“Ready, girls?”

“Ready to go live!” came a rather bubbly voice over the radio, just above the rumble of the engine. Several more voices following behind confirming their status.

“Ready, sugarcube!” drawled out another voice. “At least... I think so,” it added, uncertainty evident in its voice.

“Of course, darling. I still wish you would have let me make this thing less...drab and unsightly, though,” came a refined voice, one that had been asking to recolour her choice ever since they joined up.

“You know it!” came a brash voice soon afterwards, eager to start. “Lets show these guys how it’s done!” it added on, clearly pumped for what was about to happen.

“I... guess I’m ready too..” came the last timid voice, barely being heard over the engine, even with the radio headset full blast.

“Alright, girls, let’s do this by the book and we should have no problems!” the last voice almost beamed back. Sitting back in the chair, Twilight Sparkle shifted gears and placed her hoof over a button labeled “ready”. With a deep breath she pressed down on it. She heard a click as it lit green, and a new unknown computer voice started to countdown in her headset, “5...4...3…” She looked around the cabin of her tank, a cheap block of a thing the provider called a Renault, making sure she was all ready. This was gonna be a new experience…”..2…1...Begin!”

With a rumble of engines, the team of 6 rushed forward!....or crawled forward as the case may be with most of them as the brash voice almost immediately came back on the headset. “Are you bucking kidding me with this?!” it yelled, causing Twilight to sigh to herself.

“Rainbow, you know the trainee tanks wouldn’t be very good.. even the..NS-31, was it?” she explained. She got a annoyed grunt in response; the rest moved along without complaint, or direction, as the case may be.

With her Turret-cam, Twilight watched the group veer off in whatever direction they felt like, in particular Pinkie’s Otsu zipping away into the undergrowth by itself. “P-Pinkie! We have to stick together!” Twilight blurted out as she disappeared from view.

“Don’t worry your little head, Twilight, I’m just gonna say hi to the other team then come back.” Pinkie responded matter-of-factly. Before Twilight could retort, she noticed something….Fluttershy in her Leichttraktor wasn’t with them. Looking back, she could see why...it hadn’t even moved from the start position…
This time, however, it wasn’t Twilight but Rarity in her Vickers who spoke up, reversing back beside Fluttershy’s tank. “Oh, come now, Fluttershy, this will be fun!” she said. All she got was a barely-audible retort from the the radio, much to Rarity’s annoyance. She revved up and started to nudge Fluttershy from behind.

Watching this display, Twilight could only roll her eyes as she moved to help Rarity…very slowly moving into position behind Fluttershy, Dash might of had a point. “Come on, we all need to work together as a team,” she argued down the headset, trying to coax Fluttershy into moving by herself.

“B-But aren't tanks loud and scary and...v-violent?” was the timid reply.

At this point Pinkie and Dash had already driven off, leaving Applejack in her Cunningham to try and be the voice of reason once again. “Come on, sugarcube, it’s only a game after all, and I know the kind of games you play..” she added on, having seen Fluttershy’s rather violent choice of video games. “Besides, the longer y’all have this little tug of war, the more time the other team has to...do whatever you do in this here game. So how about you just give it a shot? You just might like it.” She didn’t get a response after that. She was about to try again when Fluttershy’s tank started to move forward on its own, a timid voice coming over the radio. “O-ok, just this once...” Applejack couldn’t help but smile as she watched Fluttershy be courageous. AJ turned around to face forward with the other three, ready to start the game.

As they moved out into the forest, the three scanned the trees, trying to find their two wayward friends who had rushed ahead without their support; however, they only saw trees and undergrowth as they rolled along. Fluttershy spoke up. “Wait, what about all the poor animals in here?”
It was Twilight who responded as they drove along the underbrush, still no sign of their friends save for their tracks they left, “Don’t worry, they cordon off the Arena before the matches. Besides, all these tanks driving around would scare them off anyway,” she said reassuringly, having asked this question already to the hosts for Fluttershy’s sake.

