Caged Panzer

by Dark0592

Rating: teen
Tags: Twilight Sparkle, Dark, Alternate Universe, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Other, Adventure
Length: 4993

When Twilight is sent to prison, she chooses to fight in mechanized death games to reduce her sentence. Celestia has other plans as well, but whether they are beneficial or not is up for grabs.

Twilight is sentenced to life in prison. This prison, unofficially named 'Lunar Prison', has Celestia as its head warden though. Another thing is the fact that it practices Caped Panzer Games, which are death games in which certain inmate participate in various types of deathmatches and objective based combat in large mechanized tanks for various rewards. One thing, though, if you lose you die.
tags and such updated as story progresses
cover image source linked

Published 2013-09-30 01:10:03 UTC
Last updated 2013-10-03 14:01:12 UTC

Prologue

-So it's choppy, it's kinda disjointed and it's kinda abrupt but I am absolutely terrible at starting stories on a whim like this, those of you who know me know this very well. Either way, though, this is very work in progress so expect the story to change around a lot until we get into a steady rhythm :3-

Twilight looked up at the massive building, her horn and legs in magic dampening chains. It was a Prison, Equestria’s largest and highest security one at that. Why was she being taken to maximum security, you ask? Simple, really. It wasn’t exactly rare anymore, but she killed a group of eight ponies. They were bandits and she had stumbled upon them practically butchering one of her friends, a Changeling, and had lost it.

Now, after the invasion of Canterlot the Changelings finally made peace with Equestria, but so many ponies still thought they were monsters and they were heavily discriminated against even though Celestia personally allowed them almost as many rights as her citizens, and they could become citizens if they so chose.

This Equestria is different than the peaceful world we know. It certainly isn’t some shining utopia anymore, and Twilight was never Sent to Ponyville. She visited and was fond of the ponies there but other than that her only friends were Celestia and Spike.

So here she is, sentenced to life without parole in this place, it doesn’t even have a name. A place of such stature doesn’t need one. Its unofficial name is the ‘Lunar Prison’, though, due to its most dangerous occupant. Little did anyone at this place know, be inmate or guard, Twilight Sparkle was rather dangerous herself.

“Well what have we here? Personal student to the Princess and sentenced to life for murder. How delightfully ironic.” The warden that greeted them said. “My name is Warden, Sir, or Blueblood. I prefer the first two if you wouldn’t mind, and you are now under my jurisdiction. You will do what I say when I say it. Capiche?” The stallion continued. He didn’t look very tough at all, and even though there was a high voltage magic stun baton on his side Twilight wasn’t intimidated in the slightest. Her face registered nothing but boredom.

“Capiche?” Blueblood repeated, getting in her face, the stun baton floated up to her chin.

“I know every single rule and guideline there is to know in this place. I do not do whatever you say when you say it, I follow regulations and don’t cause unnecessary problems. Anything more than that is most certainly not your jurisdiction, that is Celestia’s power and her power alone and you know it.” Twilight said in a monotone voice and simply walked past him to continue with her registration process.

Blueblood growled and swung the activated baton at her, but was dumbfounded when the thing stopped in a lavender veil of magic, Twilight had stopped and was staring at him, her horn glowing without a problem.

“W-What…?” Blueblood stuttered as the thing was wrested from his magical grasp and dropped to the ground.

“Who do you think invented, designed and fine tuned the glyphs you use here? Good day to you, Warden, and please do not fuck with me any more than you have.” She finished and entered the building.

“Probably could have gone for a better choice of words, but whatever.” Another warden said inside, he was waiting at the door.

“So you did transfer over here, Brother. Good to see you.” Twilight said with a smile. Shining chuckled and, his magic enveloping the chains and locks around her, set her free from her bindings.

“You too, though I’d rather you not be inmate number one but here we are. I guess they put all these chains on you for show, anybody with a brain should know they couldn’t do more than inconvenience you for a second or two.” Shining replied. Twilight shrugged and Shining went through a list of questions and information with her when they reached a room with a chair and another door. They finished quickly and Shining went over the rules she already knew.

