The Early Life of Blueblood

by Macgyver644200


Chapter II - Cadance

“Aunt Celestia, the key to the supply closet’s gone miss…”

A nine-year-old Blueblood stared at the mare who was talking to Celestia out on the front steps of Canterlot Castle. She was about sixteen, colored pink, and her cutie mark was shaped like a crystal heart. She was smiling at him, and starting to turn a little pinker. Most interestingly, she had both wings and a horn, a feature Blueblood had only seen once before.

“Blueblood!” Blueblood whipped his head back to his aunt. “This is Princess Mi Amore Cadenza. Princess Cadenza, this is Blueblood.”

“You can just call me Cadance,” the new alicorn told Blueblood. “I rarely ever use my full name.”

Blueblood looked at her with an “mm-hmm” before looking back at Celestia. “I take it I missed something important during my class field trip?”

Celestia nodded. “As you’ve noticed, Cadance is our latest alicorn, and I thought I should bring her here quickly, so I set off before you got home. And, by sheer luck, you found us just as we got back.”

The bells on the clock tower started to chime half-past-nine. “Shoot!” Celestia said. “I’m sorry, Cadance, but it looks like I’m later than I thought for an important meeting, so…” she turned to Blueblood, “Blueblood, I’m sorry, but would you mind showing her around until I get back? This shouldn’t take long.”

Blueblood nodded. “Alright.”

“OK, thank you,” she turned to Cadence, “I’ll be done by eleven.” She turned to Blueblood and moved her head right next to his ear. “Blueblood,” she whispered, “please make her feel welcome.” With that, she turned around, took off and flew off around the corner of the castle.

Blueblood frowned after her and grumbled something under his breath. He turned to Cadance “Please ignore my aunt: she’s prone to exaggeration.”

“Ah,” Cadance said.

A silence stretched between her and him. “Well,” Cadance said, “she probably hasn’t told you this, but Celestia’s adopted me as her niece. I guess that makes us cousins or siblings or something.”

Blueblood’s eyes widened slightly. “Hmm. That’s interesting. Then again...” He thought, but eventually, he turned to the palace doors. “Well, let’s begin.” Blueblood turned on his hooves and marched through the doors, Cadance in close pursuit.

<*>

“and whatever you do, do not let Aunt Celestia in the kitchen.”

Cadance chuckled as the two crossed the dining room. “That bad, huh?”

Blueblood glared at her. “I’m not joking. The last time she tried to cook…” he shuddered. “The bomb squad is still trying to figure out how to safely dispose of what she made.”

Cadance stared at him. “Really?”

Blueblood nodded. “I had no idea that they could negotiate in the middle of a crisis. Neither did they. Well,” he gestured around himself, “that’s everything, or, rather, everything essential. I imagine Aunt Celestia will want to show you to your room herself. Do you have any questions?”

Cadance shook her head. “Not really.”

“Very well.”

Silence passed as Blueblood looked at Cadance, who looked back at him. Cadance looked away for a moment, but Blueblood kept looking at her. Eventually, he turned away. “Well,” Blueblood said, “if you have no more questions, I will be in my roo-”

“Actually, Blueblood,” Cadance said, “I was wondering if you wanted to play a game or something? You don’t have to if-”

“No,” Blueblood said, turned around again, “my afternoon’s free. What sort of game did you have in mind?”

<*>

“seven, eight, nine, yes!”

Fifteen minutes later, in the adjacent game room, all but one of the properties on the Monopoly board had been bought up. Blueblood had all the reds. Cadance now had all the oranges as well as the greens, the yellows, the purples, the dark blues, the light blues, the hotels, the railroads, the houses, the money, and, most importantly, the unmortgaged properties. Fifty bits later, Blueblood was forced out of jail, and as he picked up the dice, he realised that he did not like the look of the board at all.

“What’s that face for?” she asked. “I don’t own the weather factory: you’ve got a fifty-fifty chance of not going bankrupt... this turn.”

“Actually,” Blueblood said, “I have a thirteen-point-eight-nine percent chance of not going bankrupt this turn.”

