//------------------------------// // You Can Do It! The Tank Goes! // Story: Mares und Panzer // by re- Yamsmos //------------------------------// "Ughhh, is this thing done yet?!" Duck snapped to attention, her eyes practically bouncing into an open position and her posture straightening like a tank cannon. She raised a hoof up in a crisp, much-too-rehearsed salute, but quickly realized where exactly she was at and stopped herself about midway up. Midway, Gods what an incredible battle that would have been. Blinking first one green eye and then the other, she cleared her throat and looked around the room idly. The silence of their octagonal table—only contained to them, taking into account the rambunctious attitudes of the rest of the class—ended up being the stallion's only answer. He glared daggers at the piece of shaped glass now only mere centimeters from his teeth-flashing muzzle and shot smoke out of his nostrils that caused Duck to suddenly glance about for an alarm system in an admittedly slight panic. A pony bumped into him, quickly whispered a half-hearted apology that he briskly ignored as well, and continued on their way with their conversation's space reaching across the entire stretch of the classroom's walls—deafeningly—ignorantly. A few scattered students here and there gave the two uproarious participants looks of annoyance, but didn't speak their minds and simply returned to their stations. The low whine of their hot plate went on its merry way, burning the underside of their graduated measuring cup invisibly. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE... "Uh?" The stallion leaned forward, looking down into the cup and straight into its vibrating contents. It was quiet again for awhile. And then a single, small, minuscule, tiny, little bubble formed and subsequently, very quickly, almost instantly, assuredly immediately, quintessentially instantaneously, popped. Pop! "Errr!" A mare, her chin resting in her hooves against the top of the table—and about eye-level with the hot plate, looking at her now—replied boredly, "Guess not." The stallion, whom Duck vaguely recalled as... she wanted to say Party Favour(?), placed his forelegs atop the table and lifted his chin from its previous position, a snarl squiggling his lips. "Godsdammit, everypony else is almost about done right now!" He, apparently, needed a confirmation, as he looked around wildly at the different groups of other ponies gathered around their own—boiling—cups and—beeping—measuring tablets, and, turning back to face his own group—composed of Duck Bill, the bored mare, himself, another mare who looked about ready to throw herself out of a window, and a slightly plump stallion wearing safety goggles and an apron... for boiling water with a hot plate, which she wasn't judging him for because that was kind of rude and wait crap she was in the middle of something there we go—inflated his cheeks. He scrunched up his snout and shouted, "Boil, damn you!" The teacher, Mr. Arsdale, suddenly appeared next to Party Favour and, wagging a hoof in his face, tutted with a grin, "Favour, language please." Favour looked up at the ceiling. He plopped himself onto his haunches and grumbled, "Sorry, Mr. Arsdale." The over-prepared stallion thumped his goggles to raise his hoof high. "Yes?" Mr. Arsdale asked. "We just can't seem to get our water to boil!" Mr. Arsdale adjusted his glasses and moved around the table to stand next to the hot plate, then placed a hoof under his chin and rubbed at his stubble, humming. The student continued, pointing lazily at the equipment, "We put it on the highest setting it would go, and..." He trailed off, noticing Mr. Arsdale's sudden glare. "What?" He leaned over and flicked the dial on the hotplate a few notches back, then snatched Duck's paper from in front of her—causing her to flinch and puff her cheeks—and thwacked it with a hoof, replying, "If you looked at the instructions on your paper, you'd see that you strictly shouldn't put your hot plate on the highest setting! Put it. On. Medium!" He took a step forward, as if to walk away, then turned about on a single remaining hindleg and waved his forelegs like very animated sock puppets against a canvas. "If you don't, you might end up with..." the forelegs faltered, "...uh, what is it you kids call it now, an epic fail?" Favour snickered. "We called it that about ten years ago, sir. Back when we were in, like, kindergarten." Mr. Arsdale kept his goofy grin, but nodded, his eyes telling a completely different story of embarrassment and utter heartbreak. "'kay." And he was off again. Favour couldn't bear it any longer, and threw his two hooves over his mouth, cackling quietly now. The over-prepared stallion spoke up, "I still say 'epic fail'." "Yeah, you would!" His sudden outburst being accompanied by a nest of activity in their cup, Favour made an incomprehensible, definitely foreign, guttural noise with his foreleg in the air, gazed over to their equipment with particularly darting eyes, and flung himself onto the table in a yellow blur. There, he shut one eye tightly, tilted his head, mouthed a few... things under his hot breath, and stared into the water-filled glass with the utmost amount of absolute concentration that, Duck, seeing not one Favour from her position behind the glass but a myriad of them—with one, big, massive, gargantuan eye shared between them—all but accidentally laughed at instead. Pop! "Errrrrrrrr..." "If I may, Party Favour..." came a voice from behind the hailed stallion, who immediately brandished a scowl and didn't even turn their way, "...you should see if the bottom of your measuring cup is wet at all. It might be the cause to all your grief." The source was revealed as Favour whipped about, bearing his teeth at none other than Mr. Arsdale's second period Oceanography's local know-it-everything (the class of which Duck was actually placed in to her disappointment, as she'd checked off Chemistry before her first day, but they'd apparently had not enough room), Capi Tulo Perra, or better known as Perra, which was apparently a name that everypony laughed at whenever they so much as barely even heard it. Duck never got the memo. Which made sense. People never talked to her. Which was okay with her, honestly. She shrugged. The mare next to her shrugged as well. Duck looked away. So she didn't see Favour barking at Perra until she was pushing him back with her magic. And even then, he still found the time and the place—in second period, on a Friday no less—to hiss, "Would you just mind your own business, Miss 'Perfect'?!" She did end up seeing Mr. Arsdale look over at the starting conflict, take a step forward to probably bring up some old internet slang again, slowly put the hoof back down onto the tiled floor, and turn right back around to help the students he was now hushing to gather their attention, though, so at least she wasn't completely missing out on the things that she most certainly was wanting—and now currently trying—to miss out on. She placed her lips in a straight frown, flicked an ear, and tilted her head to stare at the cute poster near the emergency eye flushing station—which merited such a thing fixed adjacent to its scary, bright orange figure—that read "You Otter Wear Your Safety Equipment!" with an adorable little fluffy sea otter holding up a socket wrench (something they didn't have any use for in an Oceanography class) and clutching his hard hat (something she... hoped they didn't have any use for in an Oceanography class) with a big old smile plastered on his plastic face holes. If there was one thing to appreciate in the terrible drag that was her second-period class, it was Mr. Arsdale's abundance of weird collectables ranging from the aforementioned otter poster—which she guessed was more a precaution, and a little bit of a necessity, and probably a mandatory thing put upon him by the school darn it Duck you're so stupid—to little fish skeletons he'd later corrected her as being from the genus Salvelinus and not Salmo like she'd prior believed. The former encounter was doing wonders for sending her away from the one-sided argument she was now trying much harder to ignore, and the latter was probably what caused Mr. Arsdale to help her out a little more than the other students in terms of answering questions (or rather lack of, in her messy case) and doing work here and there in such little time of knowing each other. One of the diving teams they'd be monitoring over the course of the semester were due to go on a mission on Monday during lunch, and she reminded herself... inside of her own reminding to come over to this room to watch it on Mr. Arsdale's computer screen. Speaking of computers, she wanted to see if... oh, yep. The one student still sitting alone at their assigned seats near the front of the classroom was still browsing pictures on the search engine with black-lined, white-filled letters underlining their figures. She didn't understand the appeal of "mees", as she'd heard them called. And on the subject of appeals... Gods, this was turning