Twilight Sparkle Vs. Paintball

IN CADENCE AND CHRYSALIS' BASE CAMP

    Chrysalis offered a fanged grin. We lifted our guns, (well, she lifted her gun and I lifted my automatic SMX-2013, the newest model, painted a slick blue, like my cutie mark) and sighted the group of fillies creeping up the stairs, tightening our magical grip on the trigger.....

SPLAT

    I wiped the goop off of my now-stinging face. I checked my hoof, yep, it was covered in cyan.

    "Told ya I'd get you back!" Rainbow Dash yelled, before turning her sights on Chrysalis as bright orange paint covered the Changeling queen.

     "Alright that's it! Dishonor! Dishonor on you, dishonor on your cow, dishonor on-" Whatever else my friend was going to say was lost as she tumbled down the stairway to the gear room.

       We heard one last shout of "Dishonor!" before she fell quiet.

      I smiled and began my descent, praying I didn't have blue paint in my teeth.

/\/\/\/\/\

\/\/\/\/\/

IN DREAM AND SOMBRA'S PALACE OF EVIL

     "AAAAGH!" I yelled, slapping a hairtie over my braid before it could unwind again. My starry hair had, for once, stopped its infernal flowing, leaving me with a sparkling braid that hung down to my knees. My tail trailed behind me, my paintsprayer's muzzle swinging and dipping to and fro as I looked around, watching for any chance of an ambush.

     I slipped around a corner, the paint in my can sloshing. I caught a wisp of a whisper: "......come to us......death trap.......win game.......Luna'll be so........"

    Immediately I whipped put my backup pistols, all four of them. Then I listened again, and cantered soundlessly to my left. The voices became stronger, as if.........they were right on the other side of this shelf! I listened.

     "Celestia's voice.......who was that? Oh wait...That was Discord...then her again....Celestia's got a big master plan.." I muttered soundlessly. Eh, waste now, think later.

    With two beats of my wings and a tug of magic, the area underneath me was bathed in gleaming, midnight blue paint, issuing from the muzzle of my gun. I dove back behind my bookshelf, then went out to check on my loot, magically replacing my empty can of paint with a full one.

    Those three dropped a good haul, but nothing I needed except for the drum harness. I shook the barrels of paintballs out of it and replaced them with my paint cans, buckling the harness on me. It was a flawless shade of black, much like my own immaculate coat, so it looked like I'd opened flaps of my skin and shoved the cans into them.

    I grinned and turned, heading for the fort. It was Sombra's turn to waste somebody, and quite frankly I'd had my fill of wasting at the moment. Three ponies down, a good score.

/\/\/\/\/\

\/\/\/\/\/

FROM THE LYRA-VISION CAM

    I slipped slowly in between  the bookshelves, invisible or only a shadowy outline at close range. I was a rogue, a master of stealth. I was working with Moondancer for Celestia, she'd sent us out to waste ponies while she summoned her own team.

    Together we moved, shadows dancing, floor after floor, until we found victims: a trio of fillies, backs to us, slightly smaller than our filly-sizes were. I used the universal signal, drawing one mint green hoof across my throat under my chin and blinking, my amber eyes transmitting a message: Take them out, quickly.

    I wove around them, and with fierce battle cries, we engaged. As we attacked I got a good look at our opponents, a trio of unicorn fillies. One was pink with a two-tone purple mane and green eyes. She went down first.

    Moondancer got hit as I took down the second and third; a greyish-purple filly with a blonde mane and tail and a pristine white filly with a bubblegum pink and dark purple mane and tail. She glared at me, walking down the steps with her rifle held lovingly next to her in a halo a couple shades more green than my coat.

    I quickly looked over the dropped supplies. Celestia's orders to us had been to go light on the loot, that way we'd have less to protect. I picked up the things Moondancer had dropped and stashed them on various places of my person, she'd want them when she respawned.

     Back to base, now.

/\/\/\/\/\

\/\/\/\/\/

SPECIAL SEGMENT: LUNA, TWILIGHT, AND MIA AMORE CADENZA ON THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS

Interview done by Senior Reporter Succulent Scoop, Canterlot Daily Magazine

Succulent Scoop: So, Your Majesties, can you explain to me exactly what the recruitment process is?

Twilight: Well, Mr. Scoop, it's more of a spell rather than a process. You see, a highly powered unicorn or alicorn can cast the spell to call in extra team members to help them on the field. Sort of like a beacon. Anyway, the spell bends planes of space and time, a variation of the Common Long-Distance Teleportation spell, if you will, and snatches a pony or ponies that the spell was targeted to get and brings them to what is referred to as 'The Gear Room', TGR for short. There they can choose their arms and join their teammates on the battlefield.

SS: Oh.....kay.....

Mi Amore: What she's trying to say is the recruitment process is a variation of the long-distance teleportation spell targeted at a pony or a group of ponies.

SS: Ah ha. Thank, Your Highness.

T: Not a problem! So few people are actually interested in how the spells work anymore!

MAC: You're welcome, Mr. Scoop.

Luna: Any more questions? Perhaps you would like to go in-field, to get a hooves-on experience for your report? Or would you prefer to just simply interview the participants?

SS: Is it alright if I do both? I can get different stories from different angles of view, including my own.

MAC: I don't see why not.

T: The more, the merrier!

L: Huzzah! But whose team shalt you choose?

SS: Hmmm.......The Dusk Crusade, if you will accept me.

T: Of course! Oooh, a new teammate! New strategies, new equipment, new thought processes!

L: (To SS) Yes, she is mostly always like this.

SS: Ah...alright, then. I'll take your word for it.

/\/\/\/\/\

\/\/\/\/\/

* *Spoiler alert: check the Author's notes for the team names and team members.Thank you for reading.* *

PESTILENCE'S POINT OF VIEW

   I moved from couch to couch before my timer went off, signaling my return to the game for the others in the room. I waved and hauled butt up the stairs, blasting up the spiraling ramp to the observatory section. There, I enacted my plan. A slow-moving, cotton candy-scented fog would descend from this top portion to the very first floor, breathable but unable to see any more than five feet.

    Then I was rather rudely blasted in the butt, flinging me over the railing. When I came back up, there was an entirely too innocent-looking changeling queen and a spiraling set of stairs.

   Nuts.