- Crystal Empire Outskirts, Noon
The artist smiled at her handiwork. To her, it was as if her canvas was just as vibrant and alive as the Crystal Palace in the distance. She sat onto her haunches and dipped the tip of her auburn tail into a smidgen of robin's egg blue to add more color to her noon sky. However, when she turned back to her reference material, there was a posing stallion with a egotistical grin on his face blocking her way. He had his chest stuck out and one of his forelegs outstretched towards her in a provocative manner, like he was beckoning her closer. Feeling awkward and confused, the artist opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted by a suave, yet exceedingly arrogant voice.
“Don't be shy my dear, let your imagination run wild! Few mares would ever have the pleasure of capturing the ever handsome, majestic, and might I add magnificent Prince Blueblood in a work of art! Yes, I daresay this is a privilege! A divine right!”
He closed his eyes and smiled as he became enamored in his own self-indulgence. “Now, let your brushstrokes capture my royal visage! Let your bleak canvas come to life! Yes, YES! I truly AM the pinnacle of art, am I not?! Ah, but you mustn’t be too bold! The my truest essence could bewitch even the coldest of hearts! It could thaw the Crystal Mountains themselves!”
“Mama, there's a weird pervert doing things by himself over there.”
His eyes snapped open, realizing all too late that he was making a fool of himself. That artist pony was gone, a mere white dot in the distance galloping towards the train station with her gear tied to her back. He turned to his left to see a gray crystal filly looking at him with half-lidded eyes, her right hoof around a lollipop stick as she moved it around in her mouth. Her mother was next to her, coiling her foreleg around her head and motioning her to walk away.
“Don't make eye contact with him, just walk away...” She was trying to keep her voice low, but Blueblood could hear her clear as day. He grit his teeth and sneered at their backs, infuriated at his situation.
“Oh Auntie Celestia, why must you torment me like this?! How is it that these commoners all seem to reject my authority and grace?! Can they not see the perfection in front of their eyes?! What have I done to deserve such a fate...?!”
- Crystal Palace, Thirty Minutes Ago
“Insulting the diplomats, coercing the chamber maids to serve you lunch in the middle of the conference, AND flirting with Princess Cadence?! What is the matter with you?! I've tolerated your arrogance in the hopes that you would learn humility on your own, but it seems as though I was mistaken.”
Prince Blueblood curled into a fetal position against the wall of the hallway, the shadow of Princess Celestia completely cast over him. She gazed down on him with a look of disdain that he had never seen before, and a stern voice that only an angry mother could give. Or in his case, an angry aunt.
“But Auntie...I-I mean, Princess Celestia, please be reasonable! I was merely trying to, uh...what I mean to say is...” He had nothing. No excuses, no logical argument, and no escape. The truth of the matter was that he simply wanted to enjoy himself, though he could never admit it in this situation. Judging from the look in her eyes, it seemed like he didn't even need to explain.
“If you will not learn from your mistakes, then I believe you require additional motivation.” Celestia closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and sighed through her nose, her momentary pause feeling like an executioner had just raised the guillotine. “Until we are ready to depart back to Canterlot, you are forbidden from entering the Crystal Palace.”
Prince Blueblood gasped, the air entering his lungs feeling like a thousand needles. Truly it was a punishment worse than death. “What?! But-but that's in four hours! You can't expect me to be around those, ugh...commoners for so long, do you?! What with their uncouth mouths, their degrading domiciles, why just the thought of it - ”
“Those commoners, as you refer to them, are the true soul of this nation. They are the reason why any of us are here.”
He gulped, surprised that she would go so far as to interrupt him. “B-but...”
“Enough! This is not up for debate.” Princess Celestia stamped a hoof down, and with a spark of her horn, teleported him just outside of the palace grounds before he could get another word in edgewise. Blueblood's head drooped, a defeated groan forcing his way out of his mouth.
“Are you gonna to do anything else weird, Mr. Pervert? I'm bored.”
Upon hearing a monotone voice speaking to him, he took his face out of his hooves to see that same filly from earlier standing in front of him, staring at him with that same dour look. Blueblood scrambled to his hooves as fast as he could, trying to reassert his dignity. Brushing a hoof through his mane, he said, “Hah! I need no sympathy from a mere foal! I was merely - ” His eyes went wide, eventually realizing what she called him. Pushing his face into her's, he yelled, “W-what?! Insolent commoner, how dare you! I will have you know that I am a Prince of Equestria, and you will address me as such!”
Her expression didn't change. She just looked back at him with her bluish, crystal pony eyes. “U-nyuuuuu...”
Blueblood back off after she started making a strange noise, his expression becoming distressed. It was creepy that she spoke with such a dreary tone, but this was going too far. Noticing that her sucker was gone, he reached into his lapel with his magic and dropped a few bits on the ground in front of her. “H-here! Take this and leave me alone! Go off and buy another lollipop with that, or whatever it is you commoners do with spare change!”
“Uwah...” She looked down at the coins at her hooves for a few seconds before picking them up with her mouth. She replied to him a muffled voice, “Thank you. You're funny, Mr. Pervert.”
