Applejack and Twilight stood in the line to enter the impromptu museum, which was mostly just a mask for the stallion to sell his terrible wares. Applejack was giddy, a rare feeling for her, as she waited to see the new machine. Twilight stood next to her friend, waiting patiently as she read in the newspaper she brought along. Twilight looked up as she heard a grumpy yell from the front of the store.
"Everypony go home, the store is closed!" the stallion screamed out, shoving several ponies out as he closed the doors behind him. Ponies whined as the walked away upset, several cursing out the greedy salesman.
"Closed?" Applejack walked to the glass door and knocked softly, wanting to get the stallion's attention. He yelled for them to leave and continued to look at a stack of papers. Applejack knocked harder, ready to break the door down.
"What do you want!" the stallion turned around and stared at AJ. He grumbled softly as he opened the door. "What do you want, the store is closed."
"We're here to see the machine," Applejack told him, her voice still calm.
"Doesn't everypony."
"Sir, I found one too, I want to know-" Before Applejack could finish her sentence he slammed the door and walked away. Before Applejack could push the door in, the handle glowed purple as the door swung open. Applejack and Twilight walked in, the storekeeper none the wiser. "We have a machine of our own, and we have proof."
"Huh? How'd you get in here?" the stallion asked as he turned around.
"Magic," Twilight stated as she smiled happily.
"Fine, what do you two want," the stallion sighed as he gave up, taking a seat on a stool.
"Well, you have a machine, similar to ours," his laugh shook AJ to the core.
"Okay, good story, now really, what do you want," Twilight took the box full of pictures out of Applejack's saddlebag and handed it to the stallion. He slowly opened the box and looked at the pictures, before closing the box. "Alright, follow me."
Applejack and Twilight followed closely behind the stallion, as he opened up a large room built entirely out of concrete. He led them inside as he stood next to the door, letting AJ and Twilight get closer while keeping his own distance.
"I found it in my basement, and all this thing has done is bring me bad luck," the stallion told them as he stayed far away from the machine. The walls had news articles, written in a foreign language to what Applejack nor Twilight could read. Pictures depicted red flags with weird star patterns or black crosses overlaid with foreign writing. "I could never figure out what it said, but the pictures depict enough for me to want to know."
"All of these were found within the machine?" Applejack asked curiously as she scanned the walls and shelves, filled with newspapers and pictures.
"No, there was a box buried close by filled with a lot of the newspapers, but some came from with it," Applejack found one picture with a caption "Eiffelturm Zerstört" with a picture of a blown up park, with burning rubble and twisted steel centered in middle.
"Eiffelturm... wait, could that be the same as the one picture we found?" Applejack asked Twilight softly, as she turned around to see Twilight already digging through the box of pictures. She stood up again and held the back of the picture to the caption. "Eiffel Tower, Eiffelturm... what does Zerst... Zerst... what the hell is that 'o'?"
"Maybe a symbol in this language," Twilight put the picture back as she kept looking around. Applejack read the page, looking for other similar to sounding words, but unable to pick out any. She glanced up to the top of the newspaper, seeing the name "Arbeitertum" first, but the date secondly, 17.9.1942. "Applejack, look."
Applejack walked to her friend's side and stared at the picture, two creatures standing side by side, but this picture was in the same language as the journal. The newspapers name called it "The New York Times", the date reading 11/30/1943.
"Do you mind if we take one of these off the wall?" Applejack asked the stallion, who just nodded at the two. Applejack pulled the newspaper from the wall and read just the first page.
Today is a joyous day for the American peoples, as Wendell Wilkie, president of the United States, and Adolf Hitler, leader of Nazi Germany, met earlier today in an attempt to fight off the looming Marxist that loomed over the United States and Germany. President Wilkie said this in his address to the American people, "American's, today we are joining arms with the German's against the Soviet's for Communism is a greater evil that both of us can defeat, we hope to seek closer ties with the German's and Italian's."
At the bottom of the page was a picture of two flags, the same black cross like the earlier newspaper, but the new flag was stripped, with a square in the corner with a single cross with bent arms. Applejack put the newspaper back up on the wall and finally turned her attention to the machine sitting in the middle of the room.
"Do you know what this thing's name is?"
"Name, these have names, what are they?"
"Nevermind," Applejack clambered up onto the tall machine's body. It was quite a bit taller than hers, by a good margin, as well as being quite a bit wider, it was shorter from front to back. The hatch to the machine was heavy, likely from rust, as she crawled inside, seeing the insides entirely empty, no electronics, seats, or personal decorations. She frowned and crawled back out of the machine. The machine itself was useless, but the newspapers were useful, at least partly.