Cadance’s eyebrow rose, and then she looked down at the board. “OK, I forgot you can’t roll a one, but your odds aren’t that bad.”

Blueblood put the dice down and looked at her. “Dice don’t work the way you think they do. While a balanced die has a uniform distribution when it’s rolled by itself, meaning that each number has a one-in-six chance of coming up, the results of two dice follow a... more pyramidal distribution. Seven has a six-in-thirty-six chance of coming up, six and eight have a five-in-thirty-six chance each, and so on down to two and twelve with a one-in-thirty-six chance apiece. My only hope is to roll a ten or an eleven; two plus three is five, divided by thirty six is thirteen-point-eight-nine percent.”

“Oh, I see.” Cadance looked back at the board. “Wait, seven’s a community chest, you should have-”

“All of the tolerable cards are gone,” Blueblood told her. “Same with the chance cards. That leaves me with just Free Parking and Derby Avenue.” He picked up the dice and rolled a two. He sighed as he moved his piece to the weather factory.

“Hang on, that’s unowned,” Cadance said.

“And I can’t afford it,” Blueblood replied. “Which means it gets auctioned off. To you.”

“I don’t remember those rules.”

“Nopony does, but I assure you, they’re in there.”

Cadance reached for the rulebook, but stopped. “Wait, don’t you just owe me rent when you land on a space I own?”

Blueblood’s eyes widened. “Oh. Right. I forgot that.” He picked up the dice again. “Well, my odds have improved.” He shook the dice. “Thirty-three-point-three percent...” He rolled…

… a ten. Blueblood scowled as he moved his piece over to the Chance square, flipped over the ‘Advance to Boardwalk’ card, placed his piece right next to the hotel on that square, and forked over his last bit.

Cadance giggled. “Well, that was fun. And very informative near the end.”

Blueblood nodded, then started scooping up the cards. “Well,” he said as he put the cards into the box, “do you want to play-”

“Wait, don’t pick that up.” Blueblood stopped, his hoof over the dice. “I want to see if I can lift it with my mind,” Cadance said.

Blueblood withdrew his hooves. “Alright.”

Cadance closed her eyes and her horn glowed light blue. A thin field of blue magic formed around one of the dice. A few seconds later, the field of magic flowed upward, but the die it was attached to remained on the board. “You’re holding it too softly,” Blueblood said. “Put a little more force on it.” The field thickened, but the die did not move. “More.” Thicker. “More.” The field flattened. “Hold o-

Crunch.

Cadance opened her eyes and gasped at the powder that had once been a Monopoly die. “I am so sorry! I didn’t mean to-”

“That’s alright,” Blueblood said, “I’ll just get another one. One that isn’t cursed.”

The two scooped up the rest of the pieces in silence and Cadance tilted the board into a nearby wastebasket to dump the die dust into it. When the board was back in the box, Blueblood got up and put the game back in the cupboard. “So, are you up for another board game,” Blueblood asked, “or do you want me to get the cards out?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, get the cards out.”

Blueblood looked up. Cadance had got up and was looking at the miniature portraits in a wall-length glass cabinet. He pulled several decks out of the cupboard and closed the door. He then walked over to the cabinet, looking over her shoulder. “That would be… Stalwart Shield,” he told her, “my great-uncle fifteen times removed.”

Cadance looked at Blueblood. “This is your family?”

Blueblood nodded, looking back into the cabinet. “Mm-hmm, at least down the line of the oldest-born. My line goes back a long way. All the way back to Divine Gift: Princess Celestia’s unicorn brother.”

Cadance whistled. “That’s cool, knowing so many of your ancestors. I’m apparently the last descendent of the last legitimate ruler of the Crystal Empire. And I never even knew my birth parents.”

Blueblood looked at her. “Really?”

Cadance shook her head. “I was raised by my whole village. Not in the metaphorical sense, either, I mean they all pitched in to raise me. We weren’t dirt poor, but we were nowhere near rich, either. Certainly not noticeable.” She took in a breath and slowly let it out. “And now I find out that I’m the heir to an empire. It’s… a weird feeling, having this sudden, deep family history that nopony ever got to tell me about.”

