Briefing

Five years ago, humanity made first contact. However, humanity had been looking in the wrong directions to find them-they did not come from beyond their solar system, they did not come in mighty or elegant ships, nor were they that advanced to begin with compared to humans.

They were extra-dimensional and it was purely by accident.

They appeared to be equine like beings, even calling themselves ponies much to humanity's amusement.

Kind, cheerful, loving; all of this was displayed to humanity and humanity had put their best foot forward in hopes of making lasting friendship and alliance with their new neighbors.

Little did they know that in a few short years, they would be fighting for survival.

This is a documentation of the war so far, persons or groups/factions of interest and leading theories on the potion and why it was passed through FDA regulations.

For now, however, we will be looking at several different factions that resulted in first contact.

The infamous HLF, Human Liberation Front, a group solely consisting of humans that initially started off as a help group for people that had family members turned into New Foals that rapidly changed into a group that some would call no better than the terror networks of the past.

The fanatical PER, Ponies for Earth's Rebirth, a group that early on consisted of humans believing humanity too corrupted to survive or believing that 'going pony' was the only way to go.

And finally, the PHL, Ponies for Human Life/Liberty. A group that not only consists of ponies, but as well as other various races of their world to fight not only for humanity’s survival, but for their own as well.

The Human Liberation Front

Author's Notes:

Thanks to the editors: (who did most of the work, I Bendy didn't do that much) redskin122004, Kizuna Tallis, Jed R and Doctor Fluffy.

The HLF

Full Title: Human Liberation Front

Founder: Reverend James Thomas (No longer affiliated with group)
Group Creation Date: March 16, 2019
Current status: Fractured (assault of 'Human Only' shantytown and de facto capital Defiance on August 27, 2022, led by Colonel Marcus Renee and troops composed of US Marines/Army/PHL personnel, scattered chain of command)

“Attracting the HLF to a battle is like having a blizzard come to your firefight. It hurts the enemy, but it’s uncontrollable, both people are hurt, and it can’t be bargained with… it sure as hell can be stopped, but there’s just so many.”
Yael Ze’ev, Israeli-affiliated PHL soldier, speaking to a disguised Viktor Kraber in Bethlehem, NH.

Maximilian Yarrow once said that history would not be kind to the HLF.

As a man who attempted the sisyphean task of reforming the HLF, it’s hard not to understand his pessimism. In reports of their history, there’s far more records of them being a hindrance than a help, and when compared with the PHL, they come off as far less heroic. Yet, as Harry Wales once said to me, nothing was evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so.

In a sense, the HLF are pitiable. Not for what they are… but for what they once were. Consider the HLF what you will, but remember their roots - they were once a support group started by the well meaning and grieving father, Reverend James Thomas.

Not A Smile
A poem by Reverend James Thomas
Here stands my daughter Harriet, on four hooves
Her new form? Oh, she approves.
Joy etched on her new pony face,
How happy she is to have left the human race!
Listen to her, it’s the best thing she could have done,
to become a pony, and praise the Tyrant Sun
I once knew a man who found himself to be a girl,
Few like that one proselytize, they’re rare in this world,
Yet here she is, urging, pleading me
I don’t want to, can’t she see?
Nothing’s right with her, since she changed she has always grinned,
But her eyes, like glass orbs, are dead with no glint.
She claims to be full of joy, all the while,
Look into her eyes, glassy and dead! No, that is not a smile!
Something has been made from the remains of my daughter,
It wonders if I am to join it, or be sent to the slaughter,
She stares unthinking, no emotions to call her own,
No drive but to bow before that tyrant’s throne!
Something has taken all that made my daughter Harriet,
Given her hooves and reduced her to some grotesque marionette
In future’s time, she’ll trot at our machine guns, one in death-bound waves,
Just one among thousands of brainwashed slaves
She’s not the only one who’ll do it, there’s too many more,
It is for certain she isn’t, never will be, the daughter I cared for.”

Though this poem was written after the Three Weeks of Blood, with the timeframe somewhat compressed to amplify the tragedy, a fact that the poet admits to, its impact is undeniable. It perfectly encapsulates the horror of many parents who found their children ponified, be they Reverend Thomas, Viktor Marius Kraber, or even Michael Carter.

James Thomas was, as the title states, a Presbyterian reverend - though one thing he’s somewhat less known for is his keen interest in poetry. He wrote countless anti-Newfoal poems, collected in his book “Lost within Hoof’s Reach,” though ‘Not a Smile’ is perhaps his most famous, having become cherished among the ponies of the so-called ‘True Equestria’ for its presentation in the ‘Dispatches From a Dying World’ gallery of the Great Human Exhibition organized by the Crowe Labs personnel Isaac Acevedo, Isaac Dan Der Grimnebulin, and Button Mash.

While his poetry was unremarkable pre-Emergence, with a small yet dedicated base of readers, it skyrocketed in popularity as the number of Newfoals grew, and with it, suspicion of Equestria.

“What did you have in mind when you started the HTF?”

“This isn’t going to be another interview where I get blamed for the HLF, is it?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“I get those all the time. Find it rather tiring, actually.”

“Well, start from the beginning.”

“Harriet had Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The odds weren’t good for her survival, we didn’t think she’d live past twenty. I had people, some of the ones that almost make me regret starting the HTF, who called me a bastard for urging her to take i-”

“You suggested it to her?”

“Yes. I did. And I would tell those early radicals: ‘Have a child one day. Hold his or her lifeless body in your arms, and then tell me how wrong it was to want him or her to survive.’ It’d usually get them to quiet down. But now… now, I almost feel as if I should have let her die.”

“It wasn’t your fault. I promise you - you couldn’t have known what would happen to her.”

“I should've… I should’ve done something, anything!”

”It was not your fault. I promise you that.”

“It’s just… the thing that came back was not her. Nothing about her was right, it was like someone sent back an actor to imitate her. A bad actor with about all the understanding of human behavior as the G-man.”

“I’ve known people like that-”

“The one from Half-Life. With the weird enunciation, uncanny valley… things like that.”

"One way, or another something like the HLF would have risen. I don’t think anyone could stopped it from happening. They only see it not happening if the war hadn’t start in the first place."

"Yeah…. I guess… you’re right."

“How did you start the HTF, though?”

“The magic of Facebook. I was talking to an old friend, Xavier Peterson, whose son had gotten brain damage in a car crash and was undergoing physical therapy, and I was telling him not to do this. But then, Xave, he said a friend of his that was a doctor kept on telling him it was a good idea, and his friend’s son took the potion and Xave couldn’t stand him. I think Xave’s friend was a fledgling PER. He’s probably dead now.”

“I see.”

“But that got me thinking. I couldn’t be the only one, so I contacted a guy I’d met awhile back, and told him I wanted his help at making a forum on ponification experiences. Then, I started getting donations - enough that I could do something more. So, right as Harriet just left the house one day without even a goodbye, I had a nonprofit group on my hands. Donations were flowing in for my investigation, I was just drowning, delirious with support. I’d contacted a man from New Hampshire named John Heald-”

“Johnny C Heald? The guy from the Alaska Incident?

“The very same. He was good friends with a New Hampshire congresswoman, and he managed to convince her to help with the investigation. And for a while, things were good… but I started getting scary people there. America has weird people, Ms. Quill. I had extremists. Conspiracy theorists, like this one crazy man named Birch. Said he thought he saw a couple ponies kidnapping a man…. back in 2016, no less.”

“I’ve heard of Birch. How did Verity and Michael Carter enter, though?”

“I welcomed them with open arms, I’m sad to say. See, I’ve tried to be accepting of transgender issues. I didn’t understand them, but I didn’t have to be an ass about it. And seeing what happened to Jazmin… that was wrong. It was then I knew - that damn potion doesn’t turn people into better people. It just made whatever Celestia wanted. Got a lot of cheers for the actions I took, but…” (sighs) “I wanted to be Gandhi. I wanted to save us from the potion through nonviolence. I wanted to be Lyra. I wanted to be brave. But that vile horsefucking whore Reitman outplanned me. No matter what I said to anyone from the FDA, they’d fall back on circular reasoning! It was like a glitch in a dialogue tree. So, after one failure too many, things went critical.”

“What do you mean?

“I had people saying that if the government wouldn’t do anything useful here, then they would. There was talk about armed insurrection. One of the first signs that my group had gone crazy was when newer members had said ‘once the barrier is down, we shall nuke horse land to fucking ashes’. Well, actually before that when they started talking about war. I don’t know what’s happened to John Birch at this point, but… I’m glad he’s gone. The only thing worse than his paranoia was the paranoia he could stir up in other people.“

“When was the turning point?”

“I was… I believe in nonviolence, and I wanted this to end peacefully. But I must admit I was at least somewhat happy with the May Day Attacks. I was happy that just for that day, there were people that wouldn’t go through what my Harriet did. But then, in the Three Weeks…” (sighs) “I saw all the reports of the people that flocked under the banner. Aeron Grant, Feng Gui Zhou, Burakgazi, Kraber, Janvier, Jelisaveta’s burnings, Joe Rither, Brendan McCartin, everyone that claimed they were Old Skinner, Valentin using fake PHL to lure ponies in, Cesar, Rutabiyiro, Lovikov… Bastards, every one of them.”

“What about Yarrow?”

“I’m happy at least about him. But the task of bringing order to that chaos? It’d be sisyphean, to say the least. In the first day they were heroes, in the third week the group had been mostly hijacked by fascists, rapists, cannibals, thieves and generally psychotic killers. And I cried for what I’d set in motion. They won’t go away, will they?”

A Humble Beginning

In its oft-forgotten, or rather overshadowed incarnation as a support group, the HLF was known as the HTF, or Harriet Thomas Foundation, named after Reverend Thomas’ now ponified daughter. Young Harriet had received a diagnosis of Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and her chances of survival were slim. As the ponification potion was being pushed as a miracle cure, the family decided to take a chance and allow Harriet to undergo the process.

It must be said - Reverend Thomas was not a bad person. This cannot be stressed enough, lest history view him as the founder of the KKK. He reached out to Lyra, to the PHL, to back-alley doctors, to Dr. Erika Kraber, to anyone that could answer one simple question:

“What happened to my daughter?”

Few people, if any, could answer. The first trickle of supporters was comprised of family and friends of Newfoals, all with similar stories of their former loved ones simply not being themselves… before abandoning them altogether to live in Equestria.

And then the trickle became a torrential downpour that threatened to drown everyone. Thousands reported bizarre and unnerving experiences with newfoals, and some people claimed it was an outright attack. The end of the world.

One such example, picked from countless many, is Andrew Silas.

Name: Andrew Silas
Nationality: English
Crime: Tagging Her Majesty's Buckingham Palace (sentenced to a year of probation, but was let off early at the start of the war)
Status: Aiding refugees in Malaysia

“What were you thinking on that day?”

"What did I think at the time? I thought I was doing something that would grab the people’s attention.”

“It certainly did…”

“That’s beside the point.”

“So how did it begin for you?”

“Well, it all started with my friend, Henry. He was crippled by his own dad about a year before Equestria arrived, when the old man had one too many drinks at the local pub and came blazing home. Didn't even slow down when he ran the light; he just ran over his own son, called out 'bloody wanker' as he passed and kept on driving, too bloody wasted to know what had happened. Now along comes this cure-all potion and Henry, who always loved a good game of football, wanted to be able to just walk again. He sure as hell did love Hibs... I was Hearts myself."

"So after one game, tears in his eyes as he watches the footballers, this ad comes on: ‘A new life awaits as a pony!’ and a month after consulting, he signs up, fills out the form and away he goes. He comes back a week later as a dark orange unicorn pony. So what’s first thing I ask? 'Hey now, Henry. Now that you’re back on your feet, or hooves in this case, want to go try out for a quick game?' And the look he gave me... it was like he had no idea what I was talking about."

"It just got worse as time went on. I know what the Newfoals are like, we all do, but this was before the war. We expected them to just be our friends and family, but with hooves and fur, we expected… I don’t know what. The simplest way I can put it is that we expected them to still be the people we knew. I’m sure you’ve heard this description a million times, but it just wasn’t him in there. Every week, Henry just got more distant, hanging out with a bunch of other Newfoals I’d never seen. A month later, it was like he never knew me, and when we did talk, the subject always turned to ponification and how great it felt. Now I’ve known a few transwomen and transmen before, and sometimes, they ended up regretting it - a sad truth, that is - and sometimes the novelty wore off after a month and they started adjusting, but Henry just glowed as if it was the day after he’d been ponified, and never stopped. Plus, those people never proselytized about it. It was just... frightening.”

“So how did you come across the Harriet Thomas Foundation?”

“Well, for a while, I was feeling down, wondering about what’d happened to my friend… just wanted someone to talk to. And one day, as I was surfing on the internet, I see something on the news about this support group being started up by a preacher from America, and I decided to check it out. I read through the testimonials, and… the thing is, once you began to realize how many people were joining this little group because of their friends and loved ones becoming completely different people after getting transformed, and just how similar many of the stories were, it terrified you to the core that no one was doing anything about it.”

“So yeah... I jumped the wall and tagged the building. Could you imagine my surprise that it was Her Majesty herself who caught me when she decided to go for a walk and was looking at me the entire time through the window? Bless her soul, I hope she is in a better place.”

Jumping Off the Slippery Slope

As the Harriet Thomas Foundation gained more and more supporters online, Reverend Thomas had struck up correspondence with Ambassador Lyra Heartstrings. Lyra was not shy to voice her doubts about the potion, and both had also expressed interest in Dr. Erika Kraber's reports of the bizarre anomalies in the psychology of Newfoals.

The second stage of grief is anger, and for the families and friends that were abandoned by their now ponified loved ones, the emotion began to take over. They started demanding answers, and Reverend Thomas was at the front of it all.

On March 1, 2019, the HTF protested in Washington DC, demanding that the FDA investigate the potion. Heading this protest were airline pilot Michael Carter and his daughter Verity, galvanized by the ponification of Michael’s wife, Jazmin Carter, who renamed herself ‘New Bloom’. Reports of what exactly happened are often conflicting, but it was known that Jazmin had been suffering from the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s, and that the potion had transformed her into a stallion due to her being a transwoman, and thus, biologically male. Hospital employees and patients nearby reported hearing anguished screams of ‘THAT IS NOT MY MOTHER!’ from Verity, and her father was arrested for assaulting either Pinkie or Maud Pie. The father-daughter duo were two of the most passionate voices in the HTF, often spouting fiery rhetoric and taking control of any discussions on the official HTF forums online, no matter the subject.

They were also frequent critics of Reverend Thomas, feeling that his approach was too soft, as his efforts grew more and more fruitless and desperate. The FDA insisted that the potion was entirely harmless. Some would say too insistent in fact.

As organization after organization brushed him off, as investigations yielded no leads, no signs of abnormalities and as Equestria essentially laughed off his concerns, Reverend Thomas found himself increasingly at odds with his group. Michael Carter, who the Reverend had previously seen as a comrade-in-arms, was gaining more leverage.

At this time, the HTF was still a fairly moderate organization, and Lyra Heartstrings found herself in frequent communication with Reverend Thomas, with the two of them even starring as guests via videochat on the Kraber Reports. While it gave Lyra legitimacy, distrust of the ponies grew.

Finally, during a public rally in Philadelphia on March 18, boasting people from all over America, even some from other countries, Reverend Thomas was brushed away from the podium, as Michael Carter took control. With an impassioned speech describing a hunger to avenge their loved ones and a desire to make the Equestrians pay, Michael Carter gathered thunderous applause.

It was this day that the Harriet Thomas Foundation died, and the Human Liberation Front was born out of the ashes.

Their first action as HLF was to commence the Three Weeks of Blood.

May Day Attacks

“...The world didn’t go out with a bang or a whimper - it ended in an orgy of violence, of arson, of theft, and mass global riots. There was blood, course there was, right as everyone played into the Tyrant’s hooves. But I remember… there was this moment when my friend Johnny and I were listening to the radio, rebuilding a house, and we heard about how the Barrier expanded. We knew right then it was all over.’
Fiddlesticks Apple, interviewee in the article ‘The Day the World Ended’.

In her book ‘A War In the Pocket,’ Dayoung Tengku, an amateur historian and iconoclast in the history of the HLF, has pointed out that the Three Weeks of Blood were a turning point in more ways than one. Seeing themselves as liberators, as men and women who had to do something because their governments and armies wouldn’t, the newly-formed HLF, and other groups under the banner that eventually folded themselves in took to attacking ten bureaus in a coordinated attack on May 1. Bureaus in Salem (MA), Sleepy Hollow (NY), South Padre Island (TX), Hong Kong (China), Sydney (Australia), Hiroshima (Japan), Mexico City (Mexico), Cape Town (South Africa), Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) and Brony (a tiny village in Poland) were all victims of the attack. While the Sleepy Hollow Bureau sustained only minor structural damage, many of them were utterly destroyed.

Despite the few old HTF standing by, begging others to keep things professional, it got violent quick, with numerous bureau personnel killed on the spot, or dragged out and tortured violently before getting killed.

PER sympathizers and others took up weaponry to defend themselves, and police were called to the scene all over the world.

Reaction was mixed. On the one hand, it was the first act of resistance against the Imperials, the first declaration of war, and to this day, nobody in polite company will call it an unprovoked attack. There had been plenty of provocation, too many Newfoals that were too radically different from the people they once were, too many disagreements, too many ponies that had been cold and indifferent to humans for it to be called ‘unprovoked’.

“They took our families! Our friends! Well, we’re taking the fight back to them!” Michael Carter had yelled, brandishing an assault rifle over a screaming pony nurse. “Think you can turn us into those abominations?! Well, we! SAY! NO!”

Unfortunately, the reaction was a lot more mixed the day after the attacks, as the destruction had only continued, gathering in their intensity.

The Three Weeks of Blood

Inspired and enraged, prospective HLF and others angered by the loss of their friends and family rose up, attacking the nearest representations of Equestria that they could - ponies and Bureaus. PER took advantage of the chaos to ponify as many as they could.

When PER abducted the daughter of a Portland Seadogs player named Patrick Saunders, he bludgeoned them to death with his baseball bat and rampaged through the city with an earth pony named Dust Kicker, attacking the construction site of the Conversion Bureau there in an armed uprising. One of the casualties was very nearly PHL pony Fiddlesticks Apple, who had been scheduled for a benefit concert at the Bureau’s opening, though Saunders has apologized for nearly killing her.

A Chinese factory worker named Feng Gui Zhou, a future warlord armed with a war surplus, led an assault on a Bureau in Xinjiang.

And in Eastern Europe, Viktor Marius Kraber and various others embarked through Austria on what has been referred to as ‘Kraber’s March’, a campaign of destruction with a high bodycount of Bureau personnel. It only intensified when Kraber met Kagan Burakgazi in a Turkish bureau, the two having planned separate lone-wolf bombings, attracting the attention of each other in the Bureau’s basement. And, of course, the attack that Viktor Kraber had been a part of had not been an isolated incident. Many similar attacks had happened, and slowly but surely, the HLF was being taken over by those who had been wrecked by the loss of their friends and family. Princess Luna, in a rare televised interview, had sworn that the PER were not part of some Equestrian offensive, and begged for them not to continue on their course.

‘Surely,’ Princess Luna had said, ‘Nopony in Equestria approves of this!’ She had sounded as much as if she was trying to convince herself as anyone else.

Many loyalist ponies claimed it was the Three Weeks of Blood that showed humanity’s true nature, all the while completely ignoring the attacks on humans by Newfoals.

It was the first real act of the HLF, and to this day it ensures some of the support they get. It gave the HLF a decisive reputation, of being quick to action and defend humanity. This was technically true. They were decisive, they helped mobilize humanity, but they did far more harm than good in the long run. Unfortunately, since the HLF targeted all ponies indiscriminately, they also alienated any ponies that were against ponification and did not support Equestria’s actions.

People were frightened and paranoid, a feeling not helped by the PER's increasingly radical misanthropic rhetoric.

One of the most infamous HLF attacks occurred near Paddington Station, in London, when a car bomber attempted to blow up a restaurant where Lyra Heartstrings was eating breakfast. In spite of the utter devastation and carnage, as testified by a PHL-affiliated eyewitness, Ambassador Heartstrings miraculously survived. To this day, nobody knows how the bomber had been found out, as various Newfoals in the vicinity had beaten him to death. Still, that had been an isolated incident.

Call to Arms

Following the Berne Declaration, the disastrous press conference during which several reporters from all over the world were forcibly ponified, the HLF threw its lot into the war wholeheartedly.

They were riding on their previous successes. As noted historian Dayoung Tengku has said, the May Day Attacks ‘showed the world the HLF had teeth’. Not helping was that they had officially been the ones to start the war before any other government. There was a distinct anti-government sentiment in those days, anger at governments for not doing anything sooner, anger at the healthcare industry for allowing for the potion to become available, anger at ponies, anger at anyone who was defending ponies, and seemingly defending ponification.

Anger drove the HLF, pure and simple. Millions over the world were swept up by the rhetoric that, with enough guns, molotov cocktails, and can-do spirit, anyone could fight off the invaders.

Though some, not least the PHL, took issue with the HLF’s methods, which were seen as unrestrained, and as much a threat to civilians and refugees as PER. As early as 2020, Yael Ze’ev had made a name for herself in anti-HLF actions, citing instances of them attacking pony members of the PHL and stealing from refugees.

And Americans had grown uneasy of their self-proclaimed saviors as well.

Name: Richard Stanley
Nationality: American
Crimes: Murder of PER, theft of weaponry and medicine
Status: Pardoned of crimes, currently performing different jobs aiding the PHL’s war effort in Dallas Fort Worth alongside his family

“You gotta understand, we were all scared. Some people reacted more… strongly than others, but it was all the same.”

“What was the first red flag for you?”

“Well, funnily enough, my wife Gail was the first to start suspecting that something wasn’t quite right. She was always a skeptical sort; kept up on the news and whatnot. She wasn’t shy to say it was a bit suspicious that this “miracle cure-all” serum just appeared randomly from creatures from an alternate dimension. I guess that’s what saved us.”

“And what about your son? Porter, correct?”

“Yeah, he was stationed in South Korea just a year before the Empire came. Even found a nice lady there. Eun-Hee Lee was her name.”

“Wait, as in…?”

“Yes. And I don’t think would never be able to forget the way she, and all those other reporters, screamed when they were being ponified. About an hour later, Porter called us on Skype. I’d never seen him so angry in my life. More than that, he was heartbroken. He wanted to make Celestia pay.”

“What kept him from that ‘slippery slope’ though?”

“Responsibility, or so he said.”

“And what about you and the rest of the family?”

“We were all running high on paranoia by that point. I remember my younger son, Charlie, saying that this was like a mix between Independence Day and X-Com, whatever that was. Not helping was the PER, the fucking bastards. We were all installing security systems and new locks in our houses, and I sometimes saw the neighbors were sleeping with their lights on. We were all scared to go outside without a hazmat suit and a gun. Families were all clinging to each other for dear life, not letting their kids out of sight… I mean, my family and I lived in a pretty small town, the kind where everyone knows each other. The whole world was going to hell in a handbasket, and the HLF in our area actually gave us a feeling of safety… at first anyway.”

“What kinds of things did you do with your group in those early days?”

“Patrolling, guarding, that kind of thing. There were some ex-military I personally knew helping train civilians how to shoot and defend themselves, survival skills, all that sort. And for a while, we had a pretty good run. We kept out the PER pretty well too. We really did do good for the neighborhood...”

“So what made you leave?”

“As soon as the loony bin began to take over. Don’t get me wrong, I can understand Mike Carter’s pain; if I lost my wife like that… I don’t even want to imagine what I would do. But believe me when I say this - nothing in this world can ever justify what that man has done. Murdering kids and civilians…(spits in disgust)”

Crossing the Line

By early 2022, the HLF had gained a reputation for being one of the biggest dangers to the public, as much of a danger as the PER and the Solar Empire’s forces. Their indiscriminate targeting of all ponies, regardless of their status (natural-born or Newfoal) or allegiances, made it no surprise they set their sights on the PHL.

They were quick to call the PHL an affront to all humanity, the pony members spies working for the Empire, and the human members traitors. That died down quickly however, as the PHL gained more approval from both the government and the general public, with more and more ponies joining the fight against their mad leader. Horror stories from Equestrian defectors from all over the globe detailed the oppressive and orwellian atmosphere of Equestria, with disgraced doctors officially blacklisted confirming the worst suspicions about the potion.

Worse was when Ambassador Lyra Heartstrings tried to reach out to the HLF with an offer to join forces. Her request was not only denied, but she was also nearly assassinated in the process by an HLF sniper. Miraculously, the bullet only grazed her flank, allowing her to pull up a shield spell. Still, the HLF maintained a decent amount of support in the public eye. The PHL couldn’t be everywhere, after all, and the HLF seemed to offer a simple narrative of “two legs good, four legs bad”.

It was summer 2022, however, that things turned around.

On July 22, 2022, members of the “Menschabwehrfraktion” and “Glanzon’s Gluemakers” HLF units and several other unaffiliated HLF soldiers attacked a PHL medical convoy on its way to Salem, Massachusetts. The ambush was short but brutal, and all but one were killed.

