The Conversion Bureau: Instincts

If you’d told me a few years back that I would be in a guerrilla warfare group fighting against magical ponies that are trying to convert us all into them, I would have either pointed you to the nearest padded, all white cell, locked away from civilisation, or ran from you, fearing that you were insane and were going to kill me.

Life’s funny like that. I remember back in 2015 when they used the Large Hadron Collider to make contact with a parallel universe. It was historical, incredible, outstanding. We sent messages into that universe, and we got a reply.

Before we knew it, we had made contact with a race of intelligent ponies, some able to use magic and others able to fly. There were air shows, human airplanes and Pegasus flight teams dominating the skies, there were advances in medicine, cures for diseases we never would have thought possible. It was a time of great prosperity, mankind and ponykind’s Golden Age.

Of course though, you cannot have a rise without eventually having a fall. Princess Celestia, the Ponies ruler and monarch, was the end of our Golden Age. There was always radical hate against the ponies, usually by  religious people and racists. When our Golden Age was nearing its end, violence was erupting on the streets, hundreds of pony and human deaths alike.

Our fall wasn't a quick thing, it happened slowly but surely. The first stage was the Conversion Bureaus, completely optional at first. Optional but free. You see the ponies had developed a potion by combining human nano science and pony magic. The result was a liquid that could transform a human fully into a pony of any type apart from Alicorn, which is a pony with wings and a horn. Bureaus were built in every capital city of the world, so one in every country. It was funded by the ponies so our governments were fine with it.

This ponification process was absolutely free, leading to many people living in slums to get themselves ponified in search of a better life. There was jobs exclusive to ponies, for example Princess Celestia demanded that only ponies could run the Bureaus. I guess that they realised that they could get in on these jobs if they did it.

After the first rush to get ponified, it all but stopped after a few months, and the Bureaus were rendered almost useless. Almost. Rumour had it that Princess Celestia had changed one of them into a lab for testing new versions of the potion. Nobody paid much attention to them.

Three months after the rumours stopped circulating, it happened. The first thing we knew in England there was some kind of explosion in Waterloo. Princess Celestia then claimed responsibility whilst in a meeting with Jeremy Corbyn, the prime minister, and pulled out some sort of vial and threw it over him. Before our eyes on live television he was the first to be forcefully ponified. That was the official start of the war. Celestia then revealed what she was doing in her lab in Canada: creating a potion that would make anyone touched by it a pony 100% loyal to her and her alone.

That was when all hell broke loose, it was every human for themselves. Rumours of the HLF, Human Liberation Front, a group who would attack the ponies in large numbers, spread round the humans who managed to stay hidden. Billions of humans were ponified in the first week.

We had few firearms, what we did have was not that powerful at all. Three .22 rifles, a .308 rifle and a magnum revolver. Plenty of ammo for the 308, some for the revolver, not so much for the .22s. Luckily, we came across a small battle sight. There were 4 automatic rifles and 1 3 round burst rifle. There was also splodges of potion everywhere, which we narrowly avoided. There was plenty of ammo and a few pony bodies, but no human ones. The ponies were obviously more interested in ponifying then killing.

That was three days ago, now I'm with the four other people in a little survival group. My name is Thomas, I'm a 24 year old and a farmer. Lived on the land all my life, wielded a .22 when hunting with my best friend and neighbour, Jack. Jack grew up with me, I was born a few months before him and we were best friends all through childhood. He owned the farm that I worked on with him, he inherited it from his dad.

Harry is a level headed, calm guy. He moved to our village a while back and brought knowledge of other farming techniques from other villages. He has blonde hair and his eyes are a bluey-grey colour. He brought another .22 rifle to our collection.

Freya lived in the village a few miles on from ours, she was visiting me when war first broke out. She is a really close friend. Our parents used to joke that we were destined to end up together. Her father owned the .308 which she took here to show me. We went back to hers a bit after war broke out for more ammo.

We found David when going looting in the corner shops. He was huddled behind the counter, shaking in fear. We took him in. He helped us and we helped him. It's always nice for manpower, safety in numbers and all that.

From what we could gather from the few radio calls with other groups we’ve had, the reason a nuke hasn't been dropped yet is because of the country’s leader, the one who has the codes is dead or Celestia just wiped their country out, replacing the whole population with ponies. The radio was our one source of contact, and with batteries fading fast, we were running out of options, it’s getting to either attack or stay hidden now. No advice from other pockets of human resistance.

Celestia and her forces round up more humans every day, taking them to their Bureaus to be ponified. Perhaps, we can get into one and take it out. Perhaps we can make a difference in this war. Perhaps we can survive.