that was coming to an end.
The city had finally decided to cut support for the orphanage entirely, after years of budget cuts. The large, old building just cost too much to maintain. Today was the last chance for the foals in the care of the Stepping Stones Home for Orphans to find a family before the doors were shut for good. Tomorrow, she'd escort any remaining charges to the province's Children's Garden Orphanage. Provided there were any left, of course. With luck, there wouldn't be.
She had visited the other orphanage twice and had not been impressed in the slightest. Cramped, damp conditions that must be terribly cold in winter. A general lack of games and toys for the children. The play area was far too small and bare earth, rather than soft grass. Furthermore, no space was set aside for any earth pony orphan, or others, if they so desired, to garden in.
She really hoped that all her charges would be adopted before the end of the day, like so many of the former residents of the home had been.
Strangely enough, the ease of finding suitable homes for her charges had been part of the problem. The ponies of Ponyville were a generous lot, quick to lend a helping hoof. Thanks to that, the orphanage had one of the highest placement rates in all of Equestria. But that also meant that the building was far larger than needed, with many of its rooms sitting empty. A new, smaller building wasn't in the town budget, not with all the other things the growing town needed, and neither was renovating the existing building, to fix its myriad of issues..
And so Mayor Mare had at last made the decision to close the orphanage. She'd fought it as long as she could, for she herself had once resided within its walls, but ultimately, she'd had to bow to the inevitable. But before the doors closed for good, the caretaker was going to place as many of her charges with the good ponies of Ponyville as she could.
Looking down upon her charges, Care Taker, for that was her name, as well as her occupation, couldn't help but smile. They were a precious bunch, each with their own quirks, and they deserved to grow up with a family who loved them. Of course, with so many young ponies together in one place, they were also frequently a hooffull, prone to bickering and roughhousing when they should be on their best behavior. Like they were doing right now.
She looked over to the corner. There, the old pony everyone just called Granny sat in her rocking chair. She was here most days, sitting in her rocking chair. Often, she would tell the foals stories about when she was young. But just as often, she'd be asleep in her chair, like she was now despite the noise.
She shook her head slightly in amusement and stepped down the stairs. Once at the bottom, she rapped her hoof loudly against the wooden floor, it's planks smooth with the wear of years of little hooves. Silence fell over the room, as she captured the attention of all the foals.
"Children, you know you need to look your best today. No roughhousing, okay?"
"But this might be our last chance to play together," protested one of the fillies, a pegasus with an orangish coat and a dark pink mane.
"She started it," another filly pointed out, earning a glare from the pegasus.
"I did not ask who started it," Care Taker said. "Frankly, it doesn't matter. What does is that you look your best possible. You want to find a family, no?"
The pink filly thought it over for a second before answering with a flip of her two-tone mane. "Only if they're good enough. My family will be pretty, rich, and powerful, and buy me all the best toys. And lots of ice cream."
Care Taker sighed. This particular filly had been a bit of a… pain. Most of the time a visit from prospective parents involved them trying to decide which foal would best fit their family. And the foals themselves did their best to be that foal, eager to find a family of their own. With Diamond Tiara though, things were almost reversed, with the filly thoroughly grilling the visitors, before inevitably declaring them unfit. A shame really, Care Taker thought. If not for her attitude, families would line up around the block for the chance to adopt her, as cute as she was.
Care Taker had tried to bring the filly around. First, she'd explained that love mattered more than the tax bracket, because one couldn't buy happiness. Diamond Tiara had responded that she would just rent it then instead. Next, she'd tried to explain that a bird in the hoof was better than two in the bush. Surely the filly would see that a nice middle class family would beat living in the orphanage. Diamond Tiara, however, had not been keen on the idea of living in a smaller house. Other attempts had been similarly shot down. At last, Care Taker had decided to just take a waiting approaching, for surely time would lower the filly's high standards. But so far, it hadn't.
She made up her mind to try again, today, since it was the last day and all. But not just this second. She didn't have the time. The open house would start in just five minutes. Quickly, she worked her way through her charges, making adjustments to their manes and the occasional bit of clothing, as well as offering a quick bit of advice to several. She finished just as the bell chimed the hour.
"Okay, children, I'm going to bring the ponies interested in adopting in one couple at a time. So please form a single line in the middle of the room, facing the door."
She waited while they followed her orders, taking enjoyment from their hopeful chatting. Lining the children up like commodities to be purchased wasn't her usual way of dealing with adoptions. Normally, she'd provide a book with pictures of each foal, as well as some general info, and then arrange interviews with the foals that interested the couple. But today wasn't normal, and so the line.
She gave an encouraging smile at the foals, and opened the door. Her eyes widened at the line of ponies outside. The turnout was higher than she had expected. With this many, she'd be sure to place every foal. She glanced back over her shoulder at her charges, noting that Diamond Tiara had managed to sneak over to the dress up closet, procure her favorite gaudy toy necklace, don it, and return in the brief amount of time her back had been turned. Well, almost every foal.
Time passed, and couples came and went.
"We were hoping to adopt a pegasus."
"Too short."
"My husband and I have always wanted a little girl."
"They're farmers. No way I'm ruining my hooves. Next."
"How'd you like to be a chimney sweep? Oh. Well, how about a candy maker then?"
From talking with the couples, Care Taker learned that Mayor Mare had been the primary force responsible for the turn out. She'd held a town meeting and made a personal appeal to keep the Ponyville orphans in Ponyville.
"We've always wanted a pony with a white coat. It'd provide just enough contrast, but not too much."
"We are a perfectly normal pony couple and not something else looking for the one with the most tasty love to give."
"Diamond Tiara, you can't just reject every pony that comes in the door."
"My wife can't have foals, but we've always wanted a little unicorn of our own."
"A bakery? Like, no thanks. No way I'm getting up that early to make the donuts. Plus I'd totally get fat and that's just gross."
Care Taker felt the ends of her sanity start to fray, as couple after couple came in. It had always seemed to her that Ponyville had more than its share of crazy ponies. Today, they had apparently all decided to adopt a foal. Still, they weren't officially insane, and really, who was perfectly sane? So the adoption process went on.
"I don't suppose I can borrow one of each species so I can test the aerodynamic properties by dropping them off a tall building? I promise to use nets."
"Which ones have the fluffiest coats?"
"You know, Diamond, maybe if you gave them a chance…"
"Oh, I'm just here to count how many 'Yay, you've been adopted' parties I need to throw."
"He smells like jelly. Next."
At last, most of the foals had found a home. Just three remained. Looking them over, she frowned slightly. Unsurprisingly, the first was Diamond Tiara. And equally unsurprisingly, the second was the orange-coated pegasus. Her wings were too small, meaning she couldn't fly, and that had led to her being passed over several times. The last though was a bit of a shock. The pale purple-coated unicorn, with her blonde mane was one that Care Taker had expected to be among the first adopted. She was polite and cute as a button. She thought over all the other foals that had already been adopted, and couldn't help chuckling. Had any of them been left, she'd have been equally surprised.
