It's usually boring work, maintaining an Equestrian border crossing. Doubly so if you're stationed at the Badlands crossing, with no incoming and a general populace still too busy licking its wounds to try anything funny. But it pays well, so guards tend not to complain.

But then you get the occasional day where everything goes wrong. Where an errant changeling with an attitude and an extremely punchable face tries to waltz past the station with a cart full of contraband, and sticky gross contraband at that.

If the border guard can get out of this one with all of their brain cells, they're definitely applying for a transfer to Ponyville.

Written as a birthday present for Carapace

Many have said that garbage represents the inevitable fate of all intelligent life. They look into the refuse of a landfill and bemoan the way that civilization paints its own demise, showing emperors and fools alike rendered useless by the ravaging advance of time. Some ponies weep over their garbage, because of what they must cast aside.

These ponies have never met Silver Spanner, champion dumpster diver and Equestria's foremost poetic defender of the average pony's junk.

This story is a sequel to Prince Blueblood Wants His Wings Back

Technically a prequel, but shh
While it is true that alicorns can be made, sometimes they are born. If a true alicorn, whose title has been rightfully earned, takes a lover who has seen the darkest truths of the universe and yet still has strength to smile, and their passion is more true than the universe itself, an alicorn might be born. The chances of such an event are so small that they make a million-to-one chance look like a sure thing.

But still, there are miracles. Sometimes an alicorn, with all the trappings of the three races, is born unto this world. It is around such beings that the universe inevitably turns. Even if they find themselves... reduced.

This is the story of Prince Blueblood the First. It is also the story of Prince Blueblood the Thirty-Fourth, and all of the Bluebloods in between.

An entry in ocalhoun's Big 250k Contest.

The changelings have been plotting their revenge ever since the wedding, to little avail. Most of their sleeper agents have been rooted out, there are regular guard patrols along the borders of the Badlands, and every deal they've made has been betrayed in record time. The only changelings not starving to death are the ones who have sold off the queen's secrets for clemency.

But despite all of these setbacks, Queen Chrysalis has a plan. A plan that, if she pulls it off, could topple the Crystal Empire in one fell swoop. Of course, it has more than its fair share of risks, but the reward will make it all worth it.

Rated Teen for brief descriptions of the various mechanisms of birth.

Also, don't worry about spoiler tags. The premise of this piece should seem fairly obvious.

Written before Season 6

Royalty doesn't always get what it wants. It's a lesson the princesses usually have to go out of their way to re-learn, but worth learning all the same. But when Luna approached Big Mac in a dream on the eve of Hearts and Hooves Day, it wasn't with the intent of learning this lesson.

Nursing a broken heart and an upset stomach, the Princess of the Night decides that the least she can do is bow out with some dignity and grace. To that end, she enters the dreamscape of Cheerilee, and gives her blessing in the most extravagant way possible.

Inspired by one of the most beautiful pieces of artwork I've seen in the past month, by phenomenal up-and-coming artist girlsay. I would seriously recommend going to take a look at the full version of this thing, as it is truly breathtaking.

When you want something so bad that you spend your entire life working towards it, nothing hurts more than having that dream ripped right out of your grasp.

Lightning Dust wanted to be a Wonderbolt. She wanted it so much that everything else, everyone else, became secondary to the blue-and-yellow suit. A disaster narrowly avoided ceased to even be a blip on the radar, loss of control translated directly to thrills, and anyone near her level was labelled an obstacle.

And now, here she stands. Alone. Broken. Everything she's ever worked for amounts to a suit with a hole in it, and her cutie mark in a blacklist. And she has no idea why.

And since Rainbow Dash is busy with training, the duty falls to somepony else to knock some sense into the disgraced cadet.

A gift for a friend.

This story is a sequel to Iron Wing and the Demolition Crew

Everyone knows the story of the Iron Wing. They all know how fiercely she fought at the battle of Rainbow Falls. Soldiers measure their worth by where they were when she routed Sombra at the gates of Canterlot. Even now, there's a pilgrimage some take that follows her entire campaign.

And anyone who knows anything about the Iron Wing knows about the Demolition Crew. The story of the Crystal Collapse is one fraught with thrills and chills for fillies of all ages, and the closing of the Ghastly Gorge continues to inspire and terrify all who hear of it.

But legends seldom begin as the titans they become. Heroes are not born, but made, through fire and pain and loss. There isn't a pony alive who doesn't know the story of the heroes, but the story of the soldiers who became those heroes is one known only to them.

This is not the story of Iron Wing and the Demolition Crew. This is the story of Rainbow Dash and the Pie sisters.

I don't belong here. These aren't the people I grew up with. My hopes and dreams, my culture, my very identity, could not be further from theirs. The only thing we have in common is body type, and even that is only superficial.

I was never even supposed to be here. I had never meant to take this shape, and certainly not so easily. I didn't plan on staying so long, on getting so lost in this world, in this universe. Seriously, how far off the beaten track do you have to get before you're in a completely different universe? I'll tell you how far; far enough that you'd never make it back if you didn't turn around the split second you showed up.

But I didn't know that, did I?

I don't owe these people anything. Their planet is only a speck of dust in a raging cyclone. I don't have a single molecule in common with this entire frelling universe. I've never owed them a damned thing.

So why am I about to give them everything?

Written for Equestria Daily's Writer's Training Grounds.

The Crystal War. A battle so long and brutal that it has shaped an entire era of righteous bloodshed. Ponies don't have slumber parties, or read bedtime stories to their foals, or even so much as smile. And when they do smile, it's the kind of smile that would keep ponies of a more peaceful era awake for days.

The madness of Sombra and his slave army claims lives every day. Soldiers in service to Celestia fight tirelessly to hold onto even a shred of what Equestria used to be. Its citizens do everything they can to feed the bloody machine, from canning food to holding funerals.

And at the heart of it all, there stand three mighty warriors. They have lost a great deal to this war, though none of them know just how much. What they do know is that they made promises back home, and they are not in the habit of breaking promises. No matter the cost.

This is the story of Iron Wing and the Demolition Crew.

Fifty years ago today, there was not a war. It was not one of the longest and bloodiest struggles ever known to ponykind. It did not claim the lives of hundreds upon thousands of ponies.

There is no such place as Shetland. It could not have been Ground Zero for Operation Petrichor because it never existed.

The Cloudsdale Massacre is a cheap horror flick, nothing more. Chemistry has no solid application in combat. The Non Sunt Dii has not existed since the first days of the Royal Sisters' reign.

Celestia is perfect. Celestia has never made mistakes. Celestia is not a coward.