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Prologue2,039 words
Chapter 14,788 words

Chapter 1

The diminutive purple dragon stretched his arms and legs out and coupled it with a long yawn. He groggily opened his eyes from his seat at one of the desks in the main lobby, but his usual view of the skyline of the city was obscured by a frowning purple unicorn. She looked down on him with disappointment and reserved endearment.

“You really need to get some more sleep, Spike. You can’t stay up all night watching TV and playing those games. You are still a baby dragon...”

“I know, I know. I’m a baby dragon and I still need my sleep. Yeesh. Well, why’d you wake me up this time? You interrupted the most awesome dream. I hope it’s for a good reason,” Spike groaned.

“We have some walk-ins who want to get converted today. Do you mind giving them a quick tour of the bureau? The girl who called ahead requested it.” Twilight shuffled her papers together and smiled down at Spike. “They should be coming up in a few minutes.”

“Fine. One quick tour coming right up.” Spike hopped down from his chair and walked over toward the elevator. The bureau was situated on the fortieth floor of a tall skyscraper that held many different businesses and offices within it. It was but one of many that rose above the city below; Spike was still getting used to the sheer size of the cities the humans made. They were easily bigger than most of Equestria’s cities and towns combined!

Spike huffed. He was glad to be with Twilight in this alien world; somepony he trusted and loved, and who trusted and loved him back. He sat down on the marble floor and waited for the new convertees.

-----

“Winston, could you be a little bit more grumpy? I think it really sets the mood in here,” Ruby chided. The older teen looked down at the red-haired girl and sighed.

“Well, I’m sorry but I usually get enough sleep before being torn from my bed in the middle of the day to go on some sort of crazy trip. Forgive me if I withhold my excitement.” Winston leaned back against the glass wall of the elevator as they rose higher along the side of the tower.

“Well there’s the problem right there!” the blond girl said, poking Winston in the chest. “Day is for people to be awake! Not night! What are you? An owl? A bat? Huh? And don’t be mean to Ruby!”

“Sorry, Ruby. I’m tired is all.”

Ruby forced a smile and nodded. “It’s okay. Apology accepted.”

Ruby folded her arms. The elevator slowed to a stop, and the doors slid apart. The three walked into a large room, easily twenty feet tall. Ponies and humans milled about in peace; the air was filled with laughter and joy. A surprising improvement from the city floor below. Everyone on the street was rough and coarse if you so much as walked too close to someone. Ponies were almost never seen by themselves on the streets; they moved in large herds to protect each other.

The anti-conversion movement, the HLF, had been acting up more and more in the past few months. They formed up around the same time Equestria appeared in the Pacific; they were unorganized and acted through hate and spite. Murder, a topic almost unknown to ponies at the time, were introduced to them by the HLF.

The bureau lobby held a few chairs and sofas, a beautiful marble floor, and doors along the walls leading to the offices and labs. They even had an in-house cafeteria, designed to acclimate newfoals, the slang term for newly converted human, to their new appetites. The lobby even had a fountain, stylized with two winged unicorns in the middle.

“You three here for the tour?” a high pitched, but masculine voice asked from behind the group. Ruby, Zoey, and Winston all turned around to find the source of the voice.

“Ohh! Yes! That was me!” Zoey said. She looked around for the pony who asked, but found a baby dragon instead. “Who are you?”

While Zoey seemed unfazed by the creature, Ruby and Winston were more confused than shocked. “A purple iguana is going to show us around a clinic to turn us into pastel ponies. I think I should lie down,” Winston said, running his fingers through his long black hair.

“I am not an iguana! I’m a dragon!” Spike argued, drawing a glance from Winston.

“Prove it.”

“I can breath fire!” Spike said, proudly. “You three better stand back... It tends to have a will of its own.” Zoey and Ruby stepped back and watched as the baby dragon took a deep breath... and belched. With that belch came a three foot long tongue of green fire; the heat was intense, and could be felt for a few seconds after it dissipated.

Winston smiled. “Fine. You’re a dragon.” Spike puffed out his chest and struck a pose.

“Are there a lot of dragons back where you come from?” Ruby asked, kneeling down.

“Yeah! Tons! But they aren’t nearly as social or friendly as I am. They’re still back in Equestria and refuse to leave. So you all have nothing to worry about! They have enough gems to eat to last for years!”

“Dragons eat gems?” Ruby asked.

Spike nodded. “I usually get the jewelry from the newfoals who come through here. Nothing too good... lots of quartz pretending to be diamonds, and the like. What I wouldn’t give for a real diamond...” Spike groaned, slouching forward as his belly began to rumble.

Ruby thought for a second, and pulled out her earrings. They were a present a few years ago from her parents. They weren’t anything gaudy or showy, just two diamond studs, barely a half-carat each. She held them in the palm of her hand and held them out to the dragon.

