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// Chapter 7: Dumb Mares 
// Story: The Menace of Canterlot 
// by The_Darker_Fonts 
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The frustration of the situation Lavender had placed him in left Blueblood fuming as he levitated the mare through the abandoned dungeons underneath the castle.  There wasn’t very much time in which he could get away with what he was doing, being that as soon as somepony connected the dots that Prince Blueblood and a female maid were missing at the same time would lead to… problems.  Still, he had to hope the mare was incredibly careful in order to get to his room alone.  With a growl, he turned a corner and found the tunnel he had been looking for, finally releasing Lavender from his magical restraint to plop her on the ground.  
“You have just made both of our lives very hard,” he finally spat as the mare gave him a fearful look.  Taken aback by the fear in her eyes, he calmed himself down enough to reassure her, “I wouldn’t ever hurt you, but you have to realize what this means for the both of us.”
“All I ever wanted to do-” she began to protest before Blueblood angrily cut her off.
“-was help.  I get that, but you could have at least thought through your actions before you decided to put us in such a compromising situation.”  Letting out another frustrated sigh, he circled the spot where he was standing for a second while trying to think of a way to let the mare go that would clearly get across to her that she couldn’t reveal anything about tonight.  “Look, you might be a bit young to understand this, but actions like this have greater consequences for all of Equestria if revealed to the public.  Did you ever think for a moment the implications of the Princesses accidentally housing the Blue Knight all while having an active arrest out for him?”
“Wait, they don’t know,” Lavender questioned, looking skeptical.
“Would you be the first pony to know my identity if they did,” he countered, intentionally throwing aside her question.  
“Don’t need to be so spacey about it,” she complained, making Blueblood glare at her.  
“You don’t have a right to know anything, young mare,” he growled, turning his back to her.  “You decided to track me down and unceremoniously reveal my identity, so now you get to live with that reality and the many questions that come from it.”
“And you have to live with me as a potential threat to your identity and the Princesses,” she replied, confident in her voice despite having literally been foalnapped.
He glared over his shoulder at her as she smartly added, “A threat you can’t ignore or remove because it would threaten you more.  So you have to work with me in order to prevent any problems from arriving.”
“Sweet Celestia, I know that, but I’m not happy about it and don’t have to be,” he shouted angrily, rolling his eyes at her.  “It would have been far easier for me and you if you had lived and let be while I continued protecting Canterlot and the Princesses from threats you have no capability of defending yourself from.”
“What’s that supposed to mean,” she questioned defensively, and for a moment Blueblood panicked as he realized that, in his frustration, he had revealed yet another secret.  However, the mare didn’t seem to notice as she continued, declaring, “I’m perfectly capable of defending myself.”
“Like you did against me,” Blueblood rhetorically asked, unable to help the hint of smugness that crept into his voice.  Making himself stern again, he told her directly, “You wouldn’t have lasted two seconds against the true villains that threaten Canterlot.  The changelings, the thugs, and their leader all would have done untold damage to the city and its ponies without my intervention.  If you had been there that night eight months ago, do you think you could have withstood the white unicorns incredible magic and fought them off?”
“Could you have done it without killing one of them and destroying half a block of innocent ponies’ homes,” she countered angrily.  This was the first time Blueblood had seen the young mare expressly angry at him, and while it wasn’t intimidating at all, it did make his gut twist slightly in guilt.
“No, the enemy did not put me in a situation to stop collateral damage,” he replied evenly.  “I could only prevent it from being the entire block.”
“You burned down those houses and killed that stallion,” Lavender pointed out, her voice wavering as she said “killed”.  “Make no mistake, I don’t approve of your actions both against them and the changelings.  They’re horrifying, but fascinating in a way that I can’t take my mind off of.  In spite of those terrible actions, you’re clearly not evil, but somehow you commit such erroneous acts nonetheless.  Truly, you are the most unique stallion to call Canterlot home, if not in all of Equestria.”
“You know why I killed those changelings and that stallion, Lavender,” he questioned, maintaining his composure in spite of the disgust he felt for those he was about to speak of.  “It was because I saw what they did to the ponies of Canterlot and would not let them live without consequences.  You didn’t see how that stallion beat the cops half to death, breaking their bones and leaving some crippled for life to escape punishment for nearly raping a young mare like yourself.  Rape’s probably a word you aren’t familiar with, so let me explain it for you.  It’s-”
“I know what it is, and I know exactly who you’re talking about,” she interrupted, looking away uncomfortably.  
