Co-Authors / editors
Redskin122004: Without him…. we wouldn’t be doing any of this. And though I may have fucked up more times than I care to admit… I’m always gonna be grateful. This is a pretty fuckin fun project.
Kizuna Tallis: Special thanks for the worldbuilding.
Rush: He definitely helped clean this up. I still say we’re going with thaumaturgons though.
Beyond the Horizon: It was really fun pointing out possible PHL weaponry with him. Though we may not have done that in this doc. I can’t remember, but I definitely had fun. I mean, he thought adding in a version of the Miter from Warframe was a cool idea! I wonder if I can do that in chapter 4...
Drawdex: Special thanks for pointing out all the problems created by randomly deciding Enitan Adebayo was the narrator instead of Obayana, and keeping me from saying unintentionally offensive things about Brazil.
Jed R: Writer of With Dignity, and our new guy. Extend a warm welcome to him! =D
Thanks to everyone for putting up with me. As that one lyric from One Night in ‘99 goes… well, you know =D
TB3: you know, it’s funny. I joined Team Spectrum round the time he left, so I never really worked with him… but somehow, it feels as if an old friend has returned. Welcome back! =D

Special Thanks To:
VoxAdam, for editing the tvtropes page and making separate folders for each individual story. That was awesome!
Jeff Vandermeer, for being generally hilarious, letting me try a certain… secret thing… for his book that got me a free copy of Annihilation, and starting the camp where I learned to write… Also, he owns Veniss Underground, the book on which I based part of the plot of A Story About Them. I don't own that. Just so we're clear.

Chapter 1:
Who Am I to Stand Still: The Diary of Coal Embers

It was midday in Brazil, in the fourth year of the war for humanity’s existence, in what would almost certainly be the last year for the city if not for some new breakthrough that could destroy the Barrier.

The sun was beating down on the city. Clouds passed sluggishly overhead, graffiti and propaganda were plastered on almost every wall almost an inch thick, billboards flickered, and those few unicorns that had any skill at food transfiguration were making a killing making ice cream and cold drinks. Earth ponies (though of course, not all of them) worked in the vertical farms that had been constructed in the late 2010s, or alongside human construction workers, either building new homes for refugees from Africa or carefully disassembling them as they moved southeast. There was not much coordination between them.

There were surprisingly few gas-powered cars, as most of the fuel was being rationed - militaries needed every ounce to evacuate citizens and kill off Imperial forces, most of which were newfoals. Or, if there was potion involved, kill off civilians that had been turned into newfoals, regardless of who they might have been before they’d suddenly been twisted and bound into pony form.

Nonetheless, it was a busy day, as most days of the War were. It would be nigh-impossible to find someone or somepony who wasn’t working to bring a human victory to Celestia, or at least to ensure the survival of the species in what time there was left. Target practice, food production, weapons tests, manufacture, recruiting, logistics, coordinating evacuation routes, engaged in heated video conferences with the PHL/UN taskforce about new equipment and asking, in a particular emotion that blended anger and confusion, “What in God’s name are we spending so much money on, because wouldn’t a last stand be suicide?”

Thaddeus Crowe, CEO of Crowe Labs, a premier supplier to the PHL, had just gotten back from one of those, forcing himself to keep from answering that question. It was, after all, a secret. So, upon making his way back to his office, tired from the weight of the world on his shoulders, he’d collapsed into his comfy chair. He missed Acevedo, and that back-alley doctor friend of his, and those ponies they lived with in that apartment.

But they’d all left for Equestria - an email to Crowe had claimed that Acevedo snuck a couple of his roommates along inside of some of the supply crates. Either way, they were certainly gone… he sighed. Acevedo had been a good friend… and even better in bed, sometimes.

So, with that in mind, and utterly emotionally drained from his meeting and from carrying at least a portion of the weight of the world on his shoulders, he decided to sit back and watch videos on youtube.

Unfortunately, a certain ad from the Russian Federal Space Administration (or FKA) distracted him. It was almost obnoxiously retro, and far too optimistic for the current situation - namely, they had only a few years to live.

...That fucking space station ad, Thaddeus Crowe fumed. That was something that should have taken decades to build. He should know. He had been working on plans for a space colony before Equestria manifested, and it had taken him years to make even slightly practical radiation shielding. He’d been hoping that ponies could help him with that, but he’d quickly diverted anything from that project to coming up with defenses against Equestrian ‘magic’. He didn’t really think of it as magic, thinking of it more as the manipulation of charged particles (or ‘thaumaturgons’) through the use of special tissues able to interact with said particles.

He actually had a very large fridge full of the thaumaturgon-interactive tissue (or alicornal tissue, as the ponies called it) that he had harvested from newfoals. He had planned on examining it himself, trying to work out ways to implant it or create barrier-resistant materials. He’d realized the instant that he came up with them that there was no way he could use them on every settlement, so he had settled for trying to coat nuclear missiles with th-

“Thad?” asked a unicorn stallion trotting into his office. This was Sum Runner - Thaddeus Crowe’s secretary, best friend, favorite accountant, and all-around inseparable best buddy. He was telekinetically levitating a tall iced coffee with his horn. He passed it over to Thaddeus, who eagerly drank it down.

“Yeah?” Thaddeus asked, frantically typing up a rant about the current implausibility of space colonization. ’Your survival lies offworld?' Bullshit. Total bullshit. Leaving Earth is a nice dream…

“We received all the recordings from the Accu-Vox program you mentioned,” Sum Runner said. “There’s this one mare that did them all as a diary - you might want to listen to them.”

“There aren’t more?” Thaddeus asked. Accu-Vox had been a pet project of his, recently - to record the experiences of people and ponies on earth, and send them into space in the hopes that someone might hear.

“You said you’d do only about one or two of these a day,” Sum Runner explained. “And, to be honest…”

“Well, yeah. And a lot of them are kind of like Acevedo’s entry,” he sighed. “...Besides being depressing. So I don’t blame you.”

“Long, rambling, loaded with tangents and references?” Thaddeus asked. “OH MY GOD!”

“I just realized the worst reason that space colonization wouldn’t work,” Thaddeus explained. “Tell me - if Celestia can pierce between universes, who’s to say she wouldn’t be able to go from planet to planet? Now, think about it. There’s no way we could get billions off of Earth to wherever. We’d be lucky to get… a hundred thousand, I think. Especially considering what resources we have now. She has billions. So… we would practically need to arm every human with a Graviton Beam Emitter to be even remotely effective. We wouldn’t be - chances are, after making planetfall, we’d dismantle the ship for settlement, using the metal for everything, building refineries, making almost every fokking thing from scratch if they didn't end up relying on the ship's machines… there is no way we could build a civilization capable of opposing her in what little time we have. Besides, we wouldn’t save anywhere near enough if we just tried to-”

“I can’t help it! Someone’s wrong on the internet!” Thaddeus protested. “The Russian Federal Space Administration just posted something about trying to make a colonization ship with cryosleep and everything, and I think it’s bullshit!” he typed in his realization, before abruptly typing how resource-intensive the process would be.

“I think we have more important things to worry about,” Sum Runner said, levitating a flash drive with all of the recordings on it. “Here. Play this.”

Dammit. That was just what Thaddeus had been trying not to do - not to think about impending doom.

Testing… testing… Okay, Good. This is Coal Embers… (judging by their tone of voice, subject appears to be looking down at a guide of some sort) unicorn mare. Coat is… kind of bluish black, same with my mane and tail, though those have red highlights. Not much more than a filly. But don’t call me a damn filly. I’ve seen shit you would not believe. I’ve caught rides on trains, I’ve outrun Wonderbolts, I’ve met the Dragons of the East. I ran away from my parents when the war started.

Anyway, I’m one of many that were chosen to participate in the Crowe Labs broadcast program. I am speaking into an Accu-Vox recorder, mailed to me straight from Brazil! Along with a supply of coupons for rations, and… (puzzledly) ‘From the oven of Dr. Thaddeus Crowe: CUPCAKES!’
...Well. That’s… that’s weird. Still, I haven’t had cupcakes in awhile…

Oh…. oh, that’s so good… yum. Anyway, I’m one of those lucky few that are going to be broadcasting their life on Earth into the cold emptiness of space in the hope that someone or something will listen to us. And I’m broadcasting it over the internet because apparently I’m getting a bonus for that.

Well, I live in what’s called a Dead End. Inspires all the confidence in the world, doesn’t it? That’s what we call the housing built for refugees. Though the Portland Dead End isn’t that bad. We don’t have walls enclosing it, it’s not a solid block of concrete with rooms inside, and it’s not crawling with people.

...Yet. But when that happens, we’ll be fucked anyway. So whatever. It’s still pretty crowded and oppressively dirty. The government figured they might as well put us all to work, so now here I am, making guns in a munitions plant. I'm also employed for making explosives and…. ah, hell. Might as well tell you. The PHL have a certain… project… that makes human weaponry all-around more effective. And it requires unicorns. It is not, as the HLF would have you believe, all staged to make the PHL look good.

Why would that even make any sense? At all? At that point, you’re not just paranoid, you’re stupid.

The job pays well. I get decent amounts of rations, sometimes even cash. Once, I even… I even got some cinnamon! That’s been so hard to find lately.

“Wonder what happened in her past though to get her here so young?” Thaddeus asked.

“Good question,” Sum Runner said. “She might reveal it later, though. We’ll have to wait and see.”

A lot of people lately seem to be calling the HLF ‘idiots who think they can go all Mad Max’. It might be overused, but… it’s not far off the mark. Also, I saw the movie after the last entry, and suddenly it all makes sense. I swear, I saw someone that looked like Lord Humongous.

He tried to drive a car full of explosives into a PHL building in Vancouver, just diving out after dropping a brick on the accelerator.

Another of them tried to… I swear to Luna this really happened… sabotage the creation of magic gear, as they were under the impression it could turn people into newfoals. Which is stupid, and, as we all beat him up, in between my stomps to his gut with hooves, he swore he was HLF. Now… that’s a special kind of stupid. I swear, those bastards wonder why nobody takes them seriously. The PHL is aligned with the few governments that still exist. The PHL assisted with the evacuation of countless cities. The PHL R&D is the reason that America still has power - yeah, hold on a sec.

Seriously. The Middle East is gone, and the country’s overpopulated… we had to do something to power the country. So… the HLF are trying to destroy the people that keep the infrastructure running.

Can’t we just… can’t we just agree to hate the PER? Nobody likes them. I mean, you have them try and potion bomb a place, and everyone in the immediate area tries to rip them to-

Okay. I don’t know who you are or who’s listening to this, but… the biggest battle of the war is happening right now. It’s in Boston. And…. and… Oh Luna oh Luna oh Luna! That’s… that’s the biggest skyliner I’ve ever seen! The missiles are just flying at the thing, and they’re not doing shit!

Oh shit, oh hell, oh mother of Luna I’ve never been more scared than I am right now. Marcus Renee is in that city. The Elements are in the city. If he’s ponified… well… we’re fucked. He knows things about the PHL, about the things we’re making here, about prisoners, military secrets… they ponify him and we’re fucked! If that ship leaves the eastern seaboard, we’re gonna be worse than dead!

If they find any PHL ponies or those few hermits that just want to keep to themselves, they’ll be picked up. Rescued from earth, even as they scream and scream, kicking and biting. Then, they’ll be turned into what are essentially newfoals with cutie marks, and you’ll be-

“Can’t blame her for throwing up in her mouth,” Sum Runner sighed. “Hell, I know I did when a newfoal told some human friends of mine how much better it was as a pony…”

“I just kicked the newfoal in the face when I got that speech,” Thaddeus sighed.

“Broke my toe, but it was totally worth it,” Thaddeus added. “She’s right about the HLF. I hope that turns into a meme - ‘IT’S NOT MAD MAX YET YOU MOFOS!’” he paused. “Wonder if I can tweet that?”

“You’re going to do it even if I tell you to listen, aren’t you?” Sum Runner sighed.

“Absolutely!” Thaddeus said, looking to find a suitably humiliating picture of the HLF. “She’s… kinda expository. Just like we're paying her for. But how else will any listeners know what’s going on? Or… the aliens? It’s not like we can just send information to them without context.”

“Sum,” Thaddeus said, “You’re technically an alien to us. You’re a magical unicorn from another universe, the leader of which is currently trying to turn us all into horse zombies. What’s so silly about aliens from beyond our solar system?”

The Elements came, Marcus Renee’s runic enhancements let him survive…. something, there was a PHL superweapon that imploded the Great Equestrian and decapitated their Salvation Army - damn, I wish I could do air-quotes! - and then Princess Celestia cloned herself (with the old legendary Mirror Pool, if my memory is right) and there…. there was a sniper rifle, and someone shot out her spine….

But there’s shit I don’t get. There’s hundreds of people talking about a dome of night covering the city, spontaneous storms, Princess Luna appearing… and Discord…

I don’t know what happened, but Celestia nearly leveled the city. She came… the PHL stood…. and they stopped her. Killed her, even. It turned out to be a clone of her, and she wasn’t really there because she was afraid the humans might have some trump card.

The day before yesterday was the Battle of Boston, and let me tell you, nobody could look away. There weren’t any “official” feeds from there, so we had to deal with speculation, scraps of footage that were transmitted somehow, rumors from people that had managed to escape the city… we’d been hooked to footage, eating up rumors like free pizza.

And then the news about Celestia attacking in two weeks came in. There were rumors of a letter, but nobody could confirm them.
We didn’t know what to make of that… other than pants-shitting or just flank-shitting terror. Those were popular. I had to go patrol the Dead End where I live with thousands of refugees, looking for people or ponies that were going to kill themselves.

Now, here’s the thing. I’ve been running for years. I’ve had the HLF at my flanks, spraying out so much lead at me that I still don’t know how I’m alive. Also, here’s something I bet you didn’t know: The HLF do not have poor aim. They just like making their targets suffer. I had the PER chasing me. And they’re that kind of smarmy, self-absorbed, can-do-no-wrong sweetness that practically begs you to cave their fucking faces in, or burn them up from the inside. And I have.

I’ve run through Asia, across the Pacific, and finally here, to Portland Oregon. I’ve seen civilization just wither up and die, I’ve seen everything go to hell as humans started burning things, rioting, killing and stealing, hoarding supplies to outrun the barrier. Civilians thrown out of trucks or trains or even because there just wasn’t enough room. Families walking barefoot, practically running, desperately trying to outrun the Barrier when there was just no time left.

