Los Angeles had been burning for three days straight, and James was tired of hearing gunshots at night. He was tired of the smoke columns rising over his city. He was tired of making these runs for the constant stream of orders The Man kept having him send out. Most of all, he was tired of fighting.
That last one hurt the most. This should have been the most exciting moment since he'd joined The Cause, known to the puppet media as the HLF. For the first time in years, recruitment numbers were up, they were trending on Facebook and their hashtags were all over Twitter. Snapchat and Instagram were lighting up with memes in support of them, mostly crude photoshop jobs of Doom Guy pressing a double-barrel shotgun up to the back of a badly-photoshopped Celestia’s head. They were no longer the crazies screaming on street corners and receiving hundreds of thousands of dislikes and links to parody videos in the comment sections of their speeches on Youtube. They were being taken seriously again! People were looking at them without scoffing again. For the first time since he'd left the Army at the end of the Collision Wars, he felt like he was part of something respectable.
And yet, last night, he'd finished shaving, looked up in the mirror, seen the bags under his eyes, and spent a good five minutes seriously debating just throwing some clothes in a duffel bag and running. Didn't matter where, though he'd always wanted to see New York. Wouldn't have even mattered to him that New York had one of the biggest pony populations on the east coast, New York was on the other side of the country from Los Angeles, and in that moment, that was what was important to him.
No.
No, not just in that moment.
It still sounded fucking fantastic.
He grimaced and cranked up the tunes on his phone, not even bothering to pull it out of his pocket, just closing his eyes and letting Corey Taylor and Slash scream into his ears until they drowned out everything else in his head. He hoped it would help. It didn't. But so the hell what? So the fuck what!? Everyone thought about it every now and again. All the big businessmen and zombified office drones all got those weird urges to just go on lunch break and never go back every now and again. This was no different.
It would pass.
He was sure it would pass.
Did he want it to pass?
He turned the phone up to max volume. He pressed his head up to the window and stayed like that until he got tired of every minor bump and crest in the road whacking his head against the glass, then he sat up straight just in time to catch the Lyft driver snapping his fingers for his attention. Dave pulled the earbuds out. “Yeah?”
“We're a couple blocks away,” the guy said, a skinny rail of a man in a ratty leather jacket and close-cropped hair, contrary to the old stereotype of all cab drivers being fat lardasses in stained wifebeaters. James had actually been a little disappointed when he'd climbed in and saw the driver: this was his first time using Lyft ever, after all, was it too much to ask for a fatass that looked like he drank Bud and hadn’t showered in weeks?
“Thanks,” he mumbled, shoving the earbuds back into his pocket and looking out the window again.
“Hey, dude, you sure you wanna get dropped off here?” The driver asked, stealing glances at James in the rearview mirror. “Dunno if you've been watchin' the news, but it's gettin’ pretty bad this part a' town. Some of the other drivers would've dropped you off a block or two back.”
“Yeah, this is where I wanna be,” James sighed, not believing the words even as they left his mouth.
“Don't look like it,” the driver replied. “Whatcha here for anyway? Is it really worth it?”
“I gotta see somebody,” James said as the car slowed to a stop right at the curb, crunching through a gutter absolutely filled with garbage. He dropped a couple extra fivers in the bony palm the driver held out to him. “Thanks for the ride.”
“S'my job. Hey, listen, if you want I can hang out here while you go inside, if—”
“Thanks, but don't, please,” James replied, not looking at the driver as he climbed out and stepped over the river of trash. He paused on the sidewalk, looking at the squat ranch-styled home with the dead lawn up front. He hovered there for a second, going up on the pads of his feet and coming back down as if debating something with himself, and finally one side apparently won out. He turned back to the kid. “Better yet, forget the address. You'll be a lot better off that way.”
He slammed the door behind him, and whatever the driver had started to say was lost forever. A moment later, the soft whine of the SUV's hybrid engine revving into action filled his ears, and the car pulled away from the curb, fading off until it’s engine was covered up by the distant bark of gunfire and the crackle of a building burning somewhere.