“Oh and by the way, Celestia is in her Head Warden office right now, she wants to speak to you as soon as you’re situated. You’ll have rooms of two in a block of ten inmates.” He continued, grimacing at his portfolio of her he had.

“Why so small?” Twilight asked.

“Well, of the ten there are three changelings, a hive queen and the old inmate number one… Good luck, you’ll need it.” Shining said.

“Is the food here good at least?” Twilight asked with a sigh. Shining made an ‘ehh’ noise and shook his hoof a little bit. Twilight chuckled and went through the other door after he passed her information to her. She looked at it as she read, but was surprised when instead of the sound of inmates loitering about, there was the sound of machinery and ponies working on them.

There was a massive room with tables, four stories high, where there were plenty of inmates loitering about as expected, but there was what looked like a massive garage door leading into a massive workshop. There were a few other doorways leading into other rooms but she couldn’t see through them. The doors along the sides of the main room lead to the cell blocks of varying size and priority. She was on the first floor, cell block 1A.

She quickly made her way to the door, but found it locked by keypad and/or keycard.

“You must be new, only the big shots get to go in there.” Someone said with a grin. She had wings folded at her back, held there with a strange jacket. Her coat and feathers were blue, her mane and tail were multicolored and messy, she was fairly intimidating and she actually looked like she’d be pretty cool.

Twilight responded by showing her the portfolio with the big 1A on it in red. The pegasus raised an eyebrow and grinned even wider. With a wingtip she plucked a card out of a small slot under the paper.

“Well I’ll be damned.” She said. Twilight took the card in her magic and swiped it, and the door unlocked. “The keycode is 0592, by the way.” The girl said, following Twilight in. “And unfortunately the only open bunk left is on the left side. My name is Rainbow Dash, by the way.” The girl continued. Twilight was about to ask what she meant by ‘left side’, but when they reached the cell corridor she figured it out.

The five-bunk room was covered in the organic material of Changelings, like a hive. Most of it was solid as rock, but she knew their bedding and sleeping pods were incredibly comfortable. She remembered Shining say ‘Hive Queen’ and there was only one hive nearby enough to have their queen incarcerated like this. She entered the room and was immediately greeted with four insectoid forms.

“Not quite sure if it’s good to see you here, Twilight Sparkle, but it’s certainly a pleasure.” One of them said. It was Chrysalis. She and the three other changelings were reclining in four pods in a box pattern on one wall. The last bed, which was also turned into a pod, was in the center of them to create an X patterns. Twilight eyed it.

“That must have taken a lot of effort…” She said, tossing her folder aside and pulling herself into the eye.level thing. It had a membranous rigid cover that slid, which was actually pretty nice, and it was indeed very comfortable and just the right temperature.

“You’re not weirded out about where you’re sleeping?” One of the other changelings asked. Twilight just shrugged.

“Wait, I heard a few things about you recently… Weren’t you the ones who killed the bug swatters?” Another asked. The other two and Chrysalis looked up or down at her, now interested.

“That’s what they called themselves? I didn’t care much to ask. They kidnapped and butchered the first friend I’ve had, so I butchered them… That’s why I’m here and I’m fine with that.” Twilight said, closing her eyes and relaxing. She was utterly surprised when she felt someone drop down into her pod with her. She opened her eyes to see Chrysalis there, standing over her. Carapace covered hooves cupped her face and the queen gently placed her forehead against Twilight’s.

“I owe you all of the thanks I can give you, then… That particular group of ponies had killed hundreds of my brood… My connection to them is weak because of the dampening attributes of this place, but I still felt all of their pain…” She said softly. Twilight sighed and pushed Chrysalis back a bit.

“You have to know I didn’t do it to help you, I didn’t even know. I just snapped on them…” She said. Chrysalis nodded and hopped back up to her pod.

“Of course, but that doesn’t mean what you did meant nothing to me and my brood.” She replied. Twilight smiled at that and closed her eyes again.

“Nictus.” One of the changelings said after a few moments. Before Twilight could ask what she meant, another spoke.

“Cerene.” She said.

