//------------------------------//
// Chapter Fifteen 
// Story: The Conversion Bureau: The First Choice 
// by Westphalian_Musketeer 
//------------------------------//

Lieutenant Karan pressed his ear to the radio, listening to the Brigadier General on the other side. "Ok listen up! Plan A is now a complete FUBAR. We don't know how badly the other teams were affected, and I'm having trouble raising them on the comm. That could mean they got their equipment knocked out, or we're being jammed, or they're KIA. In any case, we have to assume that we are it. Split into twelve groups of two, at least one human or gryphon per group; commandeer whatever vehicles you have to for those of you without wings, start hitting up the alternate sites. Caution aside, protocol aside. Move in fast, do not hesitate to shoot."

Lieutenant Karan checked his gun’s iron sights before looking down to his squad, one of the ‘other’ teams: Karphal, Crystal Clear, Privates Jameson and Vickers, and himself, all fully suited for combat. One gryphon, one unicorn medic, one rifleman, one sniper, and a CO were about to make their way to the nearest ‘alternate site’, where the PER were believed to be setting up potion bombs big enough to convert the whole of Manhattan. The first order of business was getting transportation.

Karan stepped down the fire escape that he had climbed to get the brief signal connection he had. Jumping down the last six feet, he tucked down to the ground.

He looked over at Jameson and Crystal Clear. “You get all the coordinates?”

Jameson nodded and answered, “And cross referenced it with our current position.”

“Good,” Karan said before leading them out of the alley to their Humvee. It was a lighter model built for fast transport. Hydrogen fuel cell, seven hundred and fifty horsepower, running on the equivalent of a twelve cylinder engine. The three humans and the unicorn piled in while the gryphon hoisted himself onto the roof, gripped a handlebar with one talon, and held his rifle with the other.

The lieutenant slammed the cardkey into the ignition and twisted it with enough force that Crystal worried the plastic rod would snap from the torsion. With an adjustment of the gear-shaft, the vehicle rocketed down the street.

On the roof, Karphal’s agility and sense of balance kept him stable as the Humvee swung around a corner onto a main street. To the right was a maglev rail track that would have led them to the Manhattan Conversion Bureau had they been following it south.

Vickers and Jameson checked their weapons while Crystal opted to open his satchel and check out his medical supplies: nano-injection shots for humans, scabbie-foam that would fill up a wound to stop bleeding, dermoplast bandages that would seal up flesh wounds and encourage healing, anesthetics, a defibrillator, and adrenal shots for each of the three JRSF species.

Vickers looked up from his work when he heard the roar of another engine coming from a side alley to the left. The sniper looked up to see a white minivan with the passenger side cut out. Jammed into the opening was a diamond dog troll with white PER armor and an RAC-7 held in each of his meaty paws.

“Troll!” Karphal yelled through the comms, there was a sound of paws pushing off the vehicle as the gryphon took off.

Karan swerved to the left, passing behind the white van as Karphal flew over it. A burst from the gryphon’s rifle rained down on the diamond dog from above, most of it was repelled by the armor, but a few rounds dug past the lighter armor where the neck met the shoulders. The dog leaned back and fired both guns at Karphal, the volley was dodged as the gryphon dipped to the left.

“Vickers, Jameson, start shooting at that freak of a clown car,” Karan ordered as he pressed a few buttons on the Humvee’s control panel, opening the two rear windows. He narrowly avoided a civilian vehicle in the process.

Jameson leaned out with his RAC-7 while Vickers opted to pull out his pistol. It had fifty rounds per clip, with a five-round burst fire. Each round was made of tungsten carbide, and was propelled by a series of powerful magnets.

Jameson started unloading at the diamond dog while Karphal swept up behind the PER van. From that spot, the gryphon could barely see the dog’s right shoulder. Levelling his rifle, he let out a burst from his weapon and lodged a few more rounds in the troll’s shoulder. Over the wind of his speed, the gryphon could hear a brief yowl of pain. The diamond dog hunched to the left, covering his shoulder, and continued firing at the Humvee as Karan swerved to avoid the bullets.

Many of the civilian vehicles wisely swerved to the side of the road when they saw the two vehicles barreling down towards them, others Karan avoided, and some were shot by the diamond dog.

Jameson pulled back inside the Humvee to reload. “I can’t get a decent shot!”

