//------------------------------// // Chapter XXIX: Jerusalem // Story: The Conversion Bureau: Setting Things Right // by kildeez //------------------------------// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1345 HOURS ISRAEL’S “LITTLE EQUESTRIA” JERUSALEM, ISRAEL, JEWISH QUARTER ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “…of Britons returning to their homes, believing them safer with the special ‘clearance zone’ secured in Equestria-Two. The British announcement of a forward base having been established within the area coming as good news to…” *CLICK* “…in Dusseldorf being the second deadly attack by Newfoals within the last month, following shortly after the Ambassador Bridge attack. These events now have countries all over the world looking to their own Newfoals in captivity, wondering if…” *CLICK* “…still underway here in Dusseldorf, with all personnel having been accounted for, the death toll is officially being placed at one-hundred and fifty-five for last week’s…” “Twilight?” The lavender unicorn looked up from her notebook. “Hmm?” Celestia smiled thinly at her former student, the bags under her eyes growing more apparent. “I’m glad you found a way to tap into human airwaves, and that you can even maintain the spell while focusing on your work, but if you please…” Twilight blinked, looked over at the magically-conjured screen, saw the headline “155 killed” displayed in blood red, and immediately drew her magic back, dissipating the screen in a second. “S-sorry princess,” she squeaked. “It’s okay, Twilight,” Celestia insisted, turning back to the window. “It did serve as a reminder for why we are here.” Few cities had been changed by the Collision Wars quite like Jerusalem. Tokyo had been levelled, Shanghai had been erased, but Jerusalem had, strangely enough, flourished. One of the few places where ponies had attempted neutrality and delegation in place of forced conversion to spread their so-called peace, the city held a new minority in a group of willing colonists with its population of Newfoals. It was this special enclave, surrounded by walls and patrolled heavily by Israeli military units, which had drawn Princess Celestia. She peered through the tattered remains of the curtain on the abandoned hovel they’d found and scowled at the walls towering over her. “Ingenious,” she grumbled. “She was fiendishly ingenious here.” “Who was, Princess?” Twilight asked, not looking up from the small notepad where she had scrawled several lines of complex equations, having thrown herself back into her work almost as soon as she was certain that Celestia had nothing more to say. “Her…” Celestia muttered, still in that angry tone. “The other me, the one responsible for this mess.” The scratching of the Bic pen on notebook paper fell silent. Celestia could feel Twilight’s eyes boring into the back of her neck, but she didn’t turn around. “Princess…” Twilight gasped. “You can’t be complimenting that evil thing, can you?” “Respect your enemy, Twilight,” Celestia turned to face her former student with a glare on her face like a general surveying a battlefield. “The moment you fail in that is the moment you have lost to them. In other lands, my doppelganger attempted to force the native humans to accept conversion using subterfuge and blackmail. Here, however, she offered a peace long strived for, as well as an escape for those grieving loved ones lost to the constant warring here. In a land such as this, such an offer must have seemed like sweet honey to a housefly.” Twilight blinked once or twice, then the pen drifted up to tap her chin in thought. “That…does explain the sheer volume of Newfoals in this area,” she intoned. “Sending her own subjects to live here probably only boosted her cause as well.” Celestia smiled, beaming with pride. “Exactly, my dear student.” “Still, I don’t know what you hope to find inside,” Twilight joined Celestia’s side to gaze up at the imposing concrete walls, only her ears were folded down and her jaw gaped with fear. “There can’t be many native ponies left from the war…” “But there are, my dear Twilight,” Celestia’s smile never wavered. “This is the single greatest concentration of ponies on Earth: short of the other Equestria, of course. We can work on an easier cure for the Newfoals living outside the walls while studying the ponies inside. So many ponies living in a major human city? This place might hold the key to the kind of peace that doesn’t need to be enforced by the tip of a sword or the barrel of a musket.” “Rifle, princess,” Twilight corrected. “The humans use rifles, which have grooves along the inside of the barrel to spin the projectile and increase accuracy.” “Ah, yes, thank you, Twilight,” Celestia said. The pair stood side-by-side for a while, Celestia eventually draping a wing over Twilight’s shoulders. Twilight allowed only a few minutes to nuzzle the feathers, then quickly pulled away. “I need to get back to my calculations,” she said. “You know we aren’t going to bust into a place that well-fortified on hope and friendship alone.” “No,” Celestia smiled over her