out to be a pretty awful few days. She fiddled with her jacket, possibly as a way to jumpstart her remembrance, and actually managed to do it as she popped the topmost button off and snapped it back on, eliciting an odd look from the window-craving mare next to her in a—seemingly, if the likewise bewildered look on the over-prepared pony's face meant anything—blue moon occurrence. She'd started off her morning unconditionally, hitting her head on the wall next to her bed when the alarm she'd bought the other day went off like a rocket and sending the stars the object would see directly into her own two eyes. In a dizzy, and a whole-hearted panic more than just a bit eerily similar to the one of Griffonia's leaders had they foolishly gone through and invaded Yakyakistan, Duck had clutched her violently pulsating skull with both hooves and tangled herself in her sheets, tumbling down onto her floor with the alarm still blaring in her head... which dropped onto the floor having been snagged by her blanket and crashed directly onto her face. She'd screamed at it, assuredly freaking out her loathsome (of her) neighbors, but it didn't move an inch, instead opting on continuing its torrent of audible shrieks at her to rival her own emanating from her own dry throat. Eventually finding the strength to rip it away from her body and thereafter—regrettably, thinking back to it now—chucking it across the room and against something notably feline, which scared her because she didn't even like cats nor did she ever own one, she'd shot up onto all four hooves, made a move to head over to her bathroom, and slid onto her gut thanks to the combination of electrical alarm wires and fuzzy blanket fuzziness. Oh and then she'd forgotten to make herself breakfast again, which was probably a good, if accidental, choice, because she might have tried stuffing it into her ear or something because of the new, irreparable brain damage she'd accrued. Her stomach reminded herself of the event by gurgling. She eyed the nearby pair of tongs the students had been instructed to use in grabbing their recording equipment and debated stabbing them into her gut to quiet them down, then realized that, holy... crap she'd just thought about committing ritual Sudoku. Sudoku...? That was right, right? "...and that's not even right, Party Favour–" "I'll show you right, Perra!" Yesterday...! Yesterday was... also pretty bad. Why had she sounded excited about it? The rest of Tankery team were looking to be taken out by TDs early in any match they ever took part in, there was much work to be done inside her crew's thoroughly cramped Comet, and the fifth member she'd been counting on to join them out of the blue and completely caught off-guard oh-why-did-she-think-it-would-work-why-did-she-do-that ended up scampering away in a kind of fright Duck had... shown herself capable of countless times before. The closest thing to an experienced Radio Operator that they could have advantageously employed, and possibly another kind friend to make, and she'd disappeared at the simple mention of the Tankery class. Who was she kidding, anyway? It was the last day of the first week of school, which meant that changing somepony's electives around was going to become a hassle and a half for the counselors, which in turn meant that they'd simply stop doing it for any students wanting such a thing. Graham Cracker probably liked all of her electives and was in a good place, and yet here Duck had come, asking her to change her sixth period to a terrifying, gut-wrenching, tactical sport the likes of which nopony should have even thought about enrolling in. "And another thing!" The defenestration-seeker slammed her head onto the table as Favour and Perra's argument continued on, mumbling, "Oh, good grief..." in a very nonchalant response to her skull possibly splitting wide open at the seams from the bone to wood contact. Elsewhere around the classroom, as if the two's angry conversation was an ordinary happenstance, students bubbled and troubled and toiled away at their labs, jotting down figures and numbers and writing in variably legible responses on the back of their assignments, their hot plates heating away and their measuring cups measuring away at the water that was watering away and boiling even though that wasn't what water did too often and their recording equipment doing what it did best, which was—as judged by her quick scanning, since her group's own tools weren't actually being used at the moment—spitting out long lines of unintelligible numerals and literal jagged lines that went up, flat-lined, went up again, flat-lined again, and then went up past the top of the little white beeping screen. "Ponyson, you better not be making another M.R.E. with your burner again!" Mr. Arsdale called from the other side of the room of the olive shemagh wearing, beret toting stallion crouched down in the corner of the opposite side of the room with a lighter encased in a blue glow next to him. "I can smell the flame! You're not fooling me! You better not set your face on fire, again!" "Hey! I wasn't the one who set my face on fire; I was a victim, sir, and you know it!" Mr. Arsdale chuckled to himself and turned back around to assist the group of the hour with their lab. He pointed at something and said a few words that Duck couldn't make out. "'ey, Miss Quack, you alive over there?" The table members—including Favour, who looked to be pretty pleased with himself for some reason or another—giggled, smiling at her and fiddling with their respective gear. Duck peeled her ears back and bunched up her cheeks, finding a bit of interest in the floor at her hooves. Nicknames, and yet they were being nice to her with no ulterior motive whatsoever. She didn't get it. But she nodded all the same. "Good, we need a good writer for the paper, and I think you have the best hoofwriting out of all of us here," Over-prepared said. Window raised her hoof, but scrunched up her nose and decided otherwise. Bored shrugged. Favour opened his mouth to defend himself, looked over at the math homework he'd been told not to work on in Oceanography class, picked up the first sheet on top, made sure Mr. Arsdale wasn't looking, buried his nose in it, tilted his head, hummed for a while, lowered the paper, revealed his frown, and took the paper in one hoof and lazily spun it into the air back onto the pile. "Eh." CRRRKT! Duck, for a second, believed that she'd been glanced by an APCBC shell somehow and was even lying on the ground to suit it, but glimpsed about the room to find everypony staring at the intercom near the door. She looked at it too. Would Graham be on? Her answer came to her an instant later, as the unmistakable, quickly recognizable voice of Graham came on, "Gooood morning Ponyville High! Today is the Eighteenth of August, and here are your morning announcements!" A few of the students—followed by... well, the rest of the students around Duck—relaxed, leaning against walls, tables, and chairs to listen up attentively. "Ahem..." Graham... sighed. Duck looked at her table group. They had the same look she hoped she was displaying. Which was one of genuine curiosity and confusion. "Hooo... okay. Ah-hem! So! Today is the last day to change your... your electives, so m-make sure you do so before it's too late! Sign-up for such changes are in the curriculum office and with your counselors, so make sure you see either of them if you realize that maybe being in Mr. Warmsteel's AP Ancient Civilizations first period doesn't suit your fancy." "Haw!" went Mr. Arsdale, arms crossed. "Also, special tanks– guh!" Duck's eyes widened. The intercom was quiet for awhile, save for the white noise usually accompanying a microphone, and then, finally, Graham came back on. Duck could just see Graham's red face. She spoke slower this time. "Special. Thanks... to, heh heh, special thanks to Principal Cheese and Vice Principal Lane for helping organize this year's pep rally! We hope it's a great one, and we hope to see everypony there-there-there-there-there...!" "Is she okay?" "What's wrong with her?" "Did the mic skip?" "What's going on?" Graham silenced them. In stutters. "Uh... sorry, folks! I, uh, I-I-I dunno what's... oh Gods... uuuuuuum, let's see here, we... yes, the Homecoming game is... is next week...! We'll be facing the Cloudsdale Storms, er, Kickers I mean...! Yay us! Hopefully we win!" Favour snickered. "...hopefully!" Quiet, again. Graham clucked her tongue. "Aaaanyway, the Aviation team wants you... to come fly with them! Spitfires, Wildcats, Zeros, and 109s—they've got 'em all! Have you ever wanted to hop into a metal box and roll along the... I mean, uh... have you ever wanted to... oh..." Duck sucked on her teeth. Was Graham okay– "I'M SO SORRY, DUCK BILL! I'LL JOIN YOUR TANK CREW! YOU CAN DEPEND ON ME, MA'AM!" CRRRKT! The quiet rushed back to Duck... and so did a beet red face, which she gave to the twenty-or-so ponies now looking at her with varying looks of annoyance, confusion, disgruntlement, anger, and happiness... ...which all changed as the