Be it ancient menace or new threat, diplomatic snafu or domestic concern, monster attack or friendship problem, Twilight Sparkle and her friends have always risen to the challenge.

That's a bit of an issue this time around, when the challenge is a marked absence of Twilight Sparkle.

This story is a sequel to The Sun Burns Brightly

When you're the immortal ruler of an entire kingdom, the most important quality to possess is a passion for your work. No princess can rule her nation if she can't find it in herself to give her best effort every day and night. Luna knows this better than anypony, and puts her whole heart into everything she does.

But passion, unless tempered by restraint, has a way of biting one in the flank.

Twilight's been having weird, unfamiliar urges ever since she became an alicorn. Like an intense desire to grow flowers, or the fact she can't stop chewing on her wings when she's distracted. As it turns out, you can't just suddenly inherit the magic of all three pony tribes without getting the instincts to match, and instincts can be a powerful thing. Doubly so when you're not used to them, and especially when they're telling you that your best friend with the gorgeous wings would make the perfect partner to share a nest with.

Wait, what was that last part?

Originally this was supposed to be a birthday gift for Celysus, but I fell in love with the idea so it's gonna be a full fic now. You can't stop me.

(Rated teen for mildly suggestive flirting)

In an infinitely improbable set of events, Twilight Sparkle, Sunny Starscout, and other ponies of all generations meet at the Restaurant at the end of the Universe, make friends, and get thoroughly confused about the nature of the multiverse.

A quantum superposition of all pony generations with the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. If you are not familiar with that, this will not make much sense.

If you are familiar with it, don’t expect it to make much more sense.

There are six pony virtues. Six. And fortunately for the pickup artists, confidence stallions, and desperate of the world, there's also a lot of sapients who can't count that high. Princess Luna's Return produced a few side effects, and one of the more consistently annoying is a never-ending parade of those who claim to be the hitherto-unknown virtue of This Is Worth Some Free Drinks. Others take it further.

Division Seven is an international, multispecies effort, created in an attempt to find and discipline those charlatans. And ideally, to do so before something... happens.

The planet has strange ways of reacting to the presence of true Bearers.

Imagine how it might deal with some of the fakes...

(Now with author Patreon and Ko-Fi pages.)

Cover art created by RamblingWriter.

AKA Chrysalis vs The Rolled-up Newspaper of Harmony

AKA How To Unalone Yourself At Hearth’s Warming

Chrysalis has been inexplicably spared the wrath of Discord and the Princesses, although frankly, she'd really rather have preferred the stone! Now burdened with an awful, dreadful, wicked curse that... gah, fills her with love and joy any time she tries to think a vengeful thought! And worse! Now she's been roped into pretending to be Applejack of all ponies on some errand to the middle of nowhere with a filly named Diamond Tiara and some lovely wretched mare named Cherry Jubilee.

Not that she'll fail at all in this. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.

Plus, it beats getting lost in the woods in winter.

Written for Camaleao for Jinglemas 2023!

Co-written with SoloBrony. Thanks for helping me out, man.

If there's a holiday, then somepony's probably overdecorated for it. The Greening has seen entire homes blend into the local grass, while Lambvent shrouds neighborhoods in wool and Hearth's Warming traditionally welcomes guests into homes through making it impossible to see where the front door is. But if Ponyville's going to get dressed up anyway, then Town Hall might as well have a little contest built around it. The mayor signed off on that.

Which meant there was a period of at least two seconds in which Marigold Mare completely forgot her town hosts the Bearers -- and that she'd just given them a reason to compete against each other.

Shall we count down to the inevitable one home visit at a time? In six, five, four, three...

(Now with author Patreon and Ko-Fi pages.)

Rated C for they don't celebrate Christmas Crackfic.

This story is a sequel to Changeling Space Program

The space race is over, and the third flight of ESA Amicitas is not yet even contemplated, but life goes on for the first changeling queen on the moon and her hive.

Faced with the necessity of keeping track of all her subjects and proving that they are, in fact, hers, Chrysalis decrees the Badlands Hive's first ever census. And normally this would produce merely normal levels of changeling stupidity, silliness and shenanigans...

... but what happens when a name pops up, and you can't prove that the changeling attached to it even exists?

Takes place in late winter after the end of Changeling Space Program and about two years before the beginning of The Maretian.

Written for FanOfMostEverything's Imposing Sovereigns IV contest, pairing Chrysalis and Unorthodoxy. (Group here.)

It's an interesting situation - it's not every day that you get to see the outcome of the road not taken, what might have been. As the married Applejack and Rainbow Dash talk to the dating Applejack and Rarity, they get a bit competitive over who made the better choice.

The other Rainbow Dash and Rarity think it was obviously them.

[A RariDash story that ate what started as a commission for Spamotron]

Trixie has read literally dozens of true crime stories. She has no idea why it takes the police so long to solve the crimes when they're so obvious -- especially in hindsight. When a murder happens right in front of her, its her chance to prove her expertise to the doubters and claim her rightful title as the Intelligent and Insightful Trixie, Equestria's Greatest Magical Detective!

Assuming it actually is a murder, anyway.

An entry in the 2023 Whodunnit Contest