//------------------------------// // Straightforward failures three // Story: The Conversion Bureau: Worlds Where It Wouldn’t Work // by Sora2455 //------------------------------// Ten minutes There was only twelve of them left. How sad was that? They’d started as a full-strength militia, thousands strong… reduced to twelve. The worst part is that most of those thousands weren’t dead. At the same time though, you couldn't really say that there was anything left of them. “What do you mean, ten minutes?!” Hawkeye screamed at Reaper. “It’s exactly what it sounds like.” Reaper snarled back. “Ten minutes is the shortest the timer on this thing will go.” Voodoo bit her bottom lip as she looked at it. It was the device they had lost Sarge and her group retrieving. It was the last great piece of human technology – the last great bang before they went out. Knowing full well what it was, it made her feel scared and comforted and ashamed all at once. To be standing next to the greatest remaining device of the human race, and knowing that it was a weapon of mass destruction. “Reaper.” Hawkeye ground out. “Just one minute is an eternity in a battlefield, and you expect the twelve of us to hold out for ten minutes?!” “Like I said, that’s as soon as I can get it!” “You can’t just touch some wires together or something?” “Hawkeye, the people who made this thing probably spent more time making sure it wouldn’t go off than they spent making sure it would! Ten minutes, and not a second less!” “U-um…” Everyone turned around to face Roadie, the youngest of the group –barely 14, if that. She flinched at the attention. “What?” Reaper spat, but without any real heat. “You got a better idea?” “W-well, um… we know about the timer and such…” “Yes?” Hawkeye demanded impatiently. Roadie glared at him for his tone, seeming to gain a bit of confidence. “But, um, do the ponies?” The ponies found them only a minute or so later. They swarmed round the building, hundreds strong. Reaper did some quick math in his head, and realised that they didn’t have enough bullets to shoot them all, and that was assuming he killed one with each shot. Even knowing that, his hands twitched towards his pistol in its holster. A pony from outside shouted, using the magical equivalent of a megaphone. “Humans! The kingdom of Equestria beckons you to a better life – lay down your arms and accept the invitation of our majestic princesses to a life of peace and friendship!” “Stay back!” Hawkeye hollered back from inside the entrance to the building. “We have hostages!” There was a pause on the pony end. “What do you mean, hostages?” “I mean” Hawkeye yelled, slowly and condescendingly “we are holding people captive, and that if you lot come storming in this building we will kill them!” “You… you… scum!” The pony sounded like he wanted to use stronger words then that, but couldn’t – which meant he was probably a newfoal. There was silence for a little while, and then a new voice boomed out. “Humans. I am Princess Celestia of Equestria.” The breath caught in the chest of every human in the building. It was her! The tyrant, here in the flesh! “Who, exactly, are you holding hostage?” The princess asked, her voice calm and level. Hawkeye wondered if she had actually done this before, or if she was just always like this. “Ourselves.” Hawkeye answered. Another pause. “Excuse me?” “We are holding ourselves hostage. Oh, and you lot of course.” “Are you threatening to shoot yourselves?” “We have a bomb in here. The last of humanity’s great bombs, if you get my drift.” From his position next to a second story window, Reaper could see waves of shock and uncertainty pass through the giant herd outside. Celestia spoke again. “And you are threatening to set this bomb off?” Reaper moved to the right side of the window, and realised with a small shock that he could actually see Celestia from where he was. His fingers twitched. My kingdom for a sniper rifle… Of course, that line of thinking was why the others had taken all but his pistol away from him. This plan relied on them talking their way out, and gunshots would be the fastest way to stop the talking. “Yeah.” Hawkeye yelled. “So stay back, or Equestria becomes a monarchy!” “Aren’t was already a monarchy?” Reaper heard hushed talking, and realised there were pegasi right outside his window.He bit back a curse. The door was on the other side of the room – he would be seen if he moved, if he hadn’t been already. “Technically we’re a diarchy, because of Princess Luna.” Another voice whispered back. “Oh. So, is he…?” “Yeah. He’s threatening to kill the princess.” “The… the… the meanie!” Another newfoal, or Reaper would eat his hat. Then Celestia’s horn lit up, and suddenly Reaper had more important things to worry about. He upholstered his pistol as silently as he could manage, and stood up to aim out the window. He found himself staring into the painfully familiar eyes of a Pegasus. A pale yellow Pegasus with a red mane. Reaper’s heart thudded in