“Mantis.” The third said.

“Shade.” The last said.

They were introducing themselves.

“Well that was awkward.” Rainbow Dash’s voice came from the doorway. They all looked to see her with five other mares. There was her, a yellow pegasus with a pink mane, a unicorn with a white coat, an earth pony wearing a stetson, an earth pony that was more pink than cotton candy and lastly a very imposing alicorn with a black coat and a mane and tail seemingly made of the night sky.

“What was awkward?” Chrysalis asked.

“Those introductions of course, Darling. You need to be a bit more formal with it. My name is Rarity, by the way.” The unicorn said.

“I’m Pinkie Pie!” The pink one exclaimed.

“F-Fluttershy…” The other pegasus said softly.

“Th’ name’s Applejack.” The remaining earth pony said.

“You should know who I am.” The alicorn sneered. Twilight sat up and hopped off of her bed/pod.

“Nightmare Moon, bearer of the eternal night, of course I know who you are. I assume you were the previous inmate number one.” She said.

“Indeed, I’ve not a single clue why they would give that priority to you, and I very well intend to find out. Until then, though, I want to know what got you in here.” Moon said. It seemed she was rather proud of her title. She had single handedly rendered all of Equestria’s defensive forces incapacitated and had nearly overthrown Celestia, but that obviously didn’t work out as planned.

“Slaughtered eight ponies after they killed a friend.” Twilight answered simply. Moon laughed.

“Only eight?! Are you shitting me?!” She exclaimed. Twilight chuckled.

“Well, they’re still scraping them off of roofs in Ponyville and Stalliongrad when it was in Canterlot.” She said, looking Moon straight in the eyes. Everyone but the Alicorn gave her a look.

“Hm… Well I guess you’re not quite evil so you wouldn’t just slaughter anyone. I can’t wait to see you in the CP games.” The Alicorn grinned and left.

“CP games?” Twilight asked.

“Caged Panzer games, you saw the workshop. If you can find a team or a pilot, and Celestia thinks you deserve the chance, you can compete in various death games with Caged Panzer. They’re mechanized tanks controlled virtually through a combination of advanced technology and magic receptors. You can find out the details yourself, though by the comment she made I’m guessing she’s going to keep pushing you into it.” Dash explained.

Twilight watched the Alicorn leave and couldn’t help but grin.

“Should be fun, I think. I was the head of the Canterlot Advancement of Magical Technology. I helped develop that technology. Celestia wants to see me anyways, nice meeting you all.” Twilight said before leaving as well.

Shining was waiting outside of the block door. He said nothing, but nodded to her and started walking. She followed him up a set of stairs leading to a single door, where he opened it and she walked through. Celestia was standing there, looking out of a window into the workshop. She turned around and smiled.

“Glad to see you, Twilight.” She said weakly. Twilight cocked her head sideways a bit, she had never heard Celestia’s voice with so much exhaustion. Celestia just smiled at her and motioned for her to sit in front of the desk she proceeded to take a seat behind herself.

“I’m going to be plain and simple here… I want you to find yourself a CP team, assuming you’ve heard what they are, and not lose a single match.” She said after Twilight sat down.

“Oh? Don’t tell me you deactivate all restrictions and inhibitors on the MVRs?” Twilight said. Celestia just gave her a look that said ‘uh huh...’. “Well then why would I risk my head exploding for a death game?” She continued. Celestia sighed and put her head in her hoof before speaking.

“Because I know the official that sentenced you is prejudice against Changelings and gave you an unfair sentence and I know you can handle it. These death games are not without their reward.” She said. Twilight caught something, though.

“So even though you knew all of that, you still let me get life?” Twilight asked. Celestia groaned at her mistake.

“You know that with the way the government is set up I don’t have absolute authority anymore…” She said.

“But you could have demanded an inquiry on the official.” Twilight retorted. Celestia was silent for a full minute.

“I… Have my reasons. You will know in time, but either way you would still be in here for at least fifteen years for sheer brutality, though personally I can’t blame you for what you did. You know I hate putting you through hardships for my own gains, but in most cases like this one my own gains are the gains of Equestria as a whole as well. Trust me, please?” Celestia explained. Twilight thought about and analyzed what she had just heard before sighing.

