(Story extract)
 
The thick smoke and hiss of snow turning into steam drew closer as I rounded a corner off the road, the wagon still in tow and cargo shaking and clinking loudly. That was definitely a mare screaming, but… were those actually words she was saying? Oh, please don’t let her be absolutely insane… I peeled around another corner, skidding to a stop as the source of the plume was found. An earth pony mare was hastily shoveling snow into and onto the back of a white-painted tracked vehicle, large metal turret glinting in the fading light. Another kind of tank? Uh…
 
“Chto? Kto ty?!” The mare dropped her shovel, staring at myself. What did she just say? ‘Stow coat-keys’? What? She leapt up onto the back of the tank, her old jacket shaking in the small breeze that blew down the city street, myself simply tring to make sense of what was going on. She syared at myself for a moment, before her eyes went wide and she dove back into the tank, reappearing a moment later with a gun that somewhat resembled Bloodbeak’s Thompson with the drum-type barrel. “Derzhis’ podal’she ot moyego tanka!” Still not understanding a word of what she was saying, the several bursts of machine gun fire she aimed in my general direction I picked up perfectly. Undoing the harness and diving for the corner, I nearly threw myself right into Minty, Sweetie Bot taking a moment to stop herself as her momentum carried her sliding out into the firing zone. A few bullets pinged off of her mane, herself turning her head to face directly at where the tank was. Interestingly enough, the volley of gunfire stopped; maybe she was reloading?
 
“Mare of the Ministries… w-wait! I am a friend!” The voice finally changed to a language that we understood, both myself and Minty breathing heavily and looking out at the robotic filly. Sweetie Bot sat down on her haunches, her eyes doing that weird scanning thing again, my augmented friend keeping both of his rifles at the ready. “I-I am so sorry for shooting at you Miss Belle, I didn’t realize that you were traveling with an entourage… p-please don’t take my tank away, War Mare is all I have left!” O…kay, mare with a tank was completely bonkers. Sweetie Bot finished her scanning, myself and Minty peeking around the corner at the silently weeping mare.