Prologue: A Shift in the Winds
Prologue: A Shift in the Wind
with editing and help from Doctor Fluffy, Sledge115, and TheIdiot
Everyone could remember exactly where they were and what they were doing on those two days.
The first day was in the spring of 2016, when everything irrevocably changed.
Yon-Soo Park remembered. He was preparing for a press conference to promote his new movie, when his good friend Eun-Hee (poor, poor Eun-Hee) and another co-star burst into his dressing room, yelling at him that he had to see what was on the news.
Breaking news reports from every outlet all over the globe frantically trying to explain the unexplainable. Politicians scrambling to take the honor of answering the call. Scientists, philosophers, clergymen and all manner of thinkers struggling to make heads and tails of what emerged from behind the barrier, and what answers it held for humanity’s eternal question.
The day the question of whether mankind was alone in its intelligence was finally answered.
At first, it all seemed to bring good tidings. These ‘ponies’ (for a lack of better term), the Equestrians they called themselves, were very nice, very polite. Yon-Soo had befriended some of them and he got several new adoring fans too. They brought wonders, literal magic - a child’s dream come true. And most of all, their finest invention, the answer to all, and the gateway into their realm.
A potion that could cure all ills, grant sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, the crippled the ability to move and to live life as all others had. The only trade-off it seemed was to cast off the human body for that of a colorful little pony. But people generally understood and accepted it as a way to save lives and ease the suffering of those hurting. Some people even wanted to take the potion and change their forms for a chance to use the ponies’ magical powers. Hell, if he wasn’t already in love with his own form as it was (oh how arrogant and superficial he used to be), Yon-Soo would’ve taken the potion for himself to be a pegasus so he could just fly around and sleep on clouds.
But as time went on, everyone (at least those sane enough not to be in the PER, those stupid, delusional sons of bitches, the whole lot of them) began to realize something was very seriously wrong.
The changes the converted humans, the Newfoals they were called, went beyond just the physical. At first, they were still more or less the same people they’d been before they were changed, just… maybe a bit less prone to anger or complaining about things that annoyed them. It was small and subtle changes at first, like changing their tastes in music or movies. It was somewhat concerning, but nowhere on the level of what would happen later on when those small, seemingly unnoticeable changes would grow more and more pronounced with time.
Of course, the very worst of humanity were the first to be exposed to it, and if it turned them, surely, it was all too well that humanity and ponykind would join together in harmony. But there the hope faded.
As it would turn out, each and every one of the converted - the old, the young, the weak, turned all the same. Their very personalities gradually crumbled away as the days went by. They would talk obsessively about how great it was to be a pony, became more and more disconnected from their humanity, from their families and friends, disdaining, if not outright hating who they’d once been and what they used to love, obsessively gravitating towards anything made by ponies.
And they never got sad. They literally never stopped smiling, both on the outside and in their hearts. And their smiles weren’t right; they weren’t truly happy and cheerful, an echo chamber of harmony and peace and all virtues that ponykind championed. In fact, it was like they were brainwashed, as some bluntly said. It was hard to argue against that description.
People began to worry, and everyone began demanding answers. No one was giving them any.
The days turned to weeks, the weeks into months. Bureau after Bureau opened, the number of people converting grew. But so did a backlash, the aura of uncertainty, the debates and the protests.
Fear began to run high, and those fears turned out to be justified.
Surely, it was a flaw, of course. That the potion outright erased their minds, turned them into something they weren’t.
Humanity would get its answers in the most horrifying way imaginable.
It all came down the second day it all changed: June 30, 2019.
Everyone could also remember in exact detail where they were and what they were doing when the ponies’ queen, Celestia, declared her intentions to take over Earth and convert the entire human race into ponies. And she did it all with a disturbingly serene smile, as the reporters on the scene screamed in pain and horror as the Queen’s guards forcibly transformed them after they angrily protested.
Eun-Hee was among them.
For a moment, Yon-Soo hoped it wouldn’t work. But it did. There was no delay where the pony she became was still Eun-Hee - the potion instantly wiped out everything that had ever been Eun-Hee in an instant.
The stakes were clear, and with those actions, humanity set aside decades of petty grudges and wartime grievances, and immediately declared war on the Solar Tyrant and her assimilation crusade.
A long, brutal and terrible war of immense suffering, destruction, and pain. Constant attacks every day for the last five years. And things barely seemed to be getting any better. Humanity may have had the long history of conflict, superior technology, and the will to fight, winning battle after battle on the field, but they were losing the war. The Empire’s ultimate weapon, the Barrier, destroyed every human and human-made object it touched, erasing all evidence mankind even existed. Buildings, roads, machines, art, and monuments were lost forever as soon as that damn pink wall came into contact with them. Millions of homes and thousands of years of irreplaceable history were just gone, and it didn’t even leave behind dust to mark their destruction. Meanwhile, although the estimates were still uncertain, it was rumored that a little over one billion souls were lost to the purple touch of the potion.
But Yon-Soo just knew that there had to be a way. Some way, somehow, there had to be a way to win this war, and stop this insane tyrant’s plot to destroy humanity.
He didn’t want to believe he had spent the past five years working with North Koreans, the Americans, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Russians and the Equestrian defectors, becoming one of humanity’s most revered soldiers, a symbol of the Asian Resistance, a symbol of hope, just for it all to be for nothing.
Tokyo, August 23, 2025
“Now, Mister Park,” the fuschia earth pony mare said to him, holding a recorder out towards him, “how did it all start for you?”
For a few seconds, he was quiet, trying to think on how to open this. He took a deep breath and started, “Well, I think, for all of us, it began with the Berne Declaration…”
Author's Note
Here it is, my dears! The reboot of The Conversion Bureau: The Other Side of the Spectrum, Side Story - Asia to accompany the aforementioned's reboot SPECTRUM.
For those who've been around since the days of the Original Verse, I hope you find this a satisfactory reboot that stands up well on its own merits. While this prologue is kind of a rehash of the original story's prologue, there will be some big changes in this new continuity as well, as there are plot elements in the original I came to feel less-than-satisfied with over the passage of time (along with improvements in the writing style).
As for where the original Asia Side Story stands now... well, that will get closure. Just not the closing that was originally planned. Keep your eyes peeled.
Let's sit back and enjoy this new ride, shall we?
