Unrepentantly Pony

People would tell you that cell phones were invented so that it would be easier to communicate with one another. That would be a lie. People in the past invented the telephone so people could talk to one another from distances. The reason cell phones were invented is so that you could more easily ignore everything around you. Well, this is actually true about smartphones, but it is not really that different.

Anyway, that was exactly what Marcus was doing. He had his face as close to the device as possible without straining his eyes… Too much… There were concessions he was willing to make so he could ignore the highest number possible of ponies in that room and a little headache was less than he was likely to get from these ponies and humans. Both of them, in that very room, were annoying him very much.

Marcus was strange person. He had short fingers that seemed to be sticking together, but it is not because he carried the bad genes of malformation or because his gestation within his mother went wrong. It wasn’t very pronounced and it was because of some choices he had made. His hair also showed signs of ‘something off’ about him: it was thick and blue. He looked strong, and somewhat short, with dark blue eyes. He had recently developed a preference for the color blue in his clothes, and so he was wearing quite long Bermuda shorts, with a blue shirt, dark blue tennis shoes, and light blue socks he preferred pulled up as far as they will go.

Another thing that made people think him odd was the fact that he hated ponies. Well, he didn't really hate them, even if he would always say so, but he had no love for them. Well, just a little, after all Marcus thought that being alive was the greatest gift that could be bestowed upon anything and, as such, life should be protected under any circumstances unless that lead to more loss of life. It was quite the utilitarian concept, he thought, but that sounded like a good rule to live his life. It never really failed him.

That was not true either. It DID fail him. That was about ten years ago, right after the Earth stopped being our ‘everything’, surrounded by uninhabitable space, to become just another backwater planet in a vast interstellar empire. And this empire loved ponies. To the point of allowing them to do anything they damn well pleased, like taking over the Earth. Well, that was what he thought at the time. Now he was wiser. He had learned some things.

He had learned for example that it is always noisy at a Conversion Center. He had hoped that this one, being located in the rebuilt capital of the United States, right next to the Equestrian Embassy to Earth would be a little quieter. However, ponies made everything around them a lot more fun than they had any right to be, and ‘fun’, usually meant ‘noisy’. Especially with ponies… If they weren’t singing, they were laughing and if they weren’t laughing, they were giggling; and even if they weren’t doing any of those things, they were looking for reasons to start doing them! So it was expected that there would be noise. Still, only a pony could have fun filling a form! Marcus did his best to shield his mind from the barrage of giggles coming from the cursed tan unicorn behind the desk typing away with her magic as she took her sweet time talking about anything imaginable to the four children registering into the Center.

That was odd though. Usually children came in with their parents. Marcus didn’t care too much, anyway. His mind was busy trying not to think about ponies. But did so anyway. After all, he WAS sitting in the reception for one of their Conversion Centers, wasn’t he?

It is just that he couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t just leave it all alone and live his life by himself! In peace! It is true that they saved his life. Several times, actually. The first time he found his way into one of these centers was already the second time they saved his life. But this is what he wanted: to be done with it and live his life. He helped them with their little project. He helped the government. He did everything that they asked of him. So why couldn’t he just stand up and leave?

Did he really want to leave? Did he want to stay? What the hell did Marcus want?

Why didn’t the ponies just leave?! This was all their fault, really! We did what they wanted. After that damn war ended, we did it all! We never understood what the hell was it that they wanted. What the hell did they mean with ‘Harmonic Corruption’? Did this term even make sense?! Of course, it didn’t: it was a translated form of some High Unicornish term, the language their goddesses spoke thousands upon thousands of years ago! Those two were the only ones that even remembered it and the purple prick with the stick up her butt was the only one that could even understand what it meant!

The thought of Rainbow Dash falling asleep at the sight of the size of that tome and all the angry ranting from the princess did make Marcus smile, though.

For us, and countless other worlds, all it meant is that these conversion centers had to be built before the ‘spirit of the planet’ died and enough humans had to be converted so that it’s ‘life energy’ would be restored through our souls being healed in the ‘Pool of Souls’ and them returning ‘spiritual potency’ back to the planet. It had to be us because we brought pieces of the planet’s spirit, and even if we would be equestrian ponies, the planet would take it back as we lived in it. If this wasn’t done, then we would infect the space around and spread whatever was wrong with our planet.

