//------------------------------//
// Vinyl VS The Upper Class (Part 2) 
// Story: Equestrian Robot Combat 
// by QuilliamPenn 
//------------------------------//

Vinyl VS The Upper Class (Part 2)


How had this happened?

How had everything, literally, everything, hit the fan in less than five minutes. How had they managed to get in such a terrible spot in such a short time?

This was a disaster, and Vinyl knew that full well whilst praying her hardest that the bottle sized sniper rounds currently being hurled at her at over thirty five hundred feet per second, wouldn’t somehow make its way through the overturned trolley she and Fancy Pants were currently hiding behind.

“Fancy Pants, I don’t think this thing is going to protect us forever…” Vinyl said with a worried moan, just as the feeling of another round hitting the trolley shook it slightly, punching through the thin metal roof and actually punching through the other side, flying past Vinyl and being stopped by a carriage a little ways away from them.

“Indeed, I do suspect our purple sniper friend has no intention of giving us any breathing room though!” He cried in response, bringing his revolver up and sticking it over the edge of their cover to fire blindly, only for a bullet to ricochet off the metal just a few inches from his hand.

“And what happens when her friend gets back? I doubt that Salespony dude is going to last long against SirDragonZilla!”

“We are at quite an impasse then, aren’t we?” 

“I hadn’t noticed!” Vinyl cried, just before letting out a cry of shock as another robot; seemingly appearing out of nowhere, landed on the ground in front of them with an earth-shaking crunch.

And it was ready to kill.

-A Few Minutes Earlier-

“Fancy Pants, are you sure we aren’t lost?” Vinyl asked for the second time since they had split up with Blossomforth.

“Yes, quite sure, this is an exact replica of Manehattan and believe it or not I’ve been in the real city quite a lot In my time, both on business and vacation with Fleur. So I think I have an idea of where we’re headed.”

“And…remind me where that is?”

“City Hall Square, the previous times I have played on this map in particular, I have found the enemy team will often consolidate themselves to that park, it’s easily defendable and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve moved carriages around or something of that sort to make it even more like a fortress.”

This surprised Vinyl a bit, it had registered in her head that the environment was destructible and that things in it could be moved and destroyed, but she hadn’t ever really thought to actually build fortifications from scenery and props. It wasn’t a bad idea, she just hadn’t considered it, why would she? This was a First Pony Shooter, not Minecraft or something.

For a while afterwards the two ponies were silent, the only sound being the near-rhythmic crunching of their metal feet upon the asphalt. The buildings around them easily broke twenty to thirty stories tall. Each one was often lined with windows spaced evenly apart from one another, often there would be stone pillars rising between each window to make them more pleasant and ornate looking, often they would grow thinner as they got taller, looking as if blocks had been stacked largest to smallest. The newer buildings however, as opposed to the older ones, were often comprised of glass and steel. They tended to be either hotels or office buildings.

Eventually they ended up in what appeared to be Clydes Town. The buildings were somewhat shorter here, lined with windows and colored in yellows and reds that were dotted amongst the many other tan buildings. Often there would be metal stairways on the outsides of the residential buildings, made out of wrought iron bars and bolted into the sturdy walls.

Banners with ornate and foreign decorations hung low from many of the buildings, colored in different shades of red and green with golden lettering, each one eye-catching and advertising its store or place of business. More often than not they were accompanied by awnings, protecting the different stands products from the sun and elements.

Carriages lined the parking spaces on each side of the street, sitting in silence as if waiting for their drivers to trot out of wherever they were and zip of to their next destination or to some business meeting, as was the way of Manehattan.

This however, was not the normal Manehattan. Nopony was browsing the stalls, or chatting it up with some store owner. None were climbing into their carriage to hurry off to some place of work. None were busy folding their laundry or drinking morning coffee inside their apartment whilst watching to morning news.

The only souls in all of Manehattan were the nine remaining ponies in the game; All seeking to murder one another with the aid of their individual metal behemoths.

“So, Vinyl.” Fancy Pants said, finally breaking the silence as they entered Clydes Town.

“Huh?”

“How is Octavia?” He asked in that high-class type voice of his, scanning the rooftops for enemies as the clunked along.

“O-oh she’s doing alright, she might be getting to play at the Gala in Canterlot again, she’s working out the details with-“

“Vinyl, you know that isn’t what I meant.” He said; the silly grin he wore very much detectable just by the way he spoke.

Vinyl got a bit flustered, suddenly finding herself wishing that an enemy would pop out and shoot at them or something of that sort. It wasn’t that she didn’t like talking about Octavia, nor was it that she wouldn’t admit the two very much had a “Thing.” She just wasn’t exactly sure how to explain that “Thing” to other ponies, it always came out wrong. She had been meaning to have a sit down with her roommate and discuss exactly what their “thing” actually was, but she hadn’t worked up the courage to do it for fear of ‘Tavi not wanting anything else than a “Friends With Benefits” sort of ordeal; and that isn’t what she wanted at all.

“Things are…good…” Vinyl said anxiously, rubbing the back of her neck from within the robot with a look of uncertainty; though Fancy Pants couldn’t see the look, he knew very well she was making it.

“You haven’t talked to her have you?”He said with a pang of disappointment, looking over at the DJ through his mech-visor.
“I’ll get to it…eventually…” She said, almost uncomfortably so.

“Vinyl, you can’t just neglect to talk to her about this, you know that full well.” He said with a shake of his metal finger; the sound of its mechanisms whirring being heard as he did.

“I know, I know…I just, I don’t want to screw it up or anything you know, What if she-“

“Turns you down? Vinyl I know you don’t like it but that’s just how the world functions, we win some and we lose some; occasionally the losses are horrible, but there is always a win right around the corner if we just try hard to attain it! Octavia could very well be a win, so to speak, but not if you just sit and wait, you have to take action!” Fancy Pants’ tone was reassuring and caring, he put his metal hand on Vinyl’s shoulder and gave it a gentle; gentle for a massive robot, squeeze, as if she would be able to feel it.

Vinyl let out a sigh of slight tribulation and looked over at him, bringing her rifle up and resting it on her shoulder.

“I guess you’re probably right…” She said, hoping he wouldn’t continue on the topic, alas, much to her chagrin, he very much intended to.

“You care for her, correct?” He asked, though he already knew the answer.

“Yes…very, very much...” Vinyl replied hesitantly.

“And, you long for quote unquote, ‘more’ than what you two currently have relationship-wise, correct?”

“Yeah…”

“Then go for it, my dear!” Fancy Pants said, his voice seeming to gain a few decibels; followed by an encouraging pat on the back.

“I guess there isn’t really anything else to do other than-“

Vinyl never got to finish her sentence; she was interrupted by an explosion barely ten feet away from them, followed by a bright white flash and a “BANG!” Asphalt and smoke filled the air, bits of the road flying everywhere. Vinyl and Fancy Pants were knocked down simply by the concussive force of such a large blast, finding themselves nearly blinded and deaf, their ears rung and all they could see was a white that was slowly fading away.

The both of them let out a cry of shock in unison, Fancy Pants stumbling over to the right side of the road and tripping over a carriage, sending him toppling into a shop with great force. Bricks crumbled as he slammed into the building, leaving a sizeable crater in it before teetering over to the ground with the unpleasant crunch of metal hitting concrete.

Vinyl, stumbled backwards over to the left, much like her companion, she tripped on one of the many carriages lining the sidewalk, promptly toppling over into an alley way in which she just barely fit. In a mad, blind scramble to get away from whatever it was that had attacked them, she drug herself into the alley she wasn’t even sure was an alley, not until her vision began to return and she could actually right herself and try to assess what in Equestria was going on.

She almost cried out for Fancy Pants, fearful that he had been injured. She would have done so if their attacker hadn’t decided to make his presence more known.

“Jeeze, I can freaking hear you guys from a mile away!” 

Vinyl couldn’t help but find this voice unpleasantly familiar, where had she heard this guy before?

“I would know too, I mean, I freaking make noise for a living! Musical noise though, you know, wubs and all that jazz.” 

No way, there was no way this is who she thought it was. Please, Celestia not let it be who she thought it was.

“Come on out Vinyl, I won’t shoot you! At least not right away! I’d like to chat a bit first!” This pony sounded extremely cocky, even more so than Vinyl tended to be sometimes; and that was saying a lot. Of course if it was who she thought it was; so that was to be highly expected.

With a groan, knowing that this stallion wouldn’t take no for an answer; he never had when they had met in the past; she clunked out of the cluttered alleyway and into the street, catching sight of Fancy Pants as she did.

Fancy Pants was slowly righting himself out of a pile of crushed bricks and what used to be fruit-filled baskets. Now though, he had essentially turned them to mush with his big metal rump. He groaned unpleasantly, rubbing his head as he used the hole he had created in the brick wall to help right himself.

There was a loud “Crunch!” Vinyl turned her gaze to look down the street, letting out a sigh of displeasure when she saw exactly who it was.

The mech had just leapt off a nearby roof, and was slowly rising to its full height a little ways away from her. It was a warrior-class and held what appeared to be some sort of cannon in one hand. The armor plating was a muted grey-blue color, with the rest of the robot painted a dark black. An image of three stars was painted onto his chest and as expected, the mech bore the heavy red stripes of the enemy team. The name “MasterDJNeon” hovered above it in flaming red letters, along with the number “7” next to it.

“Hello, Neon Lights…” Vinyl said, purposely sounding as perturbed as she could.

“What’s up, sweet stuff? You still hanging out with the weird violinist or whatever the heck she plucks away at?” Neon said, sounding rather disgusted to even mention “That weird violinist”

“Her name is Octavia, and she plays the Cello, you don’t pluck a Cello, you use a bow! Also, yes, as a matter of fact I am still hanging out with her!” Vinyl snapped back, raising her rifle to aim at him and unleash a well deserved world of pain onto her long time rival.

“Uh, uh, uh, drop it!” Neon gave an evil smirk and brought his cannon over to aim at Fancy Pants, who was now realizing he had dropped his weapon in the middle of the street, leaving him defenseless.

Vinyl let out an almost furious growl, slowly setting her weapon down onto the ground. If Fancy Pants got shot, she sure as hell would end up dead too. So she begrudgingly did as commanded; receiving a slimy looking grin from Neon.

“Very good, very good, it’s nice when your obedient, Vinyl, it makes me happy and I know you like to do that.” 