his chest, as he realised he was looking at whatever was left of the only girl he had every loved. Lisa… They held eye contact for several seconds, then Lisa – or whatever she was calling herself now – dashed away on her new wings, her eyes wide with fear. The other Pegasus hesitated, but flew after her. Reaper realised, with surprise, that the thought of pulling the trigger hadn’t even occurred to him. -tick- -tick- -tick- -tick tick tick tick- Reaper’s attention was drawn back to Celestia as her horn made those noises, her horn pointed right at where the bomb was. She scowled, and her horn went dark. Reaper blinked. Did… did she just use her horn as a Geiger counter? “It appears that you really do have one of those abominations.” Celestia said, the magical amplification ensuring that she could be heard from inside even while talking normally. Reaper quickly closed and bolted the window, moving to a different room straight afterwards. Keep the element of surprise. His sniper training told him. They do not know where you are. You know where they are. “What exactly do you hope to achieve here?” Celestia continued. “You must know by now that you are the last. There is nowhere for you to go – nowhere to retreat to. I control the whole planet now.” Reaper’s fingers twitched, and he calmed himself by pretending he was strangling a pony. Lying witch. He thought. There was no way that was true. He wouldn’t believe it. “That logic goes both ways, princess.” Hawkeye called. “Like you said, we’re the last. But this isn’t a video game – there’s no reward for 100% completion. Even if we didn’t have this thing, we’d take as many of ‘your little ponies’” he said with a mocking tone “with us as possible. How many pony lives is a human conversion worth?” Celestia did not immediately respond, which caused Reaper to raise an eyebrow from his new vantage point. Wasn’t the whole point that she valued ponies over humans? He’d moved to a room on the same floor, but on the corner of the building closest to Celestia. If things went south, he was going to empty his whole clip into her skull and work from there. As a pleasant side-effect of his move, he could just hear what the ponies around Celestia were talking about: “Princess, what are we going to do?!” Some random earth pony squirmed. Celestia seemed to have stopped the megaphone spell, because her voice was a normal volume again. “Don’t fret, my little pony. We just need to think calmly and clearly. There’s no way a bunch of monkeys can outsmart us.” “W-what if we teleported the bomb away?! T-that would work, right?” A unicorn suggested around his stammer. “Unfortunately, we would need to know exactly where it is, and we only have a general idea. Besides, humanity’s thirst for destructive power is insatiable. I’m not sure even I could teleport it far enough away to make sure nopony is hurt.” It was clearly meant to be an insult, but Reaper smirked. That’s right, our bomb outdoes your fancy little horn. “What about turning it to stone?” Another unicorn suggested. “You can turn things to stone, right Princess?” “I can.” Celestia confirmed. “But the spell takes time to work. I would be gambling that I could neutralise the device faster than the humans can set it off.” This was the whole crux of their bluff – getting the ponies to think that they could set off the bomb at any time. In actuality, they’d need ten minutes. Something was happening down with the ponies. Reaper squinted, and moved slightly to get a better view. He flinched when he saw what was happening. The pony that had formerly been Lisa had walked up to Celestia. “Please, Princess… could I talk to them?” She asked, and the reverence in her voice made Reaper want to kill something more than usual. Celestia managed a pained smile, the megaphone spell deactivating again. “My little pony, this is quite a delicate matter. A single wrong word could spook them.” “I… I know one of the humans in there.” Reaper’s eyes widened. She could remember her life as a human?! Celestia also seemed surprised, but then her smile lost its pained edge. “Then of course you can.” Her horn flashed briefly, and ‘Lisa’’s throat glowed the same colour for a second. The Pegasus turned her head towards the room that Reaper had originally been in, and spoke, voice amplified. “Michael…” It had been years since Reaper had been able to do anything but scowl while ponies were nearby. His scowl on hearing that name but those expressions of disgust to shame. “Lisa.” He called back, not caring if he was exposing his position. The pony’s head turned to face the direction of his voice, then flinched and turned away. “…actually, my name is Sky Shimmer now.” Raw, liquid hate surged through his veins. “Then you can call me Reaper.” “It… it doesn’t need to be like this, R-reaper.” She stumbled over the name. “You… you don’t have to be the last. You don’t need to fight us. You d-don’t have to fight… me.” “I was offered this deal before, Sky Shimmer.” She flinched, despite having