What? They said it was because of the war, and it was not our fault. Fuck that noise! It was like saying that we are a disease and ponies are the cure. We did not even know souls existed. Sure, some believed it, but even they were surprised when the truth came out. Because it wasn't what they expected. At all.

Honestly, we didn’t really give a fuck about all the spiritual babbling coming out of the ponies’ mouths. The reason the centers were built is that the Emperor believed the ponies. Celestia had the Emperor’s ears and he would do anything she told him. No, we didn’t build the centers because the ponies asked: we did it because the people with the newly reformed governments, the ones that got to travel to other worlds and see the big bad guy himself said he was losing his patience and that he was ready to send his military back to Earth. They would sterilize the planet so that the ponies could work in peace and he didn’t care about us. Or something.

Well... That was what he thought at the time. Now, Marcus could accept that other people just thought differently and they weren't necessarily wrong. He understood that he could be wrong.

Fucking ponies, though! Everybody seemed to love them! When the centers were built, they managed to charm everybody. People bought into their spiritual crap as if it was water on the desert. They flocked to the conversion centers like moths to a light... Or ponies to sugar... Some people got a hold of the metemponychosis serum and were ambushing people in dark corners, forcing them to ponify! Of course we had to stop them! Ponies were taking over our world! Once was enough! They were supposed to be the good guys! What the hell went wrong?

This memory hurt.

Marcus looked around uncomfortably from his place in the couch. That pony had shut up and the children were gone. A couple with a child was chatting excitedly next to him while the tan unicorn at the desk talked to yet another person, an elderly lady in front of her desk. Why was he still there? Why couldn’t he get up and go? The Princess said he could. The big, white ‘Matriarch of the Great Herd’ said so and what she said went.

Sarcasm was all he had in the past…

Why was he still sitting here? Marcus knew why he was sitting in that couch. He knew why he was waiting for the unicorn to call his name. He was there because he changed in the last few years. He understood things he didn’t before. He was there because he remembered. Because he had made a choice he wouldn’t have made some years ago.

In those times, the ponies were in the news every day, every news feed, in every language, in every country, in every planet known to Mankind, even the goddamn aliens (the friendly ones) seemed to love them. Sure the ponies were, in part the reason why everyone was still alive, even if the Emperor had set up that huge taskforce to escort them around and let them do their thing… Without the ponies there would be an endless war and nobody wanted that. Even so, Marcus had actually concocted a theory: he was convinced that every species had some sort of ‘ability’ and that ponies, other than their freakish magic, had the “Power of Friendship”. Wherever they went, they made friends.

That is right. Mankind knew about a lot of planets now. That is one thing that changed. Actually populated planets, really. As in ‘aliens live here’. Of course, Equestria was one such planet, actually, it was a region of space, but that wasn’t important now. Turned out those questions that had been bothering humans for so long ‘Are we alone?’ ‘Is there life after death?’ ‘Is there a God?’ had all been answered, and boy, some of us hated the answers.

As if just to purposely interrupt Marcus’ thoughts, a pony came out of the door that lead from the reception to the corridor with the bedrooms. It was a special kind of pony. She was one of the ‘clones’ magically made by the Equestrians to serve as their military during the war.

‘Clone’ wasn't the right word though. Humans fought they all looked alike, other than coat colors. Marcus knew better now. Also, most people who’d never been to Equestria thought of the Royal Guard as the military, but they were actually the police force and the pony military just wasn’t deployed into Equestria proper. The concept of the military dealing with her little ponies abhorred Princess Celestia to the point of threatening to banish one of her aides. Even the rebellious griffin that wanted Equestria out of the war wouldn't have to meet the military. No. Their training was just different. Their military existed to kill enemies, not to pacify riots. And it wasn’t just the training: there were no alicorns in the Guard.

That’s right. That thing’s name was ‘alicorn’. This is another term that got gutted in the translation. The original term referred to the magical substance that allowed ponies to ‘use magic’. They had it in some parts of their bodies, but alicorns had it in all of their cells. The end result was an eldritch death machine that could turn you inside out and still keep you alive while she explained the intricacies of death by dehydration due to exposed organs. Now, a normal pony would never do something like that, but alicorn soldiers weren’t normal. Marcus had learned that too.

Like the princesses, they had a horn and a pair of wings, physical strength and pure, raw, magic might to bend the laws of physics and power their magical armor suits. That one was wearing hers right there! She had a light bluish gray, like steel, coat and her crystal armor was a similar color. Her weapons weren’t attached to the armor. Probably because she didn’t think that she’d need to obliterate anything into nothingness while she was stationed in the clinic.

