Chapter 9
23:57.
In a lifetime measured by eons, only two of my original artifacts remained: my father’s pocketwatch and my wedding ring. The sentiment of memories was betrayed by the cold brass and gold; I didn’t remember their names, their lives.
The watch was of a traditional Swiss design, kept alive throughout the millennia, handed down within a strongly traditional family. I knew this because, every four decades or so, a component broke; in order to replace it, I needed to read a transcription of the design schematics. Indeed, the original watch had been discarded long ago, piece by piece. I had repaired it with a copy of copied notes, but what I held in my hand was my father’s watch nonetheless.
On the back of it, at one point, my name had been engraved. That, too, had been worn away by the ages; I no longer remembered the name I had been given. I vaguely remembered giving myself names when I needed to interact with the twisted remnants of humanity.
Oblivion was my curse.
It was necessary—a forgetting, my loss of self. An individual could not be the quintessence of humanity, a symbol of our redemption. An individual would lack the motives and conviction to do what was necessary for our race. I embraced oblivion, for it was my greatest strength.
The frigid mountain air chilled the insides of my lungs as I waited above the capital of Equestria, a castle, filled with false monarchs. I’d spent past three hours in stealth and quiet, moving in a large arc around the castle, lazing targets to update coordinates for my armor’s targeting system. When I was finished, I climbed to the peak, looked down on the castle, and waited for my hour of glorious redemption.
With my reflexes, I could have manually aimed each shot, or with my command of chaos, I could have flung the projectiles without even the use of a weapon. However, there was something symbolic, an irrefutable logic of using tools to avoid doing things manually.
It was human.
By the time the sun rose naturally over the earth again—a transgression against nature that I would right—humanity would be restored. Once the false sisters had taken their rightful place in union with me, it would be nothing to raze a colony of shape-shifting insects. Then, I would be complete, and from there, even the cosmos would not be out of my reach, beyond my rule.
Ironically, I just wanted to rest, to sleep. For eight thousand, two hundred and ninety-six years, I had labored. Humanity did not need a ruler, a god. That was its beauty. Once I put them on the right path, they would live and grow again, and the Chaos War would finally be over.
I would look upon that and say it was good.
23:58
I clasped the watch closed and put it in a utility pouch. A button’s press closed the mask around my head, and the inside glowed to life. My eyes were granted vision of the world, overlaid with information about the climate around me. It was negative six degrees Celsius outside, my bearing was point-one-oh-five radians south of west, and a circle of alternating yellow and black triangles told me that, if all else failed, I had an arsenal of backup contingencies.
They lied to unjustly subjugate the remnants of humanity. For that, I would demonstrate true control of sunfire—by raining it down in salvoes that would level even the nearby mountain to glowing dust.
Failure was not an option.
Granted, it was to be avoided if it could be helped. Nuclear contingencies were beyond unethical, especially against civilizations without appropriate missile defense systems.
I had also made the promise to avoid killing, even if had been a lie to say that no one would die. Compared to the existing death toll—which lay in the billions—there would statistically be no deaths, if one counted to any reasonable amount of significant figures. History would forgive a necessary death toll, however; even a thousand lives would be nothing compared to the future I would reforge for humanity.
If she did not forgive me for the sacrifices of her countryponies, then that would be another unfortunate sacrifice that my cause required of me. But even if her country’s capital were reduced to ash, she would live. That was my gift to her, a silent promise I did intend to keep, her reward for loyalty.
My helmet’s display told me twenty seconds remained until the first shots of the final battle of the Chaos War would be fired. Servos in my suit knew the coordinates of the twelve guard towers spread throughout the castle; they were the twelve guards who, according to a month’s analysis, did not change their post at midnight. By removing the knights from play, I could freely move across the board and check the kings.
Excessive force would draw any and all active guards to my location, away from hers. The distraction would make things simpler and more tactically efficient. It was the right choice.
23:59
For eight centuries after the Satellite Wars of 3309, the idea of a standing military had been abolished, all weapons were outlawed for every civilian, and most lethal weapons had even been banned for use by security details. My grenade launcher broke those laws, as it had been specifically built to the standards of pre-chaos technologies. Magnetic rails accelerated a physical payload to lethal projectile speeds. It was an older technology, one that had taken several weeks to rediscover, but given how long it had taken to find the SMU-7 Weaponized Nanomachines, I felt the need to put them to some use.