He looked up at the house, framed by a couple of smoke columns rising into the overcast sky from downtown, the distant gunshots and crackle of flame contrasting with the white picket fence, even if that fence was looking chipped and weather-beaten. He sighed again. He could just keep walking. Nobody had seen him pull up, he knew everybody inside would be either watching the back or glued to their smartphones and laptop screens. He could just pick a direction and start walking. He could probably make it all the way to New York by hitching. Didn't Stephen King write a book about a twelve-year-old kid who did just that?
Then again, that kid was white. And a kid. People would be less likely to stop for a black dude in his late twenties. Hell, way things were going, he’d be more likely to get shot by some small-town cop out in Hicksville, USA. Still, it was an idea.
The door squeaked open on hinges that needed oiling back when Dubya was president. A fat Latino guy with the grip of a .44 Magnum poking out of the waistband of his jorts stood in the doorway and looked him up and down, then motioned James over. James stayed on the sidewalk for an extra moment, then walked inside. He even wiped his feet on the welcome mat, not that it would've mattered on the scratched and dinged-up hardwood, but that and the nod he shared with the Latino guy was the extent of the courtesy he was willing to spare for anyone in the house today. Anyone except the man in the basement.
He walked past a living room filled with young guys, mostly in hoodies, some with pistols hanging limply in their hands, one with a stripped-down AK and a polishing cloth that he was running absentmindedly back and forth along the wooden stock, all with their eyes locked on the flickering TV screen in front of them. He only had to peek inside and see that the man in the basement wasn't there to know it would be tuned to CNN, and not Fox. That was good, at least the buildup and outrage in the house would be kept to a moderate amount. Nobody spared him a glance as he clomped over the dirty tile in the kitchen to the reinforced metal door leading to the basement. He was glad for that. He probably wouldn't have even returned a smile and a wave on the off chance one was given to him.
In the basement, he found The Man at his computer, editing another one of his speeches to make it Youtube-ready. His wrinkled face remained locked on the screen as James walked in, its glow highlighting the gray showing at his temples. The eyes, slightly dulled with age but still holding an almost unnatural sharpness, were locked onto the screen with a gaze that James had heard compared with a bombardier's. He disagreed. He thought they looked more like a lion's eyes. Or a falcon. Something big and dumb that knew what prey looked like.
“You wanted t'see me?” James asked.
The Man didn't respond immediately. James knew to wait until he did, and wasn't surprised or knocked off track by the response he got: “What sounds better? 'Burning our homes and families,' or 'Taking our homes and families'? I like burning and the imagery it summons up, but I'm worried it sounds a little melodramatic.”
James didn't miss a beat. “Burning's good, it's not that overdramatic. Besides, people are hungry for that overwrought stuff now. They're scared. Goin' in a little heavy-handed works now.”
“Thanks,” The Man spent a few more moments typing, then he stopped and turned, a massive grin bringing out the crow's feet beneath his eyes. “Jimmy!”
James cringed a little, but let it slide, forcing a smile on his face. “Commander.”
“No need for that kinda formality with nobody around, m'boy, not anymore,” the older man motioned to the folding chair next to the computer desk.
James sat down with a nod of gratitude. “You wanted t'see me?” He repeated.
“First off, lemme congratulate you on all the hard work you've been doing these last few weeks,” the old man said, his focus already back on the computer screen. “You're turning a bunch of gangbangers and thugs into tomorrow's army, I wantcha to know that's you who did that. It's you we'll have to thank when those little fuckers are swimming ashore and there's an armed and trained militia waiting to give ‘em a good ol' American welcome, instead of a bunch of pansy-assed smurfs who'll turn tail and run the first time one of those things lets off a bolt of magic.”
The Man said “Magic” with severe distaste, the corners of his mouth turning down as he pronounced the word. James just nodded his agreement. He knew that was all the input he needed to provide, if even that.