Turning to the door, she looked over the next couple. A pair of earth ponies, and dressed in what was probably their finest clothing. From the look of it, a solid middle class family. And the way they leaned against each other, they would no doubt provide a loving a home. They had even brought along a gift to provide a quick start to the bonding process. Stepping aside, she gestured for them to enter.
The mare gasped as she entered, pointing to Diamond Tiara. "She's adorable!"
"She sure is," the stallion said. "And she's an earth pony, just like we wanted."
"I can't believe nopony else snatched her up and raced her home to cuddle her," the mare practically squealed with glee.
Diamond Tiara took a step forward, tilting her head as she examined the couple. Quickly, she walked a circle around them, while they tracked her with their heads. "Hmm… clothing is at least three years old. The style of her dress is at least twenty years out of date. Dog hair on his pants, and a bit of what I hope is drool as well. Oversized gift… probably compensating for a lackluster home. I'll pass." And with that, she returned to her place in line.
"Okay, now I believe it."
"How about that one?" the stallion suggested, pointing at the pegasus. "She's practically an earth pony."
"Hey!" the pegasus protested.
The mare looked at Diamond Tiara and then at the pegasus. With a nod, she turned to Care Taker and said, "We'll take her."
The pegasus glared at them. "What makes you think—"
"We got you a gift," the stallion said, offering the sizeable box to the pegasus.
"Okay!" the pegasus said, tearing into the box. "O-M-C! A scooter!" In a flash, she'd hopped onto the scooter and was racing around the room. The couple watched her go, their smiles growing with every second.
"Dang she's awesome. I think we should call her Scootaloo, if that's all right, dear?" The mare turned her attention away from the ecstatic filly long enough to nod, and the stallion turned to Care Taker. "Provided that's allowed, of course."
It was, and the couple filled out the necessary paperwork. And then there were two.
When Care Taker opened the door, and three ponies entered, arguing loudly about who had gotten their first. One side of the argument, a couple consisting of an earth pony mare and a unicorn stallion, insisted they were first because they were on the ground in front of the door, while the other, a grey pegasus, insisted that perching on a cloud above the door counted just as much.
Care Taker cleared her throat loudly, and a second time when the first didn't get her the ponies' attention. "I'm Care Taker and I run this facility. For another day, anyway."
"We'll take that one," the earth pony mare said, leaning to the side and pointing to Diamond Tiara.
Diamond Tiara rolled her eyes. "Does it look like I want to be a farmer? I don't think so." Seeing the mare's confusion, the filly explained. "Your hooves. They're all chipped and cracked in a way that screams 'I spend more time crawling around in muck than a pig'. And him… he works at the post office or something? Look at that ink on his hooves. So yeah, not happening."
"I'll have you know I am Written Script, the writer," the stallion protested.
"Oh, great, a starving artist." Diamond Tiara did her best to look sarcastically impressed. "That's so much better."
"Ha!" the pegasus declared. "Victory is mine!"
"Not with those eyes it isn't," Diamond Tiara decreed. "Kids would totally pick on me if I had a mom like that."
"Diamond Tiara!" Care Taker shouted. "Apologize at once!"
Diamond Tiara looked down at the floor, idly kicking at it with one hoof. "I'm sorry your eyes are all freaky-like, okay?"
"I like her eyes," the unicorn filly said softly.
"Dibs!" all three ponies called out, and then the argument over who had arrived first resumed, louder than ever.
After several minutes without any sign of either side backing down, Care Taker reared up and slammed both her hooves down so hard the floor cracked. Glaring at the three ponies, she snarled, "Seriously? Should I just cut her in half so you can share her? Or are you going to start acting like, oh, ponies responsible enough to be parents and figure something out in a polite manner?"
"What, should we just—" the mare started.
"Actually, she might have something there, Goldie," Written Script said, interrupting his wife. "With all my trips to Canterlot, and how busy you've been with breeding new varieties of carrots, maybe sharing is the way to go. I mean, if… what's your name, anyway?"
"Derpy."
"Right. If Derpy is up for it."
Derpy settled down on the ground and raised her hoof to her chin in thought. "Well, I'll admit I'm not really sure if I can be a full time single mom… But I have always so wanted a foal, so when the mayor asked…"
Care Taker, Written Script, Dinky, and the filly all waited on the golden mare's response. The mare turned to the filly and asked, "Would you like that, little one?"
"Two families… that sounds awesome."
"Then we'll do it," Golden Harvest said.
The little unicorn bounced up and down excitedly. "Yay, I got two sets of parents! I'm the luckiest filly ever!"
"More like one and a half," Diamond Tiara corrected.
"Yay, I got one and a half sets of parents! I'm the luckiest filly ever!"
"Well, I'm glad that's settled. I'll just go draw up the paperwork." Care Taker took a step toward her desk, then froze, her eyes shooting wide open. "Do we even have paper work for this?"
It turned out that they did. It had taken a bit of searching, but she eventually found it amongst forms for adopting dragons, being adopted by dragons, adopting the elderly, and having a rabbit become your legal guardian. Why anyone would ever want a rabbit to be their legal guardian, she did not know, but apparently at some point somepony had, and there was now a form for it.
With the happy couple and a half out the door, she let the next, and final, pair in.
"Howdy," the mare said, tipping her hat. "Mah brother and Ah are looking to adopt a sister for our sister. Somepony about her age."
"Eyup." That came from the biggest stallion Care Taker had ever laid her eyes on.
"Enope." That came, of course, from Diamond Tiara. "They smell like apples. He's got twigs in his mane. And look at the state of their hooves. And, seriously, is he chewing on a piece of straw?"
Care Taker brought her head in close to Diamond Tiara and whispered. "Um, Diamond… This is it. If you aren't adopted here, it's off to another orphanage, and I don't think you'll find it nearly as pleasant."
"You could just take me to Canterlot," Diamond Tiara said, not bothering to keep her voice down at all. "I bet Princess Celestia would take one look at me and adopt me on the spot." Turning back to the siblings, Diamond Tiara repeated herself. "Sorry, apple kickers, you lose. Good-bye."
"But Ah think you'd really like our sister. She's very nice and just dying to have someone her own age to play with while we're out in the fields."
Diamond Tiara held her head up and high and shook it back and forth vigorously. "I got standards. Like not saying 'ah' at any place other than the dentist's."
The sister took a step toward the filly. "Why you little…"
"How about that one?" the brother asked, pointing toward Granny, still asleep in her rocking chair.
The sister took her hat off, brushing her hoof along the inside. "Well, Ah suppose Apple Bloom would be happy with a grandmother, and given the slim pickings… We'll take 'er!"
"You can't just—"
"It's probably better than a nursing home," Diamond Tiara said. "What? I mean, yes, I'm sure your farm is…" She paused to search for the word. "...Rusty and all. But a nursing home is full of old ponies. They smell, you know."