I brought the launcher to my shoulder, and the suit took over. It aimed, I pulled the trigger, and it adjusted to the next target for me to fire again. In a matter of two seconds, I fired twelve rounds.
A benefit to that swiftness was how the first rounds were still in the air when I finished my volley. I turned to observe the nearest guard tower as the grenade hit it. The impact itself was fairly muted—no explosives, no white phosphorous. However, once the glass shattered, the machines began their consumption and replication routines; they swarmed and multiplied in a growing pool of metallic gray that dissolved everything in the tower: stone, wood, flesh.
Through the winds and height, I still heard the panicked whinnies and feral screams of the guard as he dissolved into a pool of red and gray. It should have brought me no pleasure, yet I did find it cathartic, in its own way.
I slung the launcher on my back and—with a will of chaos—leapt off the mountain peak. I would land in the courtyard, behind the walls; once inside, my map had generated the quickest path weighted against guard patrols. It would lead me directly to the throne room, and my siege would be over in a matter of minutes.
As I fell into the combat zone, I noted that the remainder of the primary plan rested on my companion’s ability to perform her duty. She was competent, in her own, cute manner; I put the closest thing I had to faith in her.
I had opened for her a window of opportunity. It was now up to her to leap through.
One minute before midnight, I heard cries and commotion. That’s my cue, I realized, though I’d already been jogging through the Canterlot Library at three minutes ‘til.
My cover story was that I was doing some off-semester studying in the library, then I heard panic, so I took a shortcut through a service tunnel—the one Jesse wanted me to activate his weapon in—to get to my office. There’s important artifacts there, I rehearsed again. That was my story, and I needed to stick to it.
I passed through a door in the back of the library, the one that acted as a barrier between wooden bookshelves and stone-arched hallways. It was dim, but I didn’t have my torchstone with me. The only magical item in my saddlebags was Jesse’s anti-magic ball.
The hallways twisted and turned, which made me appreciate how much time I’d spent rehearsing and memorizing at the map in Jesse’s home. As I barreled through intersections at top speed, counting the directions I needed to take, I distantly noted that I didn’t have time to think about what it was that I was doing—not anymore, at least.
This was war.
The fear of failure was the only thing I let myself acknowledge, and it tensed the muscles in my legs so much, they didn’t even feel tired. That’s a good thing, I decided.
And this was for the greater good, even if I still wondered if there was a better way for Jesse to spread his technology. It was too late to contemplate compromises, though; he’d put his bets in with an all-or-nothing plan, and here I was, the keystone in it.
I hoped that one day, I would forgive myself.
Once it was all said and done, I’d have to be able to say I would have done it all over again. I saw the stakes, I knew the rewards, and if there was ever anything worth risking my life over, this was it.
Another intersection flew behind me, and I only had two more turns until I got to the long hallway. Above it, in Canterlot Castle’s throne room… I blinked and shook my head quickly. There were two pillars I needed to be between when I turned on a ball, and then I wouldn’t be able to use magic for about a minute.
Jesse and I had both agreed that, before we met up again, it’d be best to wait for him to normalize with the fragments he was absorbing. What that meant for me was that I had no intention of stopping. I’d run through the hallway, turn on the device mid-stride, and I’d keep going until I was home safe in my Canterlot apartment.
This was war, but I was a civilian. Once I was done, I couldn’t do anything except wait for Jesse to finish his plan. Everything was bigger than I was, so hiding was the smartest thing to do. I couldn’t fight, I didn’t want to fight, I didn’t want—
I turned a corner and almost slammed into a Canterlot elite guard. We locked eyes, his gray horn glowed white, and his voice filled the hallway:
“State your business!”
“I… student.” All of my rehearsals and plans, and that’s what came out as. I pointed behind him. “The university’s this way, I… I heard shouts and commotion. I need to get to my office!”
His face and voice were a stone wall. “This is a restricted area. Show your authorization now.”
“I… I left m-my ID in the library. Checking out a book, I…” I didn’t have to fake tears as they swelled. “I’m sorry, I’ll go—”
For the second time in a little over a week, I felt myself being forcibly magicked off the ground by my neck. The all-too-familiar sensation of strangulation came back to me, and the guard below me shouted, “Canterlot is under heavy siege. Unauthorized personnel will be dealt with as mandated under new defensive protocols.”