PHL medic, Nurse Sutra Cross, was dragged from the humvee she sat in and was taken prisoner. The HLF intended to make an example of her on what to do to a PHL pony. For two weeks, Sutra Cross was beaten and tortured extensively, while videos were released on the Internet depicting the atrocities committed against her.

Sutra Cross’ body washed up on the Boston harbor, and she was given a proper burial. Wracked with anger and disgust, the PHL called for putting an end to the HLF’s reign of terror.

Compounding this atrocity was an incident on July 25th, not long after Sutra Cross’ kidnapping, in which the HLF attacked the PHL oil-drilling platform Sorghum and bombarded Portland with its artillery, sparking off massive riots in the city that did far more damage than the rig.

In the month following this, the HLF of the eastern seaboard, including infamous divisions such as Taskforce Paris, the Sons of Macha, and Menschabwehrfraktion, soon gained access to a mysterious force known as ‘The Hotline’, allowing them to track down PER operations. However, this soon proved problematic, as it led to them growing arrogant and asking for protection money from nearby communities.

On August 25, the FBI and CIA were able to track down the site where Sutra Cross was held and murdered at. It was at the ‘humans only’ settlement of Defiance, located north of Berlin, around New Hampshire’s Great North Woods.

On August 26, President Jack Davis gave the order for the destruction of Defiance.

On August 27, a joint force consisting of PHL, the US Army and US Marines led by Colonel Renee ambushed the settlement and laid waste to it.

"We respond to threats, both from afar and within our own borders. The HLF has proven itself not only a threat to the general safety of the public, but to our military operations as well.

From this day forward, the HLF is considered a terrorist organization and needs to be stamped out before we lose the only thing that makes us who we are.

Our humanity."
Declaration from President Jack Davis giving the order for the assault on Defiance

Name: Fergus Farnowitz
Nationality: American
Crimes: Murder, abduction, torture, illegal forestry, cannibalism
Status: Incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay.

“I’ll never forget that night.

We were sitting around the fire, laughing, drinking, listening to the screams of the prisoners, to our music, to the various rumormongers who would tell anyone any crazy damn story about Equestria, or about the newfoals. Lovikov - that's the bastard that ran the place, I think we can all agree we're better without him - had been planning something, and we were ready to head up to Montreal.”

Your 'Hotline' told him to?"

“Yup. We were a bit worried about Kraber, though. Lovikov had kept him in the town brig for awhile. And he'd... There were rumors he'd gone even crazier. Something about mnemosurgery from those ponies he hadn't killed, that he was going horsefucker... It was hard to say.

Everything was simply perfect. Almost unnervingly so; we hadn’t been found by any police, we’d actually heard good things about us on the radio, and the prison had… don’t look at me like that. I won’t tell you if you don’t need to know.

And then everything goes wrong. Somebody is going to the tent with his wife, then he runs back, saying she has a bullet in her head.

We panic, of course. We grab all of our guns, sighting them in, and then I hear a scream.

Somebody next to me crumpled down, gurgling their last from a bullet to the chest. It went to shit almost immediately. We ran across the camp, putting everyone on alert, and I heard somebody firing. Could have been any one of our guys, from what I heard, they were just panic-firing.

But that wasn’t the worst part. Suddenly there were ponies and military people with guns everywhere, coming out of every bolt-hole, dropping out of the air, and they all had huge guns and armor that could shrug off insane amount of firepower.

Some people are going to call Defiance a battle. No, that wasn’t a battle; that was a straight up massacre.

I still have nightmares about it, damn near constantly. I remember my friends cut down by the dozen, I remember reloading my rifle only to watch the 7.62mm round from that fucking kalashnikov obliterate my wrist. I remember watching a pony standing over me and stomping on me till I was smart enough to play dead.

But that’s not the worst part.

The worst part is him. He has a particular presence that you never quite forget, a big guy who isn’t just tall, but solid.

Marcus Renee. Call him a horsefucking traitor, call him a hero - I lean towards the former - but we can all agree now that you should never piss him off. He strode through the campsite, a Remington ACR with an extended magazine in hand, firing semi-automatically whenever someone came in view.

A bullet and they were dead.

It was like the carnage couldn’t even touch him. This one woman ran out of a tent, carrying a knife, and he just buttstocks her across the face, knocking her to the ground and shattering her jaw and shot her when she tried to get back up. That man didn't even pause to do it, he just shot her as she was fumbling around with her knife and then turned to shoot someone else.

The massacre parted before him like the water before some fucked up Moses. It was unreal; any of our guys that moved in front of him just dropped like flies, and the snipers that tried to take him down all got a bullet in their head.

We didn’t think a man or a pony could have caused such a bloodbath. Like he was some sort of fucking action hero or some hell demon cutting a swath through everyone. It's one thing to see it in a movie or in a video games, it’s another to see a guy pulling it off in real life. And let me tell you, that is fucking terrifying to see that shit go down.

I cried when I saw him advancing down the main drag through the tents, past the small shops that we had. I screamed into my radio for backup, hoping that someone could come, praying to God, that I’d live through that day.

Nobody came, though, and when I loaded up my rifle, this punkass from New Hampshire named Johnny C blows off my hand with one of those big Kalashnikovs chambered for rounds that can destroy cinderblocks, and yells “There’s another one over here!” For all I cared, my hand could still be in that forest, holding a magazine. I just ran away from that camp screaming, and I never looked back.

I don’t know how I got to civilization, how fast I must have run. I got to a hospital - this small place off in the middle of nowhere - to believe I was innocent by telling them that I was a hiker who’d gotten shot by crazy HLF woodsmen.

The police didn’t buy that, and well, here I am.”

Downfall

The downfall of the HLF as a serious force, the ‘loss of their conscience’ as historian Dayoung Tengku put it, came from an unexpected source. Not long after the destruction of Defiance, an HLF man came to the PHL, hospitalized in Montreal after taking down an experimental skyliner from the inside, and covered in the blood of invading PER bent on ponifying every patient of the hospital.

"THERE'S NO FOKKIN CURING THE HLF! IT'S SO FOKKIN CLOSE TO TERMINALLY ILL I'D RECOMMEND FOKKIN EUTHANASIA, IF NOT FOR THE FACT THE HLF IS ITS OWN FOKKIN SICKNESS! MEDICINE CAN'T CURE BEING A FOKKIN TRILLKOP!!"

Name: Viktor Kraber (Aliases: Ivan Bliss, Francis Strang, Hassan Dagdelen)
Nationality: Afrikaner, born in Cape Town, currently holds German citizenship.
Crimes: Murder, mass murder, conspiracy to commit murder, illegal possession of firearms, multiple assault charges, theft of a motorcycle, breaking and entering, torture, impersonating a police officer, illegally crossing borders between countries, impersonating a child protective services officer, torture, smuggling firearms, practicing medicine without a license, arson, forgery, vandalism, kidnapping, robbery, theft of military property, impersonating PHL personnel, and public drunkenness (Captured and arrested during one of the various target sites linked directly to Defiance, immediately surrendered himself alongside Kagan Burakgazi and was given an option to join the Task Force under the command of Colonel Renee, much to Kraber and Yael Ze’ev’s protests. Citing an inability to get along, Kraber was transferred to the Bundeswehr.)
Status: In service with the Bundeswehr

When telling a story to various foals and PHL ponies, Viktor Marius Kraber once joked that “[his] ass is everywhere”. This is hard to dispute, as he has managed to fight in Germany, Turkey, the Middle East, and northern Africa, and made appearances in numerous fronts of the war, more than most would assume possible.

“Why did you join the HLF?”

“Revenge. That fokking mank genaaide bergbok Pinkie Pie did something absofokkinlutely unforgivable.”

“Ponifying your family. Everyone knows what happened.”

“Yeah. But the thing you have to understand here is… I would’ve done anything for my family, no matter what’s been said about me. I mean, here I was, a wake and bake college kid that suddenly finds himself with a pregnant high-school age stekie, two kids on the way… Kate wanted to be a mom, I loved her, so I did my best. But then, around early 2019, Peter and Anka got it into their heads that they loved Equestria.”

“What happened to do that?”
"My parents surprised me. Plane tickets to South Africa! It was like a dream. I’d spent so much time there as a kid, and I had a virtual death grip on most of the slang because the place was just so wonderful. I couldn’t wait to see all my connections down there. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought to do it yet! So anyway, when we get to Cape Town, heading from the hotel to my cousin’s pozzy, I don’t find Cousin Richard Pretorius. No, there’s a red earth pony cleaning the dishes, whistling a jaunty tune. I was surprised as fok when it turned out it was him. I couldn’t believe he’d gone through with it!”
“How’d that make them like Equestria?”
"Far as they were concerned, he was the best uncle ever, and he just… the kids fell in love. They thought he was the best uncle a child could have. They petted his fur, he gave them rides... They even wanted to be ponies too, but I told ‘em what I did this transman I knew back in college. Changing your body like that is a life-making decision, don’t do it on a whim, I said. But still they persisted! Kate even made Anka a horse costume out of a unitard, and she… she just pranced all over the house, and… I need another moment. Or to drink another dop.”
"Now, as a doctor, I came into a lot of money. Enough that, through certain channels and the Newfoal community in town - I didn’t like them, but they knew me through my daughter, so the mank genaaide bergboks were civil enough - I managed to get Pinkie Pie to throw a party for them, in person no less. She said she’d even bring a clown too, and that she’d make it a party they’d remember for the rest of their lives. And I feel physically FOKKING SICK to admit this, but she… she sounded nice. Trustworthy. I’d immediately thought of an adult who dressed like a child when I first heard her voice. Ah… I’m gonna need more bourbon.”
“What happened when you got to the house?”
"It was all quiet, except for someone laughing. It wasn’t any of the kids, or Kate, or Pinkie; I’d never heard this person in my life. I reached for my scalpel, walked into the dining room, and found that fokking clown Pinkie had hired, and some purple goop all over the room. I didn’t touch it; it just… it felt wrong. I didn’t know if he was human or pony to begin with, but I was so fokkin’ woedend. I don’t even remember how it happened, but I tied that fokking clown up to a chair, even as his laughter turned into screams, and I worked over him for hours with a smile on my face. I drove knives into him, I injected him with chemicals I found lying around the house, I used everything in my grandfather’s medical bag, I broke his legs and cut him open and eviscerated him till there was barely anything left to hurt. I remember that there was blood all over the room, seeping into the carpet, on the ceiling… it was seeping into my shoes."
"I don’t even remember what I wanted to know. Their location? The cure? Where Pinkie was? Why they did this? I just wanted to hurt something. I wasn’t in a trusting mood, so I found the HLF, or Menschabwehrfraktion, as they’re known back in Germany. They wanted another soldier to save earth from the pony menace. Personally, I thought they were conspiracy-nut chops. They weren’t expecting me to like it, but -"
“Did you enjoy it?”
"It’s not a proud moment anymore, but back then… I jumped at the chance. Every day, I woke up and killed. Then, one day… after Innsbruck… I struck out on my own, and headed off for Istanbul’s Bureau. Basic lone-wolf bombing. And right here, here’s the hilarious thing - Burakgazi, this other guy, he’d been planning a lone-wolf bombing the same fokkin day! And then, we just… We blew up so many fokkin bureaus! It was hilarious, the fokkin’ zombies and PER just exploded, there was blood everywhere… I was so happy, KILLING ALL THE BLIKSEMS TILL THERE WAS NOBODY LEFT!”
"Kraber, keep your shit together before I go in there and make you."
"Fine, ‘Commander!’ It’s only what happened."
"Just get on with it, Kraber, you’re making True Quill nervous enough as it is. And stop drinking all that bourbon, it’s only a matter of time till you’re incoherent!"
“Like anyone could tell the fokkin’ difference!”

“Damn. How did you… what did…. made you change?”

“Well, one day… after we killed a bunch of PER in Vermont, I just did a fokkin’ awful thing to some PHL they’d captured, and my commanding officer decided that an illegal checkpoint would help us. So, I found these two ponies…. And I just decided to let them ponies go. I couldn’t explain it - I just couldn’t.”

“Did she try mnemosurgery?”

“That question's a real fokking sore point for me, but I asked her, she said no. It was my fault I couldn’t pull the trigger. And, well… that had so many fokkin’ consequences. My commanding officer, he tried to kill me on the next mission, the one on the Sorghum.”

“How do you go from that to destroying the HLF as we knew it?!”

“It’s a long story - I’m writing a movie bout it, actually, but I made a big enough target that Defiance was the first place the PHL looked for Sutra Cross. And I may have also sent some letters to certain people more amenable to ponies…” (a sly, bloodthirsty smirk creeps onto Kraber’s face)

“...You sold out Defiance.”

“And embezzled from it, and revealed all the hidden weapon stashes. But it wasn’t intentionally… at first, anyway. But I don’t like saying I sold it out.”

“Why not?”

“Implies there was some kinda payoff, that I got a large amount of tom. It wasn’t bout the tom, it was cause someone had to stop them. What with staying with a bunch of ponies, volunteering as a merc the IDF, not going on a murder spree, they weren’t exactly… happy to see me.”

“What did they do?

“Let’s say… (Kraber winces slightly) I got a taste of my own medicine. Besides, the only one that got any tom out of that was Aegis.”

“Wait, what?”

“I negotiated it so Aegis got the bounty for capturing me and Burakgazi. Plenty of money and food to support his foals that way.”

“Which reminds me, how did you and Aegis become so close? It’s unusual to see ponies and humans share as deep a friendship as yours…”

"Heh… you said deep friendship. We got videos on the Internet of ponies and humans fokking each other."

"Right... so why are you and him in particular such good friends?"

“He helped me out when I was homeless, let me sleep in his living room… I can’t hate a stallion like that, and for awhile, it was like we were family. Aegis has saved my life so many times I’ve lost count, and I’ve saved his just as many. Plus, we smaak a lot of the same things... Booze, movies, video games, big guns… I love the guy. You’ll interview him later, right?”

“Certainly.”

“And… I’m sorry. For being drunk the whole time. I’m a mess, I know I am.”

Seeing a member as prominent as Viktor Kraber leave, especially as stories of his exploits under the assumed names Ivan Bliss and Francis Strang surfaced, caused far more people to question the aim and effectiveness of the organization than any PHL supporters had thought possible. Making this worse, Kraber brought infamous HLF chemical bomber Kagan Burakgazi to the side of the PHL with him, having convinced even him that the HLF had gone too far.

The two of them would soon broadcast a speech over radio with the assistance of Vinyl Scratch and Photo Finish, asking HLF dissatisfied with the state of the cause to join the PHL.

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn't believe. I've seen the PHL fight the Empire and win with overwhelming casualties… on the other side. I’ve seen that soon, the Barrier will hit America and I’ve seen how the PHL has been a key force in the evacuation, and I’ve seen that they have the power to stop the Barrier. Most of all, I’ve seen them allow me in... And I don't feel like this should all disappear like tears in the rain. I start basic tomorrow, showing them as a hell of a lot more accepting than the HLF they can be. Galt once said that the key to winning the war is to adapt and be fluid. Well, this is me adapting. This is me picking the side that knows how to stop the Barrier, can give me a bigger gun, and treat me as a friend and want me to get better instead of treating me like a mad dog on a leash. I’ve seen that they’re as willing to nurture as defend.

This is me choosing life. Joining something better.”

Tensions had been simmering ever since the Salt Caramel riots in Philadelphia, which were sparked off when a PHL mare named Salt Caramel died from an HLF man’s glass bottle to the throat. In response, PHL soldier Helena Zandt avenged Salt Caramel with a shotgun aimed at a rather delicate place, causing a bar brawl that threw the city into chaos. Seeing the defection of two intensely prominent members to work with Yael Ze’ev, the infamous enemy of the HLF, reopened these wounds and threw the HLF into chaos. This sparked the now-famous Reid Rebuke given by Angus Reid of the HLF unit Taskforce Paris:

“Shut your fucking face, old man! We haven't been worth shit for years! How goddamn delusional do you have to be to think the public actually like us?! The PHL have evacuated civilians. The PHL can use 5.56 rifles while we have to use these stupid fucking .50 Beowulf rounds! The PHL saved Boston! The PHL have secret superweapons when all we have are homebrewed cannons and pipe guns! The PHL help power America, and we've probably used something from them! What in the fuck are we compared to that?! They're calling us terrorists and murderers, rapists and torturers, bandits that... I swear to God I'm not kidding, bandits that are destroying civilization! Crazy, right? EXCEPT DAMN NEAR NONE OF YOU HAVE DONE ANYTHING TO PROVE THEM WRONG! I'm not asking any of you to have sex with the merry-go-round toys, but at least the PHL is doing something. We're all yammer and no hammer now, the war's passed us by! We're a laughingstock, and if the PHL wins the war, we're not gonna be heroes. We'll be the guys that everyone laughs at. We're not heroic partisans like in Poland, or anything of the sort, we're just a bunch of paranoid assholes with guns pointed at everything that isn't us, because fuck you, it's the apocalypse, we've got ours! We're outlaws! We're... you! MacPherson! Is this what you signed up for? Stealing from people that don't have anything left to steal? And you, Clancy?! Killing people that I'm convinced just wanted a better life because their home is a despotic shithole?! Morhaim, did you sign up to oversee gang-rapes and eat people?! Anyone in this HLF brigade that wants to do something good... Follow me, we're going to the PHL! If Viktor Kraber can quit and do the right thing, we can outdo that bastard!"

Entire units of HLF found themselves gutted, or simply disappeared overnight, folding themselves into local armies or the PHL-UN taskforce. While it was rare to find someone that didn’t appreciate the glut of new recruits, it was hard not to notice one thing:

Virtually all of the HLF members that left were more moderate types with few serious crimes to their name. The mass defection had, as Dayoung Tengku said in her book "A War In The Pocket", ripped out what conscience they had left.

Kraber, Burakgazi, and Reid's exodus had brought the left-leaning, essentially insulted the more humanitarian units into leaving, and taken some of the better fighters hungry for bigger guns. HLF officers were soon put to use by both Yael Ze'ev and Kraber alike, smoking out HLF weapon stashes and hideouts alike. The only people that could have consoled the HLF and kept them from intensifying their raiding activities were a small minority convinced they could become something better. They were ignored.

And from that, a new form of HLF arose towards the beginning of 2023 as Barrierfall inched closer. A far more desperate breed, ready to steal whatever was necessary to their goals, and hoping to save anyone that resisted the Solar Empire and defend from the Barrier…

Whether they liked it or not.

There were people who protested against both HLF action and PHL, hoping to unify HLF to fight alongside PHL in Barrierfall. These were Maximillian Yarrow's forces, the Reavers. While many have disagreed on the actions of the Reavers and the nobleness of their cause, one thing cannot be denied: they were brave. Unfortunately, it also cannot be denied that their task, regardless of any chances of success it might have had before, was all-but sisyphean afterward.

The Few Good Men

The Reavers are an oddity to those who study the HLF: though the actual percentages of psychopaths and cold-blooded killers in the organization cannot be accurately estimated (though it was easily in the nineties by the end), it is clear that the HLF will be remembered more for men like Lovikov, Zhou and Galt than it will Maximilian Yarrow. Nonetheless, Yarrow's forces were present almost from the beginning of the conflict, a quiet corner of the HLF dedicated to, as Yarrow would have put it, 'fighting the good fight'.

Name: Erin Hansen.
Nationality: British.
Crimes: HLF Membership, aiding and abetting HLF actions, assaulting police officers, graffiti.

Note: Miss Hansen was captured in late October 2023, spraying a tag reading 'Yarrow for Valhalla' on a wall in New York. Such tags continue to be proliferant as a sort of underbelly in larger cities.

"You never met Maxi Yarrow, so don't tell me the man didn't have a chance."

"You think he did?"

"I was a teenager on the Purity. Whole thing was this ramshackle pile of shit, bunch of big guns bolted to the deck. By rights it should've been ponified. We should have been ponified. But he saved us."

"I'd heard of the Purity. Didn't realise it was attacked."

"Fucking geldo bastards - no offence - probably thought they could get the drop on her. Isolated, poorly armed… way I heard Idle tell it, the thing would have gone to hell, but Yarrow strode out onto the deck and took charge. Seven or eight concentrated rockets on an early Potioneer - boom. Too much for the shield to take. Never stood a fucking chance. Turned a massacre into a win. That was Yarrow - that was what he could do."

“Plenty of HLF won early battles.”

“But not many of them were Maxi Yarrow. You - ah, hell, you'd have to have met him yourself. Though he’d have said you wouldn't have believed it anyway: you'd have seen what you wanted to see.”

“What does that mean?”

“Does it matter?”

The Reavers, formed in the aftermath of the battle of the Purity, were a force of vehicles and fighting men and women of various sub-units, all under the command of Maximilian Yarrow himself. Considered by some to be weak willed traitors and others to be exemplar HLF, the Reavers have frequently been on the frontline of anti-PER and anti-Empire conflict, notably the Imperial Creed campaign. They also - to the disgust of some partisans - categorically refused to fight PHL, under Yarrrow's specific instruction that "the runaways and horsefuckers aren't the enemy".

This caused great friction with other units, such as the Thenardier Guards. Michael Carter was known to be disapproving of this policy, and led to the Reavers being seen as pariahs by many other more prestigious units that favored a growingly radical approach. Despite this, the Reavers enjoyed some surprising success - helped by the fact that, somehow, they managed to become equipped with top-of-the-line weaponry, including ATC experimental tech just shy of PHL newtech in terms of effectiveness (though entirely free of runic or other magical enhancement). What's more, Yarrow's ideas - especially the pseudo-Norse cult - created a subculture that found believers in slums and cities, among the dispossessed and the desperate.

That was one thing that separated the Reavers from many of their cohorts, more than anything else. The existence amongst their ranks of a pseudo-Norse cult that preached the existence of Valhalla and the virtue of death in battle. Though few records exist, one tape was smuggled out of what can only be described as a pre-battle prayer, spoken by Maxi Yarrow himself.

Yarrow: "Listen up, brothers and sisters. Today we go into battle once more - battle against the enemy that would claim our lives without doing us the dignity of death. We go into battle to lay down our lives for others, to win ourselves the last… maybe the only victory left to us. We go into battle to fight the good fight, to be the Human Liberation Front - not the dogs and sadists that others define us by, but the truth of us! We will get no thanks in life for our deeds, but in death we will live forever! In the fabric of reality, our actions are recorded and remembered - and ours will echo through eternity!"

Assembled Reavers: "YARROW FOR VALHALLA! YARROW FOR VALHALLA!"

Name: Tom "Preacher" Richardson.
Nationality: British.
Crimes: HLF membership, graffiti, aiding and abetting HLF.

"I'd like to understand the Norse element to the Reavers, if I can."

"It isn't exactly difficult, Miss Quill. Yarrow was already fascinated with Norse mythology as a younger man: he told me he had always harboured a desire to be like Thor."

"Not the Chris Hemsworth version, I take it?"

"… unlikely. In any case - he introduced the concept of fighting for a reward beyond the physical after the Purity. Actually, he spoke about it in an entirely personal manner. He believed that his reward for fighting the good fight would be Valhalla. The rest of us… simply followed his lead."

"Why?"

"Even in the beginning, the HLF were not altogether popular. I understand why, of course, but still - think about these fighters, unwilling to simply abandon the HLF because they don't trust the PHL, or the ponies, but wanting to feel like they won't be fighting for nothing. Yarrow gave them - gave us - the chance to feel like we were fighting for something. Besides. At the worst of times, people need something to believe in. People, religion, themselves…”

"It sounds like Yarrow gave them all three."

"You might say that - Yarrow for Valhalla, after all. And the notion of humanity - we are human: our blood spills for the defence of the innocent and the knowledge of reward beyond the immediate. Without that…"

"Do the Reavers still believe it?"

"The Reavers will never stop believing. No one seems to understand that - but then again, our beliefs don't require understanding from others."

“I want to understand.”

“Do you?”

“I wouldn't ask if I didn't.”

“Then I’ll begin. I suggest you listen - and take notes.”

The Reavers believed - believe, one should say - that their deeds were meaningless in life. Yarrow, well aware of the HLF’s reputation, knew that those who followed him might never be recognised for their deeds. It would seem he constructed a cult that allowed for his soldiers to feel a sense of accomplishment without requiring outside validation.

Yarrow constructed a strict code of conduct for combat: this code called (though perhaps ‘calls’ might be more appropriate) for no mercy to those deemed one’s enemies, but crucially - and differently from most HLF - it was also strict about the definition of ‘enemy’. No civilian casualties unless absolutely unavoidable, and a strict ban on engaging the PHL in any manner. The enemy are defined as ‘Imperial Ponies, PER and traitors’. Interestingly, this definition seemed to cover HLF Yarrow deemed ‘mediocre dogs’ more than it meant other humans or ponies.

When the HLF exodus began, many might have expected the Reavers to jump ship and join the PHL. Not one member of that group did - only Viktor Kraber, alone amongst the defectors, could ever claim to have worked with them in any length.

In the immediate aftermath of the PHL's destruction of Defiance, the Reavers - who up until that point had been strictly focused on PER and Empire - simply disappeared. There were no actions, no attacks, no nothing. Only a handful of members of the group ever resurfaced. Yarrow himself was rumoured to have been killed, though the circumstances are classified.

