Chapters
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They left St. Louis the next day, by the first light of morning. Nopony tried to stop them like in Alexandria. She pushed Ezri to her best possible pace, even covering a little more ground in the dark. They were walking west instead of south, but even so… she didn’t want to be anywhere near the city when night fell. If word got around there were a pair of young ponies traveling alone, there was no telling what “accidents” they might have on the road.There were others they passed, but none turned…-
153.4 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…
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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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153.4 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…
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153.4 K •
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Cloudy Skies did not return to Alexandria until near nightfall. Her mission, though important, felt hopelessly mundane. Without knowing when Lonely Day and the other ponies would return from Philadelphia, and with no way to call and tell them, it was her job to find a satellite phone, make it work, then report on what they had learned.It would’ve been far worse than boring to travel off on her own when Blacklight was putting herself into danger with all her other friends. Except Cloudy Skies had company,…-
107.0 K •
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They were all there, the day they had the vote. Everyone but Alex, unconscious as she was in a hospital bed. There were no more attempted suicides; not now that the shock of having Odium gone for good was finally over. That left Alexandria with a problem, of course. What could they do with a dozen ponies that had tried to take over? Moriah participated in several of the proposals that were made, just as all of them did. Rather than keep all of them locked up in little cells during the week or so it took…
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107.0 K •
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