Blueblood was close to boiling over as she trotted away. His jaw was set so hard that it could crush stone and his hooves felt like they were close to burrowing into bedrock. He took a deep breath and screamed, “ARRGGHH! I will not tolerate this...this indignity! I am a Prince! Prince Blueblood, nephew of Princess Celestia! And I will see to it that – BWAH!”
His tirade was cut off by yet another pony invading his space, only this time she crashed into him. An unrolled beige scroll fell over his head, and he felt a pink tail forcing itself into his face. Before he could run his voice dry with more yelling, a high-pitched voice said, “Owww...oh! I'm so so SOOO sorry for crashing into you while you were screaming at nothing! Are you okay?!”
“Ugh, and just what are you sullying my groomed mane with?!” Blueblood levitated the scroll off himself and stood up, brushing his chest off while glaring at the paper before his eyes. “Hm, what's this? A genealogical chart?”
The pony next to him sprang up, getting an overtly excited look in her eyes. “Yuuup! You see, I found this weird section on the scroll talking about someone named Blueblood, but I couldn't read what it said because it was written in some old, ancient text. Twilight told me that this Blueblood pony is royalty, so I just HAD to find out what it all meant! It's a MYS-tery! And solving mysteries is so much fun!”
He only heard half of what she was saying, his eyes roaming over the scroll at the mention of his name. His levitation unraveled the scroll from the bottom while rolling it back up at the top before he stopped near the end. Curling his mouth into a haughty smirk, he said to himself, “Heh heh. I think I understand why these ponies take so little notice of me now. They don't believe that I'm royalty! Those ignorant masses believe I'm a simple, filthy commoner, just like them! Well, it's time to change all that! If I have to prove to them that I am more than worthy of their praise, then so be it!”
“...but then I found out that Princess Celestia was here in the Crystal Empire, so I had to take ANOTHER train out of Dodge Junction and – huh? Wait, come back! Twilight said there was something bad written there and I needed to warn Prince Blueblood about his ancestors! It'd be really bad if it got ouuuut!” The pink pony had her hoof outstretched towards him as he galloped off, but it was too late. Falling to her haunches, Pinkie Pie said, “Ohh fudgernutters, this isn't gonna end well...”
- Town Square, Ten Minutes Later
“Hah hah! Hahahaha! Look here Crystal Empire, you can no longer deny my heritage!”
The ponies flitting about the square stopped at the sound of some strange unicorn standing atop a crate, most of them staring at him with raised eyebrows.
“If you would not believe me before, you most assuredly would now! According to this genealogical chart given to me by a strange passerby, I can PROVE that I am of royal blood! You! Come closer and read this out loud!” Blueblood pointed a hoof at a mare with a magenta coat, causing her to point to herself.
“Huh? M-me?”
He brushed back his mane again, saying to her, “I know that I am breathtaking, but please don't be shy! Step forward and announce to the populace the history of the magnificent Prince Blueblood!”
In the back of her mind, she was wondering if she should be calling the guards over, but decided to roll with his strange demands for now. Trotting over to the parchment, she started reading to herself unintelligibly. After a few minutes of this, she gasped loud enough for the entire square to hear. Her pupils contracted and the color drained from her face, her eyes slowly raising to look at him in the eye.
Smiling widely, he closed his eyes and held his head high, “Shocking, is it not?! I see that even now, you're trembling with excitement! Yes, my little ponies! I am indeed a direct descendent of your previous ruler, King Sombra!”
Like a wrench in a grandfather clock, every single pony within earshot stopped and froze in place. Some dropped whatever was in their hooves, and others started edging themselves away from him. At first, he was expecting the masses cheer for his greatness and apologize for their rudeness, but was instead met with utter silence. Feeling confused, he opened his eyes to demand what their problem was this time, only to see terror and anger staring back at him from every direction.
“A descendent of the dark king...?!”
“It can't be!”
“What does he want?!”
“NOOO! Leave us alone, you monster!”
Their quiet whispers soon escalated into a cacophony of insults and threats. Stepping down from his crate, Blueblood started looking around himself with worried eyes, a bead of sweat going down his brow. “Whu...wait a second, why are you all looking at me like that? What did I do?”
The mare that stepped up to him yelled out, “King Sombra was an evil tyrant! He enslaved the entire Crystal Empire and caused it to vanish for a thousand years! It's no wonder you're so vile, you're his descendent!”
“W-WHAT?!” He plunged his face into the scroll again, desperate to find any sort of mistake he overlooked or a typo that proved his innocence. When he couldn't find one, he put it behind his back and started walking backwards, stammering out, “N-no, wait! I've been lying the whole time! I'm not actually royalty, I swear! Don't believe anything that scroll says!”
“Enough talk! GET HIIIM!”
“WAAAAAH!!!”
The town square soon became an angry mob, intent on punishing the wicked Prince Blueblood. Galloping down the street as fast as his legs could carry him, all he could do was scream for his life, regretting he ever crossed that pink pony.
Author's Note
1/14/14 - Once again, I've rushed this to the deadline. But I've got an excuse this time - I wrote this while being sick. As a matter of fact, this is only half of what I intended to write, but I've decided to cut it off here. And for the few of you wondering why I did this with a head cold, it's because I told myself not to miss a SINGLE Writer's Training Grounds. I intend to get myself out there in one way or another ~
