Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle stood atop the Red base with fully loaded battle rifles, scoping the area for any invading Blues to gun down.
“Hey,” Apple Bloom said. “You ever wonder why we’re here?”
Sweetie Belle shrugged. “We’re short on ponies, so we’re just defending the flag from up here until more players join, right?”
Apple Bloom shook her head. “No, I mean why are we sittin’ inside playin’ Halo when it’s a beautiful day outside? We’ve already tried and failed to get our Cutie Marks in this game, an’ there are still so many things we need ta try.”
“Oh, come on, Apple Bloom,” Sweetie Belle said as she turned her attention away from the battlefield and towards her friend. “I need to practice for the Ultimate Halo Tournament this weekend so that I have a chance at winning a tour of the development team’s main office and an early release of Halo 3!”
“Ah know, Sweetie Belle, but ah-”
“Pleeeeeeease?”
“Bu-”
“Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-”
“Okay, okay!” Apple Bloom said, pushing Sweetie Belle away from her. A bullet flew between the two just as Sweetie Belle was pushed back, startling them and causing Sweetie Belle to throw a grenade blindly into the direction of the gunshot.
“Aw, son of a-”
An explosion followed the colt’s voice and a notification announcing Sweetie Belle’s kill popped on the screen. “Take that Blue!” Sweetie Belle shouted as she fired a few victory shots towards the battlefield.
MegaUltraChicken has joined the game.
“Wait, what the?!” Scootaloo shouted as she spawned behind Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle. Whilst Sweetie Belle was giggling, Apple Bloom was flat out rolling on the floor laughing her flank off. “Oh very funny, Apple Bloom.”
MegaUltraChicken has left the game.
A couple of minutes of silence passed.
Scootaloo has joined the game.
Queen Tiara has joined the game.
Silver Meganekko has joined the game.
“Alright, we’ve got five players now!” Sweetie Belle shouted in excitement as three new ponies spawned before her. One was wearing orange armour, another was wearing pink armour, and the third was wearing grey armour. Sweetie Belle herself had chosen white armour, and Apple Bloom had chosen yellow.
“Wait, that voice,” the grey-armoured pony said. “Sweetie Belle?!”
“Silver Spoon?!” Apple Bloom shouted.
“Apple Bloom?!” the pink-armoured shouted as she backed away from the group.
“Diamond Tiara?” Sweetie Belle asked.
Scootaloo looked between the four for a moment. “… Uh… Scootaloo!”
“What are y’all doin’ here?” Apple Bloom asked. “Ah thought y’all were too cool fer video games.”
“First of all, I never said anything remotely like that,” Diamond Tiara said. “And second-”
“TEAM KILL!” the announced declared as three bullets from Scootaloo’s rifle nailed Diamond Tiara’s head.
“Hey!” Silver Spoon shouted as she glared at Scootaloo. “… How do I throw grenades?”
“Left bumped,” Diamond Tiara said as she respawned. “But don’t-”
“TEAM KILL! SUICIDE!” the announcer declared as a grenade from Silver Spoon exploded the entire team together.
“… Don’t throw one in a confine space,” Diamond Tiara said. “And what are you doing shooting your own team-”
“TEAM KILL!” the announcer declared as three shots from Apple Bloom’s rifle killed Diamond Tiara yet again.
“Apple Bloom!” Sweetie Belle cried.
“What? It’s fu-”
“TEAM KILL!”
“Stupid blank flanks!” Diamond Tiara shouted as she continued to shoot Apple Bloom’s corpse even after she had died.
“Sweetie Belle, how do I beat her with my gun?” Scootaloo asked.
“YOU GUYS!” Sweetie Belle pleaded as Silver Spoon switched to her pistol and began to shoot Scootaloo’s legs.
“TEAM KILL! SUICIDE! TEAM KILL! TEAM KILL!”
Rumble tilted his head and raised an eyebrow as he stared off into the direction of Red base. “What are they doing?”
“Sounds like a party to me,” Shady Daze said. “Whatever. This should make things easier.”
“Alright!” Snips shouted. “Let’s go! Rumble, you and Button stay to guard the flag. Snails, Shady and me will flank ‘em and take their flag!”
“Do you even know what flanking means?” Shady Daze asked.
