The Tired GI’s drop their prisoner. They look at Wardaddy like getting ready to do something about it. Ocellus aims her Tommy gun at them...
"It’s a goddamned Kraut. Forget it." she said.
The SS Griffon dies in the mud gasping his last breath. The tired GI’s move along.
"I have to tell them what you did." the Gi sighed before walking off.
Applejack ignores him. Sandbar watches the stallions go, shocked. AJ spits on the dead Griffon. Wipes her knife clean.
"You killed a prisoner of war. In cold blood." Sandbar gasped.
"I know what I did. He’s an SS. They’re real assholes." the tough tanker replied.
Applejack shakes a smoke from her pack. Scratches another notch in her knife with her can opener.
"I kill every SS I can. You’d seen what I seen you would too." she said.
"Fuck every last one. They started it. We’re finishing it." Ocellus snarled as she stomped on the Griffon.
"Heinies don’t know Our Generals smell" Smolder shrugged.
"Yep. Ain’t nothing spear from sliding belly." Ocellus agreed.
"We’re the spearhead. Done any killing?" Applejack asked the newbie.
Norman shakes his head, "No."
"You will."
(~)
Applejack shoves an ugly stamped metal submachine-gun into Sandbar’s hooves. The GIs call it a “greasegun”. The Lieutenant returns from the Company Command Post...
"First Platoon TC’s! See me now!" the lieutenant yelled.
The first Platoon TANK COMMANDERS wander over to the Lieutenant. Applejack "Warmommy", Rockhoof, Firececlaws and Rammer (I made up the name Fierceclaws, a dragon, and Rammer, a yak.) , all rough tankers who can kick ass in a bar fight.
"I see you sir. I see you." Rockhoof said in a deep voice.
"Here’s the big picture. Main Unit’s going East. We’re going North on a flank guard mission. We’ll tie up with Baker Company from the 41st. Sergeant Applejack is with us now. She’ll be acting Platoon Sergeant." the lieutenant said.
"That’s fine with me. Glad to have you AJ." Fierceclaws shook Applejack's hooves.
"Sir, saying you get picked off? Mind showing me the overlay where we’re going?" Applejack turned to the lieutenant and asked.
"Sure, AJ. After that we’re working for Captain Waggoner. Any questions?"
"You started shaving?" Rockhoof asked. The lieutenant disregards the dig...
"First Platoon! Mount up and move out!" he called as he climbed into his tank.
The five tank commanders cross to their waiting tanks. Applejack makes the “crank it up” hand sign. Spike slides in the driver’s hatch and starts the Bloom.
The other four tanks start up - their ENGINES ROAR. The 25 creatures of 1st Platoon take their fighting positions in side the steel beasts. Applejack mounts the Bloom. Sandbar too. One mare confident and seasoned. The other clumsy and hesitant.
Meanwhile, a corporal is arguing with Rammer.
"I can’t go out! I can’t do it! And you can’t make me!" the corporal yelled.
THRICK!!! Rammer punches the stallion. And shoves him into the Bow Gunner’s hatch. It’s like stuffing a cat in a bathtub.
"Battle fatigue case. Good man. He’s got his limit. We got ours." Applejack just simply snorted at this.
"Ought’a be psycho’ed to the rear." Smolder joined in.
The Corporal extends his hoof from the hatch, just his hoof. He’s hold a LIVE GRENADE.
BOOM! -- It blows the Corporal’s hoof clean off, shreds his forearm. Rammer is livid.
"Bless you heart. You done went and did it. Get on, boy. Go suck your mama’s titty milk. Get on out of here you yellow fuck." he spat.
The Corporal climbs out of the hatch, slides down the front of the tank and trudges toward an ambulance clutching his shattered hoof. Sandbar saw everything. He looks at "Warmommy", amazed and confused. Who just shrugs and locks and loads her big .50 Cal machine gun.
"Guess he didn’t want to go. Drive! Move out." Applejack ordered.
The Bloom falls in behind the lieutenant's tank. After them is Firececlaws's tank, then Rockhoof and Rammer's.