“Here. Will these be okay?” Ruby offered.

Spike gingerly plucked the earrings from her hand and held them in his claw. He forced the gemstones from their settings and tossed the white gold metal over his shoulder as his eyes focused on the pair of diamonds in front of him. He sniffed them, and without another pause, tossed them into his mouth, crunching them in his sharp teeth.

“Mmm... hints of age... a very nice vintage...” Spike swallowed his small meal. “That was awesome! You’re the best! What’s your name again?” Spike asked, completely forgetting that he didn’t know any of their names.

“I’m Ruby, that grump is Winston, and that’s Zoey.”

“I’m Spike! So, I guess you all want your tour, right?” Zoey nodded with a great, big smile.

“Follow me! Conversion was delayed a bit today, so I have plenty of time to show you guys around.” Spike guided the three humans through the double doors and into the bureau.

-----

The yellow container was sealed shut, but the serum still could be felt sloshing about inside its container. Dom wheeled it to the main desk in the bureau lobby and looked around. Nobody was sitting at the desk; this threw a wrench into his plans. He was supposed to just drop the shit off, sign a few things, and be out of this hellhole.

Just seeing the humans and ponies talking and laughing together made him feel sick and filled him with hate. At least once those traitors go in for their conversion today, they won’t be coming back out to fill the world with more of this taint.

“Sir? Are you the delivery man?” a voice asked. Dom looked to his side and saw a white unicorn with a stylized purple mane and tail. The perfume she wore was sickening, almost as much as her presence near him. Dom choked down his hate for the creature standing next to him and put on his act.

“I believe so!” Dom said in a cheerful tone, putting on a smile. “Ed Delaney.”

“I’m Rarity. If you’d kindly follow me this way, we can get this installed and you can be on your way.” The unicorn held the door open for Dom as he wheeled the case into the hallway beyond.

Just a little bit longer. I just need to hold out a little bit longer.

-----

Spike had led Ruby, Zoey, and Winston the the waiting room after their tour. He had sown the group the small apartments the floors above that some of the newfoals stayed in after their conversion. Most preferred to be moved straight to Equestria to finish their orientation there.

The waiting room was only partly filled with people. Apparently, people seeking ponification had been slowing down; at the movement’s height, this bureau had been built. It was one of the only bureaus that specialized in mass-ponifications. Twenty people would get converted at once in one sitting. The people who came here were usually the ones who wanted to go straight to Equestria, so the upstairs apartments didn’t get used a whole lot.

Zoey, Winston, and Ruby sat together around a table as they waited for the nurse to call the convertees to the changing rooms. The delivery of serum had run a little late, but it was being installed right now, or that was what the nurse kept telling anyone who asked.

Ruby looked down at her feet. “Ruby? Why all of a sudden?” Zoey asked. Ruby looked up and shrugged. “I’ve been asking you to go for weeks, and all of a sudden you say yes. why?” Ruby looked back down at her feet.

Winston leaned forward. “They have it, don’t they?” he asked, quietly. She nodded so slightly, it almost looked like she hadn’t moved at all.

“Have what?” Zoey asked. “Who has what?” Winston yanked Zoey down and held his finger to his mouth.

“Quiet!” When Zoey finally stopped giving him the stink eye, he told her. “Her parents caught Red Plague.” Zoey gasped and covered her mouth in shock. Ruby’s hard fought battle to keep her tears locked away was swept aside, like a house in the path of a tornado. Tears began to drip down her cheeks as she tried to keep it all inside. But as hard as she tried, it was a losing battle.

After a few minutes, Ruby was able to calm down a bit as Zoey got up and sat next to her. She wrapped her friend in a big hug and held her tightly.

“They went out a few nights ago...” Ruby choked out. Sniffling, she continued. “I thought they just went on one of their spontaneous trips again. But... I got a call last night from the hospital... They were admitted to the quarantine ward.”

“What’s wrong with the quarantine ward?” Zoey asked.

Winston chimed in. “Red Plague has no cure. It’s essentially a death sentence. Once you start bleeding... Ugh.” Winston was overcome with a shiver from the images he’d seen of victims of the Red Plague. Hemophilia paired with massive hemorrhaging; the victims would bleed themselves to death as their skin and blood vessels dissolved from the virus. Fortunately, it wasn’t airborne, but transmission was possible through skin contact, with symptoms appearing within a day of exposure.

“At least you’re okay, right?” Zoey asked.

“I... will be. I hope.”

“Attention everyone! Please make your way to the changing rooms and into the conversion room! We’ll be proceeding as soon as everyone is in position!” the intercom crackled from over their heads.

“Let’s get started!” Zoey said, yanking Ruby up by her arm. Ruby smiled at Zoey’s excitement as it began to spread to her. It was pretty exciting; they were going to start new lives together.