People scrabbling in the dirt or foraging in the forest, for something to eat, covered in mud, having lost so much that they’re beyond tears. I’ve talked people out of suicide… Sometimes, I failed. I watched the war turn into a damn nightmare. I was there when China turned into an oppressive nightmare, made worse by the fact that they needed it to keep all the HLF movements pushed back from Europe and the Middle East from destroying what civilization was left. I met the Dragons of the East and Captain Kleiner, I saw everyone go from riches to rags, and I still don’t know how I lived through it. I have seen anarchy. But…

Nobody should think on that shit. It would make everything I’ve seen look like paradise. But now I had something better to think on. Fighting… and winning. The Queen Bitch has destroyed most of the world… a third, or half. Depends on who you ask. The Barrier’s proven indestructible. She has seemingly endless ponypower, she’s…. she’s a goddess! And there we were, killing her.

That bitch ruined my life. She killed all that was good about Equestria. She destroyed my dad’s business. Left us to fend for ourselves. Performed honest-to-God xenocide and had no regard for non-pony life, made the newfoals... If we were going to be able to kill her, I wanted a piece.

Besides, I was sick of running, and the thought of the Barrier eating up the Americas scared the shit out of me. So why not join the PHL?

“She went through Asia?!” Sum Runner asked. He and Thaddeus winced at the pain she must have gone through. Not a day went by without news of some unpleasantness in Asia, be it the Fu’an riots, news of the police in black, yellow, and white riot armor and potion-blocking PHL gas masks raiding HLF or PER strongholds in warehouses or Cold War-era fallout shelters, executions, some great HLF atrocity in the uncontrollable shrinking badland that was rural China, or plagues caused by the cramped conditions refugees were forced to live in.

Worked up the courage to head off to a recruitment station over in Vancouver.
They accepted me after a bit of verity-gauging to see if I was a PER member, a short physical, and a magic evaluation. They gave me a ticket, and I headed off to Union Station.

If I looked at the train station in very specific places I think it could be mistaken for thinking that maybe it was before the war. I’d have to look hard. Find a little island of space in the station, away from the potion sensors made by the PHL. Away from the men and women with wetsuits or rasping, sawing gas masks. Away from the openly carried firearms that are immaculately maintained, ancient, or have been made ancient by the things they’ve seen. Away from the dirt and grime, and the unicorns in gas masks that are superheating the floor to sterilize it of potion biohazard. To somewhere with fluorescent lights that are still on, because power has been unreliable thanks to the Barrier eating most of the Middle East, even with the power plants that Macroburst the pegasus is making. And most of all, away from the newspapers.

Maybe, for a short bit, I could sit and dream of whatever the pre-war was like here in Portland, Oregon. A place without the huge, walled Dead Ends packed full of refugees. The one that I was stuck in. A place where maybe, just maybe, ponies weren’t second-class citizens.

Now, I could tell you what was on TV. Another massacre… another mass ponification. Another military victory. A short spot about how the previous announcer committed suicide, and another debunking of the footage containing Princess Luna and Discord. A conspiracy theorist, possibly handpicked for the purpose of looking nuts, saying that they were just covering it up because it would break humanity into thousands of pieces if they didn’t. News about a Nigerian radiowoman named Enitan Adebayo.

I think I’ll be fine, though. Got a milkshake, a tablet with a hoof-mounted stylus, lots of human literature, and every episode of Welcome To Night Vale, which should tell you how easily I can keep myself occupied. I don’t need the stylus - I can just use magic to levitate and animate pair of gloves and use them to control the tablet - but sometimes, you just got tired of using so much magic. And if I got tired, or lazy, things could get… incineration-y.

“Well,” Thaddeus said. “That’s good. Very atmospheric… shows how low that Queen Bitch has forced us,” he said, practically snarling. He’d hired hundreds of refugees, building up his company and creating new jobs just for them. He’d heard every kind of story almost a hundred times over, seen men, women, and children of all races and creeds go from riches to rags, just barely eking out a living in Rio. He actually employed a lot of them.

On top of that, his building had a very good view of the city, so he’d seen the slums grow, friends becoming destitute, and, more often than he’d like, he’d been able to see potion bombings, and PER and HLF attacks. He’d seen his beloved city fall apart before his eyes.

I… have a confession. I know the train trip was quicker and safer than a bus trip or hitchhiking, and air travel was incredibly hard thanks to anti-Equestrian fear, but… I can’t shake the feeling it wasn’t a good idea. See, I haven’t had good luck with trains.

I left my hometown by train. Well, I hitched a ride, and a guard threw me off as the train drove by the Everfree Forest, and I had to dodge Royal Guard trying to “save the lost, innocent simple little filly.” You... don’t… call me… SIMPLE! Those bastards!

I hitched a ride on another train, heading into a country where the government had decided to back the HLF instead of the PHL. I took one train from there into China - and before you ask, I paid for this one. It went through the territory of an HLF warlord desperate for supplies, he stopped it, robbed it, and left me to his friends.

The Dragons of the East came by before I lost my horn, but that was… well, way too close. Then I left on another train, heading for the coast of China, and that was… actually, nothing bad happened there, but China under its current rule is… well… I’m glad I got out when I did.

Then, in the Philippines (yes, the ship was attacked by PER, but that doesn’t go with the metaphor, just roll with it) I took a train, it was attacked by PER, there was a huge battle between them and partisans with hundred year old weaponry and homemade guns. Then, last time I took a train, well… it landed me in Portland around that Dead End.

“I don’t blame her,” Thaddeus said. “It’s pretty depressing in the average Dead End.”

“Least it’s not like Asia. Or Africa,” Sum Runner said, shivering. He’d been part of a PHL delegation that was delivering new assault saddles and enhanced weapons to units that would be sympathetic to the PHL cause. What he’d seen there had been, in a word, horrifying.

I’m just doing this because I’ve gotten… bored. And depressed. I need to talk it out. See, I have a little radio. I know I have a tablet, but I like radios. They’re just… they’re just fun! I felt like listening to some tunes, so I got… well… hold on, I’m gonna pull up the recorder app on my tablet.

“-Food riots in New Orleans, as grocery stores are stocked at half capacity. There’s… there’s a man with a ‘send em back!’ sign being beaten to a pulp, as humans kick him into the ground, though whether this means ponies or human refugees, I am uncertain. I sincerely hope he does not mean immigrant humans…”

I just wanted to find that smug anchor and beat the shit out of him. Anyone that advocates sending ponies back to Equestria deserves to get smacked in the face. They’re worse than a murderer - do they think the Queen Bitch is going to welcome them with open forelegs?! Hell no! Being on Earth without trying to potion anyone, that’s betrayal to the Queen. And you wouldn’t be welcomed till she’s turned you into what’s essentially a newfoal with a cutie mark. Of course, I wasn’t going to have much luck, so I twist the dial again.

“You see… it’s all a big plot between them!” says a man. Despite myself, I giggle. He said ‘plot’. Which can make for some awkward sentences that translate to ‘SO THAT WAS YOUR BUTT ALL ALONG!’

And then I stop laughing because I know that it’s one of those annoying cockholes. He’s so angry, so convinced he has to be right,, that I know it’s gonna suck and I have to “Think about it. The ponies have shown that they don’t value anything of ours… why would they want to help?”

He sounds like he just can’t comprehend it. I mean, sure, everypony thinks your race is a plague on existence, that all your music and artwork is shit and everyone’s better off without it! Dick. I know… I know. Human paranoia’s understandable here. But this man just… CAN’T understand!

“Now, see… the most damning evidence of this is the Battle of Boston a couple days ago!” this man rants. “I got the most bizarre footage and rumors from hackers. Now, I can’t say how much is true…”

I snorted slightly. Oh Luna, he is about to tank his credibility. This guy. This GUY!

“But there were reports of…. just, whatever energy they use, it was off the scale! A dome of night formed over Boston! Some people are even saying Celestia herself appeared, there’s people saying some…” there was the sound of this guy looking at a script of some kind. “Princess Luna and Discord reappeared. Huh. And yet the government tells us nothing! They tell us nothing about how they killed the alleged ‘clone of Celestia!' And Colonel Renee's disappearance is rather suspect as well! This was negotiated between our traitorous government and the-”

“News of an uprising in North Dakota over food… supposedly HLF-backed… one of many food riots, though the PHL assures us they are doing their best to provide food using the new magical means. ‘It’s like looking into the gates of hell,’ claimed an anonymous National Guardsman. ‘These people are only a meal away from rioting. Can’t really blame em.’”

There. Much better. I TK’d some headphones, custom-made for ponies (we don’t have ears on the sides of our heads, so they have to be big. And we don’t have the dexterity for earbuds.

Just woke up… the train’s not moving. We’re in the middle of the nowhere, and something doesn’t feel right…

I can hear someone walking through the train… or somepony, judging by the hooves.

Unknown pony: “Come on out! It’s so much better as a pony! You won’t even know why you resisted, clung to that human nature that makes you greedy, disgusting, violent...

No. No more running. No more leaving problems. I'm gonna be PHL someday. I. Ain’t. Moving.

PER member: "There's a pony here! She's a filly! Don't worry, I'll take you ba-"

(Appears that the Accu-Vox somehow turned on while Coal Embers was fighting, as she had kept it in a saddlebag)

PER member:" OH SWEET CELESTIA, EVERYTHING'S ON FIRE! ESPECIALLY THE PARTS THAT CAN'T BURN!"

(there is the sound of something pounding against the glass windows of the train)

Coal Embers: “Don’t worry! They’ll do worse to you if you’re in here! NOW MOVE YOUR A-”

Newfoal: “You should all envy us, you know. Humans… and natural-borns alike.”

Newfoal: “All your worries just float away once you drink the potion! Come on… join us! Don’t you think you’ll be happier? All those little things I wanted… all is better before the One True Monarch and her radiant sun. There’s no more uncertainty, no more pain!”

Newfoal: “Wait. Why are you taking that vial if you don’t - hey! Be careful! Stop! Don’t! NO NO PLEASE! - AIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! OH SWEET CELESTIA, MY EYES! I CAN’T SEE MY EYES!”

Coal Embers: “Nobody… on this train… IS GOING TO BE ONE OF YOU FUCKING ZOMBIES!”

“Hmmm, November 21st ,“ Thaddeus mused. “Huh. So if I check the location, and-” he stopped. “Oh my god,” he whispered.

I remember this old quote: It’s not the end of the world, but you can see it from here. That certainly applies in this case. In return for the psychopath Jacqueline Dionna Reitman, PER members armed with potion-throwers and grenades full of ponification potion held an entire train hostage. Unicorns came to defend against any ponies that might fight them - and, if necessary, capture them and send them back to Equestria.

The passengers barricaded themselves in one car with overturned tables, covering themselves in thick bedsheets to keep themselves from being ponified. Word is that several ponies on the train were a great help to the passengers, with one unicorn pony creating shields and lighting PER agents on fire…

The PER attacked. They’d used a fake light and a lot of magic to convince us to stop the train in the middle of nowhere, making us think that there was a train heading at us. Soon as it stopped, the PER jumped on. I heard somebody… or somepony... say that they could use it as leverage to get Doctor Reitman out of whatever hole they put that horse-fetishizing bitch in.

Yes, I can call her that. We ain’t a perfect race, and newfoals are damn near braindead. That ain’t perfection.

Anyway, they burst in with body armor and, I swear I’m not making this up, super soakers full of the Potion. It doesn’t have much effect on natural-born ponies… or so I’ve heard. Still spent a lot of time being used as a shield, when I couldn’t muster up an actual magical shield.

I showered for about an hour after that. Nobody could blame me. I don’t like that goddamn potion... makes me sick whenever I’m near it, and there’s just… something is very wrong with it. You know how you can wash all you like, but it feels like the smell never goes away? It’s like that. Anyway, that battle… it was horrible. Absolutely horrible. I saw people get ponified… some of the passengers had to execute them.

I’m very thankful everyone had weaponry. In peacetime, having that many guns would be a terrible idea, but… I saw… I saw so much! Unicorns tried to lift guns and turn them on the wielders… we had to stab them to death sometimes!

I found as many of those PER bastards I could, and lit them on fire. I just burnt through all of them, screaming. I’ve seen enough of them turn good people into zombies. I got no sympathy for them, and you don’t either. So, when we took down the last one (I focused a flame spell into a laser and cut through a pony) we beat her for hours.

I stomped on him with all the other ponies in the train, even as she said we were ponies, and we were above that. Yeah, sure.

When it comes to being beneath things, the only way from the Empire’s practices is down.

Huh? What’s… Oh. The engineer says they’re getting the train back running again.

I hope to Luna this doesn’t happen again! The U.S has a lot of crazy people in the wilderness now… you have HLF that are doing their best to destroy civilization, PER, survivalists… people you just don’t want to fuck with.

Finally! CHICAGO! It’s amazing how much being on your ass for all of two days, then fighting for your life can make ya tired. Thanks to yesterday’s… delay… I have a layover for the night. There’s a train in the morning, so I’m going to a hotel. Eh, whatevs. I need some sleep. And food.

So… I am going out to get it. Even with the apocalypse, humans do so love their meat. I… could eat it. I guess. It’d take a lot of convincing me to give it a try. Animals from Earth are stupider than newfoals (and that is really saying something) but… it still doesn’t feel right. Besides, the griffons do it. Wait. I just thought of something. If animals in Equestria are sentient and animals in the griffon kingdoms are… uh…

I found a place that serves pasta! It’s… it says they cater to ponies, and they have a menu for us! And, uh… Oooh. It’s got butternut squash ravioli and mushroom ravioli! I could tell you about Chicago, like the Accu-Vox manual says I have to, but I am friggin hungry! Equestria has nowhere near as much pasta as Earth…

So…. much… pasta… and cream... and then there was ice cream… I regret nothing. Anyway, it’s surprisingly normal here in Chicago. I’m at a hotel near a train station - the most I’m gonna be doing is watching TV. Besides, if I tried to go and look around the city for this project, I think I’d get mugged or worse, so that’s out.

It’s… a hell of a better room than most of what I’ve used. The bed is comfy, the TV is huge, the pillows are soft and they gave my chocolate.

Reporter: “HLF-backed riots in the city of Fu’an. There’s protesters out… they have guns! Molotov cocktails even, they’re holding placards! They say ‘send em back to Equestria!’ in Chinese, of course… but there’s hundreds of other languages! There’s effigies, and… I don’t know how to describe this! This isn’t a riot, this is war!”

