Michelson is a Knight of the P.E.R. Morely is a Squire. Together, they'll ponify the world.
The P.E.R. - Ponification for the Earth's Rebirth is a rogue organization that forcibly converts humans into ponies. They are reviled by those who oppose the Conversion Bureaus and denounced by Celestia Herself - but they see themselves as knights of Equestria, following a higher cause. Michelson is a Knight of the P.E.R. Morely is a Squire. Together, they'll ponify the world.
The P. E. R. Michelson and Morely The Speed Of Right By Chatoyance
OPERATION ONE: CANDY ASS
"Across the vastness of the multiversal interstices, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and warm and driven by the Magic of Friendship, regarded this earth with pitying eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans to ponify us." - Horse G. Wells
It was the fourth year since the emergence of Equestria in the North Pacific, three years from the day the Worldgovernment had initiated the most profound effort ever undertaken - the evacuation of the human species to another realm, the cosmos of Equestria.
Two universes were in collision, Equestria and Mundis, and the Earth had been caught in the middle. The ever-expanding, shimmering sphere in the Pacific would engulf the entire planet before shrinking and vanishing forever into the interstices between realities. Within that time, a space of only five to seven years, humanity would need to emigrate as a whole, or perish when their world utterly ceased to be.
But the price of escape to the green and welcoming new universe was absolute. Only native Equestrians could exist within the strange physics of the invading cosmos, and so for humanity to survive, Man must become Newfoal - Homo Sapiens transformed to become Equus Sapiens. Thus it was that the Conversion Bureaus were created, where a serum made of nanotechnology and the very stuff of magic could offer three ounces of freely given salvation to any soul who desired it.
But for some among Man's ranks, this free choice of survival was insufficient. The spirit of Humanity was too precious to gamble on personal whim or even conviction. Humanity must be rescued whatever the cost, from all threat, even from himself. So it was that the Ponification for the Earth's Rebirth took up a sacred crusade, to convert the whole of humanity, with, or without consent.
For those belonging to the P.E.R., Mankind - that pretentious, foolish, hairless ape - could not possibly be trusted to choose survival for himself. That they themselves were, or had started as human, was a fact pretentiously, foolishly, hairlessly lost on them.
The piñata hung from the bleached branches of the long-dead tree. The papier-mâché creation was large and colorful, festooned with bright ribbons and a vibrant purple coat of polypaper strips that resembled coarse fur. It had been made in the shape of a burro.
The dead tree with the piñata stood in a courtyard of sorts, around it, from the ruins, had been built a city of large shipping containers, conglomerations of metal sheet and the remains of plywood, glassine panels and even sections of plascrete clearly taken from sidewalks. Snaking through the favela-town, above the narrow paths between the buildings, hung long stretches of bound cable and wires that provided the two hours of electrical power that Little Aztlán enjoyed.
A mariachi band played Las Mañanitas as the crowd happily watched the children led in to surround the piñata like a small pack of candy-hunting wolves. It had been a very long time since anyone in Little Aztlán had even seen candy, much less such a large and marvelous piñata, and it was all because of the clowns.
The tall, thin clown wore a red nose and a wide, ruffled collar. He also wore a tight, short, yellow, polka-dotted dress with balloons filling out the bosom, and cheap, fake jewelry adorning his legs, wrists, fingers, neck, and of course, his pierced ears. A faint morning stubble contrasted with the light orange wig, and a conical hat somehow completed his absurd costume. His face was painted white with far too much lipstick and red dots for cheeks. Long, fake eyelashes stuck out like someone had implanted hedgehogs in his eye-sockets. Strangely, the entirety worked, a little too well. Some called him 'El payaso de puta', and it truly was disturbing how well he looked, despite the stubble. It just wasn't right, but... candy is candy.
The short, squat clown was dressed like a pirate, albeit one from a circus. A green curled wig, bright violet pantaloons, a loosely buckled swash and army boots strongly suggested that it must have not been a very good circus. In her crude belt a polyboard sword was stashed, covered in glue and sparkles. Apparently it was a budget circus as well. She sweat a great deal, wrung her hands and looked worried. Meanwhile, the tall clown minced and giggled at the crowd in a performance that had made at least one child cry, an elder señora need to suddenly leave, and which required one of the mariachi to adjust his paquete privado.
The two clowns had made quite a show, thus far, with some truly terrible magic acts, and a rather suspect balloon animal bit that included far too many colorless balloons with what appeared to be reservoir tips. There had also been the incident with the musical number - though it was forgiven on the grounds that the gringo clowns could not possibly have understood what they were singing. That said, after the third chorus of "¡Mierda, Joder, Cabrón!”, one of the favela elders had suggested that perhaps it was time for the piñata now.
The children of the favela were clustered around the papier-mâché burro, one child had been selected to be blindfolded and had been given a stick. The band began to play a happy tune as the child was spun in place.
"You didn't say there'd be this many humans!" harshly whispered the short, squat pirate clown. "This isn't going to work!" She continued with a panicky edge "We're going to end up as glue and gelatin desserts, and I hate Jello!"
"Oh, Nutmeg, you silly, silly pony. We're doing it all... for the foals!" The tall clown smiled beatifically, a pleased pierrot of precious, pretty perfection. Or so he imagined, anyway.
"We aren't ponies yet, and we aren't going to be unless we leave NOW!" The short clown wasn't whispering anymore "We should have left the moment we saw how many humans were here! Lets. Go. NOW!"
"Nutmeg... Nut-meh-he-he-heg...we CAN'T leave now, we simply MUST see the happy smiles on all the precious little muzzles!" The tall clown batted his overly long lashes, beaming like an expectant mother.
"You are FUCKING INSANE!" The short woman glared at her partner clown.
"Nutmeg! Now that's just not pony in the least! Shame on you. And in front of the..." The tall clown looked over at the scene suddenly unfolding. Shrieks and screams had filled the air just after the piñata had been struck - as soon as the impact had registered, the device had immediately begun spinning rapidly spewing a glittering purple fluid over the gathered children, dousing them completely. "... ah, yes... foals." A wide, red, lipstick smile spread across the tall clown's face as the children, as one, fell to the ground blanched white as dough, their limbs already swelling into the stubby bulbs from which Equestrian hooves would soon sprout.
The squat clown was dragging the tall one by the neck, her fingers clutching multiple necklaces of beads in a death grip. "Ow! You're hurting me, and you're totally ruining my couture!"
"RUINING YOUR COUTURE?" the short clown tore off her green fright wig, tossing it down a side passage in the hopes of misguiding their fairly upset pursuers. "That'll be the least of your worries when..." she was panting now "... the entire favela... gets their hooves on us!"
The two clowns ducked down an alley and through a maze of crates and pottery. Angry voices, some in English, more in Spanish, shouted very un-pony things, mostly involving which parts of the clowns should be torn off and shoved down which orifices. On the whole, none of it was particularly genteel. The pair crouched between crates as a crazed mob ran past screaming and yelling like scalded, rabid, speared baboons who had finally decided that the hunter in the short pants and the pith helmet was Probably Responsible.
"Oh, how I wish I could have played with the little darlings, seen them take their first happy trots!" The tall clown sighed delicately, wistfully.
"You smell that?" The short clown, Nutmeg, grabbed her companion's necklace and gave it a sharp jerk "That's the trots, and I'm having them right now, and they are NOT happy!" The look in her eyes was somewhere between Slow Dissection and Burning Alive, but there was no doubt that it was intended to kill, if just a teensiest bit horribly. "What in Equestria possibly brought you to imagine this plan was a good idea?" Nutmeg was hissing now, a form of speech normally left to snakes and the very pissed.
"You, actually. You mentioned that the 'hoof that rocks the cradle rules the world' and my mind naturally went straight to piñata's bursting with Potion. Anypony would have come to the same conclusion!" The completely earnest look was not the least amusing. Well, maybe a little. Under circumstances involving less chance of being chopped into chorizo, it might have been endearing. In a 'I am completely doomed to a life of utter failure' sort of way.
"Come on!" Nutmeg grabbed her partner and dragged him, stumbling, out of their hiding spot. Instantly she began to pull him down the same path the mob had taken. After a few dozen feet, she veered them away and down a staircase into the underground maglev tunnels where they had previously stored their gear. Nutmeg used her thumb and the codeword 'Horseapples' to cause the Intelligent Lock she had placed on a rusted locker to open. Immediately, she began tearing her costume off, while pulling forth her fatigues and boots.
"Oh, such a shame, really..." her partner was sighing "...back to being a drab little pony again." He reluctantly took off the yellow, clinging dress and put on his own fatigues and boots. "I counted fifteen of the little darlings. That's fifteen more foals in the world for Celestia! Oh, dear..." the makeup was hard to remove, but he was making a valiant effort.
"What? What is it?" Nutmeg was worried, and rolled out on her back, in the middle of pulling a boot on, to scan up the stairs for pursuers.
"Fifteen, Nutmeg. That's an odd number. I don't mean the number is strange, I mean that it isn't even. How will we divide the score between us?" Nutmeg stared up at her partner. He was worrying about the count now?
"The bloody score isn't what I am worried about being divided!" Nutmeg finally had her boot on and was busy snapping the autogrip laces in place. "You do understand that human parents can become just a tiny bit... oooh... murdery... when you forcibly change all their children into ponies without their permission? You do get that don't you?"
"Oh, you're right..." by now her partner had managed to get all the makeup off, and had his favorite pink tanktop on. "...you should get the extra point. It's only fair, you did end up stuck with the pirate costume. It wasn't that good, really. Sorry about that. It just happened to fit."
"The only fit is the one I'm going to have if you don't get a move on!" Nutmeg threw a boot at her partner. "Now put that on and let's get the muffin out of here!"
"No need to be shirty with me. I was only trying to be generous." He began pulling on his boots.
"And take off that stupid wig, Ginger!"
The sound of running feet and angry men echoed down the stairwell, the sounds of a mob insane with rage. It was almost certain they would be killed in the most horrible of ways the moment they exited the underground, and their plan had been the nearest thing to a complete failure, scoring only fifteen new conversions towards the goal that would permit their own. They had lost a valuable potion sprayer, had made total idiots of themselves in front of an entire favela, and Nutmeg's underwear would never be the same.
Still, there was no denying the fact that for Fifth Column Knight Ginger Michelson and his Squire, Nutmeg Morely, this had been their most successful effort yet. It was, in fact, their only successful effort, not counting the day they were first sworn in to the P.E.R. and Ginger had accidentally knocked potion all over another recruit. Sadly, that hadn't counted as score.
Somehow, some way, they would earn their conversions. One day, they would be hailed as Celestia's secret agents of ponification, and enter Equestria in triumph! One hundred points each, and they would be granted full ponyhood with honors! They were true-hearted warriors of friendship, Knight and Squire of the Ponification for the Earth's Rebirth, and they were absolutely going to save the muffin' world.
The P. E. R. Michelson and Morely The Speed Of Right By Chatoyance
OPERATION TWO: THE HORSIE CHALLENGE
The man was in his late twenties, probably around twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He wore the style of clothing common to the Red-Level Twopers, the lowest level of the two-percent of the world that were employed. He stumbled out into the street, his head in his hands, moaning softly.
"My... job... I've lost my goddamn job... what now? What am I going to do? I can't pay for my sleeping locker... I'll lose my stuff, what little of it there is..." He was trying not to cry, but he was clearly aware what his future held. Within a day or two, he would be out on the street, a failed Twoper, unwelcome in the workzones, and even more unwelcome in the world-spanning favelas, where he would be seen as one of the rich, those that look down on the slum-dwellers and spit from their seats on the maglevs. It was over. It was all over.
No. Wait. The advertisement he had seen on his hyperlink, on that tiny one-inch holoscreen the other night, the Permitted Political Dissent, the kind the Ministry of Propaganda and Infotainment likes to allow occasionally so it doesn't seem like all media was totally controlled... what was it? Oh... yeah. Yeah! Would it... could it even work? Did such an organization really exist? Were they truly... everywhere?
He had nothing to lose, now. He didn't even know where a Bureau was, and in any case he had no credits to ride the maglev to get to one. Even trying to cross the city would likely be suicide once it was noticed that he was a twoper on the skids. He was willing to try anything.
The man walked out, as the advertisement had said, to the middle of the intersection, right at the center, the old, broken streets making a gigantic 'X' which he was at the very center of. He stood as tall as he could in his grief, fear and shame, and yelled in a loud, clear voice "CRUSADE ME!!!"
The sound of his call echoed down the lonely, decrepit streets. For a while nothing happened as the last of his voice repeated into the distance of the abandoned part of the city in which he stood. Then came the sound of... hooves, many, many hooves, clopping and clipping on the roadway, and noise made him suddenly realize what he had done and he began to nervously step backwards, his body preparing itself to run when...
The flasks and water-balloons and fragile plastic eggs rained down upon him smashing and breaking as they impacted his chest, his head, his arms, and twice, painfully, in his groin. He was soaked in purple goo, drenched in sparkling serum, bukkaked in oozing grape slime. Instantly his limbs began to swell, even as his flesh turned white as dough. His last thought before the anesthetic mercifully overwhelmed him was of his 'mommy', but it was far too late for mommies now.
Fifteen minutes later, from a pile of ripped and torn Red-Level Twoper clothing rose a sleepy-eyed stallion. He was lime-green with purple eyes and an olive mane and tail. The newfoal stallion blinked and yawned... and then smiled. He'd had the most incredible, beautiful dream. He suddenly realized he felt wonderful! That ache in his knee was gone, the tumors on his arm were gone... his front tooth was back... he was in perfect health! He felt happy and he was in perfect health!
The stallion tried to get up, but his legs, all four of them now, were new to him. He noticed, with some amusement, that he had hooves. More amusing was his tail, which he swished back and forth, hypnotized by the simple ability. Half a dozen ponies approached him now, from where they had been waiting, standing vigil over his transformation. It was likely they had cut his clothing off of him, so that it would not strangle him as he changed.
A dark blue stallion gazed down at him with friendly eyes. "Colt Creamello, Team Pauldron, Squamous City P.E.R. - Welcome to the Herd!"
Barnsour clopped up to the podium, a fierce look on his muzzle. He was a large earthpony, big of muscle and thick of limb. He always looked fierce, and his unshorn fetlocks suggested cave-pony ancestry, and only added to his aura of power, danger, and absolute command. He was Baron Buck Barnsour, a Copper Knight and the Local Authority for the Squamous City, New Mexico branch of the PER.
it was somewhat unfortunate, then, that his coat was a truly shocking hot pink, a color that was not in the least graced by a mane and tail of fluorescent yellow and ...puce. "ALRIGHT, SETTLE DOWN PONIES!" Whatever his coloration, his size and vocal volume was not to be argued with and not a single one of the twenty-five ponies and two humans in the room doubted his preeminence.
"First off - what I know you've all been waiting for - this weeks achievements." Barnsour took the mouth-written sheet from his secretary and placed it on the podium and squinted at it. "First up, Team Pauldron! Looking good, ponies... looking good... total of seventy-five converted this week, not as good as last week, but still, a decent showing. Let's hear it for Team Pauldron!"
The room filled with the sound of hooves pounding on the floor. Team Pauldron were the stars of the Squamous City PER. They always had the best scores of anypony.
Barnsour cleared his muscular throat. "Ahem! Well done... well done. Alrighty, then, next up, Team Vambrace! This week, a new high, sixty-nine conversions! Better watch out, Pauldron... these ponies are creeping up on your tails!"
More stomping followed as several members of Team Vambrace took bows or just grinned. "Yes, yes... good showing all around. Now!" Barnsour looked for his secretary, a young filly with soft violet curls for her mane and tail "Let's get down to business!"
"Your Baron... ish... ness? YOO-HOO!!! Sir Barnsour, Sir?" It was a rather tall, thin human with long, silvery-blond hair. He wore a bright pink tank-top and pony-patterned Khaki pants. "What about us? Fifth Column Infiltrators? Ponies-to-be, your invaluable fists to fight the humanist resistance?"
Baron Barnsour blinked, as if confused. "Oh... oh, yes. You. Ahem." He looked back at the scribed sheet once more, squinting more intensely. The sound of some ponies trying to hide their grins, a hoof to the ribs, could be heard in the silence. "Let's see now... ah, indeed. Team Rumpguard."
Grins became snide snickers in the back. Somepony else got chucked in the ribs.
'Ginger' Michelson and 'Nutmeg' Morely had been recruited three months previously. They had each been accosted on the street, in different parts of Squamous, and given the special Fifth Column recruitment spiel instead of the usual PER indoctrination. Barnsour needed new infiltrators, the last had endured enough and simply doused each other while out on a mission. They couldn't take the abuse and nonsense any longer and had simply chosen to go pony right then and there. He couldn't really blame them. There was little more dreadful than to be stuck being human in an organization dedicated, essentially, to the elimination of all humans. There was certainly little dating potential in the situation.
The pair had been assigned as Rumpguard, the Armor Code for PER human operatives, and had immediately chosen proper pony names for their future selves. As PER tradition required, they had kept their human last names, until the day they earned their ponification. At least, that is how it was supposed to work. Inevitably, the Fifth Column agents broke and just ponified themselves long before their score requirement was met because... why not? Nopony who agreed with the goals and mission of the PER would willingly remain human for long. It was difficult to keep the Rumpguard packed.
Barnsour had expected Michelson and Morely to Go Pony two months ago, but they seemed to have some bizarre kind of thick-headed honor that defied understanding. In three months they had achieved exactly nothing. Not a single conversion. Zero points. It wasn't for lack of trying. Ginger seemed to be the clever one, and his schemes were, if anything, passionately earnest, if remarkably lacking in rational consideration. Barnsour had no expectation that this week would be any different, and had wanted to spare the two. Frankly, he just wished they would cheat and 'fall on their potion' or something and get it over with already.
"Yes, yes... Team Rumpguard." More snickers, whickers and whinnies. "As of this week, oh... fifteen points! Well met, you two! It appears... " The PER Baron studied the shaky mouthwriting "... that the points have been assigned... seven to Ginger and... eight to Nutmeg. First points! Well, well. Congratulations to you both. Keep up the good work!" It was about time, but Barnsour couldn't help but feel some pride that his infiltration team had finally had any success at all. Since they were showing some potential, finally, he made a mental note to cancel Operation Tie Them Down And Pour Potion In Their Yap. For now.