“Not a clue,” Snips admitted. “But it sounds cool!”
Shady Daze simply shrugged and followed his teammates into the battlefield. “Whatever. Let’s just do this and win already.”
“Hey guys, check it out!” Scootaloo shouted as she ran Diamond Tiara with her newly-claimed warthog jeep.
“Sweet find!” Apple Bloom said as she jumped down from the top of Red base, hurting herself a little in the process, and hopped inside the passenger seat beside Scootaloo. “C’mon in, Sweetie Belle! Room fer one more!”
“You guys!” Sweetie Belle shouted. “We need to stop killing each other!”
“They started it!” Scootaloo shouted.
“You started it!” Sweetie Belle argued.
“I just shot one of ours! Silver Spoon exploded all of us,” Scootaloo pointed out.
“That’s not the issue here!” Sweetie Belle groaned and slammed a hoof into her face. “Of all the ponies to ask to help me practice, I asked them…” Sweetie Belle caught some movement in the corner of her eye and gasped as she saw Snips and Snails approaching from behind some rocks. “GUYS! THE ENEMY IS HERE!”
“I know!” Scootaloo shouted as she chased a screaming Silver Spoon in her jeep. “We’re taking care of it now, remember?”
“No, not them! The- Oh, forget it!” Sweetie Belle ran towards the nearby sniper rifle and picked it up. “Not my best weapon. I usually try to avoid it actually, but… desperate times call for desperate measures.”
Sweetie Belle aimed down the scope of the sniper rifle and focussed the crosshair on Snips, who was crouching next to a large boulder. Half of him was concealed, but there was plenty for Sweetie Belle to shoot at. And he was sitting perfectly still. She simply had to steady her aim, and…
Diamond Tiara took Sweetie Belle’s warning seriously and scoped the area for incoming Blues. She founds Snips and Snails approaching and looked around for something that she could use. “Hello…” she said as she picked up an energy sword. She turned to the nearby portal with a grin on her face. “Time to slice-and-dice some stupid colts.”
After jumping through the portal, Diamond found herself in the centre of the battlefield, directly behind Snips and Snails. Snips was the closer target, so Diamond Tiara decided to cut him, first. Quickly, Diamond Tiara charged towards Snips from behind and slammed her hoof on the button to attack.
“TEAM KILL! HEADSHOT!”
Diamond Tiara respawned behind Sweetie Belle, who was grinning sheepishly at the furious filly. “Oh, you have got to be bucking kidding me.”
“Eheheh… Um, oops?” Sweetie Belle said, moments before being shot in the head by a sniper rifle’s fire herself.
“HEADSHOT!”
Sweetie Belle respawned beside Diamond Tiara, who was now a little less angry, but still wasn’t exactly amused. “We’re doomed, aren’t we?” Sweetie Belle asked.
Behind them, Diamond Tiara could hear the sound of a tank firing a rocket, followed by the startled screams of both Apple Bloom and Scootaloo.
“TEAM KILL! DOUBLE KILL!”
“Very,” Diamond said with a nod.
“BLUE TEAM HAS THE FLAG!”
“What?!” Sweetie Belle shouted as she looked down into Red base through the opening in the ceiling, only for her sight to be impaired by something blue and shiny and- “Oh bu-”
“TEAM KILL!” the announcer shouted as Diamond Tiara bashed the back of Sweetie Belle’s head with her rifle, knocking her corpse down into the base moments before the plasma grenade attached to her helmet could explode. Unfortunately, the resulting explosion only managed to kill Snips and Snails. Shady Daze, who was carrying the flag, was already hijacking the damaged warthog outside and preparing to drive away.
“DARN IT!” Diamond shouted as she picked up Sweetie Belle’s sniper rifle and aimed it at the fleeing colt. Unfortunately, before she could fire, she found herself dead once again at her own team’s hooves.
“TEAM KILL!”
“Oh come on!” Diamond Tiara shouted as she respawned. “Blank flank, tell your friends to stop team-killing already!” she told Sweetie Belle.
“I tried!” Sweetie Belle pointed out. “For five minutes! Did you not hear me telling them to stop?”
“Then let’s just kick them already!”
