Chapter 20: Date Night (Part 2)
The rest of dinner is a rather enjoyable affair. After we move past the screaming next door, which Derpy informs me is her neighbor Daisy, one of a group of sisters with… anxiety issues, we move on to chatting amicably in her living room. She’d lamented earlier the lack of social activities in her house, as she doesn’t usually have visitors.
“Well, I think we seem to be doing just fine without any distractions,” I comment, after we’d been happily conversing over a cup of tea for near a quarter of an hour. She’d been curious about the finer details of my work, and I’d inquired as to how a mailpony gets so involved in cooking, which she’d happily answered.
She smiles, nodding and giving me a wistful smile. “Yeah, it’s… nice. Mostly I don’t get to sit down and just talk with anypony like this. Although I do have to say I’m surprised you haven’t… what’s that term you’d used earlier? ‘Schadened Up’ the conversation?
I chuckle awkwardly. “Well, mostly that only happens when I’m either very bored or… dissatisfied with my conversation partner. Neither of which I think you have to worry about.”
“So… what kind of stuff leads you to being...”
“A pain in the flank?” I finish for her, saving her the necessity of less-than-polite language.
“Yes, that,” she conceded.
“Well, for the most part I just try to annoy ponies who either annoy me or somepony else. I find it both more satisfying and less troublesome if the pony has earned it to some degree. That isn’t to say I don’t mess with ponies who don’t deserve it, which is where most of my reputation comes from, but I’m much more likely to… act on impulse if I don’t like them. And I’m generally the type of pony who likes everypony unless they give me a reason not to,” I explain, punctuating my exposition with a sip of really good jasmine tea.
She tilts her head. “So why does Twilight dislike you so much?”
Another nervous laugh. “That’s… kind of an ongoing thing. When I first met Twilight, she was just a Princess fresh out of the gate, and she’d asked for some help in the Royal Canterlot Library.” I relate to her the story of Twilight trying to correct my Cute Mark. “Since then it’s been kind of a constant that she generally disapproves of my very presence, and I find new and interesting ways to… justify that concern.”
She gives me a wry smile. “So basically, you’re both jerks to each other, but you actually enjoy it?”
“Pretty much that. There’s a few ponies like her that I have similar relationships with. Some moreso than others, some less,” I muse.
“Like the other Princesses?”
This time my laugh is genuine. “Ha! No way. Princess Celestia and I have this kind of… underlying respect for each other. It’s hard to explain. I used to have an… ill-advised crush on her, but now it’s more like… I don’t know. She’s got a mischievous streak to her that she, being a pony in her position, can’t act on as much as she likes. She’s confided in me more than once that the primary reason she puts up with me, besides my being the only pony in Equestria who can not only tolerate Blueblood’s presence, but actively enjoys it, is that she takes a kind of weird vicarious joy in the shenanigans I get up to. To a point. There are a few… things we don’t agree on.”
Derpy looks like she wants me to elaborate, but doesn’t ask me to. Instead, she asks, “What about Princess Luna? Or Cadence? Do you talk to them much, being in the castle all the time?”
“Not really,” I respond with a shrug. “I mean, Cadence doesn’t like me much at all, but that’s mostly just leftovers from some old annoyances. We haven’t really interacted much, and the few times we have I may have been more annoying than necessary. Although it was really quite funny watching her explain to Shining Armor why their foal’s first word was ‘buck’.”
She snorts with a laugh, and tea goes everywhere. “Oh, Celestia, it’s in my nose!” She coughs a bit, and I hand her a kerchief. “Thank you. Oh, tell me you didn’t teach their foal to curse?”
“Oh, no. That was actually kind of a happy byproduct. They’d brought their foal to the castle to meet her Aunts, and had left them with a maid who… well, let’s just say she’s one of those ponies I pester because I think she deserves it. So after one particularly well-timed loosened salt shaker, she decided to… vocalize her displeasure. In front of the baby.”
She laughs again, carefully moving the tea away from her mouth. “And Luna?”
I shudder. “Well, to be honest, she just scares the stuffing out of me. And it’s not that whole Nightmare Moon thing. I mean, yeah, eternal night would have sucked, but there’s worse ways to live.”
Derpy raises an eyebrow. “So what about her scares you?”
“Well, there’s the dream-walking thing. It’s kind of unnerving that one of the leaders of Equestria can hop in and out of your most private subconscious moments on a whim. I mean, she’s very professional about it, but still. She also has a tendency to just like, show up at random. She’s like a sneaky ninja princess who-”
“SCHADENFREUDE!”
“Gah!” I start, falling out of my chair. Derpy almost spills her tea as she squeaks in surprise.
After gathering our bearings, Derpy and I both head outside to the source of the yelling. Opening the door, I’m actually surprised at how little I’m surprised that it’s Princess Luna. “Who does that,” I finish, pointing a hoof at the princess.
Luna raises an eyebrow at the gesture, no doubt sure that she’s missing some context, but quickly ignores it. “SCHADEN, YOUR PRESENCE IS REQUESTED BACK AT THE CASTLE!”
“Luna,” I deadpan, as Derpy covers her ears.
“YES?!”
“Royal Canterlot Voice.”
“OH-oh. My apologies. We… I still have a tendency to fall back on its use when addressing Royal matters,” she explains, with a polite bow to Derpy.
“Oh, that’s ok, Daisy is MUCH louder,” my date explains. Which is an… alarming statement.
“I see,” Luna says, also surprised by that information. “Well, as I have already iterated, your presence is requested back at the castle.”
I roll my eyes. “What, did Princess Twilight write a latter to Celestia about how I was being… me?”
Luna shook her head. “No. This is not a punishment. Although I have no doubt she will be… pleased to hear of your early departure.”
Derpy gave me a downcast look. “Aw, do you really have to go?”
“Apparently, yes. As much as I thought I’d never actually say this in context, I must go, my country needs me,” I joke.
It’s a joke she gets, which makes me smile as she laughs a little. “Well, you know where I live,” she says encouragingly, planting a small kiss on my lips. She misses a little and smooches my nose. “Oh, sorry,” she adds meekly.
I smile and give her a proper kiss, a bit longer than the first. “Yes, I’ll definitely be back.”
Luna leads me away, to a chariot some two blocks away. As we take off, I wave down to Derpy, who waves back with a big smile. “So, what’s the big emergency that I need to come back?”
“It’s… my nephew,” she sighes. “Apparently Prince Blueblood, in your multiple-day absence, has found himself some trouble to get into. Your… expertise is needed to ‘reel him back in’ as it were.”
“So, let me get this straight. You’re calling me back to the capital for the express purpose of annoying my boss into behaving again?” I ask in disbelief.
“...yes.”
I smile one of those big wide smiles that usually precludes a lot of crying on somepony else’s part. Somepony very, very specific. “Oh, it’s game time.”