• Published 7th Mar 2014
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The Conversion Bureau: Setting Things Right - kildeez



When a portal to another world appears outside Canterlot, the ponies' initial reaction is of enthusiasm, hoping to greet these strange aliens with open hooves. Too bad this world was already visited by another Equestria...

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Chapter XXXVI: Back On The Ship

Things were no better on the ship. To say the tension in the room was palpable would be an understatement. It practically filled it to the brim, making the air feel more like a gel you had to swim through. Just walking from one door to the other on the opposite side would feel like running a gauntlet of boxers and black belt Aikido masters while waist deep in a swimming pool. Just breathing was a struggle, for fear of becoming the target of the wrath and fury threatening to boil over.

For the most part, the group had broken into pairs: Lisa sat next to David on one end of the sofa, with Francis and Andre on the other. Akshat sat on the floor between them, using the middle cushion as a rest for his back. Other than that, Felipe and Anton stood on opposite sides of the room, and the disgust radiating off the Brazilian was enough to stifle any and all conversation. The hatred, the sheer rage he had leveled on the Russian, put a strain on even the most stoic in the room. For his part, Anton either didn’t notice or was drunk enough thanks to the flask glued to his hand to even care. He’d apparently elected to spend the rest of his days on this ship in a permanent drunken haze, and while it had never been admirable, it had officially started to interfere with their work. Something Lisa couldn’t tolerate.

“Anton?” She asked, hoping to start off politely before needing to ramp up to screaming in his face. “Honey, why don’t you put that away?”

He blinked to her, a moment of confusion on his face that made her want to grab him by the shirt collar and slam him against the wall. Maybe that would snap him out of his stupor and make him a little less worthless. Then, he looked down at his hand, grunted, and tucked the flask in a pocket, going back to leaning against the wall with the same blank look on his face.

With a sigh of relief, Lisa offered him a small smile and cleared her throat. “I think we all know what we need to discuss here.” Which was ridiculous, they all should have been discussing the video the moment it came out, not nearly a week later! But she wasn’t going to waste time ranting and raving about that when getting Anton and Felipe into the same room had already been like pulling teeth. “Our counterparts from Beijing will be joining us soon, and they’re going to expect a plan of action from us to at least serve as a starting point. If we show up to the table with nothing, it’ll be…unprofessional, to say the least.”

“Asinine”was more the word she’d wanted to go with, but “unprofessional” would also do.

“What is there to discuss?” Anton drawled. “She will appear. UN will blow her up. Back into cage on ship for her. Is all there is to discuss.”

“And maybe this time, the cage will hold,” Felipe spat under his breath.

Suppressing a frustrated growl, Lisa glared at the pair of “men.” “And what about her video? Are we just going to ignore that?”

“Why not? The UN seems perfectly happy to.” Anton shrugged.

“Here, I must agree,” Francis said, raising a hand. “The threat she poses is simply too great to gamble on any sort of risk, especially after Dusseldorf and Detroit. She should be blown from the sky at the first opportunity.”

Lisa turned to him, a slight frown on her face. “And what about the Newfoals? We’re just going to ignore the possibility she might actually save them? We’re just going to leave them as they are?”

“And if she turns them into her own private army?” Andre put in, shaking his head. “I agree with Francis. The lot of you weren’t in Dusseldorf, you didn’t see what they did to the staff there. Japan has seen more than enough bloodshed, and based on what happened to you and Dave, it’s obvious another UN failure could be just the spark needed to have them reject the UN altogether. At the very least, we’d have the HLF screaming for our heads.”

Lisa opened her mouth, then closed it, letting it settle into a thin, scowling line.

“And you all weren’t back in London.” David sat up, finally vesting something into the conversation, to Lisa’s immense relief. “We saw how she handled that Newfoal. We saw a big, empty vessel with nothing going on in its head except love for its ‘Princess’ transformed back into a loving British man who might get to spend his twilight years with his wife. You didn’t see the relief on her face. Why would our...charge do something like that in London and follow up with some weird attack in Dusseldorf? Something else is going on here.”

“Not to mention Detroit,” Akshat pointed out, raising a finger.

“Yes, Detroit,” Francis tittered. “Bit odd that after years of peace, the Newfoals suddenly click on and start another scene of butchery in the name of their princess.”

“From the other side of the world?” David shouted. “C’mon man, think! If she had that kind of power, why isn’t she doing it everywhere she goes!? Why isn’t London in flames? Or Jerusalem? Or hell, why isn’t Tokyo just one, big Newfoal riot right now!?”

“So we should gamble with the lives of everyone in Japan!?”

“You’re having us gamble with the--”

“If what she said is true...”

The new voice’s intrusion was so sudden, so strange, that it shut everyone else up and turned them towards its owner. Felipe remained leaning against the wall, his gaze running over the room, surveying everybody with the intensity of a hawk hunting for breakfast. He raised his hands. “Let’s entertain the notion.” He said. “Let’s pretend she might actually be here to restore the minds of the Newfoals. What do we do then?”

A heartbeat of silence, and then Lisa spoke: “We let her.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes. We let her.”

“So to recap,” he stood away from the wall, targeting her with that intense glare. “You want us to tell one of the largest gatherings of military might ever witnessed, a group gathered for the sole purpose of ensuring that the exact situation we’re talking about never happens again, to back down?”

Lisa met that hawk-like gaze with a stoic wall of ice all her own. “Yes.”

The most intense stare-off anybody in the room had ever seen ensued. Nobody spoke. Breaths were held for fear that even the sound of breathing would drag somebody else into the confrontation. Neither side wanted to even hazard a guess for who might win.

And then, Felipe blinked.

“You are a fool,” he hissed, twisting around to return to his spot along the wall.

Lisa sighed, giving the Brazilian a pitying look. She turned to her comrades. “Look, it’s obvious we aren’t going to come to a consensus, but at the end of the day, we have the Captain by the balls. He’s still the bastard most responsible for the escape of one of the most dangerous creatures on the planet. But we still need to present a united front to him. We have to agree on what he does next. Whatever that may be, we need a consensus before we leave this room.”

“Well, why don’t we give it the democratic try?” David said, standing up. “We vote, and we let the majority rule.”

Lisa blinked at him. A look of tense unsurety passed around the room. But Felipe just smiled. “Sure,” he said, a confident grin curling his lips. He locked eyes with the red-faced Russian still standing across from him, who seemed far more interested in the flask in his hand. “Let democracy decide.”

Andre and Francis tilted their heads towards him, then they shared a look. “Alright,” Andre said, a bloom of confidence growing in his chest. “All those in favor of doing something about the intensely-powerful genocidal maniac heading our way, raise your hands.”

He, Francis, and Felipe’s hands all went up. Felipe’s smile lasted right up until he looked across the way, back to Anton, still just standing there, not moving. His smile turned into a confused frown, then a scowl. He waved to Anton, almost reached across to him, but then the Russian looked up. His eyes still held that same, tired, half-lidded gaze, but he wasn’t staring off into space anymore. He was glaring right back.

Felipe’s teeth clenched. Were he not surrounded by seven other people, he might have taken a swing at the older man.

“And...all those for a guarded defensive action to allow the princess to do what she must?” Lisa asked. Hers, David’s, and Akshat’s hands went up. Felipe’s breath paused in his throat, whistling in and out through his clenched teeth, then Chen’s hand went up.

“Well,” Lisa said. “That’s it, then.”

“Disappointing,” Andre sighed. “But we all agreed to this.”

“You’ve killed us all,” Felipe hissed. All eyes went to him as he stormed out, but his gaze remained locked on the Russian, who just casually watched him go.

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