Winston walked into the men’s changing room with a line of other boys and men, whole Zoey and Ruby entered the women's changing room. The room itself was rather bare; a few plastic benches were placed along the room for people to sit on while they undressed. Many women were already completely undressed or getting into their paper gowns.

Conversion wasn’t allowed with clothes on; the body of a pony isn’t made to fit in human clothes, and can cause... complications. Not something Ruby wanted to think about. She picked up her paper gown and walked over to the bench Zoey was at. She was already undressing and throwing her clothes into one of the many chutes placed along the walls of the room. The clothes would be appropriated to people who need them. Equestrians didn’t like letting anything go to waste.

Ruby averted her eyes as Zoey finished stripping herself of her clothing, not just out of respect, but also out of embarrassment. Zoey had repeatedly poked fun at Ruby for being a prude; she was very uncomfortable about those subjects, no matter the situation.

“Do you want me to wait for you?” Zoey asked. Ruby looked over and saw Zoey was in her gown. The gown itself was very revealing; it only had ties on the neck loop, letting everything in the back... hang out. The nurses assured everyone that it was common practice in Equestrian society to go without clothing, and to save it for special occasions.

“No, I’ll be out in just a minute!” Zoey shrugged and walked through the doors to the conversion room with the rest of the women. After a few minutes, Ruby was left alone in the changing room. Finally comfortable, she undressed herself, slipped the paper gown on, and dropped her clothes down the chute.

She timidly walked out into the conversion room; the room was floored with white tiles and bright fluorescent lights shined down from above. Two rows of metal tables lined the room, each one several feet from the ones on either side. Ruby spotted Winston and Zoey and quickly walked over to them; she didn’t want anyone catching a glimpse of her. She immediately hopped up onto one of the tables next to them.

Ruby immediately regretted her decision. The icy claws of the metal table shocked her skin with the cold, causing her to squeal in surprise. Zoey giggled and Winston smirked.

“You know... I’ve always wanted to do it like those ponies do it,” Zoey cooed to Winston. Ruby pretended that she didn’t hear the exchange. She also struggled to pretend that she didn’t hear the playful spank Winston gave Zoey. The red in her face was almost as bright as her hair.

-----

“Alright, my dear. Everything is all installed, and we should be all set. What did you say your name was again?” Rarity checked her clipboard that Twilight insisted she use during her time here.

“Edmond Delaney. Pleasure working with you, Rarity.” The driver looked his papers over, double checking that everything was in order.

“Oh, why the pleasure is all mine! While the delivery was a mite bit late, everything is working out wonderfully. Was everything okay on the way down?” Rarity asked, her azure eyes looking up at the man before her. “Most drivers are on the dot with their deliveries. I hope everything was okay.”

“It was nothing important. I had to stop for a spot of breakfast this morning, and met up with a friend. Before I knew it, an hour had flown by.”

“Right. Well, everything worked out in the end, no?” Rarity gave a curt bow before the man began to walk off into the main lobby. His stride began widening, and reaching a very brisk pace as he crossed the large area. He was almost out and free of this charade, and Dom was so close to being home free.

“Oh, Ed? Ed Delaney!” Rarity called again from the doors he had just left from. Dom stopped in his tracks and turned around slowly, only to see the white unicorn beckoning him back towards her. Apprehensively, he walked back. Any longer he was there, they would find out that the serum was tainted and hold him and question him, inevitably finding him out. His body began to tremble against his will, his hands cold and sweaty.

“Yes, Rarity?” he seethed, his eyes darting back and forth, dreading the inevitable alarm sounding from the ponification rooms. ANother minute talking to this god-damned pony is another minute closer to being found out.

“Oh I just need you to sign right here, if you would be so kind. Just to confirm the delivery.” She levitated a pen and clipboard before Dom, his hand grasping the pen and scribbling on the line without any thought.

Wasting no time, he spun around and made his way to the exit as fast as he could without making himself noticeable.

-----

A unicorn nurse walked to everyone and handed them a small cup with the serum in it. Ruby looked down into the cup and saw small flecks of light dancing around inside of it.

“Come on! Let’s all do it on three! All at once!” Zoey cheered. They all situated themselves on their own tables and held the cups to their mouths.

“1...”

-----

Spike was walking through the lobby back to his desk at the front, looking forward to a much needed nap. After taking that group on the tour, he really needed it. But the diamonds the girl Ruby gave him was a greatly appreciated gift. His feet clacked against the hard floor, his eyes half shut from exhaustion.

“Maybe I really shouldn’t stay up so late playing all those games anymore...” Spike mumbled, his feet taking him further, his eyes almost completely shut now. He would have fallen asleep if someone hadn’t collided with him, bringing the pair down to the floor in a heap of scales and flesh.