Marcus bet they just couldn't find a comfortable place to just be in Equestria. They were made for war, not for happy living. Soldiers spoke of how unstable they would become. Some thought that the problem was the dying and reincarnating thing. They became psychotic. The actual word was ‘unstable’, but people just said they were crazy. Everything around them was shady… The Empire told ponies what they needed and the ponies created these soldiers and all sorts of things. Such as their metallized crystal starships (or crystallized metal… Not even ponies seemed to know for sure). But it was better than putting the actual, normal, ponies to the frontline. These pony soldiers served as a buffer between the frontline and actual functional part of the pony military: the ponies around the six heroes that made their magic work. They were ‘support’, healing and comforting; assisting imperial soldiers and healing worlds in their wake. That didn't mean they couldn't serve several flavors of kickass, though. Specially these alicorn soldiers. Specially that little monster that likes to go on about friendship.

But goddamn, that poor alicorn looked like she was bored out of her mind! She just stood in the archway and looked at nothing in particular. He thought of going to her and talking to her but quickly pushed the idea out of his mind. He remembered how angry they could be and he hadn’t had the best past with them: people said they shared their memories when they slept so it was best to let her be. Still, he couldn’t help remembering another thing: the first pony he’d seen was one of the ‘Winghorned Concordia’. The ‘Sisters’ as they called themselves. He couldn’t say how far ago it was. It happened in a weird space of time no one could remember, right between meeting the ponies and the first contact with an alien species.

It was at that time we learned that ‘No. We are not alone.’ Turns out there was a war around us and we didn’t know. Our ‘planetary system’ was classified ‘too low tech level: ignore until they wise up’. Therefore, we sat at the border of a vast interstellar empire for thousands of years until not the ‘good guys’ showed up, but the ‘bad guys’. It was an uproar around our little insignificant blue pearl floating around in nothingness.

It was said that the people at NASA were the first to find their starships. It was routine stuff until an intern shouted in panic  “Professor, I think I see a lot of UFOs obscuring the sky.” Or something like that. Next thing we knew they were trying to talk to us. As history says, they had previously captured a significant sample of humans to study in the past, in preparation, and because of that, their computers could translate everything in real time. We were excited! There are aliens on Earth and we could actually talk to them!

They didn’t waste time, though. They reached ‘our government’: the United Nations Organization. They thought that the UN was some sort of global government agency and when they understood that it wasn’t, they told us to fix it because they didn’t want to bother having to deal with multiple vassal governments in a single planet that was nothing more than a breeding ground for humans.

The first earthly government to respond was the United States of America, of course. Mr. President was some Texan guy with a heavy southerner accent. Actually, we were not really sure, but that was the image of the US around the world at the time: some guy with a mustache, carrying twelve different kinds of guns and speaking in ‘southerner’. As he spoke to the people of the US and the rest of the world, he kept a gravely tone, but also a defiant one as the greatest nation in the world would not bow to the tyranny of the British Empire in the past and, under God's mandate, would… Something. We never knew what he was going to say because the feed cut off as the aliens proceeded to turn the entire northern hemisphere into a wasteland with some sort of weaponry we couldn’t begin to understand. They hid the President under a mountain; the aliens just blew up the mountain. We didn't know the details, but it sounded bad. In the southern hemisphere people panicked and things quickly got out of control as everyone tried to take care of themselves and their own.

The alien commander wasn’t too happy about this because they soon realized that they had turned the UN building into a smoking crater and now they didn’t even have the place they thought was our government center. After a few hours of angry shouting, he sent messengers to the remaining governments and these messengers, armed with weapons that worked just like their orbital bombardment weapons (we didn’t even have a clue how they worked), dragged the remaining leaders to an arena that was hastily prepared in Johannesburg, South Africa Why there? Hell if we knew... Maybe the aliens liked the climate.

There, they gave an alien designed knife to each and had they fight each other in a televisioned event. It reached the entire (surviving) world, thanks to the engineers from the alien fleet. The (surviving) world watched in horror the literal death of democracy as elected leaders had to fight each other to death and Brazilians cheered as their ‘Presidenta’ got a knife through her throat, courtesy of some king from some Asian country nobody took seriously. That is what Brazilians did: they made fun of everything.

