Chapters
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Chipper Tune did not give Nathan the chance to appreciate just how strange everything in the bunker looked. She didn’t take the time to explain where the new doors led, and why some of the furniture looked like it had been adjusted for their size. Instead they kept on going, right down to where the entrance to the fifth floor would’ve been, and the home of the creepy-looking drones.Well, it had been. There was no intermediary room to his eyes, no hooks and no vests. Instead, there was a shimmering…-
33.8 K •
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Mourning was not a rapid process, particularly given the size of the missing piece. It wasn’t as though Nathan had a huge support-structure of society to fall back on—he doubted his parents were still alive, and they had not attempted to contact him through Equestria even if they were. North Star’s absence was felt as well, though perhaps not as pronounced. Celestia offered to bring him back—on the condition that he invite Brooke’s copy back into his life as well. That was a bridge too far.At…
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33.8 K •
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Nathan wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep. He rolled onto his back and found he was looking up at the shiny plastic ceiling of his tent. He felt a little like he’d just lost a fistfight with several angry honey-badgers, and smelled worse.For a few, blissful seconds, he didn’t remember what had just happened. He thought that Brooke would be outside, maybe warming up breakfast or something. They would complete their trip to his shelter today, and the investment of a lifetime would finally pay…
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33.8 K •
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Nathan watched as Brooke ran. North Star vanished behind her, without even a glance at him. Not back towards Yellowknife, and their saviors of dubious intent, but laterally, straight into the forest. Nathan wasn’t sure he could keep up with her—Brooke was eight years his junior, and more mobile than he was.Unfortunately, he couldn’t think of this trip as a chance to be somewhere private and blow off steam. Brooke didn’t know where the bunker was hidden, and certainly wouldn’t be able to find…
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33.8 K •
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Nathan doubted his intruder had gotten what she wanted out of her night with him. But she’d been drunk, hungry, and desperate, and he’d been raised better than that. At least being so drunk made her easy to get into one of the guest bedrooms, where she couldn’t hurt herself.“You are not what I expected,” said her pony, in a voice like a surprised guard dog. “The way Chipper Tune looked at you. You look as lonely as she is. But less drunk.”“Humans aren’t always what they seem,” said…
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33.8 K •
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“You can’t have enjoyed that,” Tune said, her voice as cheerful as it was mocking. “I saw your face while you ate that slug. You almost puked!”Nathan wasn’t sure if what Tune was saying was even true—in the last decade, he’d stopped carrying a phone, replacing it with a simple pair of glasses that did everything without making him look like a tool. The frames were simple plastic, so they didn’t sap heat away from his skin in the frigid cold outside.Cold that challenged the very definition…
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33.8 K •
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It took over a year to prepare. Celestia did indeed have excellent contacts—engineers and contractors and many other things. They weren’t just skilled in the right kinds of construction, but also in doing it without getting noticed. They got the materials under the guise of other buildings elsewhere, while actually ordering far more than they needed. Those structures would be sold to cover much of the cost, while the excess would be gradually, deftly moved up north. So far north that there were no…
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33.8 K •
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Nathan couldn’t believe what he was hearing.Everything Ashley said made perfect sense. Sure, the girl was a little awkward about the way she said it, and much more “conspiracy theory” than when she gave less interesting presentations about using machine learning to write stories, or other such nonsense. But Nathan didn’t care.He sat in one of the top rows of the campus brony club, where he always sat. It was nearest one of the upper exit doors, ready for him to quietly slip out when the meetings…
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33.8 K •
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Julian woke trapped. He was inside something, wrapped up in slime and something like silk. There was nothing but darkness all around him, constricting his movements. He called out, but his voice was drowned in some kind of slime that surrounded him. It rushed down his throat, starting to suffocate him.He began to kick, and he felt his containment give a little. He focused there with both of his hind legs, shoving as hard as he could. Something tore. Fluid poured out from the opening, and he realized he was…-
43.4 K •
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Julian took a long time to decide—maybe longer than he should have. Weeks passed, and he ignored the desire to return to the front and help his world expand. That was important, but the danger of the giants was too great. At least so far, diplomacy was going well. Interacting with their own changed former-passengers helped, as they were able to see the fairies who had attacked them more as fellow victims than some evil force that lurked in the woods.He stayed close just in case, though he wasn’t sure…
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43.4 K •
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