The Zebra Conspiracy

A good amount of time had passed, and the strange illness affecting the Equestrian stallions had passed along with it. For once in a long while, the ponies could stand on their own two feet with ease, remembering what it was like to be unburdened with illness.

The zebras guarding over the stallion quarantine zone must not have expected this change of events either, for just as the guards entered their holding area the ponies did away with them and escaped. They were not missed in the slightest. Gone were the days of their hand delivering sealed messages from Zebrica. Undoubtedly full of more taunting lewd pictures of what those zebras were doing to debase their wives and their bodies which were undoubtedly so covered in zebra cum that they were unidentifiable. They hadn’t even read them, rather, they recently taken to secretly burning them in and their contents in protest as they came in.

Only, once they all finally escaped back in the open world did they see the after effects of what happened. All of the zebras were gone. Along with all of their wives, mare friends, and daughters! Everypony! Not to mention all of their wealth as well. It wasn’t hard for them to piece together the clues of what had happened once investigating the dusty abandoned remains of Canterlot, Ponyville, and the harbors.

The zebras could never be forgiven for what they had done…

“We’ll attack on the west coastline,” A now bearded Shining Armor spoke to his troops. “We’ll lay siege to the coastal cities then move inwards on all fronts, burning Zebrica’s massive rainforests to ash!” The men crowding around the war room cheered at the prospect of their long overdue revenge. “Remember!” Shining Armor added. “As far as our mares are concerned, they are innocent! They have all simply been drugged out of their minds by those despicable zebras and their weird potions! Make sure not to harm any of the ones you rescue! As for the zebras themselves… we will be taking no prisoners. Give them all a reason to fear us ponies.” The army of his men cheered even louder.

“Shining Armor, sir!” A stallion called out, bursting into the war room.

“Hey!” Another chided, smacking the other lightly. “You gotta use his right name now!”

“Right… right, sorry. Captain Private Admiral Shining Armor!”

The bearded, eye patch wearing, sword wielding unicorn gave a curt nod. “Report, soldier.”

“There are countless ships approaching the Manehattan harbor from the east! They’re Zebrican ships, sir!” The crowd of stallions gasped.

“A preemptive strike on the zebra’s behalf, undoubtedly,” First Mate Blue Blood spoke. “They intend to attack us on our own land before we can attack them!”

“This is it! To arms men!! We ride to battle!” Shining Armor roared as his army roared with him. It worked well enough for him and his men anyway. The zebras would get their due, even if it cost them all their very lives.

Shining Armor and his army crowded the area of the Manehattan harbor as the zebra ships approached. Armed with swords, spears, and deadly unicorn magic. The planks were lowered as the ships docked. Arriving off them were none other than their... precious mares? Coupled and happily talking with their zebra mates beside them! Cadance was there in the front of the disembarking crowd… along with Zed.

Zed…. just the mere sight of that bastard set Shining Armor off in a furious rage.

“Charge!!!” Shining Armor cried, holding his sword up high in the air as he sprinted forward.

“Death to zebras!!!” The others cried in unison as they followed behind.

“S-s-shining?” Cadance called out, finally spotting her weirdly dressed grungy looking husband charging at them with a dull sword. “W-what are you guys doing?! Stop!!!!”

“We’re killing the zebras!” Shining insisted, but the alicorn stood behind him and Zed. His troops coming to a stop behind him. “Just…. uggg! Move, babe!!”

“Wait what?!?…. Why would you do that?” Cadance asked. Shining knew what was going on. Obviously she and the other mares were still drugged into believing the zebras were still of good intentions. This would take some convincing of his to get them back on their side.

“You should know darn well why…” Shining Armor growled, his vengeful gaze staring down Zed from behind his wife. “Because that fucker and his people abducted you all from us! They locked us guys away while they helped themselves to our wives like they were pieces of meat! They tricked us all. As one final slap in the face, they brought you all to their homeland to be bought, sold, and used as sex slaves! It was all we could do to kill the ones they left behind to guard over us and escape.”

