The Stronger Tiara

Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12 (Edited)
Chapter 13
Chapter 14

Chapter 1

She watches the Crusaders filing in for class. The Cutie Mark Crusaders.

The most recent target for her release.

To be honest with herself, she feels bad for bullying them the way that she does. They don’t deserve it. Unfortunately, she needs a release- and, she tells herself, at least she found something temporary- the lack of a cutie mark, to be specific- to bully them on. Unfortunately, the non-permanence of such state also defeats some of the effectiveness of the release.

But it’s enough of a release.

She dreads hunting up another release whenever they finally do get their marks.

Then, of course, there’s Silverspoon. Her only friend.

She’s pretty sure Silverspoon is participating in her bullying simply because she’s doing it first. She really doesn’t want to teach her friend that it’s a good thing to do, but she also can’t talk about why she does it. It’s not like it’s the right thing to do- or even a good thing to do! For that matter, it doesn’t even solve the problem at hoof!

She keeps her expression carefully untouched. Nopony must find out.

She contemplates using a blank message to get Applebloom in trouble again- and relating it to the other earth pony’s flank. She knows she won’t get in trouble for it; everypony knows her father would find out and Ms. Cheerilee would suffer for it.

Oh, yes. Her father is a bit of a conundrum. He does everything in his power to ruin everypony that hurts her- possibly why Silverspoon’s parents encouraged their friendship- yet he doesn’t show even an ounce of care for her around the house.

Her mother, however, is easier to understand. She simply doesn’t care, so long as she looks her part. So long as she looks like the high-and-mighty, holier-than-thou noble-ish prick she’s supposed to be.

She doesn’t like it.

She decides not to play the message trick. She isn’t that desperate, yet- and besides, she doesn’t think she could keep a straight face through it right now anyways.

The problem is building. Slowly. At some point, the Crusaders won’t be enough- and her mother will find out about her weakness.

And disown her. Dump her on the streets.

Her parents have the money to do that- and get away with it.

She almost wonders if she’d be better off doing that.

Probably not.

But it’s worth a little preparation. Silverspoon has a doctor’s appointment today; the Crusaders have something planned on the farm, she heard. She’ll spend her day on the other side of town, out of sight of other ponies, planning out her post-disowning life. Trying to figure out how to live.

If her mom catches her coming in messy, she’ll blame it on somepony tripping her or shoving her into a mud puddle, if she ends up that bad.

She focuses her attention on Ms. Cheerilee’s lesson. Thanks to her father, the only way she will learn is if she teaches herself. He’s so bad she can’t even give her a bad grade!

“Hey, Diamond?”

She looks up. It’s Silverspoon. “Yes?”

“You okay?”

She stops, turning to stare at her friend. “Uh, what?” She’s sure she didn’t do anything to suggest anything of the sort! At least she waited until everypony else ran off, though- so nopony is around to overhear.

“Well, it’s been more than half the day and you haven’t said anything.”

She blinks. “Is that… Unusual?”

Nod. “Something like that… There’s usually at least three pokes at the Crusaders or something by now.”

“Oh. Um…”

“How about this: Are you going to be okay today? I can skip the checkup.”

She shakes her head. “Don’t worry about me,” she states. “I’ll be alright. See you at, what, seven?”

Nod. “Right about, yes. Schoolhouse, or…?”

Nod. “Schoolhouse is good.” She smiles to her friend. “Now go. You know your mom doesn’t like you skipping doctor’s visits.”

Silverspoon offers her a glare for that. “Oh please. You’d think she’s worried about an epidemic.”

Snort. “Possibly. Every two weeks does seem a little bit overkill, doesn’t it?”

Nod. “Of course it is. But you know her- that’s what she’s like.” She lets out a sigh. “Doctor Horse has grown quite bored of my visits, but she pays him handsomely.”

“Oh? How much?”

“It changes,” she smirks. “He once told me he raises the price a little each time. As a result, she’s indirectly paid for several of the upgrades at the hospital… I think today’s visit is something to the tune of thirty thousand bits.”

Blink. “Wow. She must really care about your well-being.”

“Uh… Physical well-being, specifically, but yes.”

She raises an eyebrow, but chooses not to inquire.

Close to an hour has passed. She’s out in the grass outside of town, where nopony can see her. On the side opposite the Everfree; she doesn’t need something to crop up and attack her.

Though, she does wonder how her father would financially ruin a timberwolf.

But that’s an experiment for another day. She sniffs daintily at the grass… Bleh. She-

She’ll be sneaking in, all covered in dirt, tonight. Bonus, she’ll be able to blame it on what it really is- a sinkhole. She’d had absolutely no warning before the ground simply gave way underneath her hooves.

She falls, on top of this plug of dirt. She braces herself for a landing as best she can; if she doesn’t, she could easily get hurt.

She falls only a dozen feet or so, before she- and the preceding landslide- hit something steeply sloped. She gets showered by falling dirt and rock- only small ones, thankfully- as she slides along a steep, smooth surface. She catches a glimpse of something- metal, she thinks- as she scrambles for a hold in the waning light.

She doesn’t get it. Instead, she gets a moments’ warning of an abrupt change in the slope before she enters freefall again… and hits another slope, about equivalent, but going in the opposite direction. She gets showered by more dirt and gravel as she continues sliding, and resumes her scrambling for a hold, now in total darkness.

This happens again.

And again.

Somewhere around the tenth direction change, she hears the rumble of something significant following her down. Like a good-sized rock.

Finally, after a total of thirteen changes- she’d counted- she crashes to a stop. She immediately scrambles to her hooves, turning to move in the direction she’d been moving before. She’s afraid of the dark- and whatever this rumble is, she’s fairly sure it’s not friendly.

It hits her anyways. Her hind leg seems to snap like a twig as it rolls overtop. Thankfully, it is then deflected to the side, preserving the rest of her body- but without her left hind leg, she doesn’t think she’s even physically capable of returning to the surface.

Nevermind that, even with it, she’ll never be able to see her way up.

She bites her tongue and pulls herself further away from wherever the rocks are coming from before she runs into a flat wall, carrying the same slope as the one she’d most recently slid down- and forming a ceiling. Here, she waits for everything to stop moving, to become silent.

Thankfully, nothing touches her. She turns herself around, leaning against that flat wall as she reaches her forehooves down to find out what’s left of her hind leg.

One. Two.

She lets out a scream as her search reveals the third break in a particularly painful way.

She forces her head back down, breathing deeply. She can see what looks like another break, and her hoof looks to be broken as well. She’s bleeding, but it doesn’t look like it’s that bad.

She pauses, looking to her right, at the boulder that had ended up next to her. She can see the flat, vertical wall it settled against.

She tilts her head. She had been in total darkness not five seconds ago, hadn’t she?

She looks the other way. An open passage, though much of it has been blocked by the landslide. The gap is small enough for a filly like herself to get in, though. And inside this strange, metal passage, with something odd attached to the angled walls, there are spots of light, shining out to her.

She tilts her head again. It looks almost like somepony took a house and tilted it about forty-five degrees.

She looks up the passage she’d slid down. It fades into the darkness.

She forces herself to her hooves, carefully holding the injured hind leg aloft. She limps herself forwards, down into the passage with the light. She limps all the way to one of the lights before stopping, looking around as she leans against the odd rail-like construction on the one wall.

She spends several seconds looking around, still breathing deeply, before she allows herself to speak. “Hello?” she calls.

No answer.

“Anypony there?”

A light flickers on in a passage- angled upwards, of course- not far from where she is now.

She looks around. She wishes she had something convenient to stuff her hurt leg into- like a sling. Though those are normally used for forelegs, she’s pretty sure.

She wonders what the doctors use when somepony breaks a hind leg- aside from a cast, of course.

She rises slowly to her three working hooves, lifting her broken leg as best she can as she limps her way to the new passage.

It seems innocent enough- so she pushes herself up it. She…

Huh. The doors are on the ceiling and the floor, but not the walls.

So, did somepony take a house and tip it up onto one of its corners? And bury that in the ground?

She stops suddenly, hoof suspended over empty air. An open door. She looks down.

It’s a small room. She sees what looks like a bunch of stretchers piled on the ground, filling probably close to half the room. She sees the three great big boxlike things attached to the vertical wall the door connects to… Presumably what was supposed to be the floor. The stretchers have piled up to one of them- which has light spilling out of it.

She tilts her head. “Somepony in here?” She looks up and down the passage.

No response.

She shudders, looking once again at the stretchers. If nothing else, those look softer than the hard metal she’s on right now; she should be able to ease her passing… Or her time, if somepony finds her down here. Which she doesn’t expect.

She sticks her head in through the door, looking around. Nothing more of interest; no other doors out. She looks up and down the passage once again. Nothing. She looks at the stretchers. With their metal frames, she could possibly build a ladder out of them to get back out, if need be.

She glances back at her injured leg, and offers a little grin. Of course, that would only work if she managed to fix her leg somehow.

She takes a deep breath, looks down, and jumps.

She falls quickly- and lands right where she’d aimed, on one of the stretcher-things.

It hurts.

She lets out a yelp of pain; as it turns out, this stretcher isn’t just soft fabric suspended over nothing- no, it’s scratchy fabric suspended over the corners and edges of other stretchers. Add that to her broken limb, and she figures even her mother would cry out.

That hallway had been vastly preferable.

A quick glance reveals an easy escape from this torturous surface- into the box. Smooth, solid metal sides. She limps her way into it, settles herself into the corner, and leans back against the long side. She pulls her tail in, using it as a cushion for her injured leg, before letting out a breath and relaxing.

A low hum catches her attention almost as soon as she closed her eyes. She opens them again, looking for the source.

Oh. The lid of the box is sliding shut again. It looks mighty heavy; she probably doesn’t have the strength to stop it. Especially since it’s sliding down.

She also doesn’t have the time to scramble back out.

“What in Equestria…?”

It lands completely closed. She blinks at it once.

“Great. Trapped. Yeeich!”

She lands from her slight jump as the strange… fluid that just started falling out of the ceiling pours off of her mane, sliding down towards the bottom. She slides herself out of its path, attempting to brush it out of her mane with one hoof.

A doomed effort. It pools quickly, soaking into her tail, pooling over it. The pain in her leg seems to fade quickly as it pools up over it, and she finally lets herself relax. If she’s going to drown, at least it won’t hurt.

Something plastic, hanging from the same ceiling, attaches itself very suddenly to her muzzle.

She lets out a muffled yelp, forelegs flying up to rip it off. To rip it off… err…

Her forelegs fall limply to her sides as she falls unconscious.

Chapter 2

As my first contact with sentient life in longer than I have cared to count loses consciousness in my medical nanovat, I silently pray to myself I have made the correct decisions. The collapse of my armor was expected; as the point closest to the surface, that area received the most erosive energy over the years. At first, I assumed it was just a collapse. The breathing detected by sensors along the path the landslide had taken could easily have been non-sentient life.

Then everything settled down. The breathing changed pattern a couple times; I was beginning to suspect whatever creature had fallen into my hull was at least intelligent when whatever it was let out a scream.

This scream was enough to suggest that it could even have been sentient life- so I turned on a light in a nearby passage.

The creature had limped its way out, dragging a broken limb, and made a beeline for the light- before positively sitting down and looking around.

It looks like some kind of miniature equinoid creature. I’m not sure what it is called- but I have noticed a few interesting features: The fluffy, multicolored mane and tail, the diamond tiara on its head, rather amazing to have stayed on through the fall, the enormous eyes for the size of its head, the enormous head for its body.

It had then spoken. I did not understand its oration, but attempted to respond; the oration was very clearly a word.
Unfortunately, my speakers in the area did not respond; I have since run a check on all of my internal speakers, for a flat zero rate of functionality. I’m lucky my cameras and microphones still function.

It had spoken again, with a different oration- also clearly language. I entered both orations into my lingual database- for parsing into another language, once I have enough samples- and turned on the lights in the passage to my medbay. Well, one of the two- but the other one is at the far end of my hull and besides, it’s nonfunctional.

The creature had then, very slowly, crawled up to the open door to my medbay. I rather doubted it would make the jump down to my only working medical nanovat- but I could only offer it.

To my surprise, after some looking and calling, it did. As expected, the stretchers that had fallen out of their storage locations so long ago were not a comfortable landing. The creature had taken refuge inside the nanovat… which I activated. The rest is history.

… Or, not history, it simply hasn’t happened yet.

Hold one. This creature is female; Medical has just discovered her sex chromosomes.

Her hind leg is broken; crushed, presumably, during the landslide. She has bled some, but not enough to affect her cognitive function. I am not aware of what a healthy blood pressure might be for her kind.

I consider myself lucky my nanovats are, despite being attached to a normally ground-bound Bolo, designed to function in microgravity- and any other gravity the designers could think of, all the way up to about twenty gees. More than that and it becomes impossible to maintain a stable environment inside for medical operations.

In any case, as the nanovat fills, I float her up in the nanite gel, centering her in the machine. My nanites quickly penetrate her form, hunting for problems.

I find her leg. Rather predictably; I already knew that was damaged. I find numerous bruises, scratches, and cuts; presumably from her rather tumultuous journey down here.

I find a few other health problems. Not significant ones, yet- but ones that would crop up on her later, ruin her future. Things like her race’ equivalent of HIV, developing slowly into a case of AIDS.

Fortunately, unlike twenty-first century medicine, this is an easy problem for me to solve- even before she becomes aware of it.

I discover numerous similarities and differences between her biology and that of my creators, humanity. I do find it convenient, at least, that her small size means she won’t have any trouble whatsoever in fitting through my cramped passages.

She has a strange dream. She knows it’s a dream, because she can’t jump nearly that high. She jumped on top of the strange box thing, hopped to one of the higher ones, then spun around and made a flying leap back out the door. She slides a little down the hallway, before turning back to gallop up the passage, jumping urgently over the open doorway. She follows the path of the light, including jumping up to reverse direction a couple of times. As she goes, the sense of urgency intensifies… until she hops down through another door, landing on something… before moving to the side and connecting a wire. A sense of accomplishment washes through her, all urgency gone.

Then she wakes up. She sucks in a deep breath, eyes flying wide as she examines her surroundings- the inside of the box thing. Oh, and that big slab over the opening is sliding up again.

The fluid stuff is gone. Every last drop, leaving her mane, tail, and coat gleaming with cleanness.

She shakes herself out, and rises to her hooves… Then looks back at her hind leg. It’s no longer broken.

She looks back forwards again, shakes herself again, and steps carefully out onto the stretcher pile. She does not want to be stuck in that box again.

She pauses on the pile, scowling at her hooves. She knows she’s an earth pony, and that that comes with strength- but she feels… stronger, somehow. She balances herself carefully on the stretchers and makes a jump for the top of the box thing, like in her dream. She doesn’t expect to make it.

She overshoots. She nearly falls back off of it again, but recovers in time, before staring down at the stretchers… and the box. Exactly what is this thing?

“Hello?” she calls.

No response.

So she hops carefully onto the higher box. She underdoes it this time, just barely hooking a hoof over the corner of the box to pull herself up. She balances herself on this corner, looking at the door.

She leaps for it. Who knows, that dream might have been true!

It was. She sails out the door, hitting the ceiling before she crashes back to the floor, sliding down until she gets caught against another door. She climbs out of the doorwell and walks back up the passage to that one door. It’s still open, showing her the strange boxes inside it.

She shudders, looking up the passage. Why not? She follows the path from her dream.

Ten minutes later, she pushes the wire together. She holds it in place for a few seconds before she raises her eyebrow and withdraws her hoof. She doesn’t even know what a wire is- so why does she know this is a wire…?

It stays together.

The lights seem to flicker slightly. She follows the flicker- including returning to the passage outside. She follows the passage up, following the light once again. She calls out for somepony every once in a while, as well.

Finally, she stands underneath what looks like torn metal. Thin, torn metal, with dirt and rock on top of it.

One flying leap later, she’s back outside in the sunlight. She glances at the sun, shivers, and sets off for the schoolhouse. She hopes it’s not past seven just yet; she’d hate to make Silver Spoon wait.

Chapter 3

She reaches the schoolhouse. One glance up at the clock shows it’s three minutes past seven; however, she doesn’t see anypony outside.

She pauses at the end of the walk, glancing both ways, before turning to trot to the door. Silver Spoon may have headed inside to wait.

She pauses outside, her ear pricked forwards. It sounds almost like class is in session! But she’s certain Celestia’s sun is in an evening position in the sky, and that that clock says seven. There’s no way class is in session!

… Wait. Ms. Cheerilee isn’t giving a lecture and taking questions. Judging by the voices- she can’t tell what anypony is saying- it sounds more like Ms. Cheerilee is simply moderating a big group discussion.

She reaches a hoof up and opens the door, letting herself in. Then blinks at the assembly.

About half of her class is there, including the Crusaders- and Silver Spoon. So is Ms. Cheerilee.

So are all six Element Bearers of Harmony.

She quickly picks up on the gist of the conversation. They’re looking for something- something important, it would seem.

She tilts her head slightly. She’d like to help- but her mother probably wouldn’t approve of it. Though… She probably could get away with helping. It’ll take a little effort to engineer her way into being asked to help in such a way she can say yes while remaining all… stuck up. But there’s only one way to start that- with a question.

“What’s going on?” she asks, while Twilight is talking.

