The Conversion Bureau: Helping Hands

by CV12Hornet

Prologue

“I’m sorry, Luna.”

With those whispered words, Celestia fired the Rainbow of Light from the Elements of Harmony, engulfing the black alicorn who even now screamed defiant threats at Celestia. Nightmare Moon struggled with all her considerable might, but the harmony magic could not be denied. After a scant few seconds, both the Rainbow of Light and Nightmare Moon were gone, replaced by a crater pattern on the moon resembling an alicorn head.

Celestia gazed at the new visage. She had never wanted to do this, but Luna’s transformation had left her with no choice. Sighing, Celestia turned away toward Canterlot Castle. She had much to do. The sun had to be put back in place, she had to calm the entire country and clean up the chaos left in Nightmare Moon’s wake. And she had to plan. Nightmare Moon’s lunar prison would not hold forever, and she needed a plan to more permanently deal with the dark alicorn. And if she could free her sister from that monster’s grasp, so much the better.

As Celestia loped through the area devastated by their brief but intense battle, a small mote, as black as interstellar space, latched onto Celestia. She did not notice when it burrowed deep into her soul. In fact, no one would notice until all the work she would put in would be nearly undone.

407 A.N.M./1415 C.E.
Agincourt, France

One hobby Celestia had picked up to fill her time and distract herself from her grief was to observe other worlds. Most were barren, lifeless hunks of rock; most of the rest had only non-sapient life. To date, she had found only one world with any sapient species, and what she saw of these “humans” (as they called themselves) worried her.

Humans were prejudiced, prone to turning to violence as their first choice in far too many activities, and most lived in abject squalor while a select few lived lives of luxury, uncaring for the less fortunate. That was not what made Celestia uncomfortable, though. What made her uncomfortable was how similar these beings were to her little ponies. More specifically, how similar they were to her ponies before the first Hearths’ Warming Eve.

Celestia, determined not to make any hasty decisions, decided to see what the human world was like herself. Her scrying spell was not good at capturing the broader picture. So, she planned to project a ghostly form of herself into the human world. Celestia lit up her horn, and after a few seconds of vertigo, saw the human world appear in front of her. Almost immediately, she suppressed the urge to retch.

She had appeared on a battlefield. And it was thoroughly unpleasant, even for a battlefield. On one side were a group of armored humans slogging through thick, glutinous mud (Frenchmen, according to her research). Some remained on horseback (Celestia shuddered at the alienness of the face), while the vast majority were now on foot. Arrows fell around them in large numbers, disabling horses and staggering men. Even as Celestia watched in horrified fascination, one of the armored humans stumbled and fell, face-first into the mud. He tried to get up, but couldn’t. A few minutes later he was still, drowned in the mud. And yet the French kept going forward.

Celestia tore her gaze away from the armored humans to the other side (English). These men remained behind a palisade of wooden stakes, dressed in leather and wool and holding an impressive longbow. To the sides were more armored humans. The archers were pumping out arrows at an impressive rate, but it was clear they were beginning to run low, and the attackers were getting close.

Eventually, the attackers ran out of steam, and those that could fell back. Both sides seemed largely spent. The defenders had exhausted their arrows, and were still badly outnumbered. The French were, in fact, gearing up for another assault. Celestia wondered what the English commander would do.

What happened next would have made Celestia throw up had she still been solid. Instead, she could only watch in horrified fascination as the archers pulled out daggers, hatchets, and other assorted weapons, and began prying open the French knights’ armor like crabs. Luna, always the more martial of the sisters, would have recognized the move as cruel but ruthlessly effective. To Celestia it was simply cruel. Finally, Celestia could watch no more, and terminated the spell.

For a half hour afterwards, Celestia lay on her floor, curled into a ball, only able to repeat one phrase: why wouldn’t they retreat? She tried to tell herself that this was just one example, that not all humanity was like this, that generalizing from one data point was lousy statistical analysis.

But even in her head, the words sounded hollow.

Deep in Celestia’s soul, a small speck of darkness chuckled in satisfaction.

1632 C.E./624 A.N.M.
Thuringia Province, Holy Roman Empire

Over the two hundred years after Agincourt, Celestia had reluctantly come to terms with what she had witnessed. For the most part, she simply figured humanity would grow out of it, much like her little ponies. She continued to peek into the human world, watching as the humans began to colonize new lands and create great works of art and architecture; all encouraging signs (though she continued to puzzle why the viewing spell so favored this one continent). Finally, Celestia worked up the courage to try the astral projection spell again.

Once again, she appeared in a dense woodland. Not hearing anything nearby, Celestia flared her wings and took to the air. Turning her head around, Celestia took in the beauty of the German countryside, a beauty that was ruined by a large column of smoke. Frowning, Celestia briefly considered not checking, only to dismiss the idea, despite the lead ball in her stomach. Flying over, Celestia once again would have thrown up had she still been solid.

A large group of armed men - soldiers - were pillaging a small village. Some were ransacking the cottages for anything of value. Others were busily torching the ransacked cottages. The vast majority, however, were gathered in the village square, killing the men, carrying off the children, and as for the women-

Celestia’s mind decided it did not want to go there, and immediately went on autopilot. Even in the pre-Hearth’s Warming days, ponies almost never raped ponies. It just didn’t happen. A small, detached part of Celestia’s mind mused that it was probably a due to a gender ratio heavily skewed towards females.

Unable to keep watching, Celestia flew as fast as she could away from the village. And yet, somehow, no matter how far she flew, she kept seeing the same scene, over and over. Finally, desperate with shock, disgust, and horror, she terminated the astral projection spell, and immediately had to run to the toilet.

