The Trojan Brigade Or Light Gust Gets Some Mane

Three days after Tirek's defeat.

Stallions were once something common. The streets of Equestria’s towns and cities were once bustling with a sort of natural music, the lower tones and higher tones of stallions and mares like a harmony of voices.

Now, mares meandered in the streets of Canterlot, speaking in hushed tones about the events that had unfolded only a few days before, so sudden, and so quickly gone all the same. Foals followed close to them, sometimes daring to ask where daddy went, only for their mother to place a hoof on their head and assure them everything was alright.

Twilight Sparkle had taken great care to document what had happened. It was the least she could do. Day after day, guilt wracked her, and she couldn’t look at anypony with anything but shame.

It had been her fault. She could feel it.

After the demonic entity Tirek had stolen the magic of every pony in Equestria, she had defeated him with the help of her friends, and restored the stolen magic to everyone.

However, something had gone terribly wrong.

Stallions everywhere became ill. In the span of only a few days, the near-entirety of the male population had been stricken by the strange disease. Canterlot’s top scientists — including her — had examined the males to determine the cause of the unexplainable plague.

At the moment, she was pacing nervously in the sterile research lab of Canterlot Hospital while her team fanned around her. Only a few swiveling chairs dotted the room, as well as a few tables filled with instruments. Shortly after the start of the illness, they had collected several stallions from multiple hospitals to examine them, hoping to find the reason behind it. Earlier, the room was filled with the bustle of the team’s frantic activities. Now, everyone stared at her, not daring to disturb her pacing. Even Spike, her faithful assistant, hadn’t made a wisecrack the entire day. The tension in the room could have been cut with a knife.

“Well?” She fidgeted in place, several notepads and quills floating around her in an uncoordinated dance. “What were the results? Are the subjects all right?”

A red unicorn named Vial Dreams stepped forward and took a deep breath. She had been the one in charge of handling the few stallions that had accepted to become their test subjects after Doctor Whiterobe had fallen sick. She had been handling everything fairly well. Considering. “They’re recovering in their rooms right now.” She glanced at her team and clicked her tongue. “I can confirm what we feared: the cause of the illness is Tirek’s corrupted magic. On that note, I have some good and bad news.”

Twilight breathed a sigh of as much relief as anxiety. “What are the good news?”

“They’re unlikely to die, that’s something we are fairly confident about.”

Twilight nodded, relief washing over her. “That’s good to hear.”

Vial Dreams’ research team just stared at her, unable to look her in the eyes. The knot in Twilight’s throat that had undid itself mere seconds ago tightened again.

“The bad news?”

“They’ll never recover fully, I’m afraid.”

The news hit her like a charging Ursa Major. “What do you mean?”

Vial Dreams parsed the pages of her notepad. Twilight could feel her sweat on her brow with each crinkling turn, as Vial Dream took her time reading and re-reading the results. “Infertility.”

The air stood still. Twilight cocked her head. “Excuse me?”

“Infertility,” Vial Dreams repeated. “Most stallions we tested have become infertile. Their sperm count has dropped to zero.” She snorted nervously and tugged at her pages, like she was still processing the results she had herself written down. “If this affected every stallion in Equestria…”

Twilight’s ears dropped as panic swelled inside her. “Then ponykind will go extinct.”

Whispers rose around them, the scientists unable to stop themselves from fidgeting at the news. Twilight’s heart raced inside her chest. She might have stopped Tirek from directly destroying everything she knew and loved, but how would that even matter if…

“It’s all my fault,” she whispered to herself.

“Twilight, it’s not your fault.” A clawed hand touched her side. “You did what you had to do.”

“I should have checked.” She shook her head. “I was careless. I should have scanned the magic, given it back little by little, one pony at a time, instead of all at once. Anything to make sure that demon hadn’t done something to it.”

“Twi—”

“I condemned ponykind to extinction, Spike!” The Alicorn’s panicked voice rang through the room.

The ponies stood awkwardly, waiting for her to speak. She didn’t feel like speaking. She felt like running away, to hide from her shame. But a thought struck her, pinning her in place. “What of the mares?”

Vial Dreams blushed and flipped a few pages. To be safe, they had also tested a few willing mares, even though nothing seemed to have happened to them. “Well, it’s a bit different. Nothing serious, but—”

“But what?”

“The opposite happened to them, actually.”

Twilight blinked. “What do you mean?”

Vial Dreams clacked her tongue again. “Hyperfertility. And one of the mares who— ah— was in heat reported it to be unbearable. Nothing else, however. I’ll have my team compile the results and I’ll send you the folder.”

Already, concepts, theorems, and theories swam in Twilight’s mind, trying to made sense of it all. If her intuition was right, then Tirek’s magic might have had the effect of taking one sex’s fertility and transferring it to the other. A cruel joke from a cruel foe. She straightened. “There might still be hope.”