"Eyup," the stallion said, walking over to the desk. He rifled through the papers, pulled out one form, and brought it over to his sister.
"Look, I just can't let you adopt Granny. It's not legal."
"Then why's there a paper right here for adopting the elderly?" the mare said, waving the paper in the air. "And there's no way her parents can still be alive, so I bet she's an orphan as well. Are you discrimin-hatin' against us? Do I have to get my cousin Apple Advocate over here?"
Care Taker pulled on her mane in frustration. "Okay, fine! I'll let you adopt her."
And so the paperwork was filled out, and the oldest orphan in the building was unceremoniously placed upon the back of the stallion, rocking chair and all, with only a single "What in tarnation is going on here?" before the soft snoring resumed.
As the door closed behind the siblings, Care Taker said, "Well, I guess that was that. Now…" She turned to face Diamond Tiara. "What are we going to do with you?"
"Take me to Canterlot to meet the princess?"
"I'm really not fond of the idea of sending any pony of mine to Children's Garden Orphanage." She ponder the possibilities for a minute, while Diamond Tiara filed one the edge of a hoof. "I suppose I could adopt you."
"Not gonna happen," Diamond Tiara said, her speech slightly garbled from the file in her mouth. "Look at us. Similar coat colors. Stripes in our manes. We look far too much alike. Anypony seeing us together would immediately we're not related." She transferred her file to her hoof. "Not that I'd be, like, ashamed of being adopted. But it just shouldn't be so obvious, you know?"
Care Taker sighed.
"And what's up with always wearing those long dresses? Are you, like, a blank flank under there? 'Cause, if so, that's even more embarrassing than that mare with the crazy eyes. I'm going to be the first filly in my class to get her cutie mark, you just wait and see, and I can't have my mom not have one."
Care Taker's eyes widened as she tugged the edges of her dress down, then took a second to smooth the fabric covering her flanks. She clenched her teeth together and shook her hoof at Diamond Tiara, wordlessly.
Diamond Tiara shrugged apologetically before heading up the stairs. At the top, she called down, "Also, you'll, like, totally be unemployed tomorrow."
Care Taker felt more of her sanity slipping away. She opened her mouth, ready to unleash upon the filly the full burden of her impending reality, but before she could get a word out, the door opened, revealing an earth pony couple. The stallion held the door while his wife entered, and then entered himself.
"I'm just saying that we wouldn't have been so late if you hadn't insisted on arguing with the taxi driver," the mare said. "It was only two bits after all.
"It's the principle of the thing," the stallion said, straightening his tie. "The fare was wrong and I wasn't going to pay more than I should have."
The mare rolled her eyes. "And yet you tipped him twenty bits."
"Well, he did make good time. Hard work deserves a proper reward. And besides, we spent far more time in the shoe store than I did discussing the fare."
The mare laughed, a more joyous laugh than Care Taker would have expected from her, based on her appearance. "Touché. But Clippity did just get in the latest fashions from Manehattan, and it wouldn't do at all for somepony else to get first choice. Not at all."
The stallion nodded. "Indeed. But alas, it has made us rather late here. Perhaps we should have sent Randolf."
"Something like this we've got to do for ourselves, dear." The mare turned her attention to Care Taker. "Don't you agree?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Of course you do. You can't expect a butler to be able to judge his betters or even his betters-to-be. No, we had to come ourselves."
"Well, I just hope there's still a child worthy of us left. We could really use the tax break."
"Tax break?" Care Taker and Diamond Tiara uttered in unison. Though whereas Care Taker said it with trepidation, Diamond Tiara said it with enthusiasm.
"Well, yes," the stallion replied. "If we adopt one today, we can still claim her on this year's tax return, right?"
It took Care Taker several seconds before she could respond. "Well, yes, but I hardly think that—"
"Excellent. Then let's see what you've got."
"Preferably something in a filly. Something dainty, but not sickly. No lisps or anything. We do need to be able to show her off when we have guests over. Do you have anything like that?"
"Now look here," Care Taker declared. "You're talking about adopting a child. Not a tax break. Not some prized exhibit to parade around for all your friends. A living, breathing being that will look upon you for all her needs."
"Oh, I assure you she will be well cared for," the stallion said. "She won't want for a thing in the world."
"Or else the help will be most severely scolded," the mare added. "I won't abide help that doesn't properly help."
"Now, we understand that due to our late arrival, your in-store stock might be somewhat depleted, but if you've got a catalogue or some floor models to look at…"
"We can get down the business of making our choice."
Care Taker stamped her hoof down, before rising several feet into the air, steam practically shooting out of her ears. Landing with a solid thump, she pointed a hoof at the couple. "Now listen here, there's no way I'm letting the two of you adopt any of my wards. Even if they hadn't all been adopted."
"I'll be!" the mare exclaimed.
"Ahem… Not all," came from the top of the stairs. All attention swung to Diamond Tiara, who gracefully glided down the stairs. On the last step, she hopped forward, twirling in the air before landing into a curtsy.
"She's adorable! And so elegant," the mare said. "I can't wait to see the look on Silver Lining's face when she sees her. That'll put a stop to all her bragging about her daughter. You know she brings her up at every opportunity just to try and one-up us."
"And such a commanding presence and confidence. I bet she could boss around a dozen employees at once with ease." The stallion faced his wife. "I'm so glad you were so averse to stretch marks. I doubt even we could do better than this precious filly even if we had a dozen foals."
Diamond Tiara's smile threatened to blind everyone in the room. Reaching a hoof up, she pulled Care Taker's head down toward her and softly whispered in her ear, "Miss Taker, remember when you said I should lower my standards? That I should settle for some farmer, waiter, or that lady who dyes her hair grey? That otherwise I'd wind up with nopony, ever?"
Care Taker nodded.
"Well, in your face!" the filly yelled. "I'll take 'em. They're perfect!"
"That settles it then," the mare said.
Care Taker felt something snap in her mind. Her eyes started to spin. She felt her flanks heat up as her sanity cracked. She giggled, then snorted, then giggled again. With one last giggle, she tipped over and fell on her side, causing her dress to slide up, revealing her ball and screw cutie mark.
The stallion jingled his coin purse above the head of the fallen pony. "So, how much is she, anyway?"
"Well, she did give us those peppermints she made," Diamond Tiara said.
"Good memory, Di," Silver Spoon said. "That should totally bump her up one slot, putting her into 'Sorta cool but not really', alongside Alula and Rumble. And with that, we've got everypony in the class." Silver Spoon ran her hoof down the list, just to be sure. "Yup, everypony."
"Okay, now what?" Diamond Tiara asked.
"Hmm… I got nothing," Silver Spoon said.
"Me either," Diamond Tiara said.
"Maybe your mother knows of something? She knows everything that's going on in town."
Diamond Tiara nodded, and rose to her feet. With rapid steps, she threaded her way through the pencils and papers littering the floor from their list making, and headed out the door. Silver Spoon followed a step behind. Together, the two fillies made their way to the sunroom.