The 5 tanks of 1st PLATOON move out in a column. Each tank running over the dead SS Sergeant - Flattening him into the mud. No sentimentality here. It’s just business.
(~)
The Five Sherman Tanks are on the road heading East. They pass the OUTPOST TANK - Marking the scrimmage line between the American Army and the Nazis.
"Go fuck yourself AJ! You owe me forty bucks." an outpost sentry yelled.
Applejack waves goodbye. The tank column passes a field where dozens of foxholes are filled with infantry stallions. At the sound of a WHISTLE a hundred ragged green stallions emerge from the earth like spawning locusts and shuffle towards waiting trucks.
Sandbar is sitting in the Bow Gunner’s seat, his hatch open. The ass of the Lieutenant’s Tank spewing exhaust and dust in his face. The Lieutenant keeps glancing back at Spike, sitting in the Driver’s hatch. Spike takes quick sips from a wine bottle between the young officer’s disapproving glances.
"We get hit, we’re gonna burn out. And we’re gonna burn out fast. Our tanks are shit boxes. German guns punch through them like butter. See this..." he said as he pointed to the hatch on the floor under his seats.
"We get hit. I’m gone. Right through here. I ain’t waiting for you. I ain’t helping you. Got that?"
"Okay. Thank you." Sandbar said nervously.
Sandbar looks up at Applejack in the Commander’s hatch. She looks like he was born like that - An iron centaur, half mare half tank. Applejack speaks to him through the intercom...
"Kid, you hear me, you plugged in?"
Norman fumbles with the intercom switch, replies, "I hear you, Sergeant."
"Don’t fire that bow gun until I tell you. Got that? Don’t want you plastering our guys." she said.
"Okay, AJ."
"Fuck who told you to call me AJ?!" Applejack asked in a cold tone, "You don't deserve to call me AJ yet."
"Ok...sorry sarge." Sandbar flinched.
"Do your job."
(~)
Spike kills off his bottle of wine, throws it at the back of the Lieutenant’s tank, shattering it.
"Kid, you play cards? Blackjack? Poker?" he asked the newbie.
"No. I don’t play cards." Sandbar replied.
"You bitch."
Farmer’s fields on either side. The tank column passes an OLD FARMER riding a hay wagon pulled by two old horses. Columns of black smoke rise in the distance. Applejack spreads her map on the turret. Marks their destination. Ocellus opens her hatch, next to Applejack’s.
"What a chicken shit job. A goddamned side mission while main unit leapfrogs us. We need any support we’re fucked." she muttered angrily.
"Ain’t this fucking war over yet?" Ocellus asked.
"We’re two hundred miles from Griffonheim. Get there just over a week."
"I’m in no hurry to get murdered in Griffonheim. Kids pouring bushels of grenades in our hatches. Wine bottles full’a gasoline. No thank you, ma’am." the changeling waved her hooves.
"I don’t want it to end." AJ said.
"I’m ready to ship home. Work at Thorax's, marry me a little thing to make me pies and babies." Ocellus sighed.
"I never planned on surviving this thing." Applejack shrugged.
VROOM! - A Hippogriff P-47 fighter flies over. So low that the crew can count the rivets on the wings. It quickly vanished over the horizon.
Sandbar watched with fascination. He SEES another P-47 fast approaching.
VROOM! - It passes directly overhead.
PAK-PAK-PAK-PAK-PAK! - A Griffon anti-aircraft gun opens up. 600 yards away it’s well camouflaged in a group of trees.
It blows the wing off the low-flying fighter plane.
The aircraft corkscrews into a field and EXPLODES VIOLENTLY as its bomb load detonates. Sudden. Shocking.
Applejack was put into immediate action by spinning the turret towards the anti-aircraft gun's position.
"Anti-aircraft! Two O'clock. Six hundred yards. HE! Fire when ready!" she ordered.
Ocellus quickly got into the turret and picked up a HE round from the ammo rack behind her. She stuffed it into the cannon breech. "Loaded!" she calls.
Smolder presses her face against the gun’s telescopic sight. She makes fine adjustments to the azimuth and elevation wheels of the cannon. Then stomps the firing pedal...
"On the way!"
