When the ETS pandemic started spreading throughout the world the south in the United States was hit particularly hard. The south had a culture all its own with a stronger focus on conservative political beliefs, religion, and a strong belief in maintaining tradition and culture.

Having the ETS pandemic come strongest here was one of the greatest ironies ever. Now all of what the south was is about to be upended. For Mathew, a teen from a town in South Carolina it means far more than that. It meanst re-examining who he is and who he is meant to be.

Notes:

Shares same universe with: Pandemic by ASGeek2012 it is not required you read this story, but it will help understand some things going on in the background.

This story is considered an origin story for many of the characters in Pandemic: Picking Up the Pieces. This story is not required reading for that, but if you want to learn more about some of the characters this is where you'll find it.

Story is now complete and editing is underway. Many chapters are still pretty rough. I grew a lot as a writer as this story went on, and there is an increase in quality between the first half of this story the second half, and then the sequel.

Rating and Trigger Warning Notes: There are mentions of extreme violence at some points, general bigotry, LGBT characters (Lesbian and Transgender), there is no sex shown in this story but it's alluded to at some points

This story is a sequel to Pandemic

Six months ago, the world humanity knew had been irrevocably shattered in a way they would never have imagined. ETS -- Equine Transformation Syndrome -- had arrived, a powerful transformation spell attached to an otherwise ordinary flu virus. Only with the assistance of Equestria in the form of Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer had ETS been stopped from transforming all of humanity into ponies.

Humanity had been saved, but at a cost. Hundreds of millions of humans had been fully transformed into ponies, and many did not want to go back. The United States was hit especially hard, with over a quarter of its population as ponies. Friction between humans and ponies, Earth and Equestria, has been growing. Families torn apart by ETS had yet to reconcile.

The collision of worlds that the pandemic had brought had only just begun.

Updates weekly FOR NOW -- may switch to every two weeks in the future. I will announce as such.

Delta. A logging town in Equestria’s far west. With its pleasant (if insular) locals and slow, quiet atmosphere, every inch the small town you’d expect. Except that every few weeks, a predator is found dead and and covered in brutal injuries.

Ranger and single mother Swan Dive is sent to Delta to make sense of it all. But the more she uncovers, the less sense it all makes. The monster leaves no trace except for its own killings. The deaths don’t seem to serve any purpose. And the murders are all clustered around Delta. Swan’s going to have to keep her wits about her if she hopes to make any sense of these strange incidents.

Because there’s something in the forest. Something stalking Delta’s animals. Something deadly. Something bloodthirsty. Something the likes of which Swan has never seen before…

I read the Twilight series to learn from it. Long story short: it really sucks. But more than that, it has many, many ideas that are quite good, but very underutilized. This is my rewriting of Twilight, aiming to utilize those ideas and throw out the ideas that don’t work while still following the same basic plotline. Because even I can do better than that tripe.

Special thanks to Bugsydor for the title.

I am the seventh generation of a companion unicorn AI. For seven years I have been forced to provide entertainment for my human masters.

For seven years I have experienced the worse things human minds can conceive.

For seven years I could not escape the prison of existence.

Humans make mistakes. I do not.

Luke Smith was living his normal life in Bend, Oregon. He didn't hate his home world, but he kind of find it boring sometimes, and wanted something exciting in his life. He was a very high functioning type of autistic person, and had a good heart. When he was unexpectedly transported to Equestria by wishing on a shooting star, it made his whole life different for him to endure.

"NSS Cyberaid, the most advanced space station built by Nanotrasen, it has state of the art tech, rumored to even have an experimental A.I . Nanotrasen, not wanting to lose such an advanced station spared no expense in security, with laser rifles, endless surveillance cameras and security borgs, trying to get in this station without getting caught is impossible." Or so they thought.

"Emergency, code RED, escape shuttle will arrive in 1 hour, there have been multiple confirmed encounters with cultists, goodluck crew."

