“All unicorns build doomsday devices!” Those five words were words that Twilight Sparkle never expected to hear next to each other and in that specific order in a sentence.

King Sombra has returned, and upon discovering that Twilight Sparkle has not even considered building a doomsday device, has given her an ultimatum: Either she builds a device that has the sole purpose of destroying the world, or he starts defacing her books.

The clock is ticking: Will Twilight be able to get in touch with her inner mad science and save her imperiled reading material? More importantly, is she really destined to bring about the end of the world? Are unicorns really nothing more than a cosmic reset button, poised to bring a halt to all existence at a moment's notice even in the face of past evidence suggesting that they're not very good at it? Will Twilight succeed where all others have presumably failed? Does she even want to?

Join in as we follow the journey to answer the question on minds the world over: “Anypony for Doomsday?”

Without a lot to do, Alan has let the over-large box from an online order sit around his place for weeks now. Predictably, when he finally gets the energy to do something about it he finds that a pony has moved into it.

Things happen from there. Nothing exciting but, you know, they still happen.

This story is a sequel to In From The Cold

You'd have thought that being in space on a planet you'd long-believed to be dead and gone but which turned out to in fact have been kept tidy by the weirdo alien you also believed to be dead and gone would be exciting.

And in many ways it is, but in many ways it's also just more work to do and more boxes to tick, but that's being in charge.

Still, Jack did suggest going and getting lunch and Twilight did say yes, she's just got some things to finish up first.

And Jack, surely, has experience of waiting?

Right?

This story is a sequel to She means well

Not even a lazy lie-in is safe from magical horses sneaking in and making a nuisance of themselves.

Still, there are worse things in life, and this time at least she seems to have thought her plans through, and they seem to be going smoothly. Probably because she brought even more help.

Oh well, a man can just go with the flow, can't he? And enjoy himself. Why not? It's not so bad, he's still a softy and she is, all said and done, just plain lovely.

They say that good armour is a Royal Guard's best friend.

Sometimes, it might be a little more literal than expected.

After all, it isn’t every day that one receives shameless self-promotion from their protective attire.

William, local human, has set himself aside a comfortable, quiet slice of his day to put together a bookcase. As you do.

Events conspire to prevent this.

Dillon, local human, has a surprise for his fine friend Pinkie. Not the most amazing or sophisticated of surprises, but that hardly matters - the two of them proceed to have excellent, friendly fun together!

Later, Twilight is confounded.

Everyone's a winner.

-

Straight To The Point Studio's got the hookup

Spike and Dr. Cabelleron head into the Badlands searching for a legend.

The original version of this story placed sixth in the March 2020 WriteOff contest with the nonsense syllable "Ot" as the prompt, and this rewritten version was my entry in the Original Pairings group's 2020 May Pairing Contest.

Bill (local human) and Celestia (local horse) are very close friends. Very, very close. So close it's gratingly obvious that they both plainly want to be even closer still, but despite Celestia's best efforts Bill remains utterly incapable of grasping that this is the direction that they both want it to go in.

Her latest scheme is more direct than those before it, but can it hope to work?

Luna is bored out of her mind because it is the quietest of quiet nights.

Then, humming to himself, hoves into view the local human - the one her sister keeps around for...

...some reason.

Seeing an opportunity to alleviate her crushing, mind-numbing boredom if only briefly Luna grabs it with both hooves and calls him over. Useless chatter follows, and a Gameboy is involved.

Nothing of note occurs.