The hoof stomps rattled the floor, a cacophony greater than the applause for either Team Pauldron or Team Vambrace. There were open laughs in the middle of it, but neither Ginger nor Nutmeg seemed to take notice. Ginger beamed and curtsied, Nutmeg gave a terse, almost shy salute.
When the fuss had died down, Barnsour turned to the assignments for the day.
It was an Orange Level Mall, more upscale than the usual shopping space for Red-Level workers. It had three tiers and large open spaces interrupted by holodisplays and a working fountain. Orange-Level workers marched from shop to shop carrying slowly filling bags. The food court suffered the dramas of Orange-Privileged teenagers, while the archaic arcade endured the spectral embrace of the shrivelingly aged who found some strange nostalgia in computerized games that perversely required the use of... hands. These were the sort of antique arcade machines that harbored diseases that had last known vector in the Cretaceous.
"Are you SURE you have every contingency planned for this time? I'm serious here, Ginger. Last time we barely..." Nutmeg's whispers carried the particularly jagged edge of the justifiably concerned.
"Oh, my little nutty-buddy, you really should learn to trust in..." Ginger adjusted the lace-covered apron he wore over the logo-imprinted corporate jumper he wore. Naturally, it was a woman's jumper. At least he had no shadow this time.
"DON'T call me that! I hate that! I am not your little 'nutty-buddy'. The name is 'Nutmeg!' The only one with nuts here is..."
"YOU really shouldn't... Oh, look, we have our first customers!" Ginger hissed the last word, a universally acknowledged code for shut the fuck up.
"What... what the hell is this?" The blonder of the two young women gawked openly at the checker-draped table and the large banner that hung suspended between two poles. In a mall where holodisplays and glowing lightsculptures were the norm, this display was positively a joke. "Are you for, like, serious?" The less blond girl was incredulous.
"HEELLOOOOoooo!!!" Ginger's robust greeting sent the women into fits of laughter. "Welcome to the Horsie Challenge! We're going from mall to mall to find out if ordinary people like YOU can tell the difference between Horsie-Cola and new DIET Horsie! Big Credits! Big Prizes!"
"You have got to, like, be totally kidding me. You have like, no budget. I've seen better signs on glory holes in the bathroom." The blonder woman tilted her head to one side.
"No way!" The not-as-blond woman did not seem to accept her companion's reasoned statement. Less blond's rebuttal appeared to carry the perspicacious weight of sage cogitation behind it.
"Way, Charlene. The bar down in G-sector? The one with all the Yaoi boys? That one." Blonder suddenly took argumentative sente and exquisitely demonstrated the power of factual evidence upon spirited discussion.
"Like Bull. You wouldn't have the balls." Although unverified by medical examination, Charlene did seem to have a convincing and substantive counterargument in play.
"You don't know what I got, Girl, and whatever I got, you can just suck 'em." There simply is no way to defeat solid reasoning of this sort - Charlene was clearly stymied. Game, set, and match. That's all for today, we hope you enjoyed Great Intellectual Debates Of History. We now return you to your regularly scheduled...
"Why not try sucking back a nice, cold Horsie! If you can tell the difference between regular Horsie and new Diet Horsie, you could win... a brand new AIR YACHT!" Ginger positively pranced with excitement. Nutmeg cringed... there was no way they could back up such an offer.
"Shyeah, like a two-credit promotion like this could possibly ever deliver on that." The blonder woman seemed ever so slightly doubtful about the scenario Ginger had presented. "What-ever. Give me the fucking soda, pretty boy. I always stick whatever a Yaoi-boy offers into me." The woman downed the presented cup with a savage jerk of her head. "So, if I taste the other one, any chance of you letting me taste anything else you got, sweet cheeks?" Ginger looked scared as the young woman panned her gaze down from meeting his eyes to another spot below. Ginger felt like three small animals were desperately trying to burrow up into his abdomen to escape predation. He was not far wrong.
"Eeep." Ginger backed up while the blonder woman grabbed one of the cups arranged on the cloth covered counter and shoved it at her companion. "Don't blow this for me, Charlene, suck it down for the team. Like you did in the closet with Thad."
"Fuck you, Daph, you whore." While Charlene had technically not been accurate in her response, she had been not entirely misrepresented her companion either. Nevertheless, Charlene was, if anything, a team player, and proved her worth and general toughness, by immediately downing the proffered cup, slamming it into her gullet like a liquid puck into an over-painted hockey goal.
Nutmeg held her breath. Nothing happened. Nothing... happened. Ginger really had taken care of everything.
Blonder, 'Daph', leaned over the table and lasered sultry eyes into Ginger's crotch. "If you want anything else... sucked down... just let me know, Yaoi-boy." The young woman raised her eye-lasers to attack Ginger's horrified gaze. Blonder strutted off, her hindquarters performing some kind of ass-semaphore the message of which was almost certainly not child-friendly, unless one included within that the intent to actually make a child.
"Are you OK?" Nutmeg had never seen Ginger frightened, much less horrified. He was always the one with the grand schemes and no concept of danger. It was unnerving to see the PER Knight reduced to cowering revulsion.
"Fine. Two down." Ginger squeaked the words, and managed to breath, with some effort. "Fine young ladies, don't you think?" Ginger had a remarkably powerful capacity to interpret reality in kinder terms than it usually deserved, even under the most trying of times. Since they were not at the moment under threat of losing their lives or their limbs, Nutmeg decided that this talent was almost sweet. It was decidedly Pony.
"So, the time delay activation code really does work. It's amazing, Ginger. To think of what we can accomplish with potion that can be programmed to go off whenever we want. We might earn our ponification today, at this very mall!" Nutmeg felt something not entirely unlike hope for the very first time since she had joined the PER. Ginger's plans were finally working!
"Time delay?" Ginger was still in some kind of horrified shock, the kind little girls get when the 'special' uncle reveals what he's really hiding inside that suspect box in his lap.
"Yes, I've heard rumors, but I had no idea that you had managed to score some. Time delay potion. I can't believe it. You really came through this time, Ginger." Nutmeg began arranging more cups, carefully pouring out sparkling purple serum into each one.
"I don't understand. It should have worked." Ginger's fingers dived like frisky dolphins through the ocean of his long, silvery-pale locks.
"What do you mean, Gingey?" A vaguely uncomfortable feeling began to rise in Nutmeg like spoiled food just beginning to announce that the rest of the evening will not, in fact, be spent in comfort rather than hunched over a porcelain altar praying for a swift death.
"I mean, those two should be ponies now. Or at least well on their way. I just don't understand."
"Ginger pony, tell me true now, the potion was hacked to have a time delay, wasn't it?" The familiar horror was settling in, combined with a strange, uncomfortable, vaguely fecal whiff of relief - Ginger hadn't thought past the initial concept, but at least they weren't having to run for their lives.
"Time delay? Oh no. Of co-ho-ho-hourse not! That hasn't been perfected yet, silly filly." Ginger was just barely beginning to regain his usual, bouncy self. "Codepony at the dispensary told me the time delay thing just wasn't happening, so he offered me 'Delay Potion' instead. If I understood correctly, this was supposed to be paralytic, freeze them up in place for a few minutes. Then we just stack them up like cordwood under the table and let the change happen! That's what the banner is for, see? I kick this lever, and the banner falls over, hiding everything from the security cameras. The we just raise it back up, and two new ponies walk away, nopony the wiser!"
"Don't you think that security might catch on after the second or third time that the banner collapses and ponies start wandering the mall?" Nutmeg was becoming furious. Now things were feeling familiar. "I thought you promised you had every angle worked out on this one!" Nutmeg was rapidly beginning to come to the conclusion that the only angle in this was ninety degrees, and described the shape of her head for going along with this in the first place.
"Oh, Nutmeg, I truly think you underestimate just how boring staring at sections of a mall all day really is. The mind wanders, thoughts drift away to thoughts of strong backs, and tender hooves..."
"The security system isn't staffed with humans, Ginger. It's all AI's now, all machine intelligences. That's their entire existence, staring at the mall. That's all they have to do with their time!" Thank Celestia the hacked potion had failed. At least they could leave intact, even if the entire operation was a failure.
"That's just even MORE boring, Nutmeg! Those poor artificial intelligences must be soooo miserable. I'm sure they're playing cards or something just to cope!"
"They don't have bodies, Ginger, they can't play cards! They can only watch. It's all they can do! Enough, we're leaving. Pack this crap up. The mission's a bust. I'm calling this operation. Let's get out of here before..."
That was the exact moment the two 'Fine young ladies' had returned, only to fall down - white as dough - less than three feet from the Horsie-Cola table, already beginning to change. The sirens were wailing now, of course, because the AI security had nothing better to do than to perform their programming. Already the Blackmesh would be on-route to bolster the number that could be heard goosestepping their way closer and closer.
Blonder was going to be a pegasus, not-as-blond was joining her, wings sprouting in sync, a matched set to the end. Or more accurately, the beginning.
Nutmeg bodily threw Ginger under the lowering security door before diving through herself, the smooth floors made dragging the tall man simple as she pulled him behind her all the way down the Equal-Access ramp and into the maglev station. With Ginger finally on his feet, the pair managed to board the nearest car just as the security system began shuttering the entire facility. Fortunately, the maglev was on a separate system and pulled smoothly out of the mall station only to thrust down into the underground tunnels like some dream taken from Freudian psychology.
"Well I'll be a mule's cousin! 'Delay' potion. Of course! I did misunderstand!" Exclaimed Ginger.
"What.... what... what is it now?" panted an exhausted Nutmeg.
"I guess they really did get the time delay potion to work after all!" Ginger was beaming "Just not very well!"
The P. E. R. Michelson and Morely The Speed Of Right By Chatoyance
OPERATION THREE: PURPLE RAIN
For decades now, endless miles of gray, dead wheat covered the astonishingly flat plains. There were no mountains, only the curve of the dead fields meeting a reddish-gray sky of perpetual smog. It was Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, the site of the Last Harvest, where a strain of genegineered wheat had promised total defense against all pests be they insect or bacteria.
The product had exceeded all expectations. Nothing organic could digest the wheat, nothing in the world. It would never rot, never decompose, and it was poison to all animal life. Wheat had finally been made safe from every pest, just as the original proposal had claimed. The wheat had dominant genes - within a fortnight or two, all wheat, everywhere on the Earth had become the wheat from Assiniboia. The genes had spread laterally to other crops as well, ending forever the plague of fresh vegetables, most fruits, and almost all animal fodder too. Finally, the world's crops were preserved from being lost. Forever.
For the nanofabrication industry, with the power to convert human waste into nutritious bars, disks and cubes, however, business had never been better. It became the most dramatic shift in wealth within a single industry ever recorded.
The lead genetic engineer that had created the Assiniboia Wheat lost his job, of course. Only reasonable, considering the extinction of all wheat and most vegetables and other plants and countless species dependent on all of that. He barely got a decent severance package. Fortunately, by the most amazing coincidence, there was an extravagantly enriching position already waiting for him in the completely unrelated field of nanofabrication. Thus those concerned for his well being can be assured that he made a vast fortune and in the end was able to live in a great mansion surrounded by Blackmesh guards and a surprisingly uninhibited entourage of nubile young girls and not a few boys - just for a change of pace.
One of the inevitable, cast-aside offspring of the sort of parties the wheat engineer indulged in grew up to be a brilliant genegineer in his own right, and as is often the case with youth, found himself angry and rebellious with regard to what his mother could not successfully prove was his father. The angry young genegineer turned his back on humanity itself, when he had the chance, and was one of the first to enter a Conversion Bureau. Recruited by PER, though no longer capable of black, undying hatred, he was still fairly miffed, which is just the drive needed to become the lead hacker on the Serum Weaponifization Team. His name was now 'Codepony', and when he was not trying to hack the nanotech inside ponification serum, he had the more mundane duty of seeing to its distribution from the main PER base in Assiniboia to the waiting enclaves in the rest of the world.
Today he had gotten a particularly large order, especially unusual considering that it was from Squamous, New Mexico. Two-hundred and fifty gallons of potion was an enormous amount - whatever project the PER was up to down there must be truly impressive. Nopony in their right mind would make an order of that magnitude without an astonishingly good reason, it was unthinkable. Therefore it must be important.
Naturally, he approved it.
"Are you sure this is OK? It seems like an awfully large amount of potion to me, Ginger." Nutmeg was worried, a feeling that had become as familiar to her as terror, disappointment, trepidation, outright jaw-dropping incredulity and all the other new colors that Ginger had brought into the palette of her life.
"Don't be a silly filly, Nutmeg." Ginger beamed reassurance like a fifty-thousand watt tower of confidence "Requisitions exist to be made, and we are, after all, true knights of the PER! You can't run a crusade without resources, after all!" Ginger was busy doing his toenails, a tasteful and delicate pink, as usual. The strangely sweet smell of polish filled the barracks.
"And you got approval for this from Barnsour, right?" Of course he did, of course he would... but it was just comforting to make sure.
"Umf." Ginger was having trouble with his little toe on the left side, fortunately he was astonishingly flexible. Ginger lay his leg over his neck, his foot dangling off away to the right, roughly at at eye level. This allowed him to reach up with both hands and paint the toe properly. Nutmeg always found herself staring in wonder when he did this, a free contortionist show is always good fun.
"Was that 'umf' yes... or 'umf' Don't Bother Your Pretty Head About It Because I'm Definitely Not?" The sinking feeling in Nutmeg's stomach had started to pick up speed, soon it would breach the mantle and dive for the core where the lava devils waited with sharp, gnashy teeth.
"Remember when we first arrived and were introduced?" Now that the left toe was painted, Ginger had lowered his left leg only to flop his right one over his neck. Apparently, anatomy was yet another thing Ginger was unafraid to push to the extreme.
Nutmeg had tried to block her memories of that day, but they came rushing back despite her effort. Ginger accidentally dousing the third recruit in potion was embarrassing enough, her own nervous inability to stop giggling every time she saw their hot pink leader was only topped by her initial effort to feed him a cube of sugar while cooing about what a pretty little mare he was. Oops.
"Barnsour himself told us that if we needed anything, we should just help ourselves. This is all perfectly legit." Ginger's other little toe was proving more troublesome, Nutmeg couldn't help but imagine what it would look like if her partner lost his balance on the bed and flopped over like a car tire that had rolled loose from some incompetent mechanic.
"He was talking about the lunchroom! He was talking about sandwich fixings!" Nutmeg tried to see if she could get her leg over her head, the effort was as painful as the result was unsuccessful.
"Oh, you worry too much. I knew what he really meant. I'm sure everypony did." Ginger waggled his freshly painted toes at Nutmeg, the fact that they were next to his own head couldn't help but make her laugh. "Do you think ponies paint their hooves?"
The tall plumber in the spotless pink jumpsuit tromped down the long ramp into the dank boiler room of Squamous Valley High School - Home of the Squamous Fightin' Squaws - and joined his partner. "Here's the stopcock. Or is it a gate valve? I think I shall call it the latter, since the former suggests a rather unhappy ending to an otherwise pleasant evening." Ginger Michelson took off his bright red cap and used it to fan his long, platinum locks. "It's dreadfully stuffy and warm down here, my hair is a damp mass of sticky strands, and I swear I've been nowhere near the quarterback!"
Nutmeg Morely grimaced and took the metal part. She began to fit it into the existing system in order to complete the connection to the 250 gallon tank that they had - with the help of several brawny atheletes - wheeled in. Fortunately, this time the part was the right size and mated well with the existing pipes. She tried in vain to think of a way to announce this to her partner such that he would not respond with an innuendo and finally settled on "It's done."
"Oh goody! You really are indispensable, Nutmeg. This will be our greatest triumph, and it is all due to your inestimable skill at sticking one thing inside another!" Ginger grinned, his hand on his hip, the other brushing delicate wisps of hair from his eyes. Apparently the innuendo factor was entirely separated from reality, much like Ginger herself. Himself. Whatever.
Sodden with sweat, Nutmeg's rough, dark curls hung flaccidly down her grease-streaked face. Her previously green jumpsuit was now some shade of What Babies Do. The boiler room was not merely filthy in the conventional sense, rather it was a magical wonderland of schmutz, where mere filth was considered unworthy of residence within its gated community of slummocky defilement. She felt sure this was where the fecal fairies pranced in feculent, mucid passetemps of slubbery, stercoraceous scurfiness. It could be cleaner.
"So tell me again why we don't just get outta dodge right now?" Nutmeg realized that somehow grime had managed to get inside her jumpsuit, where it was currently exploring the topography of her personal landscape in a particularly investigative manner. Perhaps the purulence had evolved to sentience and had recognized in her a fellow entity - certainly it was trying to Make Contact.
Ginger was, of course, utterly pristine. At least his perfume helped overcome the stench of the boiler room. Pity it did so with the subtlety of a commando slitting an enemy trooper from stem to sternum - that perfume could be weaponized was a troublesome revelation to Nutmeg. "Nutmeg. Nut-meh-heh-hehg... no true artist would ever miss the opportunity to see the debut of their creation! Besides, we must be on hand in case anything should need adjustment or repair. Your marvelous skills will no doubt be needed to assuage the fury of the pipes, once the potion begins to spurt!"
Nutmeg tried to wipe the greasy sweat running down her face into her eyes only to realize that just made things worse. There was a cloth somewhere around here. "And while I'm doing that, you will be...?"
"Managing the situation, of course. From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs and all that! Say..." Ginger cocked an ear at the sound of a electronic horn "... it sounds like halftime is over! We should go and cheer our teams before theirs, and our, mutual victory - don't you think?"
"Mutual victory?" Nutmeg was puzzled.
"A victory for Celestia, is a victory for us all, Nutmeg! Show some team spirit! Rah! Rah! Sis Boom Bah! We've got a team that's backed by pride! There must be some Ponies on our side! Stand up and yell, for our victory tonight! Come On Ponies, fight! fight! fight!" It was really quite expertly performed - Ginger must spend an inordinate amount of time doing cheerleader practices. Nutmeg found herself more than impressed, but was left with a nagging question.
Where in Equestria had he been keeping those pom-poms?
