Blueblood
The sky above Canterlot was a pure grey, through which Celestia’s mid-morning sun shone coldly and dimly. A strike by the Pegasi who managed the city’s weather was in the process of being negotiated in the court, and the weather had consequently been indecisive for the past few weeks. Today was no exception. It refused to rain, nor would it shine down upon Canterlot’s streets. The city found itself in a sort of mild limbo.
This was Prince Blueblood’s least favorite kind of weather, he decided, gazing out toward the distant horizon, past Ponyville and losing clarity in the dark shroud of Everfree. It was noncommittal, and that bothered him. If only it would make up its mind, he thought, pressing his quill into the paper at his desk. One thing or the other. It’s not hard. There was a snap. The prince looked down to see his quill shattered, its ink burst across the page. The letter was ruined.
Don’t know who that was addressed to, he realized. Little mishap was probably for the best, come to think of it. He would start a new letter, he decided, but after his break. He needed another break, surely. After all, it had been a tough day on the job. He rose from the desk and drifted aimlessly from the room. Working made him feel like—he thought for a moment—a slave or something.
“It’s ridiculous,” he assured himself. “Nopony should have to spend that much time working.”
He paused. “Not me, at least. Preposterous.” Entering the break room, he said rather boldly, “This job is a joke.” And he smiled, for that summed it up nicely.
“Ahem,” said his boss.
Carriage Return, a somewhat elderly dark blue pegasus, and the chief administrator of the Equestrian Outlying Regions Foreign Affairs Department, seemed to be undergoing a sort of internal struggle. There had been twitch in his eye for two months, twenty three days, an hour, six minutes, and three seconds, and it had incorporated itself irreversibly into his demeanor. “Stop,” he muttered. “Stop right there.”
Blueblood did not hear him, greeted him briefly, and walked past him into the break room. But Carriage Return was on a mission. This would end, he had decided during his most recent sleepless night, today.
“You,” His voice shook. “Are fired.” He adopted a practiced manic grin. “You are fired. Are fired. You. You’re fired. You are fired.”
“Hm?” Bluebood turned from across the room. “Oh, hello.”
“Prince Blueblood, you have been terminated.”
“No, I’m fine, thanks.”
“You’re fired.”
“What?”
“I am firing you. Ergo, you are fired. You are now fired.”
“You,” Blueblood tried to read the pony from across the room. “Can’t? You can’t. Can you?”
Carriage Return looked confused.
“No,” Blueblood decided. “You’re not the boss of me.”
This was going better than expected. “Oh, but I am.” He retorted swiftly. “That is literally the situation we are in.”
Blueblood smiled knowingly. “Ho,” he chortled. “Ho, ho. I’m pretty sure I’d know if I had boss.” His smirk faltered. “I mean, that is, because a boss is something I would know whether or not I’d have.”
They stared at each other for five entire seconds.
Blueblood said, “Are you my boss?”
Carriage Return smiled knowingly. “One and the same. As such it is my prerogative to fire you, which I have just finished doing.”
Blueblood blinked. He detested the job, certainly, but not enough to let pass what was clearly a direct, personal attack on his character from this old Pegasus. “How dare you, sir,” he whispered. “This job, this isn’t a job. It’s a death sentence. You expect me to work for twenty hours a week? You want me to wake up early four days out of seven—”
“And that’s another thing,” the jittery pony broke in. “Where do you go on Fri—”
“—Oh, so now it’s some big crime to take the odd day off, is it?”
“No. Well, yes. You’re fired.”
“How dare—”
“—Out of my hooves,” Carriage Return lied.
“—I . . .” Blueblood seemed at a loss for words. “I hope you’ve learned something.” he finished and exited the room.
Once he was out of the building, it began to rain.
Wandering down the wet streets of Canterlot without a rain jacket, the newly unemployed Prince tried to decide whether this latest development in his life was for the better or worse.
I’m a noble, He reassured himself. I don’t see why people can’t seem to respect me. I mean, seriously, fire me? I couldn’t possibly be that bad. Blueblood sighed, and continued on towards his father’s manor near the center of the city. There’s no solution—jobs are so excruciatingly dull, and yet everyone apparently expects me to do work, like a common peasant or something. There really has to be some way around this. . .
Blueblood arrived at the gates of the family manor about a half hour before noon. His father, Chancellor Ironblood of the Day Court of Equestria, certainly seemed to flaunt the wealth and prestige he’d earned over the years, if the size the family’s estate was anything to go by. Then again, for a stallion such as Ironblood, it might not seem like such an expense. He’d always been a skilled investor.
Entering the his home, he shook himself dry, and trotted up the stairs towards his room. Before he could get there, he heard the door to his father’s study open. Ironblood, an imposing unicorn with a brown coat and grey mane, walked towards his son.