intercom sounded once more. CRRRKT! "ALL AFTER-SCHOOL PROGRAMS ARE CANCELED TODAY. THAT IS ALL. G-GOOD NIGHT." CRRRKT! Duck blinked. Flurry blinked. As did Arco. Bluebell, in the middle of a yawn, kind of had to blink. Standing before the group was a bundle of tan clothing topped with an olive green helmet coiled by shiny goggles, which raised a clump of a foreleg up to salute them. Despite the much-too-big sleeve, the figure's hoof still made an audible clack against their Equestrian Tanker helmet. "Reporting for duty, ma'am!" Bluebell pursed her lips and looked at Flurry. "Who the hell's this?" Duck was the one to respond, much to Flurry's, Arco's, Bluebell's, and her own surprise. "Graham Cracker, our morning announcer!" Flurry and Arco beamed. Bluebell, in the meanwhile, rolled her eyes and crossed her forelegs, having already been seated on the ground. "Great. You got the Stuttermare, huh?" What a rude nickname. Graham apparently held more self-security and self-esteem than Duck did, still keeping her salute and her grin amidst the fluffiness and puffiness of her ensemble. Duck grinned and walked over to Graham, who lowered her gesture and faced her peacefully. Most of the outfit was... pretty much unnecessary, looking at it now. The only real usage any of it would see is reducing a head injury thanks to the '38 helmet, and the gloves Duck now noticed Graham was wearing, which just in general would keep her safe from spent shells, new shells, and... shells. "Did you buy all this this morning?" Duck asked, cautiously grabbing Graham's right sleeve and looking at the single gold delta stitched onto the shoulder. Was this all authentic? "Yes, ma'am!" "You can stop with the 'ma'am' stuff, Stuttermare," Bluebell piped up, having walked up next to Duck without her even noticing... which showed, because she jumped at the blue mare's voice and made a small eep she hoped hadn't been heard. Bluebell leaned over and propped a very unwelcome elbow on Duck's side, smirking, "we're not actual Tankers or anything. Don't think anypony here knows what one even is." Graham opened her mouth. "What she meant to say, Graham," came Arco, trotting over and shaking her hoof, "was 'welcome to the team'!" "We're happy to have you, Graham," went Flurry, pulling alongside Duck's right. "We don't know anypony else who could take your spot as–" "Hahaha! And who might this be, little shrimps?" Their response was instant, and quite frankly looked to be rehearsed. With snarls mucking up their muzzles, Duck, Flurry, Arco, and even Bluebell turned around to find five, much taller, jersey-wearing mares smiling at them in a tight pack, having apparently left the side of their childishly-painted Tiger H to... do anything than what they were supposed to do. The other teams—stacked in a line in the same order they'd been assigned—continued their duties, cleaning up their tanks and installing equipment crucial to Tank Warudo legal standards. "Oh go to hell, Lily, you can just–" "Is that Graham Cracker in that pile of clothing?" Lily asked, cutting Bluebell off and walking over to Graham, "How you doin' in there, Stuttermare? Little warm?" "I don't even have a stutter–" Lily turned to Duck this time. "Merry band of losers you have here, Quackers." The mare Duck barely recognized as Hail Mary chimed in... and as did Field Goal, Peanut Brittle, and Whipgrass. "Bunch of loooooosers!" Flurry stuck her tongue out at Lily's shadows. They raised collective eyebrows. Flurry shrank away, a determined look still proudly displayed on her face even as she backpedaled. "Don't wanna brag, but we'll definitely be the best crew on this team. Just you watch. We'll win all of our matches, just you see." Did she want to say it a third time, or... "Get off your high-horse, canheads." "What was that... dude?" Duck joined Flurry in facing Arco's way. He stood glaring at the five Hoofball players, and spat, "I doubt that you'd win in a Tank battle if you couldn't even sling a Hoofball a few dozen yards..." Lily growled at him like some kind of feral beast, but Field Goal stepped up out of the bunch and stopped just an inch from Arco. "Oh, huh? What's it like being a guy in a girl's sport, huh? You know, the sport where we mares become more proper, and kind? You should be happy we're not guys. We'd stuff you in a locker and call you a girly colt for the rest of the year." Graham, in the newly undisturbed meanwhile, was sat down on the concrete ramp, looking like a child wearing her father's lengthy wartime clothing and flapping her wind-stricken sleeves absent-mindedly. She probably realized it'd be better off to sit this one out. Duck would have too, but she was dumb. Very dumb. She swiveled about on a hoof and yelled, "How about you all just go home and eat a... sock!" She gasped and clutched her mouth as the jocks simply lost it. "Oh, we'll get started on that right away!" "Gonna go find a sock right now!" "Hahahaha!" "Fuhuhuhu!" "Hehehehe!" They all walked back to their Tiger... which was right next to her Comet still. They gave her crew dirty looks, pulling down an eyelid each and sticking their tongues out, making "Blehhhh!" sounds. Duck fumed. "Is everything all right over here, Duck?" Mrs. Red's voice asked, accompanying their Tankery teacher as her boots clicked and clacked along the floor and suddenly stopped. Duck pouted out her lower lip and watched the jocks begin loading ammunition into their Tiger's rear hatch, which honestly looked a bit too small for them. "No," she finally lied. Mrs. Red walked up next to her. She crossed her arms. Her tail flicked idly. "A formidable opponent, the Tiger H1." Duck hummed. "A counter to the Yaks' deadly T-34. Destined to be the bane of the Allied Forces in the Never War inside of Griffonia. Aces like Staudegger could spell trouble for an entire platoon." Mrs. Red looked down at Duck. "Do you think your crew—your Comet—could fight them off?" "Wait that's hypothetical right?" Arco asked from behind her. Duck realized the meaning of Arco's question. And she looked over at Mrs. Red as well... alarmed. And Mrs. Red shook her head, and as Duck's heart began to beat out of her chest, she walked away toward a good area in front of the different five tanks and waggled a hoof around idly, calling the attention of the class under her jurisdiction. Flurry, tapping Duck on the side, nodded toward Mrs. Red and the rest of the now assembling Tankery class. Duck swallowed a lump down her throat and trotted over, trailing behind Flurry in silence. "Well, Duck Bill," Mrs. Red began, apparently not minding that Duck was still barely out of earshot and almost thought she'd cursed at first, "I'm glad to see that you were able to find a fifth member for your Comet! I suppose that that means that we can finally begin lessons today!" She clapped her hooves together and all but squeed, "Our first pre-test is simple!" She threw her forelegs out in a spread-eagle and shouted, "We'll start the class off with a practice match!" Douh... duh... what?! "All right!" "Yeah!" "Can we not?" "No!" "Dammit!" "Woohoo!" "I'm so excited!" "Now, everypony, if you would, please get into your tanks!" "We're goin' a bit fast here, don't you think Mrs. Red?" Pine Needle asked, swirling her coffee cup around and running her teeth along her burned tongue. Mrs. Red only beamed. "That's why it's a pre-test, Pine! Now get up there!" Pine bunched up her cheeks, looked left and right for any means of escape—which numbered exactly zero, because Duck had just finished checking herself—and finally, shakily, trotted over to her Cruiser and disappeared behind the hulking Tiger H1, the future occupants of which were eagerly climbing on to it and thereafter hopping into different hatches. From what Duck could make out in her still feverishly swimming (more like drowning, actually) vision, Lily took up residence in the Commander's cupola, Hail took a seat at the Driver's side, Field Goal sat in the Gunner's chair, Peanut Brittle—presumably, as no other position sat in the gun besides it—became the Loader, and Whipgrass was left to operate the MG 34 nestled in the bow. Duck gulped, then, for some reason, shot it back up, swished it around, and spat it onto the ground. She brandished a grin and furrowed her brow. No. She could do this. She had a full crew under her command, and she actually had experience with tanks... even if just a little bit! She could do this! She turned tail in a hurry and clambered up the Comet's side skirts, placing a hoof on the Commander's cupola and reaching for the hinge to crack it open. Someone cleared their throat next to her. She looked over. It was Flurry, standing over the Driver's "door" and disallowing Arco entry. The Alicorn took a step up and blinked at Duck. "Uh... Duck?" Duck cocked her head. "Yes?" Flurry bit on her lower lip, glanced down at her jacket—which looked fine—and stared back up at Duck. "Do you mind if... maybe... I sit up there...?" Arco, his hoof near his chest after pulling open his door, gave Flurry a telling look directly into the back of her head. BUT YOU KNOW HOW TO DO