Princess Twilight Sparkle glances over in her speech. “... tried that. Glad you could join us, Diamond- we’re brainstorming loc- Wait a minute.” She, along with every other pony in the room, turns to look at her. “Diamond Tiara?”

She looks back at them for a couple seconds. “What?” she asks.

Silver Spoon gallops out from the crowd to capture her in a hug. “I knew I should have skipped that checkup!”

She steps backwards from the force of the rush, accepting the hug. “I don’t get it.”

A strange sneezing noise comes from somewhere- and the entire room is redecorated in the blink of an eye. Streamers hang from the rafters and some locations they ought not to be able to hang from. Confetti showers down everywhere, except around the brand-new cake wobbling to a halt on the large table suddenly filling the center of the room, conveniently ringed by the present ponies.

The banner hanging across the rafters just above and in front of the cake reads “Welcome Back, Diamond Tiara!”

She spends another second or two thinking.

“Was I gone for a long time or something?” she finally asks.

“Three days!” Silverspoon states immediately, pulling out of the hug to hold her at forelegs’ reach. “You’ve been missing for three days! What happened?”

“I… I don’t know.” She contemplates mentioning the sinkhole, but then somepony else would find it- and the strange structure underneath. For now, at least, she wants to keep it to herself. She wants to have someplace to hide when things get too bad.

She also wants to investigate why she’d been gone for three days. She only remembers being awake for a total of about two hours, not even the four it would take to get from school’s out to seven. She doesn’t generally sleep for three days at a time, though.

… Though, she supposes, sleeping in a box full of numbing liquid with something strange attached to her face isn’t exactly like normal sleeping. She may well have slept longer than she normally might have.

She wants to… Not experiment, no- that’s for when Princess Twilight inevitably discovers it. Rather, she wants to find out about that. Examine it, perhaps discover exactly why she had slept for so long- even, exactly why her leg had seemed to heal itself while she slept.

Maybe she could talk to it. It hadn’t answered her, or spoken to her, but it had seemed to respond to her voice. Maybe it’s got some of those fancy new voice-activation spells on it? Given how old and worn it looked, she rather doubts it, but who knows?

She’ll just have to get back to it.

… After this party. And Silver Spoon probably won’t leave her alone for months, so she might have to sneak out at night or something.

Or get kicked out of her house- but she’d rather not do that unless she absolutely has to.

Her night went smoothly. Homecoming was interesting, to say the least; her father practically fawned over her for a few minutes, while her mother demanded the answer to one question and one question only: Did she wear her nobility properly throughout her absence?

Of course, she said yes. Except for the time when she’d been feeling out her injuries immediately after the landslide finished, she had ‘worn her nobility’ plenty good enough. Calling out for anypony… didn’t count.

She rather hopes she’d done well enough in her sleep- but inside that box, she rather doubts that anypony could see her during that time anyways.

She’d slammed her door rather harder than she’d intended, but nopony had come upstairs to badger her for it, so she could only assume she’d gotten away with it.

Now, though, it’s ten minutes after her night. In other words, it’s ten minutes after her parents went to bed- and they’re almost certainly asleep by now.

This is the time she would, five times out of every ten, go on a midnight stroll through… someplace. While wearing a disguise, so nopony recognizes her while she’s acting out of character.

She grins to herself. She knows exactly where she’ll stroll tonight.

Her disguise takes less than a minute to don. It takes her only two minutes to hit the streets.

It takes ten minutes to find the dark hole. She quickly checks her surroundings, scanning for anypony that might see, before dropping into the hole.

She lands solidly on the angled floor, squinting around in the darkness. Good thing she has her light crystal with her this time- or, more accurately, is thinking of it. She slips her tiara out from under her cape, flips back her hood, and installs it on her head. Next, she taps it twice- and the center gemstone lights up, glowing gently to illuminate the passage.

She looks up the passage, and back down it, before walking down the slope. About halfway down to the first corner, she checks back up the slope- still nothing- and removes her mask, stuffing it into her hidden saddlebags.

At each corner, and many times in between, she checks both ways before continuing along her chosen path.

It’s not until she reaches the bottom and enters the horizontal path that she starts talking.

“Ya know,” she begins. “I’d probably tell somepony if it wouldn’t do more harm than good.” She pauses, gazing up the passage she’d followed up to the room with the boxes in it. None of the strange lights have come on this time, but she gets the idea that they will if she needs them to. “Only problem is… Anypony that tries to help…” She shakes her head, lets out a sigh. “I just can’t do that. If I try telling them… If I’m lucky, I’ll be grounded for weeks. If I’m not…

“I’ve been wondering, a little. How hard could it be to live on my own? Presumably, food would be difficult to come by, and I’d have to spend a lot more effort in studying. Ms. Cheerilee could probably give me an honest grade, as well.

“But… Why? And for what?

“If anypony hurts me, even something as minor as a bad grade or a sub-stellar medical report, he’ll ruin them. If she kicks me out, he’ll probably turn that on me. I could kiss my tiara goodbye… live like a farmpony. No- at least Applebloom actually has something. I’d probably have to go find a rock farm to work off thousands of bits of sabotage.

“After all, it’s not like he actually cares about me. All he cares about is that nobody hurts my high-and-mighty image.”

She shuffles her forelegs, lying down on the hard metal. “Then, it’s not like she’s any better. At the end of the day, I’m about as valuable to her as a stack of bits on a counter.” She snorts. “I suppose it fits, kinda- her name is Spoiled Rich.

“She doesn’t care how I feel. She doesn’t care if somepony badmouths me.

“She only cares that I maintain a holier-than-thou attitude- that I am perfect.”

She sighs, rolling onto her side. “So, what’s the point? If I tell somepony, he’ll ruin them. If I tell them, she’ll throw me out and he’ll ruin me. If I don’t tell either…

“That’s what I’ve been doing: Not telling anypony. Only, I can’t keep it up for long. I can only contain the pain for so long. I can only mitigate it for so long.

“If I can’t tell anypony and I can’t tell them, I’ll have to contain it. I’ll have to mitigate it, no matter how long it takes.

“But the Crusaders are going to get their cutie marks sometime. How else can I release the stresses? Tell somepony…”

Her eyes widen, and she grins up at the ceiling. “Or something. You’re here. You listen, and respond. You don’t tell other ponies, you don’t have finances to get ruined. I can tell you, right? Without worrying about anypony getting hurt, or finding out?”

She lets out a sigh, turning to examine her forehoof. “I hope so. If I do tell you about it, perhaps I can drive Silver Spoon crazy again and again by not bothering the Crusaders. I wonder what they’ll do if we simply stop bullying them?

“I hope I can do that. I feel bad for taking it out on them; it’s not like it’s their fault.”

Chapter 4

“I hate my life,” she mutters, running down the blackened passage in the faint glow of her tiara. She’d been spotted- and followed. The strange stallion chasing her is wearing a cloak; she has no idea who he is. She’s pretty sure he doesn’t know who she is either; she’s still wearing her cloak, with her mask. The light from her tiara is only barely making it out in front of her, sneaking out from its position in her saddlebags.

It’s Sunday night, three days after her first voluntary visit. She hadn’t expected to run into him.

He’s catching up, slowly. The strange strength she’d gained after her nap in that odd box has been fading- and it’s down to the point she can no longer outrun an adult. She will admit, she has enjoyed not having to be as careful about exactly how hard she closes doors or stomps her hoof.

She’s pretty sure that tile in the fillies’ room at the school is still cracked, from when she’d put her hoof down while talking to herself in the mirror.

Now, most of that strange strength is gone, and she feels almost weak. Had it stuck around, she might have learned to be more gentle, but she most certainly would have been able to fight back against him. She’d only been able to escape earlier because he’d been surprised by her counterattack.

She flips herself in mid-air, landing on the opposing slope with all four legs at once, and taking off down it. If she remembers correctly, the gap between the dirt pile at the bottom and the passage she’d ended up in should be too small for him to get in through.

At least, with any speed. She should be able to find that alternate exit route while he’s busy digging his way in, and escape back to her home. She won’t be going out again for a long time, if she can manage it.

She performs the next turn; he’s only a couple seconds behind her. If she remembers correctly, this is the last one. She runs as hard as she can.

Yes, it is the last one; there is the pile of dirt and rock. She spots the opening to the side- and darts through it the moment she hits the dirt. He misses her by mere inches- and she doesn’t stop. She runs down the horizontal passage.

“Get back here!” he demands.

She ignores him, running towards the uphill slope she used last time- the one the room with the odd boxes in them is on.

“I’ll tell your father!” he threatens.

She almost snorts. An excellent way for him to ruin himself, not her. If he tells her mother, though… Regardless, she’s pretty sure he doesn’t know who she is.

“Come on, you little varmint!”

She ignores him, turning to run up that passage. She can hear him digging at the debris from the avalanche.

She runs. She hears him break through it when she gets to the top- so she changes her plan.

She jumps up to make the passage. Yes, she can still jump high enough to do that; it’s difficult, though. She continues running, burning up what little of her natural earth pony stamina she’s been able to maintain behind her parents’ backs.

She makes it to the room with the wire before he becomes visible, but he’s still following all along. She doesn’t know how.

Once in the room, she hides from the door and deactivates her tiara, plunging herself into total darkness.

Then, heart thundering against her chest, she waits.

She wishes the door would close. He’s going to round the corner- and see the only open door for several passages- any minute now.

She waits.

She can hear him approaching the corner. Five seconds. Three seconds. The door closes.

She looks up at the faint noise. The door closed, but the edges of the door aren’t very straight, so light and sound will still pass through it. She listens to him reaching and climbing the corner- after which he seems to stop, to look almost directly upwards… through solid metal, at her.

No, not at her- she fumbles briefly, pulling out her tiara. His gaze seems to shift as she moves it, so she drops it on the floor and climbs the other floor-wall of the room; the middle of the room she’s in is occupied by some gigantic… thing, and if she climbs this wall, she can potentially get on top of it, and out the other door out of this room, to a parallel passage to the one he’s in.

His gaze does not follow her. He starts moving slowly up the passage he’s in.

She jumps onto the gigantic thing, hooking a hoof quickly onto one of the many… she assumes they’re wires, connecting to it. She climbs up it, positions herself carefully to jump to the door- which slides open for her.

It’s not until after she jumps out the door, lands smoothly on the downwards slope, and turns around to walk across the closed door that she realizes she’s still in total darkness.

Almost immediately, light floods the passage from one of the vertical walls- the one that’s supposed to be the ceiling. She blinks in the brightness, and looks down at the door she’s standing on. On the other side of that room, he has just found the door in, and is now employing is horn in forcing it open.

She can’t see it… but she can. She doesn’t understand it.

She looks up, stepping carefully off of the closed door, and progresses up the passage. She knows the way out, even though she’s never been in this passage.

As she expected, the lights turn themselves off behind her, and on in front of her. She’s halfway back to the entrance when he finally penetrates that door and jumps through it, moving quickly to her abandoned tiara… and staring at it.

He’s still staring at it when she jumps her way out. Her waning strength has left her unable to jump directly out, like she did last time; instead, she picks a ledge to jump to, lands on it, and leaps from there to the slope, where she drives the points of her hooves into the soft earth to climb her way up, back to the surface of the grass. She takes one glance back down at the hole; even this far away, she knows he’s still in there, just leaving that room as he starts retracing his steps and mumbling something about runaways.

She shudders, and heads home for the night. Living on her own most certainly isn’t an option with ponies like him running around.

She’s already slipped back into her home, and back up to her bedroom, before he starts scrambling his way back out of the hole. She spends almost ten minutes snickering into her pillow as he repeatedly triggers further avalanches in his efforts to get back out, until he finally evens the slope far enough for him to avoid sliding back down in.

Then he goes out of sight.

She blinks. That door he’d forced open closes.

She has no clue what is going on.

She falls asleep quickly.

She awakens even faster.

She’s never been a morning pony. The morning rush her mother likes foisting upon her has always been torturous. Especially since she’s not allowed to act tired.

She’s feeling like a morning pony today. She doesn’t know why.

She rolls out of bed, stretches her tired muscles- they never get enough rest- and reaches over to disable her alarm clock. At least her mother had allowed her to acquire one. Even if she’d had to lie to the shopkeeper, claim it was for ‘a friend’ that couldn’t seem to get up in the morning.

She freezes, hoof floating over the device. It’s not ringing.

She blinks. Did she really beat the thing up?

The alarm clock goes off very suddenly, and she silences it instantly. Yes, she did. Not literally, of course. She walks gently to her dresser, where she pulls out her manebrush.

Five minutes later, she steps out of her bedroom to go downstairs for breakfast. It’s a short walk, and one she usually does with her tiara on. Unfortunately, she only has one.

She pauses only momentarily outside the dining room. By the sound if it, both her parents are inside, setting out breakfast. She pushes the door open, and walks in.

Her mother’s gaze instantly zeroes in on the top of her head. “Where’s your tiara?” she demands.

She looks up to meet her mother’s gaze. She’d expected this situation- and she knows exactly how to respond. “I don’t know,” she replies. “I couldn’t find it.”

Her father looks up at that. “Did someone take it?”

“I don’t know,” she replies. “It wasn’t where I put it last night.”

He scowls. “Alright.” He glances at her mother. “Breakfast first, then we’ll look for it together.”

She nods her agreement.

Half an hour later, she follows her parents out of her room. They hadn’t been able to find it either.

“I’m going to send you to school without it,” her father states. “If anypony asks, tell them it’s been sent in for regular maintenance. I’ll check with the Guard on my way to work today, see if they’ve seen anything.” He sighs, dismissing her to get ready for school- which consists of flat nothing, she has no homework due for today- as he turns the corner with her mom. As he goes, she hears him say something to her mom. “I told you we should have gotten a backup,” he seems to be saying.

She elects to ignore that conversation, instead moving to the front door and starting her journey to the schoolhouse.

Silverspoon meets her at the normal corner- and starts talking immediately.

“Hey Diamond! Uh, where’s your tiara…?”

She shakes her head. “It’s been, ah, sent in for regular maintenance. How about your spoon?”

She blinks, taken aback. “My… spoon?”

“Yes,” she nods, grinning. “I’m a Diamond Tiara without a Diamond Tiara, and you’re a Silverspoon…”

Silverspoon catches on, nodding. “A silverspoon without a silver spoon. I think I left it in the medicine closet.” Then she lets out a chuckle. “Good one. So, um, what’s the plan for today?”

“Eat, sleep, repeat,” she states.

Another snort. “I was thinking a little more, uh, general than that.”

She snorts. “Life goes on. We get Friday’s test back today- perhaps we could spend some time going over them?”

Chuckle. “If going over my mistakes and using mine as an answer key for yours counts,” she states.

She smiles. “Of course it counts. I’m hoping I got at least a three this time.”

Sigh. “Out of ten. Have you tried asking him?”

She shakes her head. “No. He won’t let Mrs. Cheerilee do anything but give me perfect score.” She glances up at her friend. “At least he doesn’t mind our, uh, ‘comparing notes’. That’s always a plus.”

Nod. “Yes, yes it is. Um, anything planned for the Crusaders, or no?”

She scowls. “Um… I don’t know. You?”

Shake. “Me neither- but I’m feeling the need, you know?”

She tilts her head. “Uh, no, I don’t know.”

This earns her a scandalized look and a frown. “I… I’ll explain later. Um… anyways… for now, I am feeling the need.”

“Is… Is this something you can talk about?”

A gentle shake, with her eyes closed. “No.”

She moves closer. “Don’t worry, I’ve got your back.”

Her friend smiles, and mirrors her motion. “I’ve got yours too.”

“Just don’t say that too loud.”

Nod. “You neither.”

Raised eyebrow. “I’m being serious.”

“Me too.”

She blinks a couple times. “... Oh. I think I understand.”

Her friend raises an eyebrow at her. “Oh?”

“All this time, I thought you were just following my example.”

Nod. “That’s how it started, but…” Sigh. “I mean, it’s so effective.”

“Even though it’s wrong.”

Nod. “Even though Mrs. Cheerilee should be harping on us for it, but can’t because our parents, uh, ‘care’ about us.”

“Well hey, at least they let her give you an honest grade.”

Nod. “That is true.”

Filthy Rich walks into the bank. He’d checked with the Guard; they hadn’t seen anything, but will reportedly ‘keep there eyes open’. Something about his morning must have shown on his face, because one of the lesser bankers approaches him as he steps through the employee-only door.

“Mr. Rich, Sir,” the banker pronounces. “There’s been a… situation.”

Oh. Not related to his morning, though- rather, a crime against the bank. He raises his eyebrow. “How much?”

“Nothing, Sir- they were caught. However…” She glances towards the teller’s counters.

He mirrors the glance; there’s a couple customers. “Right. My office, then.”

The walk is a very short one. As a matter of fact, despite how it had come out as a command, it seems his lesser banker had both expected and even wanted the instruction to come, so she’s more than willing. Once they get into his office and close the door, he turns to her as he continues to move behind his desk. “What happened?”

She gives a quick nod. “This morning, a unicorn stallion came in with what he claimed to be Diamond’s tiara, given freely to authorize a million-bit transaction.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

She sighs. “The teller told him a manager was required for that kind of transaction and sent for me. When I arrived, I didn’t believe him either- but I accepted the crown anyways. It appeared genuine, but I noticed a tracing spell in one of the lesser gemstones, so I told him I had to take it back to our appraiser to verify its authenticity, and removed it to the backroom- where I placed it on the table, instructed nopony to touch it, and sent for the Guards.