"I'm bored, Mom," Diamond Tiara complained.
"What was that, dear?" Spoiled Rich asked, without shifting her attention away from the scarf she was knitting for the annual Ponyville Start of Summer Clothing Drive. This particular scarf was red with white snowflakes, and it would soon join three other scarves, four caps, and twelve pairs of thick woolen shocks, all woven by Spoiled Rich as part of her contribution. The the other part was the time she invested as the head of the drive, one of many community organizations she headed.
"Sil and I are boooored," Diamond Tiara repeated.
"Uh-huh. There's totally nothing to do," Silver Spoon added.
Spoiled Rich set down her work and turned her full attention to her daughter. "Well, why not play with your toys? Maybe read a book? Or maybe make that change to your garden you've been planning?"
"We can't read a book together, Mom," Diamond Tiara said. "And reading different books just isn't any fun."
Silver Spoon nodded in agreement. "We've done the other stuff already as well, Mrs. Rich. We even went through Di's closet to set aside things for your clothing drive."
"And there's totally nothing else to look forward to either. No parties, no sales, nothing."
Spoiled Rich furled her brows. "So what you are saying is that your schedule is blanker than a baby's flank? Well, if that's that's the case, whose fault is that? You know what I always say..."
"You don't get to complain if you aren't willing to do something about it," both fillies chorused.
"That's right. Now…" Spoiled Rich reached for the monthly weather report, slid her hoof down to the current week, and nodded. "It's supposed to be nice weather tomorrow. Why not throw a pool party?"
"A pool party?"
"Get some goodies, maybe some entertainment, and invite all the foals whose families can't afford their own pools, and I believe that's all of them, over. Not really their fault their parents aren't successful. Just this once, of course. Provided they're not too unwashed." Spoiled Rich paused for a second. "I'd better book a pool cleaning on Saturday. Can't be too careful with those common ponies, you know."
"I suppose a pool party…" Diamond Tiara started, her voice trailing off as she let her imagination start to paint a picture of the possibilities.
"...Could be fun," Silver Spoon finished, wrapping a hoof around Diamond Tiara. "I'm sure we can get everything planned in time."
"Of course you can, Silver dear," Spoiled Rich said, looking up from her knitting at the two fillies. "You're winners, and winners always find a way. I'm sure your father can give you some bits so you can get everything you need."
"Okay, we'll do it," Diamond Tiara said, firmly slapping her hoof down. "Thanks, Mom."
The bits clinked musically as Diamond organized them into four piles. Each was dedicated to a single purpose. The first, and largest by far, was for delicious treats. The second was considerably smaller, and it was for healthier fare. The pile didn't exist because either filly wanted it. If they had their way, all the food budget would go to ice cream, cake, and candy. But then some adult would no doubt object and demand the majority of bits be spent on icky stuff like kale instead. So the trick was to allocate just enough bits to the more edible healthy things to avoid that. The third for decorations, party favors, and towels. It wouldn't do for one of the lesser ponies to get something icky on the family's regular towels, after all. And the last pile, which was also the smallest, was for invitations. To have them printed, rather than for supplies to make them, of course.
"There," Diamond said. "I think that should do it."
"Now we just need to decide who takes care of what," Silver Spoon said.
"I'll take care of the food." Diamond Tiara reached out and, with a hoof for each, pulled the two piles of bits close. "And you can take care of the invitations and party favors. Just give the decorations and stuff to Randolf. He'll make sure everything gets set up."
"Sounds like a plan," Silver Spoon said. "So who all are we, like, going to invite?"
Diamond Tiara rested her chin on her hoof as she pondered the question. Should she invite everyone? No, she decided. She most definitely did not want those blank flanks over, not after the last time. "Just the cool foals, I think."
Silver Spoon looked at her pile of coins, then back to Diamond Tiara. "Uh, will we need this many bits if it's—"
"Any decorations and stuff we have left we'll just save for next time," Diamond Tiara said. "That way, we'll be prepared if we want to have a totally awesome slumber party."
"Oh yeah. Good thinking, Di!"
"Don't be afraid to get some fancy invitations. We want to make sure everypony knows just how awesome our party will be."
"I'll make sure to get the best one invitations ever. Anyone who sees them will be so jealous of us, for sure!" And with that, Silver Spoon swept her bits into her saddlebags and headed out the door.
"And here's your invitation," Silver Spoon said.
Diamond Tiara accepted the gilded envelop and whistled. "Wow, you did go fancy with them. You must have bargained hard to be able to get them this nice."
Silver Spoon shrugged her shoulders. "Not really. I mean, I bargained a little, but it wound up not costing all the bits anyway, so I got some extra decorations instead…
Diamond Tiara's eyes shot wide open. "You'd better not have gotten any clowns!" she growled. "Never clowns."
"I'm sure Randolf and the maids have got them all set up already," Silver Spoon continued.
"You didn't… not really, right?" asked the wide-eyed Diamond Tiara.
Silver Spoon laughed. "Of course not, silly. I wouldn't do that to you."
Diamond Tiara let out a sigh of relief. "Don't scare me like that, Sil."
Silver Spoon gave her friend a sly wink. "Well, how about we get ready?"
"No rush," Diamond Tiara said. "It wouldn't do to not arrive fashionably late, even to our own party. I'll just have Randolf greet the guests."
"But… we're, like, —"
Diamond Tiara opened the door. Sticking her head out into the hallway, she hollered "Randolf!" repeatedly. She bopped her head impatiently to the beat of Randolf's approaching hoofsteps. "Faster, Randolf!"
"Ma'am?" Randolf asked between gasps of air, as he did his best fish on land impersonation.
"Please wait out by the pool to greet our guests as they arrive," Diamond Tiara. She waited for him to carry out her orders, but instead he just stood there, breathing rapidly. She raised a hoof to shoo him away. "Go already. And don't call me ma'am!"
Watching him depart, she smiled. "There. Now the guests will be greeted, and we can totally be fashionably late." She bounced forward and threw herself upon her bed. With a deep sigh, she rolled onto her back, letting her head dangle over the edge, and gaven an upside down grin at Silver Spoon.
"But Di," Silver Spoon said, "we're—"
"Fine," Diamond Tiara said, flopping off the bed and pulling upon a drawer. "I guess we'd better get dressed, else we'll stray into unfashionably late." She reached inside and fished out a pair of swim suits. "What do you think will go better with my sun hat, Sil? The purple or the yellow?"
Silver Spoon tilted her head slightly and glanced between the pair. "Definitely the purple. The yellow doesn't work well with your coat. But Di…"
"Purple it is, and of course you can borrow the yellow one." Diamond Tiara tossed the yellow swimsuit over to her friend and started to slip into her own. "You should see all the food, Sil. The Cakes made the prettiest cake, and I got eight tubs of ice cream. All our favorite flavors. And four different types of salad mixes, plus a big pile of sandwiches from that new sub place on Mane Street."
"That much?" Silver Spoon asked. "I don't think I could eat that much."