Name: Peter McReady.
Nationality: British.
Crimes: HLF Membership, assault, resisting arrest.

Peter McReady was captured at the head of a group including noted Reavers Erin Hansen, Jenny Jameson and Heinrich Brennan.

"Rither and Idle didn't send me. I came of my own accord. I want that clear before we start."

"Why?"

"Because he'd be ashamed."

"Idle?"

"Yarrow."

"That matters to you - even now?"

"Of course it does. Yarrow gave me purpose again - I haven't had that since I left the SAS. Me, Preston, Carlisle - we had something to follow again."

"Then why leave?"

"I'm an Odinson. Our job was to protect Yarrow. We failed. Preston's content staying put, following Idle and Rither, and that's fair. Me? I needed to make sure."

"Make sure of what?"

"It's kind really - that he died how he did, that he didn't live to see what he was afraid of most. He was broken. He thought that he'd failed us - Gods bless that man, he brought us to safety, bled for us, but he was so ashamed that he couldn't… that he couldn't…"

"That he couldn't what?"

"Do me a favour, PHL. I had a camera with a recording. He made it before the end but he couldn't send it. He wanted it to be known."

"I'll see what I can do - now tell me. Why did you…?"

"Come out here? Because Yarrow wanted us to be remembered. If we have to come out here, put down PER dogs and spray paint a wall… if that's all we can do… then we owed him it. Rither followed the letter of his last orders. I'm following the spirit."

The video in question is of Maximilian Yarrow himself, sat in his room. The location is unknown. This is the transcript: it provides the only clue to the circumstances of his death.

"My name is Maxi Yarrow. I am the head of the Reavers. It has been my privilege - my honour - to lead the finest men and women the Gods could ever have provided me into battle. It has been my solemn duty to try to keep them safe, and to make sure their sacrifices are remembered. I regret to say that I have failed in that duty.

"You'll forget us when the histories are written. Don't lie and say otherwise - you will. You'll decide we were all evil. You'll decide that the only men who stayed true to the name were the mad-dogs and the psychopaths. Worst thing is I don't know if I blame you. I should have been faster, or more decisive. I should have made a stand sooner, or… hell, truth is I don't know. There are days where I don't believe it matters anymore - I was doomed from the start and I led these good people to hell with me. I hate saying it but it's true.

"You're going to forget that we fought for you. You're going to forget our names. When the war graves are dug and the statues get erected, none of the names of the good folk I let die fighting the good fight will ever get on there.

"And so, because you're going to forget, I must make you remember. If you're watching this tape… if you give even the slightest shit about the truth, as opposed to just whitewashing your history to make it easy for you… then that's what you can do. You can listen to me. You can remember.

"I am Maximilian Yarrow. These are the names of the men and women who've died, not just for me, but for humanity.

(He proceeds to read over seven hundred and forty names. For the sake of brevity, I list only a few.)

Richard Thompson - died on the Purity.
Sandra Bennett - died on the Purity.
Will Bryant - ponified and killed on the Purity.
Kim Dillinger - died on the Cain run.
Alexander West - died on the Cain run.
Fred Iverson - died on the Cain run.
Rex Mayhew - killed fighting Imperial Creed.
Soren Bergstrom - killed fighting Imperial Creed.
Carl Greene - killed fighting Imperial Creed.
Wolfgang Brennan - killed while on a scouting run by PHL, innocent of any crime.
Jacques Dupont - killed defending civilians in the First Battle of Montreal.
David Thames - saved from Ponification by a bullet to the head, First Battle of Montreal.
Andrew Reichs - ponified at First Battle of Montreal, location unknown.
Eric Grey - killed defending civilians in the First Battle of Montreal.
Andrea MacMurdo - Shot down by Fillydelphia at First Battle of Montreal while hijacking a potioneer ship, all hands lost.
Edward Stark - died on the Fillydelphia.

(Eventually the list finishes)

"These people… my friends… have given up everything to follow me. I tried to lead them. They would say I succeeded but, if I had, this would not be necessary.

(There is a pause)

"Now the PHL have come to ask for my help. Once again they want to use me and mine as tools, once again the mediocre will beg the brave to lay down their lives for no reward. Part of me wishes I could tell them to fuck off, that I could keep my people safe… but safety is an illusion. A watchword for cowards and dogs. They sneer at my brave children, this Yael Ze'ev and her invisible friend, Vicky Kraber the rabid attack dog, all the ones he ripped out of the HLF and even these boys that came with them who think all we are is nothing. They sneer at the sacrifices we made. They think we're fools or cowards or worse. They say, 'the joke is that the HLF could be reformed' - as though all the HLF were like Lovikov, as though me and mine do not exist. That me and mine have bled for them does not enter their calculations - they see only what they want to see. Three letters tainted by a mad dog.

"Let them think what they want.

"We will ride to war one last time. We will fight their battles for them. We will win their battles for them. We will show them our fire and they will tremble in fear and awe as they see how good men and women choose to end. We are the ones who ride the storm that carries us to the gates of glory. We are the ones who will blot out the sun with the clouds of thunder. We are the ones whose deeds will echo beyond the mortal coil until dust and ashes are all that is left of the edifices of child killers and whitewashers and liars. We are the Reavers. We are HLF. We are human - and it is time for us to ride to Valhalla!"

Never Could Have Been Worse

As the war became harsher, the HLF, like a cornered animal, snapped at anyone and everything that crossed its path. At least as early as summer of 2021, attacks on civilians were rare enough that the HLF had plausible deniability.

Towards early winter, however, things began to change. Thaumometeorologists such as Thunderwing, the second-in-command of famed Stampede Fleet captain Rebecca Kleiner, refer to an event in winter of 2020-21, the Cloudsdale Cold Snap. Said ‘Snap’ was a supernaturally cold winter designed in Cloudsdale to freeze out humanity and make them more amenable to potion. In a time of limited resources, confusion, violence, and listlessness among expats all over the world, it was devastating.

According to leaked Equestrian Resistance documents, the Snap was abandoned for harming Equestrian colonies in what was once Europe, but the damage had been done. Travel had been nearly halted due to the below-freezing temperatures, and there was a near-complete communication breakdown in the Americas.

Thankfully, all was not lost. The Snap made local human governments much more willing to use PHL-improved infrastructure in spite of the now-disproven Imperial propaganda stating magic was harmful to human tissue. As such, distribution of watered-down PHL tech to cities within reach, such as improvements to power plants made by the famed pegasus Macroburst with improvements by Heliotrope, improved heating systems, and a rationing program augmented by PHL-engineered high-yield crops made the winter survivable to anyone under the PHL’s umbrella, clustered in the overpopulated and overbuilt cities and towns that had become their refuge. There were complaints about lowered effectiveness of the generators, turbines, solar panels, and other devices distributed, but few complained about their inclusion.

Most HLF, however, had sequestered themselves away from cities and placed themselves on the frontline near the Barrier, avoiding ponies. The winter, however, proved this a spectacularly bad idea, especially with the introduction of more durable newfoal strains, thaumic shields, and their choices to inhabit areas far away from civilization.

These tendencies were amplified in the winter of 2022-23, widely regarded as the first sign that things weren't going to get any better.

Name: Ronald Noland
Nationality: English
Crimes: Armed robbery, murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, torture, vandalism, theft of a PHL weapon
Status: Incarcerated in China

(Note: Interview given July 25, 2023, and later incorporated into the article ‘Many Faces of Mankind’ as part of Project Samizdat)

“Even in prison, you can’t get any fuckin’ rest. Say… is there a way I can get sent into the military, Ms. Quill?”

“That was outlawed. During your Korean War, almost seventy years ago.”

“Not for long it won’t be.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“They tried to use newfoals as slave labor last year in America. If we’re desperate enough to use the fuckin’ zombies as labor, and with how it worked out last time, the government will conscript me into something.”

“What made you keep stealing from trains and cars?”

“That winter was hellish. Our leaders kept saying we’d be fine where we were as vanguards against the invasion, and we’d been prohibited from taking residence in town or else we’d be considered an invading enemy. That winter might have been a monster, but the PHL, the government, they made a bad situation worse. We had to steal from people to survive, we had to! We needed food, and we couldn’t buy enough! We needed ammo, fuel…”

“We all did things during that winter that we weren’t proud of. What made you continue?”

“We were well aware of how outgunned we were. We didn’t have enough of anything! But soon… even into summer, the raids got to be almost an addiction. Maybe it was necessary, but we kept doing bigger and bigger raids.”

Final Say

Currently the Human Liberation Front is fractured, with a majority of the group's leaders and members either killed, ponified, or incarcerated, while a number have defected to the PHL, or just destroying itself by poor planning, overconfidence, and internal power struggles with each other. The group is a shadow of its former self, one that many hope dies in the near future.

With the major world leaders backing the PHL for their continued advancement of military technology and doctrine, success in both the field of battle and behind enemy lines, the HLF has all but been forgotten as a group needed to win the war. Soldiers from Marcus Renee’s taskforce and the world over have been near unanimous in their agreement that the HLF is a greater threat to itself and humanity than those they claim to fight, even in their weakened state. One anonymous soldier even claimed that their purpose was to soak up ponification potion so the real warriors could go in for the kill.

The once sought out position that the HLF so desperately wanted to prove their merit to the world fell out their reach before it even had a chance. And if they had any fragment of a chance, they took every possible opportunity to sabotage it, to the point that it became near-memetic to claim that they were the biggest threat to human-pony cooperation.

And yet, even for all their depravities and the lows to which they sunk, even the worst HLF members weren’t hated as much as another group, far more terrifying in their unfamiliarity and capacity for underhanded tactics.

The PER.

PER

Author's Notes:

Once again, thank you; redskin122004, Kizuna Tallis and Doctor Fluffy.

The PER

Full Title: Ponification For Earth’s Rebirth

Founder: Doctor Jacqueline Dionna Reitman (medical license revoked, currently in custody awaiting execution)

Group Creation Date: Unknown (estimated to be around autumn 2018)

Current status: Fractured (leadership and majority of members scattered following the assault and subsequent nuking of Washington D.C. and harsher crackdowns on Solar Empire sympathizers) Strongholds found throughout the Pacific, Stampede Fleet lead by Captain Kleiner slowly whittling them away.

Quite possibly the most despised faction of the Conversion War, the PER were pro-Solar Empire humans and ponies who conspired to bring humanity at large to its knees . Even the HLF at their worst never reached the depths of depravity of the PER, who indiscriminately targeted people from all walks of life, all in the name of “saving” the human race. They were also known to kidnap ponies to “save” them from being allegedly corrupted by humanity, either throwing them to the Solar Empire’s gulags or to the infamously hellish re-education centers. One pony, Trim Bonsai, who had taken up residence in Japan once joked that between them and the HLF, he was “between a rock and a hard place, both rushing at me.”

There are few, if any PER left, because in the presence of most anyone that did not support the Solar Empire, their lifespan was best measured in minutes.

The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions

Before the war, the amount of times the Solar Tyrant made public appearances, known as Queen Celestia at the time, totalled three times before her declaration of war.

First time was introducing herself and her world to the Earth.

The second time was at the UN building to sign an agreement and join Earth in "friendship".

The last time was at a medical conference held in Osaka, Japan.

There, she met a bright, long established doctor that will go down in history as one of the most hated people in Earth’s history, on par with the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Little is known on why the Tyrant desired to have a human face for the PER, and many things about the days before the war are shrouded in mystery. But meeting one Doctor Jacqueline Dionna Reitman was the beginning of a road that would paved with the bodies of millions, if not billions.

Interview with Doctor Jacqueline Dionna Reitman.

“Hello, welcome back to Good Morning America. With me today is a very well respected member of the medical community who is pushing for a new 'miracle' cure coming from the magical world of Equestria, and from what I’ve seen, it’s quite impressive. Doctor Jacqueline Dionna Reitman everyone."

*polite cheers and clapping*

Doctor Reitman is a woman in her forties, though she looks almost thirty, and she has curly auburn hair. Her brown eyes are framed by glasses, her skin clear. She is the picture of professionalism. She’s well dressed for the occasion. "Hello, everyone, thank you for having me here today. It’s quite an honor.”

"Now then, Doctor-"

"Please, Jacqueline is fine."

"Oh! Okay then, Jacqueline. You are making waves in the medical community for pushing the strange new medicine, or 'potion' as they say in Equestria, known as the ponification potion. Tell me, why are you pushing for such thing?"

“Because I believe it can make everything better. It can wash away your imperfections, and allow you to achieve your fullest potential,” Reitman smiles. “This potion actually cleanses away debilitating diseases, and even heals the crippled in mind and body. You see, despite advancements in modern medicine to treat cancer, prevention tactics, genetic testing for vulnerabilities to certain ailments like Huntington’s and Parkinson’s, we haven’t found full cures. There is also the issue of those who are physically crippled, be it losing a limb in an accident, or a soldier losing a leg because he stepped on a mine, or sufferers of paralysis, or even something like being blind or deaf. This potion gets rid of all of these ailments and corrects these physical impairments, giving people a second chance at living life once again.”

"I see, I see. Still, a big question still remains is why such a cure needs to change something so drastic just to give the patient a fighting chance? I mean, I’m sure most of us would like to keep our hands, for instance."

Reitman smiles again. “It can be inconvenient, not having opposable thumbs, but the fact that the ponies have built an entire civilization and even cities quite similar to our own makes it clear they’ve been able to get along fine, and there are already many ponies more than willing to help anyone who’s changed be able to readjust and still do the things they like, with certain accommodations of course.”

"There is still the issue of changing the body of the patient. Is there something that goes on? A trade of sorts, if I am reading the situation correctly?"

"The potion makes these changes due to giving the patient a 'clean slate'. Regrowing an arm is far more painful due to our lack of magic, plus the fact of our said lack of magic is deadly to us. The potion works in steps. First is the change itself, which actually requires less magic than you believe. Enough that it is tolerable and not hurt the patient. The second step is the actual healing magic. Even with magic, there is a trade off. Walk on four legs, while gaining the ability to fly, use magic, or gain incredible strength. Or be miserable and in pain for months or years?”

"Of course. Still, I would have believed that magic would not be limited by such a thing."

"Magic is still something the ponies study; it’s like a science to them,” Reitman smirks. "But the magic is limited to us. Our bodies cannot handle it, or else they will fall apart. And I do mean fall apart at a molecular level. It’s our bodies that limit the use of magic. Something that the potion can solve indefinitely."

Behind the Scenes

What information gained showed that Reitman had been busy after her meeting with the Tyrant. Meeting with various medical practitioners around the world.

Always with a white unicorn pony with an orange-pink mane and gold-rimmed glasses by her side, and always to doctors with a rather specific mental profile. Vague yet workable dislike of humanity, pessimism, ecological awareness, all were criteria she looked for.

These meetings would always end the same. The doctors changed their practice from healing to simply giving most of their patients a bottle of potion. With most of these doctors being well respected and liked, no one really questioned why, save for organizations like the Food and Drug Administration.

Until they received a visit from Dr. Reitman herself.

They made almost a complete 180 that aroused the suspicion of many.The FDA began dropping cases filed against the doctors en masse, being insistent, some would say far too insistent, that the potion was completely harmless. Some said it was charisma; others said she and her unicorn assistant, and possibly Celestia herself had a peculiar force about them. Of course, now we know.

They had used magic to convince the organizations and people that they visited. They would look into the minds of officials with authority on the subject, subtly rearranging things so they would be more amenable to the use of potion

About six months after it was made for public distribution, almost several millions of people were changed, and a small movement called the HTF, also known as the Harriet Thomas Foundation, began in response to people’s concerns over the newfoals’ personality changes.

Though both pro-Equestrian and pro-human factions were in their infancy, nowhere near the juggernauts of world policy they would become, both were impossible to ignore. “Is it all truly an accident?” pro-human activists asked. “Hell of a convenient one at that.” Or something to that effect.

“Ponify yourselves, or it will swallow you!” the pro-Equestrian activists would say. Small wonder that they found themselves at loggerheads so quickly.

Others took Dr. Reitman’s praise of Equestria as something holy almost. They came to believe the arrival of Equestria was a sign of humanity’s future.

Or rather, lack thereof. It turned into something almost cult-like, almost religious, and Dr. Reitman was their high priestess. They started saying that ponies were better than humans, that everyone would be so much happier as ponies, even as the first reports of the generally off-putting nature of newfoals slowly filtered into public consciousness.

They believed the barrier would purify the world of taint, corruption and pollution, and the ponies would bring true heaven to earth. That it would all be reborn into something newer, and better. And then they, in a fit of lunatic self-loathing, denounced their humanity, and dedicated themselves to carrying on the work of the Equestrians. They would “save” humanity from its shackles and vices, whether it wanted to be saved or not.

And the slogan would become their name.

Ponification for Earth’s Rebirth.

Name: Dr. Ernst Kasparek
Nationality: Latvia, born in Riga.
Status: Currently institutionalized in Ecuador, expected to make a full recovery.

When looking at Ernst Kasparek, one would never figure him for a man who changed the face of the war. He’s small at five foot three, his face is that pale grayish-white indeterminate smooth that comes from youth, graceful aging, and heavy medication, and his prematurely white hair is thin and wispy. He is wheelchair bound, slumped and sinking into his chair. Tremors wrack his thin body as he coughs and coughs. Unrelated to all this is the metal plate in his skull.

One would never figure him for a man who walked among such greats as Cheerilee, Marcus Renee, Stephan Bauer, Trixie Lulamoon, and other heavy hitters of the PHL. Or the man who stayed on Earth in the two weeks before the invasion of Equestria, for the simple reason that “Should not put eggs in one basket! PHL there already getting better weapons - I don’t want everyone left to be hopeless outclassed!” and personally delivered enhanced weaponry and armor to Cheerilee, Viktor Kraber, and other soldiers of the PHL before the Battle of Canterlot.

His room is a virtual art gallery, full of photos and paintings of his home city of Riga, overlapping in a vast collage of memories. The Cathedral Dome, next to pictures of music festivals. A river, quite likely the Daugava, takes up one wall, lined with pictures of buildings in its unique Eastern European style. At some points, the river appears to be frozen, at others, it is quite clearly summer. There are photos of boats crudely pasted onto the river. Yet, in the middle of it all, in the middle of this shrine to the city he so loved, is Ernst Kasparek himself, playing a videogame. His voice is peculiarly stretched and hoarse, in that manner that can make your eyes water of their own accord.

He has earned his rest, in this psychiatric hospital in Ecuador. He looks for all the world like a kindly, content middle-aged man, minus the rampant guilt and PTSD.

First question into our interview, his face darkens.

“Reitman?” his eyes narrow. “Whack that evil whore for all the crap she put the world through, you’ve got to rip off her head and piss in her skull!”

While I admitted that sort of thing might be up someone else's alley, it was not my cup of tea. I frown at him at his raspy growl before giving a soft cough, this is not why I am here.

“Everyone say in the beginning, ‘We had good intention!’“ Dr. Kasparek says, adopting a mock-protesting tone that makes my eyes water from its wet raspy tone. “Fuck my intention.”

“What was the PER like before the war?”

“Vicious goddamn cult worshiping pony,” Dr. Kasparek says. If anyone has a right to be bitter, it’s him. “I… stay with PER. Almost three years I stay. Not sure if out of fear or not. I saw and did things that your news may have covered. May have not. Either way, I would much prefer not tell you. I was scared by what I saw turn into, but I wanted to help! I wanted to make the world better. Instead, I help kill off two thirds of the world.”

“What made you wish to leave them?”

“I felt left behind,” Dr. Kasparek says simply. “Have never been too susceptible to Equestrian mind magic. Perhaps the plate in my head that scrambles it somehow. Most of my family was newfoals, because I had urged them on. My daughter, Rebecca, ran away before I could try and fill her head of the junk. Is somewhere in America, raising funds to rebuild. Will never speak to me.”

Tears began to stream down his face. “They… try… love me. They try, even as newfoals. They fail, even as everyone tells me ‘Ernst, we need your hands to craft this.’ I sit at a workbench, creating gear for pony soldier. I make armor that looks like Orokin, because it is all shiny and gold while untold millions suffer, while I sit back and watch them enhance them further. No thanks, just a grunt of what could be approval. PER says that forcing ponies to use dirty tools of humanity is wrong, beneath them. I am unloved. Unappreciated. Working for ponies who will consider me less than cannon fodder. Among ponies who ignore my advice, simply because I remain human, they are pony. And after awhile, I feel doubt. I see what my work is used for. I see them…. use potion within pinatas. I see conversion of babies in hospitals. Bombing of cities and destruction of history. I am lied to - I ask ponies to salvage artwork or anything of humanity worth keeping. Continually, they. Say. NOTHING. It was like goddamn… abyss. Despair all while. You reach a point where you ask if it is really worth it. And no. It wasn’t. In third year, I emigrated.”

"To where?"

“Wherever PER was not. I poured over the news. Documents. Anything. Anyone willing to cooperate. Anyone who still trusted magic. Finally, I decide on the group that everyone thought would fail, the PHL. They're too idealistic, everyone said. Humans and ponies couldn’t trust each other, they said. Not enough pull compared to other groups, they said. Expected to fail with in a year, blatantly spies, things like that. Yet… they were open-minded enough that they wouldn’t kill on sight, and they were refreshingly honest. If that wouldn’t work, I would make my way to Brazil. So one night, I take a shotgun and steal plane to America. I load the plane with stolen enhanced armor, and fly. Land in Florida with a near-empty tank, rent a car, and drive. Next thing I knew, I have HLF member with a gun in my face - I protest. I do everything possible to get away, taken a bullet to the shoulder. Hurt like hell. I take it to New York, the city where Lyra was staying, of course. Rumored where a PHL headquarters was being built. Had contacted her, made plans to deliver her some enchanted gear. Imperial Ponies teleport around me; PER broke my legs in fight beyond repair.” he gestured to his wheelchair. “Fought them off with a shotgun. Used cruise control to get to the city. Was bitch to use off highways.”

He sighs. “Then was attacked again. They must have realized what I was doing as they seemed to dog me until I crashed. I thought I was done and over with. To fail once again. I remember watching a new foal standing over me and readying a potion when she appeared."

"She pushed him off, her saddle bag open up and half a dozen arms sprang out, all of them with guns in hand. She jumped around, running around with those guns going off and taking them down, batting spells out of existence with her arms and beating of those that got too close. Then her would-be guardian show up and take care of the rest. You… You and Lyra. Like angels. I can remember that day. You stared at me, trying to crawl to my shotgun, and said ‘So you’re the man trying to smuggle that PER equipment?’ And I told both of you that… I gave up on PER. Was like someone took all the souls in them and left a giant void in the shape of a smile. Then Lyra walked up to me and told me that they needed to take my sorry ass to the hospital. I... that mare is too kind, she should have left me to die."

"Lyra saw someone in trouble. Wouldn't be the first time she has done something like that."

"All I have to say that it was you two that finally made me realize what we could accomplish."

"Lyra I can understand. Me? I'm no one."

"Says the man that is destined to save us all from a living death..."

"What?"

"Ignore the ramblings of a guilt-ridden old man. I grow tired, Colonel. Please. Allow me to rest my eyes. Just… remember, Colonel. Remember who you are to all those that you lead."

A House in Flames

“This ain’t war, but the breaking of seals. The undoing of life itself.”
Captain (then Chief Warrant Officer) Rebecca Kleiner, on the Battle of Washington D.C.

While the HLF had the subtlety of a chainsaw, were considered a threat to general human-pony cooperation and were known to brazenly advertise their doings all over the internet, the PER were more of an underground movement. The struck from the shadows, and used every advantage to ensure the largest possible amount of converted humans. Entire cities had the potential to be quarantined thanks to them. They infiltrated buildings such as retirement homes, maternity wards, daycare centers, and anywhere that a large numbers of relatively defenseless humans lived, taking large numbers of what were branded easy targets, including the poor, the homeless, cripples and defenseless elderly people and children. Some PER members were even known to tamper with everyday objects that would ensure a person would come into contact with the potion. The worst known cases were when birthday parties and other social gatherings full of people ended up getting ponified.

Over the course of 2019 to the early quarter of 2020, it didn’t escape the notice of anyone that there had been a string of disappearances and kidnappings going on throughout the US, Canada, and Mexico, though numerous statisticians had noted that the kidnappings fitting the pattern had actually dated back before Equestria’s Conversion Bureaus and Ponification potion. The PHL had just begun to establish itself as a bona fide military force and official military forces were already busy with evacuations and fighting off Equestrian forces. Local law enforcement and the FBI’s abilities to solve these crimes and arrest PER agents were a mixed bag, yielding less than savory results. Newfoals were easier to get rid of due to their highly conspicuous nature and personality, but human members were masters at blending into the underbelly, and expansive areas of wilderness made it harder to reach those newfoals that were able to hide more successfully.

As the official war raged on and the HLF gained attention from the authorities for their extreme methods and disregard for collateral damage and life, the PER had gained enough newfoals at its disposal and enough ponification serum, though where they gotten such things is beyond anyone’s guess. In June 2020, they decided enough was enough, and decided to strike fast and hard into a place where they knew they could “help” their Equestrian masters and destroy one of the major cogs in humanity’s war machine.

