There were many things Diamond Tiara loved. Her father, first and foremost. Her closest friend, Silver Spoon. The Cutie Mark Crusaders, recently. Her teacher, Miss Cheerilee.
But, she thought as she dropped from a gallop to a walk, gasping against the stitch in her side, she particularly loved White Tail Woods. Her late great-grandmama's cabin waited deep in the Woods, just around the next curve in the trail. She could catch her breath there and get a drink from the well.
Diamond looked at the watch around the fetlock of her left leg. Thirty minutes? Thirty minutes to get only this far?
Panting, she trudged up the path to the cabin and cranked up the bucket from the well. She lifted it to the stone edge of the well and lowered her snout to lap from it. It hadn't rained in White Tail Woods for months, no matter how hard the pegasi tried, so the dust was thick. The cool water soothed her throat from the dry trail.
Thirty minutes.
Sitting down and pouring the bucket of water over herself, Diamond said, "I'm going to lose. Badly."
"Not with that attitude," purred a voice behind her.
She cringed and hunched her shoulders. Her stomach twisted. Looking over her withers, but keeping her voice as pleasant as possible, Diamond said, "Hello, Discord. How are you today?"
He leaned down and glared at her. The yellow eyes didn't blink. Discord wore a white headband, blue gym shorts, white athletic socks, running shoes, and a white tank top that said CHAOS GYM.
"I understand you're training for the Running of the Leaves."
Diamond nodded. "I'm old enough now. I want to win the teens' age bracket."
With a snap of Discord's fingers, a dozen timberwolves appeared. They growled at Diamond, mouths slavering. "Shall we go for a run together? My friends here are very encouraging trainers."
"No," Diamond said, with a roll of her eyes. "I'm already exhausted."
Discord waved his lion-paw, and a gust of wind blew the timberwolves into sawdust.
"The Running is in less than three weeks," Discord said, "and Princess Twilight has oh-so-politely requested that I not stretch time anymore."
Diamond hopped up to her rear legs, and used her forehooves to crank the bucket back down into the water. What did this lunatic want? She'd never actually held a one-on-one conversation with him before, and her ears tucked in fear. She didn't think he would do anything malicious, but goodness, any little misspoken word could give him the opportunity for a joke!
Looking for a safe topic, Diamond said, "Rainbow Dash is training Sweetie Belle. Apple Bloom is training with Applejack."
"Indeed?" Discord asked. "What about our scooter-obsessed friend?"
"She's not fourteen until after the race."
"Ah, yes, hmm, the Crusaders... I never did extract any revenge on you for the way you treated them."
Diamond looked at him, and she felt her face going pale. "I'm not that filly anymore."
"And for that, everycreature is grateful. Fluttershy would be so cross if I were forced to give you what you deserved."
The bucket splashed into the water at the bottom of the well, and Diamond began cranking it up again.
"Why the sudden interest in feats of athletic prowess, Diamond Tiara?"
She kept cranking and said, "Well... ponies expect me to talk and give speeches. My cutie mark seems to be persuasion. I want to surprise ponies. Especially myself."
Discord pulled off one of his horns, and idly scratched his ribs with it. "Tell me, Diamond Tiara, do you know who your real competition is for the Running?"
Diamond kept cranking, concentrating on the well, ignoring him. Once the bucket was back up, she lapped from it again.
"Smoky Water," Discord said. "With Apple Bloom looking at a clean second place."
"The new colt?" Diamond replied, water dripping from her snout. "I didn't know he's athletic. He's so... shy."
"He's not shy," Discord said. "I'm an expert on Shy. He and his little sister are the only two kirin in a schoolhouse full of ponies. He's lonely. He's scared."
Looking at her reflection in the clear water of the bucket, Diamond Tiara thought about that. "I'll talk to him at school tomorrow. See if we can make friends with him. The Crusaders will help."
"I promise," Discord said, "when you're disappointed with ponies as trainers, have Fluttershy get in touch with me. I can help you train properly for the Running." He tapped her on the tip of the nose, snapped his fingers, and disappeared.
"I'd rather have Rainbow Dash train me," she said to the empty air.
Diamond Tiara poured the bucket of water over her mane and took the rest of the Running's course at an easy canter, thinking about the scared new kirin colt in school.
