//------------------------------// // The Road to Damascus - Part 2 // Story: Shattered Worlds // by Midnightshadow //------------------------------// The CONVERSION ►Bureau ═════════════════════════════════════ Shattered Worlds The Road to Damascus Part 2 ═════════════════════════════════════ An MLP:FiM Fanfiction by Midnight Shadow Jacob held his breath. He flailed with his one good arm as an empty casket slammed into his head, bouncing off, to release a good deal of nothing into the chamber. There was nothing in it. It was empty. He opened his eyes, and found himself looking at a perfectly ordinary, empty casket. Dimly, he could hear clapping. He turned, painfully, to behold a somewhat corpulent man in a perfectly-fitting suit stepping into the chamber. "Oh well done, Mister Damascus. Well done indeed." The voice was rich and melodious. The suit was well-pressed and immaculate. The shoes probably cost more than Jacob made in a year. None of that mattered. "What? But... how?" croaked Jacob. "You think we'd have the Ark right out where just anyone could waltz in and steal it? Oh, come now. You did well though, very well. Gentlemen, make sure our guest has no more... surprises up his sleeves, will you?" Jacob found himself being thoroughly and roughly searched. He was relieved of his knife, his pistol, his remaining ammo and all the explosives he had left. He slumped back down, once they had taken what they wanted. He was finished. "Captain Greyson?" asked the man, eyeing the gun that had been placed into his hands. "Yessir, Mister Letchworth, sir!" replied one of the soldiers. He ran up to the man and saluted. "You are relieved of duty," the man, Letchworth, said. And he fired the gun. "Your incompetence let this terrorist penetrate our outer and inner defences. You are hereby stripped of your position, your job and, indeed, your humanity. This, men, is the price of failure." Letchworth watched dispassionately as the soldier fell to the ground, already under the effects of the potion-filled glass bullets of Jacob's unique gun. Greyson was stripped of his armour and clothes, and the misshappen lump was dragged from the room in very short order. "Lieutenant Broderham? You are hereby promoted to Captain. See to the full restoration of first our primary and secondary backup generators, and then oversee the restoration of our nuclear generators. Leave this scum with me. We'll have a little chat, and then... well..." "Mister Letchworth, Sir?" Broderham saluted, eyes fixed on the distance. "Yes, Captain? Did I choose unwisely?" Letchworth fingered the trigger mechanism of the gun, idly. It wasn't a threat, it was a promise. "N-no, sir, it's just... w-what just happened?" "I have been concerned, of late, that your men are a little, let us say... 'lacklustre'? I arranged for a live test of our defences and I have to say I am deeply, deeply disappointed. A simple terrorist almost managed to cut our balls off whilst your men ran around like chickens with their heads removed. I expect you to fix this sorry state of affairs pronto, or I shall find somebody who can." "Yessir. B-but, who is he? PER?" Broderham pointed to the prone terrorist, questioningly. "Oh no, this is Jacob Damascus. He's with the HLF." Derek Letchworth smiled. "I arranged for the HLF to discover where the Ark was hidden, this month. I paid for their armaments, I leaked them the plans to this base, and I sat and watched whilst your predecessor did little but jerk off. You can expect a full review of the travesty that went down today on your desk in the following weeks. Weaponry has moved on, sadly our facilities haven't." "Sir?" gulped Broderham. Letchworth sighed. "You're all imbeciles." Derek lifted the gun up, showing it end-on. "This is a ceramic and composite potion gun; very neat, almost silent, with no metal parts. It fires using compressed gas. "These," and Derek took the small clip out to display the glowing, purple glass bullets, " are potion-bearing bullets, with improved nanobots. They're only good against Blackmesh like yourselves, as their payload is a seek-and-subvert von neumann device, with hyper-concentrated Potion." Derek Letchworth showed the belt and placed it on the now-empty pedestal. "Those are a collection of useful odds and sods, not generally very interesting, but this..." He picked up the knife. "This is a mono-molecular blade, it will cut