Washington D.C.

It was unknown if they planned the entire attack around the same time every American official was present in the White House or if they just got lucky. What is known was that they attacked and they attacked with force unheard of before.

Thousands of newfoals, smuggled across the country by human PER members along with ponification potions came down on Washington D.C. They struck as one and within minutes of launching the attack, the entire city was embroiled in a war of survival. Thousands of innocents were potioned in the first hour alone and converted into newfoals in the effort to bring down the human war effort in the Americas.

White House Secret Service agents were unable to evacuate President Davis and the dozens of officials, including one Colonel Renee and Cheerilee Cherry. However, the White House managed to hold out for several hours against the horde of new foals thanks to dozens of defenses along with a small group of PHL ponies helping them.

American troops and armor were unable to make a push for the White House due to the growing numbers, even having growing trouble in containing the rising threat when the call went out to fall back a safe distance. It was likely this battle that would make even the most hard-line human generals so receptive to magical enhancement, as it showcased humanity’s disadvantages. While human forces had the upper hand in strategic and technological advantages, ponies of the Empire had more than enough numbers to simply overwhelm humanity, and the magic to make it wholly possible to require a magazine of unenhanced ammo to kill an Imperial pony. Granted, those were rare incidents, but humans were growing irritated and tired of how hard it was to take them down. It also didn’t help that the newfoals’ lack of survival instinct, willingness to ignore pain receptors, and tendency to keep going despite their injuries made it either a waste of bullets or a waste of time to shoot for the center of mass. This is also likely responsible for the trend of human militaries resorting to higher-caliber weaponry, switching out lighter assault rifles for heavier battle rifles, and so on and so forth.

President Davis called Washington D.C. a lost city and proceeded to call in for multiple nuclear strikes at the country's capital, if only to keep out a foothold for the Tyrant as information came in that a permanent portal station was being set up at the Washington Monument.

It was a move that was horrifyingly similar to what happened a year earlier in North Korea. While the President and a few others escaped, it is unknown to this day just how many people were still inside the city or trying to escape when the bombs fell.

Some people tried to reassure themselves by saying that the people there were already dead, with so many newfoals and ponies nearby. It didn’t help.

In the ensuing months, any PER members that weren’t a part of the Washington D.C. assault were ruthlessly hunted down as the entire country was out for blood. Law enforcement and military forces began to conduct citywide searches; homes, warehouses, office complexes were thoroughly searched and cleared. Forest regions were scanned from the air and the ground, mountains and cave systems explored. Any feasible hiding spot found itself in the light.

And so did the scores of PER bases. Newfoals were killed on sight. What few human members were dragged out, many of them tortured for days on end before they were killed. While militaries frowned on torture, it was unlikely that anyone would come up to defend PER agents. And nobody, save for other PER agents, did.

Then, on April 2021, thanks to an anonymous tip from a PER informant, the former Doctor Jacqueline Reitman was discovered with her unicorn assistant Catseye and several others in a makeshift settlement in the abandoned town of Agua Caliente, Arizona. The plan was to stay there to recuperate before leaving on a plane to a base in the Aleutian Islands.

A joint force consisting of the US military, the FBI and several vouched HLF members came down on the settlement like the wrath of God. Of note is that it was the last operation where the US military and the FBI worked alongside the HLF groups, as they simply destroyed the town. By the end of it, the settlement had been so thoroughly bombarded with artillery and small-arms fire that it was uncertain there had ever been a settlement of any kind there, with every newfoal killed and most human PER agents captured, suffering from severe wounds.

Jacqueline Reitman herself attempted to escape the assault with Catseye and several of her closest followers. SWAT officers and a pair of US Marines found the group quickly however, and the former Doctor Reitman was immediately arrested and taken to a high security prison in northern Arizona. Catseye and Reitman’s other associates, meanwhile, died from their severe injuries from the earlier assault.

Video tape from the interrogation

The room is well lit, and in the center is a large table. Jacqueline Reitman is in an orange jumpsuit, her wrists in handcuffs. She looks thinner, less nourished than she was when she first pushed for the potion, and has bags under her eyes. Her hair is stringy and matted down with oil, sweat, and dirt. There is a large bandage on her face, and her hands appear to be bruised. She is being interrogated by FBI Agent Mamjudar Whitman.

Whitman: “You were quite the hard woman to find, Ms. Reitman. Do you know that? All the money, bullets, and men we used on the hunt for you…”

Reitman says nothing, her eyes cast downwards, just looking at the table.

Whitman: “Come on. No need to be so defensive - hell, you’re lucky we didn’t just decide we had terrible aim when trying to detain you, or hand you over to the HLF. You can just tell they were sharpening their knives for you, men and women who just wanted to work over you for hours...”

Reitman still says nothing.

Whitman: “Every moment that you just fucking sit there will just make the pain worse. And… I could say that you happened to resist. I mean, sure, you’re tied to a chair and everything, but who’s gonna believe anyone in this room? Me, or the woman who probably has a body count to put Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin’s combined killings to shame at this point, after ripping out their free will and turning them into borderline-mindless automatons? Wait, wait… don’t answer that, I think that’s the sound of me answering my own question.”

Reitman: “...Why? Why are you doing this? Why can't you embrace ponification?”

Whitman: “I’ll tell you why. Because almost a year ago, I lost my family to your little disciples when they attacked Washington. I don’t know whether or not they died as themselves, and I know I’m not the only one. Because thanks to your goddamn insanity, there’s millions of orphans, widows, and people who don’t have any families left. Because twenty minutes before the bombs came down, I got a phone call from my daughter, and she had to hang up because PER agents were coming. Angel racked the slide on the pistol, and that’s all I know. Whether she became a newfoal or not, she’s probably dead either way. Now I know what you’re probably thinking. That’s a terrible idea, putting a guy like this in the interrogation. But here’s the thing - none of them give a shit. Everyone just wants to see you suffer, and they would fucking cheer if I made you and all your Hitler Youth cronies die staring at their own lungs as I rip them from their chests.”

Reitman: “You’re wrong, you know.”

Whitman: “Well, I guess there’s probably someone up there thinking ‘Dear God, what have we unleashed?! We’ve created a monster! A terrible, handsome monster, he’s gonna strangle her with his watch chain!’ but then, I get the feeling that they’ll just stop caring as soon as I do this.”

*Whitman randomly punches Doctor Reitman. There is an audible crack.*

Whitman: “See that, guys? Remember who I just punched!”

Colonel Renee walked in and pulled Whitman off Reitman.

Colonel Renee: "Out."

Whitman: “But-”

Colonel Renee: "I said get out now before I throw you onto the first plane out on a suicide mission. And no, I don't give a flying shit you are a civilian, or that you’re FBI, or that you apparently have no goddamn notion of decency. You want to be a badass, you get to be a badass against an opponent that fights back. Get out! Now!"

Whitman: “Worth it.”

Colonel Renee: “Whitman, you fucking-”

*Colonel Renee grabbed Whitman, looping his arm around the neck and began to choke him out while dragging him to the door. Whitman struggles against the hold, only to pass out. Colonel Renee drags him to the door and throws him into the hall. He proceeds to sit back down and crosses his fingers as he looks at Reitman.*

Colonel Renee: "Well, well, well, color me surprised when I get a call telling me that they found you. Now, I could start off this meeting by punching the shit out of you, but that would just feel… kind of empty, to be honest. If I do that, humanity loses and we’re the HLF in all but name."

Reitman: "Are you expecting a thank you? A tearful apology? Do not wait for it. I will not do it now or ever. I did what I did because it was the right thing to do."

*Colonel Renee leaned in close*

Colonel Renee: "And who gave you that right? The Tyrant-"

Reitman: "Queen Celestia. Her name is-"

Colonel Renee: "I couldn't give a damn if her name is the Sugarplum Fairy Princess of Ice Cream Mountain. She had no right to pass judgment.

*Reitman struggled against her restraints, clearly wanting to jump on the Colonel and claw his eyes out.*

Reitman: (shouting) “She’s a goddess, a superior being! Superior beings - truly superior beings - can do things that if a lesser being, like a human, were to do, it would indeed be evil!"

Colonel Renee: "Hah! So a self-proclaimed goddess has a free pass to do what she wants because she is 'superior'. What a bullshit answer."

Reitman: "She is currently winning this so-called war. All you are doing is prolonging-"

Colonel Renee: "The inevitable? I seem to be thinking differently. I have a few reports that say otherwise. After all, the native ponies siding with the Tyrant is dwindling and the few she has in positions of power are being killed off. And thanks to Dr. Kasparek’s defection, we’re already in the process of making our own magic."

*Colonel Renee pulled away.*

Colonel Renee: "Won’t be long before we start wielding magic of our own. Some ponies in R&D are even talking about making guns that can kill the Tyrant. It’s just a question of materials. Lyra has been a very busy mare after all."

Reitman: (scowls) "The Betrayer will get hers in due time. This world is ending, Colonel. It will be best if you join the herd."

*Colonel Renee raises an eyebrow before giving a bark of laughter.*

Colonel Renee: "Join the herd? Tell me, Reitman. If you wanted all of humanity to join the herd, why haven't you gone pony yet?"

*Reitman blinks in surprise, opening her mouth before closing it. Confusion spreads across her face. It is as if she has never considered the notion.*

Colonel Renee: "Looks like the Tyrant did more than scramble your brain. Tell me - if I dropped a bottle of potion in your hand right now and gave you a chance to drink it, would you?"

*Reitman stares, her mouth opening and closing before answering.*

Reitman: "I would potion you."

Colonel Renee: "And if I wasn't here?"

Reitman: "I would potion whoever’s in your place."

Colonel Renee: "And if it was a pony?"

Reitman: “I’d… I’d… I’d…”

*She looks completely unable to comprehend that.*

Colonel Renee: “Now remember, it’s a PHL pony.”

*He seemed to have touched a nerve. She starts struggling against her restraints again, shouting and snarling at the colonel.*

Reitman: “You corrupted them! You robbed them of their souls, what makes them pure! Your soulless technology, lowbrow excuses for entertainment, your violent movies, video games that rob away intelligence and compassion! Your science does nothing but hurt nature! Your culture is sick, diseased, everything needs to be-”

Colonel Renee: “Well then, what does that say about you? You are human too. You went on TV for your interviews; you’ve probably driven cars; used computers, and many other things. You and your sycophants holed yourselves up in the ruins of an abandoned human town. On top of that, you’re a doctor… of human medical science, no less.”

Reitman: “I didn’t choose to be be born human! I had to make my way in the world, and I hated every minute of being human! I-”

Colonel Renee: “Then take the potion, you hypocrite. Just become a peaceful pony. Which reminds me, how are ponies peaceful if they started this war? Or if they throw themselves at machinegun nests?”

Reitman: “They didn’t start it! They were offering everyone the perfect gift! Your refusal of Celestia’s grace is what started this war!”

Colonel Renee: “Alright then, how about this - if ponies are peaceful and perfect, why did they respond with force? A perfect being should be kind and merciful, after all. And they would understand that a no means no. Let’s see… allegedly, they’re supposed to be kind and generous, and this war is neither. It’s done nothing but destroy. Unless you consider tearing apart families, incalculable amounts of dollars worth in homes, businesses, landmarks and buildings getting vaporized, and the subsequent displacement of people, and years of history, art and accomplishments getting swept under the rug to be generosity.”

*Now Doctor Reitman is at a total loss for words. The look on her face is of utter shock, as if her whole worldview has been destroyed.*

Colonel Renee: "Hmph. Thought so. Just another goddamn puppet. I'm done here. Oh yeah, before I go... When this war is over, I will personally have you buried in the darkest hole I can find. A quick death would frankly be too easy and too good for you."

*As the colonel leaves, Reitman is twitching and spasming against her restraints while screaming wildly at him.*

Reitman: “Come back here and face me, you coward! Mark my words, you will bow to Celestia sooner or later! You are but an ant in comparison to her!!”

*Colonel Renee ignored her as she rambles on, her screaming becoming more incoherent and words jumbled. Before long she appears to be having a seizure, and she lets out odd noises. Someone figures out that she is attempting to swallow her own tongue. A nearby doctor sticks a shot into her arm, sedating her.*

Growing Radicalization

Upon Dr. Reitman’s incarceration, the PER became splintered, but increasingly more radical to make up for its decreased numbers. There were those that attempted to infiltrate prisons all across the state of Arizona to rescue her, and convert the guards and other inmates while they were at it. They all failed miserably from the start, as Reitman had already been transferred to another secret location.

In America, the PER were subjected to vicious purges and attacks by the HLF, creating a small-scale civil war throughout the country, waged in small towns and major cities alike. It became commonplace for brigades of armed humans and even ponies to guard anywhere that humans would be helpless, such as hospitals, or maternity wards. Refugee camps, such as the walled “Dead End” settlements on the east and west coasts were frequent targets of theirs. However, under the guidance of Marcus Renee and the indiscriminate fury of the HLF, the PER soon became almost a nonentity in America.

Other countries were not so lucky.

In South America, PER attacks were common, turning entire favelas into massive quarantine zones which the government would bomb from the air. It soon became common practice to wall off areas with particularly high population density, as in other countries such as China and America. This was not helped by the lost newfoals that hid in the foetid depths of cities such as Rio de Janeiro, who would frequently surface to deliver potion. It became common practice for residents to go about their daily business wearing body armor and carrying weaponry, sometimes even wearing wetsuits and gas masks to protect themselves. It also became common to hire military personnel as guards for areas of importance in South America, such as schools, hospitals, and laboratories dedicated to mingling magic and technology for use against Equestria.

On the Asian Front, as the amount of areas that became the European Front had all been swallowed by the Barrier, PER upshoots had taken up refuge in abandoned towns all over Russia and Central Asia. They were known to target nursing homes, birth wards and rural areas where victims were easy targets and military presence was minimal. Their presence in China was particularly troublesome and many blame the downward spiral and the current state of Central China on the PER’s activities.

On the Pacific Front, the domain of the famous "Pacific Queen" Captain Rebecca Kleiner, they took up a role not dissimilar to pirates of old. Using submarines stolen from Russia, or Equestrian airships hidden by clouds, they targeted ships sailing the Pacific, attempting to take over entire islands as strongholds. There were potion bombings all over islands, instances of PER pegasi attempting to whip up storms, threatening to unleash them on islands that didn’t embrace ponification… then releasing them anyway after ponification, claiming that it was for the purpose of “cleansing the taint of humanity.” The newfoals wouldn’t argue, even if it reduced them to living in shantytowns of rubble, before Equestria could use portal stations to give them more adequate housing and facilities. One such case would be the Hurricane of Tokelau, a horrible disastrous event that led to the PER gaining one of their largest strongholds in the Pacific.

There are many cases of ships that were simply lost to mass ponification in the Pacific, and it soon became common practice to outfit crews of oceangoing ships with short-barreled or bullpup shotguns. Thanks to the growing population density of islands in the Pacific due to the flow of refugees and those who were determined to live in the last areas to be consumed by the Barrier, and people in ghetto-like coastal shantytowns built from shipping containers, dubiously legal concrete buildings, and whatever was on hand at the time known simply as “Dead Ends,” it was far too easy for human PER infiltrators to blend in.

“You know why I’m the only one of my family that emigrated to America?” said one Russian woman, barely more than a teenager. “The rest of them decided to stay and fight, or get atomized. They’d seen the conditions of the Dead Ends, and they would’ve left there if not for the PER. You could either stay and get ponified, you could run and get ponified, or you could find your way to the Pacific or to the Americas… and then get ponified.”

This prompted several civilian training programs to be established in the Asian-Pacific Front. Spearheaded by a group of men, women, and ponies collectively known as the Dragons of the East, in cooperation with military-trained groups all over the Pacific, these civilian training programs far exceeded the expectations of anyone. Some members of the Dragons even started off as civilians with scant military and battlefield experience, and went on to become symbols of the Asian Resistance. Members of Captain Rebecca Kleiner’s island-hopping campaign to exterminate the PER have expressed extreme gratitude to the helpfulness of pony and human Pacific islanders alike, with one anonymous pegasus pony in the Navy having nothing but glowing praise.

“We’d be dead without those brigades. We were stuck in our trench in Mindanao, when suddenly a brigade helicopter swooped in and just disassembled the PER with its door gun. It was like the partisans came out of the woodwork, carrying guns that must have been almost a hundred years old at this point - I swear I saw a Browning Automatic Rifle - and modern weapons. They just came out of every door, guns blazing, and for the first time, we drove the fuckers back. Those partisans probably saved the Philippines.”

That serviceman’s interview is nowhere near the only story of its kind. All over the Pacific Rim, there are countless stories of partisans fighting the good fight, not as HLF, but just as equal-opportunity resistances against the Empire. One story recounts a ship, full of pony and human partisans armed to the teeth, landing in the Kiribati islands and taking it upon themselves to liberate them from PER forces.

The number of lives that they saved is impossible to judge. One island nation of the Pacific, a floating settlement dedicated to anti-Barrier research known as the Ark, has officially declared the Dragons to be their patron saints. It is possible, but not likely, that there may soon be cargo cults dedicated to them.

The number of PER holdouts in the Pacific is estimated to be somewhere in the mid to high hundreds. Given the high numbers of islands in the Pacific, it’s hard to make an exact guess, but they remain a threat to this day, making water travel an untenable task. Regardless, thanks to new equipment added on to ships traversing the Pacific, and heavier armaments, it has become far safer.

Name: “Mikhailovitch”
Nationality: Unknown, presumed Russian.
Crimes: Kidnapping, espionage, sabotage of military equipment and operations, forced conversion, poisoning and tampering of food and drink meant for refugees, impersonating a medical doctor, suspect in the implementation of Ponification Pinatas.
Current Status: Incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay

Lower decks of unknown ship in U.S Navy/

’Mikhailovitch’: “You can’t torture me, you bastards-”

Unknown American Male Soldier: “Fuck you. You’re the PER agent. We have footage of you in maternity wards dousing babies with ponification serum. Babies, for fuck’s sake! Now… answer the questions or we will really make you regret the day your mother gave birth to your worthless existence.”

Unknown American Female Soldier: “Possibly both.”

Unknown American Male Soldier: “See, that’s the thing. We can torture you, and no one really would raise a stink about it. Not like how it was a decade ago.”

Cheerilee (outside the door): “Enough."

Unknown American Female Soldier: "Ma'am!"

Cheerilee: “Please. Leave before you do something to him that you’ll regret.”

Unknown American Male Soldier: “Fair enough.”

The two of them walk out of the room

”Mikhailovitch’ "You! You are a pony! Help me show them the-"

Cheerilee: "The light?" (She stepped out from the darkness.)

”Mikhailovitch”: "...You?! The Teacher! Betrayer of the Solar Goddess’s wisdom!"

Cheerilee:"Tell me... what are you planning to do?"

”Mikhailovitch”: "I refuse! Send your torturers! The goddess’ light will protect me!"

Cheerilee sighs as she looked at the human as she sat before him and remain silent.

Silence prevails for over two hours.

”Mikhailovitch”: "Say something damn it!"

Cheerilee: "The entire island of Vaitupu was ponified and 'cleansed' of human taint. Half of the island's population was killed off in the resulting purge and scattered into the ocean, some for almost a hundred miles due to the heavy storm. Several hundred bodies of dead new foals were found drifting in the ocean. All of them being eaten by the various animals. The island was found several days later and was bombarded for several hours before troops landed and killed all the newfoals there."

”Mikhailovitch”: "W-what?"

Cheerilee: "Your group had essentially murdered an entire island."

”Mikhailovitch”"No! The humans-"

Cheerilee: "Are destroying a plague. I believe that right now, they’re clearing out the woods. However it was the PER that initiated the islanders’ deaths. By changing all of them against their will, you painted a target on their backs and left them to fend for themselves. Because of you, about a thousand native islanders, and almost two thousand refugees from Russia and Asia are dead. What bodies we found intact after the bombardment reveal them to be near death. Starving and plagued by various sicknesses. We did them a favor in giving them death instead of a forced cheer of slow death, letting them die with minds left in their bodies. Congratulations. You 'saved' them alright."

’Mikhailovitch’: “I... I..." He looked away in shame. "I’ll talk. It’s… Last time I checked, it was near Tokelau; Morely and I were planning to ponify everyone on Wallis island and Futuna island and take over their farmlands. It’s hard to feed so many ponies in Equestria, and they thought nobody would miss them! Small, unimportant-”

Cheerilee: "Every life that remains free of the warped Tyrant is important. Thank you for helping."

She stepped out of the way as Mikhailovitch is brought up and dragged away.

Mikhailovitch: "I'm sorry...."

Cheerilee: "It’s not me you have to apologize to..." (Cheerilee walks out) "It’s the lives you ruined that have to accept it."

Mikhailovitch is led away and the male soldier returned.

Unknown American Male Soldier: “After awhile, you just have to wonder. Did we always have these people, or did the Tyrant get to them?”

Cheerilee: “I am honestly not sure what scares me more.”

Sleep With One Eye Open

Cheerilee had voiced a common concern among anti-Barrier human and pony forces alike. The Tyrant’s brainwashing, or always a vocal minority who had so hated their species and culture?

To this day, nobody knows.

Their operatives, using enchanted items given to them by Royal Guards, were like ghosts in the night. Entire towns had the potential to disappear overnight, only to be replaced by dens of newfoals who would burn their former homes, destroying everything in a mad orgy of destruction, and steal all the food in markets and houses.

Survivors of these towns, often transients, those working night shifts, or insomniacs, would report swarms of newfoals destroying towns. Unicorn newfoals, guided by either natural-born Equestrians or more experienced newfoals, would let loose noisy, destructive bursts of pure concussive force or fire, reducing human buildings to rubble.

Name: Dayoung Tengku
Nationality: American (born in Malaysia)
Age: 22
Status: ex-HLF, joined with PHL due to “crisis of faith”

“Look. Don’t hold being ex-HLF against me. There’s plenty of former HLF members in your ranks, right?”

“Well, yes. That’s not important, though. We just want to know what you saw.”

“Besides hell, fire, brimstone, the most traumatizing event of my young life? Can’t think of much.”

“Ms. Tengku? Just start at the beginning.”

“Right. I was desperate for a job. I do mean desperate,” Tengku says. “Got one in the local Hannaford’s, baking cakes at 3 AM. Not exactly a job that’s good for your circadian rhythms. But it paid well because not many people were willing. So, one day, I end up waking up at like… 1:30. You know how it gets, waking up early - there’s like some magic number of times too early to be comfy, too late to really get any more sleep without making yourself more tired. Around there. I was cursing that I’d woken up like that, but that horrible night saved my life. I’d heard about the PER of course, but… you always expect these things to happen to someone else. You know?”

“Focus. What happened?”

“I heard something outside, so I got up to the window. And I saw Mr. Norton. Town’s green activist, the doom-and-gloom kind. Damn near a luddite.” She threw up her hands. “Whoa. Don’t get paranoid of people concerned for the environment. They have good intentions. But, if they start wearing shirts like ‘humanity is a sickness’ and revere nature so much they don’t care about humanity, then be paranoid away.”

“I will… keep that in mind. What did Mr. Norton do?”

“He was like, on a soapbox and he looked happy. But it was like a sick, psychotic look there. He looked revitalized as the town burned, as someone fired a shotgun and just stopped after screaming. He was happy to watch humanity burn away, the goddamn pigfucker. Maybe the queen bitch or Reitman got to him, maybe they didn’t need to. I don’t know. He was just preaching, real fire-and-brimstone evangelical kind of preaching, about how Equestria was a paradise and we were soulless, damned… I don’t know, I kind of tuned it out when I saw what he was holding.”

“What was-”

“His own children. Had them on fucking leashes. Their clothes were ripped, they were so bruised, and everything. He looked like he’d practically dragged them out. And he… he just forced the potion down their throats. Just yelling ‘take your medicine! It’s good for you!’ Then, he took a big swig of it himself. I saw them turn into ponies there, as their fingers fused into hooves and fur just… just grew all over them. They looked… they just looked wrong.”

“In general, newfoals do.”

“It was like they were only happy because that was the only thing left in them,” Dayoung says, still trembling. “I didn’t save them. I just… I grabbed my things, jumped into my car and high tailed it outta there. There were pegasi flying at the windshield, and I had to… without the HLF that shot them down, I’d be dead.”

“Or ponified.”

“Like there’s much of a difference.”

Darkness-Induced Apathy

With both the PER and HLF claiming to be the saviors of humanity, both far too similar in their own equally destructive, elitist, and racist ways, it’s little wonder that humanity and escaped ponies felt rather jaded.

With the PER ruining the image of ponies wishing to help humans and the HLF calling for blood, only a scant few humans of respective power and prestige held back the tide and kept areas of the world that weren’t consumed by Equestria from descending into infighting and anarchy. Ones that were considered high-priority targets by the PER and HLF alike.

The British Royal Family.

President Jack Davis and various UN leaders.

Colonel Marcus Renee.

Major Stephan Bauer.

All members of the 'infamous' Dragons of the East.

And the "Pacific Queen" Captain Rebecca Kleiner and "StormBringer" Thunderwing of the so-called “Stampede Fleet.”

In a later interview, Captain Rebecca Kleiner admitted that in the early days of the war, along with her recently revealed lover Thunderwing, felt a “unique sense of hopelessness.”