“At least you get to shoot at an exposed target!” Vickers yelled before Jameson leaned back out of his window and shot another burst at the diamond dog. “All I’ve been able to do is riddle the windshield with cracks!” Vickers let off another volley of shots that caused a spiderweb of fractures to spread over the PER driver’s windshield. “How do you like those beer goggles!?”

The human driving the van slammed his fist into the troll’s arm and pointed at the cracked windshield. He ducked briefly as the diamond dog punched a hole through the windshield that the driver could see through.

“Karphal, you’ve got an opening in the windshield,” Vickers said proudly into his mic.

“Got it,” he responded, “Keep the troll distracted.”

Without further prompting, Jameson and Vickers laid into the troll with their weapons while Crystal Clear ducked down in the seat as a stray round from the diamond dog’s guns punched through the Humvee’s armor. Karphal sped up to the vehicle and landed on the roof of the van. Leaning forward, he aimed his rifle down the hole and squeezed the trigger. The flurry of rounds turned the driver’s face into paste as he lurched forward, turning the wheel sharply to the right, and depressing the brake pedal. The vehicle spun wildly to the right while its forward momentum propelled it into a roll, the diamond dog mercenary still inside.

Karphal leaped off the van and landed on the pavement. He reached up with a talon to his helmet and said into the mic, “I’ll meet you up ahead at Park Avenue and Eighty-Second street. I need to finish off the troll.”

“Got it,” Karan answered, “Don’t want the ankle biter to sneak up behind us.”

What few civilians were left started running away from the scene while Karphal circled the van.

The van heaved upwards and the diamond dog dragged himself out from underneath, one of his guns still in hand. The troll looked up and swung his rifle to bear. Karphal leaped into an alley before the dog could get a bead on him. Hoisting his rifle, the diamond dog began firing at the corner Karphal had run behind.

“Fight me bird!” The dog pulled out a phosphorus grenade, meant to light up an area in a white hot flame where it detonated. He threw it towards the alley and let off another burst from his rifle. The grenade exploded and lit up the alley like an inferno from Satan’s nostrils. Reaching the corner, the troll saw Karphal was gone. “FIGHT ME!”

The next sensation the troll felt was Karphal’s blade dig into his neck with the assistance of an eight-story drop from a fire escape. The gryphon drew his blade out and kicked the diamond dog into the flames. He took off with the sounds of gurgling and sizzling in his ears.





On the roof of the Human Archives Project building, what had once been the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a white box whirred to life as a timer hit zero. Purple gas started flowing out of the machine, and several others spread across Manhattan.

Within minutes, the haze had cast the view of Central park—now filled with fake grass and statues—in a purple cloud that began seeping into neighbouring buildings. Ventilation intakes drew the aerosolized potion inside. People who had the fortune to see it in time ran into the hallways of their apartments before being caught in a dense fog of transformative mist.

Across the skyline, one building had a bomb that would create a pressure wave capable of rapidly propagating the mist across the Greater Manhattan area.

The conversion had begun.


http://i.imgur.com/02AaN.png


“I’m telling you,” Jameson said to Vickers, “the nearest coordinates have to be off. Putting a dispersal unit on top of the the Human Archives Project building? the cloud would be seen by anyone in central park, it doesn't come into contact with as many buildings, and the height is off.”

“Are you telling me that the information that General Hutch just sent to us through the radio is wrong?” Vickers questioned. “They’re PER, they probably figured it would look dramatic!” He threw a hand up in the air to express his frustration at the constant stream of questions.

“You two be quiet, we’re almost at 82nd street. I don’t care where the PER set up their bombs. I’m going to shove it so far up their asses they’ll be dreaming of Celestia for the next month!” Lieutenant Karan reached over to his helmet and hailed Karphal. “Karphal you there? We’re almost at the rende—Why the hell are the trains still running?”

A maglev approached them at a medium speed. Two white and grey lumps were hanging off the side. As the train grew closer Karan recognized them as diamond dogs, and one had a grenade launcher.

Karan slammed on the brakes, grinding the Humvee to a halt. “Vickers, snipe it now!” He pointed at the train.

Vickers opened the door, deployed his bipod and quickly took aim at the approaching threat. The first round dented the train body the troll was hanging onto. The diamond dog lifted up the grenade launcher and looked down the sights before sweeping it up to fire in an arc.

“Everybody out, now!” Karan opened his door, leaped out of the vehicle, turned on his heel, opened Crystal’s door and pulled the unicorn out of the vehicle as the first grenade landed a hundred feet in front of the Humvee.