At the same time, the Moroccan prime minister stabbed the Pope to death. While technically in the northern hemisphere, Morocco wasn’t hit too hard. Most other heavily populated countries weren’t. Oh no… For all the nonsense, the aliens knew what they were doing. They were mocking us, our political structure was a joke to them and they had plans: they needed us alive. Actually, not alive, but with all limbs.

The victor was some Somali warlord the aliens thought was the ‘ruler’. He had managed to bring an AK-47 to the arena and that seemed to please the aliens as they called him ‘resourceful’, ‘intelligent’ and ‘brutal’. The alien commander laughed as he gave him a few pats on the back and sent him back to his ‘palace’ with the necessary assistants (aliens and promptly nominated earthlings) to jumpstart Earth’s new worldwide government.

His job wasn’t really to rule or anything. He was to facilitate the transfer of humans from population centers to some structures the aliens brought from their starships. Basically, the aliens didn’t reproduce in the way we humans did: they turned other species into themselves with some kind of freaky super advanced necromantic nanotechnology/magic. It is one of the many things we didn’t know how it worked and no one would explain it to us. We weren’t friends, allies or even slaves. We were cattle. And they treated us accordingly. The aliens just thought that having a human leader would calm the nerves as we just stared in resignation from inside the fences as our friends, brothers, sisters and parents walked into the structures. They walked in naked humans and came out as a bluish alien, half-dying flesh, half-robotic monster, fully clad in armor suit and with an energy weapon in hands.

The most dumbfounding thing was that they didn’t even need us alive. They would have us drag dead bodies into the damn buildings. We didn’t know exactly why, but we assumed that they could reanimate corpses or something like that. They told us we were being granted eternal life in ‘undeath’. We didn’t know exactly what that meant… Some of us thought that they were actually giving us eternal life, others were sure there was some sort of cultural shock going on and others just thought that the aliens were mocking us. We didn’t know at the time… We couldn’t see it, but the really terrifying thing is that all who walked in, did so on their own.

Anyone stepping out of line was promptly turned into ash and vapors on the spot. Usually by the newly made alien soldiers as the veterans were shipped to other places to fight ‘The Empire’. Both things mystified us. The fact that you could find some guy you knew guarding the concentration camp, but now he was a freakish zombie-like alien machine. And the fact that the aliens seemed to despise this ‘Empire’.

The Empire, at the time, was nothing more than a distant ‘something’ for us. Our life was forced labor. The aliens divided us into groups they put to work in different jobs. Killing animals to feed the rest of us, preparing food, cleaning, making clothes… Everything needed to keep a race of human cattle going. One of the most wanted jobs was policing the others. Yes, they gave us our own guns, not their guns, of course, so that some people could keep the others under control in exchange of a bigger ration. It worked. Most of the ‘Colonial Police’ was comprised of  two kinds of people. People that would be nice, do their jobs, but be nice to others. Some times let a little burglary slip. Other times avoid other would beat someone for 'reasons'. Other people abused their ‘power’ and the aliens laughed like crazy at that.

Pregnant women also received extra food and the aliens actually protected them. Apparently, humans were good for breeding. Children also were shielded, usually by separating them and their mothers from the others until the woman was ready to breed again and the children were old enough to be sent to the undeath.

Life kinda melted into routine under the Colonial Police, which was subject to the newly undead aliens, which followed orders from the older aliens. Wake you maggot. Go to work. Eat. Work some more. Go to your barracks. Socialize and eat again. Go to sleep and dream of what once was. Wake up you maggot and go to work again.

Of course some people resisted. Some kept hoping that ‘The Empire’ would come in and save us. We didn’t even know what was The Empire, but it gave people hope. The others just knew that the only salvation would come from ourselves and nowhere else. Resistance groups formed and fought in any way they could. Usually they just died while they begged the newly converted humans for mercy. They urged the new aliens to reach within, find the remaining humanity inside, and fight the alien. The neophytes, as the elder aliens called them, usually laughed and hurt the rebels as much as they could get away with: their superiors complained that it was easier to convert unhurt and alive bodies.

In the middle of that human prisoners came from other areas. Some were survivors from the greatest nations of not so long ago and they spoke of fighting. Of taking back territory. Most of them just said that there is no escape. They, the aliens, always found you and if you weren’t killed and made an example, you were brought in. Not that they left the corpses behind, of course. Not even in death would a human stop serving their new masters. Turned out Hollywood was wrong… Humans aren’t special. There was no hero that rose and led the others to victory in insurrection. Maybe it worked in the past, but when we fought a truly superior force, we were just cattle. To be herded and turned into alien monsters.