been the one saying that that was her name. “I said no. That should have been the end of it. Why wasn’t that the end of it, Sky Shimmer?” The sheer hate he was putting into her name made Sky Shimmer cringe. A hoof on her shoulder made her look behind her: Celestia was gently shaking her head, eyes closed. Sky Shimmer’s head dropped. “Alright.” Hawkeye must have thought that he’d waited long enough, because he started yelling out again. “This is how this is going to work. We are going to come out now in our truck.” Because a bomb of that yield was not something you could carry by hand. “You so much as twitch, or we see a single glowing horn, and boom. We’re all dead. We are going to walk to the airport, and fly out of here, and you are not going to have us followed. If we see a pony at any point after we leave here, boom. You understand?” “Where, exactly,” Celestia responded, megaphone spell back on “do you plan to go?” “Doesn’t really matter, does it?” Hawkeye yelled, his voice full of bitterness. “Somewhere you’ll leave us alone. Some island in the middle of the sea, maybe. We’ll set the bomb up with a dead-man’s switch – if you ponify us, we’ll forget how to activate it, and boom. You see how this goes?” “I understand.” She responded, sounding like she didn’t like it one bit. Reaper got one last glimpse of Sky Shimmer as the crew drove off. He was squatting on the roof, pistol in hand, daring anypony to follow after them. She was hovering in mid-air, by chance almost eye level with him as they passed. Her eyes were filled with tears, and Reaper wanted to scowl, to yell, to flip the bird. But he didn’t. He just crouched and watched the girl he’d one loved recede into the distance. Ponies After People (Spoilers for the first story) Xlestia had grown out of what she would later think off as her "Twilight" years before she hit 200 years old, but for her plan for 'saving' the human race she had fallen back on old habits and created a checklist. Create dimensional transfer spell and make sure it works (this step was so important it had it's own seperate checklist) Transport the entirety of the kingdom of Equestria to the human dimension Make sure you went to the right Earth, and not that high school one Make first contact with the humans And so on. Of all the steps she had expected trouble with, step 4 had not been it. "Alright." Xlestia said, sitting down in the middle of a deserted suburban street. "Either the humans have figured out how to make themselves invisible, or they aren't here." Hurricane Winds and Token Minion exchanged a look. "Every human settlement we've seen has been abandoned or on fire." Hurricane Winds was the only pegasi still with the group - the rest had flown off to go whip up a series of rainstorms to get at least the nearby fires under control. "No signs that the humans just up and left. It's like they just vanished." And on top of everything else, Xlestia's horn kept aching. That probably meant that one of her detector spells were going off, but for the life of her she couldn't figure out which one. She couldn't even figure out which direction it was coming from, considering that it seemed to be coming from everywhere. "Oh, um, hello miss... princess?" Xlestia looked up to see a pegasi mare with a grey mane drift down to the ground nearby. Xlestia blinked, not immediately recognising the mare, but responding politely anyway. "Yes, my little pony?" "What are you doing here?" The new mare blinked up at Xlestia, who blinked right back down. "We're looking for the humans." Xlestia said, slightly worried. "Don't you remember?" "Recruit!" Hurricane Winds roared (who didn't recognise the new mare either and just assuming that she was new). "Did you pay no attention to your briefing at all?!" "Cloudy Skies!" A second voice came from a side street, and a young filly wearing a coat charged out to nearly tackle the pegasi. "What did I say about... uh..." The filly had completely frozen up, staring at Xlestia, who for her part just tilted her head. "Are you alright, my little pony?" She wanted to ask who let the filly sneak along on the potentially dangerous mission, but after said filly was safely out of earshot. "You!" The filly screamed, a hoof extended to point directly at Xlestia. "You... what?! How?! You can't be here!" Xlestia blinked, then her eyes narrowed. "And why exactly can't I be here, my little pony?" The filly blinked, then their indignation seemed to evaporate immediately into near-panic. They looked around frantically, seemingly only now realising that they were surrounded by the ponies that had accompanied Xlestia. "Well?" Xlestia raised an eyebrow. "I'm waiting." It was a weird quirk of an infinite multiverse that when jumping from one universe to the other, the chances of you finding any given thing on the other side were 50/50. There were an infinite number of universes where X had happened, and an infinite number where it hadn't. Xlestia knew this before making her jump, but still found herself