"Girls?" Diamond Tiara said, and the CMCs turned to look at her.
"Hey, DT, what's up?" Apple Bloom said.
They all stood in the school yard, outside the schoolhouse. Diamond looked left and right, saw nopony was in earshot, and explained what Discord had said about Smoky.
The Crusaders nodded. "What're we gonna do?" asked Apple Bloom.
"So," Diamond Tiara said, looking at Sweetie Belle. "I'm going to be a little selfish and invite myself to work out with you and Rainbow Dash, since I need the training. We'll invite Smoky Water, too, since he wants to compete."
Sweetie Belle made a "Shhhh!" sound and twitched her ears toward the gate to the school yard. Smoky Water and his little sister, Clear Streams, were trotting through the gate. Clear's magic hadn't yet come in, so Smoky levitated both his school bag and hers in his purple aura.
"Hey, Smoky!" Diamond Tiara called as the two kirin trotted past.
"Yes? Uh... um... Diamond Tiara?"
"I get to ring the bell today," Clear Streams said before she grabbed the strap of the bag in her mouth, pulled it from Smoky's aura, and trotted into the school.
"We heard you're training for the Running of the Leaves," Scootaloo said.
"Wh… what? Where'd you hear that?" he asked, blushing and looking at his hooves. "I don't like being talked about behind my scales."
"Discord," Diamond Tiara said.
"Oh!" Smoky scratched the dirt with his hoof and frowned. "We've heard about Discord. Yeah, Mom and Dad said I should compete, to meet other foals. So... yeah."
"Rainbow Dash is training me," Sweetie Belle said. "Diamond Tiara just asked if she could come with. She also suggested we ask if you want to come along, too?"
"My birthday is two days after the stupid race," Scootaloo said with a frown, "But Rainbow tapped me as assistant trainer."
Smoky looked at Apple Bloom and cocked an eyebrow.
"My big sister took some offense when I suggested training for the Running with Dash."
Smoky turned to Diamond Tiara. "You suggested I should be invited, Diamond?"
"Yes," all four fillies said.
Smoky looked at them. Diamond held her breath, hoping he would say—
"Yes. Okay. Thanks."
"We'll meet under Rainbow's cloud house thirty minutes after school," Sweetie said.
The bell rang, summoning them to class.
"Which cloud house is Rainbow Dash's?" asked Smoky.
Diamond Tiara and the Crusaders burst out laughing.
"Nice to meet you, kid," Dash said, bumping hooves with Smoky. "What brought your family to Ponyville?"
"My mom is a healer," he said. "And my dad's an apothecary. They're interning at Ponyville Hospital to learn some modern medicine, to take back to the other Kirin."
"Neat!" Rainbow Dash said. She wore her coach's costume: a cap and a lanyard-hung whistle.
Scootaloo stood to Dash's side, wearing a blue-and-white cap emblazoned with Dash's cutie mark. They were all at the trailhead, at the edge of White Tail Woods.
"All right," Dash began. "Two and a half weeks until the Running of the Leaves. We're going to take a medium-pace gallop today to see how you two do." She pointed a wing at her new trainees, Diamond and Smoky.
"I'll carry your water bottles," Scootaloo said, wriggling under heavy saddlebags, "Since I'm not training for time."
"Let's go!" Dash said, spun on her hooves, and took off at what was, for her, a very slow canter.
Scootaloo, despite the heavy bags, paced Rainbow easily. Smoky kept up with them, too, the shadows of the trees dappling his shiny green scales as he ran.
Diamond and Sweetie Belle fell behind the others, but paced each other.
"Smoky's—gonna—win!" Sweetie gasped.
At least Sweetie Belle was breathing as hard as she was. Diamond fought to smile past her panting. "Yeah, Smoky's pretty fast." A few deep breaths, another dozen strides, as she and Sweetie galloped along the dusty trail. "We'll see how his endurance is."
"Scootaloo next year," Sweetie said. "No doubt."
"No doubt," said Diamond.
Sweetie Belle slowly drew away from Diamond Tiara, eventually turning a corner and disappearing from view.
A stitch exploded across Diamond's flank and she dropped down to a walk, gasping and holding one foreleg against her side.