I can, though. Fu’an looks terrible! The streets are so full of protesters that I can’t even see the pavement, they’re on every rooftop, out every window. It’s an overpopulated nightmare… Oh, Luna, how and why did Celestia find the cruelty in her to do this, or decide this qualified as a kindness?! She railed on and on about how terrible the human world was, then she made it worse, then used evidence

Oh my God, they’re throwing a police car over… there’s… there’s a pony. I think I know that pony from somewhere! We... I… I can’t watch. I can’t. I’m switching the channel…

Reporter: "Seven dead, fifteen injured in suicide bomber attack at a PHL headquarters in San Francisco. Witnesses say the man shouted ‘for the HLF and humanity’ before he blew himself up. This is only the most recent in a series of suicide bombings on PHL buildings and facilities..."

How stupid are the HLF that they think these things are a good idea? They’re wasting their lives, dying pointlessly just like newfoals. I don’t think we even see them as a fighting force anymore. More something like hostile weather. They hurt both sides alike, they leave destruction in their wake…

I have bad feeling that the more the barrier draws closer, the crazier things will get. Changing the channel.

By Luna’s hooves, that’s a nightmare! I can see men and women with Kalashnikovs, ponies with PKMs in their saddles, trying to suppress the madness as newfoals pour out of shelters made from shipping containers offloaded by train, past walls with makeshift guardtowers that are easy to pack up, so people can repeat this cycle until we are pushed up against the sea.

The newfoals are pouring out, and the armed forces that might be either PHL or just Russian Military are cutting through them. One of them is holding a boxy looking machine, aiming it at the newfoals coming from the town, and fires. He’s not aiming at them, so how does -

Holy shit! Something just… I don’t know what it did, it’s like for a second, it was brighter than the sun where the newfoals were charging, in a huge mushroom-shaped cloud. Which is interesting and all (I wonder if I can do that?) but…. God damn the PER. They’re worse than vultures or the HLF. They pick off stragglers and those that can’t fend for themselves, they attack refugees, they use the worst tactics… I’ve lost too many friends to them. Nobody’s going to care that I found one and set his testicles on fire…. what? Really, I did!

The PER have no shame. There is no low they won’t sink to... And considering they make people into newfoals and "rescue" refugee ponies by taking them back to the Empire, that's pretty fucking low.

Reporter: “-Captain Kleiner has finally arrived to liberate the Marshall Islands. There’s… there’s men, women, and ponies pouring out of the ships onto the beaches, and they’re just bombarding a city that’s become a newfoal stronghold. They’re-!”

That reporter was drowned out by a large chatter of weapon fire, shocked as he just saw a PHL-enhanced gun cut an Equestrian zep in half.

You know… I’d be disgusted at the joke, but… fuck it, it was probably full of newfoals. And they’re not really alive anyway. However they’d react to something like that, I’d be disgusted.

Reporter: “Anyway, they’re just pouring out, under cover of artillery, and they’re heading into the city. Kleiner is staying behind with Thunderwing, guarding the ship and manning the guns.”

The camera’s swinging towards the horizon, and… she just brought three down in one shot! OH! Damn, that woman has good aim.

Rebecca Kleiner: “PUT DOWN THAT DAMN CAMERA AND HELP! You want to broadcast your own death, or do you want to save some lives?!”

Reporter: “I know what I’m doing, then. Everyone… they need every hand they can get. Don’t worry - I’ve used a SCAR before.”

Oh… he just… he just pelted off in the distance of two of the Blitzer railguns. And - goddamit! I just got some good news, and the signal cuts out?! I’m gonna switch the channel. Maybe watch some cartoons and flick back if I get a gut feeling bout it coming back.

Well. Another train trip. Yay. Between burning newfoals alive, sleeping in Chicago, and stuff… there’s not much to report into the accu-vox.

I think I’m near the coast now, and it’s a gray, rainy day that would have you telling the pegasi weather teams to fuck right off. But the further east we go, the more everything looks beat to hell. When we pass trains, they’re full of people, packed so tight I wonder if they can breathe. Highway lanes heading west are backed up for miles. I can see drivers that are…. they’re reading books in there. Which might sound silly, but the train’s been traveling along this highway for ten minutes, and the cars stretch far off into the horizon.

I’ve passed through God knows how many abandoned towns so far. Some look like they were taken over by newfoals. A lot look like they’ve been through the HLF/PER war, bombarded, burnt and beaten into dust by newfoals, and either gone to squatters or abandoned by people who realized they were doomed anyway.

A lot of them look to have been taken over by squatters from other countries. Defiant, battered flags from Europe and Africa sprout everywhere, in the ruins of houses and buildings, in town squares. Old, battered clothes swing on clotheslines. I’ve been in places like this back in Asia - there’s likely rooms full of artifacts from their old country, so immaculately (yes, I know the word immaculate) polished that they gleam. Stations that we pass by are full of people and ponies wearing heavy clothes, with everything they can carry. They’re staggering under the weight.

And yet.. on the coast… it all looks kind of uncertain. There are cannons pointed in the direction of the sea, some of which are swivelling, aiming right at us. I can’t blame them - the PER and the Empire haven't exactly made trust easy to come by.

The train stops frequently. Men and women, sometimes ponies get on. Sometimes, it’s an inspection. Sometimes people get taken off.

We’re heading for one of the satellite towns of Boston. And… I just realized something.

I don’t care that Crowe’s paying me more on this accu-vox to describe the surroundings. Or what the instructions say. But… this is the last place we can fight. There’s manpower, there’s industry, thousands of old mills producing weapons. Some of the largest cities, there’s land that can support people…. but when the Barrier swallows up the east seaboard, we’re fucked.

There’s only so much America can do to hold all those millions, or feed them with what little land we have left. When everyone on the east coast is pushed into the fields, into the mountains, against the coast, and the cities in China get more and more overpopulated, the police get tougher just to keep the HLF from turning it into a slaughterhouse, when we’re pushed into the sea… we’ll be doomed. The war will be over, and not in the good way.

I’ve just realized this, as my fur rises (and, if I was human, I’d be getting goosebumps): we are running out of time. We’re… not at a point where if the barrier advances further, everything’s going to collapse. HLF going mad, riots, people crammed into rooms so tight they can barely breathe. But give us a week? A month? It’s not a question of whether we’re at the point that everything’s gonna slide into total anarchy, unless the PHL pull a miracle out of their flanks and asses.

Mother of God. Actually, the part of the city I’m in… looks alright. The battle was mostly in northern Boston, but you can see the scars - broken windows, bloodstains on walls, graffiti, wrecked cars, broken buildings.

Still, better than what I thought. The train pulls into Boston South Station, through a tangle of sidings and spurs, now empty of everything but passenger trains and a couple halfhearted freight trains in the yard.

It’s coming to a stop… and…. it appears most of the people on the train are heading to the PHL, judging by the homemade body armor and weaponry. The station looks like the one in Oregon, but worse.

There’s dirt everywhere, the vending machines are cracked and empty, and the walls are plastered with propaganda, HLF and PHL alike, that they are almost furry. But in that special, disgusting way you get when it’s been raining on them, the posters stick to the walls, practically bleeding into others. I can see what was probably a machinegun nest only days ago, with a heavy Browning M2 overlooking the entrance to the station, another one aimed, almost speculatively, up at the ceiling. As if pegasi newfoals could come through. A PHL soldier with a prosthetic arm derived from one of Lyra’s designs sits behind the machinegun, a Tavor assault rifle at his side.

It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, but we’re not dealing with the HLF. I’m going to turn this off for a bit. Gotta get to a PHL headquarters, then.

I found a taxi. The driver was willing enough to accept giving a ride to a unicorn, saying that the PHL saved his family, so he at least owed them the benefit of the doubt.

I… I really like human cars. I know ponies are often beasts of burden and they pull carts, in Equestria and Earth, but it’s so fun riding in them! The seats, the view, the speed… it’s just comfy! Plus, the taxi had a little TV in it! TV while riding a car, that’s just…. that’s just fun!

The ride through Boston, though, was a bit less so as I looked through the window.

I know, saying it looks like a warzone was the easy way, but it is. Half the city looks like rubble, storefronts were unrecognizable, and exploded cars dot the streets. I can even see dead bodies, pony and human alike. There’s buildings that have been ripped apart, one skyscraper leaning into another, all its windows shattered. Planes lie in the street. I don’t think there’s glass anywhere that isn’t broken. The rain is just pounding down on the city, overflowing in gutters and making waterfalls in the ruins of collapsed buildings.

Still, though, I’m passing through some kind of devastation every ten seconds. Luna, what happened here?! What did they do?!

Finally, the cab let me off in front of the PHL headquarters. It stood, triumphant, bruised and battered.

I’m…. I’m going to turn it off. They’re going to think this is a security risk.

“She... didn’t tell say anything about it,” Sum Runner said. “I mean, I’m assuming she got accepted in.”

“Pity,” Thaddeus said. Admittedly, as a trusted supplier to the PHL, he had been let in on some of the news from Boston. Namely, that Princess Luna and Discord were very real (which was a hell of a surprise) and that they had saved Boston, if only to stop his pestering to reproduce whatever highly experimental weapon they had used. Still, he’d wanted to see the look on her face. “Sum… I just thought of something. What am I doing?”

“No… I feel like I’m doing nothing,” Thaddeus sighed. “Just… listening to people and ponies being doomed. It’s depressing as hell.”

“You’ve been busy lately,” Sum Runner said. “I just… I got lonely today, and I missed you.”

You know, it’d be easy to assume this was stupid, that it turned me into a newfoal and brainwashed me cause of how happy I am, even though we’re kind of in the middle of an apocalypse. But, for those of you that think I’m a newfoal with a cutie mark, CELESTIA IS A COCK-LOVING, SOCIOPATHIC, HORMONAL BITCHWHORE WITH NO DESIRE OTHER THAN TO-

Thaddeus and Sum Runner looked at each other, wincing under the torrent of profanity. Nope. Definitely not a newfoal.

And now, here I am. From Portland to New York, through HLF and PER, across the country.

They needed a pony to help, and I’m doing a good job at the thing I was assigned to - which is to say, welding ships. They made a special welder’s mask for me so my horn pokes out, so I can weld to my heart’s content. It’s… nice, not using magic to burn things alive. The welding seems pretty nice. There’s a guy nearby, this huge Irishman who boxes under the name Colossus O’Connor.

He seems nice enough, but he’s as in the dark as I am about what happens in two weeks. Still, he’s confident that we can fight. “We can survive Boston,” he shrugs whenever anyone brings up the topic, “Why can’t we do that again?”

I don’t know how to think about that. But it’s a hell of a lot better way to think of it than ”We’re fucked.”

“...You know…” Thaddeus sighed, “I’m actually not all that depressed now. She’s got a point.” He sat up. “How are our contracts with the PHL going?”

“Well… the MG2023 that Ernst Kasparek helped design?” Sum Runner asked. “The man that’s using it says it’s working well for him, though he wishes the experimental tesla module was easier to recharge. Its effectiveness against shields has been promising. But he says it can also…”

“Liquefy newfoals,” Sum Runner said. “He’s way too happy about that.”

“Wait, it does?! That’s great news!” Thaddeus said, practically beaming. “Anything else?”

“They want more of those crystal rounds. They’re also experimenting with other enchanted munitions, and we need to keep up with Ogunleye Futuristics over in Africa,” Sum Runner said. “We have some comparable designs.. oh, and we’ve received orders for Fujin missiles. They’re also… trying to make flak cannons?”

“Ah, okay. And… Okay, We’ve been contracted to help built runically enhanced ships. That was before the battle, and since then, we’ve stepped up production. We’re sending the parts up by train,” Sum Runner said. “There’s also… uh… Oh my. You have how many projects in the works?”

“A lot,” Thaddeus sighed. “So - how about we work on them together? After dinner, I mean.”

“Yes,” Thaddeus said. “You, me… tonight. Then we try and save the world. How bout it?” he held out a hand.

“That sounds wonderful,” Sum Runner said, placing his hoof in Thaddeus’ hand. “We’ll just-”

Thaddeus’ phone started ringing. He picked it up. “Sorry,” he whispered to Sum Runner. “Who is thi-”

“Yes,” she said, her voice quivering. “Tell me - what do you know about anti-skyliner weaponry?”

“That if they didn’t have shields, they’d be kindling?” Sum Runner suggested. “And that incendiary or explosive shells work well against them?”

“Well, yes. But there’s a new skyliner they have in the works - we just found out about it today, and it makes the Great Equestrian look like a little kid’s balloon,” Cheerilee said.

“I can’t explain it over the phone,” Cheerilee said. “But… we have a little over a week to make enough weapons to take the thing down.”

“Would another Blitzer work?” Thaddeus asked. “I have a couple others. Figured you’d need a few more, considering the one we have in...” he paused. “That training facility.”

“Whatever you have,” Cheerilee said, “Send it to us. We’ll pay as much as-”

“Yeah, continued survival is better than cash in this case,” Thaddeus agreed. “I am NOT extorting the guys that are saving the human race.”

“I... see,” Cheerilee said. “If there’s anything you have that might be useful, make sure it gets to us! I don’t care what it is, so long as we can use it to win.”

“Do you have any more of those tesla weapons designed by Dr. Kasparek?” Cheerilee asked.

“Not many,” Thaddeus said. “It’s hard integrating the alicornal tissue into them, but we’re stepping up production.”

“Wait, that’s what you used?” Cheerilee asked. “Where did you get that!?”

“Newfoals,” Thaddeus said. “Harvested by my own men. I’m also keeping it secret, cause I am not letting HLF members get into that business.” He shivered. “I am not using refugees as material for experiments. Besides… they’re newfoals. And, to be honest, it doesn’t use that much of the stuff.”

“I…. see,” Cheerilee said. “You’ll be pleased to know the things are working well. Granted, we don’t like the soldier that got ahold of the one attached to an MG2023… but it’s undeniably effective.”

“Goodbye then,” Thaddeus said, disconnecting. “So - should we put off dinner then?” he asked Sum Runner.

“Well, I’m going to be honest… we have a lot of inventory to go through,” Sum Runner said. “A lot.”

“What the hell, it can’t be too hard,” Thaddeus said. “Long as we do it together.”

2: A Story About Them
Somewhere in Africa, 2023

Though to be honest, you could be an interesting person. There is a good chance you could be a certain German man fond of heavy revolvers and MG2019 LMGs, who was raised Jewish in South Africa, moved to Germany later in life, went to college in America, got his girlfriend pregnant there, and… well, you know the rest. You could be him. He does know enough Swahili to be in this story, and he is a frequent listener of Enitan Adebayo’s broadcasts.

