"So how much experience do you have with tanks?"
The voice came to her without a source for her to see—as her head was currently Stuka nose-diving back into the unbearably hot soup on her plastic tray—but she immediately stopped what she was doing, eyes wide, with a few locks of ramen hanging from her lip.
"And Ponyville's final tank has been defeated!"
"We've got a jack in the box, folks!"
"Um, it seems that..."
"It seems that one of Ponyville's combatants has been flung from the vehicle."
"...oh Gods..."
"Paramedics are on the scene!"
"Change the screen for Gods' sake!"
"We're sorry about that, folks! We'll... we'll keep you updated as news comes in."
Griffonia Is Victorious!
She slurped, the ends of her noodles smacking her upper lip and sending broth across her muzzle. Puffing her horribly empty-feeling chest and sending out a rumbly breath of air, Duck brought up a hoof and wiped the mess with her hoof, careful not to get her jacket's sleeve in the process and further sully it with herself. She should say something, lest she get too caught up not doing so and end up being assuringly begrudgingly saved by a nearby individual like usual.
Flurry shuffled in her seat, wringing her hooves together and staring at the orange peel somepony had left behind before they'd taken their seats not five minutes ago. "I'm just a little..." she deflated, as if this was an abnormality, "...nervous, is all. I don't know what they'll even make us do this first session... I was just kind of wondering if you did."
Oh, easy. Probably learning about tank history and a few basics, probably ending in unearthing Ponyville's tanks from the garage and maybe getting assigned to their respective ones.
Duck shook her head. "I... I don't know," she clearly lied. She peeled her ears back, hoping it would redeem her somehow. "I'm sorry."
Flurry let out a long sigh. Duck swallowed a lump down her throat, found it reemerge twice in scale, choked it down, and shook all over.
Arco, sitting next to Flurry, held his sandwich in mid-bite with both hooves and dipped his chin. "I heard that it's loud... it's not loud is it?"
Oh Gods yes.
"N-no..."
"Even with all the explosions and engine noises and stuff?" He asked further, rolling one of his hooves around with each occurrence.
Especially with all of those.
Duck shook her head on an autopilot. "No."
"Huh," was all Arco had to say back before returning to his food and softly munching on the lettuce and tomatoes nestled between the two whole grains. He was looking to be accruing a fair amount of assorted bread crumbs on his uniform—and on the pink bowtie collared just below his chin, which Duck noted as being an odd choice of colour for a stallion—but was also looking to be completely ignorant or lacking the care to, well, care.
The cafeteria, despite being literally what it was, was as empty as she was more than sure her head was, with only a sparse few ponies dotting the tables here and there, most of them not even bearing food with them. Even the lunch line, a couple or so meters away from her on her right, kept but about six students waiting for a meal patiently, their conversations and banshee-like wails of laughter both alien to her ears and apparently grating to others'. So most ponies either went off-campus to grab lunch or stuck around the vending machines like they were the last ones on Earth, eyeing up chocolate bars and chip bags containing less than half its actual size, which made no sense to Duck but apparently struck logic with everypony else. Good to know.
They sat in a pregnant silence that Duck achingly wished would just go into labour. Was that an okay thing to say? It was kind of rude to want to force someone to have a child... maybe it wasn't okay. At least she'd said it in her head and not out loud. Still, the relative quiet of her and her friends' round table was beginning to rouse a twitch in her hindleg and a blinking in her eye. Arco ate his sandwich, looking around aimlessly and looking at Duck here and there, waggling his eyebrows like it was a game and turning away just as quickly as he'd arrived. Flurry busied herself with her own meal as well, swapping between it and reading the strewn-out papers laying to her immediate right. Duck, straining herself to read the upside-down, bolded, centered, size 12 text on the top, mouthed what appeared to be a flavorful essay title, silently eeped, and shrank back in her chair when Flurry looked like she was going to straighten up and look her way.
Flurry caught her upward gaze as it went anyway, swirling her salad with her magic-enveloped fork.
"Um, are you... well-known around here?"
Not her. Her sister and mother.
Duck sucked in her lower lip.
"I mean, I know you're Pumpkin Seed's sister," she leaned left, "and Pumpkin Bread's other daughter," she stated matter-of-factly as if reading from a book, leaning over to her right. She rested a cheek on her forehoof there, "but those are literally just names to me. I only knew them from hearing them flung at you. I didn't really care much for... Tank War-ooh-dough growing up, so I didn't really follow it at all..."
