“Mission begins in sixty seconds.”
The ponies stood in the cold white room, trying to think of a unifying plan as the beginning of the match approached.
“Ah don’t trust Discord to make this a fair game,” said Applejack, “If we get set apart for any reason, we meet right back in this room, y’all hear?”
The team expressed their approval.
“Mission begins in thirty seconds.”
“Well I think we’ve got our work cut out for us girls,” Twilight said confidently, “One of my friends is an expert on anthropology, and she told me that humans are squishy and not terribly strong. If anything," she said, "you have to watch out for their smarts.”
“Mission begins in ten seconds.”
“Get ready everyone.”
“Five.”
“Four.”
“Three.”
“Two.”
“One.”
A loud siren played in the far distance.
The metal door rolled up from the bottom and the ponies stepped outside. The warm summer air was crisp and undisturbed, as if the atmosphere itself was expertly curated just for this event. Weathered wooden buildings lay steadfast in a labyrinth, blocking and granting access at random. The landscape was dotted with light tan boulders that matched the arid desert sand. The air was still, the ponies were silent, and time itself paused briefly in hesitation.
“Ah think that’s the cart,” said Applejack matter-of-factly, pointing at a metal apparatus not far from where they were standing. “Best we start pushin’ it?”
Applejack nonchalantly trotted over to the cart and BOOM. A sharp sound echoed through the air.
Applejack flipped over forward landing squarely on her face. About a second later she disappeared from the field in a subdued *poof*, and after another second she popped out of the white room again, a bit confused yet entirely unscathed.
“I don’t think I understand the rules of this game,” Rarity projected towards the sky, with a slight frown on her face. “You want us to pull the cart, but as soon as we get near it you send us back to that room? How do you expect us to...”
BOOM. Rarity hit the ground, *poof*, and then trotted back out of the white room.
“Hey!” she snapped, "If you keep doing that, we might as well not play at all.”
“I unno, might be kind of fun,” said Pinkie, as she bounced unpredictably over to the metal cart. The same unmistakable BOOM filled the air a few times, kicking up little patches of dust behind her, but Pinkie remained more or less near the cart. To her surprise, the cart reacted to her presence and began moving on its own.
“Come on everypony!” yelled Pinkie, and the rest of them followed her lead, not really knowing what else to do. As soon as they huddled around the cart it began emitting a faint lively glow, accelerating along its rails. As the cart gained speed, the ponies gained confidence.
It was too easy, they thought. And they were right.
When the cart reached momentum, a cadet blue figure popped out from behind one of the rocks. Then another, and another, and soon an entire group of humans were charging angrily at them.
Twilight tried to count the hostiles that emerged, but she didn’t have enough time. In a flash of intense light and sound, she found herself square in the center of the white room. One by one her friends popped in around her, with mixed expressions on their faces. Pinkie Pie was smirking and trotting in place, whereas Applejack was looking down in contemplation. As Rarity paced back and forth, Fluttershy buried her nose in the far corner of the room, whimpering quietly.
Twilight walked towards Fluttershy and paused to compose herself before she spoke, but Fluttershy interrupted in a distressed string of word pasta. The strongest voice she could muster was a vocal whisper:
“Twilight!” she whimpered under her tears, “Twilight, can we go home?” Fluttershy pulled her face out of the corner and looked up at Twilight with soulful eyes. “Please Twilight just try. I know you tried before and it didn’t work but please can you try again? Just one more time?”
“No problem Fluttershy, I promise you I’ll do what I can. I think I can speak for everyone in saying we don’t want to be here. Is everyone ready?”
Twilight stood tall on all fours and her horn began to fluoresce, but she faltered as she remembered she was forgetting something.
“Where’s Rainbow Dash?”
Twilight turned to look back at the rest of the ponies, and as she did so, Rainbow Dash popped into the back corner of the room upside down, falling on her back, and jumped right back into the air on her wings.
“Did you see that?” Rainbow exclaimed, beaming as she did restrained loops and rolls around the tiny room. “I swear I’ve never felt so alive. I don’t even really know what happened to be honest I guess I was up in the air and I just flew really fast. I saw the rocks and the tunnel and all the buildings, and everyone was just standing around on the ground yelling at each other and looking at you guys. One of them was really fat and he could barely even run!” Rainbow snickered to herself for a moment, then continued on. “I’ve got a great feeling about this and I just thought of a plan too, listen up. I bet if we can get close enough to them we can pin a few of them down. Maybe we can get some info from them or at least take ‘em out of commission. Those gadgets over there are what they’re using to send us back here, you know.”
All eyes fell on the bookshelves with the weathered metal tools.
“It’s a precision thing,” continued Rainbow Dash. “Every one of them was holding one of these as steady as they could. Remember when you were practicing turning things into oranges, Twi?”
“So we just have to figure out how to use them?”
