Equestria...a land of magic and mystery. Connected to the human world through a magical portal outside of Canterlot High School. To some, it is home. To others, a strange, bizarre place of unknown rules and knowledge, just waiting to be discovered, codified, and understood.
And, to a few, a cool place to spend an afternoon.
The Crystal Prep Shadowbolts have come to visit Equestria, with the help of Discord. This SHOULD be a fantastic adventure in another universe, but given The Shadowbolt's track record, it's way more likely to be a snarky disaster than anything else. Hopefully, most of Equestria is still standing when they're done.
Chapters (1)
Thought on reading the description: Oh no, not snark. The one thing nopony in all of Equestria does. How will they ever handle it.
Oh, guess they pretty much keep it amongst themselves, so it's a non-issue.
Ooh, nice reversal. In Equestria, Cinch would be, what, an advisor? While Cadance is the princess?
Teacup! Also, looks like Legend of Everfree hasn't happened yet...?
I'm liking the idea of Sugarcoat as the Fourth Wall girl.
Admittedly, I was a little worried when this happened:
...because it's "feet", but I didn't really notice anything else on that order. But still...
...forcing yourself up, it's an easy feat...
Huh.
I like it.
8194615 Hello there! That's a lot of comments! Hopefully I can respond to them satisfactorily
I intentionally kept Cinch's role in Equestrian vague, because addressing it more seriously has some serious continuity applications. In this instance, yeah, I sort of expect she's an advisor, and potentially some other power figure in the Crystal Empire that's, while not outright hostile to Cadence and Shining Armor's rule, she does have quite a different vision for the the Crystal Empire should be than they do, and is sort of working at cross purposes to them. While Cadence and Shining Armor are generally content to live harmoniously with the rest of Equestria and are trying to establish The Crystal Empire as an integral piece of a larger nation, I imagine Cinch was a power figure from before Sombra's rule, and she remembers The Crystal Empire as being this great, powerful nation, and isn't thrilled that it's currently basically a vassal state to Celestia. So, she's trying to re-establish The Crystal Empire as being an economic and cultural superpower: not inherently evil, but kind of aggressive, especially for a nation that's just recovering from the reign of an evil king. If I'm being perfectly honest, I really WANTED Cinch to be an alicorn in Equestria, since it sets her up as a shadow archetype to Celestia. But, there are so many weird continuity things if that's true, so I decided just to describe her as "tall", and let the reader decide if she's tall as in alicorn tall, or just tall as in Fleur or Sassy Saddles.
Whoo that was a lot to say for a one-line gag
Legend of Everfree's in a weird place in this continuity. So, I should probably get better at explaining this in my descriptions, but most of my stories take place in an alternate universe where Twilight stayed at Crystal Prep at the end of The Friendship Games, rather than went to CHS. It's based off of the originally planned ending for Friendship Games, and...honestly, I like that ending better
I feel like there was so much more to explore at Crystal Prep, and the writers could have done that more easily by keeping SciTwi there. So, my stories (usually) follow that alternate timeline. Eventually, I decided that Legends of Everfree wouldn't fit neatly into this continuity (SciTwi's dating Sunset, so Timberlight wouldn't work, and I didn't love the idea of the main cast getting superpowers here), so...I addressed the issue in "Princess Twilight Sparkle vs Big Data". I'll put it in spoilers here, in case you want to read that one, but in this continuity, the Shadowbolts went to Everfree instead of the CHS crew and...well, technically resolved the plot, but did so in the absolute worst way possible. So, long story short, Midnight Sparkle may be still around, but The Shadowbolts are just chronically indifferent to it.
Hehe, Sugarcoat's fun as this group's fourth wall girl. I sort of ship her with Pinkie Pie, so I like the idea that Pinkie Pie's fourth wall strangeness has been rubbing off on her.
Eh...sorry about that.
Typos, what can you do? But it's fixed now!
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it!
8194669 I'm so glad you did!
Thanks for reading!
A most entertaining bit of chaos. No wonder Discord brought these six across dimensions. You could've gone a little lighter on the fourth wall gags, but this was still a very fun read.
8194706 Haha, admittedly, I'm a little too fond of fourth-wall gags for my own good
But I'm glad you enjoyed it! 
Thanks for reading!
ok that was cute
Needs some rewording to be readable.
This was hilarious.
And the Monty Python ref was really good.
8194809 Hehe, I'm glad you think so!
Thanks for reading, and for the fave! I'm glad you enjoyed it! 
8194810 D'oh...
Thanks for catching that, apparently I lost my train of thought midway through that. I'm glad you found it funny! 
I honestly wasn't planning on putting that Monte Python reference in there, but I just needed Discord to say something dismissive about the threat before he got them out of Canterlot, and then I just remembered that line, and I was all like, "Okay...am I really doing this?...I'm doing this, aren't I?" 
Thanks for reading!
Well this was silly and fun.
8194840 I'm glad you think so
I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for reading, and for the fave! 
Oooh, this was probably one of your best stories so far! Everyone's characterization is as stong as usual, nothing drags on (as usual), it's funny (as usual), but somehow the sum of all the usual parts ends up being just a bit more than usual. Cool!
