"Do you think Eris is gonna be okay?" Atticus overheard his son Gerald ask his big brother.
"Of course she's going to be alright. Our dad's the president!" Joseph chuckled, "If anyone can make sure Eris is alright, it's gonna be him. And besides, remember when dad told us that the new surface dwellers have magic?"
"What makes you think they'll even help her?" Gerald asked.
"You mean aside from helping the daughter of the most powerful man in the world?" Joseph smirked, and Gerald let out a chuckle.
"The kids are worried, Atticus," Laura came up to him, which interrupted his eavesdropping session, "And you still haven't told me about the meeting with the UN."
"Well, the usual I guess. Russia suggested we nuke them, as expected. Aladeen suggested nukes as well. Oh, and so did China," Atticus said, "But, surprisingly, it was Kim Jong who came up with an alternative suggestion."
"Really? Well that really is surprising. What did he suggest?" Laura asked.
"Labour camps, extermination camps, gas chambers, dropping down cans of nerve agents, injecting nerve agents into their clouds and letting it rain down on them, bio weapons that specifically target their DNA," Atticus listed the plethora of ways the North Korean leader suggested to kill the surface dwellers, "And what's scary is that we are probably genuinely capable of doing the last two."
"So I take it you got the approval of the UN?" Laura asked.
"About half of the UN approved. I didn't need their approval anyway, I just thought it would be better to have it," Atticus replied.
"But even then, you said it yourself. The ponies are slavers. What makes you think they'll help her anyway?"
"Well, the fact that I have the authority to launch a nuke directly at them," he gave her a goofy smile.
"Atticus, be serious! This is our daughter we're talking about!" Laura chastised.
"I know dear, I'm doing all I can," he replied sullenly.
"And what exactly are you doing?! You're just prolonging the inevitable at this rate!" she shouted.
"And what do you expect me to do?!" Atticus shouted back. "I… I'm sorry, it's just…" he apologised upon seeing the hurt look on his wife's face, "I'm trying my very best to save her, but I can't do much. All I can do is speed up first contact, which is exactly what I did, and hope that they have a way to help her."
"So what're you going to do if they refuse to help her? What are you going to do if they can't help her? Kill them?" Laura asked.
"Yes," Atticus replied simply.
"You can't just commit a war crime!" Laura exclaimed in horror.
"War crimes apply to other people. It doesn't include farm animals," Atticus replied, "The most that they can possibly do according to the law is fine me for animal abuse, which I highly doubt the peacekeepers will be bold enough to do."
Before Laura could come up with an argument, three knocks were heard on the front door.
"Who is it?" Laura asks.
"Corporal Banks, ma'am," a male voice replies from behind the door.
Atticus walked over to the door and lightly tapped the sensor. The door slid out of view to reveal a young man in a military uniform.
"How may I help you, corporal?" Atticus asked.
"I've been sent to inform you that General Marcel believes the drones have located the town known as Ponyville," he said, "They're waiting for you and the other leaders to get down to the Central Drone Control Room before infiltrating. That way you will be able to observe what's happening live.
"He could've just called. Didn't have to send you all the way here," Atticus said.
"I was on patrol in the area," Banks replied, "And may I just say that it is an honour to meet you sir."
"Pleasure's all mine," Atticus replied, "I'll be there in a few. You may go back to your post, I have my agents to escort me."
"Yes, sir," the corporal said before walking off, the door sliding back into place.
"They found it?" Laura asked.
"Well, you heard the man," Atticus said, "I've gotta go. I'll be back for dinner."
"We'll continue this later!" Laura called after Atticus as he made his way to their bedroom, closing the door and locking it.
Laura made her way into Gerald's bedroom, where she found Joseph and Gerald talking to each other.
"Oh, hey mom," Joseph said as he noticed his mother enter.
"Hey kids, dad's leaving. Go say goodbye to your father," Laura told them.
"Okay mom," they said before making their way to the front door, with Laura following behind them.
