Cold Front Building
AUGUST 12
I wandered into the bedroom area to find Jeff and Rich manipulating wall panels. The unicorn had an entire panel in his magical grasp and was repositioning it.
"Whatcha up to?" I asked them.
"Making one room from two," Jeff said plainly. "Trying to figure out how to place this panel, if we need two doors or not. If we don't, it can replace the outer wall with it."
"Ah," I nodded. Then I noticed whose rooms were affected - Jeff's and Karin's. "Oh. Oh! Um, congratulations?"
"Thanks," Jeff smiled sheepishly. "We weren't trying to be secretive about it."
"That's fine; peoples' relationships are their own business," I said, nudging his shoulder, "but good job nonetheless."
"Um...?" Rich said, straining to keep the panel in the air.
"Oops, sorry," Jeff apologized. "Let's try it with two doors for now, so just lean it against the other panels for the time being."
"I'll get you of your way," I said, backing away from the pair. "Are you guys going to be ready at ten for the great cattle and or chicken roundup?"
"Sure," Jeff said, helping steady the wall as it descended. "Have you found any?"
"I scouted a few places early this morning and heard a rooster. I presume that means there's some hens nearby. Cows, I still have to find, but I figure I can do that while you guys're out cruising for chicks."
"Ha ha," Jeff said. "Okay, see you at ten."
I was in the kitchen munching on some cereal when Swift came in.
"You'd better not be eating right out of the box," she joked.
"Why didn't feed bags ever catch on with us?" I asked, poking fun back at her. "Just put a couple of strips of Velcro on the sides of this and hook 'em together behind your neck, and you can eat while you're working."
She shook her head and changed the subject. "Did I hear you go out early this morning?"
"Yeah," I said between bites. "I had a hunch which I think paid off. I heard a rooster crowing out in the country, which I've got narrowed down to three or four houses. I'm hoping where there's guys there'll be girls. As for cows, I'll look around while you guys try to catch some chickens."
"Of course, we get the hard work," Swift grinned wryly. "Just kidding. I bet I can catch them pretty nicely with magic. And no, I won't hurt them," she hastened to add as I opened my mouth to protest.
"All right," I said. "I figured we'd go out about ten."
"Sure thing."
Ten o'clock rolled around and all seven of us ended up assembled at the auto bays.
"You gonna help us out, Buddy?" I asked of our resident Dalmatian.
"I figured he could be of use in either roundup," Karin suggested. "Right, Buddy?"
An assertive bark confirmed his intentions to come along.
"All right." Jeff had the truck and trailer ready, and ponies were climbing aboard. "You good to follow me?" I asked him.
"I guess so," he said. "You sure like flying, don't you?"
"Do you have to ask?" I grinned, lowering my goggles and taking to the skies.
Up to Taunton Road I flew, staying low to allow the truck to keep me in sight. West on the sideroad, counting houses - the fifth, sixth, and seventh ones on the north side were my suspected candidates, and I circled above them while I waited for the truck to arrive.
I landed in the grassy ditch along the road, skidding to a stop like I'd meant to do it, to hide my abysmal landing skills. "One of these," I said, gesturing with one hoof as I climbed out of the ditch.
"Split up into pairs and each check one?" Jeff suggested. Everyone nodded or affirmed, so we divided as such.
"Got any idea where you're going to find cows?" Serge asked me as we took the left house.
"I'm gonna search over towards home," I said, gesturing northwestward. I inwardly flinched as I realized he didn't know my past. "I mean, my human home. It's abandoned. Well, obviously. I mean, I've moved on-"
"I understand," he said, pushing aside a gate for me. "Some of us have pasts that would do best to be memories."
I looked into the eyes of the big pegasus, seeing the same thing I knew had been in mine after visiting Sue's house - a tortured soul missing a family. All I could do was nod.
"Shed or garage?" Serge asked, indicating the two outbuildings, one on each side of the back yard.
"One for each of us?" I responded, gesturing with a wing towards the garage nearest me. He nodded and smiled and headed to his left, to the shed.
The garage was a relatively sturdy building, but a swift kick, even from a non-earth pony, defeated the door knob on the 'man door' fairly easily. I shouldered the door open after that, and had to wedge it from closing to allow light to enter the building.
