Lead and concrete crashed together and flew apart in a storm of ricochets and screaming gunfire. The air boiled in the madness of bouncing bullet fragments. Ducking and weaving, her heart thundering in her chest, Scootaloo ran deeper into the dugout.
“Go, go!” Apple Bloom roared, swinging around the corner and dissuading would-be pursuers by means of assault rifle. An over-eager spartan braved the choke point and the rounds, only to get the butt of Apple Bloom’s rifle bashed into the side of his head. He went down in a tumult of flailing limbs and dropped ammo. The filly tossed a frag grenade to reiterate the core concept of her argument: Stay Back. Only this time even louder. Then she swung around and followed Scootaloo in.
The filly's orange hoof wrapped around the pole.
“ENEMY FLAG TAKEN!” the universe declared emphatically. A rain of bullets from above forced the filly against the wall, where a narrow overhang offered meagre shelter from the fire. The flooring beneath her shredded under the assault.
Sweeping her rifle across in the general direction, Apple Bloom unloaded blindly upwards. There was a flash of metal and visor as a few fortunately aimed rounds forced the spartan into cover. “Come on, out the back!” the filly roared.
The flag was easily five times Scootaloo’s height. The pegasus ran with it in a three legged hobble, the flag waving with crazed, triumphant violence through the air.
They came upon the last bare corridor, which opened onto the glorious daylight of a completely exposed killing field. “Apple Bloom!” she cried in dismay.
“Keep going!”
A plasma detonation rocked the foundations. The fillies struggled to regain their stride. Where Scootaloo had sheltered seconds concrete now glowed and trickled. “But there’s no cover! We won’t make two steps!”
“Trust me!”
Automatic fire crashed behind them, but it was the glint in Apple Bloom’s eyes that made up Scootaloo’s mind. “Okay!” she shouted over the gunfire, urging herself onwards to greater feats of champion hobbling.
Harsh daylight gave way to harsher darkness, and for a terrible second Scootaloo thought some kind of emergency door had slammed shut, trapping them in this killbox.
But no, there was a silhouette of light around the edges. She recognized the roughness of a wheel, the frame of a door.
Sweetie Belle tossed the keys in a glittering arc of metal to Apple Bloom, who caught them easily. “Don’t grind the clutch,” the unicorn filly grumbled as she swung herself up into the gunners stand. She ducked as angry bullets slammed into the turret’s armour. She kicked the throttle into life and retorted with larger, more rapidly fired, and ultimately angrier bullets. “Have some of this!” she war-squeaked, her voice breaking upwards through an octave and a half.
The wheels were tearing up dirt even before Scootaloo’s hooves left the ground. The warthog’s harsh acceleration slammed her back in the seat. Apple Bloom fought the monstrous torque of the warthog and the whole thing swung side to side on its frame, threatening at every twist to fishtail and spin out on the rough, uneven ground.
Between the hills and matching pace, a mongoose raced along. Sweetie Belle swung the gatling gun around and unloaded at the interloper, screaming and possibly cackling manically as six barrels of beastly finality howled. The mongoose dipped down a hill, flew up another and launched itself clear through the air into a lower tract of ground, beyond the turret’s reach.
“Darn!” The white filly roared. The violent shaking, the gut jarring lurch of every stone and gully undertread was nothing to the burst of light and sound that overwhelmed them. Scootaloo felt only a terrible sideways jarring, then everything spun upside down.
The warthog tumbled and rolled, its raging engine killed in a single electromagnetic detonation. Heavy steel reamed through the soil and shrieked against stone before flinging Scootaloo bodily to the dirt, knocking pain into her ribs and air out of her lungs. She struggled to orient herself in a world gone mad and clambered shakily to her hooves, the flag still clutched tightly to her chest.
A hoof shoved her back down “Get down!” Apple Bloom bellowed.
Scootaloo’s eyes went wide, her pupils to pinpricks. “Sweetie’s hurt! Her shields are completely gone!”
“In that case we hold out until she regenerates and make a dash for the base. We’re so close! A nearby explosion shook the earth and showered them with detritus. Apple Bloom poked her rifle over the stricken warthog, firing blindly at the enemy.
“I’m sorry,” Sweetie Belle muttered, struggling to right herself on trembling legs. “Needed more dakka...”
Apple Bloom’s scream tore at Scoot’s sanity. She swung around in a flash of blackest dread. A spartan threw a gauntleted fist at the earth pony, catching her full in the chest. Apple Bloom slammed to the earth with an oof of escaping air.
There was no hesitation. Only the Flag. A flag punch could drive itself six inches into the reinforced frame of a warthog. This one hit the spartan in the kneecap like the wrath of god. A tiny orange fluffy god, but a god nonetheless.
Raw force blasted the spartan away in a flip of flailing limbs and dropped ammo.
“Go...now!” Apple Bloom wheezed. Holding up one another, spraying bullets of frothing defiance in their wake, the three fillies carried one another the final stretch. They leapt free of daylight, into the welcoming gloom of concrete. They hugged cover and caught the ragged edges of breath. Bullets peppered the wall.
Sweetie Belle swung around, her DMR single-action already on the draw. Bang. Bang. Bang bang bang. There was a scream and a gurgle and the oncoming fire halted. “Let’s finish this.”
As one they nodded, steeled in their determination. The flag room. Their glorious flagroom. Their destination. Their destiny.
And here they now stood. “Cap it, Scoots.”
The mongoose dropped through the open ceiling with meteoric violence. It exploded on impact, spreading shorn metal and splatters of flaming fuel across the walls. Apple Bloom swung her rifle around. A steel hand caught it, forced it upwards to fire harmlessly into the ceiling.
Precision fire slammed into his energy field from behind.
The spartan tore the weapon from Apple Bloom’s hooves, spun and flung it overarm into Sweetie Belle, and she went down with a cry of surprise and shock. Not slowing, he turned to face the earth pony filly. A well thrown hoof shattered his shield, but a better placed boot sent her skidding across the floor.
The flag swept his legs out from behind him with almost of its own volition. Scootaloo completed the rotation, swinging her might behind a strike to shatter his skull. An armoured fist shot up to catch the Flag and tugged so hard that it was all Scootaloo could do to hold on as she flew forwards.
A white blur slammed into the spartan’s head with a high pitched squeal of rage. Another blur, yellow and red wrested with the ironclad fingers. The flag slipped free.
Scootaloo clambered atop the struggling fighters and hefted it high with a primordial roar of victory and violence. “Finish the fight,” she growled, and planted the flag through the spartan, all her strength and weight striving to drive the pointy end home.
“FLAG CAPTURED!” The universe declared with a voice of equal awe and fear.
Three fillies held firm as the last struggling twitches of the spartan died away. Then, grinning and shaking, they breathed and wiped sweat from their brows.
As they had done many times before, they checked their flanks.
“Aww,” said Scootaloo. “I was so sure flag carrying was going to be our thing.”
They looked to one another and shrugged. “Kinda hungry now,” Apple Bloom said. “Break for lunch?”
Little orange wings fluttered happily. “Sounds good to me.”
Sweetie Belle chirped, “Me too!”
Three fillies hopped down and made their way home.
Author's Note
I'll be the first to admit that a blind man could see the punchline coming a mile off. I don't care. This was stupidly good fun to write on that new episode buzz.