Raising a brow at this, Blueblood continued regardless, “And if you had seen those foals the changelings drained, how they collapsed to the ground eyes empty, breath ragged and colors dimming, then you would have fought back like I had.  You wouldn’t have run in the face of terror because you would have known in your hooves that you could save dozens of ponies.  You wouldn’t have given the changelings who had drained foals a second chance, because if they damage an innocent foal like that without a second thought, why should you give them a second thought either?  Justice is impossible with ponies because of their nature, so I have to step in when extremities call for it.”
“So you’re saying you aren’t a pony,” Lavender pressed, stepping a little closer, excitement and curiosity egging Blueblood on.  He was strangely compelled to reveal his motivations to somepony who would actually listen, unlike Celestia.  
“I’m not your everyday pony, obviously,” he stated, eyeing the mare.
“And that validates you to exact justice,” she inquired. 
“No, but my flawed justice is better than them receiving no justice whatsoever,” he explained determinedly, receiving a satisfied nod from Lavender.
“I think I understand,” she finally muttered, stepping away as she apparently had nothing else to ask him.  Surprised by this, Blueblood waited a second to see if she was just thinking of the next question to ask him, but when it came it wasn’t what he expected.  “So… I’ve been gone a while and so have you, which means we probably need to be spotted soon, right?”
“I can’t just let you go out into the world with the knowledge you have,” Blueblood chuckled dryly, shaking his head.  “Even you recognize how much of a threat that would be to me, you, the Princesses, and by extension, all of Equestria.”
“But you can’t stop me either, so you’ll have to take my word that I want to help,” she pointed out with cheeky satisfaction.  “You’ll have to just trust me.”
“Just trust you,” Blueblood repeated, unamused.  
“Weird for you, isn’t it, but like I said, there’s nothing else you can do so…” Lavender trailed off expectantly, glancing at the exit.
“I’ll have to keep you close, you know, both for your protection and to protect my secret,” he insisted, eyeing her.  
She seemed disinterested in the idea, shrugging as she replied, “Figured you would, but that’s your problem to figure out, not mine.  I’ll go along with whatever you say because I don’t really have a choice either.  Like you said, keeping me close is for my protection too.  While everypony else seems to only remember those three stallions for the incident that I occurred, I remember the feeling of magic echoing through the entire city.”
Blueblood silently stared at the mare for a long minute, trying to deduce her intentions.  She had said exactly what he didn’t think anypony else would say, sharing his concerns perfectly.  It almost had to be an act, but he couldn’t definitively say.  What would she be trying to hide if she was simply acting?  She had helped save his life right after he had killed the stallion, and while he couldn’t know if she had known this at the time, her ability to be angry about that but not reject him as the villain made him think her desire to become a part of this was genuine.  Otherwise, why would she do all of this? 
With a slow sigh, Blueblood finally told the mare, “There’s nothing I can do to stop you from trying to help.  All that I require from you is that you never question my intentions.  They are always to protect Canterlot and the ponies in it.  Understood?”
“Perfectly,” she replied curtly, glancing over her shoulder to the tunnel out of the dungeons.  
“You probably need to get going…” Blueblood softly agreed, still hesitant about letting the mare go.  Adding a little more decisiveness to his voice, he told her, “We’ll talk tomorrow if things run smoothly.  Go, now.”
Silently, the mare nodded at him and began to make her way through the dark tunnel, disappearing from sight.  With a deep sigh, Blueblood turned and slowly made his way back through the rank dungeon.  He had discovered in his youth that there were secret, forgotten routes from his tower to the dungeons deep in the mountain, thanks most likely to the times hundreds of years ago when they were necessary.  There were no windows or doors the entire journey down, meaning that if one were to discover it, they would have to be in his room and find the strange false desk that sunk into the ground to reveal the small tunnel into the walls.  