The Squamous Valley Squaws had submitted to the White Skins in the end, and they returned dripping, covered in the sweaty scent of manhood in its prime. The game was over and it was time to hit the showers. Snapping towels licked out for their traditional prey, naked buttocks scampering for safety amidst the tiles. Grinning in the background, holding a ridiculously oversized wrench to a stall marked 'Out Of Service' stood a tall, platinum blond plumber in a pink jumpsuit. He was whispering into the delicate headset mostly covered by his long hair. "Wait for it... wait for it... Oooh! Oh... my!"
"Now? Should I do it now?" The whisper on the other end was frantic and unsure.
"No, No, not yet Nutmeg!"
"What was that then?"
"What was what, Nutmeg? Oh... oh my..."
"THAT! What's going on up there? Have we been seen? The adjustments aren't showing are they? Nothing's sticking out is it?"
"I... wouldn't exactly say that... Nutmeg. Goodness!"
"GINGER!!!"
"It's fine, fine, Nutsy, just hold your horses a little longer... longer still. Longest yet. Oh... my."
"Alright you apes!" The coach was not a happy man, the Squaws were not known for winning and everyone seemed to want to blame it on him for some reason. "What the fuck went wrong out there? Shlomovitch! Get your damn panties off and get soaped up! Friedmann, Epstein what the hell happened? You call that defense? They blew you off like toothless Trixie when the Fleet's in town!"
"Come on, Coach!" Kaplan was a quarterback, but he felt the Coach was being too hard. He was the last to step into the flowing water. "We did our best out there! They always rape us on the third down! They did their best!"
"Now." Ginger stepped back into the corner, so that there was no possibility of anything splashing him.
The nozzles of the showers turned a pale purple. The stream did not have to be pure, undiluted potion so long as the flow was continuous. Minimum exposure was the only issue. The new, stable anesthetic worked rapidly, with the boys slumping down on the tiles. Coach Rosenberg saw his entire team slowly collapse and dashed in to catch Leibowitz as he fell. The violet, sparkling spray instantly drenched the Coach, and he too stumbled and fell asleep.
The Squamous Valley Squaws and their coach blanched white as dough in the flow of tinted water. Within minutes, their bodies looked like sacks of angry snakes as muscle and bone dissolved and reformed, writhing and squirming under the pale, fruit-soft flesh. Their limbs swelled into bulbs, from which smooth hooves soon extruded, even as their heads expanded and necks lengthened, large new eyes forming and rising like bubbles in a doughy sea.
Ginger looked on with unhidden envy. It would be so easy, so simple to just step forward, to walk into the pale purple streams and... no. No. It wasn't honorable. Nutmeg was still down in the boiler room, and neither had yet earned the right. They could be ponies only when they had saved enough humans from inevitable doom. There were only four years remaining before the earth was annihilated. Somepony had to save these fools. Somepony had to rescue them from their denial and arrogance.
It was difficult being a freedom fighter, Ginger reflected. Unlike those they saved, it would be a long time before they would know the freedom of the sky, the freedom of perfect strength, or the freedom of real magic. Ginger sighed. At least the team would know these things. Such lucky stallions they were.
By now, their coats had come in, in every shade of the rainbow, and long tails and manes had spooled out. They were wet but perfect stallions now, and it must be exactly the same in the shower room for the visiting team. Ginger touched the small contact on his headset, ready to tell Nutmeg to stop the flow, when a gaggle of young girls ran in. What the...
The lead girl had a holocamera, clearly this was some kind of high school prank. The girls stopped, aghast at the scene. "Oh. My. God. What is this? Some kind of a joke?"
"What the shit? Stuffed animals?"
"Those bastards must have heard about what we were planning and they put stuffies in here! They're somewhere laughing their asses off at us right now!"
"Jesus, Libby, those aren't stuffed animals. They're real, or artificial or something, but whatever they are, they're alive!"
"Those are alive? They could drown!"
"No way, it's only a shower, dipstick."
"We gotta save them, Libby! Come on!"
"Oh, Christ... Judith, go get the rest of the girls, we can't do this ourselves."
Ginger watched with unabashed glee as the girls, other than Judith, who had left, attempted to move the ponies, heedless of the spray. As they slowly fell and began to change, Ginger reported the event to Nutmeg, and asked how the potion was holding out.
"We've still got plenty. 250 gallons is a hell of a lot, Ginger. Are you serious? There's more coming?"
There was indeed. Twenty more young women entered, and seeing their friends having some kind of fit, ran as one to help them. Soon they too were soaked and changing.
Ginger reached into the pockets of his jumpsuit and pulled out thick, neoplastic gloves and a razor knife. The jumpsuit itself was lined with neoplastic, as were his shoes and socks. "Cut the flow! I'm going in!" When the water had turned completely clear, Ginger stepped over the bodies, slashing necklines, pants, and anything else the least restrictive that threatened the health of the squirming, flopping shapes.
By the door, he radioed back "Start it up again!" The flow turned pale purple once more, and the bodies of the women completed their change, beautiful manes and tails growing out before Ginger's envious eyes. It was too much. He had to leave.
Walking away from the building, Ginger noted more students and faculty running toward where he had just left. "Just let it run, Nutmeg. Rendezvous at base. Repeat, Rendezvous at base."
The response was slightly garbled by static "What.... leave... you sure?... Ging..."
"Leave, get out, run, vamoose, skedaddle, move it Nutsy!" Tears filled Ginger's eyes now. All those new ponies. All the new unicorns and pegasai and earthponies, all the saved lives, all the beautiful new lives, and he wasn't one of them. Not yet. Not.... yet.
But maybe! Turning back for one last look, the crowd pushing its way into the building was larger than before. They must be stacked like cordwood in there.
Baron Barnsour clopped up to the podium, a fiercer than usual look on his muzzle. "ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT! SETTLE DOWN PONIES! I SAID SETTLE DOWN!"
"First off - I won't make you wait, not after THIS." Barnsour clopped his hoof down on the big button on the podium. Behind him on the portable holodisplay was the latest news report. The sound was muted, but text streamed by at the bottom: SQUAWS WHIPPED LIKE PONIES IN GAME, NOW REALLY ARE.
Barnsour looked at the screen, shook his head, and turned back to the assembled members of the PER. "Achievements for the week. Team Pauldron! Twenty-five? Twenty-five? Are you muffin' kidding me?"
Hinny the Gelding stepped in front of an upset Colt Creamello. "It was a tough week, Baron! We had real trouble with..."
"I don't want to hear it, Hinny. And that goes for you too, Dapple!" Dapple Grey had started to object, but instead lowered his head. The fourth member of Team Pauldron, Perliono Mustang, just stared at the floor as if the spots and splotches on it were an ancient language that held the secrets of how not to suck.
"Alright.... next... " Barnsour was not a happy pony today, it seemed. "Team Vambrace. What have we here?" Barnsour checked the paper on the podium. "Thirty conversions. You beat Pauldron, I'll give you that. That's all I can give you. I don't know what I can say, ponies, step it up! Step it up!"
Sorell and 'Withers' Sabino simply looked sad. This was not going to be easy.
"And now we come to the new shining stars of the Squamous PER. I gotta admit, I'm as surprised as anypony, but... there you have it, right there on the screen. Let's have a big round of applause for this weeks star team, Ginger and Nutmeg, Team RUMPGUARD - ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY ONE CONVERSIONS!!!"
Both Team Pauldron and Team Vambrace sagged where they stood. The rest of the ponies in the headquarters just stared, still unbelieving, even after a day of holonews and wailing sirens scanning the streets. The two humans. The two bloody humans. Team Ass Protection. Impossible.
But then the thunder began. It started with Skewbald of Team Vambrace and spread to the crowd. The building began to shake with the furious stomping of hooves, an earthquake of applause, astonished, miffed, and yet proud, too.
Ginger beamed, as if he had won a beauty contest. Nutmeg shifted uneasily, smiling despite herself, her hands clenching and unclenching, not used to actually succeeding at anything.
"So.... one hundred and eighty one points. How are you going to divide that, you two? One of you going to go pony today then?" Barnsour found himself caught up in the moment, even he was grinning. It was, after all, quite an achievement.
"Um..." Nutmeg spoke quietly "We... we always try to divide things equally."
"That is right!" Ginger glowed with excitement "Right down the middle, because we're a team!"
"So..." Barnsour tried to work out the math, but he was not very good with a pencil in his teeth. His secretary quietly crept up and told him the score, she had worked it out in her head. "Um hmm... you're kidding. You're not kidding."
Barnsour wore an expression that would be at home on a sad clown who had just gotten the news that his mother had been killed by a dog, and then found out the dog was HIS dog and would need to be put to sleep.
"So..." He began "...that's... ninety-nine points for Ginger... and... ninety-nine points... for Nutmeg. Um. Well. Congratulations, you two. I guess. If that's how you want to do it..." He trailed off. He'd so been looking forward to being able to recruit new Fifth Column Infiltrators. Well, one point. One little point... Ah!
"I've got a great idea, everypony!" The Baron was smiling again "What say we just spot Team Rumpguard those silly two points and have ourselves a grand old PER conversion celebration!" This brought the house down with applause and happy laughter. It was always a great party when their own got converted. It was just what everypony needed.
"NO!" Shouted Ginger and Nutmeg together. "Thank you, but we can't accept. Not yet." Ginger was his usual earnest self, honorable beyond all reason, just like his partner "We must earn our ponifications, that was the rule, and we follow the rules, right Nutmeg?"
"RIGHT!" It was clear that Nutmeg was unhappy at this, but she was every bit as honor bound as Ginger. "Gingey and I will just have to earn those last points another day. We insist. No special favors for us. We are proud to be part of the PER, and we won't sully the honor and tradition of the Squamous Enclave by taking points that are not rightfully ours!"
Twenty-five pairs of pony eyes stared at the two incredulously. Some muzzles gaped. Finally, Baron Barnsour cleared his throat. "Ahem... well... I... see." He shook his head once again. "Very well then, until... one more point... each. Indeed, how hard can it be?"
Twenty five ponies laughed heartily at this. After a score of one-eighty one, what pony dared argue?
Ginger smiled proudly at Nutmeg.
Nutmeg looked uncomfortable. One point. Foal's play.
The P. E. R. Michelson and Morely The Speed Of Right By Chatoyance
OPERATION FOUR: ELECTRIC SCOOTALOO
"It was precisely because the Three Day War utterly failed, and that all subsequent - and vastly more subtle - attempts to penetrate the Equestrian Barrier had failed, that the Human Worldgovernment finally realized they could do nothing. They could do nothing at all to Equestria itself, but far worse, it was more than clear that the forces of Equestria could do whatever they liked. The astonishing demonstration by Celestia just a few weeks after the Three Day War made that abundantly clear. So the issue for the World Government came down to sheer desperation. They wanted power over the situation, by any means possible.
They choose stealth and secrecy. As the Ponification Transformation Serum was being developed, Worldgovernment teams performed parallel development of their own, covertly, attempting to develop a means to control the transformation itself. They had early on determined that Conversion changed more than just hands into hooves, it changed every part of a human into an Equestrian, including the brain. This meant the transformation of human aggression into compassion, human territoriality and selfishness into altruism, and the human hunter-gatherer drive into a cooperative herd mentality. Converted newfoals were incapable of real violence, and of feeling the drives that made violence possible. This was a problem, since the goal was to have agents of humanity inside Equestria itself."
The young unicorn filly with soft violet curls for her mane and tail, paused and took a sip of water. Her name was Secretariat, and she was the Squamous City PER Baron's personal assistant and secretary. Because of recent events, he had asked her to recite something of the history of the PER, in order to raise morale, and to educate certain new recruits.
After placing her glass of water down on the podium in the central room, she looked out over the twenty-five ponies and two humans in attendance, and gave her best comforting smile.
"Ahem. That's better! Where were we? Ah...the result of all of that covert research was the development of a reverse transcriptase that, if administered prior to Conversion, would render a newfoal normal in every respect save one - the altered newfoal would retain a quasi-human limbic system that remained capable of violent behavior and violent emotions and thoughts. Trusted agents of the Worldgovernment were chosen for what was considered a suicide mission - to undergo Conversion, in order to infiltrate Equestria and be capable of striking directly at its heart - the princesses Celestia and Luna, if it ever became necessary. This effort was codenamed 'Hidden Dagger', and it did not turn out the way the Worldgovernment intended.
"The original agents - we do not know their exact number, but we suspect it was between twelve and twenty-five - indeed ended up with a fully human capacity for violence, duplicity, deception and even brutality. However, each and every one of them, all hardened men when human, devoid of empathy or compassion - found a complete spiritual transformation during their Conversion Dreams. As one, when they awoke, they determined to serve Their Majesties with their unique skills, skills not known to the Equestrian existence, the shadowy, dark, covert skills of the most powerful and effective secret agents Earth had ever produced. They gathered together and decided to become Equestria's first and only covert agency, sworn to defend and protect the princesses and Equestria, but more than this, to further Celestia's clear goal - the complete Conversion of the human species.
"Thus began the PER, four years ago. Since then, our numbers have swelled as recruits around the world flock to our cause. The Earth is a miserable place, and there are many who feel alienated, disenfranchised, and just plain angry, and who are driven to put a stop to the cruelty, inequity, and brutality of Man. Others come from more compassionate stances, and desire to save those who, for whatever reason, refuse to accept the Gift Of Conversion. PER recruits are incapable of violence, for we are all normal ponies, but we are all driven to serve the princesses in secret, behind the scenes, as a counter to the duplicity and secrecy of the humans. Only we, of the PER, are in position to do those things which further Celestia's goals that she cannot openly do herself. This is the nature of all covert action throughout history.
Yes... a question?"
The man was tall and thin, and he had long, platinum hair. His pony name was 'Ginger', yet he was still a human. Ginger Michelson, and his partner, Nutmeg Morely, had recently managed to save one-hundred and eighty-one misguided humans from the horrific doom of being... humans. This had been the greatest single success within the Squamous City PER, but it had also resulted in a virtual lock-down of the city, rendering all PER activity greatly constrained. A recent public denouncement by Celestia herself about the incident had shaken the young man's resolve in his own convictions.
"C-Celestia herself denounced... what we... what I did. I still feel confused about that. Shouldn't we obey our princess in everything?" Ginger was being remarkably restrained. His normally flamboyant personality had become so suppressed that his question was nearly a whisper.
Ginger's partner, Nutmeg, gave him a pat on the leg with her hand when he sat beside her. Since the speech by Celestia, he had been very down, and so had other members of the Squamous PER, including herself.
"The perfect question!" Secretariat positively beamed, as if she had been waiting for that very question to be asked, or something like it, which in fact she had. It was the point of the whole history exercise in the first place. It was the very core of the PER, in fact, and that was why Baron Barnsour had asked her to lecture the enclave.
"A great leader, a great ruler must operate on many levels at the same time. Every princess or king or emperor throughout the whole of Human civilization has relied on spies, agents and covert operatives. To the world they must say one thing, even while behind the scenes they must often do something entirely opposite, in order to achieve their goals. You have all heard the phrase 'An iron hoof inside a velvet sock?'" ... or something like that, she mumbled to herself... "Well, our Celestia must present the most velvet of appearances to the Humans at all times. She must appear vulnerable and gentle to assuage their xenophobic terrors, and seem at all times utterly devoid of guile in order to prevent open war between our two species. But She is by no means weak, as we all know."
Many heads, both pony and human nodded at this. Celestia was powerful beyond comprehension. She - and her sister - had the powers of gods. They were goddesses, but were so loving and kind that they called themselves merely 'princesses' and personally interacted with their creations. Everypony loved and respected the princesses.
"But what you may not realize, is that not all of the princesses' powers are within Her. We are one of her powers, one of Her many tools, one that operates within the human world. Publicly She denounces us, yes, this is true. In public She decries us and condemns our existence. To the world, we are an embarrassment to Her... even an enemy."
Secretariat waited as the assembled PER shifted nervously.
"And THAT is EXACTLY what all the Humans MUST continue to believe! If She openly embraced us, if Celestia openly showed us anything but derision, then we would no longer be covert agents. That is what it means to be covert. Hidden. In the shadows. Secret. In denouncing us publicly, She gives us the gift of freedom to act, the freedom to further Her goals all while permitting Her complete deniability for our actions. This is how all governments throughout Human history have used covert agents, and here in the human world, would not Celestia be amiss in failing to make use of human tools? Celestia is brilliant!"
There was no dissension from that viewpoint.
"Celestia needs the human world saved, Converted, before all the poor Humans die. Can you imagine the sorrow She feels whenever any life is destroyed? But not all Humans are willing to take Her gift of survival. They know they will be destroyed as Equestria expands, and yet they spit at Her generosity. They are foolish creatures, as we all know. But if Celestia were to try to forcibly convert humankind, there would be war. That cannot be allowed! Obviously!
"So that is why we exist, the PER, the Ponification for the Earth's Rebirth. Look at our emblem, look at it! Do you know what it means?
"On the globe of the Earth, we see the origin point for the Emergence Of Equestria, there, in the North Pacific. On either side are two ponies, one an earthpony - though it could also be a pegasus with wings folded - and on the other a unicorn. The left pony has smiling eyes, closed tight. It is blind to all of our pasts, all of our regrets and mistakes and failings. It tells us that the PER welcomes everypony, and offers us redemption of both body and soul through Conversion, both that which we undergo ourselves, and that which we gift to others.
"The unicorn has an open eye, wide and searching, to spot any threat to the princesses or to Equestria. The sharp horn is our sharp determination and a symbol of magic - the magic of friendship which we offer to all Humans in saving them from themselves. Would not a true friend save another friend even if that friend were too far gone to understand? Of course she would!
"And below it all is a dropet - ponification serum - the great miracle that makes ponification possible. It is our tool, our method, our salvation, and our only weapon, for we cannot harm nor hurt, only heal. We of the PER heal the sickness of extinction by saving humanity from its own foolish pride. The wings on the droplet remind us that we save not merely the flesh, but also the soul.
"We do the bidding of Celestia, never doubt it! Though She denounces us in the public eye, we know that when all is done, when the earth is destroyed utterly, when no humans remain alive, She will finally welcome us with open hooves and endless praise. We are Her trusted secret agents, and She cannot embrace us until our mission is complete. But on that day, that glorious day, when all of Humanity has become Pony, then will come our reward, and we will be paraded through the streets of Canterlot, covert agents no longer, but revealed as Equestria's greatest heroes!"