KABOOM! - The gun recoils violently several feet, rocking the tank. Ocellus immediately loads another shell into the breech - It slams shut - KERCHACK!
Sandbar was buffeted by the muzzle blast. He SEES the cannon shell - a glowing fireball - Arc into the Griffon position.
KABOOM! - A direct hit. The distant target explodes with a high order detonation - Burning and exploding ammunition rains down around it.
"Love One-Two for Love-One. Target destroyed. We should head over there. Might be more Krauts to bag." Applejack requested.
"Negative, AJ. We’re on a timetable." the lieutenant replied sternly.
They continue on their way. Leaving the carnage behind them.
Sandbar watches the greasy column of smoke from the crashed fighter and the destroyed Griffon gun recede in the distance. It all happened so fast. His first taste of combat and he never saw an enemy soldier.
(~)
The five tanks turn onto a paved road. It is crowded with REFUGEES - A long ragged column of Griffon civilians fleeing the bombings and marauding Dragons to the East. OLD Griffons, Gryphon, chicks, once proud faces not dirty and scared.
Applejack was warily eying the flood of refugees. There’s a carriage being pushed by Gryphon. A car is pulled by horses.
"Okay. Button up. There might be a wolf hiding in the sheep. Kid, cast an eyeball on ‘em. Anyone makes a move you cut them right in half. Do what you need to do. If people are in the way, that’s their problem. You copy?" Applejack asked.
"Copy." Sandbar replied.
Spike and Sandbar closed their hatches. Sandbar looks at the machine gun. Hesitant. Spike reaches over and cocks it for him - KERCHACK!
"Gun’s ready. Just pull the trigger. Every five rounds is a tracer. So you can see what you’re hitting. Remember, short bursts. That way you’ll harvest more meat per bullet." Spike instructed him.
Sandbar REACTS. Looks through his periscope.
The world as seen through a rectangular piece of glass. He just sees a tired mass of Griffons. Pathetic and harmless.
The Refugees move aside for the tanks. Among them are a dozen SOLDIERS - Schoolboy draftees - With no appetite for a fight. They toss aside their weapons and raise white handkerchiefs. Applejack, from her position high in the turret towers over them, aims her assault rifle at them.
"Geh weiter. Pferdesport Linien sind so. Mach weiter. Hände hoch. Los geht's. Bewegung." (Keep walking. Equestrian lines are that way. Keep going. Hands up high. There you go. Move.) She yelled at the POWs.
The lieutenant is 50 feet ahead in his tank, he handsignals for Applejack to speed up. The tanks speed past the line of refugees. Tanks don’t like people near them.
Spike opens his hatch. Sandbar does the same. Grateful he didn’t have to shoot anyone. They pass a pretty Gryphon on a bicycle. She smiles at Sandbar.
The 5 tanks steadily approach their objective. Telegraph poles line the road. From those poles hang four YOUNG GRIFFONS, about 10 or 11 - Big signs around their necks.
The creatures in the Bloom stare at the dead children. Applejack is face to face with them. He’s up so high.
"What do the signs say?" Smolder asked.
Applejack paraphrases the Griffons scrawls on the signs.
"'I’m a coward and refused to fight for the Griffonian people.'" she sighed sadly, "Fuck those SS shits... Those are just children..."
Then the body of a HOUSEWIFE.
“I helped traitors to Griffonian Empire.” Applejack continued to translate.
Sandbar gasped, looking at the bodies. Stunned by the senseless cruelty.
"They did that shit in Kulgetown and Peak of Peril. Especially to the kirins; they think they're dirty, so these SS shits massacred most of the kirins. Only few survived. Now they’re doing it to their own people. Let ‘em rip themselves to pieces." Spike growled, "And they almost killed her."
"Who?" Sandbar asked.
"Autumn Blaze," Spike said, sighing, "She and I were good partners. Been through Operation Overlord, liberation of Manehattan, and the battle of the bulge. But she's captured trying to help me retreat. After the Kirin Massacre I though I wasn't to going to see her again. Just two days ago, our colts found her escaping from the Griffons, we got her back to our camp; and boy, these Griff motherfuckers tortured her just cuz she's a Kirin. Damn, how I hate racism."
