"If I hadn't blown the whole thing years ago, I could be flying up there right now. With her, with them, the Wonderbolts. But... would I be better off for it?"

After being expelled from the Wonderbolts Academy, Lightning Dust traveled around Equestria in search of herself. Then, many years later, after a hard day of working she went to a bar and ran into the last pony she ever expected to meet again.

Who is jealous of who, though?

Written for the Everfree Northwest 2015 Iron Author Competition

Three years. Three years since that one day that ruined her life.

Bitter, unemployed and penniless, Lightning Dust couldn't go one block without being whispered about until she reached Manehattan. Her last chance comes in the form of an advertisement looking for speedy delivery ponies.

But what will happen when her trial run involves facing her demons?

Just a little oneshot I suddenly got in the mood for doing. I can't believe I got it done in just a few days!

Hope you enjoy!

Speed Reader may only be a temporary product of a fusion spell brewed by Dash and Twilight, but she's still got the Wonderbolt Barracks to herself for a whole half hour before she splits again. Just long enough to tangle with someone whom her halves would most certainly kick to the curb if either of them were in control.

But they're not in control. Speed Reader is. She can read ponies like books, and Lightning Dust is after something in the archives. Something important.

Now with a written review!

This is an entry in the Snippet Series, an anthology of old oneshots that I (and my good buddy Str8aura) wrote based around interesting pics I found. New ones will be posted every Thursday for the foreseeable future.

Donut Joe keeps his store open on Hearth’s Warming Eve. And why not? He doesn’t have anywhere else to be, and neither do the tired, bitter ponies who find their way inside.

But the Eve is young, and strange things lie ahead. Who knows what might happen on a night like tonight?

(Inspired by the song "Old City Bar," by Trans-Siberian Orchestra)

Reviewed by TheifofZ here.

The events of the Wonderbolt Academy have played out and Rainbow Dash is in the stretch to achieving her dream but still has a hard time getting a certain erstwhile friend out of her mind. After taking a few minutes to contemplate things, she decides that she's been given enough second chances in her life to see to it that somepony else gets one as well.

Rated Teen for some language later on, though nothing extremely vulgar.

Twilight is looking to hire guards for her castle. Derpy is looking for a new job. Lightning Dust is trying to find a way forward after her falling out with the Wonderbolts, and Flare Warden is just trying to get a position far far away from her brother.

Immense thanks to Fylifa for countless hours of editing and proofreading.
Cover art by Anchorxx

Lightning Dust has seen better days. She’s on the verge of becoming a full-blown alcoholic, and her career is in shambles. She’s gotten so desperate that she even found a support group to help her work through her problems, but the first meeting turns out to be nothing like what she expected. This isn’t the gathering of former antagonists that she was looking for. In fact, some of these creatures shouldn’t even exist!

An athlete like Lightning Dust is no stranger to doctor visits, and a nurse like Speedy Recovery is no stranger to receiving patients. It would take something pretty cataclysmic to throw them both off.

Or maybe all it takes is three bolded words on a psych results sheet.

This is an entry in the Snippet Series, an anthology of old oneshots I (and my good buddy Str8aura) wrote based around interesting pics I found. New ones will be posted every Thursday for the foreseeable future. If you like this one, check out the others!

Lightning Dust has been in a bit of a rut ever since getting kicked out of the Wonderbolt Academy. Day after day, she's been sticking to a strict exercise regimen under the guidance of Cloudsdale's premier personal trainer, Haymaker. Her hope is that she'll unlock her true potential and show Haymaker how awesome she is, thus prompting him to use his connections to get her back into the Wonderbolts. No matter how many times Haymaker tells her it's impossible, Lightning simply refuses to listen.

Then one fateful night, Lightning Dust's training is interrupted by the appearance of her greatest idol, Wind Rider. It turns out he too has difficulty accepting reality, and he has his own, more nefarious schemes to get himself back in the game. Haymaker sees this as his last chance to save Lightning Dust from walking Wind Rider's path. And if that means rubbing salt in a few wounds and shattering a few dreams, then so be it.

Cover art provided by the amazingly talented Cyrano.

There are 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, and humanity is determined to explore every one. We send probes, probes with the blueprints to reproduce human explorers upon arrival. Uninhabited worlds the galaxy over can be colonized and populated, until after many years they too can join the vast throng of interstellar civilization. But if a probe is very, very lucky, it will land on a populated world instead. Equestria is one such world.

Even so, it's far from perfect for colonization, not with an environment lethal to human life. But each probe is resourceful and armed with the greatest machine intelligence mankind has devised. If placing a human mind into a newly manufactured human body won't work, it will just have to get a little more creative.

This book has a Hardcover! If you want to pick it up, you can grab it here: https://starscribe.net/

This story was written at the behest of Canary In The Coal Mine, who is sponsoring it on my Patreon. As usual, cover by Zutcha. Editing by Two Bit and Sparktail.

Fantastic prereading help from: Chyre, Danger Noodle, Doctor Disco, and Doggyshakespeare (who also did the Esperanto translation). Thank you all for helping to make this story more readable and more consistent for everyone.