IT. "Um..." YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO. "Uh, hm..." YOU KNOW HOW TO COMMAND. "...o-okay." No you don't. Flurry, beaming as brightly as the sun, nodded at Duck and brushed past her to take command of the Comet, but not before both Graham Cracker and Bluebell hopped through the cupola and took their own places. Duck made some kind of noise, trotting atop the Comet's glacis to get into the ex-Machine Gunner's place... which Graham wasn't going to be occupying. Which was one of the reasons she was even here in the first place. That was rude. She wasn't just here for– "What the hell is this door?" Duck looked over at Arco to find him awkwardly cramming himself into the Driver-side door, one of his hooves pinned against his chest and the other flailing uselessly into the sky. He looked over at Duck after a few seconds of hardcore struggling, flashed her a grin, and laughed. "Help me." "Um, just..." Duck brought up a hoof for assistance and promptly made a circle with it. "Just turn your body around and slide in butt-up." Arco raised an eyebrow, and then he did as he was advised. And slid right in. His voice was muffled from the position Duck heard it in. "Oh, thanks Duck." She quickly jumped into her own seat with a hum of acknowledgment and began admiring the setup for the Radio Operator that they'd haphazardly strewn together yesterday. Though the Machine Gunner's periscope remained where it hung, the rest of the newly-replaced position's equipment had been given a face-lift. A small "shelf" if she could bear the pain of calling it had been lodged against the confinements of the Radio Operator's space, their No. 19 radio sitting right on top of it with all of its complicated wires, knobs, tubes, and fittings still in one piece. It had been a pain in the butt to move everything from the turret into the tight interior of the front, but they'd managed pretty well for what Duck was sure her mother would view as an "uncouth misappropriation". Letting out a sigh, and hearing the telltale bumps and thumps of a comfort-seeking crew to her immediate right and directly behind her, Duck adjusted her posture in her seat and suddenly found chuckles gracing her ears, echoed by the... well, the tank. "Now I know why you sit like you do," Arco went, shrinking in his own seat, rising again, and slowly sinking once more. He reached a hoof down, a hoof up, and rose another time. "This is super weird to me right now." "Hey, you two all right up there?" came Flurry's voice. Duck leaned over toward the middle of the Comet's front "room". She yelled into the circular hole, facing the rear, what she thought was a good enough answer. "Yeah!" "Ohp, hold on a second! Mrs. Red is saying something– guys, you might wanna hear this too!" Duck reached for her still open door, hoping that Arco would follow suit, and poked her head out of the hatch to find Mrs. Red pacing in front of her class' tanks, yelling, "If I could have it, would you all please start your vehicles!" "You'd think we'd be streetracing with stuff like that–" Bluebell mumbled behind Duck. "Shh!" shushed Graham. Duck became aware of her heart again, which had apparently found an admittedly promising but very noisy career as a heavy metal drum soloist. She hummed Crumpish Grenadiers to drown it out, but still minded it as she looked around to see who would be the first to successfully start their tank up. Mrs. Red, darting about, leaning over, and swiftly looking around at each tank crew at even the slighest noise, suddenly opened her mouth and let loose an uproarious, "Whoop!" as a low putt-putt-putter fell over the front of the garage, became a steady burrrrrr in a second, and made odd whrrr whrrr whrrr sounds as if it were on a bullet-fast rollercoaster going up and down heckishly. She raced past Duck's vision, and knew that it wasn't the Tiger. The hipsters had managed to start up the Cruiser Mark IV. Duck craned her neck around as the first roars of the SOMUA's V8 emerged, but the telltale sound of the M5A1 Stuart's Twin Cadillacs behind it smothered it with its unreasonably beefy rooooooooooo buh buh buh buh buh accompanying its successful ignition. Duck grinned, and swiftly covered her ears as Arco apparently found the switch in the Comet's front controls. Their own engine, the glorious Rolls-Royce Meteor V12, began with a low whine reminiscent of a weed whacker and a chainsaw midway through a tree stump that cut through her defenses and rang mercilessly in her eardrums, finally—finally—caught, and, after a torrent of puhduhduhduhduh, began chugging along routinely, ending in a satisfying, apparently Graham-moan-inciting, vrooooooooom muh muh muh muh and idling, shaking the interior of the Comet with each puff. It seemed a long while with no additional uprise in noise, and Duck raised an eyebrow. From somewhere in the noise of the four running engines, Mrs. Red called out, "I've got it in there! All you need to do is crank it now!" The hoof crank? An odd choice, Duck noted. She wormed her way a bit out of the Radio Operator's hatch and sat up a bit on the mudguard of the Comet, peering over at the school-colors-wearing Tiger H, its users crowding around the rear end and watching as Lily took a step forward, rubbed her forelegs together, and grabbed hold of what Duck—though she couldn't see—knew to be the inertia starter for the Tiger's flywheels, which, when turned at a high rate, created a substantial amount of kinetic energy that would be transfered over to the crankshaft by the pull of a simple lever located right next to it. Such a thing usually concerned starting the Tiger up in cold conditions like the inside of Yakyakistan, which, taking note of the seventy-or-so degrees it currently was outside, made the whole idea... odd. A low, seemingly distant whirring stirred within the depths of Heck. Duck blanched. WHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH Lily kept her pace, cranking as hard as she was able. WHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH Arco popped his head a bit more out as well. Flurry moved back as Bluebell and Graham poked out next to her. From a little to the left of the Tiger's upper front, she could make out Pine Needle popping open her own hatch to stare wide-eyed at the now more noticeable noise echoing across the field. WHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH "Think it's about done there, Lily! Hail, if you would pull that lever, there! Yes, that one!" Lily took a step back and watched Hail fall to the floor and reach for it. "Ready!" CLUNK! "C'mon, then..." For a second or two, it sounded as if the engine died away quietly, fading away quickly... ...before a multitude of metallic clanks and thumps banged about, bringing with them a column of smoke from the Tiger's two exhaust pipes, and a powerful, bestial, angry, furious VROOM VROOOOOM BRRRRRRRRR DOO DOO DOO DOO DOOOOOOOOOOO VUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH! Duck sucked in a long breath and shivered. Flurry was at a loss for words. Arco found them. "What was that?!" Duck lifted her chin, set her jaw, and caught the wide-eyed attention of her multi-colored crew. "That's the sound of Death waking up from a long, long slumber." They collectively looked at the Tiger once more as the jocks whooped, cheered, and hopped back into their respective places, shook like leaves, and climbed back into their own places within the Comet. Duck, shaking her head at the now more pressing realization of fighting a gen-u-ine Griffonian Tiger H1 in an unfamiliar tank, steadied her manic breathing, shut her eyes, fanned her hooves around, and slid back into her seat. She reached for her headset and placed them around her neck as Mrs. Red's voice, noticeably close by and still, surprisingly, relatively easy to hear, went, "Here's a map," and traded audible places with the sound of her combat boots against the pavement. Flurry, hunching over inside her Commander's space, unfolded the apparent map with a resolute array of shk shk shhhs and tapped her hoof against it with a not-so-resolute wibbleduh. "It says here," Duck heard Flurry begin, causing her to turn her neck around and possibly strain it, "we're going to be on the top-left side of what Mrs. Red has labeled the Combat Area, located just South East of Ponyville a safe ways away from the train tracks. Main place looks a bit like a rectangle with an X in the middle, actually, dirt road-wise." "Who's in the center?" Bluebell piped up. The paper shuffled. Please don't be Tiger, please don't be Tiger. "SOMUA." Thank the Gods. Duck licked her lips. "Where's... um, where's the Tiger going to be?" Flurry hummed and knocked on the floor. "Opposite side as us, Duck! Bottom right." Bottom right gave them enough time to deal with whoever came after them, a well-deserved rest they'd need to take complete advantage of to discuss how to take the Tiger down. "Cruiser, lower left! Stuart, top right! SOMUA, middle! Bet they're mad about that," Flurry giggled, Graham joining in cutely. "Tiger, bottom right, and Comet top left!" So, Cruiser