Fluttershy set her injured mouse down, making a mental note to scold that mean old tomcat later.
There it came again, that insistent banging on her door.
“Who could that be?” she asked the mouse.
He didn't answer.
By the time she reached the door, a third barrage of knocks had come and gone. She opened and found a huge white stallion standing in front of her. He looked straight through her, as if she wasn't even there.
“Oh... goodness. Prince Blueblood? What brings you here?” Fluttershy shrank down.
“Where is he?”
“Um... who?”
Blueblood finally seemed to notice her. It wasn't a good kind of noticing. “The draconequus and fugitive from justice Discord, whom you have been harboring, or so I'm told.”
“Fugitive...?”
Blueblood's eyes sliced into her. “Where?”
She gulped and pointed a hoof toward her upstairs room. “Oh, well, he's just up in my—”
Blueblood barged past her, shoving her aside. “Discord! Show yourself!”
The Spirit of Chaos popped into existence directly behind the Prince. “You called?”
“There you are!” Blueblood whirled around, stomping a hoof. “After a thousand years of suffering from your injustice, I'm here to see that you set things right!”
Discord rolled his eyes and lounged against something invisible, slipping a monocle onto his eye. “Ah, Blueblood, my favorite non-alicorn prince. How are you doing?”
“You will undo your heinous insult to my form this instant!”
Discord adjusted his monocle. “Well you certainly are feistier than I remember, though your manners haven't improved much.”
“Discord.” Blueblood stalked toward him. “If you don't—”
“Woah.” Twilight blinked in the doorway. “What's going on here?”
“Oh, Twilight!” Fluttershy jumped up and hovered for a moment. “You're just in time for our brunch!”
Twilight stared at them all. “I didn't know Prince Blueblood was invited.”
Discord pulled a scroll out of thin air and inspected it carefully for a long moment. “My goodness, Princess Twilight, you're right! He isn't on the list at all!”
“I'm not here for brunch.” Blueblood scowled at him.
“Um... Well...”
Discord's voice drowned Fluttershy out. “How wonderful, really! We have two royal ponies now. Why, it's enough for an official quorum. We could write a law!” He teleported in between Twilight and Blueblood, drawing them in. “I motion that we officially rename Saturday as 'Flutterday', in honor of my friend here.”
For a brief moment, everypony looked at Fluttershy.
“Um, well, I motion that someone should explain what's going on?” She glanced back and forth between them all for a moment.
“Seconded.” Twilight teleported away from Discord and faced him. “What is this?”
Discord dismissed her with a wave of his claw. “Oh, it's nothing. Blueblood is just upset about some imagined slight or other.”
“Imagined slight?” Blueblood stomped with both front hooves. “You owe me a thousand years' worth of wings!”
Sighing, Discord shrank down. “Ah, well, I suppose Fluttershy will demand it in the name of friendship if I don't put them back...”
“Actually...”
Discord froze.
Fluttershy looked long and hard at Prince Blueblood. “... Well, he was really pretty mean to Rarity once. I'm not really sure I consider him a friend.”
A huge grin spread across Discord's face as he steepled his fingers. “Really...?”
“Wait...” Twilight shook her head. “Blueblood never had wings.”
Blueblood scowled at her. “You see, Discord! This is what I have to put up with for not having wings. I get treated like second-class royalty!” He turned to Twilight. “That should have been Prince Blueblood, Princess. And for your information, Discord stole my wings over a thousand years ago, and I demand satisfaction!”
Fluttershy tilted her head to the side. “But... you can't be a thousand years old.”
“One thousand, one hundred and nineteen, actually.” Blueblood tossed his mane. “And I don't look a day over eight hundred!”
Twilight stared at him. “But...”
“Not you too!” Blueblood shook his head. “Look, everypony knows me as Celestia's nephew, right? Which means I'm the son of her only sister—Luna. And since mother dearest has been away for the last thousand years or so, I must be over a thousand, mustn't I?”