Vickers took another shot as Jameson hopped out of the Humvee next. The round hit the arm that the troll was using to hold the train. It fell to the ground below into the abandoned cars at the street level. A series of grenades fell sequentially closer to the Humvee when Jameson grabbed Vickers and dragged him off to the side.

“Come on shootin’ ace, out of the way!”

A grenade landed on top of the Humvee, blasting Vickers and Jameson away from Karan and Crystal.





Crystal’s eyes snapped open as he gasped for air. The unicorn almost instinctively scanned his body for injuries; a stressed rib and the blow to his head that knocked him out, but nothing else. He stood up, looked around and saw Karan lying unconscious beside his rifle. He had a piece of shrapnel sticking through his upper left arm.

“Lieutenant!” Crystal yelled. stumbling over to the officer and using his magic to fumble out the scabbie foam, a length of dermoplast, and a shot of adrenaline. Lifting the piece of metal out of the wound, the teal unicorn stuck in the scabbie foam’s nozzle, and squeezed. When the wound was filled he put dermoplast over both openings. Crystal sighed and observed the armor’s gel layer of biofilm expand to block the hole, sealing it.

Crystal’s ears twitched as he registered the sound of sniffing.

He hastily undid the seals on Karan’s helmet and removed it. Unceremoniously lifting up the adrenal syringe, Crystal muttered, “Come on sir, this isn’t time to dream of green fields!” He plunged the syringe into Karan’s neck and depressed the plunger just as a diamond dog with a ragged scraps of flesh where one of his arms should have been rounded the corner.

In three bounds the troll was on the unicorn. “Stupid little pony! Give me things to take hurt away!” He grabbed Crystal by the barrel and hoisted him up above his head.

“What? Medical supplies? For your arm? Right away!” The unicorn lifted a nanotech syringe out of his bag.

The diamond dog looked at the syringe and then to his stump. “Put in!”

Without further prompting the unicorn did so. The injection of nanobots entered the diamond dogs bloodstream immediately, and was instantaneously beset upon by antibodies from an immune system forged by the selective pressures of Equestria. The dull throbbing in his stump distracted the troll long enough for Crystal to rear his hooves back, and buck at his assailant’s face. The blades integrated into the armor snapped into place and dug into the diamond dog’s eyes.

“AAAAGGGHHH!” the troll screamed. He dropped Crystal and reached to his face as blood gushed out. He flailed around uselessly. “My eyes! My eyes!”

Crystal backed up against a dumpster, his vision snapping away from the sight. The dog stepped towards him. The report of a rifle sounded off and the troll’s head was pounded by bullets. The unicorn curled into a ball the moment he saw brain.

“Crystal! Get the hell up, we have to regroup!” With Karan’s encouragement, the unicorn stood up, keeping his eyes closed, and walked towards the Lieutenant. “You did good.”

The two of them rounded the corner and saw a grenade launcher. Karan picked it up and saw that it was empty. He ran back to the diamond dog, scrounged about, and came up with three grenades.

“Guess the fucker was good for something,” Karan grumbled as he loaded the rounds into the launcher and slung his rifle across his back. He returned to Crystal to see he was staring off into the distance. When he followed the unicorn’s line of sight he gawked at the cloud of purple that was expanding two city blocks away.

Karan unholstered his pistol and hung it beside Crystal’s head. “Take it. The purple shit just hit the fan.”

Gulping, the unicorn grasped the pistol in his magic and stuck it into into his satchel of medical supplies. “You four are going to be a terrible influence on me.”





“Arm shot into environmental hazard, twenty points.” Vickers sat up and shook his head briefly before standing up.

“It only counts as an environmental hazard if it actually hurt them.” Jameson, carrying his rifle, walked up to Vickers and brushed some dust off his shoulder. He scanned Vickers for a brief moment before walking behind him. “Still fully sealed for freshness.”

Vickers scanned Jameson as well. “Likewise.” He looked down to the ground where his rifle lay and picked it up. He inspected the computer scope and smiled when he saw it was undamaged. Cycling the bolt to see that it worked, he finally looked upward and saw the cloud of potion overhanging the archives.

Jameson tapped Vickers’ shoulder and pointed to a column that supported the maglev. “We can get better reception to call the lieutenant, and line of sight, up there,” he said.

