Light Despondent Remixed

by Doctor Fluffy

Episode 1: For The Kill

“I can’t believe this! We’re on the verge of being exterminated backwards and forwards in time - and we fight over the scraps. We’ve got no choice - we have to unite, ponies and humans alike, before there’s nothing left to protect!”

Lieutenant Colonel Sabine Northwoods, PHL R&D

“...But what you really have to be afraid of is the EHS. Blacker-than-black-ops. If there’s an HLF threat, or a PER cell that’s not far enough underground, the EHS will cut it out.”

Nimbus, PER Pegasus potion-bomber in the so-called ‘Shieldwall Corps,’ a unit of PER led by Shieldwall.

Gardner: “You have to trust us, because we know we can win - and we won’t do that without any of you. We have to win to preserve the good ol’ USA, to save the human race as we know it. And winning means we have to accept that we’ve gotta do some stuff we don’t like. Leave a few starving refugees behind before we firebomb a place to shit or have to evac it at Barrierfall? We can’t save everyone. Kill some civvies to clear out a PER nest? It’s them or more people ponified. Our job isn’t to save everyone. It’s survival. Our job is victory. Our job is keeping our own people alive. Anyone who isn’t with us might as well not be human. It’s the end of the world… and when faced with extinction, every alternative is preferable.”

Unknown Reporter: “But what about the HLF? Surely they’ve-”

Gardner: “Let me stop you right there. Whatever you’re suggesting, you can’t. I grew up around these people - people who think they can always do one better than the government. People that are always oh-so-independent until the moment they need their welfare check or need to take responsibility, then it’s the driver’s fault for hitting a cow they should’ve cared for. People whose defense for armed occupation is that essentially, property rights don’t mean crap so they can do whatever they want, up to and including murdering ponies that I personally promised some farmers would be great workers. They don’t care about logic, they just care about their own power.”

Press conference with US Marine Corps Colonel Robert Gardner

“They call refugees ‘the Dispossessed.’ Well, that’s a relative term, one for people like Johnny C that’ve read too much Vandermeer. To you, to people who still have a house or apartment you don’t have to run away from, that’s people like us. But some refugees I know, like my friend Abraham… they have  families, electronics, heirlooms, photos, stuff from the old world. To us, the Dispossessed are people that lost everything, even their minds. Johnny C, Abraham, his brother Dalibor, and I? We saw this one HLF woman in a hunting cabin near Errol, along the Magalloway… she had a newfoal she claimed was her son. She’d fitted a speaker to its stomach, and claimed she could hear the very faint sounds of weeping from it… begging for mercy, for her to save it. Crazy stuff.

That’s what being one of the Dispossessed means to us.”

Blossomforth, PHL pegasus.

“We have to kill them. Slaughter their ranks and fold in anyone with enough shreds of sanity, anyone reasonable enough to accept that maybe killing every pony in sight doesn’t work! Harsh? You don’t know harsh. We don’t have the option of leaving them to their own devices! They and the PER will come out of the woodwork, scrabbling over the remains and fucking us over a barrel. We leave them, and the last bastions of safety in this world go to shit! Come next November, when the Barrier hits Canada, we’ll be fucked if we leave them as they are, and anarchy’ll reign! We need to defend the lines behind our home front!”

July 15, 2023. Lieutenant Yael Ze’ev, member of the ‘Dominant’ faction of PHL, a subgroup seeking greater emergency powers during wartime. One week before the disappearance of Sutra Cross.

“I had PER friends before the war. And when we split for good during the Three Weeks - when I left one of them with a black eye - they asked me: ‘Sutra, why are you helping them! None of them want anything to do with us! With ponies! The ones with me are the right kind of human, they’ll-’”

At which point I cut her off.

“‘Anyone that’ll sell out their friends to save their own skin, not to mention becoming one of those darn things, is not the right sort of anything. I’m not doing it for the criminals and murderers that you think every human is, Honey. I’m volunteering my medical training and spells for the scared families and ordinary citizens in need of help. Can you honestly tell me that everyone deserves what the Empire will visit on them?’

