“Heinrich, I want you to make sure all the sick and elderly here my message,” I commanded, getting the feel for it again, “Jack, you’re with me.”

“Yes boss,” Heinrich said and ran off.

Jack and I walked round the back way to our meeting area, which was just the bottom of the resort, the old ski lifts rusting above us, the power long since dead in them.

We had a raised platform where everyone could see us, a few translators for the ones who didn't speak English. Off the top of my head I knew there was definitely French and Swiss here, a few Germans, a handful of Belgians, an American family or two, some Indians and some Pols.

A translator was already up there, waiting for my arrival. The crowd of survivors was busy flooding in, in the early days, we’d taken down all of the chairlifts and used them as seating for meetings like these. This would be our 5th one.

Commander Jack and I walked up on stage.

The huge crowd cheered, if there were still people there, I should have thought they would have heard us in Meribel, a resort a whole valley away.

I held up my hand for silence. I spoke into my megaphone, which had been modified for its sound to be amplified through speakers all around the resort.

“Greetings everyone!” I called out, “as you are probably aware, we were recently spotted by Pegasi. We managed to shoot down 6 of the squad of 7 and injure the 7th with a bullet wound to her leg, but the injured pony was Rainbow Dash, one of The Great Dictators most valued soldiers.” I paused as the translators did their thing.

“If this had happened earlier in the war, I would've simply relocated us to Val Thorens or Saint Martin De Belleville, but there are now over ten thousand of us and I fear we would be attacked before we made it up there. We’re staying here, we’ll fortify the resort, snipers on ski lift pylons, with the Winter coming, we’ll have weather to defend us as well.”

More translating.

“As Winston Churchill once said, ‘we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.’ Not that I’m equalising  myself to Winston Churchill as that would be hubris but my point is no matter how hard they fight, we’ll fight harder, no matter how many of us they kill, we’ll kill more of them. We will push through and win.

‘Or am I kinda like Winston, I’m leading the remnants of humanity into a battle against an almost unbeatable foe. God I hope we win now, I’ll be the most well known man in history!’ I thought as I said my speech.

Captain Heinrich Wolf, Captain Anne Laurent, Co-Commander Jack Pritchard and myself will lead you to victory. We are humans, we always will be and that will never change. We will end up as the superior race.

We will survive.”

I finished my speech and bowed. The translators finished translating it into many different languages.

The crowds of people went wild, but it was slightly darker, as we all knew our inevitable death could be right round the corner.

,.,.,

LYRA HEARTSTRINGS POV

,.,.,

We left to start the treacherous journey. With no law or government, there were no speed limits, we only had to slow down to get past obstacles like fallen trees and cars that had been abandoned on the road as people fled. One of our followers led the convoy of cars that we had trekking slowly towards Les Menuires, only stopping for more petrol and diesel.

The long journey gave me plenty of time to think, so that's what I did. Sat there is silence and started to reminisce.

‘We have been watching a small platoon of HLF for a while now, too afraid to make contact but too curious to simply leave them. They, as far as we could gather, had been scavenging through houses looking for non-perishable food to bring back to their base but now they had been spotted by a ponification squad.

“Shit! Run” one of the humans yelled out as they ran towards a small Primary School where they kept all their supplies.

“Please, join us!” A Newfoal cried out, “we love new friends!”

“Piss off!” One of the humans cried back and starting shooting.

They were overwhelmed, the one who shouted ‘piss off’ was the first to go down.

We walked away, disheartened by the fate of those poor humans, now ponies wanting to betray their own true race.’

“Lyra!” Shockwave was shaking me,

“What?” I said, startled,

“We’re stopping to eat and fill up the tank, go to the toilet and all that,” he said,

“Oh, okay,” I said, getting out of the car and entered the abandoned service station. It was looted a lot, the only thing of any worth was the toilets, even though they do not even work any more. The smell was terrible, some animals must have died, maybe a few rats in the walls or something.

After relieving ourselves and filling up with the remaining petrol, we all ate in this post-apocalyptic world and got back on the road in our convoy of cars and trucks.

As for weapons we carried, we had a few human guns and some combat knives shared between the Pegasi and Earth Ponies, us Unicorns taught each other combat spells.

The car we were in rumbled ahead of the others. We were in Troyes, our next stop being Dijon, then Lyon, and then up into the Alps and into Les Menuires. We have to get there within a few days, or Celestia’s forces will beat us there and ponified all the humans before we even arrive there and we will have failed again.

I cannot let that happen.

,.,.,

PRINCESS CELESTIA POV

,.,.,

“I want all mountain ranges checked and double checked, I want all deserts and rainforests completely explored. If there are humans there, we will root them out. As for these ones in the Alps, if our squads fail, I will lead an army to deal with them personally. If they are HLF then they will face my wrath.” I commanded my Generals.

“Yes Your Highness,” They said and left the planning room. It will be hard to hide this military operation from the public, but I will deny all allegations of it.

Once I was on my own, my sister, Princess Luna walked into the room.

“Aah Lulu,” I sighed, “just as I think I get all the humans, a group comes up and shoots down six of my subjects and injures Rainbow Dash. Why does this stuff happen?”

“Tia, I’ve been thinking, why did we ponify the humans?” My sister asked me,

“You know why,” I said, eyes slightly narrowing. Could my sister be having second thoughts? “You know humanity’s history, Gladiators, Barbarians, World War 1, World War Two, the Holocaust, the Atom Bomb, Terrorism, Radicalisation. Just a few of the things that show the discorded nature of humans,”

“But, that is history, perhaps we were the fools to ponify a race that could’ve redeemed itself,” Lulu argued,

I chuckled, “Lulu, history has a funny way of repeating itself, going in circles. The HLF for example, all those stabbings.”

My own sister was displaying treacherous behaviour, I’m going to have to start keeping tabs on ponies. Things are definitely going wrong.

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