Diamond Tiara And The Economics Of Love

She was inspecting the hoofprints in the snow and initially, she wasn't entirely sure why. The primary reason might have been that they were the only things which could be examined at all. Knowledge was supposed to be power, she had to start learning somewhere, and when Diamond had just acquired an ene --

-- the thought was put on hold, and she refocused on the impressions which had been placed into a sea of frozen white.

Diamond remembered the ponies who were waiting for her in the kitchen, then realized that taking too long outside might have them follow her out and right now, that could potentially wreck her only evidence: too many hooves stomping about. She didn't have a lot of time...

Small.

That was the primary fact available. The hoofprints were -- small.

Diamond was vaguely aware that anypony who possessed a unique pattern of imperfections in their keratin could essentially wind up having their flaws serve as a sort of identifier: it was why she'd generally been very careful about not stepping onto mud or soil while setting up anything... physical, because four utterly flawless impressions could clearly only be her. So there was a chance that anything she was seeing could eventually not only lead back to the actual pony, but serve as absolute proof of their prior presence. It was just that when it came to giving her something she could use at that exact moment... well, who went around trying to see the underside of hooves all the time?

Ponies who were too weird to appreciate the perfection of mane and tail streaks, that was who. Oh, and maybe police officers. Just in case they spotted something which could be used a few years later.

...and Diamond had done it. Once. But that hadn't been her fault, because Tirek's giant descending hoof had taken over the sky. It had been the only thing left to see, the last thing she would ever see, and she'd just been looking for some way to hurt him. To make sure he would have a reason to remember her. A legacy. The final thing she could do before she d --

-- the filly briefly closed harsh blue eyes, and stood perfectly still in the snow until she could tell herself that all of the shivering had been produced by winter chill.

After an indeterminable amount of time finally allowed her to travel from past to present, Diamond resumed the inspection.

Small.
How small?

Smaller than what Miss Twilight would have left behind, and that adult hadn't really been on the suspect list: the adolescent didn't think the librarian had been that mad about Diamond's brilliant 'book about books' idea -- and being angry about such genius was stupid anyway. (Maybe Miss Twilight was just mad about not having thought of it first. Or, given the apparent existence of Cliff Notes, second.) But when Diamond really looked at the impressions...

Small...

Teleportation was sort of -- advanced, wasn't it? There weren't very many unicorns who could learn it, and that wasn't just the strangeness which seemed to rein the potential for spell mastery to a pony's personality. Yes, temperament actually played a part: a stallion who had no interest in ever leaving his settled zone was unlikely to unlock the capacity for instantly reaching the next one. But it also took power to get into the between: more than a little of it.

(She didn't want to think about whether there had been any ponies who'd had just enough strength to go into the void. And not enough to get back out again.)

Strength. Potential. Maybe education, although she understood that some workings were self-taught and a unicorn's trick -- their personal spell -- would arise from the soul itself. But when it came to raw frequency, those who could teleport were rare. Something Diamond would have been able to work out even if short school sessions in Comparative Magic hadn't existed, because she understood supply and demand. Escort-capable unicorns were in high demand and if the supply had been larger, then the prices for such nausea-inducing journeys would have been a lot lower. And those who could bring others along were a subset of the original, already-tiny group...

There was a flash of light. Maybe it's easier to create a flash. It could have blinded me to the real exit. Faking the teleport. And there's a line of hoofprints going back to the treeline...

But it only took a little more inspection to eliminate that possibility. She felt that a pony moving across snow would have the forward edge of their keratin sink in a little more deeply, because there was a tendency to plant a little more of their weight in that direction. (Diamond quickly checked that with her own hoofprints, because theories needed testing.) This pony had trotted out of the woods, moving across Diamond's grounds. Even if they'd been able to somehow exactly backtrack their retreat, putting every hoof exactly where one had gone before...

...no. The proof was right there. The intruder had come in on hoof. And at the instant they realized their presence was known, the light had taken them away.

...one more check. Be sure.

She focused her senses again, sent her awareness deep within the earth and asked her question again. The concentration involved in checking a larger radius of snow blanket was starting to give her a headache, but...

...nothing.

The adolescent carefully tracked the incoming line of hoofprints in the opposite direction. It didn't take long before her passage between trees and over snow-covered roots brought her back to the main road, and then everything got lost because of course the plows had been through here and there weren't enough patches of snow left to hold much in the way of crunched-down testimony.