But, thankfully, you are not him. He is not a man to aspire to be. You are, of course, in Africa, which is interesting enough. Who are you, though?

So it doesn’t matter who you are. You could be one of the Zebras that managed to get out of Zebrica, one of the rare ponies that fled to Africa, or one of the millions of humans that have been forced down into the far south continent and are considering moving outward as the barrier threatens to push you and millions of others into the sea. Or you could simply have been born in one of the few countries of Africa that the Barrier has not consumed. Yet.

The whole of Africa, with its contrast of soaring cities, rich and poor, desert and jungle, had it far worse than much of the rest of the world. Reduced to five countries (if that) where there had once been many, every culture of the world’s second most populous continent crammed into a landmass not even the size of Australia. Thanks to the Barrier, soldiers and citizens were forced to use ancient and profoundly unreliable under-maintained rail lines to escape the might of the Solar Empire. The common, rugged Beyer-Garratt steam locomotives that migrated across the continent had routinely beaten the rails as they traveled further and further, pounding the steel into submission. Of course, they were used more by diesel locomotives, but ancient steam engines taking refugees further south into Africa is simply an unforgettable image. You may have used one of these trains to escape the barrier, leaving your house and precious memories to be atomized, watching from a train car, just lucky enough to have a seat, or crammed into ancient rolling stock, so ancient you could see through the holes in the floor, desperately aware of the moment this reminded you of yet forced to acknowledge that being herded into railroad cars which would take you so far south is necessary, and a far better option than being herded into a Bureau. You may have watched that happen, the barrier swallowing some town or city or village that was either your newfound home or birthplace, anywhere between Libya and Zambia, as you cried and cried. Or perhaps you did not cry, the devastation of life and property and the rape of innocence so far beyond anything you had ever seen that you were beyond tears, beyond understanding, the destruction hollowing you like a gourd. You may have been allowed only a suitcase to carry all your belongings, depending on how much money you had.

And you may simply be native to South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, or Botswana, and you may just want to make an honest living in your home for as long as you can. If you are from these countries, you dread the inevitable day that you will be pushed into the sea or forced southward. South Africa in particular is too overpopulated - you have heard that they are pushing refugees away, towards Asia or South America.

You have certainly cursed Equestria at one point. If you are a Zebra, you might have cursed them for oppressing your homeland in Zebrica, not outright conquering it but casting a long shadow so dark that it was nigh-impossible for any zebra to leave and help an impoverished, thirsting, lonely, paranoid place where the sun has become cold and pallid. If you hail from the Middle East, you could have cursed them for destroying Jerusalem or Mecca (so this is how the Jews feel about being driven from the temple, you may have thought, if you are a Muslim) and uprooting your religion. You could have cursed them for destroying livelihoods, reducing rich men and women and stallions and mares to paupers as enterprises that they or their families had worked decades to build were atomized. Hell, you could be one of those rich men and women. Human, Zebra, or Pony, you may have cursed Equestria with either hateful words or promises of revenge, or, most literally, by participating in the zebra ritual that tapped into the magic of Africa, wreaking a great and terrible spell that incited the predators and herds of the land to hate the newfoals with all their being, forcing the land itself to be a blight upon whatever empire Celestia carves out of Earth.

You may be a scared refugee, male or female, who does not wish to fight, and yet does their best to survive, in spite of the electricity and food shortages that are, at this point, some of the worst in the world. Though the exodus of immigrants to South America (you are certainly considering this) is changing that. And not for the better.

Or you may be a soldier on leave. Or a factory worker, making missiles, ammunition, armor, or any supplies needed for war, according to the odd specifications of the PHL. You could have received a custom commission for an NTW-20 from Helen Pretorius, which is going to go to her deranged, alcoholic cousin in the PHL. You are tired by your job. Tired by the gun you carry in case of newfoals.

In your place of residence, which is similarly contextual but very likely a slum, as Africa has plenty of those thanks to the Barrier, you turn on your radio.

The woman on the radio is named Enitan Adebayo. You know her by reputation. She is as tough as nails, surviving every battle from Lagos to Namibia with an old Beretta ARX160 and a shotgun, and broadcasting it all over the radio. You have heard her time and time again, broadcasting from combat, defiant and unconquered, urging you all to resist. And you may have listened to her. You have certainly fought. In a world like this, it is hard not to have fought, taking up some kind of weapon against the newfoals.

She is rather stoic and dispassionate, though no one would accuse her of not caring. She certainly cares for the news, frequently live broadcasting from combat zones. And you have heard she cares for her brother Obayana, his wife Esosa and his missing daughter Yekemi. You are neither of these people, of course. She is telling a story that is not about his family, though. It is about two people be knew from the front. Perhaps more than two.

She admits they remind him of a certain book, so she may not be using their real names, but she assures all the people you could be that the story is true.

It is a story about them, Enitan said. As always, she is speaking Swahili. Of course, there is a good chance you are also speaking Swahili.

Not long ago during the war, there were two lovers, a man and a woman. One was possibly named Jamie, another with the unfortunate surname of Balzac. Unrelatedly, Balzac’s first name was ‘Marcel’. Both, through bad luck, good intention, and a myriad of unpredictable factors, found themselves fighting in Africa. Perhaps, Enitan admitted, These were not their names. Perhaps this simply reminds me of a story.

They had fought together for years, growing together on the field of battle from boy and girl, to man and woman made ancient as the oldest soldier through their experience.

Then there came the day that they made a mistake. It was a little over two years ago, and it was not long after the evacuation of Nigeria, a day which to this day leaves me waking up screaming. Memories of being torn from Yekemi, the almost unbreakable bond between father and daughter broken as two trucks already filled to the brim sped away from the Barrier. Lagos had been cleaned out of the most valuable things it had. Food had been carted away by train, every gun in the city belonged to a resistance fighter or those who would become resistance fighters, gas had been loaded into railroad tankers that refugees would cluster on top of. Heirlooms had rarely been given precedence, and as a result, much of Lagos’ history was not even dust on the wind.

The Nigerian government had in fact done this massive undertaking days before the Barrier came upon them, and detonated a nuclear weapon there, leaving it a radioactive wasteland that would be of no use to Celestia. While the Barrier would atomize nuclear weaponry, there was simply nothing it could do about fallout.

On a day not long afterwards, the man and woman ventured into one of the forbidden zones. To a city which was not Lagos, of course. Carrying Kalashnikovs, they strode into a city that they did not own, and never could own.

Perhaps they were looking through there for valuables. For artwork. For some supplies or lost nibble of food that they could have taken for themselves. While they were teenagers who were in love, this was an immensely stupid idea.

They combed the city, looking for something. Anything. The city they had found was massive to them, the only two people left that weren’t ponies.

They made their way down a highway, checking for whatever caught their eyes. Their sacks grew full with computer equipment, cords, and those few items that were important enough to bring back, yet not enough to take on the first go. The guns of the city had been taken, so it would be unlikely for them to find weaponry.

A hoofprint in the sand, tinged with purple. Though the potion had no effect on a human who wasn’t in direct contact, they shied away from it. They’d seen too much. They knew the risks.

“Ponies,” Marcel whisper-hissed. While he could not be said to be an HLF member (some members of their unit were) and the PHL was slowly proving its dedication to humanity’s continued survival, the words “pony,” “Solar Empire,” and whatever adjectives you could ascribe to potioning were interchangeable. Especially for people as isolated as them. Perhaps Lyra was a good pony or simply a spy, perhaps the PHL was a passing fad… the opinion varied from day to day.

You can remember those days, which were, in a way, better. Or perhaps they were simply a different kind of terrible. In those days, food was scarce, but today, you would dream, you would beg for that so-called scarcity as children go hungry, as rumors of cannibalism and newfoal-eating spread across the city. In those days, cities were overpopulated, but not as overpopulated as they are now, often with at least two families to a single room, in self-imposed ghettoes. In those days, however, there were still some things that seemed that they could work, perhaps the forced de-orbiting of space stations, bombardment with asteroids, even the nuclear option. There were people, who lived at the other end of deserts and oceans, and some of these people may have been you, who had thought or perhaps merely told themselves that it couldn’t happen to them, and it was too far away that it could destroy them. If you were one of those people, you might have thought that nuclear bombardment could work, that sustained bombardment could destroy the Barrier, then thought that that perhaps “radiation bombardment to destabilize the thaumaturgons,” (As a nervous, Brazilian-accented unicorn from Crowe Labs put it) could work as well. That after enough weaponry and Cold War-era arsenals thrown at the Barrier, it would crack and fall, and under the threat of constant, 24-hour bombardment, a hurricane of missiles that could be seen from space, Equestria would disappear and the surrounding countries would find them and devastate them, and you would be left with a couple thousand stranded ponies. Perhaps, as a PHL member or PHL sympathizer, or simply a man who took in lost ponies when nobody else would, you would try and learn from them and rebuild. Perhaps, if you were an HLF member, you’d probably just kill them. In which case, you’re a total dick.

That didn’t happen. The Barrier was fueled by magic on a scale that most ponies thought impossible, and what little weakening the radiation caused was small enough that it barely mattered.

And so, whoever you are, you sympathize with these two in memory of those days, not quite better (only seemingly so) and not quite worse, merely a different kind of bad.

The woman who may have been Jamie, or perhaps the person whose name I have substituted, it has to be said, was rather lacking in common sense. Where Marcel had said it was dangerous and suggested scouting back, Jamie decided to forge on ahead and find it. Or I could just be assuming that of her because I know how this ends. Who am I to assume that doing a smart thing in a story is the right thing?

I know that as the two of them tracked the hoofprint, it could have ended in disaster. Following the hoofprints, they had traveled to a stadium, and, at the center there lay a newfoal.

Before Jamie could touch it. Before some great and terrible transformation we have all seen too much of…

My brother Obayana came, holding that huge shotgun he is so fond of. Staring down at them, angrily.

The two of them, so madly in love… those are some of the things they did. Poor decisions were made, yet the two of them stayed together, effective as a pair, for almost a year and a half after that.

At the end of that year, the man saw his love for the last time. It was on the forty-eighth day of the battle to evacuate what little remained of Malawi, and Obayana sat on the porch of a huge warehouse, in an abandoned industrial complex where our troops were resting. The valuable machinery had been cannibalized for materials or spare parts or moved further south, so there was little left other than skeletons of ironwork, imprints in carpets, or areas where there was either too much or too little dust. He had an old glass bottle of HLF rotgut on the table. I was in one of the offices, broadcasting, of course.

And, if you were listening to the radio, you remember that as well. Enitan had been tired of a day of directing the stragglers south or east, for boats or trains, and was collapsed on an ancient couch, exhausted enough that moving felt like an unnecessary indulgence, yet energetic enough that she could describe to you the particular horror of directing people from their doomed homes, unsure whether the horror came from the inevitable fate or the terrible, deadened routine of it all. She had, of course, been talking about a mare she had befriended, a Zebra with a perfect mane who was named Bayyina.

He had been sitting, contemplating as the Barrier drew near. A heavy 7.62x39mm rifle he jokingly referred to as the AK-FU, one of innumerable frankengun inspired by the Kalashnikov sat nearby. It had a homemade balanced recoil system he’d made by looking at a diagram on the internet, and a 60-round quadstack magazine, homemade and taken from a cache of HLF weaponry. He’d loaded it with as many of the 7.62x39mm HEI rounds he could find in that HLF cache, priceless in the desert They had been the dregs of the HLF, those that were paranoid enough that they would purposefully throw away advantages the PHL could give, more like bandits than resistance fighters.

His wife Esosa sat nearby, sharing the rotgut. And, in one of those twists that would leave one’s past self reeling or possibly screaming, a pony lay nearby, her fur glistening with sweat in the desert sun. She and at least four other ponies assigned to Obayana’s were from the PHL. They’d been tasked with improving existing equipment, as opposed to creating new weaponry. Supplies were low down in Africa, after all. That, and the PHL was understandably worried about bringing any enhanced weaponry overseas.

The man Marcel, who so reminds me of Balzac from that story, had become like a son to them in the absence of his parents and the absence of Yekemi.

It was likely that Marcel would consider that apt, as his parents had died in the war. They were in a PHL outpost - and, as an outsider to Africa, they were far away. Very far away, in fact. In attempting to maintain the overflowing sewers in the underground sections of one Chinese city, they were drowned.

To his own disgust and sadness, that didn’t bother him. At least they weren’t newfoals, he told himself. And yet… they’re dead! His lack of feeling, his possible sociopathy, it scared him. Especially with the disappearance of his love.

Am I a bad person? Marcel wondered. For not caring that my parents are gone? For wishing more for the woman I love?

Dawn approached. As did the Barrier, but its advance had become slightly unreliable. Gerard Mkumbi’s thoroughly pessimistic smartphone app that tracked the Barrier’s progress had registered that just yesterday, it had been four feet off.

If you were from Malawi, or one of the innumerable refugees that were funneled down through there, you remembered this day. There is a good chance that one day, men with guns told you to take whatever you could carry, thrust a weapon into your hands, and waited outside impatiently as you took food, as earth ponies and unicorns commandeered your refrigerator and pantry and set to bringing it far south into Africa. If you were lucky enough to own a refrigerator.

If you were one of the lucky ones, you’d run as soon as you could, knowing that to stay in your home one more day would be madness. If you were slightly less lucky, you’d been ferried out on a convoy of trucks or in a friend’s car, or had taken a boat across Lake Malawi to Mozambique, where you then had a somewhat more relaxing evacuation.

But if you weren’t lucky, you were evacuated on one of the trains. Forced into an overcrowded station for your own good, then squeezed into a train so tightly that it was nigh-impossible to breathe. Not helped if it was a steam engine. But you got out.

If you were phenomenally unlucky, you were forced into the unfortunate situation that Enitan was describing at the moment. Brought to factories with loading docks or freight yards, as the stations were packed far beyond capacity, and then herded into trains that would have been for freight in another life.

From the northwest, Enitan continued, closer to the Barrier on the horizon and near a steadily shortening railroad line, there came the sound of gunfire. Explosions rang out, artillery bombarded the position, and potion clouds drifted lazily by. Obayana could only hope that the defenders of that position were wearing full body protection, even more so that their protection came equipped with PHL-standard cooling equipment. He could smell gunpowder - both smokeless and dirty, unreliable, homebrewed HLF propellant.

