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// Tier 1: Twilight 
// Story: World of Friendships 
// by Xp45 
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“Hehehe.” Twilight chuckled as the light from her computer glowed brighter. “I’m gonna get a head start and no one is gonna know till we play next week.” She laughed to herself before going wide eyed as the Microsoft loading sound played. BUM BUDDA DA DUDDA. She had forgotten to turn the sound down and now that might have cost her an edge on her friends.

Carefully peeking around the side of her chair, she saw no movement in the halls nor heard any sound from anypony else. 
“Whew” Twilight muttered as she wiped the sweat off her brow.
As World of Tanks booted up and Twilight answered some questions about place and time zone etc. she thought of what nation she wanted to play, obviously she had never heard of any of them before but Sunset had said that the Germane's tanks were some of the best, so why not them?

As Twilight started the game, she was immediately thrown into the Tutorial, startling the mare.

“Welcome to the battlefield commander!” A voice from the screen said in a somewhat serious tone. “First we’ll need to brush up on some basic controls, move the mouse cursor around the screen to move the camera.” the voice continued while Twilight could only nod and moved the mouse over to what looked like a medical carriage.
“Good, Now use your WASD or arrow keys to move your tank to the designated area.” The voice picked up again as Twilight maneuvered her hoof to the left side of her keyboard and pressed the W and D keys to move the tank forward and right.

“Now move your tank to the other marked location highlighted on your minimap. Remember you’re in a tank, you don’t go around obstacles, you go through them!” The voice sounded humorous as Twilight obliged moving directly forward, destroying a watch tower, several vehicles and sand bags that were in her way.

“This is fun!” Twilight laughed as she destroyed more and more things before remembering where she needed to go.

“Now head to the location marked on your map, you will need to cross a marsh to get there, terrain like thIs will slow your tanks speed and maneuverability.” The voice started when Twilight entered the glowing green circle.

“Good to know.” Twilight mumbled as she drove up the hill decorated with a clean red and white lighthouse. She was so distracted by the scenery that when an enemy tank popped up on screen she almost flew out of her seat in surprise.

“Commander, an enemy tank has appeared on your screen! Use right click to zoom in and left click to shoot the enemy! Pay attention to the green bar on the right of your screen, this is your reload speed.” Finished the military-esque voice as Twilight struggled to obey, her hooves still shaking from surprise.

After seeing the enemy tank make no effort to retaliate Twilight happily enjoyed its destruction before obliging the voice’s request to move forward make by mental note of how she was able to push the wreck of the dead tank.

As the programmed Tiger II appeared on screen, Twilight was once again scared out of her seat at its intimidating appearance. “Alright commander we need to take out this tank as well, remember your aiming circle, as it shrinks your accuracy improves. Notice the color of your reticle, these colors represent penetration values, red means no chance of penetration while green means almost guaranteed penetration.” Twilight payed almost no attention to the voice as she was pre-occupied trying to kill the tank in front of her, not noticing how the shells just seemed to bounce off it harmlessly.

“Move your tank to a flanking position commander, tanks typically have weaker armor at the sides and rear!” The voice instructed Twilight as she moved her tank flat on to the side of the Tiger II and put shot after furious shot at the side of it before it burst into flame much to Twilight’s delight.

“Good job commander, you have completed the basic tutorial, if you wish to have more practice select the proving grounds game mode on the main menu. Otherwise select multiplayer and I’ll see you on the battlefield” The voice said as the screen faded to black.

“Alright, now I can play for real.” Twilighy happily whispered as she caught her breath from her hyperventilating experience. “Ok, Germane, Germane, Germane, AH HA!” Twilight yelled before shutting her mouth at the thought of waking Starlight or Spike.

As she selected the flag of Germany and looked at the first tank, she thought it must have been a joke, it looked like a grey hot dog with a pimple on it. “Well, we all start ugly I guess.” Twilight said as she hit the purchase button for, to her relief absolutely nothing of her limited “credits” the game had called them.

She was so excited to get into battle that she didn’t even bother with any it the tabs on the top of her screen before she hit the battle button and loaded in almost immediately.

Malinovka It said on the screen as Twilight scanned the left side of the loading page absorbing as much info as she could before she was chucked into the battle.

“Well that was quick.” Twilight said as she tried observing her team, she assumed they were, based on how they were green and the enemy was red. She knew that much about gaming.

“Look at all of the, weird designs.” She said as her eyes fell upon the K.Housenka before she noticed that it had started moving. So, she put her attention back on her own tank and hit the W key. Immediately she was disappointed at the speed of the tank as it trundled along the plain and slowing as it trudged up a hill. “Come on!” Twilight yelled as she noticed all her friendly tanks pushing on ahead.

As she finally creased the ridge she noticed a red diamond on her screen and instinctively pressed right trigger and zoomed in on it, MS-1 it read above the outline of the turret from 379 meters away. Twilight grinned as she pressed left click and instantly noticed how her gun fired several shots at once flying in several directions, only a few hitting the enemy tank doing minimal damage or none at all.

“We didn’t even scratch them!” A random voice from seemingly nowhere shouted, informing Twilight of the obvious.

“I know that, random voice.” Twilight growled as she waited for her reload before noticing a much closer enemy tank.

Moving her cursor over to it, it lit up as a T1 Cunningham. Grinning she held down left click and watched to her satisfaction as the enemy tank’s health disintegrated into almost nothing.

“Heheheh I think I’m pretty good at this game!” She joked, laughing before seeing her screen turn red as the T1 counterattacked and reduced her HP to 3.

Panicking Twilight rapidly clicked the mouse before she relaxed a little as the T1 burst into flames and her damage counter ticked up. Satisfied, she tried to move on but her own tank suddenly blew up, turret flying a few meters away as her tank fizzled and sparked. Shocked, she watched the camera pan to the MS1 she had shot at earlier, clearly smug at giving her some payback. When a "Return To Garage" button appeared on the bottom of the screen, she solemnly obliged.