And then she returned to the house.

"Diamond?" Snips quickly asked. He had to hurry the word, because he'd started at the instant she'd started to trot by the open kitchen door and still didn't have a lot of time to work with. "You were out there for a while. Everything okay --"

"Camera!" Diamond called back over her own retreating tail.

"Huh?" represented most of what her original assumption about Snips' intelligence would have contributed to any discussion.

"I need my camera!"

Several minutes passed before she actually entered the kitchen. The hardest part of the sigh which announced her incoming presence was not breathing too deeply on the other end. Just about everything in the room possessed the residual odors of food and right now, those scents weren't necessarily on her side. Snips having once again served himself meant there were a lot of vegetable undercurrents to ignore.

"...I don't have a camera," Diamond wearily announced.

They were both looking at her. The adolescent immediately decided it was from concern.

"Camera," Silver too-carefully repeated.

"We lost just about everything," Diamond reminded her best friend. "Everything except for the stuff in Daddy's safe deposit box."

...actually -- now that she was thinking about it, Diamond didn't know what had been in there. Something so important that her father had wanted to give the contents that extra degree of protection. The ownership certificates for every store in the franchise?

...and now that she was thinking about it, Diamond realized she'd been wrong. "And a couple of little pieces from the old house," she added. "Stuff which was too small to get smashed up, or that just got lucky. But that's still nearly everything lost. And we're still replacing it. I just forgot that I hadn't gotten a camera back yet." She'd had such a good model. And while she wasn't anywhere close to being a professional (much less marked) photographer, it had been important to learn how to use it properly. "Snips, I know you've got to head to the shop once we finish the homework stuff." His mother wasn't as nice about weekends as her father. "There isn't enough time for you to bring one back. Silver, can you go get your mom's camera? Maybe if you hurry --"

"-- why," Silver inquired (and did so with what Diamond felt to be a little too much caution), "do you need a camera?"

Snips perked up and because he was a boy, that frequently meant he had just thought of something stupid.

"Did you see a monster?" the not-exactly-a-stallion eagerly checked. "Is it still out there and ya wanna get a good shot before it leaves? Maybe I can help you identify it!"

She didn't sigh or groan: neither felt suitable, and -- it was Snips. You had to expect a certain amount of frustration to show up in just about any dealings with him, although Diamond was hoping the maximum allotment on Ursa Minors had already been met. Some boys were just fascinated by monsters. Snips possessed at least a little interest, although she was fairly certain he'd stopped buying the 'educational' trading cards and had never gotten anywhere close to purchasing any poorly-drawn calendar. (Because bad taste had limits, none of the most recent ones had featured centaurs.)

Instead, Diamond simply explained.

The presence of Snips meant having to leave certain details out, and she quickly claimed to have just heard snow crunching on the other side of the tree. He didn't question it, and she hadn't expected him to. Diamond felt herself to have significant skill in lying: it was just that most such expertise apparently evaporated at the moment ponies started actually looking for it.

Still, for this, it was like her talent. Some things were just easier not to talk about, especially if she wanted ponies to still feel the same way about her once she'd finished. And given how few people spoke to her at all...

(Shouldn't she be trusted to do her own work by now? It had been moons...)

"So somepony dumped snow on ya," the boy summarized. "And you want to get a shot of the hoofprints because...?"

"If they come onto the grounds again while we've still got snow," Diamond immediately said, "I'll be able to compare. Or if we can catch and keep them here."

(How did you capture a teleport-capable unicorn?)

Thoughtfully, "It's probably not somepony who can self-levitate. Have you ever seen that? Miss Fleur can do it. And that's supposed to be really rare. Harder than teleportation."

"Trying gave me a really bad headache," Snips promptly stated. "Fields just aren't supposed to go backwards."

Diamond nodded. "So if they could," she proposed, "they might have floated in, then left the same way. Or --" because you had to consider all the possibilities "-- they were holding that back for later. So I'm not going to eliminate it just yet."

It felt as if her heartbeat was starting to quicken: the amazing part was that her circulatory system was somehow managing to leave her stomach out of it. Adrenaline was doing its best to temporarily substitute for an unreliable calorie supply. (She'd just used some magic and that meant a light snack was a good idea, but she couldn't trust her body.) It almost felt good --

"-- Diamond?" Silver, and it was rare for the tones of concern to be that open. "What are you thinking about?"