“What does that mean, ‘a unique sense of hopelessness?’

Kleiner: “For me, it felt like it boiled down to either join the other side and become a lobotomized zombie, or become a member of some ‘white power’ skinhead gang knockoff, except everyone got in on it. That’s how people saw it. And they didn’t think we were any better than either of them - half the states just thought we’re an extension of the HLF, and most of them treated that like a good thing. Like they fucking absorbed us.”

Thunderwing: “Oh, you think that’s bad? What about us? We were treated like shit. We want the PER like the Captain wants some emaciated girl with a mustache and a weasel nose and a figure worse than a fat man in a woman’s one-piece coming onto her, and I’m lucky if the HLF doesn’t shoot us on sight. I was lucky if the average civilian didn’t panic as soon as they saw me. There were senators talking about goddamned internment camps for crying out loud!”

Kleiner: “Goleman, that prick.”

Thunderwing: “There was just… just no middle ground. You say you’re a pony and you want to help humanity, you either got bullets to the face from the HLF or a bandolier of potion from the PER. You say you’re human and you want to get along with ponies…

Kleiner: “No, that’s pretty much what happened to us. Except with more lynching. I mean, I knew ponies couldn’t be all bad, I mean, look at Thunderwing! He’s wonderful! But not enough people saw it that way.”

Thunderwing: “You don’t want to know. Graffiti on my door, honest to God murder attempts, a mutiny…”

“A mutiny?!”

Kleiner: “Don’t worry. The mutineers were appropriately punished. Most of them have redeemed themselves by now. But that’s what it was like back then.”

Thunderwing: “Again, no middle ground. You were either with humanity or with ponies, and you had to be against one of them. It was just horrible.”

Kleiner: “And then came the PHL…”

Light at the End

The early years of the war were a chaotic, paranoid, hopeless time. A time when anyone, pony or human alike, could be detained on the merest of suspicions. When everyone slept with one eye open, where entire cities could become deserted within days in mass exoduses to other countries, and nobody was entirely sure who, if anyone, to turn to for help.

And in the chaos, another group arose that claimed to be the saviors of humanity. Worst of all, they looked too good to be true in the chaos of the early years, with HLF and unaligned humanity claiming that they’d seen enough of ponies trying to help. There was one difference however between them and the others.

They never attempted to violently force their agenda onto anyone else. They opened their doors for everyone to whoever needed it. And unlike the PER who changed and mutated humans against their will into false cheer and friendship, or the HLF who placed a gun in their hands and sent them to die, they sheltered, fed, clothed the humans in their care before giving them to the proper authorities. Fighting off hostile powers actually seemed to be a secondary object to them, their urge to help the helpless was their most prominent trait.

These acts of kindness would be remembered by the millions displaced from their homes and countries, urged by those very people to trust their intentions to help.

A group which was started off by ponies.

Open for all to join, and relentlessly optimistic.

A force of nature that would rise into a power that would lash out at the Tyrant, becoming one of the only groups on earth that could genuinely threaten her.

The PHL.

PHL

Author's Notes:

Edited by: Kizuna-Tallis, Rush, Doctor Fluffy, Redskin122004, and TB3

The PHL

Full Title: Ponies for Human Life/Liberty

Founder: Lyra Heartstrings (deceased)

Group Creation Date: Spring 2019

Current status: Active on all fronts

“We cannot afford to trust them! Look at our world! Look at how much they have taken - no, if I say take, that implies they see anything value in our lives or culture that they might want! They have just destroyed, declaring us and our culture not even worth taking from! Our world, our families, our culture! Ponies for Human Life… what a joke. If you use them, if you trust their magic, I say you’re halfway to becoming a newfoal already!”
--Senator Patrick Goleman, just weeks before his arrest at an HLF compound he had personally funded.

Sadly, it is not impossible to imagine people saying things like that, even today. Though it is fractured, little more than a shell of its former self, the HLF is still around and still a problem. A decreasing, irritating, outdated, increasingly disliked problem that now seems to fight against the civilization they claimed to be protecting, but one nonetheless. Still, an increasing number of post-war HLF members would be somewhat guilty now at having been so harsh towards the PHL.

Not so in the early days of the War.

In its infancy, the PHL was thoroughly unpopular. Though Ambassador Lyra Heartstrings was rather well-liked among the public, especially in United Kingdom, distrust and paranoia were rampant. Despite the pro-human rhetoric that Lyra gave, it was another faction of ponies in an era of anti-Equestrian paranoia claiming to "help" humanity. Everyone had seen that Celestia’s (and, by that logic, all ponies) definition of “help,” and how heavily it relied on newfoals, and how Equestrians seemed to be in thrall to her.

To most humans, it seemed impossible for Lyra to prove herself different from one of the other viciously dogmatic zealots of Equestria, and prove to humanity that magic could be used for good.

They would be proven wrong.

The Human Lover

Lyra was fascinated with humans from an early age. Ever since her great-grandfather told her about the legend of Dream Valley, where odd two-legged creatures appeared to help a group of ponies vanquish an ancient evil. The old stallion was thought to be a loon and an eccentric, the equivalent of a human fringe historian or conspiracy theorist. Lyra’s parents assumed this human fascination would be a fleeting obsession, one of those flights of fancy a filly passed through on her way to getting her cutie mark.

It wasn't. She collected books that contained references to humanity, ranging from the well-respected Dusty Tome's An Analysis on the Erratic Nature of Equestrian Technological Development, and Nonmagical Beasts and Where to Find Them) to the eccentric, such as 'Ponyland: Fact or Fable?',‘The Dream Valley Conspiracy: What They’ll Never Tell Us, and Laconic's An Argument For Humanity and Against Catseye. What few books and pamphlets she published, however, were similarly eccentric. Unfortunately, even with her newfound prestige and proof of her theories, this focus on the eccentric likely harmed the credibility of her claims of "a growing wrongness" in Equestria. Up until the first reports of odd behavior in newfoals, anyway.

Lyra remained fascinated with them all through her life, right up until she made the discovery of a lifetime, which threw her right into the spotlight.

The discovery of the lost ship of the KV62 Excavation Party allowed her to join the Canterlot University as Head Anthropologist, allowing her access to the Canterlot Archives and began to find small points in their history of outside influences.

Ideas that wouldn't be realized for centuries, the most recent proof was the CPU system, built from an blueprint over a millennium old.

Lyra enjoyed her lofty position until First Contact several years later, where she was the first to volunteer and enjoyed becoming the first pony besides Queen Celestia to walk through the portal.

She made long strides to paint a good picture for humanity, but for all her strides and the relationships she forged, she came upon clues that would destroy all that she worked for...

By her own leader, Queen Celestia.

Kickstarting a resistance
“In the time I’ve been here on Earth, getting to know and interact with humans, I’ve seen amazing things I couldn’t have ever dreamt of. When I realized the effects the potion had on a human’s mind and soul, I immediately renounced Equestria as my home country. Today, I make it official. I cannot stand by and let Queen Celestia trample over an entire world’s history, cultures and accomplishments for something as petty as power. What she speaks of is not harmony, but of tyranny and subjugation. I, and my friends in the Ponies for Human Life organization, seek to help all humanity and stop this madness.
“In my duties as ambassador, I knew Queen Elizabeth as a strong woman and a leader of faith and resolve. Her sacrifice shall not be in vain. I call upon all humans to take the call to arms. No amount of dedication is too great when the price for failure is the annihilation of everything humanity stands for. Today, is the day we fight back!”
Ambassador Lyra Heartstrings, in a televised speech in Britain, in front of the ruins of Balmoral castle.

Ambassador Heartstrings was well-liked amongst the public and developed friendships with the members of the British Royal Family in her time serving as an ambassador. She didn’t hide her apprehension over the newfoals, and then the Conversion Bureaus when the first of them began opening all over the globe. However, her discomfort was lost in the sea of voices of Jacqueline Reitman, the FDA and various other health departments’ insistence that the ponification serum was completely harmless and the newfoals’ apparent happiness over their changes.

But when the Harriet Thomas Foundation was founded as a well-meaning support group, Lyra had the ammunition she needed to question the necessity of ponification. She was in close contact with Reverend James Thomas, with the two of them exchanging frequent letters about their questions on the nature of the potion, and even wrote an article on the unnerving qualities of newfoals together. Both of them also expressed an interest in the Kraber Reports, a series of vlogs by Dr. Erika Kraber in which she performed psychoanalysis on newfoals, attempting to prove that newfoals were still the same people, yet coming to more disturbing conclusions as time went on.

The stories of other people coming forward to talk about the generally off-putting nature of the newfoals, insecure about the state of their loved ones, gave her even more reason to question her country’s policies and just how helpful ponification truly was. When the HTF became the HLF, ousting the members most willing to talk to ponies, Lyra was on record as looking in fear for a couple seconds, saying simply, “this won’t end well.”

The growing proxy war between the extremist PER and the now openly declared HLF proved her to be right. Lyra found herself in between a rock and a hard place as both groups began to target her.

One wanted to kill her for simply being a pony, the other for having the audacity to be against their cause and their Queen.

And other ponies, those that found no fault with humans, who wished for genuine co-existence, found themselves alone in a growing hostile world. It seemed to be a dreadfully polarized situation, in which no compromise could be found.

When Queen Celestia made her announcement at the press conference in Berne declaring her intentions, Lyra had been in the London Conversion Bureau, systematically subduing newfoals and destroying the potions there.

By the time the Her Majesty's Royal Marines had arrived at the suspiciously quiet Bureau, Lyra had walked out and declared the Bureau was taken down and gave herself up into their custody. No charges were pressed against her, and she was declared innocent.

When the Solar Tyrant unleashed the first attack wave on humanity to ponify every head of state in every country on Earth, the British Royals had escaped, but Queen Elizabeth the Second stayed behind in Balmoral Castle as the rest of the family escaped. Her famous last words became the rallying cry for all of humanity when she destroyed the entire castle and killed her assailants and herself. In the following commemoration to the longtime ruler of the United Kingdom, Lyra publicly defected from Equestria, declaring she could not stand idly by and let the Tyrant trample and wipe away humanity’s history in her petty quest for power.

She knew she could not do it alone, even with the backing of the Royal Family; she was just one voice, two if she counted her reluctant partner Bon Bon, she needed ponies who wanted to help humans.

So she created a group for them, one that would later be called a misnomer after the eventual inclusion of other races.

Ponies for Human Lives.

Interviewee: Claw Hammer/Aegis The Giant
Fighting alongside PHL

“Well, what happened in Britain?”

“I… got drunk,” Aegis says, sheepishly. “I don't mean, ‘what the hell did I do last night’ drunk. Like, ‘ate fish on a bet with some Londoner’ drunk.”

“How was it?”

“Not…” Aegis raised his hoof, wiggling it from side to side in a ‘maybe, maybe not’ gesture. “It was alright. I mean the flavor was unique and all, but I wouldn’t want it again. I was fine, when I got over that fish on Earth don’t really have minds… I might have some now and then, but don’t want to do it again. Now, I tried to laugh it off cause it was just so hard to cope at the time, but my wife…. she never quite looked at me the same way. The newfoal orphans that she adopted-”

“Wait. Newfoal orphans?!”

“Yeah, there was a ‘Bring a better life to starving children or something!’ drive, they were from somewhere that spoke Swahili, she adopted them on the spot. Worst thing I ever agreed to,” Aegis sighed. “Those two foals just… it was like they wormed their warped magic inside her mind and turned her into somepony else. Still, least they helped me bond with Viktor, cause they both spoke Swahili, so I had to learn some of the phrases. Useful skill, that. Anyway, it was like that act short-circuited her brain or something.”

“So… you left because your wife went crazy?”

“She wasn’t just crazy, she was fuckmothering insane! One night, after my wife called me a carnivore and said I was a human on all four hooves, then kicked me out of the room while the foals were sleeping. So I went on a bender and somehow met Lyra Heartstrings in a bar. Was a weird-ass bender, I can tell you that; I kept seeing this white alicorn with a red mane out of the corner of my eye when I met her. So, when we woke up the morning after-” Aegis, seeing the interviewer’s look, threw up his hooves, his eyes widening behind his characteristic goggles. “NO. No. Not like that. I don’t think so...Maybe? She seemed like an… experimental… sort of mare. I mean, I knew she swung for the my team and all, but if it was a human? No bets on that one, but I know for a fact Bon Bon would have murdered me then and there. Anyway, I told her about the newfoals, and my wife. I think she must have had this as part of a pre-written speech. So, she and Bon-Bon took me out to breakfast around Paddington Station. Funny thing, I can remember it like she told me yesterday.”

“What did she say?”

Aegis cleared his throat.

“Mr. Claw Hammer, something is rotten in our state of Equestria. Dreadfully so. Does anything about our land’s magic - no, anything at all about our land - feel right to you? Look. The Elements of Harmony failed to purify Sombra - and at that point, Lyra telekinetically lifted a notebook over to me, along with a book that had several underlined passages - And this book doesn’t say anything good about how that could be possible. I can’t really remember what was there, but it mentioned something like ‘embodiment disharmony,’ or ‘thaumopsychological unbalance,’ and then she went on about the fact that it had been harder to get cutie marks since Equestria manifested, and all kinds of things about bizarre magic readings. It should have sounded crackpot, but… I don’t know. She didn’t explain it like she was crazy. And when you get down to it... Equestria just didn't feel right. Ever since.... I don't know, the explosion on the Great Equestrian... Before Luna returned. I think. You know how hard it is to pin down.”

“Everyone gives a different point.... You don’t remember that part very well, do you?”

“Well, I remember what she said. I just don’t understand it very well… I don’t know. I’m not a scientist like her. Though I did agree when she said that the claims of a second magical renaissance soon made no sense. Anyway, she continued on - Look how we’ve embraced the newfoals, even as they display few if any signs of sentience. Should they really smile so much? Should they really have that expression daily? And why… why do they act as if ponydom is ascension to a higher plane of existence, and just express such hatred for their former humanity, shunning everything about themselves before they drank the potion? I’ve seen most humans, and I’ve visited many places all over Earth. Let me tell you this: they’re not living in some dystopia where everything is owned by a greedy minority and every religion is some corrupt scam church like so many newfoals claim! Sure, it isn’t perfect, but it’s not as though they’re riddled with kill-happy criminals, murderers, terrorist fanatics, and whatever else you can think of! They seem happy! Haven’t you noticed that? Haven’t you noticed that there’s so much we could learn from each other, and yet we act like we can’t coexist? We should be making so much together, and we just act like there’s nothing humanity has to offer. They would have been happy to help with Sombra, and we didn’t tell them, even though I know that we knew they could have easily given us the tools to curb-stomp him.”

“Your memory of this speech is really good.”

“I know. What’s weird is that I had a hangover,” Aegis agreed. “She continued, “Just… there’s a sickness. A cancer in Equestria. I don’t know where it is or what, or what it will do, but it’s somewhere. All around. Inside most ponies, and I shudder to think what happens if the illness becomes terminal.” Then Bon-Bon, who’d been trying to ignore her, told her that was just paranoia, and that she should see a doctor, and Lyra said that would just make things worse because they could get inside her head, then we all got interrupted by a car bomb. Got four inches of cast-iron shrapnel right in the conk. Still there.” He pointed with one foreleg to the red bandanna he wore over his head.

Most everyone had heard of the car bomb at Lyra’s breakfast. Forensics techs had studied the scene, claiming that judging by the proximity to the window, it was “nigh-impossible” for Lyra, Bon-Bon, and Aegis to have survived that attack.

“I found myself that boom. It was like a sign from Luna,” Aegis said. “There were newfoals in there, beating the crap out of the bomber’s body, with just the most awful looks on their faces. They were happy. And I just remember telling Lyra, right before I passed out and got carted off to a hospital, ‘If that’s what being Pony means, I don’t w-’”

“And?”

“Well, I couldn’t tell her anything else. I was in a coma for two weeks. When I woke up, I was told that it must have given me some severe brain damage, but personally, I’d never felt saner. I just walked out of the hospital one day, and found that my wife had taken up with a newfoal. And she said that she sent our foals back to Equestria. So I left her, and disguised myself as a Royal Guardspony in Equestria to get my foals out. Used a fake cutie mark as well, and that’s when I started using the name Aegis. The foals insisted I keep the name, though…”

“Why?

“Said it made me sound like a superhero,” Aegis says, giving a little laugh. “I gotta say, I like that. Kinda stuck when I joined up with Lyra again. Anyway, they live in South Africa with some of Viktor’s cousins… they seem pretty happy. Viktor, though? He loves them.”

“... Are we thinking of the same person?”

“What? You never noticed that he’s really good with children?” Aegis asks.

“I will admit, it doesn’t usually come up.”

“Tell them to stop fokking confusing it with being the werf eter!” Kraber yelled from a nearby room. “Honestly, can’t I have any redeeming qualities? But no… goddamn varkpoes!”

“What does that-”

“You don’t want to know,” Aegis said.

“Just one more question. How did you two become friends, anyway? I mean… I know you saved his life, but-”

“He said he had a family before they were ponified,” Aegis said, shrugging. “I just… couldn’t stand seeing him suffer like that. Plus, his legs were pinned under rubble and the place was on fire. On top of that, he kicked a PER guy in the face right when he was about to stab me for being PHL.”

“When did that happen?”

“We were at the hospital,” Aegis explained. “There were some PER guys that attacked on the wrong day, and Kraber broke out using a stolen knife and pistol. Killed all of them.”

“But that’s another story,” Kraber added, his tone just begging the reporter not to ask about it. Which was a good idea. It would take way too long to explain.

“Also, thanks for not hijacking the interview,” Aegis called over to him.

“Don’t mention it. It’s been a problem for me, and it’s… kind of an apology for barely mentioning you in the last one,” Kraber admitted. “Sorry about that. I got carried away, and I was getting drunk, caught up in my own misery... That was an awful interview."

“Like I said, a better man than you think,” Aegis said. “Anyway, interview’s over. I want to go get some milkshakes.”

“I like the sound of that!” Kraber said, following him out of the room. “Ben & Jerry’s?”

“Good idea! I need some chocolate in me...”

Victims of War

Her first recruits were ponies who lost everything or nearly died defending something precious.

Cheerilee Cherry was the first pony to join after her ordeal in Paris, defending a classroom from a newfoal horde, living in France as an invited teacher from the French Government. Brought to Lyra by American troops, lead by Colonel Renee prior before his botched mission.

This was followed closely by Vinyl Scratch, who lost her longtime friend Octavia Melody to the Royal Guards, and had grown suspicious and angry at Equestria’s strange and draconian policies on human culture, specifically the embargo and "purging" of that which seemed too human. Which unfortunately included Vinyl's music.

Three days after their arrival was Spitfire. When trying to escape Equestria after an argument with Rainbow Dash about the militarization of the Wonderbolts, she was injured fighting newfoal Wonderbolts lead by Rainbow Dash. The ‘old guard’ of the Wonderbolts, such as Soarin and Fleetfoot, followed Spitfire to Earth, leaving Rainbow Dash and Lightning Dust to rebuild the Wonderbolts on their own. It’s been theorized that this lead to lowered recruiting standards for the Wonderbolts, leading them to accept newfoals to refill their numbers and degrading their status as an elite unit.

The most spectacular arrival was Time Turner, aka Doctor Whooves, and his family in a familiar blue box, much to the shock of the Royal Family who were welcoming the first few trickles of escaping ponies.

Then came a flood of ponies looking for shelter away from the fighting, the angry humans wishing to do them harm, and the Solar Empire loyalists trying to drag them back to Equestria to reeducate them and “cleanse them of humanity’s corrupting influence”.

However, time began to work against them as some humans began to hunt for them, Lyra knew she couldn’t just hope that the humans could wait for her and her group. So she began to look for a means to train ponies into fighting in the war.

In this, the help of the Royal Family was invaluable: Prince Harry had emptied nearly his entire personal accounts to help fund the PHL, allowing them to begin purchasing basic training equipment and repurpose equipment for their needs. King Charles, meanwhile, had set aside the entirety of Windsor Great Park for the group to use, something Lyra used to her full advantage: the varied terrain of the park would, in her estimation, be perfect for training the new army she was building, and there was more than enough room in the various lodges, such as the Cumberland and Royal Lodges, now donated to her cause, to house the ponies in.

They were not alone as the surviving leaders of countries that Lyra visited and befriended prior before the war sent their own detained ponies (who turned themselves in or saved from mobs of people trying to hurt them) join her group, the most prominent being Germany, Japan, Russia, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Along with relief supplies and troops to defend the fledgling group. Human scientists in many of these countries began early work on new weaponry for the war, (And, as time went on, inventions to help refugees survive in a world menaced by the Barrier) researching Equestrian magic and working to improve existing designs.

However, to ponies, the concept of war was strange, having lived peacefully amongst the other races of Equus for centuries. So Lyra turned to the one race that did know war.

Humans.

There were objections. Ponies that protested the use of such force, and resented what they had to resort to. Still, it had to be done. Lyra showed them all what would happen to them if they didn't fight: namely, that they would be killed for not doing the Queen's work or just for disagreeing with her, their minds raped until they were little more than newfoals themselves, or even worse, used as test subjects for the Solar Empire’s new weaponry or as medical experiments for Twilight Sparkle.

Few humans stepped up, much like Major Stephan Bauer, who would lead to the standardization of training ponies in the art of war. Due to the extreme physical differences between the humans and ponies, Stephan had to rely on retired guards for the training regiments to use for ponies to strengthen the new troops. He would later train other drill instructors, laying the foundation for future pony soldiers.

Interviewee: Trixie Lulamoon
Training under Major Bauer

"Miss Lulamoon, I never underwent the training the PHL has set for ponies willing to fight against the Tyrant. You were one of the first, and even went under even stricter training under the personal watch of Major Bauer."

"Yes, I remembered that time very clearly. Stephan was very hard on me, but I demanded that he did..."

"Is something wrong?"

"No, just thinking on my decision. When he first started training us, I was one of the first to step forward, a washed out magician with an ego the size of Canterlot made of glass. I wanted to be the best, I wanted to show everypony that I cared more than myself. After we were done, I asked Stephan to push me, break me down and rebuild me so I can stand by him when he fights. I... it was for a selfish reason."

"Selfish?"

"He was... He was so powerful in my eyes. He had this strength that called out to me. I just wanted to be by his side, fight by him, protect him..."

"You fell in love with him."

"Heh... I suppose that is true. We're together now. Its just felt so weird back then... many humans and ponies looked down on having relationships with one another. It was only thanks to Chrysalis that we are together... even then we were very stubborn about our feelings."

"No regrets about your decision then?"

"I will never regret my decision in joining. It gave Stephan to me, and in return it gave me to Stephan. *laughs* It also helps that I have new tricks to use in my shows for the children."

Upgrading

Many would think the unicorn was way over her head, dismissing the PHL as a fad not long for this Earth. But Lyra was an extremely convincing mare, one who almost seemed to have a charmed life, able to gather funding and gather ponies to her side at almost every turn. Even with multitudes of disaffected ponies by her side helping her, she was able to gather hundreds to her cause.

Unfortunately, even with many ponies willing to join the fight, their human partners were still getting pushed back. The Tyrant came prepared, having planned out her invasion months, if not years, in advance, as indicated the next few months of fighting showed that while the humans had the technology to face her numbers, magic was still something out of the humans’ grasp.

Magic was an unknown energy to humans, they had no means of defense from it. Body armor did surprisingly well due to the ceramic plates at stopping concussive force, but spells focused on the mind or elemental magic left the human soldiers reeling. Incendiary, corrosive, and sleeping spells became the bane of many a soldier, as it exposed them to the potion, if they weren’t ripped from the protective measures first.

Their ground and air vehicles suffered the same issues. Tanks and heavy armor vehicles were stopped in their tracks due to the various spells created by Twilight Sparkle just for them, while jets and helicopters were able to avoid a majority of the spells with their maneuverability and speed, but only just.

Ponies found themselves looking for a means of protection for their allies. The few escaped scholars and unicorns they had, managed to gather enough whole Royal Guard armors to study, but it was thanks to PER defector Ernst Kasparek that they managed to get a full blue print of enchantments and spells, and used this to help their human allies.

It would prove to be far more crucial to the war effort and survival of humanity than anyone could have predicted. In a flurry of creativity, humans investigated every possible application, allowing for weight reduction, cooling, and finding a myriad of other military applications.

Some even found their way to the civilian sector thanks to a Pegasus stallion named Macroburst, who managed to foresee Earth's possible energy problems, improving on power plants on Earth and even creating new ones. Anecdotal stories recall his unicorn workers wearing hazmat suits, teleporting nuclear waste over the Barrier.

One of the PHL’s biggest suppliers were Crowe Laboratories, a Brazil-based think tank run by Thaddeus “Rusty” Crowe, an enterprising philanthropist and inventor born in Rio de Janeiro. Where PHL R&D had ideas, Crowe Laboratories would make them better, committing manpower and factories to manufacturing PHL equipment.

Their human allies were aware of the ponies’ own limitations, and various plans were put into motion to help their rebel ponies into fighting the war as more than bombing platforms or mobile ammunition stores. The creation of the assault saddles was the first of many of these.

