• Published 4th Feb 2021
  • 12,261 Views, 1,082 Comments

Choice - zelkova48



When the time came, choices needed to be made. Consequences be damned. A series of short vignettes set in the Negotiationverse by Rated Pony

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Radiation


The Crystal Empire is but a distant memory. Princess Twilight is forced to survey the nuclear wasteland that, up until a few days ago, used to be a thriving city filled with millions of crystal ponies.


The snow was warm today.

It felt unnatural.

Of all the thoughts that coursed through Princess Twilight’s mind that single offhanded sensation was the most poignant of them all as she stared blankly at the indescribable catastrophe laid out before her.

Nothing.

There was nothing as far as the eye can see.


Less than twenty four hours ago, Equestria had been dealt its most harrowing tragedy to date, perhaps of all time.

It was big.

Bigger than the deaths of Commander-General Shining Armor and Princess Luna combined. For as deeply tragic as their loss was to everypony, they were still only two individuals.

At around midnight the night before, The Crystal Empire vanished in a flash of atomic brilliance born of foul human invention.

Princess Cadance, her teenage daughter, Flurry Heart, and an estimated four million of its crystal pony inhabitants were blinked out of existence as an all consuming wave of nuclear fire washing over the cool night air reduced them to atoms in a single painless instance. All that remained of the empire's once glorious crystalline monuments laid scattered across the irradiated soil in haphazard ruins, melded together and malformed, grim reminders of the civilization that was.

News of the empire’s sudden erasure spread like wildfire across the country, pieced together from the frantic gibbering of a traumatized border guard.

Outrage didn't even begin to describe the surge of emotions that erupted all across Equestria. Horror, shock, righteous anger and more swelled in the hearts and minds of everypony who felt their resolve slowly chip away under the immense strain of repeated defeat after defeat after defeat at the hands of their inferior human adversaries.

To many, the swift and total destruction of the Crystal Empire marked a point of no return for the Conversion War.

This single act had branded humanity so irredeemably vile a creature in the eyes of the ponies that they began to view conversion as less of a merciful gift given to them out of kindness and more a compulsory moral necessity in order to prevent impending doom. Humans were simply too dangerous to be allowed to exist in any capacity anymore. They needed to be converted before the entire planet gets reduced to an inhospitable Hellscape through their hubris.

Twilight’s views on humanity hadn’t changed, if anything they were now amplified. Whatever fledgling interest she had in their latent capabilities as a species that remained from before had been burned away along with her sister-in-law and niece. Her resolve to win the war was the strongest it has ever been in the past five years. But before she could act on her righteous fury, she had to deal with figurative and physical fallout of the empire’s decimation.

It seemed all she did these days outside of her royal duties was grieve for loved ones or quell the panicking masses. First Shining, then Luna, and now, Cadance and Flurry heart. Her family continues to shrink and with each subsequent death it becomes harder and harder to cope with it all, even with the aid of her friends.

The suddenness of the news was the worst part of the entire ordeal.

Twilight was sleeping soundly in her cozy bed after a particularly hard day when Spike came crashing into her room screaming bloody murder at the top of his lungs. After calming the young drake she was finally able to make sense of his panicked gibberish, it then became her turn to let out a blood curdling scream.

Two days later, after many, many tiresome speeches and around the clock damage control, the remaining members of the royal family along with a personal retinue of guards traveled to the frozen north to survey the devastation wrought unto them in the name of vengeance.

Princess Twilight, Princess Celestia and Spike stood on the precipice of ground zero. The lingering ambient radiation could be felt faintly singing the ends of their fur and scales respectively.

From one end of the horizon to the other laid an icy atomic wasteland that felt like a whole other world.

Innumerable buildings, once tall and imposing have been brought low. Towering spires of glimmering crystals, architectural marvels of remarkable artisanal feats and breathtaking monuments dedicated to the unique culture of the empire were brought to ruin in a single moment. And with it, the unintentional genocide of the Crystal Ponies living in the city who were blissfully unaware of their own fates before disappearing into the snow.

Stallions and mares.

They didn't deserve it.

Colts and fillies.

They didn't deserve it.

The young and the old.

They didn't deserve it.

The sick and the strong.

They didn't deserve it.

The proud and the meek.

They didn't deserve it.

The beloved and the hated.

They didn't deserve it.

None of them deserved to be consumed by atomic light.

They were as much victims as the humans their country sought to convert. These were ponies with lives and families, hopes and aspirations. They could've been something, somewhere, somehow. And in the same time it took for a single drop of water to fall from a leaf and onto the ground, they were just... gone.

It was all difficult to look at, yet at the same time you couldn't tear your eyes away from it. The cruel howling of the winds over the derelict rubble interlaced with the gentle sprinkling of soft white powdery snow only served to exacerbate the view, forcing those present to break down weeping unblinkingly.

The Royal Guards, strong willed as they were, wept uncontrollably at the unthinkable horror that had beset their beloved homeland. Years of training and experience in the face of war could not have prepared them to witness something so heinous and unspeakably obscene.

There was evil, and then there was human evil. They would openly scream for vengeance towards the heavens were they not so broken by trauma. What words they could find escaped their mouths in incoherent mutterings.

Spike, the youngest of the group, clung to Twilight like a lifeline. Much like the guards beside him, he was bawling his eyes with no end in sight. He stayed quiet throughout the experience, something that took a considerable amount of willpower just to achieve, but felt his lungs burn with the need to let loose emerald fire in anguish.

If there was any moment in time that cemented his distaste for the war, it was having his innocence torn from out of him by the talons of despair.

Twilight wept, but did so speechlessly. She had to be brave, had to be the strong one for Spike. She comforted him in her embrace, struggling to keep it together herself. Her whole body was wracked with torment, something not even the biting chill of the air could accomplish. She wanted nothing more than to rush into the bomb site, to claw at the ground to search for something, anything that belonged to Cadance and Flurry Heart no matter how futile it was, but couldn't for the nuclear fallout would ravage her body.

And so she watched. Burning the image into memory to give her motivation without purpose.

As for Celestia...

Celestia quietly turned away and marched across the snow.

There were no tears, no trembling.

Nothing.

Nothing but cold hatred in her heart.