//------------------------------// // Halo Wars, Game 1 // Story: Let's play some games with Leon, Luna, and Eddy // by Fireheart 1945 //------------------------------// Leon sat down in his easy chair in front of his Xbox 360, turned it and his T.V. on, and waited as the game system loaded. In moments he heard a dinging sort of sound, along with a pop-up saying, "Nightstar211 would like you to join a party." He hit the X in the center of the controller and hit the affirmative option. There was another dinging sound, and he was in the party. "Good evening, Leon," Luna said over the headset, "or should I call you Firestar?" "Whatever is pleasing to you, Nightstar." "I can't believe I'm named after a minor male character in an obscure series about cats!" "It's not obscure," Leon said, chuckling, "they say 'Best seller' on the cover-" "You fell for it again." "Darn. Still, Nightstar isn't exactly a minor character if he's a leader of a Clan, considering the revolution he ends up leading in the first book and the battle he leads in Forest of Secrets." "I still say it was ThunderClan's business who they chose to keep prisoner and who they didn't." Ding! "Hey chaps." "Hey Ed, what's new?" "Is that some sort of crack?" "Uh," Leon said cautiously, "Nooooo." "Good. Then lets play the damn game." Leon put the game Halo Wars in the game console and skipped to the start screen. After accepting a request to join a 3v3 game from Luna, he sat back in the chair, relaxing after the day he'd had, which had, which had involved a math test which he was sure he'd done pretty mediocre at. The map Luna had chosen was Fort Deen, their favorite map to play on. Luna had chosen to play as the Prophet of Regret. "Oh, nice choice, Luna; laze them all with the Death Star, that's original." "Oh, shut up, Edward. I see you chose Forge again, with his terrible Grizzly canister and carpet bomb." "Grizzlies are awesome. 'Nuff said. Leon went for Professor Anders again, discount on tech that doesn't matter once everything's been researched; at least I can save a hundred resources every time I have to build or rebuild a supply pad... oops, I mean a heavy supply pad..." "Hey," Leon protested, "Anders can have a fully teched-up army of Scorpions or Warthogs out there twice as fast as anyone else. If you have the better units faster, then you don't need the economy in order to win; you just blow up the enemy's bases." "Alright, alright," Luna said, "are you both ready to start?" The answers were both yes. They all hit the start button. The game proceeded to a generic loading screen portraying a part of the map and it's description, as well as the teams that were matched against one another. On the other teams' gamertags were X_Silverfish_X, LOLMAN824, and AWESOMENESS101. "That last is Rainbow Dash's own account," Luna mentioned. "Be careful, she's probably good." The game began as Leon's base came into view. He quickly set up; Supply Pad, Reactor, Supply Pad, Supply Pad. In the meantime, with the spare money (yes, technically it was 'resources," but "money" was faster to say), he added a Warthog to the queue. It was good to have some of those for an early force, especially once he researched the gunner tech for them. He set the one he started out with to collect a pile of crates next to his base. There wasn't much else to do, so he moved over to Luna's base. She had already queued up two Warehouses and a Temple, getting ready to throw her leader out into the world. As if she knew he was watching her, she took that moment to say, "Don't kill any of the Rebel bases on our side of the map. I'll need those to get stars for the Prophet." "Wasn't going to, but you might want to start out with the jerks covering the teleporter." "I might, but bases are easier." "Oy!" Eddy shouted. In order to get the others to pay attention, he pinged the area of the map he wanted them to look at. "RD's building an Air Pad, probably gonna go for early Hawks." Sure enough, having been scouted by Eddy's Warthog, the green UNSC base was now visible, and an air pad was currently being built on one of the pads. "That could be problematic for the tank army I intend to build," Leon remarked. "Me too. I was gonna build a million Grizzlies and swamp them." "Well, we'll have build a few Wolverines then," Leon said; the UNSC's anti aircraft vehicle was a missile-spewing monster. When fully upgraded, it only took a few of them to menace even a full army of air units. They cost two population, while tanks cost three. The UNSC started with thirty population, which could be upgraded to forty. The Covenant started with forty and ended up with fifty. It was unwise to go full wolverines, but seeing as the Covenant's vehicles were terrible compared with their UNSC counterparts - especially the Scorpion, which made mincemeat out of the Wraith - they often tried to go with full Banshee armies. The only other tangible choices were combinations of Hunters, Jackals, and Vampires, which were the Covenant's own anti-air unit. These