Cadance looked at the cabinet, but Blueblood noticed her mile-long stare. “I never got to know my parents, either.”

“I heard.”

“It seems to run in my family, men dying young, along with the duchy and the blue sclerae.”

Cadance turned around. “Come again?”

Blueblood pulled one of his eyelids down. “The whites of the eye? Mine are blue.”

Cadance looked into his eye. “Oh. So they are.”

Blueblood put his hoof back down. “So believe me, I know what weird is.” He frowned. “I get reminded of that every time I meet somepony new.”

She smiled. “Well I think they look cute on you, my new little brother.”

Blueblood stared at her. “Really?”

She nodded. “Yeah. It makes you look exotic. Along with your way of speaking, it makes you look like some kind of young archmage: cultured and sophisticated.”

Blueblood frowned. “Nice try. I know a white lie when I hear one.”

Cadance sighed. “Oh well, worth a shot.” Her smile faded away. “I almost wish I didn’t. No offense, Blueblood, but I feel really… self-conscious with my wings and this new horn sticking out of my head. I just know I’m gonna’ look… not bad, but unusual.” She smiled again. “But, I’m rambling. Let’s just play some cards.”

Blueblood nodded, then walked back over to the deck, untied it, and started shuffling. As he started to deal, an idea struck him. “Cadance,” he said, “there’s a tradition here amongst new relatives of a certain age…”

<*>

Later that night, Blueblood and Cadance slipped into Celestia’s room. Their aunt was on the bed, laying on her stomach and partially covered by a blanket that had been torn out of its bindings. It was a new moon, so the room was almost completely dark. Blueblood snuck along the wall to the door to Celestia’s en-suite bathroom, with Cadance following close behind. As the two got closer to the door, Blueblood crept over to the bed and looked over her. Finally, he nodded, and he and Cadance slipped through the door, shutting it behind them.

It was pitch black inside. Cadance pulled a small crystal ball out of Blueblood’s saddlebags and shook it. A faint light came out of it, lighting the bathroom just enough to see. Cadance set the light on a towel shelf. “OK,” Cadance whispered, “string?”

Blueblood lifted a spool of string out of his saddlebags. “Check.”

“Bucket?”

“Check.”

“Shower rod?”

“Check.”

“Good.” Cadance took the bucket over to the shower and put it under the spigot, but stopped. “You’re sure that Aunt Celestia isn’t going to wake up?”

Blueblood nodded while holding the shower rod. “At this point, she’s practically dead to the world.”

“OK.” Cadance turned on the spigot, but only a little. As the bucket slowly filled, Blueblood hopped up on Cadance’s back and fitted the shower rod next to the shower door. When the bucket was full, Blueblood sat down on Cadance’s withers as Cadance stood and passed the bucket up to Blueblood, who balanced it on the shower door and the shower rod.

Cadance took a deep breath as she took a magical hold on the string. Slowly it lifted up to the bucket and looped around the handle. Once the string had completely circled the handle, Cadance brought the string back up and looped it back on itself, where Blueblood pulled the loose end until the knot formed. Cadance then magically manipulated the other end to loop around the shower faucet before Blueblood got off of her and helped her tie it off.

“You’re also sure she won’t notice the faucet being a little harder to move?” Cadance asked.

Blueblood put his saddlebags on. “Positive. Despite popular belief, Celestia takes a while to fully wake up. She walks like a zombie before breakfast.”

“Alright.” Cadance blew out the light, picked it up, and put it back in the saddlebags. She opened the door, let Blueblood out, then stepped out herself.

She stifled a scream. Celestia was staring at her from the bed, mouth and dead, glassy eyes wide open. Cadance stopped, holding her breath as she dared not risk attracting attention. She didn’t even dare move her eyes to see what Blueblood was doing. She just stood and stared and hoped that the tickling in her nose didn’t develop into a sneeze. Finally, however, Celestia moaned and rolled over. Cadance took the opportunity to tip-hoof-sprint out of the room and shut the door.

“I’m sorry,” Blueblood told her. “Sometimes she does that when she’s really tired.”

Cadance stomped down the hall. “You’re putting the ice in the bucket tomorrow morning.”