Spike opened his eyes to see a frantic man in a delivery trucker’s uniform staring back at him. He stared that the baby dragon as Spike stared back at him. The panicked expression and the sweat on his brow in such a cold, air-conditioned lobby helped put the pieces together in his mind.

“You’re...” Spike whispered. Dom’s eyes widened, his breath racing faster now than before. He grasped for something from behind him, and shoved it into Spike’s stomach.

-----

“2...” The three of them brought the small cups to their mouths, the purple juice filling Ruby’s vision. She expected the pungent stench of artificial grapes, as many newfoals had commented on, but instead she smelled... cinnamon?

-----

A loud clap of thunder echoed through the vast lobby of the Bureau, the purple dragon skidding along the ground his body rolling over itself. Many of the humans and ponies screamed and froze in panic, many others running for cover behind tables and desks. The ones closest to where Spike and the delivery man were laying were on top of him before he could make his escape. A burly slate grey earth pony bucked him against the wall as he scrambled towards the glass doors to the elevators, and a blue earth pony pinned him against the wall with his hooves.

“SPIKE!!” Twilight had leaped out from behind the group of desks in the middle of the lobby and galloped toward the small purple form, still unmoving. A small group of ponies had gathered around him, hooves held to mouths in worry. “You!” Twilight yelled to the blue pony holding the now unconscious man against the wall. “Keep him pinned there! Somepony tell the nurses to stop the ponification treatments! If a member of the HLF delivered the serum, it’s almost certainly been compromised!” Rarity heard Twilight’s call and galloped towards the ponification rooms.

Twilight approached the small form of her assistant, and flipped him over onto his back with her hoof. “Spike! Spike! Can you hear me?!” Tears were starting to form at her eyes at the thought of what might have happened to him.

“Ugh...” A groan of pain escaped the dragon’s mouth. “Looks like diamond works faster than I thought!” Spike held out the deformed bullet in his claw, his stomach only slightly scuffed from the gunshot.

“Oh, Spike! I thought I lost you...” Twilight held the dragon close to her, nuzzling him.

“It’d take more than a gun to stop Secret Agent Spike!” he joked, drawing a light laugh from the unicorn.

“We’ll have to get security down here to bring the HLF member down to a holding room. Oh dear... I hope Rarity got to the ponification room in time...”

-----

“3!!” Zoey, Winston, and Ruby all downed the fluid at once, the serum burning its way down their throats.

“EVERYONE PUT DOWN THE CUPS! WE’VE HAD A SECURITY BREACH! THE SERUM IS COMPROMISED!” somepony screamed into the intercom. The patients murmured in confusion, many dropping the cups on the ground and spilling their contents.

But for Ruby and her friends, the poisoned serum burned in their bodies, their minds forced into submission from the strong sedatives still active in it.

-----

Her regal form flew over a vast craggy fissure in some sort of mountain range, the jagged peaks clawing at the soot filled sky above. A ferocious volcano bellowed behind her, it’s undiluted rage spilling out onto the earth around it, consuming any and all foolish enough to stand in its path. Humans were attempting to divert the flow away from their village, but it overcame them and devoured them amidst a chorus of screams and cries. She cared not for such small creatures; they couldn’t comprehend her majesty and power. They deserved to be burned if they refused to bow to her.

She flew further, the craggy mountain tops gradually becoming more and more coated in snow and ice, the frigid wind trying to bite into her rugged body. She merely scoffed at its attempt to cause her pause in her journey, though she not know what it was she was seeking; only a deep sense of direction guided her. Flapping her enormous wings, she comes to a mountain that stands like a king amongst peasants within the region; it’s rocky face faceted with a gaping maw, beckoning her forth. She hurtled down the chasm, deeper and deeper into the dark void of the Earth, a place untouched by time.

She reached a level floor, a place illuminated by glowing crystalline structures growing from the very bedrock of the earth. She looked up to see dark silhouettes before her, each greatly varying in shape, but all exuding magnificence and power. They made her feel weak and pathetic, but she reveled in their presence.

“You are not supposed to be here, whelp. In time, you will be brought before us to be judged. Now, begone.”

-----

Ruby’s head was swirling by the time her senses began to get back to her. She heard muffled noises, presumably the other patients adjusting to their new bodies as ponies. Her mind still waking up, she briefly called back to that odd dream she had just had. Patients who had gone through with ponification often told of a wonderful dream where they see life as a pony at it’s purest and most wonderful, and concluding upon seeing the Royal Princess Sisters.

But her dream was not like that at all... it almost scared her. It did scare her. The mountains flashing past in her head... And who were those figures?

“Oh no oh no oh no...” A voice finally penetrated the haze still floating before Ruby, but not a voice she wanted to hear. “This is bad... Really bad... Spike! Tell the Princesses to get here right now! We have a problem...”