The man closed the video editor he had up, and pulled up Firefox. James cringed at seeing the old browser, long since replaced by the faster ChromeX, but said nothing as he pulled up Youtube. James knew exactly where he was going, long before the video managed to load and the visage of the pony princess appeared. It was the hottest trending thing on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Haibu, YesChat, and every other social networking site under the sun right now.
Oddly enough, James tried to tap into that old rage he once felt at the mere mention of the Suncunt’s real name, and found he couldn’t. This was the bitch who’d taken so much from him, who he used to print up pictures of to take down to the range and spend hours shooting again and again, not that it was necessary given how many different cardboard cutouts of her most shooting ranges had up during and after the Collision Wars. Still, when he looked for that old black hatred to summon those fantasies again, of taking a blow torch to that pristine coat and giving that winged whorse a little taste of the hell she’d put his people through, he came back with nothing. Just an endless, empty gray feeling that sucked any and all emotion right out of his body. Easy, this used to be so easy, why was it suddenly getting hard right when he needed it most?
“Trust,” the old man scoffed. “You’ve heard this shit, right?”
“’Course.” Had even listened to it again on his way in. Spent the first half of the taxi ride searching for that old black feeling before turning to Slipknot and Asking Alexandria.
“Can you believe people are buying this shit? After what she did?”
Not her, James almost said, but when the words wouldn’t make it past his lips, he said, “Yeah.”
The Man scoffed. “Yeah, I can too, people are stupid,” he grimaced. “Still, thought most people would have the common goddamned sense to not repeat the same stupid mistakes that started all this bullshit five years ago.”
“A lot of ‘em are,” James said, moving in closer and entering his name in the search bar. A few seconds later, a video with The Man’s face in the thumbnail appeared, and James loaded it up. He pointed to the like/dislike bar. “See that? A month ago, that was almost all red. Today, it’s maybe a quarter red.”
He didn’t stop there, pulling up a couple more stats windows. “Almost all of that was from the last few weeks, after those little bitches popped up outside England. We’ve got more faves, likes, and views than we’ve gotten in the last four or five years.”
The old man grinned at that. “Point taken, HLF’s making a comeback.” His grin faded to a weak smile. “And so’s the PER. Gonna be the Collision Wars again.”
“I like our odds better this time.”
“So do I,” the old man turned the smile on him, clapping a hand on James’s shoulder. “And speaking of England, I’ve been in contact with the old HLF elements there, they’ve got soldiers all over. Melbourne, Hong Kong, Rio, all lighting up now, all ready to raise hell. And maybe even all ready to give that bitch a little surprise when she sweeps into Japan. Might be the Collision Wars again, but you bet your ass when she makes the same moves, we’ll be waiting.”
It was a testament to how his acting skills had grown that James kept a wide, hopeful smile on his face that The Man never managed to see through despite looking right at it. Five years ago, The Man had read him like a book at every turn. Times had changed. “This time when she hits,” he said. “It’ll be different.”
“Blow her ass sky-high,” the older man nodded. “We’re the patriots fightin’ for what’s right. Gonna wait for her to settle in, get all high and mighty on her power, wait for her and her little smiling ass kissers, human and shitbag alike, t’get all cozy, and then…”
Despite himself, James’s smile widened. “Blow her ass sky-high?”
“Damn straight,” The Man clasped James’s hand, pulling him in close. “I wantcha to know right now that you’re gonna be there. You and me, together. We’re gonna stomp that bitch’s fuckin’ face in, piss on that little crown, and stand tall with our chests out for the news cameras and let the whole world know how right we were all along. There’s nobody else I want there. The other boys’ll be good for gettin’ there, but it’s you I want next to me when that moment comes, when the whole world looks up at us and realizes we were right all along.”
Again despite himself, James’s smile morphed into a wide grin, the first genuine one he’d flashed in weeks. “Thanks, dad.”
The Man smiled gently. “No problem, son,” he muttered, maintaining that smile even as he gently pressed a handgun into James’s hands. Colt 1911. .45 ACP rounds, almost certainly. “Now, g’wan, rally the troops. We got a boat to catch if we wanna get to Tokyo in time, but maybe there’s time for one last goodbye to LA.”