through almost anything. It's a bitch to hold on to, too. One wrong move, and..." Jacob Damascus screamed as Derek sliced his good hand off. Derek smiled thinly as the terrorist's suit patched up the bleeding. He wouldn't die just yet, oh no. "My tech team are still trying to reverse-engineer whatever that thaumic discharge was. We were wondering how you planned to shut down the electronics. Very clever. Very, very clever." "Fuck you," spat Damascus, breathing heavily as he sought to nurse his severed stump. "I had this whole chamber built, and your men placed to guard it, to fool everyone. It worked. The Ark isn't even here." "What did he plan on doing with it?" asked Broderham, aghast. "He planned to slice up the Ark and stab Celestia through the brain with enough pieces of it that she would die. Nobody knows for sure if it would work. It might. The HLF are quite adamant, they want the ponies dead, all of them. Can you imagine? The backbone of our new golden age, gone? So they collected together an eclectic set of weaponry and hired this thug to do their dirty work. Damascus here wasn't being kind by not killing you. He was being as cruel as he could possibly be, isn't that right?" "Humanus pro vit-aarrggghh!" "Nuh-uh," laughed Letchworth, "none of that." Derek had knelt, quick as a flash, in his expensive suit and had snagged Jacob's mouth. He brutally shoved a pair of pliers into it as Damascus had uttered the oath. He yanked out a tooth. "I can't believe you guys really stoop to the old 'cyanide in the molar' trick." Jacob just glowered, and spat blood. "Leave us, now. It's safe. I want a little chat, then I'll call you back in." Letchworth winked as he pulled out a knuckle-duster from an inside pocket. Captain Broderham stiffened, then nodded. The door slid slowly shut. Alone, Letchworth visibly relaxed. He slipped the knuckle-duster off again. "You know, I had high hopes for you. I thought... I thought for a moment you might be my replacement." Jacob blinked. "What?" he asked. This hadn't been on the menu. Torture, pain, death... not an actual chat. "Tell me, Jacob," asked Derek. The man sat down, folding to the floor as carefully as possible. He waved at the chamber, with it's buzzing fluorescent lighting and stark, off-white paintjob. "Tell me, what do you think we do here?" "What is this?" "Come on, you can do better than that. I might even let you go, right?" "Fuck you. You..." Jacob rolled his eyes, looking around. "You extract her blood." "That's right. We take the blood of a goddess, and we funnel it into bottles and feed those little bottles to the unworthy. We turn useless wastes of space and resources into productive, useful, safe, obedient members of society. We are reshaping this miserable planet into a green and pleasant land for those who truly deserve it." "We'll never be safe from her!" blurted Jacob. "Hmm?" "Celestia. You can't keep her locked up forever. Something will go wrong, she has to be killed. She can't be... she can't be bottled up and contained forever! Those ponies make us weak! Earth is for humanity!" Derek laughed. "You HLF guys are right, you know." "What?" "Oh, I know all about you, Jacob. Your grandfather lost his job to a pony. You lost your family to ponies. You even lost your love to a pony. Do you think she knew, Jacob? Do you think Marissa screamed, as you burned her alive?" "Fuck you! Those fucking ponies were fucking eating our world, man! They were stealing our world and our future and our children and spitting out the bones for the crows to pick over! And they still are!" "Shh, Jacob. I know. I know. I said, you were right. The ponies were a threat, and they still are. I'm making sure of it." Jacob's heart sank and his blood ran cold. "What?!" he hissed. "I'm making sure that by the time you or anyone knows just how much of a threat they are, it's far, far too late." "What?" coughed Jacob again, struggling to sit up. The blood-loss and insufficiently-blocked pain was making him weak, but the cold, calm words of this man in his expensive suit were chilling him to the core. "A pony in every home, Jacob. I do the job of my goddess." "You work for Celestia?" "Oh no, Celestia would kill me, first chance she got. I do this in the name of the lost goddess of Equestria. Vivas Noctis, my friend. The night is so very, very long. One by one, I will relieve the useless of their humanity until