She looked around. Where was she? Not even to great-grandmama's cabin! This was worse than yesterday!
Scootaloo came down the trail at a full gallop. "Hey, DT, need your water bottle?"
Diamond just plopped down to her bottom and nodded.
Scootaloo nosed into her saddlebag, mouthed the water bottle to Diamond, and then galloped off, back up the trail, at full speed.
Scootaloo hadn't even been breathing hard.
"Pony feathers," Diamond Tiara said, and took a long drink from her water bottle.
"So," purred that same voice from just behind her ear, "you've learned a secret about my dear friend Rainbow Dash."
Diamond Tiara turned around to look at Discord. Instead of answering, she just poured some water on her face.
"I love Rainbow Dash, I really do," Discord continued, "and she's Fluttershy's oldest and most loyal friend. But Dash is a world-class athlete. The type of athlete who's still talked about a century after they retire. Dash is not accustomed to training those of... average... gifts. She doesn't understand what it's like to be, and I so loathe this word under any circumstances... normal."
Diamond just nodded, but the word average made her ears tuck and tail thrash. Sweetie Belle had left her in the dust—and she was a unicorn! Shouldn't an earth pony be able to beat a unicorn in a race?
Clearly her cutie mark didn't extend to feats of physical prowess, which was exactly why she wanted to win the Running! It would have proved she's earned this on her own, not been given it, by either her dad or her special talent.
"Dash is the pony you call to turn an already elite athlete into an Equestria Games-medalist or a Wonderbolt. Not to turn a normal teenager into the winner of a minor local competition."
"I suppose," Diamond said, "that makes sense."
Discord tapped a finger on his chin. "Scootaloo might be a flightless pegasus, but she's an astounding runner. I suppose the universe wasn't totally unfair to her."
"Yeah," Diamond said, and took another drink.
Discord leaned down, arching his back into a tight curl no pony could have replicated, and touched his nose against hers. It surprised Diamond Tiara to find his breath didn't stink, but instead smelled like... cucumbers?
"I've got a training regimen that Dash can't match," Discord said.
Pouring some more water on her head, and letting it splash onto Discord's face, she thought for a few seconds. "Okay."
Discord straightened up, grinned, and snapped his fingers.
Diamond Tiara gasped and flailed wildly as the ground receded away from her.
As she gasped for breath, she caught a mailbox post, and gripped all four legs around it. Her eyes darted around as her tail wrapped itself around the post. Almost immediately after, the mailbox separated from the ground and began to float some direction that she could not convince herself was up.
Starry night mixed with sunny day, and what appeared to be a nebula swirled with the sound of a draining bathtub.
"Welcome to my humble abode," Discord said. Which would have been all right, in isolation. However, he was floating at a ninety-degree angle to the direction Diamond Tiara's senses told her wasn't necessarily not up.
"Wait—what—Discord, what are we doing here?"
He leaned in close to her again, nose touching nose, and said, "Training."
Discord extended one finger and pushed the mailbox, and it floated across the black abyss.
Sweat rolled off Diamond Tiara, not just from the exertion of the run, but now from terror. Her own stink of terror-sweat surrounded her.
A single bead of perspiration separated from her nose and just... floated, a perfectly round ball just in front of her eyes. "Oh gosh! Oh, oh..."
Deep booms, deeper than DJ P0N-3's bass drops, echoed back and forth. Floating on his back, hands behind his head, Discord said, "Oh, it sounds like your training partners are ready and eager..."
"Tr... training partners?"
"You do want to practice running fast through the woods, don't you, Diamond Tiara?"
Gently, the tip of the mailbox post hit the dark ground ahead of them.
The sweat droplet fell and splashed into the dirt. Diamond Tiara released her four legs from the mailbox post and hung. She swung by her tail for a few moments before her tail unwrapped itself. She fell, hit the soft dirt, and stood, looking around.
Her brain could only gather fragments of the chaos. She grew up in a mansion, her foalhood constrained, managed, ordered... the chaos washed over her, battered her, waves of chaos from an ocean of insanity, she felt it but didn't really absorb the chaos. A house, a perfectly normal house with a perfectly normal fence, sitting on a tiny fragment of a hill suspended in the darkness. Other hills, devoid of supporting planet, floated around, wooden-planked rope-bridges connecting them, flowing waterfalls of lava, or something more chaotic and less physical than lava, who knew, flowing from one island to the other—
"This is new," Discord declared, waving his arms at the dark island they stood on. "I made it just for you, Diamond Tiara. Let there be... light."