A roar of stomping hooves shook the building. Cheers and laughter sounded bold and glad. Of course. It all made sense now. It was so silly to have any doubt. If Celestia openly approved, it would be the end of every value the PER had to her. She had to denounce the PER. That was how being a secret agent worked.
Ginger, for his part, still had one more concern. After the excitement had died down, he approached Secretariat and asked, simply, "How do we know that Celestia really does want us to be her secret agents?"
The secretary blinked. "Because the original, genetically altered agents told us so."
Ginger and Nutmeg had been requested to lay low for the next month or so, because of the risk that somepony might recognize them. The streets of Squamous were being constantly patrolled by Blackmesh brought in from neighboring units. The high school had been entirely closed pending security improvements, and every part of the city's infrastructure was essentially on lockdown. The borders of Squamous now had checkpoints with full searches, including body cavity and radiation booths, and portable guard towers sat overlooking most intersections. The 'Shower Incident' had become news across the entirety of the Northamerizone.
Worse, the other members of the Squamous PER had begun to become resentful - their own operations and efforts had to wait until the fuss died down, which, apparently, would not happen any time soon. Many had taken a vacation of sorts; the leaders of Pauldron and Vambrace, Colt and Roan, had organized a trip to the local Dress Club, more to get away from the walls of the Enclave than to see ponies dress up in socks and sweaters.
Team Rumpguard was not permitted to leave the Enclave for even a small period of time. Boredom quickly set in, and Baron Barnsour noted this during one of his brief visits to check in on the essentially empty base.
"Ginger... Nutmeg."
"Baron!" The two Fifth Column Agents stood at attention, Nutmeg gave a little salute, though it was clear she didn't quite grasp how to perform it.
"It must be pretty difficult... to have to sit around... after such an... achievement." Barnsour looked around the empty halls of the Enclave. It was a pretty dreary place even at the best of times, despite the cheery PER motivational posters everywhere. "I wanted to offer you a kind of... escape. Additionally, you can still accomplish political acts for the benefit of the PER. If you are interested." They'd be interested, by now they must be going squirrel from the boredom of being stuck alone in the Enclave.
"We're interested!" Ginger and Nutmeg looked like excited little foals, except of course for the fact they were humans, adult humans at that, and - from a pony perspective - about as cute as two shaved gorillas. Which, to ninety-eight percent of their genetic structure, they, in fact, were.
"I've authorized you to have exclusive use of our two Full Immersion Cyberspace Pods. Normally, these are used by Puffpastry and Ricenoodle to fill cyberspace with PER propaganda, and to manage public opinion in the media. I have a slightly simpler task for you, but no less important!" It was vastly less important, little more than cyber-vandalism, really, but it would do to keep the pair occupied. "I need you to dive into the cyber world and perform conversions!"
"Conversions?" The thought made the two humans giddy "Is that even possible?"
"After a fashion..." Barnsour stared at the big poster on his left "...in cyberspace, every location uses avatars, representations within the artificial reality that users choose for themselves. I want you to get in there and ponify everything. The pods are already loaded with the tools you'll need, the interface is so simple a foal could use it..." In point of fact, Secretariat's little foal Seabiscuit had successfully ponified a famous chat node one evening when the pods had been unattended "... and beyond merely being fun" - It really was a lot of fun - "you will be helping to keep ponification in the minds of every user in cyberspace. I'm counting on you, Team Rumpguard!"
"We won't let you down!" Nutmeg gave her little, incorrect, salute again, trying very hard to be dutiful. Ginger struck a rather provocative pose and shouted "¡VIVA LA REVOLUCION!"
Barnsour smiled at his management skills. Keep 'em busy, and you keep 'em happy. He trotted off with light hooves, and hoped he could get to the Dress Club before Snowball the Winter Mare did her heavy clothing act.
The Propaganda Room was upstairs in the old building. Nutmeg and Ginger went directly there, the steps creaking as they climbed them. Inside the room was an assortment of computers and other electronic devices, with large signs posted everywhere stating "NO MAGIC!" and "WATCH YOUR HORN!" - magic, especially the kind unicorns used, was utterly incompatible with complex electronics, causing them to fail, or even destruct in a shower of sparks. While pretty to see, it was a costly show.
The Immersion Pods had been crammed with pillows to make them more comfortable to the equinoid form. Ginger and Nutmeg spent time removing the pillows and resetting the contours of the chairs so that they could even enter. Once inside the pods, they gave each other a jaunty 'thumbs up' and lay back, only then realizing that it was probably a silly sign to give each other, considering that their entire purpose was to end the tyranny of thumbs once and for all.
It probably should have been thumbs down, mused Nutmeg, but that would look fairly disparaging. No thumbs? That would just be a fist and would seem aggressive. Some other finger? She could only think of one, and it was right out. Her revere was interrupted by the sound of Ginger over the pod's sound system "Hey, Nutty-buddy! Get in here, the Cyber is fine!" Nutmeg hated that pet name, but it wasn't worth arguing about at the moment. She activated the immersion systems, the pod closing around her. She adjusted the mindset - it was troublesome, because it had been adapted to fit the larger Equestrian skull. Eventually, she was tuned in, the device was turned on, and she was ready to drop out... into the cyberworld.
Nutmeg found herself, as she adjusted to an entirely new set of sensory inputs, inside the body of a young, muscular stallion. It must be Ricenoodle's avatar, and it was astonishingly realistic. Nutmeg began to cry, realizing that she was finally... a pony. It was so wonderful! She tried out her four new legs and whipped her digital tail around with glee. It wasn't a mare's body, but it was a pony body, and it was a taste of life to come. She had not been so filled with joy as far back as she could remember. Nutmeg galloped in circles, drunk with gladness at her new, computer generated body.
A lithe and exceptionally lovely mare strolled forward, her flanks swaying as she stepped, her tail high and proud like a flag. Her lovely wide eyes gleamed as her gentle smile broke into a wide grin. "YOO HOO!!! Nuuuut-megggg! Over here, you big, strong hunk of stallion you!"
It was Ginger. His voice had been replaced by that of a delicate and dainty mare, but his words were unmistakably Ginger. Had he known which pod was which before they had climbed in?
"Ginger!" The voice was deep and masculine. Nutmeg felt shocked at the sound of her own words. Upon reflection, she also felt a little miffed. Somehow, she had been stuck with the stallion avatar. "Humph. You're certainly looking... mare-ish today!"
"Oh, thank you my good Nutty-wutty-buddy! You are ever so handsome yourself. You know, I've heard there is this thing called 'Cybering', which I believe is a means to... enjoy... these avatars to their fullest in ways which..."
"NO. Just no. Come on, we have a job to do." Nutmeg stomped off towards the doorway that led out of the circular, domed space that was their personal spawn chamber. The walls gleamed like polished glass, white and blank and spartan.
"Oh well." The dainty Ginger-mare sighed "Perhaps I can find one of these 'chat rooms' I've heard so much about!"
The large, rectangular doorway led to a vast, dark space that seemed to stretch on forever. Paths mazed through the dark space, around tall, abstract structures covered with logos, symbols, moving images and billboards. This was a representation of the hypernet which could be walked, or, as Nutmeg noted looking up, flown through as if it were a real place.
"Where shall we start, my handsome stallion?" Ginger was getting into character a little too easily, Nutmeg thought.
"Stop that, will you? Luna's socks, Ginger, we're on a mission here!" Nutmeg still felt cheated out of the mare avatar. If she was going to get to experience being a pony before Conversion, she wished she could have had the complete experience.
"How about this place? I bet this sort of spot is just crying out for some serious ponification!"
Somehow, they had wandered down a strange-looking path and become hopelessly lost. The sky was now an eerie deep red, painted in white skulls and green biohazard symbols, with the odd violet thaumatic radiation symbol thrown in for good measure. The path had changed from blue neon to the kind of floor that would seem at home in some far-away place that a criminal might be banished to, and then thrown in a dungeon in the place that they were banished to.
A large glowing sign floated in the sky above a scary-looking door that was less 'Come on in' than it was 'Welcome to Hell'. The sign said 'BOOZER'S BLACK MARKET MEMORY SWAP'
"Oooh! I know about these places! This is just perfect, Nutmeg!"
"What... what is all of this?" Nutmeg was not a happy little pony... stallion... right now, and this environment was positively terrifying.
"Puffpastry and Ricenoodle must have all kinds of secret access, or we would never have been able to wander in here. This is the black market, Nutmeg! The net under the hypernet, the secret world where anything real or important happens! The WorldGov has no power here! These are just the sort of humans that need our help the most!" The delicate mare was prancing and wiggling her flanks with glee. Nutmeg found herself feeling additionally uncomfortable for some reason she couldn't identify.
"Alright, alright... would you stop doing that?" Nutmeg tried staring at the nightmare sky, but that just made her feel queasy.
"Doing what?" Ginger was clueless... and to be honest, so was Nutmeg, who wasn't herself entirely sure what Ginger should stop doing.
"Never mind!" Nutmeg brushed past the exquisite mare avatar and headed for the terrifying door instead. "If we're going to do this, let's do this." Suddenly, Nutmeg found herself grabbed by large skeletal hands, and was surprised to find the bony fingers actually hurt as they clutched at her virtual body. Wasn't it illegal to inflict pain on the hypernet?
A booming, evil voice screamed out "RiCeNOOdle IdenTIfieD! AcCESS GRAntEd!" Nutmeg found herself tossed through the hellish doors and down a long and twisting slide that passed through surprisingly hot flames. At the bottom, she tumbled out onto a gray slate floor.
Standing up, she looked around to find herself in what appeared to be a recreation of a Pre-Collapse media outlet. It was like something out of a history holo. Around her, posters covered the wall promoting what at first she thought were bands, or perhaps holoshows. Rows and rows of bins filled with what looked like the old, flat, disk-based media once used long ago were being browsed by a strange assortment of avatars. There were ninjas and cartoon ducks, robots and anthropomorphic animal-humans and even a wire-frame of a vaguely human shape. In the back of the shop, under 'BARGAIN BIN' she noticed something that must be a representation of Cthulhu, only done in pink with a bright red bow.
It was a very odd cyber store.
Ginger had arrived, giggling and on all four hooves. He had surfed the twisting slide without falling over, and had finished with a pretty pirouette upon reaching the slate. "Hello!" she announced. He announced. It was almost impossible to think of Ginger as male any longer in this guise. He was always a little effeminate, Nutmeg mused, but freed from his human body, the strident effeminacy was melting into some even more unsettling natural femininity. Ginger was... whatever. The mission. Nutmeg struggled to put her mind back on the mission.
"Nutmeg? I was having fun on the slide, but... now I feel kind of nervous." There was a strange sort of feeling in the antique representation of a shop. It was a feeling of danger, of risk, as though they had entered a place they were ill prepared for, and well beyond their capabilities. It wasn't an obvious thing, the store was quiet and nothing seemed immediately threatening, it was just there, a feeling, underlying the very structure of the environment.
Nutmeg noticed that the frail mare was pressed against her muscular barrel, instinctively seeking pony comfort in her stallion avatar. This was not the Ginger she knew at all, and it made her all the more unsure herself. Right now she was missing flamboyant, over-the-top Ginger taking charge and always knowing what to do, even when he didn't.
Ginger seemed positively subdued. Going by avatar shape, Nutmeg was clearly the strong one, so she resolved to play the part. She didn't like seeing Ginger looking uneasy. "Hey, there, Gingey! Stick with me, we'll see what kind of mischief we can get into! How's that?" Nutmeg's new, masculine voice sounded so strange to her - virtual - ears.
Ginger seemed to perk up at this. "O-Ok! Hee! Let's have some fun!" Her smile was playful, but still somewhat fragile.
Nutmeg decided it might be useful to find out what kind of store this even was. She trotted up to the nearest bin and raised herself on her hind legs, bracing with her forelegs over the edge of the bin. The physics routines were impressive in this simulacrum, she could feel something not entirely unlike the weight of her stallion body shifting, and there was even pressure sensation from her fetlocks on the edge of the bin. It all must be being transmitted directly into the motor centers of her brain inside the immersion pod. Or possibly her brain stem. Frankly, she wasn't sure how all this virtual reality stuff worked, come to think of it. In any case, it was not entirely convincing, but it was pretty impressive nonetheless.
Ginger clung close, quietly pressing into her flank for comfort. It was an odd sensation for Nutmeg, to be the strong one, to suddenly be the... leader... for lack of a better term. Their roles had reversed, and it was both fascinating and somewhat disturbing. She checked the square, flat packages to see what they were. It took some time for the reality of it to sink in.
Bathing In A Tub: Volume Three, Ages Two to Six
Eating Pie In A Restaurant
Double Battlefield Amputation: WARNING no anesthesia, no gimmicks, this is the REAL DEAL!
SeXXy Engrams: The best memories of the best porn stars! M/M, M/F, M/P, P/F and many more!
Twenty Eight Deaths: The Best of Death collection
I Gave Birth To Triplets! 48 hours of non-stop maternal thrills - now with Pain Plus for maximum sensation!
I Dismember Mama: murderers recall their best kills - Special Bonus Feature "My Execution!" Pay the ultimate price!
These were really memories. Human memories and experiences, recorded in real time, or in some cases, after the fact as vivid reminiscence. Of course, if it was possible to flood a brain with artificial experience, it would also be possible to record the brain having real experiences. This was a black-market shop selling forbidden or illegal experiences and memories.
One section caught Nutmeg's virtual eye, and she trotted over to it. Raising herself up again, she hoofed through a collection of pony-related disks. These had been taken from the brains of living, converted newfoals, and even from native Equestrians visiting Earth. Nutmeg found herself wishing she knew how to buy and use any of this - My Little Foal caught her eye, as did Hearts And Hooves In Central Park: A date with a special somepony.
With these recorded memories, anypony could momentarily live the life of anypony else. She could know what it really felt like to gallop down a street, or eat hay with Equestrian tastes and senses, she could experience all the joys of being Converted, now, immediately. The possibilities made her feel giddy.
"Nutmeg? What do you think?" Ginger interrupted her daydream of getting to experience pony life with a plaintive call. Nutmeg looked down. On Ginger's flank there was now a cutie mark, a clearly defined letter 'G'. "I did one for you, too." Nutmeg checked her own flank - on it was a large letter 'N'.
"I was just standing around, and I decided to try calling up the menu, right? And I found that there are all kinds of things you can do... so I... I gave us cutie marks that were the first letters of our names! Is... is that OK?" Ginger looked up with large pink eyes, wide with both hope and concern.
"That's... very nice, Ginger. Good girl!" Nutmeg had said it without thinking - Ginger just seemed so much like a foal right now. It didn't seem to bother Ginger at all - she did a little dance in place, whipping her tail around happily. No, HE did a little dance... oh buck it, thought Nutmeg. Cyberspace was stupid confusing.
"I found something else, too!" Ginger was smiling sweetly.
"What? What did you find, Ginger?"
"I found all the hacking tools. I can ponify things now! See?" Ginger pointed a hoof at one of the other customers. It was a large, horned devil, dark red with glowing yellow eyes. It wore cartoon combat boots and a small arsenal of cartoon weaponry on its back - a bandoleer crammed with bullets and stuffed with knives finished the look. Ginger... did something, something not visible within the virtual world and instantly the large, red devil fell to four dainty little hooves, having become a tiny, yellow filly foal with bright blue eyes.
The newly hacked foal looked around in astonishment. The expression rapidly turned to anger, then bypassed rage altogether and made a rapid dash straight to Darkest Hatred. "WHAT THE FUCK? WHO DID THIS? WHO DID THIS FUCK-ASS PONY SHIT TO MY AVATAR?" These words would surely have struck terror into all save that the hack changed every aspect of the avatar so that the effect became a hilarious squeaking from what appeared as a petulant little baby pony. "I'M FUCKING SERIOUS! I'LL TRACK YOUR ASS DOWN IN THE REAL WORLD AND SAW YOUR HEAD OFF AND SHIT DOWN YOUR NECK, MOTHERFUCKER!"
Ginger could barely contain her - his - giggling, Nutmeg dragged Ginger by her tail all the way to the other end of the row of bins, then found herself giggling as well. Hacking was FUN!
The tiny yellow, previously demonic filly foal was galloping up and down the memory bins, trying to find whoever was responsible for the sudden and unwanted ponification. The foal stopped, glaring incredibly cutely, at Ginger and Nutmeg. Nutmeg froze as the foal slowly stomped forward towards the only other pony avatars in the room, ready to unleash cybernetic hell on the offenders.
"You too?" Ginger spoke up, suddenly his normal, sharp self. "We've just been hacked! Look at what happened to my avatar! And my friend - just look at her! She's a muffin' horse now!"
The tiny, incredibly angry little foal glared at them, but stopped its march towards them. "Did. You. See. Who. Did. It?" the words were terse and clipped, and coming out of the mouth of the sweet baby pony, utterly, completely adorable.
"I saw something!" Nutmeg ventured, trying her best to follow Ginger's lead "I thought I saw somepony run off that way!" Nutmeg motioned vaguely towards the other side of the virtual store with a foreleg. "Ooh! If I catch who did this I'm gonna... gonna... do bad stuff to them, oh, you can bet on that!" Nutmeg tried to look as fierce as she could and hoped it would be even more impressive transmitted through the ray-traced muzzle of a muscular stallion.
The little filly foal looked doubtful but turned to stomp off in the direction indicated. She stopped and looked back over her shoulder "Don't go anywhere. I don't trust you two one shit."
With the former demon currently distant, Ginger turned to Nutmeg and smiled, once again sweet and delicate. Nutmeg noted how relaxed and comfortable Ginger seemed, she'd never seen her partner quiet and calm for longer than a moment before. "Want to do one yourself, Nutmeg? I can show you how."
The system really was remarkably simple - merely thinking 'Menu' brought up a panel of icons that only the user could see, the icons could be selected by simply looking at them - a highlight followed the gaze - and thinking something vaguely filled with purpose, like 'Do!' or 'Now!' or 'Go!'. The word didn't matter in this case, it seemed, rather the system measured intention directly. There were several pony forms that could be injected to replace another user's avatar. Several of them were representations of famous Equestrians, like Celestia, Luna, or her ambassadors. There was even a random icon that promised a unique ponification with each use.