"I just kind of hope I'm not the only guy there," Arco chimed in, tapping his hooves together like he was trying to begin a cymbal career, "all of them just... staring at me, and laughing at me... Gods, what have I gotten myself into...?"
Flurry placed a foreleg over his shoulder. He gave a little throaty chuckle, not even looking its way. The owner tossed her mane dramatically.
"I'm sure that there will be many stallions there as well."
There was more than a nigh impossibly tiny chance of that being part of this world's specifically chosen reality.
Duck grinned. "I don't think you'll have to worry about that."
Arco leaned his head back and quietly praised the Gods above.
Duck, shovel in hoof in head, brushed the dirt from her hooves, adjusted her sun hat, and promptly returned to her hard hard work of digging herself an even deeper trench line dwarfing the Yakyakistani Stena in both volume and awe-inspiring complexity. It probably even had its own little barracks where her tiny little Duck Bill brain employees dreamed their sweet, ditch digging dreams and slept their terrible, ditch digging sleeps.
She was glad the topic of her mother and sister had gone by without further prying. Flurry must have realized the sensitivity of the topic, for she opened her mouth to resume it not a moment after Duck's reassured thoughts, shut it as both Duck and Arco looked her way, shook her head, and went back to her salad, composed of nothing but green, and splotches of white, and a red circle, and tan squares that crunched. Was she having a stroke? Why was she thinking like that? Leaves, ranch, tomato, and croutons. What... okay.
"Um, Duck," Arco stuttered.
Duck sat up.
"Thanks for, uh... having our backs yesterday."
Her cheeks involuntarily bunched up and she looked at the orange peel hurriedly.
Flurry let loose a wide grin that could have blinded her if the sun had been in the right place. "Yeah! That was really brave of you!"
Well, that was what friends did, right?
"Y-you too."
Arco and Flurry apparently didn't notice her response—or whatever that absolute atrocity had just been—even as she covered her mouth and positively—no, actually, that was negatively—blanched. They'd probably thought she'd suppressed a sneeze.
"I'll go ahead and be the big pony here and say that I'm a nervous wreck right now," Arco admitted, laughing. He raised up a foreleg and showed Duck that even he had the capability to shake that much as well! "Like, I'm pretty much shivering in this seat and we're not even outside yet." He reached to his stomach, and Flurry's grin grew wilder as she nodded furiously. "And my stomach's all tossing about and..." Breathe in. Breathe out. He had the same method as well. "...yeah, I have nothing else to really say, haha. I'm just, like, super anxious right now."
A sudden burst of an uproar rose up from outside the cafeteria. Arco rose from his seat and leaned over, then sat back down, pointing a hoof. "Coming from lunch."
"Yeah," Flurry replied more aptly, intelligently, and astutely than Duck ever could have possibly mustered.
Arco took a sip from his drink, sighed, then all but slammed it back onto the tabletop.
Flurry crunched on a few leaves.
Was this what high schoolers called hanging out? Oh Gods what if she said something and neither of them liked it because it didn't fit the apparent topic? Or what if she said something and they weren't supposed to be doing that in the first place?
In.
And out.
There we go.
Duck found herself staring at Flurry as she dipped her chin and adjusted her black tie, which Duck was still unsure about whether or not it was a required part of the school's uniform. Sherbet had said that the Princesses themselves were relatives of hers, hadn't she? Three of them were aunts and one of them was her mother. It couldn't have been Celestia, or Luna. Was she Princess Twilight's daughter?
She might as well ask...
"Have to admit, though..." Arco thankfully stopped her, reaching up with both forelegs and stretching, "I really need those extra credits."
Flurry only looked like she was capable of wholeheartedly agreeing at the moment, subjected to quiet little nods and little quiet hums of obvious approval. She was a Gods blessed ray of sunshine. Flurry flashed her teeth.
"Gotta get that hundred-and-four-percent, huh?"
Arco whinnied. "More like ninety-percent. Though I'd love that one too."
Flurry arched an eyebrow. "B's?"
"Around there."
B's? What were they talking about? Like grades? Was Arco an average student? He didn't seem the type to just barely scrape by like some kind of fast food worker. If anything, he was probably taking all Honors classes and loved by each and every one of those teachers. Probably had recommendations from all of them as well.
