Very late that day, the prince slowly trod through the halls of Canterlot Castle, his mane a mess and plastered to his head with sweat, formerly pristine white coat covered in dirty little patches and ruffled fur, and dignity badly bruised. And I thought there’d be humiliating consequences for being carried through the streets! I can only imagine the rumors that will be spreading, the prince emerging from the window of the home of a mare of some reknown, not a stitch on him, and her immediately giving chase with a whip?!

As the orange light of the fading sun streamed in through the grand windows of the palace, he wondered how much he’d have to bribe the local papers not to run that story for the next week, if at all, Blueblood didn’t notice Princess Celestia standing still in the halls, a look of slack-jawed shock on her face as she took in the sight of the perpetually well-groomed Prince Blueblood of all ponies apparently in more than casual celebration of that nudity-based, ‘natural beauty’ holiday most of Equestria didn’t bother with these last few centuries.

He remembered, She thought, an almost tearful smile slowly spreading across her face, what was it called again…? Hardly anypony in Canterlot seems fond of discarding their coverings, if only for a short while. The holiday had started about a week after Celestia off-hoofedly complained to a visitor asking about her regalia that she didn’t even like wearing it. She had been thrilled to be allowed the brief freedom each year, but as the decades wore on, fewer and fewer joined her in the celebration of disdain for bodily decoration, until one year she had caused a bit of a scandal by showing up to a public event sky-clad. Those in attendance had understood her explanation, but it had still been terribly embarrassing. As the disheveled noblepony walked by, she regarded him warmly. “I love you too, nephew.”

He didn’t seem to hear her, but the princess was far too elated to notice. She trotted, a bit of a spring in her step for a while before slowing to a stop, scanning the halls for anypony else, and, finding none there but herself, grinned mischeviously. Time for a trip back through history!

She flung her golden trappings to the floor right there in the hallway, teleported them back to her room, opened a nearby window, and took off, the cool night air smoothly gliding along her entire body as her horn lit up to fully lower the sun for the day, spending the rest of that evening bare as a newborn foal.

Meanwhile, Blueblood made his way to his room to tidy up. He often used simple spells to maintain his perfect appearance, but really felt the need to scrub himself after today. After a quick shower, he dried his mane, donned a masterfully-made black tailcoat, it’s simple elegance just what he needed to wash off the indignity of the day, and headed to the dining hall, wondering if anything to eat had been prepared yet.

---

Dinner had been good, even with Celestia’s strange lack of attire of any sort, moreso than she’d usually been guilty of. The look on Princess Twilight’s face was priceless. Nopony dared ask about it, however, perhaps because she’d kept conversation going with such infectious enthusiasm that he didn’t so much as groan when she asked him to serve as an emissary to the Changelings to invite them to join in the upcoming Summer Sun Celebration. They ransack Canterlot after impersonating her niece, abducting her prized student, and, the way I heard it, beating her to a pulp, and still she wants to be friendly to those screeching monsters? He felt that last word was a little harsh, but couldn’t think of one more suiting to creatures that fed on others like Luna did chocolate, when nopony was looking. Still, he’d agreed without complaint, to his own surprise and perhaps that of a few others present. Where had the Night Princess been, he pondered, was her sleep schedule out of sorts from being awake during the day time recently? I could swear Discord had said alicorns don’t even need sleep, but taking his word for it seems-

Moving through the palace, he was snapped out of his thoughts by… Somepony singing? He knew the voice, inclining an ear to the door, already cracked, from which he heard it. Princess Twilight? He gently nudged the door open telekinetically to find the pony in question, whom he wondered about as still qualifying as the most powerful unicorn in Equestria if she had wings now. She was fully dressed in royal garb, a stark contrast of Celestia’s fashion statement that night, dancing in front of a mirror with a ridiculous smile on her face. It almost looks like she’s have a well-controlled seizure, he thought.

Giggling, she sang again, the Element of Magic/Big Crown Thingy bobbing on her head. “I’m the T, to the W-I, L-I-G-H-T, and ain’t no other princess got it down like-“ She turned her head at juuuust the right angle to catch sight of the silent, expressionless prince in the doorway. “me-EEEEEP!!” Whether she stumbled over her own rear hooves or the dress caught on something, he couldn’t tell as Twilight went red in the face, flailed her front hooves, and fell on her back, a wing sticking out from under her twitching in protest.