“I’m going to rip off your leg, and shove it down your throat, you slimy little creep!” She said through gritted teeth, pointing an angry robotic finger at him, furious at not only the fact that Neon was here, but the fact he had also called Octavia names for no reason and was holding her friend at gunpoint.

“Oh, tsk, tsk, tsk. Vinyl, babe, sorry but I’m not really into that sort of thing, now your throat on the other hoof-“

“Shut up, Neon! What do you want?” The need Vinyl felt to literally rip Neon apart could not have been properly described.

“What do I want, what do I want…” Neon’s voice trailed off, and he scratched at his chin with the hoof not occupied with aiming his gun; which now that Vinyl looked at it, looked much like a barrel that had just been attached to a trigger and handle.

“Oh! That’s right!” He snapped his robotic fingers and then pointed at Vinyl; how exactly he knew how to snap fingers nopony even knows. “I want you to finally admit you have an insatiable lust for me and my fine DJ-ing ass, and that you also are a sub-par DJ compared to me, and I want you to finally ditch that stupid-ass violin player, I mean, she’s so freaking plain too, that hair and that goofy bow tie? Ugh!”

“Excuse me?” She replied in utter disbelief; her rage only growing greater with each word he uttered.

“You heard me, I said that the string plucker is plain, and has no fashion sense.” He sneered, deliberately trying to tick her off.

“I’m going to destroy your miserable little-“

“Ah, ah, Vinyl…” He sang warningly, shaking his cannon gently so as to remind her he was very much capable of ending Fancy
Pants; who was busy wondering how somepony could be so desperate as to resort to this form of…whatever it was you called what Neon was trying to do, and in a video game no less.

Vinyl gritted her teeth, mechanical fists balling tightly in anger, then remembering she actually still had a weapon, and that said weapon was attached to her waist.

“Oh, hold one a moment. I actually have something to give you.” She said nonchalantly, managing to mask her animosity, reaching down and pulling the large explosive off her waist. With a lazy underhand toss, she lobbed the grenade in Neon’s direction as if it were nothing.

Her rival’s gaze followed the explosive, too caught up in his little tirade to realize what it was until it came to a stop right next to his foot, the soft beeping it emitted suddenly growing faster since Vinyl had armed and delivered it.

“Crap!” 

Quickly as he could, Neon dove away from the little ball of explosive fun, firing his cannon blindly in hopes of hitting Fancy Pants as he did so.

Vinyl turned and dove to the ground just as the grenade went off, hoping she hadn’t just gotten her comrade killed as yet another crater was put into the Clydes Town street with an earth-shaking “BOOM!”

Bits of concrete rained down all around, sounding much akin to hail as it plinked off of everything around it, Clattering off of windows, awnings and robots; fading away as quickly as it had happened and leaving only a smoking crater in its wake.

Quickly as she could, Vinyl righted herself. She had caught a glimpse of Neon diving away just before the blast and knew there was a good chance it hadn’t ended him. That theory was only confirmed when there was no notice of his death on her HUD, and doubly confirmed when she found him shakily pushing himself upright a little ways away from the blast zone.

“Damn it…Vinyl…” He groaned, shakily righting himself, only to stumble over into a nearby building, leaning against it and showing off the extensive amount of damage he had taken from the explosion.

Neon’s mech was sparking from its numerous damaged parts; his left arm was practically shredded and belching out plumes of grey smoke. His left leg was faring better, but not by much. A good portion of the armor was torn off, exposing the inner mechanisms. Whirring gears and hissing hydraulics did their best to work properly amidst the damage they had been dealt, but the continued usage in their current state only made the damage more and more extensive.

“Good show, Vinyl, very good show!” Came the voice of Fancy Pants; who was thankfully unscathed.

“To be honest I had absolutely no idea if that would actually work, I mean, Neon’s an idiot but I didn’t think he was stupid enough to not know what I was throwing at him…” She said, bending down to pick up her weapon as she spoke.

“Well, I would suggest we go and finish taking out the trash, the stench is nearly unbearable.” Fancy Pants returned with a chuckle, clunking over and retrieving his weapon off the ground.

Vinyl turned her gaze over to the struggling form of Neon; who was having quite a fit at not being able to function fully. He wasn’t even able to attack them; his weapon had apparently taken shrapnel or something of the like and was laying on the ground spitting smoke out the barrel end.  Neon looked just as bad; with each and every spark that popped out of his suit he would let out a cry of frustrated anger and collapse back once again. It was sort of like a one step forward two steps back sort of process.

“Hold this.” She deadpanned; her gaze stone cold and locked on her soon to be prey, shoving her rifle in Fancy Pants’ direction; much to his surprise.

“Oh, dear.” Fancy Pants said simply as he took the weapon, realizing that Neon was about to receive a sound thrashing that was most likely well deserved.

Without another word, Vinyl clunked over towards the battered form of Neon’s mech. Machinery whirring with an almost angry passion in time with each step, growing louder and louder in the ears of her foe as he realized those were the sounds of his end.

Neon collapsed once more, this time to one knee. Smoke coughed from jammed gears and lubricants spurted from broken hydraulics, sparks popped off of broken wires every now and then; the energy surging through them having nowhere to go but out from the damage. He persisted with trying to get up though, as if he would somehow magically heal and be able to walk away from this. 

“Vinyl, be reasonable here I could get you a gig In-“

“Nope!”

With the robotic equivalent of a swift kick in the teeth, he went flying back. Damaged hands groped at empty air and bits of already shredded metal flew off in a rather spectacular shower of mechanical carnage, Vinyl looking much like one would when kicking a soccer ball, only with a lot more…eagerness.

Neon impacted hard on the ground, not so much flying as he had essentially rotated 180 degrees and been introduced to the road. Sparks flew out from under him, and the sky darkened, Vinyl’s shadow lording over him like the incarnation of the Grim Reaper.

“You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to do this…” She growled.

“Waiting to do wha-“

Neon promptly received his answer in the form of Vinyl’s mechanical foot, with an incredible amount of force, right between his mechanical legs. Due to how injured his armor already was, a good deal of damage was dealt. Vinyl’s foot slipped to the side and crunched into Neon’s already shredded leg, her blow rending it completely useless, dead and all but severing it.

Now, luckily for Neon he couldn’t actually feel that blow, if he could he most likely would have sounded about ten octaves higher for the rest of his days, so he counted himself lucky there; Still though, the general principle of Vinyl committing such an act was something he didn’t take a fancy to.

“Vinyl, seriously, was that really called for?” He berated, his voice unsurprisingly not matching what his mechanical body was being dealt.

“Yes, it was!” She growled back, stomping on his inert leg as furiously as she could.

Neon simply groaned. “You have issues, you know?”

“Shut up, I would be doing this anyway; you’re on the enemy team!” She retorted, growling yet again upon reaching down and grabbing Neon’s leg and ripping it off, the already severely weakened metal snapping without much resistance under the robot’s great strength.

Neon let out a yelp as his leg was detached, only to be reunited with it once again as Vinyl attempted to redefine “Hoof in Mouth.” He could only watch with an almost bored look as his foot was brought down into his faceplate. Once, twice, three times, four times. Over and over until it smashed through his visor and swiftly ended his time in the game. 

The words “MasterDJNeon was crushed by VinylScratch” appeared in Vinyl’s HUD, and as if that wasn’t enough, the words “Level Up!” appeared in front of her in flaming letters, the number two popping up briefly and exploding into a cloud of smoke; to which she responded with a triumphant huff.

“Told you I’d shove it down your throat!” She spat, giving Neon’s robot corpse an angry kick and receiving a few sparks in return.

“Vinyl, I hate to interrupt your moment of triumph, but I do suggest we take cover!” 

Vinyl perked her ears up and turned around, wondering what was wrong that had Fancy Pants so frantic sounding as he clunked over to her; rifle held out for her to take before she had even turned around.

She didn’t even miss a beat, this was becoming easier now, the game. She had essentially mastered her robot; or so she thought, she could control the hands as if it were nothing, the legs had felt more natural, like they were and extension of her body and she could move somewhat fluidly. Granted, that was just walking and light jogging, running and full out sprinting might turn out to be a bit more tedious.

Vinyl seized her rifle from Fancy Pants and promptly followed his lead, leaving the late Neon lying limp in the battle-scarred street; only realizing too late she hadn’t scavenged like she had seen Blossomforth do a while earlier. There wouldn’t be time for that now though, apparently enemies were headed their way and Vinyl was feeling pretty good about herself right now; she had just crushed a long-despised rival after all, so what wasn’t there to feel good about, right?

Right about now, Vinyl could feel the ground shaking ever so slightly, that kind of subtle vibration. Like when she would blast her electronic music loud enough to vibrate the windows, or like a scene out of Jurassic Park, rhythmic thumping growing louder and louder with each step she and Fancy Pants took.

“Whoever that is, they sound big!” She said, looking back just as they reached the street corner before ducking around behind the apartment building on the street corner with her teammate; nearly smacking her “head” on one of the wrought iron staircases that hung from the front end of it in the process.

Vinyl positioned herself so that Fancy Pants was on point, cautiously watching the opposite way he was facing so as to lessen the chances of being snuck up on. Her silly grin was starting to come back, the rush of excitement beginning to fill her. She felt good, she wasn’t as startled by this anymore so much as excited by it, eager to get into a fight and lay down some pain.

“It appears the dear SirDragonZilla caught wind of the commotion we made with all that fighting…” Fancy Pants muttered, pulling back from peeking around the corner and turning to Vinyl; who was wearing a look of elation.

“Are we gonna take ‘em?” She asked in a hushed tone, shifting her weight from leg to leg in restless anticipation to get a little payback. She gripped her rifle firmly, feeling very much ready.

“If you’d like, but I cannot guarantee our endeavor will be successful, Vinyl.” He replied with a cool, calm demeanor, reloading his revolver as he spoke and flicking the cylinder back in with a “click”

Vinyl raised an eyebrow. “What happened to what you said the first time we met him?”

“You couldn’t walk then.”He deadpanned.

Vinyl only rolled her eyes and crept in front of her teammate, peeking out into the street and trying to get a view of her enemy. True to Fancy Pants’ word, this SirDragonZilla robot was standing out in the street, back turned as he crouched over Neon’s body, most likely scavenging; Vinyl wondered if that could be considered cannibalism.