Discord held his hands low to the ground and then slowly lifted his hands, palms upward, until they were above his head, the whole time singing, "Dum... dum... dum... DUN DUN!"
It wasn't a sunrise, or anything so logical as that. The air around them—assuming it was air—simply got brighter, and Diamond saw that she and Discord stood in a clearing, with trees towering above them.
Diamond gulped and tucked her tail deep beneath her belly. Her already-racing heart pounded harder and her vision tunneled down. The universe—assuming they were still in the universe—around her disappeared and she could only see the crown of the single tree she was focusing on. Blood hammered in her ears and she tried to say something but her mouth was so dry it wouldn't open, the membranes all glued together.
The trees resembled White Tail Woods, in the same lunatic and abhorrent way that Discord resembled a pony or a lion or any of the other creatures he was made from.
The tree arched its trunk and looked down at her. The branches and leaves twisted into something that resembled the loathsome outline of a face. The bark rippled like waves in a pond until it turned smooth.
A boom echoed through the air, and rocked up through her hooves into her body.
The tree lurched itself from the ground, roots becoming slithering snake-like appendages, and it shuffled across the ground toward her. BOOM.
She took a few steps back. Her ears were tucked so far back that they ached. Her chest pounded with what a heart attack must feel like.
She was only fourteen, she was a teenager and ate healthy. How could she be having a heart attack? Randolf always cooked exquisite meals with not too much dairy or sugar. Mainly because her mom was so worried about—
Two more trees ripped themselves from the ground and took slithering steps toward Diamond Tiara. BOOM. BOOM.
"Ent they grand?" Discord asked with a clap.
She gasped harder. Panted. Whimpered. She pivoted her head back and forth to count the monstrous trees. Five, six, seven–
A soft noise buzzed in her ear.
Seven trees. Seven! The smallest one looked at least one hundred feet tall.
"Diamond Tiara!" Discord shouted, right in her face. His voice was thin, tinny, almost inaudible though the terror gripping her.
She looked at him.
"Diamond Tiara," he said. With a snap of his fingers, he was again in a white tank top and blue gym shorts, with athletic socks and sneakers on his feet. The sweatband circled his head.
One of the trees swiped out a limb, nearly hitting Diamond Tiara.
"Diamond Tiara," Discord said, "run."
She spun on her hooves and sprinted off into the dense woods, squinting into the darkness. What had happened to the sunrise? Discord floated next to her, backstroking nonchalantly. "A lovely night for a trot in the woods, don't you agree, Diamond Tiara?"
Ignoring him, she ran as her hooves pounded against the dirt trail. She looked over her shoulder and the trees were keeping up with them, the slithering roots moving so fast they looked like bullwhips.
"Discord!" she gasped, "Stop them!"
"But you've barely gone half a mile, and the Running is nearly ten miles."
The island, or planetoid, or whatever it was, wasn't very large. A sun—it probably wasn't the sun—was rising as Diamond approached what had been the horizon. Discord was backstroking right next to her but she couldn't even see him, her vision so focused on the trail just in front of her hooves. Sweat pooled in her eyes and soaked her ribs, flanks, mane, tail, and every breath burned down her throat as she fought to feed air to her bursting lungs.
"Dash, I could use a swooping rainboom rescue right about now..." she said to herself.
Discord was going to let those tree-beasts get her, nopony would ever know where she disappeared to, her Dad would never even know what had happened—
"Discord!" came a powerful shout.
A rainbow trail streaked past her and Diamond saw Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, Smoky, and Fluttershy standing in her path. Diamond's left-rear hoof caught on something, a root or stone, and she tumbled, hit face-first, and slid twenty feet until she bumped into the CMC's hooves.
"Discord!" Fluttershy shouted again. "What are you doing to her?"
Diamond Tiara struggled to her hooves and gasped at the pain in her left rear leg, falling to her right flank and curling around her injury. She looked back, the way she had come, and saw Rainbow Dash hovering in the air, eighty feet up, shadow-boxing in front of one of the trees.
