When Shining Armor was in high school, he was given an assignment to take care of a bag of flour decorated like an infant filly. By the end of the week, "Floury Armor" was a prize-winning batch of muffins and the yearbook committee had unanimously voted him "Most Likely to Appear in a Future Villain's Tragic Backstory." This really should have been a red flag, but for some reason the Queen Bee of the school still married him anyway.

When Shining Armor found out that his wife was pregnant, he was quick to introduce the Crystal Empire to the idea of a gender reveal party. Luckily, that quarter of the city had been due for extensive renovation anyway and his explosion-proof wife appreciated the sentiment.

Now, when his daughter is turning into a pony he no longer recognizes (and he can't even blame the changelings this time), it's up to him and his self-proclaimed stellar parenting skills to save her from herself.

My entry for the Shining Armor is a terrible dad competition.

Proofreading and pre-reading very helpfully contributed by Light Striker, GreyTheGriffon, RB, Pneu, and Scream Queen

Flurry Heart has grown old enough to begin attending school. However, she may have been spending a little too much time around her father, Shining Armor. She's been acting...different than the other foals during playtime. During a parent-teacher conference, Shining is informed of her behaviors.

An entry in the Shining Armor is a terrible dad competition.
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3/14/24 Still Alive Edition

There's only one pony in Ponyville that the Mane Six have never met. Pinkie Pie has never thrown him a party, Applejack has never sold him a mug of cider, and Twilight has never seen him check out any books. And as far as that unicorn, Lapis Print, is concerned, that's exactly how it should be.

Lapis can't risk them knowing where he lives, what he does for a living, or even what his name is - if he gets his way, the Mane Six won't even know he exists, and nopony in Ponyville will miss him once he's gone.

It should be a piece of cake - after all, it's not like the biggest magical power in Equestria is about making sure everypony looks out for each other, right?

(Rated Teen for language - mental cursing mostly.)

A human wakes up in the everfree before the events of nightmare moon. Or adult Luna and Celestia. Oh, and he’s a bird. A magical bird, but still a bird.

This story is a sequel to Changing Expectations

When ages are segmented and divided in the annals of history, it is done so with great events as breakpoints. The Second Age of Heroes was unanimously declared to have started with the return of Princess Luna and the changeling Invasion of Canterlot.

For thousands of years, the changelings survived beneath The Great Tapestry, that which connects all living and nonliving things. Hundreds of generations worked endlessly to keep their existence a secret. With one command from Queen Chrysalis, the Masquerade was broken.

In a single night, the changelings waged war against Equestria and took the Kingdom by storm. Months later, the war between changelings and ponies has ended. A new tapestry, a new story, must be woven between the two species. Equestria and the Fifth Hive have gone through a dark chapter and have emerged stronger for it.

One war ends and another begins.

As The Sword of Damocles hangs above the heads of the formerly-human King Phasma and his Equestrian counterparts, the forces of light must work on an ever-shortening window before war once again brings Hell to Equus. Dark powers grow in the places that the light does not reach, and they bring one irrefutable truth.

Epitaph is coming.

Cover art by Nixworld.

Special thanks to my pre-readers!

Oblivion Shadow is a master Witcher of the Wolf School. A contract on a Leshens head brings him to the edge of the Northern Realms to answer a call for help. The fight starts off as normal. A second Leshen attack leaves him fighting on two fronts. The Witcher is able to escape, or so he thought when a sharp pain in his back leaves him waking up in Equestria. He is taken in by the Apple family, who treat him as one of their own. He is welcomed by the ponies of this world and he must learn how to accept that or risk upsetting a balance that he did not realize he was a part of. The question he has to ask himself is how does he get back to his world? Or does he even want to go back to a world that is fraught with war and drowning in hate and rage? His senses tell him that monsters from his world are in this new one but he can't seem to track them down. Could his world be bleeding into this one, and how bad will the damage be? He follows the Mane 6 and learns through them what it means to be a friend and a brother.

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Ganondorf, King of Thieves, Lord of Darkness, Master of Evil and Wielder of the Triforce of Power, had long since grown thoroughly and completely bored with the path the gods had decreed for his destiny.

Time after time it was always the same, try and unite the Triforce, plunge the world into darkness for a time, search out and then kidnap Princess Zelda, watch his minions be defeated one after another and then finally battle Link for supremacy. Rinse and repeat.

All the while knowing that regardless of winning or losing, that no matter what he did or didn’t do, that in the end everything would end up repeating itself in another time and place afterwards, again, and again and again, in an utterly pointless never ending cycle.

Having decided that enough was finally enough, and refusing to continue to be a simple pawn at the hands of the gods, he vowed he would find a way to escape from his cumbersome destiny, a way to start anew far beyond the meddling grasp of the gods, a way to reach a realm upon which he could be the master of his own fate.

And after years of careful planning he had finally succeeded.

Sure, the fact he had to drag the know-it-all Princess and the green obsessed Hero along for the ride for his plan to work was a minor inconvenience, but he knew that sometimes sacrifices had to be made. And the fact that this new realm apparently decided to turn him and his two unwilling companions into miniature pastel colored ponies upon arrival also wasn’t exactly part of the plan, but he could cope.

After all, that was a negligible price to pay in achieving his deepest wish: freedom.

In this story Ganondorf, having grown sick of following through the motions his destiny placed before him as the eternal bad guy to be defeated time after time, seeks out to escape from his fate by breaking through the void between dimensions and running away from Hyrule to another realm entirely, Equestria, all the while dragging both Link and Zelda along for the ride.

Arriving long before the founding of the country, back before the events of Heart’s Warming Eve and at the highest point of the conflict between the Three Tribes, he and his two new companions will have to deal with a whole new world and it’s wonders and dangers. All the while this new magical world will have to learn to deal with its three new strange inhabitants in kind.

Just a warning: This is NOT a Displaced fic. All three main characters are the actual characters from the Zelda series that have been taken to Equestria due to Ganondorf’s master plan, and not humans turned into them.

Beta Reader: The Amazing Emtu!
Cover Art: The Incredible swagmu!
Proofreader: The relentless TranquilClaws! (From chp I - XXV)

Featured for the first time! 07/06/2018 to 07/11/2018

Now with a TvTropes page!

Edit: Crossposting at Royalroad where I have the same username.

Featured on May 14, 2013. And again on November 29, 2014 more times than I can count thanks to you guys.

Now with our own TVtropes page! Help us catalog the awesomeness.

Holy crap we've got a trailer too!
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIguvceYEiY]

MLP:FIM is the property of Lauren Faust
Bleach is the property of Tite Kubo

Plot aspects for chapter thirty six onward contributed and improved by Ketvirtas and Alondro
Chapters 0-88 proofread by xbox432
Chapters 89-onward proofread by LyonAzakura
Partially inspired by Dirty Bit's story Cuatro
Further inspired by Christopher28's story A Different Viewpoint of Equestria
Further inspired by Trinary story Friendship is Empathy
Random plot elements inspired by SwimmingDalek98 and Phoenix Archangel
Story structure and pacing inspired by Tite Kubo

Ulquiorra Cifer was defeated at the hands of a mere human and died in Las Noches. Or at least that's what he thought. In the boundary that separates life and death for all Hollows, he's found by one that finds him interesting enough to give a second chance at life free from Aizen's control, and free to do as he pleases; he was just never told that his second chance of life would take him to an alternate world he never could've imagined even if he tried.

The land of Equestria is a magical place full of hope, and second chances. In this land where friendship is considered the most powerful magic in existence, can the Cuatro Espada find something that's been missing and learn how to live? Or will his presence be the downfall of the peaceful world and all of its inhabitants?