She didn't have to wonder about why her best friend had asked that, not when she knew the expression had been out in the open. "I'm just a little worked up," she readily admitted. "This is exciting!"

-- they were staring at her. Both of them, and she didn't understand why. Maybe if she just finished vocalizing the thought...

"I've never had an enemy before!" Diamond happily exclaimed, and watched for the moment when the stares ended.

Snips hadn't blinked yet. By contrast, Silver's snout wrinkled. The glasses shifted accordingly, and nearly fell off.

"...really?" the other earth pony slowly said.

The new home's younger resident briefly considered the perspective of somepony who'd not only been there for quite a bit of the 'fun', but had occasionally tried to nudge Diamond back when Silver had thought things were going too far. Efforts which, for the most part, had consistently failed.

"Okay," Diamond carefully qualified. "I've been an enemy. And I guess that makes whoever I was against into my enemy. I just really didn't have anypony who'd act on it. Not that directly!" Thoughtfully, "Maybe that says something about the quality of the opponents." Which briefly (and oddly) made her feel as if she owed Sweetie a fresh apology. She wasn't sure why. There didn't seem to be anything about that sentence which a Secretary Of Insults would have needed to write down.

And now that she was really thinking about it... was having an enemy who felt they could actively move against her an improvement, or an insult? Because this didn't necessarily represent Diamond having acquired a higher level of opposition. It could just represent somepony who was that unconcerned about her ability to retaliate.

Remember what Daddy said. Every business at least partially defines itself by the competition.

Which gave her another reason for finding out what she was up against -- sort of. Diamond had already done a very good job of defining herself, and didn't need to see any more meanings shift --

"-- be careful," Silver softly told her. "Please, Diamond. Just -- be careful for a while." And Snips solemnly nodded.

Harsh blue eyes blinked and in doing so, once again told their owner that the act didn't improve anything on its own. "Why?"

"Because," her oldest friend carefully intoned, "you made a lot of ponies mad." A little more softly, "We both did. And we're still apologizing. Still remembering everything we have to apologize for." The pause felt far too long. "We -- aren't forgiven. Not by everypony. Not even close. And we don't know who's doing this." With a tiny sigh, "I could make a pretty good guess on 'why'. But until we find out who and can try talking to them, for whatever good that might do... please be careful."

Which drew another nod from the boy. "Because not everypony knows you like we do," Snips stated. "Most ponies don't get close enough to... know stuff changed. To know you're sorry. So just watch your tail until we figure this out." With tones just as solemn as the first nod, "But if you can't? We'll try to guard it. Silver, I really don't have that much time before I have to be at the shop. Do you have enough to get your mom's camera?"

Violet eyes focused through carved glass, looked at the clock mounted over the stove. "Barely," Silver announced. "I'll leave now."

Snips was long-departed by the time Silver got back. The two fillies went out to the snow dump site, and Silver took the pictures. Then Diamond took two more, just to make sure it had all been done properly. A portion of allowance was turned over to make sure the film got developed, and there was a mutual agreement not to bring any actual police officers in on this because doing so was the single best way to get every possible adult involved -- a list which started with Diamond's father.

Diamond had gotten a lot of gallops out of threatening to kick her parent's perceived social and economic mass into whoever she didn't like. Getting him involved too early with somepony who didn't like her felt like a very good way of preventing Diamond from doing anything. Silver didn't completely agree with this, but was willing to file it under 'We need more information before we can act'. And since Diamond didn't talk about the personal belief that the police might just decide anything done to her was warranted, the matching topic silence made it safe to guess that Silver had reached the same conclusion.

Her oldest friend went home, and... between the interruption and need to preserve evidence, there was still an (un)fair amount of homework to do. Diamond didn't feel this had been a direct part of her enemy's plan, but was willing to recognize the results as a portion of rather irritating fallout.

She tried to do the work on her own. (She had to, because she wasn't trusted and there was no other choice.) But she kept getting distracted by her own thoughts.

A very small unicorn, far too small to be an adult. That implied somepony in her own age group -- or, given the size of the hoofprints, somewhat younger. A filly or colt. And either way, that worked out to 'child'.

(How many kids lived in the settled zone? Diamond attended Ponyville East, but there was also North to consider, and she'd trotted past the West schoolhouse a few times. How many names could she remember, and how did that compare to the number her father knew?)

A child who could already teleport.

What was she up against?