Flurry fumbled in her seat.
"You might've missed it yesterday, but I was..." she brought up a hoof and wiggled it cutely, "...this close to being suspended." The hoof went down with a small clop against the tabletop. "I guess it's easy for them to fabricate a tardy aaaand... I can't get another."
Arco screwed up his face.
Duck was very happy to not be talking right now. If this was the norm for her year, this was all right with her.
"Tardies? Really?"
Flurry threw her forelegs up, "I spend all night, uh, studying! I know my stuff! Excuuuuuse a girl for being tired!" As Arco snickered into a hoof at Flurry's admittedly manic gesture, she returned to proper, lady-like posture, matted her tie down her chest, and rolled a hoof idly. "On the subject of that, we all kind of were, back there."
Wait what.
Flurry looked her way. Had she said it out loud?
"Well, since our refusal to join Tankery despite it being on our schedule—which, y'know, is obviously wrong—counts as disobedience of the highest degree, we could actually get expelled for not taking it and attending the class."
Flurry went back to munching on her salad casually. As if she hadn't just said what she had.
Duck was now mindful of her breathing, and she was more than absolutely certain it shouldn't have been ramping up as hard as it was at the moment.
Oh Gods there was no alternative. If she didn't take the class she'd be kicked out of school and if she did take the class she'd only ruin everything for everypony else and if she was kicked out of school she'd have to go back to her mother's academy and if she did that it would be right back to more and more tanks and more and more training and more and more and more long days of nothing but gearshifting and cannon firing and kicking up mud and fording streams and climbing mountains and rolling off and breaking her foreleg and gravely injuring her crew and embarrassing her mother and disappointing her just as much and feeling nothing but emptiness and finding comfort in solitude and finally feeling courageous enough to stray from her family and go to public school and oh Gods–
"Does she need a bag?" somepony asked nearby.
She moved in a vomit-inducing blur back to reality, almost jutting forward in her seat from the imaginary G-forces.
A pony was standing next to Arco, one hoof on his shoulder and the other pointing Duck's way.
Arco threw the hoof off and knitted his brow. "Shut up, Tate," he growled with genuine frustration, "leave her alone."
Tate threw up his forelegs like he was surrendering. "Just asking. Looks like she's seen a ghost."
Flurry reached across the table and placed one of her legs on Duck's. "Duck? Are you doing okay?"
Duck cleared her throat. What else was she gonna say? 'No', and be truthful? Pfft.
"Mmhm," she replied softly, nodding.
As Tate and Arco began to talk about their Chemistry homework, which shifted to Music class—Arco jokingly complaining that he was going to be missing Tate's lovely trumpet blaring—and then to what each of their classes this year were.
Just look at them. Talking like two normal ponies. Shutting their eyes and almost spilling onto the ground in comedic reaction, clutching their guts and making humorous gestures. Bringing up names of ponies and things she didn't know about, and asking each other about ponies and things they didn't know about. Yeah, that's Flurry Heart, I met her the first day of school when Duck Bill over there defended us from Mocha Frappe and– yeah, Duck Bill what about Pumpkin Seed yeah it's her sister, but that's just it sister nothing else yeah, we're all in Tankery the class speakers made us and we literally can't do anything about it yeah I said literally that's how you use it no that's figuratively idiot literally is like you actually doing it.
So natural. Words from head and utterance from throat. It just came to them and it was flawlessly received every single time, with a laugh, or a smile, or a thump from a hoof, or a weird look that made her break out in a little grin. How did they do it? It was like Zebrican magic.
Somepony took the seat next to her. She turned to face its source and found the right side of Flurry's head as she finished placing her stuff down in front of her. The Alicorn noticed her noticing of her.
"Hey," Flurry started sweetly, swirling her salad around again. "Are you going to be okay today?"
Was she going to be okay? Just yesterday it was Flurry and Arco that were rambling about joining! She was totally fine! It was themselves she should've been worrying about! Her? No!
Duck hummed, twiddling her hooves with a lack of intent.
"Just like what Arco said. Seems like your sister has a reputation around here, but don't let anypony bother you about it at sixth. You're better than whoever she is, even if I don't even know her. You're not her. You're you. All right?"