“S-sex… slaves?” Cadance muttered, confused out of her mind. “W-what the hell are you talking about? I’ve haven’t even had sex once since I got to Zebrica! Zed already said I was pregnant shortly after we left…”

It was then Shining finally noticed his wife’s appearance. Her stomach was in fact, growing, with the obvious signs of pregnancy like most of the other mares present. On top of that, her stomach, along with the rest of her body wasn’t naked, but clad in respectable zebrican garments. Fit for a nobleman’s or tribe leader's wife. There was no collar around her neck, nor was there an overwhelming smell of zebra semen coming from her. Still, Shining Armor was unconvinced. Having long since learned of the zebra’s level of treachery and deception.

“Don’t be a fool, Cadance!” Shining spat. “Everything they’ve done has been a lie! You may have gotten pregnant, but there’s no way the child’s mine!”

“It is yours,” Cadance urged. “Some of the other girls have already had their foals. They are full ponies. Not zebra or half zebra hybrids! Just like they promised.”

“But what about-” Shining began.

“Yes, Shining” Cadance signed, “they are giving birth to colts. Your gender hasn’t been bred out of existence.”

“Oh…” Shining muttered, briefly lowering his sword. Only to angrily draw it back up again! “But what about Lavender Flitter! I know about her, Zed! Oh, yeah, that’s right! A mare just happens to know a little to much about the zebra’s plan, she asks a few to many questions before so conveniently disappearing off the face of the planet? Then she shows up in the zebra embassy later as a mindless slut?!”

“You do know Equestria is a very large place, do you not?” Zed deadpanned. “There is more than one mare by the name of “Lavender Flitter”… The one we had at our embassy was a homeless drifter we picked off the streets while we helped the community feed itself. We fed and clothed her, even nursed her back to health. She was at our embassy because, despite everything that had happened to her, she was looking to do a little good for the world even as a small part. We asked her parents permission, of course. Though, I think she would resent you labeling her a ‘mindless slut’ for her mere performance. She admitted she herself gets rather caught up in the act.”

“B-but what about the docks?! Hmmm?” Shining Armor went on, again pointing his sword at his sworn evil enemy. “You packed our women on wooden crates! Treating them like objects! Merchandise! Putting them to sleep as you shipped them across the seas like cattle!”

“Hey,” Zed scoffed, “if you can find a safer and easier way to comfortably place a bunch of sleeping ponies on top of each other for maximum cargo efficiency, I’d love to hear it. We only had so many ships to work with.”

“And the sleeping potion was for everyone’s benefit,” Zabella shot in from the crowd behind. “Sleeping passengers on an eventless journey limits their boredom, food consumption, and sea sickness.”

“B-but what about their luggage?!?!” Shining Armor shouted. “We found the dumpsters you had carelessly flung their belongings into.”

“They were contaminated with foreign pathogens,” Cadance sighed, shaking her head shamefully as she averted her gaze from the stallion she couldn’t even look in the eyes. “They couldn’t bring anything that wasn’t clean! Even us mares ourselves were a big risk on their end! I authorized it was ok for them to lie about it because they shouldn’t of had to deal with all of us freaking out about our luggage! It was a crisis we were escaping from! Not a luxury vacation!”

“Right… right… Couldn’t bring anything from Equestria,” Shining went on, unconvinced. “Except our valuables. I know they robbed us blind for their… ‘services’! Making off with all of our country’s gold and wealth!”

“Well, Shining,” Celestia now said, stepping out of the crowd in similar looking royal attire as to what Cadance wore. Looking quite angry with the unicorn captain. “I’m sorry... that you think that we live in a world where nations devote large groups of their population, resources, and knowledge to foreign powers out of the goodness of their own hearts. But, that is simply not the reality we live in.”

“B-b-b-but what about Spike! The zebras weren’t expecting a healthy male dragon to be with the mares! They probably slit his throat and left him to die in a ditch before they left!”

