Noblesse Oblige

Were I in truth the boorish cretin I portray whilst out and about in Canterlot, I daresay I could've raised a most vociferous stink about being punted out of bed at a time any logical creature would've called 'the middle of the night' instead of 'morning' so that I could be packed onto a rattling death trap and sent careening down the side of a mountain for eight or ten hours.

But since the bed in question was that of my beloved princess, since the 'punting' consisted more of 'kissing' and 'feather stroking,' since the train compartment into which I was shown was more luxurious than my pre-Blueblood-era apartment, and since the coffee I was served made me wish I had occasion to take more early morning rail trips, I found it easy enough to confine myself to the minimum allowance of grumbling and grousing that the public expected from a pony who wore the Blueblood name.

And in all honesty—well, all right, not all honesty; I can scarcely lay claim to so much of a quality of which I so rarely partake. Still, I was honestly glad to have the hours to think, the landscape outside the picture window of my private car refreshingly boring. Because for all that I'd met Twilight Sparkle several times before her alicoronation, "pudgy" and "guileless" were the first two words that sprang to mind when I thought her name.

A bit of mental prodding brought forth a few more phrases: calm and quiet when not loudly panicking; resourceful when presented with a problem formally but floundering when confronted with unexpected difficulties; both extremely powerful and extremely awkward; and only the fourth pony in recorded history to attain the title 'princess' rather than being born or married into it.

Even as I reviewed these basic notes, I knew most of the underlying assumptions upon which they were based had become hopelessly outdated. She'd saved the country—indeed, the entire world—on multiple occasions, and I'm told that that sort of thing can have a broadening effect upon a pony. Therefore, I would need to learn more about who she was now if I were to succeed in my mission of finding her a suitable cuddling companion.

I'd need to be both more circumspect and less when compared to the efforts I'd expended uniting Princess Luna and Captain Greaves, but fortunately I thrived on such paradoxes. I merely needed, I was certain, to trust my cutie mark, and I'd soon introduce the Princess of Friendship to the pony who'd usher her into the larger world of romance.

So certain was I, in fact, that I closed my eyes and slept the rest of the way to Ponyville. I had the vague outlines of a plan, after all: what more could possibly be expected of me?

Disembarking once the train arrived took a bit of doing. I'd trusted that Princess Celestia had packed for me, and apparently she'd decided that I would need more accoutrements than usual. I watched through the window as porters stacked trunk after trunk emblazoned with my mark upon the platform. A clearing of throat, however, caused my attention to focus on the conductor standing in the doorway of my coach. "Begging your pardon, Your Highness, but the lads were wondering what you wanted done with your luggage."

Nodding, I decided it was time to see how adept Princess Twilight had become at dealing with the unexpected. "Why, take it to the palace, of course!" I yawned, rose, and stretched. "When a prince calls upon a princess, he usually stays in her royal guest suites, does he not?"

The conductor bowed and turned. "I'll take your word for it, sir."

I followed him out into the afternoon sunshine. The platform had largely cleared of passengers by this time, but my eye was drawn past the stevedores wrestling my mountain of baggage onto carts to a line of ponies still standing at the door leading into the station house. They were shifting from hoof to hoof, their tails switching back and forth, the air sour with their nervousness, and looking to the head of the line, I could see why at once. A large, misshapen creature slouched in the entryway, a hodge-podge of parts crazy-quilted into one semi-coherent whole whom I recognized from the descriptions I'd read as Discord.

Rather than doing anything outrageous, however, he stood propped beside the station door in a mud brown vest and a hat with the words 'Chaos Inspector' blinking on and off across it. In his talons he held what looked for all the world like the forked branch of a tree, and with his eyes half-closed, he was waving this stick over and around the first pony in line. Yawning, he squinted at the stick, tapped one of his lion claws against it, and called out, "Next!"

The mare he'd been examining rushed past, and the stallion behind her stepped up, sweat visible on his forehead. The creature waved the stick for several seconds, glanced at it, tapped it, and stepped back with another call of, "Next!"

I blinked, then turned to where the conductor was levitating the last of my carpetbags onto the last of the carts. "See here, my good fellow! What's the meaning of that?" I waved in the direction of the station house.

The conductor didn't look away from his work. "As long as he's not turning things into other things, sir, we've instructions to leave him be." He grinned. "Sometimes, he's even helpful, comes through and cleans all the soot outta the engines, for instance. Says he uses it to make furniture." Finally, he looked over, and when I followed his gaze, I saw Discord motioning the second-to-last pony in line forward. "Don't know as how I've seen him do this before, but, well, unpredictable's kinda what chaos means, isn't it?" He nodded. "Just go on through, sir, and we'll get your bags up to Twilight's castle."