Duck appreciated the kind words and reassuring advice, but that was more than just a tad awkward and poorly phrased. Or was she just imagining it as such? No, she was the awkward one. What was she talking about? Flurry could speak more than just a sentence at a time, look at her. Funnier and more sure of herself. Look at that.
A hoof moved her mane out of her eyes.
"I'm just..."
The very prospect of her nonchalantly speaking seemed to perturb Flurry, who flinched and looked her way. Duck floundered.
"...I'm just upset that we have to lie down and take it."
Flurry patted her on the shoulder.
"Well, sometimes you have to do that," she said, ending it with a giggle. Had she said something funny? "Besides, we'll show them. They could've let us take the classes we wanted, but now they've riled up the baddest trio in school. And we'll bite hard."
Duck sucked in her lips.
B-RIIIIING!
The response was quick, as both her friends and everypony else in the cafeteria slowly rose from their seats and began gathering their stuff.
"Let's kick some butt today, huh?" Flurry asked her.
Duck found the smallest capacity to smile.
She nodded.
"Hai."
Could you really kick butt on a random grassy field?
Duck looked down and kicked a patch of it. Her hoof got stuck, and so she lifted it back up and stood straight.
You couldn't even kick the grass. Was this the Hoofball field?
Her gaze drew to her left as the cool breeze drifted through her and the rest of the crowd, toward the Y-shaped poles and the massive amount of bleachers past the chain-link fence about half a meter from her position. The grass over there was lined with yellows, whites, and more yellows. That was the Hoofball field. Okay.
She fidgeted.
Then where were they at? The frisbee golf course?
They were off-campus. That was for sure. She, Flurry, and Arco had had to go through a metallic gate just to arrive at where they were all standing now, waiting for nothing with their jackets and the sun cooking them nicely and the breeze swiftly reassuring and cooling them with a nice carpet bomb every so often. The rectangular patch of grass they were occupying dipped down a foot or so and continued onward, extending into the massive, shrouded forest that marked the western border of Ponyville High's... well, border. A few collections of ponies in the PE class, trotting around the track at a normal-looking pace, made circles, staring at the likewise group of ponies just... standing there at the edge of campus ground. They probably thought they were all intruders or something from a rival school, scouting the competition out and laughing at the absurdity presented to them.
As for the group, well... they were... something.
At the sight of her—as the gate had made quite the ruckus—one of the ponies, a Pegasus, already waiting crossed her forelegs and grumbled something obviously distasteful and definitely rude, bunching up her red tie atop her now-firmly placed hooves. A Unicorn next to her, adjusting her blue bowtie, glared at the subject of the first, then at the first herself. An Earth Pony—finishing the trifecta of races noticeably perfectly—fussed with her yellow infinity scarf and cursed Celestia of all ponies.
On the contrary, a quartet of mares dressed like they'd just escaped the local coffee shop and aroma store waved happily at her, sipping from cups of steam-fuming liquids and munching on donuts. One of them unbuttoned the flannel shirt under their blue school jacket and fluffed up their beanie. Another minded the dry paint covering her hooves. A third adjusted her glasses. The last was wearing a light-gray cardigan over their jacket—a... notable choice—and what looked to be a crown made of flowers.
She could tell the next group by their blue jerseys already defiled with dirt and muck. Doubly so by their pointing and snickering as soon as she, Flurry, and Arco had appeared. Five jocks. Perfect.
Four ponies, a bit short and stout, minded their own business and sat on the floor. Two played on their handhelds, one sketched on a notepad, and another was listening to very loud music heard even through their gargantuan headphones.
Duck quivered, and she wasn't sure whether it was because of the cold wind coming at her this time's fault or not.
The four different groups of ponies talked amongst themselves, some more than others, some less, some arguing quietly, and others arguing loudly about what sounded like this year's candidates if that made any sense.
The thumping of Arco's hoof against the Earth finally reached her ears and saved her from herself.
"It's been five minutes." He turned to Flurry, to Duck's left. "Think the teacher bailed?"
Flurry kept a straight face, but her tone betrayed it. "Gods, I hope so. Maybe then we'd have an excuse."
One of the coffee-sippers—wow that felt vehemently rude—lowered her cup and regarded Duck and her friends. "Think they said she'd be late."
Arco laughed. "Course."
"Hope she takes her time. Need t' finish my mocha."
They turned away.