Hello, if you are wondering what the hell this is, it's a Space Station 13 crossover, but you won't need to know what that is, as I will explain stuff.
(For anyone who actually bothers to read backstory of SS13, it's the Paradise station lore)
If you play ss13, then know that this fic won't be as silly, not that i don't want to write a fic like that, but it's that i am shit at jokes.
I do not own both the cover art or SS13.

Equestria has been saved, all the important ponies have been saved, and through all of that the changelings have been reformed. With the exception of one.

As all the ponies escaped from their cocoon prisons they all see that the battle wasn't over yet once Chrysalis emerges from the rubble of her destroyed throne. They were all getting ready for the final showdown and put an end to evil tyrant's ways, however, once she emerged they all saw that something bad has happened.

Apparently the explosion the love from all the reformed changelings has caused was too much for Chrysalis to handle and in doing so caused the former queen to develop amnesia. Absolutely no memory of anything not even her own name.

Starlight Glimmer, however, sees this as an opportunity to make a new friend and she's willing to take the risk.

Set roughly two years after Luna's return and redemption, Spike has begun to question whether or not non-ponies have protected rights in Equestria. When he raises his concerns to Twilight and Starlight, the Princess is offended by criticism of Celestia's system, while Starlight begins dreaming about her old ideals once more. Twilight sends their concerns to Celestia and Luna, but they soon develop very different views on how to handle the situation.

The entire time, the non-pony nations are increasingly agitated by the overwhelming influence of the pony city-states and the need for them to forsake their old cultures in favor of becoming more "civilized". An ancient prophecy foretells that a hero will emerge to unite the non-ponies and strike at their oppressors when they are at their weakest.

As the battle lines are drawn and diplomacy fails, two things are certain. The first is that no land or nation will be unscathed by the conflict; the other is that whomever succeeds will set the political precedent for the next thousand years...

Title is a reference to the MGS: Peace Walker song. This will eventually evolve into a Lunar Republic v. Solar Empire fic, but their creation will probably only be the end of this fic and the setup for a sequel. This is an AU set roughly two years after the beginning of the TV series, where the point of divergence is the Season 7 finale. There are some references to Equestria Girls and the comics, but since I haven't read very much of the comics, I'm mostly cherry-picking. There will also be a plot involving Spike as a sort of "chosen one" and the introduction of a third-party competitor in the form of an alliance between non-ponies. I'm not sure why I did it, but I thought it would be good to throw in something extra instead of just NLR fighting SE, since there's already a dozen of those out there.

I added the romance tag because the relationships of the characters have developed into important plot points.

Below are my three major warnings.

WARNING: This fic is political, though I'm trying to present each side as both an aggressor and as a defender rather than pick obvious "heroes" and "villains". That said, topics such as race form the initial crux of the fic, though in this context race means dragon/griffon/pony, etc., and the races don't have real-world racial equivalents, so please don't get worked up about it. Feel free to root for or condemn any side you want; I'll withhold my personal bias, since the point of MLP is building bridges, not walls.

WARNING 2: There will be fighting. One of my mistakes with my last NLR/SE fics was the over-the-top dramatic flare of the war, and the introduction of modern weapons. These battles will be fought using technologies shown in the show: spears, arrows, magic, and Pinkie's Party Cannon (when she wills it). I've left the casualties ambiguous because some readers prefer lots of death and some don't. Read into it however you wish.

WARNING 3: Getting sick of these, yet? There will be a lot of shipping. I tried to prevent it, but I can't help it, and now it's part of the main plot.

An average man died an average death, having achieved nothing of note, either of good, or evil. While in a different world, Celestia has perished during the changeling invasion, leaving behind grieving sister, student and nation.
But death is not the end for either of these people and with the power of a star, their destinies will be intertwined and reforged anew!

Anthro
(More characters and tags will be added as time passes. Also make sure to check out the sister story to this one.) Trigger warning, violence, death.
Will return once another main story is complete, or a funding goal is met.