Chapter V: I Send The Locusts on the Wind, Such as the World Has Never Seen!
This is what the LORD,the God of the Hebrews, says: 'How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go, so that they may worship me. If you refuse to let them go, I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow. They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen. They will devour what little you have left after the hail, including every tree that is growing in your fields. They will fill your houses and those of all your officials and all the Egyptians—something neither your fathers nor your forefathers have ever seen from the day they settled in this land till now.
- Exodus 10:3-6
Manehattan, Equestria]
Steffy looked around the streets of Manehattan, on her way to the recording studio - she had a career as a musician, and the studio had miraculously been through the storm unscathed. After a whole week of the fire and hail raining down on all Equestria, the sky had finally cleared. However, the sun seemed dimmer now, for a reason she couldn't discern. Emergency construction workers were rushing around, trying to ascertain the immense level of damage. There were scorched trees in the parks and craters in the streets, while the rubble of a collapsed skyscraper had blocked 3rd Avenue lengthwise. Ponies were looking upward, nervous that the worst storm in all Equestrian history would start again. Smoke rose from many buildings, and the tallest building in all Equestria, inaugurated 3 years ago, was heavily damaged, its facade pitted and torn while its top floors had simply ceased to exist.
Still, it stood defiant over a city trying and utterly determined to recover. After all, many said, how could things get worse than what had already happened? But still, the attitude toward Celestia was notably different than a few weeks ago. While ponies weren't making there thoughts clear, there was a general feeling of discontent tinged with fear.
~*~
Appleoosa
Applejack had not been driven into Everfree Forest along with Luna and the five other bearers of the Elements of Harmony after the altercation in Canterlot. She had fled to her own farm that day, and had sold her apples quite happily for the past two years or so. Which meant that she had happily given Luna and the others, including Twilight Sparkle, a place to live.
Twilight was quite fascinated by humans (not so much as Pinkie Pie, though), and it had taken Celestia's trickery for her to create the formula for the ponification serum. The humans just had so many new books for her to read. She was quite intently perusing one of these books when suddenly she rushed to Luna.
'What is it?'
'I was reading one of the humans' religious books,' she said. 'You know, the ones they write because they don't have Celestia or you to follow. And...and...'
'What?'
'There's a story in this book where one of the human gods punishes a country with ten terrible plagues because they were enslaving his people. It was thousands of years before where the humans are today, really long ago, and...oh no. The punishments in this book, they're happening right now - to Equestria.'
There was a long silence.
'I think,' Twilight said. 'That Celestia provoked somebody she couldn't fight back against.'
~*~
Appleoosa was a peaceful farming town. Its people were generally not violent, and so, when the woman walked into their town centre, they began to back away. It wasn't like they thought attacking her would help, and they knew when she came to a town something bad would follow in all Equestria.
The crops and apple trees were damaged by the hail, and several houses were now charred husks. The sun shone dimmer now, the smoke from the fires burning that terrible week had absorbed some of its life-giving light.
She began to speak and a dreadful silence filled the town as the ponies awaited whatever terrible pronouncement would follow.
'You have given food to Celestia,' she said. 'You could have starved out Canterlot by denying it its food supply. You might even have made her reconsider her "Purification". Well, that will be repaid a thousandfold. The locusts will come, in such numbers as will blot out the sun over all your land. All Equestria will be punished by the swarm I will send upon you. You will cry out for food and it will not come. You will beg for something to fill your bellies, and your cries will fall on deaf ears. The chastisement begins.'
She raised her staff and struck it on the ground, then left. Some minutes later, the ponies of Appleoosa looked to the west, and saw a black cloud on the horizon, followed by a loud and terrible buzzing.
~*~
Equestria
There had been bad years on Celestia's watch, but Equestria had never been in any serious danger of starving. That time was past. The swarms of iron-wrought locusts blocked out the sun for hundreds of miles wherever they went. When part of a storm descended on a farm, in less than an hour there was nothing but bare earth. Where corn was stored in barns, the locusts ate both the wood the barn was made of and the corn kept inside. Apple trees were strippd clean by the hundreds by the endless swarms.