The five parties remained standing in relative peace, at least one of the individuals participating anxiously anticipating anything that could happen in the meanwhile. The sounds of the track-trotters clip-clopped in rising and lowering volume. From what she assumed to be the airplane hangar on the opposite end of the school started up a muffled-but-still-noticeable propeller that started out sputteringly loud and settled into a moderate, infinitely more appealing hum. Something promptly thunked and raaaang against one of the Y-shaped poles. The Rec Games class was probably sharing the field with the PE class.
She hiccuped at once.
An ear went up, but everypony else kept up whatever they were doing.
Flurry and Arco looked her way, then at each other.
WHIRRRRRRRR!
Like some kind of canine, she turned a few degrees and faced directly into the forest.
Rolls-Royce... six-hundred-and-fifty horsepower... loud, and growing louder.
By now, the entire Tankery class had stopped their doings, facing toward the forest as well.
WHIRRRRRR CHNK WHIRRRRR!
Crumphill. Most certainly.
As if to confirm her assumptions and suspicions, a Mark 3 Crumphill Centurion MBT burst from the massive brush lining the edge of the woods, doing a little hop into the air about a hundred or so yards from her and the others. There, its engine revving up and its Driver shifting gears, it veered to the left and began doing donuts in the dirt, kicking up grass and soil that flung up from behind it and mixed in with the cloud of dust that had followed it since its emergence. Finished with one spin, it traveled two meters before making another half-circle, heading toward the center of the field, doing another full donut, and rolling their way... fast.
Duck stood her ground, but everypony else performed a double-take and motioned to move away. Flurry grabbed at her side, but she remained still. She knew this maneuver. Her mother had playfully done it countless times before. Run at the crowd at full speed, then skid to a stop just before you had the risk of hitting them.
The Centurion did exactly that, even turning about to make a parallel line with the students who were, by now, probably sullying themselves. Duck felt on the verge of that too. She couldn't call herself exempt.
Its engine roaring and bellowing, the Centurion kept completely still like a statue, with nothing occurring from both its side and the students' side. It seemed as if the entire latter faction was collectively holding their breath, waiting for whatever was going to happen next.
The engine rumbled to a halt, and the field was quiet once more...
...until the Commander's cupola opened up with a BREEE THUNK!, and a light blue mare with a flowing chocolate mane emerged, lifted herself from the confines of her roomy position, vaulted over the armored side-skirts, revealed her army-green uniform, and strode forward a few inches. She lifted her head, smiled to herself, scanned the crowd above her from left to right then back from the left again, and gave them all a salute.
"Good afternoon, students! Welcome to Tankery!"
She didn't give them time to applaud—though a few ponies did—and beckoned them with a hoof.
"Come on down! We've much to do today!"
The—if her mental math was correct—twenty students took pause and looked confusedly at each other for presumed guidance. None of them knew exactly what to do.
Go down and join her. You know what to do.
Duck smooshed an imaginary cigarette into the grass by her hooves.
Finally, one of the jocks, at the insistence of her teammates, stepped forward, and the rest of the class followed suit, trotting down the incline and gathering around the left side of the teacher's Centurion.
"I'm Mrs. Red Wood, but you can call me Mrs. Red!"
She approached the first group on her left—the ones who'd been keeping to themselves—and shook their hooves with noticeable excitement. She went to each and every pony lined up around her, exchanging greetings and giddy nods as she went. Finally, she reached Duck's little sector of the crowd and shook Arco's hoof.
"Pleased to meet you!"
Flurry's.
"Ah, Flurry Heart! Never expected to see you here!"
"Neither did I."
Duck's.
...
Duck's.
Mrs. Red had stopped, her hoof raised to shake Duck's but staying where it was near her body. She looked as if she was about to yell at her for being who she was.
Suddenly, she almost zoomed forward, about wrenching Duck's foreleg out of its socket as she exclaimed, "Duck Bill! I'd heard you were attending Ponyville High this year, but I didn't think it was true!" A few of the other students gave Duck a stink eye. "I'm so proud of you for joining, even after your sister's last match! Oh, this year is gonna be a good one!"
She stepped back.
Mrs. Red lifted a hoof and lightly rapped on the side of her tank. At once, its engine sputtered back to life and shuddered forward. She brandished an ear-to-ear grin. "If you'll all follow me, we'll head where the tank's going and go see the garages we'll be using for this year!"
