Ponies Versus Starcraft

by ambion

Applejack vs Siege Tank

Behold the mighty siege tank! Combining the very best of ‘big explosion’ and ‘far away,’ what ensemble dare hope to be complete without featuring this iconic war machine?

Tremble under the earth shattering kabooms! Delight at the excessive collateral damage!

Long has the siege tank been iconic, holding to valour in desperate defences, cheesing the enemy from afar.

Blow up defensive structures without contest! Blow up the defenders! Blow up the mineral line, then blow up the minerals! Impossible? Never! Bust out some good old Arclites or fresh from the factory Crucios, good times are had!

Put ‘em on the high ground, put ‘em on the low ground, put ‘em on platforms in space! Why not?

And for the pansies; tank mode! Run ‘em away, run ‘em ahead, piddle away at the enemy with cannons barely large enough to fit your head inside.

Grow a pair! Or even three, that’s right - support struts! Transform that sucker into siege mode! Transform and don’t roll out! Autobot them so hard, because you DeceptiCAN

That’s right, siege tanks! More range than a sniper! If a siege tank had teeth, they’d be picking them with those piddly, so called ‘high’ powered rifles!

A long and celebrated history! Cause nothing out ranges the siege tank! Nothing-

Wait...What’s this coming over the hill; is it a monster? It could be! It looks like an ultralisk obsessing over dieting and gold trim, hugging a supernova.

What is this ridiculous contraption!? No...it can’t be! It can’t be firing! Not from that range! No!! NO!!!---

Cue to Applejack, privately wondering what the big deal is. Outwardly she is patting the trembling siege tank and making small noises of comfort. Note, she is not patting the driver - who is still too inconsolable to come out - but the actual tank, which is possibly shaking with the severity of emotion from within. Indeed, tears are seeping through the joints, and one cannot help get the feeling that were the machine attempt to fire anything, the round would be too sodden with sorrow to be anything more than a damp squib.

“Fifteen range! Fifteen!” The tank wails. (it is just easier for all of us if we don’t distinguish between machine and operator; truth be told there doesn’t seem to be much seperating the two at all)

“There there,” Applejack mumbles, rolling her eyes. A mare does one patch job with the greatest of all tools: duct tape, and she forever becomes the go-to mare.

“I mean, I mean” the twin barrels of tank mode seem to sniffle, “There’s always been melee and air, but that was fair, ya know? And then there was Immortals, and that’s a tough cookie to crack, but did I complain?”

“There, there. It’s not all bad. They can’t upgrade to twenty three range anymore. That’s good, right?”

“Twenty three?!” The tempestuous torrent of tears trebled. “Where’s the counter? Where’s the counter?!”

Applejack hummed and hawed a momment; she could not think of one at all. Even so, this was starting to get on her nerves, just a little.

“Look, there’s still changes to come, right? You just have to do the best of what you can do, and hope for the rest.”

“You don’t understand,” the tank sniffled. The orange pony held those words a moment as she looked out over her land, her trees. It was sylvan serenity, barring the inconclusively insane colossi hellion-roller skating deftly between the trees, stirring hardly a leaf in her passing. She might have been an eighty foot tall war machine, but Applejack had come to calling her Darla. The farmer’s friends had been variously shocked, awed and ‘awesomed’, but had come around in the end. They were pretty cool like that.

The pony smiled, then sighed. “You say that, but I think I do understand. Being there, being all you can be, and being damn proud of it. And you’re still there, and you watch everything...everypony around you go on to greater and greater things...and suddenly you aren’t worth so much anymore...

They’ve all done incredible, amazing things,” Applejack mumbled. “And here I am. I don’t begrudge them that. I don’t. But...I wish I was there with them. That...oh, look at me running my mouth. I’m a silly, sentimental pony if there ever was one.” She stretched, adjusted her hat and cleared her throat.

It was only sometime into the silence that she realized the tank had stopped weeping.

“Applejack?”

“Yeah?”

“You know how they say, ‘cool guys don’t look at explosions’...?”

“Ain’t a word of it true.”

“Ah. Thank you. I...I needed to hear that.”

Again, silence. The breeze played in the pony’s mane, but also around the large bore high calibre strike cannons. It was just that kind of breeze.

“Applejack?” the siege tank asked cautiously. “Do you want to blow something up?”

She pondered a moment. “Yeah. I think I’d like that.”

They went, and blew stuff up. It was good.

Comments

[Magnum the Critic]

lols were had indeed

[Edragon]

You are a silly pony, aren't ya apple jack.
...
I never thought I'd feel sentimental and sympathetic...to a tank.

Queue to Applejack, privately wondering what the big deal is (I think you mean "Cue" here, since queue is like a line or invoice order.)

[RedvsBlue327]

Huh, so siege tanks now only do 23 damage?

And so possibly ends the grand terran iconic war machine's long record of striking fear into the hearts of the enemy players. Flawless record, you will be missed.

[Lorthalis of Crows]

[Sozmioi]

1742901

What are you talking about? The 23 in the story was range. It's a pretty ridiculous figure, and I'm not even sure what unit it's supposed to go on.