From this view, the massive Heavy-class didn’t look to badly damaged. There was a hole in the back of his shoulder plating; Fancy Pants’ doing, and Vinyl couldn’t tell if he still had the holes in his arm, but thought it safe to assume they were there, as little as it would help for her to know. There was one helpful observation to be made however. SirDragonZilla had quite foolishly set his large weapon down to the side while he scavenged, so there was that. Other than that matter though, as far as Vinyl knew, a heavy’s only weakness was how slow it was, if they could maybe take advantage of that they might have a chance! 

“Fancy Pants, you can climb, correct?” She asked suddenly, turning back to him and speaking in an almost excited tone.

“I don’t exactly spend my free time practicing, but I’ll give it a shot. Why?” Fancy Pants’ expression was anything but certain that he would actually be able to do so, but Vinyl seemed excited for some reason, so he figured it best to let the young mare have her fun and let her take charge; assuming that’s what she was doing.

“Ok, these guys are slow, right, the big ones? So the way I see it, if you can get up on top of one of the roofs, I’ll distract him. That way he won’t pick up on you climbing or anything, then you get his attention on you, and I’ll run in and get close enough to hopefully deal a lot of damage! It’ll be sort of like you’re flanking him; I’ve done this with Octavia in other video games before so I think it’ll work!” Her voice was painfully unsure, especially on the last part.

“You’ve done this with Octavia?” He asked ambivalently.

“We’ve….tried, some ponies just don’t do video games well. Anyway! It’ll work, I know it will, we’ve…” Vinyl trailed off, her voice growing softer until she was silent. 

The ground was shaking again, the subtle rumbling that had become akin to that of the heavy class robots. Except this time it was faster, there was less time between each step, almost like the one responsible for the vibrations was running…

Vinyl slowly turned away from Fancy Pants, bringing her gaze back out over the corner and scanning the area. She had feared that somehow SirDragonZilla had become aware of their presence here, but as it turned out that was not the case. He looked just as confused as Vinyl was; or at least as confused a look as a giant death machine could pull off.

“That…isn’t the dragon guy…” Vinyl said with a tinge of worry, turning back to Fancy Pants; who upon hearing her words had adopted just a confused look as she had.

The thumping was growing louder now, it was closer and the ground shook with more force as each second went by, then as if to answer everypony’s question of who was the cause of this noise, another robot appeared.

Down the street from where Vinyl and Fancy Pants were hiding, was a heavy class mech. It was crème colored and bore an image of an apple slice on its chest, the name “Salespony2” hovered above it in flaming green letters, along with the number “4”.

Salespony2 was barreling down the road with what looked like the force of a freight train, looking like he could hit harder than a train despite the fact he wasn’t going anywhere near as fast. The light glinted off the large reinforced glass of the cockpit as he charged, arms swinging in parallel unison with stumpy mechanical legs as thick as tree trunks, propelling him towards his target with furious passion and smashing through two of the stoplights a block away from them as if they were toothpicks; never once faltering.

“What in the name of…” Vinyl wasn’t exactly sure how to react to what she was seeing, It was almost horrifying to see something so large moving at that speed, it made her wonder just how fast the smaller classes could go.

Salespony2 barreled past them without so much as a passing glance, smashing through the stoplights at that intersection as well; again as if they were nothing. Vinyl and Fancy Pants both scrambled to avoid the now airborne street lights, an action which simultaneously allowed them to watch as SirDragonZilla turned and caught sight of the incoming mechanical Behemoth.

Still blurting out angry cries of passion, Salespony2 introduced his massive fist to the reinforced visor of SirDragonZilla; who was unable to react quickly enough to even get close to blocking the punch. There was the extremely unpleasant sound of metal colliding with visor, the punch packing enough force that it actually sent the enemy heavy flying about twenty feet, landing on his back with a teeth-jarring “Crunch”

SirDragonZilla let out an enraged, computerized roar as he tried to right himself, slamming a metal fist into the ground and sending cracks throughout the area around, then using that leverage to put those hydraulics to use and push himself upright, only to be met with a metal-crunching left jab from Salespony2; sending him stumbling backwards into a brick building with another cacophony of unpleasant crashing noises.

Vinyl and Fancy Pants were both staring in sheer awe, Vinyl out of pure amazement and the fact that watching two metal monsters go at each other so brutally was giving her goosebumps, and Fancy Pants because despite the decent amount of time he spent playing Equestrian Robot Combat, he hadn’t actually seen too many hand to hand combat scenarios, certainly not between to heavy-class robots; who usually blew each other and everything else to bits before they could even get close enough to do so.

“You killed Flim, How am I supposed to have jaunty back and forth conversations with him if he isn’t in the game!” Came the voice of Salespony2, sounding very much like an old-timey sales pony; you know the slimy kind that would sell you fake stuff or be an auctioneer.

As he spoke, Salespony2 thundered over to the dazed form of SirDragonZilla; who was shakily pushing himself up to his feet. His visor bore a visible crack down its entire length and his shoulder armor was visibly dented inwards from the insurmountable force of the heavy-metal jab it had previously received from its crème colored foe.

With an angry roar, Salespony2 grabbed at his enemy’s shoulder, pulling back his other arm with a tightly balled fist in preparation of dealing out another massive blow, only to find his attack stopped cold mid swing.

Almost unexplainably, SirDragonZilla had stopped the blow completely and was now holding the fist of his enemy in his own mechanical grip. Metal shuddered and groaned against metal as Salespony2 struggled against his enemy, growling angrily as he dug his mechanical grabber into the shoulder of his enemy in a vicious attempt to separate metal from robot.

“Perhaps we should lend a hoof?” Fancy Pants suggested, pushing himself up from the street; never having stood up after evading the street lights.

“What…exactly would we be able to do?” Vinyl asked uncertainly, watching in awe as the two metal monsters stood locked in a struggle to overpower one another.

“You’re the one who suggested attacking in the first place; did you do so without even knowing where to shoot? Surely not, that would be uncharacteristically bull-headed of you wouldn’t it, Vinyl?” Fancy Pants’ stupid grin was almost audible in is words.
“Yeah, shut up, at least I had a-“

Vinyl was interrupted by a gunshot louder than any she had heard previously in the game, it was thunderous and simply the sheer power of its sound carried evidence that it carried extreme firepower behind it. 

It wasn’t the two Heavies though; it was something almost as powerful, just in a smaller package. A package that was promptly delivered to the door step of Fancy Pants’ shoulder.

Fancy Pants let out a cry of shock and was knocked backwards onto the road, a sizeable chunk of his shoulder ripped off in a manner that was anything but clean.

“What? No!” Vinyl let out a distressed cry and scrambled over to the badly wounded form of her friend, another thunderous gunshot sounding out and missing her by a hair as she scrambled.

“Bollocks!” Fancy Pants let out his version of a curse upon witnessing the amount of damage his shoulder had received, grasping at it with his unwounded arm as if to feel for blood that wouldn’t be there. “Vinyl, I do believe that is a sniper firing upon us!”

His words were only confirmed as a chunk the size of a tire was blown out of the street next to them, the owner of the bullet missing by ‘that’ much yet again. The sound of metal fists colliding on armor had started up again as well, mixing in with the sound of structures being crushed and bricks turned to nothing more than dust, indicating that Salespony2 and SirDragonZilla had returned to brutally slugging away at one another like a giant game of Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots.

“Move!” Fancy Pants cried, frantically managing to right himself and scrambling over to a trolley up against the side of the road. 

There wasn’t enough room for them to both hide safely behind it, not the way it was parked. With a worried groan, Vinyl clunked around to the side of the trolley and pushed it, slowly managing to turn it at an angle so that they could both safely sit behind it in desperate hopes that they would be safe.

“Wow, really, are you kidding me?” 

This voice was new whilst also slightly familiar. Vinyl felt like she knew who this pony was, like she had seen her before or heard her voice, but she couldn’t quite put her hoof on it.

There was a loud “THUNK” The sound of metal colliding with the asphalt road. Without even thinking about it, she poked out from behind the makeshift cover and caught a glimpse of their attacker; though only for a moment.

The robot was a Warrior-Class, that much was obvious, standing in the intersection just one block down. It was clad in a purple coloration a few shades darker than that of the Heavy-Class on the same team. In its hands was a large, thick looking rifle with an even larger scope on the top. The main body of the rifle was somewhat rectangular, with a barrel that easily pushed ten feet protruding from the end you really didn’t want to be on. The stock of the rifle was pretty vanilla, nothing too fancy there other than the fact it was abnormally large and would probably take four ponies to lift on its own. It bore the tell-tale red stripes of the enemy team, in addition to a strangely familiar image of a large purple star painted on each shoulder; multiple smaller stars surrounding it. The name “StarSwirlfangirl” hovered over it in burning red letters, along with the number “10”

“BOOM!”

There was another gunshot, it whizzed through the air with an unfathomable speed and punched straight through the trolley, shaking the entire structure of the public transportation-turned-refuge as it ripped through a mixture of metal and leather seat cushion, tearing out the other side and tearing past both Vinyl and Fancy Pants.

“Fancy Pants, I don’t think this thing is going to protect us forever…” Vinyl said with a worried moan, just as the feeling of another round hitting the trolley shook it slightly, tearing through the metal like a knife through butter.

“Indeed, I do suspect our purple sniper friend has no intention of giving us any breathing room though!” He cried in response, bringing his revolver up and sticking it over the edge of their cover to fire blindly, only for a bullet to ricochet off the metal just a few inches from his hand.

“And what happens when her friend gets back? I doubt that Salespony dude is going to last long against SirDragonZilla!”

“We are at quite an impasse then, aren’t we?” He said with a displeasured grumble.

“I hadn’t noticed!” Vinyl cried, just before letting out a cry of shock as another robot; seemingly appearing out of nowhere, landed on the ground in front of them with an earth-shaking crunch.

This robot, fortunately enough, was on their side; evident by the deep blue stripes it bore.

Vinyl recognized it as the night-black Warrior class she had seen at spawn, the silent one who had just disappeared without even ever saying anything. The name “Bringer of Night” hovered above it in green flames, along with the number “15”. Familiar shoulder spikes protruded from the shoulder armor in addition to decorative fins that were attached to the forearms. Much like the one who had taken a sizeable chunk out of Fancy Pants’ shoulder, this robot held a sniper rifle; a weapon that it put to good use the second it touched the ground.