“Right, fine, whatever. Let’s get back to the subject, CPs… I need a team and I doubt you’ve got a fully functional Panzer just lying around.” She said. Celestia seemed relieved that the subject was changed.

“The team part will be both the easiest and the hardest, you need to be able to trust your team with your life and most, if not all, of the ponies in here are murderers. Due to the nature of this place you have access to all of the funds you have saved up and we will give you contact with suppliers. Find a team, make sure they’re solid, talk to me, get what you need and build a Panzer from scratch.

“Depending on how long the team part takes we can have you in the next match in a week. A team consists of at least five including the pilot. There’s a systems manager, weapon maintenance, engineer and copilot. All of the team needs to know how the Panzer works and how to maintain it.” Celestia explained.

“Copilot?” Twilight asked. Celestia nodded.

“They won’t actually be in there with you, their responsibilities number from tactical advice to navigation and quite a few others.” She answered. Twilight put a hoof to her chin and leaned back.

“Restrictions on what can or cannot be used on the Panzer?” Twilight asked.

“Unless previously specified, none.” Celestia replied. quickly.

“Do we all fight against others in this prison?” Twilight asked.

“There are local, international and world matches and tournaments.” Celestia answered. Twilight thought for another few moments before shrugging and getting up.

“Sure, be back when I find a team.” She said and left before Celestia could get another word in. As she walked down the stairs, though, she realized why finding a team she could trust was going to be one of the hardest parts.

She wasn’t exactly a social butterfly, nor the kind to trust anything that lives.

Chapter 1

A/N so guys, this is incredibly difficult to right ponified for some reason. You have no idea how many times I've had to catch myself and fix things. So I have a proposal. I will release two versions of chapter two when it gets written, one normal and one that provides a viable- although possibly cliche- humanization. It's just all of the ideas I get for this story are humanized and I have to ponify my thoughts lol.
either way, hope you enjoy. -Dark

“So I’m guessing you’re needing a team.” Dash said when she got back to her cell block. Twilight looked at her, the other four ponies behind her. Twilight raised an eyebrow.

“You offering?” Twilight asked with a smirk. Dash grinned but shook her head.

“We’re Moon’s team, sorry, though your cellmates have been trying to find a pilot to take them if you’re interested.” She replied. Twilight’s eyebrow went higher and she turned to her cell. She saw Chrysalis with her eyes closed, but Nictus was watching. Twilight went in and hopped into her pod and reclined.

“So I doubt you trust us enough to be your team yet, but you can tell a warden that we’re your team so we can get to work quickly and work on getting to know each other over building your Panzer.” Chrysalis said, leaning over the side of her pod when Twilight opened her eyes. Twilight closed them again and thought on it for a while. Chrysalis and the others, who had also leaned over the sides, waited patiently.

After a few moments Twilight opened her eyes, sat up, leaned inches away from CHrysalis’ face and stared into her eyes for a good ten seconds.

“Sounds good to me. Your eyes show the offer is genuine… We’ll see how this goes, I’m not very good with interacting with others though.” Twilight warned, reclining again. Chrysalis laughed.

“Then we have something in common, Changelings don’t normally communicate with speech so we’re still getting used to it.” She said.

“So, what are you good with in terms of the CP?” Twilight asked after a few moments.

“I’m the copilot.” Chrysalis said.

“Engineer” Nictus said.

“Weapons” Mantis said.

“Systems” Cerene said.

“Hm, how long until meal time?” Twilight asked.

“About an hour.” Chrysalis said, looking at the clock.

“Right, I think I’ll take a nap until then. We can talk about it more while we eat whatever it is they give us here and if I’m still privy to the idea I’ll go to a warden.” Twilight said. They all nodded, even though Twilight already had their eyes closed, they all watched as she fell asleep before returning to their lounging.

“What are you thinking, my queen?” Nictus asked. Chrysalis just chuckled.