She said yes, so I punched her and felt something crack. What would you do?

Sutra Cross, radio interview on the subject of the Sutra Cross Medical Convoy

They’ll go power mad. Not today, no. Not even tomorrow. But soon. You can see it in the propaganda. You can see it in the way they make subtle insinuations about those not part of their little group. You can see it in the way the PHL blends the political and the military. You know who else blended politics and the military? The Nazis. You wanna call that an exaggeration? Right now, it is. But it won’t be. It won’t be when the dissidents, the outspoken, the people who think they’re going too far, start disappearing, getting arrested. They’re already covering up the deaths of civilians, sticking medals on Gardner’s chest or giving the Butcher of Nipville a slap on the wrist instead of a firing squad. Call it Godwin’s law if you like. You’re happy now, when it’s PER they’re after. But then they’ll come for the HLF - not just the extremists, the Carter-following traitors, but all of us. Then the anti-military. Then the opposition parties, or the protesters who don’t like the PHL being so knee deep in all the governments. And then, one day, they’ll come for you. And there will be no one left to speak for you.

Officer Samantha Yarrow, HLF, the Reavers, speaking to an underground radio station known for anti-PHL-government sentiments. Said radio station was raided three weeks later, just before the Massacre Of Defiance, on Robert Gardner’s orders, and all members either arrested or shot during the raid.

Of course they want to destroy us or bring us onboard. It’s not just a matter of dealing with the split and the fallout from that. They would work with us for that. No. They want to consolidate their power. That’s understandable, not just because they think they need to, but because that’s what everyone wants. Some of them might even do it for honourable reasons, or what they think are honourable reasons. But make no mistake: choosing to focus so much on us instead of the true enemy is folly. Fringe groups and crackpots, those can be dealt with internally. But the Empire needs our attention most of all. I’m not in the business of politics or jurisdictions. I am in the business of winning the war.

Daniel Romero, HLF, Ex Astris Victoria.

I don’t have a problem with authority in and of itself. I have a problem with authority assuming it is right merely because it is the authority, merely because it holds titles and prestige. Having a title doesn’t make you right. I have the title ‘Commander’, but the reason my people follow me is because they choose to. Bonds of trust and loyalty, far beyond anything they held to their countries, far more than any respect for a word. The UNAC, the PHL, they fight the same enemy I do, but they’re not the be-all or the end-all. Authorities are not right because they are authorities. Authorities are right when they are right. And sometimes, they’re not. Sometimes, you have to make your own choices. They don’t usually like that, of course, but as long as we stay clean and they stay focused, we won’t have problems. And if we do… well, we do.

Maximilian Yarrow, HLF Commander.

Y’know, all this stuff is silly. The real enemy’s out there, bigger’n we know. This is a war of magic, of gods and demons, and we’re still stuck turning our wheels in the mud of earthly things. Truth is, all the tech we’re makin’, all the guns, that ain’t the only adapting we need to make. We need to change how we think. That’s the only way we’re gonna survive.

“Jim” of the Mystics.

An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, so they say. I say, perhaps when they are all blind, they will finally use their ears, and listen! If that is what it takes, then it must be so.

Hiro Mifune, former UNAC.

“Money doesn’t mean much in these times. Sure, the rich may be able to escape from the front line, hole themselves up in places like ‘the Last Resort’, or invest in walled communities with their own little private armies to continue living out their lavish lifestyles. But all they’re really doing is prolonging the inevitable.

But I… I just can’t in good conscience sit back. It’s tempting, I’ll admit that much. But when the enemy is so ruthlessly dedicated to wiping us and everything we’ve ever done as a species out, sitting back is not an option. It’s not the sane or conscionable option.

I’m no fighter; I barely feel comfortable even handling a pistol. But I still try to help in some ways. I still record songs for my fans; they say it helps keep the population’s morale up. Though using them for food drives helps too, I think. I occasionally volunteer at shelters, taken in some refugees as they were passing by, help out with the “behind-the-scenes” things that keep the war running smoothly. I know any little thing helps us out.”

Interview with Chance the Rapper from Complex magazine