“They agreed. The Guards, that is; they prevented him from fleeing when they arrived and, when I gave them the crown, the Lieutenant that accepted it reportedly spotted a compulsion spell as well. He’s been arrested and the crown confiscated. The lieutenant said they would return it as soon as they had gathered all possible evidence from it and stripped it of any undesirable influences.”

“You just let him take it?”

She nods. “He said it would be dangerous at best to let her wear it in its current state.”

He blinks. “Alright. Whenever it comes back, I’m going to want it in a Unicorn Lock Box as soon as possible.”

She nods again. “Yes sir.”

He nods. “Dismissed, thank you.”

She bows herself out, closing the door behind him.

He lets out a sigh, and starts his work as the general manager and owner of the entire bank. He’s going to want to identify the case and, if the Guards don’t do it first, see to it that whoever placed those spells gets punished for hurting his Diamond.

At least, for trying to hurt his diamond. He’ll have to ask the Guards when they think the spells were emplaced, find out if she wore the tiara after they were. Find out if there is any lasting effect from those spells.

He lets out a sigh. He really wishes she’d open up to him a little more, like everypony else’s fillies. He has difficulty thinking she’s perfectly happy with everything he and his wife are doing- especially with how guarded she seems.

He wishes he knew what was bothering her.

Author's Note

Depending on how events go tomorrow, this may well be the last chapter I post for a while; most likely, I'll be too busy with a new job and a new home. But that shouldn't last long, I haven't got much to move out of my parents' home.

Chapter 5

She lets out a sigh of relief, inside, when class starts. Ever since she arrived on the school grounds, ponies have been staring at her. It’s been making her nervous- but for some reason, she’s really good at hiding it at the moment; she’s virtually certain everypony thinks she hasn’t even noticed their stares. She concentrates on what Ms. Cheerilee is telling the class.

Funny. It seems so much easier to pay attention than it used to.

She can still see the doors in that odd, metal thing underground. Maybe she should have never returned? She doesn’t know.

Ponies are still staring at her. She needs to either retrieve or replace her crown soon; too much more of this will drive her crazy.

She remembers what it looks like. How could she forget? She’s spent many a day in her room, studying the thing, for lack of anything else to do!

She can also feel the line on her head, beneath her mane, where the thing always rested. She knows exactly how big it was, exactly what colors. She remembers the light spell- the only spell placed on it, for in case she needed to go somewhere dark, like the basement, for any reason.

Eighty-three and a half minutes. In eighty-three and a half minutes, she’ll have another one. It’ll be down in that underground labyrinth, but she knows exactly how to get there- and she can even have it brought out to her, though that could take a few more minutes.

Meh. Even ninety-one and a quarter minutes will still be within school hours; if she wants it anytime within the next five and a half hours or so, it’ll have to come to her.

It’ll do that.

Ms. Cheerilee hooves her her graded test.

One glance at the front page is all she needs. She knows she got a perfect score once again- yet two of the three questions on the front page are wrong. One is a sign mistake, the other she misplaced a decimal point in the middle of her calculation- and got 83 when multiplying 7 and 12.

Funny, she didn’t know she was that good at… Well, the whole sequence: Reading the question, reading her answer, spotting her mistakes, and finally finding the correct answer… all in no real time at all. On three questions, all at once.

She flips the page, glancing at the other questions- and answering them mentally with similar speed. And, she knows somehow, accuracy.

… It only works on the math and logic questions. She’s still stumped by the history questions. Some of the biology questions seem wrong to her, but she can’t quite put her hoof on exactly how.

The science questions had been a source of curiosity. Her knowledge of them hadn’t changed- but science has generally been her best subject, and she’s never been possessed of so much curiosity on the subject before.

But at least she got two out of twelve of the math questions right- that is, the two easiest. Or close thereto.

She almost shudders. Whatever is causing this new ability, she likes it- she’ll just want to be sure it’s not going to hurt her.

It won’t. She doesn’t understand the details, even though she knows them too, but she knows it won’t hurt her. It will help her instead.

Perhaps she should involve somepony else, find out what they might think of it? The same… whatever that will be delivering her tiara will be able to lift almost any pony back out of the labyrinth, so she should be able to choose anypony.

Anypony she wants to, that is.

Which reminds her. Silverspoon is going to be busy; a messenger showed up before class to alert the silver earth pony of some task or another back home. Besides, it would be more convenient to have a unicorn along instead of another earth pony. She’s tempted to go to the Princess- but she stops herself very quickly. Not one of the adults, they wouldn’t listen and are big fans of taking things away.

Not from her, usually, but in general, they are.

She’ll have to pick a youth. They’ll be less skilled in magic, but they might actually stop to listen. Maybe look at what she has to show them, without branding it as ‘dangerous’ and forbidding her from approaching it.

She runs through her mental list. Preferably a classmate; she knows them the best, and will be able to judge their probable reactions more accurately- which ones are safe to inform, and which ones will run to the adults.

Unfortunately, many fall into the latter category. There’s only one that probably falls into the first category; she sits two seats to the left and one forwards. What’s more, she’s also had a fairly negative relationship.

Perhaps she can turn that around, though? She thinks back to what she overheard just this morning. She’ll have to wait until after school, then make the approach very carefully. Especially if she wants to minimize the skittish behavior she currently expects, and prevent any possible practical jokes, pranks, or other unkindnesses against herself.

She’ll have to close off her latest release, though… Eh, she can do that. She already feels far more stable than she ever did before, no matter how many or how effective of releases she found.

She resolves to wait for after school. Perhaps she can catch the white unicorn while still on school grounds.

There’s too many variables for her to make even an educated guess on that question.

… and variables or not, she couldn’t even begin to make an ‘educated guess’ on that kind of question before. Maybe it’s another perk.

But they do say, everything has its pros… and cons. All she’s noticing right now are pros- so what are the cons? Where are they?

When will she find them?

She doesn’t know.

“Mr. Rich?”

He looks up from his desk. Somepony- his best teller, by the voice- just knocked. “Come in.”

She comes in, stopping in the door and bowing her head. “Sergeant Stonewall has arrived, and has requested an audience with you.”

He raises his eyebrow. “The Guard?”

Nod.

“About my daughter’s tiara?”

Shrug. “He didn’t say, but suspect it is.”

He nods. “Send him in, please.”

She bows herself out. “Yes Sir.”

“Come in.” She’d just knocked again.

She opens the door. “Sergeant Stonewall, Sir.”

He nods. “Thank you.” He looks at the Guard sergeant standing next to her. “You called?”

The Sergeant enters, the teller closing the door behind him. “Mr. Rich,” he begins. “You’re aware of the tiara incident this morning, right?”

He nods. “I was made aware of it, yes.”

He bows his head. “About the tiara. We have been able to confirm, it is genuinely Diamond’s tiara. However… Underneath the compulsion spell, we’ve discovered a persistent dark magic curse.”

His eyes widen. “A curse?”

He nods. “We estimate it would take only about two years to corrupt her, were she to wear it, to a level similar to that of King Sombra. The tiara has been sent off for Princess Celestia’s personal attention; if anyone, she will be able to remove the curse.

“We don’t think she’ll be able to. If she can’t, the tiara will be classified as a dangerous artefact and locked in the Vault. The Crown will reimburse the value, but…” He gestures lightly with one hoof.

He snorts. “True. What about the jerk that put them on it?”

He raises his eyebrow. “Same stallion as brought it to your bank. There’s a death warrant to his name.”

He raises his eyebrow as well. “Oh?”

Nod. “A known criminal, yes. We didn’t realize it was him until he shadow-walked right out of the station.”

Blink. “Can we put a bounty on him as well?”

His eyebrow goes right back up again. “A bounty? Not on Crown or Guard finances, I’m afraid.”

“What if I fund it myself?”

“We can do that, yes.”

“Right then. One million bits, dead or alive.”

Blink. “Uh, yes, we can do that- but for that much, you’ll have to pay it up front.”

He nods, and reaches a hoof into his desk drawer for a very specifically printed piece of paper. “Any fees?”

He shakes his head. “There’s already a death warrant to his name- Guard finances will take care of that side of things already.”

He gives a short nod, scribbles the information down on the bank check, and slides it to the Sergeant. “There. Show that to one of my tellers on the way out and they’ll make it official.”

He bows his head. “Will do. You’ve got your bounty.”

Author's Note

Sorry it's been so looong, but nightshift in a warehouse with mandatory overtime (!!!) is the worst for a computer nerd/desk jockey like me.

Chapter 6

“Hey, Sweetie Belle?”

The named unicorn looks up at her, wide-eyed, and quickly moves to hide her flank. “What?” The other two Crusaders have already gone on to their assigned tasks elsewhere.

She almost blinks. That reaction was already milder than she expected- possibly because she didn’t have her tiara for the first couple periods of the day. “You free?”

Sweetie blinks, her expression fast becoming confused. “What? Why- What happened to Silverspoon?”

She shakes her head. “She’s busy. Um…”

Exactly as she’d expected, this piques the unicorn’s curiosity. “Huh? Something wrong?”

She glances conspiratorially to the sides before stepping closer and muttering just loud enough to be heard. “You can’t tell anyone.”

Her eyes widen. “Wha- um… Okay. Um, how about the clubhouse?”

She raises her eyebrows. “Clubhouse? Like, Crusaders clubhouse?”

Nod. “The other two are… busy today, so it should be empty.”

“... Right. Um, I actually have another destination in mind, but it’s, well…”

Nod. “Clubhouse, then. May reroute on the way.”

Nod. “That works.” She starts walking with the Crusader.

Five minutes. It took five minutes, thirteen and a half seconds to achieve privacy on the way to the clubhouse, through which an awkward silence has prevailed.

Technically, the time was exactly ten seconds shorter than that- but she decided to allow that buffer, in case… She’s not sure what, but it felt like the right thing to do. “Um, Sweetie?”

The unicorn stops to look at her. “Are you trying to con me into something or something?”

She blinks, delaying her answer long enough for the authenticity to be upheld. “No,” she states. “I just figure we’re far enough away I can start… mentioning some of it.”

A couple of blinks. “Oh.”

If she’s honest with herself, she’s amazed at how well it’s going. The Crusader is clearly flustered- but hasn’t fled yet, and she’s broken straight through all the afraid-of-her-father barriers. “Um… How good are you with, uh, magic?” She gestures at the unicorn’s horn.

Sweetie’s eyes go wide. “Wha- You’re not- huh?”

She sighs. She’d expected that. “No, I’m not going to tease you about it, no matter the answer. I mean, it’s not like I can use magic, is it?” She eyeballs the air just off her forehead, waving a hoof through the empty space in front of her tiara.

The result is a few blinks and a sigh. “Oh. Um… I can’t really do very much… like, at all…”

Shrug. “Sounds pretty normal to me,” she states. “How about sensing?”

“Sensing? What good would that do if I can’t cast?”

“Easy. By sensing, you could tell- in theory, at least- if it’s dangerous enough to warrant the Princess’ attention.” She smiles. “On the flipside, you could also tell if it’s safe enough for us to handle ourselves.”

“Uh…”

“Can we keep it from the other two Crusaders, for now?”

Blink. “Uh… Sure, but no promises.”

Nod. “That works. Um, first thing’s first, my tiara… is there any magic in it?”

The unicorn stares at her for a few seconds before focusing on the tiara for a few more. “Um… I’m not seeing any, no.” She looks at her with a confused expression.

She scowls back. She hadn’t been able to figure out how to apply the light spell to her new tiara- but had simply… known of another way she could do it. Now, it’ll last longer, recharge itself off the sunlight, and be brighter, nevermind that she no longer has to touch it to activate it. A mere thought is enough. She does that now, turning it up high enough to be visible in the afternoon sun. “I thought it might be nonmagical… What about me?”

More blinking. “... You.”

Nod. She turns the light off. “Yes… anything in me, other than normal earth pony magic.”

Shrug. “No clue,” she states. “Even a unicorn can’t see past intrinsic magics without a spell. All I see is a haze of mana not unlike Applebloom… though a bit stronger.”

She raises her eyebrow. “Stronger? Isn’t earth pony magic all the same?”

Nod. “In general, yes… starts out real weak when you’re a baby, then grows to full strength by about our age. That full strength does seem to be uniform across all earth ponies, but…

“But yours is somehow stronger than Applejack’s.”

Blink. “Uh…”

“Like, double.”

She blinks again. “Okay. I… I’ll have to ask the Princess about that sometime. Um…” She glances at the field they’re walking past- the one with her sinkhole in it. “Do you want to see…?”

Sweetie follows the glance, seeing nothing. “See what?”

“Where I think it came from.”

“Uh, sure. How far?”

“Not far,” she states, turning. “Follow me- and watch your step.”

As it turns out, the warning was more useful than she thought. A second sinkhole opened up while she was walking across it- and Sweetie Belle was far enough back she was able to avoid falling in. As for herself… she used her oddly returning super-strength to her advantage and kicked off of the falling plug of dirt, scrambling to a landing on the side of the new hole and climbing out again. She trots around the edge, glancing down at it briefly. “You okay?”

Sweetie stares open-mouthed at the slowly widening hole for a few more seconds. “What the…?”

She glances down at it again. “That’s actually how I discovered it originally… I went down with the rocks. It did something… and now I can escape.” She glances over at the original hole, just barely visible. “The other hole is bigger- and safer. And possible to climb out of, even without… whatever it did.”

“Wha- Huh?”

Smile. “This way.”

“Wow. What is this place?”

She shrugs; they just climbed over the debris pile and entered the horizontal passage. Which, she knows without a doubt, is supposed to be vertical. “I don’t know,” she states. “Any more, it feels almost like it’s part of me.”

“Huh? How?” Sweetie squints at her; she’s been using her tiara to light their way.

“Well, all the way from the school, I can feel which doors are open- and control them, like muscles. I- I don’t even need light when I’m down here, because I know where every wall, floor, and door is, even the ones I’ve never seen before. I can see what happens in here, whether or not I’m here, I…” She shudders. “The list goes on.” She turns on the lights in the passage and extinguishes her tiara. “That’s why I wanted a unicorn’s opinion. I’m not sure if I should be afraid of it, or thankful.”

“Thankful? Isn’t it a bother?”

Shrug. “A little, I suppose, but that’s to be expected. It is in a bit of a destroyed state- but it’s also fixing itself.” She smiles. “I can stop it from doing that, or make something with it… That’s how I replaced my tiara today. Then…” She looks in the direction of the schoolhouse. “It’s almost like it has a brain somewhere, that has also, um, become mine. It’s… almost like I can think faster.” Smirk. “Math has suddenly become easy.”

The unicorn is suddenly excited. “Really? Where can I sign up?”

She blinks. She had not expected that. “Wait, what? You want it?”

“Well yes. Why would I not? Math is hard! It takes a lot of math to use magic! I don’t sense any magic, either, so it must be nonmagical- meaning it won’t interfere with my magic! Please?”

“Oh… Um, I don’t know.” She looks up the passage to that room with the strange boxes in it. The box that had healed her leg. “Maybe…” Then she looks up, to where that other sinkhole was. “I wonder if that other hole goes to someplace similar…?”

Sweetie’s ears droop. “What? We can’t do it here?”

She looks at the unicorn. “Well of course. Just imagine, for a second, what could go wrong.”

“Uh… I don’t get it.”

“Well, this one is basically an extension of my own body… If we tried here, we could accidentally turn you into another one, me into an extension of you… or, best case scenario, it simply becomes an extension of both… and we’d always be fighting over door positions or something. If there’s another one, that’d be a far superior choice.”

“... Oh. Can we go look?”

“Uh… Sure. Um…”

“Huh? Something wrong?”

“No, it’s just… that pile of debris almost killed me when I arrived the first time, but I’m not sure how to keep another from picking me if I come with to make sure you survive.”

“Uh… me neither. Can we at least look?”

Shrug. “Sure, we can do that.”

“You know, I’m kinda curious what it is,” Sweetie states.

She jumps smoothly out of the hole she just helped Sweetie climb out of. “I don’t know,” she states, looking back in. Then she chuckles, looking back up at the unicorn. “I’m the next best thing to being it, but I haven’t a clue what it is. Anyways, that other one is over here.” She gestures towards the other hole, hidden by the grass.

“Right! Yes!” Sweetie starts moving in that direction, and she follows. “I can’t wait to get my own… thing…” She pauses momentarily, before looking back. “If we don’t know what it is, what’re we gonna call it?”

She trots up next to the unicorn. “I donno… ‘Thing’ has been working pretty well so far, but…”

Snort. “But that won’t last very long, will it? Um… Basement? Underground mansion? Castle? Um…”

She tilts her head. “Fortress,” she states. “It fits better. Mobile fortress.”

“Huh? Mobile?”

Shrug. “I donno- it just… well, feels right. Like maybe it knows what it is, but it doesn’t know how to translate?”

The unicorn looks at her. “Huh… That makes sense. So, fortress it is.” Smile. “We can leave out the mobile part, for now at least.”

Chuckle. “Sure.”

“Though, it makes me wonder. What makes it mo-!”

The cutoff was not intentional. Rather, another cave-in is happening, right underneath their hooves.