“Have at thee, Twilight Sparkle; Thou shall not defeat us on this day!” Following up with her words, the black robot promptly loosed two thunderous shots at the pony who was apparently Twilight Sparkle.

Wait; hold on, did she say “Twilight Sparkle."? Like…the Princess? So that was where she had recognized the voice! On top of that, Vinyl did know this dark robot’s voice, everypony knew that voice. Especially after that one Nightmare Night in Ponyville a while back, but there was no what that could actually be-

“Agh!” There was the sound of metal feet scrambling to avoid to recently hurled projectiles the size of 2-liter bottles. “Luna, you need to work on your aim!” 

“And thou need to work on one-liners!” Luna retorted; although her retort didn’t really fit in that situation. She then proceeded to unleash two more deafening shots, sidestepping as she did in an attempt to keep her fellow royal in her crosshairs.

Vinyl flinched slightly at the sound of Twilight unleashing another bit of hell in Luna’s direction, watching as the Princess sidestepped and the bullet buried itself in a building not too far down the street.

“Assistance, would be preferable!” Luna cried; ducking into an alleyway and looking over in Vinyl’s direction as expectantly as a robot could look.

“Oh, right, sorry!”

Without further hesitation, Vinyl popped up from behind the trolley and quickly took in the scene in front of her, as soon as she caught a glimpse of her purple-armored foe, she loosed a trio of bullets across the intersection and towards Twilight’s position; in the process realizing that what she was doing would probably result in banishment if it hadn’t been a video game.

The faint sound of bricks being blown apart was rather annoying, as that meant she hadn’t hit her target. This fact was further proven by the sound of fifteen-pound sniper bullets being fired at her, and promptly shredding any part of the trolley that they touched.

Vinyl hissed and ducked down as low as she could, glancing over at Fancy Pants; who was still leaned up against the trolley, his shoulder sparking from the chunk that had been torn off of it.

“I seriously doubt we’ll be able to remain here for too long, our opponent will likely try to push forward once her big friend shows back up!” He said through gritted teeth, silently annoyed for not being able to do much to help fight their long-range attacker.

“We agree wholeheartedly, Fancy Pants. Twilight has proven to be most adept at this game and will not hesitate to push us back, especially once Spike resurfaces; wherever he has run off to.” Luna chimed in, peeking out from her alley across the street to unleash more heavy-metal hell in Twilight’s direction.

“Spike?” Vinyl cried, flinching at the sound of sniper-fire being returned and segments of brick wall turning to dust.

“I believe she is speaking of the large purple fellow with the rocket launcher.” Fancy Pants deadpanned, rapping his mechanical fingers against the asphalt in a manner that portrayed great boredom.

“You mean that guy?”

As If on cue, “SirDragonZilla”; or Spike, as he was now known, proceeded to come flying back into the intersection. This was rather surprising to everypony watching, considering that the heavy-class mech weighed easily ten-tons and even getting it off the ground in the first place would be a feat in and of itself.

Vinyl watched as Spike let out a computerized roar, landing on his back and making a shallow crater in the pavement. He balled his large mechanical fists and slammed them into the ground, sending cracks spiderwebbing throughout the area around as he began to push himself up and loosing yet another roar.

“Spike really should get that mic fixed…” Luna said; her words barely audible over the cacophony of sounds that filled the air.

His armor was badly damaged, what had once been a rather pristine-looking robot was now a thoroughly beaten and dented hunk of metal. One of the small arms on the stomach appeared to have been torn off, and the armor on his right shoulder was almost nonexistent, sparks flew out from multiple points on his armored body with each movement that was made, however despite his battle damage, Spike was still a force to be reckoned with.

A familiar, rhythmic thumping shook the ground. Vinyl scanned the area before her as best she could without exposing herself and tried to gain a better grasp on what was going on; she already knew what was making the ground shake, what worried her was if it was their heavy or another enemy heavy.

Luckily, as it turned out, it was a friendly.

Salespony2 charged into view once more, however unfortunately, he did not appear to be faring much better than his enemy was as far as armor integrity went.

His stomach armor was beaten and crumpled, a good portion of his left shoulder had been dented inwards and his right leg was spewing thick black smoke. A large crack was zigzagged through his visor and much like the robot he was about to give a heavy-metal body slam, sparks flew out from different parts of his damaged body with each step he took.

Vinyl couldn’t help but watch as Salespony2’s charge was brought to a most unexpected and abrupt end. The massive mechanical being charged forth with all the speed he could muster, only to be tripped up almost comically as Spike turned to the side and slammed his fist into the back of his opponent, sending him toppling forwards and turning the force of his charge into energy used to firmly plant his faceplate into the asphalt with an unpleasant crunching of metal and reinforced glass.

“We would advise that all available firepower be focused on taking down Spike!” Luna cried, swinging her rifle over and taking aim at Spike; who was in the process of raising both his fists much like a gorilla with the intention of slamming them down on his enemy.
Without hesitation, Vinyl brought her rifle up to her shoulder and took aim; A satisfying “Thump, thump thump.” Sounding off almost rhythmically as she fired at Spike.

The thunderous sound of Luna’s sniper rifle followed soon after; also accompanied by the deep shots Fancy Pants' revolver gave off with each pull of the trigger. Each round hit its mark as intended, impacting somewhere on Spike’s back and successfully turning his attention away from the badly-battered form of Salespony2.

However in this little bit of excitement, they had all forgotten about Twilight.

Fancy Pants was the first to pay for this in full, without any prior warning, his already damaged shoulder was shredded and his arm torn clean off, the force of the bullet punching through his armor did well to turn him around and send him onto his stomach, sparks and some sort of lubricant spewing from where his arm had once been.

“Ha!” Twilight jeered; her triumphant yell audible even over all the commotion.

“Fancy Pants!” Vinyl cried, turning her attention from Spike and scrambling over to her wounded comrade; sparks flying as the metal of her robot ground against the pavement; Holding her rifle in one mechanical hand and kneeling down to turn Fancy Pants, faceplate-up.

“I’m fine, I’m fine!” He said in annoyance, waving his one good arm at her dismissively for a moment before sitting up and looking around for his weapon; not even paying attention to the lubricant and sparks that were sputtering from his shredded shoulder.
“Uh, at this juncture, we would heavily advise some sort of retreat!” Luna’s voice said, loud and commanding amidst the sound of enemy sniper-rounds being loosed and what Vinyl now recognized as Spike’s heavy footsteps getting closer.

As it had turned out; though they didn’t know it, Vinyl and her team had actually helped carry out a plan that Twilight, Spike and their third remaining teammate had laid out. Spike was to be a distraction and draw Vinyl’s team out of cover so Twilight could thin their ranks, at which point Spike would turn his attention to what remained of his foes and push them back into the trap they had laid out.

The part where he pushed them back was currently being carried out wonderfully.

“Move back!” Luna cried, taking potshots at Spike and looking like she was preparing to bolt away. Spike was now nearing the overturned and hole-ridden trolley that had previously been used as cover; luckily for them he was without his rocket launcher so there wasn’t any immediate danger, but there soon would be if they didn’t haul heavy-metal ass.

“Either pick up Fancy Pants or leave him here, because we are leaving, now!” Luna cried, diving out from her alley and firing a trio of shots in Twilight’s direction so she could safely retreat.

“Bollocks, this is no good at all!” Fancy Pants groaned, struggling to push himself upright so that he wouldn’t get stepped on, fueled by the sight of Spike’s massive robot closing in on them; balling a fist and slamming it into the trolley they had used as cover, and sending it crashing into the alley where Luna had previously been.

“No…” Vinyl breathed. She had a conscience and even though this was a video game she couldn’t leave Fancy Pants here and feel good about it; that was the realism kicking in, or at least she thought so. Gritting her teeth, she put her smaller mechanical frame between Fancy Pants and the massive mechanical monster before her, took a knee, and brought her rifle up to her shoulder, pointing it straight at her enemy’s visor and praying Twilight didn’t pop out and blow her apart.

However just as she was about to unload her ammo clip, gunfire rang out in the air. Like some sort of saving angel, a racer-class mech leapt off the roof of the building closest to Spike, round after pellet-filled round blasting from the tip of her shotgun as she soared through the air and boosted at the last second, landing gracefully atop Spike’s mech and jamming the barrel into the top of his visor.

Vinyl didn’t need much time to realize it was Blossomforth; her tiny Racer-class frame was laughably small compared to the heavy-class. Topping out at only ten feet as opposed to the heavy-class’ thirty feet.

Spike let out a roar of displeasure as shotgun rounds were unleashed into his upper half; he swung his thick hands up in desperation, trying fruitlessly to grab the pest currently dealing him a substantial amount of damage.

“Time to go, Fancy Pants!” Vinyl said with a hint of worry, grabbing her wounded friend by his remaining mechanical arm and quickly hauling him to his feet; managing to do so without falling over in the process.

“I agree completely!” He replied in a manner most chipper; as if he wasn’t missing an entire arm and part of his shoulder. 

“No, wait!”

Vinyl and Fancy Pants both turned their gaze back up to Spike and Blossomforth, finding the latter of the two to have been the one who let out the scream, and the reason why she had was instantly evident.

They watched Spike as he wrapped his massive mechanical fingers around one of the small, spindly legs of Blossomforth’s mech. She cried out in shock and quickly flicked her combat knife off her belt, bringing it above her head for a moment and then down into Spike’s shell; desperately trying to stop her impending doom.

“WE WOULD SUGGEST THOU RETREAT!” Luna’s voice boomed from behind them, followed by the sound of a single, thunderous gunshot. It hit dead center on the back of Spike’s massive hand; which promptly released Blossomforth’s leg after the shock of the impact.

“I believe she means now!” Fancy Pants cried, grabbing Vinyl’s shoulder and tugging on her so she would follow.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!”

With a worried moan, Vinyl quickly followed after her friend, trying to ignore the sounds of battle behind her and the gunshots from all around. He mind raced and her heart was pounding, adrenalin coursed through her and she felt like she could run for days.

The smell of gun smoke filled the air, the ground shook from the thunderous steps of dueling mechanical monstrosities. All around her the sounds of combat were loud and clear. Brick and concrete turned to dust and pebbles as bullets and metal fists smashed into them.

The entire intersection had turned into a full out warzone; a warzone where it seemed as if neither side necessarily had an obvious advantage.