Ruby finally managed to open her eyes, briefly blinded by the lights of the room she still lay in. She reached up with her hands to rub her eyes, but froze at the discovery that she still had fingers. She ran her fingers over her face, but she didn’t feel the soft features she just had before. She felt hard bumps, and her nails felt much longer than they used to.

“Ruby...” Winston’s voice called from next to her. “You gotta stay calm.” Her eyes finally adjusted to the lighting of the room, Ruby looked up to see the faces of several ponies hovering over her. They all recoiled back upon seeing her awake. She sat up awkwardly, the table not nearly as cold as it was before.

The first thing she looked at was her hands: in place of her peach-colored skin were hard red scales, her fingers replaced with sharp talons. Ripping off the paper gown, the rest of her body held the same features: red scales with orange scales running down her chest and belly, shining in the sterile fluorescent lights. Limp on the chair next to her sat a fat tail, covered in the same scales and spines as the rest of her body.

“Wh... what... what happened?”

“Wow...” Spike stood at the foot of her table, a quill and parchment in hand, but not in motion. His was more one of curiosity than anything.

“We’re DRAGONS!!” a bright yellow figure bounced into the group next to Spike. Undoubtedly, that had to be Zoey. She looked very similar to the purple dragon, although while Spike’s features were more round and stocky, she was more curvy and her features more angular and defined, her body covered in bright yellow scales and lime-green spines. “But wait... I wanted to be a pony...” she said, her realization finally breaking past her energy and sinking in.

“Seems like it.” A silver scaled figure shuffled up to Ruby’s chair, his scales almost like mirrors and his spines black. It had to be Winston; his body and face more closely resembled Spike, save for his coloring, but he was a tiny bit shorter than the purple dragon.

“W... Why?” Ruby stammered. Her mind was awash in so many questions and worries, that it was almost impossible for her to have a coherent thought at all.

“We don’t know just yet, dear, but we’re looking into it. Right now we think it had something to do with the HLF agent who delivered the ponification serum. Hopefully we can find a way to fix this,” a white unicorn with a highly stylized mane said from behind Spike. She looked through her purple rimmed glasses at Ruby, scanning over her new body. Her claws felt along her alien form, gently feeling along her smooth scales and feeling her hard spines on her head and back. “At least your colors are nice... Those brutes from the migration were such an eyesore.”

"Tell me about it..." Spike grumbled.

She sat up and attempted to hop down from the table she was sitting on, only to just now realize she was only half of her normal height that she was as a human. She hopped onto the ground, her feet clattering on the hard linoleum floor tiles.

“Spike! Letter! Now!” Twilight shouted, snapping Spike back to attention.

“Right! On it!” He hastily scrawled a short message on the parchment, rolled it up, and spouted another of the green flames from his mouth. The flame devoured the parchment, dissolving it into a glowing mist that floated out from one of the vents in the room.

“Come on, everypony. We should wait for the Princess in the main office. Hopefully, we can get some questions answered there. Rarity, please have security begin the questioning the prisoner. We’re going to assume this was a direct attack on the Bureau itself. Tell them strong-hoof tactics are encouraged if he doesn’t participate.” Twilight gave a stern look to the white unicorn, who immediately stood tall at the request.

“Oh, it will be my pleasure, Twilight. Making a fool of Rarity? Nopony should be allowed to get away with this!” With that, Rarity departed the room. An uneasy silence hung for a moment.

“Alright, you three. Follow me. Let’s get this sorted out.” Twilight held the door open for the small procession of dragons, with Spike following up in the rear.

-----

“Y-You summoned me, my lord?”

“Yes. It seems as if something worth noting has happened above and I will have you investigate it. Something... new has happened. A new race has appeared and is assimilating them. Look into it, Quan.”

“Oh, ho, ho! With pleasure, my lord.”

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Cloudhammer

Cloudhammer #1 · Jun 19th, 2012 · · ·

A curious development indeed. Looking forward to more

Krass McWriter

Krass McWriter #2 · Jun 19th, 2012 · · ·

Beautiful work from the wonderful Windchaser

Fullmetal Pony

Fullmetal Pony #3 · Jun 20th, 2012 · · ·

Ah was wondering when we'd get a dragon TCB story.

darkmatterbutterflies

darkmatterbutterflies #4 · Jun 20th, 2012 · · ·

773063
I think a lot of the discussion on the matter of the human creature misses an important point. One of the most important aspects of our evolution was the socializing. Not tool use, not the bipedal thing, but the social learning. We're naturally empathic with each other, and a lot of our thoughts are how the self fits with the others in the social group. That means a lot of the behaviours that we find so shocking, like murder, rape, war, and so on, are actually malformations, instinctual misfires, and such.