I tried to say something, but things were starting to get spinny and light. I heard a gurgling sound, but it sounded far away.
A second voice cut through the haze: “Starlight, what are you doing?”
Air rushed back into my lungs as the guard’s grip loosened. He still kept me in the air, but as reality tightened around me, I saw a second guard rush over to us. They looked almost identical, even up close, or maybe I was too distracted to see their differences.
The first guard—the one I guessed was named Starlight—looked at his comrade. “Cram it, Shield. I caught her running through the hallways.”
“Student!” I wheezed.
The second guard shot a hard glare at Starlight. “Excellent. Captain Armor’s already going to be under duress, and you’ve seen it fit to assault a little schoolgirl?”
Maybe it was the indignation of being called a “little girl”, or maybe I was still running on adrenaline. Maybe, in the core of me, I still held a sense of duty to Jesse. Whatever it was, as soon as Starlight took his eyes off me, it seemed like a profoundly good idea to buck my hind leg down, straight on the tip of his horn.
I felt something crunch under my hoof, followed by screaming, followed by gravity. I hit the ground running, hoping against hope that I could outrun them. It’s one more intersection, I told myself. Once I got through there, I’d activate the orb and run straight to the throne room, to Jesse. He’d help me, especially if he were the only guy who could use magic.
Five feet from the intersection, I tripped. I lurched forward, but didn’t fall; that was when I noticed the glowing nimbus of magic all around me.
Then, a cold tingling spread across my body, flowing out from my left side—the saddlebag Jesse’s orb was in. I fell on my right side, but before I got up, I panicked and tried to use magic to open my bag and check on the orb.
Sure enough, I couldn’t. It was like my magic simply didn’t exist, and my horn was a dead growth of keratin sticking out of my forehead.
No…
Behind me, hooffalls approached, and I snapped my attention to the second stallion guard—the one whose name I didn’t catch.
He raised an eyebrow and muttered, “Perhaps Star wasn’t using excessive force after all.”
In that moment, I felt like I should have been frustrated to fail, so close to my destination. Eighty more feet, and I would have succeeded; now, I was out of the fight and Jesse was probably walking into a fight without any tactical support.
However, the only thing that crossed my mind was fear. Not fear of consequences or blowback or anything like that; immediate threats filled my stomach like a stone.
I managed to stammer out a quick whisper: “Please don’t hurt me.”
The guard standing over me scowled in disgust. I didn’t have time to defend myself; the last thing I saw was his gilded boot stomping straight down towards my temple.
A warning indicator flashed inside my mask, announcing that all chaos-powered functions of my armor were currently offline. I let myself smile; she’d accomplished her task. That left the remainder to me.
I took a quick glance at the map in the lower-left corner of my vision; by some strange fate, she was almost directly beneath me. Or, from what I saw, two larger equine figures were standing over what had to be her smaller, prone form. Logic concluded that she had been apprehended after helping me. Emotion screamed that I should rescue her.
Duty told me to continue with my mission.
I pressed on towards the throne room. My sonic-rendered map showed it as a plain room with vaulted ceilings and large windows; already, I knew the sisters who saw themselves as gods had made it into their cathedral.
A barrage of chaos hit my suit hard enough for alarms to warn of structural damage. I snapped my attention to the foolishly brave guard; he shouted, “You, stop right—”
It was a simple matter to will his armor to turn molten. I stood and watched, curiously, as he both caught on fire and liquefied in a glowing, screaming pool. By all logic, that close to the throne room, he should not have been able to command chaos.
Unless…
I peeked back at the map, where two guards were now carrying a limp form away. I realized that she was on the side of the hallway she would have entered through, which meant she had, in most likelihood, fired the nullifier where she had been apprehended.
I sneered. It had been a desperate attempt, but it was failure nonetheless. A moment’s recalculation, and then I took my grenade launcher off my back; if I couldn’t attack precisely, I would devastate.
As I ran the final distance to the throne room, I reactivated the systems of my armor that the errant pulse had taken offline. I also hovered my vision over the nuclear icon on the lower right; the suit asked for a confirmation passcode, but I blinked and shook my head. Things had not yet reached that stage.
The doors to the throne room were open, inviting; as soon as I barreled through the threshold, indicators inside my suit exploded in a cacophony of screeches and light. Nothing was damaged, but over a dozen sources of chaos were focused on keeping me rooted in place.
