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Nightmare Fuel / The Negotiations-verse

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Let's just say that as a Deconstruction Fic of The Conversion Bureau, The Negotiationsverse does not skimp on the horrors of war.


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    General 
  • As is common in deconstructions of the Conversion Bureau, the newfoals bring about plenty of it. While it could be considered mitigated by the fact readers don't get to meet any individual newfoals, what is told about them is more than unsettling enough. Between them not showing any emotion other than happiness, the way some are shown to be given the task of singing songs to boost the morale of ponies who are going to kill or forcibly convert more humans, and the fact they can't say no to anything natural-born ponies ask of them, including requests for sex, there is plenty of material for nightmares. And a particularly fine point is put on it once it is mentioned in Rest that there are thousands of former newfoals on suicide watch because of their trauma.
  • When the humans' resistance to conversion proved much tougher than the ponies originally anticipated, Equestria destroyed Rome and Mecca with the Crystal Cannon, hoping that the obliteration of two of humanity's most important religious cities would be a major blow to their morale. Instead, it made the humans so furious that in retaliation, they dropped a nuclear bomb on the Crystal Empire, killing Princess Cadence and Princess Flurry Heart and wiping out 90% of the Crystal Ponies.
  • In the Battle of Jerusalem, the humans unveiled the newly created Anti-Magic weapons that took the Equestrians completely by surprise, as they had no idea how to counter against something that basically canceled out their powers, rendering them much easier to kill. In a display of Suicidal Overconfidence, Princess Luna nevertheless tried to hold the line and allow her forces to escape to safety, only to be killed by several human soldiers unloading their rifles at her for a solid minute, riddling her with so many bullets that what's left of her afterward is described as looking like ground meat with bits of blue fur and feathers mixed in.
  • Before her execution, Princess Celestia reveals the truth to Twilight about why she brought Equestria to Earth: 300 years before Nightmare Moon's return, she realized the sun was dying. She tried everything she could to save it but failed. As a last resort, she had the Mane Six use the Elements of Harmony to teleport Equestria to another planet, that being Earth, so that her ponies could survive. But because they didn't take the rest of Equus with them—not that they could have—no one was left to move the sun and moon. Every single race left behind on Equus—dragons, minotaurs, yaks, changelings, griffins, zebras, all the other non-pony races, and every pony outside Equestria—a total of 1.2 billion lives—either froze or burned to death. Any character who finds out about it, in-universe, immediately has a massive, debilitating Heroic BSoD.
  • The humans may have won the Conversion War, but not without a heavy cost. At the end of the war, casualties on their side totaled about 3 billion.

    Truth 
  • One of the biggest reasons Celestia hates humanity? She sent Sunset Shimmer as a scout to Earth in order to make sure it was safe, but her student ended up being killed and eaten by a tribe of African hunters.

    Fallen 
  • Fluttershy's mention of having heard a story about a pony soldier ordering a newfoal to kill herself and the newfoal doing so on the spot is horrifying. While it is just a rumor as per her own words, the very fact it is believable induces shivers.
  • Fluttershy's human boyfriend Martin is captured and tortured in order to force her to use her Element of Harmony in Celestia's plan to save Equestria. If she does not cooperate, he will be force-fed a flawed prototype of the conversion potion that will cause him to go through an agonizing half-Newfoal transformation before he dies.
  • The "Divine Justice" ending: Harmony itself reveals its disapproval of Equestria's actions, turns Celestia into a stone statue, and imprisons her deep beneath the earth, fully conscious but never to be released until the planet itself dies.
  • The "Rejection" ending: The Elements themselves wither away into dust after an attempt to use them to create a bigger barrier and Harmony sweeps Fluttershy and Martin out of Equestria and brings them to Lyra's house. Celestia has a Villainous Breakdown and rallies the entirety of the Equestrian populace to make a Last Stand against humanity. This action, dubbed "the March of Fools" by historians, ends in the death of three-quarters of the entire population, or more than 1.5 million casualties.
  • The "Operation Freebird" ending: The resistance sends out a rescue mission to get Fluttershy and Martin out of Canterlot, which winds up with several of the Element Bearers getting killed by the soldiers. Meanwhile, Celestia, consumed in an Unstoppable Rage that includes her having Black Eyes of Evil, tries to kill Fluttershy but ends up vaporizing Twilight instead. Spike then comes in and fights off Celestia, and though he ends up getting killed via being stabbed in the chest by her horn, he does a pretty gruesome number on her - half her body is burned, her right eye is clawed out, her left wing is half gone, the right one ripped out entirely, and she's covered head-to-hoof in bullet wounds, bite marks, and gashes that bleed so bad she leaves a small river of blood behind her when walking.
  • The "Harmony's Chosen" ending: Harmony bestows Fluttershy with its power, making her the sole bearer of all six Elements and ascends her to alicorn status. Celestia is naturally not happy and tries to attack her, but Harmony speaks through Fluttershy, angrily calling Celestia and Twilight out on using the blessings given to them for war than peace and strips them both of their alicorn powers. Celestia is then subjected to No Immortal Inertia as her body rapidly ages before she dies and then it rots away into dust.