In times of desperate need a pony could perform the dreadfully barbarous act of grazing, but even that was stripped away by the locusts, who completely denuded massive areas of soil in hours. Equestria had expanded to cover much of the rich Midwestern farmland, but now the locusts were stripping much of that territory bare as an utterly relentless swarm.
The gardens of Canterlot were swept bare by the locusts as well, and with the locusts stripping away the soil's protection came what Oklahoma had known in the Great Depression but which Equestria had never heard of. The dust bowl. Strong winds blew the dust as far as Manehattan, blotting out sight and forcing whole towns to flee for the protection of Ponyville and Canterlot.
Only one farm stood amongst the sea of dust: Applejack's. Something made the locusts completely avoid it, an island of green in an endless sea of red-brown.
In two days Equestria had begun one of the most extensive famines in both worlds' history. Everypony was suffering, except for the newfoals, who always seemed to be well-fed. There were empty stomachs even in Canterlot, where Celestia still stubbornly tried to do something to defy the punishment she had been given.
Four days into the week, Equestria sent its first ambassador to the United Nations in months.
Geneva, Switzerland
The United Nations was located in Geneva now, New York was still too close to the current limit of Equestria's borders.
The pegasus walked into the General Assembly hall, and spoke.
'Our people are starving,' she said. 'The locusts have devoured our entire food stocks, and Celestia-'
'Is getting what she very well deserves,' the American representative said. 'We have a degree of circumstantial evidence that the Barrier is not a natural phenomenon, and its expansion was related to Princess Celestia's activity.'
The pegasus lost her cool then. She was screaming insults at the human delegates, ranting and raving quite dramatically.
'A fine example of Princess Celestia's idea of diplomacy,' the German delegate said. 'Given that she has been so consistently disrespectful and antagonistic to all our countries, the UN, and humanity as a whole, Germany proposes this item. No UN member will give any food, medicine, or other aid to Equestria while Celestia still holds power. Not even if she offers all the contents of her treasury for a single ear of corn. Furthermore, the UN member countries will endeavour to close all Conversion Bureaus still open, through force if necessary. Furthermore, the member countries will endeavour to stop any aid by private organisations or individuals to Celestia or her genocide plan.'
'France is in favour.'
'India.'
'China.'
'America.'
'Great Britain.'
'Israel!'
'Russia.'
'Korea.'
'Portugal.'
'Brazil.'
'South Africa!'
The pegasus had stopped ranting - she looked around silently, uncomprehending. It was one of the only completely unanimous votes ever in the UN. Celestia would be furious when she heard of this.
The ambassador Celestia sent to the UN never came back to her.
Character derailment, rushed pace, genocide...
There's something very wrong with your premise when you have to resort to turning Celestia evil to justify things. And she's totally unrecognisable here. This reads like a religious tract, not a story.
So when ponies commit a xenocide, it's bad, but when a human does it with the power of God, it's ok?
Not to mention your 'protagonist' seems to be blindly accepting of being ordered to go out and mass murder. It reads like she's just going down a shopping list: "1. pick up the milk, 2. kill off thousands of ponies, 3. pick up little Tommy from school"
On top of that, both Celestia being blatantly evil and the ponies turning into frothing lunatics the second anyone implies she's not anything less than gold-plated purity seems incredibly forced
Hey, Varanus and Cloudhammer. Get off of the Chatoyance wagon and learn some pride ya jackwagon!
721513 I'm not so sure your logic makes any sense. Just because I point out what I see as the flaws in this story, you feel the need to bring in something completely unrelated?