This all seemed so surreal. She'd come here to avoid the very machine the teacher was commanding, and yet here she was following it. It was as if she'd never left. Her stomach gurgled and grumbled at her the extent of her stupidity. She threatened to empty it. It shut up.
"Now, what's everypony here know about tanks?!"
There was a soft murmur amongst the marching crowd that wasn't all too helped by the Centurion's growling engine and thundering tracks.
"Uh," voiced somepony, "they were designed by Lieutenant Applejack before the Global War."
"The Equestrian tanks were! Good job!" Mrs. Red commended, bunching up her cheek. "Anypony else?"
One of the jocks chortled. "They go boom." She and her posse went bonkers.
Mrs. Red rolled her eyes and had to nod. "Very good. At least you know your basics." She cleared her throat and spoke louder as the Centurion snapped a few loose twigs and tree branches that had been neglected in the field. "Tanks were one of Equestria's main fighting forces before the War began, alongside our planes and our battleships!" She thumped the Centurion again. "This is a Centurion Mark 3, sent over from our allies over in Crumphill here recently! Now, this kind of tank is unable to be used in Tank Warudo! Can anypony tell me why?"
It was built after the armistice. Tank Warudo was designed to be fought as if the war was actually happening, and everything that had been made was to be used as such.
"Y-you said recently," one of the coffee-drinkers fumbled, their coffee having singed their tongue.
"Yes!" Mrs. Red shouted, "Tanks built after the armistice are unable to join Tank Warudo. It is illegal to field one on any occasion." She suddenly became aware of the sand-colored building that Duck and the others had already been noticing before. She clacked her teeth together loudly and, presumably, accidentally. "Ohp! It looks like we've reached the garage, class! Before we open it up, I'd like you all to find a few partners!"
At once, the four groups bunched together like they'd been part of a magnetic field. The Centurion continued onward, stopping at the far left garage as Mrs. Red and the class stayed where they were just at the edge of the business end of the wall.
The—for lack of a better term—nerds talked among themselves.
The coffee-lovers exchanged smiles.
The jocks hoof-bumped and giggled.
The crude trifecta, though incredibly hesitant at first, grumbled curses and bitterly formed a half-hearted crew.
Flurry and Arco hopped next to Duck without even a second thought.
This prompt convergence left a sole pony that Duck hadn't noticed before, a Unicorn with a light gray coat and a navy blue and light blue striped mane who looked about and caught sight of Duck in kind. She blinked. They blinked.
Flurry let out a long, long breath of air.
Arco piped up quietly next to Duck.
"You remember those bullies you fought the other day?"
Duck nodded. What exactly was he meaning?
He pointed at the Unicorn, who was now glaring threateningly.
"That's Bluebell. That's who they follow."
Duck went white.
Bluebell raised her hoof, causing Mrs. Red to ask, "Yes?"
"Can I change classes?" Bluebell inquired, her voice kind of raspy.
Mrs. Red shook her head.
Bluebell, deflating and hissing like a balloon at one of Duck's one-pony birthday parties, stomped over to where Duck and her friends stood, threw her rear onto the ground, crossed her forelegs grumpily, and muttered, "Grouped up with a Pumpkinhead. Great."
Duck shied away.
Flurry gave Bluebell a glare that she couldn't see.
Duck looked up at Mrs. Red as she continued.
"Good to see! It seems like we're all good! Now, if you don't already, remember the names of your group members! They are now your tank crew for the year!"
Duck would have spewed water onto the ground if she'd been drinking any. Stuck inside a tank—first off—with the leader of a pack of bullies?!
The rest of the class wooped and hollered, trying to seem excited.
"Now, onto today's subject!" Mrs. Red proclaimed, lifting her chin and beginning to pace back and forth in front of them all. "Tankery teaches a mare to be prim, proper, and polite. In this class, you will learn kindness, you will learn sportsmanship, you will learn grace, and, above all else, you will learn friendship."
"As if we don't have enough of that," Bluebell murmured.
"In the face of danger, you will not retreat, you will not despair, and you will not falter! You will learn to have nice conversations with your opponents, answering a shell with another, bigger shell of your own!" Mrs. Red stopped and faced them. "I understand if you feel a tad overwhelmed by all of this—because, honestly, there is a lot to learn before your first match—but we will be working hard these next few weeks to ensure that you are as prepared as you could be!" First match?! "Now! If you'd follow me, we'll go and enter the garages where you all will be working! Come on, then!"