“You obviously know. I must say, I’m rather excited. Our first time in the CP games. I have a feeling this place won’t be so bad anymore.” She replied.

“Already?” Celestia asked later that day. Twilight explained the situation and seemed to mull it over for a while as she paced. “Alright, I’ll allow it… There are terminals in the Workshop the five of you can go to for ordering your parts… I trust your judgement with this, but I check up on all teams and their Panzer before every match. I will bar your participation if I sense anything is amiss between you and your makeshift team.” She continued.

“I expect nothing less, Princess.” Twilight said with a smile. Celestia sighed and walked over to where Twilight was standing and wrapped a wing around her.

“I miss the old days when you were a filly… It really is a shame what a dark world can do to such a kind soul.” She said softly. Twilight giggled and leaned into her for a moment before backing out of the embrace.

“I’m still Twilight, I’m just not the same Twilight… I always will be Twilight Sparkle, though, no matter what happens. If not then I’ll be dead. Simple as that.” She said rather solemnly before leaving before Celestia could say anything more. She had been doing that alot…

Chrysalis and the others were waiting at the bottom of the stairs with questioning looks. Twilight grinned and motioned with her head for them to follow. They entered the workshop and Twilight was just a little awestruck by all the machinery and variations of the large Panzer.

It seemed that generally they were humanoid, but nearly half of them had some alteration or another. They weren’t nearly as high tech and fantasy-like as some books have portrayed mechanized tanks before, but at the same time they weren’t just tanks with upper bodies. Well, there was one like that but that was a rare case it seemed.

“So what are we limited to in terms of what we can order?” Chrysalis asked.

“Well I’m going to rely on your input, due to your familiarity with how they work, but price is not an issue. I have piloted similar things before, and done many virtual simulations in my time, so I’ve found that I prefer speed with lots of stopping power.” Twilight answered. Chrysalis thought a moment and in seconds they were all on separate terminals compiling various things onto the main one.

After five minutes they had compiled a series of choices for Twilight to put together on the main terminal that ranged from chassis, weapons and special modifications. The final product was incredibly expensive, but they were all happy with it. It stood a bit taller than most light Panzer, but it was incredibly slim and had light armor. The armor was sloped and slanted so that it would take a direct hit from a big gun to do any real damage. Because of all the sloping and slanting, it had a lot of sharp edges.

The forearms had Magic Amplifiers, which could amplify magical energy to create solid energy strong enough to cut through armor. The armament consisted of two mounted dual repeater cannons mounted under the energy amplifiers, which fired about two rounds a second that could pierce weaker armor and dent heavier armor, and a massive sniper cannon that could probably punch through heavy armor and go straight through an entire light mech. The feet of the thing could deploy pylons into the ground to stabilize and combat recoil.

There were three special modules that used a fairly large amount of her own magical energy to use. The first was a set of thruster engines on the back, mounted on a sort of wing frame, that coupled with a set of gravitational glyph inscribed thrusters in the feet to hover. The second was an optic camouflage that was nicknamed ‘chameleon’ since it worked about the same way.

The last was kind of ironic, considering the changelings helped design it. It was a transformation system. She had three forms of the Panzer. The first was the humanoid form, the second resembled some sort of reptilian quadruped that was built for speed and the last resembled a dragon. The last one would wear down her magic if she flew for too long, but she did have lots and lots of it. Her sniper cannon would be mounted in the shoulder of the Basilisk form, which is what she called the quadruped, and in the mouth of the dragon.

“Well this’ll certainly be a bitch to get working in less than a week, but luckily the parts will be here by tomorrow morning. We’ve had a garage designated for us for about a month now, looks like we can finally use it.” Nictus said. Chrysalis laughed and turned, the laugh falling short. Moon was standing there with the others that was her team behind her.

“I look forward to seeing you on the battlefield, Twilight. Lucky for you the match next week is a scrimmage and therefore when I kill you your brain won’t explode.” She said, though she had a certain grin on her face that said ‘give me a challenge’. Twilight grinned back and walked up to her. The Alicorn was taller than her, but Twilight was a fairly tall mare herself and was able to go face to face with her.