She moves. Time almost seems to slow down as she does, but this collapse is faster than that other one. She isn’t able to get nearly as much purchase on the falling rock. Had she been alone, she rather suspects she would not have been able to escape.

But she’s not alone. Sweetie Belle is falling with her- and even though the unicorn has often been the target of her bullying, she’s somehow more important than herself.

So that’s which way she moves. In moments, she’s run physically into Sweetie Belle- but those moments were too long, too fast, for her to have a realistic hope of throwing the unicorn back out to safety. So she holds on. Depending on what they encounter further down, she may still be able to get one or both to safety.

Sweetie screams. Unsurprising- and, if she’s able to save both, the scream may well attract rescue, so helpful. Probably.

The collapse quickly turns out to be into a vertical, metal passage, about similar to some of the passages she’s seen in her, uh, fortress.

Not that the hesitation seems to have taken her any time at all. Her ears start flicking back and forth, picking out echoes she didn’t know she could hear- and, combined with her oddly granular sense of time, it lets her estimate how deep the chasm is… To a point. As it turns out, she can’t hear anything below her normal perception threshold, so as the general noise of the collapse rises, she rapidly loses her ability to guess at the eventual depth. She does know it goes down for at least thirty meters- or, two and a half seconds of fall time- with multiple horizontal side tunnels.

She did manage to get a halfway decent echo-print of the first couple of these horizontal tunnels, and elects to throw Sweetie into the first one. It’ll hurt, and she stands the risk of damaging the unicorn’s skeleton herself, but it’s better than falling to one of the lower ones and risking a deadly landing… or falling to the unknown bottom and suffering a very fatal landing. She’ll have to see what she can do with the reaction force from the throw to slow herself down enough to make a landing on one of the side tunnels, or even on the bottom if she’s not able to find an acceptable side tunnel. Getting back up… Well, she can probably just send in the odd, spider-like manipulator thingy after herself… And Sweetie, of course. If they both survive, she’s going to have to describe the device to the unicorn and discuss a name for it.

If the tunnel has a depth of at least sixty meters, and if no major rocks fall down on top of her, she should be able to create that mutual-survival scenario independent of side tunnels. In any case, Sweetie’s survival is virtually assured- and unless she passes out, she’ll be able to scream for help when somepony passes, and all it’ll take is an adult pegasus to pull the unicorn out. As for herself…

Well, she’ll be finding out soon; she’s performing the throw now. Either she’ll be deceased and won’t care about it anymore, or she will have survived and her thing will have retrieved them both by the time any pegasi have time to get anywhere nearby. She feels what she thinks is a bone giving way, and does her best to adjust the throw to minimize pressure on that rib. By the end of the throw, two more ribs and one leg bone were exhibiting the same behavior. She really hopes that won’t be a problem, especially with the spin she imparted.

The spin stands a chance of dropping Sweetie on her side, allowing her to sustain a mild concussion, with a small chance of unconsciousness. However, the same spin makes it possible for her to come up against the opposing wall hooves first, rather than back first, making her wall-jumping method of self-salvation possible. She considers it an acceptable tradeoff for her own continued survival- especially when she considers the hours, or even days, that might pass before the next pony passes close enough to hear a scream, even assuming one is uttered at the perfect time.

She kicks off of the wall, propelling herself rapidly at the opposing wall with her eyes fixed downwards. Her ears are pointed upwards instead; rather than listening to the obscuring thunder beneath her, they’re listening for any major debris above her. Which, thankfully, she isn’t hearing- only little stuff, Sweetie’s cry upon landing, and the echoes of the thunder below.

She performs her next wall rebound. Her plan is working- and, as a matter of fact, she should be able to land safely on a solid bottom to this shaft at really any point. She’ll be able to land safely in a side tunnel after approximately forty meters of this activity- a scant three seconds, for a total drop of approximately fifty-five meters.

“Good evening, Ms. Cheerilee. How do you do?”

“Good evening, Mr. Rich,” the schoolteacher answers, bowing the elite banker into her office at the school. “What brings you here today?”

“That’s… a bit of a complicated answer, I’m afraid.”

She nods. “I’m listening.”

He mirrors the nod. “It’s… my daughter, Diamond Tiara. She’s… well, changed her demeanor, recently- and I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or not. I still can’t shake the feeling that she’s hiding something from us- and now, it seems like she’s hiding something specific from my wife- something she’s not worried about me discovering.”

After a short pause, she takes her queue. “Well, have you tried asking her?”

He shakes his head. “I wish I could say I thought that would work, but I don’t. We’ve never developed the father-daughter bonds everypony keeps touting as ‘natural’.”

Scowl. “How about your wife?”

He snorts. “I’d say the mother-daughter bonds kinda went backwards with her. Spoiled does ask, and regularly- but she always answers with ‘nothing’ or a variant thereof. Especially lately- with her answers and deliveries these last couple days, I might have been easily fooled, had it not so closely matched the… less convincing answers she gave in the past.” He sighs. “Have you seen anything?”

She shakes her head, scowling. “I haven’t noticed anything… I’ll keep my eyes open. Though… I do have to ask, did she forget her tiara this morning or something?”

“Huh? Uh, no, actually, there was a… different turn of events. Why ask?”

Sigh. “It’s kinda hard to miss half the class staring at her for three periods.”

“Huh? She did tell them it was out for service or something, right?”

She tilts her head. “I… I don’t believe anypony asked. Probably assumed she’d just forgotten it when she came back from break with it.”

His eyes go wide. “When she-!? She didn’t act out, did she?”

Shake. “No. What happened?”

“Well… The official story is that we sent it in for regular maintenance… Or at least, was. What really happened…

“She couldn’t find it this morning, so we looked for it and finally sent her to school without. I filed a missing item report with the Guard, and went to work- where I discovered that it had already been found… stolen, with an attempted use in a fraudulent transaction at my bank. Of course, the Guard investigated- and before I arrived, they found it to have been cursed, and took it in for processing.

“They later reported, directly to me, that it carries a dark magic curse and they’re sending it to Celestia herself for annulment… but there’s a chance that could fail, and it could be permanently locked up as a dangerous artefact.”

She blinks. “... Oh. Well, I did notice it looked a little… Well, not strange, but perhaps too perfect, today? Almost like it was made just for her, at this exact age.” She scowls. “I couldn’t actually find any differences, but when I looked at it, I could swear it was shaped differently.”

He scowls. “I suppose it’s possible she acquired another one, but…

“But it was a custom job from the Pie Farm, worth almost eighty million bits- and it took weeks to complete.”

Author's Note

I am starting to wonder, have I reached a time of year where nopony is reading, comparatively? Or am I simply publishing at a bad time of night for exposure to readers/commenters?

Chapter 7

Boom, boom, Boom, boom, Boom, boom, Boom boom!

By the time her, um, thing gets anywhere near the hole, she’s already wall-jumped her way up to Sweetie’s side-tunnel, and sends herself soaring in. Her muscles are hating her for it, of course, but she got here safely and that’s about all that counts right now. “Sweetie Belle?” she asks. “You okay?”

Sweetie lets out a long, pained moan, lying on the cold metal.

“I’ll take that as a no,” she states, turning to trot around Sweetie- to get in front of her. “How bad is it?”

Sweetie moans again, though not as long. “I… I think I broke something.”

She completes her move, lighting her tiara. “That might be my fault… Where does it hurt?” She scans Sweetie’s form, searching for strange bends in her limbs- and finds nothing.

Sweetie opens her eyes, not moving her head. “Ow… Uh, right foreleg… and I think I broke a rib, too.”

She winces; that would be harder to detect with a visual search, not to mention potentially more dangerous, depending on which rib is damaged- and how many. “Okay,” she states, and sits down in front of the unicorn. Very carefully, she grips the specified foreleg and, as gently as possible, moves it. Sweetie winces, but doesn’t cry out; furthermore, she’s able to track the limb’s motion all the way back to the shoulder, and it’s not bending where it’s not supposed to. “Well, there’s some good news,” she states. “Your leg’s not broken. Might be cracked, but it’s not broken.”

Sweetie raises an eyebrow at her, still not moving her head. “ ‘Ats nice,” she states. “What about the- Ow!- … the rib?”

She winces and moves herself closer. “I don’t know yet.” She reaches out and, just before she starts feeling for ribs, she glances up at Sweetie’s head again. “I’m going to be feeling for it- yell when it hurts, okay?”

“Aaah,” Sweetie fakes, then grins. “Sure.”

She nods. “Okay, here goes.” She starts feeling for the damaged rib.

Before she gets past more than three ribs, though, her spiderlike thing arrives, running up behind Sweetie with the faint clicking of its metal legs against the metal floor. It’s a little different; it doesn’t feel like it is part of her, but rather more like the kitchen knife does when she’s using it, or her quill when she’s writing. Yet, she can still see through it, or act through it, when she wants to.

So she looks for breaks with it. It seems to understand her intent and automatically flashes a light that she can’t see except through it, watching for the reflection.

She sees the reflection. Whatever light it used went straight through Sweetie’s skin and fur, but not her bones- as much. It takes her a moment of angle processing before she is able to fully understand the image. Probably helps that her thing skittered sideways, snapping more images from more angles.

Then she sees it, and winces. “Oh… Um… Well, you’re not wrong. You’ve got three cracked ribs…” She touches them gently, each eliciting a wince. “And one broken.” When she touches it, Sweetie lets out a pained cry. She flinches away, and lets out a sigh. “The good news is that it’s not a floating rib, so as long as you don’t jostle it, it shouldn’t move too much. We’re still going to want to go to the doctor quickly, or…” She trails off, looking down the passage. “I wonder…?”

Sweetie winces, and starts trying to stand up. “Ow! Um, you wonder what…?”

Very suddenly, her question is answered. This fortress is not the same as hers; as a matter of fact, she gets the idea it’s not simply another one, but a different kind as well. It also has those strange box things she’d used to heal her leg in hers so long ago- well, it has one, but it’s operational. Then, of course… She raises her eyebrow, looking back at sweetie. “Oh, and good news- not only is this fortress capable of healing your bones, but it wants to, er, how do I put it…? Be part of you?”

Sweetie blinks. “So, it- Ow!- it wants to be to me what yours is to you?”

She nods. “Yep. It can’t, at the moment, for some reason… But it wants to.” She smiles. “It’s not interested in me, because I’ve already got one.” She glances up at the ceiling. “Kinda weird. Feels like I’m talking to it, and it’s talking back, but neither are using words.”

Sweetie manages upright, but she’s flinching at every move. “Alright,” she states. “What do I need to do?”

She looks at Sweetie. “There’s a… box thing. I don’t know what it’s called, and the name it’s using isn’t a word. Oh- and before you’re scared by it, that, uh, spiderlike thing over there is part of mine.” She blinks. “Maybe we can think of something to call it?”

Sweetie looks at it, flinches, and almost shrugs, visibly catching it just in time. “Uh… I don’t know. Some kind of- Ow!- spider, but metal spider doesn’t sound right.”

“Ahh… Um, the box thing is this way.” She gestures down the passage, away from the shaft. “Are you good to walk, or would you rather ride?” She gestures at the spider.

“I can walk,” Sweetie states, and takes a step. “Ow! Owowowowowow… um, on second thought, I’ll ride.”

She carefully lays Sweetie down in the box thing.

“This is it?” the unicorn asks.

She nods. “Yep! Back when I first arrived in mine, a boulder crushed my hind leg. I found one of these, climbed in… and when I woke up again, I was healed. Um…” She glances at her spider thing, standing calmly on the lid of the box. It does seem this fortress is almost perfectly sideways, rather than on a corner like her own. “I’ll keep my spider down here, in case you need help getting back out. I think I can talk through it.”

“Alright. So…” Sweetie looks around the box.

“Uh… Don’t be scared, okay?” She stands clear of the lid, allowing it to close.

“Wait, what?” Sweetie asks, before it lands closed.

She hears a yelp from inside, then… then all goes silent. By ‘talking’ with this second fortress, she knows the box thing just engaged, and Sweetie is now unconscious.

She sighs, and heads out. She runs her spider up to help herself out- she’s tired of wall jumping- and sends it right back down to wait.

“Diamond!”

His daughter stops midstep, turning to look at him. “Yes, Father?”

“Where did you get that tiara?”

She blinks, visibly taken aback. “I made it,” she states simply.

“Oh? With what?”

She averts her gaze. “I don’t know what they’re called.”

He sighs. “What spells does it have on it?”

“None.”

He raises his eyebrow. “Oh? How do you know?”

“Sweetie Belle checked for me- and besides, they’re not real gems.”

He blinks. “So, Sweetie Belle, who can’t use magic, checked for enchantments.”

She nods. “Turns out she can sense just fine… though she can’t see past our innate magic, and she did say she saw something strange, so I was going to have Princess Twilight tell me what it is.”

He gives a slow nod. “Alright… where did you find fakes that realistic?”

“I made them,” she states.

“How?”

“I don’t know. Did something happen?”

He glances quickly up the street. “Uh… I’ll tell you later. So long as you’re absolutely positive that tiara is not cursed and that it’s not the same one as went missing this morning.”

She nods. “I’m positive.”

“Wait a minute. You asked Sweetie Belle to look for magic?”

She nods. “Yes. She wasn’t sure what she was looking at, so I came here.”

The purple alicorn takes a step back. “Oh… uh… Anything in particular you want me to look for?”

She shakes her head. “No. I just… want to check.” No matter how thoroughly she analyzes the situation, she can’t come up with any particular action pattern that would get Twilight to actually perform the scan without finding out more about her reasoning.

Twilight raises an eyebrow. “Just want to check?” she asks. “Does this have anything to do with the time you went missing?”

She nods slowly. “Something… happened. I don’t know what it was; I was… I don’t think ‘asleep’ is the right word, the whole time.” She gazes off to the side. “Whatever it was, it’s had lasting effects… and I’d like to be sure they aren’t harmful.”

“Does it have anything to do with your tiara?”

“My tiara?” She takes a step back. “What about it?”

“Well… it was stolen last night, then found to be cursed this morning… and, though I sealed the package myself less than an hour ago, it’s back on your head.”

“Wha-? No, it’s a different tiara. Everypony was staring at me in class, so I made a replacement.”

“So you made a replacement. In six hours.”

She shakes her head. “Eighty-three and a half minutes.”

“What?”

“That’s how long it took to make.”

“Uhh… You sure it’s safe?”

“That’s what I’m here to find out.”

“Alright. I’ll check you- and that tiara- for anything suspicious, but then you’re taking me straight to wherever it was you made that, okay?”

She nods. “There… there seems to have been a lot of sinkholes in the area, though.”

An eyebrow raised. “Around here, or around that place?”

“Around that place.”

“Then I’ll carry you, and you tell me where to land. I’ll scan now- it might tickle a little.” Her horn glows.

It does tickle. And tingle. A lot.

But she can handle it. She’s not sure how- or, she is sure how, but she doesn’t understand any of it. She stands still, save only her breathing, until the alicorn is done.

“Did… Did you find anything?”

“Yeah…” The alicorn mutters, slowly. “That tiara’s clean, and the only harmful stuff I can find on you is spell fragments left over from that first tiara- but those will take care of themselves, with time. Then, your innate magic is at least a dozen times stronger than Applejack’s… and still growing.”

“Huh? Was my tiara cursed or something?”

Twilight closes her eyes. “It’s being taken care of, and is no longer a danger to you.” She opens her eyes again. “You’re sure you’re all earth pony?”

“Uh, yes?”

Scowl. “Because the thaumic buildup I’m seeing is impossible for an earth pony. Earth pony magic grounds itself out every time you touch the ground. You’re absolutely certain you don’t have wings or a horn?”

She nods emphatically, backing slowly away from the alicorn. “You know my lineage is all earth pony for at least a dozen generations.”

“Not even a hint of a midshoulder or button horn?”

“Not that I’m aware of…?” She never was very good at biology; she’s not sure exactly what her skull and spine should look like, as an earth pony. On the other hoof, she knows exactly what her skeleton does look like, somehow- and she doesn’t recognize anything like a horn or wings.

Twilight taps a hoof on her chin, scowling for a second, then pauses. “Wait a minute. How long have you had your cutie mark again?”

“Huh? That’d be… six and a half months.”

The Alicorn’s scowl intensifies briefly. “That makes no sense,” she states, and starts pacing. “It’s not unheardof for a Unicorn or Pegasus to be born to otherwise exclusively earth pony lines, particularly if there is a lot of the other two breeds in the area. It’s also not unheardof for wings or horn not to form until after the cutie mark- a birth defect, it’s believed to be. Both at once has never happened before, in recorded history.” Then she glances up. “Then, at six months, if you fell into the latter category, you’d have at least a button horn or a mid-shoulder and the beginnings of wing bones. So…”

She watches Twilight continue pacing wordlessly for a few seconds before she speaks up. “Sooo, is there a way to test if it’s earth pony magic or…?”

She shakes her head. “No, unfortunately; magic is magic. The three tribes’ magics are separated only by the focus: Hooves for earth ponies, wings for pegasi, and horn for unicorns. The issue being, magic will only anchor itself in our bodies in the focal organ- and any excess always grounds right out.” She looks up at her. “And every hoof is identical in how much it’ll anchor. Yet, you’ve managed to stow a dozen times that much, without any other anchor point!” A sigh, and her ears flop down. “I think. There is no spell to actually detect anchor points, only the magic itself… which, no matter where it’s anchored, distributes itself throughout your body.

