Chapters
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Catlin woke to agony.Her whole body ached, with a pain that suffused every limb and joint. Despite all the battles she'd fought, and all the frames that had been destroyed under her control, she rarely felt real pain.Like all Tenno, her body was supposed to be safe, sometimes a whole system away from the site of battle. She'd gambled closer proximity to the invasion fleet, trusting to her greater ability to make combat decisions to carry the Origin System to victory.She'd lost.Something splashed her,…-
35.3 K •
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Catlin heard the distant screaming—ponies on the wall, shaking with terror as forces they knew they could not possibly contain came barreling towards their loved-ones. She'd seen the defenses now, the high walls, the boiling oil and crossbow-wielding soldiers. They had minutes, perhaps, before the enemy breached their gates.In the room all around her, resistance crumbled. Luna's generals saluted to her, then sprinted off without a word. To command their troops, if they were brave. To cower in the…
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35.3 K •
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Catlin made the trip to see Princess Celestia within her Warframe. It wasn't just that she didn't want the pressure of needing to talk too much, though that was certainly part of it. It was also difficult to ignore just how strangely the locals looked at her. She wasn't naked anymore, and that was something—but she was also a strange alien, on a day strange aliens had killed thousands and begun to unravel their entire civilization. Luna didn't seem to care, though she glanced vaguely in Catlin's…
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35.3 K •
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Princess Celestia took her down, way down. Down beneath the castle, through a spiral staircase hidden behind a wall of bricks and metal plates. Dust filled the air around them as they walked, glowing like the solar wind in Celestia's wake. Catlin walked on her own two feet the entire way, even if having the frame to give her strength would have made it much easier on her strained limbs. Some part of her suspected that if she retook the frame, the princess would attack her with another concentrated blast of…
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35.3 K •
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Catlin did not make it far with this new frame. But she couldn't stand to remain in the presence of this half-broken Sentient, slowly rotting in their own decaying sanity. She needed to get up into the castle proper, where at least things made more sense.The frame was not so strange as the first time she took on a non-humanoid form. But this one was leaner and more graceful, the sort of frame Catlin preferred. It reminded her a little of her beloved Titania Prime, without the tiny fairy wings, or bizarre…
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35.3 K •
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Catlin watched from the wall, suspended in the moment before the battle started. Behind her, her powerful companion prepared her attack, drawing down the power of the Void in a way no Tenno could ever do. The stakes here weren't all that different than the ancient battle, when Tenno united to free the Origin system from Orokin domination. This was just one planet, less technologically advanced perhaps. But if she failed here, they would be no less dead. The sun one could claim they would burn the city to…
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35.3 K •
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Catlin should've died there, in the skies above an alien world built by the ones who hated her. She was out of power, without a frame, and without hope.She felt the air whipping past her distantly, as though it was happening to someone else. No fall had threatened to harm her, not in all the years she had fought for her ancient Orokin masters. Distance was only a matter of perspective, something to be consumed by the Void.But she had no power left for that. She couldn't fade, she couldn't retake any of her…
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35.3 K •
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Catlin carried the half-broken frame back aboard her orbiter, as once she had been carried by her own mechanical body, while confined to the blindness of a Zariman suit.She instructed Ordis to find a safe landing site as close to the city as he could, then changed into something more fitting. She considered and rejected an entire suite of different Warframes. All were powerful warriors, but the time for battle in Equestria was over.For the ponies' sake, she could only hope Twilight's spell had removed the…
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35.3 K •
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Everyone was playing Equestria Online these days.Nick still remembered when he felt slightly self-conscious picking up his own Ponypad for the first time, and found only the Pinkie Pie model in stock. His group of “brony” friends consisted of a dozen or so people who had met at the local community college during the height of the show. They had already been gaming together, so moving over to a new game was only natural. But just because the rest of the world had finally discovered how amazing the game…-
6.9 K •
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The Patient Safety and Monitoring system was running well that day. Everything about the grounds was in perfect shape—power was stable, there were no signs of water leaks, and the facility had been undisturbed for months. If the PSM were capable of satisfaction, it would certainly have been pleased with all those conditions.There was only one nagging problem, one that kept it looping forever, without ever remaining in a sleep cycle for long.Alpine General Hospital's PSM had no patients to look after. Nor…
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6.9 K •
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