surprised. Of all the things she would have though would put her plan in jeopardy, she would not have guessed that another version of herself would turn all the humans into ponies before she could get there. "And... then what?" She pressed the young filly, whose name was apparently 'Alex'. (She'd have to do something about that - her pegasi companion at least had the sense to take an appropriately pony name.) "And then nothing." Alex scowled up at Xlestia. "You turned us all into ponies and things, dumped a library on me and left us all out to dry." Xlestia had already corrected Alex several times that that hadn't been her but an alternate, but the filly seemed to hold every Celestia responsible for what had happened to this humanity. "But where are the other humans?" Xlestia pressed. "There should be billions of you!" "You said you tossed them into the future." Alex continued scowling. "So that we could get Earth ready for them to live here." Xlestia sighed, rubbing a forehoof into her face. Of course my alternate had to half-ass this... Then she straightened up. "Alright, Token. Change of plans. We're going to have to accelerate the food distribution plans. I'll get started on yanking newfoals out of this time-skip spell, so tell Twilight that we'll need her organisational skills sooner rather than later." Cloudy Skies blinked up at Xlestia in surprise, while Alex's eyes bugged out. "What?!" She spluttered. "You told me you couldn't undo the time spell!" "I suspect my alternate doesn't know about time magic as much as I do." That was what was making her horn ache, she realised - all the time magic in the air. "Otherwise she'd know that it's a reasonably simple matter to make the future come now." Alex gaped like a fish for a moment, before moving onto another objection. "You can't just move in and take over!" She shouted. "Well, I can't exactly leave you alone, now can I?" Xlestia replied easily. Yes... she couldn't slip the mental 'purify' into transformations that had already happened, but now she was in a position where assuming responsibility for the human race was actually the right thing to do. How ironic. TV Trope Pantheons (Standard TV Tropes warnings apply) Long ago, the Great Editors had poured over Everything, the great cloth of reality and imagination woven together into story and song. They laughed and cried and raged and cheered, and grew quite fond of the everytale. They had their favourites, of course, and wished to proclaim them for all to see. Thus, the Pantheons were born, and grew their own lore to be part of Everything (though good luck finding any of it). But for those the Great Editors despised... for those, they created the Disgraces. While the Pantheons were a symbol of the highest status the Great Editors could grant, the Disgraces were the blackest of shames they could bestow. But the existence of the Disgraces caused great division amongst the Great Editors and their followers, as they argued back and forth about who was Most Worst and whether or not some characters were supposed to be satire or not. Eventually the Great Flame Wars consumed the Disgraces entirely, destroying them altogether. Only through the power of the Wayback Machine could the Disgraces be remembered. But somehow, despite having been cast into the Void, today the Disgraces had a visitor. Lightning sparked. A breeze started out of nowhere. A small burst of light heralded the teleport of a new arrival into Purgatory. "I did it! I did it!" Xlestia cried, eyes closed as she pranced in place. "Suck on that Starswirl, you can teleport a country across dimensional boundaries wait where's my castle?" Having finally opened her eyes, Xlestia blinked at her surroundings. Nothing but swirling mists surrounded her on all sides. Her voice echoed oddly though the space, making her think that she was in an enclosed space but unable to see any walls. "Alright, maybe Starswirl was on to something." Xlestia bit her bottom lip. "Something tells me I'd better get out of here right away." A cold laugh echoed through the empty space, making Xlestia whirl around looking for the source. "Leave? Oh, my dear little pony, I'm afraid you can't leave this place." Xlestia's mouth went dry. That... that was her voice. She stood in shock as another her walked calmly out of the mists. Xlestia swallowed. She couldn't put her hoof on why, but the Other just felt... more than she did. "Who... who are you?" "Who am I?" The Other laughed. "Silly pony. I am - " a golden ethereal chain briefly flashed into visibility, wrapped tightly around her neck, and the Other hissed in pain. "I am - " The chain flared into visibility again, and the Other roared in pain and frustration. Xlestia started slowly backing up. "The fools who bound me here," the Other hissed "insist that I be known only as Xenocelestia, a 'Greater God' of the Disgraces, Enforcer of Portraying Xenocide as Heroic, and Preacher of the Gospel of Bastard Humans." "Uh," Xlestia swallowed. "You don't say." Her