He’d lost a lot of men who thought that full body protection (in the desert, no less) was simply too hot to keep. They were right on some counts, but not having it around was simply an unacceptable risk.

A risk that most of the men and women had not taken, praise God. They stood by, folding themselves against walls, shotguns ready. Or, in the case of the few ponies with him He held a Neostead shotgun, this one a new NS2018 with the new replaceable magazine tubes and semiauto capability. Across the hall from him stood a stallion named Shuffling Dust and a female Zebra named Bayyina, each wearing new assault saddles. Shuffling Dust had opted for the standard two LMGs, while Bayyina had chosen a minigun. Any other zebras or ponies were in other parts of the complex, guarding the loading dock with their lives.

Oh, how Obayana hoped that Yekemi wasn’t one of them! Hundreds, if not thousands had told stories of being forced to kill those they loved, either mid-ponification or… he shuddered. Best not to think about that. For the men and women, stallions and mares that he served with, it was the greatest of all fears, superseding death or even those hundreds of irrational, childish phobias. A truly disgusting, horrific form of psychological warfare by an enemy that considered them unworthy of any sort of mercy, less than… to say ‘dirt’ would be vastly overstating their value to Equestria. Though personally, I suspect that ponies of Equestria do not rank much higher. That Celestia cares for nothing but herself.

Think on it. If Celestia valued ponydom so much, would she send natives and newfoals alike to die by the thousands? If PER are listening to this… think on that, would you? Think about how much Celestia would value your contribution as a newfoal, to send you to murder children’s minds as they sleep in their beds. Think of how very much she values you to send you to die with no weapons besides potion vials. Not even guns of any sort, which open you up for my brother to pick you off with his heavy shotgun and assault rifle! She does not care. She may hate us, she may consign us to living death, but at least she is up front about it.

Refugees of Malawi sat in the warehouse behind them, huddled and shivering not from cold but from the knowledge of what could happen. They were waiting for a train to come, or trucks, or buses - anything to bring in a direction that was not north. Even now they could hear the train coming. It was a diesel engine, judging by the whistle. They were armed with motley assortments of weaponry, some nearly a century old. One refugee, a Libyan veteran of the civil war of about 9 years back, held an ancient STG-44. Its ammo was running dry, but he kept the thing for good luck. On top of that, he’d been promised a magically refurbished version and a new supply of ammo from the PHL - the things were common enough among North Africans that their utility was impossible to ignore. Rifles, shotguns, and pistols poked out every window and doorway in the loading dock. I had been one of those, broadcasting as usual through a headset while clutching the Beretta rifle I had taken all the way from Nigeria - I would have been surprised if anyone could have heard me.

Perhaps you remember that, if you were there. If you were huddling near that loading dock, clutching a gun, as the next couple minutes could be your last. There was a train in the distance, coming for you after it had deposited a load of refugees somewhere, possibly South Africa.

“Are the barricades set?” Esosa called over to an albino named… well, like the man and the woman, there is a character whose name just seems to fit with him. I would like to say his name was Mindle. Except that’s not going to work because that was not his real name, and most of you don’t understand the reference that I’m going with. His name was, in fact, Youssouf.

He was little more than a child compared to everyone, one of the rare child soldiers who had not been pressganged into the war - rather, he had volunteered. Yet he had seen as much as all of them. If not more. He was a child who had never been a child, voluntarily cut his childhood short to protect those he loved.

Youssouf nodded. He had rigged the stairwells, the air vents and every entryway leading to the refugees that he could find. He had plastered the walls with hidden homemade claymore mines full of odd metal bits and bobs, activated by tripwires. Covered weakened areas of floor likely to collapse. Made sure that any ponies that got through would be in for a bloodbath. Further down the hall, there was a heavy door that looked like it could take a missile, though none of them were willing to test that. A former HLF man named Clinton Mokoena had welded it shut, but not before plastering it with small proximity mines.

“Whatever you do, stay put!” Obayana hissed, his shotgun not quite pointed at Marcel, not quite pointed in the direction of the voice. “She could be…”

He didn’t have to say it. They all knew. Perhaps Marcel knew, too. Perhaps he was blinded by love.

There was the sound of a scuffle off in the distance, and the telltale preprogrammed response of a newfoal reborn as a pony. Goddammit, Obayana groaned. Another one lost. You keeping score, you Queen Bitch?!

Everyone stood alert in the corridor. Youssouf’s fingers tap-tapped on the grenade launcher he had mounted underneath his rifle. “Soon,” he said. Then, more insistently, “Soon.”

There was a thump. Then another. Everyone stared at the door, trying to convince themselves it was but another one of the factory’s old creaks and groans, another-

“How’d they get this far?!” Obayana hissed, knowing the answer as soon as the first syllable left his mouth.

They all knew what he meant. The newfoals had picked a route and cheerfully sacrificed their own numbers to find the explosives, sending scouts ahead to be reduced to red mist and pulped muscle with smiles on their faces.

There was another thump on the door. This one louder, more reverberating. A heavy boom.

“...They stole your explosives,” Marcel whispered, his face paling to white. “They shouldn’t be this smart.”

“Get ready, everyone!” Obayana yelled, holding the NS2018 in one hand, the Kalashnikov with the silly nickname and 60-round magazine in the other. Shuffling Dust staggered back slightly, his mouth closed around the trigger for the assault saddle, though not firing. Not yet.

And the door burst open. There was no order to fire, no “wait till you see the whites of their eyes!” order, because if anyone waited that long, they would be dead.

They all opened fire in what would look like unison to an outsider, but, with the slowed perception of those in the heat of battle, felt like eternity.

In most situations, full auto is usually a bad idea unless it’s short, controlled bursts.

This was not one of those situations. Rifles with extended magazines opened up full auto or, if they were semiautomatic, fired in twitching, guttering bursts that would seem impossible to the outside observer, roaring and shredding through newfoals. It was chaos, and the masses of newfoals dying as 5.45x39mm rounds either pierced their insides or 7.62x39mm rounds shredded them.

At this moment, I was downstairs, holding off a crowd of newfoals that were running through a door, firing grenades and bullets alternatingly.

Where is she?! Marcel thought, almost hysterically, desperately trying to keep firing. Obayana’s big Kalashnikov roared nearby, its heavy percussion and the clattering of its shells on the floor deafening in the confined space, as the HEI rounds punched through up to three newfoals at once, burning them from the inside and scorching their insides. Unlike some of the lighter assault rifles of their unit (If one could call them that anymore) it didn’t leave neat little holes in newfoals. It shredded them.

“SONS! OF! PIGS!” Obayana roared, firing a grenade, watching it detonate against eight newfoals that were running through the door.

It was madness. Utter madness. And, to Shuffling Dust, it was such a terrible waste.

He’d told Obayana about it over glasses of HLF rotgut, and as they fired madly, screaming not in fear but in challenge, his mind went back to that day. There were so many smarter ways it could have been done, and he thanked Luna that the Queen Bitch hadn’t used any of them. She didn’t use tactics. She didn’t display any kind of battlefield smarts, an odd note considering that she had led military operations in the distant past.

She simply threw newfoals and potion at a problem, just so she could drown it. To Obayana, who grew weary of watching young men, women, stallions, and mares cut down in their prime under the onslaught, and considered wasting manpower to be a sin as terrible as wasting water, he considered it appalling. To Shuffling Dust, it spoke of a deep, uncharacteristic sadism.

The LMGs fired in short bursts, almost impossibly disciplined compared to everyone’s panic fire. Due to a pony’s rather unique hardships when it came to reloading, burning through ammo was a common problem. Alongside him, Bayyina’s minigun buzzed, cutting through the newfoals like a chainsaw.

“Oh God oh hell oh fuck no,” Marcel whispered, not sure whether to be happy as he possibly cut down a newfoal that could have been Jamie, unsure of whether he was doing a mercy, but certain he needed to keep firing.

Nearby, Obayana reloaded his Kalashnikov and fired again, ripping through more newfoals. “YOU THINK YOU CAN TAKE MY FAMILY?! YOU THINK YOU CAN TAKE THESE MEN AND WOMEN?!” he roared. “BRING IT ON! BEND OVER AND TAKE IT, BITCH!”

The floor had become so littered in shell casings and bloody corpses of newfoals that it was nearly impossible to see the concrete beneath their feet. Or, as it happened, hooves.

Back in the loading dock, we’d all been wondering the same thing. We were emptying magazines at the charging newfoals as well, rounds of every description piling up more newfoal corpses in the hallways. A Zebra with two FN MAGs on his back watched the windows, pacing and perforating any newfoal that got close enough. I fired a grenade from the Metal Storm 3GL under my rifle, firing it at the ceiling, near pegasi that were trying to fly over the mass of dead ponies in the middle. They were ripped to shreds as the grenade exploded, turning them into scraps of bloody meat.

Maybe we were just caught up in the heat of battle, but it felt like that train took its sweet time.

If you were from Malawi or passed through there on the way south, you likely remember that train. You may feel the stirrings of memory, half-remembered nightmares of not being able to get on the train, and desperately firing your gun at any newfoals that came close.

That train did take a damn long time to get to the loading dock, you may agree.

Finally, Enitan continued, The fire drew to a close. The train had appeared. We would have been using a train station to get out, but they were all heavily occupied and under fire from newfoals.

If you were there, you remember the stampede to get on the train. Some pegasi carried men, women, children up to the handholds on top of the train, screaming and begging them to hold on for their lives. You would have been almost lucky to have been one of them, as you know from either news or personal experience that it was a mad dash into the railroad cars, all things about orderly lines forgotten in the chaos.

Some were nearly trampled. Perhaps a few were. There were children and foals practically thrown into the train, set adrift across the refugees like Moses in the river.

It was chaos, and if you were there, you count yourself lucky to have survived. Most of the refugees got on the train… you hoped. Oh, by God did you hope. Almost miraculously (The newspapers dubbed it the Miracle of Malawi) there were barely any newfoals created from those hanging onto the sides or the roof. The assault yokes of PHL ponies had made sure of that.

It had been almost a miracle that Obayana, Esosa, Marcel, Youssouf, Bayyina, Shuffling Dust,and Mokoena to escape on the train - they’d all jumped on as it began to move, settling in a boxcar converted to hold refugees.

“FALL BACK!” Obayana yelled, running and firing the Neostead behind him as he ran, the Kalashnikov in his other hand. “Fall-”

The last thing he saw would have been a pegasus newfoal flying at him. In some inexplicable way she reminded him of Jamie, a bandolier of potion around her barrel…

Obayana’s shotgun blasted through her flank, obliterating any space where there could have been a cutie mark. Though Newfoals never seemed to earn those. She screamed in pain, in that voice that sounded so much like Jamie’s. Though they had all seen the Kraber Reports. They knew it wasn’t her.

“TRAIN!” Shuffling Dust yelled, taking off at a gallop. Bayyina followed close behind. Nobody could blame them.

Marcel picked up the body of the newfoal that had been Jamie, ripped off its bandolier of potion and followed.

The newfoals were ever closer to them, the drumbeat of their hooves growing louder as the resistance fighters dashed to the train.

The refugees had all made their way into train cars, whether they were old rolling stock or actual carriages, or flatbeds. Some had been fitted with gun turrets, even ancient flak cannons.

Obayana's group ran to a boxcar, pausing only briefly in their mad dash to turn and shoot.

All but Marcel, who carried the remains of the newfoal that had been his beloved, no matter how everyone begged and screamed at him to drop her, as she wasn't worth it.

Finally, after an eternity of shooting and running, distantly aware of the train moving from the station, they threw open the boxcar's door and jumped in.

A newfoal jumped into the car, but Obayana shot it in the head with his revolver, a heavy hunting piece passed through many hands, finally to be looted from an HLF man who had styled himself a Great White Hunter. Shell casings littered the floor of the boxcar as they fired at the torrent, the avalanche, the… no descriptor could adequately describe the mass of newfoals heading for them.

Even Marcel joined in, firing his heavy Kalashnikov into the newfoals this time, turning slightly as the train picked up speed. The Barrier was just over the horizon, surely to consume the factory within the day.

As a matter of fact, there’d been a minor engine malfunction and one of the engineers was trying to fix it while fending off newfoals with a shotgun. But it could have been much worse.

Finally, after hours that felt like years, and hundreds (if not thousands) of bullets that left Obayana’s unit feeling several pounds lighter, the shooting died down. The train had outrun the ground forces, and it had killed off most of the pegasi newfoals that could have followed them.

With the exception of one, lying on the floor missing much of her hind leg, murmuring gently and coughing blood.

The story becomes different here. In another world, another time, another place, perhaps Jamie would say half-delirious things. Perhaps she’d say she was cold. Or she would dwell on moments in the past, skipping and looping, descending into a state that could not by any means be called consciousness.

To Marcel’s tattered and torn psyche, that would have been a kindness compared to what happened next.

In the pause that comes next, you run through what few possibilities you can think of. You have certainly seen newfoals before, quite likely killed a few. There are people - PHL members, HLF, unaffiliated armed civilians in the wrong place at the right time - who simply kill newfoals at first sight. At first, this seemed cruel.

Until you actually spent a minute with the newfoal that had been someone dear to your heart. They would guilt you. They would bring up every wrong they remembered you did as a human. They would try and make humanity seem like the worst thing one could be, all while going on about how wonderful it was to be a pony.

“Oh, Jamie,” Marcel sighed, hugging her. “It is so wonderful to see you again.”

“We all know how this story has to end,” Enitan said, and maybe, just maybe, her voice cracked a little. “Humans and ponies can live with one another. Newfoals should not with either.”

“Why didn’t you take the potion?” she whispered. “We could have been... happy…”

“But we were, Jamie!” Marcel protested, still hugging her. “We were in love. We were always together, we-”

“Don’t…” Jamie coughed. “You know it wasn’t. It’s nothing compared to how I feel now, embraced by the One True Monarch. I was scared when I was hit with the potion, but I do know that I couldn’t stop smiling. None of us could! And our smiles seemed better, fuller, wider.” Jamie smiled. “You could live forever like that, if you’d only submit.”

“I can’t!” Marcel pleaded. “Please, Jamie! We can find a hospital, PHL mages, zebras, doctors, I can make you better!”

“Kindness to newfoals,” Youssouf sighed. “We’ve no need of it. Never ends well,” he said bitterly, spitting on the floor of the boxcar.

