“BLUEBLOOD!” The wafting cry floated across the Duke of Canterlot’s residence, a modest forty-nine room mansion in the wealthiest section of the city. Strong, century-old walls fortified with sharp pointy bits surrounded the mansion, as well as four gardens, seven fountains, both Summer and Winter reflecting pools, and a most magnificent gazebo in the middle of a hedge maze of such complexity that the current resident had no clue of its existence. The garden staff had long ago simply cut holes in the hedges and installed gates to ease the process of maintenance, which had nearly caused the death by starvation of three groundskeepers before sanity had intervened.

“BLUEBLOOD!” The cry was significantly closer now, and of a volume that it gently wafted into an open window in the magnificent Ducal Library, a two-story affair in the southern wing with a permanent staff of three, and a yearly operating budget that would have bought several small countries. Quite an unfair comparison, actually. Due to many centuries of growth and contraction in Canterlot royalty, there existed several members of the upper crust, who if their home estates were planted entirely to wheat, would not yield enough to create one loaf of bread.

“BLUEBLOOD!” The Bluebloods of Canterlot had held the title of ‘Prince’ for many generations, each of them ready at a moment’s notice to step into the shoes of power. Those shoes, however, belonged quite firmly to the immortal Princess Celestia, and as of late they had been joined by her long-lost (and also regrettably immortal) sister, Princess Luna. Despite their ownership of the Duchy of Canterlot, and enough land to make themselves a small and prosperous kingdom, each generation of the Bluebloods had been loyal to a fault. The current fault… um… holder of the title of both ‘Duke’ and ‘Prince’ was a rather vapid blonde unicorn stallion of impeccable pedigree. In fact, it was so impeccable that he enjoyed spending hour after hour in his library, sorting and tracing the various limbs, branches, roots, leaves, forks and twigs therein. There were even rumours among the house servants that he would kiss the family tree on rare occasion. These rumours were completely unfounded. They were only light pecks, not kisses. And no tongue.

“BLUEBLOOD!” The voice was getting closer, the two impassive unicorn guards in Blueblood’s personal livery at the front gate glanced nervously down the street. It was late in the afternoon, so late that it might even be close to the time when the guard was to be changed. Perhaps even soon enough that the guards presently on guard might be able to get out of range before whoever was making that horrible noise were to show up at the gates. They clung to that faint hope until it was too late.

Vengeance came around the corner.

She spotted the guards in front of Prince Blueblood’s gates.

She began to charge.

“BLUEBLOOD!” The sheer volume of the anguished cry of rage and pain shook the leaves in the gardens, it woke the peacocks on the lawns, caused the pigeons on the roof to flutter about in their dovecot, and rattled the glass in the library windows.

The Prince was many things: Vain, stubborn, opinionated, spoiled, rich, foolish, cowardly, vain, and repetitive.

He was, however, not deaf.

“Oh Jeeves! Do nip downstairs and see about chasing off whatever ruffian is shouting so. They are making it quite difficult to properly concentrate on my Great-Aunt’s descendants.”

I suppose we should add stupid to the list.

The magnificent white unicorn stallion went back to his task, carefully inscribing a miniscule line of text on the wall-sized diagram that took up most of the western library wall. His name, of course, was at the very top, followed by various ancestors in descending order connected by multi-colored lines of every variation depending on their status of birth and various degrees of legitimacy. Certain lesser-related relatives were relegated to other charts occupying other walls, their distance determined by their misfortune of birth and their current influence at court.

A faint shudder shook the room, and Blueblood looked up. “You there!” He pointed to a luckless servant passing by and scowled. “You caused me to smudge my Great-Great-Great-Uncle’s name! What do you have to say for yourself?”

“It wasn’t me!” She pointed out the window and trembled. “Somepony blew up the front gate!”

“What?!” Blueblood scurried to the window to look across the East Garden, past the Aquarius Fountain, and along the croquet field to see an enraged purple unicorn trotting down the path from what little remained of the front gate.

“BLUEBLOOD! THERE WILL BE JUSTICE!” A ball of purple light formed above the unicorn mare, then was flung forward with a soft explosion that scattered the front door guards in all directions. The groaning guards began to pick themselves up as a second bolt of incandescent power plowed into the now-unguarded doors, blowing their shattered remains inwards with a force that shook the mansion to its foundations.