“Exactly, Twilight. They could only hold one each in their stubby little paws. I bet with your magic you could pick up this entire shelf at once.”
• • •
“Mission begins in sixty seconds.”
The blue team stood in the cold white room, trying to think of a unifying plan as the beginning of the match approached.
After a moment the spawn doors opened, and the team moved out to defend.
“I don’t trust ze Announcer to make this a fair game,” said Medic, as the nine of them jogged up to the rocky Badwater outcropping, “I say we should take cover until we know what’s up. If things start going bad, we’ll need to meet up again and think of a new strategy.”
The team expressed their approval.
“Mission begins in thirty seconds.”
As they situated themselves around and behind the rocks outside of red spawn, Scout ran in place, flipping his bat in his hands out of nervous habit.
Pyro glanced back towards blue respawn, then looked onward.
“Mission begins in ten seconds.”
“Everyone ready?”
(“Ready as we’ll ever be.”)
“Five.”
“Four.”
“Three.”
“Two.”
“One.”
A loud siren played in the far distance.
Each one of them stood still, peeking out at the distant respawn from his position behind the boulders. The air was crisp and undisturbed, and the battlefield was quiet enough that they could hear their own heartbeats. A few moments passed in silence, then a little purple figure ducked through the respawn door, then a pink one, an orange one, a yellow one.
“Are those . . . horses?” Sniper whispered quizzically to Engineer, who was one rock to his left.
“They look more like ponies, actually,” replied Engineer under his breath. “And I’ve never seen colors like that before. I’m thinkin’ maybe the Announcer’s goin’ nutty. ”
“She’s already a grade A nutcase if you ask me,” joked Sniper, who looked a bit guilty as he realized he’d raised his voice far above a whisper.
On the opposite side of the battlefront, Heavy, Medic and Soldier peeked over the rock, a mix of dumbfounded and amused.
“What should ve do?” whispered Medic.
“What you think Announcer want?” inquired Heavy.
“She would want us to fight like the men we are,” replied Soldier.
A faint rustling caught Sniper’s ear. One of the opposition had started towards the cart.
With the orange pony in his sights and urgency in his voice, Sniper whispered over to Engineer, “What do I do? Engie, they’re going for the cart! Do we fight them?”
“Heck yes. That’s the point of the game, right?”
Sniper’s finger was resting in the trigger guard, unsure of whether to shoot or wait for more to unfold. His mind was racing, and his thoughts turned to mush.
BOOM.
Before the orange pony could get to the cart, Sniper had landed a perfectly aimed, unpremeditated crit. Seconds later the same pony walked back out of the respawn room.
After a moment another one started whining indistinctly, the pitch of her voice wavering at high frequency.
BOOM.
“I don’t know, Engie, do we keep fighting them? It feels wrong. Like strangling a kitt’n.”
“As long as they’re coming out of that spawn, they’re enemies. You remember basic training, don’t you Sniper?”
“. . . yeah,” Sniper replied hesitantly.
“The Announcer wouldn’t have sent them out here if we weren’t supposed to fight ‘em,” added Engineer. “Remember the first time she sent those metal imposters out?”
“. . . yeah I guess you’re right,” stated Sniper, with a bit more confidence.
Sniper looked through the scope to find the pink one bouncing up and down. After establishing its gait, it started bounding randomly towards the cart.
“Steady, steady . . .”
BOOM.
Sniper cursed under his breath.
BOOM.
BOOM.
“Aw come on,” chided Engie, “I’ve seen you do way better than that.”
On the other side of the field, Soldier was getting antsy, running his giant launcher through his hands repeatedly. “We should fight, men. Sniping over rocks is for cowards. The sooner we fight, the sooner we win.”
Heavy and Medic looked at each other, trying to gauge the other’s enthusiasm.
Soldier cried out and pointed at the respawn door. All the ponies had started moving at once, and Soldier seized this opportunity to take control.
“Go Go GO, Charge!” he yelled, sprinting out from cover.
The team was instantly mobilized. Heavy jumped out from behind the rocks and Medic followed immediately after. Pyro, Demoman and Scout ran around to flank on the right, and Spy went invisible and positioned himself near the spawn door. Sniper stood up to get a better view, and Engineer sat there and kept him company.
The team worked in tandem as they had rehearsed a thousand times before, and this time was no exception. Heavy and Pyro went in for close-range battle, while Medic juggled an ubercharge between the two. Demoman and Soldier followed behind them with mid-range blasts, and Sniper and Engie functioned as remote support. The adrenaline of the fight flushed their faces in the afternoon sun, but when the opposition had been decimated and they congratulated each other with cursory glances, they couldn’t help but feel empty. Was this really the Announcer’s test? The lopsided battle resulted in no casualties, and the defending team had barely broken a sweat.
It was too easy, they thought. And they were right.