Welcome back one and all to our EaW Story Showcase! And the fourth installment, too!

I'd like to apologise really quick for the fact that this was delayed by one week. I had a lot of other stuff I needed to get done last weekend and admittedly forgor about this in the heat of it. I eventually did remember (at, like, 10 PM mind you) but by that point it was too late. I hope you don't mind.

Without further ado, let's get into the actual showcasing!

Today's primary criteria: Word Count

The Princess and the Kaiser

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Equestria and the Crystal Empire have fallen to the Changeling Hegemony, led by the brutal Queen Chrysalis at the head of a mechanized horde of guns and tanks. Princess Cadance stayed in the Crystal Empire; Princess Twilight stayed in Equestria. Chrysalis rules the continent, only defied by Nova Griffonia, the poor Griffon colony in the north.

Across the ocean, the Griffonian Reich pledges to reclaim its lost territory, sundered by revolution a generation ago. While the Alicorn Sisters retreat to New Mareland, Princess Flurry Heart and Shining Armor turn to Aquileia, the Republic born out of the ashes of the Griffonian Reich. The Kaiser of the Reich is only a child, subject to a regent bent on war and conquest.

Flurry knows the Reich and Chrysalis have worked together.

She knows that war is coming to Aquileia.

She knows that Celestia and Luna abandoned her mother and Twilight Sparkle.

She knows that the world is on fire, and she is the last true Princess of Ponies.

She knows she will go home.

Story rating: Teen

Story tags: Romance, Dark, Sex, Violence, Death

Character tags: Spike, Flurry Heart, Thorax, Griffons, OC

Basic premise: The general promise of Princess and the Kaiser (I'll just call it PK from now on) is that Equestria and the Crystal Empire has fallen to the armies of Chrysalis. Much of what you'd expect to happen has happened as a result, such as the two royal sisters abandoning Equus and fleeing to New Mareland. Where the story starts differentiating itself from ordinary gameplay in the mod world, however, is that it focuses on Flurry Heart rather than aforementioned sisters. It's a very much unexplored point of view, given that Equus content is outdated as all heck and doesn't mind telling you where all the alicorns and characters actually went. We know Luna and Celestia peace out to New Mareland, but where exactly does the Crystal Royal Family run off to?

All in all, a very fresh take on a scenario everyone familiar with the mod knows and can appreciate. As the story moves on it diverges more and more from normal gameplay loop (obviously) and involves Grover VI and the Griffonian Empire more and more. This doesn't even mention Flurry's own character development both from the war in Equus and her time in effective exile in Griffonia.

Final words: To say that Flurry Heart is a missed opportunity in general is probably an understatement, even more so in EaW's world. She always sort of gets passed over or overlooked compared to the big baddies or goodies, and is often just mentioned as an afterthought. Granted, she is a baby in regular MLP, but given how long the Great War can last it's safe to say she would be able to stand on her own legs (hooves?) at some point during it.

This is a story you can appreciate not only for its premise alone, which as mentioned above is a very unique one, but also for fleshing out a very underappreciated character and giving her actual... well, character. I admittedly don't personally agree with all the stylistic choices taken to paint that character, such as Flurry Heart single-handedly taking out trained units of changelings with her alicorn magic (which makes me wonder why the alicorns didn't fight to begin with?) but that's more of a personal gripe than anything that has to do with the story quality overall.

This is good. I do suggest you bookmark it and read along whenever you have downtime. It gets updated pretty frequently, too.

That's all for today. Join us again in two weeks when we take a look at another story, this time with the primary criteria of release date!

Useful links:
Reddit Crosspost
Reddit Informative Post
Fimfiction Informative Post
Previous Showcase

Well, hello there.

This is a very slow-burn fic about Flurry Heart's character growth and complicated pen-pal relationship with Grover VI. To my eternal shame, it has been showcased before I could make it to their reunion, but I promise readers, the story is tagged 'Romance' for a reason. I've kept to a vague canon/historical path for the course of world events in Equestria at War, with the noted exception of Flurry Heart's activities.

Flurry X Grover is a bit of a meme ship for the Equestria at War community, and it surprised me no one tried to write a story about them. When I started drafting it out, I had three goals:
1: Flurry and Grover had to be interesting.
2: Flurry and Grover had to be believable.
3: Keep the world situation simple and don't get bogged down.

It took me far more words that I expected to engineer a situation where it made sense for Flurry and Grover to interact, but I'm quite happy with their character development. Grover will be making more appearances, a lot more, I promise. I fully cop to writing Flurry as an overpowered bomb (as she is in the show) but her fur is just as vulnerable to a bullet as any other pony.

Let's see: running themes are the nature of duty vs love, power vs authority, complicity vs resistance, and how far should one go and what should they be willing to sacrifice? Typical war stuff mixed with coming-of-age experiences for poor Flurry Heart.