All of the guards promptly laid back down. After all, their name was not Blueblood, so this was not really their problem. Unfortunately for Blueblood, the Prince tended to hire ponies that matched his personality.

The Captain of Blueblood’s personal Ducal guard bolted into the library and skidded to a stop in front of his Prince.

“Prince Blueblood! I must report that an aggressor has gained entrance to our fortifications.”

“Well, don’t just stand there,” bellowed Blueblood. “Go stop them! Fight them! Defend me!”

“Don’t worry, my Prince! I assure you, my guards are a stout lot, and will defend you until the last—”

The crack of an exploding magical bolt echoed up the staircase behind the guard captain, immediately followed by the deafening sound of an expensive Catelian crystal chandelier being rapidly converted by gravity into a massive pile of razor-sharp glass shards and tangled golden wires.

‘WHERE’S BLUEBLOOD!”

“In the library, up the stairs, take a left, you can’t miss it,” came the almost immediate reply of a half-dozen ponies downstairs.

Captain Rearward Advance wiped the sweat off his brow and glanced at the open library door. “I’m sure my guards will stop them on the stair—”

Another voice drifted into the library by way of the open door. “The library is right over there Ma’am. Mind the rug, it bunches a bit and can trip you.”

Captain Rearward Advance grinned nervously at his terrified Prince. “Tell you what, you just find a place to hide, and I’ll… go get help. Don’t worry, my Prince. I’ll be right back.”

Blueblood turned to shout at him, but all he could see was the tail of the Prench guard captain as he vanished out of the door.

-clop-
-clop-
-clop-

The sound of hoofsteps was coming up the stairs. Prince Blueblood dove underneath his writing desk and cowered.

-clop-
-clop-
-thud-

The hoofsteps had reached the carpet at the top of the stairs. Blueblood reached out with his magic to close and lock the library door.

“BLUEBLOOD, YOU’LL PAY FOR THIS!” The library door blew inward, converted into energy so abruptly that even the wooden splinters vaporized harmlessly before touching a single book.

-thud-
-thud-
-thud-

A shock of recognition surged through Blueblood as the purple unicorn mare strode through the smoky doorway; Twilight Sparkle had undergone a dramatic change from the quiet little prodigy who had been following Auntie Celestia around for years. She had always been such a timid little thing; but now her eyes were white pits of pure magical fury and her hooves left smoking holes in the carpet as she walked. Closer and closer she strode, every smoldering step measuring one less miserable moment left in Prince Blueblood’s life.

-thud-
-thud-
-thud-

Prince Blueblood tried to close his eyes and wait for the end, but he was frozen in terror. Surrounded by fumes from smoking hoofprints in the carpet, the purple unicorn strode right up to the desk he was cowering under. There was a light fluttering of papers on the desk above him, and a sheet of his genealogy research floated out to join with a familiar-looking book which levitated out of her saddlebags. Both of them stopped in front of Twilight Sparkle’s blazing white eyes, and began to glow violet.

She muttered as she worked, “I can’t believe you just ripped this page right out of the book, it’s a LIBRARY REFERENCE BOOK for Celestia’s sake. You could have just made a copy, but no. You just ripped it heartlessly from a LIBRARY book. That’s worse than MURDER or even ARSON!”

The blinding violet glow surrounding the book and the loose page vanished with a sharp flash and the mended volume appeared perfectly whole. Twilight smiled, and her eyes rapidly regained their normal purple coloring.

“There, that’s better. I’m glad it wasn’t permanently ruined, but they’re still going to bill your library card something fierce if I have anything to say about it!”

She floated the book back into her saddlebag and turned to leave, paused, and turned back to Blueblood’s family tree. Scooping up a quill, she made a few tiny adjustments to a smaller side-entry on the main display before standing back and giving the correction a nod.

“That’s better. Everypony always misspells Dad’s name. It’s Night Light, not Nite Lite. I’ll see you later, cousin.”

Twilight Sparkle trotted out of the room without a backwards glance, leaving the frazzled Prince to crawl out from under his desk. He spent a few terrifying moments studying the correction the Princess’s protege had made to his family tree, tracing the lineage and genealogy back and up an astonishingly few steps until he dropped down onto his haunches in stunned terror.

“Cousin?”