No chickens here. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I let out a laugh. At least, not the kind we need.
Inside the garage, up on jacks and partially restored, was a 1978 Pontiac Trans Am Firebird - the car The Bandit had driven in the iconic road trip movie.
Various car parts lined the shelves along the walls, and a workbench at the back had some tools and the typical license plates, calendars and photos, and such.
Ducking back out of the door, I saw Serge leaving the shed. He saw me and shrugged. "Just a rusted-out lawnmower and a broken weed eater," he called out.
Before I could say anything, a cacophony of barking and frenzied clucking reached us from the other side of the hedge. "Sounds like we found 'em," I said, turning and making a wing-assisted hop over the shrubbery.
Karin and Jeff were in the middle yard with Buddy, and the latter was sitting by the door to the larger of two sheds. He'd only barked a couple of times, enough to point out his find, and then sat and went silent, so as to not agitate the birds further.
"How are they alive after all this time?" Karin wondered, listening to the excited creatures inside.
"Only one way to find out," Jeff said, and as Serge rounded the house followed by Rich and Swift, he reached out and shoved the door open.
It wasn't exactly a pretty sight. It was far from the happiest flock of birds I'd ever seen in my life. There was some kind of automated feeding system and some lights on a timer, apparently driven by solar power. Feed hoppers were in the back of the hut, near to being empty. The hens were in sad shape healthwise - not near death, but not in tip-top shape either. And between the spoiled eggs that had been laid for many, many days, and the waste from the birds, the place was, shall we say, a mess.
"Good God," Serge uttered.
"Can they be saved?" Swift wanted to know.
"I think so," Jeff said. "It'll take some TLC and gentle handling. We certainly won't be producing eggs this week, that's for sure. Can somepony keep Buddy back by the truck? I think they might freak out some more with him around. Bring me some of the pet kennels." We'd acquired a couple dozen animal carriers to try to help in moving the creatures.
"I got that," I said, urging Buddy to come with me. He obediently lay by the truck as I clutched the handles of three carriers - two in my forehooves, one in my teeth - and flitted back to the barn.
"I'm gonna leave these with you," I said, putting them down. "Honest, it was my plan all along to go looking for..."
"Lucky you," Karin smiled, wrinkling her snout at the stench. "I bet at least five ponies in this hut would jump at the chance - excuse the pun - to join you anywhere but here."
"You sure?"
"Just go," Swift insisted, "before we change our mind."
"Thanks guys," I choked out, spinning and flying away, gulping down fresh air as I climbed into the atmosphere.
Durham Region rolled underneath me as I flew away from the disaster area. Okay, it wasn't that bad, but I truly felt ill after being in that coop for just a few moments. My friends were going to have to put up with the foul stench for quite some time, until they rescued all the birds and got them out of the mess.
I still felt like I was abandoning them, even though I did have an excuse to move on, and they were willing to let me go. I'd have to make it up to them - hopefully by finding some decent milking cows, relatively close to our preferred meadow. Still, the area I was searching was more than 16 kilometers away from the pasture, and that might be a tedious hike, especially if the cows were as bad off as the hens.
What you need are wild cows that found some good food and fended off predators, I told myself. Hopefully a herd of bovines would be easy to spot from the sky.
I passed over the hiking trail, then the town of Whitevale, and then the town of Green River. Durham Region gave way to York Region, but the farmland ensued.
There were signs of cattle having used the fields - many a crop and/or patch of grass had been eaten away to nothing. Fences and gates in various places had been broken open. I tried to remember if they were that way when Swift and I had come up this way in the SUV when going to my sister's house, but that was a lifetime ago.
I flew over a property that had several unusual features - two swimming pools, a number of tennis and basketball courts and baseball diamonds, and a number of one-story buildings. Ultimately, I realized it was Camp Robin Hood, a kids' camp I'd often heard of, but never actually knew where it was situated, even though it was a ten minute drive from my house.
At the edge of the property were several dozen small white boxes. Finally it dawned on me. Oh! Bees, I realized. Why the camp would have beehives was beyond me, but they were there. Maybe we should come see if there's any bees to salvage. Honey would be a nice treat.