A few minutes passed as they chatted, before the bedroom door slid out of the way, revealing Atticus. He was now dressed in a navy blue suit, which went together with a pair of navy blue slacks, while wearing a white shirt and tie to top it all off.
"Hey kids, Laura," Atticus greeted.
"Hey dad," Joseph returned the greeting.
"Where are you going, dad?" Gerald asked.
"I'm going to see the live drone footage from a town called Ponyville, which is one of the towns that these creatures called ponies live in," Atticus explained enthusiastically, causing Gerald's eyes to go wide.
"Are they those surface dweller aliens that are all over the news?" Gerald asked.
"Well, they look like the tiny horse, not the centaur. They're the ones who are gonna help Eris," Atticus told his kids.
"Well, I best be going. Better not to keep them waiting," Atticus said. He then gave Joseph and Gerald each a kiss on the forehead, followed by giving his wife a goodbye kiss. "Be good, kids," Atticus said, "I'll be home for dinner, bye guys." He left through the door and it automatically closed behind him.
Outside, the two secret service agents stood guard, one on each side of the door. They heard faint bits of muffled conversation between Atticus and his family, before the door opened, and the president stepped out.
"Gentlemen," He greeted, "Good day."
"Good day to you too sir," one returned the greeting.
"Good day sir," the other replied.
"Well, lead the way gentlemen," Atticus told them and they began to make their way to the drone control room.
The drone control room was bustling with activity. The top military officials stood all around, observing. Hundreds of drone pilots sat in front of rows upon rows of TV sized monitor screens. It looked like a school computer lab, except they were all using state of the art supercomputers, with each one controlling military grade infiltration and observation drones. These drones were the most advanced infiltration drones ever developed, each individual drone being smaller than a fly and emitting virtually no noise while they flew. They could literally be flying right in front of your eyes, and you would think it was no more than an insect. The pilots had a mission; to infiltrate and obtain all information that could possibly prove useful.
There were nine different squads of a hundred drones each. Each squad was led by a general, who would relay orders to the drone pilot commander. The other drones were assigned to just gain any information they could, and report if they found anything interesting.
The world leaders all sat in front of a large screen, along with the top scientists that Utopia had to offer, Dr. Keifer among them. The screen was separated into nine squares, each showing the point of view of a separate drone which was assigned to infiltrate different areas of the town. These screens were from the feed of the drone pilot commanders, which now showed the view of a small town that was in the distance.
"Shall we commence the operation?" one of the generals, a Russian, asked the world leaders and received his confirmation. "Proceed with the infiltration," he commanded, "And spread out. A thousand flying insects in one area would definitely raise some eyebrows."
The drones began to head for the town in batches. Once a hundred of them had successfully infiltrated the town, the next batch would begin heading towards it. Each batch was relatively spread apart, with them spreading themselves evenly over a hundred meter radius. The drones began exiting from the cover of a forest of some sort, heading for the town while flying relatively low to the ground.
The town was extremely primitive in nature. It seemed to be done in a medieval style, with most of the buildings being made of stone rather than concrete and having nothing more than a thatch roof. What was the most striking thing, however, was the massive castle that was literally made out of gems. The castle was built into what looked to be a tree made out of Crystal. All in all, it was some magnificent architecture, and it was something that such a primitive society should not be able to accomplish.
As they headed into the town itself, they came across a massive farm of some kind. The plantation had a farmhouse and a barn, and was full of apple trees, which signified it as an apple farm. But something else surprised all those present within the room. Instead of those miniature equine creatures working on the farm like they had expected, they found that it was being worked by humans.
People were either climbing ladders to pick the fruit or jumping to get at them, before depositing them in a basket below the trees. There were ten people on the farm in total, but also present were a single pony.
It was red in colour, and was extremely large and muscular compared to Cozy Glow. They could tell that it was male because, unlike normal ponies, these ones seemed to have the ability to express a wide variety of facial features. Another thing they observed was that unlike Cozy Glow, this one didn't possess any wings. The strangest thing, however, was that he was farming by literally kicking the trees with his back legs, which made most of the apples fall into the baskets set under the trees.