Not to mention that this is the comment section for -this- story. If you want to say something to me not related to the story, that's fine. My PM inbox is always open
I read the bible(Not my cup of tea), Ive seen the movie he lists as his inspiration(music WAS pretty good), this story is stupid niether. I agree with cloudhammer, bitch is WAAAY too casually about it. Hell, moses pretty much begged the guy everytime before sending a plague.
Also, sicne Celestia is from a whole nother universe, how can god even be aplicable? I can see if she went to earth but in Equstria? Also, for gods sake, INVISIBLE DINOSAURS?! This HAS to be a troll fic. You cant have invisible dinosaurs and even a minute speck of seriousness.
*looks at the mary sue alarm blaring loudly* seriously making an OC prophet to god? heck by writing this your being a hypocrit. it's a fantasy series! your celestia is off, you made god seem both quick to anger and extremly heavy handed and you stained the conversion bearu universe as a whole! you realise celestia isn't the reason the dome expands right? ponyfication is an offer to help not a punishment. this can't even be called a satire to the series or the bible. you should take a second look at this.
Invisible Dinosaurs?. . . Is our god supposed to be Discord? cause this seems right up his alley.
My good god, this was meant to just give the TCB universe what it needs. Quit being Jackwagons and get off if it offends you that he is dealing justice to Pro-Nazi ponies.
721630
Heh.
You're a silly little thing.
721658 Yup! I I'm crazy and I know it!
I do not wish to be aggressive, but I cannot help feeling like I should leave a comment to the author of this story. I am left extremely uncomfortable by the depictions, not only for their complete mischaracterization of MLP and the Conversion Buereau, but for their blatant misuse of biblical symbolism, and lack of understanding as to how any reasonable being in a position of political power (the UN, the President, even Celestia herself) would behave in these circumstances. You are attempting dutifully to make the ponies out as some sort of villain, (or perhaps only Celestia, though in that case the constant destruction of ponykind is doubly inexucsable), but all I am left feeling is that humankind are proving themselves the barbarians, and that the god you describe as loving in the summary of this tale is very obviously not. There are so many places where I am shaken by not only your misunderstanding of everything all three of these works have attempted to create, but your complete lack of comprehension as to how basic human behaviour works, that make me hope the above commenters are right. If this is a trollfic, you have done a beautiful job.
If it isn't, then I have no real advice I can offer you, but I will hope with every beat of my heart that whatever cruel thoughts have got their grip on you, encouraging you to create such unpleasantry and to put so much work into it- because the technical aspects of the story are much higher caliber than those of many others- will leave you soon, so that you can properly enjoy life without being convinced that everything, from symbolic organizations working to improve the state of mankind, to pastel colored cartoon ponies, are trying to hurt you.
721434>>721571>>721580
The "Moses" figure isn't technically an OC, but a real person.
And, well, every time I brought up the folks that would then inevitably say, "Hey, Big Guy... You're being unnecessarily cruel here..." there would be a steamroller response.
I think you revel a little to much in the depiction of the plagues. Leaving the whole blatant "evil Celestia"-thing and the Nazi-insinuation (those never help) aside, this is little more than "a Roland Emmerich-action flick meets TCB".
If you wanted to recreate the Exodus from Egypt with the newfoals as the as the 12 tribes, than all those dinosaurs and "fire from the skies" was unnecessary.
But this story feels like you just wanted to use the line "Let my people go" and build around it rather halfheartedly.
721513
... what does that even mean.
Look, I'll give merit where it's due and criticism where its due. And this story is due some very serious criticism considering how fast, loose and sloppy it plays with characterization and the actual morals of the Bible.
My advice to the author - either do some serious reconsideration of the characterizations and the message of the Plauge (ie, that it was horrible, that Moses didn't want to do it), or just focus on a different idea.
721730 Who gives a **** about criticism, this is made to be a anti TCB fic. So if ya don't like it go worship your Celestia some more.
721754
Anti TCB? Hate to break it to you, but this makes TCB look good by comparison, and TCB is terrible.