The first iterations were heavy and bulky, forcing all but the strongest of ponies to remain still as they fired their weapons, used more as a suppressive fire than anything else. However, as with all human technology during wartime, they improved vastly as time went on.

Nowadays, the assault saddles are lighter, durable, and can easily be interchangeable for various fighting styles. It became commonplace to integrate heads up displays into their helmets, allowing them to finally aim. Even newer models, assault yokes solely for pegasi use, were created, mostly consisting of light sniper rounds or explosive payload drops. A popular non-regulation addition was the "fire hedgehog," which consisted of at least four SMGs wired to a secondary assault saddle trigger and pointed at the ground, for the purpose of strafing newfoals.

Lyra Heartstrings would give us the means to fully protect humanity’s war machines and soldiers from magic: Magical runes of unparalleled protection against magic and increase the offensive capabilities.

Sadly, she would only see it once before her capture and eventual death at the hooves of the Solar Tyrant. She was captured during the evacuation of Reykjavik, Iceland, on board the HMS Thunder Child, an experimentally enhanced PHL ship.

Like her fictional namesake, the heroic torpedo-ram from H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, HMS Thunderchild’s final fate was to sink to a cold grave in the silent depths of Neptune’s sea. But only after that valiant ship had endured hurricane force winds, bolts of magical lightning, and ocean waves swept up into mountains by arcane spellcraft, forces that would break apart any lesser craft, going far above and beyond the wildest expectations of its designers did she prevail against. She remained floating to that last, unloading her ordnance in a pyrrhic auto-fire onslaught, drawing the attention of scores of newfoals and three potioneer ships away from passenger ferries and steadfastly upon herself. And when she did die, it was by the choosing of herself and her crew: crippled and out of control after one damaged airship was brought down upon her, snapping her keel, the final three survivors onboard chose to blow Thunderchild’s scuttling charges, triggering off a final defiant conflagration as her remaining fuel and ammunition cooked in an instant, taking two more enemy airships with her.

When the chain of explosions cleared, all that could be seen of the besieged ship were dying fires on the ocean surface, and her battle standard, serenely caught on the winds, and ascending out of sight into the clouds.

If any work of man can be said to have died gloriously, steadfast in battle and throwing herself onto the pyre so that countless lives might be spared, it was the Thunderchild.

Sadly, even with her defiant stand, she was boarded during the battle and the human crew members were all ponified (with the exception of three who committed suicide) and Lyra and Bon-Bon were brought back to the Solar Empire before the ship sank.

Lyra's trial amounted to little more than a kangaroo court, a show trial with a predetermined verdict to send a message to humanity and appease the loyalist ponies baying for blood. She was sentenced to petrification and crushing, while Bon-Bon was forced to watch. The PHL’s top physicist and dimension hopper Doctor Whooves was able to rescue the latter, but he arrived too late to save Lyra.

Interview: Marcus Renee
Lyra’s death

"Commander-"

"*sigh* It’s Colonel."

"Right, sorry about that. Colonel Renee, what can you tell me when you heard the news of Lyra’s capture."

"I was... I was mad at her."

"Why? Did you two have a fight before-"

"What? Oh no, I was furious that she stayed behind, I saw it when she had this frown on her face, an idea that she knew I wasn’t going to like. The next thing I know, I turned around and she and Bon Bon were gone."

"She believed she was doing the right-"

" IT WASN'T HER CALL TO MAKE!"

Silence rings out

"I... I'm sorry. The last few days had been rough. I had a plan. We all did, but she... she just didn’t want anymore people getting hurt... Damn it, we were preparing to take the Thunder Child for test runs, see what they could do under pressure. Lyra just did it before we were prepared..."

"I'm sorry, Colonel. It must be a sore point for you."

"Yeah... just shows how much she can get into our hearts... and how easily they can be ripped out."

Mourning but not down

Lyra Heartstrings’ death was mourned the world over. Even some members of the Human Liberation Front expressed sorrow for her passing, and even now, some areas still hold a memorial service the anniversary of her death. Many wondered how the PHL would be able to still function without her.

She was more than a leader, or a founder... She was an inspiration to them.

Once again, the PHL found themselves in an uncertain situation. Would they be folded into the army of some country in a bold move of politicking? Thrown under the bus by an HLF-aligned senator, or any host of possibilities that would have, in all probability, doomed all sentient life? Or just fade out of the spotlight till they were just a circle of humans and ponies at a table somewhere in the Pacific, far from the front, ineffectually squabbling over what to do while nobody listened, as more and more of their funds were diverted to the HLF?

Vinyl Scratch
Musician
Fighting alongside the PHL

“After Lyra died… That was the scariest, saddest time of my life."

"How so?"

"We'd lost our leader and inspiration! Who was going to... I don't know, who was going to lead us? Work with humans with us? Keep everyone from joining the HLF? It was... I thought we were fucked. There weren't many people or ponies that could just.... Talk. I thought every day we could get bombed, imprisoned, or worse. There were people that wanted to kill me on general principle! But then…”

“Then what?”

“Marcus stepped up. He told everyone trying to downsize us and get rid of our funding just where they could put their plans, showed how effective rune magic was… he even tested an F3-Thunderlord in battle, just to show the kind of things magic could do for our weapons. If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t have the bass cannon! Or… there’s so much stuff that… just… aaah!” Vinyl flopped over, sighing. “There’s just so much we owe to him! I… I don’t care what he says. The man is a [EXPLETIVE REDACTED] hero. He’s responsible for so many people not being zombies, for ponies not getting deported… that’s a [EXPLETIVE REDACTED] death sentence!”

“Was it still hard for the PHL to carry on?”

“Marcus made it a hell of a lot easier, that’s for sure. Besides…. we’d proven ourselves to enough people that going after us then would have been suicide.”

Seeing the absence of a leader, Colonel Marcus Renee stepped up to the plate, leading the PHL into a more offensive role. His experiences in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq allowed him to use the very tactics by the terrorists used against the US against the newfoal hordes, along with directing ground troops from the frontlines to hold areas that would normally be lost within hours to a few days.

This painted a target on him, escalating the furious drive to ponify him and break the human race’s will to fight, but the Colonel survived every encounter and attempt, pushing him higher and higher into an almost legendary figure. He wasn’t alone, for many heroes came out during the War, each with their own titles and accomplishments.

'Commander' Marcus Renee of the PHL/UN Task Forces.

The 'Knight of Germania' Stephan Bauer of the European Forces

The 'Dragons of the East', one of the most well known multinational, multispecies military operations group out of Asia, led by Porter Stanley and Yon-Soo Park.

'The Pacific Queen' Captain Rebecca Kleiner and 'Stormbringer' Thunderwing of the Stampede Fleet.

Colonel Renee would hold onto the title as leader of the PHL group until he passed it to Cheerilee Cherry, known as the ‘Teacher’ to the Empire’s loyalists due to her pre-war occupation as a school teacher and due to videos of her teaching ponies and humans equally with a smile.

This proved a boon as it allowed the two to focus on very different tasks, as many would look to the two with clear priorities.

Colonel Renee would focus on the war effort, logistics of personnel, vehicles and artillery, plans for future battles, and various forms of battlefield control.

Cheerilee would focus more on the home front, food and clothing, technology and weapon shipments, and positive propaganda of unity and the war effort, and of course, teaching children, both human and ponies, wherever and whenever she could.

Interview: Photo Finish
Propaganda specialist

“Ms. Finish? How did you come to Earth?”

“Vell…. It makes for a better story for a pony to say zat zey vere vun of ze last to escape Equestria, yet my goals at first vere rather… selfish. I am almost ashamed to say it. Unlike zat… zat Tyrant, I saw humanity as an opportunity to learn. I vanted to see human designs and photograph zem, possibly readapt some of my favorite dresses for humans - and vice versa. It alvays struck me as strange zat Rarity did not vant to try ze same.”

“And now we know why.”

“It disgusts me! Zat mare has turned her back not just on an entire species, but on culture itself! I made decent amounts of money on earth. Some models called it, und I quote, ‘a strange und unnatural experience, being photographed by a tiny blue horse’ but zey vere usually good sports about it. Zere vere bigots, of course - I have experienced their like before, being an Earth Pony in ze fashion business. Stereotypes, you know. For a time, I thought zat zere vas hope. Zat I could be to two worlds vhat I vonce vas to one. But zen… zen came Celestia’s declaration of var in Bern.”

“Then what happened?”

“Vell, I vas cut adrift! Left on ze river vissout a paddle! I vas not popular enough on earth to be untouchable, and I liked humanity enough zat… vell, I had my fears about Equestria. Venever I vould consider returning, I vould get a… a bad feeling. A shiver down my spine. Zen, as I vas sheltered in ze house of a model who vas protecting me from ze riots outside, I saw Lyra’s PHL on TV. Ze news clearly had no respect for zem, calling zem traitors und spies… but I had seen her before. She vas like ze idol of anypony who vanted to live on und enjoy Earth! On top of zat, she denounced ze queen! On live television! I decided right zen zat I vould help - ze poor mare. She needed… she needed somevone who knew ze camera. Somevone who could construct each shot like a work of art, find ze magics in each still! It vould not be finding ze magics I vas used to, or fashion photography…. but it vas necessary.”

What do you remember most about the PHL in its early days?”

“Being desperate. Ze feeling zat any moment, somevone could bomb us und ve vould only be a footnote in history books, or a story told to frighten little colts and fillies to sleep. Yet, ve marched on! Zere vere humans und ponies zat tried to cut us down…. vonce, somevone tried to bomb our plane. It vas depressing, und yet…. vhat happened vhen Marcus took control vas a godsend! Anyzing zat has happened is beyond anyzing zat I could have imagined!’

“How so?”

“Vell… ve vere a joke. Now? People trust us to save ze vorld!”

“What would you say your most important work at the PHL is?”

“Zat… is not an easy decision to make. I’ve helped design every poster, I’ve made videos, I’ve done such magics here! And yet...deciding vould not mean zat one wins. Deciding vould mean one zat does not,” she sighed. “Anyzing zat I did zat inspired someone to join the PHL. Not to take the easy route and join the HLF, but to help the PHL make somezing greater. As long as I know that it inspired someone, zen it is my favorite.” She paused. “Zo I am fond of ze work I did after ze Battle of Boston.”

“Why?”

“It convinced hundreds to join us, vat zey allowed us to show." Photo Finish says. “On top of zat…. I had somezing to vork vith. I had proof ve could vin, for vonce in zis var! I could vatch ze news… see humans and ponies vorking togezzer, taking down HLF and PER alike, fighting ze barrier and vinning! I can look at it and say, ‘I had a hoof in zat’.”

Bringing Down the Hammer

Playing defensives throughout Europe due to the growing barrier, it was only when the western end of the barrier hit the Atlantic that they were able to focus on more offensive attacks.

Ponies, joined later followed by griffons, zebras and Diamond Dogs that managed to smuggled themselves through the portal station or by the Doctor, attacked supply lines and captured towns, disorganizing any planned assaults or pushing them back several weeks.

However, the master spies behind these attacks were two ponies with the backing of the PHL.

The first was in deep cover in the Canterlot Nobles, husband of the PETN leader (and later Minister of Newfoal Affairs) Fleur De Lis, known by the loyalists and the Tyrant as Trade Secret, was Fancy Pants. He was known for giving the PHL and in turn, the soldiers on the frontline as well, a heads up of any surprise assaults.

The other was Blue Spy, the blade of the PHL, known to destroy entire bases by herself and poison food supplies for entire colonies filled with newfoals, was a unicorn named Trixie Lulamoon.

Thanks to these two, they were able to disrupt a majority of the Tyrant forces for two years with their intel and assassinations.

On the ground on the frontlines, various commander units ensured the best they could to keep the horde in line and not add to their fallen to the Empire’s numbers.

With the addition of magic to their tools, their numbers of fallen human soldiers dramatically fell wayside, allowing the soldiers for each battle to increase their ability to survive. It also allowed some soldiers to develop unique weaponry and fighting styles for extra effectiveness against the Tyrant’s forces.

The Battle of Boston was the first 'true' victory for them. In previous years, ‘victory’ for humans depended on the number of civilians saved, but at the Battle of Boston they turned away an overwhelming force with the fabled Skyliner ship, the Great Equestrian, leading the charge to Boston. The barrier was also delayed, coming to a temporary stop, at the shock of the Tyrant and her armies.

Some would call the Battle of Boston “the miracle of Boston.” It wasn’t a miracle, not really, but it was as near as one for everyone who had spent the last four years running for their lives and stripped of everything they owned, certain they were doomed. For the first time in years, humanity had been able to stand and fight… and, most incredibly, keep the ground they were fighting on. The PHL had pulled new weapon after new weapon out of seemingly nowhere - the Fujin Missile that destroyed the Great Equestrian, along with every airship and flying newfoal in the area, anti-alicorn munitions, and whatever else they had used to take out a clone of Celestia.

It inspired hundreds to join the PHL, even some members of the ferociously violent HLF. There are countless stories of humans and ponies alike who said they were heading to Boston because they were inspired by the PHL’s actions. It was clear the PHL were the force to be reckoned with, not just to Celestia but to what few skeptics remained on Earth.

The next two weeks became hellish for Imperial forces. Humans signed up en masse for the PHL, eager for a taste of the new weaponry that the PHL had used and ready to take arms against the Solar Empire and get payback for all they had lost.

Those weeks were, to put it simply, utter madness. The one remaining Bureau in North America was cleared out and destroyed, all Newfoals within were slaughtered. The PER was all but exterminated in the North America, by this point, unable to mount a resistance due to the slew of new weapons being brought against them. Many of these assaults were lead by the infamous Stabsunteroffizier (or Sergeant) Viktor M. Kraber, who used them as test beds for newer and more exotic weaponry, such as the MG2023. This earned these purges the name "Kraber's Operations," a pun on his past as a surgeon. Which was fitting, given that they were almost surgically precise in terms of people saved in the process, and the lack of collateral damage. In terms of damage to PER operations and members, however, they were anything but surgical, delivering exactly the amount of mercy the public demanded. In other words, none.

The HLF were a laughingstock, though this didn't stop them from trying to gain new weapons from military bases, killing off ponies, and attempting to discredit the PHL at the MIA status of Colonel Marcus Renee. Enchanted ammunition and weaponry was passed out to anyone in the PHL who placed themselves between Celestia and civilization, from China, to America, to the Pacific, to Africa.

This PHL buildup and newfound drive to resist reached its zenith in the Battle of Brooklyn, in which Kraber rallied civilians to defend the city, its shipyards, and escape routes from the surviving PER and imperial forces as they sent waves of bodies at them to weaken their defenses, leading a brutally one-sided battle against Imperial forces that could more accurately be compared to a curbstomp.

When the Tyrant launched her second attack on Boston, she also sent out thousands to attack at the barrier’s edges at various points of the world, if only to gain more newfoals for the future conflict.

What she did not know was the opposing forces had also launched their own attack upon Canterlot. Moreover, they had also gained an ally in their time of need.

Another Equestria, one uncorrupted by the Tyrant’s influences, full of ponies and numerous other races willing to help humanity… and utterly livid at what had happened to their counterpart universe.

Their inclusion brought up the number of fighters of three hundred and fifty thousand and growing to nearly a million plus strong, matching the Tyrant’s own forces equally.

It would be one of the bloodiest and fiercest battles ever waged between all three worlds.

Profiles

Many beings, both human and pony, rose in defiance against the Tyrant and her slave newfoals and mind warped ponies.

Listed below is only a small number of people who risked everything to fight against tyranny and enslavement.

But their contributions for the war would be felt throughout the world.

Name: Lyra Heartstrings
Birthdate: October 12, 978 ANM (After Nightmare Moon)
Faction/Rank: Ponies for Human Life/Liberty, Founder
Status: Deceased, Former Leader of the PHL (Succeeded by Cheerilee Cherry)
Abilities/ Preferred Weapons: Level 8 Unicorn (Precision well above average)
Assault Arms (Created and forged by herself)

“I sometimes feel as if my eyes have been opened to some great and terrible mystery that everypony dares not look at, and shies away from. When I draw attention to it, most ponies laugh at me, or seem almost on the verge of understanding, a look of comprehension dawning on their faces…. before something draws them back. I don’t know what it is. There is something deeply wrong, and though I know not what, I know that the newfoals, the potion, the barrier, all are symptoms of a greater wrong. But mark my words: Something is not right with the world, wrong on a deep, fundamental level, and the Barrier is just the most noticeable symptom. The sun of Equestria has gone pallid, and Equestrians are not quite as caring for their fellow pony as they once were. I know that we are speeding toward some great catastrophe, the nature of which eludes me utterly...”

Biography: Lyra Heartstrings was a brilliant, but lazy, unicorn scholar before turning to music. She came in second after Twilight Sparkle in Celestia’s School of Gifted Unicorns. In fact, many teachers believed that if she applied herself she would have given Twilight Sparkle a good run for top student.

She started off her career by finding the KV62 Excavation Party’s lost ship in the Galloping Sea. While she only made a curious glance and looked around, she immediately returned to Canterlot to inform Queen Celestia of her findings.

Not only was her dream of finding the lost ship fulfilled, but she also cleared her great grandfather's name, validating his theories on the existence of parallel worlds and of humans. She was given a chance to study the remains of the ship and many findings of humanity. (Which was later retracted and all findings destroyed)

When Queen Celestia first made contact with humans, Lyra offered herself to become Ambassador for the United Kingdom and soon made friends with most, if not all of the Royal Family.

Specifically with Prince William and his family. Her assistant (and rumored lover), Bon Bon, was always seen by her side.

However, as time went on, Lyra was making note of the odd behavior of her leader. Her journals indicated that she was worried about her nation’s stance and continued distance from their new neighbors, with multiple references to “uncharacteristic behavior,” to the point that at least one diary was given over to recording such instances. One subject she was particularly concerned about was Conversion, claiming that surely there were better ways to protect Humanity from the Barrier. The very subject made her uneasy, as did the newfoals. She is widely cited as being one of the first ponies to claim that something “wasn’t right” about them, though she was unsure of what.

When the Conversion Bureaus opened, she made several attempts to have them shut down and have the potion examined by other medical practitioners, although the MHRA in the United Kingdom stated that there was no issues to be taken and allowed it through. She had strong doubts about it, and expressed unease around the new foals to her friends in the British Royal Family. It didn’t make her a popular mare in the country, and proto-HLF and PER elements had gotten suspicious of her. One HLF member even attempted a car bomb at a breakfast place Lyra had been eating.

Miraculously, he failed, taking few casualties, injuring the stallion Claw Hammer who had been eating with her. Though there have been questions about just how Lyra and Bon-Bon survived without injury, as they were at the epicenter of the blast.

With factions like the HLF and PER rising throughout the world, she began to fear a nebulous coming catastrophe, though she was unsure of just what could happen and was afraid and confused about the state of her homeland. Then came the expansion of the barrier and the silence from her homeland. She began to plan for a worst case scenario, along with planning to go the Bureau in London for an "Inspection of Quality".

She went on the day Celestia declared humanity unfit to exist and kicked off the Conversion War.

When Celestia sent out the signal to prepare the potion for distribution for all humans "to see the light", Lyra was present to see it and proceeded to disrupt the plan by systematically destroying the potions while keeping the newfoals contained within the London Bureau. By the time anyone in Britain had realized what was happening, the war kicked off and a quarter of the country was engulfed in war, with newfoal insurgents hidden right under the country’s collective noses. However, thanks to Lyra, the UK was safe and all newfoals were immediately disposed of before they could become a threat.

It would remain that way until the barrier made landfall at the beginning of the second year of the war.

By this time, Lyra stood out among other native ponies as she vocally disavowed her home country and pleaded with all native ponies to make their way to Britain and join her.

She created the PHL to protect their human friends and fight against the Tyrant but with so few humans willing to listen to her, she had claw her way into a position of power and set up a faction that would later become a powerful force in the war. It seemed destined to fail, to become a footnote, to have its members swallowed up by the monolithic PER and HLF gangs.

For those few in power over the world who had wondered about the prospect of enhancing human weaponry with magic, it seemed that the final nail in the coffin was when she was paired with a 'disgraced' and demoted American officer named Marcus Renee, who would later pushed for a taskforce to be created to field new weapons and armor. Including her famed "Assault Arms", which she had been seen constantly improving.

Miraculously, her group did not fail. It became a symbol of resistance and cooperation to humans and ponies alike, drawing in defectors from the HLF and Equestria alike.

Lyra Heartstrings would meet her end in Iceland, where she, the entire ponified crew of the HMS Thunder Child, and Bon Bon were captured and sent to Equestria. She was doomed before even stepping a hoof into a courtroom. After a show trial, she was sentenced to death by petrification and shattering.

However, even in death she still fights through the PHL, through humanity, from the various notes and journals she left behind. Her most important contributions are arguably the famed runic imprints and markings, which became standard modifications in all weapons, armor, and vehicles.

During the final battle with the uncorrupted Equestria at their side, Lyra’s own counterpart would wield the final version of the Assault Arms in the Final Battle, showing their true potential.

Name: Marcus Dwayne Renee
Birthdate: April 14, 1987
Military Branch/Rank: United States Marine Corps/Colonel
Status: 'Commander' of PHL Taskforce
Abilities: Runic Magic (Awaiting update status).
Enhances Physical attributes (measured strength-wise up to almost two and half tons when pushed) Olympic level running, minor increased of reaction
Minor telekinetic ability.
Magical negations (Offensive/majority of Mental spells)

"I am a man who has the literal world thrust upon his shoulders. But I wasn't alone. Others saw me and came to my side, to help me lift this burden high. I am nothing but grateful for their help. I will fight until my dying breath, I will lead until my time is done. If there is one thing we humans taught the ponies, its that we are a stubborn race, and I am glad that we managed to brush some of that stubbornness into them."

Biography: Colonel Renee's time in the Conversion War had not been easy. He soon became a frontline leader as he managed to keep the losses of of both military personnel and civilians well above standard.

However, a botched mission ended with nearly 90% casualty rating with both soldiers and civilians. While none of the survivors blamed him for what happened, various officers in the chain of command felt it necessary to demote and send him away from the frontlines.

His new mission was essentially one to keep him out of the fight and later send him back out under a new and capable officer. His orders stated that he was to take care of the fledgling leader Lyra Heartstrings and ensure that she and the other ponies would not turn against them. It wasn’t an honorable position, a reward, or anything to aspire to at the time.

It was, as stated earlier, like reassigning him to Antarctica. The powers that be had used him as a scapegoat, and conspired to turn him into a glorified bodyguard or babysitter for a perceived failure, expecting it to fail for both of them. Lyra’s fledgling movement, composed of a small minority of dissatisfied ponies and humans, was underfunded, widely disliked, and allegedly destined for doom. That, and there were numerous elements of the various governments, such as Senator Patrick Goleman of the United States, who had already handpicked their various “champions” in the fight against Equestria.

Marcus was, at this point, a nonentity in a dangerous, unforgiving job. Lyra’s open stance against the Tyrant and holding an open hoof of friendship to humanity had all but painted a target on him and his charges. Multiple assassination attempts from both the PER and the HLF had forced Marcus to rise back up and save dozens of lives with the help of the PHL at his back.

Marcus would later have a pitched three-way battle with HLF and PER at the same time in the middle of Austin, Texas, guarding Lyra while she talked to the Governor of the State. The three-hour battle was only won thanks to Lyra and her few followers, Austin PD, Texas Rangers, a small number of brave volunteers, and Marcus himself who took overall command of the defenders and led them to victory. It was here that showed the world that they could fight and win against overwhelming odds if they worked together, and Marcus suddenly found himself thrust into the spotlight, surrounded by supporters.

The reassignment had failed, suddenly placing Marcus in a position of unprecedented importance, one in which he never seemed all too comfortable. There were politicians and countless officials (such as the infamous Senator Goleman) who had attempted to demote him once more, protesting his newfound and unprecedented power.

However, the PHL, under Marcus and Lyra’s leadership, had become popular enough that to demote him from such a favorable position was untenable. On top of that, he had managed to impress President Davis with his skill at negotiating between humans and refugee ponies.

He had risen up to the challenge, allowing him to push for the PHL to have military backing, even displaying to various generals of multiple countries in the UN the combination of Equestrian magics and Human technology to fight the war. It's quite possible that because of him, PHL-aligned governments outnumber HLF states in perpetual states of emergency. Even in its infancy, the PHL's magic showed promise and the UN agreed, diverting thousands to thaumaturgical research. Then millions, and billions as the war drew onwards, as the last countries of humanity grew ever more desperate.

President Davis reinstated Colonel Renee his proper rank and labeled him a liaison and Commanding Officer for human members of the new PHL Taskforce.

For whatever reason, possibly due to his unlikely prestigious position, foreign officers and media mistakenly called him "Commander" Renee instead of his true rank. Sadly for the Colonel, even with him correcting them, people still knew him as Commander Renee.

Since then, Colonel Renee has been in dozens of conflicts, leading both human and pony troops. Made an alliance with the European Forces, and pushed for runic magic to be integrated into human equipment, citing the growing effectiveness of Equestrian shields, and numerous cases where humans were in close proximity to high energy magic where they suffered no detrimental effects. He has even placed himself in harm’s way by imprinting unknown and dangerous runic markings on his body.