My ears pricked. He'd used my title earlier, but Princess Twilight didn't even get a "Miss" or a "Lady" before her name. This implied that he'd been instructed not to address her thus. If I were to further guess, I would stake a stack of bits that she'd told him this personally, directly, and no doubt repeatedly.

A data point, in other words. Our Princess Twilight seemed not to care for formalities...

Filing this away, I headed for the station house. The line was gone, but the beast still lay sprawled across the doorway, his stick tucked under one arm and his attention apparently riveted entirely upon the comic book he was reading. For a moment, I wondered if I should bring out my high dudgeon when confronting him, but then I recalled the morning of his initial rampage several years back when I woke to find my bed sheets had been transformed into caramel.

So politeness won out. "Perhaps you can tell me, my good sir," I called, stepping up to him as if I confronted unnatural monstrosities at least twice a week, "if this is the correct exit. I'm staying with Princess Twilight for the week, and I'm fairly certain I've never set hoof in Ponyville before."

The expression he turned toward me made me think of sompony looking at a bug, and not an interesting bug, either. Heaving a sigh, he tossed his comic book into the air, the pages flapping like wings and carrying it away into the afternoon sky. "Just when I was getting to the good part, too." He grabbed the stick, waved it in my direction—

And lights began flashing all up and down his uniform, the most ear-splittingly annoying alarm horn blaring out. Discord's eyes bulged like balloons expanding, steam blasting from his ears, and he quite literally exploded, his uniform bursting into confetti that swirled out and away from him in whizzing, pinwheeling cascades.

Suffice it to say that I took a step back.

"Well, now!" a braying baritone announced, and the creature stood intact before me, his grin gleaming unevenly along his snout. "I had a feeling a nice little bit of chaos was heading my way, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was!" His eyes narrowed, and he bent down to prod a claw at me. "You seem distressingly normal, though. What d'you s'ppose it was that set my stick off?"

I've always prided myself on my ability to maintain my equilibrium when all about me were losing theirs, but I must confess that it took me a bit longer than I would've liked to draw myself up and say snootily, "I'm sure I have no idea what you're—"

By then, however, he was bending over me, his nostrils flaring and drawing in such gusts of air, I felt my hooves lose contact with the floorboards. An absolutely atavistic fear sliced through me—did the monster mean to devour me?—and I exclaimed the most heartfelt, "Now see here!" that I believe I've ever uttered.

For his part, however, instead of sucking me bodily into that unusual head of his, Discord gave a gasp, his talons clutching his chest, and started back as if I'd done something untoward to him. Staring up at his spinning eyes, I couldn't quite get my legs to move, and when an even more massive grin spattered like spoiled milk across his face, I cursed myself for not fleeing while I'd had the chance.

"This is simply too much!" he crowed, then he leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whisper and the air suddenly smelling of nothing but mustard. "You've been making yourself useful between her sweet, creamy thighs, haven't you?" He straightened up with a ratcheting sound, slapped his knee, and the station swirled away around us like bathwater down a drain. "Oh, if only I'd known! I would've been prancing about all blonde and white-hided this whole time!"

Ignoring the melting colors of the scenery took a fair amount of doing, but I'd become rather adept at ignoring things over the past several years. "Is this going to take long?" I asked, fishing my pocket watch out of my vest. "I'm fairly certain it's considered impolite for one's luggage to arrive at one's destination before one has arrived oneself."

Discord blinked at me. "I count four 'ones' in that sentence." He fanned several playing cards between his paws and claws, a green eyeshade springing out from his forehead. "Well, that beats my full house." He tossed the cards away, and they swooped up beneath us, stretching and locking together into a sort of flagstone courtyard. Purple and orange palm trees appeared with little popping noises around the edges, and the sky resolved into something as dimly lit and out of focus as a poorly rendered mid-century Neo-Impressionist painting.

"Speaking of a full house," the creature was going on, throwing himself back to sit on a barrel-sized toadstool that had conveniently sprouted behind him, "if you're regularly plowing those alabaster fields, I don't suppose you and Cay-Cay are expecting a little bundle of hooves or anything appalling like that, are you?" His eyebrows waggled like caterpillars doing calisthenics. "I've always thought that having a foal would do wonders to settle our Celestia's disposition, and besides, the pranks practically write themselves, don't they?"

I pushed out as extravagant a sigh as I could manage under the circumstance. "This is all so fearsomely irregular, I'll be on a diet of prunes for the next week." Patting my lips, I forced a discreet belch. "I don't suppose you have a bicarbonate of soda I could borrow? I'm certain I'll return it with interest—and possibly with the force of a projectile vomit."

He pursed his lips. "I can't imagine many things less interesting, actually." His gaze softened, and he tapped his snout. "In my experience, however, you equines can't vomit." Grinning, he reached his eagle talons toward me, a beaker of bubbling green liquid clutched therein. "Shall we experiment?"

