Something causes you to wake up in the middle of the night. You're groggy, you need to use the bathroom, and you really, really want a glass of water. On your way to the kitchen, you notice that your wife is still awake.

You're not surprised.

Adagio is an adult in this story.

Great and Powerful Trixie lands the performance opportunity of a lifetime. A kingdom and all its riches are hers - as long as her audience doesn't kill her first.

An entry for the 2024 May Pairings contest.

longdesc

It was supposed to be an easy way back home. Jump into the quicksand pit, go through the portal to Equestria beneath it, sneak through Ponyville, get to Twilight's Castle's Basement, go through the Magic Mirror, and before she knew it, Sunset and all of her friends and everyone they rescued from that sinking cruise ship would find themselves on the manicured green lawns of Canterlot High.

Instead, they wake up scattered around the quicksand pit, still on the desert tropical island they were trying to escape. Only there isn't a portal to Equestria anymore. And none of them can get a cell phone signal.

And then Bon Bon's phone lights up.

ATTN AGENT SWEETIE DROPS: BRILLIG BLACK EVENT CONFIRMED. FOUNDATION CONTINUITY SCENARIO OMEGA-OMEGA-OMEGA. FINAL DIRECTIVE: ENSURE LONG-TERM SURVIVAL OF HUMANITY BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.

content warnings

Spoil at your own risk! This list may change depending on how later chapters go but is current for the story currently planned out:

Overall: Gore, death, gory death, limb dismemberment, guns, being shot by guns, being killed by guns, suicide by gun, suicidal ideation but it's only one time, starvation, questions about the nature of humanity, existential horror, body horror, existential horror arising from body horror, relationships in all sorts of combinations even including cis-hetero, one of those is Rarity x Ragamuffin, pregnancy so sexhaving is implied to have happened but is not depicted, one of those is Rarity x Ragamuffin, almost everyone in the world dying but it's not depicted and all offscreen so it's okay, gaslighting, gatekeeping, girlbossing

Chapter-by-chapter:
Chapter 1: Surprise death and gore. "Spring Breakdown" plot inconsistency lampshading.
Chapter 2: Death and gore, possibly of a child. Rainbow Dash no longer having a leg.
Chapter 3: Suicidal ideation. Implied offscreen apocalypse where everyone died.
Chapter 4: Discussion of corpse disposal. Discussion of cannibalism. Discussion of how many calories a human body has.
Chapter 5: Implied but not depicted gore. Funerals. Grieving being something we all do in different ways.
Chapter 6: No actual content warning here so this is just to pad out the spoiler bar
Chapter 7: Physical effects of the early stages of starvation depicted. An animal in chronic pain depicted.
Chapter 8: TBA
Chapter 9: TBA
Chapter 10: TBA
Chapter 11: TBA
Chapter 12: TBA
Chapter 13: TBA

info

an entry into the May Pairings Contest (Sunset Shimmer x Bon Bon), the Tropical Post-Apocalyptic Story Contest, and the Sunset X Villain “Monster-Shipping” Competition

thank you to Crack-Fic Kai, Shrink Laureate, and Drider for prereading Chapters 1-6!

The pony you love is sometimes not the pony others expect or want you to be with. But that doesn’t mean you can stop loving them — even when the world tears you apart.

Originally written for the 2nd round of the Quills & Sofas 2024 May Pairings knockout bracket.

Also, my submission for the site-wide 2024 May Pairings contest.

Cover art by the wonderful Shaslan!

Sunset Shimmer asks her girlfriend a simple question: “Would you still love me if I were a worm?”

Unfortunately, Twilight Sparkle has never given a simple answer in her life.

Written for Perfectly Insane’s Dialogue Only Contest.

Pre-read by Posh.

Twilight and Pinkie tell Rarity they're dating. Rarity calls on every trope in the book to explain it.

Octavia's and Vinyl's life together. You think it's simple, and I'm going to prove you're wrong.

So, heads or tails?

Proofread by MrNumbers.

Reading by ObabScribbler

Reading by Voiceguy.

Featured on Equestria Daily.

Twilight Sparkle moved to Ponyville last week to start her new job as town librarian. In between making friends and saving Equestria, she meets another pony whose orderliness, punctuality, and love of paperwork matches her own: Mayor Mare. But will their love be a match for the Equestrian Civil Service Code, volume 13, chapter 22, paragraph F?

A light-hearted fast-paced romance set after S1E2. Written for the 2024 May Pairings Contest.

Rainbow Dash has been so busy recently she's hardly been around and some of her friends are beginning to feel the tension on their relationship with her, will she be able to patch things up with the others or maybe create something even stronger. Is it as her father says just one big distraction or is there more to life than soccer. Follow the mane 7 on their slice of life adventure, through the mundane and the crazy forming stronger bonds as they cut their own paths through life.

The fic will be heavily Flutterdash based but will include other ships that will be given attention in the background or in their own chapter if something big happens

All chapter are currently at version 2 meaning if you've read it before and thought it was poorly written, so did I when I read it, so I'd recommend giving it a second glance

Tea brings those once apart, close together. Kinda...

Made for Dialogue Only Contest

Just for funziez though, first time publishing :)