“Erm,” Blueblood ventured, “Are you… Quite alright?”

She leapt to her hooves rather quickly, for a mare in a full dress, stammering out an affirmative as her eyes darted around the room, looking at anything but him. “Y-yes, I’m flying! F-fine, I meant fine! I-I was just, th-that was, uh…” She finally let her eyes rest on the pony she was speaking to. “P-practice?”

He saw her endearingly forced grin and raised her an eyebrow. “Practice?”

“Yes, I-“ She seemed to panic slightly, “NO! I-I mean, that wasn’t something I was practicing, I was just doing it to, um, Rainbow said, for c-confidence, like, uh…”

Seeing the increased glow of her cheeks and beads of sweat on what he could see of her brow, Blueblood didn’t let it show on his face that he suspected she was at the start of one of her famous breakdowns, and made it his first priority to get out of the blast radius while he still could. He gave what he had hoped would be a sufficiently relaxed grin, snout held upwards. “Well, that’s certainly important for one of royal standing, just be sure not to hurt yourself, would you?” Finishing the statement with a don’t-worry-about-it chuckle, he about-faced, paying no mind to Twilight’s reaction, closed the door behind him, and quickly made his way back to his chambers. He would rest for tonight, gather whichever of his usual guards he could early in the morning, bat ponies watching him or not, and be off. She may have just been mortified at the moment, he thought, quickly packing a travel bag with his magic, but if it’s changelings or being witness to the first Royal Psychotic Episode, Badlands, here I come!

---

Lost.

It made no sense, he, Prince Vladimir Blueblood the 52nd, Master of Navigation, was lost.

He stumbled blindly through the jungle, his guards long since having given up on his failure to lead them anywhere but a slow death of wasting away. Probably sitting cozy in a warm barracks right now, the useless, backstabbing-

The rest of his disdain was cut off by the familiar rustling of jungle foliage, the ache in his many claw wounds told him it was those damn jungle cats again. He could have sworn he’d finished them last time with that thundercloud electrifying the shallow pool that built up from the melted snowballs he’d been pelting them with at first, but it seemed cats had nine lives after all. Even the tiny white one, I suppose… Snorting once, he charged up his horn in the direction of the noise, ready to unleash what he knew could be a devastating fire if any of the nearby plants caught, at this point he was past caring if he razed a few acres of savage wasteland, when out of the bush emerged… a mare?

A pegasus, beige coat, nearly black mane, maroon eyes, olive drab shirt, and a pith helmet. She looked familiar.

“There you are,” she said, sounding relieved, “I’ve been looking all over Equestria for you!”

The misplaced prince regarded her cautiously, suspicious eyebrow raised. “Is that a fact? It’s not often one thinks to find royalty in the untamed wilderness.”

The mare smiled. “Not looking for royalty, looking for you. I knew you’d find your way out here sooner or later, you couldn’t stay away forever!”

“What ar-“

Her wings fluttered excitedly. “Adventure, Blueblood, adventure! I’ve been scouring every dangerous landscape, braving every trap-addled temple, swimming every shark-infested sea, spelunking every deep, dark cave,” she giggled for a moment, mouthing the word ‘spelunking’ before continuing, “and even bucking down the door of Tartarus itself to find you, because I knew you’d be doing the same sooner or later!”

Blueblood was fairly certain he knew this mare’s name now, the hero of those amusing, slightly silly adventure stories, Daring Do.

“After all,” she said with a warm smile, “what would you expect of any child of mine?”

He froze. “…C-come again?”

Daring Do nodded, laughing quietly. “You heard me, you, Prince Blueblood, are my son!” She took his wide-eyed shock as reason enough to continue. “I left you at the palace after asking Princess Celestia to look after you until you were old enough to join me.” She scratched her chin with a hoof. “I was sure you’d have been at it sooner, but-“

“Liar!”

The adventure pony he had been sure was fictional, and not that much older than him, blinked. “Huh?”

“You’re lying, my parents were-“

“Never around? Always busy? Like they didn’t care for you at all? Just up and left you to the princess one day?”

The prince sputtered. “H-how, dare you assert such-“

Daring Do maintained a calm, patient mask. “What were their names?”