Two hundred years! she screamed in her head. Two hundred years and they haven’t gotten any better. Hay, they’ve gotten worse, if that’s even possible! It didn’t occur to her to wonder why the astralization spell had sent her to yet another battlefield. The horror scenes replaying in her head prevented that. Sleep did not come easy to Celestia for months afterward.

And the darkness fed hungrily on the despair.

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
July 5, 1863 C.E./859 A.N.M.

Why do I do this to myself? Celestia wondered. It had been another two hundred years. And she had gotten the urge, once again, to visit the human world in her astralized form. This time, she wasn’t even surprised anymore when she arrived on a battlefield; it seemed to be the only thing humans did.

This time she did not appear in woodland, but in a cloud of dense smoke. All round was a thundering roar that she could not identify. Lifting herself above the cloud of smoke, she saw a long row of cannons, manned by soldiers in butternut uniforms, firing constantly on a long ridge about a mile distant. Celestia shuddered to think of the destructive power of these weapons; that was the reason she had outlawed them when they were invented in Equestria. With this much artillery, surely the enemy line would be broken, an assumption reinforced when she saw several thousand soldiers line up for a charge.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As it turned out, the enemy line hadn’t been broken, and the soldiers in butternut simply died in droves before ever getting close. And yet, they didn’t stop. The soldiers continued to charge into certain death, and yet they did not falter. Celestia frantically bolted for home, and once again curled up into a ball, a mantra playing in her head over and over again: Why don’t they retreat? Why don’t they retreat? WHY DON’T THEY RETREAT?!

By the time Celestia had recovered, she was determined to get answers. 400 years, some of the most heinous acts she had seen, and whoever ruled that world had yet to do anything about it? She would have to find him or her, and give them a piece of her mind. And so she began to scour the globe in what little spare time she had. 80 years later, she found her answer...

Canterlot Castle, Equestria
941 A.N.M./1945 C.E.

Celestia lay on her bed, lost in thought. Over the past six years she had been watching a war in the human world. That was not unusual; humans seemed to be constantly fighting each other. No, what was unusual was the scale and the cruelty. Only that war in Germany a few centuries ago came close to the cruelty, and none matched the scale.

She had seen massive prison camps, where people had been tortured, starved, and killed in vast numbers simply because they did not fit the racial ideal of their captors. She had seen scientists test biological weapons on innocent farmers. She had seen massive flying machines dropping explosives on cities without a care for the people living in it. She had seen seagoing steel fortresses pounding each other to pieces with bomb, shell, and torpedo. Bataan. Holocaust. Dresden. Okinawa. Stalingrad. Leningrad. Hiroshima. Nagasaki. The names meant little to her, but the events did. This... her little ponies had never been capable of anything like this. She could not, would not, believe that any immortal ruler would be capable of standing by and watching this. There was only one reasonable conclusion.

There was no immortal ruler.

It made sense. Of course they would be this violent without a guiding hand like hers. Her course of action was clear. She would have to bring the humans the light of harmony. It was her duty.

And so Celestia began to make plans. Plans to be executed after Nightmare Moon had been eliminated, one way or another. After Discord was resealed; after the Crystal Empire was restored. Plans for-

Conversion.

Author's Note:

First story, woot! First, I'd like to give thanks to the crazy wingnuts of Spacebattles, specifically the TCB Story Idea Thread, for inspiring me to make this. Second, I was trying to depict how Celestia went from wise, benevolent ruler to irrational, xenophobic tyrant. Let me know if I've succeeded.

Comments

[Dead Turtle]

I'd say I sympathize with Celestia here.

[Sandman]

Did ROB make her interdimensional viewscreen get stuck on Bugfuck Awful?
Or is she just ignoring all the good humans have done to and for each other.

[LazerFace]

So that evil nightmare spark gets her to look at the worst things? Also wouldn't it be guiding hoof at the end there?

[Lord Charles]

2169570it seems from the bronies i met that believe man kind to be pure evil wich is not the case

[Spiritus Arcane]

2169467
I'd have more sympathy if she looked at anything other than some of the bloodiest battles of history. It's like trying to tell someone about cars by showing them all lemons.

[Sorrowfulwinds]

3720826
Did you not notice how a bit of the nightmare got into her? It would seem logical that there is something guiding her subconsciously so she doesn't see anything good.

[Doctah WAAwee]

Huh... she only saw all the wars we've had. Nightmare Blob Thing doing its work.

[Doctah WAAwee]

2169467

oassf.com/en/media/images/facepalm-card.jpg

You disgust me.

[Eon333MS]

I realize this story is cancelled, but this is one of the first if not the first conversion bureau story that let's us see things through Celestia's eyes so we get her point of view, it's not perfect and it seems too coincidental that she only saw negative things on Earth whenever she used the spell, but still good job on giving us Celestia's perspective could use a little work though.

[OrchestraOfRuin]

3722394 I agree she hasn't seen the great things we can create like; Michelangelo's David, The Sistine Chapel, Statue of Liberty or the Sydney Opera House, things built solely for humanity's capacity for ingenuity, self expression and creativity. Oh well at least she didn't see what Mussolini or Stalin did.

[PeachClover]

I was trying to depict how Celestia went from wise, benevolent ruler to irrational, xenophobic tyrant.

What in the god damn? Celestia never went from benevolent ruler to irrational xenophobic tyrant. Wherever you got this idea it is not part of TCB universe.

[RobertLuller_Bass]

2169467
Really ded toitle?How?