The Road Home

The Road Home is a sequel to Past Sins and the first that is not a part of "In The Family" trilogy. The story takes place in an alternate universe season 5, in which Twilight hid Spike  and Nyx  in Zecora's  hut and then sent them to Canterlot to live with her parents, Twilight Velvet and Night Light.

Official description
In the wake of the battle with Tirek, Twilight Sparkle becomes fixated on restoring Golden Oaks Library. After all, it was home for her little family of three. But as her attempts to repair the books and tree continuously fail, her friends must take matters into their own hooves. Discord, as the good friend he is, tosses Twilight and her extended family into an unexpected adventure while Twilight's other friends get to work on the new crystal palace.

All together, they'll do everything to ensure Twilight and her family have a place to call home when they reach the end of the road.

Style
The story is written in the third person, past-tense, and focuses on various view points, including Twilight, Her friends, Discord and Nyx.

Summery
The story begins with Twilight in the renovated Night Stone Castle, which is now Princess Twilight's School Of Higher Learning. She is praised by Princess Celestia, but her conversation is interrupted by Tirek, which absorbs their magic and then destroys the school. when he sorrounds her with flames to kill her and shows her a black feather and a green scale, Twilight wakes up from her repetitive nightmare. She finds out that during her dream, she levitated her temporary home, Applejack's barn, which forced Applejack to wake her up. After a small talk with Applejack, she starts to try a new variation of repair spell on her books, which fails.

Applejack moves back to her work, getting some of their last harvests off the orchard before the fall. But after bucking a tree, she finds out that the apples are acting strange, which was because of a spell putted on them by Discord to 'help' her. After a little arguing with Discord, Rarity and Fluttershy come join them to convince Applejack and Twilight to have a meal in the town. At first, Applejack hesitates, but when Discord uses her magic to harvest all of the apples, she agrees, but stats that Twilight needs a 'force of nature' to get her out of the barn. Then she asks Discord that why he isn't using his chaos magic to rebuild the library again, but Discord uses two puppets to tell her that Twilight already asked for his help, but he was unable to do so, because he didn't remembred everything from her library, and also his conjuration were not able to last forever.

After Discord says that Twilight didn't have some friend who could get her palace ready for her, Rarity gets an idea, to become the interior designer of Twilight's new castle and prepare it. She says that they can get bits for the job from donations, and makes Applejack the organizer for the workforce needed to repair the castle. Fluttershy, Applejack and Discord agree with her plans. At the same time, Spike is showing Nyx his comic book collection, or what that was left of it, and has a talk with Twilight Velvet about telling the truth to Nyx, which is still unaware that the library is destroyed.

The next day after the agreement, the mane 6 sans Twilight, along with Discord meet in Twilight's castle. Rarity brings her plans for every room, and makes everyone accept with her plan to add a ballroom to the castle. Applejack argues that they are low on time because Nyx and Spike will come back the next day, and they also need an ‘army’ to do everything, and they will also need some crystal ponies. Rarity says that they can distract them, and Discord accepts to do the job.



Discord uses a fake letter to covince Twilight that there is an ancient spell which is able to repair anything in the Crystal Empire, and Twilight blindly accepts it. She says that Shining Armor and Cadence are going back to Crystal Empire too, so she takes the first train and moves toward Canterlot. Discord is also happy, because now he can sow a lot of chaos in the name of friendship, and also gives a secret message to the others, which are discussing with Rainbow Dash about adding a pool to the castle. At the same time, Shining Armor and his wife are in hospital, glad that their foul is still healthy after the attack of Tirek, and when Cadence is discharged, they go back to Shining Armor's mom and dad's home, and a little after they rach home, Twilight also arrives, and after a reunion with her family, Spike and Nyx, and then they are all distracted by Cadence's foal's kickings.

Meanwhile, back at the castle, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy are arguing about adding a pool an a garden, respectively, but Rarity stats that they don't know where the property lines are, and Applejack will never agree with them too. Applejack joins them, and when Rarity asks her about the volenteers to build the castle, Applejack says that nopony has arrived, but they are surprised by a loud music and singing, which reveals itself to be the ‘army’ they needed to renovate the castle, concisted from a countless number of ponies, led by a band and with Pinkie Pie at the center of them all.

Twilight, Shining, Cadence, Nyx and Spike are in the moarning express's royal cabin, playing Dodge Hold'em, which is actually Texas Hold'em, with Nyx winning. But their game and arguing is intruppted by deceleration of their train car, which is because of a rock slide with a large boulder in the middle of the tracks, which somehow didn't hit the train, but just hit their car (later it is revealed that this is done by Discord). Then Twilight hears a familliar voice which says they hit a rock, a sedimentary rock, which reveals itself to be Maud Pie's voice.

Back in Ponyville, Pinkie Pie is telling about the way she gattered all the volunteers from normal and crystal ponies. She says that Rainbow Dash inspired them to help, and Rainbow says that she just told them that they'd be helping ‘The Brave And Glourious Spike’ to convince them to help. They also make Pinkie Pie undertake the responsibility of the housing of the volunteers in the Night Stone Castle, and they also make Rainbow Dash the leader of the delivery team, which is responsible to bring the materials crystal ponies needed. After one of the items Discord conjured dissolves, Rainbow asks where Discord is, and Applejack says he is going to make Twilight's trip a long one, probably by changing the train's coal into brownies.

Twilight was listening to Maud's lecture about what happened to them, and that it was strange, because she found a obsidian (which was not common in the region) in a pile of rocks and when she pulled it out the rock slide happened. In the train station of the Crystal Empire, Flash Sentry and a bunch of other gaurds are waiting for the arrival of their Princess, but they find out that the gaurds on train are all unconscious, and they think that the royal family has been kidnapped.

Discord is also using a map to oversee Twilight and her family which are stuck, and then throws a bunch of creatures around their figurines.