definitely first. The Comet's cannon versus the Cruiser's was a bit of a no-brainer, but the fight could still be quickly—unexpectedly—over if the Cruiser managed to nail their ammo or their engine, the latter of which was an instant out, the former of which was something they'd have to physically deal with and attempt fixing so they could keep on rolling along. "Hahaha!" Bluebell chortled, a low whirring sound following shortly afterward. "Let that Cruiser head my way! I'll blow 'em to smithereens!" So Bluebell was their Gunner. Which meant that Graham was their Loader. At least she was safe to handle shells... Her Radio Operator's side door still wide open, Duck sat up and watched as first the Stuart rolled forward and disappeared out of sight. The SOMUA, stopping and starting in violent fits—as if, for some random reason, its occupants were fighting over who got control—finally chugged down the ramp and followed the Stuart's movements. Glancing about to her right, she watched the Tiger's massive body claw its way onto the field, leaving the Cruiser to pretty much tear off like a racecar in a way Duck was sure was an unforeseen event to its handlers. Arco, gritting his teeth and murmuring a few selective words, reached over, pulled his door shut, stretched his legs out, and felt for the accelerator and the brake. Duck pointed at something in front of his face. "Arco." "Hmm?" "If you need it, there's a small hatch in front of your face you can push open, yeah, just like that." A stream of light filtered through the compartment. Arco screwed up his face. "Is this really the only way I can see?" Duck shook her head. "You have optics—those little rectangular glass cases with handles up there—that peek over the top. The hatch you just opened is for parades and simple driving around. It's... um..." she bit her lip, "...it's not advised to leave it open if we're in combat." Arco pantomimed, bringing up a foreleg and stuffing its hoof into his scalp. "Precisely." Arco sucked in his lips and returned to his search. "Feel a lot better being over here now." Duck's ears fell limp. "C'mon shortie, get us moving!" went Flurry, staving off Duck's upsetness and replacing it with a genuine giggle. Arco whipped about instantaneously. "Hey, shut up! These things are built for, like, Princesses or something! I can barely reach them!" "Forward, Driver!" Flurry quipped. Arco whirled about and adjusted his posture. He pouted his lip out, then pulled it back and snarled. "I'll show you forward, Princess." Flurry attempted to continue their back-and-forth, "Then let us whoa!" and, judging by the sound of bone against metal, was flung back in kind with Duck by the Comet's sudden jolt and, in pursuit, its rolling ahead. Arco's smile grew a mile wide. "I'm driving a tank!" Duck grinned. "Keep it up, Arco!" Arco looked at her and nodded, then his face fell flat. "Uh, how do I turn?" "Those two sticks poking out. Right turns right, left turns left." "Okay," he said, grabbing hold of the sticks. "You're gonna need to listen to Flurry whenever she speaks. You may have command of the tank, but she's the one commanding you." Arco guffawed, and leaned his head around. He raised up a hoof and rapped on the metal between him and Duck and the turret. "Hey, Flurry, do you trust me?" "Kind of have to now, Arco! Otherwise, no!" "Hahaha! That a yes?" "Yes!" Silence. Besides the puttering of the engine and the dirt underneath the steadily moving Comet's treads, obviously. "Do you trust me?" Arco snorted. "Oh, definitely, Commander!" "Well, then! Tank... erm..." Duck deflated. This was going to be... arthritic. "Tank, go right!" "Aye aye!" The Comet, assisted by Arco's yanking of the right stick, turned about slightly and began to head down what Duck—looking through the BESA's now-empty cradle—noticed to be a long trail through a dense forest only halted by the expansive stretch of dirt bisecting them. She could hear twigs, branches, bushes, and trees snap, and rustle, and thrash about in each tank's wake, only multiplied as the Comet, in the rear, was left to bumble mindlessly over the combined mess of four other variously sized tracked vehicles. Arco, thankfully, was pushing the Comet along at about ten or so miles per hour, and so the ride to their destination wasn't too much of a bumpy one. Speaking of their destination, she had a job to do, though a begrudgingly followed-through one at that. She slipped on one earmuff of her headset, held it there with a hoof, and reached up to work the dials and knobs she hadn't actually used in quite a few years. Switching on what all she recognized, she sucked in a breath and listened for any legible noises, found nothing, and tried again, rotating a few knobs here, pushing a few buttons there, and finally hearing something... that she wished she hadn't heard. "So we're all taking down that Pumpkinhead, right?" Whipgrass asked. "Right!" went pretty much everypony else. A chill went down her spine. The rest of her crew, able to hear it thanks to their insistence on keeping a speaker in the turret, gasped. The Comet stuttered as Arco let go of everything he was holding, then, realizing his position, went back to it. They continued on, and so did the rest of the class. "Gods, I hate that Pumpkinhead! Race-hating, lazy slob of a Mud Slinger!" Duck blinked rapidly. What? She wasn't any of that... not as far as she knew! "Everypony, let's all just calm down and think of a plan!" Sweet Tea?! Her too?! She mouthed the name to Arco, who bit down on his lower lip, couldn't find anything to say, and focused on his task. "Switch to another frequency! They might be listening!" "Right!" The radio buzzed with white noise. Duck furrowed her brow and, finding the Frequency knob, clicked it one notch over. "All right! We're good!" "Think they'll be listening?" "Pfft, no! That's impossible!" Four against one. Four against one... Oh Gods... why were they doing this?! "We're really doing this, aren't we?" Arco asked the front compartment but, clearly, the whole tank. His hindleg continued to tap-tap-tap against the floor incessantly. The tank rumbled its response. They were sitting idly in their proper position, waiting for Mrs. Red to announce the beginning of their very first practice match via, Duck assumed, the intercom before her. Duck felt the aching need to projectile vomit somewhere, but she didn't want to smell up the tank, nor did she want to vandalize the natural presence of the trees, and the bushes, and the grass, and the dirt beneath it that surrounded them all peacefully. Well, at least previously peacefully. They'd kicked up a lot of wet Earth getting up the hill that marked their designated zone, which, notably, had a good amount of cover by way of thick tree trunks surrounding its every corner except for in front, and masses and masses of bushes that could conceal them very well if they decided to shoot and scoot. Flurry let out a long sigh, her head currently inside the tank. "Looks like." Graham ran her hoof along a shell. "I dunno about you guys, but I'm excited! Can you believe we're actually going to be shooting tanks?!" "More like get shot at by tanks," Bluebell grumbled. "What do you even know about tanks?" Graham hummed in a fit of nervous giggles. "I, erm, my family is a long line of professional speakers, which is why they wanted me to try out doing morning announcements at the school. They've done a few 'odd jobs' here and there, like Hoofball games and, well, a few local Tank Warudo matches. It's never really interested me, but I guess it's a lot different when you're actually holding a shell in your hooves!" Duck couldn't help herself. "That's a 77mm shell you've got, Graham! One of the best Crumphill has to offer!" Graham gasped. "This is a Crumpish tank?!" "Apparently, according to Duck, it's an A34 Comet, one of the best in Crumphill's arsenal," Flurry replied. Duck nodded. "It would have been deployed much too late into the war for it to have much of an impact, but in what little time it would have trodded along Griffonia, it would have shown its strengths more than enough!" CRKKT! "Oh, here she is!" Arco exclaimed, leaning over to Duck's side. Duck listened as Mrs. Red's voice came on loud and clear, "Finally, I found you all! What an odd frequency to tune into... anyway! If you're all set, which, judging by this map looks like you are, you will begin on my mark!" Her heart thumped loudly. Arco returned to his seat, ready to roll. His whole body was shaking violently. Graham grunted, apparently knowing how to open the cannon breech, and placed a shell inside, shutting it afterward. Flurry tapped a hoof against the inside of her cupola, huddled down and ready to pop outside into the cold outdoors. Bluebell moved the cannon around in small rotations, familiarizing herself with the controls and, seemingly, finding the vertical crank now, which she promptly cranked. Duck controlled her mane and adjusted her radio's headset on her head, waiting. Listening. Through the BESA's cradle, she saw the grassy hill that went up and then down toward the Stuart's