choices meant slower movement. Hunters cost 250 resources vs. the Banshee's 200, and the Banshees could move a heck of a lot faster. Luckily they were vulnerable to anti-air, but that didn't stop players from throwing them into combat, losing them, and instantly queuing up more where they had come from. "Ah," Eddy went on, "Orange went straight for a Barracks, I can already see Marines." "ODSTs then. This guy must like Russian Steamroller tactics." "Yeah, bad idea." Eddy's Warthog kept driving on, until an enemy Arbiter went into rage mode and destroyed it. Eddy clucked. "Well, that was good while it lasted." "Did you see anything of Red's?" "Nope. He's got a couple bars on his rank, Captain, probably going to try building a Scarab." "That's not good for us," Luna noted. "We aren't exactly equipped to destroy one." "You mean none of us went Cutter, so we don't have a MAC cannon to immediately blast it to scrap metal," Leon quipped. "Rainbow's probably going to be the real pain, the other two seem like new guys." "Says the guy with three Warthogs. You rushing, Leo?" Eddy asked. "Not unless I can mess up Rainbow's base, and I'm not sure I can." Leon gave it some thought. Wrecking the air pad or blowing up a supply pad would force Rainbow to rebuild it, using credits desperately needed in the early game. "If I can get five Warthogs out quickly, I might go for it." 'By the way, what is our plan if this draws out?" Eddy said to both Leon and Luna. "I say Super Turtle," Leon suggested. "Pffft. You're only saying that because of all those online videos you watch." "I'd suggest taking the war to them as soon as possible," Luna advised. "With somepony like Rainbow Dash on their side, the other team, new or not, will become a pain in our necks." "Alright, but now that I've got all five Warthogs, I'm going in," Leon announced. "You sure five 'Hogs are gonna do anything?" Eddy inquired. "I'm going to add more in as the whole thing goes on. And I'm not going to just sit there as my 'Hogs get wrecked, My goal here is to wreck buildings and do damage, not take someone out of the game. You want to take people out at the start of the match, use a leader rush or a MAC rush." "How many MAC rushes have you seen work?" Eddy asked as Leon moved his Warthogs to attack Rainbow's base in the center of the enemy position (it was on the concrete side, whereas their own team was on the grassy side). "Not many," Leon admitted. To be sure, the MAC rush - everyone playing as Cutter, driving a Warthog up to an opponent's base and hitting it with a single MAC from each player, destroying it - was more for laughs than for serious play, in fact he'd never heard of anyone using it for real. "Good luck, anyway." Leon knew he couldn't rely on his teammates to help him with the rush; Luna had sent her Prophet to kill a rebel base and the units guarding it, while Eddy was too busy focusing on his economy to do much of anything. His Warthogs crossed most of the map without facing anything more than a few pot shots from towers on rebel bases. unfortunately, LOLMAN824, who was the orange UNSC player, had a Marine on the ramp he drove up on, which probably tipped off everyone on the other team to the attack. Regardless, Leon ordered his units to attack a Supply Pad Rainbow Dash had built on her base. Pieces of the building chipped off as five machine guns tore it up. Another Warthog came up and added it's own firepower to the mix. The Supply Pad blew up as it's health bar was depleted. "Got a Supply pad, going for the Air Pad." "Uh look out, mate, you got a bunch of Marines coming for you." Sure enough, a group of eight or nine orange Marines were charging forward, obviously trying to wreck the attacking force. "That's fine, they'll never catch up with me." When Leon ordered his Warthogs to go around to another part of the base, the Marines were left behind. "Careful, you might get caught out from there." "I know what I'm doing," Leon replied, shooting up Rainbow's Reactor a little as his Warthogs quickly darted out of the danger zone, which was the space between the base and a cliff, where many a tank or Scarab or what-have-you had indeed been trapped by hostile ground forces. He started to giggle. "I can see Rainbow now, yelling at her teammates for not helping." "Speakin' 'o which, you got an Arbiter coming to rage you," said Eddy. "Uh oh, that could be a problem." Red's Arbiter was running up in Rage Mode, and began a series of jumping attacks on Leon's Warthogs. Luckily, he hadn't been upgraded much, so all he did was kill two Warthogs and damage another. The damage could be easily repaired. As his units began the rush, he'd upgraded his Reactor and build a Factory, allowing him to build tanks, so at least he would be able to repair the damage. "Yes! Got my first star," Luna remarked excitedly. "Good, can you clear out the teleporter?" "I can, in fact I'm already on my way there." "Ok, thanks." As this exchange ended, Leon's first tank rolled out of his base, and he ordered another base