Finding herself between Sweetie Belle and Smoky, Diamond stood on three hooves, then hugged them, one in each foreleg, injured leg lifted up, and sobbed into Smoky's red mane.
"My dear Diamond Tiara asked for help training for the Running," Discord said. "And you should have seen how magnificently fast she moved."
One of the trees reached up a branch and thumped Rainbow Dash. It launched her into a high ballistic orbit above the floating island, past Discord's house, a rainbow trail following her and a few light-blue feathers floating down toward the ground. A cry of "Uncooooool......" wafted down from above.
Smoky pushed Diamond Tiara away, breaking her hug, and took two steps forward. He snarled, low in his throat.
"What—" Scootaloo said.
Red and blue flames burst from him as his light-beige body turned black, his greenish scales turning charcoal-gray, and a flaming nirik stalked forward, toward the monstrous trees. The CMCs faded back a few steps, and Diamond released her hug on Sweetie Belle.
"Discord, you stop this right now!" Fluttershy said.
Diamond ignored Fluttershy. She watched Smoky closely, paralyzed with fear.
"This ain't good, y'all," Apple Bloom said. "Applejack told me she had to fight a whole village of niriks all by herself with only a half-glass of water and her lasso—"
"What?" Fluttershy said. "Applejack said... what?"
Smoky's flames grew. The trees began moving into a semicircle to surround him, and they shook their branches to shed their brown leaves, making themselves less flammable. Smoky scraped at the ground with his left forehoof.
"They're perfectly armless," Discord said. "But fine, I'll go to the root of the problem."
He snapped his fingers and the trees sank back into the ground, rearranging their roots. The distorted faces in the branches disappeared as the limbs returned to a natural arrangement, and the smooth bark wrinkled back to normal.
Discord huffed. "I wasn't going to hurt Diamond Tiara. Just a little fun at her expense, like she used to always do to your three little shadows here." He pointed to the Crusaders.
Smoky looked at the now-still trees, cocking his head. The flames engulfing his body reduced, but didn't disappear.
He shook himself, looking over his shoulder, down one flank, then down the other.
"Discord!" Scootaloo said. "Diamond Tiara isn't like that anymore, and we've forgiven her."
"Even if she was still like she used to be, siccing giant trees on her wouldn't have been fair," Sweetie Belle said.
Smoky began to spin in a circle, looking at his torso, pursing his lips and blowing on the flames.
Diamond Tiara took a deep breath and limped to him.
"Smoky?" she said, when she was about a body-length away.
He looked at her, his eyes empty and white. "Stay back!" he said. "I... I can't control it! I'm stuck. Mom and dad warned me to never go nirik on purpose..."
"It's okay," Diamond whispered, taking another step closer. The heat roiled off him, drying her sweat and stinging her eyes. "It's okay, everything's sorted out. The trees are back to normal."
He looked up into the forest canopy. The trees sat motionless, not even a hint of wind rustling their leaves.
His flames dropped some more, but his body remained dark black, the scales on his back charcoal gray, and his currently black mane still shimmered with heat.
Rainbow Dash flared her wings and landed a few feet from Smoky and Diamond.
"DT, watch it, back off," Rainbow said. "Fluttershy told me about this. Smoky, you okay? We need you to be cool. Chill."
Diamond took another step, limping to keep off her hurt back-left leg, and used her right forehoof to touch his right hip, where a cutie mark would have been on a pony. "You're okay, Smoky, it's all okay. Everything's sorted out, and thank you for trying to keep the trees away from us. Good job. Come back to us."
He shook his head.
Diamond Tiara brushed his ribs with her hoof.
The flames quenched and he was a kirin again.
Smoky looked at Diamond, Rainbow, and the others and blushed. "Wow, that's embarrassing. My cheeks are... hot."
Discord made a quizzical face and tapped a finger against his chin.
Rainbow trotted around to Diamond Tiara and squinted down at Diamond's injured hoof. "We need to get back to Ponyville and get you to the hospital. That's swelling up already."
"That's really humiliating," Smoky said, his ears tucking and tail thrashing. "I've never been so mad I got stuck like that before. Diamond Tiara... thanks."
