There's a crime wave gripping the sleepy town of Apple-Morepone, and nopony on the City Watch seems to care. Corporal "Rainbow" M. Dash naps through her patrols, her partner Dobby is an infamous kleptomaniac, Captain Rhymes is a drunkard, and the entire Watch is a group of burnt-out misfits.

They're about to meet a batpony (adopted) by the name of Carrot, visiting town to return an overdue library book.

And none of their lives will ever be the same.

A crossover/homage to the "City Watch" books of Terry Pratchett's Discworld, written to be readable without any familiarity with the series (though they're excellent, and if you do read them you'll catch my Pratchett in-jokes).

Winner of Aragon's "Comedy Is Serious Business" Contest! "I was quoting this offline for days, forgetting where I was remembering the lines from. … This story made me legitimately jealous, both of its cleverness and of its funniness." –Contest judge MrNumbers

Rated ★★★★★ by Louder Yay! "The best comedy I've read in a long time."

"Highly Recommended" by Super Trampoline! (Video review here @ 09:17) "It's 13,000 words long, but it doesn't feel long, because so much fun stuff is happening."

Reviewed by Ghost Mike! "It features meticulously laboured-over prose, rhyming with actual metre for Zecora, perfectly-timed jokes and reveals that are often outrageous, a sneakily clever plot and character investment that works its magic throughout ... This is a phenomenally executed piece of work."

Other reviews: Present Perfect | City of Doors

Thank you to Themaskedferret and Caliaponia for prereading, and GaPJaxie for motivation/inspiration!

In which Pinkie Pie finds out what turns Flash Sentry on.

It has been more than one hundred years since Celestia banished Nightmare Moon. While Equestria has enjoyed a century of relative peace and prosperity, there are still lingering tensions between the three pony tribes.

Shadow Kicker, a proud warrior of Pegasopolis, must navigate the treacherous noble court of Canterlot and address the concerns and wounded pride of her own tribe in a desperate effort to prevent matters from coming to open warfare.

Flash Sentry: hero, heart breaker ... and self-admitted coward. For the first time, he details his own undeserved rise to heroism (as well as the trouble such a reputation brings him) in his own words.

Principal Celestia always has wings in her dreams.

They got her into trouble, once. She let herself believe that they meant she was an angel. Then she grew up, and learned some hard lessons about what being an angel really required.

Now six magical girls have just fought a demon in front of her school. And her phantom wings are itching.

Her life is turning upside down ... and she hasn't even heard about Equestria yet.

Rated Highly Recommended (Top 15 Stories Sitewide) by Present Perfect! "It's f**king flawless, you guys. … The first [6]00-word chapter by itself is a masterpiece."

"Literally the single best EqG story on the site." —Professor Plum
"[One] of the best stories on the site, period." —Pearple Prose
"One of my all-time favorite pieces of fanfiction." –brokenimage321
"My favorite EQG fic of absolute all." -Skywriter

Rated Why Haven't You Read This Yet? by PaulAsaran! "I might have been skeptical going in, but horizon knocked it out of the park."

Rated 5/5 by csquared08! "The opening chapter here was truly something else. ... Then I hit the end of chapter 3. holy crap."

Rated ★★★★ by Louder Yay! "A lesser writer might have made a horrible, cliché-ridden mess of this story, but fortunately horizon is not a lesser writer. For a start, it's by some distance the best portrayal of the human world's Celestia I've read."

Third place in the "Under the Sun" June 2017 Writeoff!  (That first draft has been revised and expanded for FIMFiction.) Praise for the Writeoff version:

"Holy cow ... That's how you write an EqG fanfic! You captured the heart and SOUL of this/your version of Principal Celestia, wrapped it up in bi-universal consistency, and sold me on an idea of redemption I didn't even know I needed." —Xepher

"This is gorgeous. A thorough, exhaustive, incredibly moving portrait of a character who I don't think I've ever seen get quite this much development or attention." —Posh

"This is actually, after all these years, an original take on a story on Luna's banishment. If that's not something to be celebrated I don't know what is." —Quill Scratch, Radio Writeoff

MORE REVIEWER PRAISE: Rated "Definitely Read" by Super Trampoline! Reviewed by City of Doors! Reviewed by Titanium Dragon! Featured on Equestria Daily!