There was a bone-chilling roar; one Vinyl could only assume had come from Spike. It fueled her to move faster, but she was already moving pretty fast as it was. She was struggling to keep her balance as she moved and it almost felt like she was running forward to keep herself from falling rather than to evade the monster trying to crush her.

Something large and metal flew past Vinyl with an incredible amount of speed, she wouldn’t have thought much of it, had it not been for the fact whatever it was that was thrown had been screaming. Loudly.

“Fancy Pants, I think that was-“

“Never mind her, keep moving, we have to get somewhere safe!” Fancy Pants cried; his accented voice surprisingly calm and collected considering his current state. He was actually managing quite well despite having only one arm, and it didn’t seem to hinder him all that much as he ran down the street with her.

“Damn it!” Vinyl cursed; swinging her shoulders opposite her legs, keeping a grip on her rifle and trying to do her best to keep her balance as she ran; it was actually more like a jog, but to her it was running.

She watched as Bloosomforth’s small frame collided with a streetlight and bent in a manner that looked extremely unpleasant, before flying onto the street and tumbling to a halt, and lying motionless, sparks and a small bit of smoke coming from her heavily damaged mech.

“This way, Vinyl, make haste!” Fancy Pants shouted.

Vinyl turned and watched as her friend led her down a street away from the scene of battle, she was only a little ways away from him, but they were almost in the clear! 

Putting all she had into a full out sprint, Vinyl made a left and went after Fancy Pants. All they had to do was get away from Spike, that’s it. He was slow and large so he couldn’t sneak up on them. They would escape, and regroup, and make a plan, and take him down and win the game!

Fancy Pants slid to a halt at the end of the street, coming to a T-intersection and looking side to side as he tried to figure out which way to go. He was visibly worried; it was noticeable just by the way he moved. His mechanical hand open and closed and his movements were quick and jerky.

“Vinyl!” He cried, turning around and looking back at her from his spot halfway down the street. “Hurry, we need to-“

A thunderous gunshot drowned out the rest of his words, and without any sort of warning, Fancy Pants’ knee was blown out and shredded into hundreds of tiny bits of metal, he let out a cry of surprise and dropped to the ground. Metal screeched against asphalt as he fruitlessly tried to right himself in a manner that was almost pitiful.

“Fancy Pants!” Vinyl cried, her stomach doing back flips as she came to an unsteady halt a few yards away from him, the need to help her friend clashing with the need to get to cover and avoid meeting the same fate.

“Finally!” A familiar voice called out, followed by a rather triumphant laugh.

It was Twilight.

A second later, Twilight’s purple warrior-class robot appeared on the roof of a three story shop across the street from where Fancy Pants stood, on the other side of the T-intersection. Massive sniper rifle in her hand, she leapt from the roof of the building and onto the street with a loud “¬Ka-chunk”, bending her knees to absorb some of the impact.

“Don’t even think about it!” Vinyl cried, raising her rifle to her shoulder and aiming it straight at her purple-armored foe.

Four rounds fired off.

Only four.

Twilight let out an annoyed “Gah!” and swatted her giant hand as she tried to ward off the bullets, stopping shortly after and flexing her mechanical hand in front of her face-plate as she stared down at Vinyl; who was currently cursing in a manner most colorful as she tried to figure out how to reload.

“Damn it, damn it, you son of a-“

“Well, well, somepony skipped the tutorial, am I right?” Twilight practically cooed, suddenly adopting a rather lazy stance and 
resting the barrel of her rifle on her shoulder, her other hand lazily resting on her hip as she leaned her weight on one side.

“Shut up, Princess!” Vinyl hissed, frantically slapping her rifle and trying to find the release for the clip.

“Tsk tsk, such a mouth…At least your friend here has the sense to keep quiet and accept he’s going to die.” The Princess said nonchalantly, giving the shredded but still functioning form of Fancy Pants a kick.

“I’ll rip you apart before you even get the chance!” Vinyl said through gritted teeth, her abuse of her rifle becoming more frantic. How did it work in the other games, what button on the gun was pushed? Usually they would just pull and it came out! Or at least it looked like that.

“Unlikely.”

Twilight’s grin was practically audible in her words. In one fluid motion she brought her rifle down; still holding it in one hand, and aimed the barrel-end at Fancy Pants.

“Vinyl, run-“

The sound of metal being shredded and shot after thunderous shot ensured Fancy Pants didn’t have the chance to finish his words. Vinyl could only watch in helplessness as her friend was riddled with multiple rounds the size of 2-liter bottles. 

Fancy Pants’ mechanical hand was outstretched as if to try and stop his fate, the first round tore through his thumb and into his shoulder, then another went into his chest, and the next into his forearm; straight down the palm, and sufficiently shredded his entire arm, leaving him to weakly kick with his one good leg as Twilight emptied her clip into the upper-class pony.

Eight rounds later, Fancy Pants was nothing more than a smoking pile of twisted metal in the middle of the street, and the words “MrFancyPants was eradicated by StarSwilrFangirl’ appeared on her HUD in flaming letters

“No!” Vinyl cried, throwing her rifle to the side and running at Twilight as fast as she could. She would make the Princess pay for that, dearly.

“Oh, yes, bring it!” Twilight said with a laugh, tossing her rifle haphazardly onto Fancy Pants’ remains and raising her mechanical fists.

It wasn’t until it was too late to stop her sprint, that Vinyl realized she had no idea what she was about to do. Was it a grapple, a tackle, a punch, what?

Oh, no, it was her getting slammed into a building.

Twilight turned to the side at the last second; much like Spike had to Salespony2, and shoved her metal palm into Vinyl’s back, propelling her forward even faster and sending her faceplate-first into a shop window.

Vinyl let out a cry of shock as she slammed into the second story of a bakery, smashing through the glass and crushing a few of the chairs and tables that were inside. 

Outside, barely audible, were the sounds of battle as they began to resume. It sounded like Spike had been engaged in battle yet again wherever he was. However that wasn’t of Vinyl’s concern right now, what was her concern, was the fact she was being dragged out of the building she had been slammed into up to her shoulders.

With an almost animalistic roar, Twilight latched her mechanical grabbers onto Vinyl’s back and pulled her out of the building, transferring the force from that into a half toss half shove into the street that sent Vinyl into the asphalt with the unpleasant sound of metal grinding against stone.

“Oh, your glorious suicide is insanity, but I love it!” Twilight said maniacally, the sound of her metal feet clunking over closer to Vinyl growing louder and louder in the DJ’s ears.

Vinyl groaned in annoyance, the depiction of her robot in her HUD showed the part of her armor that was shoved into the building had been brought down to 96% integrity, so she hadn’t taken too much damage, but still. You didn’t just throw Vinyl Scratch into a building and get away with it!

Not bothering to think of a good comeback, Vinyl pushed herself up off the ground and turned to face Twilight with relative ease; bringing her mechanical hands up in tight fists in front of her.

“I’ve read books on so many different forms of martial arts that you couldn’t even begin to list them all, do you really think you’re going to take me down in hand to hand combat?” Twilight sneered, stopping a few yards away and taking a battle stance, positioning herself at an angle so she couldn’t be knocked down as easy.

“Listen, Princess, I’m a DJ. Getting in fights comes with the job when you work at some of the clubs I do, so don’t think I’ll be going down easy.” Vinyl said with a cocky grin, actually feeling somewhat confident in herself.

“We shall see…”

Without warning, Twilight lunged forward, pulling her mechanical arm back with a hiss of hydraulics and a whirr of gears. She closed the distanced between them with three strides and swung hard, hitting Vinyl square in the visor and sending her stumbling back into a building with a crunch.

Vinyl let out an annoyed groan as a few bricks fell down and bounced off her hull with a series of “Clunks”.

Maybe this wouldn’t be as easy as she thought.

Vinyl barely had time to recover before Twilight was on her again. She felt one of her foe’s hands grip onto her shoulder firmly and holding her in place just as a staggeringly powerful blow was delivered to her stomach, denting the armor and sending the armor integrity down to 85% with only that one blow.

She roared and introduced her fist to Twilight’s faceplate in retaliation, but there wasn’t enough force behind it to do any more than dent the armor, so Twilight delivered another powerful gut-punch and knocked the stomach armor integrity down to 78%

“Get. Off!” Vinyl protested; fueled by the armor percentage, and grabbing at her enemy’s shoulder, gripping onto an armor plate and using it to try and push Twilight away.

“Gah, let go!” Twilight cried, letting go of Vinyl’s shoulder, only to start slamming the DJ’s stomach with her other fist; dropping the armor integrity down to 70%

“WOULD YOU STOP THAT!” Vinyl roared, using her grip on Twilight’s shoulder to pull the Princesses mech closer to her; catching her off guard and then bringing her knee up into the stomach of her enemy.

Twilight doubled over a bit and her gut-punches momentarily ceased, long enough that Vinyl could bring her giant metal elbow down and slam it into her enemy’s back; sending sparks flying and the unpleasant sound of metal scraping metal through the air.

Taking advantage of Twilight’s vulnerable state, Vinyl gave her another knee in the chest and then shoved her away. The Princess stumbled backwards with a cry of shock and landed on her purple metal rump in the middle of the street.

“What now, Princess?” Vinyl mocked, pushing herself off the building, sauntering over and punting Twilight back onto the asphalt just as she started to right herself, sending sparks flying and a crack running through the reinforced glass visor of her boxing opponent.

“You’re way too cocky!” Twilight hissed, swinging her leg around from her position on the ground and sweeping Vinyl’s feet out from underneath her.

The DJ cried out as she toppled like a tree, crashing down onto the street and crushing a carriage beneath her. Wood splinters and a large swatch of cloth turned to a pancake beneath her.

While she lay on the ground, an entire taxi carriage squashed beneath her. Even though she was furious as how Fancy Pants had been executed, she couldn’t help but feel…alive. This was intense, her heart was racing and her blood was pumping, adrenalin raced through her and a blood-lust coursed through her veins.

Good thing it was just a video game.

Just as she was about to stand up, a mechanical, purple foot was brought down onto her chest, the clawed toes digging into the armor and holding her down. Vinyl cried out and grabbed at the leg, slamming it in a desperate attempt to dislodge it as she watched her stomach armor integrity drop down from 70% to 68%, and then to 65%, and then to 62%, and so on. The pressure was growing greater and greater by the second.