"Well, you don't have to eat it all, Sil. And besides, with all the swimming we'll be doing, we'll burn off a ton of calories, so we'll need the energy. Speaking of swimming, don't forget your swim cap. Wouldn't want your mane to wind up looking like Twist's."
Silver Spoon caught the cap in her teeth and quickly slipped it on. She took a moment to check the mirror, making sure it wasn't crooked. Satisfied, she went over to her saddlebags and took out her prescription sunglasses. "All set!"
"Me too," Diamond Tiara said, her own cap, a custom piece complete with a tiara on top, in place. "Let's do this!"
The two fillies headed down the stairs, through the hall, and out the door. The only sounds were their hooves striking the wooden floor, well, that or the rugs that covered the floor.
Diamond Tiara looked toward the pool. There wasn't a single pony splashing in or diving into it. Arching one eyebrow, she shifted her attention toward the fence that protected the Rich's manor from the common ponies beyond. Not a single pony stood there, eager to be let in.
"Um, like, where is everypony?" Diamond TIara asked. She wondered if they had all rejected her invitation, but squashed that thought as quickly as it had come. One or two of the more foalish might have dared to reject her, and their reason might even be forgivable, given the short notice, but no pony showing up? There was just no way that was possible, short of the end of Equestria.
"We're it," Silver Spoon said. "You said to invite the cool ponies. As per our list, that's just us, and we're all here."
Diamond Tiara slammed her hoof against her forehead. "That's not what I meant!"
"It's what you said. If you'd wanted to invite the 'sorta cool, but not reallies' or the 'uncool, but not as uncool as blank flanks', you should have said so," Silver Spoon stated, quite matter of factly. "I mean, I wasn't sure if that was really what you wanted, but whenever I tried to bring it up, you always switched the topic or re-assured me that everything was, like, going to be awesome." She shrugged. "So I figured the party was totally just for us and we'd talk about how awesome to everyone else who wasn't invited. You know, like normal."
Diamond Tiara lifted her hoof to shade her eyes from the hot sun that was already starting to melt the tubs of ice cream. Her gaze went to the tables of food, with the two maids standing behind them, ready to serve, before drifting over to the bundles of balloons tied to the poolside furniture and threatening to lift them into the air. Randolf stood post at the gate, waiting for guests that were not coming.
Diamond Tiara slipped her pencil into the bandanna wrapped around her head, doing its sworn duty of keeping her mane from exploding in every direction. She'd been wear bandannas for as long as she could remember. They certainly beat having to spend all that time brushing and styling her mane, time that could be better spent playing or helping her father. Time was precious, for so much of it was consumed by what her mother demanded of her.
By now, her collection was quite large, but this particular one, patterned with the royal symbol of Princess Celestia, was her favorite. She wore it almost every day. The day when she'd move on to a new favorite was coming though. She could feel it in her bones. Soon, she'd find another bandanna that struck her fancy, and this one would be relegated to her closet, only rarely seeing the light of day again.
She stared at the book in front of her, trying to make sense of the mystical symbols and equations that were somehow supposed to let her figure out how long the sides of a triangle were. The task wasn't made any easier by her belief that it was an utter waste of time. It wasn't like calculating how much tax would be required on a purchase or making a statistical analysis of current market trends. Those things had uses. Triangles? Those things were practically useless.
It didn't help either that she'd spent the last hour worrying about something else. And that something else was about to arrive, for she'd just heard the front door open and close. That could only mean one thing: that her mother was back from the parent-teacher conference.
Silently, she counted the seconds as her mother was no doubt putting away her coat. At the sound of the first hoof on the stairs, she shifted her count to that instead. Seventeen steps, then five more seconds. A rapid knock on her door, and then her doom entered the room.
"Diamond Tiara, we need to talk. I just had the most interesting conversation with your teacher, and do you know what she said?"
Diamond froze. Here it comes, she thought. Miss Cheerilee told her all about how I didn't get my homework complete on time, and I'm going to get grounded and won't be allowed to go to Canterlot with daddy this weekend. Silently, she waited for inevitable to start.
"She said you don't have any friends."
Diamond nearly collapsed with relief. Was that all? Turning to her mother, she said, "Well, duh. Have you seen the ponies in my class?"
"I saw the parents," Spoiled Rich said, shaking her head, "and I guess I can see your point, though there was one couple that seemed like they could be socially acceptable. But whether you like them or not isn't the point, Diamond. What matters is whether or not they like you."
"But why? It isn't like they matter."
Spoiled Rich gave her daughter a stern look. "You want to succeed in life, right?"
Diamond knew exactly how to answer that question if she wanted to avoid a long lecture on the importance of success. "Of course, Mom."
"Then you've got to be popular." Spoiled Rich waved a hoof in the air and looked up toward the ceiling as she gathered her thoughts. Her daughter waited patiently until at last Spoiled Rich began to speak. "See, it's like this… When you read the paper, who are you more likely to hear about: Sapphire Shores or that star guy Day Grassy?"
Diamond Tiara wasn't sure what the correct answer was, as she recalled neither from the newspaper. Mentally, she reviewed the comics pages from the last week. Yes, she was sure, neither one was in any of them. But since she had no clue who that Day Grassy guy was, she offered a tentative "Sapphire Shores?"
"Exactly! And do you know why? Let me tell you: Because she's popular. And so people are far more interested in listening to her than somepony who spent all their time learning the tiniest details of the subject matter rather than becoming popular. And it isn't just her. Fancy Pants: hugely influential in Canterlot. Is he any better than other ponies? Of course he is, because he's popular, so he matters and they don't. And it doesn't stop there. No, it goes right up to the top," Spoiled Rich said, her hoof waving for emphasis. "Do you suppose Princess Celestia is our ruler because of her wisdom, her combat prowess, or because we need her to raise and lower the sun?"
Diamond Tiara frowned. All those things seemed like good reasons why Princess Celestia would be in charge. But based on the way her mother's conversation was going, she went against her gut feeling. "No?"
"That's right. It's because she's popular. After all, unicorns raised and lowered the sun for years before the Princess showed up, so we don't exactly need her for that. And wisdom? She's the type who would likely send out some minions to deal with an extinction level event and then make everypony think she was involved in dealing with the issue by using a fancy awards ceremony.. And she hasn't won a one on one duel for a thousand years. But none of that matters. Do you know why?"
"Because she's popular?" Diamond Tiara said, with much more confidence that that was the right answer.
"Exactly!" Spoiled Rich affectionately rubbed the top of Diamond Tiara's head. "She raises and lowers the sun with a style and flair that the unicorns never had, and that makes her popular. And because she's popular, those minions of hers will do whatever she asks, even if it could mean their deaths. Pretty much anypony could do that, but it doesn't matter, because she's more popular than anypony else. She's so popular that if you told anyone what I've just told you, they'd look at you like you were crazy. They think she's a goddess incarnate, that she can do no wrong. Because she's that popular."