James kept up his smile too, nodding even as his stomach twisted. He tried tapping into the black rage for another moment, and finally gave up on that. He shoved the Colt into his waistband, returning the old man’s smile and looking him right in the eyes as they shook hands and saluted one another. Finally, he turned and started up the stairs.
Everyone was waiting for him in the kitchen. All the angry, young, hoodie-clad men that had been watching news in the next room were crowded around the beat-up chipboard table in the middle of the floor. Some had pistols, most had heavy pipes and brass knuckles though. A few even just had their bare hands, though these guys were so big that didn’t make them any less intimidating.
Without a word, James pulled out the black bandanna in his pocket and tied it around his face. The others did the same, mimicking him with only a few seconds’ delay all around. Then he pulled out the gun. Raised it. Pistols, hammers, baseball bats, and even an AK all joined his weapon in the air. He nodded, lowered his arm, then walked out the back door. He didn’t have to look behind him to know he was followed by every man in that living room.
He wished he wasn’t. He wished everybody had stayed behind, and he could just pull up another Lyft, and hop in, and tell the driver to take him anywhere but here, he didn’t care where. San Fran, maybe. Catch a plane to New York?
Maybe.
This story is getting pretty intense. I wonder how things are going for the UN ambassadors now, with the whole YouTube video thing?
8773298 Yeah, some plumber named Mario found the meteor shard and stuck it back into the primary body, thus forcing all the alternate universes everywhere to start merging together.
Talk about unintended consequences.
That movie just couldn't do anything right!
Also, kinda hate everyone and everything in this story... *calls the Independence Day aliens* Hey guys? Got an Earth I wouldn't mind if you sterilized the surface.
Setting Things Right... this is a deliberate ironic title, isn't it.
Absolutely everything is wrong. I seriously think the only way to stop this is for the Daleks to show up and exterminate all of them. Or the Death Star to misfire and blow up this earth instead of Alderan.
The whole thing's totally FUBAR, and everything should just die and get it over with.
So everything's starting to approach the climax.
this will end badly if she show she was telling the turth
i really hope we get more chapters by the end of the year and i'm glad to see this story isn't dead
9234977
Hello, do you wipe yourself with sandpaper? :)
The Cantina is called Chalmun's, yah nerfherder.
TCB stories are fucking impenetrable.
Is there really a need to abbreviate "jean shorts" or "cut-offs"? It's not much shorter and it's not exactly a common piece of slang outside the U.S. (I only know what it means because I had to look it up when another fic used it a few weeks ago and I live in Canada, where our language is heavily Americanized compared to other commonwealth countries.)
Generally, you don't want to reference specific products. It makes your story age more poorly. (eg. The various fics over on Fanfiction.net which expected MySpace to still be going strong by now.)
Beyond that, needlessly rubbing people's brand loyalty (Firefox vs. Chrome) the wrong way is also a poor authorial decision. (Especially when it's flat-out wrong. Yes, Firefox had to cut off its old extension API like a gangrenous limb in order to start making progress, but it's already lighter than Chrome and, with projects like WebRender, it's on track to leapfrog Chrome and become faster too.)
9234963 9234977
When I first came to this site back in 2013, I found most of your comments to be either amusing or insightful in an off-beat way. These days, I'm really starting to worry for your mental health.
This is getting intense! I'm...
Well, it's a really dope story. I love how modern it feels, too!
9235374 'Sheltered brat'? I know full-well that people are heartless bastards for no reason. I worked as an armed security officer at 7-11s for three and a half years and during that time I was shot, stabbed, hit by a car, beat up by six people, saw a man murdered, and found a newborn baby boy tossed in a fucking dumpster. You don't know shit about me, so take your opinions elsewhere. My life isn't 'sunshine and rainbows, as you put it. I live in the real world. It's ugly, it's unfair, it sucks (and never stops sucking), life is shit, but we have to make the best of it that we can. If I read a story, I want it to be a bit harsh, but I want it realistically harsh. This was over the top from what I remember.