Discord wrung his hands together. “Well, I'm afraid, Prince Blueblood, that I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request.”
Blueblood stood for a long moment, twitching and giving Discord his best death glare. Finally, he managed a “What?”
Discord raised an eyebrow. “It means—”
“I know what it means!” Blueblood stomped his hooves. His mouth moved, as if he was telling Discord off, but no sounds came out, except for a final strained “Ugh!” In a flash, he jumped over to Fluttershy. “You have to make him do it. You have to!” He groveled in front of her, holding his trembling hooves up.
“Well...” Fluttershy pawed at the ground. “I suppose I could consider you a friend...”
“Yes?”
“If...”
“Yes?”
“... If you apologized to Rarity.”
The Prince's mouth dropped open, and his eyes went wide. “Apologize? To her? He jolted back. “She assaulted me! With cake! Crude country-pony cake!”
Twilight butted in between them. “You had been treating her terribly the whole night.”
Blueblood glared at her. “Oh, I had been treating her terribly? Bullocks! Do you have any idea how hard I had to push her just to get her to show me proper royal courtesy? I could scarcely even get her to open a door!”
Discord giggled.
“What?” Blueblood whirled on him. “What are you snickering about, vile creature?”
It should have been intimidating, but it only made Discord laugh more. “Oh, you are never getting your wings back, and it makes you so delightfully cross!”
Blueblood's eye twitched.
Twilight moved in next to him. “Now, if we all just talk this out, I'm sure we could—”
“Apology?” Blueblood stomped again. “I'll show you an apology!” With that, he shot up and stormed out through the door.
“Oh... goodness.” Fluttershy winced. Looking down at her floor, she winced again. Prince Blueblood had stomped on her nice wooden floor quite a lot, and there were hoofprints to prove it.
* * *
Blueblood knocked on Rarity's front door again, rattling the frame with every strike.
“I'll be there in just a minute, dear,” Rarity's voice chimed from inside. “And the doorbell works perfectly well. No need to beat on the door.”
Blueblood proceeded to simultaneously ring the bell and knock as loudly as he could.
Finally, it opened. “Good heavens! What is the emergency? Why, I—” Rarity froze when she saw who it was. “... You!”
He scowled at her, building up his willpower to do the unthinkable.
Rarity glared back. “So, come to exact your revenge, have you?”
“I've come here to apologize,” he growled.
“Oh?” Rarity stared at him through the corner of her eye. “Do tell.”
Blueblood took a long, deep breath. He shuddered slightly. “I'm sorry for how I treated you at the Gala.”
One of Rarity's eyebrows slowly rose.
“... And I was wrong to do that.”
Rarity glanced up at the ceiling. “Well...”
“Yes?”
“... I suppose...”
“Yes?”
“I could forgive you if you could do a little favor for me.”
Blueblood suppressed a groan. “What is it?”
“Well, you see, I had been going through the old fashion archives in the library, but then I was struck with a veritable storm of inspiration for my new line. It's what I was working on when you interrupted me.”
He showed no sign of regret for having caused an interruption.
“So, if you could be a dear and help clean up the mess I left the library in, I'm sure we could call it even.”
Before Rarity could even grin smugly at him, he was off, galloping away toward the Library.
* * *
Spike shrugged his shoulders. “I told you, I already cleaned up that mess. All the books are back on the shelf and arranged already.” He gave Blueblood a probing look. “But Twilight could probably use your help on something else. She's still out having brunch with Fluttershy.”
* * *
Panting and sweating from his unseemly exertion, Prince Blueblood found her.
Twilight looked up from the cottage path when she heard somepony approaching. “Oh, you again?” She stepped aside. “On your way back to Fluttershy?”
“No, I'm here for you.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Rarity wants me to do a favor for you before she'll accept my apology.”
“Oh... I see.” Twilight looked at him, up at the clouds, down at the critters scurrying around her hooves... but she couldn't think of anything. “That's nice, but I don't think there's anything I really need right now.”
