DAWN OF THE FINAL WEEK
-72 Hours Remain-
Several generations of children had passed through the admittedly small schoolhouse out on the outskirts of the Ponyville border. It was a traditionally small building that had been around for several decades, and quite simply nopony had ever gotten around to expanding it. It was nearing summer, and the end of the educational season was on the tip of tongues of children everywhere. Then there would be the time of much rejoicing, especially over the fact they can sleep in on Mondays. But next week was an entire weekend away, and there was still Thursday and Friday to get through.
Miss Cheerilee had been busily writing a homework assignment on the board with chalk, ears twitching as she tried to tune herself into the chatter of the students behind her. It was required multitasking, as she always had to be on her guard to prevent any of the children from becoming too disruptive.
“Alright, that’s enough,” Cheerilee said, turning around as the chatter and excitement grew to a level just short of breaking out in uncontrollable anarchy. “Settle down, please!”
The commotion died down, but did not cease entirely. It was enough of a calm to allow her to continue, at least. The desks were arranged in rows of three, and though the Cutie Mark Crusaders always tried to get the top three desks, they were rarely so lucky. All three of them usually managed to get in the first two rows, however, but this meant somepony had to sit next to Diamond Tiara. Today, Scootaloo had drawn the short straw, and her irritable mood reflected this.
“As you all know, next week is the 50th anniversary of the school’s founding,” Cheerilee announced. “There will be many events throughout the week, including an appearance by the Mayor.” This was meant to be exciting news, but it wasn’t as if Princess Cadence was visiting, and several students groaned. A visit from the Mayor was, like, totally lame, and many had been expecting something… well, a bit more elaborate. Like a clown. Or even school being out. Actually, yeah, that last bit sounded pretty awesome to just about everyone.
“Tomorrow is the last chance to finish your projects for next week, and then they will be set up over the weekend as part of our wonderful Founders Display. At the conclusion of the week, we will be burying a time capsule,” Cheerilee said. “I want all of you to participate. The capsule will be buried with the intention of being dug up on the 100th anniversary of the school, and I expect it to contain contributions from all of my talented students.”
“Miss Cheerilee?” Diamond Tiara raised her hoof from her seat in the front. “Will those of us who don’t have any talent be allowed to participate?”
Scootaloo, not in any mood to take her crap, glared at her with indignation.
“Everypony will be helping,” Cheerilee said firmly. “And since you’re so keen to be part of it, you can start by cleaning the chalkboard after everypony else has left. Again.”
Behind her, Apple Bloom snickered. Diamond Tiara harumphed.
After the others had left, only Cheerilee remained, grading the assignments that had been turned in that day, and Diamond Tiara was busily scrubbing the board, fuming reproachfully at the chore. She had absolutely no intention of going to the stupid celebration, and was already scheming several ways of getting out of it.
With the board squeaky clean, Diamond stubbornly threw the sponge down into the soapy water with a splash. Said splash caught her in the face and drenched her muzzle in soapy suds. “Can I go now?” she asked, angrily wiping her face.
Cheerilee looked up from her papers. “I don’t know,” she said patiently. “Can you?”
“That’s why I’m asking you.”
Cheerilee nodded. “Yes, and I’m asking you if you ‘can' go?”
Diamond’s patience skipped a beat, then she groaned. She had several comebacks planned, but there would be no sense in getting herself in trouble right now, and bit her tongue. “Oh for Celestia’s sake… fine. May I go now?”
“Yes, thank you,” Cheerilee replied. “Maybe tomorrow you’ll think twice before making fun of the other students. And if you don’t, I can always use my board washed again.”
“Whatever,” Diamond said, and left the schoolhouse, slamming the door behind her.
It was quite a few blocks back to her admittedly large home, which could even qualify as a mansion according to whom you asked. She had to first walk through the section of town inhabited by the commoners, before she could get to the more wealthy estates. The lower class referred to the mansions as eyesores, the upper class referred to them as standard living. Diamond was one of the latter folks, and always referred to the ‘mansion’ part with her nose in the air and a snobbish tone of superiority.