to be constructed on one of the base sites Luna had cleared out. So far, things were going alright. The next few minutes were quiet. Luna kept blowing up Rebel bases and taking out scattered Rebel infantry with her Prophet, who got his second star very quickly after smashing the Rebels guarding the teleporter, who, since they had experience at the start of the game, were worth more to someone going for experience, especially on a Covenant leader. Then Leon noticed a red icon on the minimap; on closer inspection, it was the symbol for the Arbiter, who was headed for Eddy's base. "Hey, Ed, you have an Arbiter coming to your base." "Aw, what's he gonna do?" Eddy asked contemptuously. What the Arbiter was going to do was made clear; as he neared the base, Suicide Grunts began teleporting in en masse around him. "Oh, bugger!" the British player shouted. "I see it," Luna said quietly. "Coming." Leon ordered his tanks to intercept the suicide army, then Cryo-bombed the enemy army, freezing much of it in place for a few seconds. He hadn't upgraded it, so it didn't last long, but at least the Arbiter and most of his grunt army had been stalled. Seconds after the enemy had been frozen, Eddy dropped a Disruption bomb (commonly known as the "D-bomb" or "EMP bomb") on top of the Arbiter, preventing him from teleporting away or calling for more reinforcements. The best thing of all was that the Arbiter couldn't rage until either the bomb's effects wore out or he walked out of it's area of effect, so he was more or less helpless. Leon's tanks as well as a few of Eddy's tore at the enemy, while the Prophet, still grounded but upgraded to have a pair of sentinels guarding him, was slicing at the suicide units with the Cleansing Beam; within thirty seconds, half of the Suicide Grunts were dead, and the Arbiter was down to half-health. At the same time, a few Grunts had managed to reach Eddy's base, and started to explode, destroying two Heavy Supply Pads and doing damage to the main structure. Luckily they didn't manage to do any more before the rest were wiped out completely; the Arbiter bugged out, walking to a point beyond the range of the d-bomb and warping away. "Phew. Thanks, guys." "Anytime." Leon built a Reactor on his second base; the canister shell was perhaps the best upgrade in the game, and he needed tech level 3 to get it. He also queued up a Barracks in order to train Spartans to put in his tanks. "Uh oh," Luna spoke up, sounding a little worried. "Orange has sent in an entire army of Marines against my expansion base." "Really? They aren't even ODSTs?" "No, but there's a full army of them. And they'll have a MAC." "Yeah, that's the big issue," Eddy remarked. "Better drop a d-bomb." "I don't have one; only UNSC leaders, like yourselves, can use one." "Leo, you get to do it this time; mine's still recharging." "Fine." Leon centered his camera on the threatened base and d-bombed it; if Orange researched ODSTs in the middle of this fight, he didn't want him to start dropping them in. He also sent his army of tanks to intercept the enemy force. The Marines began shooting at a Summit on the base; luckily, since the base had a Shield Generator on it, it was protected from damage... until three MAC slugs fell out of the sky on top of an area of the base unprotected by the d-bomb, killing the shield and doing some damage to the base. Almost as soon as that happened, the Marines mass-volleyed rockets into the central base structure; the health bar dropped to a point where it's color had turned red. "Uh, help?" the Princess asked with a wavering voice However, in doing using both unit and leader powers, Orange now had nothing to defend himself against the army of Scorpions that crashed into his flank, or from the Banshees that began plunking away at them with plasma fire. Eddy sent in a Carpet Bomb; the effect was devastating. Leon ordered his tanks to use canister shells. Marines dropped like flies before everything thrown at them. A group of green Hornets flew in from the center of the map and started firing missiles at Leon's tanks. He wondered why they had been thrown in this late in the battle; if they had been committed at the start, the base might have collapsed. As it was, the Hornets began falling back as soon as the Marines had been finished off. "Well, that went well," Eddy remarked. "I agree, although my base took significant damage." "Here, have a heal." Eddy used the healing power that was available to al UNSC commanders to heal the base. The health bar for the main structure slowly climbed back toward the right side of the bar. "Thank you." "I'm going to go wreck Orange's base." Leon announced. "He probably doesn't have much after we destroyed his army." As he said this, he sent his army toward one of the Orange player's expansion bases. "Not sure that's a good idea, mate; Rainbow has Hornets, and she's probably researching Hawks as we speak." "Well, if we knock out Orange, that's 30-40 population worth of units permanently out of the fight. If