Ugh, man. Even rereading some of the chapters, I can't keep up. Too many perspective changes too quickly.
9235133 It's not my fault no one's likeable in the story. It seems to just pile on misery with every new chapter.
9235956
Yin yang.
Rip, I'm caught up now. Welp, time to put this in tracking to be mildly surprised when it updates again
Oof, so much edge in this comment section. People here really have no clue what the world is actually like, it seems :)
Well, at least NecromanCRE and Truthseeker have gotten their edgy rocks off now :)
About time lol
For those that are unhappy with Alt Shining Armor Take into account he’s probably suffering from a severe form of PTSD. It’s heavily implied that something happened between him and Alt Celestia, The heavily implied death of his sister on top of a number of things he’s probably seen. It’s doubtful he’s really fully in control of himself, especially seeing the object of all his hate, never mind a “twisted” version of his dead sister. It doesn’t excuse what he’s done but it’s doubtful he’s playing with a full deck of cards.
As for how humans are handling the situation I’m actually more surprised ponies haven’t been completely relocated to reservations. I did find it rather charming though that despite everything a soldier was able to have a rather amicable relationship with a young filly telling her stories (Star Wars is always a plus). I’m hoping that he survive somehow but I am unsure honestly I would like to hope that somehow he’s going to be kept alive. As for what happened exactly it sounds more like they’re trying to stage a liberation in hopes that it will be squashed and they’ll be captured. But they have to make it rather convincing of course but I’m willing to bet they won’t be able to hold onto the location for very long I doubt that area can go dark for longer than an hour before people start to notice it’s gone dark.
I’m hoping the HLF will continue to show up in this story, It would be interesting to see the back stories of some of the members and try to see their motivations beyond just “urrrrrg Ponies Bad”.
Nice to see this story come back now here's hoping that this is the start of it updating regularly again instead of once a year.
9235374
Guess what Germany and Japan are now?
Fully independent nations that are economic powerhouses.
Well I have reread the entire story to get to this point. The story is definitely getting intense and as always thanks for the update!
9238412
gifimage.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/its-bad-writing-gif-4.gif
A lot of the story is good, but this spot in particular just sucked for how pointless it was.
Hm. I'm excited to see this update again, but after going back and rereading everything, I'm reminded of both what I like about this story and what I don't like about it.
A lot of people have commented that humanity in this story is being overly hostile and distrustful to the point of stupidity. Personally, I think this story would make a lot more sense if you removed the detail about My Little Pony actually being a show in this universe. Not only should that open minds to the possibility that since Xenolestia was untrue to the character of the show, there may be other digressions in other Equestrias, but the show contains details that should automatically confirm something was wrong about Xenolestia. Even if this universe's My Little Pony stopped at Season One - the very first episode shows that Celestia is not the only alicorn. But humanity seems very surprised when it turns out there are more alicorns and that Celestia isn't a lone goddess.
If Xenolestia's Equestria was humanity's very first encounter with ponies, their reaction would make much more sense. Everyone is too certain that Celestia is pure evil despite numerous flags that anyone with a passing familiarity with the show should pick up on.
Other than that - I really do like this story and want to see this premise explored to the fullest, but it seems like the characters are constantly setting themselves up for failure. I can buy humanity's extreme distrust after everything that happened, but Celestia is continuing to manipulate and use fear tactics while trying to set herself apart from her manipulative and terrifying counterpart. While this does underline that yes, the two of them come from the same pony... I'd think she's smarter than that.
Even her transmission doesn't really do much for her case. She hasn't presented anything that could make anyone think she's not just trying to build herself an army of Newfoals. She could have had Twilight make the video and be her public face for a while, or she could have explained the principles of the spell as best she could online and had groups of unicorns attempt it - or if it was impossible due to strength reasons, at least study it and come up with their own treatment plans based on that idea. She's moving too quickly.