Now the two polygon-packed psudo-ponies were on the hunt, looking for the next user they could ponify. As they studied the environment, Nutmeg used one of the icons in her interface to change several posters on the wall to pictures of ponies. By now they had moved some distance away, and when they looked back at the bins they had been at, they saw a likely target. It was the wireframe avatar, green and spartan, perusing the bins that had pony memories.
Ginger noticed that the user was selecting and purchasing a package that, as they crept closer, turned out to be 'Greatest Pony Hits'. It was a collection of carefully selected experiences and memories of Equestrians, both newfoal and native. It was possible to see the track listing, which included both innocent... and spicy selections. Perfect! Both Ginger and Nutmeg were over the moon at the sight.
“Aha!” Ginger popped out, filled with excitement and bravado “I see that you’ve decided to try sampling some pony memories!”
“Oh really?” Nutmeg leapt forward beside her partner “Let’s see what they’ve bought!”
“Why it’s 'Greatest Pony Hits!'” Ginger was practically prancing now, around the wireframe man “I’ll bet you just can’t wait to try out track seven, mating season, can you?”
“Listen, get out of my way!” The wireframe avatar growled at them with a vaguely mechanical voice.
“Has my squire hit a nerve?” Nutmeg, having started to enjoy her more dominant role, had forgotten that Ginger was the Knight and she the squire, but Ginger seemed fine with the statement. If anything, Ginger seemed happier.
The wireframe humanoid did not respond, but instead tried to make his way down the aisle of bins, away from Nutmeg. Ginger had galloped to the end of the aisle and blocked the user. “Why settle for mere memories when you can have the real thing?” Ginger was carried away now, and began flicking her - his - tail suggestively.
“Leave me alone,” The wireframe man was suddenly calm. “I won’t ask again.”
“You dare threaten a knight of the PER!” Nutmeg was acrimonious!
Both ponies began circling around the wireframe. Remembering an ancient, Pre-Collapse cartoon, Nutmeg, giddy with the feeling of cyber-hacker powers, began to perform an ancient routine. “Prepare for trouble…” While she spoke, her interface was up, and she was selecting various icons, to see if one might work. 'Clown Pony' almost took effect, but was roundly defeated by some protective counterprogram. She began trying others in desperation. This wireframe needed ponification, now!
“Make it double…” Nutmeg's mouth dropped open in happy surprise - Ginger knew the same ancient cartoon! Of course she would! He would. Whatever. It was just his style! This was brilliant! They liked the same things, it seemed!
The wireframe man had stopped, frozen. By the time they realized that the cause of his immobility was that he was busy doing some hacking himself, it was too late. He hadn't done a thing to the look of their avatars. As they shot like missiles into the skull-filled, blood red sky above the roofless virtual store, it dawned on them that more than appearance could apparently be hacked. Function could be altered, too.
The wireframe had changed the way gravity affected them, reversing it. The store became a tiny rectangle increasingly swallowed in the endless, icon-laden space. There was nothing they could do. Checking their interfaces, they found not a single icon that represented control of local physics parameters.
It was then that they realized, with some unhappiness, that they did not know how to disengage from the simulation. There had to be an icon for exiting, but... they couldn't find it. They'd been in such a rush to get started that the idea of studying a manual had just seemed boring.
"Eventually, it has to boot us out. We'll hit some kind of barrier, or limit, or run out of memory or something. If nothing else, somepony will find us and pull the plug. It'll be okay, Ginger!" Nutmeg was trying to be the strong stallion again for her partner. The little filly was crying, apparently uneasy in an endless, shrieking void of grinning skulls and blood.
Ginger sniffed and worked to form a fragile smile. "Team... Team Rumpguard is... blasting off again!"
She was just so darn cute. He. He was so darn cute. "Muffin!" Nutmeg swore.
The P. E. R. Michelson and Morely The Speed Of Right By Chatoyance
OPERATION FIVE: HLF LIFE
"'Gladiola' Johnson is our new Fifth Column recruit, and she comes to us from Los Alamos." Baron Barnsour was at the podium again, with twenty five ponies and now three humans in the main room of the Enclave. The last month had been dreadfully dull for everypony, because of a great public furor over the mass conversion of a local high school. That furor had now been replaced by NEW furor over a political scandal involving a pants-less local corporate leader, a dead girl and a live boy. Instantly the extra Blackmesh security had been recalled, the road-blocks removed, and the portable prison towers packed up and ported away. Such was life in the fickle Amerizone.
Barnsour cleared his throat and continued. "Ahem! Well, not exactly Los Alamos... but somewhere close by, some sort of hush-hush WorldGov program of some kind, Mesa Science, or Black Aperture, or something like that. She's a smart one, ponies, and what with our current Fifth Column Infiltrators only one point away from their well-deserved ponifications, we need somepony new to fill up Rumpguard, once our own Ginger and Nutmeg get their hooves. Gladiola... anything you want to say to the herd?"
Gladiola was a brunette woman, of medium height and an efficient but friendly attitude. She wore modern business attire, skin tight with a high collar and holographic cuffs. During her welcoming party, many ponies had noted she had a hidden severe side to her, but that overall she seemed a tremendously competent sort.
She took the podium, and looked around the room. Ginger and Nutmeg stood in the back, as usual, the outlier humans that never quite fit in. They felt strangely invaded by this new recruit, which was silly, because they were one point each away from being ponies and out of the Fifth Column altogether.
"Hello, good ponies. And humans." This did nothing to win Ginger and Nutmeg's favor, they preferred the term 'ponies-to-be'. It didn't feel friendly to point out their deformity like that. "I am Gladiola. I chose that pony name, because I like the flower very much. My mother used to grow Gladiolas... though I cannot tell you more than that, because the reason is classified."
"Actually," Gladiola brushed a long strand of her brunette hair from her face "most of my life is classified, and I can't tell you anything about it. You may find that odd, considering the state of the world, and my choice to join the PER, but I am very good at keeping secrets. It is a matter of honor for me, and I think you will find that this trait in me will serve all of you, and this fine organization, as well as it did my previous... associates. Thank you for letting me join you. I look forward to many great successes together!"
The ponies of the Squamous PER gave the new recruit a warm round of hoof-stomping, but Ginger and Nutmeg merely tapped their feet impatiently. Something was off about this human, but they couldn't put their hoof on what it was. Maybe her smile was too perfect. Yes, that was probably it.
Worst of all was the round of hoof-stomping applause that followed her speech. When Ginger and Nutmeg had first been introduced, all they had gotten was a few isolated clops and several snickers. The pair immediately agreed to begin disliking her early in order to avoid the rush... which they privately hoped would happen sooner than later.
Barnsour took the podium once again, and various assignments were easily ignored until the very end when Team Rumpguard was mentioned again, startling Ginger and Nutmeg out of their constant daydreams about finally getting to be ponies at last. "It's about time," the Baron was saying "that our infiltrators finally got the chance to, well, infiltrate. Thanks to some fantastic intel brought to us by our newest member..." Barnsour nodded towards where miss Johnson stood "we now have the precise location and all the access codes to Fort Mankind."
Fort Mankind. It was somewhere in the desert surrounding Paguate, just five or six miles south west of Squamous City. Some thought had to be near the New La Joya Loop, others just as sure it was actually over near Rancho Grande instead. Finally, the location of their greatest enemy was known. The secret, primary base of the New Mexico HLF. For some time the room was silent, as the ponies stood shocked at the revelation. Almost everypony there had suffered the loss of somepony they cared about to these hairless, murderous, meat-eating monsters.
Ginger and Nutmeg felt dizzy and like they might throw up as the room suddenly exploded in hoof-stomping applause. This was not going to be a happy joy ride at all.
The ride across the desert was low and smooth, and the plan was for the three infiltrator agents to be dropped off a half a mile from the abandoned aerostat hanger that was, apparently, Fort Mankind. Hinny the Gelding pulled the cart that the three human agents sat in, his pegasus powers strong as always. He didn't like to talk about how he got his unusual moniker, and his gruff rebuffs had left nopony daring to ask anymore. It was rumored that he had been caught by the HLF, but managed to escape - perhaps that is why he had volunteered for this mission.
Gladiola wore a pair of vaguely steampunk round goggles and sat up tall in the cart, admiring the wide desert. New Mexico had been spared much of the devastation that wealthier and more populated areas had suffered during the Great Collapse and the Austerity War - when there isn't much to begin with, there isn't much to lose. The desert was the desert, brown and wide and dead and dry. For all the world, they could be flying over the Amazon.
With the loss of fossil fuels - except for the unimaginably wealthy - airplanes and helicopters had been quickly replaced with slower, but much more economic aerostats. Lifting bodies, an advanced evolution of the zeppelin, were now the primary form of long-distance travel. The location of Fort Mankind was within the shell of one of the earliest transport companies, before they were all swallowed up by the World Corporation. The shiny metal enclosure was visible already, a spark of brightness against the endless ruddy brown.
Nutmeg, braced low against the forward wall of the cart to avoid the wind, had been wishing she possessed a pair of fancy goggles. "Hey, if we succeed, then the HLF will finally get it's Just Deserts, huh?"
Gladiola stared off into the horizon, it was uncertain if she had heard Nutmeg's attempt at a joke, and Ginger, crouched down close to his partner quietly put his face into the palm of his hand. Nutmeg was not good with humor, sadly, she seemed intrepidly unable to comprehend this little fact.
"You have a dry wit, I see." Gladiola had graciously deigned to respond to Nutmeg's attempt to break the ice. Apparently she had heard. Ginger saw Nutmeg look down and smile, glad at a response that for once did not consist entirely of a groan. Maybe this new Rumpguard recruit was going to be alright.
Hinny had landed in a wide, dry culvert. As the human infiltrators put on their packs and prepared for their hike to the HLF base, Hinny turned his head to Ginger and uncharacteristically had something to say. "Show those... clopheads... some of Celestia's Mercy for me, will ya?"
Ginger nodded an affirmative "I intend to earn my ponification ten times over today." He put a fierce tone in his voice, as best as he could. It came out more like a showgirl encouraging another dancer to 'break a leg', but it apparently got the point across, because Hinny smiled.
Hinny and the cart took off, low to the ground as before. The three agents were alone in the desert, half a mile from the camp of their sworn enemies, the enemies of all pony-kind: the Human Liberation Front.
The air was dry and desperately hot, the perpetual, global smog layer did nothing to stop the burning of the sun.
They began their walk, already sweating.
The tiny camera that looked like a rock panned to follow them as the three PER infiltrators made their way to the front gate of the cyclone fence that surrounded the old airfield. They were three humans, eager to join the HLF in order to stop the unholy invasion of the pastel aliens from another universe. The party-colored monsters offers of peace and friendship, of salvation from a dying world, of joy, contentment, perfect health and endless abundance were an affront to everything humanity stood for. The horrific, happy horde must be stopped by any and all means.
"Alright, that's far enough, meat." The voice was young, tough, and filled with enough barely post-adolescent testosterone to fuel at least seven teen movies, and easily over a hundred short Clopfics. Where the two young HLF guardsmen had come from was a quandary, something the inbred look in their eyes suggested they were likely poor at.
Ginger, Nutmeg and Gladiola put their hands slowly up in the universal sign for 'I've watched a holo about guys with guns before' and waited for the inevitable searching and questioning to begin.
When it had been discovered that all three were packing guns in every pocket, place and location a weapon could be stuffed, and that their backpacks were essentially individual armories, the two young HLF guards relaxed completely. The guards had come to the conclusion that these were clearly people of like mind and like inclination, truly decent, worthwhile human beings. Nobody could carry that much hardware designed specifically for the purpose of mass murder and not be swell folks. "That's some nice ordnance you got there, damn..." the more sunbaked of the two guards whistled in appreciation, clearly in a much friendlier state of mind now. "You manage to bag any of those bastards recently?"
Ginger, always creative, decided to play it tough. "I shot a pale orange dam and blew her unborn foal right out of her belly. Damn thing bounced off the wall and messed up my best khakis." Ginger had completely captured the young guard's over-acned imagination, so he invented a fabulous finale. "I stomped that sucker flat."
They were so in.
Colonel Richard Coxiker was the head of the New Mexico division of the Human Liberation Front, his friends called him 'Dick' and, curiously, his enemies did too. He nodded with approval at the huge stash of pistols, shotguns, semiautomatics and grenades that the three new HLF recruits had brought. "Names!" he stated. He didn't ask questions, he was the sort of man who already had all the answers he needed.
Ginger smiled brightly. "My name is... Brad. This is Janet -" he pointed to Nutmeg at his side "And that is... Magenta." Gladiola gave a short nod to the base commander, and a brief worried look to Ginger for his ridiculous name choices.
"Brad, Janet, Magenta... welcome to Fort Mankind! You wouldn't be here if you didn't know what we do, and what we do is resist the alien invasion of Earth!" It seemed like every sentence Coxiker spoke ended in an exclamation point. Ginger - Brad - almost giggled at the thought of the man announcing a need to visit the restroom. "You lose anybody to the bastards, son?"
Ginger wasn't sure what he was being asked. Ponies didn't kill. Then it dawned on him that Coxiker meant ponified. Ginger did his best to look sad. And tough. Tough and sad. And inbred. "Lost my sister, sir. She was out trying to reach the maglev when a bottle of potion got her right in the tits. Total wet T-shirt contest, only she lost. Last I saw of those beauties, they were between her legs, her bein' a pony and all. Worst day of my life."
The Colonel was visibly moved. "A man loses his sister that way, he's got a fire down below that just won't go away. You'll get your chance for revenge here, son." Colonel Coxiker put his firm, strong, manly hand on Ginger's shoulder. Ginger tried very hard to look properly comforted, instead of improperly aroused.
"Get these soldiers bunked and trunked, and tell 'em the rules. Boehner! Stiffson! Hop on it!" Colonel Coxiker turned neatly and marched stiffly out. Ginger noted him as a hard man with a soft head.
"We'll, uh, take you to the barracks. Fall in - that means follow us, OK?" the two hard of thinking privates lead the trio into the bowels of the HLF base. They had successfully penetrated the enemy, and a simple story of incest lost had lubricated their entry. Gladiola gave the quick-witted Ginger a nod of approval. Nutmeg trembled, astonished that they were all still alive.
They had been indoctrinated and educated, briefed and briefly debriefed (it was mandatory to take a delousing shower), and after a meal of Government Rations stewed with vegetables raided from a Conversion Bureau, the three infiltrators finally found themselves alone in the barracks, with some time to themselves before lights out.
"That Colonel, he's a real... something or another, isn't he?" Nutmeg had been uncomfortable around the commander of the base. She busied herself trying to see if bouncing could make her assigned bunk any softer. It didn't.
"Oh, I don't know..." Ginger sighed "...in another time, in another world, as a stallion...." There was no talking to Ginger when he was in one of those moods.
"I do know, and the transmission has been sent." Gladiola was, as always, efficient and focused. "The PER should know our precise location now, along with all of the intel I've gathered so far."
"You've gathered... intel?" Nutmeg looked up in astonishment. When had there been time?
"I recorded their rules, plans, the maps in the briefing room, The layout of the facility and grounds, the contents of several mission folders and a list of all personnel in the region. What did you get?" Gladiola was busy pressing buttons on a sub-miniature holocorder/transmitter that she had somehow managed to hide on her person even through the delousing procedure.
"I..." Nutmeg felt entirely outclassed "I learned that they... have a problem with lice?"
Gladiola didn't seem to hear Nutmeg's response. It was probably for the better.
"I learned an important lesson about friendship!" Ginger was beaming now. "Even a despised enemy can have compassion for the grief of another!"
"You mean that little story you made up? You don't even have a sister, Ginger! And even if you did, you wouldn't be the least bit interested in her!" Nutmeg had meant it as a putdown, but somehow it hadn't come across at all as she had intended.
Ginger sighed again, picturing the big, strong Coxiker as an even bigger, stronger stallion. There was no doubt he was picturing himself as a mare. Nutmeg bounced on her bunk, it remained as hard as whatever Ginger must be imagining.
In spite of herself, Nutmeg liked Ginger. More than she wanted to. But Ginger would never be interested in her.
"So, if we've taken care of all the spying, when do we start Project Poke?" The mission had two basic phases. Phase one was Project Peek, which was to get inside and learn whatever they could. Gladiola seemed to have accomplished that entirely on her own.
Phase two was Project Poke, which involved the specially modified ordnance the PER team had brought. All of the weapons were loaded not with ordinary ammunition, but much less penetrative ammo that carried not lead or copper but concentrated potion. In effect, all of the weapons they had brought were paint grenades and paint guns, with the paint being ponification serum. It would be harmless, if uncomfortable, to the already converted, and with sufficient hits, thorough in dealing with those still suffering from terminal humanitis. The PER had been planning this mission for over a year.
The scheme was to simulate an open attack on the HLF base, once it had been precisely located and mapped out. The HLF would naturally rush to defend their base, and in the ensuing 'battle', the three human infiltrators could use the modified ponification guns to run about 'team-killing' the HLF from within. With a little luck, the entire New Mexico HLF could be ponies before nightfall, and many might even end up swelling the ranks of the PER after all was said and done.
"We have to wait for the signal from Barnsour. Don't worry, I'll let you know." Gladiola waved the tiny holodevice, before hiding it away.
The rest of the HLF troops were returning from the game of basketball they had been playing in the large aerostat hanger, apparently it was a nightly tradition with them. When all the showering was done, the barracks was quickly filled with snoring, exhausted humans. Ginger missed his room at the Enclave desperately. They were literally sleeping with the enemy, though not in the way that made for good fantasies. Ginger gave a little wave to Nutmeg, across the aisle, on an opposite lower bunk, and turned over to get some rest. The signal might come at any time, and it would probably be best to be refreshed.
Nutmeg couldn't sleep. It had been hours now, and all she could think of was how each and every one of the humans around her would be only too happy to murder her at the slightest hint of her true affiliation. These HLF soldiers truly believed death was preferable to ponification - there were many stories of HLF shooting their own, when a well-aimed flask began transforming one of them. They considered it a mercy.