Such secrets in the design of the castle were still being discovered everyday, as not only was it built almost sixteen hundred years ago, it had also been renovated several times.  There were rumors he heard from some of the male maid staff about rooms with no way out, having accidentally or intentionally been hidden away by new additions to the castle.  Whatever the case, there were almost six miles of hidden halls in the walls, between floors, and even underground that the maid staff and Princesses knew, and a few more miles uncharted or rumored to be hidden still.  This was useful information Blueblood had slowly been gathering as his activities as the Blue Knight became more frequent and more illegal.  
With a sigh, he made it back to his room in a matter of only a few minutes, which was still astonishing to him considering the technical distance between his room and the dungeons.  Using magic to activate the mechanism to open the tunnel from the other side, he squeezed through the small, ground-level opening and back into his bright, perfumed room.  Shaking off the dust from his coat, ignoring the way the stone had scraped against his scarred skin, he closed the entrance and raised the small desk back into place.  Realizing that there may be somepony coming by to ask his whereabouts if they had noticed his absence, he quickly put on a minimalistic suit that hid his back and most of the smudges from his fur.  
Looking at the chair he had unintentionally thrown across the room after Lavender had surprised him, he moved it back into place at his main desk.  While this venture with the mare now consumed much of his thoughts and had taken a good amount of his time, he couldn’t let the interruption or any worries about said mare prevent his work further.  Sitting down in the chair, he inspected the healer’s mark flower, trying to see if it had wilted any since Lavender had come by.  
The purple flower- Blueblood decided it had to be purple and not lavender when compared to the mare’s coat- didn’t look any worse for wear, so he continued studying it.  Several small glass vials were filled with the liquids excreted from the flower when crushed, clear with the very slightest green.  Three different pots full of healer’s mark from the riverside also occupied his desk, organized by difference in hues.  While not almost inexplicable, Blueblood suspected that based on the darkness of the flowers’ coloration, there may be a difference in the juices produced.  
Ever since he had fully recovered from the burns, he had spent a sizable chunk of time studying the flower.  Luna and Celestia had both confined him to the castle for another two months to recover, though he suspected it was more punishment than anything, considering how he couldn’t heal a scar.  Blueblood suspected there was something about the flowers that had helped saved his life that night, though he had been incapable of identifying it yet.  As Lily had told him and he had later confirmed through his own studies, the flower was named for Meadowbrook, one of the lost Pillars, not for actually having any healing capabilities.  However, after Blueblood’s own experiences, he had come to doubt these claims entirely.
Given, there was plenty of credibility to them seeing as how he had been incapable of proving his theory after nearly half a year of work.  From all accounts about the flower in botany and pharmaceutical books, historically tested methods of unlocking any medical purposes for the plant had failed.  In each case he found, though, he could eliminate an ingredient or mixture from the possible ingredients that may unlock healing processes in the plant.  After some rather thorough research and recollection of his experiences with the flower, he had come to the conclusion that there had to be an ingredient that activated healer’s mark.  It was the only explanation he had thus far, and seemed to line up with why healing purposes for healer’s mark had yet been discovered.  
The juices on their own, from the flower, stems, roots, and few leaves all had different bitterness to them, but none had yielded any results other than an ill stomach from so much raw plant juice.  Given that things such as sugar, cinnamon, mint, sunflower, and any number of oils had been tried and failed, and that none of those had been present for his own healing, he could eliminate such possibilities.  Nevertheless, even with the limited factors in his own experience, he had countless other possibilities and combinations to try.  Looking over a three-page long list of factors he had written down as suspect to the healing, he sighed.  All but a few items were crossed out, and these remaining ones were the most far-fetched and… unpleasant to try.  
Silk had, in both cases, been present and most likely ingested by him when his healing had taken place, and though minimal, it may be the key to healer’s mark.  He of course had his doubts, which was why it was one of the last few on his list.  However impossible something was, though, it had to be tested.  With a reserved sigh, he took a small puff of silk and carefully poured a smidgen of the “Purple1'' juice onto it.  Staring at it for a moment, Blueblood shook his head and levitated it into his mouth, uncomfortably chewing and swallowing the bitter silk as fast as he could.  Gagging slightly as it went down, he stood up and aimed to go to a nearby bin in case his body rejected the unnatural meal.  
“Did you just eat that,” Luna suddenly shouted, having appeared from out of nowhere at his bedside.
In response, Blueblood coughed out the small tuft at her hooves.