location. To the right, just barely out of sight, was the turn that would lead them to the Cruiser... or the Cruiser to them. They'd have to act quickly, lest they get surrounded and easily defeated. And she wasn't going to let that happen. Duck sucked in a breath. And expelled it. "You may begin!" The Comet lurched forward, and Duck immediately sat up, leaning a bit forward in her seat and listening for anything out of the ordinary. It may have been a rude tactic to listen in on enemy comms—and in fact was strictly prohibited in proper matches—but this was nothing more than a practice match, and if the rest of the class teaming up to take them down was fair game, so was spying. It seemed that his nerves were getting the better of him, as the Comet sputtered and stumbled about in oddly-spaced increments, a possible result of his also being... relatively short compared to her, Flurry, and Bluebell. Flurry, meanwhile, had opened her cupola up completely, letting in a bright white light that assisted Duck in adjusting her radio's volume. At once, she heard them. "Don't lag behind, guys! You might miss us taking them out already!" The Cruiser was definitely going to be the first tank they met with, if the Stuart—the faster tank by just a smidgen—didn't go full throttle along their much longer pathway leading to the Comet. "Arco, turn right!" He did so. "All right, keep it up!" Duck looked through the cradle. They weren't taking any of the roads at all! Duck's internal plan had gone something along the lines of hiding along the Cruiser's road and waiting for them to approach before simply breathing on them, then moving along their trail back toward where the Comet's starting point to try and take out the SOMUA and the Stuart before the Tiger made it over to their location. Instead, Flurry was taking the Comet right into the middle of the field toward the SOMUA! "Flurry, wh-what's the plan?" Arco stuttered. Thump thump. "I'm thinking we hit the Samoa..." Duck cringed. "...or the, what, the SOMUA, first. The Cruiser and the Stuart think we're still hanging around our own area, so we take out the SOMUA and pull back behind the Stuart and hit it in the rear!" Which left them open to the Tiger, which would be behind them if they continued on with the plan and flanked the Cruiser as well. You didn't want to show your rear to a Tiger as long as you had the now substantially less amount of time to live. Arco ignored Duck's pained look. "Sounds good to me! Up we go!" Up they did go, as the Comet reared up on its tracks and ascended what Duck noted to be a pretty darn slope before settling back down onto a normal orientation. She was already beginning to sweat a bit, and they hadn't even seen a tank yet! Which was due to change, as Flurry ceased her bodily functions by shrieking, "I see something to our right! Kicking up dust!" "Already?!" Arco blurted out. "That was fast!" Graham shouted. Duck barely even heard Flurry as she yelled, "Arco, stop and turn us right!" "Can we do that?!" Duck couldn't believe herself as she shouted, "Yes!" Arco hiccuped, and released his influnce on the accelerator by lifting his hindleg up completely and propping it against his chest. Thay may have been a little too much. He pulled on the right stick and sent the Comet Eastward. "I see 'em!" Bluebell reported, bonking her head against her sight excitedly. Flurry's voice sounded much clearer when she hollered, "Who is it?" Was she... back inside the tank? Bluebell hummed. "Looks like that Cruiser." Duck, realizing her assumption had held true, desperately reached up for her periscope and peered around to find it. Sure enough, the Cruiser was in full sight of them on the edge of the dirt road... and was aiming right for them already, with a clear shot right at its side. Her blood froze. The Comet's turret continued to slew around at a steady 8.9 degrees per second. Duck watched as the Cruiser's body juttered back, a small plume of smoke escaping its barrel... ...and flinched as a massive weight struck the side of the Comet, rattling her instruments and sending her headset off her head. Immediately, Arco, Flurry, Bluebell, and Graham were gritting their teeth and crying out. "We got hit!" "Are we done for?!" Duck lifted her chin and smelled for smoke. No. She smelled for oil. Nada. She glimpsed through the central hole in the wall behind her and shouted, "Glancing shot!" Thank their lucky stars. Graham barely had time to ask, "Glancing?!" before Bluebell interrupted her. "Let me at 'em!" "If we're fine, then by all means!" Flurry responded. The turret stopped. Duck looked back through her periscope. The 77mm barrel was aiming straight at the Cruiser. They waited. Duck heard Bluebell mutter, "C'mon, c'mon" under her breath fervently. Duck didn't even have time to register Flurry's voice. "Shoot!" BOOM! At the sound of their own cannon firing, Arco let out a whoop. Graham let out a shrill cry, "Ow!" Flurry immediately came to the rescue. "Graham, are you okay?" "Yeah, think... ow, was that the shell? It comes back here? I thought that's what we sent them!" And Duck watched as the Cruiser's side, newly blackened, erupted in smoke. With no flag popping up. Her crew was beside themselves all the same, cheering. Arco accidentally threw a hoof up, smacking it into the ceiling barely an inch above his head and instantly—like, there were no words for how quick it was—cursing and clutching the appendage. He smiled at Duck when he noticed her noticing, and shook the hoof before sucking on it like a pacifier, giggling all the while. "Damn, that hurt." "We took someone down on our first try!" Flurry cheered. "Yeah!" "Good job, Bluebell!" Bluebell... was seemingly unprepared for a compliment. Just in general. She stuttered something out like a baboon, droned a low note, and cleared her throat nonchalantly. "Thanks, I guess." "We did it!" Flurry shouted once more. "We– aiieeeee!" NEEEEEYO POOM! BEEEEEYO! Flurry was back outside, though just barely if her now slightly more hushed voice was an indication. Duck was now completely out of her seat, intent on staring through her periscope to see what she could see. "I've got the SOMUA in our sights, firing at us from the–" WHEEEEOO! "–from the front!" Duck shouted, "Stuart on our left!" Flurry let out a little whimper. "Aaaaah, I dunno what to do! Arco, take us right!" Arco pulled the right stick and, letting it go, stamped his hoof down on the accelerator. "Errr, Arco, left!" He brought up his hoof, then, realizing he'd made the wrong choice, immediately stamped it back down. "Left, Arco!" "Gotcha!" He pulled the left stick, and left they drove. The Comet rumbled over the craters their enemies' shells had presumably earlier made, and it was at that moment that Flurry shrieked, "Left!" "We're already going left!" Arco called back. "More left!" He pulled further down on the handle. "Wait, no, right!" He reached for the right stick, muttering, "Dammit, mom," under his breath. "Left, wait, yeah, left!" He reached for the right stick again, teeth grit and his mane matted against his forehead. "We need to– whoa!" Flurry's voice went around... and around... and around. Duck went wide-eyed. Flurry had just found the cupola's rotational lever... and had accidentally unlocked it. Craning her neck around and bumping into the ceiling, Duck bit on her lower lip to, sure enough, find Flurry's lower torso spinning in a violent circle as the Comet twisted and turned about unreliably. Her hindlegs kicked about frantically for ground, knocking Bluebell upside the head and kicking the shell that Graham had been holding onto the ground beneath her rump. BOOM! "Bluebell!" "I barely touched it! My leg's just kicking!" "Ow!" "Graham, put your head away from that thing!" "And load those in right next time!" Bluebell added. "Sorry!" Duck sucked in a breath of choked, claustrophobic air, bits of her mane sticking to her forehead. "Flurry!" Flurry gasped. "Duck?" Duck expelled it. "Move over!" she ordered, reaching to her left and throwing her Radio Operator's hatch open. "Duck, what the hell are you doing?!" "Is she outside of the tank?!" Graham asked. "Duck, get back inside!" She was used to sticking her entire upper body outside of a cupola to assess situations. What more was the other half? Crawling out of her seat and slamming the door back down as a shell WHIZZZZZZed past her two ears, Duck flipped about and hopped up the glacis, landed on the roof of the turret, and looked down at Flurry's worried expression through the cupola's hatch. "Scoot over, please." Flurry only nodded, and Duck pulled herself over the top of the hatch, placed her forelegs on the roof, and hopped inside the Commander's position. And, immediately folding her forelegs in front of her face, she spoke into her headset. "Arco, relax. These guys couldn't hit the broadside of a barn." These guys, in particular, were the M5A1 Stuart and the SOMUA S35, both of which were steadily chugging along and heading their way, firing at the same time as their tracks were moving. Neither of those tanks had stabilizers that would help