Unlike Ginger, she had heard things about the PER, before her recruitment. There had been a news report about the aftermath of a battle between the PER and the HLF in the Southamerizone. The PER had come in waves, throwing potion, trying to convert the HLF who shot them as they came, the bodies of ponies piled up like the Amazonian dunes. The ponies always stopped to rescue the wounded or comfort the dying, but the HLF soldiers left their own if they fell from friendly fire, which was common in the confusion. The wounded HLF had been immediately ponified as much to save them from bleeding out, as for the goal of converting all of humankind.
Nutmeg despised the Human Liberation Front. To her, they represented the reason she had wanted to join the PER in the first place, and now she was sleeping among them, a tiny pony among hungry lions. She shivered with fear. If they could just do this, if they could just pull off this one mission, everypony would be able to sleep more soundly across the entire New Mexico region of the Northamerizone. As frightened as she was, this was worth doing.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Gladiola staring at her from the bunk above Ginger. Gladiola held her tiny holodevice in her hand, and gave it a little wave. The three tiny hololights on it swung back and forth in the dark. She must have been given the signal. The PER were on the way even now.
Nutmeg crept out of her bunk as quietly as she could to kneel by the side of Ginger, who was fast asleep. She reached out a hand and gently shook the tall, thin man. He was a sound sleeper. She gave him a stronger shake. He mumbled something that seemed to be about taking a little foal to its first day at school. Ginger was a mystery to Nutmeg. He could be brash, bizarre, unrealistically sure of himself, but he was, if anything, kind - and very, very dedicated. With a hand now over Ginger's mouth, Nutmeg gave him a serious shaking, and he startled awake.
When she felt certain he would not speak, she pulled her hand back, and gave a little point of her finger straight up. Ginger instantly grasped that her gesture referred to Gladiola in the bunk above. Ginger nodded and stared at Nutmeg as she climbed ever-so-quietly back into bed. All three were awake now, alert, and ready. It was a small advantage, but it might be everything.
When the alarms rang out, and the order to scramble to defend the base came, Gladiola, Ginger and Nutmeg made sure that the weapons they grabbed came from those they had brought. The new weapons had been racked with the others, but the three agents knew what to look for - each had been marked with three black horseshoes somewhere on the weapon, usually on the stock. It was common for HLF to mark kills in this manner, but the altered ordnance had the horseshoes in a particular pattern, close together like a cutie-mark.
Gladiola took two MTAR-28H Micro Tavors with standard holographic tracking sights. The way she held them suggested she knew more about such things than Ginger or Nutmeg had imagined. They had been given a very short weapons class by a visiting, still human, PER weapons specialist before Operation HLF, but they had never gotten down how to build and unbuild even the simplest weapons. They at least managed to learn how to hold various guns and had practiced shooting them, but it was clear they would never, not ever, win any marksmanship awards. That was one good reason for backpacks full of automatic and semiautomatic weapons.
Ginger and Nutmeg picked up a... gun... each, that for the life of them they could not remember the name of. It was not too heavy, it spat potion-bullets like rain, and they knew where the safety and the trigger was. They knew which end the bullets came out. Good enough, they reasoned.
Colonel Coxiker was in his element "Matrix, Michell, O'neil - Take the front! Rhodes, Lee, Hauser - I want you watching our six! Benez, Ryback, Hiler, Fenix and Santiago - get your asses out there! Where's Cole and Baird? Freeman! Find Cole and Baird, and dammit, get Hayabusa, Kane, Drake, Croft and Threepwood and tell them to watch the perimeter! Move, people!"
It was not a surprise at all that the three new recruits were left unnoticed. Ginger and Nutmeg stationed themselves well behind the others, behind a wide workbench that had once been used in the servicing of aerostatic craft. They did not see where Gladiola had gotten to.
"I'm really scared." Nutmeg was shaking as she stared plaintively into Ginger's pale blue eyes.
Ginger winked and gave a reassuring smile, though he was not truly hiding that he too was terrified. "Team Rumpguard is not blasting off this time." Nutmeg couldn't help but return a smile at the reference. Despite his oddness, she was grateful to be partnered with Ginger. If only he would even notice her. Nutmeg shook her head. What a crazy thing to be thinking at a time like this!
The first shots made both of the agents jerk with surprise, it had been so quiet just a moment before. More shots rang out, little firecracker sounds from the front, louder ones from the side. The PER must be attacking, or mock-attacking - hopefully they were staying in some kind of cover and out of range. It was horrible to imagine any of the ponies they knew being shot by these murderous humans.
There was one thing they could do to help. Reduce the number of humans, and they had the tools to do just that. Unfortunately, they did not have the training, the skill, or most importantly, the courage. Crouching low behind the wide workbench, shielded by the heavy metal drawers that formed its base, they pointed their guns over the countertop and pulled the triggers blindly. They had to hit some of them. The guns sprayed potion pellets like hoses, and most of the HLF was directly in front of where they were.
The guns rattled and fought their grip like angry animals, and it was everything they had to prevent the weapons from jetting out of their hands entirely. They tried to sweep the weapons back and forth, as best they could while staring at their boots. The noise was deafening and soon they found themselves screaming at each other in tune with the sound of the discharge. They were still screaming long after their guns had run out of ammunition and they found themselves staring at three pairs of boots instead of just two.
The third pair of boots was just a mite disquieting for the two PER agents, especially since the boots were pointed at them, and almost certainly indicated a person standing right beside them, looking down on them. This could be a problem, they decided, and since it would almost certainly be the kind of problem that would end in neither of them ever seeing Equestria, they reasoned it was better to just fall silent and keep staring at the floor since looking up would just be even worse.
After some time had passed, Ginger and Nutmeg realized that they were still alive, and more importantly, there were no more shots ringing out. Instead, the room seemed filled with squishy, burbling noises like nothing so much as several dozen bellies being blown raspberries upon, mixed with what seemed to be either a gargling contest or a sudden, universal attack of the runs.
Slowly they raised their heads together to find Gladiola was the third pair of boots, and she was now loudly shouting to the rest of the PER that everything was safe, and that the HLF had been successfully overtaken from within.
"WE DID IT!" Ginger and Nutmeg shouted, jumping up and down, hugging in triumph! They had saved the day and earned their ponifications and protected the entire PER and...
"No, actually I did it. You... did that." Gladiola pointed at the dripping purple row of splotches that ran from one side of the walls of the hanger to the other, all well above the heads of any human, however tall. The walls were dripping with potion, the entire contents of both Ginger and Nutmeg's guns. Not a shot could have possibly hit anyone.
The pair looked down at the writhing bodies of the former HLF, white as dough, squirming like sacks filled with snakes. Gladiola was now moving efficiently from body to body, using a rather imposing military knife to slash open any restrictive clothing, so that the rapidly forming newfoals would not suffer from strangulation.
Nutmeg hung her head. They had been useless. Worse than useless - what if they had accidentally hit Gladiola? She was clearly the only decent agent in the room. If they'd accidentally struck her, they would all be dead now, shot by angry HLF soldiers. The horror of how close they had come to catastrophe due to their own incompetence made Nutmeg feel ill.
Ginger just slumped his delicate shoulders, and let his gun fall to the ground. He understood the same thing. They were useless failures in the one time it had truly counted.
The brand new ponies were waking up now, filled with that special flush of feel-good chemicals and neurotransmitters that some called the post-conversion ponygasm. They were all smiling, they couldn't help it really, wiggling their ears and playing with their tails. Some were nibbling or licking at their hooves like foals. The burst of joy would fade down to a general feeling of contentment in about a half an hour, but for now, the former, fierce, ruthless Human Liberation Front warriors were giddily recounting how wonderful their life-changing meetings with Celestia and Luna within their Conversion Dreams had been, and crawling closer together to admire each others new bodies, and to exclaim about how wonderful they felt.
Ginger and Nutmeg let themselves slump down to the floor, back to the workbench, and put their heads on their knees. Nutmeg briefly put her fingers in her ears to try to blot out the sound of happy, euphoric ponies being so damn excited and glad about everything, but it didn't work. For a brief moment, she caught herself sympathizing with the former HLF - all the chirpy, syrupy joyfulness made her want to shoot every last one of the damn ponies.
Nutmeg caught herself at that. Jealousy and feelings of personal worthlessness had overcome her, and it shocked her. She tried to be happy for all the freshly created newfoals. That worked about as well as putting her fingers in her ears.
"Hey, you two. Enough sulking. We have a bit of a problem we need to deal with here." Gladiola stood over them again, looking very, very serious. It was the kind of serious that faces display just before words come out describing how mommy won't be coming home ever again, or how that one time without the condom apparently did count.
Ginger stood up first, and helped Nutmeg to her feet. "What... what is it, Gladiola? What happened?"
Gladiola looked out over the base full of newfoals. She did something amazing with her gun that reminded both Nutmeg and Ginger of an action holo, there were things clicking and snapping and ka-chunking and on the whole it was pretty cool and incredibly professional. There was absolutely no doubt that Gladiola knew guns. "These HLF guys were really good."
That seemed an odd statement to make. Ginger offered "They can't be that good... they're all ponies now." He grinned, but the look from Gladiola was cold. Quickly he added "Because of you, of course. You're better. That's what I mean. You're obviously better!" That didn't help either.
"You... you two have anyplace to... go? You have any friends at any other Enclave?" Gladiola scuffed her combat boot on the floor and looked up.
"Um... no. Not really. We figured we'd just go back home after..." Ginger paused, then looked angry "...Come on, I admit we were completely crap back there. We failed! I admit that! But that's no reason to suggest we shouldn't even show our heads again! I'm not saying that Barnsour won't have us cleaning the toilets with a brush held in our teeth - but ponies forgive, Gladiola! Come on, that's just mean, seriously, that is just..."
Gladiola just kept staring at Ginger. Her face was blank and impassive, and somehow that was the worst possible expression. Ginger stopped ranting. "What... exactly... do you mean by 'they were good.'" Nutmeg began to look like she was about to cry, a feeling that was welling up in Ginger now, too.
"Let's..." Gladiola looked uncomfortable, like she had been put in the position of having to take care of Someone Else's Pets. "...round up our new herd, here. I need you to help me shepherd them out the back - and ONLY the back - way. Get them together, I'll find a transport, and bring it around the back. REMEMBER!" Gladiola grabbed Ginger's face and stared hard into his damp eyes "ONLY the back. Don't let them look out the front... or out that side, either. Get 'em together, and get them out back, UNDERSTOOD?"
Ginger and Nutmeg understood.
The former HLF newfoals had been released near the Conversion Bureau in Albuquerque. It had taken nearly an hour to get the last of them loaded into the electric troop transport, and another hour to make it out of the desert, through the ruined part of old highway forty, and finally to the city. Gladiola had raided the HLF treasury, and split the wealth between them, half for her and the other half generously given to Ginger and Nutmeg together.
Technically, Operation HLF had been a complete success. The primary base of the Human Liberation Front had been conquered and sacked, and every member of the violent humanist group transformed into gentle, loving, innocent newfoals. The HLF would no longer bomb Conversion Bureaus, or shoot pegasai out of the clouds for sport, or perform horrible experiments on captured Equestrians in New Mexico. Not for a long while, anyway, and considering the state of the world, there wasn't a long while left. Humans and ponies both could feel safe from terrorist violence in the streets, and humans could go to the Bureaus without fearing traps and roadblocks and being gunned down as 'traitors to Mankind'. It had been a great success, one that would save countless lives both pony and human. A splendid success. The greatest achievement of the Squamous PER. Or at least of Gladiola Johnson.
The last they saw of Gladiola, she was heading north, vehicle recharged and credit stick in hand. By then, the faint, diffuse glow of morning was beginning to tint the dark, globe-spanning smog layer above them.
Ginger fingered the silvery credit stick aimlessly as the very last agents of the Squamous, New Mexico PER sat together in the doorway of a long-closed restaurant across from the WorldGov Vehicle Charge Station. Nutmeg was tucked in tight, pressing into him, shivering despite the overly warm, post ecosaster night air. Ginger held his partner tight, as he had been for several hours now. At least she had stopped sobbing. It was hard not to cry himself, when Nutmeg was doing it. Ginger looked at the holographic display on the credit stick. The number was larger than he knew how to pronounce without thinking about it. Even at Maximum Inflation prices, they would lack for nothing for the rest of their human lives.
Which could not, cosmologically speaking, be longer than two years at most.
That meant, they had agreed, that they had two years in which to redeem themselves. Two years in which to honestly, legitimately earn those last two points between them. And if they could not, if they truly could not even manage that little, then they deserved to let the Great Barrier of Equestria sweep them away, or burn them with the 'mage plague' of thaumatic radiation. They owed that much to the memories of their vastly braver, much more worthwhile PER comrades.
The P. E. R. Michelson and Morely The Speed Of Right By Chatoyance
OPERATION SIX: KINDLY STRANGER
The jitney caravan from Albuquerque to Oklahoma city traveled on the remains of old highway forty. Before the Austerity War, before the Great Collapse, the Northamerican Production Zone had been divided into two societies called 'nations'. A nation was something like a smaller version of the Corporate World Government, except it only exploited a small part of the world. Back then, the whole planet was divided into these little 'national' corporations, each trying, in its own way, to ultimately take over and merge with the rest. The inevitable result was a merger of all the corporations into the Worldgovernment, but the process was slow, and used up almost all of the Earth's resources, and resulted in the near total destruction of the biosphere.
The road the caravan traveled had been built in pre-Collapse times, and that it still remained, albeit in a broken and sometimes incomplete form, made it quite the wonder to see. It spoke of an age where resources were so plentiful that large-scale construction for the majority of people was undertaken, where bridges and roads were built for even the poor to use. These ruins from a grander age also brought anger - they had so much, back then, and they left nothing for anyone after them.
Ginger watched the sky brighten, the perpetual smog layer slowly gaining a diffuse light that made it possible to see the landscape and the wonders upon it. In the dim, yellow-gray light, the broken, tall towers of Bridgeport stood like spikes against the sky. It was hard to imagine the scale of life back then, before the Collapse. Everyone, even the poor, must surely have lived like gods, with food on every corner and electricity all the hours of the day.
Nutmeg was asleep, hunched over Ginger, pressed tight into him because of the intense crowding. The pair had been lucky - Ginger had used some of their incredible wealth to purchase an impressive store of alcohol which he then used as payment both for the journey, and for a window seat in the middle Jitney. It was a clever choice - the windows never had any transpex in them, they were always open in a Jitney, and they were wide, too. The air would keep them from baking, and reduce the stench of such close company. It was a prime place to be.
The middle jitney car in the caravan had advantages too. If the caravan was attacked from the front or the rear, both of them would be able to react and possibly escape, and if an attack came from the side, they would see it first and have at least one car beside them to act as a shield of sorts. Jitney caravans did not travel single file.
The caravans ran mostly on alcohol, which is why Ginger had used that for barter, but they could also make use of kerosine if it was available, and as a last resort solar. Solar power required days of charging to run for mere hours, and was the slowest option and the most dreaded. But no caravan had escaped having to use it at some point or another, when other fuels ran out. This trip, thanks to Ginger's generous payment, had been swift and entirely alcohol powered.
They had gone east, of course, because there were only three directions to go, and only one of those made any long term sense. The Barrier had already taken most of the south-west coast of the Northamerizone, The vast curve of the bubble just beginning to engulf the ruins of Las Vegas. California had nearly ceased to exist, along with much of Oregon and part of Washington. By next year, the edge of the Barrier would be nibbling at the Great Lakes. There was no question that the expansion had some kind of an exponential quality to it. For those not yet ponified, the fifth year after Year Zero, the year in which the Conversion Bureaus had opened, would be a year of constant evacuation.
Four years since Zero, five since First Contact. Two years left. The Jitney caravans mostly carried passengers only East.
Ginger let his partner sleep. He wanted to move, though - his buttocks had fallen asleep, and his leg was halfway there, tingling ominously with the threat of a cramp. He had no choice. "Nutmeg? Nuh-huh-hut-meg.... wakey wakey, hay and cake-y... Nutmeg?" he gently stroked the back of her neck, it usually worked.
Nutmeg slowly pulled herself up, her neck and back in agony from sleeping hunched over. As she groaned, Ginger tried to loosen her muscles with a surprisingly strong grip. Eventually her groans turned to moans of relief. "T-thank you, oh Celestia, thank you. I was... cramping up pretty bad there." She indicated her left shoulder, which Ginger gave a few more squeezes for good measure.
"I... really need to shift a bit, Nutmeg - my legs are going to sleep, as well as...my flanks, if you catch my drift." Ginger stretched as best he could in the confined, crowded car, pressing with his feet as he flattened like a board in the seat. His head bumped against the passenger behind him, to whom he apologized profusely. Ginger stuck his head and shoulders out of the window, and tried standing that way, holding carefully and tightly onto the edge of the vehicle as he rose above the top.
On the roof of the Jitney were dozens of people in the economy seats, exposed constantly to the open air. There were advantages and disadvantages to riding up on top - it was cooler and it smelled less, but it was much more dangerous. There was also the constant risk of sunburn, which even through the smog layer was a serious issue. If it rained, the economy seats became -for some at least - a wet and miserable hell.
Over the miles, Ginger had tried to work out why the Squamous PER, why Copper Baron Barnsour had been so determined to risk everything to wipe out the New Mexico Human Liberation Front headquarters. It seemed ridiculous, really - New Mexico didn't have that long before it would be entirely absorbed by the expanding Barrier. The Bureau in Albuquerque was only months from being closed in any case, and they all would have needed to move well before the end of the year.
It certainly wasn't for the fools in Squamous City, going about their lives as if Equestria simply didn't exist. The perpetual smog layer made it easy to ignore Equestria to an extent - the Barrier should be visible across nearly the entirety of the Western Hemisphere, save for the world spanning smog. The human capacity for denial was almost infinite. Undoubtedly, in a cold, uncaring, mechanical universe of hopeless scarcity, intrepid denial was an evolutionary advantage - it fought despair. But it also allowed the most colossal errors in judgement, too.
No, there was only one reason Barnsour and the rest would have fought the HLF. For the future, for the bureaus east, in St. Louis, in Minneapolis, Lancing, Memphis and all the rest, and to protect, of course, the big PER base in Assiniboia. The HLF had been dealt a crippling blow, not only in New Mexico, but throughout the rest of the Northamerizone. Ginger felt for the credit stick in his pocket. Half of the war chest for the entire HLF rode with him, in that silvern stick. The other half was somewhere North, possibly even Assiniboia by now. Barnsour may well have effectively destroyed the HLF as a viable threat forever. Or at least the next two years.
