A My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Round Robin fanfic by Insaneponyauthor.
On a train trip to a family reunion, Octavia Melody finds a once-in-a-lifetime chance to have an adventure and meet the Princess. She leaps at the opportunity... and lands in a hospital, with no memory of how she got there, and no memory of the Sun Princess who's now madly in love with her. Princess Celestia, for her part, wonders what she can do to restore Octavia's memory—or has she already done too much?
Experience the magic right here
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Provides examples of:
- Amnesiac Lover: Octavia gets injured and, upon waking, has no memory of falling in love with Celestia. Celly angsts about the situation for a bit, then sets out to jog Octavia's memory.
- The Big Damn Kiss: Thanks to The Power of Love, it causes a literal explosion:"Of course I do!" [Octavia] shouted. She practically jumped on her princess, holding her by the head as she gave her the most... explosive kiss of either of their lives.
- Book Ends: The first and last sections were written by the same author. He ends the story the same way it began: with Octavia and Celestia having a conversation, on a train trip to Appleloosa.
- Crush Blush: In the early section, just thinking about Celestia gives Octavia a Luminescent Blush. Sunny Skies even lampshades it: “Are you sure you’re okay? I can’t tell if you’re blushing or feverish.” There's also a flashback to the time that Celestia attended Octavia's performance of a cello concerto:The adrenaline rush helped her play flawlessly that evening, but it also set her face ablaze with a blush that must have been visible from the back rows of the concert hall.
- "Everybody Laughs" Ending: Not the final ending of the story, but the Apple family subplot ends with Big Mac, Applejack, and Apple Bloom bursting into laughter.
- The First Cut Is the Deepest: Mentioned in passing. Celestia hasn't dated in about a millennium because of how badly it turned out last time:“That’s what you get for not dating for so long,” Luna said with a snort. “I was always telling you to get some action. You could use the experience.”
“Well, excuse me for being wary of dating after the way the whole Discord thing panned out.” - Genre Roulette: The introduction is Slice of Life, which then morphs into the premise of an action-adventure. After the Time Skip, the story becomes a love story mixed with a medical drama (with a brief foray into Troll Fic). Then, aliens invade.
- Heart Beat-Down: Off-screen, Cadance takes out fifty or so of the aliens by blasting them with her love magic. This doesn't kill the aliens—it just makes them so distracted that they stop attacking.
- Imported Alien Phlebotinum: Shining Armor oversees a lab, designing new weapons and armor from mysterious technology found in a meteorite. Flash Sentry's new armor is the latest design based on this technology.
- King Incognito: "Sunny Skies" (later, "Sunny Days") is actually Celestia's alias for slipping away from Canterlot incognito.
- Literal-Minded: Octavia asks Celestia to describe how they originally got together: "Tell me everything." Celestia begins telling her entire life story. Octavia catches this mistake several hours later—and the story has only gotten to a point 500 years before she was even born.
- Memento Macguffin: Celestia gives a pendant—with a picture of herself in it—to Octavia, hoping it will trigger Octavia's memories. The pendant also turns out to have magic powers, and it's connected with the artifact used to repel the alien invasion.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: The alien invaders are "an odd mix of equine and abhorrent, with rocky carapaces instead of hair and tentacles in place of legs."
- Mushroom Samba: The fic briefly turns into a surreal mess of misspellings and broken grammar. When this ends, the very next line is "The drugs were beginning to wear off."
- Noodle Incident:
- The readers never see the incident that hospitalized Octavia. Judging by Celestia's description of how she and Octavia fell in love the first time, it was a ridiculously convoluted, epic adventure involving crates full of koalas and off-brand antacid tablets.
- Luna shows up to breakfast dressed like a pirate. Celestia just wonders to herself, "Why is she STILL dressed like that!?"
- Pirate Parrot: Luna's unexplained pirate ensemble comes with a bat, dressed like a parrot.
- The Power of Love: An Ancient Artifact ultimately repels the alien invasion. Celestia and Octavia fuel it with their love for each other.
- "Save the World" Climax: The fic starts off with a Slice of Life train ride, yet culminates with Equestria repelling an alien invasion.
- Shout-Out:
- The subtitle "If on a sunny day a traveler" is a nod to Italo Calvino's novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler.
- Celestia's habit of leaving Canterlot under the alias Sunny Skies comes from an early MLPFIM fanfic Sunny Skies All Day Long.
- Octavia performs Joseph Hay's Cello Concerto No. 2 in D Major.
- Octavia insists that she's a bad enough mare to rescue the princess.
- Snap Back: Octavia's hospitalization abruptly ends off-screen with no explanation of how she got better in the space of one conversation between Celestia and Luna.
- Spit Take: In the waiting room, Celestia drinks a lot of water in an attempt to calm down. Then she spits it all out when she sees Octavia in a wheelchair.
- Spotlight-Stealing Squad: For the first two-thirds, the story focuses exclusively on Octavia and Celestia. However, once the alien invasion starts, the story gives equal screen time to the Apple family in Ponyville, and to Shining Armor and Flash Sentry in the Crystal Empire. None of them had appeared at all in the story beforehand.
- Verbed Title: A Pun-Based Title because it involves a train trip gone awry.