“You’re home early,” the old stallion stated simply. If his voice or face betrayed any sort of emotion, Blueblood failed to pick up on it.
“Yes, I am,” Blueblood replied in as calm a voice as he could muster, and walked past his father towards his room.
“Any particular reason why?”
Blueblood stopped in his tracks and turned to face his father. He knew there was no dodging the question. All the pent-up frustration in his mind boiled over, for the second time that day, and this time he raised his voice in a harsh tone.
“They fired me. Me! Terminated, laid off, removed from from the workforce!” he snarled. “Job over. The end!”
Ironblood sighed and looked down at his son, with a rather unsurprised look on his face. “Figures. Was it due to laziness, insubordination, or that fact that you were skipping work each Friday?”
Blueblood didn’t reply, except by glaring daggers at his father.
“A combination of the three, then.” Ironblood concluded. “I doubt anyone will hire you now, with such a bad record on the job, nobility or not. At least, not until you improve your work ethic and fix your reputation.”
Prince Blueblood remained stubbornly silent.
The Chancellor shrugged. “Your loss,” he said, and walked down the stairs toward the manor’s front door. Suddenly, he stopped, and turned back for a second. “Oh, and Blue? Being laid off is not the same as being fired. You were fired, not laid off.”
Ironblood left the building, closing the front door quietly behind him, leaving Blueblood alone, angry, and dejected. Why does life have to be so difficult? Everything is so . . . inconvenient.
Five hours later, the words were still resounding in Blueblood’s head.
“Fix my reputation.” He muttered indignantly. “Who does he think he is, saying that to me? He’s a former military grunt, a glorified bureaucrat who married into royalty.” He’s also your father, the Prince briefly thought to himself, but shot the thought down in a second. “What sort of father is he, always out, always working? He’s just a high-level government bureaucrat, I bet he’s not even earning all that money he brings in legally.”
It was at that moment that the Prince’s gaze lighted upon the door to his father’s study, which was closed. It was always closed, and with the exception of a brief peek when he father entered and exited the room, he had never seen its contents. His father had left the house for a joint meeting between the night and day courts, which, naturally, took place at dusk. He would never know.
He crept toward the darkened door, which had an ominous quality to it. To look at it with the intention of entering was like making eye contact with a psychologically unstable ruffian whose eyes had taken a liking to your coinpurse. It was a grim, foreboding feeling, but Blueblood pushed on in spite of it. He would pass this door and he would find what his father was hiding.
He reached with his magic to twist the doorknob. He gripped it gingerly, but was not sure why. His father was miles out of earshot. He could not hear. With great caution, he began to twist. He gave a slow turn and found that the door was locked.
“Damn,” he said, but then used his magic to unlock the door. “Ah. That’s better. I’m glad he never figured out I learned how to do that.”
The study was dominated by an enormous roll-top desk, which itself was flanked by several rows of stacked filing cabinets, which, despite their immaculate tidiness, looked overwhelmingly heavy with paper. Only a few papers lay on Ironblood’s desk, and as Blueblood stole warily across the room they drew his attention.
“Labor Subordination and Emergency Reacquisition Act,” muttered Blueblood, reading from the top document. “Pegasus unions . . . must be about the strikes.” He lifted it to the side, reading what was underneath. “Ugh,” he said. “This goes for—” He flipped through the stack. “—thirteen pages.”
He pushed them aside to find a different document, a small stack of papers in a manilla folder marked TOP SECRET in red. This document seemed to be full of magical mumbo-jumbo, most of which Prince Blueblood couldn’t make heads or tails of, going on about something called the Veil. It looked complicated and boring, but the red stamp on the folder implied it could be interesting and useful if he had the proper time to peruse it.
The third item on Ironblood’s desk was full of names listed in descending alphabetical order. Numbers accompanied them. It was a payroll sheet, he realized. Comments were listed alongside several names. “Thirty percent raise,” said one. Another said, “Promotion: Move to manager salary.” Among the names with comments listed were “Phake Phantom,” “Questionable Existence,” “Bogus Employee,” and “Embezzlement Fund.”
“Hm,” said the Prince. “Everyone says he’s awful to his employees. Guess you can’t believe everything you hea—” He squinted at the fourth name. “Hold on,” he said. “I know what’s going on here.”
He carefully lifted the ledger from the desk, but was jarred by a rattling at the front door. It was his father. It had to be. The meeting must have been cut short. He would replace the papers later, he desperately decided. He used his magic to break open Ironblood’s study window from the outside, and knocked objects over within the room to make it appear there had been a burglary. With the documents in his magical grip, he fled the room, pulling one door closed as another one opened. Quickly, Blueblood moved from the study, down the stairs, through the parlor, up the stairs to his room and through his bedroom door;.
By the time his father had left the entryway, the records were safe in Blueblood’s own study.