Trash of the Royal Castle

"The Crystal Fair was established by the First Queen of the Empire, and became the most important tradition!" A yellow-furred Yak said loudly as he led the group of six mares and a dragon, "The fair was held every year to, and I am quoting this, Renew the spirit of Love and Unity in the Empire so they could protect it from harm, end quote." The yak opened the flap to a large tent in the middle of the sea of tents that took up a sizable portion of the Crystal Empire's eastern quarter.

"You can take the book, Read for yourself," The Yak said as he pointed at the table in the middle of the tent, and at the book that lay on top of it.

"Thank you." Twilight Sparkle thanked the Yak as she levitated the book towards herself, opening it to skim through the pages.

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"Blueblood! I came as fast as I could, what's happening?" Starlight Glimmer made her way up the road to the Crystal Empire's entrance, stopping halfway up the road in the middle of an open field of green grass. The magic of the barrier around the Empire keeping the land warm and habitable enough for the grass to grow and flourish.

"We're hastening the work on Plan B." Her boss told her, his horn glowing blue as round orbs of crystal levitated around him, "At the rate things are going, Cadance will collapse before the Heart is found, so we need to make sure Plan B succeeds instead." He said before grumbling something under his breath, the illusion he kept over his face fading away briefly to reveal the dark circles that formed beneath his eyes, a twitch of his right eye quickly reformed the Illusion, creating the image of a prim and proper Prince, as opposed to the tired and disheveled Stallion that he was hiding underneath.

The Crystal he levitated around all flew in different directions before settling into small holes in the ground. The Prince lowered his head to the ground, his horn touching an invisible symbol, causing the light from his horn to spread outwards like a spiderweb, each string of light ending at one of the crystal orbs.

"Not enough..." He mumbled as he raised his horn, the spiderweb disappearing as if it never was, "Needs more space... Starlight! Bring more Crystals, We need to enlarge the net. Make it cover this entire field if you can. I need to review the book." Blueblood told her before he turned to the bag he always seemed to bring with him, taking out one of the many books written by Clover the Clever he kept in his bag. The pages magically turned to the page he wanted to look at, a small beam of blue magic hit the page and caused an illusionary copy to start floating in the air as the pages returned to turning.

"Are you sure you should be the one doing this? When Celestia hears about this she won't let you out of her sight for who knows how long..." Starlight told Blueblood as her legs started moving, her horn already aglow with aquamarine light.

"If it's not me doing this, nobody will," Blueblood told her, once again using words like Nobody instead of Nopony. "If you hadn't noticed yet, The more time passes the more obvious it seems that the only person capable of doing their job correctly in any given situation is me, and more and more situations keep popping up requiring me to be the one to fix them."

"I understand that's what you think, but you know that's not true." Starlight told him, her eyes roaming across the field in order to locate the edges of the magical web, "You've convinced yourself that you're the one who needs to fix all these problems when in reality you're just putting more, and more work onto yourself," Starlight pause as she turned to look at the Crystal Empire, hearing laughter and joy in the distance as tents and balloons started to rise in the distance, She ignored the sounds as she turned to stare her boss in the eyes, His ice-blue orbs seeming tired even through the illusion placed on top of them, "Where's the Blueblood who gathered up an entire precinct of police officers in order to arrest some poor mare in the mountains?"

Blueblood scoffed at her, his eyes turning to look away from her, focusing on the twisting shadows that loomed outside the barrier of magic, "Luna was the one who set me up to do so." He mumbled quietly.

"What about the Blueblood who sailed through a river of chocolate milk floating through the sky as he tried to save as many civilians as he could find while also balancing a test for a Nautical Science degree?" Starlight asked louder, focusing on her boss, on the twitched around his eyes, the quivering in his jaw as he grit his teeth, the furrowing of his brows as emotions started bubbling inside him, Emotions Starlight knew he needed to get out.

"It's only because I could rely on Neighsay to bring the ponies on board that I could even focus on the ship-" Blueblood was cut off by Starlight.

"And what about the Blueblood who organized on his own a mission to create diplomatic ties with the nation of Caninia, only to find himself wrangling a group of grown Children as a shapeshifter tried to sabotage them from within, only to find himself building good ties not only with the group he was sent to meet, but also the opposing group, and beating the shapeshifter to a round of applause?!" Starlight's voice was nearing a yell at this point, her horn stopped glowing as she put down all the crystals she was asked to move, bringing her full attention onto her boss. Onto her Best Friend.

"It's only thanks to Raven that I could-"

"It's because you asked for help!" Starlight yelled, forcing Blueblood to shut his mouth and look away from the barrier, focusing on Starlight, "When was the last time you asked for help? Not an order of 'bring me something to drink! I need to focus' or 'Carry me up the stairs because I'm too injured to move', I mean actually asking someone to help you, going to someone and telling them 'Hey, I need help," Starlight took a moment to catch her breath, watching Blueblood stare at her blankly as if he still was unsure at what point she was trying to get at.

"I think the last time you actually asked me to help you, and by help I mean lighten the burden of your work, was back when we went to Ponyville and you were intangible, and you asked me to get the Apple Family to sign a contract for you." She told him, "That was all the way back in January, We're halfway through April, It's been four months! You keep trying to do all these things on your own, Just tell Celestia exactly what you need and then ask her to bucking help you already!"

Starlight huffed, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath, glaring at her boss.

"...Are you done?" He asked her.

"...You have dozens of Ponies working for you here, A Dozen more Yaks that came with a separate Prince who is already helping in his own way. Just tell them how you want them to help so you can stop burning yourself out on this," Starlight told him, "It's barely been over two weeks since the wedding, Regardless of what you're feeling on the subject, working yourself to the bone isn't healthy, especially after what Chrysalis did to you."

"...Get back to work." If her words even entered into his mind, Blueblood made no show of it as he turned away from her and returned to reading the pages from the book.

"Fine! But once you see that I'm right on this one I'll hold it over your head for the rest of your life!" Starlight told him, scowling at his reaction before she too resumed her work.

She could try to change his mind as hard as she may, but at the end of the day, it was on him to listen to her. If he decided to ignore her words, there was nothing she could realistically do about it.

She could only hope that in the future she wouldn't regret not pushing harder on him.

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"Twilight, we might have a big problem~" Rainbow Dash whispered loudly to her friend as she tried to hide the crystal statue of a heart that Twilight carved in the middle of the Empire.