"Is she ok?" Sandbar asked.
"Yeah, still recovering." Spike said, "Here's a tip for you kid: During war, you'll always lose the ones you trust or liked. It just the way it is."
Sandbar remained silence as the tank column continues.
(~)
Sandbar watches the world go by through his periscope block. Seeing Griffonian Empire through the small glass prism...
Suddenly, he saw MOVEMENT in the ditch alongside the lieutenant’s tank - An 11 Y.O. GROVER V YOUTH aims a Panzerfaust anti-tank rocket at the Lieutenant’s tank - He’s a scared little griffon; probably 8 years old, fear on his face, trembling.
Sandbar can’t believe what he’s seeing - He hesitates.
Just at this short moment of hesitation, the little griffon fired.
KABOOM! - A perfect hit on the ammunition storage. The result is instant and catastrophic as a jet of molten steel ignites the cannon ammunition...
A column of intense flame erupts from the commander’s hatch like a giant blow torch. the lieutenant is immolated like a pony candle.
Applejack aims her assault rifle at the Grover V Youth...
BRDDDDT! - Drops him with a burst. Two more GROVER V YOUTH decide they are done playing soldier and take off running...
BRDDDDT!-BRDDDDT! - Applejack smokes the little fuckers too...
The four other tanks spread out into a cover formation...
The burning tank rolls to a stop. The Driver’s hatch opens. The DRIVER crawls out - Flops on the ground, burning alive, he pulls his pistol from his shoulder holster...
BAM! - And shoots himself in the head.
Applejack and the other three tank commanders scanning for more Germans. All clear. Into radio...
"Keep an eye out." she said to Ocellus, who grabbed onto a 50 cal and loaded to cover AJ.
Applejack approaches the burning tank. AMMUNITION begins to EXPLODE. It is a total loss. No survivors.
Wait - The BOW GUNNER’S hatch opens. Belching fire and smoke. The A-DRIVE flails in the open hatch. Roasting alive. Trapped. Hopeless.
BRDDDDT! - Wardaddy finishes him off. Then, he crosses to the Grover V Youth in the ditch - He’s still alive. Applejack kicks him. Reloads her rifle.
"Bist du jetzt glücklich, du kleine Scheiße? Du solltest in der Schule sein und Milch trinken. Du musstest nicht gegen uns kämpfen, du Idiot." (You happy now you little shit? You should be in school drinking milk. You didn’t have to fight us you idiot.) Applejack snarled at the little Griffon as she aimed her gun at him.
BRDDT! - she ends the boy’s short lived war. She returns to the Bloom. BANGS on Sandbar’s hatch with her gun butt.
"Sandbar, open this goddamn hatch you cocksucker." she roared.
Sandbar opens the hatch, scared of Applejack. Who the hell wouldn’t be?
"Why didn't you shoot that shithead when you had the chance?" she demanded.
"It happened so fast. He was just a kid." Sandbar muttered, unfortunately, that angered Applejack even more.
She gestures at the dead lieutenant's burning tank.
"See what a kid can do? That’s your fault. Next fucking Griffon with a weapon you see, rake the dogshit out of him. I don’t care if it’s a baby with a butter knife in one hand and mama’s left titty in the other. You chop him up."
Applejack walks away, leaving Sandbar destroyed and guilt wracked. Spike looks at him, SEES newbie started to fall apart.
"Okay, look. That stupid kid did that not you. I froze up before too. That’s why I like driving. gotta kill Griffons? It’s them or Can you do it?" he said to the falling young pony.
"...I can do it..." he whispered.
"Okay. Then do it. This makes it easier." said Spike as he patted Sandbar's shoulder.
He offers Sandbar a bottle of wine. Sandbar declines. Applejack shouts to Rammer’s tank.
"Alight, Ram. Guess I’m it. I’ll lead the column. Let’s get where we’re going!"
"Lead the way." Rammer said.
Applejack climbs into the Bloom’s turret. Double checks her map. Into her mic, "Driver, move out!"
Spike puts the tank in gear and leads the column forward.