“We could probably get an X-ray or something at the hospital, but I’m not certain that horn or wing precursors would show up on that just a few days after anchoring became possible.”

“Huh?”

“Remember that birth defect? Magically, they’re effectively earth ponies until they get their cutie mark. Then- and immediately- their wings and/or horns ‘exist’ as an anchor point for their magic, and they begin accumulating- even before the biological changes start taking place. I look at you, and your continuing accumulation, and it can’t have started more than a week ago. Which means, if it is some strange case of late-emerging pegasus or unicorn genes, we likely won’t see anything definitive on an X-ray for another couple weeks… WAIT!”

She lets out a yelp, jumping backwards, right into the closed door. “Gah! What?”

“Your tiara! You lost it this morning, and if I allow for a surge caused by the removal of an inhibitive spell, it matches almost perfectly! Though…” She looks up towards a window. “I sent it to Celestia half an hour ago… and with a dark magic curse, it’d be really dangerous to try checking for something inhibitive.”

“A what?” She’d suspected, from her father’s comment earlier, that it had been cursed- but she’s pretty sure dark magic is on a whole ‘nother level.

“Oh, oops,” she states. “I promised Filthy I’d let him explain that to you…?”

“Ahh… as long as it’s not dangerous now?”

“No, it’s not. With the wardings I put on that box, even long-range effects would be cancelled. And, I’ve confirmed- just now, when you asked me to scan you- that all of its effects have been cancelled out… or broken.”

“So, it’s not going to hurt anypony.”

“Not any more, I made sure of that. Oh, and speaking of the tiara, you were going to show me where you made your new one?”

“Yes.”

“And… Right, I was going to carry you, to avoid the sinkholes.”

“Yes.”

She heaves a sigh. “You ready?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure your… place isn’t going to fall into a sinkhole?”

She tilts her head slightly. “Fairly sure.”

“Fairly sure?”

She nods. “Any sinkhole big enough to sink it is also going to chew at least half of Ponyville.”

“Wait. That mean it’s near Ponyville?”

“Yes. Fairly sure none of the sinkholes are a danger to the town, but it probably won’t hurt to verify while you’re out there.”

“... Ahh. We’d better get going, then.”

“It’s here?”

“Yes. That hole.”

“You sure about that?”

“Absolutely certain.”

“Alright, but if another sinkhole forms, I don’t know if I can pull you out in time.”

She shakes her head. “We should be safe, in the immediate vicinity of this one.”

“Okay, here goes.”

Twilight then puts her down, before landing herself. “Some of those sinkholes looked mighty dangerous. Are you sure we’re safe here?”

She nods. “Yes. There’s not much that can get through three quarters of a meter of… uh, I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s metal and it’s very strong.” She trots up to the hole, looking down in. “Anyways, you wanted to know where I made my tiara. This is also…” She takes a deep breath. “This is also where I was when I went missing for a few days.”

Twilight shudders visibly. “Underground?”

She nods. “I don’t think it’s supposed to be underground, but it is, yes. Did you want to see?”

Blink. “Uhh, yes.”

“Alright then, follow me. Be careful, though- it’s very easy to slip and fall on the slope if you’re not careful- and very painful to slide all the way to the bottom.” She shudders. “I know by experience, when this hole originally caved in.” She hops down in, landing firmly on the slope, before looking back up. “Coming?”

Twilight wings her way in. “... Or, I can just use my pegasus magic to not have to worry about that. Pegasi can walk on any surface they like, regardless of orientation, after all. And- how did you land so smoothly? Even an Earth filly should have had trouble with that!”

She shrugs. “That’s one of the lasting effects. It seems to have made me crazy strong.” She lights her tiara and starts walking down the slope.

Twilight trots after her, before reducing to a walk as well. “Why this way?” she asks.

She smiles. “Because this is the direction it’s in. When I first got here, when I went missing… I rode a landslide all the way to the bottom. Got crushed by a boulder, but survived, and found some kind of box that healed me, apparently over a couple days.”

“Then- then how did you get out?”

“I jumped.”

“And where is this box?”

“That’s where we’re headed first. I wasn’t actually present for the tiara production, but that was close by as well.”

“What.”

She sighs. “I’ll explain when we get to the bottom. But… it’s all part of a single, giant machine, that we’ve already entered, so…”

“Ahh. I’ll start my scanning now, then.”

… She didn’t know walls could be tickled.

The rest of the walk passes silently.

Right up to the pile of dirt at the bottom, and the nearly-blocked passage to the side, light flooding out of it.

“This is…” Twilight begins.

She nods. “The landslide.” She points a hoof at the boulder. “And that’s the boulder. There’s more dirt here than there was then- the stallion that stole my tiara caused a few more landslides- from the same hole- in the course of his escape.”

“What.”

She nods, eyes closed, and slips through the hole. “Yes, that theft happened down here. Think you can teleport through?”

She blinks, and teleports past the opening, into the passage. “It happened down here?”

She nods. “He chased me in. That pile slowed him down- he had to dig his way through it- so I had time to escape. He seemed to be tracing the tiara, somehow, so I abandoned it and fled without.” She shudders. “That’s actually when a lot of the lasting effects started.” She trots over to an upwards passage, leading Twilight up it. “The healing box… is in here.” The door to that room slides open in front of her, and she peers down in. “The furthest one down, by all those stretchers- warning, those things make a painful landing. The box gave me the extra strength to get out, but that faded away, back to what I’m more used to. When he chased me in, though…

“Enough of the strange extra strength had faded away that I couldn’t fight him, and only escaped his initial grapple because he didn’t expect me to try. I also couldn’t outrun him, necessitating the small entryway- and hiding… which I did.

“Then, I… knew where he was. I began to sense through this thing, sight, hearing, and so on. I gained control over this place. He was looking directly at me, straight through a solid wall… When I moved the tiara, his gaze followed it. When I moved without it, his gaze stayed on the tiara. So I dumped it and fled.” She looks up at Twilight. “I didn’t even need light on my way out until I reached the exit, because I knew where I was- and where the walls were. I found my own path out, because I knew where all the passages were.

“None of that has faded. The extra strength returned after that, and… I still have complete control over this thing, almost like an extension of myself, even though it continues to do things on its own.”

“It’s doing things on its own?” Twilight asks, alarmed.

She nods. “Yeah. Fixing itself, mostly- like how your body will heal a papercut on its own, if you don’t apply a spell to it. Except I can make it stop, make it do something else instead.” Sigh. “That’s how I made this tiara, and had it delivered to me. Overnight, it had made some kind of… spider thing, that could carry it away. I have the same control over the spider, but… well. It feels more like a hammer might, or maybe a paintbrush, than like an extension of myself.”

“Ahh…” Twilight scans the box, then scans everything around.

She smiles gently. “Hey, that tickles.”

“What?”

She shrugs. “Carry on. For some reason, I can feel these walls, too. The scary part… I know exactly what makes it possible, but I haven’t a clue what any of it means. Or how to put it into words.”

“Huh?”

“It seems to have a mind of its own- one that got merged with mine. Thanks to it, I can solve even the toughest of math problems in but a moment. And, it knows a lot of stuff, including about itself- but it doesn’t know Equestrian, and I don’t understand much of anything of what it knows, except in its own context.” Sigh. “I’m sure you’d be able to understand a lot of it, maybe help me to understand it too… but I can’t figure out how to put any of it into words.”

“Ahh…” Twilight mutters. “That all?”

She nods.

“Alright. With all my scanning… This, uh, structure, for lack of a better term-!”

“Fortress.”

“Fortress?”

Nod. “Yes. That’s the best word I’ve been able to use to describe it as a whole. Though it’s supposed to be mobile… it’s got a few different ways of moving around, none of them working- and only one of them even resembles anything I understand.” She smiles. “Kinda like a cart, if it had several hundred wheels and brought its own road.”

Twilight rubs her chin for a second. “... Huh, doesn’t ring a bell. Anyways, I’ve noticed this fortress, while it doesn’t have any magic itself, it does have a magic signature. You know what that means?”

She shakes her head.

“It means that, while it’s not producing magic itself, it’s capable of storing it. So, some part of it is serving as a magic anchor, like pony hooves, horn, or wings, but it’s lacking anything to produce it, like the pony heart.”

She nods slowly. “Okay. Is that something I need to worry about?”

Sigh. “Normally, yes. Only… that magic signature is a perfect match to yours.”

Blink. “Meaning?”

“Meaning any magic in it is YOUR magic, because you’re already permanently fused with it, thaumically at least.” She sighs. “That also means that, for better or worse, it’s here to stay. I don’t think I could separate you from it without killing you if I wanted to- and, with this strong of a bond, chances are better than even you’d just wake up again in here, if killed.”

Her eyes open wide. “What-?”

“And don’t worry, that’s only a thaumic separation, to divorce the two sides. As near as I can tell, physical separation should be completely harmless.” She glances back down at the box thing. “Unfortunately, I am going to have to insist on tightening security around here. Your fortress thing is still growing into its status as a second body- still drinking in magic from elsewhere to do that. It doesn’t look to have started until after whats-his-face left, so it hasn’t absorbed any negative influences just yet, but I’d rather not risk it.” She glances up. “If it does absorb too much bad magic right now, it could be destroyed- and you killed.”

“What-?”

She shakes her head. “Don’t worry. It’s been drawing on the ambient fields so far- a neutral source. Right now, I’m feeding it with the Element of Magic itself- perhaps one of the most positive sources there are. Once we finish down here, I’ll be posting guards to protect it- then tracing out and marking a safe path for you to approach. Finally, I plan to come into here regularly to feed it, until it finishes; the more positive power it consumes during this stage, the more I can guarantee a positive outcome.” She smiles. “If it is going to hurt you, absorbing a lot of positive energy will cause the linkage to close down on its own. If it’s beneficial, it’ll only make it stronger.”

She blinks. “Soo… You’re not sure if it’s good or bad, but by feeding it with the Element of Magic, you can make it judge itself?”

Nod. “Yes.”

“What happens when it finishes absorbing energy?”

“That’s when this vulnerability closes. And when it gains the ability to create its own magic.”

“Its own magic… as in, that’ll be when I’m able to produce magic in it, in addition to in myself?”

Blink. “... Yeah, something like that. I don’t know the specifics just yet, though- and we won’t, until it happens.”

“The specifics?”

“Yeah. Such as, which part is producing it, if it’s passive production like ours or if you have to do something, and so on. I figure it’ll probably be active production, but done on a subconscious level, making the appearance of passive production. Just like our breathing… and that self-repair thing you mentioned.”

She nods. “Possibly. Though, it doesn’t seem to have a clue what magic is, so…”

Blink. “Huh. Strange.”

Chapter 8

Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!

She lets out a sigh of relief as she finally hears Twilight’s yelp on the other side. It’s in the middle of the night right now; she’d been awoken herself, very suddenly, only two minutes ago. Now, she’s finally managed to awaken Twilight- though her knocks on Twilight’s bedroom door must have sounded like a giant was knocking.

She didn’t think she was that strong. Whatever- she’d tried knocking lighter, but Twilight had slept through it. She’d contemplated waking Spike, to have him go in Twilight’s room to wake her up, but again, it’s the middle of the night- Spike would be even harder to wake than Twilight, at this hour. And she doesn’t want to enter Spike’s room herself either, for the same reason.

And besides, she didn’t damage the doors or anything, so no harm, no foul, right?

“Wha-?” Twilight calls from within, tone wavering slightly as if shaking herself awake. “Who’s there?” It now sounds like she’s getting herself awake, and starting to focus more on her strength.

“Twilight?” she asks the closed doors.

Moments later, the doors slam open, surrounded by purple glow, with Twilight behind them, searching for something. “Wha…? Wait, was that you?”

She nods. “Yeah! There’s-!”

The door slams back shut, right in her face. “I’m tired, come back in the morning.”

“But- but Twilight! It’s-!” She stops, listening to the sound of Twilight’s snoring through the door for a second. “Aaand… you’re already back asleep. That’s not normal, is it?”

Not waiting for an answer, she gallops for the next closest pony of importance: The Carousel Boutique.

It takes her a minute to get there, and she instantly sets to work pounding on the door, not waiting to catch her breath. She can actually see Rarity in the main room, snoozing softly on the floor.

The simple wooden door creaks and groans, the frame and hinges protesting as well, but the normally light sleeper stays asleep.

“Something’s not right,” she declares, and heads for the next one: Sugarcube Corner.

As usual, a gentle knock is all she needs, and Pinkie answers the door instantly. Pinkie also starts talking immediately, though it seems faster than normal.

“Sorry I can’t talk right now I can’t stay awake for more than five seconds at a time because of something and I don’t know how to fight it maybe Bonbon could help try them bye!”

The door lands closed again, and she hears the springs of Pinkie’s bed upstairs groaning as she hits them again.

She nods. “Thanks for the tip,” she states, and runs for the named mare’s home- even though she doesn’t know how she could help when the Elements of Harmony themselves couldn’t.

Here, she assaults the door once again. She breaks off when she hears a crash- and following scream- from inside. Seconds later, Bonbon opens the door- and flings it wide.

“Diamond?” Bonbon’s housemate, Lyra Heartstrings, asks, her head rising from where she had been looking through a tube-like magnification device she doesn’t know the name for attached to the top of a long, thin, tube-like physical-object-acceleration-based weapon device she also doesn’t know the name for, both pointed at her. “How’re you even awake right now?”

She blinks; that was not what she expected. “Uh, what?”

Then Bonbon grabs her and pulls her inside, before Lyra’s magic flicks the door closed. Lyra also rises from her weapon, lifting it with her as she moves closer on her hind legs. As she does so, she keeps it pointed at the floor.

“How are you awake right now?” Bonbon repeats the musician’s question.

“I don’t know,” she states.

“Does it have anything to do with the sinkhole Twilight’s ordered protected for you?” Lyra asks.

“Probably.”

“How do you mean?” Bonbon asks.

“It sensed something, so I woke up.”

“Called it,” Lyra states, glancing briefly at the candymaker. “Have you had a chance to talk to it yet?”

She blinks. “Talk to it?”

“Yeah. Those Bolos can sense a lot of stuff that we can’t.”

“Oh,” she states; Lyra must be thinking of something else. “No. I just sensed… danger, and woke up.”

An eyebrow raised. “You mindmelded with it or something?”

She tilts her head. “What’s that mean?”

“Same mind- like an extension of yourself?”

She blinks. Perhaps she is talking about the same thing. “I think.”

“Alright. Any clue where the danger is?”

She shakes her head. “Sweetie’s called the alarm. I haven’t seen it yet.”

“Sweetie’s? She has one too?”

Nod. “Not… mindmelded yet.”

“Is she okay?”

Nod. “She’s in mine.”

“Can you ask hers what the problem is?”

Headshake. “Tried. It’s gone silent.”

“Power loss,” Bonbon mutters.

Lyra nods. “Probably. Those things are solar powered.” She glances back forwards. “But that’s not the cause for the alarm, is it?”

She shakes her head. “Sweetie was transferred from the healing box in hers to the one in mine four hours ago, because hers was running out of power.”

“Sounds like a medical nanovat,” Lyra states. Then she glances at Bonbon. “And Bolos don’t panic.”

“What?” the candymaker asks.

The musician nods. “How do you think Diamond has even a semblance of calm left? We’re in the middle of a snooze field for crying out loud!”

“Snooze field?” she asks.

“Dark magic,” Lyra states. “Area-effect spell, used to put large numbers of ponies to sleep. We’re trained to resist it.” A glance down at her. “And they’re really effective against foals, training or not. The mindmeld with the Bolo is probably the only reason you’re awake right now.”

“Dark magic?” she asks. “Like the curse they found on my tiara?”

Both mares eye her tiara suspiciously. “Cursed tiara?” Lyra asks, weapon shifting.

“Not this one,” she states. “The original. It’s been sent to Celestia for cleaning- I made this one myself, as a replacement, yesterday.”

Lyra squints at the tiara, then nods. “Yeah, that’s duralloy, not silver. Dark magic won’t stick to it.”

“What happened to the first one?”

“It was stolen, found, and found to be cursed.”

“Who stole it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Any idea why they stole it?”

“No.”

“When?”

“Twelve oh-seven A.M., last night.”

An eyebrow goes up. “Where?”

“In my… you called it a Bolo.”

“Wait,” Bonbon states. “Why did Twilight order it protected for you?”

“Because the mindmeld whatsits bond is still forming or something.”

Lyra shakes her head. “No, the mindmeld is instant. That’s bodymeld you’re talking about. And I bet she’s feeding it with the Element of Magic, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Then we need to get over there.”

“What?”

“If she fed it with one of the Elements, Dark magic can find it. It’ll be protected for a little, but not forever- and we don’t want Twilight, because if it finishes the process with Harmony magic, it’ll be useless.”

“What-?”

“A Bolo is a machine of war, Diamond. You’ve already got a mindmeld, so it literally can’t do anything you don’t want it to. If fed on the Elements of Harmony, it’ll be little more than an inert hunk of alloy.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah. I mind-and-body-melded with one myself, a long time ago. Fed it with Harmony magic. Because of that, it’s a great big lump of useless alloy buried deep under Canterlot, all its remaining knowledge transferred to me. I didn’t even get to keep its processing capacity!”