Diamond Tiara stood in the back of the pack, waiting for Pinkie to sound her airhorn from the balloon to start the Running.
She chose a spot far in the rear of the mass of ponies because she fully expected to come in dead last. Well, that was fine. Just finishing the course at all with her leg wrapped in elastic bandages would be an accomplishment.
Apple Bloom coughed, and took a drink of water. "Why ain't the pegasi gotten any rain? It's all dusty here."
"Don't ask me," Scootaloo said with an angry flap of her wings. "I'm not on the weather crew, obviously."
"What are you doing here, again?" Sweetie Belle said.
"I printed fake numbers and taped them to my flanks," Scootaloo said, pointing at the '123' placards over her cutie marks.
Sweetie Belle was 77, Apple Bloom 93, and Diamond Tiara herself 99.
Smoky trotted up, number 123 also on his flanks. "Hey, twins!" he said.
"Don't tattle?" Scootaloo said, her ears perking up in concern.
"Wouldn't dream of it," Smoky said.
"Diamond Tiara," purred a voice just behind her ear.
She didn't even turn around. "Discord. Make like a tree and leaf me alone."
"I'm here to apologize."
She turned and looked at him. He was back in his tank top, gym shorts, running shoes, and sweat band. "As a magical powerhouse, I usually just teleport or float anywhere I need to go. To demonstrate the sincerity of my apology, I'm going to run with you, for the whole track. And I despise... yuck!... running."
"Did Fluttershy put ya up to this?" Apple Bloom asked.
"Well, obviously," Discord said. "The fact that it wasn't my idea doesn't make it wrong."
He snapped his fingers and a placard appeared, pinned to the front of his shirt. Instead of a number, it showed a picture of a slice of pecan pie.
"On your marks!" Pinkie called from the balloon.
"Good luck, everypony!" Diamond Tiara said. Apple Bloom and Smoky shouldered their way to the front of the pack, close to the start line, where the serious competitors waited.
Six miles in. Six miles. Four to go. Diamond paced herself, trotting slowly, and Discord's long legs allowed him to pace her with a quick walk. His hands were folded behind him.
"You don't have to stay with me the whole time."
"I do, in fact. Fluttershy made it quite clear that was the actual backbone of the apology, and Starlight agreed with her."
"Since when do you listen to Starlight?"
"Since the time she gave me a rather sincere apology, for the time she banished me from the school. Being chaotic doesn't mean I can't recognize good examples."
Sparkler and Dinky sat at a water station a few dozen feet up-trail. Diamond slowed to a walk and approached them.
"Diamond, you doing good?" Dinky asked. "You're dead last."
Sparkler bopped her little sister on the horn with a hoof. "Dinky!"
Dinky levitated up a clipboard and made a checkbox. "See? Last one. Number 99. Number 123 even went around twice, it looks like."
Diamond Tiara took several of the water cups and guzzled them, then poured a few over her mane. Discord held up a water cup, snapped his fingers, and the cup disappeared, leaving a solid hunk of water still in the cup's shape, and snatched it out of the air with a snap of his jaws.
"Diamond Tiara," Sparkler said. "You're limping, and I see your leg is wrapped up. Should you even try to finish the race?"
Sparkler pointed to a side trail. "That's a shortcut back to the finish, Diamond, less than a half-mile."
Diamond Tiara looked down the shortcut, then up the race course trail.
Her throat was parched again, just seconds after the drink of water, and the dust stung her eyes. Her rear leg throbbed, the injury still too fresh for the race—her dad had been right about that, although her mother had insisted she participate anyway and show everypony she wasn't a quitter or a loser.
Diamond Tiara sighed. "Yeah. Discord, let's call it quits and take the shortcut."
"Shortcut?" he said with a smile, and snapped his fingers.
"Yipe!" Diamond Tiara shouted as the teleport deposited them just past the finish line, at the first aid tent.
Nurse Redheart looked up from taking an unconscious Mr. Cake's blood pressure. "Oh, Miss Diamond," Redheart said, "I warned you not to try to run on that."
Diamond plopped down onto her bottom and thrashed her tail.
Starlight Glimmer trotted over to her. "First teleport?"
Diamond shook her head, swallowing several times. "Third."
"The nausea might take a few minutes, those first few times."
"Okay."