The scientists looked at her with eager eyes, notepads ready. She cleared her throat. “Some ponies are born possessing XX chromosomes even though they themselves are perfectly male. If we’re lucky, then these rare ponies might not have been affected by this change.”

Her heart calmed down as the scientists wrote down her idea. They looked at her, hopeful. She felt a bit taller now, more confident. With enough luck, she could save Equestria.

Spike rolled his eyes and mumbled. "That's honestly one of the dumbest things I've ever heard."

Only a few short weeks after the start of the plague, Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship, stood before the council of her elders with a lineup of scientists and lawmakers. Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, and Princess Cadance considered her with cold stares. A rigid silence floated in the throne room without the usual noise of the court, and the paling moonlight did little to pierce the shadows that wrapped the diarchy and the Crystal Princess. Even Spike held his tongue and stuck close to the youngest's legs.

Twilight cleared her throat and swallowed a hard lump. “I’m sorry for bringing this to your attention so soon, and—”

“At 2 in the morning?” Princess Celestia interrupted. “You do know I barely slept, do you?”

Princess Cadance nodded. Heavy bags drooped under her eyes. “With how upset the Crystal Empire has been lately, I barely got a good night’s sleep myself. Tonight was supposed to be the night, but apparently, you had something important to show us?”

Only Princess Luna regarded her smugly, fresh and fully awake, clearly enjoying her sister’s pain. “Please, do share what you have to say with us, Twilight.”

The youngest Alicorn cleared her throat and gave a nervous chuckle. She was positively drenched in sweat, and if she could have just died on the spot at that very moment, she would have. “Well, it’s about that — ah— fertility problem I brought to your attention recently.”

Princess Celestia nodded, kind eyes piercing thought her tired looks. “You put a lot of effort on that problem, didn’t you? Even after I offered to help, you still wanted to do it all alone.”

Twilight sighed as the Princess’ words brought her tiredness back to the surface. It had been weeks since she hadn’t had a good night’s sleep, and she could feel it in the numbness in her bones. Still, if her works had borne fruits, each and every ache and pain would have been worth it. “I’m sorry I didn’t accept your help, but you and I both know you couldn’t have possibly done your usual work and spare time for mine without working yourself half to death. However, I believe I might have found the solution.”

She gestured to the line of males behind her. They stood proudly to attention, unlike most other stallions in Equestria who had either been admitted to the overflowing hospital around the kingdom or were bedridden at home. The princesses raised a collective eyebrow at the display. There were twenty males, all in good shape, and none with anything that could visibly explain why they weren’t in the pitiful state of the other males.

“Well?” Twilight grinned only with her mouth, her eyes nervous. “Impressed?”

“I mean, yeah,” Cadance said, slightly raising her hoof in puzzlement. She looked right, to her aunts, who seemed to share her confusion, and back to Twilight. “How did you cure them, though?”

“I didn’t cure them.” Twilight swaggered with pride. “Because they were never sick in the first place. As I had correctly hypothesized, males carrying XX chromosomes seemed to be immune to Tirek’s spell.”

“Actually,” Luna corrected matter-of-factly, “Tirek casted no spell. The tainted magic simply needed to be purified before—”

Her words hit Twilight like a train, whose ears flattened on her head. Celestia punched Luna in her side, and the darker Alicorn yelped in pain. While both sisters turned to each other and began a shouting match, fluttered her ears to make them stand upright. It was too late to feel sorry for herself. She had to present a good front for the princesses, and for herself too.

A light blue aura surrounded the two fighting sisters.

“Please, Twilight.” Cadance ripped Luna and Celestia from each other with her magic. “Continue.”

Twilight nodded. “I have here twenty specimens of the most virile males I could find that haven’t been stricken by this corruption.”

“Virile?” Celestia and Luna asked in a questioning tone, breaking their hateful staring in doing so.

“Virile?” Cadance asked before licking her lips.

“They are only the beginning,” Twilight continued, pacing in front of them like a proud general in front of her army, her plan lifting Luna’s careless words off her. “I believe we have in these kinds of stallion the key to stop the extinction of the pony race as we know it.”

Luna cocked her head. “The… extinction of the pony race?”

Twilight froze. A heavy silence hung low in the room. “Oh, yeah, about that.”

“About what, Twilight Sparkle?”

“Every stallion affected by this curse has become slightly, um, sterile.”

Worry crossed the faces of the princesses, except Cadance, whose gaze was locked with one of the males behind Twilight.

“I have not been advised of this,” Celestia said, slowly.

“I have,” Luna retorted. “Well, Vial Dreams let it slip about a week ago. I have the feeling someone here didn’t want to bother us with unnecessary stress, as unwise I would consider it to hide something of that magnitude to us.”

“Don’t worry!” Twilight hurried to add, “I have created a team to search out the most virile stallions in Equestria to prevent that disaster from happening. I present to you: The Trojan Brigade!”

The sound of Spike facepalming punctuated Twilight's proud announcement.