//------------------------------//
// Unsettling Events - Deadlift, Newsclip, ??? 
// Story: Escape From Canterlot 
// by No one is home 
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Dear Usagi,
We've been caught.  Hell I don't think we ever weren't caught.  Pip, or Moth, or whatever she's calling herself these days was apparently tailing us the whole time.  She'd been giving us some space, for old times I guess.  Asking Samantha not to tell her royal foster parents where to find us was just plain laughable.  God, it’s finally happened.  The Pink Step’s done infected my brain, and I’ve gone full pony.

For what it’s worth, Samantha’s been monitoring us this whole time.  She hadn’t reported us because she hadn’t decided how to interpret her data on the growth cycles of the shadow changeling.  So, yeah, I think we can trust her from here not to narc us out.  Apparently the moon brat is pretty good at disabling his mom’s monitoring spells, and she only found him when he crossed paths with the monitors she had on Z.  You guys are safe, apparently none of the monitors she put on the Belfry took for… reasons?  I guess?  I’m pretty sure she can see when I take a piss now.  No, her voice in my head just reminded me that she would never be so unprofessional as to violate my privacy if it did not advance the cause of scientific discovery.  Samantha Watch is scary as fuck.

But she ain’t the one who ratted us out to the Princess, no that was our old buddy “Orange Pip”.  Turn’s out Moth has been watching us since before we even got on the train.  And by “us” I mean “me and Z and Facehugger” and by that I mean “Z and Facehugger”, obviously.  If the crown wants to find you guys or the Goat, you’ve got shows booked three times a day.  She’s even got one of the Shifts with her.  The one that liked to play “Pinkie Pie with Knives” that wasn’t Diane.  According to Moth, Luna doesn’t even care about us.  This is all about the changelings.  More specifically, the changelings associated with Iam.

We had  full hive with the original circus.  A small hive, but a full hive all the same.  And that’s not counting the Shift Sisters and their “Shadow Hive”, or whatever infrastructure Iam had in place in Canterlot.  Diane cut a bloody path across the city, but it’s impossible to believe that she took out ALL of his command structure.  And even if she did, she made as far as she did by recruiting ll the displace drones she was creating as she killed off Iam’s chain of command.  She planned on those drones becoming hers.  Honestly, for a twelve year old changeling trying to conquer the slums of the pony capital by military force she did pretty good.  I know, that little filly is a war criminal, and I sometimes have nightmares about her escaping from Tartarus, but it’s impressive.  She was evil well above her grade level.

Which makes me wonder, what is it the damned goat had us running from?  And if he knew the crown was already watching us, why the whole misdirection?  Who or what are we hiding from anyway?  How much does that blind bastard know?  And why am I more scared of what he doesn't know? The point is, you guys aren't even the ones they're watching.  I guess maybe that was the point to sending me off with Z.  Damn the Blind Goat.  It's all one big game to him.  He reminds me of Iam, sometimes… in all the worst ways.

I miss you girl,

James “Deadlift” Jackson

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“Airship Crash Lands In Canterlot Air Yard, All Aboard Dead or Missing”

The Canterlot Crier

The airship EAS Demeter Crash landed this morning at the Air Yard in Lower Canterlot.  The Decanter Lunar Guard were dispatched immediately to the scene, but to their Dismay the entire crew of the trading vessel was found to have been dead before the crash.  Some had, in fact been dead for days, their bodies stored in the ship's hold to be returned for proper burial.  However others had died more recently in what the guard is describing as an apparent mutiny.

Any conclusions drawn at this point are purely, at best, educated speculation.  But it that evidence seems to point in the direction of a series of violent confrontations between the ponies and griffons of the crew.  The Captain, one Godfried Griffon, seems to have been the last to die by his own talon.  He was found tied to the ship's wheel, where he apparently slit his own throat during the airships final approach.  The guards say that his body was still warm when he was found.

Obviously the ship’s logs will be exhaustively examined by the guard before anything is released to the press.  The Airship was returning from a trading expedition to Griffonstone, stopping over in Fillydelphia.  It is believed that it was between Fillydelphia and Canterlot that whatever events transpired that turned this routine trip into a tragedy.  Of course we will bring you any news as it develops.

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Report #176

Wow, when you said I’d know it when I saw the news, you weren’t kidding.  You always did have a flair for the dramatic.  At any rate, Royl surveillance of the Pastel larvae is ongoing and pervasive.  At the moment the grub and her mother are in Ponyville under the care of Pinkamena Diane Pie.  This could prove troublesome, as much difficulty as Jimmy Jack would have posed to your plans, the Pink Horror presents a wholly insurmountable obstacle.  I would suggest using the hostage to leverage our position, but I understand that you wish to remain outside of public view at the moment.  Still the chances of taking back the offspring of the Unspoken Prince seems remote at the moment.  If there is any good news, I believe I can separate the pair from Jimmy Jack at this point.  He doesn’t like Ponyville any more than he likes ponies.  It shouldn’t take more than the softest whisper from the right lips to convince him to return to Las Pegasus.  That still leaves Pinkamena to deal with, and she is extremely protective of her adopted changeling “sister”.  But even a lesser obstacle removed is one less problem.

End Report