721775 You don't get it do you. This was made to smite TCB fans.
721820
I gathered from your last comment. My point was, if this is the best you can do to attack them, it's best to throw in the towel right now.
721849 Bluh bluh
Hm, how shall I say this?
On one side, you have a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, who kills and tortures anything that dares to be so much as a different shape than her. Truly, she is one of the most horrifying beings ever to exist on either Equestria or Earth, and literary cosmic justice demands she be destroyed at the end of the story.
On the other side, you have a strawpony version of TCB!Celestia.
There is literally nothing else to this story other than that black-and-black moral conflict.
And that is why this fic is completely terrible. Sorry, but it would be dishonest for me to say otherwise.
721970
And I shall join you
iambrony.jsmart.web.id/mlp/gif/tumblr_lkn4dsynFR1qh8k7no1_400.gif
They got what's coming to them.
This is just a perfect mixture of everything to incite a flame war in the comments section.
721273, a lot of TCB fics have Celestia as a hardcore speciest and xenophobe. This is taking that to the extreme. Not to mention as Heretical Zed pointed out, some TCB fics are little more than a gross caraciture of MLP:FiM.
That said, I really didn't like it. The pacing was bad, the protagonist is clearly a designated hero (heroic by author fiat instead of actions) and I'm not exactly seeing the logic behind this.
Granted, I do like it only because I HATE The Conversion Bureau with the heat of a class W blue supergiant. And it was a guilty pleasure watching TCB Equestria and TCB Celestia get their asses handed to them. And I'm atheist.
i like this if god is real and is noticing his children being change by another upstart deity he would stop being neutral and enforce his presence among his flock, but as if the other complaints the main char is showing no sympathy for the ponies she should be pleading for celestia to stop to save her subjects
723276
Ignoring the issues of pacing and use of the prophetess as is...
Agreed. I'm an atheist, and firmly of the opinion that the characterization of God is an artifact of the differing moral codes of the era in which the book was written and evil by many modern standards... and I still love this as a (admittedly very) guilty pleasure, mostly because it gives TCB Celestia what's coming to her. Don't fool yourselves, people, Xenocidelestia here is pretty much exactly how she is in other TCB works (namely, perfectly willing to destroy a species and its culture in their entirety, down to emotions and mentality, despite being OK with Dragons and Diamond Dogs in canon; if she isn't expanding the barrier in a fic herself and it is expanding, it only absolves her of unfair misanthropy as much as it pins the author, particularly if the author doesn't give a good reason and doesn't portray her as tortured by the issue, as any non-evil person by the standards I was taught would be REAAALLLY tortured by the concept of having to extinguish the culture and mind of an entire sapient species no worse than many shown in Equestria), albeit exaggerated in a way easily explainable as the same "hardening the tyrant's heart" thing God did to Pharoah.
My-in-universe self would have a number of very serious, mildly PO'd questions for God and/or miss Prophetess on the issue of collateral damage/who to target in such situations, before moving on to the maltheism (or at least tortured angst and confusion) if they couldn't, wouldn't, or didn't explain (dumbed down) about reasoning to my satisfaction, but here out of universe, I'm just watching the fireworks.
Read this while listening too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2WjCHuYg4g
Epic, if you watched Prince of Eygpt you could feel and see everything that is happening in these pics. Personally I love stories in the bible like the 10 plagues.
they got what was coming for them
I don't like this fic, but i do have to say, she's potrayed here as she is in most early TCB fics, only she isnt subtle about it.
The Celestia here is not the Celestia of the show.
She is the Celestia of the TCB subgenre, who is genocidal. No buts about it. Only there the author is (usually) firmly and totally on her side. I, not being an utter misanthrope, am not on the side of this strange interpretation of her.
Besides, most TCB fics are ponies/their supporters against a strawman, bound-to-lose version of humans, so what's the harm in a strawman, bound-to-lose version of this strange idea of Celestia?