She walked through the gate, which closed and locked on its own behind her with the aid of some long since cast unicorn magic, and opened the front door to the house. The family pet pig, a despicable, dirty creature whom she held no affection for, came running up to greet her. She still had no idea why they kept the thing, but apparently her father had won it in some card game years ago and being the cheapskate he was, decided it made for a more convenient pet than a cat or dog. The animal gave off its usual array of grunts and squeals, and Diamond made a face of repulsion.
“Down, Abner,” she scolded, and the pig quieted at once.
“Daddy, I’m home!” she called. No answer, per the usual. He rarely answered, rarely even bothered to show acknowledgement of her existence at all when they weren't out making public appearances. On those occasions, she was his number one priority and favorite daughter. Well, his only daughter, but that still counts.
As Abner went about his business of trying to nibble the hairs of her tail, a wickedly devious plan that ran its course through her head in a matter of seconds in a sudden flash of brilliance. It was a stretch, and probably wouldn't even be all that believable, but if she could pull it off, she wouldn't have to worry about attending one of those stupid Founders Day celebrations or any other asinine event at her school ever again.
Diamond removed her sacred tiara and placed it on the pig’s head, an act that was no small feat. She didn’t want any part of her touching the animal, and she made a mental note to have the tiara incinerated and the ashes buried as soon as possible when this was all over. Daddy would simply buy her a new one, after all.
Looking the pig over, the filly huffed. Abner basically looked like a pig with a fancy tiara on his head, with that same stupid grin stuck on his face. It was a stretch, but it would have to do. The pig would simply have to attend the celebrations in her place. Nodding with satisfaction, Diamond moved off to the kitchen for her after school juice, just as her father emerged from his upstairs study and gazed down at the front entryway.
“Good afternoon, precious!” he called. “I thought I heard you come in. How was school?” He looked at his pocketwatch, as if the conversation was on a schedule, costing him time, money, or both.
Abner gave a throaty, resounding grunt. Or a fart. Really, it could be either one.
“Very good, very good, keep up the good work!” Filthy Rich replied, and returned to his study. As much as he wanted to stay out here gabbing with his daughter, there were important things to be done and money to be made.
Oblivious, Diamond Tiara returned from the kitchen a few moments later. She looked at the pig, the animal still wearing her Tiara, and felt her usual sense of deep, seething loathing. The pig was not intentionally meant to take her place, or serve as a clone by any means, but meant to represent some sort of satirical metaphor of how she felt about the school, and by association, the entire educational system. She felt like a pig in a sty, being penned in that little classroom for hours on end, day in and day out, being pumped full of useless knowledge.
Diamond glared at the pig with dislike, and the animal just stared back at her with completely oblivious toleration. She’d send the pig to school on Monday, which left with her only Friday to attend class and suffer through the usual tedium of lessons until the weekend. That was all well and good, but there was still one issue left to be resolved. She wanted to see the looks on the faces of her classmates as a pig entered the classroom in her place. They would know it wasn't her, of course, she was FAR prettier than the pig, but the statement had to be made.
The young filly hurried back outside into the late afternoon and made her way towards the center of town, weaving and dodging between the ponies who were too slow to get out of her way. She raised her hoof and knocked forcefully on the large wooden door that was inset into the bottom of one of the biggest trees in town.
Twilight Sparkle opened the door, blinking in the sun. She looked confused for a moment, then her gaze lowered, and fell upon the child who’d summoned her as one might summon Cthulu, although the latter was much more dangerous and time intensive.
“Yes?” Twilight asked. She knew it was one of Sweetie Belle’s little friends, but couldn't place the name.
Diamond Tiara forced a cough. “I’m not feeling well,” she whispered in a hoarse voice. “Ah-choo.” She sniffed. “I have school tomorrow, and I’d hate to miss out on learning. School is so important after all.”
Twilight gasped. “Thank you! That’s what I keep saying, but nopony will listen!”
“Can you magic up some sort of video device so that I can still watch my lessons from home?” She asked.
Twilight rubbed her chin with a hoof. “I think I can do something like that,” she said. “Wait right here!”
The purple unicorn disappeared into the Library, and there were rummaging sounds, as well as a particularly male cry of dismay.