Slumping back in a mock fainting spell, I waved a hoof weakly. "You go on without me, old fellow. I fear I shan't be much longer for this world: another six or eight decades at the most."

"Alas." Discord shook his head slowly and raised the beaker. "I drink to your memory, sir." He swigged down the vile glop, and twin jets of glowing gas shot from his ears. "But then, were you ever anything more than a memory even when you were here?"

"Hmmm?" I gave him a few blank blinks. "I'm sorry, but I seem to have forgotten what we were discussing."

With a grin, Discord snapped his lion claws, and I found myself sitting on the grass beside an outlandishly odd-looking structure, a sort of cross between a tree, a castle, and a kidney stone. "We were discussing the next stop on our itinerary," Discord said beside me, a small megaphone suspended from helium balloons floating in front of his mouth, a tall hat with the words 'Ponyville Tours' sticking up between his horns. "The Friendship Palace, seat of Equestria's second newest princess, Twiglight Sprackle."

"Not a very comfortable seat, I'd imagine," I was simply unable to refrain from muttering, "what with all the towers and crenulations and such."

"Ah." Pulling the hat off with a pop, he stuffed the megaphone in, then pulled out a spyglass. "Observing the Alicornica Crepuscula in her native environment will reveal the generously upholstered posterior she's developed specifically to perch upon said battlements." He held the spyglass out to me, and the end of it winked at me. "Or should I say, 'butt-lements'?"

"If you must," I said as politely as I knew how.

"Oh, I must." He jammed the spyglass into one eye—one of his own eyes, I suppose I'd best add for clarity's sake. "I can't even begin to tell you how much I must." Turning the glass in such a way that it began screwing itself into his head, he sighed. "If only she were airborne. Then I could show you her flying buttress."

Fortunately, I truly needed no telescopic assistance since we were sitting scarce yards away from where Princess Twilight stood staring at the burgeoning mass of luggage a veritable army of porters was unloading on the front steps of the aforementioned Friendship Palace. "You're sure he said to deliver them here?" she was asking.

"Pardon me a moment," I said to Discord, then I waved a hoof toward the princess. "Yoo-hoo, Your Highness! Yoo-hoo!"

"Splendid idea!" Discord produced a small yellow box, jabbed a clear straw into the top, and began noisily sucking brown liquid out of it.

I spared him the briefest of glances since Princess Twilight was wheeling her more-than-slightly frazzled gaze in our direction. "Prince Blueblood?" Her gaze hardened almost audibly. "Discord? I should've known you'd have something to do with this."

"Moi?" How that odd face of his managed to look as innocent as a kitten's, I can't begin to imagine. "I'm merely here to learn a valuable lesson about hospitality."

Displaying my most oblivious smile, I made my way over to the luggage pile. "I do hope that I'm not imposing, Your Highness, but when I mentioned to Princess Celestia that I'd not yet had the opportunity to visit you here in your new demesnes, she became frightfully concerned and entreated me to journey hence forthwith."

She winced, but whether her reaction was due to my use of 'hence' when I meant 'hither' or to our impending 'guest/host' relationship, I had no way of knowing. "I see," she said through her teeth. "Well, I really must thank Princess Celestia the next time I see her." She turned, tilting her head back to take in the entire expanse of luggage. "For now, however, let me get your baggage sent up to your room." Her horn flashed, and—

Now, I'd been secret consort to the single mightiest being in the entirety of the known universe for some time by that point. I'd found myself enveloped by Princess Celestia in every way that a stallion can be enveloped by a mare and in several ways, I'm certain, that were original and unique to my beloved. I was intimately familiar with the flow and feel of mind-bogglingly powerful magic, in other words.

Which was why the casual, almost shrugging manner in which Princess Twilight flicked that tonnage away almost literally stole my breath from me. I'd known this young mare since she'd been an absent-minded wallflower, a prodigy, yes, but mostly notable in my eyes as the sister of Canterlot's Captain of the Guard. Now here she was, a bit taller at the shoulder, a bit leaner at the flank, the wings along her sides looking as natural as if they'd been there all her life, and without even a twitch at the corner of her eye, she had successful conjured and directed more sheer supernatural force than I would likely generate in the next decade.

And she did all this just to stow away a few dozen steamer trunks.

I could almost hear my beloved quietly chuckling. While finding my former student a suitable romantic partner, she seemed to be telling me, don't under any circumstances underestimate her.

With my impedimenta gone, Princess Twilight turned back to me, something closer to an actual smile on her face. "We'll put you on the second floor, Your Highness." She gestured to a balcony jutting out just above our heads and to the left. "It gives a lovely view of Ponyville and the Everfree Forest."

My bow took me clear down to the ground, and I had to remind myself to straighten up. "Your Highness is too kind," I said, hoping it was true.

"Oh, now." The smile she gave then was friendliness itself, her head cocked and her eyes curling closed. "Call me Twilight, Your Highness, please."