I looked around; as I’d expected, stained glass windows adorned comfortably lit walls in a hall fit for two queens. In front of me, several gray unicorns had formed a defensive perimeter in front of two thrones.
Only one was occupied. From it, a false sun-goddess’ voice asked, “What business do you have in my realm this evening?”
Quick analysis showed me the shape and structure of the spells that bound me in place—chaos-born pressure exerted on my position from every angle, leaving one glaring structural weakness.
First, however, I locked eyes with the despot. If she wished to parlay, I would grant her that much. By design, my armor amplified and distorted my voice when it was set to speak publicly. In a roaring bass, I commanded, “By authority of the Unified Terran Republic, you are hereby ordered to stand down and abdicate your subjugation.”
She looked shocked. Indeed, some of her loyal guards turned to face her, puzzled, waiting for her response. It came after she blinked and bowed her head. “The sovereign nation of Equestria does not negotiate with warmongers and murderers.”
I scoffed. “And I will carve that into your tomb.”
Then, I teleported forward two meters. I felt the shockwave of the spell collapsing behind me. I willed negation, and the lights extinguished themselves. Thirteen milky shields formed, and I remembered why subterfuge was an essential part of that tactic.
Nullification shields were worthless for defending against applied chaos, however. I lifted the group of twelve guards into the air and threw each of them through a window. Screaming led to shattering, which led to a horrified, white face staring down at me.
I locked my grenade launcher into my shoulder and fired.
She took flight, nimble enough to dodge even computer-aided predictive targeting. SMU-7 canisters hit the wall, ceiling, and pillars; when my weapon was empty, gaping holes grew in the room as it dissolved.
A blast of chaos-fire caught me off guard; I raised a shield, but it was too late. The inside of my armor grew hotter as the outside began melting. I tried to move, but without its pneumatic systems, the armor was merely cumbersome.
I removed the pieces of molten slag before they could melt through the jumpsuit below; instead of discarding them, I flung them at the false idol. Faster than rail-launched grenades, she couldn’t dodge all of them; my shin plate connected with her neck, followed by my left glove.
While she paused, dazed in midair, I was already flying up to her with a clenched right fist. She dodged, and a surprisingly sturdy wing buffet assaulted my head.
With only chaos to rely on, I condensed all the air in the room into a sphere. The remaining windows shattered in the vacuum, and her wings failed her. She fell, but before she impacted, I flung myself down, threw the ball of air, and released my hold on it.
It exploded, and she crashed into the ruined throne room’s floor. I landed next to her and summoned a black, crystalline blade in my right hand. Beneath me, she craned her head up at me, so I pressed the sword to her neck.
She yielded.
A thin trail of pale blood leaked from her mouth as she asked, “Why have you come here?” She sounded weak.
I knelt down, gripped her horn with my left fist, and began absorbing the fourth fragment of myself. As I did, I whispered to her horrified eyes: “I am salvation.”
Naked human arms wrapped around my shoulders and crossed my chest. My blood ran cold, and I released the idol’s horn in shock. A female form pressed into my back, and a soothing whisper flowed into my ear: “Is it not time to rest, brother?”
I didn’t feel the knife blade enter my spine, but I felt my lower half collapse, numb.
She released me, and I fell, twisting to land on my back. My sword fell to the ground and shattered. I looked up to find a human woman with long, flowing hair the color of midnight. The only thing she wore was a tiny pendant around her neck, one of a crescent moon; in her hand, she carried a bloody, shimmering dagger that was the night.
I summoned chaos, only to find that it was incredibly difficult. I gazed up at her hallowed face, and in that moment, I understood.
It had all been for naught.
Her voice was placid twilight when she whispered one simple command:
“Sleep, now. We shall speak when you awake from the nightmare.”
I lost my final battle to remain conscious; beneath her, for the first time in eight millennia, I drifted off into slumber.
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Well... a number of dead ponies with no results.
Ain't that a kick in the teeth?
No!
Self-important center of his world power hungry idiot. Yep, it's a human alright.
Well, Jesse managed to beat up Celestia!
This calls for a celebration!
With tea and cake?
Nope!
With stabs!
Hooray stabs!
Well, that ended badly. No nukes?
ΔΓ
Yeah... I'm not sure how to feel about this.
Or even what is going to happen next.
Feeling kinda down, though.
EDIT: Don't see a Dark or a Tragedy tag, so there's still kinda hope, but... Damn.