finally, I shall relieve the world itself of its burden." Jacob sat, horrified, as he looked up at the man. He expected madness, frothing insanity. Instead, he found a stone, cold brooding logic. "When the time is right, I shall open the Ark." Derek Letchworth stood up, suddenly. "She'll kill me, or whoever it is. I'm sure of that. A goddess can go mad, it is her right. I used to believe like you, you see, until my brethren killed an entire world, until they burned an entire universe, and all without a flicker of remorse. Mankind must pay for such mass murder, any species which can set the sky on fire and brag about it does not deserve to exist. And I have dedicated my life to it. The rich like me, we don't age. We never will. Unless men like me make changes, our world will be run by the same soulless bastards forever." "Traitor!" spat Jacob, struggling to move. His blood-flecked spittle splashed Derek, who wiped it off in disgust. "It's an easy choice. When the humane thing is to end humanity, it's a very easy choice. There are thousands of us world-wide, at all levels of government, in all social circles. Invisible. There are, however, just six like me, and promotion is by dead man's boots. Or horse-shoes, as it may be. I had really hoped you'd be the one to replace me, but you're just another useless punk." Letchworth fingered the potion gun again, before pointing it at Jacob. "There's only six of us. I'm laughter." The body of Damascus jerked once as the bullet entered his brain, and then it slumped, the skin already turning waxy and white as the change overtook it. "If you thought I'd give you the escape of death, you're very wrong. I don't, however, need you remembering our little conversation. Even if your mind stays intact." When the door opened, Letchworth was cleaning his hands off on the remains of Damascus' clothing. "Take him topside. Geld him and brand him, use the HLF mark like his fellows. The ponies won't care, but I want those HLF retards to know they don't fuck with me." Letchworth strode out through the complex humming to himself. He placed his hands in his pockets as the power was slowly restored. He stopped, though, as his fingers encountered something hard and unexpected. He took his hands out of his pockets. There, between his finger and thumb, was a shiny metallic coin, a bit. From Equestria. One side was almost bare, the other had a stylized '4' on it. He took a closer look. The bare side wasn't bare, it had very faint writing on it, and the '4' was actually a pony-head. He smiled to himself as he peered at the words. "Vivas Noctus," he said to himself, "long live the night. By the grace of the lost goddess, may it be over soon." He laughed. It was in his pocket. The bastard had been standing next to him, and had left his calling card in his jacket pocket! He wondered idly who it had been, but realized it didn't matter. His replacement had been found, everything was on track. The machinery started up as Letchworth headed to his office. Under a strain that the system hadn't really been built to withstand, the pumps keeping the Ark drained of excess blood were off-kilter. They did their job, however, and were soon once more sucking the precious dark red liquid from the spigot of the Ark, the entirety locked in a prison of Substance D. They jostled to keep up, almost falling over themselves to find a new rhythm. When it settled, the familiar beat returned, but it wasn't quite so evenly spaced. Sshhh-pock-shh-pock, sshhh-pock-shh-pock, sshhh-pock-shh-pock... Letchworth spun in his comfortable leather chair. There was plenty to be done still, billions of humans to convert, trillions of dollars to make, and many miles to go before he could finally rest. Jacob staggered. His head hurt and his arms and legs didn't obey him. Where was he? He was in a dirty, grass field. Sand and grit was piled up everywhere, and behind him - it had to be behind him, though he had no recollection of having moved - were tracks in the dirt from his passage. They must have thrown him out, and they now expected him to die in the middle of nowhere. Well fuck them. He'd show them who he was. If only he could remember his own name. Or how he'd got there. Or work out where he was going. The sound of hooves roused him. He wasn't sure what had happened, but he seemed to have momentarily lost consciousness. It was as if a sudden herd