8195729 I'm glad you enjoyed it so much
It hasn't been one of my more popular stories so far, but I still enjoyed writing it, and I'm glad you think it's good! 
Thanks for reading!
8195750 Maybe the popularity thing has to do with the day and time of posting, do you keep track of that? I remember seeing some stats, there is definitely such a thing as a worse and better time to post a new story. Though it's not as if I was ever able to make use of that sort of info.
Also it might be because of no shipping promise in the title or description. People really like stories with ships.
I wish I could get a subscription to the Chekov Times, its so useful. Sunset and newspapers have really taken off though, huh? I wonder if reality would survive if Pinkie and Sugarcoat were in one room for too long. So how often does Midnight pop up when Sunset's around? I bet that makes their dates awkward. The Shadowbolts haven't bumped into their pony counterparts yet, have they? Aside from the obvious Twilight and Twilight. Maybe then Equestria would be in trouble that couldn't be solved in forty-five minutes.
Maybe try add Sunset to the character tags? Sunset makes everything better. (That was just a joke, I think this is another one of your great stories.)
8196058 Honestly, I'd considered those options early on, but in both of those cases the behavior I'd expect is a relatively low number of views, but a fairly consistent like/view ratio (people wouldn't be clicking on a story at a time when users just aren't active, or if they didn't want to read a non-shipping story). But in this case, the number of views is fairly consistent with similar stories, but the ratio of likes/views is one of the highest I've seen for a newly published story in a while. It's not a big deal, I just need to learn from it. And what I think I've learned is that I needed a stronger opener. This is a fairly long story, and people who aren't diehard Shadowbolts or EQG fans may not be hooked by the current opening. The first thousand words or so are generally about setting up gags that are going to (hopefully) pay off later, so I can see why that may not have hooked readers' interest.
That's the hypothesis, at any rate
I can only really test anecdotally, though.
8196083 A subscription to The Chekov Times only appears at your doorstep if there's something in there you need to read
Yeah, "A Newspaper Solves Everypony's Problems" is one of my favorite fanfics, so I really couldn't resist referencing it here...
I don't know how Sunset Shimmer got to be the responsible one in this universe...it seems to be mostly by contrast to the people around her, haha
If I'm being strict about the timelines here, Sunset Shimmer doesn't know about Midnight Sparkle yet (but canon in these stories are kind of loose, to be honest). The first time she learns about it in these stories is in "Princess Twilight Sparkle vs Big Data", which references events in "Sunlight at the Grand Galloping Gala", where it's implied that the events of this story have already happened, (Twilight references nearly causing an international incident by blowing up a diplomatic convoy on a bet). So, if I want to keep these timelines reeeeaaally consistent with each other, Sunset Shimmer probably doesn't know about Midnight Sparkle yet, in the context of this particular story. I suspect that Midnight Sparkle really only rears her (not so ugly) head when Twilight's in hardcore, "Need to understand it" mode. I prefer to think of her as the personification of Twilight's "gluttony for knowledge", for lack of a better term. She wants to know and understand everything, and is just childishly and aggressively apathetic about what she has to do to achieve that goal (when confronted by Sunset in The Friendship Games that she's destroying the human world to get to Equestria was, "So what? There's more magic there. And I want to understand it all!" Nothing about actually WANTING to destroy the human world, she just didn't care if she had to.
Sorry, went off on a tangent there
That's a long way to say that I only imagine Midnight Sparkle coming out if there's something Twilight feels particularly and aggressively strong towards wanting to understand. So...maybe she comes out when Sunset gets her Hearthswarming presents? 
"What is in the box? I have to know! I MUST KNOW!" "Not until Hearthswarming morning Midnight Sparkle." "Aww...but I want to open it NOOOOOOOOW..."
Haha, I haven't had The Shadowbolts run into themselves yet...so to speak. It's...complicated writing for exact copies of the same characters, which is why I don't generally write about the mane and humane six meeting themselves. The Twilights are an exception because they have pretty distinct personalities, and physical traits I can use to signal who's who (glasses, hairstyle, and (in the human world) crystal prep uniform for SciTwi, wings for Princess Twilight in Equestria). Since I'm mostly making up The Shadowbolt's characterization for these stories anyways, I just haven't thought about having them meet themselves yet.
Thanks for reading!
So glad you enjoyed it!
8196458 Well if you go back to your original pace of publishing stories you might have enough material for a statistically relevant sample size in a year or two.
So... who's on first?
*wheeze* Can't... *wheeze* Bucking... *wheeze* BREATHE!!!
8442283
Yes, he is!
I'm glad I was able to make you laugh
Thanks for reading, and for faving!
I enjoyed this. Really anything with Sugarcoat ices my cake, though.
Awesome work, this is hilariously funny.
Can I just say, I FREAKING LOVE THIS. The "Who's On First" parody, Midnight Sparkle, everything. You rock. Please keep writing.
Good... and one of the Best parts is totally untranslatable.
Do anyone know another good story of Midnight Sparke?