“I don’t need to be better. I’m a pony after all… and we are perfected. As a newfoal… they’re always calling to you. You are always happy,” she said, and the smile on her face grew wider and wider. “You can be pretty just like me. I know you wanted that,” she said, and Marcel jerked upwards as she revealed his secret. “All your worries, your secrets, your fears, your hate, all that human nature that makes you greedy and selfish-”

“And it’s all stripped away. Everything becomes transparent, and the sun never seems to set. Or maybe it’s thanks to Celestia’s kinder… brighter light. Wouldn’t you say it would be nice to be that happy?” her voice was sweet, now. Like fruit that had gone to rot. “Please, Marcel. Join me in ponydom.”

“That’s not my name,” Jamie said. “I’m Mist Rider now. And I have to say… I’m better than Jamie ever was. You could be, too.”

“I love you, Jamie,” Marcel said. “I love you more than anyone left on this planet.”

“If you had loved me, you would have taken up the potion with me!” Mist Rider spat.

“No,” Marcel said, tears in his eyes. “You’re right. I’ve made a mistake. And that mistake is not doing this when I first saw you as a newfoal,” he reached for his handgun. “Goodbye.”

“NO!” Mist Rider howled, trying to float upward, in spite of her mangled wing and missing leg. “DESTROY AND CONVERT-”

As it happens, newfoals make terrible soldiers. I can almost understand why Celestia uses them in meatshield rushes - soldiers with no minds, no dreams, no hopes, no higher thought, and, as that broadcast from Brazil said, ‘no higher brain function’ make for terrible soldiers.

Had whatever magic turns them into newfoals given them even rudimentary intelligence, the newfoal that had been Jamie would not have so blatantly tried to ponify him then and there.

She gagged, tongue behind one tooth, trying to fling what was presumably a capsule of potion into his mouth-

Only for Obayana, Mokoena, Youssouf, Bayyina, Shuffling Dust, and Esosa to down her with a bullet each.

“I’ll be right there with you,” Marcel said in a low voice whilst his body trembled as tears fell from his eyes, before finally pulling out his pistol and putting it to his chin. “I-”

“Dammit, Marcel,” Obayana whispered. “Wherever Jamie is… whatever Jamie is… she wouldn’t want you to go out like that. You want to do right by her? Avenge her.”

“We don’t know that!” Esosa protested. “We haven’t seen her since Lagos!”

He did not kill himself. At least, not that day, not any day between now and today that I know of. Yet, as we are pushed back further and further, I worry for him. As he could be any of you. All of you have almost certainly experienced or will experience a similar trauma. A loss of a loved one, the ponification of a friend, the loss of your homes.

As a result, I worry for all of us. As the Barrier closes in, a miracle could not come soon enough. We are ponified each day, and though the news from Boston has been promising, we need our miracle. I was not actually in Boston, and at least one frequent listener of mine has refused on the basis of it being “classified information.”

You can practically hear her glaring, or at least sense it through her indignant silence. Though that doesn’t carry well over the radio.

Regardless, I’ve heard good things. Anti-alicorn bullets, the Fujin missile, whatever the secret weapon they used to defeat Celestia was… I don’t know what that was, but I’ve been hearing downright bizarre rumors. Cloned alicorns, magic disruptors, a ‘Thaumic Absorbent Runic Missile’ or TARM, and most absurdly, Princess Luna and Discord coming back from the dead and laying a smackdown on her. And there’s even people saying Luna turned into Nightmare Moon! Regardless…. that day, we had a miracle, and I have little doubt it will return in two weeks.

While it may be too late, it is certainly not too soon. It is never too soon for a miracle. We have delayed the Barrier, we stopped Celestia and destroyed the Great Equestrian, so who knows what the future holds? In light of that, I urge you not to give up hope. Somewhere, my brother may find my niece. As a human, not as a newfoal. Somewhere, humans and ponies are banding together to fight off Imperial Forces. Perhaps in the Pacific, perhaps in Mindanao in the Philippines. Somewhere in Asia, there is an elite human-pony unit defeating HLF warlords, PER upshoots, and upholding justice and human life. Somewhere, a PHL sniper is trading out his borrowed DSR. 50 for a twenty-millimeter rifle, practicing his shots on an effigy of Celestia, and loading himself up to take on armies of newfoals and win, taking up a hand cannon of a revolver and a new light machinegun.

Do not give up. Do not run. Do not cower and atomize yourself and submit yourself to the living death that is ponification, turning yourself into a grotesque parody of the ponies I have grown to know and befriend! We have more to live for now than we have in the last four years, and I want to live to see it with you. I want you to take up your spade and do your part to make sure that in two weeks, Celestia has the worst day of her life!

I want you to live so we can take this planet back. I don’t know how the PHL can bring us the tools to do so, but I know they can.

We may be burdened by our own insecurities, by our loss, by our desperation, and a sense of inevitability. Yet, even with all that weight on our shoulders, I know we can rise up.

I trust all of you, human, pony, zebra, or whatever else you may be. I trust you to resist and rise up on the side of the PHL, for without them, we would be dead. Without them, we would be beneath even bandits.

The PHL have made a hopeless war bearable, perhaps having even brought hope. Well, they’ve brought rifles and grenades that make newfoals explode and bring new meaning to your life, which is sort of the same thing as hope.

The PHL have saved civilians time and time again, rising miles above the HLF. The PHL saved us from becoming those nzambi newfoals, those slaves to Celestia.

Think about it. Think about fighting alongside ponies who want nothing more than to save you from the madness of a goddess they have sworn off. Think of the sweet, beautiful explosions.

Chapter 3:Short Change Hero

It had been said that it would be a stretch to call Fleur De Lis a bad pony, though at this point in time she wondered about the distinction.

She’d betrayed her empire. Her friends. Her beliefs. To Equestria, that made her “bad.” That meant that she’d turned her back on Harmony, on the great friendship of her homeland.

But, for the ponies and humans she was going to join with, that made her “good.” Even though she’d thought they were evil.

They’d gone far, far north into Equestria, making their way through a forest of tall pine trees that reminded Roseluck uncomfortably of the Everfree. Yet they seemed… calmer, somehow.

“When do we meet them?” Fleur asked, realizing, to her shock, that she was curious. She had seen pictures of humans, of course. She wasn’t like those ponies that had seen so many propaganda posters that they thought humans looked like deformed and hideous apes.

“It’s not you,” Roseluck said. “It’s.... Fancy told us to trust you with everything that wasn’t PHL-related, that you were a good mare… but there’s some things I just can’t stand to be reminded of.”

“Anyway - we should be at the camp soon,” Roseluck said. “It won’t be a fancy manor, but… you’ll have to make do.”

“I understand,” Fleur said. “Fancy… did take me camping once before. Though I understand it’s… not the right comparison.”

“Well, pardon me for trying to cope, what with my husband being dead, my house burnt to the ground, my life in tatters, being labeled a traitor, and having searches organized for me as we speak!” Fleur hissed. “I understand it. I know we’re at the end of our ropes. But I’ve lost everything!”

Roseluck just responded with a curt, “So have a lot of others, pony and human alike.”

Finally, after walking for longer than Fleur remembered ever having walked, they came to a camp. It was a small thing - there were crude tents, a small campfire lined with stones, and boxes of what must have been the few worldly possessions of its inhabitants.

Roseluck nodded. “Surprising, isn’t it? But… he’s lost a lot in the past few years. His grandmother, most of his family, his sister… she didn’t even come to Granny Smith’s funeral, and started acting as if she felt nothing for her family, and alienated damn near all of them. I think the words he used were ‘like making newfoals is the only thing that makes her feel anything anymore!’”

‘So that’s who you were visiting all this time, Fancy,’ Fleur said. Somewhere, deep inside, she almost cursed his name for keeping so many things secret… but there was so much he’d done for her. And if she’d known, it would have been catastrophic.

“So… why did you leave?” Fleur asked. “Surely you’d have been more use to the PHL starting there.”

“Equestria is a giant fucking cognitohazard,” Roseluck explained, the human cursewords shocked Fleur ever so slightly. “It was damned risky getting the information back to humanity. Or just living there. We lived in constant fear of just waking up and not being us.”

“She means,” said a deep, drawling voice, “That the Queen’s constantly trying to brainwash ya there. Well, ‘cept for newfoals. They’re already brainwashed... don’t think it’d have much effect.”

“She’s… I don’t… what?” Fleur asked, realizing that the voice belonged to Big Macintosh, Applejack’s brother. “I mean, I know what she did to the newfoals now. But that’s…”

“Do you really think anyone in Equestria is the same pony they were before?” asked an unfamiliar yellow and orange earth pony. Judging by the carrot cutie mark, Fleur assumed this was Carrot Top. “Look at… look at Berry Punch! She’s sober now, but can you ever remember her being that rabid about anything when she wasn’t drunk?”

“Bad example,” Big Macintosh said. “How about… Rarity? You knew her, didn’ ya?”

“How was she before the…” Big Macintosh paused. “Crystal War? I’m never all that sure when everything went to pig crap.”

“She was, well… a little vain,” Fleur said. “But generous, almost to a fault. She was elegant, she… honestly, all the culturedness she had seemed to be an affectation. I’ve seen ponies that failed at that, but she wore it well. She was inventive, she cared for virtually everpony that came her way, and… she loved her adorable little sister more than anything. Even dressmaking.”

“I’ve… barely seen her, she seemed to be always busy. Come to think of it, she’s barely made dresses at all,” Fleur said. “There was this psychiatrist I knew. He said that while it’s fine to do something else, ignoring your cutie mark is bad for your mind.”

“I also doubt that’d have a noticeable effect, what with her busy being a soulless monster that takes joy in wiping out an entire sapient species."

"Fleur, how couldn’t ya see the horrible place Equestria has become?!" he said with his voice slightly raised in anger. "Don’t ya realize Celestia uses humanity’s own former children as a weapon against them?"

"Ever hear of a machine gun?" Roseluck asked. “It fires hundreds of metal slugs faster than the speed of sound. They shred organs, can blow off limbs… and newfoals just run into it. They get chopped up. Even worse, the humans have bullets that practically explode inside newfoals now."

"No… she can’t…. she would never..." Fleur said now shaking like a loose leaf. “I mean, I know Fancy said she was beyond reasoning-” (There was an ‘eeeyup’ from Big Macintosh) -“But I never would have dreamed…”

"Maybe once… but not anymore,” Roseluck said. “She uses them as a form of psychological warfare. And… and they just tell their former friends and family how happy they are, how much better it feels as their minds and bodies get pounded into a bloody paste."

"It is an attempt to break humanity’s will to resist and possibly make a soldier hesitate to pull the trigger. And of course, she’s overpopulated Equestria, so she needs to do something with all those numbers, and there’s so many newfoals, it’d be expensive to train..." Carrot Top said. “Honestly, I’m not sure. If she’d even tried for assault saddles, or something to make ponies competent at long range, then it might make sense, but she’s just throwing newfoals at a problem and drowning it."

"You… you were right. I was on the wrong side," she said in a low voice as she looked down at the ground, strewn with pine needles, tears falling down her face.

“Let’s… quit being so hard on her,” Big Macintosh said. “She’s been through a lot, alright?”

"I… I thank you for enlightening me, but please spare me the details of Celestia’s savage cruelty, I’ve heard enough for the moment. And I’ll hear far more "

“I… think I can understand,” Roseluck said, yawning. “Anyway, it’s late, I’m tired and we all need to go to bed.”

They all woke to an unfamiliar warbling, grinding noise like keys scraping on piano wire in the distance.

“That’s a… a human machine?” Fleur asked, trying to ignore everything she might have thought about them thanks to the propaganda.

“It would take too long to explain,” Rose said. “Just… when you meet them, keep quiet. They know your reputation.”

“I probably seem as bad to them as Queen Celestia, don’t I?” Fleur sighed, scuffing one hoof against her. “Some stupid old trophy wife that couldn’t tell if she was doing wrong…”

A box covered in metal sheets, barely large enough for anypony to comfortably fit inside appeared outside the clearing, and a brown stallion with 3D glasses and an hourglass cutie mark stumbled out.

“Carrot Top!” the stallion cried, hugging both of them. “Good to see you!”

“Fleur De Lis!” the stallion responded, a goofy smile on his face, as if he was just playing along. “I need you all not to question what’s going on and follow me into the box!”

“...But it’s…” Fleur said. Oh, how she hated being caught so off-guard, so unaware of what was going on!

Fleur shivered at the thought of being in the same room as Stallion Enemy No.1, but…

“You’re fine to go back to Canterlot if you don’t trust it,” he said cryptically, as if he had read her mind.

“Fine,” Fleur said, following her fellow ponies into the box, to find it was a lot larger on the inside. “How is…”

Doctor Whooves looked at her, an expectant smile on his face. Then, in perfect time with her protests: “Yes, it’s bigger on the inside than the outside!”

Fleur had heard about Doctor Whooves. He was a mystery to all - there were no records of his birth or cuteceneara, he displayed knowledge of magic and technology alike that dwarfed everypony’s understanding. He was, it was whispered, even more brilliant than Twilight Sparkle, and worth an entire Canterlot University graduating class.

Fleur had never believed the rumors, but upon stepping into his bizarre machine that could somehow pass the Barrier and between worlds, so much bigger on the inside than the outside, she almost believed it.

She believed it, however, as soon as the machine appeared above the Barrier in the middle of the night, thousands upon thousands of feet in the sky, gracefully floating towards the landmass known as North America. Part of her wanted to emphasise the “mare” part of its name, as was custom for “reclaimed” areas of Earth, but something told her not to.

“Agreed. It will only give you heartburn,” Doctor Whooves said absentmindedly.

Fleur shook her head, deciding it was better not to question this. Her head was still reeling from everything that just happened over the last 24 hours.

There was a great city below, one that dwarfed Canterlot, full of wrecked towers and spires, a vast cityscape of rubble that must have once, in its own way, been magnificent. Wrecked potioneer ships and human machines dotted the landscape, often having crashed into buildings. There were massive scorch marks from incendiary spells, broken glass littered the streets, and it was almost deserted.

Fleur knew what happened, knew the Empire's role in the tragedy, had seen the newspapers.

But nothing did the battlefield justice. This was a million times beyond anything from the Crystal War, thanks to the human weaponry and the scale of the battle.

The Crystal War had not been even a warm up compared to this. Buildings lay wrecked and shattered, and it looked to have experienced a simultaneous hurricane, earthquake, and artillery bombardment. There were almost no lights on though, and somehow, that unnerved Fleur more than anything before she realized: Most humans, save for military personnel, had abandoned it long ago. They’d realized it was doomed to be wiped off the face of their planet, so they’d headed east until…

Oh, Ce… no, Oh, Luna, what happened if the Barrier pushed the last remaining humans into a corner? Would they become some sort of freak show? Escape into space? Commit mass suicide?