No cows, though, so on I flew. In a few seconds, I found myself over home. The Mennonite church sat just north of the property, and Sue's place across the road, all of it looking unchanged except for the overgrown lawns. Like Serge said, it was best left to rest in peace, as far as I was concerned.
I went as far north as the fairgrounds, and found nothing. I decided to try my luck closer towards our desired meadow, and banked right to head that way.
Claremont came up in short order, and there was nothing new there from a couple days ago. Turning right again, I angled towards a farmstead that was settled in the 1600s, trying to remember its name. Naturally it wasn't relevant, but it was occupying my mind.
I was so wrapped up in that, that I almost missed the creatures in the field the next farm over.
"Woo!" I cheered to myself, banking and turning to circle over the cattle again. There were about twelve, and three calves. They were milling about in a yard - as I passed over the house and the driveway that led up to it, I saw that it was identified as a wildlife sanctuary. Maybe they figured this was someplace they could find something to subsist on. Any port in a storm?
I bounced off the turf a few times and staggered to a standing position, a good distance away from the cows so as to not frighten them. As I turned to face them and raised my goggles, I hoped the look I was getting from them wasn't truly one of bemusement like it seemed.
At that instant was the first time it occurred to me that the cows might have some greater sentience, either on the level that Buddy's intelligence seemed to grow, or even higher, to be on par with us. As I trotted up to the cows, I smiled brightly and tried to think of something to say.
"Good morning!" I said. "How are you all?"
They all, to the last, stared at me.
"Okay then," I mumbled to myself after a moment. "My name is Stormy and I represent a group of people - well, we used to be people, now we're ponies. Maybe you think that's funny or just desserts, maybe not. But it occurred to us that we haven't had any fresh milk in a good long while, and you probably haven't had anyone care for you or pay any attention to you at all, since the Event. How'd you like to work together to solve our mutual problems?"
One cow chewed on something for a few moments.
"Um," I said, not sure if I was selling them on it or not. "We have a field we've set aside that will have plenty of grass and soon enough some milking equipment so we can attend to your needs. It's over this way a couple miles. Are you up to walking a couple miles?"
I stood there with my hoof pointing towards the field near the park in Brougham. True enough, my circuitous flight had taken me to a place just about three kilometers from where we'd planned to house the cows. Possibly they could have even found it on their own, if left to their own devices long enough.
Finally, at long last, after several uneasy moments, one of the cows stepped sideways, turned ever-so-slowly, and lumbered towards the edge of the field. She let out a sudden, prompt "moo", and in a far-from-coreographed maneuver, the cattle all turned to follow their leader.
"...Great!" I said, jumping up to a hover and following them slowly. "I know you're going to like it with us."
The animals didn't need much herding; they managed to stay together as a group and follow my directions for the most part. Still, every time I had to stop to open (or worse, find and then open) a gate, it took a couple of minutes to get everybody moving again.
The Ponytown Cattle Drive of 2015 took a little over an hour and a half to complete. By that time, my compatriots had rescued all the hens and taken them back to Ponytown, and sent Jeff out to the pasture with the truck to look for me.
"Took you long enough," he called out, standing on the hood of the truck watching me approach from the far side of the field.
I was hovering over the herd as they loped southward; though once they spotted the fresh, tall grass, they seemed to quicken their pace a bit. "These guys seem to want to go their own pace," I explained, keeping up with them.
"Looks like you had success."
"Yeah, relatively close by, too, otherwise I'd be out here til nightfall. These guys seem to be willing to dance with us - funny thing, they almost seem like Buddy."
"I think I know what you mean," Jeff said, nodding, hopping down from the truck and walking over. "The chickens seemed thankful once we got them out of that hellhole."
"How bad was it?" I asked.
"Two we couldn't save. Three more malnourished, and eleven relatively healthy. Damnedest thing, the malnourished ones probably would've gone the way of the dead ones if they hadn't been force-fed."
"Say what?"
Jeff nodded. "The other chickens were keeping them alive." He walked up to a cow. "Hello ma'am, mind if I take a look?" With no response forthcoming, he ducked under her and began inspecting her udder.
