One week after Starlight Glimmer suffered a "relapse" during some long-overdue friendship lessons, Spike found her reflecting and lamenting in her bedroom. After some urging from the dragon, Starlight admitted she wasn't sure if the Mane 6 (save for Twilight) had truly accepted her as "one of them." But most of all, the reformed friend-in-training legitimately wondered if a pony with her past even deserved friends at all.

Naturally, Spike had some things to say about that.

While hanging out on Hearts and Hooves Day, Spike and Big Mac discussed how the Mane 6 had run off to parts unknown during the more recent Hearts and Hooves Days, including this one. Big Mac asked Granny Smith if she knew anything, but the elder pony claimed to be sworn to secrecy and told him to drop the matter.

Naturally, being denied just made Spike and Big Mac yearn to learn the Mane 6's secret more. Overcome by curiosity, the pony and dragon defied Granny Smith's order and set out to learn what their friends and sisters were up to.

Spoiler alert: you didn't really think a hint to the Mane 6's secret would be here, did you? Har har, har-ly har har!

Rarity was summoned by the Cutie Map to Ponyville's park, solo. However, there were no friendship problems in sight; the only thing that seemed to be waiting for Rarity was a lake.

According to Princess Twilight, the map was functionally normally, so there had to be something going on for the magical map to take action. Or could a certain troll be at work?

When Princess Twilight Sparkle suffered "one of those days" that pushed her to her breaking point, Spike worked to salvage the rest of her day. He was driven to ensure what the stressed Princess of Friendship still needed done would get done, perfectly.

However, once the bad luck that plagued Twilight started targeting Spike, his self-appointed mission threatened to push him to his own breaking point.

The idea for this story was requested by wonderkid125 and is the first of my two 5th-year anniversary stories of opening my account on this site. Man do time flies...

As an experienced reformed heroine who had dealt with unpredictable Equestrian magic in the human world, Sunset Shimmer has seen some pretty weird things.

Knowing that every human inexplicably has an Equestrian pony counterpart? Sunset yawns at this news. Being trapped in a collapsing mirror world? Not weird, but maybe a little scary. Having to play peacemaker when two Twilight Sparkles argued over who had the better boyfriend? That may have been unexpected, but not odd.

But the fact that Princess Twilight's boyfriend was a book and the teenage Twilight's boyfriend was a smartphone? Now that bit of weirdness wasn't so easy to shake off...

Special thanks to TheHardie-Boy for proofreading this story!

Thanks to having some free time, Princess Twilight accompanied the human Mane 7 to Equestria Land in the human world. To the dismay of two girls, what she chose to do first was to play Flim and Flam's infamous ring toss game. Knowing their game was nigh-impossible to win, the Princess's human counterpart begged her to not mess with it.

However, Princess Twilight wasn't a regular ring toss player, but a champion who claimed she had never lost. With just one ring, the Princess of Friendship left herself (literally), Sunset, and even Flim and Flam in disbelief.

Let's just say that more begging and hilarity followed.

This story is a sequel to Too Late

Believing an interdimensional relationship could only go so far, the human Flash Sentry reluctantly turned down Princess Twilight Sparkle's offer to go on a date. However, after an initial heartbreak period, Twilight decided to ask out Flash's pony counterpart. Without the difficulties of an interdimensional relationship to scare him off, surely this Flash would jump at the chance to hook up with Twilight, right?

Well, let's just say Princess Cadance had sunk the ship a few months prior. The Princess of Friendship did not take learning this well.

This may or may not end with a funeral.

Enough is explained in this story to not require reading "Too Late" to understand what's going on. This story does mention only the most relevant parts of "Too Late", so it is recommended to check out "Too Late" if you want to learn more about what happened when, and immediately after, Twilight tried to ask out the human Flash Sentry.

After being hesitant to try due to shyness, Princess Twilight Sparkle finally gathered enough courage to ask out Flash Sentry. While she didn't know it, Flash liked her too, so surely he would accept her offer to go out, right?

Also, Sunset Shimmer might need a tombstone.

Starlight Glimmer has been a great and reliable guidance counselor for Princess Twilight Sparkle's School of Friendship ever since its inception. She always went the extra mile for her students and prided herself on always being available to them without complaints. She even had to learn it was okay to not be available to them sometimes.

Starlight has also never received a raise, even though the school has been open for well over a year.

Upon learning of Starlight's non-existent raises despite her excelling and working hard as a guidance counselor, Trixie Lulamoon lost it. Despite Starlight desperately pleading with her to calm down, the Great and Furious Trixie stormed to Twilight's office and demanded the bewildered alicorn inside for answers and to pay up. Saying Trixie didn't like Twilight's reason for why she hadn't done it would be the understatement of the century.

Starlight Glimmer managed to successfully save the Mane 6, Spike, and the Princesses from Queen Chrysalis while inspiring the changelings to reform.

Except for Chrysalis. She instead chose to flee in disgrace after warning Starlight to sleep with one eye open.

However, as the group watched Chrysalis run away, Spike asked a big question.

EDIT: Featured through 04/19/22-04/21/22!!