It was one thing to champion the ethical treatment of newfoals, or question why humanity wouldn’t jump at the chance to be ponified, and thus support the war.

It was entirely another to see why they refused so, and what had been caused in the name of ‘more perfect peace’ and ‘harmony’. To see what you’d supported, reducing a human city little more than a massive ruin. Especially after seeing firsthoof what newfoals really were.

"Eeeyup," Big Macintosh said. "Mah granny said Equestria was dying... Not sure I believed her at first, but I do now."

"I... Think you're right," Fleur said, to everyone’s shock. “It’s just… Equestria isn’t the same place where I grew up.”

“Jus’ like cousin Fiddly said,” Big Macintosh agreed. Then, after some stares: “Fiddlesticks is kind of a mouthful.”

“We’ll be making groundfall soon on Boston Common,” Doctor Whooves said, pointing with one hoof to an oasis of greenery within the city, between a long row of older brick buildings and a row of taller buildings that put many of the skyscrapers of Equestria to shame. Though they looked more… solid, somehow.

There were ponies in the area they were descending into, and some of them appeared to be snacking on grass. It was a smattering of ragged-looking mares and stallions with odd contraptions on their back. But behind them….

They didn’t look as horrific or ugly as some of the propaganda made them out to be. She’d heard some ponies describe humans as looking like the result of a minotaur mating with an ape or a pig, with little, unexpressive piggy eyes and ears, and that was one of the less… derogatory descriptions Fleur had heard. They… actually looked kind of like shaved bears as well.

The machine touched down on what appeared to be a sports field of some kind. Immediately, the humans assumed some stance with their weapons that seemed to be more… more ‘ready’ somehow. The human guns looked slightly like griffon firearms, some of which Fancy had tried on a lark, but only in the same way that a modern steam locomotive (At least, by Equestria’s standards of modern) looked like those first clumsy engines with an uncanny resemblance to a bottle of pepper sauce. Were those… were those machineguns? Fancy, while using a griffin weapon, had claimed it had potential, requiring less training than a bow and having longer range than a spear. If only there was some way to reload without unicorn magic, though...

The humans had evidently found it, possessing supremely dexterous hands, and perfecting their weaponry to a peak that the griffons couldn't even dream of, with one of their rifles being worth more than a single volley from griffon firearms.

“That’d be the humans then,” Rose said. “Please…” She was trying to be gentle. Trying desperately to make sure Fleur knew that she had nothing but the best intentions in mind. “Be nice to them.”

They didn’t look like they were in the mood for “nice.” They had all been pushed to their limits and beyond, judging by how much of their world was gone.

A group of ponies, each wearing the curious devices that the ponies called assault saddles, strode up to them.

Fleur noted with extreme discomfort that most of the weapons were pointed at her. They looked small, but those few ponies that returned from Earth had often come back with grisly wounds, sometimes even necessitating amputation.

While they looked happy to see the Doctor, there was a curious mix of emotions on their faces. The Doctor had warned them that he’d be evacuating several informants to protect them from the cognitohazardous enchantment on Equestria, and new ponypower for the PHL was always welcome.

But he’d also warned them that he had terrible news, so they were worried. And rather disgusted at the presence of one Fleur de Lis.

And then, movement. Between the soldiers and various irregulars with guns, something small and yellow shot out, heading for Big Macintosh. Was it an attack, some new weapon, or -

"BLOOM!" Big Macintosh gasped. It had been said by some ponies that Big Mac seemed to be made of stone, judging by his unemotive face and monosyllabic vocabulary.

Before anyone or anypony knew it, Big Macintosh, biggest, strongest stallion in Ponyville and counties around, was bawling his eyes out, holding his little sister between his forelegs in an embrace that would leave most people or ponies worried about the cracking noises from their ribs that they were hearing.

“I… I missed you, lil’ sis!” he said, his voice slowly giving way to sobs.

“I… I missed you too!” Applebloom cried, still hugging him. “It’s happier here, and I’m with friends-”

Almost to punctuate that sentence, three other young mares jumped on him, a tiny orange earth pony with bandages around her barrel, a brown earth pony with a red-pink mane, and a young unicorn mare that Fleur recognized as Rarity’s adorable little sister.

“You’re… all out,” he said, a smile on his face. “You’re okay! You’re… you!” He squeezed tighter.

“Now, ain’t that sweet?” said a large and heavily muscled earth pony with a red bandana and goggles, almost sniffling back tears of his own.

“Sure is,” said a the bearded human next to him, heavily armed, carrying a massive gun. There was a smile on his face as he watched the reunion, and Fleur would have been disturbed to know just how uncharacteristic that was.

“I thought I’d lost you!” Big Macintosh’s sister cried. “I thought you wouldn’t be you when you came back, I thought you’d be like - “

“Don’t,” Big Macintosh said, hugging her tighter. “Maybe someday, we can talk about her, but for now….”

“Fleur De Lis?” asked one human quietly, not willing to interrupt the touching moment.

She turned away from the ponies as they gathered around the family and friends and gave a curt nod.

“Kiff,” said the human with a wild beard and almost cannon-like rifle, standing further back, near the road. Everyone looked at him. “Cool,” he explained. “That’s… that’s what it means.”

“Don’t worry about Kraber,” said the first human. “He won’t be in the debriefing.”

“Actually, I will,” the human that was evidently named Kraber said. “Just… not as an…” he mused over his word choice. “Enhanced interrogator. I’m kind of… fokking tired of sinking so low. ‘Sides, she came to us of her own free will. Not really any point to it.”

Everyone stared over at him. Fleur didn’t know why. The stallion with a red bandana and goggles stared up at him, a smile on his face.

“Queen Celestia killed my husband,” she said. “Immediately after a newfoal tried to kill my foal, and after he showed me... he showed me what newfoals really were.”

“Awful,” she said, tears in her eyes. “Caricatures of ponies that only seem happy because they are not allowed to be anything else.”

“Now,” the first human said, ignoring the two of them, “We’re going to be taking you to a PHL building down south. Secret location,” he explained. “Into the truck.”

The human named Kraber opened the doors of a large human transport, a huge metal thing almost the size of a small house.

“Easy,” Roseluck said. “Easy, Fleur. They’re not going to hurt you if you cooperate. It’s only temporary.”

Roseluck nodded. “The PHL are reasonable people. You can trust them a hell of a lot more than Celestia, that’s for sure.”

Some part of Fleur wanted to argue. To say you could still reason with her, that she didn’t trust the PHL… but those were quickly overridden by more logical parts of her brain, not clinging to the memories of an Equestria long dead.

If Celestia was reasonable… would she have launched an unprovoked attack? Killed her husband? Created newfoals?

She doubted it at this point. Beside her, Big Macintosh, Roseluck, Carrot Top, and others were clambering into another nearby truck.

“And no,” said the other human, glaring at Kraber. “There won’t be. I won’t ask why you think that.”

But the unanswered question was racing through Fleur’s mind. How did she know? Well, she’d been told that the HLF and PHL weren’t as different from each other as they’d like to pretend, and they had no mercy for captives. They didn’t come back, the reasoning went, so clearly, the humans ate them! Or brainwashed them!

But Fleur doubted that now. She had never quite believed it anyway, and with the destruction of all she had believed in, it simply crumbled away without thought or internal argument.

She stepped into the truck, realizing something odd about the bearded human’s weapon. Most human weaponry was far smaller and more slender than griffin weaponry. The gun he’d been aiming at her, however, had roughly the same bore as a griffin weapon, while still bearing the same modern look as human weaponry.

As they traveled through the city, and as she observed the devastation, a thought came upon Fleur.

“You know what’s stupid?” Fleur asked. “There are… there are bonuses given to pegasus soldiers that take photos of human cities before everyone gets ponified or they get blown to smithereens. It’s shown to colts and fillies all over Equestria, even in some of the colonies, just to make sure they know how to think about Earth. I even… I even participated in some of them. I had this newfoal with me, Shimmering Glass… he must have been a recent convert, considering his accent. He’d go on and on about how horrible life on Earth was, living in a refugee camp. He was….” Fleur broke down sobbing. “We made your world horrible, didn’t we?”

“Yes,” a dark skinned young woman replied with a slightly bitter tone. “I mean, yeah, it wasn’t perfect, but there were good things too, and people were trying to help change the bad things.”

“And Celestia could have actually tried to fokking help,” Kraber added. “Pity we didn’t run into a Celestia that would have been willing to share magic with all of us… one that didn’t have Twi-” He stopped abruptly, then sighed. “I know, I know…”

“We’re here,” the dark-skinned woman said, and the truck drew to a stop.

There was a series of metallic clicks, and the door opened, only for Fleur to find herself staring into the bore of that huge rifle, and a strange piston-like construction immediately under its… barrel? Was that the right word?

“I’m not trying to soek with her. Just, she looks enough like she could be related to Celestia, so this NTW-20 seemed like a safer bet,” Kraber said. “Plus, you’re a high-ranking official in Celestia’s government, so-”

“Pardon me, but any relation we may have… is not really in enough of a concentration to be dangerous,” Fleur explained.

“...Bliksem,” Kraber sighed, lowering the huge rifle. “I’m starting to feel really fokking silly for asking Helen to get this to me.”

“He just means… he bought a ludicrously overpowered tool, and he hasn’t found the opportunity to use it,” Aegis explained.

“Don’t worry about it, I don’t want to fok everything up,” Kraber said. “Either way - I sincerely hope this change of heart is genuine. I can promise you… I won’t be very nice if it isn’t.”

“Stop scaring the prisoner and get her inside!” the dark-skinned woman yelled over.

To Fleur’s immense relief, the PHL had been true to their word, proven not to consider torture to be an acceptable tactic. The room where they were interrogating her had a comfy cushion, and a table with several small chocolates. Unbeknownst to her, the things were rather cheap, but it showed that they were trying to be nice.

The walk to this room, however, had not been as welcoming. There had been ponies and humans alike glaring at her, all with a peculiarly ragged look. It looked oddest on ponies - she usually expected them to look happy, or at least comfortable in whatever they were doing.

They looked like they’d been through Tartarus, or survived one of the numerous uninhabitable areas (the Everfree Forest, the Battlefield of Discord) of Equestria for years on end. In a sense, they had, because Earth didn’t have pegasi weather teams, or regulated weather. And they had predators that ripped other creatures limb from limb and ate them!

Apparently, she hadn’t been well-liked for claiming to help newfoals while still buying into the anti-human warmongering. Still, she supposed it was what she deserved for never noticing.

A magenta colored earth pony entered, Fleur recognizing her as Cheerilee, the current leader of the PHL. Fleur wasn’t entirely clear on where Stephan or Marcus had gone, and she suspected that Cheerilee was in no mood to tell her.

She looked so… normal. Almost too much so. Like an Earth Pony you could just walk into on the street. And that was the mare that had somehow beat up the queen, according to rumors?

“I know you’ve heard a lot about me,” Cheerilee said, looking Fleur over. “Ponies saying that I beat up the Tyrant Sun. And yes. Those rumors are true.”

Fleur could understand that. A week ago, they would have been mortal enemies, and there was probably no love lost between them. Fleur had been, to her, a mare made all the more vile by her supposed kindness in advocating for good treatment of the newfoals while considering the destruction of humanity to be a service to them, close enough to have gotten it all wrong. And, to Fleur, Cheerilee was a merciless traitor and rebel leader who went against ponykind and her country, had murdered newfoals, refused to ‘save’ humanity through the use of potion…

But given what she’d seen recently, that might not necessarily be a bad thing.

"I... I don't know." Fleur whispered, "He could have came with me, I... he just stayed behind to distract them?"

"The newfoals were chasing you, correct? They were on your tail, literally?" Cheerilee asked, gaining a nod from the widow. "The newfoals would have ripped Equestria apart looking for him. He was PHL, so he knew lots of secrets that we’d rather keep, and he’d also committed the worst crime in the Empire… not thinking like the Tyrant. There was no way they’d let him live, especially not if he was taking the Minister of Newfoal affairs with him. We’ve learned that thanks to…” Cheerilee pondered for a moment. “Thanks to some connection to the land, she can find ponies easily if they are within certain distance. Fancy may have stayed to cover you, be the target of all her rage and distract her with the chaos until you were far enough."

"Oh...oh Fancy..." Fleur cried, tears streaming as she hiccuped, "He... he went to his Trophy room and he just said to go..."

Cheerilee sighed before she jumped off her chair, she walked around and wrapped her leg around the mare. "Trust me... just let it out now... it will be better for you."

Fleur sniffed as she gave the mare a long look, tears welling up in her eyes before she threw herself and hugged the former schoolteacher, bawling her heart out. "I’m sorry! I'm sorry for ever doubting all you! I’m sorry for helping that evil conniving hag! Everything was just… they’ll consider me brainwashed for deciding this, but it’s as if every bit of evil she did was in plain sight, and we were made to consider it as normal. Or the right thing!"

Cheerilee closed her eyes and return the hug, gently cooing and nuzzling the devastated mare as she released her pent. She pulled away as Fleur settled down after a few minutes, some inner strength she had pulled from within herself to stop and grieve later for her brave husband. "I... I need to finish... I need to."

“What…” Cheerilee continued, “What is the Beneficence? Doctor Whooves had been quite clear that you knew about it.”

“It’s a massive skyliner,” Fleur explained. “They’re working on defenses for whatever missile you shot at it even as we speak. They don’t seem to know how the missile works… but you might want to improve it. Just a little.”

Fleur lifted Fancy’s letter out of her fashionable saddlebag, and passed it to Cheerilee, still reeling at the revelation that an Earth Pony could have telekinesis. How… how was that even possible?!

Fleur answered. “A lot. Judging by the number I saw on the one side we were looking at… almost a hundred. It’s almost as big as a human battleship, I’m assuming that the only reason it doesn’t have more is to carry troops, hold other systems, and save weight. ”

Cheerilee scrambled to write it down, using telekinesis. She seemed to have very messy hoofwriting… or was it hornwriting? She wasn’t using a horn, anyway...

“But it’s not the mortars you should be worried about,” Fleur added. “It’s not even the cloud-seeders.”