“What-!?”

“Don’t worry. I know exactly how to stop that from happening to you and finish off the bond at the same time.” She smiles. “I was planning to bond Bonnie with another one, so I did my research.”

“Another one?”

“Yeah. Never found another, though- and it’s not possible to break the bond, once started, without completely trashing at least one side.”

She looks at the unicorn’s weapon. “What’s that?”

The unicorn blinks. “It’s a sniper rifle. Yours missing a lot of data too?”

She shakes her head. “It feels complete- except it doesn’t know Equestrian.”

Nod. “That would do it. Mine knew Equestrian, but very little of the rest of its databanks were still in one piece.” She hefts the weapon. “That’s where I got the plans for this. Best one I have. Now, we’d better get going.”

She turns to the door, but Lyra stops Bonbon from reaching the handle. “Before we do,” Lyra states. “Diamond, how much outside sensor capability do you have?”

“Huh?”

“How much can you see outside?”

“Nothing,” she states. “I do have a few spider-like things I can send out, though.”

“You have tech spiders?”

She tilts her head. “Tech spiders…? Uh, yeah, I think.”

“Awesome! See if you can’t sneak them out near your entrance, undetected- to watch for threats as we approach.” She sighs. “Keep one hidden, though. Those things are what allows your Bolo to fix itself; I’d hate risk permanently crippling your repair capability.”

“I don’t rely on them,” she states. “Something else, smaller. It can pass through walls, build, gather… not very good at seeing, though. And I have a lot of those.”

The musician blinks twice. “You have nanites? That’s even better! I only got a few mentions of ‘em in my databanks, and most of my spiders were destroyed when somepony else found my Bolo, before the bond was complete. I understand nanites aren’t very useful in combat- but they’re virtually impossible to exterminate, thanks to their numbers and mobility. So, whatever you think is best, I guess. I’d vastly prefer to make the trip with surveillance than without.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah. He could attack us while we’re on our way over- and I’d like to see him coming when he does, if at all possible.”

She closes her eyes, concentrates. Twilight’s scans had tickled her walls- so hopefully, she can sense the ‘snooze field’ as well.

She can. It’s a strange feeling, almost like she’s looking through muddy water, and it takes a lot of effort- but she can see it.

She draws in a breath, and lets it go, opening her eyes again. “He’s in my house.”

“What?” the candymaker asks.

“He’s in my house,” she repeats. “It takes effort, but I can see the snooze field- and through it, him.”

“We must hurry,” the musician states. “High-level sensor access means the bond is nearing completion- and difficulty reaching it means it’s Harmony magic. And we cannot let it complete on either Harmony magic or Dark magic.” She rips the door open again, and runs out of it on three legs, the last one holding her weapon.

She follows, the candymaker on her tail, and immediately turns down the street, towards her Bolo. “This way,” she states- and the other two follow.

On the way, she pauses, twice, to sense the field again. The first time, he’s still in her house.

“So what would happen if it finished on dark magic?” she asks, while they sneak down an alleyway.

“You’d die,” Lyra answers. “And dark magic would gain control of the Bolo- like Sombra. Think about it again after I’ve finished the bond off for you, and you’ll understand how bad that would be.”

“Huh?”

“Because that’s when you’ll have access to all its functions.”

The second time she senses for him, though…

“He’s following us!” she hisses, and breaks into a gallop. Not a full gallop, no- but fast enough the two mares are having difficulty keeping up with her.

Author's Note

This is probably my least-active story, where comments are concerned... am I really that bad at writing Diamond?

Chapter 9

“GAAAH!” She screams, leaping awake and sitting up suddenly.

Then she sighs, and falls back down on her back. Musta been a nightmare.

Wait a minute. This isn’t my bed!

And sits right back up again, looking around.

There, sitting at that table and cleaning a bunch of oddly-shaped pieces of metal, is a pony she recognizes. Lyra Heartstrings.

Lyra’s looking up at her.

“You’re awake,” the unicorn observes. “Nasty dream?”

She lets out a sigh, somehow sensing that her tiara is on the nightstand to her other side, and turns to retrieve it. She settles it onto her head before she answers. “Nightmare.” She’s not sure she’d count all of it quite like that; in that nightmare, she’d had perfect recall and the ability to guess- accurately- exactly what she could and couldn’t tell somepony. She’d even managed to resolve her issue with the Crusaders- though that was specific to the unicorn, but it would inevitably have cascaded to the other two.

Lyra takes her time before she speaks again, running some kind of brush carefully in and out of a long metal tube of some sort. “What happened?”

She rolls upright, rising to her hooves- and collapsing promptly when one of her hind legs fails to support her weight, collapsing under her like wet linguini. “Ow! Um… I don’t know. You were there. So was Bonbon.” She looks down at her misbehaving leg, flexing the muscles in it- and getting very little response.

Lyra glances up at her between parts, apparently ignoring her problem with her leg. “We were there?” she asks. “What made it a nightmare?”

She shudders. “We… There was a stallion, with dark magic. He was chasing us.”

Lyra puts her brushes down, and starts putting the pieces together. “That wasn’t a dream.”

She blinks. “What?” That simply wasn’t possible; if that wasn’t a dream, then she would know exactly who she could reveal what to. Then she would be able to do math like it was nothing, remember absolutely everything that happened.

Lyra nods, not interrupting her assembly. “His name… His self-given name, that is… Was Darkness Lord.” She puts the last piece into her assembly, tightens something, and picks it up, standing it up on the table.

She gasps. She recognizes it from the dream; it’s Lyra’s… weapon. She’d called it some kind of ‘rifle’ in the dream.

“Put a bullet through his heart,” Lyra states. “Only way to kill a dark magic user for good. Bonbon’s got his body at the Guard house right now, going through the process with them.”

Blink. “Then…?”

“Yeah. You said he was chasing us- do you remember anything after that?”

She shakes her head, pulling herself into a sitting position.

“Ahh. Well… You lead us to the entrance to your Bolo.”

She sucks in a sharp breath; that’s something else from the dream as well. Either it wasn’t a dream… or the dream hasn’t ended.

Lyra nods, placing her weapon in a strange case, and locking it shut. “Yeah. You lead us there. He already knew where it was- he actually beat us to it, by a few seconds. I was able to keep him off the entrance as we approached with a couple hasty shots.” A sigh, and she hangs her head. “Then the battle started.”

“What… happened?” she asks.

“Long story short… the battle lasted almost six hours. All my research on Harmony magic and its effect on bodymelds turned out to be wrong, so I focused mostly on that. I was so focused on it I nearly let him get behind me- only barely saved myself a couple of times. Then of course, there were the times he really did get behind me. You had my back, though- aside from your own ungodly powerful blows, your spiders were waiting just out of sight somewhere. I still don’t know where- but whenever he got behind me, one would always show up and go wholesale on him from behind.

“Then… Towards the end of that battle, you let out a terrible scream, and collapsed. He almost beat us then; your last spider had been smashed almost an hour before.” She closes her eyes, and she spots a tear trickle down the unicorn’s face. “So me and Bonbon went wholesale on him, completely setting aside the matter of your Bolo. Trying to divide our attention clearly wasn’t working, so we took care of him.” Shudder. “It was a lucky shot.

“He nearly had us beat; I was airborne, thrown by one of his blows, weapon in hoof. He had Bonbon on the ground, stunned by the impact, and was rising up to smash down on her with something lethal. So I grasped at straws… or should I say triggers? In any case, I had as good a chance of killing Bonbon as I did of hitting him at all, and an even better one of killing you instead, but it was a lucky shot. The bullet went straight through his heart, and he collapsed, magic shattered. A very… painful, but fast, way to die.

“With him down, Bonbon went straight to you and started checking for vitals- she recovered while he was falling- while I went straight to your Bolo.” She looks at the floor, shedding more tears. “I’m sorry. The bodymeld completed on Harmony magic.”

“What-?” she asks. “Then…”

“Yeah. If you have any more spiders left down in there somewhere, you’ll be able to use them still, but it’ll be hard for your mind to handle. I still have one of the spiders from mine; that’s how I made my rifle. Your super-strength will probably stay, since that’s something you wanted to come back; the rapid healing should stay as well. Oh, and you’ll still be able to control any functions you installed on that tiara of yours. But beyond that and a sense of feeling in the walls of that Bolo down there, I’m afraid all is lost.”

She takes a deep breath. “What about… nan-somethings?”

“Nanites?” The unicorn looks up. “If you happen to know how they’re powered, and where some of them are in your hull out there, you might be able to restore it to function. In theory. In practice, I bet you don’t remember how it works, and thence won’t be able to after all.”

“I… I don’t.”

The unicorn trots around the table, reaching up to put a hoof around her withers. “Welcome to the party,” she states. “You’ve got your tiara, and hopefully it’s not reliant on your Bolo for power; I’ve got my spider. They’re normally reliant on their Bolos, but they can also absorb sunlight on their own- so that’s how I keep mine charged.” Sigh. “All said and done, my spider’s probably no more use than your tiara.”

“Yeah.” She hangs her head, tempted to lean into the older pony and cry.

“Well. I guess we just have to hope that Sweetie doesn’t have the same issue- and is able to restore our Bolos to operability?”

“Sweetie?” she asks. “Sweetie belle? Is she okay? Where is she?”

Shrug. “I don’t know. Last I heard… Oh. Oh no. Last I heard, she was in your medical nanovat.”

She jumps to her hooves, wobbling slightly on her weak hind leg- but at least it’s not as weak any more. “We have to go get her! The air can’t last very long in there!”

“And I don’t remember enough about them to know how they handle power loss,” Lyra states. “Hold on a sec- your leg’s still healing from his slash. Good thing you’ve still got that crazy-fast healing you managed to get out of yours; I never got that. You’ll need to be careful, gentle it a little bit. And I can teleport us to the entrance to your Bolo. Ready?” As she spoke, she removed her rifle from its case once again, and inserted a rectangle object into it.

“Ready,” she states, bracing herself for a teleport.

Lyra pulls back on some lever on the side of her rifle, pushes it back forwards, and nods. “Ready.” Her horn glows.

She lets out a gasp as soon as the jump completes, and her hooves strike down on solid metal wall.

“What is it?” Lyra asks immediately, swinging her rifle to point both ways down the passage.

She lights her tiara, a white glow to chase off the darkness. “I felt that,” she states.

“Well of course,” the unicorn blinks. “Kinda hard not to feel it.”

“No,” she states. “I felt that in these walls. I felt the surge of energy the teleport left behind.”

Lyra blinks. “... Huh. My Bolo never felt magic after it completed- I wonder why…? Anyways, Sweetie Belle.”

“This way,” she states, and gallops down the slope. As she goes, she favors her weakened left hind leg; unlike the other one, it’s not offering the strength required for this speed. She’s not going nearly as fast as she could with it, using mostly just the other one for propulsion- and she’s going fast enough the adult galloping with her isn’t quite having trouble keeping up.

She slows smoothly to a stop as she approaches the dirt pile at the bottom, and glances at Lyra. “Any chance you could teleport past this pile, through that little hole? It’s what stopped… him long enough for me to escape when he stole my tiara.”

The unicorn looks at the gap she’d indicated. “Yeah, sure. You want to teleport with, or go the standard way?”

She shudders. “I can go the standard way, thank you.” She crawls through the gap while the unicorn teleports through with her gun. “Sorry, teleporting is just…”

“Unsettling,” Lyra finishes for her. “It still is for me, sometimes. And Bonbon hasn’t gotten over it yet either.”

She chuckles, then continues forwards. “She’ll be just up here.” She selects the passage, and turns to climb it.

As the unicorn turns to follow her, a distant voice sounds back. “Hello? Is that you, Diamond?”

She gallops forwards. “Yes!” she calls back, before she comes to a stop at the edge of the door.

Lyra comes up next to her as Sweetie’s voice comes back from the door again. “What happened? I don’t remember there being such a tilt!” At the same time, Sweetie’s head becomes visible in the dim light reaching the bottom, sticking out of the box thing and looking up at them.

“Um, yeah, about that,” she begins, before Lyra interrupts.

“Sweetie belle!” she calls. “I’ll levitate you up here?”

“Huh? Oh, yes please!” Sweetie calls. “I hate the dark!”

So Lyra levitates her up to the passage.

“Anyways,” Sweetie says, turning to her. “You were saying?”

“Yeah. Um, as night fell, yours panicked, as it was running out of power. So we- that is, me and yours- transferred you here, in mine.”

Sweetie blinks, and tilts her head. “Why use the tiara instead of…?” she asks.

“Because… there was an unforeseen complication,” she answers. “Because of it, mine’s… become useless.”

“Well…” Lyra mutters. “Not entirely unforeseen- but yeah. And, um, how possible would it be for me to get into Sweetie’s Bolo and check on things?”

“Bowhatnow?” Sweetie asks.

“Turns out that’s what they’re called,” she states. “Bolos. And Lyra… Not likely. Getting into hers is a pretty big vertical drop. We were lucky to survive going in the first time.”

“... Oh,” Lyra states simply.

“Yeah, ‘oh’,” she chuckles. “Anyways, let’s get out of here. It’s well into the morning already.”

“Huh?” Sweetie asks. “How long was I gone?”

“An evening,” she answers, as the three head back for the entrance. “Rarity’s probably freaking out, but I mean, you’ve been gone for longer on some of your crusades.”

Sweetie groans. “Yeah, I probably have. Like that time we went to Baltimare to try for our business cutie marks.” Shudder. “All weekend. And I’m glad Princess Celestia found us.” Another shudder. “‘Nuff said.”

“Ouch,” she mutters, as she clambers through the hole first, before reaching back to help Sweetie through while Lyra teleports.

Seconds later, they’re galloping up the passage when Sweetie looks at Lyra. “Oh- and Lyra? What is that thing you’re carrying?”

“Oh, this?” Lyra asks, galloping expertly on three hooves while the last holds the weapon aloft. “A little protection, in case we ran into something.”

“Uhh…”

“Let’s just say it’s a little more potent than magic.”

It seems to take forever before they reach the entrance. “Alright,” Lyra states, before levitating Sweetie out. “You two run home. I’ll teleport- and don’t tell anypony I was involved. It’s all top secret!” She looks meaningfully at her.

“Agreed,” she states.

“Okay,” Sweetie mumbles. “I can do that.”

Then, as the two gallop back to town, Sweetie speaks up again. “Come to think of it, Diamond- about how long do you think it’ll take before I start getting those positive side effects?”

“No clue.”

Wince. “How about what it’ll take to avoid the negative?”

Her ears go flat. “Danger.”

Author's Note

Sorry about that... offscreening the combat like that. I just couldn't think of any way to make it more exciting.

Chapter 10

Two parents finish setting out breakfast, take their seats, and pause, looking at the door.

“Where is diamond?” they ask simultaneously, despite a complete lack of anypony to answer the question, before turning to the clock.

“Late,” they then answer their own question.

Spoiled rises from her seat to talk out of the room. “Where is that filly?” she mutters, as she goes.

Filthy watches his wife leave the dining hall and go stalking off in the direction of their daughter’s bedroom. Then he sets his head in his hooves and lets out a sigh. It had been only yesterday when her tiara went missing, and she replaced it from he knows not where. Again, it had only been yesterday when she suddenly seemed so different, in the face of her mother. Said mother had been happy- very happy, as a matter of fact; she seemed to think Diamond had finally caught on fully to her lessons.

But Diamond had shown a very different face whenever her mother wasn’t there. He’d kept his eyes and ears open all day. When he’d talked to Ms. Cheerilee, he’d made it sound like the whole change had happened a couple days ago- but that simply isn’t true. No; he’d started noticing changes a few days ago, ever since she got back from being missing those three days. A gradually building… confidence, he thinks. She’d seemed surer of herself than usual, stronger, somehow. Even though he’d never noticed her lacking either of those. The massive increase in muscular strength had been very sudden, but not only was it fading but she had been learning to control it better.

She’d changed the most that one morning, that he’d noticed. He doesn’t know if her muscular strength had continued to fade or started growing again; she’d had perfect control of it either way. He’d even sensed, as had his wife, little touches of her earth pony magic dropping out with each step she took, firmly anchoring each hoof to the ground until she decided to go. His wife had been delighted- with that kind of tricky skill mastered, even a monsoon couldn’t blow her down- and it also gave her a certain assurance of her footing that even he struggles to attain.

Nevermind that meant that she simply couldn’t be snatched. A foalnapper would have to remove her legs in order to separate her from the ground on which she stood. And cutting a scoop of the ground out wouldn’t work either- earth pony magic has massive area of effect, so they’d have had to scoop up a few hundred tons of dirt and rock… assuming she didn’t move. Or extend that grip, simply by dumping more power into it. After all, the step-hold he’d seen had used so little power she could probably have gone up by an order of magnitude and still not needed to dig into her thaumic reserves.

He had been outright impressed with how she had handled herself that day. The part that made him worry, the part he spent half the day hunting for answers on, had been when his wife wasn’t there.

She hadn’t lost that subtle earth magic hold. No; if anything, that was stronger in her mother’s absence, almost like she’d been afraid her mother would notice it.

She also hadn’t lost the perfect control over her muscular strength.