“Hey!”
“I’m sorry, I need this! I’ll get you a bigger one, I promise! Somepony’s education is at stake!”
Diamond blinked.
Twilight returned after several minutes with two decent sized red gemstones on strings, and handed them over.
“Just give this to one of your friends to wear,” she said. “The first one will act as a camera, allowing you to see the feed from the second.” She sounded rather proud of this. “Now you can learn from home! I don't know why I didn't think of this before. I could mass produce these, and then children could all stay and learn from home, never having to go to school again!” She paused at this, continuing her own thought. "Thus rendering schools obsolete... that's why I never thought of it before." She smiled weakly. "Never mind."
Diamond broke into a wide, eagerly unnerving smile. “Thank you, Twilight, it’s perfect.” She blinked suddenly, and gave off another forceful cough. “Achoo,” she said, for added effect. “I better get home and get to bed so I don’t miss any more school than I have to.” She waved to Twilight, and headed away, while the unicorn waved back.
“Don’t overexert yourself!” She called. “I’ll come and tutor you myself if you’re not feeling better! We can be study buddies! How fun is that?”
“I’d rather sit on a porcupine,” Diamond muttered, looking down at the gemstones wrapped around one hoof.
“What?” Twilight called, already receding out of earshot. “I didn’t hear you!”
“I said that sounds just fine!” Diamond called back.
When she returned home, one of the gems was slung over the pigs neck, and the other placed by her bed. It was almost the weekend, and as of Monday she could stay home all week and read comics, while watching the pig cause all sorts of disruption.
This was going to be great.
DAWN OF THE FINAL WEEK
-48 Hours Remain-
Diamond Tiara woke up first thing Friday morning as the alarm gave out its usual late warning, and as soon as she glanced at it she knew she’d never make it to school on time. But that was alright, since she didn’t care all that much about school in the first place. It was just a place filled with books and learning, which was just the lamest stuff ever. She took her sweet time going downstairs, grabbing an apple for breakfast. She sat down at the breakfast table, the apple clamped firmly in her hoof. The fruit had only just made it to her mouth when she noticed what was in front of her, and she stared.
Abner was already sitting at the table in the chair across from her. There was no fruit or cereal in front of him, he was just sitting cheerfully in the chair, keeping tabs on the comings and goings of the members of the household. All with that stupid piggy look of his. Diamond tried feverishly to get him off the good furniture and back down onto the ground, but Abner seemed to be refusing. He was wedged firmly in the seat.
“Shoo! Get out of here, porker!” Diamond hissed. “If Daddy sees you…” Well, he’d be spending the day outside in the yard, that much was for sure.
As if on cue, Filthy Rich entered from one of the side hallways. He was already dressed in a fancy suit, prepared for the business encounters he would have to engage in that day, and a copy of the Ponyville Times was firmly tucked under one foreleg. He came into the kitchen and glanced first at Diamond Tiara, an apple still clamped in her mouth, then at the pig, who was still wearing her tiara from the day before.
“How many times have I told you not to let the pig sit at the table?” His tone was firm, since it was far too early for nonsensical shenanigans.
“Hah!” Diamond exclaimed, triumphantly. “I told you not to let him see you up there! Now you’re gonna get it!”
Filthy Rich swept right towards Diamond Tiara, and pushed her off the chair with a single swipe of his hoof.
“What-” she began.
“Down.” Filthy Rich commanded. He swiped Diamond upside the head with the end of his newspaper. “Bad.” Then turned to Abner. “Aren’t you going to be late for school?”
Abner gave a resounding, throaty grunt.
“Yes, I had your mother pack you pudding in your lunch. Now you better hurry before your class begins,” Filthy Rich said, and Abner jumped down and scuttled off, oinking noisily.
“And you, outside,” he said to Diamond, who was still quite in shock and speechless over this sudden turn of events.
She gave him a reproachful glare and stormed out of the house. She fully intended to catch up with the pig and give it a scolding. Diamond ran around the side of the mansion, making quick work of the apple as she did, weak breakfast as it was. She cut past the topiary garden, and caught up with Abner, who was standing stupidly on the manicured front walkway, without any clue what he was supposed to be doing there.
