The frozen dirt road cracked underhoof as a lone earth pony trotted along it, soft grumbles escaping his muzzle. The hell was that other stallion doing at Angel’s place, anyways? Acting like he owned half of it, honestly, the nerve of some guys. At the same time, the collection of cooking utensils packed in one of those brass cylinder-things that Angel used in her grenade rifle did make him reconsider sticking around, just on the offchance mister electric blue had a spare one and the same trigger hoof as Angel did. All in all, not a great discovery today.
 
His ears twitched as the rumble of something in the air caught his attention, looking around to try and spot it. Yeah, he knew that sound well, that throaty rumble of Angel’s flying thing - much as he really didn’t want to be bombed again, the hope of Angel having another one of her famous crash landings and leaving her flat as a page - and, more importantly, entirely helpless to whatever handsome stallion could find her first - did overpower his better judgement of diving into the nearby snowbank. His eyes scanned the cloudy skies, a faint break in them letting the sun shine through and prompting him to block it with a foreleg.
 
“Heh, oh, come on Angel, at least give me a fighting chance this time. Or at least let me see where you’re going down…” Amidst his searching, what Parchment failed to notice was the faint shaking of the ground, one that steadily increased in frequency as the drone of the engine drew closer, slowly, steadily, surely, and squeakily. And - rather unfortunately for him - that coat and mane of his made it fairly hard to see him through the limited optics the pink-maned cackling operator of the vehicle had. Thinking the road was clear ahead, she accelerated the tank, bearing down fast on the unwitting stallion.
 
Something wasn’t quite right. Parchment could feel it. Usually by now the engine would’ve gone ‘nyoom’, but the way things sounded it was more like the engine was stuck on ‘n’. Or, well, probably a capital ‘N’ at this point. And what in Celestia’s name could be that squeaking sound behind the rumble? Still confused, Parchment started to look places that wasn’t the sky - the road ahead was clear, the snowbanks on his left were empty, there was a massive rubber tank charging at him form behind, and the snowbanks on his right were-
 
The Maus had cleared another several yards as Parchment stared at it in disbelief, before desperately trying to outrun it. What was unfortunate is that he was both a graduate of the oft-mentioned Prometheus School of Running Away From Things, and had stopped on one of the slipperier parts of the frozen road. You can probably guess what’s coming.