"This is gonna be a little surreal," I said, stumbling to a landing, watching him work.
"Tell me about it," Jeff's voice came from under the cow, who was standing there chewing away disinterestedly. "Oh, man, maybe we should have gotten the milking equipment straight away."
"You're kidding, they're producing still? Now? Whatever?" I said.
"I don't know how good of product it would be, but this poor girl's swollen and probably pretty sore."
I held my forehooves up and looked at them. "Please tell me we'll get a machine. I don't know if I can figure out how to milk manually with hooves."
"It's probably for the best if we do. I don't suppose there was one near where you found them?"
"I can go check, but I got the feeling they were kind of nomadic, standing out in a field as they were."
"If you don't mind. Worse comes to worst, we can go looking tomorrow. Or maybe Swift and Rich can help relieve these poor girls."
"There's a thought," I said.
"I'm gonna look them over and see if there's anything urgent we can do for them. Go look for a place that has a milking parlor. If need be we can take the worst-off ones to it, if it's decently nearby. Otherwise, when we find one, we'll try to uproot it, and bring it here on the trailer and install it with a generator or windmill from Ponytown."
"Got it," I said, throwing a mock salute and taking off again.
It took several hours, but I finally found a barn with a milking machine. On the way I'd come across a lot of creatures that'd not made it without human intervention, and I got pretty depressed for a while, even feeling guilty; thinking about us playing house in a shopping mall while these poor animals died of starvation or disease.
You can't save everybody, I tried to remind myself. Even if we had been able to go door-to-door, the best we could have done for most of them was set them free to fend for themselves. I certainly didn't know how to care for pigs or llamas. Dogs and cats I could have let loose, as I said, but what would I have done with a pen full of hungry goats who'd eaten everything in their paddock down to the dirt?
Jeff was still with the cows when I got back with the good news about the machine. Karin and Swift had joined him, driving up in the Prius. Swift was sitting nearby, watching bemusedly as the two Earth ponies were seemingly chatting with the cows. Of course, they were having a one-sided conversation, but it was the same kind of talk any and all of us had had with Buddy. These animals seemed to understand us a lot better than before, and their visual communication cues between one another and us were scarily detectable now.
"I wonder if it's them that got smarter," Swift said as I came to sit down with her, "or if we've moved closer to their level now that we're ponies."
"Whoa, that's deep," I observed.
"You know what else is deep?" she said, holding up a hoof. It showed signs of vigorous scrubbing with a scouring pad, and there was still gunk from the chicken coop in between the sole and the frog.
"Oooh," I winced. "Want me to whip up a deluge?"
"I'll get a shower later," she said dismissively. "But nopony can say we haven't worked hard today, that's for sure."
"I still feel bad leaving you guys behi-"
"Don't," she insisted, cutting me off. "We all had our parts to play. You did what only you could do, flying around to find these guys."
"I just don't want you to think I was having fun flying all over the place."
"Oh, horsepucks," she shot back with a smirk. "You had the time of your life and nopony will believe otherwise. But you were working at the same time, so that's cool."
I smiled faintly. "Thanks then, I guess," I said.
"What's got you so mellow?"
I gestured with a hoof to the cows. "Thinking of 'these guys' and all the other creatures that have been wandering around out here while we've been making good lives for ourselves. Me giggling over being able to fly while these poor cows are staggering around trying to find something to eat and feeling like they're about to burst."
"You can't blame yourself for any of this," Swift insisted. "We've had a hard enough time surviving on our own. You've got to look out for yourself before you even try to help anypony else. You can't be of any use if you're not in good shape yourself."
"I guess that's true," I conceded.
Jeff came back, followed by Karin. "Well, the good news is, nobody is sick, and nobody needs immediate attention. Other than the fact that they're all bloated and miserable. But we can solve that after we get the parlor moved here and running, hopefully tomorrow."
"How big is it again?" Swift asked, looking to me. "I can probably pick the whole thing up and put it on the trailer myself if it's not too monstrous."
"I'm pretty sure the main workstation you can handle," I said. "It seemed to be hooked to some ancillary equipment as well as what I presume were holding tanks. I think they'll need to be transported separately."