he's as stubborn as you would expect, he's just going to throw ODSTs into the field till he's wiped out." "Please be careful," Luna advised. "I will." Leon's tanks crossed the field without incident. Just behind the shield wall, the enemy base was completely undefended. He ordered his tanks to destroy a barracks on one of the pads. It went down quickly, as did two other structures, a Supply Pad and a Field Armory. Then he gave the order for his tanks to canister the central building of the Fortress. The damage was extensive, to say the least. He expected Green Hornets to show up at any time, but they were surprisingly late to the party. It wasn't until the Orange base was down to red health that Rainbow committed her aerial units into the battle. Leon was ready. He dropped a Cryo bomb on top of the attacking units, destroying a few and freezing the rest. His two wolverines, though not upgraded, fired volleys of missiles into the stonewalled Hornets, while his tanks kept pounding the base. Luna sent a few Vampires into the fight; the Covenant anti-air unit was itself a flying unit and vulnerable to anti-air. Red sent in his own army as well, a large group of his own Vampires. These started taking fire as the Orange base finally exploded and Leon's tanks were looking for more targets. The Red Arbiter made an appearance as well; a brief appearance, as it turned out, as he was d-bombed again by Eddy and Leon's tanks' canister shells obliterated him. "Oh ho, yes!" Eddy cheered, even though his units hadn't done the actual killing. By now though, the Hornets had done enough damage to Leon's army that he had to withdraw. His Wolverines had been overwhelmed by the sheer number of enemy air units, and he'd lost five of his tanks already. "Pulling back," he announced. "Okay, I'm sending the rest of my Banshees and Vampires to cover you," Luna answered. Purple Vampires did indeed cover Leon's retreat, and the Hornets withdrew before taking any excessive damage. "Thanks." "Anytime." The game was quiet for the next little while. Eddy got a third base, as did Luna, and all three of them built up their economies and researched technologies. "So Luna," Leon said after several minutes of silence, "what happened today in court?" "On, nothing new," the Princess answered. "Blueblood wanted a massive allowance when he does nothing; that got shot down instantly. Some of the nobles came, saying we should lower taxes on them so, in their words, 'the more important ponies could get things done.' Needless to say, the answer to that was a big no as well. Some dignitaries from the Zebra Tribes came; it's always a pleasure to speak to them, they're surprisingly cultured for a people that live primarily in huts and tents. Ah yes, and I permanently banned a Griffon ambassador from Equestria." "Why? What did he do?" "Oh, nothing. If you count cheating honest merchants, and yes, those do exist, of their hard-earned money, causing an uproar from public drinking, and making lecherous faces at everypony, especially at my sister, as nothing." "Wow." Leon scratched his head. "How can people be that stupid?" "I know. Still, he won't be back, not unless both me and my sister die before he does, which is highly unlikely, considering the relative peace Equestria lives in. Anyway, after he was unceremoniously thrown out the front gate by my Guards, a group of farmers requested and received a permit to build an orange plantation in the southern regions of the country. After that, court was over, and I went to the spa for a hooficure." "Your hooves wouldn't be able to feel the change, let alone any dirt or grit that got on them." "Perhaps, but we like them to at least look good, which was the point, and I was able to relax for the first time today." "Uh, glad you guys have had time for such a lovely little chat, but there's a massive army coming to destroy my base, if you hadn't noticed," Eddy cut in. Leon took a quick look at the minimap and saw a myriad of green, red, and orange blips heading straight for the British player's base. "Oops, sorry Ed," he apologized as he sent his tanks and Wolverines over to help. This enemy army was much stronger for the fact that at last all three opposing players were cooperating. An entire army of ODSTs was coming in behind a full army of Suicide Grunts. Green Hawks flew in and out of view; clearly Rainbow was hoping to join the battle after her teammates had engaged. Leon Cryo-bombed the Suicide Grunts; though he could have saved it for the Hawks, he knew the Grunts were more dangerous if they got to the base. Eddy agreed, for he used a Carpet bomb against them. It was fully upgraded, so the casualties came from both the Orange and Red armies. "Do you want my help?" Luna asked them. "No. In fact it might be more prudent if you attacked one of their bases," Leon replied, still waiting for his tanks to show up. "We have tanks and Wolverines, so we should be able to get something done here." "Alright." Leon didn't bother looking at the minimap to see