But he’d noticed other things. She was a lot less… Well, sticky. In her mother’s presence, as well as away from her mother on days prior, she used the same formulaic, holier-than-thou behavior as her mother. He doesn’t approve of that behavior, and often doesn’t use it himself (except when dealing with the Canterlot nobles, as they don’t deserve anything nicer), but as he’d told himself long ago, she could suit herself. If she wants to do that, he won’t stop her.

Last night, outside her mother’s presence, it seemed like all that went out the window- particularly when she thought he was out of earshot, he’s pretty sure. She’d held onto some of it near him, but not nearly all of it. She’d been tense when he asked her about her tiara- but earlier, he’d seen her chatting peacefully with Sweetie Belle. At least, that’s what it looked like. Later, he’d seen her talking to Princess Twilight in similar manner as, say, Applejack might, not a trace of her mother’s “noble” behavior.

Then she’d been a perfect little noble at dinner, and after dinner as well, when he explained the curse on her earlier tiara to both her and her mother. When her mother had asked about the one she was wearing, she’d told a fictitious- yet very believable- story of some classmate that was good with mock-ups, and was able to furnish her with a look-alike for until she got her real one back, since she didn’t feel complete without it. She’d said she still didn’t feel complete with the fake, and planned to return it as soon as the real one was either returned or replaced.

Completely aside from how she’d almost seemed defensive earlier, when she’d told him she’d made it herself.

Then Spoiled had demanded to know why she’d seen Diamond going into the Crystal Castle earlier.

Diamond had answered simply that she’d gone in to have Twilight spell it to be impossible to curse. She’d stated she planned on getting a similar spell on the real one, assuming it didn’t already have it, whenever it was returned or replaced.

Nevermind that that’s one of the things he’d looked into when he’d first purchased it- and such a spell simply doesn’t exist. Dark magic is too varied- and powerful- to block entirely with any spell. Spoiled had swallowed that story hook and sinker, though, so he hadn’t mentioned that little problem.

He had, however, begun wondering why his daughter was deceiving her mother… and planning on asking her later, away from the same. He doesn’t normally approve of lying any more than Applejack does- but she knows that, and she has to have known he’d known she was lying when her answers had differed so massively from the ones she’d given him before.

Which means, she must have a reason good enough she’d figured he’d be okay with it. Otherwise, she would have given him her falsified answer as well. And come up with a better excuse for visiting Twilight; she’d no doubt expected both conversations, even though the timing of his- out in that street- appeared to have been a surprise.

Speaking of which, she’d told him why she was going to Twilight as well- even volunteered that information. That answer had not been the same. He’d brushed over it at the time- but having Twilight tell her what “something strange” Sweetie had seen was… is very different from having Twilight apply a spell that doesn’t exist to her tiara. Though, the way she’d worded it in the street had sounded like that “something strange” was in her, not her tiara.

A sudden scream from upstairs draws his attention away from his deliberation, and his head snaps up as he draws in his breath, turning to jump out of his seat.

Then he stops just as fast as he’d started. The thuds of his wife’s distant hooves echo through the structure somewhere upstairs- and Diamond herself is halfway to her seat, from the door, pausing as she makes eye contact with him.

He lets breath back out, turning back forwards in his seat; Diamond resumes her path. “Where’ve you been?” he asks.

“Fighting the monster that stole my tiara,” she states, before climbing into her seat.

He raises an eyebrow at the tiara on her head. “You mean the first one?”

She only nods, before Spoiled explodes around the corner.

“Filthy!” his wife begins, drawing in a quick breath for whatever else she had planned to say.

But whatever that is, he supposes he’ll never find out, as her gaze zeroes in on Diamond.

“Diamond!” she practically explodes, marching over behind her daughter, who has only closed her eyes, declining to turn towards her mother.

He puts a hoof to his face. “Spoiled,” he begins.

She ignores him. “What were you thinking?” his wife demands. “Not only were you late for breakfast, but what in Equestria have you done to your room? It’s atrocious!”

“Spoiled,” he states again, as she goes on and on about the mess she’d apparently found in her daughter’s room. While irresponsibility certainly isn’t a good thing, he doesn’t think exploding in her face like that would be really any kind of effective.

He watches his daughter’s expression tighten in anger, of all things, facing away from her mother, as Spoiled goes on. He watches her muscles tense- spots the crack appear on the expensive glass salad bowl held in her hooves as she sets it down, slowly and deliberately, eyes still closed.

He raises his eyebrow. The bowl is replaceable, even if she’s not supposed to break them- but while this tirade is a little much, her reaction seems to him to be a little out of proportion. Perhaps this is a bunch of pent up frustration from times past, being pulled to the surface by her mother’s tirade? Perhaps he’s about to find out what’s behind all the strangeness these last few days? Find out what she really thinks of his efforts?

… He figures the bowl is probably a side effect of her strange physical strength probably returning, without her strange control over it, compounded with the muscle tension coming out of her anger. Probably why she put the bowl down, too- too much strength and she could make it explode.

“What do you have to say for yourself, young lady?” Spoiled finally finishes her tirade. “Hmm?”

He opens his mouth, filling his lungs to speak, but Diamond beats him to it. He can feel her putting her earth pony magic into her voice, producing an effect reminiscent of the Royal Canterlot Voice; even though she speaks quietly, the entire room rumbles with her words, dishes clattering. Her already damaged bowl completes the break, splitting cleanly in two and spilling salad dressing onto the table.

“Shut. Up.”

He doesn’t move, closing his jaw and folding his ears against the inevitable explosion from his wife, even as he decidedly suppresses that information for processing later. He’s always been good at that, whenever something shocking or surprising comes up, allowing him to retain function in the present.

Spoiled steps back, jaw articulating up and down as she blinks in shock, lacking his ability. “What… What did you say?” she demands, slowly.

Diamond turns to her mother, eyes opening to blaze at her mother. “I said, Shut. Up,” Diamond repeats, this time without adding her magic to the equation. “For six years, I’ve done exactly what you wanted me to. For six years, I’ve been an insufferable prick at school. For six years, I’ve had no friends at all.

“Last night, I fought a dark-magic-wielding monster. He trashed my room while I got help, then the battle lasted six hours after that, during which all three of us could have died several times. After we killed him, I then went on to save the life of one of my classmates. And lose half of myself in the process.

“Then you come jump on me for showing up thirty seconds late to breakfast? You’re lucky I showed up at all!” She stands on her chair, Spoiled shrinking away from her. “You try fighting all night on an empty stomach, pulling somepony out of mortal danger, and chopping off half of your own mind, then showing up on-time for breakfast!”

She lets out a sigh, jumping down from her chair, and her expression falls away from anger to more of sadness as she leaves the table, abandoning her breakfast uneaten. Probably a good thing, with the broken bowl. “I’m done,” she states, walking towards the door. “I’m done with beating ponies up. I’m done pretending. I’m-!” She takes a deep breath, and he realizes she’s crying as she walks out the door, putting one hoof on the open door without looking back. “I’m done ruining my life for you,” she states, before slamming the door so hard it cracks before it bounces back open, her tail vanishing around the corner.

He blinks- her physical strength must have returned at some point, no even alicorn should be able to fling the door closed that hard- and hops off his chair, abandoning his salad, to follow after her. Unless he’d missed his guess, her tirade had been aimed at her mother, not himself- but he still plans on keeping a safe distance until he can make sure of that. If she’s strong enough to break the door, she’s strong enough to break him.

As he approaches the door, Spoiled recovers- and gallops past him, thrusting him violently aside before she explodes out the door, screaming as she charges after her daughter. He recovers and emerges in time to see her drawing close to her daughter- and to see both of Diamond’s hind hooves leave the ground together, at the same time as Diamond turns her head sharply to glare at her mother though the corner of one eye.

He ducks.

Chapter 11

He was only barely in time. The damaged door snapped in two as his wife passed, ripping the hinges out of the wall and sending the massive slabs of solid, wooden door tumbling after her, before the display cabinet at the far end of the hall finally manages to stop her. He glances quickly in her direction, catching a glimpse between the falling door fragments; it looks like the blow wasn’t quite hard enough to overcome her earth pony magic to deal significant damage to her. She does pride herself in the near-invulnerability she’s able to coax out of her magic. The toughened, diamond-like ability after which Diamond had been named.

It’s specifically only near invulnerability, though- even with it, she can still get surface cuts, and various blows still hurt, they just don’t do any significant damage. Which means he’s not surprised she’s bouncing limply off the display case to land face-first on the floor.

But she has that ability, and it works whether she’s stunned or not, so he turns the other way to follow his daughter into the living room.

Even then, as he watches his daughter stomp to and flop down on the couch, he stops at the door. “Diamond?” he asks.

She doesn’t move.

“Can I come in?”

He can just make out one of her eyebrows raising as her eye opens partially, head turning slightly to look at him. She sniffs, and returns to her prior position, eyebrow going back down, without saying anything.

He chooses to take that as a yes, and enters, walking slowly towards her.

He slows as he approaches; he lacks his wife’s self-protection ability, and wants to be sure she’s not going to kick him across the room before he gets in range for that. Such would probably kill him outright.

“Diamond?” he asks again.

She doesn’t move.

He winces internally. He’s never been that smart with anything other than money- and his next question, the only way he can think of to get her to respond and maybe open up, even he knows isn’t very sensitive. Nor a very good idea. “Are you okay?”

She lets out a snort, and he blinks; perhaps it was better than he thought. She turns to look at him, tears still streaming down her face, but her eyes are open. “Of course not,” she states. Then she turns back to the couch, laying her head down and closing her eyes again. “You heard what I told her, right?”

He blinks, and nods. “Sounds like a…” He hesitates, searching for the right word. After a second, he decides he’d started the sentence wrong, and hangs his head. “Long night.”

His daughter lets out a snort of laughter. “One way to put it,” she says. “It was a… very long night.” She lets out a sigh, turning slightly away from him. “That… was true.”

He steps up next to the couch, judging her calm enough not to kick him. “Who was it?”

“Same guy that stole my crown,” she states calmly. “But he’s dead now. Shot through the heart.”

He shudders; that’s a quick way to end any pony’s days, not just a dark magic users’. “You… You said earlier, all three of you could have died… that referring to whoever was helping you?”

She nods.

“May I ask, who was it?”

She shakes her head. “I’m not allowed to say.”

He blinks. “Agency.”

She nods. “Something like that.”

“What about…” he begins, and sighs. This is the hard part- the part he’s been planning to ask her about sometime, but hasn’t been brave enough yet. “What about us?” he continues. “What have… we, been doing wrong?”

She looks at him. “You say that like you know you’ve been doing something wrong.”

He nods. “I… I’ve always had a hard time believing you were as happy as you made out to be…” He glances towards the door. “Today just cemented that feeling.”

“All she cares about is how I act,” she states. “She doesn’t care how I feel.”

He nods in the following silence. “Yeah, I think I’ve started picking up on that too, these last few days.” He glances towards her. “Particularly yesterday.”

She winces, looking away.

He blinks; he hadn’t meant to say something that might hurt her.

“Then… you,” she begins, and looks back at him. “You’re not going to yell at me, are you?”

He blinks. “Uh, no. Why would I?”

She smiles weakly, though it looks more like a victorious smile than true happiness. “Because you don’t,” she states, before looking back forwards, at the side of the couch. “You don’t worry about me. Instead, you go after anypony that hurts my image.”

“That’s… That’s not-!” he begins, but breaks off as she looks at him again with those great, tearful eyes. He hangs his head, averting his gaze. “I… I suppose that is what’s happened,” he mutters. “I… I’m sorry. I’ve only… Only ever wanted the best for you. Went after anything that hurt you…” He sighs, and looks back at her. “But all I ever saw was your image.” He hangs his head again. “I’m sorry,” he mutters again. “I’m not very good with ponies… just bits.”

“Yeah,” she mutters. “I’ve been wondering about that too, these last… few… days.”

He looks up; she’s not looking at him, though. He follows her gaze.

Her mother is standing in the door to the room, positively fuming.

He looks his wife in the eyes. “We need to talk.”

“Rich incoming,” Rainbow mutters to her friends, gathered in the main library of Twilight’s castle. The Alicorn herself is in one of the upstairs labs, doing some experiment or another, nopony really understood any more than the general category of the experiment: Magic. The experiment title she’d assigned had sounded too much like she had started pulling random words out of the dictionary for anypony to understand, even Spike.

Applejack follows her gaze towards the front doors. “Huh,” she mutters. “He doesn’t look too happy.”

“Almost like somepony tried to hurt Diamond again,” Rarity observes. “But worse.”

“Again?” Rainbow asks.

“Spike?” Rarity asks the drake. “Could you do me a favor and go get Twilight, please?”

“Yeah, again,” Applejack states. “Seems a lotta ponies are trying to do her in lately.”

“A lot?” Fluttershy asks. “I thought it was only the one… and whatever this is, I suppose.”

“Yes, darling,” Rarity nods to the pegasus. “That was the first time anypony has ever tried to hurt her, so I do believe a ‘lot’ is the right term.”

“Relatively speaking, at least,” Applejack agrees.

“Wait,” Rainbow mutters. “Somepony was stupid enough to try to hurt Diamond?”

Applejack looks at her. “You mean you never heard about her tiara?”

“Her tiara?” Rainbow asks. “Was there something wrong with it or something?”

“Well of course!” Pinkie declares. “Why else would it have come up?”

Rainbow blinks. “So what was wrong with it?”

“Found to carry a dark magic curse yesterday morning,” Filthy Rich states, walking up to them. “And keep it down, I’d rather that not be common knowledge.” He shifts his gaze across the five mares. “... Where’s the Princess?”

“Uh, whaddya need her for?” Rainbow asks. “Did somepony try to do Diamond in again?”

His eyes narrow. “My business is with the Princess and only the Princess. I would like to know where she is, or when she’ll be available.”

Rainbow opens her mouth to speak.

“That would be right here, and right now,” Twilight states, trotting into the library from behind Filthy.

“Your highness,” he begins, turning and bowing. All five mares behind him roll their eyes.

Twilight’s reaction is a little noisier. Her trot breaks, wings flaring for balance, as she groans. “Ugh, would ponies please stop bowing!”

He takes that as his cue to rise. “Princess Twilight,” he begins.

“Just Twilight, please,” Twilight interrupts.

“Alright then, Twilight,” he continues. “Though I require your assistance in your capacity as a Princess of Equestria.”

“Uh-oh,” Applejack mutters.

“Somepony got him maaad,” Pinkie whispers dramatically.

“Uh, Celestia’s just up in Canterlot…?” Twilight ventures.

He sighs gently, looking at the floor. “By Equestrian law, though, you have the same level of authority as Celestia herself.”

“What-! But-! Is there some reason you can’t go to her?”

“It’s a long train ride, then a long line, to be seen by her. And this is a matter of urgent importance, for the safety of my daughter.”

Blink. “... Alright. What is it?”

“I need a divorce.”

Chapter 12 (Edited)

Diamond wakes up, very suddenly, and lifts her head off the hard metal in a heartbeat, eyes wide. She’d come back down here earlier, and spent a few hours trying to find some of those ‘nanites’ Lyra mentioned. Perhaps- perhaps, since her tiara is still powered by the sun, she could use it to feed her… ‘Bolo’ enough for it to remember how it works for her. To do that, though, she needs nanites- and to pray she’s right about how to link the power over.

She’d been unable to find any, and eventually cried herself to sleep, here in the very room the tiara theft had happened in.

And now, it’s awake. She doesn’t know how; it doesn’t either. It feels very weak, somehow- but for all that weakness, it’s refusing to show any. She can feel the nanites scattered throughout the entire monstrous thing working to find out… what caused it to lose power, she thinks. It’s thinking so hard about that that it hurts her brain to try and follow it.

Then, something Lyra had said crosses her mind.

“If you happen to know how they’re powered, and where some of them are in your hull out there, you might be able to restore it to function. In theory. In practice, I bet you don’t remember how it works, and thence won’t be able to after all.”

She sucks in a gasp of air. She doesn’t know how the nanites are powered- no, correction, she does know, they’re powered directly by the Bolo. Which has power right now. And she knows where some of them are- where all of them are, even though only a small number are active right now for… she doesn’t understand the reason, but she rather suspects it’s related to power. And, she may not remember how it works, but it sure does!

How do I restore power, then?

While a tiny portion of its very hard thinking starts throwing a series of possible answers at her, none of which she understands, another thing Lyra had said crosses her mind. One she hadn’t remembered until now.

“Those things are solar powered.”

Solar! The Sun! Get that!

She senses its thought patterns shift in response to her thoughts.

And then, just moments before it dies once again, it discovers something she understands.

It can’t absorb sunlight, because that’s broken. Fortunately, though, it’s plenty capable of fixing that- and she can help it go faster by clearing dirt off the metal around the sinkhole; a tiny bit of that was able to be restored, even in the brief moment she had.

She jumps to her hooves and starts galloping. She doesn’t know where that temporary burst of power came from; it never found out and, to be honest, neither it- nor she- were too worried about finding out.

Then she rounds the corner at the bottom and crashes straight into Scootaloo.

She lets out a small yelp, leaping backwards, off of the pegasus, and blinking at the same time, glancing around. Scootaloo is rarely alone- just like this time, she isn’t alone. No; Sweetie Belle, Applebloom, and Princess Twilight are all here as well. “Sorry!” she squeaks, towards Scootaloo.

