Thanks! Literally received this at the stroke of midnight over here!xD happy new years to you and to all, too!

7833851
Princess twilight part 2 where pinkie is landing from her jump.

i came here to eat cupcakes and kick ass and I'm all out of cupcakes.

Let's not forget why those humans were violent, enslaved, given to abusive owners, and one woman was fucking spaded, that's mmmooooorrreee then enough to learn more the A little ire, they probelly thought that nearly all ponies was irredeemable monsters.

Worth the wait! Happy new year!

whoosh! thats a lot to take in. im not complaining. thats a great way to tie up loose ends there. by the way, thank you VERY much for just summarizing the events of the harmony tree. i was dreading that there was going to be several chapters of that distraction. thank you for sending everyone back to earth. there's still a lot of loose ends but at least you're addressing most of them.

thank you for another wonderful chapter. you have a good one and happy new year!

So basically, if the princesses sent the Humans to the middle of the ocean, or the middle of a desert, she's basically sentencing them to death.

If they end up in lets say, Northern Iraq, and get captured by ISIS, results will still be the same, only the world will know that they somehow dissappeared and ended up in the hands of ISIS.

The more I read this, the more I hate Celestia.

I feel like she needs to be punished somehow.

I'm also hoping that a military unit ends up there. Realistically, there should still be more Terran Humans out there, whether they're in captivity or still out there trying to survive.

It would be cool if there's a group of Humans out there raiding camps and freeing Humans.

Happy New year, Max! You're already making it great!
7834078
Actually,

Twilight lifted a hoof to shield her eyes, but before that she caught the briefest glimpse of a large harbor with an arched bridge, and a large white building overlooking the harbor that looked like the sails of a ship. For a brief moment, a warm breeze rushed through the throne room. A loud ‘splash’ could be heard.

one group seems to have landed in Sydney harbor (hope they didn't land on a box jellyfish),

Within the light, Twilight was just able to make out what appeared to be a city partially submerged in water before it became too painful to look and she glanced away.

while the other was dropped off in what I'm guessing is either Venice, or a post-Katrina New Orleans. Leaning more towards Venice, though.

Happy to see this update. I'd say it's a good start to 2017, but I still have to wait 52 minutes.

meh, i found the solution of the terran humans lacking and very rushed. which is understandable but i wonder what max will think when he finds out his ex was teleported like that. overall a decent cleanup of events and winding down of the entire story.

Starting a new year with a new chapter, that's a good way to start.

happy new years!

7834100 Must've missed that part, but they took the risk knowing the Humans even the ones that weren't violent may end up dying because wherever place they could land on. Imagine landing in the middle of the Amazon. An undiscovered part away from civilization.

“Equine, four, nine, twenty-three, six, twenty-two, twenty-six, twenty-three, twenty-three, eleven, three, twelve, eight, twenty-two, eight, twelve, eighteen, twenty-four, eight, four…”

The numbers, Mason. What do they mean?!

I didn't really expect all the terran humans to end up being sent home, I figured some of the good ones like the duo that helped with the vines would be given a choice or something, and likely choose to stay.

7834202
The risk would have been there regardless; it was either send them now, or try to accommodate more prisoners than Canterlot has probably seen in centuries until their only know pony-to-human translator recuperated enough to confirm that, yes, they are willing to take the chance if it means leaving this Planet of the Pones and having even a chance of seeing their friends and family again.

Remember, the only reason Max decided to stay is because he found love. All any of the rest of them found was madness, oppression, deception and loss. After all they've been through, I wouldn't be surprised if some of them were considering... other means of getting out of that world.

7834246 Yeah but it was a huge gamble. There are so many places in the world they could've ended up in and get them killed.

Still want to see a group of Humans raiding and freeing slaves.

Good job. Can't wait for more.

If Max experiences a moment of harmony and bursts out into song, but no ponies would be able to understand him, would it sound something along the lines of this?

Good shit bro. Poor Twilight tho being denied sleep by both herself and others.

6300 Thumbs up exactly. Take a picture!... Oh wait, I did for you

image.prntscr.com/image/837044c4abdc4d32870e448cefe253c0.png

So much hype! 46 simultaneous readers OMG! WTF are you all doing this hour?!?
Let's hope that code isn't a destructive one?
Let's see... 4 9 23 6 22 26 23 23 11 3 12 8 22 8 12 18 24 8 4
Becomes D I W F V Z W W K C L H V H L R X H D
Hmm, no rotations help that, um... Yeah, maybe I'll try again when it's not 3 am...
Keep going! ;)

7834266
I agree that it was a big gamble on the safety of the Terran humans. For the violent ones, I don't think there's really much of a better solution. For the helpful ones, though, Celestia could have waited for Max to act as translator (or, although Celestia didn't know it at the time, Lyra).