From across the clearing, Smoky screamed, "What are you talking about?"
Diamond looked up.
One of the race referees—Mr. Davenport—levitated up a clipboard, and looked down at the kirin foal. "We're showing number one-two-three passed several of the checkpoints more than once. Sorry, we don't know what that means, but we're disqualifying you."
"But–but–but I came in fourth! Fourth overall! First among the teenagers. You can't disqualify me!"
Scootaloo ran up to the referee. "It's my fault, I faked a number because you all wouldn't let me sign up."
"What?" Davenport said. "Why couldn't you sign up, Scootaloo?"
"I'm not old enough," Scootaloo said.
"Where are your parents?"
"Shire Lanka."
"...Explains a lot," said Davenport, and looked back at Smoky.
Diamond Tiara stood and limped toward Scootaloo and Smoky.
Two adult kirins and Clear Streams were approaching from the spectator area.
"Don't punish Smoky," Scootaloo said. "I'm the cheater."
"Look, did you know she had the same number as you?"
Smoky ground his forehoof into the dirt. A thin stream of smoke rose from his horn. "Yes."
"Then you should have told a race steward."
Smoky's light-beige coat turned a shade darker, and a thin line of blue flames ran down his back.
"Mister Davenport," Diamond Tiara crooned, limping toward him. "Come now, can't we be reasonable?"
"Honey..." said the kirin mare, approaching cautiously. The stallion wrapped a hoof around Clear Springs and held her back.
"Diamond Tiara, this isn't your concern," Davenport said
"Come now, certainly it is. Smoky here is my close friend and classmate."
"Friend?" said Smoky.
"Don't go nirik," she whispered. "These woods haven't had rain in two months. They're dry tinder."
"But if Smoky knew Scootaloo here—" Davenport began.
Diamond turned face-on to Davenport, looked up at him, summoned her quivering lips, and hit him with the big, sad eyes she'd practiced for years on her father. "But Mister Davenport, do you expect the new foal in school, and the only kirin in the entire school other than his sister, to really go off tattle-taling to the adults when one of the most popular students in school does something she ought not?"
"Well..." Davenport muttered, rubbing the back of his neck.
"Come, now, Mister Davenport," Diamond crooned, now cantering back and forth in front of him, her nose lifted up, as haughtily as she could. "You remember when Scootaloo's parents nearly moved her to Shire Lanka? The whole town came together in her defense. Smoky surely heard about that."
"I nev–" Smoky started.
Diamond Tiara popped him in the nose with her tail.
"Yeah, the thing. I heard about." Smoky said. "That I heard."
Diamond paced back the other direction. "He did so well, and surely made some good friends, despite being new here in town, Mister Davenport. Can't you extenuate some circumstances for him?" She blinked up at Davenport with pleading eyes.
Davenport was about to argue the point, but merely sighed. "Oh, okay. This is a warning, though, to both of you. Scootaloo: you're pre-disqualified for next year." Davenport trotted off.
"What?!?" Scootaloo plopped down to her bottom and her wings drooped.
Smoky looked at Diamond Tiara, and the flames running down his back disappeared. His coat returned to its normal coloration. He approached her. "I... thanks. I appreciate that."
Diamond Tiara sat down on the ground, and rubbed her sore leg with her forehooves. "Any time. I'm just glad I quit the race early and got back when I did. If I'd been five minutes later... huh. Were you about to nirik out?"
He nodded his head. "Yeah. Mom says you learn to control that better as you get older, but... it's still hard."
"I'm thirsty," Diamond said.
Smoky pointed his horn at a tent where Bon Bon and Lyra were selling ice cream floats. "My treat. I owe you."
Diamond Tiara looked up at him and extended a forehoof. He reached out with a forehoof and helped her stand.
"My pleasure," Diamond Tiara said.
Author's Note
This is an entry to the Season 10 bingo contest. My prompt was:
[Diamond Tiara][is thinking about][Rainbow Dash]
[Discord's Home]
[Kirin]
I had no idea what I was going to do with that prompt, and then I read "The Spirit of the Forest (link)" comic, which is about Diamond Tiara and White Tail Woods. I heartily recommend the comic to anyone who wants to see post-reform Diamond Tiara being awesome.
Comments are always welcome!