Take medical sociopathy, for instance: as much as evolution could have intentions (it really doesn't), it's not intentional. It's caused by specific mutations of the genes responsible for neurological development (they found some!), brain trauma (it's happened!), and even certain types of malnutrition (!!?!). Taught sociopathy is a different phenomena all together, and as usual, if you remove the creature from the operative environment, the conditioning goes ker-poof, for better or worse. The problem is that our civilization, as we know it, sometimes rewards psychopathy big time. A clever sociopath born into the right place will have a unique advantage: they can become unfathomably rich, and they are legitimized and empowered to make major decisions for all of us. Forget dragons and zombies: that's a real horror story right there, made all the worse by the fact that it has the gall to be true.

Of course, that's also rather historical, too. Most human rulers, or at least the ones that strive or select themselves for authority, have been absolute shits. Show me a king and I'll show you an inbred self-important monster with far too much money and power. I'll hide none of my scorn for that pack of celebrated warlords, slave-drivers and madmen. I doesn't matter when or where, either. I think that the ultimate human flaw isn't that some of us are bad, or that we do reprehensible things, it's that the good, the wise, and the decent always lose out to either their own worst traits or to a person who has nothing but worst traits. The sorry part is, most of us really are decent, but damn do we all just gather together and shrug helplessly as the most debased among us claims claims it all, including us, as our own — and we do nothing!

Personally, I don't think one should be conjuring up things that humanity has done as evidence of human glory. Take those pyramids for example: they showed an application of supreme organization, teamwork and ingenuity… as entirely subservient to the terrifying whims of superstitious stupidity and aristocratic narcissism. The invention of the aeroplane was a fantastic display of how an engineer could apply all the theoretical understandings of different physical laws and principals, and make a practical vehicle that can give a terrestrial creature access to the skies… much so the better that we can load onto them equally clever weapons, such that we can force those without such machines to submit without question.

Industry isn't so easily dismissed, because, like agriculture, it's sort of an apocalypse. Not THE end of the world of course, but the end of the world that came before it. There's no turning back from it: it redefines everything, and suddenly everything about civilization has to be renegotiated. I hope, earnestly and fervently, that we haven't outwitted ourselves, and that our future isn't one of total planetary destruction like the way a lot of TCB fics show it. Of course, that's the drama of those fictions: that's the what-if that they're proposing. It doesn't mean the authors assume (outside of the fiction) that it IS the future of humanity, just that it is one.

Since we keep bringing up Chat, she actually presents not the future, but a fun-house mirror of the world as it is, with future themes worked in. That's the way of classic golden age science fiction, and it's what makes her unique. I don't know why she gets under so many people's skins so much, although it's strangely fun to watch it happen. Personally, should I actually commit to posting any of my artwork and writing, I hope I light as many fires as she does. It's better than being ignored, entirely overlooked, or the WORST POSSIBLE THING, which is to cause nothing, to move no emotions, to be entirely trite and forgettable. Anyway, wow off-topic.

I'm actually pretty excited about the dragons, too. It's an amazing repercussion of the setting: there's only a thin little barrier between the greatest bogeyman, the greatest, deepest, nightmare in the heart of the human animal: dragon. And if one of them had a special fancy to, they could just pop over for a quick visit. Knowing that, I would wonder how many people could sleep so easily at night, knowing that They are out there, real, physical, and they might just be thinking, right then, about you.

King Rhaegas Targaryen

King Rhaegas Targaryen #5 · Jun 20th, 2012 · · ·

776936 I think a lot of the discussion on the matter of the human creature misses an important point. One of the most important aspects of our evolution was the socializing. Not tool use, not the bipedal thing, but the social learning. We're naturally empathic with each other, and a lot of our thoughts are how the self fits with the others in the social group. That means a lot of the behaviours that we find so shocking, like murder, rape, war, and so on, are actually malformations, instinctual misfires, and such.

give this man a cigar. he just described human nature better than blaze, chatoyance, and 95% of all TCB writers ever could.

that's both true and untrue. we all know that there have been some tyrants and heathens sitting on thrones throughout history. but the good ones have made a bigger impact on the world than any tyrant can. Genghis khan for example, might have been a warlord. but he was a warlord with morals. he created the biggest empire in history and laid down the foundations for modern society by getting rid of aristocracy and trending pants. Constantine pretty much made Christianity a world wide religion and is thought to be the founder of the eastern roman empire. for every tyrant or psycho in charge, there's also someone who's a great ruler.

Take those pyramids for example: they showed an application of supreme organization, teamwork and ingenuity… as entirely subservient to the terrifying whims of superstitious stupidity and aristocratic narcissism. The invention of the aeroplane was a fantastic display of how an engineer could apply all the theoretical understandings of different physical laws and principals, and make a practical vehicle that can give a terrestrial creature access to the skies… much so the better that we can load onto them equally clever weapons, such that we can force those without such machines to submit without question

it doesn't change the fact that their a wonder of the ancient world. each one of the seven wonders was (and in the pyramids case, still is) a testament to human ingenuity and grace, and a monument to civilization. also superstitious stupidity? you really went there? and as for the aeroplane... well, ok yeah, but that wasn't the original intent.

