Chapters
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Lauren pushed the door open with no little effort. The tiny stallion might’ve been able to buck clean through a door, but for her the already-heavy door swung only with great effort. She braced her shoulder against it and shoved, inching forward. Eventually it swung out far enough for her to make her cautious way back into the office hallway.She didn’t know how long had passed, but the sun was far brighter through the window, meaning it was probably sometime in the afternoon. The light from the windows…-
13.3 K •
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Lauren wasn’t stopped and asked to explain herself by any of the supervising “ponies”. After seeing what had happened to her brother, she tried to see if her condition had been common. Though she couldn’t tell for sure at a glance as easily with these new bodies, it didn’t smell like there were very many stallions in the room. That was the word for a male horse, wasn’t it? The trend continued as she crossed the hall into the classroom where many of the office staff were congregating. The space…
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13.3 K •
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The next morning passed in a rush. The ponies in school seemed to wake at different times. Lauren and Preston woke among the earliest, along with many of the others with wings. Despite waking just before dawn, Lauren didn’t feel tired. Preston didn’t seem to either.Fortunately for them, there were enough other winged ponies that someone had been called to organize breakfast. For everything else that had changed since yesterday, cereal with milk still tasted as bland as ever. There was at least one good…
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13.3 K •
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Several months later…Preston whined as Lauren lifted her head, holding another broken feather in her mouth. She spat it to one side, then shoved the filly deeper down into the plush of the mattress. “Quit struggling! It’s harder if you don’t hold still!”Ponies were flexible, younger ones even more so. Preston turned to glare over her shoulder without difficulty. “You said you’d be gentler this time! I don’t think that last one was ready to come out yet!”Lauren glanced down, and saw there…
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13.3 K •
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“Dreams are your territory, not mine. Outside of my own sleep, I’m worse than useless. Here, though.” There was no delay like when Jackie had changed. One second she was an Alicorn, and the next she had her own batwings and her horn had vanished. It was not really all that different: Archive didn’t actually know what being a thestral felt like, so the sensations were entirely imagined.“I’ll… consent you’ve actually created a shared dream.” She sounded reluctant. “That doesn’t mean…-
153.4 K •
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For all the different ways Lonely Day had died, what happened after was always the same. She drifted in timeless space, felt forces tugging her towards the gulf that would terminate her existence, then turned away and returned to her body instead.This time was different. As Archive drifted back towards Earth, she passed through boiling clouds and roiling storms and found she was not alone.“It’s about time you died. Baconhead made it seem like a good death was part of your morning routine.”Archive had…
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153.4 K •
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The teleport took her in a flash, briefly blinding her and setting off all the thaumic energy indicators in her helmet. She had given herself a full twenty feet of breathing room over where she guessed the surface to be, in case her calculation had been vastly wrong. It was, and twenty feet was more like fifty. The parachute on the back of her armor exploded outward as she started to fall, but it wasn’t enough. Parachutes weren’t meant to work at such short distances. It was night, but even the gloom…
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153.4 K •
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There was no more drama for a few hours as Radio Springs mobilized. Alex learned then that the pegasi flying from Motherlode had been sent to tell the city about the attack and the armored pony that had killed three of their guards and been heading for the settlement. Thank God she had noticed them, or else she might’ve walked right into the city and been arrested.White did not correct the misinformation, not yet. If the pegasi heard that some other story was being passed around, they might be able to…
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153.4 K •
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The disused mine up on the back hill proved to have been barricaded to prevent further escapes. An hour or so and a crowbar later, and they could use the lift to start bringing trapped miners back up. Just in time too: the rain had flooded the mine, and the water level had continued to rise. The storm seemed to have lost interest in the complex once the battle was complete, but even so most of the Refugees emerged wet as well as hungry.Alex made sure she was out of sight as this happened, hoping the miners…
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153.4 K •
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Bingham Canyon proved not to be the paradise of technology and progress Alex had promised: mostly it was temporary buildings and lots of metal supports sunk into concrete near the bottom of a gigantic open-pit mine. Yet even the temporary structures on the rim had electricity and running water. As Jackie went into surgery, Alex learned that she herself was being brought on as an advisory engineer on the construction of “Paradise Crater.”Not because there weren’t any humans or ponies of the HPI to do…
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