Max could translate for the violent ones, too, but they already believed he was a shill for the mind-controlling ponies, and they wouldn't be listening to anything he says.

Wasn't Max's human girlfriend among them? For all she knows he's dead in a ditch somewhere...

Never been a fan of Vynil being a vampire. Too edgy and emo.

Great update! Looking forward to more!

Yay, I am so happy things are looking up. The humans who wanted to go home are home. Let's just be glad they weren't sent to Siberia.
The Equestrian humans are getting much better treatment and eventually rights.
The Big Blue Heron is better, (I hoped she would, I really liked her), not well, but better. Besides who's going to be afraid of a Big Bad Bat? "Cough" Bat Mare.

7834413
One major clue for this cypher Is 'Equine'.
But I've never been good with number puzzles.
For all I know is it matches the same puzzles from Gravity Falls. (Dang you Bill!)

stream1.gifsoup.com/view3/4785318/please-sir-i-want-some-more-o.gif

she caught the briefest glimpse of a large harbor with an arched bridge, and a large white building overlooking the harbor that looked like the sails of a ship. For a brief moment, a warm breeze rushed through the throne room. A loud ‘splash’ could be heard.

Holy shit that's Sydney other side of the country but yeah close to home

And happy new year!

*Sees update*
*drops everything, including being in the middle of a boss fight in DS3*

Alright ! On to reading !

EDIT : a nice transition chapter, that ties some loose ends most notably Melodic Wind's fate and the "kind" Terrans, and adds a bit of foreshadowing at the very end !

Now, I got my fix, back to waiting for the next chapter ! Thanks again for writing this Max !

Oh man, I know it might be a while but I'm already super stoked for the next chapter. I wonder if Max is trying to fight off some form of mind control or something. Or maybe it's just an allusion to nightmares Max is having. I guess we'll find out!

7834078
Dude that is stupid, the Equestrians could barely communicate basic concepts to the Terrans. Why waste good supplies on a foe that cant understand the goodwill your providing? They chose to rise up agaisnt the Equestrians and even when defeated they still looked like they wanted to fight. Give supplies to the humans that in the minuets it took to cast the spell could have allowed them to escape? A foolishly optimistic action that puts the ponies at risk and may force the ponies to have to kill the prisoners. The humans are victims of circumstances, but if the roles were reversed dont even sugest that the ponies would have gottent any better treatment.
A good leader has to make tough choices for the good of all. Most humans only consider their side as All. At least Celestia did what she though was right for the humans. A less than ideal trip home for the dangerous humans and a trip with the best possible odds for thoes who were willing to try looking past their own fear and hatred.

7834615 I spotted that one too, it's the second one that I'm trying to figure out... a city partially submerged in water? If it's somewhere suffering major floods, could be many places, but, if the second portal was relatively close to the first, then it's probably Melbourne.

I suppose we'll only know for sure if the author speaks up.

many structures had structural damage

"many buildings had structural damage" would sound a lot better

7834554
7834413

It could be a replacement cipher, but using the equine alphabet, rather than ours, so unless we can figure out the equine alphabet the author is using, we probably won't be able to solve it.

Kept us waiting, huh?

Another great chapter, wonder how everything ends and what Max is dreaming

The more I think about this, the more I think Celestia and Luna just proved Discord's opinions about them correct. It was a plot point in another story how zapping them back to Earth with a completely random landing point has a high chance of being lethal, since, for starters, the Earth is 2/3rds OCEAN. So that already throws the odds in favor of death, not even accounting for if they were to end up in the middle of Antarctica, or the middle of the Sahara or something...

7834689
As others have pointed out, the humans who fought against ponies were placed with the worst kind of owners, unlike Max who got lucky, so they had every reason to believe they were acting on the right side, making them pretty much just as much Discord's victims as any of the ponies they hurt in their revolt. Given the odds of the sister's method of sending them home being a death sentence as mentioned above, it really makes me want to smack both of them with a giant 2x4, since they might have well just executed the humans and made it quick deaths.

Well, it looks like this story is just about over, at long last.