"Probably three trips," Jeff nodded. "Four if you count the generator coming up from Ponytown. Sounds like an all-day affair."
"It'll be worth it," Karin said. "They're eager to get milked and get back to work."
"You can tell?" I asked.
"Haven't you ever talked to Buddy? Same thing," Karin smiled back.
"If you say so," I shrugged. "But if any of these guys ever acts like they're laughing at me, so help me, I'll-"
"Take it like somepony who knows they're three times your size and could step on you until you cry for mercy," Swift interjected.
I couldn't help but feel like at least two or three of the cows who'd overheard the exchange were leering at me.
Speaking of all-day affairs, it was nearly five PM by the time we got back to Ponytown - Jeff and Karin in the truck, and me and Swift in the Prius.
"As much as I hate to encourage your crazy behavior, messing with nature," Swift said as we pulled in to the parking lot, "we probably need some rain on the garden here tomorrow."
"Messing with nature," I echoed with a dumbstruck tone. "You mess with nature all the time, making shit that shouldn't float float."
"I know what I'm doing and what my limits are," Swift argued. "What if you accidentally make a tornado or a hurricane?"
"Come onnnn," I replied. "When have you known me to get out of control?"
"Do you want that alphabetically or chronologically?" she smirked.
I batted at her with a hoof. "Oh shut up," I said with a grin.
She changed the subject abruptly, nodding towards the windshield. "Hey, look who stopped by."
I looked up to see a familiar black flatbed vehicle stopped in front of our entrance door, with Rich and Serge standing or sitting nearby. The platform was conspicuously free of any cargo except one small item.
"Hmmm," I said, then nodded in the same direction my friend had. "Pull up."
The two vehicles stopped near the HPI drone, and all four of us climbed out to join our other two friends. "She's here now," Serge called out. "Everybody is."
"Good," came a tinny voice from the device on the flatbed. "You all need to hear this."
I walked up to the platform; Serge had been looking at me when he said 'she's here', and nodded from me to the device. I blinked when I saw it. It was a piece of equipment that looked like a cross between a phone and an old-school laptop computer; I mean the old ones that had bulky screens and thick connecting and peripheral cables. The folding part was a display, and on it was the weathered face of a sixty-some-year-old balding man, with wire-frame glasses and a troubled expression.
"Aha, Ms. Storm," he said, and I found myself taken aback. The concept of seeing a human talking was such an alien one these days. "We finally meet face-to-face, as it were."
"Dr. Baker," I said, recognizing the voice. "Hello. Neat contraption."
"It's little more than a satellite phone with video capabilities," he said. "It does the job, though."
"We have a handful of satphones," I interjected, "but we never got them to work."
"Oh? Perhaps you didn't have the right numbers to call. We have a number of them working across the continent... around the globe, really, what with the outreach team in the EU," he said offhandedly. "However, I have to bring us back to the reason I'm calling, and I apologize for cutting right to the chase. We've... well, the best way to put this is we need your help."
"I'm sure we can assist," I said, looking around at my friends. "What's the matter?"
"I'm afraid it's a rather big ask," Baker said. "And trust me, I did not want to do this. My orders are coming from higher up."
"What is it?" Serge said with impatience.
"We've overextended ourselves," came the reply. "We knew we were sharing with you - and the other large colonies - more than we could afford, but thought it would be something we could resolve with a little bit of rationing. Unfortunately an... incident recently caused us to re-assess our food stocks and supplies situation, and... well, the numbers just don't come close any more."
"So what are you saying?" I asked.
"Your colony, and the other larger ones, are very close to being completely self-sufficient, to the point of even being able to trade your excess product - to have an excess product in the first place. You'll recall we have an agreement to share the crop from your new garden we helped build. I absolutely loathe doing this, but we are going to have to demand more than our fifty-fifty share of the first crop."
I held up a hoof to silence the cacophony of protests erupting around me. It eventually worked, but took a few seconds. "How much?" I asked.
"Eighty-eight percent, no less."
"That doesn't leave us a lot. And is that a permanent thing or a one-time 'request'?"