where her units were going. As it was, the enemy Arbiter was back, fully upgraded, and he was raging down some of Eddy's Grizzlies. The canister from the Grizzlies did little, either against him or the army of Suicide Grunts. Leon's Scorpions were another matter, and tore into the hostile force. Partly thanks to the leader powers they'd used, the Red army was mostly dead. That didn't stop the survivors from trying desperately to blow themselves up against the base. Only three of them got close enough to pull it off. A Heavy Supply Pad blew up, but the rest of the base was undamaged. The Orange army, undeterred, kept on walking toward the base. Clearly they intended to use their rocket power on the main base structure in the hopes of bringing it down. That fact was underscored by four MAC slugs that fell from the sky onto the base, lowering it's health well past the halfway mark. At this point the Hawks joined the fray, all of them concentrating on the base itself and ignoring the ground units. A Cryo bomb fell on Leon's Wolverines, immobilizing most of them and temporarily disabling many Scorpions as well. For every ODST they managed to kill, more simply dropped out of the sky to join their brothers. Both Leon and Eddy used their D-bombs (one of which fell on the Arbiter, the other off to the side in an effort to keep the OSDTs from flanking the base), but there were too many free places for OSDTs to drop in. Some of them inevitably got close enough to use their rockets against the base. It was too much. The base exploded, all the buildings on it going up one by one like firecrackers before the main structure broke up. "Aw, those mother-" Leon tuned out Eddy's river of obscenities and tried to focus on exterminating the remaining enemy units. While the composition of the enemy force was good for killing bases, it wasn't so good at fighting a mechanized army. Scorpions and Grizzlies tore up the ODSTs; no matter how many you were able to throw in, there was a limit as to how many could be dropped at once, and in this case the damage done outweighed the reinforcements. Meanwhile the Hawks were blasted out of the sky by Wolverine missiles. The Arbiter didn't last long either; without any experience, he was almost helpless under the rain of canister shells that once more blew him away. "Calm down, Ed," Leon said somewhat forcefully after listening to fifteen seconds of rage by Eddy. "You can rebuild the damn thing. And you have two other bases, which aren't damaged, I might add." Eddy told him to do something that was... impossible. Leon tuned that out as well; it was just typical Eddy, being, well, Eddy. The remaining Hawks withdrew, escaping the devastation that had claimed most of their number. Orange either never got the idea to pull back or he just decided his army was dead in any event. The last ODSTs finally died off, smashed by tank shells and machine gun rounds. "Well that was fun," Leon remarked. "How are you doing, Luna?" He got no response. "Luna?" He checked the chat status of the party. Just as he'd thought, the Princess had switched to game chat, which was completely separate from normal chat. "Luna, you still here?" he asked after switching to the same chat mode. "Oh, hey Leon. Is it over?" "Yeah, Eddy wore himself out. He'll get over it." "I hope so. I may be learning about modern methods of speech, but I still hate bad language." "A lot of us do, but..." "I know. Well, let's get back to the game." They both switched back to party chat. "As I was saying, how far did you get on that attack of yours, Luna?" Leon inquired again. "Fairly well, as a matter of fact. Look for yourself." Leon did. Luna had, by herself, managed to completely destroy two bases, one Red and one from Orange, and the only reason she hadn't gone farther was that Orange had realized that keeping his bases was more important than attacking, and he kept throwing ODSTs into the fight. While they were terrible against tanks, ODSTs were harder for aircraft to kill. Red still had a few Vampires, which contributed little due to the fact that most of them had been stasis-beamed by Luna's own Vampires. Now was the time to attack, to wipe the enemy team out one by one while they were weakened by Luna's attack and from their own failed assault. "You guys up for crushing them?" Leon asked. "I am crushing them, Luna said in reply, "but some assistance would be nice." "Yeah, my Grizzlies need more food," Eddy agreed. "Going to wreck this base." A cream-colored ping displayed the base (a green one) Eddy had targeted for destruction. "Then I'll knock out this one," Leon announced, pinging one of the orange bases. "Okay." Leon gave the command, and his army rolled out. In the center of the map, Orange had had the presence of mind to place ODSTs in the shield wall, which would have been a good idea if there had been something like Cobras or Scarabs to help them. There weren't, so a few canister shells later the Scorpions and Wolverines passed by the remains of the infantry who had