But it had cost Barnsour his life, along with every other pony in the Squamous PER. Thrown flasks versus sharpshooters. If it hadn't been for the ringer he'd found in Gladiola...
"Are we there yet?" Nutmeg helped Ginger to squeeze back into the jitney. It was not always an easy task, as any vacancy was filled by the constant pressure of human bodies against each other in the cramped car. "Your flanks doing any better?"
Ginger made a weary smile. "I've got feeling back, but... my tail is still asleep. My tailbone, I mean. And it feels... well it doesn't feel at all fabulous. I guess, in this moment, I'm glad my tail is only a quarter of an inch long!" Nutmeg giggled, more from politeness than humor. It had been a long and difficult trip, and there wasn't much real humor left between the two of them.
The waiter had been appalled that the order was vegetarian. The world might be outright dying, only two percent of the population still had real jobs, and an alien bubble was devouring the entire planet, but one thing Oklahoma City would always have was goddamned steak on the menu. It might not be the best meat. It might be grown in tanks in the back from cell cultures, but it was beef, after a fashion, and why in all hell and damnation would two idiots walk into a frikkin' steak house, the ONLY steak house in the whole of Oklahoma, and order the vegetable soup and salads and not a lick of steak?
He shook his head. They had money, no doubt about that, though they certainly didn't look like they were Elite. Must be slumming it. Corporate Overlords in disguise was what Joey the Cook said. Just smile and don't cause trouble, because with that sort, it was one wrong move away from being the latest exhibit at the Blackmesh-run Torture Prison. The salads were ready - hydroponic grown, also in the back, using equipment from one of the decommissioned Conversion Bureaus that had existed back when there was still a west coast.
Nutmeg picked at her salad. The soup had tasted funny, clearly some of the vegetables were nanofabricated fakes. Surprisingly, the salad was pretty good. She and Ginger had gotten used to eating fresh, tasty foods four days a week at the Enclave, thanks to some secret connections with several Conversion Bureaus. While the official policy was always that the PER ran contrary to the stated mission of the Conversion Bureaus and the Worldgovernment AND Celestia Herself, the fact was that there were sympathizers in the Bureaus and in parts of the corporate government too. Those who understood the flat fact that the world was ending, and that there was only one viable escape - which was not pipe dreams about space ships and mars colonies - made many willing to secretly assist the PER and its agents.
The bottom line was that some humans genuinely wanted to prevent people from dying for stupid reasons. Mankind as a whole might be greedy, shortsighted and cruel, but individual people were often driven by genuine compassion and altruism. Equestria was a lifeboat, the earth was a sinking ship, and if the PER were willing to fight to save a few of the stupid ones despite themselves then, well, more power to them was the feeling. There were not a few in both the Worldgovernment and the Bureaus that felt frustrated, and couldn't understand why humanity, as a whole, was not fleeing in droves to Equestria instead of apparently ignoring the very end of the world.
"What do we do, Ginger?" The salad reminded Nutmeg of a happy lunch she had once eaten, helping her cousin Celia feel more comfortable on her first day at the Conversion Bureau in Phoenix, back before it had closed. Nutmeg had lost one of her guaranteed fourteen Bureau days, spending it with Celia, but it was worth it. Celia had settled in nicely, and Nutmeg had never forgotten that fantastic lunch... or the dinner, later. Celia had become a quietly content unicorn named Indigo, just 'Indigo', for the color of her luxurious, royal coat. Indigo was in Equestria now, with an earthpony stallion named Greensward, and the last Nutmeg had heard, she had a foal on the way. That was almost two years ago.
"Arugula, mizuna... that's tat soi... and frisee, oakleaf, red chard..." Ginger looked up "...this has to be radicchio and that is definitely mustard greens. Pretty amazing restaurant, I'd say. Maybe they import food from Equestria, you think? At these prices, it could very well..."
Nutmeg was not interested in Ginger's extensive knowledge of salad. "Where are we going, Ginger? Seriously. Everypony's...." She just managed to not cry "...I really need to know what the plan is here. I need... to have something... to cling to. Where are we going?"
Ginger looked down at his plate. He sighed, softly, before meeting Nutmeg's intense gaze. It would be pointless to question Nutmeg about what she wanted to do... that wasn't what she was asking. She wanted direction, not discussion. What she was really after was some kind of stability, some kind of goal.
Ginger felt a twinge of resentment for that... always he was put into the role of having to make decisions for the two of them. He wished that he had someone to take that burden from him, that Nutmeg might have some answers, some direction for him to follow. Somehow he had gotten stuck in the role of playing the... leader in all of this. He hadn't wanted to be.
He studied the look on Nutmeg's face, her body language. The trauma of what had happened had hit her deeply. She was in a more desperate place right now. It wouldn't be loving to not help. Nutmeg was like a little sister to Ginger, he would just have to keep being her big sister, that was all there was to it.
"Nutmeg..." Ginger tried to be as calm and reassuring as possible. "...there is a large PER presence here in Oklahoma City. Most of the groups from California and Oregon moved out here when Equestria hit land. I remembered that Secretariat regularly sent correspondence here, to somepony named Crusader. Grey. Grey Crusader. He's some kind of big PER organizer and leader type. I always figured he might even be one of the original agents, but... who knows?"
"Do you think Secretariat made it? She has a foal." The question was flat, but deep with emotion underneath.
"I can't imagine that Barnsour would have let her go on the mission. I'm... sure he would never have allowed it. She's probably safely in hiding with little Seabiscuit with her. I'm certain of it." Ginger wasn't at all certain, but he made every effort to act as if he were. It was strongly rumored that Seabiscuit was Barnsour's and that he and his secretary were more than close. Ginger privately feared that Secretariat would have gone with her lover, unwilling to not share his fate. Ginger would have done the same thing. In any case, little Seabiscuit would be with Secretariat's sister, well taken care of, safe and hidden.
"We should have gone back... shouldn't we?" This was the first time Nutmeg had brought this up. But then, they had both been in shock over it all.
"Nutmeg..." Ginger shook his head "If what we did at that high school locked the entire city down for a month, imagine what... is going on right now back there? Even going near the Enclave would mean arrest. A few conversions is a political embarrassment, not worth a real investigation. But Operation HLF..." There would be Blackmesh likely swarming the Enclave by now, having finally had reason to seriously search it out. There was no going back. "We can never return, Nutmeg. There is no... 'there'... to go back to, anymore."
Nutmeg held a leaf in her fingers - oakleaf lettuce, Ginger automatically noted - and studied it "This friend of yours, the grey guy... will he take us on, as agents?" She carefully placed the leaf in her mouth and sucked on it.
"He's not my friend... at least, not yet. I only know of him because our Enclave sent reports to his new base. I don't even know where the base actually is, except somewhere here, in Oklahoma City. But I think he is our best bet right now." Ginger watched Nutmeg finally chew and swallow the leaf. "If nothing else, we need to report to him what happened. We need to tell somepony in the PER, no matter what. They need to know the situation from somepony that was there."
"What about Gladiola? She went north, right? Wouldn't she just head for Saskatchewan and report to central command directly?" Nutmeg took a sip of her Nanocola (Now! With taste you can't see!)
"You know as much about Gladiola as I do, Nutmeg. I'd like to think that is where she went. But..." Ginger shivered slightly "...she was a little too... mercenary, a little too professional, you know? Now she's rich beyond avarice. I have no idea what some -human- like that will do."
It was true. Some humans, the first time in meeting them, it was like - pony - only a matter of time. It was like they were already a pony inside, in some way, and they just hadn't gotten around to getting their body properly shaped. But other humans, like Gladiola... it was hard to imagine them ever taking the purple.
They had tried carefully hinting and searching around the city, but had so far found no sign of the Oklahoma PER. They'd tried checking for Marks - the little cutie-mark like sigils that indicated entrances to PER stashes or contact points, but had found nothing. They'd even tried outright asking if any of the humans knew about the PER, but beyond various opinions as to what the PER could stick where, they had come no closer to contacting them.
By the third day, they had both begun to doubt whether Ginger had remembered correctly.
Finally, Nutmeg had an idea. "Gingey... what if we tried that thing."
"Thing? What thing?"
"The thing from the ad. On the holo. The big advertisement the PER managed to get through the Ministry? The one with the guy in the street?" Nutmeg waved her arms, trying to get... something... across.
"Guy in the street? You've completely lost me." Ginger was willing to try anything at this point, but he had to comprehend what it was, first.
"Okay, okay... there's this guy, and he goes out into the middle of the street and the voiceover says that the PER are everywhere, and that if you need to be converted at any time, day or night, just yell out 'Crusade Me!' - it was the whole 'PER Crusades The Earth, Join The Crusade' campaign. It was all over the holo. There was all that fuss that they allowed it and everything?" Nutmeg was practically dancing with frustration, trying to get the idea across.
"I'm sorry, Nutters, but I never saw that. I really didn't follow the holo stuff for a while. 'Kill your holo, free your mind' and all that?" They were making their way down a street called 'North Mickey Mantle Drive' - Ginger figured it probably was in honor of that Pre-Collapse cartoon mouse that was so famous way back when. Around them walked ponies and humans in roughly equal measure. The ponies were increasing in number, though, according to the locals, in direct proportion to the closeness of the approaching Barrier.
Nutmeg ignored the annoying play on her name. "Why don't we do that!"
Ginger stopped and stared at Nutmeg "But we don't want to get converted - I mean we do, of course we do - but we want to do it honorably. If that actually worked, then they'd probably just start tossing potion at us, and... we'd never be able to redeem ourselves... for... for..." Ginger didn't have to say it.
"Maybe we could get them to stop in time. We could shout out to them, 'Halt! We're PER ourselves! We just want to make contact!' or something like that! Frankly, Ginger, I don't know what else to do!" Nutmeg had a look on her face that made Ginger want to cry. That wasn't good. "We've lost our Enclave in Squamous. We can't go back and this... it just isn't working. We need to do something, anything... or we might as well just go to the local Bureau and just be done with it."
Nutmeg hung her head. Ginger agreed with her. They might as well do it, nothing else had worked. It was either that or the Bureau, and if they couldn't reason with the local PER, the end would be the same. They might as well. "Alright, if you want to try it, then... what the hay. There's an intersection up ahead. Let's just go stand in it and scream 'Crusade Me', and see what happens."
"I wouldn't recommend it." The voice came from a light gray stallion standing in the shadow of a stairwell. He had a white mane and tail and was wearing a darker gray Borsalino fedora with a gutter-dent, side-dented crown. It was actually a rather classy look, though it fairly screamed 'old movie detective'.
"W-why is... is that?" Ginger and Nutmeg were both taken aback. They weren't sure what they were dealing with. It was a pony, that was good. But not all ponies supported or approved of the PER. Most were staunchly loyal to Celestia's stated opinions of things, and Her Majesty's public opinion of the PER was not even slightly positive.
"Well, for one thing..." The stallion in the hat stepped out from the stairwell "... you'd be drowning in potion before you finished saying 'Me', which isn't necessarily a bad thing, except that you two seem to have some unfinished issues. Still would probably be the best thing, even so."
"Listen... all we want is to find the local PER. We have to find them. Do you know how we can do that... please?" Nutmeg clung tightly to Ginger.
"I AM the PER." The stallion tossed his head and caught his classy hat with a front hoof. Underneath, his white mane matched his tail. His eyes were intense, the look on his muzzle a smirk. "You are just about the least stealthy Fifth Columners that I have ever met. Only that old fat-ass Barnsour could have recruited you. He always valued loyalty above actual skill, and look where it got him." The look on the faces of the two humans made the stallion instantly regret his words.
"Hey, no sniveling now. You're PER!" Ginger and Nutmeg tried to put on brave faces. It was less impressive than they had hoped. "I just had to make sure you were for real. Follow me... I'm Crusader." The stallion flipped his fedora back on and turned away, then headed up the street.
"Grey Crusader? You're Grey Crusader? You're exactly who we've been looking for!" Ginger was beyond happy, finally they would have the chance to make up for their failure. Finally things could work out for them.
"Yeah, I know. So does half the city. Did I mention you suck at surreptitude? You suck at surreptitude."
Ginger wasn't sure 'Surreptitude' was even a real word, but there was no way he was going to argue the issue. They had found other PER, they had found their herd. That was enough. That was everything.
Grey Crusader got the two refugees from the Squamous Enclave fed and showered and tucked into bed, which is to say he got others to take care of it, which was more than fine with him, and as far as he was concerned, how reality was supposed to work. Reality was rarely a problem for Grey.
He had known what Barnsour was planning - the Baron had called him just before the mission. Grey had told him not to do it, to wait for backup, to wait for the arrival of a serious force to support him, but the old bastard had always felt he had to prove something. It was that damn hot-pink coat of his. He always felt it was some kind of an affront to his stallionhood or somesuch. Grey chuckled. Barnsour did look a bit ridiculous by human standards.
Neither of the two survivors was Barnsour's 'Ace', that was clear. He'd apparently felt invincible because of some new human recruit that could give a horsefly a bris at ten thousand hooves without using a scope. She was supposed to be Celestia's gift to gunmanship or something. Nopony had heard from her since the action.
Grey, before he had arranged for Barnsour's agents to be stabled, had sat them down and listened to their story. He'd sussed what their situations were, both as individuals and during the conflict, within the first ten minutes, but - feeling unusually charitable, what with all the tragedy and everything - had let them prattle on for nearly an hour. Most of the time he spent planning what to do with them, so the time hadn't entirely been wasted. Plus it settled them down and made him look good in the process. Not shabby.
The two were a pretty simple pair, really. They just needed to get ponified, stat, and everything would work out. But they were as stubborn as that old mule Barnsour, in their way, and one of the little secrets of ponification was that not every human wrinkle was always ironed out after a good, stiff belt of the purple sauce. Extremely strong feelings, attitudes and drives sometimes survived Conversion - even negative ones like vengeance and shame and guilt. It was rare, to be sure, but Barnsour himself was an example - his human ideas of masculinity had messed with his judgement and ultimately cost him his life. As well as most everypony that had followed him. Grey wasn't going to let that happen with these two. He owed that to Barnsour.
Even if it was a Pyrrhic victory, the fact was the HLF had been severely crippled. They might never recover, in fact. Not to what they had been. It was a hell of an achievement. A lot of ponies were better off for it.
So Grey had figured out a way to get these two sorted properly, so that they would take nothing negative with them into their true lives. It was a pretty clever plan, he felt, considering he made it up while distracted. The two would earn their precious little points, and they would be immediately taken care of according to their individual needs. But they wouldn't be agents anymore. They seemed nice enough, but... they were not PER material. Not to his standards. Good kids, but... not PER.
He'd get them sorted, then shipped express to Equestria. The world was coming to an end, soon. Softhearted foals like those two shouldn't have to deal with that. It could only get messier.
Ginger stared at the shape of his partner, Nutmeg. Once again, she was huddled under the covers, wrapped tight, as if somehow she could hold the sad at bay if she could only put up a strong enough blanket defense. Like the last few nights, he knew she wasn't asleep either, the grief in her mind greater than her exhaustion.
Ginger sighed. It was the pony thing to do. And... truth be told, he had to admit it helped him too.
"Nutmeg?"
Ginger waited. She was awake, she was just trying to act brave.
"Yes? Ginger?"
"Come on." She needed no coaxing. She was too proud to ask, but she needed it more than anything right now.
Nutmeg left her bunk and moved swiftly, embarrassed but grateful, to crawl in next to Ginger. She pressed her back in close to his, seeking warmth, comfort, closeness. It was only human. It was even more... pony.
Ginger reached back and patted her bottom. Nutmeg relaxed almost instantly. In minutes, she was asleep. She wasn't the stallion of Ginger's dreams, but she was warm, and she needed to be there. And maybe, just maybe, Ginger needed her there too.
Grey Crusader laughed as he galloped, a special, evil, devious sort of laugh, the kind of laugh that supervillains are defined by, and mad scientists prefer nine to one. And the exception secretly envied the rest who could perform it.
He leapt out over the edge of the Tacksworn Corporation skyscraper, the distant street far below his unicorn body, the poisoned wind of the city streaming his white mane back over his flanks, his tail a comet of white silk behind him. Like all Equestrians, he was front-heavy, and his large skull angled over, dragging the rest of his weight into a plummet. Grey grinned at the onrushing street, the plasteel and crystalex of the building streaming by like a dark river.
He felt the touch of hooves on his shoulders, delicate and precise. Hushed Silence transferred her pegasus nature into the mass of the falling unicorn, and he became an extension of her, like a cart she might pull, or a chariot she might lift. The effort was all but thoughtless, instinctual, yet the result profound - Grey followed her arc upwards, falling no longer, his limbs splayed wide, his mad laugh become an uncharacteristic giggle, almost foal-like, almost innocent.
Grey and Silence rose above the buildings, cutting a lazy circle through the sky, searching. It was easy to become momentarily disoriented above the complicated mess that was a human city. Grey's sharp mind snapped to recognition, there, McKinley and Twenty-First... he motioned to Silence and tried to convey the location, but the wind was too loud.
Hushed Silence, wings spread wide nevertheless understood, she always understood, it was part of her specialty as one of the Nine. With a slight smirk she sharply jerked over into a twisting, G-loaded spiraling dive that left Grey shrieking with either horror or delight - and she knew from long experience that he would never reveal which it had been. Most likely both.
At the last moment, she reduced their speed and flared her pinions, bringing them to a butter-smooth landing on the wide ledge of what had once been the main offices of the Kahuna-Heisler corporation, back in the old pre-Collapse era. Grey pretended to stretch sore muscles, but he was really checking to make sure he hadn't wet himself. Not again. Never again.
Hushed Silence laughed softly to herself. She liked being able to occasionally catch the old bastard off guard. She walked to the edge of the building and looked down. It would start soon. The Final Battle.
"What the flying... muffin... are we doing here?" It wasn't so much a question as a complex cry of anquish, anger, confusion and astonishment. Nutmeg felt as if she had just been through the middle of a cyclone, and things were not merely moving too fast, they had reached escape velocity and entered hyperspace on route to Barnard's Star.