They all followed Mrs. Red as she about-faced with perfect finesse, marching at opposite times as her that both she and Duck seemed to notice and cringe at. Turning to her left and making a horizontal circle with her hoof, she directed the Centurion move about fifty meters away so the leftmost door could be opened without any fuss. Duck watched it as it went, and almost collided with Flurry as she and the class halted at once. Mrs. Red, rearing up on her hindlegs, grabbed hold of the two handles marking the rightmost garage's entryway, wrestled them ajar, and threw them open, where they thunked on the adjacent, apparently brick, walls. Being motioned to continue following, the class stepped into the garage and began whispering to each other.
The walls were lined with rectangular windows in four-by-three borders, letting in little blocks of sunlight that created a Rubik's Cube shape in its glistening wake. Crates upon crates upon crates sat on wheeled carts, containing belts of MG ammunition that hung over the edges like froth on a glass of cider. Patches of oil and grease dotted the floor in streaks and drops, mixing in with the assorted handymare tools, spare tracks, shell casings, tarps, and road wheels that lay all around there as well. The interior, a dreary, brick-lain tan, almost made Duck want to vomit, though mostly because of the smell that she so, so hated. Pillars reaching from the floor to the ceiling marked each "bay" for the tanks... that weren't there. In fact, apart from what she'd just said, the entire garage was mostly empty.
Save for one thing that caused Duck to pause and stare at.
Sitting in front of them, its canvas cover torn to shreds, its left track disconnected and laid flat beneath it, the Commander's cupola propped open, its entire body covered in scratches, its armor chipped in countless places, what looked to be explosive damage along its front end, and, to top it off, the cannon barrel itself completely folded upward, was a rusty-looking tank, Crumphill-made if she was to guess.
The class' voices echoed.
"Whoa, it's a tank..."
"It's bigger than I thought it would be..."
"Look at it."
"It's all beat-up..."
"Poor tank..."
Somepony pointed at the far side of the garage. Everypony looked its way.
A brown tarp, massive in size, was bundled up on the floor.
"What's that?"
Mrs. Red answered, "The other tank crew." She clapped her hooves together and beamed. "They must already be out and about training for the season!"
"Who are they?"
"Are they Seniors?"
Mrs. Red shrugged. "Oh, nopony knows. The Commander never pokes her head out of her hatch."
Duck, in the meanwhile, had already turned to face the beat-up old tank sitting before them. And, her hooves on autopilot and Flurry whispering her name, began trotting toward it.
"What's she doing?"
"She okay?"
Her heart was beating out of her chest when she stopped an inch from its side. Her brain instantly switched back onto the frequency it had taken back in the boarding school, and she spoke without even thinking twice about it, "This is a Crumphill A34 Comet, Type A. You can tell by the double Normanedy cowlings on its rear that this is a later version." She hadn't seen this tank before on the Horsepowers team. It must have been one of their snipers. One of her hooves rose up to lightly caress its rounded mudguards. Crumphill. Just like her family had been using for years. It may have been a tank, but it was a familiar, incredibly welcomed sight to her.
She turned toward the class to find them giving her weird looks. All but Mrs. Red, who simply grinned. She would have peeled her ears back and fumbled in her dialogue. She would have sauntered back over to Flurry's side and hid herself beneath her hooves. Her head was telling her so.
But she didn't.
She raised her voice.
"Its armor isn't much to talk about, only being hard in the front..." She looked back at the front plate and smirked. "...but it can punch holes with the best of them." She pointed at the cannon, now. "77mm High-Velocity cannon, one of the best they have in Crumphill, able to penetrate even the toughest of Griffonian tanks."
She rapped on the mudguard...
...and jumped back.
SSSFICK!
SSSFICK!
SSSFICK!
SSS-THUMP!
The three—four, if the thump had been the concrete ground—white flags of the Comet had immediately deployed from its left side just an inch from Duck's face, on the opposite right side, and next to the Commander's cupola.
Composing herself, and genuinely feeling curious, Duck wheeled around and raised an eyebrow.
"What happened to the other tanks?"
Mrs. Red immediately straightened her posture, eyes shut and her white teeth glistening as she scratched the back of her head.
"That's a... that's a long story..."
The students looked her way as one singular unit.