The two walked to the column and climbed the ladder placed there for maintenance of the high-speed commuting system that ran all over the New York Area. They reached the top of the rail line and clambered up on top of the train that was still there.

Reaching the top, Vickers asked, “Did you see where the other diamond dog went?”

“No, I was a little busy avoiding grenades,” Jameson answered. “Keep your eyes peeled.” He reached up to his helmet. “Lieutenant? Karphal? Crystal? Can anyone hear this? Jameson here, and I have Vickers.”

A bit of static came through the mic before a voice answered, “Karphal here, I’m almost at the rendezvous.”

“Great, we’re on top of a maglev there, we were attacked by two diamond dogs, one with a grenade launcher and now down one arm thanks to Vickers.” Jameson got down into a crouch and scanned the street below.

Vickers got down into a prone position and looked down his scope towards roof of the archives, he flipped on the thermal imager and aimed down the street for any targets. There was a large cubic heat signature right in the middle of the roof. “Got the disperser on thermal. On the roof, distance: five hundred and seventy-eight meters.” To the left side of the disperser, a red dot poked out from behind what Vickers guessed was a statue. “Live target... Five hundred and seventy-two meters.” The dot ducked back behind the statue. “Wind speed: three knots North-East.” Vickers lay the reticule over where the dot had appeared. A few seconds later the dot reappeared. Vickers fired, and over two city blocks away, a PER soldier’s helmet, face, skull, and brain were unconventionally deformed by a hardened tungsten-carbide bullet.

Jameson looked up and saw Karphal approaching them from the air. He waved up at the air for a brief moment. “The gryphon reinforcement is here! Welcome to hell!”

The gryphon looked towards them and scanned the area. Jameson and Vickers on overwatch of the street leading to the archives, blown up Humvee in the middle of the intersection, and, stepping out of an alley just then, Karan and Crystal.

As Karphal slowed for a landing, a car door flew towards him. Karphal folded his wings and dropped the last few feet. He ducked to the ground just in time for the car door to sail over his head.

Standing back up, he saw a diamond dog troll bullrushing down the street. Cars were thrown aside as the dog ploughed through them. Karphal aimed his rifle and squeezed. The troll weaved between cars to evade the bullets. When it became clear he wouldn’t land a killing shot in time, Karphal leaped into the air again, only to have the diamond dog immediately stop and pull out his RAC-8.

A hail of bullets forced the gryphon back to the ground twenty feet away. The diamond dog took aim, and was knocked to the ground when a grenade shot from Karan landed beside him.

Karphal slung his gun and drew his sword, dashing towards the dog in time to meet him as he recovered. The troll used his gun like a quarterstaff, blocking the blows Karphal tried to deliver.

Karphal stabbed at the troll’s left shoulder before moving into a sweep to the right. The dog ducked and lunged forward in an attempt to headbutt Karphal. Karphal dodged to the right and swung the sword towards the back of the diamond dog’s neck, grazing it as the dog charged out of reach. The troll turned. Karphal brought his rifle again. A burst of short range fire entered the diamond dog’s chest, rupturing its heart. The dog stumbled forward with an angry snarl in time for Karphal to bury his sword into the dog’s opened maw.

Karan and Crystal ran up to Karphal. “You move fast. We’ll need that if we’re going to stop that disperser unit,” the lieutenant said.

“Eight PER troopers, seven humans, one troll coming towards you,” came Vickers over the radio. A sniper shot fired down the avenue. “Six humans, one a war-amp. Best get to cover, Lieutenant.”

“Got it Vickers.” Karan moved into cover behind a sedan while Crystal hopped beside a van nearby. “Jameson, get down here and help us push up. Karphal, use the roofs to get a flanking position on the enemy.”

A PER potion round flew over the sedan’s roof, commencing the fight to get to the archives proper. Karan got up and started firing at the human troopers, their white armor contrasting against the purple backdrop. “And they all came marching in a straight fucking line!”

Crystal floated out the pistol he had been given. Poking it around a corner, he winced as he fired it blindly down the avenue.

“Good shot Crystal,” Vickers said over the radio. “Nice hit, I’d be hard pressed for that one.”

“Oh Celestia! I didn’t kill somepony did I?” Glancing around the corner of the van, Crystal’s ears tilted back in fear of what he would see.

“Nope," Vickers said, "just shot a trooper’s gun, it’s malfunctioning now.”

“Karphal here, I’m on the north block’s roof, engaging.”