“What now, DJ?” Twilight said, with a slightly insane-sounding cackle.

Her HUD flashing red, Vinyl frantically looked around for something to help her get out of this. No way was she going down like this. Squashed by the Princess, hell no! 

But how was she going to stop it, there was nothing around her but-

The Carriage!

Frantically, Vinyl struggled to grab at the large tarp-like fabric that had made up the canopy of the taxi; she gripped it in her mechanical fingers and swung it up into Twilight’s face, praying harder than she had ever prayed that luck would favor her.

And so it did.

The tarp still had fragments of the taxi attached to it when it was thrown, so it got stuck between segments of Twilight’s armor and completely covered her visor, rendering her totally blind.

“Ahh, I can’t see, I can’t see!” Twilight hissed, swinging her arms around for a moment before she found the tarp and began yanking at it, beginning to tear it off.

In her frantic attempts to remove the tarp, Twilight had slackened the amount of pressure she was applying to Vinyl’s chest, doing so long enough that the DJ could grab onto her ankle and shove her attacker off, sending her careening backwards and the brick building she had backed Vinyl into earlier.

Without missing a beat, Vinyl pushed herself up off the ground, taking a moment to regain her balance before storming over to where Twilight was; finding her finally removing the tarp and realizing what was going on.

“Ponyfeathers!” Twilight cursed, throwing herself to the side just as Vinyl buried her fist into the brick wall and punched a hole clean through.

“Oh, what’s wrong, having trouble, Princess?” Vinyl snapped, yanking her fist out of the brick wall and sending dozens of bricks down onto the ground as she did so.

“Ha, from the condition of that mech of yours, I’m not the one having trouble!” Twilight retorted; pushing herself up off the ground and taking a few steps back to put some distance between the two of them.

Unfortunately for Vinyl, her opponent was correct. The DJ’s once pure white mech was now scratched and battle-scarred rather extensively. Her chest and stomach armor had been severely damaged, sparks and small plumes of grey smoke coughed from her front end every so often. However she wasn’t out yet, she still had a lot of fight left in her, and the fight she had put up so far was evident on Twilight’s mech.

Twilight’s robot had a large crack that stretched across her entire visor, her chest armor was dented in but not nearly as much as Vinyl’s armor was, and sparks spewed from her back; the result of Vinyl’s elbow earlier. In addition to this, Twilight’s stomach was also battered, the result of Vinyl’s kneeing.

“It’s still anypony’s game. In case you haven’t noticed, no one else has died yet. We’re still evenly matched! If anything, we outnumber you!”

“You seem to assume that our third remaining teammate isn’t capable of utterly destroying the rest of you on her own, even if Spike and I fall, you still have to take her down and is seriously doubt that’ll happen!”

“Oh yeah, if she’s all great and powerful, where is she?”

“She’s dealing with the rest of your teammates, don’t worry.” Twilight said darkly, then proceeding to dig her clawed feet into the ground and sprint towards Vinyl.

However, this time, Vinyl was ready. She braced herself, watching as Twilight tightened her right fist in preparation for a swing that carried the force of her sprint behind it.

Just as Twilight came close enough, Vinyl side-stepped; mimicking what Twilight had done and intending to get the same result. However much to her surprise, at the last second, Twilight balled her other fist and with a roar of passion transferred all the energy into that arm, punching Vinyl right in the shoulder and sending her flying.

When the DJ-turned-mecha-warrior reunited with the ground, it was face first. She rolled a good distance and crashed through two stop-lights and a fire hydrant before coming to a grinding halt. Her entire HUD flashed and her shoulder armor had been reduced to 65%.

That had been one hell of a hit, but how had she managed to-

“Surprised?” Twilight said mockingly as she pushed herself up off the ground; having essentially done a belly-flop after throwing herself like she had.

“I unlocked single-use elbow rockets at level 7, I knew it was a good idea to wait to use them, aren’t they just wonderful?”
“Yeah, wonderful…” Vinyl said through gritted teeth, slamming her fists into the asphalt and pushing herself up off the ground. She rolled her shoulder a bit once she had stood, the sound of metal grinding against metal being heard as she did so, signaling that the armor was pressing against the mechanisms beneath.

Twilight was already storming towards her once again, her arms swinging opposite her powerful hydraulic-powered legs as a run turned into a sprint.

Vinyl was so done with this.

In a manner slightly frantic, she looked around for something that she could use; anything she could use to hit the Princess, hard, multiple times.

There!

Over to her left, was one of the stoplights that had been knocked down like a tooth pick when she had been thrown. Vinyl wasn’t sure if it would do well as a weapon or if it would break, but it was something!

Vinyl let out an unsettled moan and scrambled over in the direction of the stoplight, doing her best to make it look like she was trying to run away so that Twilight wouldn’t suspect anything.

“Running won’t save you!” Twilight yelled, laughing madly as she grew closer and closer.

Vinyl collapsed to her knee as soon as she was within arm’s reach of the stop light, wrapping her fingers around it and waiting until Twilight sounded close enough.

Damn, if she pulled this of it was going to be so badass.

“Say goodbye, DJ!” Twilight cried, and in the process alerting Vinyl that now was her chance.

Praying for the best, Vinyl pushed up onto both feet and spun around; swinging the stoplight in one hand much like one would if they were playing baseball.

“Clang!”

The stoplight smashed into Twilight’s shoulder and did so with enough force, that her charge was redirected into the corner of a nearby building. The lights and the curved end of the stoplight broke off and remained lodged in Twilight’s armor right up until she collided with the corner of the building.

The sickening crunching noise that followed made Vinyl cringe, she watched as Twilight’s front end buried itself into the brick, through the wall, halfway into the shop, and then as if the wasn’t enough. The single-story corner shop then collapsed on top of her in a shower of brick, wood and roofing, leaving her buried beneath it.

“Outta the park…” Vinyl sneered, grinning to herself as she clunked over to where Twilight lay; half buried under rubble and unmoving. 

Upon nearing the scene, Vinyl gave her fallen foe a good kick in the side, and her entire form shuddered.

Twilight was trying to get up.

She groaned and slowly tried to push up to her hands and knees, the metal of her mech groaned and creaked as she moved, chunks of rubble and debris tumbling off her back and kicking up clouds of dust as the giant purple machine tried to stand upright.
“No…I can’t lose, I read all the books, and I studied all the-“

Twilight was interrupted by a stop light pole to the stomach; it knocked her sideways and onto her back with a “Thunk”; her arms and legs splaying out weakly to the side.

“Come on, get up, I’m not done with you just yet.” Vinyl growled, reaching down and grabbing Twilight by her shoulder, and then ‘helping’ her up, only to slam her into the building next to the one that had just collapsed.

“Ugh…” Twilight groaned, still dazed from having a building collapse on her just a few moments prior.

“Let’s see how you like it when your arm gets ripped off!” Vinyl roared, ramming the stoplight pole into the area that held Twilight’s arm to her shoulder. She put all her weight into her thrust, succeeding in spearing it all the way through the Princesses shoulder and effectively nail her to the wall as the pole dug deep into the building.

Twilight growled and tried to swing at Vinyl with her one good arm, but the DJ was too quick, she grabbed Twilight’s arm and held it firmly against the wall, rendering her opponent all but helpless.

The sound of metal being crumpled filled the air not seconds later.

Twilight was helpless as blow after metal-crushing blow was dealt to her chest, stomach and visor. He armor crumpled with each hit and with every second that passed she grew closer and closer to total shutdown. 

Vinyl growled and began focusing her blows on Twilight’s shoulder, slamming repeatedly on it with her fist until it was crumpled enough she could grip it and then rip it off; tossing it to the side and exposing the inner, more fragile working of the machine.

“This looks important!” She chimed with an evil grin, jamming her hand inside and gripping a large cluster of tech and machinery.

“What’re you doing? “ Twilight cried.

With a roar, Vinyl closed her hand around whatever it was Twilight seemed so frantic about, and with a small deal of effort, she ripped it out of her chest and tossed it off to the side. 

“GAH, NO, STOP!” Twilight cried, her chest beginning to spew thick black smoke and fire.

Vinyl yelped and waved her giant hand at the smoke, trying to ward it away as she backpedaled into the middle of the street, releasing Twilight and allowing her to slump away from the wall.

“Damn it!” Twilight cursed, stumbling forward and pulling herself away from the pole that held her to the wall, unintentionally ripping her arm off in the process and falling forward onto her knees; left side spewing thick black smoke, sparks and so many assorted machine fluids and the like.

There was an explosion to Vinyl’s left; down the street. Both she and Twilight turned their gaze in that direction and caught sight of what had caused it.

Five or so blocks down, Spike was still locked in intense combat with Luna and a little speck zipping around that looked like Blossomforth; how she had survived being tossed Vinyl had no clue. Salespony2 wasn’t anywhere to be seen, but he hadn’t died; otherwise it would have shown up on her HUD, so he had to be skulking around somewhere.

“You won’t win…” Twilight said weakly, still on her hand and knees; on the precipice of death.

“Maybe not…but I’m gonna have a damn good time doing it.” Vinyl sneered in reply, turning her attention back to Twilight and preparing to deal the finishing blow.

“You actually are happy about-“

“Oh, shut up!” Without any more chit-chat, Vinyl swept Twilight’s remaining arm out from under her, and then proceeded to bring it down with all her strength on the back of her ‘Head’, being rewarded with an extremely satisfying “Crunch” and flattening Twilight’s cockpit with a crunch of metal and the shattering of glass.

The words “StarSwirlFangirl was stomped into the dirt by VinylScratch” appeared in the HUD’s of everypony still in the game, and flaming skull and crossbones appeared over Twilight’s smoking corpse.

“So much for all those fighting skills, and here I thought you-“

Vinyl was cut off by a spine-chilling roar, it didn’t even sound like somepony with a broken mic, it actually sounded like a roar. What was truly horrifying was that it had come from Spike, he sounded furious, and just as Vinyl looked back down the road, and Spike caught sight of her.

“Oh boy.”

Spike turned and slammed himself into a building, managing to get Luna to jump off his back so she wouldn’t get hurt, and allowing him to begin running down the road and towards Vinyl’s current position.

“Oh…boy.”

Frantically, Vinyl began searching for a weapon. The stoplight pole sure as hell wasn’t going to work, so maybe Twilight’s corpse had something on it she could use?