“You!” Diamond seethed. She slung a drawstring pouch around the swines neck, willing to take any opportunity to get rid of it. “I’m supposed to go to school now. I don’t WANT to, but there’s this whole stupid thing with the school board, and if I miss class again I have to make it up over the summer, and Daddy will, like, totally kill me. And then I can kiss my weekly shopping sprees goodbye!” She sighed. “Look, take these five bits, go to the market, and pick up a fruit basket. I’m supposed to do it after school, but I don’t wanna,” she said. “You can get yourself some… mud, or something while you’re there. I dunno. Whatever you enjoy rolling around and then eating.”
Abner oinked loudly. Whether he understood or not was anypony’s guess. But Diamond didn’t have time to worry about it. She gestured with a hoof towards the market.
“Fruit basket, now,” she said. “I gotta go.” And with that, she raced off towards the schoolhouse, not wanting to be too late. As much as she hated the idea of school, she hated the idea of summer school even more. She looked back only once, to see the pig wandering towards the market, being reminded ironically of some old foalhood nursery rhyme. So at least she had that much going for her.
“Scootaloo?” Cheerilee said.
“Here!” Scootaloo called.
“Snails?” No response.
“Snails?” she asked again, looking right at him, the colt sitting in the back. Snips, who was sitting right next to him, punched him in the shoulder.
“That’s you, dude,” Snips whispered.
“Ow! Oh, here!” Snails called, a bit doofishly. “I am present accordingly!”
Cheerilee sighed. Second time this week… again. “Snips?”
“Here!”
“Tiara, Diamond?” No response.
Cheerilee peered up from her checklist, frowning, but not entirely surprised that Diamond had elected not to show up. Again. Oh well. The filly knew the consequences. Cheerilee was just lowering that dreaded red quill, the source of nightmares and the bane of existence of all schoolchildren throughout Equestria.
“Tiara, Diamond?” she asked again. If Diamond didn’t arrive in the next five-
“HERE!” Diamond called from the doorway, panting heavily as if she’d just run a marathon. Her hair was a mess, and her tiara was nowhere in sight. It was a very rare occurrence indeed when she didn’t show up looking absolutely perfect. In fact, nearly the entire classroom was staring at her now, the exception being Snips and Snails, who were arguing over whether ladybugs were male or female. Truly a riveting engagement of vast intellect.
“Sorry… got held up… in traffic…” Diamond panted, taking her seat.
“There is no traffic,” Cheerilee said.
“Whatever,” Diamond huffed, and took her seat. She was never all that good at coming up with comebacks. At least not spur of the moment, the ones she did think of occurred to her two or three hours after she needed them. She had taken to writing down really good ones in a journal and then lamenting why she couldn’t have used them at the perfect moment. A sad fate it is.
“In any case, now that we’re all here, I’m going to finish taking attendance, and then we’re going to be reading our Founder’s Day essays. As you all know, since Founder’s Day is about beginnings, you’ve all written reports about your childhoods and how you started out. Diamond, since you were so eager to join us, you can go first.”
Apple Bloom raised her hoof. “But Ah thought y’said Ah could go first,” she drawled. “Ah worked real hard on it. Granny helped an’ everythin’.”
“Alright, you can go first,” Cheerilee said. “I’m glad somepony around here is showing some enthusiasm. Maybe some of you could can learn from it.” She didn’t want to call out Diamond again, but gave her a knowing look. The stink eye, as Diamond thought of it and was fully used to.
Diamond sighed. Today was going to drag on forever.
Over at the market, the pig was standing by the fruit vendors, his small brain trying to process and remember what the pony had told him. He wasn’t as stupid as everyone thought he was, but he was by no means a genius either. He was around high school dropout levels of intelligence, which surprisingly enough was above average in pony society, and on more than one occasion (though not consistantly) still surpassed Diamond Tiara.
“Howdy, Diamond!” someone called, though the pig ignored it. That wasn’t his name, after all, and he had no idea he was even being talked to. It was probably a weirdo.