Jameson slid beside Crystal and gave him a pat on the back. “I’ll take it from here.” He aimed around the corner and fired at two troopers hiding behind a white van.

Karphal leaped across the rooftops until he was behind the huddled enemy. The gryphon popped out of cover, and shot down the two soldiers before a flurry of potion shots headed towards him.

“You’re a lucky bird, Karphal,” Vickers commented. “Don’t get hit by those potion shots, they can still knock you unconscious.” Another sniper shot flew down the road. “Dang it, that diamond dog gets into cover before I can get a shot.”

“On it,” Lieutenant Karan answered, bringing out his stolen grenade launcher. “Be my eyes.”

“The diamond dog is on the left side of the street,” Karphal informed.

“One hundred meters, beside the taxi Crystal has been taking potshots at,” Jameson added, causing the mentioned unicorn to blush.

Muttering some numbers under his breath, Karan nodded, aimed the launcher in an arc, and let out one more grenade. He grabbed his injured arm and winced. The grenade landed a few meters short, but it was enough to send the car sailing back in a flip, exposing the diamond dog and a PER trooper desperately trying to repair his weapon. The diamond dog ran on all fours across the street while Jameson shot the human.

Two remaining PER humans dragged a third with a missing leg back down the block.

The troll reached some more cover and leaned out to fire at where Crystal was seated. A shot from Vickers made the troll hunker down and blind fire on occasion. Karphal moved up while the troll was distracted from the combined fire of Vickers, Karan, and Jameson. Opting for a more dramatic finish, Karphal threw a high-explosive grenade at the troll. It immediately noticed the cylinder and leaped away from his cover. The concussive wave sent him through the air and slamming onto open pavement, where three separate shots finished him off.

“Troll down, five hundred points for me.”

“No way Vickers, that was totally mine!”

“Let’s split it three ways for now and slaughter the rest of these bastards first, ‘kay?” Lieutenant Karan proposed.

“Do humans always argue about whose kill it was? That just seems so...”

“Fun?” Karphal offered.

“Okay that’s enough,” Karan ordered. “Let’s get moving. Vickers, join Karphal on the roof, we’re going to need all the support once we get to the end of the street.”

“On it,” Vickers replied, standing up and leaving his position.

The others moved up, occasionally taking cover as the three remaining PER troopers fired back on their position. The one-legged soldier threw a potion grenade down the road, the plume covering their retreat. The enemies soon reached the edge of the cloud, and the wounded soldier signalled to be left behind, indicating his missing leg and the opening. The other soldiers nodded and continued into the obfuscating mist. The soldier pulled out a pistol with one hand and a potion grenade with the other, he pulled the pin and kept it in his hand as he started firing down the road at Karan and the others.

“Lieutenant, I’m at the roof with Karphal. Enemy in my sights.” Vickers made sure the reticule was set exactly over the PER’s head. No ‘sunnyside express’ for him. The shot placed the soldier thoroughly in the realm of FUBAR.

The whole group pressed through the purple cloud until they reached the corner of fifth avenue and eighty-second street, just in front of the archives. Vickers set up his bipod and scanned the roof with his scope set to thermal imaging. He saw the same red cubic shape of the disperser. Scanning along the roof, he saw a human trooper with a potion rifle aiming at the intersection.

“Karphal, right side, can you see him?” Vickers kept his finger hovering over the trigger.

“I will soon enough.” Karphal flew over the the roof and landed softly behind the PER. His paws crunched the gravel covering the roof as he drew out his sword. The soldier’s spine was severed just as he flinched from hearing the first step.

Karan crouched behind a car beside Crystal and Jameson. He brought out a DATab and pressed a few icons. “Alright, according to the city blueprints, there’s a maintenance entrance on the left side that leads to the basement just below the lobby. We get in through there and avoid walking into an ambush like some idiot Rambo.”

A confused grunt from Karphal prompted Vickers to explain. “Crazy jungle man who always won even though he charged into things.”

“Alright,” Karan said. “Jameson, Crystal and I will enter in through the basement. We can distract anyone inside the building. Karphal, you disarm the disperser with Vickers covering you. Then we’ll meet in the main lobby. Vickers, if we need you at that point, we’ll call you.”

“Got it,” Vickers affirmed, rolling his shoulders and scanning the building for any sign of more tangoes.

“Oh and Karphal?” Karan hoisted the grenade launcher. “Fuck them up.”