    Fallen: Twilight Falls 
  • Twilight finds out that Celestia lied to her about the reason they teleported to Earth, that their entire cause of wanting to bring harmony and friendship to the humans has been nothing but a gigantic self-serving lie, and that she killed Spike to keep him from getting a message to the resistance, and goes completely bonkers. Which is to say, she vaporizes most of Celestia's head with a huge magic blast, impales the commander of the Royal Guards with her own spear before slaughtering the entire platoon, strangles Applejack with her own lasso, smashes Rainbow Dash's head against a rock, snaps Pinkie Pie's neck like a twig, and then personally slaughters all the remaining royal guards and Equestrian military before destroying Canterlot and herself in a giant magical explosion, leaving nothing but a smoking crater where the city once stood.

    Choice 
  • After Fluttershy's defection to aid humanity, the Equestrian government starts imposing 1984-esque levels of surveillance to root out dissenters and traitors, under the eye of the Equestrian Secret Service. Households are checked regularly and civilian ponies are financially rewarded with huge sacks of bits for turning in potential traitors, even their own friends, family members and neighbors. Anypony judged to be disloyal to Equestria's cause or too sympathetic to humanity is arrested without trial by the ESS and sentenced to hard labour in the work camps. Even something like failing to contribute enough to the war effort is seen as unpatriotic and can be grounds for a prison sentence; the chapter "Documentation" reveals that Applejack turned in a mare named Mountain Song for "deliberately obscene idleness in times of crisis".
  • A ship full of refugees from other, non-pony races attempts to flee Equestria, but is sunk by a bolt from a ballista. The soldier responsible, Private Straight Shot, is given a medal and a promotion to captain and praised by Princess Celestia herself as a true Equestrian hero who "did what needed to be done," while Captain Parabola is dragged off by the ESS for protesting against the murder of the refugees.
  • Celestia turns her sister Luna's funeral into a Nazi-esque propaganda rally, spurring her little ponies into a vengeful frenzy and declaring that they will stop at nothing to bring "harmony and friendship" to the humans, no matter what has to be done in order to achieve such an end. Blind Obedience and Detrimental Determination, thy name is Equestria.
    She paused and took in the cheering and clamoring of her ponies. They have all since stood up and began shouting her name in blind reverence, displaying the same level of unquestioned zealotry that drove away Fluttershy and the Resistance to begin with. These ponies, no matter how scared or unskilled they were, were prepared to throw themselves directly into the line of fire without a moment of hesitation if it meant achieving the ultimate end of harmony.
  • After Shining Armor's death in New York, Celestia manipulates Cadence into firing the Crystal Cannon at Rome by lying that the humans desecrated his corpse, paraded him around as a Battle Trophy and left him to rot and be eaten by crows and flies.
  • When Applejack finds herself in dire financial straits due to the heavy tithes imposed by the crown, she becomes desperate for money to keep Sweet Apple Acres afloat. She turns in Davenport to the ESS after hearing him talk about wanting to leave Equestria.
  • Near the end of the war, Ponyville gets bombed into oblivion and goes up in flames. Rarity, Sweetie Belle, Pinkie Pie, and the Cake family all die; Apple Bloom is killed when a stray piece of shrapnel goes straight through her brain — a golden bit that Applejack got for turning ponies over to the ESS.
  • As it becomes increasingly clear that Equestria is about to lose the war, Celestia has a god-tier Villainous Breakdown that makes Hitler's in Downfall look like a child's tantrum, literally bursting into flames and raging at her war council while cursing ponies and humans alike for her losses—blaming her soldiers for not fighting hard enough, humanity for rejecting the "perfect gift" she was giving them, and even Twilight for Fluttershy's defection to humanity and the loss of the ability to use the Elements of Harmony.

    The Tale of the Broken Soldier 
  • To show Halberd that ponies aren't the Perfect Pacifist People he believes they are, Garen takes him to the distant past from before the three pony tribes united, and shows him a platoon of pegasus soldiers executing disabled foals by throwing them off the clouds. The last one to be executed is an adult stallion who planned to escape the village with his disabled son, only to be sold out by his wife—who personally throws their foal off the cloud herself.

    Regeneration 
  • As revenge for her brother's death and losing her wing and eye in the Defeat of Osaka, thanks to the Doctor's interference, Twilight uses the Harmony Cannon to nuke the East Coast of the US and part of Canada, resulting in EIGHTY-FIVE MILLION HUMAN CASUALTIES.
  • Mixed with Tear Jerker, Pinkie Pie is so horrified by the devastation caused by the Harmony Cannon that she hangs herself, with Rarity being the one to find her corpse. The only thing she leaves behind is a note that says, "It isn't funny anymore."
  • The end of chapter 12. The Windigos have returned. They haven't, thankfully, as they were illusions created by Discord to distract Twilight, Celestia and their armies while his companions sabotage the Harmony Cannon. This, however, leads into the truly nightmarish reveal of chapter 13...
  • The Black Guardian. They are the real reason why Celestia had Equestria teleported to Earth to "save" her ponies, killing everyone back on Equus who weren't on Equestria at the time and giving him free reign upon a universe where the ponies have become absent, wiping out their future achievements and heroics in one fell swoop. Even before his reveal, the most he appeared in previous chapters was through their psychic influence on Celestia, represented by corrupted text, to the point that their more forceful influences result in her getting Black Eyes of Evil, or a darker and menacing tone of voice, which creeps everyone around her who happens to notice, including Twilight.

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