The day after she swears off her petty, villainous ways, Starlight Glimmer is finally ready for her very first friendship lesson! To mark this grand occasion, Twilight decides a walk through town is in order to let her new student make some friends the right way.

It turns out that Starlight Glimmer is exceedingly bad at making friends the right way.

Many thanks to Syeekoh and Kamikakushi for taking a big one and prereading this for me.

When your life is as dull a gray as the world that surrounds you, the mundanities can make it all seem meaningless. Sometimes all we need is a little color -- or six -- to reintroduce us to what truly makes life worth living.

*6-16-2017 Edit, added Rainbow Dash tag because it triggered knighty.*

Still stuck in his agreement to aid twilight with her changeling research, Max stops by the library for his weekly interrogation. Unfortunately, Twilights not the only one asking the questions today.
First time posting something that rides the line, so rated T for now. If it bothers people, I'll bump it up, though I don't think I'll need to. I'd say take the story with a grain of salt, but I don't condone underage intoxication.

So I'm still keeping super powers a one-shot. However, I want to write this out now, possibly to be added to "the one who fell through the world" or as a compilation of side-stories at a later time. However, it's my story and I want to write it NOW! Seriously, it's sitting right next to me, on my notebook. I need to move it.

Sometimes, when I look at fanart... things happen.
This was one of them.
I'm sorry.

Shining Armor has everything - the wife, the house, the life. So when he rolls over to find the creature that crashed his wedding and nearly wrecked his chance at happiness snuggled oh-so-sweetly at his side, with his darling Cadance at his other, it's all he can do to keep it together and try to assemble the missing pieces.

Diplomacy has failed. Six years have passed Equestria's crowning of the princess of friendship, ushering in a supposed unprecedented age of peace and harmony. The concept of warfare is, to most ponies, nothing more than an unfathomable legend. They have let their guard down.

An unknown enemy has seized the opportunity to attack Equestria with terrifying new weapons of war, bent on taking the fertile land and restoring an ancient order. The valiant efforts of the Royal Guard have given Princess Twilight and her arcane scientists time to research and develop a response to their attackers, and the time has come for that response to be implemented. Utilizing weapons and tactics borrowed from another world, five squads under the command of Princess Luna will infiltrate the forests of the Equestrian Northwest to destroy a revolutionary magical matrix that Twilight refers to as the "radio" - a tool that allows enemy ponies to communicate across vast distances instantly.

Nightmare Two is comprised of three foalhood friends who, rather than be separated from each other in the draft, volunteer to become one of the five Nightmare squads. With their bodies forever altered to suit the needs of their mission, the three young mares join legions of ponies armed with powerful weapons to partake in a horrifying new breed of warfare - Equestria's first in over one thousand years.

--

Heads up, folks. If you wouldn't mind leaving a comment alongside the thumbs-down, I'd appreciate it. This is my first foray into fan fiction and although it's a hobby I nonetheless wish to get better. :)

Got some FAQ's for you guys as well!

- Alternate universe in which the events of "Crusaders of the Lost Mark" did not occur. (As much as I loved it! :D)

- Numerical age tends to vary with headcanon, but the CMC here were just getting started with their adult lives when the draft went into effect.

- The war is pony v. pony, utilizing firearms and the Equestrian equivalent of a tank. The underlying headcanon is that ponies used firearms similar to muskets and tracked armored vehicles akin to our tanks in times of old, and what the enemy currently employs is essentially the natural progression of these technologies.

- There are no real-world weapons or equipment i.e. "Panzer IV," or "M16 assault rifle." Particularly acute details such as the caliber of weapons are also absent.

- Technology is based on that of WWI with some WWII elements. Firearms are primarily bolt-action.

- The "radio" spell matrix functions as what we know to be a radio, but is not identical.

- All four of a Night Mare's legs are permanently replaced by the augments.

- Night Mares are female. Stallions proved unable to properly animate the limbs.

--

Hold up, now - fanart? You guys rock. Like, for real. Thanks a lot!

1. A great YouTube video coming from The_Pegasus_Box. Thanks, bud!
Check it out!

2. Click here for the collection on DArt.

3. https://derpibooru.org/740375?scope=scpeac921b191f688d04521575f31608785cbc3bbaa1
[img]https://derpicdn.net/img/view/2014/10/10/740375__safe_anthro_apple+bloom_gun_artist-colon-pusspuss_night+mares.png[/img]

It was the greatest discovery. New homeworld of sapient species. It was the first event of such kind for the whole millenium. So the Planetology Institute of the Union immediately equipped the expedition, and soon research teams arrived on the planet. They made avatars for themselves, infiltrated local societies and began to do their work. And this work turned out to be very, very interecting and full of adventures and surprises.

Being subtle isn't Rainbow Dash's strong suit. At all. So when Applejack asks her point blank what she thinks of Rarity, she doesn't hold back.

Not her best idea.

Pre-Read by: SapphireColors | LoneUnicornWriter

Reading by LandonWho

Pipsqueak and his Mum attend a high-society event hosted by Equestria and dedicated to the kingdom's gryphon friends. Other pony nations, like Maretonia, are also invited.

Foreign delegates and dignitaries. Nobles and royalty. Ponies from outside the kingdom. It will definitely be a fancy event.

But Pipsqueak and his Mum are just common folk...it just so happens that Pipsqueak knows the Princess of the Night.

A special night, with his favorite princess...what could possibly go wrong?

UPDATE: (Dec.17,2014) This is my first fic. Other fics are being written. Some are actually done (BOOK 2, Lu-). But I can't publish until I learn as much as I can from this first fic. I appreciate short, sweet comments. Sometimes they are feedback enough. But, if you can, please give details about the things you liked and disliked. I've had some give such comments, and I very much appreciate them. Such comments can give me lessons and ideas that I can apply to unpublished fics and fics in progress.

Just wanting to improve, so that I could write stories you guys would enjoy.

Moonshine is tired.

She works hard all night to provide for herself and her young son, Stardust. They live alone in the small bat pony village of Hollow Shades, on the ground floor of their tree home. It's not easy, raising a foal by herself, but she'd stop at nothing to provide him with everything he could want.

Well, almost anything. Some things just... aren't meant to be.

But together they make it through. One night, she keeps telling herself, it'll get easier. One night, they won't be alone anymore and they can be a family again. One night...

Until then, she'd just have to hold her flickering lantern a little closer.

All characters belong to the awesome KarpetShark. Go give her some love, she deserves it.
You can also find Moonshine's ask blog here.

"Dear Princess Celestia, as your (former) most faithful student, I feel I have to warn you that this is probably a trap. Chrysalis cannot possibly be serious about this. Why would anyone, much less her, want to shoot a documentary on us?"

Chrysalis, queen of all the changeling hives and infinitely cunning architect of their plans to conquer Equestria, has a problem: She knows diddly-squat about ponies. But Chrysalis is cleverer than most—or all—changelings, and she's already devised a brilliant solution to this trifling issue: Make a movie about them.

Tenth place winner in Equestria Daily's Outside Insight contest.