Karan, Jameson and Crystal sprinted across the street and to the maintenance door. 

Crystal shot the lock off and pressed the door open with a hoof. “Beats lockpicking?” He blushed when Jameson nodded at him.





Sarah Bertwell awoke with a sneeze. Hazy images of a brown field of grass with the occasion stream crossing it faded out of her vision as she perceived her surroundings. The entire room was occluded with a light purple mist. She tried standing up but ineffectually flailed about. She looked down to her legs: all four of them.

A gasp sounded to her left. “Sarah you’re awake! Oh my gosh I was so worried when they dragged you in here. I thought for sure your leg was going to deform when they brought us in here before you finished changing.” Rendition walked into her view. “Does it hurt?”

Sarah’s sides heaved as she tried to take in all that had happened. Her eyes darted around.

Rendition lowered her face to Sarah’s concernedly. “Sarah? Can you hear me?”

“Yes, I hear you... And no, I don’t feel any pain. Is this really happening?”

Rendition nodded her head, frowning. “I’m afraid so.”

Sarah looked at her legs again, the violet fur covering them almost blended with the potion. She rolled onto her stomach; taking her time, she stood up on wobbly legs before opting to sit. She flexed her jaw and lips and winced at the purple vapors. “Do you think they’ll let us go? Or are they going to put us into ‘protective correctional oversight’?”

Rendition shuddered at the thought. The PER sometimes tended to protect those they had ‘saved’ by bringing them to a hidden base and instructing them on ‘proper’ Equestrian behavior.

Sarah felt an uneasy quaking in her stomach at the idea. A director of HAP being convinced to try and stop the program would be a disaster in public relations between Earth and Equestria.

“Well they can’t honestly expect that nopony will come and stop them,” Rendition answered. She pressed her head to a crate. “I worked so hard to perfect that technique, and it’s... gone.” Rendition swallowed back a wad of spit.

Sarah carefully bent her neck and saw her other fellow newfoals, both pegasi. Testing her limits a little further, she was able to see she had no wings. She reached up with a hoof to her forehead and felt a horn. “Guess kicking down the door isn't an option.”

The two pegasi began stirring in the corner, their hooves moving about.

Rendition walked over to them and smiled gently. “Help me keep them calm?”

Sarah took a few uneasy steps forward. “Help me learn magic when this is all over?”

Snorting, Rendition looked to the crate labeled ‘ink’. “We could always start you out with drawing.”





Karan, Jameson and Crystal were peering around a corner into the main lobby. The room had a ‘T’ shape to it, and was ringed by a second floor balcony. In the middle of the room, where it’s three lengths branched off, a simple bronze statue of a cherry blossom tree reached up to the round skylights in the ceiling. PER patrolled between the massive white pillars and on the balcony.

Through the purple mist, Karan could make out the PER patrolling, all in fully sealed armor, including the two massive hunched-over figures.

“Two diamond dogs, four humans.” Karan looked at his grenade launcher. “We wait until they head up for the roof. The disperser will likely send out a signal the moment someone tampers with it.”





On the roof, Karphal stepped up to the disperser and saw a timer running at ten minutes. Casting a quick glance into the distance, he muttered, “Hope they stop the detonation of the thermobaric bomb.”

Using his talons to first unscrew the armor plating, he tore off a side panel and immediately scanned the mess of wires, circuits, pumps, fans and tubing. He grabbed a clawful of wires and tore out some of the circuitry. Small electric fans started to whir, continuing to pump the thick purple fog into the air. Karphal moved on to another panel of shielding and removed it, tearing out the wires behind each as he went along.

“Vickers, start shooting at the disperser. The electronics are exposed.” Karphal removed the last panel and stepped back as Vickers’ first round entered the machine.

Karphal drew his RAC-8 and emptied the clip into the obstinate and stubborn device. He released the clip in time for the door to slam open and reveal a diamond dog, and for an explosion to sound beneath him.

The dog charged towards Karphal with a savage speed while four PER troopers ran onto the roof as well. One second.

No time to reload. Karphal clicked out the bayonet in his RAC-8 and threw it at one trooper like a javelin. It impaled the trooper and pinned him to an air conditioning unit just behind him. Two seconds.

Reaching to a holster, Karphal pulled out a sub-machine gun typically reserved as the mainstay weapon for support personnel. He aimed it at another PER and emptied the clip. Three seconds.