Blueblood held out a hoof accusingly, mouth agape when he realized he had no idea.

“Did they know yours, either?”

She’s right, he thought, horrified, I have no recollection of my parents at all, no memories together, no faces, not even portraits on a wall somewhere, nothing!

As the tears gathered in his eyes, indignant pose still held and lacking any menace, Daring Do smiled sadly, stretching out her wings to wrap him in a hug. “It’s because you’re mine, Blueblood,” as their necks and her wings pressed together, not a full foreleg hug, he caught sight of her cutie mark, “you were meant for a life of excitement and adventure.” It was a compass rose, much like his own. She took a step back, smiled at him, and said

“We should probably be going, your highness, the Changeling hive awaits!”

Blueblood blinked. “…What?”

Her voice sounded like a gruff stallion’s now. “You’re going to extend Her Highness’s warm regards to those… Bugs, right?”

The prince opened his eyes, shaking off the haze of sleep to see his usual three bodyguards of unremarkable physical description, Wind Chill, Coin Toss, and Bolt Breaker, a pegasus, earth pony, and unicorn respectively. He remembered now, they’d stopped to rest about mid-day on the way to the Badlands after the desperately forced march they’d had fleeing Twilight Sparkle’s imminent-I mean-not wanting to keep the Changeling Queen waiting, if she knew they were coming. His guards needed no convincing when he’d hinted that the newest princess seemed a little ‘off’ that not being around for the possible follow-up was a fine plan of action, all of them having an idea of what an abnormally powerful unicorn could do when unhinged, made worse by her being an alicorn princess now, and joined him in making their way to the insectoid home with gusto… Before all four of them nearly collapsed a few hours later, Blueblood himself running on sheer terror to keep up with the trained soldiers.

It was time to get back to work!

---

The next day or so passed without much incident, the changelings had let them into the hive, -an underground structure with solidified green bile everywhere and disturbing membrane windows that he couldn’t see through here and there- so long as they minded themselves. When they got to what Blueblood guessed was supposed to be a throne room, Queen Chrysalis was nowhere to be found. One of the changelings, from whom Blueblood quickly learned that at least some of the creatures could speak, informed him and his guards that the queen was out at the moment and that trying to find her when she was up to something had almost always proven futile for them, and suggested waiting around until she returned home.

Just faintly worried about the not-so-subtle hint that an old enemy of Equestria might have been plotting something again, the prince complied with the given suggestion. After all, it had been… What, several months, since his sister’s wedding had been thrown off? He wasn’t even in Canterlot at the time, out making nice with the minotaurs in Celestia’s place for their annual head-bashing get-together… My one, pointed horn actually held up rather well against their comparatively soft foreheads, I think. I didn’t win first prize, per se, but making it to semifinals is still pretty impressive for a Prince of Equestria against barbaric brutes, I’m sure.

Brushing the thought aside, he wasn’t afraid of the changelings as a whole, though this would be the first time he’d met Chrysalis. Rumor was she’d actually been quite well behaved recently, in that there was no strong evidence that she or her minions had committed any heinous acts of late. For about a day and a half, Blueblood and his guards remained in the hive, passing the time communicating with the changelings as best they could, even the ones that would only make screeching noises, some of whom just loved charades, he noted, and playing card games.

In this time, the prince’s thoughts drifted to family, specifically what the mare in his dream had said. While the notion that I am the spawn of a fictional character is absurd at best… It’s true that I never knew my parents. Auntie said they died just days after I was born. He remembered the look of sorrow in Celestia’s eyes the day she told him, but to her surprise, he really hadn’t felt too bothered. He’d been raised by a kind, caring aunt when she had time, a selection of nannies when she didn’t, groomed to be a proper prince, who could be more fortunate than he? It wasn’t as if he had been aching for a chance to meet his parents even a little bit, embrace them in some tearful-

“SCREEEE!”

He blinked. “Hm? What?”

The changeling across the table from him waved a hoof of cards excitedly. “Scree!”

Remembering that Go Fish was a surprisingly fun way to pass the time, Blueblood looked to the cards he had been levitating. “Oh, uh, got any threes?”

“Screeeeee!”

They never saw the Changeling Queen, the Summer Sun Celebration most likely being over by the time they’d decided to head back to Canterlot.

Apparently a lot had happened in their absence… Again!