“They’re my friends! I’m not going to-”
“Hey Sweetie Belle!” Scootaloo shouted as she ran in front of the two fillies, carrying something very large and very menacing in her hooves. “Hold still, I wanna try something.”
Before Sweetie Belle could respond, the three fillies were blown away by a rocket fired at their hooves.
“TEAM KILL! SUICIDE!”
After respawning, Scootaloo picked up the rocket launcher again and proceeded to start firing it at their own tank, from which Silver Spoon was attempting to gun down Apple Bloom who was cowering behind a rock.
“… Yeah, okay,” Sweetie Belle said as she voted to kick Scootaloo.
Diamond Tiara also voted. Naturally, Scootaloo and Apple Bloom both voted to not kick her, and only three of the colts on Blue team voted ‘yes’, whilst the other two voted ‘no’, so the deciding vote was left up to Silver Spoon. In the event of a tie, Scootaloo would not be kicked.
Voting ended. Player Scootaloo will not be kicked.
“What?!” Diamond screeched as she turned to face Silver Spoon.
Silver Spoon simply shrugged. “The ballet was confusing!”
“Hey, what’s the deal?!” Scootaloo shouted to both Diamond Tiara and Sweetie Belle. “Why you tryin’ ta kick me?”
“BLUE TEAM CAPTURED THE FLAG!”
“Cause of that,” Diamond said with a groan.
“You guys are so busy killing each other that we’re losing now!” Sweetie Belle shouted. “You’re ruining our game!”
“But it’s Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon,” Apple Bloom said. “Why would we wanna play with them when we could just kill ‘em instead?”
Sweetie Belle struggled to find some kind of argument that would successfully persuade her two friends. She tried to lower her own intellect to match theirs, but that was starting to hurt her brain, so she stopped.
Diamond Tiara, however, managed to think of something that just might work. “Okay, then think of it this way,” she started, gathering everypony’s attention. “If we lose, those boys over there will brag about it all day in school tomorrow.”
“So?” Scootaloo asked.
“So? The whole of school, no, the whole of Ponyville will know that we lost to a bunch of stupid colts!” Diamond shouted, earning a gasp from Silver Spoon. “On the other hoof, if we win, we can brag to them! We can let the whole town know that fillies are superior to colts everywhere! We can taunt them for losing to a bunch of fillies who they think are too lame for their stupid, ugly-looking secret base.”
Scootaloo put a hoof to her chin and hummed. “I do like the sound of that, actually.”
“Yeah!” Apple Bloom agreed. “Those colts said we can’t hang out with ‘em ‘cause we’re ‘prissy’ and ‘have cooties’, and ‘can’t keep up with ‘em’. Well ah say it’s about time we show ‘em what us fillies can do!”
Silver Spoon thought about it for a moment and then exited her tank. “Very well then. I’m in, if it means embarrassing those stupid colts.”
The five fillies gathered atop their base and joined their hooves in the centre. “Just to make things clear,” Scootaloo began, “We’re not friends. We just have a common enemy.”
“Agreed,” the other four all said in unison as they raised their hooves together into the air.
“Now what’s the plan?” Apple Bloom asked.
Snips and Snails trotted calmly across the battlegrounds. Their visit to the Red base earlier confirmed to them that their enemies were no threat, and so there was no reason to be worried about any sudden counter-attacks to their advances, or well-co-ordinated assaults on their own base.
“This game is pretty fun when you’re actually winning it for once,” Snips said.
“I agree,” Snails said. “By the way, you never did tell me why that jeep at out base is called a ‘warthog’.”
“Well-”
“CHARRRRRGE!” Apple Bloom shouted as she drove her warthog over the hill and towards the two colts.
“HOLY MOTHER OF ALL GREAT AND POWERFUL!” Snips shouted as he and Snails turned around to retreat. “RUUUUUUUN!”
“TAKE THIS!” Silver Spoon shouted as she aimed the mounted gun on the back of the warthog at the two fleeing colts.
Snips and Snails took cover behind a nearby boulder, just managing to escape with minimal damage. “Great!” Snips shouted. “Now what?!”
“Wait it out?” Snails suggested. “That thing’s gotta have limited ammo, right?”
Snips nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. We’ll wait for the perfect chance to counter, then attack!”