Ok, so group A ended up in Sydney, and that's all well and good, and group B....there's little evidence as to where they ended up, but Celestia at least remembered that the majority of the planet's surface is water, and got them a boat to work with.

And we're still not done with Vinyl and Octavia there Max, your only making it more convoluted for yourself.

7834711 I think its venice italy is the second location

HOLY SHIT! I FINALLY FIGURED OUT THE FUCKING CODE, YOU TWAT! Fuck me sideways, that took forever! You were using the same decryption code that was used in Black Ops too, if I remember correctly.

“Equine, four, nine, twenty-three, six, twenty-two, twenty-six, twenty-three, twenty-three, eleven, three, twelve, eight, twenty-two, eight, twelve, eighteen, twenty-four, eight, four…”

Okay, so Equine is referring to something, most likely something in this story. So we take 'Equine', or more specifically, the letter 'E', which happens to be the fifth letter in the alphabet. That's 5... so lets go to chapter 5 (not counting the prologue cause apparently you don't consider that a chapter). Next is the number that comes after Equine (four), which tells us where in chapter 5 we need to go: the fourth paragraph. Now we might have the KEY STREAM for the code... the only problem is that a Running Key Cipher uses letters, not numbers... So we'll just have to turn the remaining numbers into letters.

9-23-6-22-26-23-23-11-3-12-8-22-8-12-18-24-8-4

iwfvzwwkclhvhlrxhd

Now, if we take that... horrid conglomeration of letters and plug that and the paragraph from chapter 5 into a Running Key Cipher translator we get fucking magic.

iwfvzwwkclhvhlrxhd becomes killmiamorecadenza. Kill Mi Amore Cadenza.

I FUCKING FIGURED IT THE FUCK OUT YOU BITCH! NOW, WHAT CHAPTERS WERE THE OTHER CODES IN.

7834826
Because a chance of a slow painful death or getting dropped on their own front doorestep is all they could safely offer without keeping the ticking timebomb that are the terrans arround. Imprisoning them woul make the humans would only make them think they were suffering at the hooves of the Equestrians again. The commenters are mad because the humans are victims. But they are victims that were tricked into acting like monsters. It's tragic but humans are dangerous, and the only way to keep everyone safe to get them home as soon as possible.
What I don't understand is why is Celestia expected to bend over backwards for them? She gave them medical attention, she is sending them home even though it is magically taxing to do so. She isn't the cause of their situation, Discord is. Celestia has no obligation to do anything these humans, she is within her right to keep them prisoner and confined for the crimes they have committed. These people believed they were revolting against an oppressive Power, but any Revolt carries the risk of failing and suffering the Wrath of the government. Despite all this in Celestia's benevolence she stakes their Survival and freedom on a chance. As a group that chance is greater. And for those that went above and beyond, and try to see past the lies. They were given a boon to help improve their odds of survival. I felt this was completely fair.

7834861 are you for real or is this a big meme?

7834892 my vote is no, that's not it.

7834078 In talking with Blackie while editing, I pointed this out as well, with a lot of hostile locations that weren't just ocean.

Examples I listed were:
1) Antarctica
2) Pyongyang, North Korea, and
3) Within the nuclear exclusion zone of the Chernobyl power plant (I specifically listed Pripyat, the abandoned town a few miles away)

Admittedly, Celestia's dismissive sending of the humans to Earth was a perfectly reasonable reaction, given what they did, but she also had absolutely no way of knowing where they'd end up, or what the political/environmental aspects of the location they ended up would be at all. While unsafe, she didn't have a better means of sending them back. I can't really justify punishing her for something that was entirely outside her control.

7835202 Yeah, but that's the unfortunate part.

My other point is, the Humans that assaulted Canterlot can't be thr only Terran Humans out there. There has to be more in captivity, free and trying to survive, or in groups trying to survive.

I'd love to see a group of Humans raiding and freeing slaves.

7834892
7834969

The man is right and even gave you the means to check. Go to the site he linked, for plain text type, 'Kill Mi Amore Cadenza' for the key stream put the 4th paragraph in chapter 5 and hit encypt, you will get a stream of characters and if you turn those characters into numbers you will get the phrase she keeps repeating. Also each poke is a separate paragraph, I fucked up the first time and assumed they werent.

7834861
You glorious fucking bastard.

7835239 Shhh! Quiet you! They must not warn the others!

ehhh not a huge fan of how this went down not at all

7834227 agree, kind of disappointed that they weren't even given a choice of returning. would have been difficult with language barrier, but it could have been at least attempted