Just then, they heard a rumble as a tank burst out of the brush to the right, slamming right into Applejack and almost breaking her tread. Fluttershy immediately started to pull back and rear-ended Rarity, causing much confusion and panic until Twilight noticed...that was Pinkie’s tank...but Dash was nowhere to be seen. “Hey Pinkie, where is Rainbow Dash?” she asked while the rest of the team calmed down to hear what she had to say.
“Oh, she just went off to say hi to the other team!” She beamed, the rest of the team gasped, and Twilight let out a rather dramatic Big No! to the heavens. She knew just how much use a single tank was vs an enemy team….

-MEANWHILE WITH THE BRASH DASH-

The tank rattled as it crested a mound of dirt at full speed. Rainbow Dash kept driving her tank onward, scanning the treeline fruitlessly before slamming a hoof down on the dashboard in frustration. “Where is everyone? I thought this was meant to be a fast-paced game!” she grunted, unaware of the barrel sticking out of a nearby bush slowly zeroing in on her exposed side armour. It let off a round, jolting Dash as it exploded against her armour. She tried to escape, but another blast from the other side let her know just how exposed she was. She tried to pull back.

The two tanks didn’t even wait for her. One drove forward to block her escape and expose her rear armour. Dash desperately turned her gun to try and fight back, but she didn’t get a chance before a shot into her rear armour penetrated it, blasted her ammo storage and almost took her out of the game right then and there. Not that she had much hope now. The alarms sounding in the cockpit told her just how screwed she was. She looked up to see the second tank casually drive up to her to finish her off. She could only utter one thing before her tank was taken out. “Ah, ponyfeathers...”

-MEANWHILE WITH THE HARMONY TEAM-

The team froze up at the sound of cannon-fire followed by a loud explosion. Twilight saw one of the lights in her cockpit blink off, telling her that Rainbow Dash was out. “I told her not to run off before we started, now look what happened….ugh!” She let out a frustrated sigh before taking a deep breath and looking over at her friends, “We can still pull this off, girls, we just have to play smarter! Now follow me! According to the map we were given, we can sneak behind the enemy if we go down into a depression not far from here. What do you say, girls?”

Despite the loss of their friend, Twilight’s plan helped boost their confidence. The team rolled out with a round of cheers, unaware of the small tank that was watching from the nearby line of bushes and reporting their position to his teammates.

As the team moved, they kept an eye on the treeline, nervous since Dash was taken out. Moving into the depression, it was hard to see around them; a thick layer of trees to their right made it impossible to scan for the enemy team, while to their left was a plateau with overgrowth covering it. The team focused on the treeline as they moved onward, as that would be where the enemy would come from, considering there was so much more cover, that is, until Rarity piped up with a few words that made the team stop in its tracks...

“Wait. Is someone watching the left flank?”

That's when all Tartarus broke loose.

A barrage of cannon fire rained down from the plateau, causing panic and confusion. The team bumped into each other and desperately tried to turn their turrets around. The trench was little more than a killzone now.

Pinkie was the first to go, her tank going up in smoke quickly. Fluttershy followed soon after; instead of whimpering as expected, her gamer side started to show as she angrily yelled out, “You lame camper noobs if I see you ag-”

Applejack didn’t fair much better: her tank was trapped between Rarity and what remained of Pinkie’s tank, so there was no room to move. She managed to get a round off in stubborn defiance for all the good it did, then followed her team as the barrage of cannon fire quickly focused on her.

Rarity in her Renault, however, managed to take several rounds thanks to her armour, even managing to return fire...and completely miss. Then she soon realised her turret ring had been shot in the first barrage, her shot harmlessly flying into the trees, She could only place her face in her hooves and sigh with annoyance. Stuck as they soon whittled her down too. Leaving Twilight alone with the whole enemy team. When she checked her dashboard, she noticed...she and her friends had managed to get zero kills this whole match. Her eye started to twitch. She threw her head and hooves up; this whole fiasco was finally getting to her. They opened fire on her tank.

“I CAN’T BELIEVE WE LOST TO A TEAM OF COLTS AND FILLIES! WHEN I FIND THEM CELESTIA AS MY WITNESS I’M GOING TO GI-”

Author's Note

And so I throw my hat into the writing ring, it will most likely burst into flames but won't know till I try! Please leave a comment if you like or dislike the story, the only way i can improve and make the story better for you lot if yea let me know how.

My tank crew for this story has been:
Tyrannosaurus Tux
AlicornPriest