shoulder. “But it helps.” Twilight smiled back, then bent over the pad and resumed her work. Celestia let her gaze linger a while longer, watching those bright, lavender eyes dart back and forth across the page. She had been incredibly lucky to find a mare like Twilight. Odds were that even now, Twilight was crunching away at problems and issues that would stump any normal pony within minutes. Who knew what that mind could entertain itself with in its spare time? Who knew how Twilight Sparkle could keep herself entertained with… “Xenolestia,” Twilight said suddenly, still staring at the page. An eyebrow rising, Celestia asked: “What?” “Xenolestia, that’s what we can call her,” Twilight finally looked up at her, speaking in a matter-of-fact tone. “It’s a mixture of your name and ‘Xenophobia,’ the fear of strange peoples or customs. Really, ‘Alienophobia’ is more fitting, since that is the fear of alien species, but that doesn’t quite click like ‘Xenolestia’. How would we fit it? ‘Alielestia’? ‘Celestien’? And even then, it makes her sound like she’s an alien, not extremely phobic of them.” Celestia blinked. “I know it’s not really creative…at all…” Twilight sighed and rolled her eyes. “Like calling the protagonist of a story ‘Anonymous’ and claiming it’s so anypony can insert themselves in as the main character when really you’re just too lazy to come up with a name, even if the results look completely idiotic the moment they’re put to paper. But I was never much of a writer, so…” “No no, it’s fine,” Celestia held up a hoof to end Twilight’s tirade and offered a calming smile. “Xenolestia is fine.” Satisfied, Twilight grinned and returned to her calculations, her forehead wrinkling with concentration. Celestia stood in place, dumbfounded for just a second, then the smile rose on her face again, like a warm fire taking root in a cold hearth during a winter night. And so, with her back to the window, she never even noticed the white van pulling up to the front gates, just beyond a squat set of buildings. And even then, it was too far away to hear the squeal of rubber as the driver suddenly slammed on the accelerator, or the crunch of the bumper warping around the concrete bollards surrounding the gate. But it was definitely not too far away to mask the tremendous explosion that pumped into the air, sending waves of heat and shockwaves that washed into the tiny, dingy room with ease, tearing the ratty curtains off their rails. Twilight darted to her hooves as Celestia’s wings reflexively curled around her, the heat and light washing over them as if a second sun had landed in the hovel’s front yard. When the last of the shock had dissipated, Celestia slowly rose to her hooves. Her ears rang, but not loudly enough to drown out the distinctive, faint popping of the humans’ weapons discharging in the distance. “Oh no,” she whispered. “P-princess?” Twilight’s eyes swam in every direction as she rose to her wobbling legs. “Princess, what…” “I do not believe we will need your calculations, Twilight,” Celestia said, her wings fanning in preparation for flight. “Are you still in flying condition?” Twilight nodded shakily, flexing her wings for emphasis. “I believe so, Princess.” “Then let us be off.” Celestia darted out the gaping window, her wings extending the moment she was clear of the hovel. Twilight was only a few seconds behind, swooping towards the rising cloud of dust and the sound of gunfire and explosions spreading like wildfire through the compound inside. The pair swooped over what was left of the front gate, spying the blackened remnants of a uniformed body draped over the flaming ruins of a desk, all covered with brick and mortar dust. Celestia’s teeth clenched as she dropped to the dirt just inside the gate, her ear perking up at a sound that until then had been covered up by the ongoing rattle of gunfire: the screams of a large crowd of people. Her teeth clenched harder, her head swiveling in the direction of the noise as a shield materialized around herself and Twilight. “Stay with me, Twilight, just keep at my side, it will all be okay.” Celestia panted as she turned and galloped through the dusty streets. “Y-yes, Princess,” Twilight whimpered. A few seconds later, the sound of gunfire peppering the shield drowned her out. Anything she might have said was lost under the near-constant popping of bullets dissipating under the shield, like ladyfinger firecrackers being set off at their hooves. Grimacing with the effort of trying to fight both the occasional “Tachyon Inhibitor” as well as the sheer force of the bullets trying to penetrate the shield, Celestia pressed forward. “That building ahead,” she grunted. Twilight nodded, and verged to the side, pulling them behind a low wall covered in shrubs, completely trusting Celestia’s senses even before she saw the muzzle flashes in the windows of the squat apartment complex straight ahead. With Celestia tucked into safety, she added her own power to the shield and poked her head over the wall. Immediately, the familiar crack-thump of bullets pounding into brickwork echoed by her