Her new task decided upon, Vinyl kicked Twilight’s corpse onto it’s back and began frantically searching for something she could use; finding herself seriously regretting tossing her gun away earlier. Of course she couldn’t figure out how to reload the damned thing, but…

“Come on, you’ve gotta have something useful!” Vinyl whined, patting down the heap of wasted metal and trying to find something. Thinking back to the run in with “EarlofGrey”, she remembered that Blossomforth had pulled stuff off of the waist, so that would probably be where the equipment was.

Finding herself somewhat encouraged, Vinyl moved down to search the waist, only to find most everything down there…she had pounded into nothing in her frenzy to kill Twilight.

“Good job, Vinyl.” She muttered under her breath, the ground-shaking footsteps from Spike’s thirty-foot robot getting closer by the second, accompanied by another roar that filled the air.

“Come on, come on!” She whined, trying to find some sort of weapon she could use.

Flipping Twilight’s trashed metal corpse yet again, she found that she wouldn’t be fighting Spike with just her hands; thank Celestia.
The only two things still intact on Twilight’s waist, was a single grenade; what kind it was, Vinyl had no clue, in addition to the grenade was a four-foot long combat-knife.

“That’s more like it…” She muttered with a grin, pulling the knife off of Twilight’s belt and examining it in her mechanical hand.
The shiny blade gleamed in the light of the sun, its edge looked unimaginably sharp and it had jagged teeth all along the back; most likely for stabbing and then yanking out to cause good amounts of damage.

Another roar roused Vinyl from her examination of the knife; she let out a whimper and turned around to see Spike was only two blocks away and closing fast.

He was significantly more worn looking than the last time she had seen him. Black smoke was almost pouring from a chunk that had been torn off of his side, and his visor was spiderwebbed with cracks. The armor of his right forearm and shoulder was nonexistent and a small fire appeared to be burning on his left shin.

If anything it made him look more intimidating than he already was.

“Yo, lady, I’d suggest you be moving out of the way!” A voice called.

Vinyl turned her gaze over to the rooftops to Spike’s left, finding Blossomforth zipping along, hopping from rooftop to rooftop and keeping up with Spike as he barreled down the street.

The massive machine was two blocks away now, and just as Vinyl was about to turn and run for her life, Salespony2 burst out from the right side and slammed into Spike, sending them both toppling into a thrift shop and instantly crushing the small building under their combined weight and sending a massive burst of dust and debris into the air.

“Damn…”

All seemed to go silent for a moment, no other sound filled the air but that of the dust settling and the bits of debris falling onto the ground. It had happened so fast too, Vinyl had barely even seen Salespony2 as he came barreling in out of nowhere and body slammed Spike into a building!

“And here we thought the large one had run off to nurse his wounds…so to speak.”

Luna dropped down from a three story apartment building off to Vinyl’s side, landing on the ground with a heavy “Ka-chunk” and bringing her rifle up to rest the barrel on her shoulder.

“I was wondering where he went, I was also wondering…” Vinyl said in an annoyed tone, turning over to Luna and giving her the faintest of glares from behind the visor. “Where you ran off to…”

“We chose…a tactical retreat.” Luna said with a shrug, sauntering over to Twilight’s smoldering corpse and looking it over.

“No, you ran and hid you shiny metal ass, while I dealt with this.” Vinyl gave the twisted heap of metal a good kick and glared down at it with a frown. “I already scavenged her, so don’t bother looking.”

“We can see that fair Twilight was not felled easily…” Luna said with a hint of amusement lacing her tone, looking Vinyl’s battered mech up and down and huffing softly.

“That doesn’t even begin to describe the-“

There was another roar that cut her off, obviously from Spike. Both she and Luna turned their gaze back to where the dust was finally settling, just as Blossomforth hopped down from a rooftop and landed next to them.

“Someone’s getting back up…”

“Why is it you guys didn’t charge in and finish him off while he was down?” Vinyl asked, her tone almost teasing.

“I just figured that weird-ass Salespony guy would like…beat him or something.” Blossomforth said nonchalantly, hovering over and looking at Twilight’s corpse curiously.

“The point is we are over here now and not over there; let us make haste so we can end these frivolities. We want lunch.” Luna said in a commanding tone. “Blossomforth, take to the rooftops and ready thyself in case thou art needed to assault from above. Vinyl, thou will…where is your weapon?”

"Huh?"

“Your weapon, the rifle, where is it?”

“Oh, yeah, uh…I possibly…ran out of ammo.” Vinyl said with a sheepish chuckle, watching as Blossomforth scaled a nearby building and took off down the street.

“How did thou manage to empty six ammo clips on Princess Twilight?”

“I didn’t…”

“Then how did thou-“

“I didn’t know how to reload the damn thing!” 

Luna was silent.

“Shut up, let’s go. I have a grenade and a knife.” Vinyl said with a huff, waving a mechanical hand dismissively at Luna and beginning to move in the direction of the two badly damaged Heavy-classes slowly righting themselves.

“We said nothing, but we agree. Let us hope your need to skip the tutorial won’t get us all killed…” Luna said with a computerized sigh, walking next to Vinyl with heavy clunking feet and simultaneously feeding a new magazine into her rifle.

“We will take up a position farther back, thou should make use of that grenade, try to take out one of Spike’s ankles!”

Vinyl couldn’t even get a word in before Luna turned and took off into an alleyway over to the left, latching her rifle onto her back before beginning to climb up onto a roof.

And so, yet again, Vinyl was alone in the middle of a street surrounded by giant fighting robots.

“Oh boy…”
There was a passionate battle-cry, loud and resounding amidst the gunfire that had yet again started to pick up. Salespony2 threw a heavy left swing and missed rather spectacularly, his leg giving out as he did and sending his fist into the ground rather than into Spike’s visor-plate.

His armor was in such a poor condition it was almost nonexistent at that point, his right arm was almost totally shredded and hung limp, sparks and smoke spewing out from different points on it and a small fire burning in the shoulder. His leg; the one that had just given out, looked like it had actually just snapped and now was detached at the knee. His stomach armor was shredded and the only part of him that had sustained the least amount of damage as his right arm; something that was going to also be ruined rather soon. The unfortunate fellow was in quite a bad spot and he would have been stupid to think his end wasn’t rapidly approaching.

With a spine-chilling roar, Spike reached down and firmly gripped the Salespony2 by the shoulder, lifting him up and holding him out in front of him in a rather strange manner, much like one would hold out a coat to inspect it.

Why was he…?

There was a sound akin to that of something large powering up, it seemed to fizz unnaturally and it’s source was unknown until about five seconds after, at which point a blue ball of what could only be described as ‘Energy’ flew out from the street to the left and impacted on Salespony2’s back, blowing a hole clean through his chest and then dissipating before it could hit Spike on the other side.

Salespony2 let out a cry of shock, but did not die; much to the surprise of Vinyl and all those watching.

Spike let out another roar and shoved Salespony2 backwards, and he looked as if he would fall over, that is, until he was caught. Seemingly out of nowhere; just like the energy ball that had punched through his stomach, another heavy class mech appeared. 

This mech was the definition of clean; its metal shined in the sunlight and it was painted an almost painful-to-look-at white. On its shoulders it bore a strikingly familiar image of the sun, and other than the red bands it wore on its shoulders and chest, it was marked in no other way.

“No way…”

Vinyl knew without a doubt who this was, simply based off of who she had encounter in the game thus far.

In burning red letters, hovering above the white heavy-class, were the words. “SunRiseBooty” and the number “14” hovering next to it.

“Princess Celestia?” Vinyl said in shock, watching in horror as the Ruler of Equestria proceeded to hold Salespony2 by his one remaining shoulder; back to her, and drew her fist back. Then on her elbow, the armor plating pulled back and revealed a grouping of rockets, they fired in full and combined with the already staggering force the robot could exert, punching straight through the barely-alive form of Salespony2 with the literal force of a freight train.

Glass and twisted metal showered out into the air, plinking off of Spike’s mangle hull and onto the ground, the body it belonged to only collapsing once Celestia had removed her massive rocket-propelled fist from the hole where her victim’s visor-plate used to be.
The words “Salespony2 was obliterated by SirDragonZilla and SunRiseBooty” appeared in the HUD of every remaining player, signaling that their teammate had finally been brought down after what had seemed like an hour of intense combat.

“FALL BACK!” Luna roared, her voice loud enough that she could make sure it was heard above all else, but also drawing the attention of the two heavy-classes in the middle of the street.

Vinyl let out a worried mewl-like noise and started backpedaling down the street, watching Luna hop down from the roof she was on and begin actually sprinting down the road, swinging her rifle around and latching it onto her back as she moved.

“Blossomforth, come on!” Vinyl cried out, still backpedaling and watching as the racer-class mech she was calling out to turned and looked at her.

Just as Celestia raised up a massive, energy cannon and unleashed a blue ball of hell right at the building atop which Blossomforth was standing. The cannon seemed to almost ripple as it charged up, blue light coursing throughout multiple tubes and wires on its outer shell, the barrel end glowing brighter and brighter blue until finally it launched an energy ball the size of a tire.

Blossomforth jumped at the last second using her boosters to try and get away, but it didn’t help her very much at all, she still caught the brunt of the blast and was thrown down into the street.

Right at the feet of Spike and Celestia.

“No, no, wait!” She cried, holding out her shotgun and taking aim, only for it to not fire at all; it had taken damage from the blast. She let out a frustrated cry and tried to stand up to flee, but Celestia was too quick, she bent and grabbed onto the lower legs of the smaller mech with one giant hand and lifted her up to eye-level.

Paying no mind to Blossomforth’s protests, Celestia wrapped her hand around the top half of the racer-mech and effortlessly ripped her in half, tossing each piece to the side as if they were nothing more than empty sunflower seeds.

“VINYL, MAKE HASTE!” Luna roared, just as the words “SunRiseBooty destroyed Bl0ss0m4th” appeared in the HUD’s of the four remaining players.

“Mother of…” Vinyl breathed, watching as Spike roared and pointed in her direction.

“Ah…”

Vinyl couldn’t have moved faster; though she wished she was. The thunderous steps of the two heavy-class mechs shook the ground as they took after her. The DJ spotted Luna as she took a left turn down the street about two blocks down, finding herself able to run without much trouble, and reaching her destination without tripping up.