"I hope to God it's a one-time request, miss," the doctor said fervently. "I have no desire to give you the short end of the stick after we've worked so hard together. But my superiors insist it's necessary for our survival. If we don't get what we need, not only will we have to break off our co-operative relationship with you, but..." He chewed on his words a little before speaking further. "Rumor has it that future missions to accumulate supplies for our survival will take on a more aggressive nature."
"What does that mean?" Swift wanted to know.
I looked the man in the eye - or at least in the camera lens. "What he's saying is, if they know of a resource they need, they're just gonna take it, and it doesn't matter what's in the way, or who gets hurt. All for the greater good of the HPI. Am I right?"
"I so wish it wasn't this way, miss-"
"Yeah, you and me both. So basically you helped us get self-sustainable, and now we need to return the favor. Am I right?"
"That's about the size of it," he nodded grimly.
"What assurances do we have that if you get what you need, we can go back to a mutually beneficial relationship?" Jeff asked.
"I swear," Baker nodded vigorously, "Get us on our feet, and I'll personally see to it that we return to being the best of allies in perpetuity, if I have to go to Raven myself."
"Raven?" someone behind me echoed.
"Never mind," I told them. "So, we need to make sure this crop is the absolute best we can deliver, and harvest it the second it's ready, and give you nine-tenths of it."
"...Plus anything from previous shipments that you've ended up not using," Baker added reluctantly, as if he'd 'forgotten' to mention that.
"Of course," I snarked. "Do we have a deadline?"
"We know your crops grow faster than they did in post-Collapse Earth due to your innate abilities," he said. "Twenty-four hours after harvest, maximum."
"Or else the gunships come and take what you need in force."
"Don't say it like that."
"We'll get it done," I promised. "After that, we'll need to talk about our future arrangement."
"I understand completely. Trust me, miss Storm, I am on your side here. I argued against this as long as I could - probably longer than I should've. If there was room, or time, I'd probably have been censured or charged. Regardless, I have your back. Help us, and I will do everything in my power to make sure it is worth your while."
"We'll get it done," I repeated.
The rover lifted its robot arm, grasping the video-phone, and held it out. "I have to take the RVR back, but please keep this for future contact. It's simple to operate and charges from standard AC mains power, which I believe you have in abundance."
Swift took it when I made no move to.
"Thank you, miss Quill," Baker said. "My, this looks interesting from this angle," he mused distractedly, referring to the phone being caught in Swift's magical glow. Then the call ended and the rover backed away.
Everyone flinched when I lashed out with a hoof and kicked at the phone. It must have been made of sturdier stuff than it looked, because it didn't break - just wiggled a little in Swift's telekinetic grip. That, or I'm a weak kicker.
"Don't get so upset," Jeff said, trying to calm me. "We can do it."
"I'm not mad at that, or at him," I snapped. "It's... it's his bosses! And this whole thing." I paced in a little circle, wings spread wide, ranting. "First the chickens are near death, then the cows are sick, and now we need to drop everything and save people that knew this whole friggin' thing was going to happen and hid underground while the rest of us-"
I was cut off when I felt a pony step up to me and put a hoof around my foreshoulders. "Relax," Swift said softly, hugging me. "We've got this. Together we can make it work."
"I know," I frowned, quieting down. "But part of me wants to trust him and the other part of me wonders what's going to stop them from saying 'Wups, we partied too much last night, we need all your food again this week' over and over again!"
"Stormy," Swift said, quietly, in my ear. "We're not going to let that happen. And if by some inexplicable chance they end up actually doing that, we can just pick up and go somewhere else. As small a group as they are, there have to be places they're not able to reach."
"I hope it doesn't come to that," I said.
"We all do," Serge spoke up, and I realized I'd all but forgotten they were all there. Now they were crowding around me and Swift.
"Jeff and I will just have to put in early and long days this week," Karin said. "No big deal."
"We'll all pitch in," Rich said.
"I don't think they know about the livestock yet," Jeff mused. "If we can get them producing by tomorrow evening or Friday morning at the latest, then we'll put it in with the crop on Monday morning, and hopefully 'wow' the HPI into dropping the hardball routine."
"Yeah," Swift nodded enthusiastically. She started to guide me inside. "Sound okay?"
"I guess," I mumbled, as the group began to disperse.