We didn’t even realize, but soon we were happily doing our jobs for the invaders and waiting for the opportunity to become one of them. We had surrendered our humanity as they slowly indoctrinated us. We became their subservient slaves. It was slow and the mind didn’t see it until it was too late. Then one would panic and try to do something about it. Anything. But there wasn’t a thing that could be done. One couldn’t remember what it meant to be 'us'. Memories were there and they were precious, but there was no remembrance of why. Sanity slipped away until, finally, understanding came: ‘I am no longer human.’ Just one of them and all that is left is to walk into that building.

We never understood… Was it something in the water? The food? We prepared our own food! It made no sense! How did they poison us so. Did they just break us so profoundly that we just couldn’t see ourselves as human anymore?

These converted humans were monstrous, and not only on the outside. They changed. They had memories of their past life and it hurt them. It was intentional… They were angry. Revolted, rebellious and frustrated. But their body was now controlled by an alien will that turned all their anger and frustration into aggression. They let it out on themselves, fighting each other for dominance. They turned it towards the humans that were still humans. They hated us for still being us. They hated themselves and their alien masters. And that is, precisely, what the masters of the ‘Undeath’ wanted. Strength born out of anger was what powered their war machine.

The world had changed too. The aliens ignored livestock, pets, wild animals and they expected us to care for the animals that would give us sustenance. They gave some of us permission to go out and hunt, though some human farms kept livestock for food. But the world seemed like it was slowly dying, grass turned yellow and the trees around became dead husks of what they once were. We don’t know how long it took, but the aliens didn’t care at all. They had no interest in anything alive that they couldn’t turn into them and livestock could be fed with recycled food if necessary. Though we weren’t sure if ‘livestock’ in this case was the cows or us.

As time progressed, things started to change, however. Fewer and fewer neophytes remained behind until only the ones necessary to run the process and keep us under control remained. Something had them scared. The neophytes talked of a new enemy that had entered the war and sided with the Empire. They weren’t scared, like you should when an enemy is coming to fight you in superiority. They were terrified. Some new, up to this point, undiscovered power that was like water to their fire. It was magic. True magic. It was outside the boundaries of the Natural and nothing could stop it. They spoke of it in god-like terms. To add insult to injury, the final blow was that IT could remove the ‘undeath’ from the body. It could restore Life. It was unthinkable to them. The Masters of The Undeath were the gods. They dictated the laws. Still, the aliens were losing territory across the entirety of the theatre of war and the prospect filled the neophytes with both hope and terror. To humans, it was a promise of a miracle just beyond the horizon. If only we could remember what hope was like.

One day ‘The Empire’ came. The Imperial force was named ‘Bearers of Harmony’ and it was comprised of more than one thousand of the most powerful warships ever build in the universe, or so we were told later. We never saw the initial battle, but at night, among the stars, we could see the flashes. The feeling was impossible to explain. The pessimists thought that whoever was winning was likely another bunch of assholes and the others wanted to cheer, but even if they remembered how, they wouldn’t dare do it next to our captors. The majority was just angry that our alien friends were being attacked and feared that ‘undeath’ would be denied to them. Days and nights went on and eventually things started falling from the sky. They ignited and burned as they were falling. It felt like the Angels of the Lord were coming in fiery chariots to deliver us from us from our torment.

We never actually saw when the Bearers of Harmony made it to the surface of the planet, but we felt the ground shake. We heard the exchange of artillery fire. We heard explosions and we saw the terror in the face of our alien captors. The same terror that had consumed us so long ago was now etched in their zombie faces as their commanders ordered them around. It felt good, but none of us would mention it or even indulge in a smile of justified vengeance. There were, of course, those horrified with the prospect of never ‘ascending unto Undeath’.

The aliens ignored us though. Overtaxed with the battle nearby, the aliens ordered the neophytes to the front lines. The Bearers of Harmony were doing something that the aliens really didn’t want them to do. We never knew what it was but we felt it. The ground shook again, but it was different this time. It was as if it had come to life. There was ‘energy’ flowing through it, from it… It was something that couldn’t be described… It was energy that flowed through the ground into us. It looked like the world itself had revolted and stood up in arms to fight the invader. Marcus could remember it just as if it had happened a few seconds ago!

