Innocence Once Lost and its spinnoffs are a series of Alternate Universe Fics for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. After breaking out of his stone prison and nearly being beaten by the Mane Six Discord escapes to an Alternate Universe version of Equestria to try his luck there while the Mane Six come after him, unfortunately for them this new Equestria isn't as friendly as their own...
The 'Verse contains several stories:
- Innocence Once Lost
, the main story which, sadly was cancelled. - Enemy Unknown where Alt!Twilight studies the humans and their possible ties to Equestrias history.
- My Little War Orphan, a story about Alt!Rainbow Dash adopting Alt!Scootaloo
- After The War: Luna Aeternal an Interequel between "The History Of The Human War" and "Innocence Once Lost", Alt!Luna and Alt!Twilight go to the human moonbase to pass a peace treaty only to be caught in a terrorist attack that could restart the war.
- The History Of The Human War which describes how the actual war went.
This fanfic provides examples of:
- Accidental Hero: Alt!Trixie during the war, by her own admission she was trying to save her own skin only to somehow repeatedly help the Equestrian side. She eventually got promoted to Royal Guard Captain after Alt!Shining Armor dies.
- Alternate Universe Reed Richards Is Awesome: Royal Guard Captain Trixie Lullamoon.
- Anti-Magic: Alt!Luna made a giant anti magic zone so humans could live on earth, Canon!Discord wants to destroy it because all the chaos energy remaining from the war could make him invincible even with the Elements of Harmony, but the anti magic field keeps the energy "frozen" so he can't absorb it.
- Body Horror: Some of the Alt!Mane Six and others suffered injuries during the war:
- Alt!Fluttershy lost her leg due to a shot meant for Alt!Rainbow Dash, the latter feels guilty because of it.
- Alt!Rarity went blind after a flashbang exploded in her face
- Alt!Luna got maimed trying to contain an antimatter bomb during a terrorist attack, she lost her wings, is blind on one eye and wears a human made prosthetic leg.
- Contain the Kaboom: Alt!Luna almost dies trying to do this in "After the War".
- Deaf Composer: Alt!Rarity went blind after a flashbang grenade blew up in her face at point blank range. It hasn't impeded her from making dresses in the slightest and she even managed to develop some level of Super-Senses like figuring out there are two versions of characters before Alt!Twilight tells her simply by hearing the exact same ponies being in two places at once.
- The Dreaded: Whatever Alt!Pinkie did during the war humans refuse to go anywhere near her, Canon!Pinkie implies she was responsible for killing several humans in a particularly gory fashion.
- The humans redefined Equestrias idea of what Shell-Shocked Veteran means. Equestrian psychiatrists literally had added a new clasification for Ponies who were traumatised by the war with humans.
- Drugs Are Bad: The Princesses outright refuse to experiment with using human Super Serum on their people.
- Failure Hero: Alt!Twilight seems to think of herself this way, she thinks all her victories were more due to luck or the help of other people than anything she's done.
- Fantastic Terrorists: In "Luna Aeternal" Twilight and Princess Luna have to stop a group of pony terrorists during a peace treaty.
- Forgotten Friend, New Foe: "Enemy Unknown" implies humans and ponies used to get along at one point, but when the Background Magic Field intensified to levels fatal to humans after the humans left for the moon they decided to solve the problem by killing all magical beings to reverse the process and the ponies forgot humans existed until they came back.
- Just the First Citizen: The title of the human leader, it's implied it was originally a joke but was forgotten and used unironically since.
- Lensman Arms Race: Deconstructed in "Enemy Unknown" showing the various problems that would arise trying to reverse engineer technology you know absolutely nothing about, several Pony technicians die in accidents that would never happen to a human technician with basic safety knowledge and a few of their discoveries have no practical military applications for various reasons.
- Lost City: During "Enemy Unknown" Twilight finds the remains of a human city under a glacier, ancient ponies tried to preserve it with magic, but its been so long that the preserving dome has been shrinking and most of the buildings are frozen solid in the ice.
- Lost Technology: a lot of the data the humans on the moonbase have regarding history or technology is either missing, unreadable or refers to document in the former categories for context in order to make sense. Alt!Twilight is naturally distraught due to this.
- Mooks: Subverted with the Diamond Dogs, the humans convinced them to work for them during the war, but the humans aren't really the bad guys and they treat them a lot better, both in terms of kindness and better living conditions, than anyone else does so they're very happy with it, in the end they go from a few scattered tribes to having their own country.
- Noodle Incident: When Pinkie Pie tries to drink a human energy drink Alt!Twilight slaps it away citing something Alt!Pinkie did when she drank one. Canon!Twilight agrees not to give her any.
- Order Versus Chaos: The First Citizen uses this as an analogy when discussing their respective species with Alt!Luna over dinner, ponies live in an environment they have a lot of control over thanks to magic and are most productive when they work together, humans had to live in an uncontrollable hostile environment fighting one another for resources to get anything done and are get most of their inspiration and motivation to solving problems from adversity, naturally she doesn't exactly like the idea of a species that self-identifies with chaos but she gets the point he was trying to make.
- Place of Power: People speculate the reason Alt!Luna survived the antimatter bomb explosion is because she was on the moon at the time.
- Recursive Canon: "The History of The Human War" is both a Recursive Fanfiction and an in universe book Alt!Twilight gives the Mane Six to read to bring them up to speed, unsurprisingly the author of the in universe version is Lyra.
- Replacement Goldfish: Alt!Pinkie is killed fighting changelings and replaced with a baby changeling that imprinted on her. Her friends know about it but accept it.
- Shout-Out: Several:
- Alt!Trixie is always called Captain Trixie Lullamoon Hero of Equestria and judging by the Accidental Hero entry above it's not hard to see why.
- Based on their effects the human combat drugs that the ponies are experimenting on in Enemy Unknown are Franchise/Fallout chems under a different name. The title of the story itself is a shout out to the X-COM franchise.
- Slept Through the Apocalypse: Alt!Big Mac ends up in a coma due to a head injury and recovers after the war is over.
- Staring Down Cthulhu: When Discord tries to get the Diamond Dog king to turn against the humans the king and his guards try to kill him to Discords surprise, its partly out of genuine loyalty to the humans and partly because they know full well that whatever humans would do to them would be worse.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: One of the apparent side effects of Luna being trapped on the moon for a thousand years, aside from humans being immune from the harmful effects of her magic, see Weak to Magic below, is that Luna and humans naturally think alike, Celestia finds this unnerving enough she wonders if humans brainwashed Luna.
- Villain Team-Up: in "After the War" the villains are two extremist groups, one made of ponies and the other of humans who join forces to cause a terrorist attack that will restart the war and drive both sides to commit genocide against eachother, both groups fully intend to kill eachother when the time comes but work together because they both see their alliance as taking advantage of the other.
- Weak to Magic: Humans can't survive in a magical environment without hazmat suits, though apparently due to Luna being trapped on the moon for a thousand years her magic isn't harmful to them.
- Won the War, Lost the Peace: Minus the winning part. Equestria managed to sign a peace treaty with humans, but due to the one sidedness of the conflict and the public perception of the trade being lopsided in the humans favour the pony population view the Princesses as weak leaders who bribed the humans into leaving Equestria alone and there are extremists on both sides who want restart the war to wipe each other out.