head, along with a few fizzles from the shield. She ducked back down. “They’re not very good marksmen: I saw the soldiers in the Dusseldorf camp make shots just as far as we are from them, if not further.” “They must be from one of this region’s terrorist groups,” Celestia replied, her mind already shuffling through the pile of possible candidates she’d read up on. Of course, to target this compound specifically left one candidate at the forefront of her mind. Not that it mattered. “No matter who they are, they are perfectly placed to ambush any response from the outside,” Twilight whispered, her voice hoarse with concern. Celestia sighed. “I had hoped it would not come to this again, but if I must, I will,” she fanned her wings out. “Twilight? A distraction, if you please.” Nodding, Twilight’s horn ignited with magic which flowed through her wings. Fanning them out, a magically-enhanced breeze whipped up around her, screeching through the sand and dust and kicking up a humongous, choking cloud. “Thank you, Twilight,” Celestia said, swooping out over the top of the cloud and sailing high into the sky. Stay there until it is safe, she ordered through their mental link. After a few moments, Twilight’s voice came back: I just nodded, and then realized you couldn’t see me nod. So…yeah. Suppressing a chortle, Celestia rocketed back downwards, pulling up at the last moment to land gracefully on the complex’s roof. Recovering with her shield in place, she stormed across the rooftop, wings tucked behind her. A door opened to the side. A man with a gun peeked out. A side-kick from her hoof later, he was down. She wrenched the door wide open and thundered down the stairs, two more men appearing below her, rifles aimed upward. Wings tucking in, she bounded over the staircase railing and rocketed downward. The men peeked up at her, only to practically bump their noses against her snout as she vaulted onto them, slamming both face-first into the concrete steps. She thought this was a good point to say something smart. Daring Doo would say something smart here. Oh well. Bucking the door open, she tucked herself low and crawled along the linoleum, the flickering fluorescents barely lighting her way. Once she’d reached the middle of the hall, she curled up in a ball and perked her ears up, listening. A mother comforting her crying baby. No. A couple kids whispering to one another in the local language. Also no. Two sets of footsteps tensing just beyond the door behind her, accompanied with the rattle of rifle ammo clattering against itself in a weapon’s loading mechanism. Bingo. Pressing her rear hooves against the wall, she rocketed herself off with a powerful buck, slamming through the door with only a mild magical boost, splintering the cheap faux wood with ease. A spray of bullets careened past her, but then she wrenched the weapons out of their owners’ hands, clenching them tight in her magic to bring the stocks up against their jaws. The fighters falling, Celestia swooped to their sides, checking pulses and breathing as her magic crushed the rifles in its grip, twisting the barrels completely around as if this were a cartoon and Superman had just gripped some Mafioso thug’s gun. Taking a moment to pause, Celestia sighed, her wings fanning out and stretching near her body. Twilight, I am inside. I have disabled… she paused, counting in her head. …five of the fighters. Oh thank…you… Twilight replied awkwardly. Should I teleport to you? The princess weighed her options, wondering if it would be better to handle things on her own, but dismissed the idea upon spying a telltale series of contrails in the distance. Yes. I will need help to disable resistance in this structure before local military forces arrive. A split-second later, Twilight winked into existence near her, and Celestia gladly accepted a warm nuzzle before the smaller mare turned to the two men on the floor. “They’re just unconscious…r-right?” “Of course, Twilight,” Celestia said as she walked towards the window, noting the sigh of relief from Twilight’s side. “Now, I only need you to help maintain my shield while I work to clear out the remaining populace in the building.” “O-okay,” Twilight concentrated, and a translucent purple shield flickered into existence around her princess. “But how are you going to do that?” Celestia just grinned. “Luna is not the only one who can assume a nightmarish form at will.” She took off out the window, chased by the rattle of bullets as she raced higher and higher into the sky, aiming for the sun. Twilight had to squint to keep up, watching the princess disappear into the glare, chased by confused shouting as the chatter off the humans’ weapons died off to an occasional blast. Suddenly, a jet of flame burst out of the sky. The sounds of shooting disappeared entirely, and Twilight’s jaw dropped in horror as a nightmarish face consumed her vision. A grin filled with jagged, razor-sharp teeth greeted her as she gazed into a pair of eyes with piercing, red-hot pupils that seemed to judge her for every sin she’d ever committed, as if she were staring