“I’ve got a feeling that you won’t be killing me, and I won’t be killing you. If you’re really as good as you act, I look forward to it as well.” She said. Moon chuckled and turned around to walk off further into the workshop.

“She may be cocky, but she’s an honorable fighter. She could have looked over our shoulders to see our designs.” Chrysalis mumbled.

“Good.” Twilight said simply. “So where is our space?” She continued. Chrysalis led them through a few corridors until they finally reached a closed garage door. Chrysalis put in a keycode on the keypad and it opened to reveal a massive room in slight disrepair.

“Don’t worry, it’s mostly just dust and clutter, we can get this place pristine before dinner.” Chrysalis assured Twilight. Twilight just looked around. There were pulleys, winches, ladders, moving platforms and anything else you could possibly need to build a large mechanized tank.

“Luckily since we sent in the design as well as the parts, most of the modification and customization work that would need to be done on the parts will already be done so we just have to put it together and make sure everything does what it’s supposed to do.” Nictus said, hopping up onto one of the maintenance platforms.

“I think the biggest stretch of work will be getting the systems to work with the transformation.” Cerene said, starting up all of the terminals and generators.

“Either way, any weapons we put on this thing will be awesome. I mean that huge sniper cannon? No question, that will have some satisfying bangs.” Mantis grinned.

“Well, shall we get used to the place now?” Chrysalis said, looking at Twilight. She shrugged and walked over to the terminal.

That night was certainly an interesting night. Well, not so much the night itself but the dream Twilight had. She couldn’t even put it into words. All she could say for certain was that these CP games were going to be fun.

She was woken up by a loud ringing noise, groaning as she wiped sleep from her eyes and sat up. The others were hopping out of their pods and were shuffling towards the door. She followed and they left the cell block to line up in the large mess hall for breakfast. They talked about their day’s work as they ate until a warden announced the garages that had shipments delivered. Theirs was one of them, so they nearly rushed over to see it.

Twilight never thought she’d think of big garage filled with massive crates and pallets and new machinery as beautiful, but hey here she is doing just that.

“This is going to be more fun than I thought…” Twilight said, her horn glowing as a clipboard floated over to her. In conjunction with it and a quick magical scan, she found that everything they ordered was indeed here and to their specifications. Her bank account was going to be hurting for this, but it was so worth it.

“Right, we’re all going to have to work together to get the frame setup. Once we get that done we can move on to our specialties.” Nictus said, surveying all of the parts as well.

“We don’t have a proper winch or crane, so I’ll do all the heavy lifting. You guys are going to have to help me through this, because I may know what they are but I have no idea how they work internally.” Twilight said with a grin as she pried the top off of the largest crate without a problem, the creaking wood making a satisfying snap in her magic.

“Whoa…” They all said in unison. The parts and components of the head of the thing were there, namely the faceplate. It looked as if someone had turned Twilight’s, or a similar looking unicorn mare’s, face into an angled mask with nothing but eyes.

“Right, if there are any I’m going to need an operation manual, any kind of books dealing with putting the thing together and possibly some theory of the technology.” Twilight said.

“Well there should be a box in here somewhere full of books, I don’t think they’d be able to teach you all that… much…” Chrysalis started to reply, but Twilight’s magic enveloped one of the boxes and a number of books floated out. They swirled around her, their pages flipping rapidly as she looked at them at random. They went from the box to a neat pile one by one and in ten minutes she had cleared the thing. She stood there for another minute with her eyes closed, processing the information.

“Did you seriously just read all of that in ten minutes…?” Chrysalis asked. Twilight grinned and opened her eyes.

“I used to run a library.” Twilight said simply. Her horn glowed and all of the crates opened and parts floated up to the massive set of platforms and mounting stations. It would need at least two days of work to get the thing’s frame completely setup and functional and then another two in order to finish it. At least that’s what Nictus and Cerene were saying.

“Damn, I was worried with how much we got it’d take at least two weeks…” Mantis said with a grin. Twilight grinned back as everything that could be put on the static mounts to hold the thing was placed and the rest were moved to convenient locations.