With a sigh, Blueblood nearly collapsed.
“But...”
“Yes?” He looked back up at her, eyes shining.
“... I suppose...”
“Yes?”
“I do owe Princess Celestia a favor after she helped me find replacement books for my library.”
He sunk back. “Oh, you can't be—”
“So if you could go and ask her if there's anything she needs...”
“Ugh, fine!” Blueblood shook his head and stormed off. “Confound these ponies!”
* * *
“My, that is quite the tale.” Celestia gave one of her quiet giggles. “And as it so happens, I do have a little errand that can't be put off any longer.”
Blueblood leaned in toward his aunt. “Yes?”
“Just one small thing.”
“Yes?”
“I'd like you to do something to Discord, something benign, but truly random and chaotic, and then I want you to give him this.” Her magic carried over a small card.
Happy Birthday! With love, Celly, it read, sealed with a kiss mark.
Blueblood wondered where she'd gotten the red lipstick. She certainly wasn't wearing it now.
“Do you think you can do that for me?”
He stared at the note a moment longer. “It's Discord's birthday?”
Celestia shrugged. “Sort of. He counts how old he is in two hundred and twenty-three day years, just so that his birthday is never on the same date. Still, I've managed to keep track of it over the years.”
“And you want me to give him this?” Blueblood glanced down at the kiss mark, then back up to Celestia.
She nodded.
“Ugh.” He rolled his eyes. “Fine.”
* * *
It had taken well into the evening to catch enough frogs. It had taken Blueblood even longer to organize them by the tone of their croak, but he was finally ready.
Levitating the lines of frogs carefully, he moved into position outside Fluttershy's window.
Inside, Discord had just curled up for a nap on Fluttershy's couch.
Discord's eyes shot open when a frog hit him in the face. It croaked. Before he could do anything, a quick succession of them came flying in, each one croaking a different note as it hit.
With a shiver of glee, Discord noticed the pattern formed a familiar melody. He could almost sing along! “My little pony. My little pony... A-ah-a-ah-a...” It was Equestria's national anthem, of course! He had never heard it played quite so chaotically.
He giggled and squirmed the whole time until, finally, the song came to an end.
A moment later, Blueblood stepped in through the front door.
Fluttershy came down the stairs as well, blinking the sleep out of her eyes.
Both of them took a moment to stare at the frog-covered Discord.
The mass of frogs shook. “Ooh! Now that was the most delectably chaotic thing that happened to me in weeks!” With a snap of his fingers, the frogs turned into fruit bats and fluttered out through the same window they'd come in.
“Discord...” Fluttershy glared at him.
He held his paw up. “Don't worry. They'll be frogs again by noon tomorrow, and then they'll gently fall down onto ponies' heads. It will be wonderful!”
Blueblood used his magic to send Celestia's card over to Discord.
As soon as he looked at it, Discord squealed. “She remembered! Good heavens, she actually remembered! And after all those years...” He chuckled. “Looks like I do have a chance after all.”
Blueblood cleared his throat.
“And it was you who did all this, wasn't it?” Discord swept him up into a decidedly non-consensual hug. “That must be worth a pair of wings at least, maybe three!”
Discord dropped Blueblood roughly. Before the Prince hit the ground, a tiny pair of white wings sprouted and held him aloft.
Blueblood settled gently back down on the ground. “What? That was all it took? You mean all that running around was for nothing?”
Discord tilted his head to the side. “What running around?”
“Discord, that's not funny!” All eyes were drawn to Fluttershy as she stomped toward him. “If you're going to give him his wings back, you need to give him his real wings back, not those tiny little things!”
They both stared at her in the silence that followed.
“But, these are my real wings.” Blueblood gave them a little flap.
Fluttershy blinked, blushing. “Oh...” She stared at them. “Well... um...”
“Yes?” Blueblood asked.
She squinted. “You wouldn't happen to be related to a pony named Bulk Biceps, would you?”
“Yes!”
