Chapters
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Between the late hour of his last class and the isolation of the river trail, it was a rare night when Jacob met anyone else on his walk home. Despite his age, there was always something that made him nervous whenever he heard another set of footsteps.When he heard footsteps running towards him down the path, he got a little tense. Old growth pine and fir grew here, obscuring the orange of streetlights and splitting moonlight into patchwork shadows. Jacob slowed a little in his walk, wishing he had a can…-
123.5 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…-
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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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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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…
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13.3 K •
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Lauren had seen many strange things in the school’s offices before; if anything the peculiar was what kept her days interesting. Membership in the Associated Student Body had many perks, but one she treasured above all others was being able to spend a period of every day as a “student assistant” in the office. If there was going to be any juicy gossip from second period, Lauren would be the one to get it.When she saw a policeman standing outside the assistant principal's office, she couldn’t help…
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13.3 K •
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So it began. Archive had been recruited to protect the HPI from Athena’s influence. Now she realized that influence had been Athena’s feeble attempts to slow the expansion of Gideon’s Outsider faction. Instead of working to root out Athena, she began moving to support and conceal her. Even so, it was not difficult to contribute in other ways. Working directly with Athena meant the two of them could easily fabricate “victories,” such as “inventing” systems Athena could not monitor. What gains…-
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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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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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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