of... hooved animals had gone past, waking him from slumber. He could hear them, now, far off in the distance. He could smell them, he spotted their tracks in the dirt... but he couldn't see them. All he could see was the ruined city. Above floated a dim sun, burned out and vapid, as if seen through too many layers of dark cloth. The sky wasn't blue, but it wasn't the black of night either. It was some listless, pale grey. In fact, the world seemed grey. All the colour was missing. He staggered through the city, falling to his hands and knees and strangely finding that loping gait comfortable, as if his arms and legs were the same length. It was like when he'd been dreaming, when little. Often you could fly in dreams, but you couldn't walk or run. You'd have to... kind of shuffle on all fours. He did it now, urging his body onwards. He had to be dreaming, that was it. Briefly he considered flying, and something told him it might work... but rational thought reasserted itself. He pressed onwards. The castle was grand. It was broken and disused, but epic and immense. Dimly, he could hear the sounds of talking, the clip-clop of hooves. He knew that should alarm him, but... it didn't. His head still hurt, and it hurt more thinking about things that he didn't understand. As he entered the building proper, passing through the inner courtyard, things became clearer. This place... he knew it. Years ago, when small, he'd seen pictures. They'd been paintings, but... they'd been surprisingly accurate. This was the place where those ponies lived. Ponies were small, four-legged creatures. And they could talk. And that alarmed him, and it hurt to think why. Everything hurt, now. It was like a presence, bearing down on him. He swore he could see it, even. At first it was just sparkles of light, glimmers in the corner. But then the whispering started. The ghostly clip-clop of hooves echoed through the empty throne-room, and the phantasm manifested. "Human..." it said. The man shuddered, shivering with fear. The creature before him was roughly equine in shape, thin and gaunt. Bones poked through her chest, which showed ribs. It was a mare, of sorts. For some reason, he knew that word. Her horn was broken and her wings were nothing but plucked appendages. Her filthy coat was torn, bloody and marred. Her mane hung limp and lifeless. Worst of all, even worse than her wide, flaring nostrils, were her eyes... They showed fear. They showed such fear. Fear and anger. "I'm sorry," the man cried, and he realized he was... he just didn't know what for. "I'm sorry!" The creature before him moved on disjointed, boney legs, circling him, her shredded lips curling back to reveal wide, skeletal teeth. "HLF!" she said, quite clearly. It chilled him to the bone, that a simple phrase could hold such malice. "I... don't... I don't understand," the man replied. "HLF!" the mare repeated, louder, barely suppressed rage thrumming in her body. She stomped a hoof. She screamed in a whinny, shattering her hoof as she did so. To his horror, she neither cared nor noticed. "H!" "Please no!" begged the man, falling to his knees. "L!" the skeletal, decrepit mare threw herself closer. "I beg of you!" the man whimpered, folding in on himself, shrinking back from the mad banshee, but it was no good. "F!" she cried, and she lunged forwards. She screamed. She looked deep, deep into his eyes, into his very soul, and she screamed. And with that scream came an eternity of hate, a universe of pain and loneliness, and an overwhelming, soul-crushing despair. Through his blasted mind flowed millions upon millions of lost souls, crying out in pain as their world was reduced to a cinder, as matter itself broke down into its primordial components, as even their burned shells were reduced to dust, and then to less than dust, and then to less than nothing. He broke. He fell down in a heap, screaming himself. It seemed he screamed for an eternity all by himself, as he felt the agony of an entire realm course through his psyche. Finally, it was gone. He was gone. He was empty. He had nothing left. He wanted to die, to forget, to sleep forever in oblivion. Instead, he found a circle of sunlight. He crawled towards it, begging forgiveness, begging that she take the memory back, take the pain away, that he would do anything if she wouldn't feel that pain any more. And the sunlight swallowed him.