Equestria has been an island continent in the Pacific Ocean for decades, and the world's nations have kept marching on.

Ivan and Katna, two Ukrainian orphans have been left by the wayside of society. In the daily struggle for survival, they've found themselves at the bottom, and their hope of a healthy future is kept from them: species transfiguration. To survive they must delve into the edges of society, go beyond the comforts of safety, and travel to the ends of the earth for each other.

Content information: science fiction, transformations, questions of personal growth, survival duo, and lots of journeying.

Editing Staff:
Chapter 1-3 Pre-readers: Scootaloser, Sorren, and Shadow_Fire.

Pre-readers: Blazing Rune and Pleaseworkforonce.

Editor: Sharp Logic.

Pinkie Pie has always been random, but when she shows up to Twilight's library with a straight-cut mane, Spike is immediately worried that some tragedy has caused her to enter into a depression.

Sometimes a girl is more than the fur on her head.

Inspired by the cover art of Darth Franny.

Now edited and proof-read with the help of PrettyPartyPony.

Tirek has won, and Twilight's friends are gone. She and the other princesses have just one chance left. Maybe if one of them can go back, she can warn them right when he escapes and stop this all from happening.

It might be a long shot, but it's the only chance they have left.

Diplomacy has failed. Six years have passed Equestria's crowning of the princess of friendship, ushering in a supposed unprecedented age of peace and harmony. The concept of warfare is, to most ponies, nothing more than an unfathomable legend. They have let their guard down.

An unknown enemy has seized the opportunity to attack Equestria with terrifying new weapons of war, bent on taking the fertile land and restoring an ancient order. The valiant efforts of the Royal Guard have given Princess Twilight and her arcane scientists time to research and develop a response to their attackers, and the time has come for that response to be implemented. Utilizing weapons and tactics borrowed from another world, five squads under the command of Princess Luna will infiltrate the forests of the Equestrian Northwest to destroy a revolutionary magical matrix that Twilight refers to as the "radio" - a tool that allows enemy ponies to communicate across vast distances instantly.

Nightmare Two is comprised of three foalhood friends who, rather than be separated from each other in the draft, volunteer to become one of the five Nightmare squads. With their bodies forever altered to suit the needs of their mission, the three young mares join legions of ponies armed with powerful weapons to partake in a horrifying new breed of warfare - Equestria's first in over one thousand years.

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Heads up, folks. If you wouldn't mind leaving a comment alongside the thumbs-down, I'd appreciate it. This is my first foray into fan fiction and although it's a hobby I nonetheless wish to get better. :)

Got some FAQ's for you guys as well!

- Alternate universe in which the events of "Crusaders of the Lost Mark" did not occur. (As much as I loved it! :D)

- Numerical age tends to vary with headcanon, but the CMC here were just getting started with their adult lives when the draft went into effect.

- The war is pony v. pony, utilizing firearms and the Equestrian equivalent of a tank. The underlying headcanon is that ponies used firearms similar to muskets and tracked armored vehicles akin to our tanks in times of old, and what the enemy currently employs is essentially the natural progression of these technologies.

- There are no real-world weapons or equipment i.e. "Panzer IV," or "M16 assault rifle." Particularly acute details such as the caliber of weapons are also absent.

- Technology is based on that of WWI with some WWII elements. Firearms are primarily bolt-action.

- The "radio" spell matrix functions as what we know to be a radio, but is not identical.

- All four of a Night Mare's legs are permanently replaced by the augments.

- Night Mares are female. Stallions proved unable to properly animate the limbs.

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Hold up, now - fanart? You guys rock. Like, for real. Thanks a lot!

1. A great YouTube video coming from The_Pegasus_Box. Thanks, bud!
Check it out!

2. Click here for the collection on DArt.

3. https://derpibooru.org/740375?scope=scpeac921b191f688d04521575f31608785cbc3bbaa1
[img]https://derpicdn.net/img/view/2014/10/10/740375__safe_anthro_apple+bloom_gun_artist-colon-pusspuss_night+mares.png[/img]

Once again, I am alone in my prison. Doomed to spend eternity trapped in this underworld abode. Stuck in my cage without another soul to comfort me.

Except, for the first time during my imprisonment, I get a visitor. That visitor being the last person I'd ever expect to meet down here.

Kids. Kids. Who are you gonna believe, some old book, or your Uncle Bad Horse?

So, anyway. Like I was saying. Once upon a time...

(One of those damn kids had a wire on him, and put recordings on that tubey thing, one, two, three. And made a video. And wrote it all down, in Russian.)

I think that I shall never see
A home as lovely as my tree.
In its trunk I made my nest
With all things that I love best.
Books to read all night and day,
Rooms to learn and space to play;
But no more growing, no more fun;
No more soaking up the sun;
Nevermore to drink sweet rain;
Or to greet the Spring again.
There is no power or decree;
No magic spell to save my tree.

Cover art by The-Paper-Pony. Used with permission.

In the future, we'll colonize the solar system, cure cancer, clone the human genome, and build trans-dimensional hoodies that can summon tiny talking horses from an alternate universe.

It's pretty snazzy.

Cover art by xioade.

There is no beginning and no ending; only hoodies and the poni poni poni that fill them.

I was the first human to come to Equestria, and I will be the first to die here.

My name is Able, and in five days I will die, leaving behind a filly that looks to me for everything.

These are my last days.

The book was empty. Purely empty. Each page was as blank as the last. There were no words; there was no title. There was nothing but page after page of blank, white paper.

So Twilight reads it.