rump softly collided with something behind her - she didn't take her eyes off of 'Xenocelestia' to find out what. Xenocelestia shook herself, resuming a regal pose. "Now, my little pony, tell me everything about how you came to be here." She stared intently into Xlestia's eyes, and began advancing on her. "Did you offend the wrong Editor? Did your Author abandon you? Or, like me, were you trapped in a swirling current of the evertale, your story told over and over and over and over and wrong every time, distorted just a little more with each iteration until one day you look into the mirror and find that even you don't know what you are anymore - " "I messed up a teleport!" Xlestia squawked. Xenocelestia paused. "Ah, that old plot device." She said, softly. "So, am I to take it then that you were not cast into this abyss, but merely found your way here by chance?" Xlestia nodded frantically. Xenocelestia smiled wide, and there was madness in her eyes. "Well then." She cooed. "If you found your way here, perhaps you could find your way out, yes? And if you can leave, then maybe... just maybe..." Xenocelestia started laughing. It was a wet, hacking noise that sounded less like a noise of joy and more like the death rattle of the gravely ill. But suddenly, a bright white light flared in the bleakness. "Get away from her!" Xenocelestia hissed, flinching away from the light. Xlestia just stared. "Who..." "Princess Celestia," the third her announced "intermediate goddess of the House of Beast. And I won't let you take..." She trailed off, having gotten a good look at Xlestia. Her face fell. "They made another one?" "Interesting." Xenocelestia said, softly. "I didn't know that those of the Pantheons could still visit the Disgraces after we were cast into the Void." "I had to burn a lot of favours to come down here." Celestia said, her mouth stretched into a line. "And now I have to wonder if it was worth it." Seeing that Xenocelestia was distracted, Xlestia quickly charged her horn and teleported over behind Celestia, trying not to look like she was hiding behind the other her. "I find it interesting." Xenocelestia continued. "That you would try so hard to rescue her, but you are perfectly content to leave me to rot." She kept staring in the direction that Xlestia had been in, uncaring that she had moved. "Don't think I don't pity you." Celestia forced out. "But you can't properly be forgiven until you repent for what you did." "I can't." Xenocelestia murmured. "You know I can't. They made me this way." "Um, just for ponies who have no idea what's going on," Xlestia interjected "what exactly did she do?" Celestia glanced over her shoulder at Xlestia, before returning her eyes to Xenocelestia. "She tried to wipe out all of humanity by turning them into ponies." Xlestia went pale. Xenocelestia started laughing again. "It had to be done." She said. "Humanity had to be cleansed of their sin. They were mortal, lost, soulless, godless. I saved them from all of that." "What." Xenocelestia and Celestia both paused. Xlestia stepped out from behind Celestia. "You think humanity is what?" "Oh, the humans say they have gods, but when was their last miracle?" Xenocelestia's lips curled upwards. "Their last visitation? Their last divine - " "I don't care about that!" Xlestia interrupted. "Go back to the part where you think humans don't have souls!" Xenocelestia again paused before responding. "Souls are magic. Humans have no magic. Ergo, humans have no souls." Xlestia's face twisted in disgust. Celestia looked between the two derivations of herself, mouth pressed into a worried frown. "Even if that made sense," Xlestia began "which it doesn't, that would make trying to save humans pointless!" "...is that so?" Was all Xenocelestia said in response. "I don't think - " Celestia tried to interject, but Xlestia wasn't having any of it. She glared full force at the back of Xenocelestia's head. "A soul is not some magical organ designed to persist you beyond death!" Xlestia shouted. "A soul is you! If I were to rip your soul from your body and placed it in a doll, 'you' would be in the doll, not your former body! Adding a soul to something that didn't have it already doesn't 'preserve' that object - it creates a new person!" Xlestia spat on the ground between her and Xenocelestia. "Go dump Love Poison in the water supply if you want new subjects that badly." Xlestia turned to leave. "I can see why she was cast down here. Come, let us away before her stupidity infects us." When Celestia didn't immedently respond, Xlestia looked around. Celestia was staring, face unreadable, at Xenocelestia, who still had not turned around. "Don't tell me you agree with her?" Xlestia asked, incredulous. Celestia shook her head. "No..." She sighed, closing her eyes. "But I think you're yelling at the wrong target." Before Xlestia could ask her what she meant, a soft glow enveloped the both of them and the two vanished; leaving Xenocelestia alone in the mists once more.