“Nice to see you, Diamond!” someone else called. “Shouldn’t you be in school, though?” The pig looked around, but couldn’t tell who had spoken, or who it was being directed at. It didn’t matter, though, he had a job to do.
Mud, mud, where to find mud… wait, no, that wasn’t it.
Fruit basket, that was it, fruit basket… Abner had to really look around for a few minutes, since the marketplace was crowded and everything was so much bigger than he was. When he did find the kiosk selling fruit baskets, he approached it cautiously, and looked both ways to see if he was being watched. When he was confident that he was not, the pig snatched a basket from the top of the table and balanced it on his back, completely forgetting he had bits in a pouch around his neck.
The kiosk owner turned out to be Big Macintosh, who blinked in dopey surprise as he suddenly found his kiosk being bamboozled!
“What-HEY!” he exclaimed, and took off after the culprit. Abner oinked and squealed as he ran from the charging stallion, who was a lot bigger, but a lot less agile.
Big Mac was gaining on him, and Abner stopped in his tracks before doing a 180 and zooming underneath Mac’s body, using the moment of confusion and the time it took for the stallion to turn around to duck into an alley. He was off after that, making twists and turns to arrive further back up the street, and ran towards the house with his successful plunder.
Back the schoolhouse, Diamond Tiara was bored out of her mind, going through her lessons completely distracted. She picked up about half of what Cheerilee was teaching, and absorbed even less than that. It ran down to around one-third, which was better than the one-fourth she bothered to remember. After what seemed like an eternity, the final bell rang, and Diamond Tiara was first out the door. She’d been stuck in that classroom for hours, and so distracted that she hadn’t even bothered making fun of the Cutie Mark Crusaders today.
Silver Spoon came up to her, smiling faintly. Silver was not an outright bully, and in fact only teased the Crusaders because she looked up to Diamond, and Diamond made it look cool. But she honestly felt sort of bad whenever they sent the trio away crying, as her heart just wasn’t entirely in it.
“Hey, Diamond,” she said. “Thank Celestia that’s over. Aren’t Fridays just the worst?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Diamond said.
“You wanna hang out for a while? My parents are at cricket.”
“No. Thanks though.” Diamond shook her head. “I gotta get home.” In fact, she was already turning in that direction, but waved to her friend just the same. “Some other time, okay?”
“Okay!” Silver agreed, and split off to head towards her own house.
Diamond was in a decent enough mood, but unfortunately her good mood lasted only as long as it took to get back home, where she found her father waiting for her, stony faced and eye twitching. He was home early, which was always a sign of something bad happening.
“Good afternoon, Daddy,” she began, hoping that the ‘something’ that had inevitably happened didn’t involve her.
“Don’t you 'good afternoon, daddy’ me!” he scowled. “Do you have any idea of the trouble you’ve caused with that prank you pulled today?”
Whelp, her hopes were shot down.
Diamond scrunched her muzzle. “Prank? I didn’t pull any prank. I even got to school on time,” she said.
“Oh, so it WASN’T you who raided the apple fruit stand? It was some other troublemaking little pink filly with a tiara?”
“What?” she asked. That kiosk must have had a bad day by the sound of things. Abner must have just missed the theft by minutes. She’d seen him wandering around the house when he came up the path.
“I owe them thirty bits!” her father roared. “And you’re going to pay it back, every… well, bit of it!”
“Thirty bits?!” Diamond gasped. “But that’s, like, a whole weeks allowance! Am I supposed to survive without all that dough to spend on overpriced sweets? Or to foil the attempts of blank flanked losers? How?!”
“Apparently, while Big Macintosh was out searching for the culprit, someone came by and swiped the rest of his fruit baskets,” her father said. “The family is livid.”
Fruit baskets…
“Right, whatever, but it wasn’t me!” she insisted, and stormed past him into the house. “Everyone knows crime is totally lame, anyways.”
“Don’t think this is over, young lady!” her father yelled.
Diamond ignored him, and went up to her room. Abner was now sitting on her bed, looking triumphant… surrounded by at least 15 fruit baskets.
“Oh, hell,” Diamond swore.