Scootaloo poked her head out from behind the tree that she was hiding behind. “Nopony to the left… aaaand nopony to the right.” Scootaloo nodded to herself as she charged towards Blue base. “Alright! While the others keep those dweebs busy, I’m gonna show what I’ve got!”
Scootaloo ascended the ramp that led to the top of the Blue base, spinning around as she reached the top to make sure that nopony was behind her. When she found that all was clear, she moved to the hole leading down to the Blue flag. Standing guard over it were two colts: Rumble and Button Mash.
“Hey,” Rumble said to Button, “You ever wonder why we’re here?”
A devilish grin on her face, Scootaloo jumped down into the base and bashed the back of Rumbles head with the butt of her shotgun. Whilst Button Mash was startled, she threw a plasma grenade onto his head.
“Son of a bi-”
“DOUBLE KILL!” the announcer shouted as Button exploded. “RED TEAM HAS THE FLAG.”
“O-Oh my gosh!” Scootaloo shouted as she danced around with the flag. “I did it! I totally did it! Yeah! Take that you stupid colts!”
Sweetie Belle whipped out her sniper rifle and pointed it towards the Blue base, looking down its scope to get a closer look. “Sounds like Scootaloo’s pulled through!”
“Who’d have thought she could actually be useful for once?” Diamond Tiara asked as she threw a grenade over the rocks she was hiding behind.
“WHOA!” she heard Shady Daze shout just before the explosion. Unfortunately, no kill was announced, so she knew that her target must have still been alive.
“This colt’s hard to kill,” Diamond grunted.
“Okay, now we just have to hope Scootaloo doesn’t do anything stupid before Apple Bloom can get to her with the-” Sweetie Belle was cut off as Scootaloo ran outside of the Blue base, carrying the flag in her hooves, and waved towards her friend on the cliffside.
“Hey Sweetie Belle, check it out!” she shouted. “I got the Blue flag!”
The next moment, Rumble and Button Mash jumped down from the top of Blue base and beat Scootaloo to death with their guns.
“BLUE TEAM, FLAG RETURNED.”
“… Plan B?” Diamond asked.
“Plan B,” Sweetie Belle sighed. “You go back to the base and bring Scootaloo and the tank. I’ll take care of Shady and destroy all their vehicles.”
“If you say so,” Diamond said as she pulled out her rocket launcher. “I’ll trust your Gamerscore.” Diamond Tiara aimed down the sights of her rocket launcher and towards Snips and Snails, who were still cowering behind a rock as Silver Spoon continued to fire at them. She fired a single rocket, exploding the two colts at once and alerting Apple Bloom and Silver Spoon to the change in plans.
“DOUBLE KILL!”
As Diamond Tiara moved retreated back towards the Red base, Sweetie Belle pulled out her energy sword and charged from behind the rocks, startling Shady Daze and slicing him as she ran past. “Now that I think about it, plan B is probably the better one anyway…”
“Okay, so that totally just happened,” Rumble said as he aimed down the scope of his sniper rifle at Sweetie Belle, who was attempting to circle around to the back of Blue base. He fired all four of his shots, each one missing. “Damnit! Button, you try!”
“Button sweetie, it’s time for your hair appointment,” Button Mash said.
Rumble raised an eyebrow. “But mum, the enemy’s attacking our base and we have to stop them or we’ll lose to a bunch of fillies!”
“Well, you’ll just have to defend your flag later. For now, we need to do something about this hair of yours before it becomes a jungle for things to live in.”
“Muuuuuuum!”
“Come on, say goodbye to your friends and sign off.”
The sound of something being thrown against the floor and a colt grumbling something as he stomped his hooves came from Button Mash. A few seconds later, a mare’s sigh was heard, and Button Mash disappeared.
Player Shadow Mash has left the game.
Rumble quickly took cover as he began to type a message to everypony on the server.
Storm: Time out! This isn’t fair! It’s 4 against 5.
A few seconds later, a response came.
Queen Tiara: True, but one of ours is Scootaloo, which balances it out.
…
Scootaloo: Hey! **** you!
“Ah to heck with it,” Rumble said as he aimed down the scope of his sniper rifle again, only to find all of the Blue base vehicles completely destroyed. “What?”