Rising to her hooves, Spoiled Rich walked over to the window and looked out over the town. She beckoned Diamond Tiara over to her side.
"And the thing is, Princess Celestia knows this, knows the importance of being popular. Do you know how I know this?" Spoiled Rich pointed toward the large tree home that served as the town's library. "Miss Cake heard from Pinkie Pie who heard it from some lizard that the new town librarian, who apparently is Princess Celestia's prized pupil, was sent here to learn how to be popular. Apparently she had no friends at all in Canterlot, not one at all. The Princess couldn't let that stand, so she banished her pupil from Canterlot to here so she could study how to be popular. If it takes, who knows, maybe in a few years, we'll have a new princess. A Princess of Popular." She paused every-so-briefly. "Ity."
With a flourish, Spoiled Rich pulled the drapes close, obscuring the sight of the town, and grabbed hold of Diamond Tiara's shoulders. "So you see, you've got to be popular, the most popular pony in your class, if you want to succeed in life."
"But what if nobody likes me?" Diamond Tiara asked.
"Oh, dear, how they could they not? You're my daughter, the prettiest and richest filly in town." Spoiled Rich frowned. "Well, if you'd just lose those ugly bandannas and do something with your mane, anyway. Looking better than everypony else is half of what it takes to be more popular than them, after all." She paused again, remembering one more important point. "I almost hesitate to bring this up, as I don't want to scare you, my dear, but you've got to be wary of what could happen if you aren't popular. You wouldn't want to wind up like Princess Celestia's sister, now would you?"
"You mean the new princess, Luna?" Diamond Tiara asked.
Spoiled Rich nodded. "I heard from my hair stylist that way back when, she was not popular, and that is why she went mad and became Nightmare Moon. That's almost as bad as being an ordinary pony. So as you can see, you've got to become popular, Diamond. It is the most important thing in life, for without it, even a princess can fall."
Diamond Tiara cast a quick glance toward her desk. "Is it more important than maintaining a 3.5 GPA?"
Spoiled Rich laughed. "My daughter, always such a kidder. Now, tomorrow, I want you to start on becoming the most popular filly in school, alright? I'll expect a progress report when you get back home."
"Okay," Diamond Tiara muttered.
"That's my girl," Spoiled Rich said. With that, she turned and left the room.
"Rats," Diamond Tiara muttered, collapsing into her chair. With a sigh, she opened her notebook to a fresh page, pulled her pencil out of her bandanna, and began planning.
Diamond Tiara took a deep breath before stepping into the school house. The ponies already in the classroom turned to see who had entered. A bit silly, she thought, since she was the last to arrive, and it wasn't like any of them were her friends or that she was the most popular filly in school. Nopony said anything in greeting, nor did they turn away. They just looked at her. The Apple family one wore a perplexed expression on her face, a look she usually reserved for math class.
She froze in worry. Was her mane still styled perfectly or had the wind mussed it, undoing half-an-hour's worth of work? Should she have left the tiara at home? Her mother did always stress the importance of accessorizing, but maybe it was too much for this setting? At least they weren't laughing at her, not yet anyway, she thought with relief, but regardless, she could feel her cheeks reddening, and her knees felt like they could buckle under the weight of the stares at any moment. She needed to do something before everything went wrong.
Fortunately, her planning last night meant she was prepared..
"I, uh, brought cupcakes for everyone," Diamond Tiara said, opening up the box for all to see, and the calm erupted into action like a Pinkie Pie surprise party with everything, from the guests to the quantity of confections scaled down.
"Chocolate dibs!" Rolly, the nickname Diamond used when thinking of the short, fat one, launched himself toward the offered goodies so quickly his desk slid backwards. His quick start coupled with the location of his desk allowed him to be the first foal to close the distance, and one of the chocolate cupcakes disappeared into his mouth. Despite their slower starts and longer distance to travel, the rest of the class was right behind.
"I'll take a thrawberry one, if that'th all right?" the filly Diamond thought of as Red, thanks to the color of her frizzy mane, asked. She waited for Diamond Tiara's affirmative nod before taking the cupcake she desired.
The last cupcake was claimed by the mousy, grey filly. As usual, her mane was a tangled mess, and her glasses sat crooked upon her nose. She said something, but whatever it was was lost under the garbled thanks from one of the class clowns, who seemed to have crammed his entire cupcake in his mouth. Diamond Tiara had to offer the cupcake box twice before the filly took the cupcake and scurried back to her desk.
It crossed Diamond Tiara's mind that that filly —what was her name? Some sort of cutlery… Silver Fork? No, that wasn't quite right. She'd have to make it a point to memorize everypony's names, she decided, just like how her dad always knew everypony's name. Ponies seemed to react better to that then if you said, "Hey you!" Nor did they always take kindly to perfectly sensible nicknames— Anyway, she could see her mother's point. Mouse was never going to amount to much, at best winding up working for someone else who would take all the rewards.
"Okay, class," Miss Cheerilee called, rapping her hoof on her desk to quiet everyone down. "Everypony thank Diamond Tiara for those delicious cupcakes." A chorus of thanks yous came forth from the class, and Miss Cheerilee continued. "Now, if everypony will open their history book to page thirty-four, we can get started."
The classroom filled with the sounds of ponies digging through their bags or opening their bags to retrieve their books, followed by the rustling of pages as they sought the correct page. All except for Diamond Tiara, who raised her hoof.
"Diamond Tiara?" Miss Cheerilee asked.
"Miss Cheerilee, I brought you something, too." Diamond Tiara reached into her saddlebag and brought forth a large apple. "Teachers like apples, right?"
"Yes, Diamond, teachers love apples. They're healthy and delicious." Miss Cheerilee smiled and said, "Although maybe not quite as yummy as cupcakes," causing the class to giggle.
Maybe this will all be pretty easy, after all, Diamond Tiara thought. With the use of some gifts, the right attitude, and being sure to remember everypony's name, she could pull off being popular and maintain the high grades her parents insisted upon. In no time, she'd be running this class. Maybe she could even become the head of some school club. She could imagine it now, how she would sit at a big desk and bellow orders at her subordinates, leading them with such skill that the club's success would be recognized not just by the school, but all of Ponyville. Maybe even—
"By the way, Diamond, did you get yesterday's homework completed?"
Diamond Tiara's daydream evaporated as her eyes shot open. The homework! She'd forgotten all about it. She tried to shrink into her desk. A snicker came from behind her. The sound steeled Diamond Tiara's nerves, and she straightened up. No way was that Apple kid going to laugh at her. Not that she was sure it was the Apple kid, but it seemed like the type of thing that hillbilly would do.
"I-I'm sorry, Miss Cheerilee. I got so wrapped up in the idea of bringing cupcakes that I completely forgot about it." "It won't happen again!"
"I suppose I can give you one more day," Miss Cheerilee said, "since you did bring all those cupcakes and all. But don't forget again, or I'm going to have to give you a zero, okay?"
"Yes, Miss Cheerilee, I won't forget," Diamond Tiara said, quickly jotting down a reminder to herself on her hoof.