It was unknown how his body would react in the future, but took the chance if it gave humans a chance to fight.

He then vanished at the Battle of Boston, but returned hours later, with new allies that could turn the tide of the war. He returned again, two weeks later...

… With an entire army at his back. It was an Equus uncorrupted, all willing to help humanity in its darkest hour. The combined forces of three alicorn princesses, the Bringer of Chaos, the Elements of Harmony, and every known civilization residing on Equus, were brought together by the efforts of the Colonel, the Princesses, and the two hundred volunteers that went to Equestria.

Colonel Renee had all but cemented himself in the annals of history with doing the impossible everytime he hit the field. He will step back and deny anything he did was special, ever humble in person. He will point out dozens of other things people and ponies did to show that he saw himself as nothing more than a soldier doing his duty. Whichever point of view you take, it is indisputable that Marcus is a great man.

The final battle would show all three worlds the might of human willpower and the ancient magical power of Equestria combined.

Name: The Doctor
Aliases: Doctor, Time Turner, Doc Who? (stage name), John Smith, Theta Sigma, The Mad Pony With a Box
Birthdate: ???
Faction/Rank: PHL/ Lead Researcher
Status: Alive
Abilities: ???

"I was a soldier once, you know...the Oncoming Storm, that’s what my enemies called me. The name that demons ran away from. The terror of the Last Great Time War, a ‘good man’ wading into the fight. I saw empires crumble and planets burn...saw entire species erased from existence, reduced to a nightmare of might-have-beens and never-weres.

(pause)

No, I didn’t just see it happen, I made it happen.

Eventually I said ‘No More’, and I ended the whole thing...easy enough, when said in the right Moment. So ten million ships burned in space, and on a world below, 2.47 billion children cried and died in an instant. And that was it...the war was over. And I was the only survivor. The coward survived, and ran away.

But you can’t run away from your past. I wanted to be The Doctor, the man who makes people better, but more often than not I saw more people die. Strangers, friends...family. I was just this one guy running around in a blue box, with the weight of billions of innocents weighing down on me.

The Lonely God, thats what they called me then. Ha! Some God...an impotent God, unable to rewrite countless wrongs, those ‘time-locked’ moments without which history can’t flow.

Like Lyra’s death. Like the Conversion Bureaus. Like this whole forsaken war! A lot of regrets. But there’s one that really weighs me down. It’s not the deaths, or the war, or all the blood on my hands...hooves.

It’s a friend I let down. He was a soldier too, a Brigadier. A good man, who died in a retirement home, waiting for me to come round and share one last drink as friends. All of time and space at my command, the whole whirring cosmic engine, causality itself at my disposal, and I couldn’t spare a few hours for one good, old friend who was convinced I’d not forgotten him.

Well, not any more. I failed Gallifrey, I failed the Brigadier, and I failed the billions already ground up and fed through the mill of Celestia’s madness. But No More! No running away, no forgotten promises, not a single more life wasted. I have a family again, a brave, wonderful wife and two fantastic daughters throwing themselves into danger, and I won’t abandon them.

I won’t abandon the PHL. I won’t abandon...my friends.

Chin up guys. Be strong. And when all this is over, the drinks are on me."

Biography Little is known about the pony named the Doctor. He is knowledgeable in several matters involving theoretical quantum physics, time itself (as demonstrated by his cutie mark) and many others. He has often alluded to meeting other alien races, travelled through time and space in his TARDIS (more on that below) and knowledge in the oddest of subjects. He also seems to have an odd love of silly hats and neckwear.

What is known is that the Doctor shares in a common-law marriage with ‘Derpy Hooves’, a former Ponyville pegasus mailmare (see Casefile: Bubbleheart). Derpy herself was the single-mother of a unicorn filly, ‘Dinky’ at the time of this union (see Casefile: Twinkleheart). Subsequently, this growing family declared themselves to have adopted a second daughter, ‘Sparkler’ (full name Amethyst Star, see Casefile: Sparkleheart). All three of these ponies display higher-than-average IQs, considerably excessive personalities, and a penchant for creative and lateral thinking, much like the Doctor himself (in this researcher’s opinion, a demonstration of the old adage that ‘like attracts like’).

Interviews with other PHL members who resided in Ponyville during this period indicate that the Whooves family were a stable and familiar sight around town, if somewhat eccentric, and confirm that at this time the Doctor presented himself under the alias of Time-Turner, a self-proclaimed theoretical physician and general advisor to the town council on ‘science, space, and all things timey-wimey’.

SIDENOTE 1:The lack of details on the particulars of Sparkler’s adoption have raised some questions. Evidence exists of her appearing as a member of the family with no forewarning and little to no proof of a previous family or background. Interviews also suggest that for her first months in Ponyville she spoke with archaic ‘Gecko-Roaman’ syntax and accent (a historic pony dialect analogous to Latin or Greek). The relevance to this of the family being ‘time-travellers’ remains unconfirmed.

SIDENOTE 2:Subsequent to this, Dinky has entered into a confirmed romantic relationship with another young PHL volunteer, Pipsqueak (see Casefile: Patch for particulars).

The TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space) is the Doctor’s means of transport. Before the rescue attempt for Lyra Heartstrings, it was a blue rectangular box that looks very much like an outdated British Police Box (a kind of ‘one-man police station’ and communications hub, discontinued after the introduction of two-way radios). After it was damaged and rebuilt, it now resembles a modified New York City phonebooth. Both iterations have the same trait of being far bigger on the inside, the ability to fly in both Earth’s atmosphere and outer space, jump dimensions between Earth and Equus, and jump through time (Although this ability was never used due to concerns, he has hinted that he would use this only if necessary).

His role in the PHL is one of advisor for the weapons and armor human and pony soldiers use. While he has shown a rather large distaste for weapons (and violence in general), he has set this aside as a matter of necessity to help improve their magical capabilities and practical uses. His knowledge in theoretical physics, space-time, and odd areas of magic has helped in the development of weapons that have helped prevent enemy unicorns from stealing firearms, the construction of assault saddles, super sonic bullets that pierce through magic shields, and rumored energy weapons.

However, due to his ability to bypass the portals, the Tyrant’s set her sights on to him. This came to a head when his wife, Derpy Whooves, was captured and imprisoned in the Frigid North. She, along with the thousands of others that rebelled against the Tyrant and set to go through re-education, were held in a rather poorly constructed prison on a mountain. Doctor had gone there himself and freed over two thousand ponies, then proceeded to knock the entire prison down the mountain, killing all the guards inside with a single sonic screwdriver.

In time, his family became the cornerstone for all magical technology. Or, as it was affectionately called Magitech, by the Whooves. With Doctor leading all experimental weapons and testing beds for vehicles.

For whatever odd reason, he absolutely has to bump heads with the European Forces Leader Major Stephan Bauer.

The parallels between Doctor Whooves and the sci-fi series "Doctor Who" have not been lost on those "in the know". However, in a world where magical pastel ponies with devastating magical abilities are causing the genocide of the human race, it is one of the lesser mysteries that most are content to quietly ignore. Those that don't are usually told that they "need to get their priorities right". It did however, create a rather odd (not to say amusing) moment where King William of Britain was rendered entirely speechless upon meeting the Doctor.

Names: Captain Rebecca Kleiner and Thunderwing
Places of Birth: Okinawa, and Cloudsdale
Ages: 34, 29
Status: Currently island-hopping in the Pacific

Captain Rebecca Kleiner was born in a military base in Okinawa, Japan, the oldest of three children to an American Navy captain and a military doctor native to Okinawa. She was a quintessential “military brat,” having lived in at least five different places through her childhood. Eventually she and her brother and sister joined the military, following a long held Kleiner family tradition. She studied military history, criminal justice, and law, and was stationed in her birthplace following her 25th birthday. She carried out her duty as a JAG lawyer for several years, up until the Equestrians declared war on humanity.

Thunderwing meanwhile was born in Cloudsdale, Equestria. He lived a normal life as a weather scientist, his special talent being in storm formation. He often studied weather formations over the Everfree Forest, intrigued by how the weather could manage itself without magic. He was a frequent collaborator with environmental scientist Verdant Tract. When Equestria made contact with Earth, Thunderwing was in, in his own words, meteorological heaven. He travelled all over the world, studying ocean currents and storm patterns, as well as climate change and ways ponies could help humans remedy those issues.

Thunderwing met Rebecca in a town in Kyushu. He was studying the tropical storms that had hit the region at the time, while she was helping out with relief efforts. They became fast friends, finding themselves to have numerous shared interests.

Both of them were interested in the weather, they found themselves walking together along the beaches, and both of them considered surfing to be a fun hobby. Granted, as a pegasus, Thunderwing would frequently ditch his board and start flying, sometimes not even bothering with the board.

They would spend many happy hours together by the seaside together.

Their budding romance was kept incredibly secretive before and during the first two years of the war. Human-pony romantic relationships were regarded as deviant and strange, many such couples often being the targets of discrimination and accusations of bestiality (Colonel Marcus Renee himself has faced similar prejudices after it was revealed he was in a relationship with the Earth pony mare Cheerilee (aka The Teacher), and a common insult used against such pairs by HLF groups is the term, “horse-fucking traitors”).

When the war commenced, Rebecca and Thunderwing helped in the evacuation of civilians and refugees, as well as containment of PER members. As the US military and the Japanese Self Defense Forces collaborated to keep the Japanese archipelago safe from the PER, Rebecca realized that refugees were the most vulnerable groups, as islands in the south Pacific were converted into Solar Empire strongholds, and the walled refugee camps on the outskirts of cities (known as “Dead Ends”) changed into killing fields.

However, that changed when her ship was attacked during repairs at a dock. Most high-ranking officers had been ponified, and she was the last one left in command, she was forced into an untenable position of great and terrible power. A position where the lives of millions rested on her shoulders.

She could have broken down. She could have lost her mind. But she didn’t, stepping up to her job with Thunderwing at her side. There were many who grumbled about his importance on the ship, allegedly as a “ tactical advisor,” though he’d seemed likeable enough.
Then, the night after a pitched battle to destroy a PER island holdout and prevent it from sending out ships to ponify other islands, perhaps the most infamous HLF attack in the Pacific Front occurred.

Peterson’s Mutiny. Several sailors with HLF sympathizers managed to convince the crew that Thunderwing was a PER spy, and a massive fight broke out across the ship between those loyal to Captain Kleiner and the HLF.

Unfortunately, at that moment, a PER sub arrived, turning the mutiny into an all-out three-way battle. Kleiner issued commands to both forces over the intercom, convincing everyone on the ship that the mutiny was pointless at the moment, and they had to act or they’d get ponified. During the rebellion, Thunderwing managed to create a rogue wave, then created a small cyclone that flooded the submarine, saving the crew of Kleiner’s ship.

It was probably at that moment that the two of them proved themselves to be more than capable and competent to not only lead, but to also send the enemy packing.

Interview

“How did you keep the ship going after the mutiny?”

Captain Kleiner: “It wasn’t easy. It was downright hellish, actually.”

Thunderwing: “Say, I know you’re the interviewer, but mind if I ask you a question?”

“No, go ahead.”

Thunderwing: “You know what frightens me most about the war?”

“What?”

Thunderwing: “How quickly hu… no, how quickly we nearly doomed ourselves. I mean… damn near everyone could have turned out to be an HLF member. It’s almost a miracle that there’s so many PHL. Think about it… it’s easy to have just looked at ponies like me, associated us with the enemy, and decided to shoot them. You could have gotten riots, ponies killed on sight…”

Captain Kleiner: “He’s right. Much as I’m pretty sure this is going to be the most horrible thing in the history of humankind, we didn’t.”

Thunderwing: “We didn’t.”

“How’d you keep it that way?”

Captain Kleiner: “I talked them down. I gave them the standard speech about how his homeland had gone to shit, judging by what we’d been hearing. Told them that if magic created the Barrier and it was destroying everything we’d ever built, then it was pretty unlikely we could kill the thing.”

Thunderwing: “It was not like that.”

Captain Kleiner: “Then how do you remember it?”

Thunderwing: “It was a hell of a lot more inspiring than that! You said something like ‘BUT! There’s ponies out there like Lyra, ponies with a definition of help that doesn’t involve the Potion or simply wiping everything about us off the face of the earth,’ then you started endorsing the PHL and... didn’t you threaten to throw anyone that tried to hurt me into a boat propeller?”

Captain Kleiner: “I… hope I didn’t. That'd be an awful way to keep the crew under control."

“Did you find it hard to assume the level of control that you did?"

Captain Kleiner: "I'd be surprised if I didn't. But, hell... It's saving the world, and that's only easy in video games. Besides, I can sit down and complain, or I can do something about it. And if I do the first thing, I’m a zombie, so that’s..."

Thunderwing: “Yeah, that’s… no.”

Name: Stephan Alexander Bauer
Birthdate: August 15, 1994
Military Branch/Rank: German Military Bundeswehr, SpezlKrH EGB (Similar the US Army Rangers)
Status: Current leader of an EU Regiment and actual chosen representative of the EU forces. He is also in charge of the training of new recruits for the PHL and human forces.
Equipment: High Modern Full Body Armor enhanced with Runes.
Heckler & Koch G27 (HK417A2 13”) Battle Rifle with under barrel GLM Grenade Launcher and 1-8x24 PM ShortDot scope.
HK USP .45 as sidearm.
Machete enhanced by Runes and Changeling Magic, which gives it the ability to transform into a Claymore.
Abilities: Inhuman stamina and strength thanks to the Runic Armor. Quick thinking and adjusting to new situations. Won the German Armed Forces Badge of Marksmanship 7 times in a row. Trained in many hand to hand combat styles.

Even though Bauer isn’t quite a member of the PHL, his importance to their cause is virtually incalculable. It was him who trained the first batch of PHL ponies from Europe and taught them how to survive on the modern battlefield, and, after Captain Kleiner and Thunderwing’s successes, he was one of the most vocal proponents of arming PHL ponies with assault saddles and yokes. One of his greatest successes was the ‘Blue Spy’. But more about that later.

Bauer was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1994. He joined the military at the age of 18 and worked his way up to the rank of an officer (Leutnant/Lieutenant). He always showed great respect to experienced soldiers and they in return taught him how to lead. One of those was Hauptfeldwebel Peter Diesberg, who saw a great potential in the young man and treated him like a second son.

Soon, Leutnant Bauer joined the SpezlKrH EGB, and managed to become the commander of a squad and lead them through several missions around the globe.

But he had to fight his greatest battle in his homeland. After the Tyrant’s declaration of war on all of humanity, Germany and the other nations of the EU mobilized their forces to push the invaders and the traitors in their own lines back to where they came from. But as soon they noticed that the Barrier was unstoppable, they changed their tactics to prevent any future losses of civil and military personnel. Europe has been evacuated and now millions are homeless, a mass exodus on a scale no one ever saw before, resulting in overpopulation on a scale never seen before in human history. That loss burned deep into Bauer, who only wanted to end the war and rebuild his home.

It was around the year 2019, as the Barrier swallowed Germany, that Leutnant Bauer was forced to leave his home like so many others. It was in Hamburg where he met Trixie Lulamoon who was fleeing from the Tyrant and her newfoals and was looking for protection. Stephan took her with him, taking the risk of being ostracized by the rest of his unit, as the differences between PHL-allied soldiers and HLF were not as defined as they are now.

It soon proved to be one of the best decisions he would ever make, as he would train her to become one of the best spies in this war. Iceland was their next stop and Stephan helped Trixie to adjust to her new life. But Trixie wanted more, and soon afterwards he found himself in the position of the new drill instructor of the PHL ponies on Iceland. During this time, a unit that fought in France found the Queen of the Changelings, Chrysalis. She was the one who taught Trixie the power to transform her body and create separate personae, allowing her near-limitless transformation ability. Chrysalis died four years later as her internal organs rotted away due to the ‘Poisoned Love’ of the newfoals, which already killed her entire species and rendered her sterile. She died before the war ended, but not alone.

Later, Leutnant Bauer became Major Bauer and leader of an EU branch after the EU Forces would be split up and dispersed into other military forces. They were supposed to be subordinate under the command of the UN, but Major Bauer refused to do the last part and with the support of many other officers from the EU, the EU Forces became an relatively independent military branch, upholding the memories of a lost land. They still coordinate with the UN, but the remaining EU Forces do everything to keep the history and individuality of their home nation to preserve it for the future.

Since that day, the EU Forces fought around the globe against the Tyrant and getting their revenge by killing every Newfoal she send against them and she payed with blood for every meter she moved forward.

Soon, Trixie returned to her beloved mate and brought him new tools for the fight against the Tyrant. She enchanted his machete to transform into a claymore, able to cut through every known material, and he was soon given a modified full body set of armor with enchantments which protect him and gives him an extraordinary boost in strength (both blade and armor would later gain more powerful runic magic). All this gear gave him a new nickname in the lines of the UN troops: The Knight of Germania.

Many people look up at him and some seem to actually follow him instead of Marcus. The story behind the meeting of those two is an entire chapter for itself, but they fought side by side in more than just one occasion. Both see each other as equals, as soldiers and friends and can alway rely on each other. This trust was so deep that Marcus made Stephan to his second in command of the UN forces if anything should happen to him. Of course, no one ever thought that Marcus would disappear, but after it happened, Stephan took the lead but still had to fight with the doubt of the other soldiers who followed Marcus. Many thought that the war would be over without him.

But it was the battle against the Tyrant’s Clone that presented Stephan in a new light. After she fought against Discord, Princess Luna and Cheerilee, it was Stephan who finally brought her down, and executed her after Viktor Kraber made his killing blow on her spine with one of the first six anti-alicorn rounds in the world. It wasn’t just a victory for the troops, though. For all the humans and allied ponies who had lost their comfortable lives, wealth, families, and homes, the victory meant everything. It meant that, for possibly the first time, there was hope. That even as the Barrier inched over the Earth, maybe, just maybe, the Empire could be defeated.

Of course, when it was revealed that there was another Equestria with enough magic to rival the Solar Empire, all those hopes flared up into absolute certainty. They could absolutely win, they were sure of it. Stephan then followed Marcus through the portal to the other Equestria to train the new troops, being one of the first people through the portal.

After two long weeks, Stephan returned with a new army in his back, composed of ponies and other creatures from the second Equestria that he trained to fight in the war. There is no doubt that he trained them to be the best of the best, like he did several times before. And with him at the peak, together with Marcus, there is a chance to win this war.

Name: Trixie Lulamoon
Aliases: “The Great and Powerful Trixie”, the Blue Spy
Birthdate: April 17, 980 BNM (Before Nightmare Moon)
Faction/Rank: Ponies for Human Life/Spec. Ops Assassin
Status: Alive
Trixie Lulamoon was born in Neigh Orleans to an earth pony father who managed a circus and a unicorn mother who was a top performer for said circus. She spent most of her foalhood traveling, and found her cutie mark in magicianship and showponyship at the age of twelve. She was a hit at her parents’ circus for her over the top shows and stage persona. When she was old enough, she struck out on her own, travelling all over Equestria to perform shows and support herself as a travelling performer.

The only hindrances to this were her terrible luck and her ego. A disastrous show in Ponyville where she rubbed off the wrong way on the Elements of Harmony and accidentally inspired two local children to stupidly wake an Ursa Minor just to watch her vanquish it cost Trixie her livelihood for a while.

Whatever happened between that time and the outbreak of the Crystal War is rather vague. There were rumors of her searching for a magical amulet that would augment her power to levels rivaling even alicorns, but she never found it. She was seen to have taken numerous odd jobs, including something on a rock farm and even a job as an exotic dancer, but nothing ever really stuck. In between jobs, however, she spent a lot of time living out of her badly repaired cart.

She, like many other ponies of Equestria, had claimed to feel something wrong with her land even before it manifested. She in particular claimed to remember a “peculiar void” in Equestria. A sense that something was missing, never to be found again.

She evacuated herself along with countless other refugees, heading northeast on the Equestrian Exodus.

She made her way to Germany, marveling at the human technology. It wasn’t an easy journey, though. Just getting out of Equestria wasn’t easy. She was forced to take her battered old cart through the woods of Equestria, along pathways it clearly was not meant to traverse. Food wasn’t an issue, as she was forced to eat grass on the way through.

It wasn’t the travel that was the hardest part, she’d later claim. It was the loneliness of everywhere that the Barrier had eaten up. It also hadn’t helped that the Barrier had destroyed any roads or bridges she could have used, making the journey for her and her fellow escapees longer by days. She’d wondered how Equestria would be able to sustain the campaign, thanks to all that they’d destroyed.

Unfortunately, upon passing the Barrier and making her way into Germany, her bad luck struck once more. She somehow ended up mixed up in a group of PER and newfoals (to this day, she’s uncertain of how it happened) and they assumed she would throw potion. She refused, rather vehemently, and was forced to run away.

She met Stephan Bauer during the evacuation of Hamburg, begging for him to transfer her out on a helicopter. Unfortunately, her cart was left behind, but it didn’t fit in the chopper anyway.

Her bad luck struck yet again, as she was soon detained by two officers on the USS Gerald Ford under the pretense of securing the safety of everyone on the vessel. She was mercilessly beaten for no other reason besides the fact that she was a pony.

And yet she persevered.

After most of Europe had been swallowed by the Barrier, Trixie ended up in a bleak and depressing refugee camp, at least until Bauer remembered what she did before the fleet Equestria. He pulled a few strings and provided her with everything necessary to give the camp its very own Magical Show.

But soon it wasn’t enough for Trixie. As soon as she heard about the PHL she decided to join. She asked Stephan if he couldn’t be the one who trained her and the other ponies. Mostly for the purpose of spending more time with him.

Suddenly, a few weeks after the training started, Stephan called her to accompany him for a visit, finding, to her shock, Queen Chrysalis. As she found out, she had been chosen to be trained in the ways of body shifting and other secret magical arts a unicorn could only dream of. Thus Stephan took care of the military part while Chrysalis gave Trixie the tools to become the most capable spy who ever lived.

Of course she isn’t allowed to tell any secrets, but she said that both of them forced her to her limits and beyond. But results didn’t lie.

It was in the Christmas days during her departure to the USA that Trixie finally confessed her love for Stephan, which he returned. Neither of them made an effort to hide their budding relationship - he was a war hero, why should he? - to anyone and spent as much time together as they could.

After the battle of Boston, Trixie traveled to the second Equestria together with Bauer to prepare the promised troops for the upcoming battle. And she and Major Bauer will make sure that they return with an army of the best of the best.

Contribution to the War

In this world that we live in now, after the Barrier has fallen, as we slowly reclaim our lost territory, “PHL” is often synonymous with “Hero.” There are often HLF movements that disagree, but they are a dying breed.

It’s no exaggeration to call them a godsend. The technology they produced has become commonplace, their weaponry saved countless lives of soldiers and civilians alike.

The PHL would be a shining example of a group of sheer determination and conviction, able to stand tall in the trying and dark time of the Conversion War. Against all odds, suspicion and paranoia, they were able to unite the majority of humanity and numerous other races against a common foe. Their inventiveness, resourceful methods and uncompromising optimism are, without question, what saved humanity and Equestria alike.

With a bit of luck, of course.

A world where the HLF had taken their place would have been doomed to fail. Anyone can pick up guns and slaughter their enemies, but not just anyone can do what the PHL did. Humans and ponies alike looked beyond what prejudices they could have had, beyond their disagreements, beyond their fears, and joined together to create something much greater.

They created weapons that could pierce shields, armor that could resist and even shrug off spells, cleaner and more efficient power plants. They went from being a simple annoyance to the Tyrant, an insignificant group almost certainly destined for failure, to a force that would bring her down.

A world without the PHL, where humans and ponies were completely at odds and forced to opposite sides would be a terrible bleak world indeed. A world far too terrifying to contemplate.

HLF (Old version. Non canon)

Author's Notes:

The events that take place in this chapter are no longer canon to The Other Side of the Spectrum. It's an act as a mere deleted scene of such of the old HLF chapter.

The HLF

Founder: Reverend James Thomas (No longer affiliated with group)

Group Creation Date: March 16, 2019

Current status: Fractured (Assault of 'Humans Only' Shanty city Defiance on August 27, 2022, led by Colonel Marcus Renee and 200 troops composed of US Marines/Army/PHL personnel, scattered chain of command)

While first contact happened on February 6, 2018, the HLF did not form until a full year later, when the 'New Foals' and the PER had already established itself.

The founder, one Reverend James Thomas, had initially created the group to form an awareness of the New Foals and their extreme changes from their original personalities. It wasn't even called the HLF at the time, but was called the HTF, the Harriet Thomas Foundation, in response for his formerly cancer-ridden daughter’s extreme change of behavior and hoped to use the organization as a tool for helping others to be aware of the changes made by the ponification and help them through it.

When it became more apparent that this was not just minor isolated incident that happen on occasion, Reverend Thomas reached out to others in an attempt to let various government officials know of their concern.