I don't know why she gets under so many people's skins so much,

Edit: I'm changing this entire answer due to new information. The reason i now hate that creature from the black lagoon is because it wrote Operation candy ass. Any being that can write something like that and expect us to view the characters as heroic protagonists should have any and all ties to the human race severed out of shame that we could produce someone that deranged.

And i do hope you succeed with you quest to start fires.

Da Bunnana King

Da Bunnana King #6 · Jun 20th, 2012 · · ·

I demand more.

King Rhaegas Targaryen

King Rhaegas Targaryen #7 · Jun 20th, 2012 · · ·

i just realized there was a new chapter.

and oh was it glorious.

dragons > ponies.

darkmatterbutterflies

darkmatterbutterflies #8 · Jun 20th, 2012 · · ·

778847
GENGHIS KHAN
“The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters.”
…was a warlord with morals. I hope I never meet one without any, then.

Constantine. Saint Constantine. I take it that you follow the Christian, belief. I believe my comment regarding the pyramids and my round dismissal of superstition has cued you to my feelings of all such beliefs. If the Great and Beautiful Men, those holy clergy in the service of God had their way, I would be rather quite dead, and it would be public and brutal. Of course it would be deserved: I'm the very worst of criminals, an apostate. I suggest we both stay terse on the subject. I will add that the great and holy Roman Emperor Saint Constantine arranged for the state-sponsored executions of both his wife and eldest son. Both of their deaths were cruel and extremely unpleasant.

If these two were examples of good ones, then I wonder who the bad ones are!

But, anyway, this is all a bit of a diversion. Remember, one of the scary differences between humanity and the ponies is the frame shift: these little sapient horses are frighteningly well-behaved. Or at least that's the conceit, anyway. They just don't have any of those unfortunate glitches that the human genotype sometimes causes. Well, again, conceit. If the whole little horse thing is too much of a distraction, let's push it aside, and simplify matters. What if our understanding of the genome, animal social behaviour, and medicine advances to a point when we can produce a serum that removes all genetic problems with a patient, and even grants many permanent benefits? It will turn a violent and stupid psychopath, a person that actually just has several developmental, hormonal, and genetic deformations, into an person that's gifted with a strong conscience, who is well-behaved, and suddenly finds in himself the patience to read something other soda labels. He's quite happy he drank that stuff the doctors offered, even though the artificial grape taste was kind of nasty.

A woman that seemed normal also deliberately acquires this treatment, because then she won't need glasses. A week after taking it, she finds that maybe it wouldn't be funny to disparage an associate's reputation out of jealousy. She looks into the matter, and discovers she had a catalogued mutation that was making her extremely aggressive with those her body considered rivals. She would remember how she would have really nasty headaches sometimes, and realized that they were due to her repressing her buried instinct to attack or harass some of her friends, family members, and co-workers. This leads to an existential afternoon of wondering who she ever really was, and is now, but then realizes her body was attempting to rob her of her free will then in about the same way that it is now, but at least the life that she's now living closer resembles the one that she would have wanted before, and that she's more happy now, at least due to a lack of headaches. It was all thanks to an afternoon in the local alteration clinic.

It's not like the big stuff goes away. The planet's ecosystems are still threatened, nobody likes politics, and the Bears didn't make the Super Bowl again, but for some reason it all seems more tolerable. Crime rates start falling even faster than before, it seems like the streets are safer, and it's weird, but suddenly even big companies start acting a little more, would you say, decent, maybe?

That's basically the same as The Conversion Bureau. It isn't as dramatic, and there's no magic, but it's essentially the same. The problem with discussing any shortcomings of humanity is that you make it sound like monsters when comparing it to something better (by moral metrics). I can also see how the whole matter is extremely disturbing to somebody whose beliefs are anathemic to the idea of a being, or a state of being, that's naturally superior to a human in terms of behaviour. I can also see how that'd be compounded with the physical transformation as well, especially to that of a human-sized magic horse. Personally, I think the whole matter is quite entertaining, and it gives me a lot to think about. Also, the collective reactions have been really interesting, too. There was this one guy that was writing this fic about his self-insert protagonist who receives a mission from Discord to kill several TCB authors. In the comment section, a few of the said authors showed up, and did you know that Krass is a trained sniper? Very suddenly, the author decided that the work wasn't worth any more of his time and energy. Oh ho ho!

