The Many Destinies of Sunset Shimmer

by ratedoni


Equestria Girls und Panzer 05

Sometimes you never know what will appear from the inside of a box; sometimes it can be awesome things like a new mp3 device or maybe a face full of spiders. Thankfully, this time Rainbow was fortunate enough to receive the first one, with one of the boxes left behind in the hangar contained metallic parts. Rainbow had started to read about Sensha-do and stuff related to it, but she was in no way an expert at anything so far and the pieces simply confused her even more.

The group of friends was taking their time, cleaning the abandoned hangar and scoring the place for more information of what exactly happened to the previous Sensha-do club since Vice-Principal Luna was in no mood to give away that information. It was quite unfortunate that Principal Celestia was not in town at the moment; Rainbow was sure that she would allow them to revive the club with no fuss whatsoever. Sunset was suspicious of the reason why Luna was against the club in the first place; maybe it was the cost, but that could not be the only thing happening for her to act that way. She was being even more forceful on this and that did not fit with the image the Vice-Principal had of tough but fair with the students. In any case, the girls were busy now that the Honey was outside and ready for the cleaning and repairing that the thing deserved after such a long time of being abandoned.

Another thing that the girls had been doing, besides waiting for the tow truck to take the tank to a Sensha-do regulated tank repair shop, was to make a list of stuff around the place. So far they have found a catalogue of mod shops, completely legal since it sold parts of tanks, like heated seats and radio equipment; alongside that it had information about special Sensha-do ammunition and paint job discounts; the last one had probably expired by now, or probably the shop had also went belly up too.

“Hey, Sunset! Any idea what these things are?” At hearing her name being mentioned, Sunset stopped moving the broom that had been pushed into her hands by Rarity. She didn’t mind it so much since she also agreed that the place needed to be cleaned. They probably also had to call some pest control just to be safe. Looking into the box that Rainbow was showing her, she smiled knowing that at least they had some good news in all of this.

“Great, they seem to be spare parts for the Honey, nice, they even seem to be never used by the looks of it,” she said taking one of the hoses at the bottom, inspecting it for any hole or deterioration. At Rainbow’s incredulous look she put everything back inside the box “what’s wrong?”

“You can just know that by looking at it?”

“Well, yeah, these are all parts of a Twin Cadillac series 42 and since that is the engine of the M3 Stuart, well, that seems logical.”

“Are you saying that you even know the engines and the parts that belong to it?”

“It took me a while and I’m slightly rusty these days.”

“Dude, I’m glad I asked you to be part of this whole thing.”

“Oh Rainbow, you may be saying something different in a few days considering all the amount of training you girls will be part of. Is this the only thing you found?”

“Well, that and several cans of oil still unopened.”

“Maybe we can take a look at those later on; anything on your side girls?” Sunset raised her voice to call the attention of the other girls who were right now looking through a drawer full of boxes similar to the one Rainbow had been looking at.

“More mechanic pieces that we truly need you to take a look at; probably more pieces of that Honey tank of ours, but with some luck these will give us some hints of what other tanks this club had.”

“I still say we should probably ask around the school, maybe someone still remembers what happened back then.”

“I doubt it Rainbow,” Sunset continued talking as she took a look at the boxes and other spare parts which didn’t really told her much until she took a better look at them. She was much more confident in USA tanks and pieces considering the amount of time she spend driving her ‘little’ Pershing back when she was still an avid reader and fanatic of Sensha-do “besides, there must be an accountant book or maybe even the Club Annotations Book for that kind of thing.”

“The what on the what now? Ah’m kind of new to this whole tankery thingy, so care to explain that for us with less than perfect knowledge of this whole thing?”

“I suppose I can do that considering we will have to do those things if we can get the club up and running again. So, one thing that all clubs need to have is the Accounting Book; basically a place where all the expenses are written down to keep track of important stuff, like how much money they had to use for repairs, new tanks and such.”

“And where exactly does a team get that kind of money? Because I’ve seen some amazingly looking tanks, but I’ve never asked how much they cost; I’m pretty sure they are not cheap,” Fluttershy said as she kept on cleaning the different shelves with a rag. Now that the shy girl had put the question on the air, the rest of the girls that were new to the inner workings of the sport got curious.

“That’s a good question and something that many take for granted. So, since it is a sports club, you know, like the football club or the basketball club, the school pays for most of the stuff, like uniforms, transportation and the like, alongside the balls the team need and maybe replacing old equipment. That’s the same with Sensha-do, with schools having a bigger budget allocating more money to these clubs, especially the ones that have dedicated Sensha-do programs.”

“That must be pretty sweet; are there many of those schools?”

“Is pretty normal, I mean, you have the NCAA schools, but in terms of High School programs, you have places like Manehattan Tech or Baltimare High,” the programs at those schools were pretty much legendary at this point “but for most schools, like Canterlot and others in the area, some of that money comes from the students that are part of the club.”

“Wait, that means we are going to pay for a tank? I don’t think we can even get enough money between us to buy a car less a tank!”

“Some tanks costs even less than a car by this point Rainbow, I mean, I think we can scrap enough to buy a small T-45 if we need to, not that I wish we have to get to that point. No, we can also get scholarships and loans from the NTSA, that’s the National Tankery Society of America; they are the guys that oversee pretty much every single tournament and cup in the country.”

“So, we get in contact with these fellas and then we can get new tanks? But what about the other book? That whole Annotation thingy?” AJ said with the small notepad in her hands which made Sunset smile knowing that at least they will get to know more about the school now that they had found the thing.

“Where did you find it?”

“I looked inside one of the desk that had been put on the back of the hangar, is it important sugarcube?”

“Very, it is basically a list of members, tanks, modifications and plans for the club; think of it like the achievements book and inventory list of the club all at the same time. Now, let’s see, most of the names seems to have been erased or something; everything is so smudgy to read, but… yeah, here we have a complete list of tanks the club had!”

“Awesome! So does that mean we can have more than one tank?”

“Well, first we are going to have to find them Rainbow, because I for one don’t want to be in debt with the NTSA this early on my return, but for now, it seems we have a treasure hunt on our hands,” Sunset kept on reading, trying to find all the information she could about some abandoned tanks from the school club when the five girls heard several steps getting closer. Turning around, they saw Pinkie accompanied by other people that they recognized. Seems that they got new members.

“Rejoice, because you have been blessed since the Great and Powerful Trixie has decided to join your club!”

“I thought your name was Beatrice?” The blonde girl at her side asked immediately making the wannabe magician lose the small modicum of temper she had.

“THE NAME IS GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE!” The blue haired girl said, while Muffins, or more commonly known as Derpy, kept on looking at her with the same calm and quite charming little smile of hers, completely undisturbed by the outrage of the other girl. The rest of those that had accompanied Pinkie began to laugh at the unintended show. Sunset also laughed alongside them knowing that there were things that they had to do before they could even think about opening the club once again. They had the members; they had the information, now they only had to find the tanks.

All and all, maybe it wasn’t that bad of an idea to come back to Sensha-do; there was still a part of her that wanted to get out from here screaming into the night, but she just couldn’t leave her friends -specially Fluttershy- behind; maybe it was time to put behind her fear and embrace the opportunity the world was giving her.