“Probably,” Fleur said. “It would not surprise me. No. They’re trying to overcome the greatest problem that Pegasus weather control has on earth.” She looked at Cheerilee. “The reason they don’t blow ships back to ports very often, not without employing an entire town’s worth of pegasi.”

“Not enough thaumaturgons in the clouds to manipulate,” Cheerilee answered. It wasn’t a question.

“Exactly,” Fleur said. “It’s also got launch bays for pegasi. I think they’ll be used in tandem with that. But…”

The pencil dropped from Cheerilee’s rather shaky telekinetic field. And she said a word. It was not a swear word, a question, an exclamation, or anything of the sort, and yet it managed to carry the same gravity as all of them.

Cheerliee twitched, staring at Fleur. “So… she’s making a damned personal battleship for herself? Knowing her now, she’s probably made it almost obsessively luxurious inside, and insanely deadly.”

“Ms. Cheerilee?” a mare called over, knocking on the door. “There’s a mare named Coal Embers. Says she’s here to talk about PHL recruitment.”

“Tell her it can wait, Cocoa!” Cheerilee replied. “We need to know more about the Beneficence."

And so Fleur told Cheerilee everything she remembered. Its terrible, massive size, its history as a skyliner that had been changed midway through construction. She vaguely remembered Fancy being curious about the Beneficence awhile before the war, though he’d been rather skeptical about it. According to a friend of his, Trans-Equus Lines had been forced to change its name late in production, and he believed it to be the result of a pissing contest between them and Equestrian Air Navigation to build the largest skyliner.

Fleur noted, “I suppose the construction was rather rushed, now that I think about it…”

“So there’s likely some kind of structural weaknesses?” Cheerilee asked. “Hmmm. We have former skyliner workers in the ranks…. I’ll have to consult with them.”

“We don’t, they’re mostly used to help improve existing aircraft,” Cheerilee explained. “And help us out in times like this, because they know how the Empire makes their skyliners. When will the Beneficence be ready?”

Cheerilee cursed under her breath. “I’m going to need to make some calls...”

“Fleur,” Cheerilee said. “You just left Equestria. We don’t know how much your mind could have been warped…. and on top of that, you weren’t in the PHL. You weren’t an informer, you’re the most recent turncoat that we’ve received.”

"Fleur, there are many humans that will hate you, especially the HLF. Or just about anyone that lost someone to the potion. You need to earn the humans’ trust.”

"You’ll wish that they shoot you to death if you meet them, it’s likely they will try and capture you and then 'maybe' torture you to death, if even that given your status. They won’t be quick about it either."

“If they hate me so much, then let me at least help somehow! I just learned about the awful things I’ve supported, the things I’ve caused. I’ve treated everything about humanity like it’s an…. an addiction, I’ve thought they were-“

“No, you don’t underst-” started a small red mare with a bob-cut mane in alternating green colors said, as the door creaked open, revealing a unicorn mare with a blue-black coat and red mane poking her head through the door.

“Right. The less said about it, the better,” Fleur said. “But I’m ashamed of myself. I feel sick inside, I must have been blind not to understand why humans would resist becoming newfoals.“

"That, or the Queen had subtle mind control over you. I wouldn't be surprised; there have been a lot of ponies mentioning uncharacteristic thoughts in their heads," Cheerilee said.

"Yes… and as time goes on, she’ll modify them," Cheerilee said, unmindful of the new applicant, or that Cocoa Powder was currently trying to drag said applicant away, with limited success.

"If the Queen wins, she will subjugate other worlds outside this universe. Possibly even worlds where humans and ponies like us had coexisted with one another," Cheerilee said. “She’ll move on, consuming everything that resists her, until something stops her, or there is nothing left except newfoals and everyone lives in a false paradise where free thought is nonexistent."

“Or at least, whenever they’re full of that fake fokking happiness that stuffs their snouts up their flanks, they won’t want to think unless they don’t smile,” Kraber said from somewhere. “They won’t want to stop smiling either, thanks to the Smiling Goddess of great and terrible power ironing out all the wrinkles so they all think sm-“

“Actually, I was just walking by, and heard someone not referencing Night Vale when describing the Queen. I couldn’t resist,” Kraber said. “Plus… I’m not actually in the room. Be seeing you then.”

The four of them heard him walking away, humming a South African song under his breath. Cheerilee vaguely recognized it as Jan Pierewiet.

"You’re telling me...” Fleur whispered, ignoring the bizarre interruption, “that she’s going to do this again?”

“She’s going to turn near-infinite amounts of innocents into newfoals, until she’ll have enough of them that she can just throw them at a problem and have enough to do that hundreds of times more,” Fleur said, the dread creeping up on her. “Which isn’t even going into what she’ll do if the Barrier gets moving again. She’ll become like some sort of… of universal reaper, and she’ll keep doing this till there’s nothing left, after sacrificing and ponifying so many peoples that I’ll need to use exponents or scientific notation to come anywhere near understanding the numbers. After…. after…”

Fleur imagined scenes of humans clutching their children and running, houses (though, as with all imagined versions of places she’d never been, said images looked nothing like the real thing, and more like something near her house) and businesses being atomized, millions outrunning the Barrier as it pushed them further and further to the edge, newfoals ponifying young children…

“I am helping,” Fleur declared with steely determination. “I don’t care what I have to do, but I am helping the PHL, and there’s nothing you can do about that.”

“Welcome aboard, then,” Cheerilee said, hoof held out in the beginning of a hoofshake. “Now… I believe there’s another PHL hopeful that wanted to see me...”

Screaming was common on the frontline. So common, in fact, that Desert Wind really, really hated it. It wasn't the regular kind of hatred, the kind of thing where you hated something on principle, or because it annoyed you. No, the Earth Pony was very familiar with those kinds of hatred. No, it was the kind of hatred that came with something being so deep-seated and ingrained into your everyday life that you become utterly familiar with it - the kind of familiarity that the word "contempt" was utterly inadequate for.

The situation he was in, however, called for screaming, much as he might have despised it.

He was in the middle of a ruined street, in a city whose name he had long forgotten. On one side was a score of newfoals, most of whom had taken to throwing potion bombs that (mostly) missed. On the other was a group of Royal Guard unicorns who were taking pot shots at the group with their horns. Desert himself was sore, bleeding in five places, and limping. His gun had run out of bullets five hours ago, but frankly he didn't care. He preferred smashing newfoal faces in with his hooves anyway. Half his squad were dead (well, one of the men had gotten splashed with one of the potion bombs - but he was dead now. Only took six stern stamps to the skull), and those who were left were tired and drained.

Their squad leader, a dark skinned Texan man by the name of Alexander Redmond, had a cut above his forehead. However, considering how utterly doomed he and his squad seemed to be, he seemed remarkably determined to keep fighting. He was firing his rifle down the street at the newfoals. More than one fell, pierced by bullets: say what you like about Redmond, he was an excellent shot.

Redmond looked irritated, but a cloud of dust covering him from an explosion caused by another spell apparently made him rethink holding this position.

"Alright!" he snapped out to the remaining members of his team - Desert himself, as well as a German man called Manfred Stein and another two PHL ponies, one a Pegasus mare by the name of Cloud Ranger and one a grizzled Earth Pony stallion by the name of Iron Gait. There was also their engineer, a woman called Jan Lockett, who was busy trying to get command on the radio. She looked up at Redmond's shout - the man was pointing at a nearby corner-building. "We're too exposed out here. Make for that building, quick!"

Desert didn't need telling twice. With a snarl, he headed for the building, looking over at the unicorn line while he did so and almost daring the stuck-up bastards to hit him with their best.

Turns out that daring Celestia's best troops wasn't such a good idea. A bolt of something (Desert Wind was at least certain that it was purple, though that told him diddly squat about it's properties) hit him, and he stood still for a moment, pain lancing through his entire system. He vaguely heard someone calling his name, and then there was blackness.

Desert Wind sat up, winced in pain, and blinked at the sight. Redmond had taken up a position at a window: judging from the view, they were on the third storey of the building. Iron Gait wasn't present, which made Desert Wind assume that he hadn't made the run (a fact he was too comfortable accepting - damn war). Cloud Ranger sported a damaged wing and Lockett was leaning against a wall. Stein was nowhere to be seen either. There was a faint purple glow coming from outside.

"Ah hell," Desert Wind said, realising what it must be with a sickening feeling of dread. "I thought we were still five hours ahead of that thing!"

"We were," Redmond said heavily. "But that was about four and three quarter hours ago. Since then, the newfoals've flanked us and blocked the only path out of here. We're stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place."

"Crap," Desert muttered. He tried to stand, only for his limbs to scream in protest and his back to arch in pain. "What hit me?"

"No idea," Cloud Ranger said softly. "None of us are that good with spells. If Sapphire Steel were still here..."

Sapphire Steel had been a unicorn who had fled Equestria with Desert Wind. When the two of them had joined up, they had always been together. She had died two days ago, the victim of a Royal Guard spear.

"So," the Englishwoman said softly. "We're trapped between certain death and certain ponification - which might as well be death." She looked between Redmond and Desert Wind. "One of our squad can't walk. The Pegasus can't fly." She sighed. "What are we doing?"

"For what?" Lockett said angrily. "I don't know about you, but I don't fancy sitting here waiting to be incinerated or assimilated!"

"And what will yelling do?" Cloud Ranger said angrily. "We can't change anything!"

Before the group could descend into arguing, Iron Gait walked in, looking haggard. Desert Wind didn't show it, but he was immensely grateful that yet another of his squad had survived.

"Stein?" Redmond asked. Gait shook his head, and Redmond snarled. "Dammit! What's the situation?"

"The little buckers are holding up," Gait said, sounding irritated. "They know all they have to do is wait for you to die here when the Barrier hits."

"I see," Redmond said softly. He leant against a wall, thinking. "And there's no other ways out?"

"All the roads are blocked off," Gait said. "And they've got Pegasi covering the skies."

Everyone and everypony cursed softly. That was it then. There was a pause as they sat for a moment, each in silent contemplation. This was interrupted by a cheerful voice.

There was a pause as the group exchanged glances. The voice had been female, almost certainly a newfoal.

"I'll go," Gait said sourly. He walked over to the nearest window. "What do you buckers want?!" he yelled.

"There's no need to be like that!" the newfoal yelled up. "We know you've got no way out, and your human friends will die if we don't convert them! We'd like to offer you the hoof of friendship. Come down and we'll save you!"

Iron Gait threw a half annoyed, half amused look at Redmond, who grinned. Desert Wind laughed.

"Well it's well known that they're pretty fucking stupid," Redmond reasoned. "Gait, your estimate on the Barrier?"

"When it hits, this building gets destroyed, you humans get incinerated and we're left to fall three storeys onto whatever rock is left after the Barrier hits," Desert Wind said softly.

There was a pause as Redmond thought about precisely how to answer the newfoal. He picked up his rifle, walked over to the window, and fired twice.

"You... you monster!" another newfoal voice yelled. "You shot her! You shot her right in the -!"

Redmond fired again, and the voice shut up. He walked away from the window and grinned.

There was a moment's pause. With that, their last chance to step out of this with something resembling life was utterly gone.

"So," Lockett said conversationally, sighing softly. "Three minutes, no way out. What do we do?"

"Three minutes is ages," Gait said. "Coulda done with some books. Or television. Or chess. Or knitting."

"I miss my Mum," Lockett said after a moment. "But she was too old to evacuate when Britain was destroyed."

"I miss Equestria," Gait replied, "the way it used to be, before this bucking war business. I was a tradespony, not a fighter."

"This war's made soldiers of us all, it seems," Desert Wind said quietly. He was thinking back to his home, his family. Two of his cousins had died in the Royal Guard during the war with Sombra, and though he himself had never joined up, Wind felt the loss deeply. They, his mother, his father... so many he had lost. Even his home, now.

There was a moment's pause, and then Redmond sat down and began whistling. A moment later, he started singing.

"#Who's the leader of the club that's made for you and me,
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E,
Hey there, Hi there, Ho there, you’re as welcome as can be,
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E,

Mickey Mouse!
Mickey Mouse!
Forever let us hold our banners high,
High, high, high..."

As Redmond sang, Lockett started laughing. A moment later, Iron Gait did too. And then they started humming along, although neither of them knew the words. Even as the purple glow from outside got stronger and stronger, they kept singing and humming. They were afraid - you could see it in their eyes - but this was perhaps the only choice they had left: to go out with terror, or with dignity.

For Desert Wind's part, he was content to close his eyes and think back to green fields, beautiful skies and the promise of friendship - a promise that had been broken.

Lockett was at the window, staring over at the Barrier in awe. "Either it's moving glacially slow or..."

"No! Why did it stop!?" a newfoal cried out in horror. The newfoals began to panic, their once assured victory now seemingly forgotten as they ran about, panicking.

Suddenly, there was a whining sound in the air. Lockett had barely heard the sound before she ducked back and threw herself on top of the others. "Down!"

Dozens of Tomahawk missiles came flying through the air, taking out several pegasi as they slammed into the horde. Their cries for the barrier fell silent in the wake of the explosions that ripped them apart.

"Anyone still out there? This is Victor Kravchenko - I’m with the Spetsnaz. There aren’t many of us left, but the Barrier… seems to have stopped."

Lockett coughed, dusting herself off as she searched for her long forgotten radio. "Guys! There’s someone coming!"

It was a deus ex machina. It was improbable, and they all should have been atomized or newfoals by now. Yet they had survived by the skin of their teeth.

“Hello?” Lockett asked, practically yelling into the radio. “We’re trapped between a three-story drop and the Barrier!”

“I’m on my way,” Kravchenko said. “Let’s see how those newfoals like a Pozhar rocket launcher…”

There was a hollow boom off in the distance, and Redmond stared out the window. “It’s just raining explosions down on them,” he breathed, a smile full of almost childlike glee on his face. “From one rocket launcher. So much you can do with runes...”

“We’re coming for you now!” Kravchenko yelled. “Just sit tight and keep the newfoals away!”

“We can do that,” Redmond said, not smiling, but wearing a look of exhausted relief.

“This… this makes no sense!” Desert Wind said. “The Barrier suddenly stops, there’s a detachment of PHL nearby…”

“Well, Marcus said that in Boston, they’d ‘draw the line’,” Cloud Ranger said. “His words, not mine. Couldn’t imagine what that meant, but now…” she stared in the direction of the purple glow, wearing a smile full of childlike wonder. “Now, I don’t know what to think. If they can do this, who knows what could happen next?”

Calm Before The Storm

by Doctor Fluffy

Earth (part 1)