Discord hasn't been feeling himself lately. Rarity thinks that it might be a good idea to get his mind off of things by having him assist her with upcoming work for the Summer Sun Celebration. Being the good sport that he is, Big Mac helps Discord out.

As it turns out, the project is surprisingly fun.
It's also more than a little painful.

Rated "Highly Recommended" by Present Perfect.

Now featured on Equestria Daily!

Now part of the Royal Canterlot Library (11/24/17)

Thanks to Door Belle, Garnot, Solocitizen and GeneralLiberator for their help.

Power occasionally comes with a price.
Getting your brains blasted with enough magic to make manehattan glow for a decade is a small price to pay for being an alicorn.
It's still a price, though. It comes with drawbacks.
Twilight Sparkle's still trying to learn to deal with it.

Pre-read by The 24th Pegasus and Door Belle. Go check out their works, they're cool dudes.

It can be taken for granted that being a Wonderbolt is crazy tough work. Coming home from wing-breaking work and having to deal with an excessively snarky fancolt certainly doesn't help matters.

Then again, there are circumstances that make staying at home all day an even more arduous task. Depending on who you're asking, Quibble Pants might have one of them.

Dialogue-only story. As far as i can tell, this isn't forbidden by FimFic rules, and I wanted to try something (slightly) different.

Spoiler Alert/Squick Warning: if the idea of MPreg grosses you out, you might want to stay away. Hopefully you're a tolerant enough soul that you're willing to read this story without checking the spoiler, though.

Image belongs to the lovely Astori-a, and will be taken down upon request.

This is a story about Fluttershy's birthday, the very special gift she receives, and the dark secret she learns not long afterwards.

It's also a story about Starlight Glimmer's long and painful recovery after a terrifying accident, and the emotional fallout that happened as a result.

It's also a story about Discord's visit to the Changeling Kingdom, and how drastically things have changed there - and how things have unfortunately stayed the same.

It's also a story about Thorax fighting for his life against an amalgamate of a twisted god and a dear friend.

And as all four stories join together, it becomes a different tale altogether - a tale of learning to accept things that come to pass, and the dangers of rejecting them.

*****************

I've tried something a bit unusual (for me) here. There are four protagonists, and the story is somewhat non-chronological. Chapters are listed as a number before a decimal place and a number after the decimal place (e.g. 2.6, 3.2, etc.); the number before the decimal place refers to who's the protagonist at that point in time, and the number after the decimal place refers to the "chapter" of their story. The stories seem separate at first, but will link together into a bigger picture at then end (which I haven't released, yet - stay tuned!)

My most heartfelt thanks to MidnightDancer, NorsePony, Present Perfect and Regidar for all of their help.

Cover art is by ZiG-WORD (I think), and will be taken down on request.

The work of a businesspony is to provide goods or services to other ponies in exchange for the abstracted representation of the worth of said goods or services (i.e. bits), typically to obtain said abstracted worth in greater proportion than what said goods or services would normally be worth in an economic vacuum. Typically, this entails finding a good or service in high enough demand that ponies will pay disproportionate amounts of wealth to obtain it.

Take, for example, Dextromethamphetamine.

Because sometimes, a guy just gets sick of trying to sell apple cider, y'know?

The Order of Her Resplendent Lady's Eternal Dawn performs miracles that Princess Celestia is unwilling to perform,
And punishes the wicked in ways Princess Celestia is unwilling to do,
And spreads justice throughout the land;
Requiring not Princess Celestia's favor,
Or even awareness that they exist in the first place,
For the righteousness of their cause sustains them.

This is one such story of their holy works.

Third place in the Soft Hands Write-off Contest.

Picture belongs to Nekokevin, and will be removed upon his request.

If you're going to give a speech, it makes sense to know what your audience is like - what they're thinking about, how they're feeling, and so on.
Theoretically, this means that a spell that lets you scan the surface of the thoughts of ponies - just for brief emotional impulses and surface thoughts, and all that - should help anypony give a better speech. I mean, getting a peek inside the heads of everypony present should be strictly a good thing, right?
Right?

Inspired by the description of a story. No, really. If i was given a penny for all the things in life that i found disproportionately funny, I'd have enough copper to provide electricity to all of Tokyo, and that's even given how little copper pennies actually have these days.

My heartfelt thanks to Majin Syeekoh for proofreading this, and also for not suing my butt. You're the best, dude.

There are only a couple of things worse than wasting time in a room, listening to other ponies droning on about annoying and irrelevant subjects.

Wasting time in a room, listening to other iterations of yourself droning on about annoying and irrelevant subjects? Definitely one of them.

Discord, as it turns out, is his own worst company.

Starts with comedy, ends with drama. Random tag is because, uh, Discord.

JabberwockyChamber17 is the original poster of the art; Should she ask, I'll take it down.

Milk is good for ponies.
Milk is especially good for very young ponies.
Milk's crucial for their development at that age, really.
But the way Big Mac's carrying on about things, you figure that Applejack would be feeding cyanide to baby Applebloom, instead of milk.

Clearly, the guy needs to stop acting embarrassed and start acting like a responsible parent.
It's not like there's anything immoral about a mother nursing her child in public, right?

Right?

I'm not sorry about this.

Story is possibly in-universe; your interpretation of whether this is alternate universe or not depends on who you believe Applebloom's parents are. Either way, I'm pretty sure this gag wouldn't work without this particular assumption, So I offer my apologies to people who don't like the concept.

Oh, and rated teen for the lactating bits of female anatomy.

Baking cakes is part of being Ponyville's Premiere Party Planner. It's a particularly important job when the cake is for frowny ponies, or the sort of folks who don't normally eat cake.

But it's something that Twilight Sparkle doesn't seem to understand. At least, if she understood, she probably wouldn't barge into Sugarcube Corner early in the morning, screaming about Changelings invading Equestria and covert smuggling rings and blah blah blah.

It wouldn't kill Twilight to show some decorum. She clearly needs to get her priorities in order.

EDIT: This is now the most likely candidate for the image source. Thanks to m2pt5 for the tip!