Gather 'round, my children, and you shall hear a tale of unbridled horror and injustice, savage, nightmare-inducing woe to rival anything begotten by Lovecraft or Poe.
I am in a tank. Dalian Plant.
An enemy tank approaches the South Docks spawn point, where I am. Commander picks him up with scan, points him out on the map. Cool. Time for a tank battle, right?
We meet on that little strip of land that connects the South Docks to the mainland. I open fire.
Hit indicator lights up.
He doesn't fire back, for some reason. Name's red, he's still in the tank. Oh well, I still want a kill. I fire again.
Hit indicator lights up. That's two. The enemy tank begins to smoke.
He still hasn't fired a shot at me. I shoot him a third time.
Hit indicator number three. More smoke. He begins to back up, and pops his smoke canister. I keep my turret trained on him, see the red name show through the smoke, fire once more.
Hit indicator. Four hits on his tank, none on mine. My tank is 100% healthy. No message saying I killed him, though.
The smoke clears. The tank is still there, smoking like a chimney but not on fire. Almost in a daze, I fire an incredible fifth time at this tank, and this tank, incredibly, takes it.
Five hits. Five. Unanswered. Hits. I was beginning to realize that I would never win, that I would continue to fire at this tank until I ran out of ammunition, the muzzle of the turret glowing an angry red, wispy smoke from the barrel silhouetted against the sun low on the horizon.
Finally, finally the tank driver gets his left mouse button un-stuck and fires back at me.
Takes me out in one hit.
One hit to my front.
Logic escapes me. The laws of physics, probability, and the limits of human endurance tap-dance discordant melodies in the dark ichor at the back of my mind. This encounter was on par with octuplets, all over 100 years old, each winning the lottery on the same day, with the same numbers. Those were the odds, and I beat them. I had met God, I decided, and He drove an M1A2. Invulnerable and perfect. I want to laugh with insanity at my own foolishness for trying unmake that which He had wrought.
As the seconds towards my rebirth begin to count down, I see, in the background, the tank driver, the Engineer, calmly exit his vehicle... and begin repairing it.
Argh.