“Uhhhhhhhh, I’m right here…” Spike said, with a meek raise of his hand. He stood next to Rarity in the center of cowering mares and zebras. His throat so conveniently unslit, or maybe that was just what the zebras wanted him to think. The dragon, though, desired to stay as far away from this growing awkward situation as dragonly possible. “They just wanted to talk to me over some safety things. You know… fire breathing dragon... on a wooden boat… in the middle of an ocean. I can understand how it didn’t exactly calm their nerves. B-but I had a really good time in Zebrica, honest.”

“They set up a facility in Cloudsdale! To drug our water with their unholy concoctions!”

“Uhhhh, that was just so they could add fluoride to the water,” Rainbow Dash shot in. “Helps keep our teeth healthy. I’m not even sure why we didn’t think of that before. The zebras were a ton of help outside of the whole plague thing and knocking us all up for you.”

“B-but… they said you would all be mtumwas. I looked up the translation for that! I know what that means!”

“I looked it up to!” Cadance said with an exasperated roll of her eyes. “Its exact dictionary definition was: honored and esteemed foreign visitor in their native tongue! What language did you think they were speaking?!”

“S-Swahili...?”

“Are you seriously assuming zebras in Zebrica speak the first foreign sounding language you saw?”

“N-I mean, mmmm… errrr… uhhhhh….never mind,” Shining Armor stammered.

“We’ve been living peacefully with the zebras ever since we left Equestria. Trying to convince some of them that ponies aren’t so bad. So yeah… thanks for trying to kill them all, big brother. Huge help.” Twilight glared.

“Y-y-you were all walking around… going about your days completely naked though…” Shining meekly whimpered now.

“All of our old clothes had to get tossed out and burned because you guys contaminated them! And we choose to stay naked because it was easier and zebras didn’t gawk at us like you all would have! They have always treated us with respect!” Twilight exclaimed. “And frankly, I don’t think you’re one to talk about us going overboard.”

“Shining…” Cadance sighed, done with this insane conversation. “We heard you all got better and were on our way back to rejoin you and rebuild Equestria! You should have known about that! We’ve been sending you mail ever since we arrived in Zebrica to let you know we were okay!”

“Ummm… about that…”

“The only reason the zebras are here now was because they were nice enough to accompany us back to here to say their final goodbyes after all this time! You, on the other hand… ugggg!!! I always knew there was a chance you might have been jealous of what Zed and I did together, even though you yourself said it was all okay. But… I never, in a thousand years, would have thought you were so… racist!”

“W-what? No! No no no! I’m not racist! You’ve got it all wrong! S-some of my best friends are-” Shining paused, now realizing he hadn’t gotten to know a single zebra during their time in Equestria. In this current day and year, was he really part of the problem?

“Only a racist would have thought zebras were up to something when they were just obviously trying to help us! That somehow zebras had managed to convince everyone of them coming over to Equestria to take part in some grand conspiracy against us and at the same time, somehow manage to keep it a perfectly kept secret for all of the months they were there!” Cadance exclaimed angrily.

“Cadance… honey, I…”

“I think… I think it would be best if we left,” Cadance said turning around. Unable to look at the racist, bigoted monster the stallion that was once her husband had become. “We’re leaving. All of us! And never coming back!”

The stallion tried to think of something to say. But he couldn’t. He looked at the other mares for support, but found only despise and distain in their angry eyes. What was once Shining glorious vision for a heroic rescue of all their helpless wives had turned into… this. He had turned out to be the bad guy all along!

“Yes, of course you girls can come live with us,” Zed said quickly, embracing the pink alicorn in his strong arms as he comforted the gentle alicorn. “You have all long since proven your good nature. As far as the elders are concerned, you mares may stay in Zebrica until the end of your days engaged with your zebra mates.”

The mares and zebras hurriedly rushed back up the ramp into the ships.

“And yeah…” Zed said awkwardly to the stunned stallions, still trying to process everything they had just heard. “I guess you stallions killed the guards we had stationed here? I’m afraid that means war... But you won’t be seeing us again...”

With that, the zebra hopped back onto the boat as they withdrew. Sailing backwards into the Sunset as they made their way back to Zebrica. Unlikely to ever return.

It was all the Shining Armor and the rest of the stallions could do but to watch them leave.

“Well……. Shit…”