tried to hold them. Leon was worried that Orange would try to re-man the wall by dropping in more ODSTs; that would likely slice several of his units in half instantly. Orange did nothing about it. After several seconds of ODSTs not dropping in to retake the wall, he stopped worrying. When he looked over at the battle Luna was currently fighting, his questions were answered. The Orange player had decided it was better to defend his base directly rather than try retaking the shield wall. Well, he was going to pay for it. He did so in short order. An undefended base was hammered by canister shells and missiles from Wolverine volleys. The base stood no chance. Without a proper army to defend it, there was nothing to stop the mechanized army from wrecking it. Three buildings, all Supply Pads, were obliterated before he concentrated on the main structure. The fortress didn't last long before it broke, all four remaining buildings gone. The only damage Leon had suffered was superficial, inflicted by base turrets, which hadn't been upgraded. At last, though, a Red army came down the concrete ramp leading to the main bases of the enemy players. This time, Red had gone with a full army of Hunters, which were fully upgraded and began ripping into Leon's Scorpions with their assault beams. "Aw nuts, guys, Red has Hunters." "Oh really?" Eddy said incredulously. "I wondered whether they had the brains to get off what they were doing." Leon dropped a Cryo bomb on the enemy, but got an unpleasant surprise when Rainbow did the same to him, so the majority of both armies were frozen in place. Leon ordered what tanks he still did have to canister the Hunters, which did knock out a couple of them. Both sides began shooting at one another as soon as the freezing effects died off. Leon lost a couple tanks due to the fact that his units were still frozen for a few seconds after the effect had vanished from the Hunters. He swiftly withdrew from the action. One of his Wolverines was picked off as he fell back. "Well, I can't go any further without my army being horrendously destroyed," he deadpanned. "No problem, mate, I have a Carpet bomb ready to go, just go back and I'll blast them." "Okay, Ed, we'll see how it works out." Leon sent his units back to re-engage the Hunters. Eddy dropped the Carpet bomb as he'd promised, and several Hunters dropped beneath the barrage of bombs and tanks. None of that prevented four more MAC slugs from blasting numerous blue tanks apart. Orange had seen and had targeted his army. Looking at the Hunter army and what was left of his own, Leon decided against continuing the attack. He could win, but most of his army would be dead and of little further value. After healing up and rebuilding he would come back. Elsewhere, the offensive was going well. Red's entire army had come to fight Leon, and Eddy's Grizzlies were ripping into their base on the other side of the map. The base was doomed; it only took a cursory glance at it to know that. As for Luna, her banshees were blasting away at Rainbow's main base with their fuel rod cannons. The base turrets that had any chance of hitting them had been destroyed, and a Reactor was being brutally chewed up. Red made his decision. As soon as his expansion base was destroyed, the message "X_Silverfish_X resigned" flashed across the screen, followed by distant explosions as his remaining base blew up and his units instantly died. Orange went down even faster; as his remaining base was attacked, he resigned as well, all seven buildings on his base detonating one by one. That just left Rainbow Dash. She struggled on as well as she could, but Leon had healed his remaining tanks by now and sent them back in, all the while rebuilding his army. The game only lasted two more minutes. The end was inevitable. "Well, that was fun," Eddy said as the green UNSC base blew up and the last of Rainbow's units died. The word "Victory!" came up on the screen. The game was over. "Hold on, I'll invite Rainbow Dash," Luna said. After a minute, the valiant pegasus did actually join. "Ugh," she groaned, "I'm so mad right now." "What happened?" Leon asked. "Leon? Is that you? Oh thank heavens. Someone rational. Those two idiots wouldn't listen to a word I said." "Yeah, especially considering that terrible first attack," Eddy said with amusement. "I told them not to do that. But did they listen? Nope! Had to threaten to cryo one of their armies just to get them to cooperate. Nearly destroyed my controller with my hooves because I was so frustrated." "Wow." "Yeah, wow." "Why did you party up with them then?" Leon asked. "They were friends of someone I knew, and they were the only people I could find. It would have been better to wait." That was something rarely heard from the impatient pegasus pony. "Well, we'll play something where you can join on our side," Luna announced. "Thanks, Princess." "Anyone for Battlestations Pacific?" Leon asked. The answer told him all he needed to know. He smiled. It was going to be a good night.