Yon-Soo still remembered that day when everything changed, forever.

It was the day the question of whether mankind was alone in the universe was finally answered.

It seemed to bring good tidings. The Equestrians seemed pretty nice and polite and even shared something literally magical with humanity.

A serum that could remove cancer and other lethal diseases, grant sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, allowed the crippled to walk again, albeit on four legs and in the bodies of colorful little ponies. But people understood and were willing to let this go in order to save lives. Hell, Yon-Soo even thought about taking the potion for himself and turn into a pegasus; now that could’ve been neat.

But as time went on, people quickly noticed something was horribly wrong. The converted humans, Newfoals as they were called, underwent changes that went beyond the physical. Their very personalities were completely and utterly changed, for the worst. They became passive and fragile flowers. And they would just not stop smiling. It wasn’t even that they were just naturally cheerful but that their smiles were not genuine. They were glassy eyed and empty, like they had been brainwashed.

And indeed they were. The Newfoals would immediately denounce everything they previously believed in, be it religious, philosophy, or politically, and worship the ponies’ queen like a goddess.

Celestia.

And when Celestia refused to lower the barrier between their two worlds, announced she was planning to convert all of humanity into Newfoals, and forcibly ponified a group of reporters on camera, humanity immediately declared war.

It had been nearly three years now, and things barely seemed to be getting any better. The barrier destroyed every human and human made object it touched; essentially erasing all evidence mankind even existed. Buildings, roads, machines, art and monuments were lost forever as soon as that damned pink wall came into contact with them. Millions of homes and thousands of years of irreplaceable history were just gone, and it didn’t even leave behind dust to mark their destruction.

As a result, breaking through the barrier with conventional weapons didn’t work. Not even nukes could touch that thing, and neither could radioactive fallout. All that humanity’s forces could do was hold the line, help as many civilians escape as possible, and then fall back.

But Yon-Soo knew that there had to be a way. Some way, somehow, there had to be a way to win this war, and stop this insane tyrant’s assimilation plot.

He didn’t want to believe he had spent the past three years working with North Koreans, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Russians and the Equestrian defectors, becoming one of humanity’s best soldiers, a symbol of the Asian Resistance and a symbol of hope, just for it all to be for nothing.

Author's Notes:

And here it is! I was inspired to write this after reading the heartbreaker known as the Starvation side story, and after a line saying that stuff about the situation in China, I just couldn't fight off the plot bunny gnawing at my ankles to make a story about the other side of the world.

Okay, it's just the prologue. The rest of the story will also be kind of a "how he got here" and an examination of how Yon-Soo went from being a pampered celebrity to a full fledged soldier up there with Stephan and Marcus, as well as how countries that once didn't have good relations are trying to work with each other in times of desperation.

And for those wonder just what Yon-Soo looks like, I kind of like to think of him looking like Lee Min-Ho (of course, I'm a bit biased, as he's my favorite Korean actor). He is supposed to go through a gradual change, from being a soft pretty boy to a hardened soldier, so I kinda wanted someone that could look like that.

And thank you so much to Redskin for agreeing to collaborate with me! You are an absolute darling and an awesome person in general! Thank you so much for The Other Side of the Spectrum and letting us write along with you!

Kizuna Tallis out.