A potion round hit Karphal’s claw, numbing it and making him drop the SMG. A sniper round passed through the offending soldier’s chest. Four seconds.

Karphal drew his sword and back-flipped onto a skylight, the diamond dog soon charging onto it. Five seconds.

Bayonet deployed, the diamond dog and Karphal met in the middle of the skylight. The diamond dog blocked a downward strike from Karphal, stomping his paw into the ground.

The skylight riddled with a spiderweb of cracks.





Karan leaned out and shot a grenade at a diamond dog just before he finished climbing a column up to the second floor to follow the other PER up to the roof. Jameson, Crystal and he were immediately distracted by snarling coming from behind them.

Four trolls were coming up from the basement with a murderous flame in their eyes. Behind them was a PER trooper. When Karan, Jameson, and Crystal ducked into cover and fired down the hallway, the enemy took cover in several side rooms, not risking the hundred meter dash through three streams of fire.

A skylight in the lobby shattered as two figures dropped from the skylight ten stories above. The winged figure pushed itself away from the other in time to land on its hind legs with a grunt.

Karphal got up in time for the diamond dog to immediately charge him again. The gryphon rolled to the side as both his legs protested from the fall. Rushing past Karphal, the dog reached out to a pillar; his claws dug out a chunk of rock as though he was playing with snow. He swung around and hurled the boulder at Karphal’s feet. The gryphon jumped and landed before approaching the diamond dog.

Weaving and ducking below a stream of boulders, Karphal reached the diamond dog in time for it to lunge at him. The troll’s armor was peeled open by the gryphons sword. It pierced just above the hip bone, but the sword caught in the dense tissue and was wrenched out of Karphal’s grip. The exit of the sword tore a massive gash on the inside of the diamond dog’s thigh.

Karphal turned to see the dog tear at the rent armor and rip it off. Blood pooled by his left foot as he grasped the armor in his left paw, and charge—rather sluggishly—towards Karphal again.

Swinging his shield like a maddened gladiator, the troll panted heavily as Karphal ducked around his blows. The troll fell to the ground with an angry snarl as the gush of blood from his leg turned to a seep.

The ground to the left rose up in a bump before bursting to expose another troll with his weapons and armor still intact. A human PER trooper clambered out of the hole. The human aimed his potion rifle at Karphal as a second diamond dog climbed out of the hole.

Sprinting to his sword, Karphal ducked as the first diamond dog threw a grenade at him. He opened up his wing, batting the grenade away as the second diamond dog opened fire at his exposed wing, perforating it. The grenade exploded over the diamond dogs, making them flinch for a moment. Karphal slid by his sword and grabbed it. He spun around and threw his sword at the human PER, embedding it in his chest.

“I’m going to feast on your eggs!” the troll yelled.

The sound registered with the gryphon’s brain. The frontal lobe sent a message to the limbic system. Biological brain chemistry, coupled with thousands of years of focus on devotion to family, friends, and kingdom in an intermixed web made it so that the surest way of getting a gryphon to lose their shit, was a threat against family.

Time slowed for the gryphon’s perception as he contemplated what he wanted to do: skin the diamond dogs alive, and what he needed to do: kill them both quickly. He made his plan, and commenced with it.

While one dog ran after him, and the other aimed his rifle, Karphal again sprinted. The sudden movements hurt his wing in a constant ache that kept building. He grabbed the PER’s corpse after pulling out his sword and tossed it at the rail gun wielding troll. He only needed a brief distraction.

Karphal grabbed the potion rifle and turned around in time to see the unarmored diamond dog leap at him. He positioned the rifle, and bashed it into the side of troll’s armored jaw. The casing on the potion rifle cracked, and a hyper-concentrated blast of potion wrapped around the dog’s helmeted face. The purple mist, coupled with his enraged state, resulted in the diamond dog allowing Karphal to slip out from underneath him.

The diamond dog deployed his bayonet and started swinging at Karphal. Locked in melee with one troll, Karphal was forced to keep the troll positioned between himself and the other one trying to shoot. This gave the the troll the advantage, maneuvering Karphal towards the pillars, and occasionally landing a blow of his own. Pressed underneath the balcony the pillars supported, Karphal got behind one as the diamond dog slashed his right hind leg. Karphal used what strength remained in his wounded limbs to jump over the troll, and stab backwards, severing the spine between the skull and atlas vertebrae.