I am very invested in her and Twilight's journey in this world and don't mean to be overly negative, but maybe you can find this perspective useful.
9246161
The show is a show, denying reality because it doesn't fit your story book isn't realistic, it's childish.
9250630
And you don't think things are already a little weird when some colorful kid's show:
1.) Materializes in your world, dumping a world full of beings entirely recognizable as cartoon characters, that proceed to act and do exactly what said cartoon characters could do
2.) Promises to spread the show's values of peace and harmony to your world
3.) Is revealed as treacherous once the true effects of their various offers of goodwill become known, worsening until all-out war breaks out
4.) (The majority of?) ponies defect once they realize their leader is tyrannically insane. With cooperation and heavy cost, she is brought down. Celestia has been thoroughly revealed to be a lie, but the ponies themselves are not that different at heart from how the show portrayed them.
5.) Is integrated into your culture in the aftermath as the entire world slowly attempts to rebuild
And most importantly...
6.) Materializes again (as a portal this time), though the remnants of the first incident are unchanged and clearly separate.
Realistic? There's nothing fitting our idea of realism here. A cartoon became real, twice. Magic dimensional bullshit is blatantly at play. I'd argue that the attitude taken here is more childish - not in distrusting Celestia, that's a natural response, but the way that precisely one character in the entire story stops to think that something might be different this time, and even he can't believe what he's seeing. They already have concrete proof that this Equestria is not exactly the same as the one they saw before. Twilight Sparkle was not an alicorn when she first appeared in the other Equestria. Even if she wasn't Xenolestia's student, which she might not have been, she was the brother of Equestria's current leader. She shouldn't be an unknown figure; that's trivia to history book material, depending on whether or not she was the student. Here, we have Twilight Sparkle who is an alicorn, who is coincidentally something Xenolestia said there never were any more of - a claim the show gave contrary evidence to within the first episode. Therefore, assuming everything else about it is going to be the same is silly, and it gets even stranger when they have a direct reference for what Equestria could/was/is supposed to be.
Basically, the fact that the show exists, at least two versions of Equestria exist, one of those Equestrias is unknown, and the other Equestria is markedly different from the show, absolutely leads to the conclusion that wildly different Equestrias exist. It doesn't mean the second Equestria is the show Equestria, that would be just as mad a conclusion to make at this point, but treating it as exactly the same as Xeno-Equestria after a big glaring difference has been spotted is not wise.
Celestia's behavior isn't even important to this. She could easily be lying or faking everything. She rapidly became aware of her predecessor's failed attempt to subjugate humanity, and therefore everything that follows - her emotional responses, the bloodless escape, her attempts to lay low, curing the Newfoals - can be intelligently written off as a ploy to appear unthreatening and genuine. She's historically a very practiced liar and she has a lot of potential motives. (Really, there isn't anything she could do at this point that would help clear her name. Visibly fighting Xenolestia wouldn't help her. It could easily be staged, or taking down the competition.) But Twilight Sparklecorn should have people thinking. I don't expect the average soldier or civilian to think too deeply on the implications, but the leaders, the politicians? Where are the analysts? You'd think a lot of countries would be interested in doing some emergency planning right about now.
Meanwhile, if there was no show, it's way easier to think that Xenolestia's behavior is a baseline for the ruler of ponykind, and treating her as the only possible example of Celestia makes more sense. If there is a show and it made it through Season Three, then everyone's being exceptionally moronic. I'm assuming that isn't the case simply because somebody should have recognized Twilight Sparkle the alicorn as a concept that, y'know, exists.
Seriously, I get that humanity's been collectively traumatized and nobody's happy at the idea of dealing with a second Equestria. But I'm having trouble buying the way virtually nobody is stopping and wondering what's going on when they have a sample size greater than one.
So does this mean you overcame the writers block?
I await further updates with bated breath. Thank you for this update.
9252426
Nah, looks like temporary reprieve.
9346784
Awww
HLF fanatics.
9650642
Love the profile picture