What does a mayor do? On a good day, you get to nose over an award. It helps if you can make sure the weather schedule comes off on time. But more than anything else, it's about leadership. Taking responsibility for the safety and comfort of all those who live within your domain. That's how it's supposed to work. The mayor is the one who makes sure everything is under control.

This is Ponyville. Marigold is fully aware that on a typical day, approximately nothing will be under control. But when it comes to protecting those who live there, she still has to do whatever she can.

If there's anything left which she can do at all.

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Cover art from a vector rendering by DaAfroMan.

After you've tried to celebrate it enough times, a holiday might start to feel like nothing more than a group of traditions which all chose the same day to kick you. The bulk of Equestria may see the palace's annual gift-receiving ceremony as their chance to show how much they love their Solar princess, but Celestia mostly perceives it as something she has to get through without dying or actively longing for death. She's usually 50% successful, and most ceremonies end with her convinced it was the wrong half.

But maybe this year will be different.

One of them has to be.

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Cover art by BonesWolbach, used under open permission. Please contact him with any special background rendering requests.

The palace is ancient. So it makes sense for Celestia and Luna to order a complete overhaul of the waterworks, especially since the old system has been making strange sounds within the walls. All they really wanted was to wash up without dealing with new leaks.

They didn't get it.

They weren't expecting the magical lasers either, but that's plumbing for you.

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Rated C for Crackfic.

There's always been traffic crossing the river at the base of the mountain, and that means Canterlot's had a bridge there for centuries. But bridges wear out, while new styles come into play. Commissioning a new span out of the national budget, replacing the worn-out turntable with an arch... that's simple enough. After that, the sensible thing is to just step back and let the architect do their job.

Yeah, right. The sensible thing is clearly for everypony to start telling him exactly how things should be done! Because what does an architect know about bridges, anyway?

It isn't as if 'not having them collapse' was the important part.

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Cover art found by K-123 Ту́полев.

Running a library is a lot of work, especially when you're doing it all by yourself. But the Bearers are out of town, a little dragon wasn't allowed to participate in the mission, it's the sort of autumn day where all of Ponyville wants to curl up with a book -- and just to make things worse, Twilight was running a Print Your Own Story event. Add in the boxes upon boxes of fresh Release Day hardcovers, and Spike just has too much to do.

So why not let the patrons do it themselves? What's the hazard in allowing ponies to check out (and print) their own books with no supervision whatsoever? The library has rules. Surely you can't get a card unless you understand that.

Spike thinks ponies understand rules.

It's a mistake he's only going to make once.

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Adapting a classic novel into cinematic form is always a little tricky, especially when the book's weight has seen six nations require registering the hardcover as a lethal weapon. The two-hour version reached the screen a week ago, and early returns are less than encouraging. The studio stands to lose a lot of money, and those involved in the production would prefer it if their careers didn't end today. But as it turns out, somepony who's intimately familiar with every last paragraph of the megalith knows how to fix everything!

Surely an alicorn has to know what she's talking about, right?

...right?

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The Diarchy has asked -- ordered, really -- Twilight to attend the Zoology Conference. This means meeting the leaders of various nations, along with making a speech. And with Twilight increasingly suspicious about what all of these extra duties might eventually mean, she's becoming desperate to make it all stop.

There's a briefing book. Long lists of things she shouldn't discuss, because doing so would be seen as an insult. And Twilight has just learned about what Applejack calls 'cancel culture'. So if she just offends enough attendees, proving that she isn't suited for this sort of thing, then she's home-free! It's not as if being offensive is hard.

Unless you're Twilight Sparkle...

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Cover art by SockPuppet.

In order to make sure her class knows a little more about the world, Cheerilee has them exchanging letters with children in other nations. This allows her students to learn about truly foreign concepts, like 'snow day'. And the mere concept of having a random storm grant an unexpected holiday has taught the Crusaders something big: that Equestria is the worst place in the whole world, because the weather schedule means that's never gonna happen.

Surely there has to be a way to get a snow day of their very own. Surely...

...so what's the fastest way to summon a windigo?

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Cover art from an image created by LunaticDawn.

Missions come with risks. They usually don't think about that. They have many ways of not thinking about it and given how many missions they've been on, some of them have not been thinking about it for a very long time.

They were just waiting for a new mission to start. Then somepony came along and asked them to write down every medical circumstance under which, by their own legally recorded desire, they would prefer to die.

And now the thoughts won't stop.

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Twilight hasn't been living in the tree for very long. She's still trying to figure out how to be both a good friend and a decent librarian. So if there's something going on where the local pegasi have to stay in the air as much as possible and Rainbow just needs her to bring a book up to the balcony, where everypony can see Twilight turn it over... that's really not so much to ask, is it?

A minor act done for one mare is a friendly favor.
Two is a trend.
When you reach the third, herd mentality is already out of the starting gate and galloping.
Four through fifty inclusive is 'Welcome to Ponyville'.

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