The jump left Karphal in the open. The other diamond dog lowered his rifle and shot at Karphal. Most of the rounds hit his hind legs as he pushed himself away from the dangerous stream. Karphal got behind a pillar for a brief moment before more bullets pounded into it.

Injured, with a fresh diamond dog not twenty feet away, Karphal winced and scowled. Then he heard a sniper shot ring out from the lobby’s main entrance.

“Hey you son of a bitch!” Vickers yelled.

Another shot rang out, this time coupled with the sound of the diamond dog dropping his rifle and a yowl of pain. The next shot didn’t come with a yell, but the slumping of the troll onto the ground.

Karphal leaned out from behind the pillar to see the sniper lying prone beside the door, bipod deployed. “Vickers? Deus ex machina.”

“You only left me with one PER and a disperser that was already swiss cheese on the roof. A full sniper clip and it stopped pumping out potion from what I could tell. I used the fire escape to get to ground level.” Vickers stood up, ran to Karphal, passed him the RAC-8 of the diamond dog Karphal had killed. “Make it count, Big Bird.”

The two of them ran to where gunfire was still echoing down the hall and joined Karan and the others.

Crystal looked up from his pistol and gave Karphal a once over. “You look—”

“Rougher than bear-shit wrapped up in fish hooks,” Karan finished. “We’ve been keeping these two dogs pinned, but a human and two other trolls haven’t shown up since they ran into a side room.”

Karphal poked out from his cover and fired a few rounds down the hallway. “I think I may have taken care of that.” He looked to Jameson, who had two blocks of C4 on him. Then he looked to Crystal. “How do you feel about spelunking?”





Minutes later, Jameson and Crystal climbed out of a literal hole in the ground and into a room filled with a dozen data servers that held terabytes of human history within them.

The man and pony walked over to an open door where the sound of gunfire was close. Peaking around the corner, Jameson saw the two diamond dogs two dozen feet ahead of him. He leaned back and behind the corner. Pulling out what was needed, he set up a block of C4 with a remote detonator.

Gulping, Crystal quietly floated the C4 to within four feet of the first dog when it flinched. The troll turned in time to have the block smooshed into his face like a wad of silly putty.

The other diamond dog was blasted away from the meat fountain and shot down by the collective fire of Karan, Karphal, and Vickers.

The squad soon returned to the roof to confirm that the disperser had indeed been disabled. 

Karan reached up to his helmet. “Hello? Forward Command? This is Lieutenant Karan at the Human Archives Project, we've managed to disable the disperser, and all known hostiles in the area have have been killed.” When there was no response, Karan kicked at the ground. “Shit! Communication with the other squads is still blocked. If I find out which tech dropped the ba—”

An unseen explosion sounded in the distance, silencing Karan’s rant. The five of them stood there in horror, waiting for the blast wave to spread the potion over New York, when none came, Jameson was the first to speak.

“The others must have been able to sabotage it so the potion wouldn’t spread.” He looked down to a dead PER soldier with an exposed DATab. On it, the glowing figure of nineteen minutes was visible. “Guys, why would they have a second timer?” Jameson pointed at the DATab with his rifle.

Crystal looked at it and lifted it in his magic. “What would the PER need to do after all of New York was converted?”

Jameson’s eyes widened. “Make sure all the government programs they’re against couldn’t just be brought back up when they were done.”

Karan looked to Crystal, the revelation completing itself in his head. “Crystal, is there any way to stop the countdown?”

Crystal started manipulating the device with his magic. “Not that I can tell, but... YES! They’ve got a layout plan of where each of the charges would be placed.” The unicorn’s eyes seemed to bulge as he scanned the plans. “Six charges, one in each of the two main server rooms, another in the art restoration room, one in the non-digitized transcript storage, and two in the foundations.”

Karan looked to each of his men with a grimace. “Karphal, you know how to disarm bombs?” The gryphon shook his head. “Crystal?” Karan turned to the unicorn.

Nodding, Crystal answered, “They prepare us for that in case of HLF bombs back in ConSec.”

“Go with Karphal down to the foundations and disarm those two charges. Jameson, you go to the art restoration room, Vickers, the undigitized documents. I’ll handle the two server rooms.”

With a salute from each, they ran to their objectives.

On the main floor, Karphal looked at the body of a PER human. He plucked out a potion grenade, tucked it into a hollow behind his neck feathers, and muttered, “Never pass up a free smoke grenade.”