Name: Andrew Silas
Nationality: United Kingdom
Crime: Tagging Her Majesty's Buckingham Palace (Serving a year probation, but was released at the start of the war)
Status: No longer affiliated with the HLF

"What did I think at the time? I thought I was doing something that would finally get someone's attention. My friend, Henry, he was crippled by his own dad when he had one too many drinks at the local pub and came blazing home. That man didn't even slow down when he ran the light, ran into his own son, called out 'bloody wanker' as he passed and kept on driving, too bloody wasted to know what had happened. Now along comes this cure all potion and Henry, who loved a good game of football, wanted to play again."

"So he signs up, fills out the form and away he goes. He comes back a week later, a dark orange unicorn pony. So what’s first thing I ask? 'Hey now, Henry. Now that you’re back on your feet, or hooves in this case, lets go try out for a quick game?' The look he gave me... it was like he had no idea what I was talking about."

"Then it got worse as time goes on. I know what newfoals are like, we all do, but this was before the war. We expected them to just be our friends and family with hooves and fur, we expected… I don’t know what. The simplest way I can put it is that we expected it to be them. That they’d be something like the people we knew. Henry, though-you’ve heard this description a million times, but it just wasn’t him in there. Every week, he just got more distant, hanging with a bunch of other newfoals I’d never seen. A month later, it was like he never knew me, and when we did talk, the subject always turned to ponification and how great it felt. I’ve known transwomen and transmen before, and sometimes they ended up regretting it-a sad truth, that is-and sometimes the novelty wore off after a month and they just started adjusting, but Henry just glowed as if it was the day after he’d been ponified, and never stopped. Plus, those people never proselytized about it... It was damned unnerving. So one day, wondering about what’d happened to my friend, I saw this help group starting up by an American, and I figured why not. Thing is, once you began to realize how many people were joining up because of their friends and loved ones became completely different people after getting transformed, it terrified you to the core that no one was doing anything about it."

"So yeah... I jumped the wall and tagged the building, could you imagine my surprise that it was Her Majesty herself who caught me when she decided to go for a walk and was looking at me the entire time through the window... Bless her soul, I hope she is in a better place."

The Change to the HLF

Reverend Thomas reached out for various organizations to help spread the word of the disturbing trend in the New Foals. However, he turned to more radical and extreme groups, mostly evangelicals with questionable pasts or groups with known criminal backgrounds, or those with questionable medical backgrounds.

Still, he moved on, and finally managed to secure a meeting with a State Governor to air his concerns about the New Foals and how many families had questioned the use of potions.

Sadly for Reverend Thomas, his meeting resulted with nothing to show for it. The FDA reported nothing was wrong with New Foals and there was no need for concern themselves with the potion use.

He received this news the day the newly revealed Conversion Bureau was announced to the public. When the next meeting for the HTF was held, Reverend Thomas found himself alienated and was cast away from his very own group he founded not several months earlier for his daughter.

It was this day the HTF died, and the HLF was born from the ashes.

And soon came to follow, the heinous crimes in the name of Humanity.

Name: Viktor Kraber
Nationality: German
Crimes: Murder, mass murder, conspiracy to commit murder, illegal possession of firearms, assault, impersonating a police officer, illegally crossing borders between countries, impersonating a child protective services officer, torture, smuggling firearms, practicing medicine without a license, arson, forgery, vandalism, kidnapping, robbery, theft of military property...
(Captured and arrested during one of the various target sites linked directly to Defiance, immediately surrendered himself and was given an option to join the Task Force under the command of Colonel Renee)
Status: In service with the Bundeswehr

"I guess you could all say it started in South Africa. Or possibly New York. I’d planned to move to South Africa after med school, live with my cousins, provide my service as a doctor, eat the food, and just turn into the scenery and do whatever I wanted when I was off duty."

"You can see my records in med school. I was not the best student. I drank, I hotwired cars, I was what… I was what a friend of mine calls wake and bake, yet still, somehow, I passed each class. There was only so long before it could all catch up with me-which is where Peter and Anka came in. Kate and I were just fokking shocked, I tell you-trying to raise children while you’re attending a university in a country you’re not native to, trying not to piss off your girlfriend’s parents… I believe it was all comeuppance for what I’d done in medical school. Still, it all worked out, and me and Kate managed to pay for them. I found work as a doctor back in Germany, Kate took an accounting job. It was a long time before I could afford to visit cousin Richard and cousin Helen back in Joburg, but we managed."

"Then one day in 2019, not too long after the barrier dropped, my parents surprised me. Plane tickets to South Africa! It was like a dream. I’d spent so much time there as a kid, and I had a virtual death grip on most of the slang because the place was just so wonderful. I couldn’t wait to see all my connections down there. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought to do it yet!"

"Kate, Peter, and Anka couldn’t understand why it was so exciting to me-hell, Peter thought it was all a big cliched desert or a death trap full of men with Kalashnikovs and spears. But no-there’s so much more to the place. There’s jungle, there’s opportunities to ski, there’s veld, I just… I love the place. Plus, they make excellent guns-a recent friend of mine claims that his Neostead shotgun is a favorite of his."

"So when we get to South Africa, heading from the hotel to my cousin’s pozzy, I don’t find Richard Pretorius. No, there’s a red earth pony cleaning the dishes, whistling a jaunty tune. I was surprised as fok when it turned out it was him-I couldn’t believe he’d gone through with it! Still, he seemed like he was Richard, and he just… the kids fell in love. They thought he was the best uncle a child could have. They petted his fur, he gave them rides..."

"They didn’t just fall in love with him though. They fell in love with… with Equestria. I… I’m sorry. I need a fokking moment. They bought cheap merchandise, they watched everything on the news-they even wanted to be ponies too, but I told em what I did this transman I knew back in college. Changing your body like that is a life-making decision, don’t do it on a whim, I said. But still they persisted! Kate even made Anka a horse costume out of a unitard, and she… she just pranced all over the house, and… I need another moment. Or to drink another dop. You got any bourbon?"

"Now-as a doctor, I came into a lot of money. Enough that, through certain channels and the newfoal community in town-I didn’t like them, but they knew me through my daughter, so the mank genaaide bergboks were civil enough-I managed to get Pinkie Pie to throw a party for them, in person no less. She said she’d even bring a clown too, and that she’d make it a party they’d remember for the rest of their lives. And I feel physically FOKKING SICK to admit this, but she… she sounded nice. Trustworthy. I’d immediately thought of an adult who dressed like a child when I first heard her voice. Ah… I’m gonna need more bourbon."

"I was going to be there, but I had to treat a man who’d been hit in a car crash. There were certain complications, so I couldn’t come for awhile. So, when he was done, I packed up some presents-hell, I’d even thought of getting a costume so I could match them, they’d half-converted me to ponification-and sped home. It wasn’t a long drive, but then…"

"Then I saw my house. No one in there. No music-she’d promised spontaneous music too. I walked in, wary-I didn’t have a gun with me. If I had one, it would have been out right then and there-and it was all too quiet. Dammit, is there any more bourbon?"

"Except for someone laughing. It wasn’t any of the kids, or Kate, or Pinkie-I’d never heard this person in my life. I reached for my scalpel, walked into the dining room, and found that fokking clown Pinkie had hired, and some purple goop all over the room. I didn’t touch it-it just… it felt wrong. I didn’t know if he was human or pony to begin with-their rampant xenophobia suggests that Pinkie would have taken him from Equestria, but the clown’s madness suggests he was a newfoal. "

"He was the one laughing, of course. 'TELL ME WHERE THEY ARE!' I yelled, holding the scalpel to his eye."

"He never stopped laughing, even as his laughing pissed me off so much that I drove it into one of his eyes. I stared down, blood on my hands as I thought of what must have happened to the children, why their clothes were all gone…"

"They’d all been ponified."

"I tied that fokking clown up to a chair, even as his laughter turned into screams, and I worked over him for hours with a smile on my face. I drove knives into him, I injected him with chemicals I found lying around the house, I used everything in my grandfather’s medical bag, I broke his legs and cut him open and eviscerated him till there was barely anything left to hurt. I remember that there was blood all over the room, seeping into the carpet, on the ceiling… it was seeping into my shoes."

"I don’t even remember what I wanted to know. Their location? The cure? Where Pinkie was? Why they did this? I just wanted to hear someone scream for what had happened to my wife and the children I’d struggled to protect all my life. "

"I had murder on my mind. I took a double-barreled 10-gauge shotgun from the attic and walked out into town. I had it sawed-off, hidden in a bag, so I had to go somewhere without metal detectors. I searched all over the city for someone that might know, one hand on the shotgun all the time."

"That’s how I found the HLF-or Menschabwehrfraktion, as they’re known back in Germany. They wanted another soldier to save earth from the pony menace-personally, I thought they were conspiracy-nut chops. They weren’t expecting me to like it, but-"

"I jumped at the chance. I was on board for it before the woman in charge finished speaking. The training was unbearably painful, but all worth it in the name of what I’d accomplish. Every day, I woke up and killed. We traveled all over Europe, looking for more newfoals to kill. I can remember watching Bureaus explode with childlike glee, as me and my mates-no, they’re not my mates now, they’d fokking shoot me on sight if they met me-turned it into a competition to see who could create the biggest boom without harming any humans in the way. I turned my MG2019-the stolen one that has those F3-Thunderlord parts-on a street full of advancing newfoals once, and killed them all. The police called us terrorists. They spoke of us as if we were the scum of the earth."

"Far as I was concerned, that didn’t matter. Why should it? I could just keep killing and KILLING THE BLIKSEMS TILL THERE WAS NO ONE LEFT!"

"Kraber, keep your shit together before I go in there and make you."

"Fine, 'Commander,' only stating the truth after all. "

"Just get on with it, Kraber, you’re making Ms. Finish nervous enough as it is. And stop drinking all that bourbon, it’s only a matter of time till you’re incoherent!"

"Like anyone could tell the difference! Now, in the future, if we win, people are going to want a hero. I am not that hero. When there’s a movie of this whole ordeal, I’ll be portrayed nothing like I really am. The movie’s going to show me having doubts way earlier than I actually did. It’s going to turn me into a fokking overwrought tragic anti-hero. And I’m not."

"I am fokking not. Tragic, maybe, but not any sort of hero."

"What I did between my children getting ponified and joining the Bundeswehr would take too long to explain, and I’m sure that neither of us want to dwell on it too long. It will all be in the book that Aegis and I plan to write."

"I can’t believe I told this whole fokking story without mentioning Aegis! Long story short - he’s how I got in the Bundeswehr. There was a raid on our compound, I was trapped under a piece of rubble… and he saved my life. Threw it like it was nothing and carried me out on his back-he even had to knock me out so I didn’t kill him."

"Now that, that could be a whole other fokking story on its own. But trust me-without Aegis, there’d be a lot of other people and ponies dead with me. It’s him that keeps me sane. And I’m glad he set me back on the path to killing the right things, if only because the HLF is a punchline now. Nobody respects them, nobody should respect them, and they’re like…. like some storm that just hurts everyone when it hits a settlement. And they’re to us what your average Kalashnikov-wielding guy out in some desert was to soldiers back during the war on terror.”

"With all this in mind, anyone watching this that thinks ponies and humans can’t coexist? They had a saying back in South Africa. Gaan klim terug in jou ma se poes."

Human and only just

The HLF, now reborn from the HTF and no longer had a peaceful leader at the reigns, saw fit to do what they saw was necessary.

Even with the news reporting a low turnout for the Conversion Bureau, the HLF had a target in mind, the PER.

All across the world, sparks of battles between the groups began to increase. Government officials denounced both as terrorist groups and locked down and targeted both groups with equal vigor.

This went on for a month before the portal began to expand, this caused the HLF to target more openly on any ponies, whether they were New Foal or Native.

Finally, came the day Queen Celestia made her broadcast and attacked every known leader across the world. The HLF went on the assault as well, attacking and killing hundreds of ponies, calling it justice and revenge.

The truth on the matter is while they killed a score of New Foals, they also killed innocents in equal amounts. Humans caught in the cross fires, captured and being held for potioning, or simply in the wrong place at the wrong time; they justified it as they were a lost cause, even when the captured humans were in no danger of being changed or it was to 'better to be safe than sorry'. That is not to count the possible dozens of innocent ponies that had no desire for the war and were just as stunned as the rest of humanity.

Name: Michael Costello
Nationality: Irish.
Crimes: arrested for being a part of the riot and assault on a Garda Siochana officer when the first Conversion Bureau Center was opened in Dublin City in Ireland followed by a prison escape; linked to dozens of kidnapping, murder, rape of various human sympathizing ponies and humans; inhumane treatments to both human and pony prisoners; and was a leading figure of the HLF members involved in the massacre and desecration of hundreds of ponies and humans in a refugee camp in Northern Ireland.
Status: Incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay

When asked about his past, the young man said he had committed no previous crimes, he said anyway. Though truthfully he had a dislike for anyone that wasn’t Irish and was often involved in fights with foreign people visiting Ireland, especially people from England. When the ponies came to Earth and Celestia revealed her plans for humanity, most of his hate went away for other non-Irish people and he became consumed with hate for the ponies, thinking of them as little more than animals.

"May I ask why?"

"Why I killed all those ponies and humans? Because the ponies are all fucking scumbags and those humans are horse fucking traitors!"

"Do you not feel bad about yourself?"

"Of course I’d feel bad what I've done to my fellow man. As for the Ponies however, I don’t give two fucking shits about them! They aren't human. So why should I feel bad about killing them?"

"What do you hope to achieve?"

"I hope we smash down the barrier, so we can kill every single last one of those fucking horses. Those bastards took my family and my homeland from me! So I will fucking avenge my country!"

“A noble goal, avenging your country. Just one question, though. How do you think that the barrier can be stopped?”

“I have no idea, but we can find a way! I know we will. Human ingenuity will solve these problems and we will steamroll them, I know it!”

“What about the work that the PHL/UN Taskforce is doing? I’ve heard of-”

“Don’t talk to me about them! Marcus Renee is a horsefucking traitor to his race!“

"Nice to know how you feel about me."

"What? You fucking cunt! Let me out of here!"

"Believe me, when the time comes, I would rather let you be potioned, it might better to kill you off that way... by becoming something you hate. And then we will kill you or just let you live. Doesn’t matter to me. Goodbye, Mr Costello, your interview is over."

"Get back here! Fight me! You fucking coward!"

A path not for everyone

Not every initial member of the HLF stayed for the ride. Like most concerned loved ones, they only joined believing it was a help group. Once the change occurred between leaderships, many left on that same day, understanding that the group was going somewhere they couldn’t follow. Others joined out of fear and paranoia for their safety; seeking help, refuge and ways to defend themselves against the PER, newfoals and Equestrian forces.

While there was a rising tide of memberships, there was an equal amount of people leaving as the crimes linked to the group were reported.

Even with their proclamation of their intent to help mankind kind in its darkest hours, they did very little to prove this, and have done progressively less ever since.

By the end of their first year, the group had listings of known criminal elements from every corner of the globe, supplies of weapons being shared with all members.

The crimes began to skyrocket, with postings of various videos depicting crimes showing the utterly depraved nature of the group, cementing their image for all.

And still the war went on, despite their 'efforts' to stem the tides of Queen Celestia, the 'Solar Tyrant', and her herd of New Foals.

As the war effort began to grow, the reports of a new group entering the war made the HLF turn their sights on what they deemed 'an affront to mankind.'

The PHL.

Names: Richard Stanley, Gail Harmon-Stanley, and Charles Stanley
Nationality: American
Crimes: None
Status: Stationed at Fort Hood, various jobs in helping with the war effort

When I first heard about the Harriet Thomas story, I guess that raised some red flags for us, especially for my wife Gail. She always liked to keep up on the news, and she always wondered in fact if the ponies could just make a “cure-everything potion” that didn’t change the drinker’s body. She was a skeptical sort; I guess that’s what saved us. My oldest son, Porter, was stationed in South Korea a while before the Equestrians came, and he even found a very nice lady there. Her name was Eun-Hee Lee, and she was a reporter for the KBS (Korean Broadcasting System) news, and they even had plans to visit us. Gail, our younger son Charles and I couldn’t wait to meet her, especially Gail. She couldn’t stop harping about wanting grandkids already.

Back on subject…

Eun-Hee was one of those reporters at that conference in Berne, when the barrier was starting to expand. I still remember how she and those other reporters got forcibly ponified on camera, their faces and screams. I still wonder just how and why Celestia thought that was a bright idea. One hour later, Porter called us on Skype and I had never seen him look so angry. But more than that, he was just heartbroken. He wanted to make Celestia pay. I told him not to let himself get carried away, and thankfully he took my advice to heart, since I do see he’s still alive.

Anyway, when war was declared, and the Equestrians were trying to ponify every country’s leading politicians, we were all running on high paranoia. Not only that, but there was also the PER. The local Conversion Bureau was raided and most of their potion stocks disappeared. News reports everywhere talked about PER upshoots and newfoal groups ponifying entire families. We were all scared to go outside unless we had a hazmat suit and a gun. Many of our neighbors ended up installing security locks and systems into their homes, and some of us slept with the lights on. I mean, my family and I lived in a pretty small town, the type where most of the locals know each other, trust one another. That had to be a sure fire sign of how scared we all were, and the HLF offered us help and safety.

The HLF leader that got us into the offshoot in Ohio was actually an old acquaintance of mine. In fact, most HLF members were former military, so we felt right at home. He and many other people in our area got together, helping to supply locals with weapons to defend themselves, teaching them how to shoot, do some night guarding to look for any PER or newfoals that could be wandering around, guard any supplies like food and medicine, look over large gatherings of people, all that good stuff.

But then it went from a well-meaning group aiming to help humanity to a downright insane group of fanatics that, quite frankly aren’t really helping our case with the Queen.

I don’t know how it began, but first, there were the public killings of people suspected to be in cahoots with the PER. There was no evidence to support that accusation, but vigilantes were everywhere, playing judge-jury-executioner on everyone they considered to be in league with the Equestrians. Hell, I’m sure most of those “vigilantes” just accused them of being PER members because they just plain didn’t like them.

On top of that, there were ponies, good ponies that didn’t agree with Queen Celestia, getting harassed verbally and physically for no reason other than being ponies. It first started with their homes being vandalized with graffiti saying stuff like “go home geldos” and their windows getting broken in. It wasn’t long before that stuff escalated, with assaults, muggings and slurs getting thrown at them. And then the killings started.

I have seen plenty of horrible things through my life. Live news reports of what was going on in Vietnam. My own experiences in Operation Desert Storm. Witnessing the terrorist attacks. But those still didn’t prepare me for what the HLF did next…

Over The Edge

The HLF had established itself as group of questionable morals and tactics against all ponies, no matter if they were New Foals or not. So it was no surprise that they set on a group that was composed of ponies.

Propaganda spread that the PHL were spies sent in from the Tyrant to get within their ranks and gain their trust. Sadly, this didn't work for long as the PHL began to skyrocket up in status thanks to information and ponies willing to help in their war against their mad leader. There were horror stories from all over the globe of the oppressive, orwellian atmosphere of Equestria, and disgraced doctors from Equestria confirming the worst suspicions about the potion.

Worse was when Lyra Heartstrings offered her hoof in friendship to the HLF, in hopes that together they could beat the Solar Tyrant. In retrospect, this will likely be the most damning evidence for the HLF’s status as a hate group, given the near-messianic status of Ambassador Heartstrings outside of the barrier.

They denied her and even tried to kill her by a sniper, who himself was killed by a countersniper placed by Colonel Renee before he even had time to set up. At the moment, Renee’s position in a growing Task Force linked to the PHL had seemed almost like the proverbial reassignment to Antarctica, but that soon changed when it became clear how effective they were.

This caused tension with both groups, especially with President Davis who gave the option to all US military units, both active and retired, within the group to leave or face execution for aiding a known terrorist organization.

This caused many members to either leave in face of this, or go into hiding for refusing the order.

Still, both groups butted heads for the next year, many of which caused by the HLF to go to ground afterwards. They still continue their tactics of spreading misery everywhere they went, not at all painting them in good light.

Then, on July 22, 2022, they attacked a medical convoy that was sent to Salem, Massachusetts that had three PHL members on board.

The entire convoy was routed, with one humvee disabled that held Nurse Sutra Cross, one of the three ponies of the PHL.

The rest of the convoy was facing fire from all sides, and could only watch on as all personnel within were killed by the HLF sans Nurse Sutra Cross, who was dragged out and placed in a waiting vehicle.

Two weeks later, her corpse washed up in the Boston Harbor, while videos spread out over the web depicted the crimes being committed against her.

On August 25, CIA and FBI narrowed down the site where she was held and tortured, located in the woods north of Berlin, New Hampshire, beyond even Erroll and far from any major roads.

On the morning of August 27, the 'Free and Human Only city' Defiance was assaulted, all information gained while dealing with the city was deemed classified.

Name: Fergus Farnowitz
Nationality: American
Crimes: Murder, abduction, torture, illegal forestry, cannibalism
Status: Incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay.

I’ll never forget that night.

We were sitting around the fire, laughing, drinking, listening to the screams of the prisoners, to our music, to the various rumormongers who would tell anyone any crazy damn story about Equestria, or about the newfoals.

Everything was simply perfect. Almost unnervingly so; we hadn’t been found by any police, we’d actually heard good things about us on the radio, and the prison had… don’t look at me like that. I won’t tell you if you don’t need to know.

And then everything goes wrong. Somebody is going home, to the tent with their wife, when he runs back, saying she has a bullet in her head.

We panic, of course. We grab all of our guns, sighting them in, when I hear a scream.

Somebody next to me crumpled down, gurgling their last from a bullet to the chest. It went to shit almost immediately. We ran across the camp, putting everyone on alert, and I heard somebody firing. Could have been any one of our guys, from what I heard, they were just panic-firing.

But that wasn’t the worst part. Suddenly there were ponies and military people with guns everywhere, coming out of every bolthole, dropping out of the air, and they all had huge guns and armor that could shrug off insane amount of firepower.

Some people are going to call Defiance a battle. No, that wasn’t a battle, that was a straight up massacre.

I still have nightmares about it, damn near constantly. I remember my friends cut down by the dozen, I remember reloading my rifle only to watch the 7.62mm round from that fucking kalashnikov obliterate my wrist. I remember watching a pony standing over me and stomping on me till I was smart enough to play dead.

But that’s not the worst part.

The worst part is him. He has a particular presence that you never quite forget, a big man who isn’t just tall but solid.

Marcus Renee. Call him a horsefucking traitor, call him a hero, I lean towards the former, but we can all agree now that you should never piss him off. He strode through the campsite, a Remington ACR with an extended magazine in hand, firing semiautomatically whenever someone came in view.

A bullet and they were dead.

It was like the carnage couldn’t even touch him. A woman ran out of a tent, carrying a knife, and he just buttstocks her across the face, knocking her to the ground and shattering her jaw and shot her when she tried to get back up. That man didn't even pause to do it, he just shot her as she was fumbling around with her knife and then turned to shoot someone else.

The massacre parted before him like the water before some fucked up Moses. It was unreal; any of our guys that moved in front of him just dropped like flies, and the snipers that tried to take him down all got a bullet in their head.

We didn’t think a man or a pony could have caused such a bloodbath. Like he was some sort of fucking action hero or some hell demon cutting a swath through everyone. It's one thing to see it in a movie or in video games, it’s another to see a guy pulling it off in real life. And let me tell you, that is fucking terrifying to see that shit go down.

I cried when I saw him advancing down the main drag through the tents, past the small shops that we had. I screamed into my radio for backup, hoping that someone could come, praying to God, that I’d live through that day.

Nobody came, though, and when I loaded up my rifle, this punkass from New Hampshire named Johnny C blows off my hand with one of those big Kalashnikovs chambered for rounds that can destroy cinderblocks, and yells “There’s another one over here!” For all I cared, my hand could still be in that forest, holding a magazine. I just ran away from that camp screaming, and I never looked back.

I don’t know how I got to civilization, how fast I must have run. I got the hospital - this small place off in the middle of nowhere - to believe I was innocent by telling them that I was a hiker who’d gotten shot by crazy HLF woodsmen.

The police didn’t buy that, and well, here I am.

So.... Who is this for anyways? Will this keep me from being potioned if the New Foals show up?

"It gets you a bullet, Mr. Farnowitz"

F-f-fuck! Its you isn't it!? Man I'm going to die, ain’t I?!

"Goodbye, Mr. Farnowitz."

"Fuck me, man! Please don't kill me, please?!"

Final say

At this time, the group is completely fractured, with a majority of the group's leaders either killed or ponified by poor planning, over-confidence, or internal power struggles with each other. The group is a shadow of it former self, one that many hope dies in the near future like it did with the PER.

With the major world leaders backing the PHL for their continued advancement of military technology and doctrine, success in both the field of battle and behind enemy lines, the HLF has all but been forgotten as a group needed to win the war. Soldiers from Renee’s taskforce and the world over have been near-unanimous in their agreement that the HLF is a greater threat to itself and humanity than those they claim to fight, even in their weakened state. One anonymous soldier even claimed that their purpose was to soak up ponification potion so the real warriors could go in for the kill.

The once sought out position that the HLF so desperately wanted to prove their merit to the world fell out their reach before it even had a chance. And if they had any fragment of a chance, they took every possible opportunity to sabotage it, to the point that it became near-memetic to claim that they were the biggest threat to human-pony cooperation.

Thank you for watching, stay tuned for our next segment of Case Files:

PER