Swift leaned against me as we walked along. "Don't sweat it. It's gonna work out. The farming wizards are going to make corn and beets and potatoes and tomatoes and everything else appear right before your very eyes. The chickens, they're gonna be okay after a couple days' rest. And the cows... well..." She smirked. "They weren't cows anymore. They were waiting to be, but they forgot. Tomorrow they'll see the sky, and remember what they are."
I chuckled. "Thanks," I said.
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Your slice of life continues to be wonderful, I could read about daily life in Ponytown for days on end without getting bored I think.
Anyway, it probably was going too smoothly.
Hello HPI. Doesn't come entirely as a surprise that an organization such as this will cash in its favours with suddenly high interest when the need arises. Their science hub is in Alexandria and, seen from this timeline, will soon be out of the picture for the foreseeable future. Do they have 'hardware scavenging teams' from colonies based in interesting cities and other agricultural communities to pressure? Spy satellites are uncomfortable things to have gazing down at you.
That strategy could backfire badly though... we'll have to wait and see I guess.
And finally! Ms Storm confirmed as leader.
It was Fenix. That is all.
WHY DO YOU TORTURE ME SO?!?
It seems that the inevitability of keeping an unsustainable existence is that you always lean on your friends who do, even if it's not your choice. Sad, but true.
What a sad time. First the wooohooooo dairy products are back on the menu, followed by, about that...
Hmm... they should, realistically, be able to survive for quite a long time by scavenging canned food. Fresh food is nice to have, but it shouldn't be an immediate problem if they can roll into supermarkets all over the place and collect all the cans.
I wonder did the HPI just discover that canned food outside their shields gets contaminated by magic much more than non-canned food, to the point that it becomes inedible? If so, that's a pretty awful new problem to need to deal with on top of everything else.
Hah! Did you write the entire rounding up the chickens and cows section just to be able to finish with that line?
I'm glad you're going to continue with a sequel. I like these characters, and would definitely read more about them.
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Actually, to tell you the truth, no; I was 95% done the chapter when a "what's your favorite Firefly quote" thread popped up on Reddit, and when I saw the line posted, I knew I had to
mangleuse it.Same with the Velcro discussion between Cel and Grey a few posts up - I had already written the 'feed bag' exchange by then and left it in just to see if it'd get a mention. ;)
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It did not go unnoticed.
theponytackshop.co.uk/var/ezwebin_site/storage/images/for_pony/pony_care_stable_equipment/hy_grazing_muzzle_grazing_mask/210995-25-eng-GB/hy_grazing_muzzle_grazing_mask_medium.jpg
Here's to you, Stormy.
The sad thing is, according to the official wiki, this story cannot be considered canon. The HPI only trades with Alexandria.
http://poniesafterpeople.pbworks.com/w/page/97837594/Timeline
Edit:
Also relevant: http://poniesafterpeople.pbworks.com/w/page/97803592/Human%20Characters
Finally caught up and I have just one issue to bring up: The Prius.
It is statistically improbable that the Prius they found was a plug-in. Around 75 000 Priuses are plug ins, while around 4 000 000 are not (they charge off the petrol engine). In addition, the all electric range in those things is terrible; they'll get less than 20km at the best of times before charging.
Other than that, great work. Not quite as good as the origin story, but it close.
6390443 Luckily, after the epilogue, your argument is invalid.
The HPI does what I said it would ;)
All of fledgeling ponykind work together to ensure the rocket with the probe on board launches on time. And ponytown will do its part... and is maybe one of the coming 18 citystates? Madame President Stormy.
I didn't want my reply to appear contradictory, but it's true, TCS is canon to the LPoE world.
I do have the last chapter almost ready to go, too - just doing a little tiny bit more polishing. Once it's up, I will probably focus on Highway and an unrelated project for a bit before jumping on the TCS sequel. Gotta figure out what all it will entail (and perhaps how it will fit in to Founders and/or the third in the core's trilogy).
6408445 Thank God, because I was getting really worried when I saw that you said this was the 2nd to last chapter!!
You write a wonderful story, and it's VERY interesting to see how Ponytown has MUCH different interactions with the HPI, than in the mainline story.
Keep up the great work!!