"Should I proceed further into the town sir?" the drone commander asked the general.
"Yes, go ahead," he said before addressing everyone else, "But I want a couple of you to stay here and observe!"
"Flight commander, advance," the general ordered, and the drone began moving further into the town known as Ponyville.
There were hundreds of ponies present within the town, and they were able to determine that there were three different types of ponies; regular ponies which possessed no additional traits, the ponies that had wings and could fly, and the ponies with a horn on their foreheads.
There were also just as many, if not more, humans in the town. They listened to the command of three ponies and acted subservient, but were not chained like animals as they expected. Surprisingly, they all wore what looked like gold necklaces around their necks. They were still clearly slaves though, with their dirtied, worn out clothes, and the fact that most of them were doing work.
It was at that point that they saw something that really surprised them. It was four people that were pulling an open chariot without a roof. In the chariot were three normal ponies; a brown male pony with the collar of a suit around his neck, along with a tie with a dollar sign on it, a magenta female pony which wore the sleeves of a dress on her front legs, and a female pony child who wore a tiara.
"Isn't the horse supposed to be the one pulling them?" Aladeen asked, eliciting snickers from the other world leaders.
"I have never, not even once, seen something this fucking dumb," the Russian prime minister stated.
Suddenly, one of the men pulling the chariot stopped, causing the rest of them to nearly trip.
"What is your problem?!" one of the people pulling the carriage asked him.
"Mistress Spoiled's gonna be irritated with that bump," one of them said fearfully.
"Who did that?!" the female pony asked, clearly annoyed. They all pointed at the man who stopped, and she switched her gaze towards him, "Why did you stop suddenly?! I almost bumped my head!" she angrily shouted at him.
"I… can't go on, ma'am," he said in between pants, "I'm… too tired."
"Well, the rest of them can't pull this thing by themselves. Go on, or I'll sell you to the diamond dogs!" she said.
"Please, mistress, I'm too tired. Can I have a break?" he pleaded.
"We're gonna be late! We already have a reservation, so hurry up! We can't keep the baron waiting!" she replied, "Go on!"
"Dear, I'm sure we can give him a few minutes," the male pony said in a much gentler tone.
"No! I will not be made late because of a human!" she shouted. She then outstretched her hoof towards the man who had stopped, and he began shouting in pain while clutching his neck. After about ten seconds, she retracted her hoof and the man stopped screaming, now panting even harder than before. "Slave! I said go!" she shouted.
The man slowly got back onto his feet, and resumed jogging along with the others. He was clearly making every effort to push himself, as he nearly tripped soon after he began jogging once again.
All the world leaders were shocked by the savage display of slavery that they had just witnessed. All, except one.
"Kinky," Aladeen stated, and all the other leaders' faces shifted into a look of disgust.
For the next few hours they witnessed several feasts performed by the ponies that simply defied all science and logic. They witnessed several pegasi literally sit on top of clouds, and that's not even mentioning seeing several of these flying horses literally move the clouds.
The unicorns deserve their own paragraph. Their abilities included, but we're not limited to: teleportation, projecting images out of their horns like a literal projector, moving objects with their minds, shooting what looked like concentrated energy blasts, and walking through walls. All that made the unicorns the biggest threat to the humans, and they certainly knew it. The generals all promised an increase in security, and the Chinese prime minister requested blacklisting ponies from Utopia so that Alise would deploy her defenses if one of them managed to teleport in.
They also observed the way the humans were treated. The first thing they noticed was that there was a slave market of sorts, with people in cages being bought and sold like everyday objects. Unlike the first instance, however, the rest of the humans seemed to be treated relatively well, for a slave at least. They were still forced to do hard work, but most of them weren't quivering with tiredness, while working in extremely good conditions. The only ones who were suffering in agony seemed to be those working in construction, with several buildings currently being built. The construction workers were, in fact, quivering with tiredness, while anyone who stopped work for too long got their magical shock collars activated as punishment.