Yeah, I don't think I can continue reading after this. Just... fuck that guy.
3866588
That seems a pretty misanthropic response, when Luna has just implied that he's under the same influence she was when she was Nightmare Moon. By extension of that logic, the same thing was the cause of Sombra's madness as well, and possibly Chrysalis' reason for invading Canterlot.
3866606
It would seem that he was so sure of himself that he didn't enable a dead man's switch.
3866772
I'm mocking the character, not humanity in general. And Luna could just as easily have been meaning that she was putting him into a nightmare instead.
I feel bad for Lyra. She knew what she was getting into, and made poor decisions. Now, essentially, she's an accessory to many 1st degree murders.
If she was portrayed as mean or selfish or greedy, I would think she got what she deserves. But really I see her more as a child with little experience with evil, who put her trust in someone who's a living artifact of history. She does love that stuff after all.
Not that she's not responsible for her own actions. Her gut feelings were right, but she rationalized them away.
I don't envy you, girl.
3866544
Oh, there were results. Probably not any good ones, but still.
Holy. Fucking. Shit. Balls. What the hell just happened.... First, jesse shows off his sick chaos powers n' shit, then Luna turns human.... what the fuck O_o.
Well, god f*cking damn it. The technological advancements of the humans have failed to defeat a few techno-colored ponies.
Well, it might not matter, but if his plan succeeded: is EVERYONE human? Even the minotaurs, dragons etc.? If not, what would happen to them?
Nitpick:
I’d spent past three hours in stealth and quiet, moving in a large arc around the castle, lazing targets to update coordinates for my armor’s targeting system.
I presume "lazing" doesn't refer to lazy targets, therefore "lasing", because "laser".
Wow, screw you Luna, way to fuck everything up for all the ponies.
Also, I definitely still feel like Jesse is the good guy here. He's totally right, a few deaths mean nothing compared to what the ponies will gain from this.
"It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle." - Sun Tzu
Lyra's spent eight chapters telling us Jesse doesn't understand ponies. His thoughts in this chapter make me think he doesn't have a solid grip on himself either. It's a shame ponies had to die to prove it.
I feel. So... Conflicted?
At first I though Jesse killing innocents was a sign that he was a bad guy but, Luna stabbed him. And they seemed to know each other
And ignorance
And I'm so confuzzled right now.
The fuck is happening?
I love this paragraph because everything else in this chapter directly contradicts it.
A being of his precious logic and conviction would not sneer at Lyra's failure. It would note it and engage contingencies. A being of logic and conviction would not find catharsis in the screams of ponies being devoured by swarms of nanobots. It would note their elimination and proceed. A being of logic and conviction would not carry around a useless pocket watch when a visor HUD could tell one the time. It would discard all sentimental trinkets.
For all his posturing and moralizing, Jesse is petty, sadistic, tyrannical, and completely blind to any view but his own.
It's hard to fault him for it, though.
He's human, after all.
3868142 I have one thing to say regarding the Sun Tzu quote, and it's this video:
How shit would go down if one of those missing space ships turned up: Captain of ship "The fuck are these mutated abominations doing on our home planet? KILL THEM WITH ORBITAL FIRE!" and then the planet would be wiped clean of all Equestrian life, the end. However, if the ship captain ISN'T form the Imperium of Man, he'd probably initiate diplomatic negotiations, and if they fail, total pony annihilation.
3868309
I had more or less the exact same line of thought about the imperil pegasi and the fact that MOST sapient races on Earth lack cutie marks. The destiny nonsense is all a pony thing. Griffins don't seem to give on whit about it.
The threat of awful death due to instant rehuminization goes just beyond pegasi who happen to be thousands of feet above the ground. What about earth ponies hauling around a few tons on their shoulders? What about unicorns using their magic in a delicate, dangerous situation?
It seems to me that this plan wasn't really thought through.
3866772 I finished the chapter and, upon reading the comments, I was amazed that apparently only you (and I)got it.
3867795
Power is a burden rather than an advantage in the hands of fools. Jesse´s half-baked plan wouldn´t have worked with all the tech of the world.
3868393
That speech isn't about who he is, it's about who he thinks he is. As it goes, a being of logic and conviction wouldn't have made that speech because the information is already known, and repeating it would be a waste of time. He's convinced himself that he's a god, and when he's restored the "natural order," he'll go back to letting the universe run itself.