into the face of a new god that had just been born: one more akin to the wrathful gods of old. Its wings unfurled, curls of flame licking off every feather as heat blasted the building’s façade. “Run,” this god hissed, her voice seemingly whispering into Twilight’s ear. “Run, this is your only warning. Run, and make this into a good game. Run, and behave like good sport. Run, and maybe your death will be less painful than the others’.” Twilight suppressed the urge to wet herself as the building filled with the screams of panicking men, women, and children. She turned and pressed herself against the door jamb, peeking out into the hallway to find a stream of terrified humans: men scrambling over one another, women and children rushing in a panic, fighters dropping their rifles in a mad dash for the exits. Her jaw dropping again, Twilight turned just as Celestia alit in the room, daintily spreading her wings out to soften her landing. Celestia smiled, spitting out a set of plastic fangs and grinned with her normal, pony teeth, letting the fangs clatter across the floor. “It has been far, far too long since I got to do that.” “Princess…” Twilight gasped. “What was…” “The Solar Flare Delusion: came in handy during the Dragonland Incursions of 576,” Celestia mused as she trotted towards the door, peeking around the hall. “Takes quite a bit of power, the sort I need to build up over days. And don’t worry about the city panicking over a giant floating terror in the sky: I can localize it to a specific area, such as this building.” “It was…incredible,” Twilight said, still stunned, her surprise as plain as the dust and dirt caked to her cheeks. “Do you suppose so?” Celestia smiled as she tapped her chin thoughtfully, glowing beneath Twilight’s praise. “Really now, you don’t have to exaggerate to inflate my ego. It’s alright.” “No, I do mean…” And then, something shuffled behind the door next to them. A choked-off sob sounded. The ponies eyed one another. A fine couple of scholars we are, their looks said. In their rush to clear the room, neither had bothered to check behind the closed door off to the side. Screwing up her eyes, Twilight nodded as Celestia took position on the other side of the door. She raised a hoof. Twilight sucked in a breath. Celestia’s hoof dropped, and Twilight bucked the door open. In a second, light poured into the room, and a group of humans screamed inside, waving weapons. Twilight’s horn charged up, ready to unleash a bolt, but Celestia’s hoof stopped her in her tracks. “Princess, what…” but she trailed off as she took a second look inside, and realized she’d nearly unleashed a stun spell against a group of children. Two girls in long, full-body coverings (birkas, she thought they were called) and a boy in a long, dirty robe, all holding spatulas and kitchen knives and frying pans and wearing looks as though they were staring down the devil himself. Which makes sense from their point of view, Celestia mused. She could hear Twilight physically restrain a curse word before it left her lips. Sighing to herself, Celestia turned away from the door, shutting it gently. Twilight eyed her as she trotted towards the door. “Princess?” She asked. “Where are you going? We have to help them!” “We already have, Twilight,” Celestia replied, her voice quivering. “But…” “There is nothing more we can do here,” Celestia insisted. “We can only move on to wherever we are needed next.” “But they’re still afraid!” Twilight gasped, pointing back at the door with an almost frantic, desperate gesture. “We’re supposed to be fixing that fear, right!? How can we do that if we just walk away from a group of children fearing for their lives!?” Celestia paused in her walk, just short of the stairwell. Two men still snoozed in the corner, safely tucked away. “Do you honestly think that I could have a chance at allaying the fears of children in this world?” She whispered, her head bowed, her voice shaking. “Here, where I am the monster that haunts their dreams? That conquers their lands and murders their brethren?” Twilight opened her mouth to speak, but then a little sparkle dribbled around Celestia’s snout and plinked off the floor. Realizing that she was watching her friend and mentor break down, that this was what it looked like for a goddess’s heart to shatter, she did the only thing she could think of: she embraced her. Her smaller, purple wings meshed with the ivory white ones. “You’re not that monster,” she whispered, her eyes closed as the hug tightened. “I know,” Celestia whispered back. “But I can’t stand being seen that way.” “Miss pony?” The pair turned in surprise to the little voice behind them, turning face-to-face with the little boy from the closet. Neither of them moved, worried that the slightest motion might send him scurrying back like a frightened rabbit. As it was, they could see the fearful, wide-eyed way he looked at them, and the way he clenched the kitchen knife in his little hands until the knuckles turned white, and they could tell it was taking all his courage just to stand there and talk. “Yes?” Celestia