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A visual reference for Daisy.

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He did stand out in that regard, so I suppose if anyone was going to leave a mark on her he might be the one. If I remember right from the original story, even most of the slaves were excited to watch and largely indifferent to the massacre, so it's pretty bad when one of the hired mercenaries is the only one who appears to be upset by the spectacle.

This story definitely took a different turn than I expected, to the point I get the feeling that it may have taken a different turn than you expected too, but overall I really liked how it turned out. It was just as long as it needed to be, and had a happy ending despite everything. A lot of good lessons for the characters too.

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Thank you!

Longtalons inspired me to write a "you know what's going to happen, but not how the characters get through it" type of story. The instant the reader learns where Project Phoenix is, they know Daisy's status quo is going to dramatically change.

It was going to have much more of a Dumb Ways to Die in the Wasteland vibe, but I'm happy with what it became instead.

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One character in particular was very much inspired by Kasimir's story. Masque.

His life is how I imagine things may have gone for Kaz if he never joined Talon, and continued to have bad luck finding other work. That's probably how it was for a lot of griffons who didn't want to be mercenaries. They either struggle their whole lives to barely get by, or eventually give in and sign up. Or they're claimed by the wasteland, like Masque nearly was until Daisy happened upon him.
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A funny little note; the Daisies do get found out for what they are. By NCR tax collectors, of all things. They noticed that a few dozen citizens had the same name, looked into it, and decided to apply a bureaucratic solution to the cloned mares. The Daisies were assigned numbers. POV Daisy is #42. Soldier Daisy is #17. Moonlight's Daisy is #36.

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That's pretty funny regarding the Daisies being found out by tax collectors, but it makes sense and plays into jokes about you can't escape the tax office.

And I definitely picked up the parallels between Kaz and Masque, and you're definitely right about Kaz likely falling into a similar position if he hadn't joined Talon Company. He'd have probably scraped by with his father for a while, but once he passed Kaz would have been in pretty deep trouble. The citizens of Oatsfield probably wouldn't run him out of town or anything, but if he fell to the point of picking through trash for food he'd probably just wander off into the wastes to die.

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The Daisies are damn lucky Red Eye never learned what they were. An infinitely expendable population of easy-to-manage earth ponies who were immune to radiation and taint. He'd have Fillydelphia fully rebuilt and the crater mined dry in no time.

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A potentially inexhaustible army too, though using them in that fashion would have probably been inefficient. Maybe treating them as cannon fodder to probe dangerous areas would have been better, and I'm sure Talon Company would have appreciated them taking the initial fire from raiders or whatever.

Using them in the crater would have been an excellent use for them, or any kind of potentially dangerous labor.

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While POV Daisy wasn't a great fighter, there were some, like Soldier Daisy, who spent most of their lives in mercenary groups and militias, and got pretty good at it. The Goddess specialized some of her pawns over time.

This was a good story

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Thank you!

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Sunburn Solar Plant worker: "What a long day. I feel like death."

Daisy 17:
c.tenor.com/h3bxBhKoSIMAAAAC/tenor.gif
"You feel like death, huh? Describe it to me. I'll fact-check."
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The typical Daisy Pusher experience:

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Do they eventually own up to who they were and the fact they could come back after dying, or do most of them still try to keep it secret or in their past? At this point I guess it doesn't matter much to admit it.

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Most tell those they trust. They never could before with the Goddess in their head. Daisy 42 couldn't explain herself to Masque until after Maripony was destroyed.

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Now I wanna read this interaction 😂

EXCELLENT STORY :D