with such a multi-task. Duck smiled. "Right stick, hard. Turn us completely around!" "Where we headed?" "Let's burn past the Cruiser and head for the treeline. We'll make for the field just past there. I have a plan." Another round zipped past the top of the Comet, blowing apart a tree a few feet in front of them next to the Cruiser. "Isn't it dangerous to stand in the open like that?!" Flurry suddenly cried, catching Duck's attention from outside the cupola and into the Comet's interior. She looked down to find Flurry gritting her teeth, worry in her eyes. "What if you get hit?!" "It's the only way to get an all-around view," Duck informed her, then, shutting her eyes, she grinned, "and besides, ponies barely get hit!" She felt a hoof tug at her hindleg, and she ducked back inside the Comet to find Flurry giving her a big smile between a pair of glistening eyes. "Then let's do this, Duck." Duck looked for a reply. She found nothing verbal, but gave the Alicorn, the squished Pegasus to her right, and the Unicorn to her left a simple, quiet, courteous nod that the first two returned. Returning back into the open air, she watched their rear to find the SOMUA and Stuart still firing at them from across the way. Further past them, however, were continuously falling trees, signifying what she knew would be approaching soon and be more than within its recommended striking distance from them. "All right, that's good! Forward, now!" The Comet, after a moment's hesitation, moved away from the three tanks and headed back toward their starting zone, which they quickly mounted and disappeared behind. Pushing through the prior untouched brush and emerging from the treeline into an open field besieged by tall oak trees. NYEEEEEEEE BEEZOOOOO! A massive rain of dirt fell from the air directly to their left, bouncing on Duck's head and spilling off back to the ground below. "The hell was that?!" Bluebell cursed. "Looks like the Tiger found its prey!" Duck answered. "I don't like this anymore!" Flurry cried, whimpering. Duck grit her teeth. Now was the time. "Bluebell!" "What?" "Lower the turret about ten degrees!" "How am I supposed to–" "Ballpark it! Just aim at the ground ahead of us!" WHIRRRRR! THUMP! Her heart jumped at the long-forgotten words. "Fire!" BOOM! The Comet, running at its speed, immediately dropped into the crater its gun had created. "Stop!" And it screeched to a halt. "Arco, turn us around!" He stammered, but did so. "Uh, um, okay." Safe from harm's way for the time being, Duck poked her head back into the her cupola and examined her crew. Flurry needed a position. Arco was the Driver. Graham was their Loader. Bluebell was on the cannon. Flurry seemed to notice this after a short while, brandishing a little grin and looking through the central hole at Arco, who was bent about at the hip to look at them. "I noticed you were having a bit of a hard time with those pedals." "Shut up." Flurry hummed. "Fit for a Princess, you said?" Arco shrugged. "You mind if I take a crack at it?" Arco laughed. "Course not." He pushed his door open. "Be my guest." Flurry moved past Duck to leave through the cupola. Graham clapped her hooves together. "Chineighse fire-drill!" Duck hopped onto the roof as Graham left as well, allowing Arco to enter and take Bluebell's spot, which was vacant as its previous owner jumped around inside and took up residence in her neat little Loader's area. Duck, realizing something, whistled and caught Graham's attention. "May I have those gloves?" Graham tossed them her way from the Radio Operator's hatch, and she caught them with a flash of her teeth. Making sure that Arco was in his place, and that Bluebell was comfortable, Duck slid back into her position and admired her handiwork. Arco, their Gunner. He wiped the lens on his sight and pressed his face against it, hindleg on the foot trigger. Bluebell, their Loader. She snatched Graham's gloves out of Duck's grasp and wrestled them on, then placed a shell into the breech. Flurry, their Driver. She settled into her seat nicely, and, as Duck looked through the central hole to find, had the perfect height to pull and push each and every lever before her. Graham, their Radio Operator. She put on her... own headset and clicked it on, stabbing it into a few receptacles on the radio and automatically adjusting a few of the knobs. And herself, Duck, their Commander. She adjusted her jacket with both hooves, dusted herself off, and grinned. That was much, much better. And so, sticking her head out of the cupola once more and listening as the summer breeze whipped through her long mane, she brought out a hoof, pointed it straight ahead, opened her mouth, and muttered the first thing she remembered from her boarding school. "Well... Panzerrrrrr vorrrrr!" Flurry's response, unexpected, came immediately. "You like vore?!" Bluebell belly-laughed like her stomach was full of mead. Duck scratched the back of her head. "'Panzer vor' means..." her ear flicked up, picking up the telltale sound of an engine. "...someone's coming!" "Good phrase," Flurry giggled. "No," Duck tutted, "someone's coming." She lifted her chin and faced the lip of the crater. "Flurry, stand by." "Gotcha, Duck." "Arco, turret up five degrees. Go level with the crater's incline." "Uh... okay..." WHIRRRR... The idle engine of the Comet blurred away as the new one materialized in recognition. ...that wasn't the SOMUA. And the Tiger wasn't going to get there anytime soon. She looked up. "Stuart." Its Twin Cadillac engine revving and rising in volume, Duck waited to hear what she was anticipating. Her crew remained quiet in kind. WEEEEEEEEEWW THUNK THUNK THUNKTHUNKTHUNKTHUNK! A couple, stray flecks of dirt began tumbling down the crater in front of the Comet... ...followed very, very shortly by the M5 Stuart, having gone much too fast and been completely unable to stop themselves before limply sliding down into the entrenchment. Duck remained motionless as the Stuart came to a complete stop, gracefully assisted by the Comet's massive barrel of hardened Crumpish steel poking directly into its front glacis. A tank boop. THUMP. Duck swallowed. "Fire." BOOM! The Stuart, defying all laws of Equestrian physics, practially flew out of the ditch, doing a flip and crashing somewhere on the top side. SSSFICK! Duck grinned. "Flurry, take us topside!" "Right!" BAROOM, CHK, BROOOOOOOOOO! Going up onto its rear roadwheels, the Comet mounted the lip of the crater and thumped back onto all fours(?) with a loud, uncomfortable thunk that threw Duck into the sides of her cupola. Next to them, newly spitting smoke from its side, was the M5 Stuart... a white flag sticking out of its right side side skirt toward the sky and waving in the wind. Duck placed her forelegs on the turret's roof, leaning forward and gathering every inch of her voice to yell, "Are you guys all right?!" As if waiting for the question, one of the nerds popped her head out of her hatch and nodded in a daze before thwacking her chin on the glacis. Facing forward once more toward the field they'd dreaded upon starting, Duck and her crew were met with a red blur that grew in size in a mere millisecond and exploded right next to them, rattling the Comet's right side and sending it a noticeable centimeter off the ground. Covering her head from the cascading torrent of dirt, Duck grit her teeth and looked ahead. Across the field were three tanks advancing upon them. On the left, its turret shaking its head at them in a probably unintentional negative gesture, was the SOMUA. On the right, still very much alive and currently strafing, was the Cruiser. And, in the middle a little ways back from the two, was the Tiger, putting along as if it was just on a merry Sunday stroll through Equestria, Griffonia, and back. The Cruiser, stopping, fired a shot that landed in front of the Comet and obscured them from view for a good second or two. It started back up and continued trying to go for their right flank. Duck hummed. Not on her watch they weren't. "Comet, move forward!" The Comet remained where it was, engine idling. Duck pouted out her lower lip. "Um," came Flurry, "we're Comet!" Duck sighed. "Us, move forward!" Still, nothing. She sank to her haunches and, in a much quieter voice, poked her head in, stared into the central hole, and pleaded, "Move forward, please." The Comet roared back to life, and, smiling, Duck returned to her position half-outside and buried her chin in her forelegs. "Let's hit that Tiger, huh?!" Bluebell piped up. Duck shook her head, then realized Bluebell couldn't actually see it. "No. Arco, aim at the Cruiser and focus on the right side of its front step. That's the flat part just below their turret." "On it!" WHIRRRR! THUNK! "Fire!" BOOM! The right side of the Cruiser erupted in flames, causing the whole light tank to suddenly slow down and sputter. Even with the ejecting shell from inside, the whir of their Rolls Royce Meteor, the approaching SOMUA and Tiger's engines, and her own troubled thoughts, she heard loud and clear the flag popping up on the Cruiser's cupola. SSSFICK! "Cruiser