She did however, nearly fall as she tried to round the corner, and she would have done just that if Luna hadn’t grabbed her mechanical hand and pulled her over into an alleyway, literally tossing her to the ground as she rushed to hide her only remaining teammate from danger.

“Well isn’t this a fine predicament we hath gotten ourselves into?” Luna muttered softly, peeking out from the alley, only to zip back into it as soon as she saw the two heavy-classes lumber into view, scanning the area around them for their prey.

“Why didn’t you tell me that your sister was in here, I assume that’s your sister?” Vinyl hissed, pushing herself up off the ground and pressing her back against the alley wall, praying they wouldn’t be found.

“Quiet!” Luna hissed, holding out a giant hand and making a grabbing motion with it.

“What’re you-“

“Grenade!”

“Oh.”

Quickly as she could, Vinyl reached down and detached the grenade from her belt, handing it to her royal teammate and wondering what she had planned.

“Thou art going to cause a distraction.” Luna said softly.

“Uh…pardon?”

“Thou heard us loud and clear. We need thee to run out and grab the attention of Tia and Spike, so that we may plant the grenade in Spike’s armor and end him, then we can work together and take down Celestia.” She explained, not even seeming to mind that Vinyl could get utterly obliterated.

“Do you not see that cannon!”

“Doth thou not wish to triumph on this day?”

Vinyl shot the Princess a glare through her visor, not really liking this plan but not being able to argue with the logic that Luna was presenting.

“Fine.” She hissed, “Just tell me when.”

“Now.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now! Go!”

With a worried whine, Vinyl was once again back out, alone, in the middle of the street, facing angry robots; though they were looking the other way.

“Uh…hey, big metal whales!” Vinyl yelled out, cupping her hands as if it would amplify her voice.

Spike let out a roar and Celestia was silent as they both turned around and laid eyes on the single, tiny warrior about a block away from them. Celestia’s cannon started to bristle with energy and the barrel end began to glow a bright blue, signaling she was charging up what would most likely be a very large blast.

“Uh…you’re…fat?”

Neither robot moved, Celestia’s cannon however was very much active and the end you didn’t want to be on, was glowing a very bright blue.

“I don’t like this plan anymore!” She cried, turning and hauling shiny metal ass down the street as the crackling sound of Celestia’s cannon charging up began to fill the air. There was a muted “Thump” shortly after, and then the fizzling sound started to rapidly get closer.

Vinyl let out a cry of displeasure at this entire situation, and threw herself to the side, landing on a carriage and instantly crushing it under her weight as a blue orb of energy whizzed by and impacted on a building down the street, exploding and leaving a hole that couldn’t be called a hole so much as it was a massive chunk that was now missing out of the entire shop, easily half of the front end had been obliterated.

“Dammit, Luna, this better work.” She hissed under her breath, slamming a metal fist into the sidewalk and sending cracks throughout it as she pushed herself upright, turning her gaze back to the two heavy-classes down the street, just in time to see Spike beginning to charge towards her.

Her first instinct was to get the hell out of there. She didn’t have anything but the knife anymore, and there was no way she was skilled enough to take Spike down with only that even with the amount of damage he had sustained.

She would have to trust Luna not to get her killed, So she held her ground; drawing the four foot combat knife from her waist and brandishing it out in front of her, as if that was going to do anything at all.

Slowly, Spike picked up speed, focusing himself solely on Vinyl instead of the black-armored warrior-class mech that had appeared on the rooftops beside him and was currently running and leaping to keep up; grenade clutched in her hand.

“Come on, I’m right here!” Vinyl shouted, waving her arms and trying to make herself as annoying as possible to ensure Luna wouldn’t get caught and their plan ruined.

Luckily for the two remaining players on blue team, Spike didn’t notice Luna.

Celestia, however, did; though it wasn’t in time to save Spike.

Luna threw herself off the roof just as Celestia unleashed an orb of blue energy right at the building her sister had just leapt from, it exploded in a fantastic display of blue energy, fire and debris flying everywhere, creating a spectacular background as Luna landed on Spike’s back and jammed the grenade in, lodging it between Spike’s armor before scrambling to push herself off and falling to the ground.

Three seconds later Spike’s entire back was turned into a crater, and thousands of tiny pieces of metal and machinery flew out in a mixture of smoke and fire. Instantly he dropped to the ground and slid a few feet on his faceplate, then came to a halt and was no more. 

The words “SirDragonZilla was eliminated by BringerOfNight” appeared in the HUD of the three remaining players, and a red skull and crossbones floated up above Spike’s corpse and signaled his death yet again, dissipating in a flash of smoke a second later.

“Finally…” Vinyl sighed, wiping a bit of grime off of her visor and looking down the street, catching sight of Luna righting herself, and the Celestia working on feeding a new clip into her cannon and slowly lumbering forward; The tiny arms on her stomach doing all the work to reload so she could hold the weapon.

“We told thou that the plan would work!” Luna called, turning to look back at her sister before briskly clunking over to Vinyl and putting a metal hand on her shoulder. “No time to rejoice now, we would suggest mobility be the best route, lest our sister reload her weapon sooner than expected.

“Agreed, why don’t-“

“You aren’t going anywhere, Lulu!” Celestia’s voice rang out, even though slightly computerized; you could still hear her sweet, motherly tone. It was somewhat strange for it to come from a monstrosity wielding a cannon, but that wasn’t the concern.

What was the concern was that Celestia appeared to have abandoned reloading her cannon, and was now aiming a forearm in the direction of them both.

“Sister, what art thou- HOW?”

Celestia let out a soft chuckle as the armor on her forearm folded back, and a group of four rockets slowly came out from the hole with a faint whirring noise.

“Thou did not tell us that the wrist-rockets had been unlocked!” Luna cried, actually stomping her giant metal foot.

“I don’t tell you everything you know.” Celestia chimed back.

“So we hath learned!”

“Honestly, Lulu, this would have happened sooner. You know it would have.  However royal duties happened to come up that needed my attention just as the game started, hence why I didn’t show up to decimate your team until later in the game!”

“Thou did nothing of the sort! Royal duties…all thou did was stuff thy face with CAKE!” Luna cried, stomping her foot yet again rather like an annoyed child.

It was actually somewhat humorous to watch.

“Lulu!” Celestia said sharply, sounding rather hurt.

Vinyl would have expected more to be said, maybe more ‘Sisterly’ back and forth, but no. Apparently Tia had enough, and shortly after that, four rockets were launched straight for them both.

“Oh damn.”

Vinyl managed to at least try and get out of the way. Luna however seemed to busy doing what was most likely pouting to even pay much attention to the four rockets whistling through the air and coming to meet her straight in the visor-plate, creating an explosion of shiny onyx-black armor pieces that showered the area around.

Vinyl caught a good deal of the explosion, landing face-first into the street as the words “BringerOfNight was vaporized by SunRiseBooty” on her HUD in burning red letters.

Unfortunately for her, that wasn’t the only thing in her HUD.

The image in the bottom corner of her HUD showed her legs glowing a bright red, with an ‘X’ on each one and a 0% on the armor integrity counter.

Her legs were gone, completely.

“Oh…wonderful.” She groaned, flipping herself over and deciding she might as well get comfortable for the end.

“She always was a bit of a sore loser, I’m sure I’ll hear about this for quite some time.” Celestia chimed, the armor on her forearm recovering the holes the rockets had come from as she lumbered over to Vinyl and lorded over her.

“Oh, I know you!”

“Oh, really?” Vinyl deadpanned, not even bothering to try and put up a fight as she had no legs or weapons.

“Yes, you’re the one who DJ’d Shining Armor’s wedding, aren’t you?” Celestia cooed in that soothing voice of hers.

“Uh…yeah.”

“Oh, wonderful, I don’t know if he ever told you but he enjoyed the party quite a bit!” She said happily, as if she wasn’t currently bending down to pick up Vinyl’s badly damaged mech and lift it up into the air; holding it in both hands by the shoulders.

“Yeah…he told me.”

“I hope you know, My little pony, this isn’t anything personal. It’s just the way the game is played!”

“Just kill me and be done with it.”

“As you wish.”

The sound of metal being crumpled was the next thing she heard, followed by the shattering of visor-glass. Vinyl’s entire HUD lit up and flashed a bright red.

And then everything went black for a moment.

A few seconds later, she was in the air, seeming to be flying around the city of Manehattan, only the entirety of ClydesTown was currently spewing smoke from multiple different places.

A second later, the scoreboard popped up in the sky, written in rather intense flaming letters.


Red Team.

“VinylScratch”: Warrior Class Mech. Level 1(Leveled Up +1) (Kills: 2 Assist Kills: 1 Killed by: "SunRiseBooty")

"MrFancyPants": Warrior Class Mech. Level 9 (Kills: 1 Assist Kills: 1 Killed By "StarSwirlFangirl")

"Bl0ss0m4th": Racer Class Mech. Level 3 (Kills: 0 Assist Kills: 1 Killed by: "SunRiseBooty" )

"Salespony1": Heavy Class Mech. Level 4 (Kills: 0 Assist Kills:0 Killed By "SirDragonZilla")

"Salespony2": Heavy Class Mech. Level 4(Kills: 0 Assist Kills: 0 Killed by "SirDragonZilla" and "SunRiseBooty")

"Bringer Of Night" Warrior Class Mech. Level 15 (Kills: 1 Assist Kills: 1 Killed By "SunRiseBooty")



Blue Team.

"Starswirlfangirl": Warrior Class Mech. Level 10 (Kills: 0 Assists Kills: 1 Killed By: "VinylScratch")

"SunRiseBooty": Heavy Class Mech. Level 14 (Kills: 4 Assist Kills: 0)

"SirDragonZilla": Heavy Class Mech. Level 8 (Kills: 1 Assist Kills:1 Killed by "Bringer of Night", "MrFancyPants")

"Sp33dySoarin": Racer Class Mech. Level 6 (Kills: 0 Assist Kills:0 Killed By "MrFancyPants" ) 

"EarlofGrey" Warrior Class Mech. Level 6 (Kills: 0 Assist Kills: 0 Killed by "MrFancyPants", "VinylScratch" and "Bl0ss0m4th" )

"MasterDJNeon" Warrior Class Mech. Level 7 (Kills: 0 Assist Kills: 0 Killed by "VinylScratch")



Final Scoreboard.

RED	BLUE
5	       6

Blue Wins

Game Over.