The Old Bailey Court, London. September 12th, 2030.

“Jacob Levy. You stand before this court accused of crimes against humanity and ponykind.”

I thought I was saving us.

You were destroying us.

“These crimes include the following: aiding and abetting the Solaminan regime in their campaign of genocide against the human race. Contributing to the slaughter and forced Conversion of several hundred humans. Killing human and Equestrian Resistance ponies in acts of unlawful sedition. Causing and orchestrating uncountable amounts of criminal damage to the city of Plymouth. Willing membership of a terrorist organisation..."

I thought I was doing what was right.

You deluded yourself.

“How do you plead?”

“Guilty, your honour.”

“Do you understand that what you have done brings the harshest of judgement?”

And that it deserves it?

“Yes, your honour.”

“Do you have anything to say in your defence?”

How can I say anything? I know what I did.

What you did cannot be defended, or justified.

What I did… I did because…

You should have known. Salvation is for better men, and isn’t so easy as to be found at the bottom of a vial.

“No.”

“Mr Levy… you do realise that without speaking on your own behalf, and having refused duly appointed counsel, we have little choice but to put forward the harshest sentence possible?”

“I realise that, sir.”

“Mr Levy, in the interest of fairness, I will ask directly: speak for your own defence, or we can grant you no clemency.”

Clemency? Mercy? What mercy is there they can offer?

What mercy do I deserve?

“I ask for no mercy.”

“No mercy?”

No mercy? Do you think you are beneath mercy? That what you did was somehow justifiable, that you don’t need mercy?

“Mr Levy, what you have done amounts to nothing less than a crime against the sum total of humanity. You aided a regime bent on the extermination of mankind, already responsible for the destruction or enslavement of billions. And you say you ask for no mercy?”

You mock us. You mock what we have suffered.

I mock nothing. I don’t deserve mercy.

"I don't deserve it, sir."

"Indeed?"

Do you think it is your place to appoint the manner of your own punishment?

"And you don't think the court has some say in what you deserve, Mr Levy?"

"Of course sir, but..."

But what?

But I didn't understand.

Silver Morning screaming. That glare, dead eyed and empty - "me" - the one who is wrong - all the pain of what they became, what I/you helped them become because you thought it would be better...

"But what, Mr Levy?"

"But I know what I did, sir."

"Do you?"

How can you know? You haven't lived it. You haven't felt what they felt. You haven't suffered what they suffered.

"Tell me, Mr Levy: what did you do?"

I thought I helped them.

"We were dead, sir. I thought I was helping save us. And then I reasoned it away..."

Reasoned it away? Do you think any reason can justify...?

"I know people who were PER who hated humanity, sir. Penny Hatfield, Jackie Reitman in America before the Gilead crisis... but I never did it because I hated humanity. I just knew life was hard. I thought it would be better for everyone to be..."

I thought you'd be free of pain. Instead I drowned them in it. I buried their souls in it and painted a smile on the gravestone.

"I thought it would be better."

"And now?"

"Now..." Silver Morning's stare/screams of Converted/dead eyes staring across a room, looking at nothing, empty of hope... "Now I know it wasn't. I've seen what I did for what it was."

...

...

"Mr Levy."

Excuses.

"I can understand a man fighting for a cause he believes in. I can even almost understand your belief that you were fighting to help the human race. But that does not change what you did."

Nothing ever can.

"You are complicit in murder and pain, a pain that can never be washed away and murder beyond the count of grief or the understanding of rationality. There is no cure for Conversion, Mr Levy, and barring a miracle from the Equestrian Science and Magic Commission, there never will be. Those who have been Converted - those who you helped Convert - are forever trapped in their new lives."

There is no excuse, no reason, no justification.

"There is no crime in human history equal to what you have done. Never has there been such a fundamental and yet indiscriminate attack on the basic right of all humanity to live, without thought for race, class, creed... never has the human race been so threatened. When we needed to stand together, it was men like you who tore us apart."

You could have saved us. You could have fought by his side and helped save humanity from its end. Instead you tore us apart - fought against him, even tried to kill him.

"When we needed you, you abandoned us, attacked us, then called it helping us."

I thought I was!

Delusions are not an excuse.

"Because there is no crime to match yours, Mr Levy, there is no punishment humanity has on record fit for it. I will not sentence you to death, much as others wish it. There have been uncounted deaths: millions of ponies, billions of humans. I think that's enough. But the fact remains that the human race has no answer for your crimes."

Because no one in our history has ever been so thoroughly, delusionally evil.

"And so the answer I have settled upon, after consulting with the Equestrian Government, is to cast you out from the human race."

... what?

"We have in stock small amounts of the ponification potion: while it is a vile substance, there are stockpiles left intact for study. You will be taken from this place and, in controlled conditions, administered the potion as punishment for your crimes against mankind."

You abandoned humanity. Now humanity abandons you.

"You will be a pariah - a Converted among ponies, a traitor among humans, belonging in neither world fully. It is the fate you have delivered unto others. What you choose to do after your conversion is your choice Mr Levy: you have an entire life ahead of you as a pony. But you will never again be human. I can think of no more fitting punishment."

I'll lose everything I have... everything I am.

Just like them.

You asked for no mercy. We have given you none.

***

In the years after the Solaminan War, there was a Converted who went by the name of Just Penance. He joined the Dead Men and, by his own request, often served in the most dangerous of fronts: the Solaminan remnants, the crazed rioters, the warlords... and he did so without hesitation. Those who served with him called him quiet, or polite, but he never left more of an impression than that. And never once did he say who he had been or speak of the life he had led.

He would only say that he had asked for no mercy.