Intro

Gotham.

The city that all other cities had tried to be.

The shining star of what mankind could achieve, and now the fallen example of what could happen when 30 million people live together.

This city, one that had been crumbling at the seams since dozens of crime families, gangs and other criminal avenues had taken over, had one hope left before it fell into anarchy; The Batman.

No one knew who he was, where he came from or why he chose to risk his own life each night by apprehending the criminals that plagued the town, but all who were protected by his just guard could have cared less, for he was the one who made their city safer than it had been in decades.

Because of his actions, there were many criminal organizations and gangs that were either locked up in one of the cities prisons, or were run out of business by the Batman. This led to safer parts of Gotham where few criminals would roam, though had the unwanted side affect of making a small coalition of criminals rich due to their having no competition from those the Batman had caught.

Plans had been in the works for months using marked bills, political games and a myriad of other tactics on both sides as they prepared for the eventual endgame of both factions, with the Batman being the one seen as a wildcard; neither a villain, nor a pure hero. Everything had changed when they had arrived.

Ponies, of all shapes, sizes and indeed species had emerged from the relatively small island that had itself appeared out of nowhere in the Atlantic Ocean.

At first, they had wanted little to nothing to do with humans, so long as they stayed away from their island and out of the skies above. Soon, though, their leader, one who, even after presented with sound scientific proof, preached to her subjects that she and her sister held control over the Sun and Moon, made a public visit to various countries before attending meetings with the UN.

After much time had been spent by the delegates to convince her otherwise, the one and only Princess Celestia had deemed the way that humans ‘suffered’ in cities due to crime, were crippled by dangerous work, accidents or birth problems, or were outright rejected by society for their various beliefs to be too horrible to let continue.

After a massive amount of gold was transferred to cover the expenses, she had Conversion Bureaus opened all across the world, inviting those who wished for a new life to give up their humanity to become a pony, one who would live happily in Equestria.

After the initial rush of cripples, losers and social rejects, there were few humans who would willingly give up their bodies for another, besides from the furries, many of whom jumped at the chance to change themselves into a pony as soon as the Bureaus opened.

After perhaps a little over a million people worldwide, with many coming from either poor or dangerous countries as well as those from developed nations, had been converted, the flow of humans into Bureaus slowed to a trickle, then to a slow drip until the Bureaus sat empty, awaiting humans who would never arrive.

It was at this point that a small group came into existence, a terrorist organization that called themselves the Ponies for Earth’s Rebirth, or the PER. Their primary mandate was to convert all of humanity into their version of a perfect being: the pony, whether they wanted to or not.

They stayed relatively unknown until, after months of planning, several of their operatives walked into heavily populated or famous areas and set off gas bombs containing an airborne version of the ponification potion.

These populated areas included crowded areas of the cities of New York, London, Shanghai, Moscow, Berlin, Seoul, Paris, and Sydney. Though there were attacks in other cities as well, these potion bombings alone caused tens of thousands of forced conversions.

While most ended up having to go to their local Bureaus to learn how to use their new bodies and how they would resume their lives after they had adjusted to their forced changes, there were some who were so infuriated by the loss of their humanity that they formed a counter to the PER. They named their group the Human Liberation Front, on account of their desire for the Equestrians to reverse the effects of the potion that was forced onto the many thousands affected, which would ‘liberate’ them of their new equine bodies.

After the Equestrians had refused to revert the converted humans back to their ‘inferior forms’ they changed from wanting to give humanity back to the PER’s victims to wanting to avenge them by making the PER repay them in blood.

Along with a nearly unlimited supply of humans who were now just as hating of ponies as they, the HLF began attacks of their own, killing those they found responsible for the potion bombings along with any other ponies they could find, though only native equestrians if they could help it. In response to the violent reaction to the forced conversion of so many, Princess Celestia began to openly support the PER, supplying them with potion and funding them with equipment and personnel.

Not particularly liking the idea of a state-funded terrorist organization, many world governments chose to act rather that wait for the PER to claim more victims. In an unprecedented cooperated assault, over a dozen countries supplied troops and equipment for an invasion of Equestria, their far superior technology letting them steamroll over all resistance, at least until they reached Canterlot.

Once they reached the grand city, the Princess enacted her last-ditch plan to survive the onslaught: The Barrier. After activating the barrier around Canterlot, she began to slowly expand it, using it to force the humans off the island after the first few soldiers were vaporized by the glowing, pink dome.

After retreating to a safe distance, a standoff ensued. For many months, the ponies were kept quarantined inside of their shield, cut off from the rest of the world. For months, nothing changed, until at last a single Pegasus flew out of the barrier and sent a message to the humans surrounding them.

The message was simple; you leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone. And for almost a year this worked out fine, with ponies going to and from their island as they wished with human approval, and the humans stayed away from their island, leaving only a few dozen ships behind to guard the equines.

However, peace, as we all know, is a fickle thing. It is, in a sense, like gravity: all it takes is a little push for it to come crashing down. This was what happened as the PER, their numbers bolstered by the attacks on Equestrian land, once again resumed their regime of potion bombing populated areas, though most of their victims now chose to stay in their homeland rather than go to the place their converters had hailed from.

Nonetheless, one of the most devastating attacks on any city was the one that consumed Gotham city, with hundreds of potion bombs going off all around the city. In every district of Gotham, from the corporate headquarters of Wayne Enterprises to the slums, hundreds of thousands of people succumbed to the gas as it spread about the city.

It was one of the PER’s greatest victory and the HLF’s justification of the destruction of Equestrian facilities all around the world. Out of those unfortunate enough to be in an area that was affected in Gotham, the most well known and important to the city was Bruce Wayne, the billionaire son of those who had practically built the city, with his company having a part in nearly every residents life.

This, unknown to the public until it had been long enough to be accurately assumed, had the additional effect of turning Batman, the savior of Gotham City into a black and midnight blue Pegasus. As much as this saddened those who knew who the Pegasus really was and had been his friend or practically family for years, there was one other who was enraged by the conversion of Gotham’s Dark Knight: The Joker.

Being the crazed murdering lunatic that he was, he had, despite his claims to the contrary, put quite a lot of planning into what he was going to do in order to fight and torment the Batman while he turned Gotham city on itself. The ponification of Batman, however, had thrown a monkey wrench into the gears of his carefully planned plot, enraging him to the point where words could not accurately describe his fury.

Because of what a group of idiotic miniature horses had done, all his work, the fruits of preparation of his life’s goals were all wasted. There was no way that Batman could continue his fight of the criminals in Gotham as a pony, at least nowhere near the extent that he did before, as most of his equipment and tactics would not work for a quadruped.

There was also the issue of not being as easily disguised as before as unlike with humans, almost every single pony had different colors or patterns, which would make finding the Batman far easier, almost comically so after all of the masked fighting he had done.

It was then, after thinking long and hard about what had happened, that the Joker realized that all was not lost, as even if he could no longer in good conscience fight Batman and that the first stage of his plan (which he was currently enacting) would have to be modified, he could in fact take his rage out and use at least part of his meticulously crafted plan on the ones who had rendered his previous goals impossible: the PER and all those who helped to convert humans.

He smiled to himself, readjusting the duffle bag on his shoulder and clenching the clown mask in his hand tighter before walking up to his waiting car and his fellow criminals waiting within.

What luck that his target bank and the Gotham Conversion Bureau were right beside each other on the same street…