The world leaders noticed that not a single human fought with any of the ponies, most not minding following the ponies' orders, which they found strange. They were all controlled by the threat of being sold off to either the diamond dogs, the mines, construction companies, labor camps, or just being sold in general. They seemed to take the threat of being 'sold' very seriously, which led the observers to deduce that this was probably one of the better areas for a slave to be in. It made sense as well, with the town not having any major constructions going on that required backbreaking labour or mines for the slaves to be treated badly in. It was mostly escorting their masters, helping do some heavy lifting, or doing household chores; all of which was heaven compared to what they could be subjected to if they were sold.
It was after a few hours in when the cool evening suddenly switched to a dark night, almost instantly, confusing them greatly.
"Did something happen?" one of the generals asked in annoyance.
"The drones are fine," the drone commander replied, "It's probably something to do with the environment."
"One of you commanders observe the area. This is highly unusual," one of the scientists ordered.
"Yea, sure, I'll just go - " he was cut off as one of the other pilots spoke up.
"I believe I've just found Twilight," he said, "She just arrived on a flying carriage that was being pulled by one of the horses with wings."
"Ponies," Dr. Keifer corrected with annoyance, "And how do you know it's her?"
"One of the horses called her by name," the pilot answered.
"Put your feed through to the main screen," Keifer commanded.
He began typing a few things on his keyboard, and his drone's camera replaced one of the commander's. What they saw made the world leaders scrunch their faces in confusion. This pony had both a horn and a pair of wings, and she was the first one of their kind that they saw. Beside her were six others; two normal ponies, two flying ones, and one horned one. Also tagging along was a strange purple bipedal lizard of some kind, which they guessed was probably one of the ponies' pets.
"So Twi, how do you think Sombra even came back?" the orange one asked in a southern accent, "I thought we managed to end him after we got the crystal heart?"
"I thought so too, and I honestly have no idea how he came back AJ," the purple pony answered, "But I'm way too frustrated to think right now."
"Twilight, he destroyed the tree of harmony, and the elements along with it," the white one said, sounding worried.
"I know, but I think we should all go home and get some well deserved rest. It's been a long journey, and I'm way too tired to think," Twilight said, "We'll reconvene at my castle in the morning."
"I second that," the blue one with a literal rainbow mane said in a rough voice.
"I've gotta go feed my animals as well," the yellow one said in a soft, gentle tone.
"Well, I guess we should all head back then," the white one said.
They said their goodbyes, and Twilight began heading back towards the castle, all unaware of the hundreds of people watching them.
"Well, I guess we should come to a decision," Atticus said, "We've been watching without anything happening for about an hour now."
"Didn't you tell congress that you'd observe them for 24 hours?" one of the generals asked.
"I'm sure they won't mind. We've gotten tons of information anyway," Atticus said.
"What are you planning, Atticus?" the Russian leader asked.
"I'm sending a diplomat to meet with the princess tomorrow," Atticus replied.
"And what if we disagree with your decision to send a diplomat the day after discovering an alien species, one that is currently enslaving ours?" Supreme Leader Xi Mingzhe of Lian Meng asked.
"I would say that you have no authority over the USU," Atticus said before turning to General Marcel, "Prepare sixty men as an escort for the diplomat general."
"A sixty man escort?!" General Marcel asked with surprise, "I highly doubt we need - "
"They're creatures that enslave humans. They can move stuff with their mind. Get me my escort. Have them ready to go by eleven in the morning" Atticus demanded.
"Yes sir," General Marcel saluted before walking off to perform his assigned task.
"Atticus, listen to - " the prime minister of the EU began, but was rudely cut off.
"Now if you'll excuse me, I have a diplomat to find," Atticus said before getting up and walking off.
"You're making a big mistake Atticus," the Oceanian prime minister said, but Atticus ignored him, still walking away.
"He is making a big mistake," the European prime minister agreed.
"I agree," General Aladeen stated, "He should have brought sixty thousand soldiers, not sixty."