Rated T for brief cursing and alcohol use. Cover art by Seniloko, used under Creative Commons license.

Translations:

中文 - 行政天使

There's a lot of things about Cadance and Shining Armor that never quite made sense: their sudden appearance before the Royal Wedding; their suspiciously convenient suitability as rulers of the Crystal Empire; their oddly abbreviated pregnancy; and even their quick change of heart after Spike asked them to forgive Thorax.

Twilight Sparkle knows exactly how deep that conspiracy goes — she was there in the beginning, when her hive's queen created Shining. And she wasn't happy about it.

Finalist in the "Things Left Unsaid" December 2015 Writeoff! Rewritten and greatly expanded to fill in more backstory and to account for Season 6 canon.

Rated 'Worth Reading' by Titanium Dragon! "If [you like] the idea of a story which hints at a greater conspiracy behind the scenes which explains some of the plot holes we see in the series, you’ll likely enjoy this."
Reviewed by Matthewl419!

Cover art by Lo-23, using Twilight from "Deception is Magic" by Heilos.

Once upon a time, one brave pegasus stole command over the weather itself from the heavens. Nowadays, Rainbow Dash tells Scootaloo the legend.

Cover art from the gallery of Jowybean.

Spanish translation, by SPANIARD-KIWI.

The star system Omega Centauri was just another oddity on a map to scientists in the not too distant future. However when they found the star was orbiting an earth-sized, earth-like planet instead of a black hole as its motion had suggested, a mission was scrambled to investigate this most unusual of celestial behaviors.

Hamstrung by politics, and nearly crippled before it began, the 'Lone Ranger' mission was reduced to just one crew member and left to his own devices.

These are the logs of Arrow 18 and its lone commander. This information is classified TOP SECRET by the Global Space Agency.

Do NOT tell the princess.

When the Royal Wedding scatters defeated changelings all over Equestria, a member of the hive winds up being captured in Ponyville, tied up, stunned, repeatedly shot by a cannon, and held against his will.

The truly frightening part is he’s starting to like it.

Thank you to my twisted editors: Tek, Seether00, GameKnut, Cerulean Blue and Peter
The picture Pinkie Pie uses Party Canon is from Atmospark at DeviantArt

This story is listed as comedy⁽*⁾ because the author has an odd sense of humor. No changelings were harmed⁽¹⁾ during the production of this story, despite what the newspapers printed or the ongoing lawsuit from the ESPCA⁽²⁾. The management would like to remind all readers to spay and neuter your pets. Unless your pet is a changeling, in which case…

(*) Dark humor, to be exact. If you are someone who finds pleasure in the misfortune of others, enjoys watching the occasional inept chainsaw juggler or cheers during a NASCAR crash, welcome home. Also, get help.

(1) Excluding blunt trauma, thermal impingement, chemical exposure, radiation, thaumaturgic infusions, and confetti ingestion. All characters represented, including changelings, are the exclusive property of Hasbro, no matter what they may shout at you from between the bars of their cell. Any violence or pain inflicted on the changeling in this story was simulated on a stunt changeling with special effects and mirrors. Except for the cannon. There is no truth to the rumor that Queen Chrysalis provided the stunt changelings from a supply of disobedient changelings in her dungeon⁽³⁾.

(2) Equestrian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Arthropods

(3) The Changeling Kingdom does not have dungeons. They have Call Centers. It explains a lot, actually.

Here is a link to some appropriate background music to listen to while reading: Piotr Tchaikovneigh’s 1812 Overture

Additional Note: This story is tagged Sex because it has the occasional reference to… well, sex. There are no explicit references, but there are things.

Rainbow Dash has an unusual way of learning, and Twilight’s determined to take advantage of it. Before she knows it, Rainbow’s worst fears become reality and her life unravels before her eyes as she becomes the smartest pony alive.

The dark tag is for the implications of the story.

An entry for the April 2015 write-off event, with the prompt “Great Expectations.”