724001
Well, it was what I listened to while writing for the most part. So all's fair then.
Other people/general:
The Plagues are not intended to be shown as a totally 'good' act. They cause excessive casualties and massive damage. They are more like the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I'm not really religious, so any argument that I'm trying to advance a religious agenda is false. Just to clear that up.
721273
The TCB Celestia would. Only a little more subtle.
@tealspeckles, "you made god seem both quick to anger and extremly heavy handed" - that's not canon? Have you read the OT? God is kind of a vindictive little so-and-so.
721434 The list part of your comment is pure humor fuel.
Yeah, she has angered the Lord Almighty, and He is showing how powerless she is before His might.
1651538
Aye, sir. And what might He has... (In a horrible, dark way, it's humorous.)
724985 im a catholic myself and i got to agree with ya dont piss the lord off..
I like your story. Too bad religion is scorned when it comes to the internet. Aside from that, the Conversion Bureau had this coming for a long time. A revenge fim where God does all the punishing. Sure people will say bad things about your work but its your story.
I'm not sure, but I think it should be "The United States" instead of just "America". Just nitpicking.
Way to go Germany! You just earned a moustache!
My only nitpick: why do Exodus, and not Revelations? That would've been much more cathartic.
Oh well. It's only a minor nitpick. Aside from that, it's a well-done story, and certainly entertaining.
While I myself am an Agnostic, that doesn't stop me from enjoying this story. Conversion Bureau!Celestia deserves every bit of what she's getting.
(Makes me wonder though, what would happen to Celestia if the Equestrian sun was turned "as black as Sackcloth made of goat hair"?)
3505309 The whole damn usually-good-for-nothing UN gets a moustache!!!
2326111
I haven't noticed the internet scorning religion any more than they parody and mock politicians. Even agnostics and atheists are mocked and parodied. The Internet makes fun of everything, including itself.
That would have been the perfect moment for it to collapse.
Honestly, even if we did during a more primitive time, we likely would have considered them to be either avatars of the sun and moon or "god-princesses". Either way, they wouldn't have been worshiped. Even those beliefs would have ended once it was learned that the princesses use the same magic and spells any unicorn is capable of and nothing else. Then we'd be disillusioned and be like "if you were goddesses you wouldn't need to use spells or magic at all".
Um, I thought the United Nations is headquartered in Geneva.
Understand, pony, that if we were not at war with Equestria (which we are, we just can't reach them to shoot them), then we would seed food despite Celestia being in power. You do not outnumber us in the slightest and you have practically no industrial power. As such, reducing your manpower is unnecessary, so we would not target your civilians regardless of our hatred for Celestia. Such has been proven countless times throughout human history.
723876
Just a tidbit here while I was reading your comment. I'm not sure but it sounded like during the whole
part, you believed God magically harden his heart.
When I was little and read that part in the bible I thought the same thing and got confused by it, because I wondered why God would force the Pharaoh's heart to harden against him. I thought that it didn't sound right.
I think it meant God would harden pharaoh's heart because God was against him, not in any supernatural way. Like if someone that didn't like you would harden his heart toward you. So when God said he was going to harden the pharaoh's heart he meant he would be the cause of him hardening his heart, just as you or anyone else would be the cause of someone harding their heart toward you. Or in other words, that's how they react towards you. It's enforced by the fact that it says that God doesn't mess with free will. He allows humanity to choose whether to love him or not.
Anyway, it was just something that stood out to me. If you already knew that and I misinterpreted your comment then, my bad.
721265
This is a Conversion Bureau Story. Its par the course
add trajectory the final circle to her crimes
4313712
Then we can hope for another one of these with Revelations instead in the future!
When the most influential countries in the UN all agree on something there’s not much the other countries can do.
721265
721434
Here's a reply 7 years in the making, shut the fuck up you atheist twat.
9698360
i second that.
sure we can argue the hypothetical all we want but at the end of the day it's just a story and not many stories are perfect