finally asked. The little boy bit his lip, but continued: “Bad men…you make go ‘way?” He asked in semi-broken English. Again, Celestia nodded. “Thank you.” Celestia did not reply, only watched the little boy, wide-eyed, as if she could not believe what she was seeing. “You make sure sister safe?” After a few more seconds of frozen, wide-eyed staring, Celestia asked: “I will try. Where is she?” “She went to check on mama.” “Where is your mama?” “At the special hospital, the one for humans maked ponies.” At that, Celestia’s eyes bugged out. She stood up, pulling free of Twilight’s grasp. The boy flinched back, raising the knife, but thankfully he did not scurry back into the room. “There is a Newfoal hospital in this place?” Celestia asked, her eyes still wide, her breathing rising and falling in ragged gasps. After a while, as if piecing together what she said with what English he did know, the boy nodded. “I thought they were all outside, in the colony. I thought this place was just for ponies and humans!” An edge of frantic panic entered her voice. The boy shook his head. “Some human-ponies not eat, not come out right. Almost die. They in the outside-place. The rest in here.” “That colony is just a massive hospital,” Celestia gasped. “The able-bodied ones are in here, where they can be held by walls…of course! Oh Tia, you idiot!” She stepped towards the boy, easing back whenever the fear rose in his eyes. “My child, where is your mother’s hospital? Can you point towards it?” Nodding, the boy extended a shaking finger down the hall, out the window to the sea of squat, dusty buildings baking in the desert sun. One building, however, stuck out above the rest: a building surrounded by fencing and barbed wire. And, Celestia thought with a grimace, Likely a Tachyon Inhibitor or two. “My child, stay inside,” she said, her look growing stern, like a mother giving instruction. This was a look Twilight was only too familiar with. “Lock every door and window you can see and hide like you were doing before. Do not open anything again until the local military restores order, do you understand?” Nodding, the shaking child slowly turned and walked back into his apartment, grabbing the remnants of the front door and easing it shut. When only a narrow crack remained open, he looked out and peered at them both. “We will find your sister and mother, and we will do everything in our power to ensure they arrive home safely,” Celestia pressed a hoof to her chest and bowed in the universal sign of a pony making an unbreakable oath. “You have my word.” The boy gazed out at her a while longer, his wide eyes still locked with hers, then he looked away and closed the door without another word. Instantly, Celestia turned towards the stairwell, galloping to the roof again as fast as she could. Twilight fought to keep up, her hooves stumbling over the concrete as she scrambled behind. “Princess, wait up!” She gasped. “Why do you think that hospital is in danger!?” “It’s them, Twilight! It’s the Human Liberation Front!” Celestia gasped as she bucked her way through the rooftop door again. “What!?” Twilight gasped, recalling the name of the highly-mobile international terrorist group that had formed in the weeks leading up to the war between Equestria and mankind. They appeared to be the only ones who suspected something might be going on with Equestria and the Conversion Bureaus sprouting up everywhere, and the evidence they gathered amidst their numerous attacks on bureaus had actually been what eventually spurned the UN into action. “I-I thought they faded away with the end of the war!” “Faded, perhaps, but not gone, not completely,” Celestia grimaced as her wings fanned out, ready to take to the skies. “That kind of hatred rarely vanishes on its own. It remains, festering under the surface, feeding off the pain of loss to spread itself and keep destroying and burning all around it. Even without a war to fight, the members of the HLF would still feel that anger, at the UN for not acting sooner, at the ponies that remained, at the Newfoals for what they represent…” Twilight paused mid-flight, her wings keeping her hovering as she rounded on Celestia. “You sound like this has happened before.” “It has. Time and again, against countless enemies and in countless forms,” she grimaced. “Sombra was a royal guardspony before he took up dark magic to save his home from foreign invasion. From what I gathered from his brother, Tirek took up the art of magic-draining after hearing about one of his friends being captured and beaten by a group of pony bandits. Time and again, hatred and violence might start off with noble intentions, but it cannot defeat other forms of hatred and evil. If it tries, it only takes that darkness into itself and becomes tomorrow’s new evil, fostering more hatred and more evil to continue the cycle.” Twilight settled in next to Celestia, keeping pace with her, flapping her wings to keep up. “What can stop it?” She asked after a long, drawn-out silence. Keeping her eyes locked ahead, Celestia’s reply was almost lost on the wind: “Understanding.”