Life in the streets is a constant struggle, even in a beautiful city like Canterlot. Hunger, danger, and persecution can easily lead to death or worse. Trixie and Sunset consider themselves lucky to have each other when facing the hardships of life.

They know that as long as they're together, they'll be able to survive anything the world throws at them.

Inspired by this music: Until We Die - Ending Song

Originally written for the Sunset Shimmer x Trixie Lulamoon contest over at the Sunset Shimmer x EG/MLP Villains Shippers’s Group & Competitions!

Now part of the May Pairings Contest

I had so many problems with the production of this thing I swear it's cursed.

Special thanks to Dewdrops on the Grass, mushroompone, and Shrink Laureate for pre reading and helping me keep my sanity.

Extra thanks to daOtterGuy for the cover art.

This story is a sequel to Good Trooper Gilda

Gilda has been a fugitive, a refugee, a prisoner of war, and a bat-hen to Equestria's fussiest unicorn. But it wasn't until she took 'the Princess's bit', that she began to know something about what it meant to be responsible for the welfare of others, even if the others in question happened to be the pack of imbeciles, blackguards, con-ponies, and bat-ponies who had been fool enough to answer her captain's call to the standard.

A crystalline standard which had not been seen in the living world for over a thousand years.

And although Captain Gleaming Shield and her motley band of raw recruits and shifty bat-ponies aimed to do nothing more exotic and dangerous than put a foreign princess on her proper throne, there are other things stirring in the shadows.

Like calls to like, and the revival of ancient battle-colors may lead to the revival of other, darker memories upon which the rays of Celestia's sun lay lightly and infrequently.

Once upon a time, (if the term even applies) two young ladies, (if that adjective even applies) decided to visit a magical land of Equestria, selected seemingly at random from about a million.

• One of the two is a time traveler deprived of her time machine, the other is an eldritch abomination out of her element.
• One would prefer the world of pastel-colored ponies to stay as it is, and can’t help but alter it. The other one is anxious to see how it can change, and can’t help but maintain it.
• Both believe that this is not their story. But while they disturb the delicate world of ponies, they don’t even notice ponies doing the same to them.
• Sandwiches are involved somehow.

There are many things this story is and some things it isn’t.

It’s not a fix fic, no matter what some of the characters think. It’s written in multiple first person narration, which happened for a pointlessly clever reason, that will eventually become quite obvious. It’s not a crossover, it just comes with an unhealthy amount of backstory. It could be a rational-fic, but since idealistic philosophy is typically not seen as very rational, it’s only a philoso-fic instead. It’s quite meta, in the original definition of metafiction: fiction concerned with fiction as a concept. In any case, it’s either a small monument to overthinking things – I’m trying to reexamine many fanon ideas here – or a digital paperweight, I’m not sure which. It’s quite a bit more subtle than it could be, and everyone talks way too much when they should be having glorious adventures.
I know how it starts, I know how it ends, and most of what happens in between. Readers say it’s a slow burner, but we’ll get there eventually.

Acknowledgements

With special thanks to my editors, Thainen, Shrink Laureate, and MitchH.
Further special thanks to ScarletWeather and Themaskedferret for valuable input.
The artist who made the cover image stubbornly wishes to remain uncredited, but thanks to her anyway.

It's been months since Nightmare Moon was banished, and things have started to settle down. Yet, mysterious things were still ahoof, when one night a stranger happens upon my door with something that will change my life forever.

Art by: Eifie-Chan (They're amazing)
Theme music by this amazing pone
Editor:
Level Dasher
Shrink
Featured on 3/24/2018 I love you all
Prereaders:
Toasty
Rumble-in-a-Bucket
JackRipper

The Alogos Archipelago is rich in culture and history, dating back just as far as Equestria itself. Stories of heroes, gods, and monsters litter the little islands and saturate the very lives of the ponies who live and thrive there.

Some legends are better left alone, and some mysteries are better left undiscovered.

[Contains a few scenes of light gore in later chapters.]

Gilda only wanted the humble things in life. Cheap rent, copious bits, the respect of her peers, the occasional juicy field-mouse.

Being captured by the Equestrians and dragooned into the Territorials wasn't quite what she'd dreamed of, but at least the rent was free.

And the rats were nice and plump.

This story is a sequel to A Scratch On Shining Armor

Seven years ago in the middle of Canterlot, under the light of the full moon, the world changed in ways it was not supposed to. Lovers were torn apart, and a pair of new ones were brought together. Through trials and tribulations, Shining Armor and Vinyl Scratch fell in love.

Now? They are still in love, but cracks are forming. Stress and work regularly cause divides, and Shining disappearing into a mission his grandmother tasked him with isn't helping. Everything seems to be falling apart, even Canterlot itself.

Proof reading and editing by Shrink Laureate

Cover art by Birbhorse

When the Princess refused Sunset Shimmer the reward which was her right as a pony of talent and excellence, Sunset was determined. She would prove her mentor wrong, she would prove her worth, prove her worth as a pony and as a princess in her own right. The Mirror offered promises. It promised Sunset many things.

The Mirror lied.

The land that laid beyond the Mirror was barbaric beyond all her worst expectations. Ape-like beings strode through this world, arrogant, violent, vicious beyond anything in Sunset's experience. Slavers, savages, brutes, carnivores.

They put her in chains like cattle, and told her she was livestock. Then the brutes tried to give her as a gift to those whom even brutes feared, to the eastern savages. To a people who said there were only two things in this world: those that ride, and those that are ridden.

And so if she has any hope of ever proving herself worthy of being a person again, Sunset Shimmer would have to show that she could be one who rides - that she is...

Dothraki.

This story is a sequel to In the Company of Night

Gold and his ponies go forth at the end of every summer, looking for those foals whose destinies are in motion, are uncertain, are an embodiment of all possibilities, all things, suspended in the great magical excess which is the end of the growing season. Miracles bloom in the over-fertilized last few weeks of the summer season, and nothing is so full of potential as foals who have not yet found their own futures. Suspended, between past and future. Suspended, before the moment of realization.

Assistant alchemist and Treasury employee Gentle Breeze never expected to actually put her training to use as a royal hoofmaiden. But then a humble little pegasus did the impossible and ascended into alicornic princesshood, and suddenly being the only pegasus in a cadre of dozens of unicorns became very important. Gentle Breeze was about to become part of the great pageant of royal life!

Just keep an eye for her at the end of the procession. She'll be the one carrying the porta-potty. Because Gentle Breeze has become Princess Mi Amore Candenza's... mare of the stool.