Das Wiederaufleben

“Lock down the castle!” Chrysalis ordered, turning to a nearby guard who was just patrolling the area. “Lock down any and every entrance and exit to the palace, and put the city of Canterlot under marshal law!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, we can’t enforce a marshal law! Especially not for just one murder!” Spike interjected, just before the guard hurried off to carry out his order. “We’d start a riot. Lock down the palace, sure, but we cannot allow civilians to suspect that something’s amiss.” The guard saluted and rushed away to order the lockdown.

“We should probably see about identifying this poor pony.” Twilight suggested.

“Let me handle that, Your Highness.” Marks stepped forward, making his way to the corpse and starting his search.

“And what, pray tell, qualifies you to carry out a forensics test?” Chrysalis challenged.

“Marks here knows his way around a crime scene, alright?” Scootaloo replied. “He knows what he’s looking for, when identifying a body.”

Marks began rifling through the dead pony’s pockets of his jacket, looking for any form of ID or items that might suggest any indication of occupation or heritage. Going through the pockets of his stuffy, very clearly business oriented, suit, he found a pen, a fob watch that had been broken, the hands telling half past five, and a wallet tucked away in the deepest pocket of his coat lining. “Aha! Bingo.” Marks cheered victoriously, opening the faux-leather plastic pouch. “This must have something in it we can use to identify this poor bastard.” Fishing around in the wallet, Marks found pictures of a beautiful young mare on the beach, mane and tail soaking wet as she posed for the camera, and a long reel of photographs of a young filly with a pacifier in her mouth, along with a few bits and a business card showing a picture of the pony in question.

Hector Kontizpony, Mortgage Advisor for the Royal Bank of Equestria.

“Well…. That answers that.” Marks deadpanned, giving the body a quick once over. “Poor guy’s cold as a stone, and stiff as a board, so he’s been dead for… ooh, five days? A week? Gunshot wound to the frontal cortex, looks like a sniper bullet. The time on his watch suggests he was sniped as he was locking up at the bank.” Walking round the banker’s body, Marks noticed something odd about Kontizpony’s belly. “The buck?” Bending down, the stallion noticed that the corpse’s abdominal cavity had been, very obliviously, sliced open, and looked as if all the internal organs had been removed. “Ugh. I cannot believe I am about to actually do this.” Marks complained, the call of curiosity urging him forward as he cautiously reached inside the mutilated body and pulled out a small silver sphere with several lights dotted around its surface.

“A holoprojector?” Scootaloo gasped, staring at the sphere in shock.

“I’ve got a very bad bucking feeling about this.” Marks swore, throwing the sphere up in the air, the metal orb steadying itself in midair and flashing up a beam of light, projecting a 3D image of Schadenfruede amongst the group. The ghost pony stood tall and proud, facing forward with a permanent smirk on his pointed face.

“Guten tag, everypony,” he drawled in a cocky, commanding tone. “As you can see, this is what we think to the pestilent bucking scourge of Equestria and, as you now see before you, we do not hold back in our extermination methods. This greedy, motherbucking-”

“Schadenfreude, zat's enough.” a new voice interrupted. The pony being projected gulped and nodded.

“Y-yes... Mein Fuhrer...” The hologram of Schadenfruede stepped out of existence to give way for a new projected pony. He was tall and broad, clearly in the peak of his physical prime, with a pristine white coat, flowing golden mane that cascaded down his neck and a pair of thin rimmed glasses perched on his muzzle before his piercing blue eyes. His expression held the most imperious, self important look of “buck the world” it was equinally possible to conceive.

“Dear deities of zis pazetic excuse of a country.” He addressed all present, clearly aiming his words at the princesses. “For too long, ze pony race has been plagued by a cancer so violent, it zreatens ze very stability of our planet’s future. I speak for all Earz ponies and Pegasi ven I say zat ze genetically inferior narvhal race, known as ze unicorns, must be purged from ze gene pool.” Everypony present gasped in horror.

“N-Narwhals?” Marks sneered, utterly horrified by the racial slur.

“Eradicated?” Fang whimpered.

“Aw hell bucking naw!” Scootaloo snorted, blowing steam from her nostrils as she stared down at the hologram.

“For too long, ze narvhals have held zemselves upon a pedestal, zinking of zemselves as ze great epitome of pony evolution. I, however, feel zis is ze single most disgusting pile of pferdescheiße in ze entire vorld. As of today, let ze ponies of Equestria tremble at ze might of ze Zyanid, und may zey cower in fear of my name……. Endlösung.”

Fang’s eyes widened in horror. “W-Was!?” She yelped, leaping back.

“Ponies of Equestria, bevare.” Endlösung sneered. “For, on zis day, ve declare var.” And with that, the hologram fizzled out of existence, leaving the holosphere lying inert on the ground.

“Who is this Endlösung to declare war on us!?” Luna exclaimed.

Celestia shrugged, and sighed. “It makes no difference. He clearly has the resources to engage us, if yesterday's attack was any indication.”

“Zyanid... An appropriate name for poisonous terrorist snakes.” Chrysalis mused.

“What now?” Scootaloo asked. “Do we just wait, twiddling our hooves until they decide to make another move?”

“Hmmm...” Twilight examined the holoprojector, lifting it upwards. “There appears to be some sort of message... Coordinates it looks like...”

“To where?” Scootaloo queried.

“If I'm reading this right... Siberia.”

Scootaloo scowled. “This has to be a trap. That Endlösung wants us to follow those coordinates.”

“Like it or not, it's our only lead.” Twilight sighed. “We have to take it we want to stop this Zyanid organization.”

The orange mare grunted, not content with being forced to play in her adversary's ballpark.

“Commander Scootaloo.” Celestia called, earning a salute from the orange mare. “I'm assigning you and your Phoenix Centurions to track down this Zyanid organization. I want to keep this threat privy to as few as possible. Our citizens are already wary of OSIRIS in the middle East. Another threat could cause mass panic.”

“Understood, your Majesty.” Scootaloo affirmed.

“Excellent. We shall hold council here to decide how to proceed. Reconvene here tomorrow morning. Dismissed.”

“Yes, princess. Ad Victoriam!” The commander shouted.

“Ad Victoriam!” Marks and Fang parroted.

Celestia nodded.

“Ad Victoriam.”