He stared in wonder as the tree just outside the fence changed in color. It was brown now. He hadn’t even realized how everything had turned to shades of gray a long time ago. There were no clouds in the sky and its gray hue turned to livid blue as little greens were sprouting from the tree. Marcus felt alive. He felt something bad, he hadn’t even realized was in him, flushed away as if Life itself washed Death away.

He saw five of their alien captors running on the outside of the fence, their energy weapons in hands and suddenly the first one dropped to the ground with a gaping wound where half of its head used to be. The others spread around, seeking cover as best as they could, with another one getting half his torso replaced by a hole, exposing weird electronics and bluish flesh. They returned fire, shooting at something Marcus couldn’t see.

It was probably a very dumb idea, to stand there as shots were flying, but he just couldn’t move. He couldn’t find the energy, the drive to move. So he just stared as the aliens were killed off one by one. The concept was incomprehensible: the masters were invincible. It took time simply to process what was happening.

That is, until something caught his eyes. It was a strange creature. It moved in four legs and had a long flowing tail. It was bulky and moved in a strange way, with strange deliberate motions. The creature moved with cat-like grace as it turned around and fired its weapons. At least they seemed to function the way weapons would... They were strange objects attached to the creature’s sides: one was long, like a shiny double spear attached to a larger portion of it and the other, on the other side of the creature, looked like it’s actually a gun, with a long crystal-y tube.

Whatever it was, it moved behind a structure. More of the enslavers were coming out of their own housings, way outside of the fence behind which Marcus was. They were panicking… All of them were neophytes without a superior to tell them what to do. Bright flashes came from the sky and everything turned to loud noises, and dirt flying everywhere. Marcus had to protect his eyes, just as much as the others around him did, even as they angrily shouted to leave the masters alone.

When he could see again, a different kind of strange creatures came from the sky. They landed on the tip of their feet and their inverted knees bent to absorb the impact. Their legs reminded Marcus of chickens, but the rest of their bodies were slim and tall, with long arms. The right one had what looked like a long and bulky gun around it and the other had a free, three fingered hand under a sci-fi gauntlet. Their bodies gleamed in the sunlight, covered in dark, sleek, armor.

One of the creatures shouted something pointing at the distance and made a circular gesture, while looking at the fenced area. Marcus wondered what it was saying. Something to do with him and the other humans? Whatever it said, it was clearly in charge. Its armor had golden adornments and his shoulders held a flowing black cape. Its peers spread out, swiftly covering the ground with their long legs and some of them jumping over structures, but one remained for he was holding a standard made of some sort of silk, all black and gold with an alien character above an image of what seemed to be a planet.

By its side, the ‘commander’ pointed his gun to the air and shot something out of it. Seconds later, there was a flash and a ‘pop’. Several of the quadrupedal creatures appeared. Each one with a crystal armor, but the things that looked like guns at their sides were retracted into a more compact form of themselves. One of them was holding in her front leg a long flagpole that held a flowing yellow standard of a green equine horned skull combined with a pair of wings, all of that over an emblem of three pink buttlerflies and above alien characters.

They were escorting another quadrupedal creature, but this one was smaller. It was soft yellow with a long pink mane. Her face was adorned with a delicate muzzle and large cyan-green eyes. A crystal armor in the same color as her coat covered all of her body and its gorget held, encrusted into itself, a golden jewel with a pink gem in the form of a butterfly.

Upon her arrival, all noise seemed to stop. Everything stopped and became quiet, as if the universe itself stood in reverent wait. The humans weren’t puling at the fence and shouting angrily anymore. The sounds of battle seemed even farther than they already were. Both tall alien creatures lowered themselves in respectful genuflection as their helmets opened up and retracted into the gorgets of their own armor suits, revealing their faces: harsh lines between pads of thick leather, almost like a carapace, deep dark eyes and a very short, plain nose. Their features completely suspended in solemn attention.

After acknowledging the tall creatures, the yellow creature turned her eyes towards the fenced area. She looked very feminine to Marcus. Maybe it was the large expressive eyes with long eyelashes or her soft voice as she spoke in an alien language full of neighs, nickers and whinnies. Maybe it was her delicate muzzle, or even her hair-like mane and long tail. Whatever it was, there was a bright flash from the sky and Marcus fell flat to the ground, as did all the other humans behind the fence, unconscious.