I'm going to go out on a limb here, which I don't usually do, so drumroll please: did the First-World bit happen specifically with you and Chatoyance? If it did, it left an impact, because you've brought it up a couple times now. I wouldn't let it bother you too much. There is a big disparity of world-views and feelings about life and the world between an average citizen of Somalia and the average citizen of Canada, yes. There's also a similar gap between two Canadians of two different dispositions and income brackets. There's even such a gap with a single individual from two different times in their life. A lot of people on here are pretty young, and sheltered from a lot of the scarier stuff out there, and I've seen more than one comment on human-related fics on here show the ignorance that comes from that. To be honest, I've had the gall to bring up the issue with a couple of people, myself, but only after those people claimed to have never encountered any unpleasant thing in their life. If you've never lost somebody to murder, found a mutilated dead body, if you've never been raped, if you've never been attacked, or gone hungry, if you've never ran from a very real threat to your life such as a group of people that are displeased with your ethnicity, then there's that damn gap between you and somebody that has gone through some of that. Remember, you don't actually know this woman, and she doesn't really know you. You're just engaging these spectres of each other, these shadows.

Once I saw an online tiff between two people. One of them spoke badly of his father. The second berated the first, telling him that he should love and honour his parents, because they did the best job raising him that they could. The first informed the second that his father trapped both he and his sister in a basement for three years, and subjected both of them to uncountable incidents of sexual abuse before they managed to permanently escape. The second didn't post a reaction to that, possibly because he suddenly agreed that the first's father was a dirtbag. I don't think too ill of the second guy: he had likely been encultured with alright parents and he's likely seen others complain about their parents when the complaints weren't warranted. It's hard to be truly anonymous online, because our expectations colour every interaction.

In any case, it's just a bunch of bizarre fanfiction written by a bunch of weirdos anyhow. If I were anybody, I wouldn't put too much stock in it.

darkmatterbutterflies

darkmatterbutterflies #9 · Jun 20th, 2012 · · ·

*cough* Um, sorry, Windchaser, for getting all of uhhh that ↑↑↑↑↑ up there all over your otherwise perfectly respectable comments!

I'm really enjoying this thus far. Your depiction of the bureau was really evocative somehow. I like your handling of Spike, and I hope to see him get a central role if I get to see more of it.

It might behoove Twilight to see if she can't find a truth-telling spell. I think that the right application of magic would make interrogations a cinch. (Failing that, there's always the want-it-need-it spell. Works every time. )

King Rhaegas Targaryen

King Rhaegas Targaryen #10 · Jun 20th, 2012 · · ·

779413 yes, yes, i know. "the greatest thing in life' and all that. i said he had morals, i never said he was a nice person. although i never heard about the whole 'sentenced his family to death thing.'

and while i am a follower of the christian belief, my comment of 'did you really go there.' came from me being a very avid fan of ancient history and mythology. it utterly amazes me to see ancient civilizations and how they viewed the world. sure we've grown out of believing that volcanoes erupt because the fire gods were angry with (insert city, person, or action here) but it still fills me with child like wonder to learn it. so i was slightly offended when you called it superstitious stupidity.

and i wasn't the only person she used the whole 'first world' argument on (although to my knowledge i am the first person she used that argument on while using the word 'corn doodle' (which i still don't know what it is)) after reading her stories, im starting to think that the relationship between equestrians and mankind is less of a relationship between best friends and more like between man and ood.(any nuwho fan should know what I'm talking about.)

and really? someone actually wrote a fic like that? words cannot describe how hard I'm laughing, but I'm wondering if it counts as a revengefic, or a hatefic? I've got to find it, it sounds hilariously bad. although i highly doubt crass is a trained sniper...

darkmatterbutterflies

darkmatterbutterflies #11 · Jun 21st, 2012 · · ·

779760
I actually meant "superstitious stupidity" in the most affectionate way, given the circumstances. The culture present in the Egyptian valley at the time had some interesting beliefs about how the universe worked, and the ruling class found interesting ways to exploit those beliefs. Specifically, they convinced the masses that they were god-born. That play gets borrowed by a lot of people through history. God save the queen, mm?

I believe a corn doodle would be one of those puffed corn snacks, like Cheetoes. There was a cartoon somewhere that identified them that way. Corn, because it's made of corn, and doodle because they're these little squiggles? I don't like them much myself. That powder gets everywhere, and they always taste kind of stale.

I had to do some wild guessing, but here's the guy: http://www.fimfiction.net/index.php?view=category&search=greekdollmaker
All I've read from him is that last thing. It and his comments read like a cry for help, so I can't give any commentary on the rest of the stuff he's written.

Also, yes, Krass is a trained sniper. It doesn't mean he puts that down on forms next to the occupation field, though. That's how armed services train you: a combination of what you want, what they want, and what you've the aptitude for. A friend of mine from high school ended up with 100+ hours of detailed demolitions training. I wouldn't have trusted him with a firecracker in high school. Now, given an afternoon and the materials, he could likely level a bridge. Fantastic.