"Excuse me, you said this thing has been bad luck for you, how so?" Applejack asked softly, as she jumped from the top of the tank to the floor, regretting it as the landing sent vibrations up her legs, causing her hooves to hurt.
"Well, when this thing was in the main shop, I thought it would bring in more customer's, but it brought in less, tax collectors became harsher, and.." his face grew distant as he tried to hold back tears. "It took my wife from me."
"O-Oh, I'm so sorry," Twilight apologized to the poor stallion, as she landed next to Applejack. The stallion coughed as he tried to fake a smile.
"Thank you, but you said you had another like it, would you care to take this thing off of my hooves, please, at least just the paper, I can scrap the actual monster," the stallion told them. Applejack looked to Twilight who was tapping a thinking hoof to her chin.
"We'll take the newspapers, but how would we get it out of here?" Applejack asked softly.
"The back wall, I could tear it down and it gives direct access to the street, then you could have somepony drag it away," he told them. Applejack bit her lip softly, as she pondered if she actually wanted a second one of these machines, especially if she had nowhere to put it.
"Alright, I'll come back up here later this week with my brother, and the two of us will pull it back to Ponyville," Twilight dropped her hoof as she looked at AJ.
"AJ, the inside is barren, what are you gonna do with it?"
"I can figure out the inside comparative to the other one, and make new components to fit it, kinda like updating old farming tools, except there extremely heavy and make you wish they could still work."
"Alright, if you think it'll work," Twilight told her friend.
"You can take them for free, as long as they aren't anywhere near me, I'll be happy they're gone," the stallion told Applejack as she reached for her bits. Applejack looked back, but shook her head and gave the poor stallion around 30 bits, the same price as a small house. "I-I... thank you."
"Of course," Applejack turned to help Twilight pull all the newspapers off the wall and carefully set them into each of their saddlebags. The walls and counters empty, Twilight and Applejack were escorted back to the front entrance, where they were given a farewell and hug, as they both left and headed back for the train station.
Huh, this is definitely turning into a mystery, the mind boggles at these twists in history.
9683322
Yay, it's doing its job!
It reminds me of Fatherland 1999 where Germany won but needed America to help fight the war in Russia which was still going. Although I wonder which german tank he has I would assume a Tiger or Tiger Royal but not enough detail to go on.
9683344
Never even heard of Fatherland 1994, but I might go watch it
9683355
Its a film about a german in an alternate timeline where noone knows of the Holocaust and they search for rumors of the jewish death camps after seeing a jew drowned in a river and the Gestapo is hot on their heels
9683357
Oh, sounds interesting
9683379
I've been working on two key ideas and am trying to gather interest. The first is tanks turned into ponies and the second is a man displaced as a tank where he uses engine revvs for Morse code or uses the internal radio to speak. do either sound interesting to you?
9683383
Both sound very Transformer-y, more so the second one, but I enjoy the idea of the first one, where six different tanks, like a Tiger 2, a Churchill, a Sherman, a Schneider, a Type Four, and a T-26 and all of them try and figure out the whole living thing, each with their respective accents, sounds interesting, I prefer the first idea more
9683410
the reason they are so transformey as you say is because I wanted to find a way for the vehicles to achieve a form of sentience. The easiest way would be magical transformation/modification. Otherwise they'd be too similar to existing stories. My hope with the transformed tank story would be based on strong national characteristics but not overly blown stererityping like the anime Axis Powers Hetalia which makes the nationalities so painfully stereotypical it hurts. The question is what tanks to use
9683466
How many tanks do you need?
9683512
my writing policy is that if you have more than seven you cannot have them all be the main characters. If there were say ten, then I would have to leave characters our of some stories to center them on others so no more than seven but six or lower is better.
9683514
Okay, does time period matter or no, like WW1, WW2, modern?
9683526
up to the end of world war two. If the tank is after it has to be designed and started in World war II like Pershing or Centurion
9683581
Then the six I mentioned, each one from a different country in WW2, should be perfect
Well, something screwed with Hoi4’s ai this time (more so than usual)
9688799
I actually ran this through Hoi4 several times, and each time the idea worked very similarly to what I'm doing here
Why didn't you use the name of the ACTUAL president during WWII?
9697870
Why do you think? Just curious?