"Good, good," Miss Cheerilee said and returned to her lesson.
Diamond Tiara barely paid attention, her mind lost in thought. This was going to be just as hard as she initially thought. There was no way one pony, even one as talented as herself, could pull this off. It just wasn't possible. There weren't enough hours in the day, not with how much time she needed to study, not if she still wanted free time to run and play.
She found her gaze drifting toward Mouse, watched how the filly was reading several chapters ahead of where they were supposed to be, yet she answered every question Miss Cheerilee asked in her barely audible voice. Always the answer was more of a question than a statement, yet never wrong.
A smile spread across Diamond Tiara's face. She knew she'd found the answer to her dilemma. If she could not have more hours per day, she would need to use her time more efficiently. And what better way to do that then to tap the class brain? With Mouse's help, Diamond Tiara was sure she could get her homework done in half the time. The smile stayed until recess was called.
She followed Mouse out, waited until the filly sat down under a tree. With a hoof, Diamond Tiara nudged down the book the Mouse was reading.
"I've decided. We're going to be best friends," Diamond Tiara said.
It would take some effort, no doubt, but it would pay off. Mouse's saddlebag was name brand, and not the sort of brand her father's store carried either, but one of the higher end ones you had to travel to a big city to find. Obviously, the filly's family wasn't poor. Furthermore, the filly was smart, smarter than even Diamond Tiara, as far as book-learning was concerned anyway. And so Diamond Tiara had determined that Mouse and she would be friends. In exchange for help with homework, Diamond Tiara would make her popular as well. Though not quite as popular as Diamond Tiara herself, of course.
"Friends?" Mouse asked.
"No. Not friends. Best friends. Like, BFFs," Diamond Tiara said with a nod. She settled down next to Mouse and said, "I've thought it all through, and it will be perfect. We'll be the most popular fillies in town."
"Popular?"
She'd really have to learn the filly's name, Diamond Tiara thought, before she accidentally called the filly Mouse. Reaching out, she took hold of Mouse's mane. "May I?" she asked, and began braiding it without waiting for a response. From her new position, fortune smiled upon her, and she took advantage of it to note the "Property of Silver Spoon" written on the bookmark. "Yes, Sil. May I call you Sil?" Again, she didn't wait for a response, but continued braided and talking. "Popular, Sil. Let me ask you this: Do you think Celestia holds power because she's smart and a good talker? Of course not. It's because she's popular…"
The doors of the teleportation room closed behind the two fillies, leaving them in a long, narrow corridor. The walls were bare stone, a rough granite that would have caused a certain Ponyville fashionista to spin around and fling herself upon a teleportation pad, begging to be allowed to flee, had she ever found her way down here. And that was without even knowing the dark secrets and terrible deeds hidden within the secret base.
The fillies had no such reaction, idly swapping banter back and forth, not paying attention to the decor or the large seal that hung on the wall besides them, the coat of arms of The Agency, complete with its "For Princesses and Pony" slogan. The base with its poorly lit corridors was a second home to them, even if it was one without all the comforts of, well, home. No thoughts about the lack of comfort or style crossed their minds as they headed down the corridor, towards the door barely visible at the far end of the hall.
"I wonder what's so important that we're being called in like this," Diamond Tiara said for the upteenth time.
"Still don't have a clue," Silver Spoon replied, "but whatever it is, it must be of huge importance if they're pulling us off the MULE investigation."
"I know, right? V knows how close we are to identifying their leader. No way she'd blow a year-long operation unless there was, like, a really good reason. It's got to be something like a Breezy coup attempt." Diamond Tiara sucked in her breath. "Or maybe… maybe an invasion of demonized teenagers from a parallel dimension."
Silver Spoon rolled her eyes. "You've got to quit reading those tabloids, Di. They're totally rotting your brain."
"It can't all be rot. Equestria Daily is the third-highest circulating paper in the world, after all."
"Being popular isn't the same thing as being good," Silver Spoon replied.
Diamond Tiara tilted her head, giving her companion an incredulous look.
"Well, okay, except when it comes to us."
"Because we're the bestest," Diamond Tiara said with a grin.
"Bump bump, sugar-lump, rump!" the two fillies chanted in unison, giggling gleefully.
It wasn't long before Silver Spoon's mirth wore off, though, and she grew more solemn. "Of course, the downside is that we get all the hardest, most dangerous missions."
"I wonder what the mission is this time."
Silver Spoon sighed and lowered her ears. "Still. Don't. Know." Her head shot up, eyes wide, as a thought struck her. "Maybe Babs will be here to help us. It must be totally super important mission, so it'd make sense if they called her in from the Manehattan branch."
"Or maybe we'll, like, have to go to Manehattan to help her with something..." Diamond Tiara directed a wicked smirk at her friend. "Like an impending invasion of demonized teenagers from a parallel dimension."
"You know I know fourteen different ways to knock you out with just my bare hooves, right? Sixteen if I don't mind chipping a hoof."
Diamond Tiara grinned. "Good thing you love me."
Silver Spoon settled her hoof on the door handle. "As if. I know you've got eyes for nopony but Apple Bloom."
"Well, maybe if you wore a really big bow?"
Silver Spoon snorted and pressed the handle down, opening the door.
The two fillies entered the office, settling into a pair of chairs facing a large oaken desk. Piles of folders covered the desk, each containing the details of some operation or intelligence. In one corner, a pair of goggle-like glasses sat, the purplish lenses facing upward. On the other side of the desk was a single chair, its high back turned toward the fillies, as it always was whenever the fillies entered the room.
Slowly, it swiveled around, revealing the white-coated unicorn within, her two-toned blue mane in its usual half-wild state. V, the chief of the Ponyville branch, and the second highest member of The Agency, answering only to L. She looked her agents over with a single eye, the other covered in a black eyepatch.
"Sorry I had to pull you in, but something important has come up." She pulled the third folder from the top out of the stack to her left, and tossed it to Silver Spoon. Settling back, she waited for their reaction.
Silver Spoon opened the folder, as Diamond Tiara leaned over to look as well. Together, the two fillies read the single piece of paper within it. Their response was the same, and almost perfectly in sync. First, their eyes slowly widened, then their jaws slowly dropped, followed by a head shake and a second reading of the paper. A brief moment silence, and then both fillies erupted out of their chairs.
With a solid thunk, Silver Spoon's forelegs came to rest on V's desk, knocking a pile of folders askew. "Cookies? We're supposed to sell cookies?"
At the same time, Diamond Tiara slammed her hooves together. "We were this close to finding out the identity of the head of MULE, V. And you're blowing it all for cookies? You realize our contact will probably take off when we fail to make our meeting."