Basically, he's a deist with a God Complex.
3868007 there are plenty of "greater good" scenarios that, when looked at completely clinically and without compassion, make a lot of sense. For example, up here in Canada we have a large population of Native Americans that, due to a troubled and tragic history, now live in semi-autonomous reserves that are essentially failed states. Alcoholism and drug use are rampant, their governing bodies are frequently corrupt or incompetent, their infrastructure is routinely self-sabatoged, their lands almost uniformly lack any natural resources that could drive any industry, and education is so poor there are children as old as 8-9 that can communicate only through grunts.
The chances of this system correcting itself are abysmally low. The investment that would be required, and the amount of time it would take to see any sort of return on that investment, are both astronomical.
The money that the government spends on subsidizing these communities is essentially money lost to the void. Any objective observer knows that the simple solution would be to cut off funding to these failed communities or forcibly integrate them into the greater Canadian society.
But that will never happen, because that would amount to genocide, cultural or otherwise. Those people deserve the right to choose for themselves how to proceed, no matter the state of their community or education. Because doing otherwise, by taking away that choice, would be wrong.
Now look at Equestria. Not only is it a vibrant, happy place, it is one that has its own history, culture, and identity, completely divorced. It is completely able to sustain itself, and judging from Lyra's history lectures, is one that is peaceful and does not seek to dominate others.
There is no force, real or imagined, that has the right to destroy that without allowing the people who make up that nation the ability to choose their own fate. One does not get the right to determine if violence and strife are worth it if diplomatic means have not been exhausted, or there is some crisis that can not be averted. Neither is true in this case.
3869108 I thought Luna, after paralyzingly him from the waist down, further disabled him using funky dream magic to trap him in a nightmare or something.
Your interpretation has legs, though.
3870133 I know full well that Jesse is full of shit. ;D
Besides, he's already admitted his mental faculties have been compromised. I wouldn't be surprised if he lost some reasoning ability/critical thinking skills alongside his memory
Well shit.
I guess he'll have to nuke the site from orbit now, it's the only way to be sure.
3862590 No. It just didn't seem clear to me in the story that Jesse's the bad guy. I was almost on Jesse's side, until you mentioned eco-terrorists.
On an unrelated note, I agree that that face is fun.
3862562 He is planning to turn everypony human. That in itself isn't that bad, especially if what he says is true.
The bad part is that he's not asking first. He's changing them without consent, and likely against their will.
3862994 Most of them, probably. But he's a magic man, so he might catch them, I guess.
3870307
If a madman does not wish to be helped back to sanity, is it wrong to institutionalize him? Humans were morphed into ponies against their will, and just because they now enjoy their current forms means nothing. They were designed to enjoy the pony form, as Lyra says that she suddenly no longer felt just complacent and content when she gets turned into a human. Just because Jesse has a little bit of a god complex (well deserved, I might add, any being who has lived eight thousand years and has the powers that he does IS a god, in many senses of the word,) does not mean that his plan is wrong. And as Jesse said, tons of ponies, zebras, gryphons, etc. die from disease, while the technology within the facility could easily rid the world of all disease. Plus, he said that humanity hadn't waged war on itself in ages, so your point about Equestria being a peaceful society is moot. Same as the self sustaining part, as human society had clearly reached a point of self-sustainability infinitely greater than that of Equestria. Remember when he said the facility used to run on stars?
To deny a culture as great as what Nicknack describes human culture was would be a far worse genocide than that of the Equestrian culture. Perhaps one can't actually quantitatively measure the worth of a culture, but if you were to just look at the two cultures by what they've accomplished, it is quite clear which one deserves to live, and which deserves to die. But the thing is that they wouldn't even be killing the Equestrians, just making them into something far better.
I feel that I am not going to like how this story ends. It seems like the author is going towards a "just let the ponies be ponies" ending, which I feel would be an extremely sad ending, in my eyes, simply due to the huge waste of potential. I suppose I will have to wait and see.
I see people talking about the whole "consent" thing.
But if all these ponies are actually humans...
He's killing guards. He's killing fellow humans. I'm having a lot of difficulty understanding his motive to use such lethal force.
Your first person perspective felt a bit weak, as your characterization there was quite blatant.
As well, I wouldn't think Jesse would march right into Canterlot killing everything he comes across. The reasoning he uses to permit that feels a bit out of character.