down!" She yelled to the glee of Arco, pumped a hoof and shouted. "Hell yeah!" "SOMUA's next!" The SOMUA, noticing their turret's movements, stuttered for a second, made a slight adjustment as if to copy the Cruiser's flanking, realized how much good it had done for them, and decided to continue on forward. She had expected the SOMUA to fire next, but barely had time to duck her head as an 88mm shell zoomed past her turret. "What in... they're aiming for my head?!" Arco shook her from her distraction. "Where am I shooting, Duck?!" "Uh, ahem..." She narrowed her eyes and looked at the approaching SOMUA. She hummed, and gave him his answer. "Right in the turret, where its barrel's coming out of! They call that the mantlet!" "All right then! We're on it!" "Fire!" BOOM! The red arch of their shell went skyward upon contact, disappearing into the cloud layer above. Duck could see Arco going white from her position. "That one bounced?!" He shouted incredulously. "Get another one in there, Bluebell!" Duck ordered. "Already done!" "Arco, fire!" BOOM! The SOMUA's turret spun like someone had slapped it, a thick cloud of smoke bursting from its exterior and creating a large spiral of gray that faded into the air. "SOMUA's down!" Duck reported. Her heart was now about ready to leap from her chest. Was this... was this happening? Was she doing this right now?! She cleared her throat. There was time for thinking afterward. "Just the Tiger left!" The Tiger, now in full view and pushing past the downed Cruiser and SOMUA, roared back in response. And, at once, it fired. The round, moving at almost three times faster than the speed of sound, struck the Comet's right fender and sent it in pieces across the glacis. Duck gritted her teeth and would have snapped her hoofheld radio in half had she been clutching it. "Look at the size of that thing!" Graham called. "Flurry, pull us forward!" "Right!" WHIRRRRRRRR! Duck rested her chin on the cupola's lip, glaring at the Tiger as it, likewise, began to speed up. "Shift gear!" CHK WHIRRRRRRRRRRR! The Comet, juttering for just a second at the very unhealthy powershift, increased its speed further. "What're we gonna do?" Arco asked, turning to look at Duck. Duck sucked on her lip. "There's no way we'll get them from behind at this rate. They'll blow us to bits before we do." She watched as the Tiger's crew, realizing their now much slower speed, shifted gears as well and turned its turret around to face them. "What then?" Graham asked, raising her normally quiet voice to be heard above the increasingly loudening Tiger's engine. Duck couldn't contain her grin, and tried to hide it behind her foreleg. "Flurry, veer right and take us outta here! We're gonna take this Tiger for a spin!" She looked to her left side and scanned the Tiger's blue roadwheels as they passed, smirking at its—pleasantly found to be completely, utterly wrong—configuration. Her crew took the time to jest. "Come and get us, Tiger!" Arco dared. "Here, kitty!" Flurry enticed, turning the Comet a few degrees to the right. Duck watched the Tiger for any new signs of movement, and subsequently ducked a tad as it, predictably, and just according to plan, turned around to chase after them. Its turret subsequently already facing them, it fired a shot that would have nailed them right in the sprocket had they been going even a bare mile an hour more, which instead zoomed past the front of the fenders and kicked up dirt, making a crater that the Comet rumbled vigorously over. Duck's bones shook in response. She turned back around to observe the Tiger. "Come on... come on..." And it shifted again, its occupants clearly furious at being outran... ...and sent a few of its loose, wrongly-fitted, interleaved roadwheels off their axles, where they rolled around to escape the Tiger's sudden list to the left and abrupt halt. Its engine sputtered for a second before roaring like its namesake, beginning to drag itself in the dirt to try their darndest to take them down. A few clouds of separated smoke swirled from the exhaust ports. She sucked in a breath and barely got her next words out, an opportunity having arisen. "Turn us back around and head for their rear! We've got them right where we want them!" The Comet, now at its maximum speed, whipped about, drifting in the dirt, and sped off toward the downed Tiger, whose operators were turning the turret of to try and stop them in a less effective maneuver than actually moving the entire tank was. With its 7.1 degrees per second of rotational speed, the Tiger's cannon attempted to land a shot in front of the Comet, thwarted by the Crumpish tank's impeccable speed and agility. Her hooves making rapid beats against the cupola, Duck watched as the Comet cleared the side of the Tiger and took a sharp turn to face directly up its rear. "Aim for anywhere but those big exhaust pipes! Right up its butt!" Duck yelled, thumping a foreleg against the cannon's roof. A few muffled curses came from the Tiger now but a foot from them. "Dammit, Hail, turn it around and fire!" "Get us out of here first!" "They're right behind us!" The Comet's barrel stopped, aiming right between the crux of the two exhaust pipes. Duck frowned. "Fire!" BOOM! Their close proximity ended up a bad choice for Duck's lungs, which immediately—involuntarily—sucked in a large amount of fumes and smoke emanating from the Tiger's newly penetrated rear armor. Coughing into a free hoof and struggling to keep an eye open to watch for the flag, Duck finally lowered her head and sighed. A brown rod finally shot out of the Tiger's rear, sticking out into the gusts of wind. It folded over and spat out a sheet of white. SSSFICK! She wiped her dripping brow and, vaulting out of the Comet's cupola and opening the storage box just above the middle of the side skirts, snatched the regulated fire extinguisher from its clasps, took out its hose, and pulled the trigger, quieting down the flames that were just barely beginning to crackle from the struck engine. A sudden, unexpected weight slammed into her, followed by another, and then another. She blushed instantly, almost dropping the fire extinguisher. And with her friends' arrival came the massive wave of emotions she'd been hiding away the entire match, overwhelming her and squeezing tears out of her eyes totally unhelped by the hooves coiling her body. She'd... she'd done it! They'd done it! They'd taken everyone down, four to one! Oh my Gods they'd done it! Over the intercom, both in the gaping Tiger and their Comet, Mrs. Red came on excitedly. "Duck Bill's team is victorious!" "We did it, Duck!" Flurry squealed, tightening her grip around Duck's waist. The Tiger's cupola flipped open with a BREEE THUNK, depositing a trio of mares in jerseys who stumbled onto the grass with grumbles and curses, dirty looks at every face that met them, and crossed forelegs as they sat on the grass and mumbled profanities at nothing in particular. PUTT PUTT PUTT PUTT PUTT PUTT. Duck cracked open an eyelid along with the rest of her crew, and looked over to find the source of the new, rare noise. The Cruiser, its flag still waving in the wind, was gracefully rolling along the grass idly, its front completely busted open, before coughing, sputtering, and finally stopping right next to the two tanks in the disturbed dirt. From the frontal hole emerged two bruised ponies: Sweet Tea and Candle Light, who also carried with them an equally bruised pony body over their shoulders. Though they were clearly battered, with their clothes a bit burnt and their manes sticking every which way, they were all smiles. Duck sucked in a gasp in an instant—and as did everypony else nearby—but she let it back out once she realized they were still breathing. She looked up at Sweet Tea and asked, "What happened?" Candle Light was the one to answer, adjusting her glasses. "That first shot you guys gave us knocked the lights out of Pine and Vanilla!" Sweet Tea laughed. "Took us a fair while to take their places, and then we were back on the hunt and coming your way!" Duck smiled wildly. So they'd... field-repaired after losing two members and came back for more?! That crew wouldn't be one to mess with at that rate. "Oh, Duck!" Duck turned around to face Flurry. "You never told me what 'Panzer vor' means!" Candle Light gaped, her left optical crackling with a distinct chh. "You like vore?!" Duck giggled, and, adjusting her jacket, looked at her two attention-paying audiences, shut her eyes, and dutifully explained. "'Panzer vor' means 'tanks, forward'!" Candle Light, scratching the back of her neck and then under her chin, hummed. "Griffonian, huh?" Duck nodded. "I like it!" Arco claimed, pumping a hoof. "Me too!" Graham chimed in. "Panzer vor!" Flurry shouted. "Panzer vor!" "Panzer vor!" Duck's smile felt ready to rival the sky high above her head. Raising a foreleg, she pointed it upward and, reaching down in her vocal chords, exclaimed the phrase with a wave of voices alongside her. "Panzerrrrr vorrrrrr!" Elsewhere, somewhere behind her, a sickly Bluebell vomited onto the grass.