"Then you must call me Blueblood," I replied, although for the space of an indrawn breath, something about this Twilight Sparkle made me consider asking her to call me Polaris, a name that only the vanishingly small section of the populace whom I considered my nearest and dearest ever used for me. Well, except for my beloved, of course. She never called me anything but—

"And I," Discord announced suddenly, startling me from my thoughts and shying me sideways so that I nearly collided with the strawboss of the stevedores who'd lugged my luggage up from the station, "shall be Dr. Hippopotamus Q. Bird Sanctuary, local ornithologist and amateur saxophonist extraordinaire."

"Discord," Twilight said with a sourness I'd so far only heard her employ when speaking his name, "what are you even doing here, anyway?"

He spread his forearms. "Where else would I be when the scion of the ancient and noble House of Blueblood pays our fair village a call? In fact—" One of those forearms popped from its socket, flashed through the air like some sort of winged serpent, and wrapped itself around my shoulders. "I've found myself so taken with the fellow that I'm volunteering my services to make his stay as...memorable...as possible." He punctuated the word 'memorable' with a grin that made me think of a large and sharply honed knife slicing into a helpless watermelon.

"No, no," I said, surprised I could make any sound other than a rapid and high-pitched gibbering. "No need to trouble yourself."

"Trouble?" His arm flashed over to reattach itself, and he waved two sudden pennants in his paw and talons: one with his smiling face and one with my frowning one. "Oh, my dear sir, let me assure you!" He continued smiling expansively, but the expression of the face on his pennant portrait became positively diabolical. "You don't know the meaning for the word!"

"Discord," Twilight said again, and the sternness in her voice reminded me shiveringly of the way her mentor was wont to speak during our pre-coital role-playing sessions. "I'm glad you want to help, and it would actually be really great if you could show Blueblood around town for a couple hours." Her voice lost its edge when she turned a look of sincere apology toward me. "I have some duties this morning—in fact, my assistant and my student are probably at the hospital right now wondering where I am." She looked back at Discord, and her lips tightened once more. "But if you do anything to make our guest feel uncomfortable—"

"Uncomfortable?" He put a claw to his chin. "You mean like arriving unannounced with enough luggage to drown a giraffe and expecting somepony to drop all her plans for the day so that she can cater to my every whim?" His eyes narrowed, his gaze fixing on me. "I'd never do anything as discomfiting as that. I mean, I'm a spirit of chaos, not a witless, tactless buffoon."

"Discord..." She more growled it than said it this time, but then she took a breath and blew it out. "Just...promise me."

That got Discord blinking for a change. "Promise you what?"

"You know what."

He puffed out a breath of his own—a green cloud with little red spangles flashing in it—folded his arms, and looked away pouting. "Yes, I suppose I do." His ears came up quickly, though, and his demeanor became all kittenish and innocent once more. "Very well. I promise to be every bit the gentlecolt that our esteemed visitor is." A halo popped into place above his horns, and he smiled at Twilight, his foreclaws pressed together before his chest. "Surely that should be sufficient?"

The doubt that twitched across Twilight's face spoke volumes: she knew my reputation, after all, and I couldn't imagine she'd want Discord behaving even remotely like that. She couldn't say anything about it, however, I'm sure she thought, without insulting me.

So I said it. "Oh, come, come, now, old fellow! Let's not set the bar that low!" I pressed my front hooves together. "Instead, you shall promise to be every bit the gentlecolt that I am, and I shall promise to be every bit the gentlecolt that you are. We shall each therefore be constantly upping one another's game until we become so excruciatingly proper and polite, ponies will rise up against the sterling examples we provide and run us out of town for exposing their shortcomings to the glaring light of day!" I couldn't summon a halo of my own, but I did flare my magic to create a smoke ring, widening and dispersing around the tip of my horn. "In the nicest possible way, of course."

Her jaw hanging open and her eyes wide, Twilight looked like a fish pulled suddenly from the river to the bank. The air around Discord, however, burst into a shower of sparks, and he clapped his lion paw across my back. "You, young fellow, will be the brother I never had!" The strip of black mane along his neck rippled and became a blonde rivulet that matched mine. "Come along, then!" He spun toward the town. "Ponyville awaits!"

"Umm," Twilight said, raising a hoof.

I stepped forward and took that hoof between my own. "Fear not! We shall be the gentlest colts anypony has ever experienced!" And besides, I most pointedly didn't say aloud, I could use this opportunity to ask her friends what sort of romantic partner Twilight might be interested in. Friends, I'd discovered over the years, always had opinions on such subjects, and a colorful groups such as the Princess of Friendship had gathered about her over the past few years should prove a positive gold mine.

Giving Twilight my most radiant grin, I turned, tossed a bag of coins to the chief of the railway workers, and trotted off to rejoin my tour guide.