"Are you done, Agents?" The command, for it wasn't really a question, and it took but a moment to take hold of the two fillies, their bodies settling into their seats, even as their protests remained evident in their eyes. V took a deep breath. "I" —she stressed the word heavily— "am not doing anything. This came straight from the top. From the top, you hear. Straight from L's mouth. And before you ask, no, I don't know why it is so important. I asked, and L told me it was above my paygrade, that there are to be nothing documents about this op, and to put my best agents on it, no matter what I had to pull them off of. That's how big of a deal this cookie thing is. I don't like it anymore than you mares." She took a moment to straighten the folders Silver Spoon had disturbed. "Now get out there and sell some cookies, for princesses and ponies. Operation Confection Clearance must succeed."
Diamond Tiara frowned, but stayed silent.
"We'll do it, Chief. We always do our duty," Silver Spoon said. "So what's the plan?"
V shook her head. "There isn't one. You'll have to improvise."
"No plan?" Diamond Tiara asked.
"Are you hard of hearing, Agent?" V asked. "There's was no time to plan, and I know nothing of selling cookies. So you improvise. Just try not to start a war with Yakyakistan like the two of you almost did the last time you decided to wing it."
"That was, like, not our fault; you know that, Chief. How could we—" Diamond Tiara fell silent under the weight of V's glare.
"Why are you still here?" The unicorn raised a single foreleg and pointed toward the door. "Go. Sell cookies. The very future of Equestria hangs in the balance. Probably."
"You know, it's too bad we can't just order Randolf to take care of this," Silver Spoon said as the two ponies walked down Mane Street. So far, they had proposed sixteen different plans to each other, and each had been summarily picked apart and discarded.
Diamond Tiara couldn't help but giggle, despite her mood. "It'd be nice, wouldn't it. Too bad he's on vacation."
"Plus V probably wouldn't like it. So that plan's a no-go as well." Silver Spoon sighed.
"If only this wasn't the same week as the Filly Scouts' cookie sale."
"I know, right? Selling these cookies would be hard enough even if that wasn't the case, what with how many there are and how they totally—" Silver Spoon cut off at Diamond Tiara's raised hoof.
"Don't remind me. I swear I can still..." Diamond Tiara stopped, swivelled her ears, and sniffed the air. "Something's off."
Silver Spoon titled her head at her partner, then looked around, first toward the store to their right, then the street to the left. "Hmm… You're right. There's, like, not nearly as many ponies wandering about as usual."
Diamond Tiara nodded. "And the ones that are here, they're… on edge. I wonder what's up."
"I don't know, but we'd better find out," Silver Spoon said.
Diamond Tiara nodded, and pushed open the door of the shop. "Nopony gossips like quilters. They'll totally know what's up."
Five minutes later, the two fillies exited the shop, shaking their heads in disbelief.
"See, this is why I hate pranks pulled by anypony other than me," Diamond Tiara said with a scowl. "Nothing good ever comes from them."
"And could you just imagine if someone tried to pull one on us? With our training, we could seriously hurt somepony." Silver Spoon pursed her lips. "Again. We could totally hurt somepony again."
Diamond Tiara nodded slowly. "Though, like, we only used a little glue on her flight feathers. How were we to know that'd make her spin and loop out of control?"
"But at least she agreed not to tell on us, in exchange for us pulling a few strings to get those pesky breaking and entering charges dropped. And she agreed not to prank us ever again if we did the same for her." Silver Spoon paused. "You know, that's probably why we didn't know what's been happening."
"But that still leaves her free to prank everypony else, and it looks like that's gotten a little out of hoof. To the point that Mayor Mare herself had to ask the princess to ask the pink menace to intercede." Diamond Tiara stamped her hoof in frustration. "You know, this is totally going to make it even harder to sell those Nightmare-darned cookies."
Diamond Tiara made it half a block down the street before she noticed Silver Spoon wasn't with her. A quick glance behind revealed her partner standing still, one hoof jabbing and poking the air. Diamond Tiara watched for several seconds with raised eyebrows, before walking back to her friend. She settled on her haunches, letting Silver Spoon finish her calculations, mumbling mostly incomprehensible gibberish, though Diamond Tiara could make a few words phrases. Things like "sale", "Pinkie" and "median acting ability of the entire town over a period of twelve point two hours". At last, Silver Spoon dropped her hoof to the ground.
With a wicked grin, she said, "I've totally got the best plan ever. And by best I mean one that could well fail, but it's the only plan we got that just might work. And it won't even break the deal we made." She pondered that for a second. "Well, not technically, anyway."
Celestia floated the tea cup up to her lips and took a small sip, savoring the special blend that had been gifted to her the previous year by the visiting Arabian royalty. Setting the tea cup back down, she looked over at her sister and co-regent, Luna.
"So, I heard that your new charity completed helping its first case yesterday."
"Oh, yes," Luna replied. "You should have seen how happy the little colt was. I don't think I've ever seen a foal as happy, well, outside of Nightmare Night." She settled back in her chair, took a sip of her own tea, and closed her eyes in contentment.
Celestia tapped a hoof on the table, to no avail. "Well, don't leave me hanging. My little sister's charity's first big case. Details. I need details."
Luna rubbed her hooves together as she composed her thoughts. "Well, there's not much to tell, not really. See, this colt from Baltimare had been having these dreams about his class's upcoming bake'n'sell, about selling more cookies than anyone in class, all on the merit of his cookies. And then, wouldn't you know it, tragedy struck. He got a minor touch of the flu and wouldn't have been able to sell a single cookie to a non-family member.
"But that's when my Have a Dream Foundation stepped in. We took the cookies, found some volunteers, and sold them all, thereby fulfilling the colt's dream. And that's about all there was to it. Easy-peasy."
Celestia nodded with approval. "Have I said already how proud I am of you for starting a charity?"
"Only a few times, but I don't mind if you mention, say, a dozen or so more," Luna said, with a wink.
"Well, I am proud. It's good to see you helping our subjects outside of the dream world." She raised a hoof, warding off Luna's interjection before it could start. "Not that your nighttime work isn't important or beneficial. It truly is. The foals of Equestria have been sleeping much better since your return, and you can notice a definite uptake in their parents' wakefulness as well, all thanks to your tireless work." Celestia took another sip of her tea, watching as her sister did likewise. "Now, time for more serious business. How are things on the intelligence front? If I recall correctly from our last meeting, that operation to identify the head of MULE was about to come to fruition, no?"
Luna nearly spit out her tea, but managed to swallow it, instead. "Um, yeah… I'm afraid that operation didn't work out. The contact we'd been cultivating got cold feet and ran, and my agents haven't been able to reestablish contact."
"Really?"
"Oh yes, for realsies." Luna shrugged. "It's a bummer, but just one of those things, the nature of the intelligence game. We'll figure out who the head of MULE is sooner or later, though, no doubt of that." Luna's eyes drifted down to the table. Seeing Celestia about to ask a follow up question, Luna nodded toward a plate of confections. "Want one of the foal's cookies?"
Celestia blanched. "Those were the cookies? Oh Lady. Those cookies are horrid. And the way they stained your teeth..."
"I know, right?" Luna shuddered. "That's one foal who won't be getting a cutie mark in baking."