“Coming through!” a voice behind Rumble shouted. As he turned around, he was met with something large and metallic colliding with him.
Sweetie Belle sliced Snips and Snails with her energy sword and rushed through the base. “Okay, sounds like Apple Bloom and Silver Spoon are here. I just need to get the flag and hope that Scootaloo and Diamond Tiara are ready with the tank.”
“This is why I said I should drive!” Diamond shouted as she jumped off of the side of the tank, which was stuck on top of a rock in the middle of the desert section of the battleground. “Why did you even come here?!”
“I was trying to do a sweet trick!” Scootaloo said. “‘Sides, it’s not my fault the dumb thing won’t even turn properly!”
“GAH! Just forget it!” Diamond shouted as she threw a bunch of grenades at the tank. “Let’s go back and pick up a new one! And this time, I’m driving!”
Sweetie Belle sighed as she witnessed the explosion in the distance, followed by the tank flying into the air, through the scope on her sniper rifle. “Well, so much for that plan. But at least we still have the warthog.”
“Sticky grenades!” Silver Spoon shouted from somewhere nearby. “GET OUT!”
An explosion sounded, and moments later two fillies ran into the base, joining up with Sweetie Belle. “We, uh… might have lost the jeep,” Apple Bloom said with a sheepish look on her face.
Sweetie Belle groaned and slammed a hoof into her face. “Well this is going well,” she said in a sarcastic tone. “No jeep, no tank, outnumbered, and I think I’ve been sitting on hooves for too long, ‘cause they’re starting to hurt…”
“So what do we do now?” Apple Bloom asked as she watched Sweetie Belle approach the Blue flag.
“RED TEAM HAS THE FLAG!”
“Now,” Sweetie Belle said as she turned back and ran past Apple Bloom, “LEG IIIIIIIIT!”
Apple Bloom and Silver Spoon glanced at each other for a brief moment before shrugging and following after Sweetie Belle.
“D’ya see them?” Rumble asked Shady Daze as he examined the canyon with his sniper rifle.
“Nah. I think they took a different path.”
“There they are!” Snips shouted as he pointed down into the battlefield. “They’re just running across the field.”
“I got this,” Shady said as he aimed his sniper rifle and fired. However, his shots came too late as the three fillies managed to reach the rocks on the battlefield and took cover behind them. “Darn it! Guess we’d better take the jeep.”
“It’s gone,” Rumble said. “Sweetie Belle blew it up.”
“The tank, then.”
“That too.”
“… The cool bike-thingy?”
“All gone!”
“We could use the portal,” Snails suggested. “We could cut them off and ambush them.”
“That’s a good plan, actually,” Rumble said.
“Alright, portal it is,” Shady said as he switched his sniper rifle for a shotgun. “Ladies first.”
“Colts just before,” Rumble said as he jumped into the portal. He appeared suddenly in front of Silver Spoon, who screamed and swung her gun at the colt, beating him to death in a few hits.
Rumble respawned on top of the Blue base, his teammates already gone and battling it out on the battlefield. “… Take two, I guess…” he muttered to himself as he ran through the portal once more.
“THIS WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA!” Sweetie Belle screamed as she took cover behind a rock with her two teammates, a barrage of bullets and explosions keeping them pinned down.
“We need somepony to make a distraction!” Silver Spoon said.
“That won’t buy us enough time! The base is all the way over there!” Sweetie Belle told her.
“Hey!” Apple Bloom shouted as she pointed up into the sky. “What’s that?”
Shady’s ears drooped to the side of his head as he looked up at the menacing purple monstrosity flying above him. “Oh bu-” The purple beast fired a round of plasma bullets at the colts, killing Shady and forcing the others to retreat.
“RUUUUUUN!” Rumble shouted.
“Yeehawwwww!” Scootaloo scream as she chased the fleeing colts, taunting them by firing around them and only occasionally hitting them to break their shields. “That’s right, run for your puny lives!”
“Scootaloo?!” Sweetie Belle shouted in complete surprise. “How did she-”
“Hey, what did ya expect?!” Scootaloo shouted down to Sweetie Belle. “Future leader of the Wonderbolts here, y’know?!”
“Diamond!” Silver Spoon shouted as she caught sight of a tank approaching them from the Red base.