“Diamond-?” Sweetie asks. “Are you okay?”

Applebloom stares wide-eyed between Sweetie and Diamond.

Twilight sighs. “Sorry, Diamond. I just caught these three nosing around down here.”

“Hey!” Scootaloo half-yells, back at Twilight.

Diamond raises an eyebrow at Sweetie.

Sweetie shrugs. “They wanted to explore the sinkholes,” she states, gesturing towards the other two Crusaders. “It was all I could do to point them at the safe one.”

“Ahh…” Diamond mutters, before glancing at the other two Crusaders as well. “It’s just a maze of passages that you will get lost in, right now. And all the other sinkholes, that we’ve found so far at least, are deadly drops to different mazes of passages you will also get lost in.”

“Aww,” Scootaloo groans.

“Anyways, you’d better head out,” Diamond informs them. “I rather expect Twilight doesn’t want to have to send search teams after the search teams she sent after you.”

Twilight raises an eyebrow at her, but otherwise doesn’t speak up.

It takes only a couple minutes to get the Crusaders safely outside her Bolo. Diamond stops at the entrance to watch then run back towards Ponyville- and only partly because Twilight stopped her with a wing.

“Diamond,” Twilight finally states.

She looks up at Twilight. “Yes?”

“It’s finished.”

She nods. “Okay.”

Twilight goes on. “It still has your magic signature, though- so it must be beneficial. Everything still…?”

Diamond shakes her head. “When it finished… It hurt. And it’s even more damaged.”

Twilight blinks. “What-? But that shouldn’t be possible! There were only two possible outcomes, and both should have been silent! If good, it’d just… finish. If bad, then it would break down, lose its magic signature, and possibly even get turned to stone. But it would do so silently, and painlessly!”

Diamond shakes her head. “It hurt, a lot. But it’s not lost.”

Twilight blinks. “What?”

She nods. “Yes. Right before I ran into you… it had a little power. Just enough to work, but not enough to… um, I think it was referring to the mindmeld thing.”

Twilight puts a hoof to her chin. “Hmm… that might’ve been when Sweetie had her horn lit. Which she did so far down because the glow crystal I gave them last week for a school science experiment ran out.”

She blinks. “... Huh.”

“Anyways, did you learn any more about it? Did it… heal?”

She shakes her head. “No… it was too busy trying to figure out what happened. And the power didn’t last long enough for it to heal.” She looks up at Twilight again. “But it did have enough power to find out that a bit of the … er, the metal around the sinkhole still works.”

Twilight looks at her. “The what?”

She shrugs. “I have no idea what the word it used means… but whatever it is, if the sun shines on it, it can produce power.”

Twilight blinks. “Meaning, if we widen the sinkhole, it can come back?”

She nods. “Yes.”

Twilight promptly turns back towards it, lights her horn, and peels back some dirt and rock, before stopping. “... Huh. It’s a bit of a peak here… I don’t know how much I can expose.”

“That should be enough, thank you,” Diamond answers. It’s still not answering her, but she sees the spot she knows was the restored bit, nicely exposed.

“It’s back?” Twilight asks. “It’s working again? You’ve got control of the doors and whatnots?”

She shakes her head. “No. It’s not making enough power for that… I think. But it should be making some power at least, and using that to fix itself.”

“What-!?” Twilight begins. “Then-!”

She shakes her head. “Now we just give it time. Until it fixes itself a little and wakes back up again, there’s nothing more I know of that will help.”

She sighs. “Alright then. Let me know when it wakes up, okay?”

She nods. “Will do.”

Then Twilight looks up. “And you said Sweetie has one too?”

“Uh, yeah,” she mumbles. “But please don’t feed it with the Element of Magic. That makes it readily detectable to dark magic.”

Twilight looks at her. “What-? How do you know that?”

She looks up. “Because I fought a dark magic user for a few hours last night before mine finished, right here at the hole. We only barely won- and without it awake, I don’t remember the fight at all.”

Twilight blinks. “Oh, so that must be why Lyra and Bonbon seemed so tired this morning. Okay, so I won’t feed it with the Element of Magic… but I can still make sure it hasn’t absorbed any dark magic, right?”

“Right. It’s over here… be careful, though. I don’t remember if there were any more sinkholes waiting to happen.”

Twilight looks back at it, then at her. “It can see through solid rock?”

“Ahh… it’s supposed to be able to, I guess. But it’s all broken. I think Sweetie’s actually could, because I know I looked through solid rock at one point. I don’t remember what I saw, though.”

Fortunately, no additional sinkholes appear on their way over to Sweetie’s hole- and Twilight’s dark magic check comes up negative.

Twilight scowls. “Huh. This one seems to be just about to start its period of vulnerability.” She glances up. “You know if Sweetie has been…?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. Mine uses a strange code to describe whatever it does for the mindmeld… and while I know Sweetie is capable of it and has been linked to hers the same way I am to mine… hers can’t do it right now. I’ve only talked to hers, though… and I don’t understand the words it used.”

“You… talked to it.”

She nods. “Turns out these things can talk to each other without using words. And of course, they understand each other perfectly.” She scowls at the hole. “Which, of course, means I understand it perfectly… in their context.”

“Rrrright,” Twilight mumbles. “So, Sweetie hasn’t had any difference in what defines ‘her’?”

Diamond blinks. “Uh… Not that I’m aware of, no. She’s been rather upset by that, actually.”

Twilight blinks as well. “What-? Why?” She glances down. “Wouldn’t it be a bother?”

Diamond shrugs. “If it didn’t come with its own mind, sure,” she answers. “Thing is, it does, and that mind knows all about it. So from the moment I first, ah, connected to it, I could make it do what I wanted as if I had been doing it for years. Because, in the end, I have- at least, the part of the combined entity that was me that actually does them has been.” She scowls. “That… didn’t come out quite right.”

“I… I think I understand,” Twilight nods. “But then, what makes it so attractive? It’s just a bunch of doors underground, right?”

She winces. “The body, currently, yes. That mind, though, despite working in a language I don’t understand, does understand images- and math. Oh, does it understand math.” She grins. “When I first merged with it, I went to school… took one glance at my math homework, and instantly knew not only what the answers were but exactly what I got wrong.”

“Then…”

She nods. “Even though it was actually doing the math in its own language and translating it back for me.”

Twilight blinks. “And… that doesn’t work with words?”

She shakes her head. “No, it doesn’t… I think it’s related to how concepts are easy to translate, but words aren’t even close.”

“Ahh… How well does it remember those concepts?”

She smiles softly. “It’ll remember anything I tell it, whether it understands it or not,” she states. “And it remembers it with perfect recall.” She looks down at it. “I… don’t remember what limits it might have had.”

Twilight stares at her for six seconds.

“You know, you’re making me wish I had one.”

“Well…” she begins. “There’s… a possibility. Remember when I said I looked through solid rock?”

Twilight nods. “Yeah?”

“I don’t remember what I saw, but I remember… um, a description of what I saw, I suppose. It was… um, alarming?” She scowls. “Nah… that doesn’t fit.”

Twilight nods encouragingly. “Yes?”

She grins. “You know how nopony could get any trees to grow in this field for centuries?”

Twilight blinks. “Yeah…? There’s a reason they’re called the Treeless Plains.” She touches a hoof to her chin. “Pretty sure they’re still officially owned by Sweet Apple Acres.”

“That’s because there’s more of them here, scattered about. A total of twenty-seven of them.” She looks across the plains. “A lot of them are a bit further down than mine and Sweetie’s, but they’re there.”

Twilight nods slowly. “Ahh… And what you said down there, about sending search teams after the search teams?”

She nods. “Yeah?”

“Did you really mean that?”

She nods. “It was a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s big enough it wouldn’t be hard for even a search team to get lost in there.” She sighs. “And even when it’s working, I can only ‘see’ a very small amount of the inside. A lot of my inside senses are broken.” She blinks. “That sounded so wrong…”

Twilight blinks. “Oh. Um…” She glances about the field. “Of those, ah, twenty five more… can you talk to any of them?”

She shakes her head. “I remember trying, but not one talked back. I can only assume they’re not working.” She shrugs. “Getting them to work might be as simple as letting them see the sun, but it might also not be.”

“Twilight,” Applejack states calmly.

“What?” Twilight gasps, struggling against her exhaustion to stand up straight.

Diamond, completely unexhausted, smiles knowingly as she watches from the side.

“Might I ask why,” Applejack continues, before gesturing past Twilight. “Why you’ve turned the Treeless Plains into the Cratered Plains?”

“Uh,” Twilight mumbles. “For science!”

Applejack looks at Diamond, and raises an eyebrow.

“She’s looking for something,” Diamond answers simply.

Twilight takes a deep breath. “For science!” she bellows once again, horn glowing brightly, and takes aim.

Once again, Diamond flinches when her Bolo makes contact with her once again, suddenly having enough power to do so. Once again, she instantly knows that Twilight’s shooting in the wrong direction.

Author's Note

Edited 11/16/19. It was a bit too happy-go-lucky for the direction I wanted the story to go. The changes are in the details, but they're very important details.

Chapter 13 Author's Note

WARNING to any returning readers: The previous chapter has been edited. The changes are in the details, but they're very important details- and this chapter won't make any sense without that. I personally recommend rereading, but if you really don't want to, the most important difference is thus: Clearing the armor is no longer enough to fully revitalize Diamond's Bolo in but a moment. You may also want to check the final section of the previous chapter as well, as it's new. No worries, it's short as well.

Chapter 13

Confusion.

She can’t see anything, can’t move her head. She can’t feel her legs.

She can see the inside of her Bolo, though, just the same as she could every time it was working. Except, there’s a difference. Before, it felt like it was part of her. All the feeling in the walls, all the everything, had a little bit of a distant feeling she couldn’t describe. Almost like it wasn’t her, but also was her at the same time.

Now, it feels like it is her- exactly like her body felt before. She feels the warmth of the sun shining on her back corner, which also stings because of the hole in it.

She can feel everything.

… Funny. There’s a large pile of flowers sitting on a large, wooden box in the middle of that shaft. She can’t read the words on it, though-

She stops herself. She can see the engraving, see the words, without issue. And, she recognizes the symbols from her memory of her most recent homework assignments.

… But she doesn’t understand them in the slightest.

She-

She doesn’t scream. She would have, had any of her speakers been working.

She waits, and she wishes. Every day or so, she wakes up for anywhere from a few seconds to a minute. Each time, she looks at the flowers on the wooden box, notes any changes (it’s always a fresh bunch), and reanalyzes everything she remembers with those characters on it. From homework assignments to wallpaper in the school to signs at the store to the titles of every single book and magazine on the shelves of Twilight’s entire library. Even her alarm clock.

Each time, she wishes she had her hooves back.

Each time, she idly watches her spiders and nanites work until she gets bored, before she goes back to sleep. They are never doing very much; she doesn’t have the strength to run too many of them at once. And, they aren’t working on her back corner, either- no, it’ll take far less time, overall, for them to work on something a lot closer to her front. Something that was working before, but isn’t now, for some unknown reason. Almost like something had burned it- but it’s submerged in water, that shouldn’t have been possible.

Rather fortunate her nanites and spiders are all waterproof.

One day, she wakes up earlier than normal. Funny. No, wait- her nanites finally got that thing working again so, as of thirty-seven milliseconds ago, she once again possesses the strength to stay awake full-time. So much strength that the tiny trickle from her back corner is negligible, to the point that it might as well not even be there.

Then, she blinks. Or, she would have, if she had eyelids. That’s… That’s her father, Filthy Rich. She watches him swap out the glow crystal on the magic torch placed next to the wooden box, before stopping at the box, replacing the flowers, and leaning against it to shed a tear. She tries to cry out to him, to comfort him- but none of her speakers are working. She listens to his words, not understanding anything but her name, before going back to sleep. Had her eyes been capable of shedding tears, they would have been doing so.

She sleeps for far longer than she has previously. She knows exactly how long; it was one week, four days, and twelve hours. During that time, all her available strength had been devoted to understanding what people were saying.

If she could blink, she would. She had… figured out how to understand a few of the words ponies use, in her sleep. She checks her memories of the written symbols, but doesn’t come up with anything.

But in any case, she didn’t wake up to a surge of strength this time. No, it was a task completed that woke her up. Had she still a face, she would have raised an eyebrow- she could do work while she slept? A whole new meaning to the idea of sleepwalking, she supposes.

Then she looks at what task it was.

Had she legs, she would have jumped for joy.

No- no. She checks that the task truly is complete, and the result has entered into a stasis state, before triggering the discharge sequence. Then she reaches out, throws together a quick, two-address Total Systems Data Sharing net, steps out of her nanovat, and jumps for joy.

She has her body back.

Her tiara is now actually part of her body… But so? She can detach it, if she wants to. She makes a singular jump straight from the stretchers all the way up into the passage above, landing in the passage, before galloping down it like a lightning bolt.

Her body is a little… different than it was before, but so?

The dirt pile at the bottom of the shaft has been dug out long ago. She pivots on it anyways, rocketing up the passage. Somepony must have placed all these thaumic torches in here at some point, giving the passage an even blue light.

She veritably explodes from her back right corner, before screeching to a halt and looking around.

The entire area seems to have been turned into a cratered wasteland while she was away. She can see the beginnings of an effort to restore it off by the edge of town, but most of it is all craters. Twilight really must have gone to town with it while she slept.

She gallops into town. She makes sure to slow to a normal pace, once she gets out from among the craters.

She’s not sure why everypony seems to be staring at her. Did she miss her homework?

She screeches to a halt in front of… what used to be her mansion. There’s some ashes still visible, and it looks like the construction ponies are getting ready to relay the foundation soon. It must have burned down.

She blinks. Obviously, her father isn’t here. Perhaps he’s still at work, at the bank?

She gallops for that instead.

More ponies are staring at her.

It’s another pile of ashes. This one looks much more recent; most of it looks like it hasn’t been touched yet, only some of it cleared. There’s a sign out front, with words she doesn’t understand… Except, she finds, in context. By analyzing it in her other context, the one she doesn’t understand, she’s able to find it indicates that something valuable that was stored inside the building remains unharmed- and has been moved to the giant crystal castle on the outskirts of the town.

She looks up at the giant crystal castle in question. Twilight’s castle, she knows.

She gallops to it.

At least it hasn’t burned down. As she knocks on the gigantic crystal front doors, she wonders idly if it’s even possible for it to burn down.

Somepony- no, she recognizes the voice, that’s Spike- says something from inside that she doesn’t understand. No, wait- she quickly processes it in that other context. He’s telling her she’s allowed to come and go at will- which, if she thinks about it, she already knew. Twilight never locks this door.

Whatever. It’s polite to knock. She pushes the door open, and steps inside.

Ahh, there’s the little green-spined purple dragon, Spike. Funny, he’s staring at her too.

She quickly drafts up a question, does her best to translate it into that context, revises it in that context, prays she didn’t mess up the meaning, and says it.

“Hey, Spike! Could you point me to Twilight?”

He tilts his head, blinks, and tilts it back. “Um… She’s in the library, I think. Didn’t you… uh, die, at some point?”

She processes his oration in that context, and does her best to translate it into something she can understand. As near as she can tell, he told her that Twilight is where the books are- something she guesses instantly to mean the library- and that she herself is… something.

Strange. That other context wants to respond to his question with a vehement ‘no’, so it was presumably something rather unpleasant. She lets it.

“No, of course not! And thanks for the info!”

She gives him a little wave, before trotting towards the library. He stares after her for a few seconds, before resuming whatever he had been doing beforehand.

Finally, she enters the library. It takes her all of two seconds to find the purple Alicorn, who seems to be studying a very large and heavy book… and looks much worse for the wear, almost like she’s cried herself to sleep every night for weeks. She trots forwards, and calls to her by name. Fortunately, she doesn’t need to translate the name; it’s a name, so something that never needed to be translated in the first place.

“Twilight?”

Twilight doesn’t react at all.

“Twilight?” she calls again, louder, as she trots up next to the mare.

Yes, she’s definitely studying the book. She’s staring at it, eyes tracking over line after line of text that- according to that other context, which understands the words- makes her nose wrinkle in disgust. She tries translating it, and gets the really weird impression that the book talks of making the dead alive. Lke, necromancy, maybe? No, no, not that. Resurrection? Yeah, that feels like the same concept.

She fills her lungs and yells in Twilight’s ear. Twilight flinches, but stays focused on the book.

She looks out across the library, and finally picks a course of action.

She jumps, fluidly, on Twilight’s back.

Without taking her eyes off the book, Twilight tries to shake her off. She, however, spreads her wings for balance- and stays on with dismissive ease.

Then she hops up onto Twilight’s head, sticking her head down in front of Twilight’s face and screaming straight into her face. “Twilight!”

Twilight screams, leaping backwards, away from her book and flinging her off. She adjusts her wings just a little, causing herself to land on her hooves, before holding them and trotting towards Twilight, who is finally looking at her.

… And staring at her.

“Twilight?” she asks.

Twilight blinks a couple more times. “D-Diamond. You’re… alive.”

This, she finds, is pretty easy to translate.

“Yes, I’m alive. Why would I not be?”

“Because I- I-!” Twilight bursts into tears and explodes forwards, wrapping her in a massive hug and sobbing into her fur. “Because I killed you.”

Chapter 14

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