They had spent a single night in the Oklahoma City PER Enclave. The morning was a blur of food, secret schemes that entirely failed to stick in their memory, somehow agreeing to join in with... whatever was going on... and ending up in curiously loose and thin uniforms and nothing else. No weapons, no guns, not even a knife, and it was just now dawning on them that this really was supposed to be the Final Battle, in boldface capital letters, likely even italicized, between the Human Liberation Front and the Ponification for the Earth's Rebirth. "What The Muffin?" had entirely failed Nutmeg, and she felt compelled to use the very unpony-like "What The Fuck?" simply because nothing less could even hope to do.
There was never time for a single question, nor was there any hope of an answer even if the time had existed. They had both been swept along as if by a vast flood, only to be deposited on this street, at this time, next to this large cart full of stoppered flasks, vials, glass eggs and what appeared to be retrofitted, adapted super-soaker water guns, all filled to the brim with potion, and so hot with thaumatic radiation that Nutmeg already had small black spots on her hip where she had leaned on the edge of the cart. Nutmeg's head spun, and her hip, well, it kind of itched and burned.
"I hear both of you are just one point away from earning your hooves!" It was a red pegasus mare who looked just like the one on the posters they had seen in the barracks the night before. "STRAWBERRY JAM WANTS YOU!", and with the alluring pose and flagging tail, the innuendo offered an enticement to join the PER on multiple levels. "Just keep tossing, and I'm sure you'll be ponies before nightfall!" she winked at Nutmeg and Ginger, and went on her way, apparently to confer with another pony about a thing that needed to be done, somewhere.
Ginger shrugged his delicate shoulders. Somehow they had escaped a battlefield only to end up right in the middle of another. Nopony would tell them anything, but everypony seemed more than upbeat - they seemed almost jolly in fact, which made everything seem all the more surreal. Didn't they understand what battle meant? The HLF were not hoofing around, they had these nasty things called 'guns' and they made holes where holes shouldn't be. It was as if none of the ponies of the Oklahoma City PER understood any of this.
Some of them were even laughing! Oddly, they stopped the moment that Ginger or Nutmeg looked at them. Perhaps word had gotten out about what they had endured, and this sobered them. If so, then good, thought Ginger. Good.
Ginger looked at his partner in ponification. Nutmeg looked frightened and confused. What were they doing here? Risking their lives to finish off the dregs of the HLF because of some insane notion of honor? Yes, they had been useless, but the Squamous PER would have ended up... the way they did... whether they had been in that base or not. Gladiola could have gone alone and the result would have been exactly the same. They hadn't even made a decent diversion. Did they really owe Barnsour's memory anything in the end? Nothing about that battle would have changed one bit if they had never joined the Squamous PER.
One point. Why was that so important? Between them they had saved one hundred and ninety-eight lives, humans so foolish that they played football while the entire world was ending all around them. Hadn't they done enough? More than enough? Nutmeg could be killed in this battle. She had suffered enough, and truth be told, so had he. Ginger came to an uncomfortable decision. It bothered his deep sense of honor and duty... but it also served a higher calling too. They wanted to save others. Well, right now, Ginger wanted to save Nutmeg.
The answer was utterly simple. All they had to do was leave. They could go straight to the Bureau right now and... no. Nutmeg would put up a fight. She would argue him out of it, she would invoke honor and duty and he would end up agreeing with her. They reinforced each other that way, both so stubborn they kept the other from giving up.
They had a huge cart of potion right beside them. You can't talk while you're changing. It would be so easy. He could carry her away while she was transforming. Just pick her up while her body metamorphosed. It would feel a little icky, but... so what! Ginger picked up two flasks, one in each hand. Nutmeg had moved in front of him, her back was turned. Their uniforms were so loose and stretchy that there wouldn't even be the slightest worry over being restricted during Conversion.
Ginger raised the flask of purple serum he held in his right hand. All that would be required is one sharp smash - and at that very moment the sound of heavy boots stomping, growing louder and louder filled the street. From around the corner came dozens of camo-wearing shapes running towards them. Ginger got a glimpse of guns and caps and canteens and dark glasses as vials and bottles spun in lazy, long arcs over his head. The battle had begun, there was no way to escape as ponies crowded in close to grab with teeth and hornfield at the contents of the cart.
Everything became a loud, screaming blur. Nutmeg was still there, in front of Ginger, he could tell that, as the forces met. Ponies had darted ahead towards the humans, bucking and butting them over. The sound of shattering glass was everywhere, tinkling and smashing. Ponies ran around, seemingly in every direction - it was hard to tell what was going on. Ginger threw his flasks in the general direction of the humans, in the close crowding, it was hard to see if he had hit any target or merely thrown wild. Nutmeg was tossing potions now, grabbing from the cart with her left and tossing with her right like a machine.
The sound of gunfire startled Ginger. Why hadn't there been any before? Perhaps there had been, and he simply had been too overwhelmed to even acknowledge it. At the battle in Squamous, they had hidden behind a workbench. Ginger was astonished at how confusing being in the middle of a close-quarters fight really was. How could anypony even know what to do? In the end he decided that all there was to do was just keep throwing and hope for the best.
It seemed like an eternity, yet in real time it was apparently over fairly quickly. A familiar sound of squishy, blorpy, splurty sounds filled Ginger and Nutmeg's ears as the cries and screams calmed and faded. In front of them were several dozen rapidly Converting former humans. Somehow, one had gotten within mere feet of Nutmeg's position. He - or she, it was impossible to tell at the moment - burbled and writhed, pale as dough. "Did I do that?" Nutmeg's query sounded like a small child unsure if they had done wrong or right.
A bright, brash voice interrupted "Excellent throwing arm there! Oh, you got that one, and a few others I dare say! You did well too! Good girl!" The pale blue unicorn stallion was looking at Ginger when he said the last. Clearly the long platinum hair and delicate build had confused him. That happened fairly often to Ginger, and for some reason, it always made him smile.
They must have gotten their points. More than. Ginger beamed at Nutmeg, as they looked out over what must be three dozen former HLF, all squirming and burbling as the nanotechnomagical serum did its work. Some of them had colorful coats already, and Ginger noted bright manes and tails shooting out here and there among the piles of forming ponies.
Oddly, there was no blood, anywhere. Not a single pony body was on the ground that wasn't in the middle of the conversion process. There were no dead ponies. Not even a single injury. No... wait.... there was one of the PER, limping past, an earthpony mare, ivory with brown mane. "Heh... I stumbled and strained my cannon... derp!" The pony made an embarrassed silly-face and crossed her eyes briefly.
Ginger looked around. Not a single casualty beyond that. Nopony was hurt. This was more than a little... "GINGER! We did it! We WON!" Nutmeg was yelling and jumping up and down, her hands high in the air. Ginger looked down at the nearly complete former soldier at Nutmeg's feet. Nopony was rushing to cut the clothing off these soldiers. Ginger looked more carefully. The clothing the soldier was wearing was very loose and ill-fitting. The neck and arms were wide and soft and... stretchy. The fabric was not normal.
The former HLF were now beginning to sit up, giggling and laughing with joy. They looked silly draped in khaki and camouflage patterns. The patterns... the camo patterns... they weren't abstract shapes. Ginger had seen that pattern before. On the pants he had worn in Squamous. The shapes were olive, gray and brown pony silhouettes.
"Fantastic fucking job, you two magnificent bastards!" It was Grey Crusader. He had been literally dropped in by a pegasus mare who had apparently been... carrying him. "You've both more than made the grade! Congratulations!" The look on the gray stallion's muzzle, the look in his eye... Crusader was having a lot of fun with this. More fun than one would expect at the end of a battle.
Two ponies joined Crusader, one on each side. They held potion flasks in their mouths. "Guess what, kiddies? When I run the show, promises are kept. Punishments are swift, but rewards... AH! Rewards are even swifter. Gimmie that!" Grey snatched one of the potions from the pony on his right. In one incredibly smooth, practiced motion, he tossed the container. Ginger found he couldn't breath for a moment, the impact of the flask had briefly knocked the wind out of him. He managed to gasp, the air rushing back in, and looked down, his hand already going pale and numb where he had instinctively grabbed at the spreading, syrupy, bright red fluid that was melting his clothing and actively soaking into his suddenly pale chest and abdomen.
Ginger just barely saw Nutmeg go down, drenched in purple, before his vision failed, blackness enveloping the world. The laughing voice was unmistakably that of Grey Crusader.
Ginger had been sent to the principal's office. Again. It wasn't fair. It wasn't like Ginger was doing anything on purpose. The boys just kept attacking, they said the meanest names. They cursed and swore. All Ginger wanted was to be left alone. It wasn't even worth it trying to make friends anymore. Wasn't being quiet and staying away enough?
Ginger had learned to not try to hang out with the girls anymore. They just made fun too. Somehow it had all changed because of puberty. Before that, all the girls would play. They were best friends. They shared so much, all the same likes and dislikes, the same attitudes, they spoke the same language. Dad and mom always wanted Ginger to play with the boys. Boys were so weird. They made no sense. And they were really rough and sometimes even scary.
But the world had changed. Ginger hadn't. The boys kept trying to pick fights, to push and shove and hit. And they laughed while doing it. The girls became distant and the boys just kept pushing, pushing, hitting, hurting. Finally, Ginger had fought back. Not well. Not much. But it meant a trip to the principal's office.
It was a new principal. Two of them! They were both so beautiful! One of them was pale, with the most beautiful hair, long and flowing, the shade of sunrise and glory and joy. The other was dark, with dark hair long and sparkling with highlights. Ginger couldn't stop staring at the dark, flowing hair, so shimmery and lovely. If only dad and mom would allow long hair. Ginger envied long, beautiful hair so much.
The pale principal sighed. "What am I to do with you, hmm? I know you didn't mean any harm, not really. You all come in here so filled with charity and hope and kindness. You really believe, so strongly, that you are doing what I want, that you are really following the rules. I've given up scolding you. You just honestly don't know any better, and all of you really do mean the best."
"It does work to save them, Tia. I keep trying to tell you that you should just embrace this. It is their way, after all. Humans are the ones who started this, and it is part of their culture to sneak about taking choice from each other. At least in this, they are not taking life, but instead giving it. You really should be less grim. Discord had a point there." The face under the dark, sparkling hair smiled at Ginger. It felt like laughter itself to see that almost admiring smile.
"My little filly, I suppose you have done your best to do good as you see it, and it is clear that in your heart there is only kindness. Would you do me a favor for the rest of your life?" A swirl of morning mixed with sunset swept across half of the winged principal's long, graceful muzzle.
Ginger wanted nothing more in all the world than to be a good girl and to obey. She nodded with conviction.
"Remember that love cannot live if it is forced. That's all, just that."
Ginger looked at her hooves, not quite ashamed, but aware that she had perhaps not been the best pony she could be. She wanted to please the princesses. Always. "I will remember that, princess Celestia."
"Be a good girl now!" Luna giggled after she said that. It sounded like bells.
"I will, my beautiful princess." Ginger blushed. She hadn't meant to be so direct about her fascination.
"Hah! That is one more for ME!" Luna stuck her tongue out at her sister. "Remember, foal, you are loved in return by the night!"
The principal's office had expanded, somehow, when Ginger wasn't looking. It was as big as the sky now, and caught between day and night. Once again darkness came, but after that, came the dawn.
Ginger's hooves were a brilliant white, and pearlescent. So was her coat, white as sugar, and shimmery like fine optic cable. She was still so sleepy, it was difficult to hold her head up off of her forelegs. She laid her head down on her foreknees and stared at where her hooves met her fetlocks through half-lidded eyes. She tilted her head slightly and smelled her own scent, her nose sniffing at her own silken coat, covering her legs. It smelled so good, slightly sweet, delicate, feminine. She lay her head down again, rubbing her cheek against her foreknees, feeling the velvety softness that covered them.
After a short nap of a few minutes, she felt more awake. She discovered her ears and twisted them this way and that. Somehow it made her giggle to move them. She raised her head and gave it a shake. Her soft white mane swung and rippled as she moved. She tilted her head down slightly letting her mane hang so that it draped across part of her vision, like a blanket of hair, long and straight and lovely. It shone in the light, and Ginger simply could not help but laugh with delight.
She shifted her body, feeling a blanket underneath her. She was on a bed, the bunk she had slept in the night before. She looked around, buoyant with the most delightful, inexplicable joy. It was just there, a kind of inner fountain of happiness, bubbling over. She suddenly remembered, her thoughts beginning to clear - all newfoals feel happy when they wake up. Post conversion bliss. So that is what it felt like. It was wonderful. She wished everypony could feel it, all the time.
Nutmeg! Where was Nutmeg? Ginger swung her long neck around, towards the bunk that Nutmeg had used last night. There was a pony in it. She was a soft tan color, a warm pleasant hue that felt like contentment. It was kind of yellow, and kind of light brown, and just a little golden, too. It made Ginger think of custard, real custard. They'd had it once at the Enclave... sad thoughts began to appear, but the inner well of joy inside pushed them away. Ginger felt light and floaty once more.
That must be Nutmeg! The tan pegasus mare in the bunk with the beautiful dark crimson mane must be Nutmeg. Oh, she got to be a pegasus! Ginger felt so happy for her. She would get to sleep on clouds and fly in the bright blue sky! Nutmeg deserved that kind of freedom and beauty - Nutmeg had always been such a good pony.
Ginger called to her "Nutmeg? Ohhh... heloooo? Nutmeg? Wakey wakey! Can you hear me? You're beautiful, Nutmeg! You're a lovely pegasus, isn't that splendid?"
Nutmeg began to stir. Ginger saw her ears twitch. Yes, that was fun! Now Nutmeg was moving her tail. Oh! Ginger hadn't even thought of that. She turned to look back over her flanks, and swished her long, shining tail back and forth across the bunk. That was even more fun than her ears, but it made her thighs feel cold. She carefully tucked her tail in close to her flanks, feeling the silky smooth hair press delightfully against... places... that she would have to explore more carefully another time. They were really nice places.
"Ginger! Oh my sweet Celestia! Is that you?"
Ginger turned to face her friend. Her best friend, really. She'd never actually realized that. Nutmeg was her very best friend. She really was her sister. And now they could be sisters together, forever. Ginger grinned. "Hello little sister! You look so pretty - you should try your wings!"
"I have wings?" Nutmeg looked in delight at her new limbs, and hesitantly extended them. "Look! Look at that! I can move them! I'm doing that!"
"Of course you are! They're your wings. One day you'll be flying all around leaving your poor older sister behind..." Ginger let out a mock sigh of resignation, but the bubbly feeling inside wouldn't let her continue it for long. She found herself giggling. She just felt so silly and good.
"Sister?" Nutmeg was puzzled for a moment. Then she smiled. "OK, sis!" Nutmeg had once wanted Ginger to want her, as a boyfriend would, but deep down, she knew that would never happen. Somehow, Ginger had turned out as a mare. It suited her. Of course it suited her. It was what she really was, all along. The excursion into the virtual world had proven that. Nutmeg remembered how content, how relaxed, how... herself... Ginger had been in that illusory mare's body. A sister would be fine. It would be wonderful to have Ginger as her sister.
"I love you sister!" It just came out. She couldn't help it. Nutmeg just felt so incredibly open, so utterly bouncy inside.
"I love you too." Ginger's words sank into Nutmeg's very heart. Ginger really did love her. She always had. Nutmeg thought back to all the things that Ginger had done to comfort and protect her. Ginger made a very good big sister.
"What now, big sis?" It was fun to state it out loud. Big sis. Nutmeg had always taken comfort in solid definitions and well defined relationships and situations.
Ginger stopped and thought for a moment. This was a completely new life. In her old life, she had been put in charge by circumstance. She really didn't want that anymore. "Nutmeg?"
"Yes?"
Ginger looked at her sister with pleading eyes."Could you be the big sister? I want to be the little sister. Please. Pretty please?"
Nutmeg stared. What an odd... "Of course, Ginger. I'm the big sister now. I'll take care of you, so you don't worry, alright?" It felt right to say that. Nutmeg wanted to protect little Ginger. She somehow felt stronger and more confident just thinking that way.
Ginger instantly relaxed. There were almost tears in her eyes. Actually, looking closer, there really were. "Thank you big sister! Thank you! Yay! Yaaaaayyyyy!!!" Ginger was practically singing her 'yay' and her tail was wagging so hard it made slapping noises on the bunk.
Ginger used her foreknee to delicately dry her eyes. "So... big sister? What now?"
Nutmeg raised her long neck up straight and tall. "First we find some food - I don't know about you, but I am starving!" Newfoals were always hungry right after conversion. Ginger enthusiastically nodded agreement, grinning with happiness at the thought.
"Then," Nutmeg flexed her wings "we fly this coop and head straight to the nearest Bureau, and from there to Equestria. Where we belong."
Ginger laughed with delight and clumsily clopped her hooves together attempting applause. She really was a little filly, inside. And it was wonderful to see her so happy at last. They knew where they were going, and they were done with what they'd been. They knew what they wanted, and they'd forget what they'd seen. The future was certain, and they had time to work it out.
Grey Crusader sent two of his toughest to make sure that the pair from Squamous made it to the local Bureau safely. It was probably unnecessary, but he was a pony who liked to be sure about things.
"Do you want the results from the hazing?" Grey frowned at Silence. She was an insolent little pegasus sometimes.
"Not hazing! Wargame! It was a wargame, useful training for both our regulars and those three dozen pathetic human recruits! Just because it was blanks and potions doesn't mean it wasn't a legitimate military..."
"Hazing. You just enjoy making humans dance. We could have ponified those recruits the usual way. You're a twisted son of a bitch, Grey." Hushed Silence blinked at him. Her muzzle showed not the slightest hint she believed anything else.
"Yeah, damn straight I am. Hard as cock during mating season, and cold as ice in winter." No, she didn't see. Good. He'd never hear the end of it if she really knew. He had an organization to run. He couldn't afford anypony seeing him as less than a hard-assed commander. The last thing he needed was word to get out that he had arranged something like this just to help two mixed-up ponies feel better. Fucking hell. Sometimes he wondered if the alteration the WorldGov had done to him was failing. He'd end up a syrupy sweet pony someday, and then what?
Silence turned away, the report tucked under a wing. "Don't worry, oh fierce and terrible Grand Master - I'll make sure those two get to Equestria safe and sound."
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