“C’mon, get on!” Diamond shouted as she pointed the tank’s canon towards the Blue base. A thought then crossed her mind and she aimed it up a little higher, at the banshee hovering in the air.
“Don’t,” Sweetie Belle said in a stern tone.
“Oh come on!” Diamond pleaded. “After all the times she’s killed me this game I think I deserve a little payback!”
“But we need the banshee to pin them down,” Sweetie Belle said. “At least wait until we’re back at the base.”
“… Oh, fine!” And so Diamond Tiara fired a couple of warning shots at the Blue base, and then turned the tank around to retreat back to Red base. As soon as they were close enough, Sweetie Belle jumped off with the flag, and Diamond Tiara turned the canon around to face the banshee.
“TEAM KILL!”
“Hey!” Scootaloo shouted as she respawned.
“Karma, blank flank!” Diamond Tiara shouted back.
“RED TEAM CAPTURED THE FLAG!”
“We did it!” Apple Bloom cheered in a joyous tone. “We actually did it!”
Queen Tiara: Take that dumb colts! You’re gonna get your flanks handed to you by fillies!
Storm: Yeah right! That was a fluke! We’re totally gonna pwn you guys!
S.Belle: … Wanna make a bet on that?
“A bet?” Apple Bloom asked.
S.Belle: If we win, you guys have to be our personal servants for one full week!
“Ooh, I like that!” Silver Spoon said.
SlimShadyDaze: … And if we win?
S.Belle: Name your conditions.
Storm: Ooh! DT and Apple Bloom have ta kiss in front of the whole school!
“What?!” Apple Bloom and Diamond Tiara shouted in unison.
Queen Tiara: EWWWW!
Cutie Mark Plz: No way!
Queen Tiara: Stupid colts!
Storm: What’s the matter? You girls chicken?
Sweetie Belle felt a vein pop in her head, and her blood began to boil.
S.Belle: Fine, you’re on! Just don’t start crying when we have you polish our hooves in front of everypony in school!
“Sweetie Belle!” Apple Bloom cried in protest.
“Come on girls!” Sweetie Belle shouted. “We’re not gonna let ourselves be beat by a bunch of colts, right?!”
“B=But…”
“She’s right,” Silver Spoon said. “As sappy as it sounds, if all five of us work together, we can make those colts our slaves for a full week!”
“That’ll be good payback for the stink bomb they put in our restroom!” Scootaloo added.
Apple Bloom thought about it for a moment, and then nodded. “Ye’re right!” she said. “There ain’t no way we’re gonna lose ta a buncha dumb colts who pick their noses in the middle of class!”
All five fillies shuddered at the mental image that brought. “Alright then,” Diamond said. “Let’s kick their flanks!”
“Hold it a little higher!” Silver Spoon instructed as she looked back over shoulder at the five colts following behind herself. “We want to make sure ponies can see it, after all.”
“This is so stupid,” Rumble muttered as he trotted alongside his friends through Ponyville, the five of them carrying a sign that read: ‘We were beaten by fillies and admit that fillies are superior to colts in every way.’
“Why am I here?” Button Mash asked. “I had to leave partway through.”
“Abandoning your team?” Silver Spoon asked the colt.
“We took an oath, Button!” Shady Daze shouted. “When you joined our club, you swore to stand by us through thick and thin!”
“Well I changed my mind!” Button cried. “I want out!”
“There is no out!” Rumble told him. “… We haven’t thought of the ceremony for ‘outs’ yet.”
“There ya are!” Apple Bloom shouted as she waved the group over. She was standing with Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, and Diamond Tiara. “Never thought the five of us would be hangin’ out like this…”
“Well we found a common enemy,” Silver Spoon said as she reached the group. “Now then, shall we?”
The other four fillies nodded. “Um,” Rumble dared to speak up, “W-Where exactly are we going?”
The five fillies exchanged demonic grins that sent shivers down the colts’ spines. “Our first stop,” Diamond told him, “Is the spa, of course.”
“We can’t have our personal servants look so terrifying, now can we?” Silver Spoon asked.
“We’re gonna pretty you up!” Sweetie Belle declared with an innocent smile, though for a moment a devious grin flashed on her face.
A look of horror spread across all five colts’ faces. “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
