Chapters
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Not for the first time since taking up investigations, I found my interests following me to work.Of course I spent the first few hours of the shift wandering through life half-awake, filing things and retrieving requests from prominent ponies more by rote than anything else. But I had a talent for operating on not much sleep, and eventually I’d recovered enough that I had started putting pieces together in my head.The Soma Opal was an artifact—of the valuable and rare sort that the Canterlot Archives…-
16.9 K •
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Falling was nothing new to me. Flying wasn’t exactly my special talent. But I’d never tried falling down a trapdoor at the bottom of a fancy dungeon before.I don’t recommend it.I smacked into the walls more than once, conscious of a distant gray glow and a squealing unicorn in the dark space with me. It sounded like Calico was running through the entire repertoire of profanity, and she was surprisingly colorful.Non-flying ponies were all the same—a bit of a drop, and they were tumbling wildly,…
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16.9 K •
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I took little pride in being right. The guards searched us right there on the street, though they didn’t find much. I had a knife kept somewhere obvious, and a few tools I’d hidden away a little better. Calico hadn’t brought anything they cared about, though they stole her little pouch of bits and seemed to enjoy just how hurt it made her look. I hope that isn’t everything you had left.We went straight into the sewer entrance I’d found, then down a series of tunnels until it connected with the…
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16.9 K •
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“Come on girls!” Twilight’s voice called from up ahead, insistent. “The train leaves in a few minutes! There won’t be another one until tomorrow!”Scootaloo slowed a little more, dragging her hooves through the sand. Her wings buzzed against her back, but as usual she remained firmly on the ground.“We’ll come and visit,” Sweetie Belle said, pausing long enough to give Terramar a goodbye hug. “I’d like to hear your mountains again. Maybe bring my sister along… it’d be…-
2.6 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…-
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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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 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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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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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…
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33.8 K •
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